The Dying Day

by Vaseem Khan

  ‘I want you two to follow someone around.’

  ‘I’ve booked the rest of the day off,’ said Haq, straightening from his habitual simian slouch. His stomach pushed against the buttons of his shirt. Smears of chutney decorated his collar.

  ‘Cancel it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘This is important. The Healy case takes precedence over your personal plans.’

  Haq subsided with a grumble.

  Never a demonstrative man, Sub-Inspector Karim Haq rarely made more than a moment’s fuss over anything. Of all her colleagues, he was, perhaps, the most inscrutable. As a Muslim, he and Birla often clashed, mirroring the sectarian hostility that continued to mark relations between the country’s two largest religious denominations. Though millions of Muslims had departed – or been forced to depart – for Pakistan and its counterpart territory in the east – the unimaginatively labelled East Pakistan – millions more had chosen to stay.

  Whether that was a wise decision remained to be seen.

  Despite Nehru’s edicts and the centre’s efforts to promote unity, the serpent of mistrust had bitten deep. The brutality that had marked Partition was still fresh in the minds of her fellow citizens.

  Forgive and forget was a mantra few were keen to embrace.

  She looked at him now, a scruffy, heavy-set man, with a head like a lantern, cauliflower ears, a crew cut, and a lugubrious expression. She’d always thought Haq would make an excellent hangman. He’d never mentioned his age, but she guessed he was maybe half a dozen years younger than Birla, who was in his mid-forties. His family circumstances remained a closely guarded secret. He was married; beyond that no one really knew.

  She’d once asked Birla how Haq had ended up at Malabar House. Birla himself had been consigned here because his daughter had refused the overtures of a senior officer.

  Birla didn’t know.

  Haq had never said and Seth refused to comment on the matter.

  She wrote down Franco Belzoni’s name on a sheet of paper and handed it to them. ‘Give Neve Forrester a call and find out where he’s staying.’

  ‘Why exactly are we following him?’ Birla asked.

  ‘He was witnessed arguing with John Healy just days before he vanished. They were fighting over the manuscript. Belzoni’s an Italian. He believes, like the Italian government, that the book should be returned to Italy.’

  ‘That’s colonialism for you,’ said Birla. ‘They give themselves licence to take whatever they want, but you hold on to one little book and suddenly all hell breaks loose.’ He sighed. ‘You think he’s mixed up in this? I mean, we know Healy killed himself. Belzoni had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Maybe not. But I’m convinced Healy couldn’t have done this without accomplices. The manuscript is still missing. Belzoni doesn’t have it. Maybe he hatched a plan with Healy to steal it and then Healy double-crossed him.’

  ‘Still doesn’t explain why Healy’s leading us on a merry dance.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Have you got any further with his latest clue?’

  She shook her head.

  Haq looked pointedly at his watch. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  They watched him wander back to his desk, sweep up his cap, and lumber out of the office.

  ‘It’s a good thing he’s only as dumb as he looks,’ muttered Birla.

  ‘Are you two going to be able to work together?’

  He raised his hands in mock surrender, then went back to his own desk to dial Neve Forrester.

  Five minutes later, he had the information he needed. ‘I’ll grab Haq on the way out.’ He gave her a wave and left.

  Alone in the office now, she closed her eyes.

  The only sound came from the ceiling fan. Down in the basement of Malabar House, they were shielded from the traffic rumbling by on John Adams Street. A mouse squeaked somewhere under the jumble of desks and filing cabinets. She’d seen it on several occasions, usually late in the evening, the same one each time, a jet-black little thing with a shortened tail.

  She’d named it Stumpy.

  The Healy investigation wound itself around her like the coils of a python. The more she knew, the less coherent the picture seemed to be.

  What had been Healy’s purpose in all this?

  She opened her notebook, and looked again at the enigmatic inscription he’d left behind.

  AFFECTIONATE

  HONOURED

  FRIEND

  EMBRACES

  PRAISED

  PERSECUTED

  SERVANT

  Tomorrow, she’d have to ask Seth to help her find a professional codebreaker. Something inside her rebelled at the idea of standing aside while another solved the problem. But she knew that was simply ego, a vice her father often accused her of.

  Not ego, she’d told him: ambition.

  Fatigue moved over her like an enclosing fog bank. Her eyes became heavy; Healy’s words swam on the page. Her eyelids drooped. A moment’s rest. Five minutes, before—

  Her eyes snapped open. Fernandes was at his desk, fiddling with paper. She glanced at the clock on the wall.

  Fifteen minutes had vanished.

  She flushed. The idea that Fernandes had caught her napping at her desk . . .

  ‘What did you find out?’ Her tone was harsh, even to her own ears, like a cannon-shot signalling the exchange of hostilities.

  Fernandes stiffened.

  Gradually, he twisted his bulk around in his seat and fixed her with a long look. His thick moustache twitched. She braced herself for an explosion, but then he seemed to take a deep inner breath.

  ‘I went to the FRO. No one named Francine Kramer has ever registered there. This means one of two things: either she registered under a different name when she entered the country or else she never registered at all. In which case, she had a reason for not doing so.’

  Persis recalled the statements from both Kramer’s friend, Arabella, and, later, her neighbour – namely, that Francine was a woman with a troubled past. Perhaps she’d come to India to forget that past. Perhaps that was why she’d decided not to report to the Foreigners Registration Office. Might she also have adopted a false name to ensure the FRO couldn’t track her down?

  She wouldn’t be the first person to sink without trace into the cosmopolitan soup that was Bombay.

  ‘And the search for Francine’s doctor?’

  ‘I spoke to the consultant psychiatrist at the Grant Medical College, a Dr Varun Nayar. He’d never had Kramer as a patient. But he gave me the names of seven other head doctors in the city, those most likely to have treated a foreigner.’

  ‘Show me the list.’

  He stared at her, then stood up and walked over to her desk. She was suddenly conscious of how big he was, how he loomed over her. His nostrils flared in the silence as he looked down on her with an inscrutable gaze. Then he reached into the pocket of his trousers, took out a small notebook, thumbed through to a page in the middle, and held it before her face.

  A list of seven names and addresses was written there in Fernandes’s laboured hand.

  She stared at the page, then wondered why she’d even asked to see it.

  Fernandes lowered the notebook. ‘Do you want me to copy them out for you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, looking away. ‘How many have you spoken to?’

  ‘Four. The rest were unavailable. I’ll get to them tomorrow.’

  He made no move to return to his desk. His bulk was like a tree that had erupted from the floor. She could hear his breathing as he continued to gaze down at her.

  The moment stretched, became unbearable.

  His gaze fell on her open notebook. His brow furrowed. ‘Saints,’ he murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have the names of saints written in your notebook. Why?’

  She squinted up at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  He leaned over and tapped a thick finger on Healy’s riddle. ‘These are the literal meanin
gs of the names of biblical saints. Or at least biblical characters. We used to learn them as children.’

  She knew that Fernandes was a Catholic – a devout one, by all accounts. Bombay’s Catholics, the legacy of Portuguese missionaries and forced conversions, were said to be as committed as any living on the doorsteps of the Vatican.

  Excitement quickened inside her. She looked again at the inscription. ‘You know what these mean?’

  ‘Not all of them. But I recognise some. For instance, “praised” is Jude, one of the “brothers” of Jesus. He wrote the Epistle of Jude. And “persecuted” is Job, the man who was tested by God. His story is told in the Book of Job. “Friend” . . . that could be Ruth, though I’m not certain. Ruth married an Israelite, and was known for her kindness. Or something like that. “Affectionate” is definitely Philemon, from the New Testament. Philemon is mentioned in the Epistle to Philemon, a letter written by Saint Paul to him while Paul was in prison. Philemon is generally regarded as a saint. The others I can’t recall, though I vaguely remember that there’s one whose name means “servant”.’

  ‘Do the numbers mean anything to you?’

  He peered at the sequences of digits, then shook his head.

  She knew that she should thank him, but the words shrivelled in her mouth.

  Fernandes waited a moment, then turned, went back to his desk, picked up his cap and a satchel, then left.

  Her mind was ablaze.

  Could he be correct? If so, what did the remaining three words mean? She remembered reading the Bible as a teenager – it had been a requirement at the Cathedral Girls School. But she was neither a Christian nor a scholar.

  A cog turned in her mind, slipping into place with an almost audible clunk.

  Bible.

  Perhaps John Healy had used a book cipher, after all. And she could now make an educated guess as to which book he’d used as his key.

  She walked to the evidence cabinet, picked up the keys atop it, and unlocked the door.

  A red register sat on the middle shelf, used to log evidence in and out of the almirah, though she knew it was employed haphazardly by her colleagues.

  She located the box containing evidence from the Healy investigation and from it removed the book the Englishman had left behind when he had switched it for the Dante manuscript.

  A copy of the 1611 King James Bible.

  Returning with it to her desk, she opened it and examined the first pages.

  The text began with a cover page containing its full title:

  THE HOLY BIBLE

  Containing the Old Testament, and the New: Newly Translated out of the Original tongues: & with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by his Majesties special Commandment.

  There followed the flyleaf on which Healy had left his first clue: What’s in a name? Akoloutheo Aletheia. After this was a dedication, a lengthy message to readers from the translators – defending their efforts against possible criticisms – and then a section containing extensive genealogies. The Bible proper began with the first book of the Old Testament, the Book of Genesis, and its opening verse: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth.’

  A quick look told her that the volume contained the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, and a section containing the fourteen books of the Apocrypha – works of unknown or unclear authorship, filling the gap of time between the period covered by the Hebrew Bible and the period covered by the Christian New Testament.

  This was about as much as she recalled from her schooldays.

  But one thing she did remember and which she now quickly confirmed: the Bible contained no page numbers. Instead, everything was numbered by reference to chapters and verses.

  That was the answer. The solution to Healy’s book cipher.

  He wasn’t using page numbers.

  He was using the biblical convention of chapter and verse.

  She set her notebook beside the Bible and looked closely at the sequence of numbers from Healy’s inscription. Seven sequences, in fact. And above them seven words. The logical conclusion was that each word corresponded to a line.

  She rewrote the entire inscription, pairing each word with its corresponding line in the order they had been set out, and adding colons in line with her conjecture about Healy’s use of chapter and verse numbers as the basis of his cipher. She also added Fernandes’s guesses at the words he had identified with biblical characters:

  AFFECTIONATE (PHILEMON) 1:3/1.7

  HONOURED (??) 1:2/5.8

  FRIEND (RUTH??) 2:11/52.64.71.72.92.97.102.146.157.158.221

  EMBRACES (??) 3:14/2.3.63.64

  PRAISED (JUDE) 1:7/6.137.139.159.164.168.173.174

  PERSECUTED (JOB) 26:14/17.30.62

  SERVANT (??) 1:21/15.21.24.53

  She leafed through the Bible to the Book of Philemon in the New Testament. Glancing at the numerical clue – 1:3/1.7 – she found chapter one, verse three.

  Now she had a choice.

  If Healy was using words rather than characters as his reference point, then she would need the first and seventh words in that verse – 1.7. These were ‘Grace’ and ‘God’.

  She frowned. Perhaps he was using characters instead?

  She looked up the first and seventh characters in the verse – not counting spaces – and came up with ‘G’ and ‘o’.

  Go.

  That seemed more promising.

  She realised that there was little point in continuing. She needed to find out the biblical names corresponding to all the words in the sequence, not just those Fernandes had guessed at. Only then would she know which books in the Bible to look at in order to decipher the message in its entirety.

  She needed help.

  And she could think of only one person to approach.

  She had called ahead. Fortunately, Neve Forrester was also a late worker.

  She found her at her desk, forehead cupped in the palm of one hand as she wrote steadily on a sheet of paper. A fan whirred in the silence, gently stirring strands of grey hair that had come loose around her face. The only light in the darkened room came from a desk lamp, focused on the letter. The reflected light lent an uncharacteristic softness to the Englishwoman’s features, the impression heightened by the fact that she had shed her usual severe jacket to reveal a short-sleeved white blouse.

  She waved Persis into a seat before her, but otherwise did not acknowledge her presence.

  Persis waited impatiently. Part of her wanted to shake the woman by the shoulders; having to wait in this manner smacked of a Raj-era mentality, the Indian lackey waiting on her mistress’s command.

  She held her tongue. Forrester was older, used to working in a particular way. There was little point in trying to change her. She knew, from long experience with her father, that that would be an exercise in futility.

  Forrester set down her pen. ‘How did John’s father take the news?’

  It was a curious place to start.

  Caught off-balance, Persis blinked before replying. ‘He was . . . devastated. He told me that his son had changed after his experiences in the war. The time he spent in the Italian POW camp altered him. I’m digging into that, to see if it might have any bearing on his decision to steal the Dante manuscript.’

  ‘To get back at the Italians, you mean?’ Forrester considered this. ‘It might be one explanation, I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  ‘That’s because I’m not. To steal a manuscript as a way to get back at a whole nation would seem the act of a disturbed mind. That wasn’t my impression of John Healy.’

  Persis pressed on. ‘I also met with Franco Belzoni. According to Erin Lockhart, he and Healy argued over access to the manuscript.’

  ‘If they did, it’s news to me. I saw them together several times. They seemed amicable. Besides, as Curator of Manuscripts, John would have had some say over access, but by no means the last word. The Socie
ty’s board ruled that Belzoni could view the manuscript. If he and John had a problem, it wasn’t brought to my attention.’

  ‘Was Belzoni vetted? Before access was granted?’

  ‘Yes, of course. His credentials are impeccable.’

  ‘What about Erin Lockhart?’

  ‘Erin works for the Smithsonian. Surely, you’re not questioning her credentials?’

  ‘Not her credentials; just her motives. She told me she’s in India to collect artefacts for an exhibition about the independence struggle. But others have claimed that her true motive is to acquire the Dante manuscript. The implication being that she became friendly with Healy in order to convince him to petition the Society to sell the manuscript to the Smithsonian.’

  Forrester’s expression hardened. ‘By “became friendly”, I take it you’re implying she slept with him. Don’t you think you’re doing the woman a disservice? Erin Lockhart is highly intelligent and extremely capable. I doubt she’d need to resort to such methods to get her point across. Besides, the Society would hardly hand over its most valuable treasure to the Americans on the say-so of John Healy.’

  Persis digested this a moment, then moved on to the real reason she’d come to see the Englishwoman.

  Quickly, she brought Forrester up to speed on her attempts at cracking the riddle Healy had left inscribed on his inner thigh. ‘I think I’m on the right track. But I need to be sure I’ve identified the correct biblical books to focus on before applying the rest of the cipher.’

  Forrester leaned back in her chair. ‘I suppose this explains why he left the Bible behind when he took the manuscript. Did you know that his earliest work was grounded in biblical philology? Interrogating the Bible is one of the oldest applications of the study of ancient languages and our attempts to derive meaning from them. My own doctorate was in such a topic.

  ‘John was a noted scholar in that arena – it’s one of the reasons he made such a success of his study of the Tremulous Hand of Worcester. The Tremulous Hand glossed many documents important to Christian doctrine, including the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum – the Ecclesiastical History of the English People – by the Venerable Bede, an English Benedictine monk sometimes called the father of English history.’ She noticed Persis’s expression and said, ‘My point, Inspector, is that John spent a lot of time looking at the Bible, its language, its content, and its meaning. I suppose this also explains his later fascination with the Dante manuscript. After all, The Divine Comedy attempts to bring to life, in prose, key concepts from Christian theology. Heaven, hell, the rescuing of man’s soul from damnation.’