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Harvill Secker, an imprint of Vintage Publishing,
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Copyright © Abir Mukherjee 2016
Abir Mukherjee has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2016
(First published in the United Kingdom by Random House in 2016)
www.vintage-books.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
In loving memory of my father,
Satyendra Mohan Mukherjee
AT LEAST HE was well dressed. Black tie, tux, the works. If you’re going to get yourself killed, you may as well look your best.
I coughed as the stench clawed at my throat. In a few hours the smell would be unbearable; strong enough to turn the stomach of a Calcutta fishmonger. I pulled out a packet of Capstans, tapped out a cigarette, lit it and inhaled, letting the sweet smoke purge my lungs. Death smells worse in the tropics. Most things do.
He’d been discovered by a skinny little peon out on his rounds. Almost scared the life out of the poor bugger. An hour later and he was still shaking. He’d found him lying in a dark dead-end alley, what the natives call a gullee: hemmed in on three sides by ramshackle buildings with the sky only visible if you craned your neck and looked straight up. The boy must have had good eyes to spot him in the gloom. Then again, he’d probably just followed his nose.
The body lay twisted, face up and half submerged in an open sewer. Throat cut, limbs at unnatural angles, and a large brown bloodstain on a starched white dress shirt. Some fingers were missing from one mangled hand and an eye had been pecked out of its socket – this final indignity the work of the hulking black crows who even now kept angry vigil from the rooftops above. All in all, not a very dignified end for a burra sahib.
Still, I’d seen worse.
Finally there was the note. A bloodstained scrap of paper, balled up and forced into his mouth like a cork in a bottle. That was an interesting touch, and a new one to me. When you think you’ve seen it all, it’s nice to find that a killer can still surprise you.
A crowd of natives had gathered. A motley collection of gawkers, hawkers and housewives. They jostled and pushed ever closer, eager to catch a glimpse of the corpse. Word had spread quickly. It always does. Murder is good entertainment the world over, and here in Black Town you could sell tickets to see a dead sahib. I looked on as Digby barked at some native constables to set up a cordon. They in turn shouted at the crowd and foreign voices jeered and hurled insults back. The constables cursed, raised their bamboo lathis and struck out left and right, gradually forcing back the rabble.
The shirt clung to my back. Not yet nine o’clock but the heat was already oppressive, even in the shade of the alley. I knelt beside the body and patted it down. The inside breast pocket of the dinner jacket bulged and I reached in and pulled out the contents: a black leather wallet, some keys and loose change. I placed the keys and coins in an evidence bag and turned my attention to the wallet. It was old and soft and worn and had probably cost a fair amount when new. Inside, creased and dog eared from years of handling, a photograph of a woman. She looked young, in her twenties probably, wearing clothes whose style suggested the picture had been taken a while back. I turned it over. The words Ferries & Sons, Sauchiehall St., Glasgow were stamped on the reverse. I slipped it into my pocket. Otherwise the wallet was pretty much empty. No cash, no business cards, just a few receipts. Nothing to point to the man’s identity. Closing it, I put it with the other items in the bag and then moved on to the ball of paper in the victim’s mouth. I pulled at it gently, so as not to disturb the body any more than necessary. It came out easily. Good quality paper. Heavy, like the sort you find in an up-market hotel. I flattened it out. Three lines were scrawled on one side. Black ink. Eastern script.
I called to Digby. He was a lean, blond son of the empire; all military moustache and the air of one born to rule. He was also my subordinate, not that you could always tell. A ten-year veteran of the Imperial Police Force and, by his own reckoning at least, well versed in dealing with the natives. He came over, wiping the sweat from his palms on his tunic.
‘Unusual for a sahib to be found murdered in this part of town,’ he said.
‘I’d have thought it unusual for a sahib to be found murdered anywhere in Calcutta.’
He shrugged. ‘You’d be surprised, old boy.’
I handed him the scrap of paper. ‘What do you make of this?’
He made a show of examining both sides before answering. ‘Looks like Bengali to me… sir.’
He spat out the final word. It was understandable. Being passed over for promotion is never easy. Having that promotion taken by an outsider, fresh off the boat from London, probably made it worse. But that was his problem. Not mine.
‘Can you read it?’ I asked.
‘Of course I can read it. It says: “No more warnings. English blood will run in the streets. Quit India!” ’
He handed back the note. ‘Looks like the work of terrorists,’ he said. ‘But this is bold, even for them.’
He was probably right, for all I knew, but I wanted facts before jumping to conclusions. And more importantly I didn’t like his tone.
‘I want a full search of the area,’ I said. ‘And I want to know who this is.’
‘Oh, I know who this is,’ he replied. ‘His name’s MacAuley. Alexander MacAuley. He’s a big noise over at Writers’.’
‘Where?’
Digby looked like he’d just swallowed something unpleasant. ‘Writers’ Building, sir, is the administrative seat of government for Bengal and a good part of the rest of India. MacAuley is, or rather was, one of the top men there. An aide to the Lieutenant Governor, no less. Makes it look even more like a political killing, doesn’t it, old boy?’
‘Just get on with the search,’ I sighed.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, saluting. He surveyed the scene, and sought out a young native sergeant. The Indian was staring intently up at a window overlooking the alley. ‘Sergeant Banerjee!’ Digby shouted. ‘Over here please.’
The Indian turned and snapped to attention, then hurried over and saluted.
‘Captain Wyndham,’ said Digby, ‘may I present Sergeant Surrender-not Banerjee. He is, apparently, one of the finest new additions to His Majesty’s Imperial Police Force and the first Indian to post in the top three in the entrance examinations.’
‘Impressive,’ I said, partly because it was, and partly because Digby’s tone suggested he thought otherwise. The sergeant just looked embarrassed.
‘He and his ilk,’ continued Digby, ‘are the fruits of this government’s policy of increasing the number of natives in every branch of the administration, God help us.’
I turned to Banerjee. He was a thin, fine-featured little chap, with the sort of face that would look adolescent even in his forties. Not at all the mug you’d expect on a copper. He looked at once both earnest and full of nerves, and his slick, black hair parted neatly on one side and round, steel-framed spectacles gave him a bookish air, more poet than policeman.
‘Sergeant,’ I said, ‘I want a fingertip search implemented.’
‘Of course, sir,’ he replied in an accent straight off a Surrey golf course. He sounded more English than I did. ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’
‘Just one thing,’ I said. ‘What were you staring at up there?’
‘I saw a woman, sir.’ He blinked. ‘She was watching us.’
‘Banerjee,’ said Digby, stabbing a thumb in the direction of the crowd, ‘there are a hundred bloody people watching us.’
‘Yes, sir, but this lady was scared. She froze when she saw me, then disappeared inside.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Once you’ve got the search underway, you and I will go over there and see if we can’t have a chat with your lady friend.’
‘I’m not sure that would be such a good idea, old boy,’ said Digby. ‘There are some things you should know about the natives and their customs. They can be very funny about us questioning their lady-folk. You go barging over there to interrogate some woman and before you know it you’ll have a riot on your hands. It might be better if I handled it.’
Banerjee squirmed.
Digby’s face darkened. ‘Is there something you wish to say, Sergeant?’
‘No, sir,’ said Banerjee apologetically. ‘It’s just that I don’t think anyone will start a riot if we go in there.’
Digby’s voice quivered. ‘And what makes you so certain of that?’
‘Well, sir,’ said Banerjee, ‘I’m fairly sure that house is a brothel.’
An hour later, Banerjee and I stood outside the entrance to number 47 Maniktollah Lane. It was a dilapidated two-storey building. If there was one thing Black Town wasn’t short of it was dilapidated buildings. The whole place seemed to consist of these decaying, overcrowded dwellings, which crawled with humanity. Digby had made some remark about native squalor but the truth was they possessed a vibrant, wretched beauty not dissimilar to Whitechapel or Stepney.
The house had, at one time, been painted a cheerful bright blue, but the paint had long ago lost the battle against unrelenting sun and monsoon rain. Now only a few pale traces lingered, streaks of watery blue on mould-covered grey-green plaster a fading testimony to more prosperous times. In places the plaster had fallen away, exposing crumbling orange brickwork and weeds sprouted from cracks. Above, the remains of a balcony jutted out like broken teeth, its iron railings strangled by foliage.
The front door was little more than a few gnarled, ill-fitting planks. Here too the paint had faded, revealing dark, worm-eaten wood beneath.
Banerjee raised his lathi and rapped loudly.
No sound came from inside.
He looked at me.
I nodded.
He rapped on the door again. ‘Police! Open up!’
Finally a muffled voice came from inside.
‘Aschee, aschee! Wait!’
Sounds. Feet shuffling towards us; then someone fiddling with a padlock. The thin wooden door rattled and finally opened a crack. A shrivelled old native with a shock of untidy silver hair stood stooped like a question mark in front of us. Tanned skin, parchment thin, hung off his stick-like frame, so that he looked like some fragile caged bird. The old man looked up at Banerjee and smiled a toothless grin.
‘Ha, Baba, what do you want?’
Banerjee looked to me. ‘Sir, it may be easier if I explain to him in Bengali.’
I nodded.
Banerjee spoke but the old man appeared not to hear. The sergeant repeated himself, this time louder. The old man’s thin brows knit tightly together in confusion. Gradually his expression changed and the smile returned. He disappeared and moments later the door opened fully. ‘Ashoon! ’ he said to Banerjee and then, turning to me, ‘Come, sahib. Come. Come!’
He led the way, shuffling down a long, darkened hallway, the air cool and heavy with the scent of incense. We followed, our boots echoing on polished marble. The interior was tasteful, almost opulent, and a stark contrast to the building’s shabby exterior. Like walking through a Mile End doorway and finding yourself in a Mayfair townhouse.
The old man stopped at the end of the corridor and ushered us into a large, well-appointed drawing room. Elegant rococo sofas were interspersed with oriental silk reclining cushions. On the far wall, above a chaise longue upholstered in red velvet, a bejewelled Indian prince on a white charger stared out stoically from a framed painting. A large green punkah, the size of a dining table, hung stiffly from the ceiling and light streamed in from a courtyard outside.
The old man gestured for us to wait, then quietly disappeared.
A clock ticked in another room. I was glad for the respite. It had been over a week, but it still felt like I was acclimatising. It wasn’t just the heat. There was something more. Something amorphous and indefinable. A nervousness that manifested itself as an ache at the back of my head and a queasiness in the pit of my stomach. Calcutta itself seemed to be taking its toll on me.
A few minutes later, the door opened and a middle-aged Indian woman entered, the old man following behind her like a faithful pet. Banerjee and I stood up. The woman was handsome for her age. Twenty years ago she’d have been considered a beauty. A full figure, coffee-coloured skin and brown eyes tinged with kohl. Her hair was parted in the middle and tied tightly in a bun. On her forehead a smudge of vermillion. She wore a bright green silk sari, its border embroidered with golden birds. Beneath it a blouse of green silk above a bare midriff. Her arms were adorned with several golden bangles and from her neck hung an ornate gold necklace, studded with small green stones.
‘Namaskar, gentlemen,’ she said, pressing her hands together in greeting. Her bangles clinked softly. ‘Please sit.’
I shot Banerjee an enquiring look. Was this the woman he’d seen at the window? He shook his head.
She introduced herself as Mrs Bose, the owner of the house.
‘My manservant tells me you have some questions?’
She walked over and reclined elegantly on the chaise longue. As if on cue, the punkah on the ceiling started swaying, delivering a welcome staccato breeze. Mrs Bose pressed a small brass button on the wall next to her. A maid appeared silently at the door.
‘You will have some tea, yes?’ Mrs Bose enquired. Without waiting for a reply, she turned to the maid and ordered.
‘Meena, cha.’
The maid left as silently as she’d arrived.
‘Now,’ continued Mrs Bose, ‘how can I help you, gentlemen?’
‘My name is Captain Wyndham,’ I said, ‘and this is Sergeant Banerjee. I take it you’re aware that there has been an incident in the alley next door?’
She smiled politely. ‘From the noise your constables are making, I should think the whole para is aware that there has been “an incident”, as you call it. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to what’s actually happened?’
‘A man has been murdered.’
‘Murdered?’ she said, deadpan. ‘How very shocking.’
I’d seen English women need a dose of smelling salts at the mere mention of murder, but Mrs Bose seemed made of stronger stuff.
‘Forgive me, gentlemen,’ she went on, ‘but people are killed in this part of the city every day. I don’t remember ever seeing half the Calcutta police force turn up and close down a street before, let alone an English officer take an interest. Normally, the unfortunate wretch is simply carted off to the morgue and that’s the end of it. Why all the fuss this time?’
The fuss was because it was an Englishman who’d been murdered. But I got the sense she already knew that.
‘I need to ask you, madam, did you see or hear anything untoward in the alley last night?’
She shook her head. ‘I hear untoward noises coming from that alley every night. Drunkards fighting, dogs howling, but if you’re asking if I heard a man being murdered, then the answer is no.’
Her answer was emphatic, which struck me as odd. In my experience, middle-class, middle-aged women were generally all too keen to help in a murder investigation. It added excitement to their lives. Some were so zealous in their wish to be of assistance that they’d happily recount gossip and hearsay as if it were the Gospel of St John. Her behaviour didn’t seem normal for a woman who’d just been informed of a murder ten feet from her home. I suspected she was hiding something. But that didn’t necessarily mean it was related to the murder. The authorities had banned so many things recently that it was perfectly possible she was covering up something completely different.
‘Have there been any gatherings in the neighbourhood that may have been of a seditious nature?’ I asked.
She looked at me like I was a particularly slow child. ‘Quite possibly, Captain. This is Calcutta, after all. A city of a million Bengalis with nothing better to do than talk revolution. Isn’t that why you moved the capital to Delhi? Better to roast up there in a desert backwater surrounded by pliant Punjabis than put up with such dangerous Bengali rabble rousers. Not that they actually do much other than talk. But to answer your question, no, I am not aware of any gatherings of a seditious nature. Nothing that would contravene the articles of your precious Rowlatt Acts.’
The Rowlatt Acts. They’d been passed the previous month and allowed us to lock up anyone we suspected of terrorism or revolutionary activities. We could hold them for up to two years without trial. From a copper’s perspective, it made things nice and simple. The Indians, of course, had reacted with fury, and I can’t say I blamed them. After all, we’d just fought a war in the name of liberty, and yet here we were, arresting people without warrants, and locking them up for anything we considered seditious, from gathering without a permit to staring at an Englishman the wrong way.
Mrs Bose rose. ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen, I really can’t help you.’
It was time to try a different approach.
‘You might wish to reconsider, Mrs Bose,’ I said. ‘The sergeant here has voiced a suspicion as to exactly what sort of an establishment you may be running here. Obviously I think he’s mistaken, but I can have a team of ten officers from the vice division down here in less than thirty minutes to find out which of us is right. I expect they’d tear this place apart and maybe haul you over to Lal Bazar for questioning. They might even suggest you spend a night or two in the cells, at the Viceroy’s pleasure, so to speak… Or you could afford us some cooperation.’
She looked at me and smiled. She didn’t seem intimidated, which was surprising. However, she chose her next words carefully. ‘Captain Wyndham, I think there has been some… misunderstanding. I am perfectly happy to help you in any way I can. But I honestly didn’t see or hear anything untoward last night.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘you won’t mind us questioning anyone else who was in the house at the time?’
The door opened and the maid entered with a silver tray upon which sat all the paraphernalia associated with middle-class tea making. She set it down on a small mahogany table beside her mistress and left the room.
Mrs Bose lifted the teapot and an elegant silver tea strainer and poured the tea into three cups. ‘Of course, Captain,’ she said finally, ‘you may speak to whomever you wish.’
Once more she pressed the brass button on the wall and the maid returned. Foreign words were exchanged and she disappeared again.
Mrs Bose turned to me. ‘So tell me, Captain, you’re clearly new to India. How long have you been here?’
‘I hadn’t realised it was quite that obvious.’
Mrs Bose smiled. ‘Oh, but it is. Firstly, your face is that interesting shade of pink, which suggests you haven’t yet learned that most important lesson of life here: that you should stay indoors between the hours of noon and four. Secondly, you haven’t yet acquired the swagger that your kinsmen tend to display in this country when dealing with Indians.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ I said
‘Don’t be,’ she replied casually. ‘I am sure it is only a matter of time.’
Before I could respond, the door opened and four slim young girls entered the room, followed by the maid and the old man who had shown us in. The girls looked dishevelled, as though they’d been roused from sleep. In contrast to Mrs Bose, none of them wore make-up, but all possessed a natural beauty. Each wore a simple cotton sari, in various pastel colours.
‘Captain Wyndham,’ said Mrs Bose, ‘allow me to introduce my household to you.’ She gestured towards the old man. ‘Ratan, you have already met. And of course Meena, my maid. These others are Saraswati, Lakshmi, Devi and Sita.’ At the mention of her name, each girl steepled her hands together in greeting. They appeared nervous. That was to be expected. Most young prostitutes in London were also nervous when questioned by an officer of the law. Most, but by no means all.
‘Not everyone in my household speaks English,’ Mrs Bose continued. ‘You don’t mind if I translate your questions into Hindi?’
‘Why Hindi and not Bengali?’ I asked.
‘Because, Captain, while Calcutta is the capital of Bengal, a great many people here are not Bengali. Sita here is from Orissa and Lakshmi is from Bihar. Hindi is, shall we say, the lingua franca.’ She smiled, amused by her own turn of phrase, and gestured towards Banerjee. ‘I take it your sergeant here speaks Hindi?’
I looked at him.
‘My Hindi is fairly rusty, sir,’ he replied, ‘but passable.’
‘Very well then, Mrs Bose,’ I said, ‘please ask them if they saw or heard any disturbance in the alley last night.’
Mrs Bose put the question to them. The old man appeared not to hear and so she repeated her words more loudly. I looked at Banerjee. He was staring fixedly at Devi.
One by one, each of them replied ‘Nahin’.
I wasn’t convinced. ‘Seven people in the house last night and none of you saw or heard anything?’
‘Apparently not,’ said Mrs Bose.
I considered them in turn. Ratan, the old man, was probably too deaf to have heard a thing. The maid, Meena, might have, but her body language didn’t suggest she was hiding anything. Mrs Bose was too smart to let anything slip. A woman in her line of work quickly learns how to deal with inconvenient enquiries from the police. The four girls, though. They would have been up most of the night with clients. One of them may have seen something. If so, they’d probably be less adept than Mrs Bose at concealing it from me.
I turned to Banerjee. ‘Sergeant, please repeat the question to each of the four girls in turn.’
He did as I asked. I watched the girls as they replied. Saraswati and Lakshmi both answered ‘Nahin’. Devi hesitated for a second, averted her gaze, but then also answered ‘Nahin’. The hesitation was all I needed.
Banerjee proceeded to ask the final girl the same question. She gave the same reply, but I detected no signs of subterfuge. Devi was the one we needed to talk to. But not now, and not here. We’d have to speak to her alone.
‘Unfortunately, it seems we cannot help you, Captain,’ said Mrs Bose.
‘It would appear so,’ I replied, rising from the sofa. Banerjee followed my lead. If Mrs Bose was relieved, she hid it well. Calm as a lotus on a lake. I made a final attempt to unsettle her. ‘Just one last question, if I may?’
‘Of course, Captain.’
‘Where is Mr Bose?’
She smiled playfully. ‘Come now, Captain. You must realise that in my profession it is sometimes necessary to cultivate a certain image of respectability. I find that having a husband, though he is never present, helps to smooth out some of life’s little problems.’
We left the house and returned to the blazing heat. The body was still there, covered by a dirty tarpaulin. It should have been moved by now. I searched for Digby but couldn’t see him.
The alley was a furnace, not that it had much effect on the crowd, which if anything had grown larger. They packed themselves together, tight under large black umbrellas. Everyone in Calcutta seems to carry an umbrella, though more for shade than shelter. I made a mental note to follow Mrs Bose’s advice and be indoors by noon.
From a distance came the sound of a horn and through the narrow, crowded street an olive-green ambulance truck threaded its way towards us. In front of it, a constable on a bicycle was shouting for the crowd to clear the way. On reaching the cordon, he dismounted, leaned his bicycle against a wall and briskly made his way over to me.
He saluted. ‘Captain Wyndham, sir?’
I nodded.
‘I have a message for you, sir. Your presence is requested immediately by Commissioner Taggart.’
Lord Charles Taggart, Commissioner of Police. He was the reason I was in Bengal.
I thanked the constable, who headed back towards his bicycle. By now, the ambulance had stopped at the cordon and two Indian orderlies had got out. They spoke to Banerjee, then lifted the body onto a stretcher and loaded it into the ambulance.
I again searched for Digby but couldn’t see him anywhere, so instead I asked Banerjee to join me as I headed back to the car parked at the entrance to the alley. The driver, a large turbaned Sikh, saluted, then opened the rear door.
We negotiated the narrow, congested streets of Black Town, the driver leaning on his horn and shouting threats at the pedestrians, rickshaws and bullock carts in our path. I turned to Banerjee. ‘How’d you know that house was a brothel, Sergeant?’
He smiled shyly. ‘I asked a few of the locals in the crowd about the surrounding buildings. One woman was more than happy to tell me about the goings-on at number 47.’
‘And our Mrs Bose? What did you make of her?’
‘Interesting, sir. She’s certainly no admirer of the British.’
He was right. But that didn’t mean she was involved. She was a businesswoman, after all, and in my experience people like her had little time for politics. Unless it boosted profits, of course.
‘And the woman you saw at the window?’
‘It was the one she called Devi.’
‘You don’t think it was her real name?’
‘It’s possible sir, but Devi means goddess, and the other three all had the names of Hindu goddesses. I think that’s too much of a coincidence. And I understand it’s not unusual for such girls to work under aliases.’
‘True enough, Sergeant,’ I said, adding drily, ‘I congratulate you on your knowledge of whores.’
The young man’s ears reddened.
‘So,’ I continued, ‘do you think she saw something?’
‘She denied it, sir.’
‘Yes, but what do you think?’
‘I think she’s lying and, if I may venture an opinion, sir, I think you do too. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t question her further?’
‘Patience, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘There’s a time and a place for everything.’
By now we were on the Chitpore road, on the outskirts of White Town. Wide avenues bordered by imposing mansions: the homes of merchant princes made rich from trade in everything from cotton to opium.
‘Unusual name, “Surrender-not”,’ I said.
‘It’s not actually my name, sir,’ replied Banerjee. ‘My real name is “Surendranath”. It’s one of the names of Lord Indra, the king of the gods. Unfortunately Sub-inspector Digby found the pronunciation beyond him, so he christened me “Surrender-not”.’
‘And what do you think of that, Sergeant?’
Banerjee fidgeted in his seat. ‘I’ve been called worse things, sir. Given the natural inability of many of your countrymen to pronounce any foreign name with more than one syllable, “Surrender-not” isn’t too bad.’
We travelled in silence for a while, but that soon became uncomfortable. Besides, I wanted to get to know this young man better, as, other than servants and petty officials, he was pretty much the first real Indian I’d met since arriving here. So I asked him about himself.
‘I spent my childhood in Shyambazar,’ he told me. ‘Then boarding school and university in England.’
His father was a Calcutta barrister who’d sent each of his three sons to England to be educated: Harrow, then Oxbridge. Banerjee was the youngest. Of his elder brothers, one had followed his father into the law and been called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn. The other was a physician of some renown. As for Banerjee, his father had wanted him to pursue a career in the Indian Civil Service, the legendary ICS, but despite the prestige, the young man didn’t fancy spending his days as a pen-pusher. He decided to join the police force instead.
‘What did your father make of that?’ I asked.
‘He’s not too happy about it,’ he replied. ‘He’s a supporter of the struggle for Home Rule. He thinks by joining the Imperial Police Force, I’m assisting the British in the abasement of my own people.’
‘And what do you think?’
Banerjee reflected for a moment before replying. ‘I think, sir, that one day we may indeed have Home Rule. Or the British may leave completely. Either way, I’m quite sure that such an event won’t herald the outbreak of universal peace and goodwill among my countrymen, despite what Mr Gandhi may think. There will still be murders in India. If and when you depart, sir, we Indians will need the skills to manage the posts you’ll be vacating. That goes for law enforcement as much as anything else.’
It wasn’t exactly the ringing endorsement of empire I’d expected from a policeman. As an Englishman, one rather assumes that the natives are either for you or against you, and that the ones employed by the Imperial Police Force must be amongst the most loyal. After all, they uphold the system. That at least one of them might be somewhat ambivalent came as a shock.
I confess, my first week in Calcutta had brought with it more than a degree of unease. I’d met Indians before, I’d even fought alongside some of them during the war. I remembered Ypres in 1915, the suicidal counter-attack ordered by our generals at some lamentable little village called Langemarck. The sepoys of the 3rd Lahore Division, Sikhs and Pathans mainly, had charged on without hope of success and were mown down before ever catching sight of the Boche positions. They’d died bravely. Now, here in Calcutta, it was disturbing to see the way we treated their kinsfolk in their own land.
‘And you, sir?’ asked Banerjee. ‘What brings you to Calcutta?’
I was silent.
What could I tell him?
That I’d survived a war that had killed my brother and my friends? That I’d been wounded and shipped home, only to find that as I recuperated in hospital, my wife had died of influenza? That I was tired of an England I no longer believed in? It would be considered bad form to tell a native any of that. So I told him what I told everyone.
‘I grew sick of the rain, Sergeant.’
I WAS SIX when my mother died. My father was headmaster of the local school, a man of some importance in the parish and of absolutely none outside it. He soon remarried and I, being considered surplus to requirements, was packed off to Haderley, an unremarkable little boarding school in a forgotten part of the West Country, as far from anywhere of any consequence as it’s possible to be in England.
Haderley was no different from the myriad of other minor public schools that dot the shires. Provincial in location and parochial in attitude, it provided a passable education, a veneer of respectability and, most importantly, a convenient holding pen for middle-class children who, for one reason or another, required to be dumped somewhere unobtrusive. That was fine with me. I was happy at Haderley, happier than I’d been at home, at any rate. If anything I’d have stayed longer if I could. I envied the boys who were forced to remain there during holidays on account of their parents being posted to some far-flung corner of the globe, bearing the white man’s burden and supporting the enterprise of empire.
The empire – it truly was a middle-class enterprise, built squarely on the shoulders of schools like Haderley. They were the institutions that churned out the fresh-faced, diligent young men who were the grease that kept the wheels of empire spinning; the boys who became its civil servants and its policemen, its clerics and its tax collectors. In turn, those boys would marry and have children of their own, children they would send back to England to receive the same education they themselves had received. To the same schools, to be moulded into the next generation of colonial administrators. And so the wheel turned full circle.
I left Haderley at seventeen when the money ran out. My father had taken ill the year before, and in light of his straitened financial circumstances, the school fees became an unaffordable luxury. I didn’t bear him any ill will because of it. It was just one of those things. Nevertheless, it did present me with a problem, which was what to do with myself. University, if ever I had entertained hopes of going, was out of the question now. Instead, I did what energetic young men short on prospects and even shorter on resources have done for centuries. I set off for London.
I was lucky. I’d an uncle who lived in the East End, just off the Mile End Road. A local magistrate with some connections, it was he who first suggested I consider the police force. It seemed a good idea, especially as I had nothing else lined up. So I applied and was offered a position as a constable in the Metropolitan Police’s H Division, headquartered in Stepney. People think the Met is the oldest police force in the world. It’s not. It’s true we had the Bow Street runners, but Paris was the first city with a real police force. The Met’s not even the oldest in Britain. That particular honour goes to Glasgow, which had a police force a good thirty-odd years before Robert Peel suggested one for London. Still, if there was one city that needed police more than London, it was probably Glasgow.
That’s not to say London was safe. Stepney and the East End certainly weren’t, and we saw more than our fair share of murders, though the victims were never found wearing black tie. It just wasn’t that sort of place. Still, the boys of H Division were thankful for our trusty old Bulldog revolvers, though I never needed to use mine in anger, the act of aiming it at a miscreant generally having the desired effect.
My break came two years later, at the scene of a particularly nasty double murder on the Westferry Road. The bodies of a shopkeeper called Furlow and his wife were discovered early one morning by their assistant, a girl named Rosie, who, confronted by a scene straight out of a penny dreadful, did the sensible thing and screamed her head off. By chance I was on my beat, and hearing her cries, was the first constable on the scene. There were no signs of a break-in. In fact, there was little sign of anything untoward, except of course for the two bodies in the flat above the shop, dressed in their night clothes and with their throats cut. Other officers soon arrived and the place was cordoned off. A search was conducted and a cash box found, open and empty, under the Furlows’ bed.
The press got hold of the story, whipped the locals into a frenzy, and soon CID took over the case. After some persuasion, they let me stay on the case. I convinced them I could be useful – I was, after all, the first copper on the scene and I knew the territory.
We appealed for eye-witnesses and several came forward. They spoke of two shifty-looking men seen leaving the premises that morning. A couple even identified the two as brothers, Alfred and Albert Stratford, toughs with a reputation for violence considered excessive, even for that part of town. We hauled them in for questioning and of course they denied everything. To listen to them, you’d have thought they’d been in church at the time of the murders.
Then witnesses started backtracking. Stories changed – it was dark, they couldn’t be certain, weren’t even sure if it was the same day – and suddenly we had nothing and the Stratford brothers were going to walk. In a last throw of the dice, the CID officers returned to the crime scene in the vain hope of turning up some evidence that might have been missed. I was left at the station and to my own devices. On a whim, I went down to the evidence locker. With the case slipping away, my stint in CID seemed almost over and I wanted to take one last look at what we had, for old times’ sake. I examined the meagre contents: the blood-soaked night clothes, a cracked pocket watch, the empty cash box. It was then that I noticed the reddish smudge hidden on the inside lip of the cash-box lid. In all the commotion it must have been missed when the box was originally discovered. Instantly I knew what it was, and, more importantly, what it might mean. I vaulted back up the stairs, my hands shaking as I held out the box and showed it to the senior officer. Soon Scotland Yard’s nascent Fingerprinting Bureau had been summoned. They managed to lift a print, which turned out to be an exact match for Alfred Stratford’s thumb. We’d caught him red-handed. I applied for a transfer to CID and was accepted.
As for the Stratford brothers, they were both hanged.
I spent the next seven years in CID, dealing with crimes that would put most men off their dinners. It gets tiring after a while and in late 1912 I transferred to Special Branch, whose primary role at the time was to keep an eye on Fenians and their sympathisers in the capital. Not many people remember that the Special Branch started life as the Special Irish Branch. The name may have changed, but the mission hadn’t.
The war came in the summer of ’14. I wasn’t one of those who welcomed its arrival like so many turkeys cheering for Christmas, maybe because I’d already seen enough death to know it was often gruesome, generally pointless and rarely honourable. I certainly didn’t get caught up in the fever that saw countless young men head gleefully to the recruiting office in those early days, thinking it would all be over by the New Year. So many people thought it would be a short affair; that we’d go over there, give the Kaiser a thrashing and that would be that. As though dispatching the industrialised might of the Imperial German Army would be no more arduous than beating the spear-chuckers we liked to fight in our colonial campaigns.
In the end, though, I did volunteer. Not for love of king and country, which is considered noble, but for the love of a woman, which is something altogether more complicated.
I first saw Sarah on the Mile End omnibus one morning in the autumn of 1913. People talk of love at first sight, of violins and fireworks. For me the experience was more akin to a mild heart attack. She was beautiful, in the way one always imagines an English girl should be, and far too pretty to be on an omnibus on the Whitechapel Road – or within a five-mile radius of the place for that matter. Before I could regain my wits, she had alighted and I lost her in the crowds. That might have been the end of it had I not spotted her again on the same bus a few days later. Soon I’d planned my journey with precision, fine-tuning it to coincide with hers. It was nice to have a use for the old Special Branch surveillance techniques that for once didn’t involve trailing Irishmen all over town.
For the next few weeks, that morning journey coloured my life; there was joy at the sight of her, and a hollowness when she wasn’t there. One day, when the bus was particularly packed, I offered her my seat. She took it as an act of kindness. I took it as an opportunity to start a conversation.
Over time, I got to know her. She was a school mistress, a few years older than me, and smart too. If it was her beauty that first attracted me, then it was her intellect that made me fall in love with her. Hers was a open mind, espousing ideas liberal and radical. Some men are put off by intelligence in a woman. I find it intoxicating. Those days were the happiest of my life. She had a fondness for nature and we spent many a freezing Sunday afternoon walking in the royal gardens. Nowadays I can’t see a park without thinking of her.
But the course of true love never did run smooth, and in our case, it meandered all over the place. The trouble was, I wasn’t the only one captivated by her. She had more than her fair share of admirers: intellectuals and radicals mainly, even the odd foreigner. She introduced me to her circle: long-faced, sincere men with shiny new ideas and old threadbare coats, who’d gather in coffee shops and talk heatedly about the fraternal solidarity of the working classes and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was all nonsense, of course. They were there for the same reason I was – moths around the same flame. If they thought it would help win her affection, each one of them would have happily knifed the others in the back with fraternal solidarity having gone out the nearest window. There was one thing that united them, though – their suspicion of me, a mistrust that didn’t exactly diminish when they learned I was a policeman.
Of course, there were other women in the group, but Sarah’s light was always the brightest. And she, aware of her position, made sure to distribute her favours evenly: a kind word here, a glance there, just enough so that no one suitor ever seemed to be preferred or any other ever lost heart.
It was in order to set myself apart from these men that I enlisted. Like most radicals, they talked a lot but did nothing, and it didn’t take an intellectual to see that she was tiring of the endless discourse. I enlisted because I sensed that, despite her liberated views, what she really wanted was for a man to be a man. I enlisted because I loved her. And then I asked her to marry me.
I joined up in January 1915 and received three weeks of the most basic of basic training alongside two dozen other men. Sarah and I were married in late February and two days later, I shipped out to France.
We saw action almost immediately, thrown into the attack at Neuve Chapelle. A number of my comrades died in that battle; just the first of many. There were a lot of dead men’s shoes to fill in those days and field promotions became common place. As a detective inspector, I was considered officer material and quickly made a second lieutenant. After that came further promotions, all by dint of me still being alive. One by one, my friends were killed. Family too. My half brother, Charlie, died at Cambrai in ’17: missing, presumed killed in action. He’d been at my wedding two years before and his funeral was the last time I saw my father, who’d died shortly after. In the end, out of the twenty or so of us who signed up together, only two of us survived, and only me with my wits intact. Though that’s debatable.
It was during the war that I first met Lord Taggart. I was pulled out of the line and ordered to report to him in St Omer. He wore the insignia of a major of the 10th Fusiliers, but it quickly became apparent that his real role was military intelligence. He’d read my file, noted my time in Special Branch, and had a job for me. I was ordered to Calais, to track a Dutch national whom military intelligence suspected of abetting the enemy. I tailed the man for several weeks, noting his contacts and meetings, and soon we’d uncovered a ring of spies working at the docks and passing information on our logistics to the Germans.
Taggart asked if I wished to continue working for him. It wasn’t a difficult decision: I’d done more for the war effort in a month in intelligence than I had in almost two years of sitting in a trench. The work was for the most part enjoyable, and I proved to be good at it. Compared to the Irish, the Germans were amateurs. They tended to view espionage much as we British view haggling: a slightly seedy business, best left to other races.
My war came to an end in the summer of 1918 at the second Battle of the Marne. It was to be the Hun’s last throw of the dice. They let loose with everything they had; a barrage of shells that seemed to last a couple of weeks. I was on a reconnaissance mission in the forward trenches when we took a direct hit. I was lucky. A medical orderly found me and dragged me to a field hospital and a week later I was transferred to a facility back in England. It was touch and go for a while. They gave me morphine for the pain and I spent many days in a drug-induced fog. It was only much later, when they considered my mental state sufficiently robust, that they told me of Sarah’s death. They said it was influenza, that there had been an epidemic, that a lot of people had died from it. As if that made it somehow easier to accept.
They didn’t send me back to France. There was no point. By October it was clear the war was over. Instead, I was demobilised, allowed to return to civilian life. But it’s not much of a life when everyone you cared about is lying in a cemetery or scattered over a French field; when all you have left are memories and guilt. I rejoined the police force in the hope of regaining some purpose, as though returning to the familiar might somehow reanimate what was now a hollowed-out husk. It didn’t help. Sarah’s passing had taken the best part of me with it, and now the days were empty and the nights populated by the cries of the dead, which nothing could extinguish. Nothing except the morphine. When that ran out, I took to opium. Not as effective, but easy enough to get a hold of, especially for a copper who’d cut his teeth in the East End. I knew of several dens in Limehouse alone, and it was while staggering along Narrow Street one freezing December night, past where the Cut flows into the Thames, that I considered ending it all. It would be easy. Just a short walk into the blackness. The cold would numb the pain and it would all soon be over…
Then I remembered an argument I’d once had with a sergeant from the River Police at Wapping. It was only the thought of the satisfaction he’d get from fishing my bloated corpse out of the water that kept me from doing it.
I can be petty like that.
It was soon after that I received the telegram from Lord Taggart offering me a job. He’d been appointed Commissioner of the Imperial Police Force in Bengal, had need of good detectives and requested that I join him in Calcutta. There was precious little left for me in England, and so in early March, after bidding farewell to Sarah’s father on the quayside, I boarded a P&O steamer bound for Bengal. I’d managed to pilfer a stash of morphine tablets from an evidence locker in Bethnal Green before leaving. It was easy enough to do: evidence went astray all the time. There were rumours that certain officers in Wapping earned more on the side from the sale of contraband than they ever did pounding the beat. What concerned me, though, was whether I’d managed to purloin enough tablets for the three-week journey. It would be touch and go. I’d have to ration myself, but hoped that it would be enough to see me through to Calcutta.
Unfortunately, Lady Luck can be fickle sometimes. Bad weather in the Mediterranean added almost a week to the journey and I’d run out of tablets several days before the coast of Bengal finally came into view.