by Vaseem Khan
Standing there, in Ingram’s bedroom, she felt as if the answers were swirling around her like a flock of birds. All she had to do was hold herself perfectly still and eventually one of them would alight on her shoulder, and tell her everything.
It didn’t work.
She stuck the photograph in her pocket and left the apartment.
Back at Malabar House, she found a message from Frank Lindley awaiting her, in the form of a note taken down by Birla. He squinted at the chit, scratched his head, and eventually worked out what he’d written. ‘He wants you to call some Italian. A former administrator at that Italian prison where they kept John Healy.’
Lindley had provided a number.
The man on the other end of the line, Salvatore Pepe, the camp adjutant at Vincigliata during the period that Healy had been there, spoke slowly, carefully, as if vetting every word before allowing it to leave his mouth.
Thankfully, his English was more than serviceable.
‘What exactly did you do there?’ she asked.
‘The commander of Vincigliata was a black-hearted Nazi,’ he explained. ‘My job was to do whatever he told me to do.’ It sounded like a defence plea, though she hadn’t accused him of anything.
‘Your office kept the records for all the men arriving in and leaving from Vincigliata?’
‘Sì. Arriving, leaving, dying. Though we didn’t see much of that. These were senior officers and we treated them well. Even the Nazis showed restraint and it is not often you can say that about those butchers.’
‘Butchers?’ Her tone hardened. ‘I thought they were your allies.’
‘Not my allies. Mussolini crawled into bed with Hitler. Madonna, it must have been like taking a corpse to bed! I was a bookkeeper before the war. I enlisted because I had little choice. I knew many Italian soldiers on the front line and most were honourable men. They did what they did because that was what the uniform demanded of them. But the Nazis . . . they were thugs. Schoolyard bullies whose only answer to every problem was to exterminate it. Tell me, what kind of world is it where men can think like that?’
She ignored the question, not entirely buying his innocent act. ‘When did Healy arrive at the prison?’
‘September 1943.’
‘I’ve been told that he didn’t stay very long. That he was moved out by a Nazi who came to Vincigliata about a month after Healy arrived.’
‘It is more complicated than that.’ Pepe hesitated.
‘Rest assured, whatever you tell me will not be used against you. The war is over.’
‘The war may be over, madam, but the Allies have long memories, sì?’
‘Please. It’s important.’
A silence drifted down the phone. ‘Very well. Yes, it is true that Healy left the prison in October. However, I was instructed to make no record of his leaving.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is very simple. As far as my records were concerned, Healy remained at Vincigliata.’
‘Who instructed you?’
‘The man who came to collect him. Matthias Bruner.’
‘Why would he ask you to do that?’
‘I don’t know. The Nazis did not like questions.’
Having set down the phone, she continued to stare thoughtfully at it.
John Healy had been removed from the Vincigliata POW camp by the Nazis, who had then gone to great lengths to ensure that no one knew that fact. As far as the world was concerned, Healy remained at the camp until he appeared again halfway through 1944, having escaped captivity.
What had happened to him during the period he’d vanished from Vincigliata, disappearing into an administrative black hole? What had the Germans done to him? Why had they concealed the fact that they’d taken him out of the prison? Most puzzling of all . . . why had Healy himself never spoken of that missing time?
Questions that would have to await answers.
She pulled out the photograph she’d recovered from Ingram’s apartment and tucked it into an envelope.
Calling over the office peon, Gopal, she instructed him to deliver it to Frank Lindley at the university, with a short note asking the Englishman to see if he could find out who Ingram’s mysterious fishing companion was.
Chapter 36
She arrived home to find Aunt Nussie preparing a lavish meal.
‘It’s really not necessary,’ said Persis. ‘I’m fine.’
‘No one can be fine a day after they’ve almost been murdered,’ said Nussie, shooing her towards her bedroom. ‘Go and change. Dinner will be ready in a bit. And wear something nice.’
She showered, dressed in a pair of silk pyjamas, then returned to the living room.
Nussie stared at the pyjamas. ‘Wouldn’t you like to dress in something a little more formal?’
‘Why?’ she said. ‘Is the Prime Minister coming to dinner?’
Nussie looked as if she was about to say something, then nodded and turned away.
Sitting at the Steinway, Persis tinkled out a few desultory notes as Akbar watched her, licking his lips. Distracted by thoughts of the case, she hit a wrong note. The cat rose up on his hackles, hissed at her, then leaped off the piano and scooted from the room.
‘Everyone’s a critic,’ she muttered.
By the time dinner was on the table, her father had arrived from downstairs. He’d closed the shop early. She hoped it wasn’t on her account.
They’d hardly sat down when the bell rang.
Nussie, her face glowing from the heat in the kitchen, bounced towards the door. Swinging it aside, she said, ‘Oh. Hello.’
Persis couldn’t see who it was. The caller was not tall; Nussie’s body shielded him – or her – from view.
And then her aunt moved aside.
Zubin Dalal stepped into the apartment, slipping off his homburg.
‘I apologise if I’m interrupting,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should come back another time?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Nussie. ‘You’ll sit and eat dinner with us.’
Persis began to rise from her seat. ‘Aunt N—’
‘Sit down, Persis,’ said Nussie, cutting off her incipient protest. ‘This gentleman saved your life last night. We shall not turn him away at our door.’
‘But—’
Directing herself to Zubin, Nussie said, ‘Please take a seat.’
Words piled up in her throat until Persis felt she would choke. But her aunt merely flashed her a look and gestured for her to retake her seat.
She could only watch, helplessly, as Zubin sat directly opposite her, nodding at her father, who stared at him in stony silence. She’d never told Sam precisely what had happened between them, but he knew enough. Nevertheless, even Sam Wadia wouldn’t send away a man who’d saved his daughter’s life.
Nussie had made sautéed chicken with lemon rice. The fragrance of the food wafted around the room. Persis ignored it. Her appetite had vanished, to be replaced by a ringing sense of alarm.
‘Why are you here?’ The words were forced out, as if at gunpoint.
Zubin affected a complaisant smile. ‘I was in the area and thought I might see how you were feeling.’
‘And I thought I made it clear I had no wish to see you.’
He smiled again, and lapsed into an infuriating silence. Her heart swelled with fury. The past barked in her chest like a rabid dog, a holy frenzy that threatened to overwhelm her. What right did he have to turn up here, to act as if all had been forgiven, if not forgotten?
‘So, Zubin . . . how is your wife?’ asked Nussie, brightly.
He set down his fork, looked directly at Persis. ‘We’re no longer together. Divorce. Four months ago. My marriage, I’m afraid, proved to be an unfortunate wrong turn.’
The word resounded inside her skull.
Divorce.
‘And do you still live in Delhi?’ Nussie continued.
‘No. I returned to Bombay a few weeks ago. I’ve been getting reacquainted. The city has changed s
o much in just a few short years.’
‘But its heart remains the same,’ sang Nussie.
Persis shot her a look. Her aunt was acting oddly. Like her father, she knew only the outlines of Persis’s brief relationship with Zubin . . . If only she knew the whole of it!
Persis lowered her head, seeking to control her rage before it spewed out of her. Hacking savagely at a piece of chicken with her fork, she said, ‘You’re not welcome here.’
‘Persis!’ Nussie frowned at her.
‘Why don’t you ask him how he just happened to be passing when I was attacked.’
Nussie turned to Zubin in confusion.
The man had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Very well. Cards on the table. I have been following you around. I was summoning up the nerve to approach you. I admit, I tried on several occasions, but at the last, my courage failed me.’
‘Like the spineless coward you are.’
He spread his hands. ‘All I want to do is talk.’
Her look could have felled a charging rhino. ‘There’s nothing you have to say that I want to hear.’
He subsided. An uncomfortable silence fell over the table. Sam ate noisily, glaring at his guest with a whisky-drinker’s aggressiveness.
‘Don’t you want to know why my marriage ended?’ said Zubin finally.
‘I suppose she found out what sort of man she’d married.’
He sighed. ‘Persis—’
She stood up, so abruptly that they all froze. ‘I need some air.’
She left him staring after her, his mouth hanging foolishly open.
Downstairs in the shop, she sat at her father’s counter, steadying herself.
She’d imagined the encounter for so long, the day that Zubin would make the mistake of crossing her path again. In gleeful dreams, she’d pictured herself taking out her revolver and forcing him to his knees, watching him squirm as he begged her not to shoot him. She’d imagined humiliating him in a thousand and one ways, taking from him every iota of self-respect, just as he had all but taken hers.
But now that the moment had arrived . . . she had failed. Failed to deliver the speech she’d rehearsed so often it was burned on to the insides of her eyelids. A grand diatribe in which she dissected every flaw in his character, reducing him to a wreck, a husk, a parody of the man he believed himself to be.
She’d failed, and in that failure, she’d lost the opportunity to undo years of hurt.
Zubin’s presence had simply rekindled the very grass fires of the heart she’d long thought extinguished. Distance had allowed her to heap the memory of his charms on to the bonfire of her hatred; but now, up close, she saw that he had lost none of the tigerish magnetism that had so enthralled her, that sense of swashbuckling gasconade that had once sent swarms of bees buzzing around her heart— No!
She swatted the counter in anger.
The man was a despicable toad, deserving of her contempt . . . God, she needed a drink!
She rummaged through the drawers below the counter. Her father usually had a bottle of something in here . . .
A rattle at the door jerked her head up. She peered through the glass, at the outline of a woman . . .
Moments later, Jaya, impeccably dressed in a beautiful evening gown and heels, was looking around the shop. ‘My God, this place is still a dump.’
‘I’ll be sure to let my father know,’ said Persis. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘A little bird tells me you were almost strangled to death last night.’
‘That little bird wouldn’t happen to be Aunt Nussie, would it?’
Jaya smiled. ‘I thought it might be some sort of sexual fetish, but then I remembered it was you we were talking about.’ Her face became serious. ‘Look, I know you’re a hotshot policewoman now and risks have to be taken, but isn’t this a bit much? I mean, you don’t have to prove your point by actually getting yourself killed.’
Persis dismissed her friend’s concerns with a wave of the hand. She was too tired to argue.
‘Stubborn as ever . . . I also hear Zubin materialised out of thin air to save your life.’
‘He didn’t save my life! I had the situation under control.’
Jaya smiled infuriatingly. ‘What was he after, do you think?’
‘It’s the case I’m working on—’
‘Not your attacker. I meant Zubin.’
She blinked. ‘I don’t know. What’s more, I don’t care.’
Jaya seemed about to say something, then shrugged. ‘No. Of course not. A louse is a louse even if he does prevent your imminent death.’ She raised a hand before Persis could protest further. ‘Anyway, dinner with Dinaz is confirmed. No excuses. And talking of dinner . . . I’m off to a soirée with some friends. I don’t suppose you’d care to join us?’
Persis could imagine the sort of friends Jaya was having dinner with dressed like that.
‘No.’
‘Suit yourself.’ She turned at the door. ‘By the way, your handcuffs have proved to be a big hit with my son. I’ve had to release my maid from captivity three times already. Heaven knows what would have happened if you’d given him a revolver.’
After Jaya had left, Persis sat in the semi-darkness. Her friend’s visit had, perversely, depressed her. Jaya had a way of pulling things apart that forced Persis to confront realities she would rather have ignored.
Zubin. Would she never be rid of him?
She picked up the phone. It was answered on the fifth ring. ‘Does your offer still stand?’ A pause. ‘Very well. Do you know the Eastern Dragon? It’s in Opera House.’
Half an hour later, she was standing outside the bar that Birla and Haq had followed Franco Belzoni to. On first impression, it was exactly as they had described it: a dump. A darkened façade, with a red dragon painted over the lintel, much of the paint cracked and faded. One of the dragon’s taloned legs had been effaced by monsoon rain. A desultory Chinese lantern hung from a hook above the door, unlit.
Inside, she found a dimly lit, smoke-filled mugginess, and a bar behind which a fat Oriental gentleman was leaning on his elbows talking to another man in a suit. About a dozen round, unclothed tables were scattered about the place, with a series of booths at the rear.
She made her way to the booths.
In the third one along, she found Archie Blackfinch nursing a beer.
He sprang to his feet as she arrived, an uncertain smile lighting up his features. The smile faltered as he saw that she was wearing what looked like a pair of silk pyjamas. Refraining from comment, he waited as she slipped on to the cracked red leather of the booth, and leaned back.
‘How are you feel—’ He began, then stopped, perhaps recalling the last time he’d asked her that. He tapped the side of his glass. ‘You look like you could use one of these.’
She asked for a whisky.
The waitress stared at her when she arrived with the drink. It was either the pyjamas or the fact that the bar was one of those where someone like her rarely set foot. A small slice of home for Bombay’s Chinese community, an oasis in the Indian desert . . . So what had Franco Belzoni been doing here, meeting with a military attaché?
The stray question swept across her bows like a freak wave. She’d picked the bar precisely because Birla had said it was off the beaten track, somewhere no one would recognise her or Archie Blackfinch and report back to her aunt. Somewhere she might have a few moments where her life was completely her own.
But she realised now that even in this seemingly instinctive choice, her underlying desire to work the case had shown itself.
She forced her mind to a deliberate stillness.
‘Rough day?’ asked Blackfinch.
She blinked. ‘The man you met yesterday, the one who . . . He turned up for dinner. Uninvited.’
‘Ah. You mean the “old friend of the family”,’ said Blackfinch, quoting Zubin’s description of himself.
She looked directly at him. ‘He was the first man I . . . was intima
te with. I was in love with him. I adored him.’ She didn’t add that he was the only man she’d been with. ‘I thought we would spend our lives together. And then he vanished. Ran away to Delhi to marry someone else.’
‘It could have been worse.’ He sipped at his beer. ‘He could have married you.’
She flashed him a dark look.
‘A man’s character rarely changes, Persis. Once a cad, always a cad.’
‘You don’t think we evolve? Outgrow our mistakes, the defects in our personality?’
‘To a certain extent. But you can’t change who you are. A man who’d betray a woman as incredible as you . . . A fool like that doesn’t deserve a second chance.’
Embarrassment forced the glass to her mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had praised her.
‘I met my wife at a cocktail party,’ he continued. ‘She was a singer. Frankly, her voice wasn’t great, and I told her so. She stared at me, then threw a drink in my face. Later, when I went to apologise, she grabbed my face in both hands and kissed me. I’d never been kissed like that before, and certainly not by such an attractive woman. It made me feel eight feet tall. We married within a month. She was impetuous, flighty, easily bored. I thought that side of her would settle down in time, but it didn’t. A tiger doesn’t stop being a tiger just because you put it in a cage.’
Blackfinch had turned up in a taxi and so she offered to drive him home.
Parked in the narrow alley outside his apartment complex near the Sassoon Docks, she listened to a stray dog barking. The three whiskies she’d had had left her with an inner warmth that rose gently like a cloud of steam to envelop her thoughts. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled.
‘The pleasure was all mine,’ said Blackfinch, slipping off his spectacles to wipe them on his trouser leg.
She twisted in her seat and locked eyes with him. In the half-light, he seemed even handsomer than usual. Something unspoken pulsed between them. He leaned in and kissed her. For an instant, she froze . . . and then pressed back. Time passed, she became lost to the sensation, and then she felt his hands on her, on her thighs, her waist, moving up the front of her silk blouse. Excitement shivered along her spine. It had been so long . . .
