“Oliver!” she screamed, darting past a small crowd on to the boat jetty. “Oliver!” Her legs gave way and she collapsed on to her knees. “Oliver!”
The boat was fifty feet from the jetty when he heard her. He spun around, shouted to the boatman and stood, muttering apologies to the other two passengers. “Indi, hang on!” he yelled across the noise of the engine. “Hang on there, I’m coming!” He saw her drop forward and his stomach lurched. “Hurry up!” he called across to the boatman. “Can’t this bloody thing go any faster?”
Minutes later they were back at the jetty. He jumped off the boat as it pulled alongside and ran across to her, dropping down beside her and pulling her into his arms. “God, what happened? Indi, what happened?”
She wasn’t crying but she was shocked, her face was ashen and she was shaking. “A man, in the suite, he hit me…” She put her hand up to the back of her neck and Oliver gently lifted her hair. “Christ! Let’s get you back inside, we’ll need to get that seen.” He helped her to her feet and, with his arm around her, walked her inside and across to one of the chairs in reception.
“Here, sit here and I’ll get the desk to call a doctor.”
“No.” She looked up at him. “It’s all right, I’ve felt it, it doesn’t need stitches. It’s all right.”
“How would you know? I’ll get a doctor, Indi, don’t argue.”
She reached for his arm. “I am a doctor,” she said. “Well, half a one at least.”
“You are?” He realized that he didn’t know the first thing about her.
“Yes.” She smiled at the look on his face. “You had me down as a silly young thing, didn’t you?”
“No! Of course not, I…” He sat down next to her. “I didn’t know what to make of you to be honest. I still don’t.”
They both smiled.
“Look, can I get you anything? A drink maybe?”
“No, but I could do with some ice.” She touched the back of her neck. “For this.”
Oliver held his hand up to attract the boy’s attention. “D’you want to tell me what happened?” He ordered tea for them both and a bucket of ice. As the boy disappeared, he said, “You should report this to the manager, you know, Indi. It could have been very nasty, you were lucky. I wonder if he’s tried it on anyone else?” Indi looked down at her hands. “It’s not unusual for tourists to get ripped off when they’re abroad,” he went on, “particularly not in India but you don’t expect it in your hotel room! We’ll definitely have to say something to the management and the police need to be informed. Did you get a look at him, Indi? I suppose it was a bit quick but you…” He stopped. “Indi? Are you all right?” The boy arrived with the drinks and ice and interrupted him. Oliver organized the tea, wrapped the ice in a napkin and handed it to Indi for her neck. He signed, waited for the boy to leave, then said, “Is there something you’re not telling me? Why do I get the feeling that there’s something wrong here?”
Indi said nothing. She held the ice on her neck and stayed silent; she didn’t know what to say.
“Indi? It’s not connected to this Jimmy Stone thing in any way, is it? You don’t think he might have…”
“No, I mean it might be… Oh! I really don’t know what’s going on!” She dropped the ice bag onto the coffee table. “I went into the room to take my call, Oliver, and someone hit me from behind. They tried to grab my bag but I managed to hold on to it and smack them hard in the goolies!” Indi stopped. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.
“Nothing!” Oliver tried hard to cover his smirk but it just didn’t work. “I’m sorry,” he said, breaking into a grin. “It’s the way you ‘smacked them hard in the goolies’!” Suddenly he started to laugh. “It just sounds quite funny, that’s all!”
Indi smiled. “I bet it didn’t feel funny!” she said. Then she too started to laugh. “I really gave it all I had. Wallop!” She punched the air and laughed even harder, “God… it must… have… really hurt!” She gasped for air, crying with laughter. Then all of a sudden she burst into tears.
Oliver instantly sobered and fumbled in his bag for a hanky. “It’s all right,” he said. “It often happens, it’s the shock.”
Indi blew her nose loudly and Oliver remembered the noise from the telephone call. “That’s a charming noise,” he said, smiling.
Indi smiled back and wiped her face. “One of my most endearing qualities.” She sniffed and took a sip of her tea. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to make a fool of myself. I feel very confused, with everything that’s happened.”
“You haven’t made a fool of yourself.” Oliver watched her as she composed herself. “Look,” he said, “I’ll go over to reception, check on your call and then why don’t you start at the beginning, tell me the whole thing, how you met Jimmy Stone, when, the trip here, everything. Let’s try and sort it out. Hmmm?”
She nodded. It was all beginning to feel a little bit odd, a little bit scary. “All right,” she said. She waited for Oliver to return from the reception desk and then took a big breath. “I met him a month ago…” And she started on the whole tale, from the giving of the red rose to the last words she spoke to Jimmy Stone.
An hour later, Oliver sat back and clicked for more tea. He didn’t know what to make of the whole story but he did know that something wasn’t right. The phone call was bona fide, from Brigadier Bennet, but that seemed to be the only thing that was.
“So, Jimmy Stone flies you out to India,” he said, “gets you to Baijur, then disappears with all your documents and money, leaving you stranded. Yes?” Indi nodded. “Then you go back to the room, accidentally catch someone there and he tries to steal your bag?”
“I think he was after my bag but I’m not exactly sure. He may have been searching the room, he may have been after me, waiting for me.” She shivered.
Oliver thought for a moment. “Your parents? Your father was Indian, right? Might it have something to do with him, d’you think?”
“No, I mean I doubt it. I know practically nothing about him. I’ve never even seen a photo. What could it have to do with him?”
Oliver shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to make some sense of all this.” He was silent for a few minutes, then he said, “Look, what would you think if I said that maybe your father’s family, or someone connected to him wanted to get you out to India? What if they set up Jimmy Stone to lure you out here?”
“That’s bizarre! How could they possibly know about me? I know nothing about them.”
“OK, then look, what if Jimmy Stone was involved in something sinister, something dangerous. What if he hid something in your bag and now he’s sent someone to collect it?”
“No, he can’t have done! I unpacked it all myself, there was nothing in it that shouldn’t have been there. I checked the whole bag.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“But it makes sense, to keep you here till the goods have been collected.”
“Goods?” Indi shook her head. “You mean drugs, don’t you?”
“Yes, they’re a possibility.” Oliver sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Could he have hidden something anywhere else?”
Suddenly both Indi and Oliver looked down at her rucksack. “In there?” She picked it up. “Surely not, I…” She began to unpack it but Oliver caught her arm. “We should do that in private,” he said. She nodded.
“Can you face going back to the suite?”
“Yes.” They stood and, glancing over his shoulder, Oliver led the way out of the lobby and back down the passage to the royal suite. Indi handed him the card key and he went in first.
“Shit!” He stood just inside the door and glanced back at her. “Someone is looking for something, Indi, that’s for sure.”
She came up behind him. “Oh God!”
The room had been trashed. Drawers were open, furniture ransacked, everything turned over. Indi walked into the bedroom where her clothes were strewn
everywhere, her wash things scattered over the floor. She dropped the rucksack down on the bed and slumped down putting her head into her hands. She felt thoroughly miserable and bloody scared. She stayed like that for a while and Oliver gave her the chance to recover. After a couple of minutes, she sat straight and reached for the bag, tipping it up, emptying the entire contents out. She rifled through them.
“Anything there?”
She shook her head. Oliver came across and sifted through the small pile. “Any secret compartments in the bag?”
“No, only a zipped pocket that’s hidden under this flap.” Indi unzipped it and pulled out the package John had given her.
“Christ! What’s that?”
She shook her head. “Don’t get excited, Oliver, Gramps gave it to me.” She began to untie the leather thong that bound the cloth. “It belonged to my father, he wanted me to have it.” She uncovered the book. “It’s some kind of diary.” She opened the first page on a water-color illustration of an Indian elephant and held it out for Oliver to see.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “What does it say?”
Indi shrugged. “It’s in Hindu, I’ve no idea.” She flicked through the pages. “There’s some verse in here, some English verse.” She continued to flick. “And loads of paintings.” She peered closer at one. “My God! They’re my mother’s paintings. Look! Here! It says JM, that was her name, Jane Mills.” Indi smiled. “Wow! Perhaps that’s why Gramps wanted me to have it. I’ve seen a couple of her water-colors at home but they’re nothing like these.” She looked up at Oliver. “It’s beautiful, the whole thing. I wonder what it is?”
He took it from her and looked at it. “You’re right, it is lovely.” He turned a couple of pages. “Everything is dated, the verses and pictures run on from each other.”
“Let’s see.” Indi stood next to him. “Oh yes!” She followed the dates as he turned the pages. “I wonder if it means anything? You know, like some kind of story?”
Oliver gave it back to her and sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t suppose it’s valuable in any way?”
“I doubt it.” Indi sat next to him. “Why?”
“I just wondered if it might be the thing your man was looking for.”
Indi looked down and turned the book over in her hands. “I shouldn’t think so.” Then she glanced up at him. “But how would we find out if it were?”
He thought for a moment. “Maybe if we knew more about your parents, about what happened, that might give us a few clues.” He stood and started to put Indi’s things back in her bag. “One thing is for certain, Indi, and that is that things are beginning to look very peculiar, to say the least. Unless, of course, it’s all a massive coincidence.” He finished and turned to her. “But I doubt that very much.”
“So, what next then?”
“Well, first, let’s find out if Jimmy Stone was real and did actually disappear by accident. Can you ring your grandfather and ask him to get in touch with Stone’s publishers?”
“Yes, all right.”
“And can you get any more information on your parents from him?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Indi looked down at the book. “He’s never said very much at all and I don’t want to ask him. He hates India; it upsets him to talk about it.”
Oliver touched her shoulder. “OK, I’ve got a friend at the High Commission who might be able to help. Rob Jones, he works for the foreign office, he might be able to look up some files.” He smiled. “Then again he might not.” Looking down at her, he offered her his hands. “Come on,” he said, “you make your call and I’ll get moving on this mess.”
Indi slipped the book back into the hidden pocket in the rucksack and then took Oliver’s hands, letting him pull her up.
“Oliver?”
He turned.
“What about your train?”
Oliver shrugged and smiled. “What about it?” he answered, and he bent to begin on the clearing up.
John put down the telephone thus ending his call to Beckman and Steen, the last publisher on his list. He sighed heavily and slumped down onto the chair in the hall. No one, not one single person in any of the companies on his list had ever heard of Jimmy Stone and no one had a book commissioned on the Mogul architecture of Baijur. Whatever it was that young man had been up to it certainly wasn’t art photography. Damn! John put his head in his hands. Damn and blast! He should have enquired a week ago, before Indi even left the country, he should have made sure it was all bona fide before letting her go off with some head case who didn’t know the difference between truth and lies!
He looked up and sighed again. Well, he had to ring, at least let them know what he’d found, even though it wasn’t much. He stood again and picked up the receiver, looking on his pad for the international code and the number in Baijur. Once he’d done that then maybe it was time to do a little investigative work himself. If Stone had lured Indi out to that God-forsaken place then there was a reason for it and, by Christ, John was going to find it out.
Suddenly he dropped the receiver back in its cradle and walked from the hall into his study. He would start now and there was only one place to make that start. He unlocked the side cupboard of his desk and took out a heavy stack of newspapers tied with string, a collection he had made many years ago, every Times published for nearly two months. He cut the string with his letter knife and lifted the first issue off the pile. History, he thought, looking down at the newspaper, a history he had never been able to face. And taking the paper off the pile, he sat down at his desk, put his glasses on, and finally began to read.
The Baijur gymkhana club, four o’clock in the afternoon, and Oliver glanced at his watch as he stifled a small yawn behind his hand. He was bored and anxious and the heat of the clubhouse was beginning to get to him.
He glanced across at Indi, deep in conversation with the Indian chap they had met there quite by accident and cursed himself for suggesting the venue in the first place. He’d been recommended it by Rob Jones on the phone that morning, but all it had achieved was two hours in Dr. Yadav’s company. It wasn’t that Oliver had anything against this Ashok Yadav, it was just that Oliver wasn’t a doctor and he didn’t understand a lot of what they had been saying all over lunch. Besides, this Ashok was a bit too good-looking and got on a bit too well with Indi for Oliver to really like him. Not that he’d worked out his feelings for Indi, nothing like. He felt an enormous responsibility, now that he was here, and she needed his help, that much was obvious. It wasn’t anything more than that though, he thought, trying to convince himself and glancing briefly across at her. He felt his excitement immediately flare and looked away. So, he liked attractive women, that’s all it was, and who didn’t?
Oliver coughed to attract Indi’s attention without wanting to interrupt. She looked across at him and smiled.
“Ashok, I think we have to go in a few minutes. Is that right, Oliver?”
“Yes, I’m sorry but we do.” He was finding it difficult to be polite and Indi’s forehead creased in a frown. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, of course.” She stood and Ashok stood with her.
“It has been most fortunate accident of fate to be meeting you again, Indu,” Ashok said, “I have very much enjoyed our chat.”
“Thank you, Ashok. So have I.” She glanced across at Oliver, prompting him.
“Oh, so have I!” He held his hand out and shook hands with Ashok.
Ashok turned toward Indi and folded his palms. “If there is anything that I might be able to do for you at any time, please, please do not hesitate to ask it of me.”
Indi smiled. “Thank you.” She bent to pick up her bag. “Oh, Ashok,” she said suddenly, “there is something that you could do for me.”
“Of course. What is it?”
Indi unzipped the pocket in her rucksack and took out the book. “Ashok, could you read me the inscription on the front page? It’s in Hindi.”
“Yes, certainly, it would b
e my pleasure.” He took the book and opened it “It is very beautiful script.” He read and was silent for a few moments. “It says; ‘O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm…’”
“‘That flies in the night,’” Oliver went on, “‘In the howling storm; Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.’”
Indi looked across at him.
“Blake,” he said, “Songs of Innocence and Experience.”
“I know.” She looked then at Ashok. “Is that all it says?”
He read the line at the bottom of the page and the date. “It says at the bottom here, ‘For Indu, from her father,’ and it is dated March 1966.”
Indi took the book. She looked at the inscription and then at the first drawing but she didn’t say anything. She closed the book and put it away. “Thanks, Ashok, I appreciate that.” She held out her hand and they shook. “We may meet again, I shall probably be in Baijur for a few more days.”
“Perhaps, I hope so, Indu.”
Indi and Oliver turned toward the door. “Goodbye, Ashok.”
“Goodbye, Indu and goodbye, Oliver.” Ashok bowed and watched them leave. He waved as they walked down the steps of the club together and he saw them get into a motor rickshaw. Then he walked across to the telephone. Taking out his diary, he looked up the number of the journalist he knew and dialled. He didn’t want to waste time, he needed to know the facts, the history, if he was going to make a move. He needed to be sure they really had what he thought and once he knew that, there wouldn’t be any time to waste.
Rob Jones had called when they got back to the hotel and Oliver had to phone him back. Indi went into the bedroom to finish tidying while he made the call from the sitting-room of the suite. He dialled Delhi, went through the switchboard and finally got Rob on the end of the line.
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