by Vaseem Khan
‘How much do you know?’
‘Only what I was told. Namely, that he appears to have gone missing.’
She waved at the table. ‘Please, take a seat.’
He folded his frame on to a wooden chair, then waited as she poured herself a glass of water. She tilted the jug at him but he declined.
She studied him over the top of her glass as she drank.
His pale eyes were deeply set, hooded, his lips wide and full. There was a stark, unsettling beauty about him.
‘How did you know John?’
A hesitation. ‘Did?’
She realised her mistake. No point backtracking now. ‘I’m afraid that we’ve just discovered his body.’
His jaw fell. ‘John’s dead?’
‘Yes.’
He seemed stunned. ‘How?’
‘We’re still determining the exact circumstances of his death. But it’s in connection with his disappearance that I wish to speak with you.’
For a moment, his focus was elsewhere, and she was forced to repeat herself.
‘Yes, of course, anything I can do to help. Perhaps I’ll have that glass of water, after all.’
She poured him the glass, then waited until he was ready. ‘How did you know him?’ she repeated.
‘I met him about a month ago, when I came to Bombay. I’m from England, as you can probably tell. I’m a writer. Well, it might be more truthful to say aspiring writer. I’m working on a historical novel set in the early period of the East India Company’s tenancy on the subcontinent. The Asiatic Society has an excellent collection of Company papers documenting their activities here.’
‘Their activities were theft, murder, and political manipulation.’
He seemed unfazed. ‘That’s what makes that particular period so intriguing. Speaking as an author.’
She bit down on her desire to reorient his viewpoint.
It always amazed her how so few Englishmen could bring themselves to acknowledge the truth of the Raj and the East India Company period prior to that, both constituting little more than a protracted pirate enterprise, a means of taking enormous wealth from the subcontinent while inflicting terrible suffering on the local populace. With independence almost three years in the past, history was being rewritten, or at least, buffed and polished. Men like Ingram would turn the British time in India into an adventure story, the sort of Bigglesian tale of pluck and derring-do aimed at teenage boys that had sold so well over the years in her father’s bookshop. ‘How did you meet?’
‘It was some soirée the Society had organised. He was pointed out to me as a fellow Englishman, and so I went over and said hello.’
‘My understanding is that he was Irish.’
‘Half Irish. On his mother’s side. But he was born in England and grew up there. At any rate, we hit it off. Since then, we’ve met for a drink a few times. The odd meal.’
‘How did he strike you?’
‘Well, he was a bit of a loner, if that’s what you mean. I can understand that. Company is not always desired or sought, even by those of us with gregarious temperaments. But once he’d had a beer, he’d loosen up.’
‘Did he talk to you about what he was doing here?’
‘His research? Yes, of course. Translating the Dante manuscript. Fascinating business.’
She hesitated. Should she trust him? He was a writer, and in her experience writers could rarely be relied upon for their discretion. Any number of them had wandered through the Wadia Book Emporium over the years: novice writers seeking inspiration, failed writers in their cups, and renowned authors launching their latest bestsellers. On the whole, she liked them, but trust – that was a different matter. ‘I must ask you to keep what I now tell you to yourself. At least, for the time being.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Quickly, she briefed him on all that had transpired since her summons to the Asiatic Society.
‘The manuscript is missing?’ His eyes gleamed with interest. ‘John told me that volume was priceless.’ He paused. ‘You know it’s going to be impossible for you to keep a lid on this for much longer? Someone’s bound to say something.’
She could practically see him penning the story. ‘When was the last time you saw Healy?’
He considered the question. ‘That would be six days ago, I think. We went for a beer.’
‘Did he say anything that hinted at his plans?’
‘No. Nothing. If I’d had the slightest inkling he was planning to steal the manuscript . . .’
‘Did he speak about anything else, anything that might hint as to his state of mind?’
‘No. He seemed his usual self.’ He reached out and poured himself another glass of water. ‘There’s one thing. Possibly irrelevant. I think there was some tension between him and that girlfriend of his. The American.’
‘Erin Lockhart?’
‘That’s the one. Nice-looking, but bossy.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘John mentioned it a couple of times. Apparently, Erin was trying to pressure him into convincing the Asiatic Society’s managing committee to sell the manuscript to the Smithsonian.’
She frowned. ‘I’ve spoken with Miss Lockhart. She mentioned nothing about an interest in the manuscript. She’s here sourcing Indian artefacts for an exhibition about the Quit India movement.’
‘That’s her cover story. But her real mission is to buy that manuscript. Apparently, the Smithsonian has been after it for years.’
‘Why would she not tell me this?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? The Smithsonian doesn’t want it publicly known that they’re trying to get their hands on it. Because as soon as that comes out, the Italians will have a fit. The mandarins at the Smithsonian would rather whisk it away and then let everyone debate the merits of who it should belong to.’
She considered his theory.
Erin Lockhart had seemed a straightforward woman. To discover that the American may have lied to her was disappointing; a note of sourness crept into her belly and curled up there.
‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’
‘Only that I’d like to be involved. Healy and I may not have known each other long but we were friends. Two Englishmen out in the wilderness together.’
‘This is my home,’ said Persis. ‘Not some wilderness.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said, hastily. ‘All I’m asking is that you allow me into your inner circle. I could document the whole thing for you. Can you imagine what a story it would make?’
She stood up, her expression hardening. ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Ingram. Tell me, will you be in the city for a while?’
He gave her a cool look in turn. ‘Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.’
After the Englishman’s departure, she went to see Roshan Seth, with Birla in tow.
The SP listened intently as she filled him in on the details. When she’d finished, he picked up a wooden carving of a tortoise and shifted it from hand to hand as he spoke. ‘This couldn’t be worse. Not only is the manuscript still missing, but now the man who stole it is dead.’ He sighed. ‘At least tell me you have a trail to follow? A scrap of meat I can throw to the rabid dogs up in Delhi.’
She showed him the note Healy had left behind. Seth scanned it quickly. ‘What’s wrong with this man!’
‘He’s dead,’ said Birla, and then wished he hadn’t spoken.
Seth glared at him. ‘This isn’t normal behaviour. Normal criminals steal things and then vanish or do something clumsy and get themselves caught. This man is leaving us riddles. Why?’
‘I still think he wants us to find the manuscript,’ said Persis.
‘Then why the hell doesn’t he just tell us where it is!’ Seth threw the note on to his desk.
‘I think’ – Persis began, then hesitated – ‘I think he hid it before he died. Somewhere in the city. I believe he wants us to find it. But he wants us to work for it.’
‘What mak
es you so sure he hid it here?’
‘Because he had very little time between stealing it and killing himself.’
‘He could have given it to an accomplice to smuggle out of the city.’
She conceded the point. ‘Yes. But Franco Belzoni just confirmed that the manuscript hasn’t turned up on the radar of some of the most well-connected international dealers specialising in rare books.’
Haq had picked up the call while she’d been with James Ingram.
Seth pursed his lips. ‘Fine. So Healy hid it in Bombay. But again, I ask you: why? Why would he do such a thing?’
That was the question to which she still had no clear answer. Was it some sort of test? Or an elaborate game, a game that would now continue, even in the wake of Healy’s death?
‘The man was mad,’ Seth concluded.
The possibility couldn’t be discounted. Persis hoped this wasn’t the reason. Because if Healy had truly lost his sanity, then his actions would defy logic. Her own belief that the man was operating to some sort of plan was the only glue holding the sequence of his actions together. If that glue melted away, she would be forced to admit that the Englishman might be leading them on a wild goose chase, and that they might all be lost in the labyrinthine workings of a madman’s mind.
Following the meeting, she made two phone calls. The first was to Neve Forrester at the Asiatic Society to inform her of Healy’s death. The Englishwoman took the news with equanimity. ‘I suspected as much,’ she muttered. And that was all she had to say on the subject. Her thoughts, like Seth’s, had jumped ahead to the matter of true import – the missing manuscript.
Persis told her about Healy’s note, reading out the words.
‘Simple enough,’ she replied. ‘They’re the opening lines from the first canto of Inferno.’
Inferno. The first book in The Divine Comedy. ‘Can you think of any reason Healy would write those words?’
Seconds ticked away as Forrester thought over the puzzle. ‘No.’
Persis asked her for one further piece of information: contact details for Healy’s next of kin.
Having put the phone down, she dialled the switchboard at Malabar House and asked for an overseas trunk call to be placed for her, to England.
The phone was picked up on the tenth ring, an instant before she gave up. A deep and distinguished-sounding voice said, ‘This is the Healy residence. Peter Healy speaking.’
She hesitated, suddenly overcome by nervousness.
As the lead investigator on the case, it fell to her to carry out this most difficult of duties, but she had little experience in such things and there was no training manual to refer to. Best to plunge straight in. ‘Mr Healy, my name is Inspector Persis Wadia. I work for the Indian Police Service in Bombay. I’m afraid I have bad news.’ She quickly sketched out the circumstances of John Healy’s death, omitting details she felt were irrelevant.
There was a long silence on the line. ‘Mr Healy?’
Forrester had told her that Peter Healy was a man of some standing, a successful civil servant. Persis imagined him in late middle age, instantly aged a further ten years by the news. Backing into an old armchair, fumbling behind him as he continued to clutch the phone, falling into it with a whump, the air from his lungs expelled at the same time.
Finally, Peter Healy spoke. ‘His mother passed away during the war. Emphysema. John was our only child. He was all I had left.’
‘Was he in touch with you?’
‘No. I mean, I would call him regularly, but John was difficult to engage. Getting him to speak at all was a miracle.’ She could sense his sadness; it drifted down the line like a fog. ‘He wasn’t always like that, of course. It was the war that changed him. His mother begged him not to go. There was no reason to put himself in harm’s way. With his academic background, he had a job waiting for him in Whitehall if he really wanted to do something for the effort. But John wouldn’t hear of it. A man shouldn’t say this of his dead son, but John was arrogant, conceited. He’d achieved so much at such a young age that failure was inconceivable to him. He wanted to be able to say that he’d seen action. That he’d fought; not just sat behind a desk fiddling with blotting paper. And then we heard he’d been captured and taken to Italy. It was the worst day of our lives, or so we thought at the time.
‘When he came back, he was a different man. A war hero, but it meant nothing to him. He wouldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t settle.’
‘What do you think happened to him?’
‘I think they tortured him. I think they beat him and did terrible things to him. He was out of touch for so long. He might as well have vanished from the face of the earth. We thought we’d never see him again. His mother mourned him as if he’d already passed; she never lived to see him rise from the dead. I believe John thought he would die in that Italian prison; he never expected to make it out. In a way, he did die out there.
‘When he finally came to, he tried to pick up where he’d left off but he couldn’t stick. And so he left. He spent some time in Egypt at their museum in Cairo, and then he became obsessed with Dante’s work. The Divine Comedy. And that’s when he heard about the copy at the Asiatic Society.’
‘When was the last time you spoke with him?’
‘A fortnight ago. We didn’t say much. We never did.’
She chose her next words with care. ‘Mr Healy, before your son died, he behaved in a way that may sound out of character. I wonder if you can help shed some light for me.’ She explained about the theft of the manuscript and the clues that Healy had left behind.
A silence floated from the phone, so deep and long that she thought the man might have hung up on her. ‘Mr Healy?’
‘This makes no sense,’ he said, shivering back to life. It was a refrain she was becoming well acquainted with. ‘Why would my son do that? He’s a respected academic. John’s never stolen so much as an apple.’
‘I believe you.’ The words tumbled out of their own accord. ‘But men change. Didn’t you just tell me that John had changed?’
‘There are some things a man knows about his son.’ He said nothing further and the call ended on this discordant note.
Birla floated over. ‘How did he take it?’
‘As well as could be expected.’
‘Did he have any bright ideas about Healy’s riddle?’
She shook her head.
‘Then we’re back to square one.’ He continued to stare at her. ‘Are you getting enough sleep?’
She bucked her head.
‘Take my advice: don’t hold on so tight. They’re just cases. Some we win, some we lose. All you can do is plod on, do your best, and let the coconuts fall where they will.’
But could she do that? She didn’t think so. She wasn’t built that way. Her whole life, she’d felt the need to prove something – to her father, to the girls at her school, to the world, to herself. She had few friends, perhaps because of this very refusal to bend with the prevailing wind. Prickly. Arrogant. Charmless. These were the labels that had stuck to her over the years. And worse.
The two years at the police academy had been particularly tough, the lone woman in a sea of men, many of them happy to make a pass at her, but unwilling to acknowledge her as their equal, even when staring dazedly up at her after she’d judo-flipped them on to the training-hall mat.
She’d grown gills to breathe the air of male animosity that constantly surrounded her.
She realised Birla was still looking at her. She knew that his concern was genuine.
Birla was one of the few who’d welcomed her arrival at Malabar House. At the least, he hadn’t been as scornful as the others. Birla had a daughter just a few years younger than Persis – a forthright woman, by all accounts. He’d long ago seen the sense in giving way to women who seemed to know what they wanted, possibly for fear of being mown down if he stood in their way.
‘I want you to do something,’ she said, finally. ‘Go to the Asiatic Society and fi
nd me a modern translation of The Divine Comedy.’
‘Don’t you have one in the bookshop?’
‘No. I checked yesterday.’
‘What do you think you’ll find?’
‘Maybe nothing. But Forrester says those lines that Healy wrote came from Inferno. I’d like to learn a bit more.’
‘What did you make of that Englishman?’
‘Ingram? He might turn out to be a nuisance. He’s some sort of writer. He’s got it into his head that there’s a story here.’
Birla raised an eyebrow. ‘And you think there isn’t?’ He scratched at his beard. ‘Bhoomi’s office called. He’s scheduled Healy’s autopsy first thing tomorrow, eight a.m.’
She walked to the Godrej steel almirah that served as the station’s temporary evidence locker and returned with the notebooks they’d found in Healy’s bag. They were A4 in size, bound in royal-blue stippled leather, and smelled faintly of tobacco.
She opened one. Inside the cover was a note, written in Healy’s hand.
IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO JOHN HEALY
C/O ASIATIC SOCIETY BOMBAY.
SUBSTANTIAL REWARD WILL BE PAID.
She turned the page. Her eyes scanned the lines of dense, neat handwriting – Healy had meticulously written out the Italian, line by line, from the copy of The Divine Comedy held at the Society, with a translation in English of each line beneath. In the margin were annotations, obscure notes that he had made, actions for himself, his thoughts on other sources to reference.
As she turned more pages, she saw that the entire notebook was similarly crammed, as was the second notebook, while the third was still all but empty.
She spent the next hour going through the books, but her cursory scan threw up nothing that might indicate a connection to the case.
George Fernandes came clattering into the office. He marched to his desk, took off his cap, and collapsed into his seat like a grand piano falling from the third storey.
‘Where have you been?’
His expression hovered somewhere between anger and sheepishness. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. ‘I – uh—’ He began again. ‘I went back to Silva as we discussed. His friend in England confirmed that no woman of that age and description had ever worked at RAF Wyton. When I mentioned that she might have been a night worker, he told me about a place called Le Château des Rêves – the Castle of Dreams – over in Nariman Point. I’ve heard about it before; it keeps a low profile but most people know what goes on there. It’s a high-class brothel for westerners, masquerading as a private gentlemen’s club. Silva says that during the war it was particularly popular with foreign personnel passing through the city. He had the notion that our mystery woman might have picked up the RAF brooch there.’
