by Irene Black
Duncan froze. Oh, my God. What if I’d killed her?
“Why didn’t you leave me to sleep?”
“I want to go over it all again,” he said. “I don’t believe you’ve told me everything.”
“I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Mark Salers,” Duncan said. “Is he Terry Bull?”
Felicity flinched so violently that Duncan knew he had hit the spot. It took a few seconds for her voice to struggle into sound.
“How did you know?”
“It doesn’t matter. This time I want the truth.”
Her shoulders sagged. Her expression was one of futility. “You’re right, Dunc, I’m sorry,” she said flatly. “Mark Salers is my brother. Terry doesn’t exist. Everything else I said was true. Almost everything.”
“I’m waiting.”
“It is true that I set you up to find out about Hannah.” She struggled to sit up straight. “But there’s no one else involved. Just Mark and me.”
She told Duncan that Mark Salers had written a book about Hannah, in order to prove his innocence. “That’s why he asked me to spy on you.”
“A book? What sort of a book?”
“When Mark was released, I couldn’t believe what prison had done to him. And it was all down to her…Hannah. He blamed her for everything. She took away Maighréad from him. She got him arrested and put away. She wrote all those lies about him. He wanted to set the record straight. I did what I did to help him.”
“Lies? There were no lies. He would have killed Maighréad if Hannah hadn’t taken her to England. As for his arrest and imprisonment—he got what he deserved.”
“Oh God, Dunc,” Felicity said, looking at the floor. “If only you knew the half of it.”
Duncan looked at her with loathing. Any lingering sympathy towards her had dissipated with her latest disclosure.
“I’m not interested in any more of your half-cocked stories. Mark Salers is a crazy bastard who got what he deserved. The only thing that interests me now is getting the Indian police to pick him up. With a bit of luck, they’ll finish him off in the process.”
He chose not to see the tears welling up in Felicity’s eyes or the broken look on her bleached face. Mark Salers was as guilty as hell…and dangerous. Duncan had been there. He had seen Hannah’s book through, stage by stage, following with her every step of the tragedy as it unfolded. He knew beyond a doubt that Hannah’s sensational exposé of Mark Salers, his arrest, his trial, his conviction, his imprisonment, were irrefutable facts. They had to be. He had published them. Nothing that Felicity could say could change anything.
“In any case, if the book’s finished, why is he still after Hannah? Tell me that.”
Felicity shook her head nervously. “I don’t know. Mark seemed to suss out that…” She glanced up at Duncan. “…that I hated what I was doing to you. He got angry and stopped confiding in me. He’s so ill. I don’t really think he knows what he’s doing or saying anymore.”
“That bastard knows exactly what he’s up to. Always has.”
Felicity ignored the comment. “When he left for India, I thought that was that. I thought I was free. I wanted to make it up to you.”
So that’s why she’s been so over-the-top recently. And I thought she was having an affair. Pity I was so wrong.
He tried to email Hannah.
Have confirmed that Salers is Terry Bull—but I guess you’d already worked that one out.
Damn it! he thought. Email’s down. Must have blown due to pre-Christmas rush. Will have to keep trying.
* * * *
When Room Service delivered the packet, Hannah decided that there was no point in phoning Ashok before she set about inspecting it. He was due any minute and would probably be on his way already.
He had dropped her off after they had left the campus garden. The morning’s discussion had left them both uptight and in need of time alone. She’d said she wanted a shower, and he’d wanted to try another bookshop for A Small Life. He’d said he’d pick her up at midday for lunch.
She turned the packet over. Thin, the size of an A5 envelope. No hint of its origins, but Hannah knew. Only one person could have sent it. Carefully, she slit it open with scissors and removed the content. A paper wallet containing photographs. She looked at the first one. A view of the Qutab Shahi tombs taken from halfway up Golconda. Hannah remembered taking it. They were her photographs. She looked at the next few, all images of Golconda. On one of them, a shot looking back down the hill, she could make out, in the distance, a woman in a burkha.
So what? she said to herself. It told her nothing.
She heard a knock on the door and a voice. “It’s Ashok.”
She let him in and showed him the wallet of photographs.
“I really can’t understand why he should go to the trouble to return them to me.”
“Have you looked at them all yet?”
“No.”
“Then shouldn’t you?”
Hannah pulled out the next one. “Oh, God.”
“That was you, wasn’t it, Hannah? Before the face was scratched out.”
She nodded. “Willi took it in front of the Durbhar Hall. How ghastly.”
“Yes. Let’s check the rest.”
They tipped the photographs onto the bed.
“Look. That was me, with a family on a cycle. A fruit vendor took it.”
“Here’s another. This looks like that wedding you went to.”
Hannah nodded, regarding her scratched out image with revulsion. “It was taken at the Pandava. Before I had the camera locked in the safe.”
“All other pictures are intact. Even ones of Willi.”
“He went to some trouble, didn’t he?”
“You mean the precision with which he did it? Yes. Odd, isn’t it? Look how carefully he’s removed every trace of color from exactly where your face was. Except for your eyes. Just left eyes in a white mask.”
“Like a ghost.” She shuddered. “So he’s saying that he’s going to wipe me out.”
“Or simply that he hates you.”
“Glad you think that’s all.”
“I’m not saying that. One way or another, the man’s a menace. Time for positive action, I think. We’re going to get him.”
“You bet we are.” Her expression softened. “Sorry I got into such a strop earlier. You’re right. I’m not superwoman. Maybe I did use the photography project as an excuse to get away. There, I’ve admitted it. I was scared.”
“You were brilliant. I’d have fallen apart long ago.”
She brushed the comment aside. “So—what’s our next move?”
“First, compile our list of suspects.”
“Any luck with Small Life?”
“Afraid not. Out of stock. Come on, let’s talk about it over lunch.”
Uma’s restaurant was crowded with lunchtime shoppers and barristers from the nearby law courts. Scruffy-looking travelers from Australia and Europe ordered blindly and affected a posture of blasé confidence that cried out “foreigner” more clearly than their blue eyes and lank blond hair.
Ashok and Hannah pushed through the noisy scrum in the huge, canteen-like interior on the first floor and managed to secure a table on the terrace overlooking the road, where traffic fumes from the street below did not penetrate the air.
Ashok ordered a masala dosa for each of them.
“Mmm,” she murmured. “I’m beginning to feel human again.”
Ashok furrowed his eyebrows. “How can you be so damned cheerful with that cretin after you? I don’t get you. You’re up and down like a yoyo.”
“Listen,” she said, her mouth full of dosa. “I’m back on form, now we’re going after him. Pity I didn’t have your support back home. Might have put an end to it much sooner.”
“Sorry I couldn’t oblige,” Ashok said.
“Listen to me. I’m beginning to lose my independent streak.”
“Never!” He smiled, but his
eyes were serious. “Say, Hannah. I’ve got to tell you...tomorrow...it’s going to be difficult...”
She jumped in quickly. “It’s okay. I understand. You can’t always be with me. You’ve got other obligations.”
“Will you let me finish? I have to go to Mysore to see my father. Some business he wants me to help him with.”
“I’ll be fine. Honestly. I’ll explore the city with Willi...”
“No! Listen to this and tell me what you think. To nail this man, we’ve got to isolate him somehow, right?”
“Right.”
“So how about if I arrange a bungalow for the three of us in Bandipur National Park for tomorrow night. Mysore’s on the way. We’ll go to Mysore together by bus, and you and Willi can wait for me there. I’ll only be an hour or so. We’ll take a taxi up to the park from there. It’s about forty-five miles south of Mysore. If Salers, Bull, or whoever follows us, we’ll nab him. There’s no place for him to hide up there. The park only has a few bungalows and a small lodge. Rest is wilderness—tiger and elephant country. And if he doesn’t follow us—well, it’s a great place for a safari.”
“Why don’t Willi and I go on ahead to the park? Better than hanging around the bus station in Mysore waiting for you. You can join us later.”
“No, really, that’s a bad idea. Anyway, you won’t be hanging around the bus station. You can go and visit Maharaja’s Palace.”
“Tempting. Even I’ve heard of that. Someone told me they made the iron pillars in Glasgow. Is that true?”
“I believe so, yes. Anyway, agreed?”
Hannah sighed. “Very well then. The Maharaja’s Palace it is.”
Ashok was thinking out loud. “Let’s assume for a moment that it is Salers. We know he has sound knowledge of the country, knows how to get information from locals, and can probably make himself understood—at least in Tamil, which will be of some help here.”
“So what do we do?”
“We don’t know if he’s dangerous—but we must act on the assumption that he is.”
“Of course we know he’s dangerous. Have you forgotten what he did to Maighréad?”
Ashok realized with a jolt that, so wrapped up was he in Hannah’s dilemma, he had suppressed his own past indirect entanglement with Salers.
“No, of course not,” he said brusquely. “We must lure him out somehow—hopefully, we can do that at Bandipur.”
“Any ideas?”
“Yes, I have, as a matter of fact. But...” He hesitated. “I don’t know whether it’s right to put you through it.”
“Put me through what, for heaven’s sake? I’ve told you, I want to put an end to this. So what’s the plan?”
“Well. First we’ve got to make sure he takes the bait and does come up to the park. You must tell hotel reception exactly where you’re going.”
“Do I mention you and Willi?”
“No, I don’t think so. Let him think you’re traveling alone, as long as possible. That way he’ll be more inclined to make the trip. I think he’ll want to be there before you, to plan. He won’t know till you arrive that we’re coming with.”
“How will he know what time I’m arriving?”
“Tell the people on reception you’re taking the nine a.m. bus to Mysore and a taxi from there up to the park.”
“I could leave another message on Duncan’s answerphone.”
“Brilliant—yes! And how about leaving a note pinned to your hotel-room door for some fictitious friend?”
Hannah looked dubious. “Think you’re getting a bit carried away there. Let’s not overdo it.”
“Maybe you’re right. After all, he hasn’t needed much help in tracing you so far.”
“Okay, so what’s the rest of the plan?”
“Well. I know Bandipur very well. Used to love going up there as a child. At night, it gets very dark—only moon and stars, and a few lights from the bungalows and the lodge. Only way to get around outside is with a torch. And even then it’s a gamble. Animals tend to come out of the deep jungle at night. Who knows what you might run into? Probably the dangers are minimal, but it feels real enough.”
“A true adrenaline rush.”
“It is for me. Anyway, there’s a small hillock with a bench on the edge of the compound. My father and I used to sit up there at sunset and watch chital herds and monkeys gathering near the boundary. They feel safer there at night.”
“Sounds magical.”
“My idea is that you’ll come out of the bungalow and climb the hillock, to wait alone for sunset. Only I’ll be hidden in bushes nearby.”
“I see. I’m the bait.”
“I knew you’d hate the idea. Sorry I suggested it. Thoughtless of me.”
“Don’t be so silly! Of course I’ve got to be the bait. And I’ll be perfectly safe with you nearby. I know I’ve got to give him a chance to get at me alone. Otherwise, he’ll be sidetracked into seeing off you and Willi again. I’ll do it.”
“I’ll be right there with you. You’ll have nothing to fear. We’ll get him.”
“Then what?”
“Turn him over to police. The rest’s up to them.”
“Hopefully they’ll deport him.”
“Then you’ll only have to face the problem again when you get back to UK.”
Hannah stood up and gazed over the terrace wall, down at MG Road. The ordered turmoil of life seemed encompassed in a panoramic time capsule. She watched a street vendor cutting guavas. His knife seemed to glide effortlessly through the green fruit. She could taste its honey-mellowed sweetness and sense the heavy, organic fragrance. Her eyes wandered lazily across the busy thoroughfare, in and out of the ant-like armies of autorickshaws to a wall of thick bamboo scaffolding. For some moments, she watched a billboard painter at work, balanced on his bamboo perch, painstakingly creating a work of art to advertise the latest Bollywood blockbuster.
She turned to look at Ashok, so calm, so tender. He had something noble about him…an intangible nobility.
“UK? Who says I’m going back?”
* * * *
On Monday, Duncan called Piers and told him he wasn’t coming in. He said he’d been sick all weekend. It wasn’t altogether a lie. He was sick—sick with worry and self-loathing.
He should have gone to the police twenty-four hours ago, as soon as Felicity had come clean. But he’d held back. He’d needed time to get to grips with Felicity’s story, to make sure she wasn’t lying again; perhaps she’d fabricated the Salers story when he put the idea into her head. He’d spent Sunday fitting the facts together. By Monday morning, it had become clear to him that Felicity’s story made sense. She’d finally told him the truth.
After Felicity had confessed that Terry Bull was Mark Salers, Duncan’s first instinct had been to sling her out of his house, no matter what the consequences. It had taken a supreme effort to admit to himself that she would be more use to him if she stayed where he could keep an eye on her and an even greater effort to sweet talk her into doing so. To his relief, she had insisted on moving into the spare room.
“We both need some space to work this through,” she had said.
Now he agonized over what to do next. He ought to shop Felicity to the police. If the story got out, he’d be a laughing stock. It would be professional suicide. He remembered that he hadn’t told the police where Hannah was. But now it was imperative to tell the cops that she was in India and that she was still being followed. He could do this without implicating Felicity, but he was overcome by guilt and worry. Not only had he let Hannah down badly in the past, but even now he intended to keep the full truth from the cops to save his own neck. Was he endangering Hannah further by keeping back that he knew the stalker in India was Salers? He thought not. They’d soon work that out for themselves, but, dammit, he was worried sick about Hannah. How could he help her? What if the police started asking questions? The whole thing was a goddam mess and there was no way out. Unless…
He was rocked by a s
udden inspiration. If Felicity was Salers’ sister…
He went into the house and sought her out. She was lying on the sofa, still nursing her sore head.
“Tell me,” he said. “Where were you born? The truth, mind.”
“India.” she replied. “My mother brought us to England when Mark was fourteen and I was twelve. I don’t remember too much about India, though.”
“Do you speak the language?”
“The language? There are dozens of languages. I still remember some Tamil.”
“Where is Tamil spoken?”
“In the south. Mainly Tamil Nadu, but it’s widely understood in places like Bangalore, where there are a lot of Tamils.”
Bingo, Duncan said to himself. He knew what he had to do. A drastic decision, but he still felt an inexplicable unease on top of his worries about Hannah's safety. He would go to India and persuade her to come home. Salers would follow her. The British police would be watching the airports by then. They’d catch him.
Duncan needed someone to get him around India. Who better than Felicity? And if Salers made trouble in India, Felicity might come in useful. Afterwards, he could dump her there and forget about her. She’d never rat on him. She was in too much trouble—spying, phone tapping, aiding and abetting a criminal—they’d throw the book at her. Hannah would have to know, but she’d have no reason to tell anyone else.
Despite his aversion to places that harbored heat, disease, and poverty, this, right now, seemed the only way forward. Yes, he would go to India.
He didn’t tell Felicity about his plans. Better to book the seats first and spring it on her. He went into the garden room and dialed the number of the travel agent.
“No problem,” the travel agent gushed, “First class seats can always be found, though it may take a while.”
An hour later, he had secured two tickets for the same evening—giving him just enough time to nip up to the High Commission in London for visas.
He emailed Hannah.
Sit tight, I’m on my way. Arriving Bangalore Christmas Eve. Try not to worry.
Duncan
P.S. Don’t go out at night. And keep your hotel room door locked.