For a moment Maya wondered if her deception of a man was not working.
She was draped in a large overcoat upon a loose shirt and trousers, while an old top hat upon her head hid her long hair. Slowly, and looking casually down at the road, she walked past the men, her left hand inside the overcoat pocket clutching tightly to a knife in preparation for any eventuality. But none of them made any advances towards her as she crossed them and moved to the end of the street.
Maya wiped the sweat upon her brow and released the grip on the knife in her pocket. The apartment building that Bernard lived in, lay to her left. It was a tall decrepit structure that looked like it should have collapsed a decade ago. Plaster peeled from large patches upon its façade and in some places, holes had formed on the wall which resembled jagged misplaced windows. The street below was littered with garbage, it seemed like the people living on the top stories did not care to step down to dispose of their rubbish. Maya squinted her nose at a particularly large pile of garbage at the entrance of Bernard’s apartment building and walked towards the stairs. Bernard lived on the topmost level of the 6-floor apartment.
While the street outside was deserted and silent, the apartment building itself was a hubbub of activity. So loud was the bustle that as Maya clambered upon the steps, walking slowly and testing each step before putting her weight on it (lest it gave way under her), she actually had to shove her fingers in her ears. The houses were abuzz with arguments, children’s wailings, clangs of pots and pans, and a clamor of late dinner. After a slow toil of ten minutes, Maya finally made it to the top flight, the stairs here were so broken that twice she slipped and had to clutch the iron railing to stop her from toppling over. Once at the door of the flat 632, Maya stood still for some moments catching her breath. The large overcoat was very cumbersome and Maya was wet with sweat. A horseshoe hung at the top of Bernard’s door which was shuttered with the help of a large iron lock. Maya opened the lock with her hoop of skeleton keys and stepped inside.
A strange smell hung about the place, nauseating and rotten. Maya produced a candle from within her overcoat and lit it. The house consisted of a single room and a small kitchen on the side. A cot lay sprawled in the corner of the room and around it lay littered the cause of the smell. The room was strewn with newspaper wrappers, chicken bones, crumbs of bread, and other half-eaten food. The food must have been here for a long time for it to smell so bad. A large unshuttered window in the room opened to the street. Maya peeked through it casually to observe the street which seemed to be as quiet as before. She turned to give the room a thorough exploration. Apart from the cot in the corner, there was a wooden trunk, which was open, the sleeve of a shirt was poking from under the lid. Maya trundled to the trunk to find it stuffed with dirty and smelly clothes. At the bottom were a few papers and a pen and inkpot. Maya took up the paper and studied it in the light from the candle. The first page was similar to the source document that Bernard gave the doctor with each cadaver. She kept the papers back and closed the trunk. It was then that her glance fell on a parchment on the floor beside the trunk. She picked the paper up.
“Don’t disturb the graves or else…”
This was the same note that the doctor had received, accompanied by Bernard’s dead body. The handwriting upon it was the same as well. Maya looked around to find at least five other copies of the note, all of them with some mistakes and corrections. It seemed like the author of the note had taken his own good time to make the copy for the doctor. And he had done it in the house of his victim? Had Bernard been killed here as well then?
Maya could not dwell on the questions for much longer. There was a sudden loud thump in the room and she turned hurriedly to find a figure jump in from the open window. Maya slipped the pieces of paper in her pocket and produced her knife, ready to face the intruder.
23
Grave Robber's Accomplice
The figure was of a boy, clad in dirty khaki pants and with nothing upon his chest. As soon as he landed in the room, Maya charged towards him and kicked him in the stomach to leave him rolling in pain. She quickly turned him over, settled upon his frame, and pointed the knife at his face. As she did that, her mustache came unstuck from above her lips and fell upon the boy’s face forming an ill-placed and ugly third eyebrow. The boy was skinny and could not be more than 12 years in age. The suddenness and ferocity of the attack had left him shocked and he was quivering with fear.
“Don’t kill me,” he wailed, “you can take whatever you want, though I don’t have much here.”
Maya, realizing that the boy was not much of a danger put the knife away and stood up. The boy still lay on the floor, shivering and studied Maya keenly.
“Who are you?” Maya asked finally.
“Bh….Bhola,” stuttered the boy, “Please don’t hurt me.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” said the boy, “this is my house.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Maya barked, “This is the house of Bernard Knowles and it is locked from outside, you are intruding in.”
“I am sorry. You are correct, this is not my house. I only hide here in the night. I jump into the house from the terrace.”
“And who are you hiding from?”
“The Greycoats. They are rounding everyone off from the streets. They picked Shyam and Karim and Robert. They will get me as well.”
The boy gazed at the garb of Maya before sliding away from her. “Are you a Greycoat?” he asked.
Maya did not say anything. She reasoned that pretending to be a Greycoat could aid her in getting the boy’s cooperation.
“Yes,” she said.
“But why are you pretending to be a man? And are there women Greycoats at all, I have never heard of them.”
“I am one of the few women in the force,” said Maya pulling a chair close to the boy and taking a seat, “And I dress up like a man so that people do not recognize me. Now tell me, why are Greycoats after you?”
“You don’t know?”
“Don’t ask questions boy,” snapped Maya, “answer them.”
The boy stared incredulously at her before he thought better of violating Maya’s commands.
“I worked with Pickle, I mean Bernard, I called him Pickle always, that’s what everyone called him. We went to graveyards to steal bodies. But the police have him, I know he has given them my name as well, so I am hiding from them. I spend my days in the streets begging, and slip into the house at night. The Greycoats think that the house is locked so they don’t trouble me here. I jump in through the roof.”
If the boy worked with Bernard, thought Maya, he could be a massive help in finding more about the man.
“I can let you go, boy,” said Maya leaning closer to the Bhola, “not arrest you for grave robbing if you cooperate with me.”
The boy nodded.
“How long have you been with Bernard?”
“1 year”
“When was the last time you saw him,”
The boy thought deeply, “A week ago. We had planned to rob a body in the Kolaso Cemetery but I slept too long and could not make it.”
Maya noted the name of the cemetery.
“In your time with him do you know anyone who he had picked a fight with or he had a feud with.”
The boy thought for a long time.
“We were in a dangerous business and had fights with a lot of people. The watchmen of the graveyards, the Longstaffs, other grave robbers, common people who had a sniff of what we did, everyone. But why do you ask this, what about Bernard, where is he? Have the police done something to him?”
Maya seemed to have no choice but to tell the boy about his companion.
“Bernard is dead,” she said solemnly, “He had never been arrested. A week ago, he was murdered and I am trying to find out who did that. For that reason, I need to know if you suspect anyone.”
The boy gasped at the revelation. He huddled farther away from Maya to take the support
of the wall and kept quiet for a long time.
“He is dead. But how is that possible.” Bhola mumbled after some time, “I think I know who could have done it.”
“Who?”
“There are some people who owe money to him. When Bernard had asked them to pay back the other day, they had threatened him”
“Who are these people?”
“I know their faces,” the boy said, “but nothing else.”
“Please try to remember,” urged Maya, “that might be the only hope to find Bernard’s murderers.”
“I don’t know the names but I think I know where you can find them.”
“Where?”
“In his pocket. He always carried the list with himself. If somehow I can get access to his body, I am sure I can give you the names.”
24
The Fourteenth Day
“How long do you think it takes a skeleton to decay,” Director Horace Ibrahim asked Ernst, rubbing jasmine oil on his bald head. Today was the last day of the 2 weeks that Ernst had been given to arrest the thief of The Ladder’s skull, and when he had found a green note at his desk summoning him to the director’s cabin early in the morning, he had feared the worst. Rightly so.
“I would suppose it would take it forever to become dirt,” Ernst answered solemnly.
“So you think you have forever to find the thief who stole the Ladder’s head.”
Ernst had no answer to it. He shuffled his feet, embarrassed at having made no progress in the case. He had spent a dozen futile nights in pubs, raided the houses of few notorious thieves in Cardim, churned through his intelligence network but had failed to find any worthwhile clue about the thief. He didn’t have even a single suspect to put forth as evidence of his efforts.
“I am making progress on it sir,” he managed finally, “it is proving difficult to find any prominent leads but I am trying. You see…”
“If only trying was enough I would have become the mayor of Cardim,” quipped the director screwing the glass bottle of the oil shut and keeping it carefully in the drawer, “Listen, Captain, we don’t have forever. There are 10 thousand men responsible to protect 15 million people in this city. If you sit on a case like it is your mother’s lap we’d go nowhere. You need to work fast. You asked for two weeks, I gave you that, and yet you sit here empty-handed.”
“But today is the 14th day,” Ernst corrected him.
“You are telling me that what you have not been able to do in the last 13 days you would do in a single day. If you had such good fortune, Captain, you would not have become a High Guard.”
Ernst blushed with embarrassment. He shifted his glance back towards his feet and his torn shoes drifted into his sight. Should he take them off and put it on the director’s table, a proof of all his efforts. Better still, should he throw them on Horace Ibrahim’s smug bald head.
“Look up captain. You do not have time to sit here and shrivel. Leave this case and focus on other things. I have information that a huge tranche of stolen goods and valuables are being transported from the bank of river Kali to the harbor to be smuggled away. There are more than 20 boats employed for the purpose which has set my brain moving. Take two Longstaffs along with you and find more about it.”
Ernst wanted to protest but he had no words. He had planned to take a break once he had solved the case of the skeleton thief but his failure to do that meant that he had no power to ask for rest.
“Okay, sir,” said Ernst without any hint of energy. He had a feeling that even this task would prove too hard to be done properly. It was only a ploy so that he could fail once more and Horace could chuck him out of the constabulary.
“Good,” said the director, “Please close the door behind you and for God’s sake invest in new shoes”
25
Grave Robber's Grave
Bhola doubted if the woman in her house was actually a Greycoat. In his yearlong dealing with them (ever since he had come into contact with Bernard and started raiding graves), he had seen a couple of them. They were clever, cunning, cruel, and most importantly men. He had never heard of a woman Greycoat. It was absurd, there was no way that a woman would be able to deal with all the villains that brimmed in the belly of Cardim. She would not last a day in the mirth. But then, who was she?
Bhola did not much care. It was enough to know that she wasn’t a Greycoat and that she did not intend to give him up to the police. He wasn’t too inclined to spend another year in the juvenile detention home. He had spent some time there when he was caught stealing bread in Emilia. When he had escaped from the place he had resolved never to return, at any cost. But the crackdown on the grave robbers had pushed his resolve to the limit, most of the men in the business had already been rounded up and put in jails. He had thought that Bernard, who he often felt was among the cleverer robbers, would manage to save his neck but he had been mistaken. Bernard had fared even worse. At least the others were alive (eating stale food and grinding wheat in prisons, but alive). Bernard on the other hand had managed to get himself killed. By who? Bhola had no clue. For all he knew, Bernard might have been killed by the spirits of the multitude of dead men that he had disturbed all his life. Bhola did not know of anyone who owed Bernard money. He had made that story up, Bernard never had enough money to lend to someone.
Bhola chuckled as he and the mysterious woman got off from the hansom and emerged in an area he was sure he had been before. Yes, he remembered, it was the doctor’s place.
He had accompanied Bernard many times to this house to supply bodies. Though he had never ventured inside, Bernard carefully dropped him out of the cart just as the wrought-iron gate of the building swam into view, he easily remembered the big house.
The doctor was one of the more generous customers of Bernard and he prepared prudently for the job. The body snatcher would save the best corpses for him, those which had been buried the same day, then clean the corpse and scrub it to remove any traces of dirt and mud from the body before putting it in a clean sack and loading it onto a cart. It wasn’t just the body that had to be prepared, Bernard dressed nicely and even prepared some sort of document to give to the doctor. It was a strange business, one that Bhola understood little about but he was content with the money. Bernard gave him 5 Cowries for every body sold to the doctor which was way more than he gave him any other time.
Bhola expected to be led to the main gate but the woman instead ushered him towards the left, upon a narrow dirt trail that ran parallel to the boundary wall of the doctor’s bungalow. Upon knowing that Bernard kept a list of men who owed money to him, and who might have had a hand in his murder, the woman had undergone a strange change. With the knife and candle in her hand, she had paced around the house for a full few minutes before announcing with a flourish that they needed to go to Rabitsnare to explore Bernard's grave. That is what Bhola had wanted, to get access to Bernard's dead body, not because it had any piece of paper, that was an elaborate lie of course, but because Bernard had a gold ring in his hand.
The two of them had hit a jackpot with the last body they had robbed from a cemetery. Two weeks ago, they had gotten information about a recent burial in Flinston Park cemetery. They had crept up to the place which seemed like it had been filled up freshly and dug it up. But instead of finding a fresh body inside, they had found a skeleton, centuries old. Perhaps the men who had dug the grave had first dug in a place already inhabited by a dead man. They must have then found someplace else to bury their body. The two were about to fill the hole back up when Bernard saw something glint in the grave. He had groped in the dirt to find a skeletal finger inside a muddy but unmistakably valuable gold ring. The two had dug the grave further to search the skeleton for something as precious but there was nothing. It did not matter, the ring was enough, it was more valuable than ten cadavers put together. The two had packed their tools and left.
That was the last time Bhola had gone digging a grave. A few days later Bernard had told him that he had foun
d a buyer and that he would take the ring to be valued in a couple of days, till then he had another job for him in the Kolaso Cemetery. Bhola had agreed but it had slipped off his mind at the last instant and he had slept through the night. That was the last that he had seen Bernard and the ring which the other man had put upon his finger.
Bhola hoped that dead Bernard still had it in his finger. The possibility was remote. If he had been killed by other robbers, they were sure to have stripped him for anything valuable, but it would be worth the effort. If he managed to sell it, he might even make it to his village in the south. He could stay there safely for a few months until the situation in Cardim improved.
The woman led him to an opening in the wall and the two crept through the gap and inside the compound. The area inside was much larger than he had initially thought. A hundred houses in which Bernard lived could be fit inside the place. At the other corner of the lawn, was a large bungalow which lay wrapped in darkness. The household was asleep. The guardhouse at the gate also seemed devoid of any activity. The gatekeeper must be asleep as well. The two of them looked around to make sure no one was about then the woman led him towards the right along the wall and stopped near a pile of freshly filled dirt. Bhola had seen the spot from some way off. Two years in the business had accorded his eyes a keen sense of recognition. He could locate a grave from a long way off. He unstrapped the shovel from his back, took off his shirt, and silently took to work. The tools in his hand were Bernard’s. It seemed quite ironic to use a grave robber’s shovel on his own resting place.
The grave was at least four days old, he could tell from the tightness of the soil, and it had been dug in haste and by an unpracticed hand as could be made out from the uncertain shape of the place. It was also rather small for a man of Bernard’s height, which meant it was not very deep. Since the edges of the hole tapered as one went down it would be too small to accommodate Bernard if it went too deep. His practiced hand quivered slightly as he dug, not because he was digging the body of a person he knew but just due to the excitement of the potential of the discovery. He pitied the woman slightly. She was now crouching beside the grave, keeping an eye on the surroundings to make sure no one noticed them. He would tell her once he found Bernard and his empty pockets that it seemed like Bernard had not been carrying the list when he had been killed. All her efforts would be in vain. For a moment he was curious why the woman cared about Bernard at all, but then the thought of the ring and the riches smothered all other thoughts.
The Anatomist (Maya Mystery Book 2) Page 11
