Blackstone and the Great Game (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 2)

by Spencer, Sally

  ‘Police!’ he said. ‘Inspector Blackstone!’

  One of the bodyguards advanced towards him, while the rest continued to keep him in their sights.

  ‘You will please to stand facing the wall with the palms of your hands flattened against it,’ the bodyguard said.

  ‘But you know me. I’m from the police.’

  ‘You will please to stand facing the wall with the palms of your hands flattened against it,’ the bodyguard repeated.

  The guard ran his hands expertly up and down the Inspector’s body.

  ‘Come,’ he said, when his search was completed.

  Still under close scrutiny from the other bodyguards, Blackstone followed the man down the corridor and into the parlour of one of the suites.

  The Maharaja was there, sitting imposingly on an exquisitely carved throne. Various servants hovered in the background, ready to satisfy his slightest wish. Aggarwal sat at his feet, in front of a low table, like a faithful dog.

  Blackstone made a quick study of the Maharaja’s expression. There was haughtiness there, as might be expected on the face of a man who had the power of life and death over his subjects. But there was grief, too—the grief of a father who did not know how he would survive if anything should happen to his son.

  ‘You have found the men who took my golden child from me, Inspector?’ the Maharaja asked, without preamble.

  ‘Not yet, Your Majesty,’ Blackstone admitted.

  But we did have a lead, at least for a while, he thought.

  Lou Gammage might have told them much! But by the time Blackstone’s men reached the Admiral Nelson, Gammage had gone. Not for ever, of course. He would almost certainly turn up again—but probably as a corpse, floating in the river.

  The Maharaja shook his head sadly. ‘Of course you haven’t found the kidnappers. You will never find them. They are far too clever to be caught.’

  ‘May I ask if there has been a ransom demand?’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Yes, there has.’

  ‘How much do the kidnappers want?’

  ‘One hundred and twenty thousand pounds,’ the Maharaja replied, and Blackstone noticed that Aggarwal, still at his master’s feet, blinked.

  ‘Can you raise that kind of money?’ the Inspector asked. The Maharaja’s lip twisted in contempt that the question should even have been asked.

  ‘The money will be raised,’ he said, ‘but it will take a little time, for even I do not carry so much currency with me on my journeys.’

  ‘I would like one of my men—perhaps my sergeant—to be the person to deliver the ransom,’ Blackstone said. ‘Are you willing to agree to that?’

  ‘No!’ the Maharaja replied emphatically.

  ‘He will not interfere with the transaction in any way, but when he sees the kidnappers at first hand, he may perhaps be able to notice something which will give us a clue as to where—’

  ‘No!’ the Maharaja said again.

  ‘We know that these men are capable of killing their victims, because they have already done so.’

  ‘And that is precisely why I am prepared to do exactly what they ask of me.’

  This was an impossible situation for any policeman to find himself in, Blackstone thought. Under normal circumstances, the victim would have to co-operate with him whether he wanted to or not, because he represented the law. But the Maharaja was the law in Chandrapore—and even outside it he was powerful enough to exert his will, should he wish to. This hotel stood on English soil, for example, but as long as the Maharaja was there, its second floor had become a part of his kingdom.

  ‘I must be brutally frank, Your Highness,’ Blackstone said, hoping that fear might work where logic had failed. ‘The kidnappers may kill your son however willing you are to co-operate with them. They may have already killed him.’

  ‘They have not,’ the Maharaja said.

  ‘How can you be so sure of that?’

  The Maharaja gestured towards his secretary. ‘Show him the photograph.’

  Aggarwal reached on to the low table, picked up a photograph, and handed it wordlessly to Blackstone.

  It was a hasty piece of work which reminded the Inspector of the snaps which seaside photographers took of visitors wandering along the promenade. Though the boy in it was obviously Indian, he was dressed in the clothes of a London street urchin. He was standing against a brick wall. He seemed unhappy and looked as if he might have been drugged—but he was clearly standing unaided.

  ‘Are you sure this was taken recently?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Do you think I would have allowed my son to be dressed in rags while he was still under my protection?’ the Maharaja retorted.

  Blackstone examined the photograph again. The brick wall did not look new, and neither was it crumbling. It was about as anonymous as any wall could be, and might have been located in hundreds of streets in London—or thousands of streets anywhere else, for that matter. He turned the picture on its side, looking for some detail which might help him pinpoint the place more accurately.

  Nothing!

  There was not even a shadow which would have allowed him to guess at what time of day the photograph was taken.

  ‘As you can see, His Royal Highness is quite safe,’ the secretary said.

  ‘I can see that he was quite safe when the picture was taken,’ Blackstone countered. ‘But there’s no guarantee that he still is. And even if the kidnappers haven’t harmed him yet, they may well do once they have got their hands on the money. They know that if they’re caught, they’ll hang for what they’ve done already, so what’s to stop them deciding it will be safer to kill the prince?’

  ‘Because letting him live will put them in no extra danger,’ Aggarwal said. ‘They have assured me that they have been masked at all times, and the prince would be unable to identify them.’

  ‘And you believe their assurances, do you?’

  ‘Within limits. Only a complete fool would call a gang of kidnappers honourable men. Yet from the way they spoke to me I believe that they are not quite devoid of normal human decency. Perhaps they have children of their own, and can understand the suffering His Majesty is enduring. Whatever the case, they have promised to return the prince safely once the ransom is paid, and I am prepared to accept their word for it.’

  ‘And I am prepared to accept the judgement of my secretary,’ the Maharaja said.

  ‘They have already killed twice, and may kill again,’ Blackstone reminded him.

  ‘This I know,’ the Maharaja said dismissively. ‘But there is a great difference between butchering a few commoners and spilling the blood of a prince. Will they risk such a thing—especially if I have done exactly what they asked? I do not think they would dare.’

  He didn’t understand, Blackstone thought desperately. He simply could not come to terms with the idea that even to an ordinary kidnapper, the prince was not royal at all. To them he was no more than the son of an unfairly rich nigger, and his life counted for virtually nothing. And these men were not ordinary kidnappers. He had realized that after his visit to Amritsar Lodge. He yearned to save the poor, frightened child, but the father was not helping at all!

  ‘Return the photograph to my secretary,’ the Maharaja said.

  ‘I’d prefer to keep it for a while,’ Blackstone said. ‘It might just provide me with a—’

  ‘Return it to my secretary,’ the Maharaja repeated firmly.

  With a sigh, Blackstone gave the picture to Aggarwal. ‘I wonder if I might be permitted to question your secretary, Your Majesty,’ he said.

  The Maharaja nodded. ‘By all means, ask him whatever you wish.’

  ‘I…er…think it might prove more useful if we were allowed to talk in private.’

  ‘And why might that be? Do you think he is keeping secrets from me? Do you think that he would even dare to dream of doing such a thing?’

  ‘Of course not, Your Majesty. But he may find himself overwhelmed in the presence of his ruler, as I am
sure I would be in the presence of mine. Perhaps he would be able to think more clearly if we were alone. Will you grant us that opportunity?’

  ‘I will consider it,’ the Maharaja told him.

  Twenty-Four

  Blackstone looked across his desk at the man lounging in his visitor’s chair. Walsh seemed relatively sober, taking into consideration the fact that it was already late afternoon.

  ‘So you talked to the Maharaja, did you?’ Walsh asked.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘And there has been a ransom demand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much do the kidnappers want?’

  ‘A hundred and twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘And what did the Maharaja say about the ransom? That he was willing to pay it, and you were not to interfere in any way?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  Walsh smiled. ‘I did not need to be told. No one in the world knows the Maharaja better than I do.’

  ‘No one?’ Blackstone asked sceptically.

  ‘There may have been those in the past who knew him better, but since having such knowledge is dangerous, they are all now dead,’ the Major said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘The secretary met at least one of the kidnappers, and he believes they will return the child unharmed,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Did he tell you this in private, or when the Maharaja was listening?’

  ‘When the Maharaja was listening.’

  ‘Then he may only have been saying what he thought the Maharaja wanted to hear.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I asked the Maharaja’s permission to talk to him privately.’

  ‘And did the Maharaja give his permission?’

  ‘You claim to know him. What do you think he said?’

  Walsh stroked his chin pensively. ‘He said he would think about it.’

  Blackstone shook his head in admiration. ‘And why did he do that?’

  ‘It’s not his practice to grant a request the first time it’s made. Normally it is necessary to ask—to beg!—four or five times, even when what you want to do is what he already wishes done. Perhaps in your case—since you are not one of his subjects and are concerned to capture the men who kidnapped his son—he may well grant your request at only the second time of asking.’

  Blackstone had always suspected that he needed Walsh. Now—seeing the Major as a lantern which could lead him through the dark subtleties of the Maharaja’s mind—he was certain of it.

  ‘During your time in India, did you ever come across Colonel Howarth of the llth Hussars?’ he asked.

  ‘If you’re in India long enough—and I was—there are not many colonels you don’t come across,’ the Major said, lighting up one of his cheroots. ‘What surprises me is that you seem to have heard of him. How did that happen?’

  ‘What can you tell me about him?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Not going to answer my question first, old boy?’

  ‘No.’

  The Major shrugged. ‘Fair enough,’ he said philosophically. ‘In my opinion, some soldiers are born, and some soldiers are made. If you’re born to it, you know almost instinctively what to do. If you’re not, and you have any sense, you wrap yourself so tightly in all the paraphernalia of soldiering that any part of you which might not act like a soldier is never allowed to spill out. You live strictly by the regulations. You worship the ritual. You believe that whatever we do is always right—because it is we who do it. And conversely, of course, whatever the other chap does is always wrong.’

  ‘Is Howarth, in your opinion, one of the soldiers who was made?’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Walsh agreed. ‘But please don’t take that as a slight on the man. For every Julius Caesar, Henry the Fifth or Robert Clive, there are a thousand Colonel Howarths. It’s only if they’re really unlucky that they turn out to be disasters. Most of the time they muddle through well enough. Some of them may actually achieve something.’

  ‘Who could induce Colonel Howarth to commit a criminal act?’ Blackstone asked.

  Walsh’s mouth fell open wide enough for his cheroot to fall out of it. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, as he bent down to pick it up.

  ‘Oh, I think you heard me well enough,’ Blackstone told him.

  Walsh placed the cheroot back in his mouth and frowned. ‘Criminal act?’ he mused. ‘Who could induce him to commit a criminal act? Let me see. The Queen, of course—but whatever he did for her couldn’t, by its very definition, be considered criminal. Nor would he cross the line for his family because, as far as I know, he doesn’t have any.’

  ‘How about money as a motive?’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘He suddenly seems to have plenty of it. He’s just moved into a very fine estate near Windsor.’

  ‘I couldn’t see him committing a crime for money,’ Walsh said.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I suppose it’s just possible that having already committed it, he might be prepared to accept a reward for his services. Yet I must come back to the point that I don’t think he’d ever contemplate anything anti-social, unless it was under orders from someone higher in the—’

  Walsh came to a sudden halt.

  ‘Yes?’ Blackstone said.

  ‘There are certain codes of conduct which apply even to drunken ex-officers who jumped shortly before they would have been pushed. I don’t think I’m prepared to discuss Colonel Howarth any further—unless, of course, you can provide me with a really compelling reason why I should.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll consider this compelling. We believe that Colonel Howarth played a part—admittedly small, but nevertheless significant—in the kidnapping of the Maharaja’s son.’

  ‘That’s absurd!’

  Blackstone quickly outlined what he had learned at Amritsar Lodge.

  ‘The Colonel had a tiger, now he doesn’t,’ he concluded. ‘So where is it’? My guess would be that it’s lying on a stone slab in the London Zoo infirmary, full of bullet holes.’

  ‘But if he is involved, that must mean that—’

  ‘That he’s not the only Army officer who’s part of the plot’? That someone else, possibly someone who outranks him, is also involved?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Walsh admitted.

  ‘Thinking it over, I’m surprised this kind of thing hasn’t happened before,’ Blackstone said. ‘How many soldiers would you say leave the Army with the conviction that they’ve had a raw deal? Or, at the very least, that they haven’t been sufficiently compensated for all their efforts?’

  ‘If you’d asked me that question a few years ago, I’d have said none at all,’ Walsh replied. ‘Back then, it was enough to know that you had done your duty. But times have changed. When one sees some common northern industrialist—a man without breeding or education—spending money like water, it’s hard not to feel that something has gone wrong with the world. So there may well be a few bitter old soldiers around. Still, I refuse to believe that any officer who’s had the privilege of serving under Her Majesty’s colours—’

  ‘They have the expertise, and they have the discipline,’ Blackstone interrupted. ‘I should have thought of the Army from the very start. Who else would be capable of pulling off such an operation?’

  Walsh’s brow furrowed in deep thought. ‘I wish I could provide you with a ready answer, but I can’t actually think of anyone else,’ he said mournfully, after perhaps two minutes had passed.

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘You’re not the kind of man who would be cruel enough to deliberately undermine everything I’ve based my life on without some purpose,’ Walsh said. ‘So what is that purpose? What are you seeking?’

  ‘I need your help. I want to know who Howarth was close to during his time in India. Not his superiors, they’ll mostly be dead, but men who served under him and now probably outrank him—and, of course, are in England at the moment.’

  ‘I’ll feel like a Judas, but I’ll do it,’ Walsh said.


  ‘And Major Howarth’s house has to be watched. It’s not really a job for the police. You’ll need to use your influence to call in the secret service.’

  Walsh’s mournful expression disappeared, and he burst out laughing. ‘The what?’ he asked, between chortles.

  ‘The secret service,’ Blackstone repeated.

  ‘And what, exactly, do you know about the secret service?’

  ‘About the British secret service, I know nothing. It wouldn’t really be very secret if I did. But I had some dealings with the Okhrana—the Russian secret service—a few months ago. It seemed to have an extensive web of agents, so I can only assume that—’

  ‘Then you’d assume wrong,’ Walsh said. ‘In India, our political officers garner their information from paid native informers, which means that what they learn is, at best, unreliable. For God’s sake, man, the Indian Mutiny took us completely by surprise! Do you think that would ever have happened if we’d had a decent intelligence-gathering network?’

  ‘Perhaps there have been failures in India, but surely—’

  ‘Do you know how we’ve learned about Russian advances in Asia in the last forty years? Through the efforts of individual Army officers who used the time they should have been spending on leave to travel through hostile territory!’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Quite serious. And you haven’t even heard the worst yet. Sometimes, while carrying out these missions, they pose as explorers. And that’s not just to deceive the people they’re spying on—it’s to deceive the Foreign Office as well.’

  ‘The Foreign Office!’ Blackstone repeated, dumbfounded.

  ‘The Foreign Office doesn’t like us spying. It has no power to avenge our deaths, should we be killed, and it feels that such activities could upset the cosy diplomatic relationships it periodically establishes with the Russians. So the Army’s not only given the almost impossible task of having to defend a huge frontier against possible enemy incursions, it has to do it while it’s blindfolded.’

  ‘What you’re saying is that we can’t use the secret service to watch Colonel Howarth, because the most powerful nation in the whole world doesn’t have a secret service!’