‘Let me see.’ She donned the pair of spectacles that were suspended from a chain around her neck, then opened the large, hard-backed ledger with a marbled cover which sat on the desk in front of her. ‘Scheduled departure is today. Check out by eleven o’clock.’
‘Less than two hours,’ said Surrender-not.
‘Which room is he in?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘You are forgetting something, no, Inspector sahib? Newspaper clearly states there is substantial reward for any informations leading to his capture.’
‘We haven’t captured him yet,’ said Surrender-not.
‘He is upstairs only,’ she shot back, ‘and newspapers says information leading to capture, not led to. My information is leading to his capture, no?’
We didn’t have time to argue. Besides, I’d learned that it was futile to do so. Engaging in an argument with a Bengali woman was generally a hiding to nothing.
‘Very well,’ I said, pulling out my wallet, extracting a ten-rupee note and placing it in the gap between the grille and the counter. ‘Now what room is he in?’
She looked at the note as if I’d just blown my nose with it. ‘That is hardly substantial, sahib. What do you expect me to do with ten rupees, celebrate with a box of ladoos?’
‘Right.’ I sighed, pulling out another ten. ‘That’s all I have.’
‘Shame,’ she replied. ‘I would happily have told you for sixty.’
I looked to Surrender-not. ‘Open your wallet, Sergeant.’
‘But . . . Yes, sir.’ He sighed, handing over two crisp twenties.
‘Room twenty-three.’ Mrs Mitter smiled, sweeping up the notes. ‘It is on second floor. You want master key?’
‘As long as there’s no extra charge,’ mumbled Surrender-not.
‘Please,’ I said as she held out a ring of keys.
I took the keys and headed for the stairs with Surrender-not half a pace behind me.
We reached the second floor and crept down a corridor illuminated solely by light from a window at the far end. Number 23 was about halfway along. I drew my revolver as Surrender-not knelt down and quietly pushed the key into the lock. As he was about to turn it, a shot rang out. A bullet blew a hole in the door about a foot above his head. The sergeant threw himself to the floor, taking the key with him. I stepped back, drew my revolver and took aim.
‘Police!’ I shouted. ‘Open up!’
Another two shots rang out and two more holes punctured the door, sending a shower of splinters flying.
I dived for cover.
From inside the room came the noise of scraping furniture, then the smell of burning.
‘What’s he doing in there?’ asked Surrender-not.
‘Either destroying evidence or attempting to burn the place down. You know what to do,’ I shouted to Surrender-not and threw him my revolver. The sergeant nodded as I left the relative safety of the wall and launched myself at the door. I crashed into it with as much force as I could muster and achieved precious little for my trouble other than a bruised shoulder. In response, another bullet came blasting through the wood only inches from my head. I flung myself back behind the wall and prepared to try again.
‘Wait, sir!’ shouted Surrender-not. ‘Let me try the key again!’
He threw the gun back to me and snatched the key from the floor. Dropping to his belly, he inched his way to the door. The smell of burning was growing stronger. He reached up, slotted the master key into the lock and turned it with a click. Anticipating another shot, he quickly dropped flat on the floor, but no shot came. We looked at each other. I nodded and he gently reached up and pulled down the door handle. I kicked it open and crouched down. Inching forward, I scanned the room: a bed, a desk, a wooden almirah and a wastepaper bin on fire. No sign of our suspect, though. At the far end, a set of French doors had been flung open. I raced over to them, just in time to see a man sprinting along a balcony that ran the length of the building.
‘Put that fire out!’ I shouted over my shoulder as I raced after the suspect. The man had made it to the end of the balcony and, with his revolver, smashed another set of French doors and dived into a different room. I reached the shattered door in time to see him disappear into the corridor beyond. I loosed off a shot, more out of frustration than in the expectation of hitting him, and pursued him into the hallway and up a flight of stairs, bursting out onto the roof only a dozen or so paces behind.
The man ran to the edge, no doubt hoping to make his escape across the rooftops, but was stopped by a three-foot-high coil of barbed wire which ran between the hotel and the building next door.
Dead end.
He turned and I got my first good look at his face. It was the man who’d shot the prince. Same beard, same wild eyes, same markings on his forehead.
‘Drop the gun and raise your hands!’ I shouted, aiming my revolver at his chest.
The man’s eyes darted left and right, frantically searching for a way out. Then, still holding his revolver, he slowly raised his arms.
‘I said drop the gun!’
He looked up, as though suddenly noticing it was still in his hand.
For an instant, he looked at me and smiled, then he lowered the revolver to his temple and fired.
It was a risky thing to do. Shooting oneself in the head is harder than you might think. The cranium is tough and sometimes you just end up blowing out part of your skull rather than your brains. But I guess he was lucky. He was dead before he hit the floor.
I walked over, knelt down and put my fingers to his neck. Then I picked up the revolver that lay beside him.
‘You shot him?’ gasped Surrender-not from somewhere behind me.
‘He shot himself,’ I said, returning to my feet.
‘But why?’
‘I suppose he figured it was better to die from a bullet to the head than face the hangman’s noose. Regicide’s a serious offence . . .’
‘Where does that leave us?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly, examining the dead man’s revolver. It was an antiquated thing with only five chambers and a trigger that folded in. ‘We needed to interrogate him. As it is, we still know absolutely nothing about who he was or what his motives were. Let’s hope we find something in his room. Did you manage to put out that fire?’
He grimaced. ‘Yes, sir. Though I’m not sure it was in time to save anything.’
The building was soon crawling with khaki-clad officers of the Howrah police. They covered the assassin’s corpse and prepared it for transport to the Medical College Hospital morgue, where it would likely lie next to the body of the man he’d murdered less than twenty-four hours earlier, proving yet again that the universe has a sense of humour.
Surrender-not and I were back in the assassin’s room, looking for anything that might shed light on his identity. A team of officers would carry out a finger-tip search later, but for now the two of us made a start going through the dead man’s few possessions. The room was spartan, the almirah was closed and the bed had been made. If it wasn’t for the burned-out wastepaper bin and a door that now resembled a Swiss cheese, you’d have been hard pressed to guess that anyone had actually stayed there.
Surrender-not opened the almirah. In one corner of the cabinet was a small, saffron-coloured bundle tied to a long bamboo stick. Surrender-not brought it over to the narrow single bed. Unpicking the knot he opened up the cloth and spread out its contents.
A pair of underwear, a vest, some betel nut, a small ball of what looked like opium resin and a flimsy booklet printed in some eastern language. The man had obviously believed in travelling light. I flicked through the pamphlet before tossing it over to Surrender-not.
‘What do you make of this?’
Surrender-not studied it intently, and I took advantage of his distraction to pocket the opium.
‘I’m no expert,’ he said finally, ‘but the text appears to be Sanskrit. It could be some sort of religious tract.’
‘Really?’ I
said, as he returned the pamphlet. ‘You’re a Brahmin. Can’t you read it?’
‘I’m not a very good priest,’ he replied, ‘which is why I joined the police force.’
I walked over to the burned-out bin, picked it up and placed it on the desk. With one finger, I sifted through the remains of what looked to have been a sheaf of papers. All that was left now was a pile of ashes.
‘Whatever he was burning, he certainly did a thorough job of it,’ I mused. ‘He’s destroyed pretty much everything.’
‘Maybe not everything . . .’ said Surrender-not. He was on his hands and knees under the desk. He brought something out and placed it on the desk. It was a scrap of paper, seemingly torn from the corner of a newspaper. I guessed it had either been lying there for days or, more interestingly, fallen to the floor when the assassin threw all the other papers in the bin. I picked it up and examined it closely. One side was smudged with some sort of grease and covered in eastern type. This was a different script from that of the booklet, and while I was certainly not an expert in Indian languages, it obviously wasn’t Bengali, lacking the sharp angles and straight lines that characterised that particular typeface. It didn’t look like Hindi, either. This text was far more rounded, full of curls and squiggles. I turned it over: more of the strange writing above a picture of something. It was hard to tell exactly what, as the paper was only a corner scrap, torn from a whole sheet of newsprint. In amongst the foreign type, however, there was one thing I did recognise – the English characters ‘NGER 99K’. They meant nothing to me. Whatever had preceded it had been ripped off and, I guessed, consumed by the flames in the bin.
‘Can you do any better with this, Reverend?’ I said, passing the scrap to Surrender-not.
He peered at it, then shook his head. ‘Looks like a South Indian language to me, sir.’
‘What about the stuff on the back?’
‘There’s something familiar about it, sir. I just can’t remember what.’
‘That’s very useful, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Any thoughts on the grease stains?’
His brows knitted in concentration.
‘Residue?’
‘Smell it.’
He lifted the scrap to his nose.
‘Oil of some sort. Smells like the stuff we use to oil our revolvers. Do you still have the gun, sir?’
I removed it from my pocket and handed it to him. He opened up the chamber and smelled it, then nodded.
‘It’s possible that the revolver was wiped with this paper.’
‘Not wiped’, I said. ‘Wrapped.’
‘What?’
‘My guess is the gun was wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, from which this scrap was torn.’
‘Why would a holy man wrap a gun in newspaper?’ asked Surrender-not. ‘Was he trying to protect his clothes?’
‘The man’s head and body were covered in ash. I don’t get the impression he was the type to be overly fastidious about the state of his under-garments.’
But Surrender-not’s observation was valid. Why wrap the gun in newspaper? And why had the assassin stayed on in the city after he’d completed his task? They were good questions. And as yet I had no answers.
There came the sound of wailing from the corridor, and a moment later, the sari-clad figure of Mrs Mitter appeared.
‘Hai Ram!’ she exclaimed. ‘Look at all this damage! Who will pay for it?’
‘You’ve got the reward money,’ Surrender-not ventured.
‘Are you mad? There is over two hundred rupees’ worth of damage. Look at the door . . . and the furnitures! And why did you set fire to my waste bin?’
‘That was the work of your paying guest,’ I said.
‘And where is he?’ she questioned.
‘You might say he’s checked out early.’
‘Someone must pay for all this,’ she asserted, sweeping her hand over the general carnage.
‘I’ll tell you what, Mrs Mitter,’ I said, ‘you help us identify the man and I’ll see what I can do about expediting any claim for compensation you might have.’
‘You want to know the fellow’s name?’
‘That would be a start.’
‘It’s in the book,’ she said. ‘The guests’ register. He signed upon arrival. I will bring it.’ She took another despairing look at the room then headed back down to the lobby.
I walked out onto the balcony and lit a cigarette. Below me, the assassin’s body, wrapped in a white sheet, was being transferred by two police orderlies into a waiting ambulance. Surrender-not joined me.
‘I want the man identified,’ I said. ‘Whatever is written in the register is probably a false name. Nevertheless, check it out.’
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied.
‘And get the Fingerprint Bureau to take a set of his prints at the morgue.’
According to Surrender-not, Calcutta was where the science of modern fingerprint detection was born. He claimed it was two Bengalis – one a Hindu, the other a Mohammedan – who’d done the work. Of course the classification system they’d devised bore not their names, but that of their supervisor, Edward Henry. He’d gone on to receive a knighthood and become commissioner of Scotland Yard. I wasn’t sure what had become of his two subordinates.
Mrs Mitter returned holding the large, hard-backed ledger. She put on her spectacles and proceeded to thumb through the pages.
‘Hã, ei-tho,’ she said, looking up. ‘This one.’ She passed over the book and pointed to a name scrawled in black ink. It read Bala Bhadra.
‘Is that a Bengali name?’ I asked.
She let out a snort of derision. ‘Maybe you ask your friend?’
I turned to Surrender-not.
He shook his head.
‘Balabhadra is the brother of Lord Jagannath.’
SEVEN
‘So you let him shoot himself?’
It was an hour later and we were back in Lord Taggart’s office. Our efforts in tracking down the killer hadn’t done much to redeem us in the Commissioner’s eyes.
‘It was rather difficult to stop him, sir,’ I replied, ‘seeing as he had a loaded gun in his hand.’
More to the point, I was quite glad he’d fired at himself rather than at me.
‘You’re sure this was the man who murdered the crown prince?’
‘Yes, sir. His revolver is being tested as we speak. We should have confirmation as to whether it was the murder weapon within twenty-four hours.’
The Commissioner pondered this.
‘And there’s nothing to suggest a wider political dimension?’
‘We’ve no way of knowing if this was a one-off attack by some disgruntled fanatic or the start of something more serious, sir.’
Taggart removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘Have you any theories, gentlemen?’
I’d been expecting the question, but that didn’t make it any easier to answer. I had some ideas, though not much more than speculation and postulation and half-baked premises, and nothing that was remotely reasoned through. Still, Lord Taggart wanted answers and it was my job to give him some.
‘We’ve several theories, sir,’ I replied, ‘but nothing concrete.’
‘Let’s hear them anyway.’
‘First, and most likely at this stage, the man was a religious fanatic who bore a grudge against the crown prince. The problem is we don’t know why he’d do that.’
‘Who knows why religious fanatics do anything?’ replied Taggart. ‘That’s why they’re called fanatics. Besides, the fact that he shot himself rather suggests he wasn’t exactly playing with a full deck, Sam.’
Surrender-not coughed gently. Taggart turned to him.
‘You have something to add, Sergeant?’
‘If I may, sir, there may be some . . . problems with that theory.’
‘Such as?’
‘There are some loose ends, sir. When cornered, the assassin burned some documents in a wastepaper bin before trying to escape. It
would suggest he was attempting to destroy something incriminating. Their destruction took precedence over his attempt to flee, which could imply a wider conspiracy.’
Taggart thought for a moment. ‘Did you manage to retrieve the documents?’
‘No, sir,’ replied Surrender-not. ‘By the time we gained access to the room, they were little more than ash.’
‘So, at this stage, your theory is purely conjecture?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘There’s also the letters, sir,’ I added. ‘The ones the prince wanted to show us.’
‘Did you get hold of them?’ asked the Commissioner.
‘Unfortunately not, sir,’ I replied. ‘We questioned the Dewan and the prince’s ADC. The Dewan claimed to know nothing about them. The ADC stated that he’d been shown them in Sambalpore but that they were in a language he couldn’t read. We requested permission to search the prince’s rooms but the Dewan refused. He was quite implacable on the subject. He said the hotel suite was sovereign Sambalpori territory.’
‘So you’ve no letters either,’ he grumbled. ‘The Viceroy is deeply concerned about this whole episode. Nothing is to be allowed to derail the current talks. Given the sensitivity, you’ll need to come up with something more than a bin full of ashes if I’m going to justify keeping the case open.’
‘There is one other thing, sir,’ I said. ‘We found a scrap of newspaper in the assassin’s hotel room. It had traces of gun oil on one side. We believe it was used to wrap the revolver.’
‘And?’
‘I think it might have been a package, sir. Someone delivered the gun to the assassin for this particular killing. It’s imperative we keep digging.’
The Commissioner sighed. ‘It’s not enough, Sam. The Viceroy wants the matter concluded. Unless you can come up with something concrete, loose ends or not, I’m going to have to close the case.’
Surrender-not and I trudged silently back to my office.
Loose ends.
The Commissioner employed them as throwaway words as though the letters and other indications of a deeper conspiracy were to be tossed to the breeze and forgotten about.
A Necessary Evil Page 5
