[Inspector de Silva 09] - High Wire in Nuala

by Harriet Steel

  The last thing he found was a jar of pomade. Remembering how Boris’s hair had been slicked back when he acted as ringmaster, de Silva unscrewed the lid. He studied the thick, viscous substance. Could this be what had been smeared on the wire? He sniffed it; it had a strong, sweetish scent that reminded him of vanilla. It was not the smell of the greasy substance he and Hebden had found.

  He replaced the lid and returned to the living area. On the table where he and Boris had sat the previous day, there was a coffee pot with a mess of damp grounds in the bottom, a plate with a few crumbs of bread and a smear of jam on it, and another with a curl of orange rind and a knife. De Silva smelled a citrusy tang. Clearly, no one had been to tidy Boris’s quarters yet. He must keep a sharp ear out and be ready to move quickly if he heard anyone approach. Luckily, he had noticed there was a way out from the sleeping area as well as the main one.

  On a folding table doing duty as a desk were piles of papers and letters, along with writing equipment, and two oil lamps. Carefully, he removed the rubber band around the letters and looked through them. Some had to do with bookings for the circus and others acknowledged orders for supplies of food and fuel at future stops. There were also contracts with the circus performers and circus hands.

  Hearing a sound outside, he quickly tidied everything and hurried back to the sleeping area. A moment later, he stole a look around the flap dividing the two areas and saw that a servant had come in. The man put down the fresh linen he carried and began to collect up the dirty crockery. There was a chance to escape in time before he came to make the bed.

  Cautiously, de Silva peered out of the sleeping area’s exit. There was no one in sight. As he was about to step outside, a glint caught his eye. He stooped and saw that there was an empty vodka bottle on the ground. It must have rolled out from under the canvas when he opened the tent flap. There was another one tucked behind it. Was vodka what had caused the argument between Nadia and Boris? Sadly, he shook his head. The circus had enough problems. It would be a great pity if Boris’s old habit had resurfaced to add to them.

  He glanced at his watch. Prasanna was probably still busy. There was time to find Alexei’s tent and take a look around. He hoped not to be disturbed, but if his luck ran out he would have to say he was making a routine check.

  **

  In contrast to his brother’s quarters, Alexei’s contained no business papers or letters; in fact, there was nothing to show that he was joint owner of the business. It seemed Boris was responsible for the lion’s share of administration and planning. The tent had obviously been shared with Tatiana, for women’s clothes were everywhere: a plethora of frocks, blouses, fashionable trousers, high-heeled shoes, and hats. There was also silk underwear, and nightgowns in shades of ecru and shell pink. De Silva caught the musky scents of rose and patchouli and had the uncomfortable feeling that he was intruding on the dead couple’s privacy. The dressing table mirror had numerous photographs of Tatiana in stage costume tucked into its gilt frame. There were also some of Alexei with his horses. None of Tatiana’s stage costumes were in evidence; he assumed they were looked after by Nadia.

  Taking care to put everything back in the same disorder as he had found it, de Silva went through untidy drawers and trunks. There was no sign of a suicide note. It didn’t prove anything, but in his experience, people who took their own lives usually left something. Had Alexei omitted to do so because he was sure Tatiana would be dead by the time his body was found, and she was the only person he cared about? If Boris was innocent, it would surely increase his pain that his brother had no last words for him.

  De Silva had finished his search and was at a good distance from Alexei’s tent when Boris emerged from the main one. He raised a hand and started to walk in de Silva’s direction. ‘Good morning, Inspector, I see your officer with Gordo.’

  De Silva nodded. ‘Prasanna came up to make routine inquiries in accordance with my instructions.’

  ‘I understand. Does this take long?’

  ‘I’m going to look for him now, so I’ll find out, but I imagine he won’t need very much more time.’

  ‘Good. We give no show today, and soon, I hope, we move on.’ He looked sad. ‘But first, we must have funeral for Alexei and Tatiana.’

  De Silva was relieved that Boris hadn’t asked what he had been doing while Prasanna was carrying out the so-called routine inquiries. ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘If you like, I can introduce you to the local vicar.’ Boris looked blank. De Silva searched his mind for another way of describing Reverend Peters and came up with the word priest.

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said Boris. ‘Alexei and Tatiana belonged to our Russian church.’

  ‘Our priest is the vicar of the English church here – we have no Russian one – but I’m sure he will do his best to help. He’s a good man.’

  Boris nodded. ‘Thank you.’ He paused. ‘You let Izabella go now? When we leave here, I want to take her with us.’

  De Silva hesitated. His doubts about the case against Izabella had continued to grow since the previous night. She was a bitter woman, but was there really enough malice in her to make her deliberately cause a fatal accident? And surely, if Boris was the culprit, he could have found a way of getting rid of his brother without harming Tatiana. Wouldn’t that have been the better way forward? He wouldn’t have to lose his star performer, and there was always a chance that a bereft Tatiana would turn to him for comfort. The pomade he had just found might have made him change his mind, but then there was the different scent to consider. Maybe he really was looking for complications where there were none. He considered the possibility that Alexei had been a more calculating man than he had originally believed and had used some substance of his own to grease the wire that they might never find.

  Before he gave Boris his answer, however, there was one last thing he wanted to do.

  ‘I’d like to see inside Izabella’s tent before I decide.’

  ‘Very well.’

  The tent was by far the smallest de Silva had been into. Searching it didn’t take him long, and he found nothing suspicious. As Boris waited at the entrance, he made his decision.

  ‘I’m satisfied that she played no part in the accident,’ he said. ‘If you believe you can keep her safe, I will let her go.’

  Boris gave him a searching look. ‘Then one of my people make mistake.’ He clenched one fist. ‘I ask questions; I find them.’

  ‘If there are questions to ask, please leave that to me, sir,’ de Silva said calmly. He hesitated. ‘But I’m afraid you must accept the possibility that this has nothing to do with your people. It may have been your brother’s work.’

  Anger flashed in Boris’s eyes, and de Silva had to stop himself from taking a step backwards. It was replaced by abject sorrow.

  ‘This is hard for me to hear.’ There was a catch in Boris’s voice, and it was difficult to believe his sadness was feigned. De Silva felt a rush of pity for him. With Alexei and Tatiana gone, Boris would probably have no one he was close to except Nadia.

  ‘I’ll go and see if my sergeant is ready yet,’ he said. ‘Then I suggest you follow me to the station and collect Izabella.’

  **

  Prasanna still needed to speak to a few people, so de Silva agreed to return for him. With Boris following in one of the circus trucks, he drove back to town. Nadar’s obvious relief at his arrival was briefly wiped from his face when Boris walked into the station too. Perhaps he thought there was going to be an ugly scene.

  De Silva gave him a reassuring smile. ‘I’m releasing Miss Rabach. Mr Goncharov will be taking her back to the circus and seeing to it that she’s safe. Go and fetch her, please.’

  Nadar hesitated.

  ‘Well? What are you waiting for? She won’t bite.’

  Izabella came out from her cell with a haughty expression on her face. She clearly felt that she had been unjustly treated. She refused to meet de Silva’s eyes and stalked out with Boris behind her. He suspected tha
t it would be the last he saw of her.

  **

  Back at the circus, Prasanna was ready for him.

  ‘Anything to report, Sergeant?’ he asked on the way back to town.

  ‘Nothing more than I found out yesterday, sir.’

  ‘I promised to speak to Reverend Peters about funeral arrangements for Alexei and Tatiana. As Boris Goncharov hopes to move on soon, I’ll telephone Peters as soon as possible. Of course, the coroner’s office will need our report and Doctor Hebden’s, which will have to wait until he returns from his fishing trip, before the bodies are released for burial.’

  ‘Do you mean you don’t suspect Boris or Izabella any longer, sir?’

  De Silva relaxed back in his seat, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his knee. ‘That’s right. I believe that Izabella is telling the truth. And if Boris had wanted his brother dead, there would have been easier ways of achieving it that didn’t involve losing his star performer. Since the circus tent was empty for a period of time during which no one knew where Alexei was, he had the opportunity to tamper with the wire himself.’

  They drove on. To de Silva, the breeze seemed more refreshing than usual and the colour of the trees lining the road more vivid. A flock of green parrots rose from a field as they passed. With amusement, he noticed that Prasanna’s head was nodding. The young man must be tired. When they arrived at the police station, de Silva gave him and Nadar the rest of the day off. ‘And there’s no need to hurry here in the morning,’ he added.

  They didn’t wait for him to change his mind. Left alone, he wrote up his report from his own notes and those that Prasanna had left with him. When he had read it over and made a few corrections, he placed it in a folder and labelled it.

  He was about to put on his jacket when he noticed that the latest digest of crime reports from Kandy lay on his desk. He looked at his watch. Maybe he would deal with them before he went home. Going out to the back, he made himself a cup of tea, took it to his office and settled down to read.

  The electric fan suspended from the ceiling thrummed rhythmically. It wasn’t long before his mind started to wander, but he blinked and shook himself. There was only one more page; the sooner he finished it, the sooner he would feel justified in going home. It would be pleasant to spend the last part of the afternoon in the garden and then enjoy a whisky on the verandah with Jane before dinner. He wondered what her opinion on the outcome of the case would be. Somehow, he doubted that she would be surprised. From their last discussion, he suspected that she had already come to the same conclusion that he had now reached. He smiled; as was not infrequently the case, he could probably have saved himself some time if he’d listened to her in the first place.

  He turned his attention back to the last page of the digest. There had been four robberies recently – the one at the de Vere plantation, and three at plantations near Kandy. In each case, a large quantity of valuable jewellery had been stolen. All the break-ins had been at night when the families were away and only a few servants left to watch the house. In every case, they had gone to bed and had claimed not to have heard anything. Like the de Veres’ servants, the others had been trusted employees with long service.

  De Silva wondered whether he should telephone Singh to ask if there had been any developments, but on reflection, as Singh had promised to keep him informed, he decided to wait for a while. It would be advisable, however, to notify the wealthier families in the Nuala area of the need to take extra security measures, at least until the gang had been caught. Archie might prefer the advice to come from the Residence so he drafted a note with a suggested message that he would drop in on his way home.

  He drained the last of his tea and swatted a fly that had settled on a few grains of sugar he’d spilt in the saucer. Unless it had come in when he opened the door, the window must be open a crack. He went to check and pulled the handle down firmly. Back at his desk, he straightened the papers. He would leave them out on the desk to remind him to telephone Singh at some point if he didn’t hear from him. The thought prompted the recollection that he had promised Boris Goncharov to speak to Reverend Peters.

  It was Mrs Peters who answered the telephone. ‘I’m afraid my husband is out visiting a sick parishioner,’ she said. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  He explained the situation and heard her give a sympathetic click of the tongue. ‘How terribly sad. And their religion is Russian Orthodox, you say. I’m not sure what the church’s policy is on that.’ An anxious note entered her voice. ‘Especially with the complication of the manner of the poor man’s death.’

  De Silva frowned. He hadn’t considered the church’s attitude to suicide. It came back to him that, irrespective of the different religions, that was likely to cause a problem if Boris wanted his brother buried in consecrated ground.

  ‘But I’m sure Ambrose will do his best for them,’ Mrs Peters went on. ‘I’ll ask him to call you as soon as he comes in.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m leaving for the day shortly, but he can reach me at home.’

  Chapter 8

  Prasanna climbed the stairs to the apartment he shared with his wife, Kuveni, and their daughter, Anika. He called out as he opened the door, and she came running to meet him. He swung her up into his arms and hugged her.

  ‘Have you missed me?’

  She nodded as her mother appeared from the direction of their small kitchen. ‘You’re home early. Is everything alright?’

  ‘Yes, the case is finished. He gave us the rest of the day off.’

  The previous evening, he had already told her about what had happened after Tatiana’s accident. Now he explained about Izabella’s release and the conclusion de Silva had come to.

  Kuveni raised an eyebrow. ‘So, Nadar no longer needs to guard this ferocious lady.’

  ‘I expect he’ll wildly exaggerate the difficulties he’s had,’ said Prasanna with a grin.

  ‘You must allow him to boast a little.’

  ‘If you say so. Now, I must go and wash. Have we anything to eat? I’ve had no lunch, and I’m starving.’

  ‘I bought vegetables at the bazaar this morning and made curry. I’ll cook some rice to go with it. It won’t take long.’

  A short time later, washed and dressed in a clean sarong and shirt, he sat down to eat with Anika perched on his lap. He broke off a piece of naan bread to give her and she munched it happily.

  ‘I saw your mother at the bazaar,’ said Kuveni, turning from the stove where she was stirring something in a pan. ‘She complained that she never sees you. You should go and visit her when you’ve eaten.’

  Prasanna sighed. He had been looking forward to spending the rest of the day quietly.

  ‘She gets lonely without your father. Just go for a little while. You can take her some of the butter cake I made this morning.’

  ‘Alright.’

  After he had finished his meal, he lifted Anika off his lap. ‘Daddy has to go out for a while. You stay here with your mother and play with your toys.’

  The little girl’s forehead wrinkled.

  ‘When something doesn’t suit her, she looks just like you,’ said Kuveni with a laugh.

  She handed him the parcel of cake, and he kissed her cheek. ‘I won’t be long.’

  **

  There were streaks of crimson and gold in the sky. Soon, with the speed it always did in the tropics, darkness would fall. Prasanna passed people trudging home from work or sitting outside their doors smoking and chatting as the heat of the day faded. At the bazaar, many of the stallholders had packed up and gone home, leaving unsold vegetables and fruit on the ground to be picked up by anyone needy enough to want them. There was already a faintly putrid smell in the air. Two skinny dogs snapped and snarled at each other as they circled a puddle of broken eggs.

  The part of the city where Prasanna’s mother lived lacked electricity. The narrow streets were lit only by the oil lamps that some of the inhabitants hung by their doors. He moved f
rom one pool of light to another, alert for the sound of footsteps. The neighbourhood was perfectly safe in the daytime but could be less so at night. As he kept telling his mother, who often forgot to lock her front door, it was best to be cautious. At the door, he tried the handle. Good, she had remembered to lock up this evening. He knocked and waited for her to come.

  She was a tall, striking lady, whose dark hair was always glossy and sweet smelling with scented oil. Her olive sari was made of good quality material; a fine chain with a golden medallion glowed against her skin. ‘So, you have found time to visit your mother at last.’

  ‘I’ve been busy, Mother.’

  She gave him a stern look then laughed. ‘I’m teasing. I know you are busy. Come in.’

  He followed her to the kitchen, where there was a mound of chopped vegetables on the table. A pot of soup simmered on the stove.

  ‘Kuveni tells me your inspector gives you a lot more responsibility these days.’

  ‘He does.’ He put the package he carried on the table. ‘She sent you some butter cake.’

  ‘That was kind of her. Will you thank her for me? And how is my granddaughter? She looked thin when I saw her with Kuveni this morning.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry about her. Anika eats plenty of food. It’s just that now she can run about, she’s not as plump as she used to be.’

  ‘I suppose, you were a skinny child.’

  Prasanna looked down at his belly. It was still flat, but he was not as thin as he had been when he and Kuveni married.

  ‘Now you’re here, you must eat.’

  He knew better than to argue with his mother, so he found room for a bowl of the thick soup she had made, a delicious creamy mixture of sweet potato and coconut, spiced with ginger and cumin. She insisted he follow it with a large slice of Kuveni’s butter cake. Afterwards he fixed the bracket on a shelf that had come loose, went to borrow tools from a neighbour to repair a pipe under the kitchen sink that was leaking, and drank several cups of the tea that his mother made him.