Unbound

by Shawn Speakman

  Crimson ignored a sudden chill. He took a step forward. "What was stolen?"

  He stopped abruptly, Goddard's hand suddenly pressing against his chest to hold him at the precipice.

  "Let's do this carefully," the man said. "Methodical. As Sleeman would."

  Crimson found himself nodding. "Yeah, all right."

  "Tell me what you see."

  John Crimson took in the room again. He shrugged; the answer seemed obvious. "Someone was looking for something. In a hurry. Money or jewels from the safe will be gone, I suspect."

  To his surprise, Goddard shook his head. "We're meant to think so."

  "Sir?"

  His boss gestured expansively. "All this," he said, "should have made a hell of a noise. But I heard nothing until a breeze made that window clack against the frame, waking me."

  "I . . ." Crimson said, and swallowed. "I don't understand."

  "This is staged, John."

  "There was no break-in?"

  "Oh, there was a break-in alright." He seemed about to say more, then fell silent.

  "Still a bit confused here, sir."

  Goddard sighed, but not, Crimson thought, from annoyance. The man was trying to convince himself, as if trying to work out a magician's trick at a West End show. "The burglar, or burglars, came in through the window. They were after something specific. The safe, perhaps, I'm not sure yet. Then, once in possession of their prize, they proceeded to quietly and methodically create this mess."

  Crimson studied the room again, still confused. He was about to ask how Goddard could know they made the mess after the robbery, but then he saw it. "No footprints," he said.

  "Very good, John."

  "They came in through the window. A flower garden out there, if I'm not mistaken."

  "You are not mistaken."

  "Their boots or shoes would have been damp at the very least, muddy more than likely. Yet the papers on the floor are unblemished."

  "Not even rumpled."

  Crimson pictured a thief walking backward toward the window, scattering papers in their wake. "We may find muddy footprints on the carpet then."

  "Indeed. In fact you can see some, in a gap just there," Goddard said, pointing.

  Something still didn't add up. "Why go to that trouble, though? Why not take the boots off at the sill and make the whole thing clean?"

  "It is a mystery, isn't it? I suspect," the superintendent said, "all will become clear when we know what was taken, and that is no small task. There's so much detritus here I'm half convinced the thieves brought some papers with them just to add to the mess."

  "Only you will know what is missing, of course, but I'll help in any way I can. There may be more clues we have yet to spot."

  Goddard grasped Crimson’s shoulder. "Now you're thinking like Major Sleeman. Let's get to it then."

  * * * * *

  Hours later, at 7 a.m., Annette brought them eggs with thick-sliced toast coated in butter, plus a carafe of steaming Arabica coffee. They ate in the hall, at Goddard's insistence, so as to not contaminate the room. Fed and caffeinated--it was by far the best coffee Crimson had ever tasted--they returned to the laborious task, with Crimson surveying every inch of the room for possible clues while Goddard attempted to catalog the spilled papers and other debris from his mental recollection of the contents prior to the invasion.

  There were indeed the hints of muddy footprints on the rug below the scattered papers. Crimson also found a single black thread dangling from the window's protruding hasp. Silk, he thought. An unusual textile in London, but it made sense if one wished to move about with stealth. He wrapped it in a paper envelope, wondering what Goddard would do with such a clue. Take it to the cloth vendors and the fine clothiers, perhaps? Look for a match in color and thread quality, then scour the billings for a possible suspect. Rather thin. Likely a waste of time. Crimson stuffed the paper in his pocket.

  The clock struck nine when Henry Goddard, kneeling on the floor beside stacks of papers, rocked back on his heels and ran a hand over his tired face. "I don't understand."

  "What is it? What's missing?"

  "That's just it. Nothing."

  "What?"

  "It's all here, John."

  Crimson cast a glance about the room, deflated. "Whoever it was sought something specific and did not find it, then."

  Goddard reluctantly agreed. Neither of them commented on the implication: trespassing was a much less serious crime than theft, no matter the stature of the victim. He sent Crimson away then, saying he would stay home a few days to sooth the nerves of his pregnant wife, asking Crimson to manage affairs at the Yard as best he could.

  Two days passed with Crimson drifting through his duties, his mind equally distracted by the crime scene within Goddard's home and the lack of contact with the lovely Malena. She'd vanished from his life as abruptly as she'd entered it. Inquires at her hotel were rebuffed on grounds of client privacy. Upon presenting his Scotland Yard warrant book, the clerk admitted no one by the name Malena Penar was on their current guest list, nor, upon Crimson insisting they check, even on their list of clients from the last few weeks.

  "What about the name Penar?" he asked, thinking of her brother, how he'd left her on Old Kent Road, and what else a man like that might be capable of. Intuition made a vein on his temple begin to twitch.

  "Nothing, inspector. Look for yourself."

  "I think I will," Crimson said, and for the next hour he pored through each entry. He found nothing either, though one name made him trip up twice during his search. A current resident by the name Mona Pendisio. M. P. Crimson flipped the book around and tapped it. "I'd like entry to this room, please."

  The manager came with him, along with a porter holding a ring of keys. No one answered at the knock, so Crimson stepped aside and let the door be unlocked. The two men waited in the hall as he entered with truncheon in hand.

  An empty room. Bed unmade. Closet wide open, devoid of clothing. Drawers left pulled open.

  And, unmistakably, her scent. It lingered in the air, as if she'd just left.

  The manager came in a step.

  "Remain in the hall," Crimson barked. "This may be a crime scene."

  The man backed out, aghast, hands raised in apology. Crimson kicked the door shut in his face. He turned back to the room, stepping farther inside as a hundred thoughts fought for the full attention of his mind. Why stay under a false name? Or had the name he'd known been the false one? Had she left in haste? Fled from her brother? Perhaps he'd taken her. Perhaps he'd packed her belongings while she waited, bound and gagged, in a carriage in the alley below.

  Crimson recognized this last as pure fantasy on his part. The overactive imagination of a man who'd seen more horror in his twenty-five years than most would see in a lifetime. Yet he also knew what people were capable of.

  He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath through his nose and let it out through the mouth. Theoretically this cleared the mind, gave one the ability to see things as they were. Henry Goddard said so, anyway. Crimson felt daft, but when he opened his eyes he found the technique had worked.

  The room was not, in fact, empty. When he'd kicked the door closed, something had moved. A length of cloth, black and shiny, hanging from a peg on the inside. Malena's silk scarf. The accessory had been black when he first saw it, then she'd changed it for a blue one but claimed to have done no such thing. Here, now, hanging in space against the white-painted door, it seemed to announce itself like a bold challenge.

  And suddenly John Crimson felt a weight. A physical burden, wrapped in a piece of paper and stuffed into his pocket. A knot of dread twisted in his stomach as he removed the yellow square and unfolded it carefully. Inside, the single strand of blue silk waited like a serpent. Blue! It had been black when he'd taken it from Goddard's window. His throat went dry as he picked up the thread. He lifted it, and lifted his eyes at the same time, to the cloth hanging from the door. The black scarf, now blue.

  Tran
sformed, somehow. Impossibly. Supernaturally.

  Crimson shook his head. He felt like the butt of a joke. Some prank being pulled on the school yard. This was no innocent jest, though. A home had been robbed. Malena had used him to get to Goddard. She'd . . . she must have sought something. Heard something during that dinner. But what? And why leave this bizarre, almost magical, clue?

  Of one thing he felt sure. This was a challenge, somehow. A test. He vowed, then and there, to pass it.

  Blue cloth in hand, he fled the room and raced to Goddard's home.

  * * * * *

  Crimson found his superior much as he had two days prior: standing in the hallway, staring into the invaded study.

  Only this time the superintendent's face brightened at the sight of his inspector. "I've cracked it, John," he said.

  "I . . . you have?" he asked, the scarf temporarily forgotten.

  "Something was stolen. A single piece of paper, no wonder I'd missed it."

  "What piece of paper?"

  Henry Goddard looked at him. "Sleeman's letter, of all things. I don't understand why. It contained only the logistics of my visit. Still . . . what's wrong, John?"

  Crimson had turned to look at the room, as if it might now divulge some explanation. It did not, not exactly. But tidied now, everything back where it had been before the robbery, Crimson noticed something that had slipped attention before. "The globe, sir," he said.

  "What about it?"

  "Did you move it while cleaning in here? Bump into it, perhaps?"

  "No. Why?"

  He and Goddard walked together to the ornate sphere.

  The world had been angled so that India would be front and center in the magnifying glass, a single red pin pressed into the surface to mark Sleeman's base of operations in Jubbulpore. Crimson had noted this marker months ago, even discussed it with Goddard. It served both as a reminder of the coming visit to that place, and a talisman through which Goddard hoped to channel some of Sleeman's investigative ideas.

  But the globed had been turned.

  "What on earth?" Goddard whispered.

  The Black Sea, not India, now loomed beneath the circular lens. The word CRIMEA sat in the very center, bold and blindingly obvious.

  "Son of Crimea," John Crimson whispered.

  Then he showed Goddard the scarf, and the thread from the window hasp.

  Part One

  Months of agonizing travel followed.

  Crimson spent most of it alone in his meager cabin, dividing his time between attempts to unravel the mystery of the color-shifting scarf and studying everything he could find about Major William Sleeman. The scarf proved stubborn, remaining blue since leaving the abandoned hotel room. As for Sleeman, the man proved a prolific writer, leaving no shortage of material to pore over on the journey. Yet for all he learned about colonial politics and the murderous Thugee Cult, he could not imagine why Malena Penar--or whatever her name really was--had done any of this. The whole endeavor defied logic, and so he'd quickly given up trying to comprehend it. The answers waited in the jungles of central India, it seemed. He hoped so, anyway.

  Between the frayed nerves of Goddard's wife and the impending birth of their child, plus the pin in the globe that seemed aimed for John Crimson himself, it had not taken more than an hour for the two policemen to agree that it should be Crimson, not Goddard, who would board an East India Company steamship bound for Alexandria. They had learned, later on the same day that the modified globe had been discovered, that a Mona Pendisio had booked passage to India the day after the robbery. She'd taken a sail ship on the slower course around the Cape of Good Hope. Crimson, it was decided, would steam for Egypt, ride hard overland to the Suez, then sail on to Bombay. With any luck he'd present himself at Sleeman's home several weeks before the woman had even set foot on the subcontinent. Then he would wait for her, and confront her.

  "She may never arrive at all," Goddard had said, "but learning her motives is not the primary purpose of this journey. You are my representative to Sleeman. Learn all you can from him. Write down everything, because this time next year you'll be training our whole department in his techniques. Understood?"

  What ate away at Crimson's confidence was the fact that this seemed to be exactly what Malena wanted. The scarf, the pin, Sleeman's stolen letter. These clues had been deliberate. She wanted him to follow, of that he felt absolutely sure. And she'd given him the chance to arrive ahead of her. Had their meeting on Old Kent Road been planned as well? He thought very probably so.

  It was the why of it that gnawed at his gut, churning with each mile of sea and land he left behind him until finally, after almost six months, the sprawling skyline of Bombay appeared on the horizon.

  * * * * *

  He spent only one night in the teeming, sweltering city. Hundreds of miles of overland travel still awaited him, and yet his only safe option--to embed himself in an army regiment bound for Sleeman's province--would not work. No suitable dispatch would happen for another four weeks, and Crimson's intuition told him time was of the essence.

  A rail line made close approach to Jubbulpore, leaving a manageable fifty miles of foot travel. However, Crimson quickly learned the trains were not running due to a tunnel collapse three days prior, so that path was moot.

  That left two alternatives. The first was to travel with a merchant caravan. A logical choice, as common sense said there was safety in numbers. Yet Crimson had learned much from reading Sleeman's letters over the last few months, and the Major devoted a significant amount of his words to the methods employed by the Thugee. It seemed they preyed upon this very notion of safety in numbers. They posed as merchants, trickling in to caravans in the days leading up to a departure, then traveling alongside them for days or weeks. They made friends, they dined with their traveling companions, shared stories and supplies. Then, somewhere out in the vast rural plains or forests or jungle, the Thugee would strike. They were not brigands who waited at blind curves in the road. No, the cunning bastards earned the trust of their victims. They traveled alongside, then struck in unison when least expected. Through some complex and silent system of hand signals, the Thugs would spread among the other merchants, slip rolled-up scarves around their necks, press one foot against the lower back, pull, and twist. A coin knotted into the center of the scarf would press against the windpipe, resulting in suffocation. The hair on Crimson's neck pricked up every time Sleeman mentioned this sinister technique.

  The bodies were looted, then grotesquely-yet-expertly mutilated so the limbs could be folded in such a way that a full bleed-out would occur within hours. Buried in shallow graves, yet drained of fluids, the bodies would rot into the earth without notice. Because of the crude infrastructure of the country, it would be weeks or even months before anyone even realized their traveling merchant relative had failed to return. Before Sleeman these disappearances were attributed to the supernatural, or simply the deliberate removal of oneself from an unwanted marriage or overbearing family. Disturbed and disgusted by the Thug's techniques, Crimson couldn't help but admire the cleverness of the system. They were rarely caught, at least before Sleeman took his interest in their activities. Indeed, as far as Crimson could tell the Thugs were essentially tolerated by the larger population. To be killed by them was to have been duped by their methods and their deities, and thus the fate deserved.

  Thus John Crimson could not travel with merchants, though part of him almost wanted to just to confront these killers firsthand. It seemed almost a test of investigative skill to see if he could spot them before they struck. The problem, however, was that he would be hopelessly outnumbered. He could see himself standing in a jungle clearing, pointing and shouting "Aha! I knew you were Thug!" even as fifty or sixty of them surrounded him, the rest of the caravan dead or dying. These were people who made murder and robbery a way of life, starting as young as eight years old. Fine inspector of the Yard or not, he'd be no match for them.

  So he rode, alone, eschewing eve
n a guide. The police warrant book he carried had no pull whatsoever with the colonial force, so he purchased a horse for a considerable sum from a regimental stablemaster with an understanding of reimbursement if Crimson returned the animal in good condition at the conclusion of his “ill-advised adventure.” Again common sense seemed to run against reality. Everyone he spoke with while provisioning himself seemed to think traveling alone in India was suicide. He should wait, travel in a large group, surely!

  He couldn't blame them. To cling to the common wisdom, no matter the evidence right in front of one's nose, was an affliction as old as love.

  Each night he made camp well off the roads, which were little more than well-beaten game trails in truth. His skittish horse, bearing the unoriginal name Bucephalus, neighed at anything that came within twenty yards. He ran well enough during the long, blisteringly hot days, but at night the animal seemed to sleep with an eye open and that suited Crimson just fine. From the very first night he slept like the dead.

  Fifty miles outside Bombay the foot traffic all but vanished. When Crimson did come upon other travelers he stormed past them at a gallop, eyeing each of them as a potential Thug, though he knew this was likely incorrect in every instance. Most ignored him anyway, uninterested in the goings-on of the British.

  For a week straight he pushed the horse across a landscape of shocking variety and beauty. Endless dusty plains and dense jungles. Villages and their denizens alive with a riot of color and sound. Ancient temples half-consumed by vegetation. Forgotten monuments to uncountable Gods. He rode past all without so much as stopping to eat, and by the end he found that, more than anything, he craved human contact. Relief washed over him as the white spires of Hindu temples finally poked out about the dense trees, and the town of Jubbulpore came into view.

  * * * * *

  The town was no more than dirt roads woven through a scattering of low buildings, some in the native style and some clearly built since the East India Company arrived.