‘Anything?’ asked Surrender-not beside me.
‘Nothing yet.’
I shifted the focus from McGuire onto the crowd around him, looking not just for Gurung, but also seeing if I could spot Section H’s operatives. Dawson had told us there were four of them down there, and in the twenty minutes or so since we’d taken up our station, I was fairly certain I’d spotted at least a couple of them. One, a native, was standing not ten feet away from the medical director, and though he looked to be watching the same monkey routine, his gaze kept shifting to McGuire.
Another, an Englishman, stood further away, ostensibly buying a sherbet from a sugar-cane seller. The vendor, in a vest and lungi, was passing stalks of cane through a wringer similar to the type used to wash clothes, turning a large wheel and collecting the juice in a vessel at its foot. Once again it was his focus on the good doctor, rather than the sherbet seller, that betrayed him.
I was less certain about the third, but my eye fell on another native, a large Sikh loitering by the path leading from the fields towards the riverbank. While he wasn’t looking at McGuire, it was his size and seeming disinterest in any of the amusements which aroused my suspicion.
I passed the binoculars to Surrender-not.
‘Take a look,’ I said. ‘See if you can spot anyone who might be Gurung.’
The best part of an hour later, he was still looking. The sun was overhead now and the temperature, while pleasant at ground level, was starting to feel uncomfortable on the roof. The crowds below us had grown and, around some of the stalls, the throng was such that bodies jostled to get past each other.
I held out a hand. ‘My turn,’ I said.
Surrender-not lowered the field glasses and passed them to me.
‘McGuire’s over there, by the shooting gallery,’ he said, pointing out a booth to the left.
I picked up the binoculars and trained them on the stall in question. McGuire had picked up one of the toy-like rifles and was trying his luck, aiming at a row of tin figures. I watched as he aimed, then squeezed the trigger. He was too far away for us to hear the crack of the rifle going off and it felt a bit like watching a silent picture on one of those Mutoscope machines you find on the promenade at seafronts. One of the targets fell and McGuire reloaded, then took aim at the next. Once more he pulled the trigger and a moment later another of the tin targets fell. I had to hand it to him. These games tended to be rigged – the gunsights slightly off or the rifling of the barrel skewed so that the bullet travelled out at a less than straight angle – but McGuire seemed to have compensated for that. He wasn’t a bad shot for a doctor. Beside him the stallholder grimaced as McGuire reloaded and prepared for another round. As he did so, a young native boy walked up to him and pulled at his tunic. For a moment, McGuire looked as though he’d been struck by lightning. Then he lowered his rifle and turned towards the boy.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Something’s happening.’
The child looked to be around ten or eleven, and from his stickthin frame and ragged clothing, it appeared he might be part of the travelling fair rather than the offspring of anyone at the cantonment. He handed a slip of paper to McGuire, then ran off, disappearing back into the crowd. McGuire unfolded the note, scanned it, then looked around forlornly for the boy. Crumpling the paper into a ball, he pocketed it and then began moving quickly through the crowd as though searching for something.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Surrender-not.
‘A boy just handed McGuire a note; and now the colonel’s looking for something … or someone.’
Down below, McGuire’s minders had noticed the change of behaviour too. Two of them left their stations and began following him as he weaved his way through the crowds. Another – a short native in a white shirt and khaki trousers that I hadn’t noticed earlier – also broke cover, all three of them tracking McGuire at such a close distance that if Gurung was in the vicinity, he was sure to have realised that McGuire was being tailed.
Suddenly, McGuire stopped in his tracks. He turned then headed straight towards the building on whose roof we were perched.
‘What’s he up to?’ I asked, passing the binoculars to Surrender-not and pointing out McGuire.
‘Maybe he’s coming to see Major Dawson?’ the sergeant ventured. ‘It could be that Dawson sent him that note. Maybe there’s been a development?’
Down below, the Section H operatives were now close enough for me to see their faces clearly. All three had slowed and were keeping their distance, obviously relieved that McGuire was heading to what looked like a rendezvous with their boss, Dawson.
I waited a few minutes, just to see if he’d reappear, then stood up and stretched my aching limbs. ‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘Keep an eye on the crowd for Gurung. I’m going down to see what McGuire has to tell Dawson.’
I ran across the roof and down the stairs to the second floor. It took me a few minutes to locate the room where Dawson had set up his base of operations, longer than it should have, given the trail of pipe tobacco left in the air. Dawson was silhouetted, standing with his back to the window, with his face in shadow, berating two of his men – one of whom I recognised as one of the doctor’s tails.
‘Where’s McGuire?’ I asked.
‘Gone,’ said Dawson.
‘What? Didn’t he come up here?’
‘Look around, Wyndham,’ said Dawson acidly, ‘do you see him here?’
‘Didn’t you send him that note? The one that urchin delivered?’
‘Of course not. Why the hell would I send a bloody carnival-wallah’s child?’
‘So, you’ve lost him? But he came in here. I saw him.’
‘So did my bloody officers,’ said Dawson. ‘They all just stood outside and chatted among themselves like a chapter of the Women’s Institute. I’ve got them searching the building now, but …’
As the initial shock passed, I began to think through the chain of events.
‘You won’t find him,’ I said. ‘It’s an old trick. He’s walked in the front door and straight out the back. Get your men searching the cantonment. He can’t have gone far.’
Dawson stared at me, his animosity tempered by the knowledge that I was probably right. He nodded to one of his officers who quickly left the room to carry out the order.
‘So where’s he going?’ said Dawson, turning to me.
‘No idea.’ I shrugged. ‘But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out it has something to do with the note that child passed to him.’
Whatever had been in it had spooked McGuire. So much so that he’d spent the next few minutes trying to find the child who’d delivered it. But then a thought struck me.
‘Maybe he wasn’t looking for the boy.’
‘What?’ asked Dawson, but I was already halfway to the door and making for the stairs.
With Dawson a few paces behind me, I raced back up the stairs and flung open the door to the roof. At the sound of the commotion, Surrender-not lowered the binoculars and turned to face me.
‘McGuire’s wife!’ I shouted. ‘Can you see her?’
Surrender-not picked up the glasses and quickly scanned the crowd. As the seconds ticked by, a black dread began to well up in the pit of my stomach, and after the longest minute of nothing, I knew.
‘The house,’ I said. ‘He’s making for the house.’
Seconds later, all three of us were racing down the stairs, out of the building and into the sunlight. Dawson was shouting something to his men but Surrender-not and I ignored him and headed for McGuire’s bungalow. We were there within five minutes. In the distance I could hear a siren wailing. The sensible thing to do would have been to wait for Dawson’s men, but there was no time. I pulled out my revolver and, with Surrender-not behind me, made for the steps up to the front door.
THIRTY-THREE
The door had been forced. It swayed slightly in the gentle December breeze, splinters hanging from the area where the lock met the door jamb. Silently I pushed it open wi
th the toe of my shoe and waited in anticipation of gunshots. None came. Just a dead silence broken only by the distant wailing of the siren. Even the birds seemed mute.
The splintered door told me my fears had been correct. Gurung was here and by now he no doubt had McGuire. I ran through the probable sequence of events in my head. Gurung had been at the fair. He’d realised McGuire was being watched – actually, a man like that would have assumed from the outset that the director would be under surveillance. So he’d hatched a plan. Instead of going after McGuire, he’d get the man to come to him. And for that he needed Mrs McGuire. At some point, she and McGuire must have parted company. McGuire’s minders would have kept focus on him and not his wife, and it wouldn’t have taken much for Gurung to isolate her and force her, probably at knifepoint, to do his bidding. He’d have brought her back here, then paid the urchin to deliver his note to McGuire. And McGuire would have felt he had no choice but to comply with whatever Gurung had ordered in that note.
Revolver drawn, I inched my way inside with Surrender-not a step behind. The hallway was unlit, shrouded in shadow, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I made out the doors to the drawing room and the dining room and the passage that most likely led to the bedrooms.
There were two ways to do this, slowly and methodically, or to go in with guns blazing. It had now been about twenty minutes since McGuire had walked through the admin building and given us all the slip. Assuming Gurung had told him to come here, and that he’d come directly, he would probably have arrived here no more than ten minutes ago. It wasn’t a difficult decision. Ten minutes – it could be a blink of an eye or a lifetime. It was more than long enough to kill a man, yet not much time to pluck his eyes out and ceremonially carve him up. McGuire might already be dead, but there was a chance – a good one – that Gurung was still here.
Instinctively, I made for the first door, the one to the drawing room, kicked it open and dived in. The room was silent but for the ticking of a clock. Behind me, Surrender-not was already heading down the hall and making for the next door. He didn’t have a gun – it took a lot of paperwork and questions asked before a native officer received a replacement – so it was either damn brave of him or remarkably foolish. Gurung could be waiting behind it, ready to welcome him with a chestful of lead. Not that Surrender-not seemed to care. I steeled myself for the sound of gunfire, but once again, none came. Sometimes I didn’t give that boy enough credit. I breathed once more and backed out into the hallway.
‘Empty,’ said Surrender-not.
‘The bedrooms,’ I said. ‘He left Dunlop’s body lying on a bed. Maybe he’s doing the same here?’
We moved fast, through the hallway, to the rear of the house. From somewhere close by came a thud, the sound of furniture toppling over.
‘That one,’ said Surrender-not pointing to a door.
‘Brace yourself,’ I said, taking a deep breath before turning the handle and pushing open the door.
At first the room looked empty. But then, between the bed and the dressing table, Surrender-not spotted the leg of the upturned chair. He ran in and I followed. On the floor, gagged and tied to the chair, lay Mrs McGuire. I helped Surrender-not right it. He untied the gag around her mouth and let it fall to the floor.
‘Are you all right, Mrs McGuire?’ he asked.
The woman seemed to be in shock.
I placed my hands on her shoulders. ‘Mrs McGuire.’
At the sound of my voice she looked up at me and tried to focus.
‘Do you know where your husband is?’
Again, she said nothing, just shook her head.
I left Surrender-not to untie her and headed back into the hall. Frantically, I made my way along it, kicking open every door and, each time, being met with nothing but an empty room.
Behind me came the sound of voices and boots running up the front steps. Major Dawson’s men had arrived. I walked quickly back to the front hall. Soldiers were already searching the rooms off it.
‘Tell me he’s here,’ said the major, red-faced. In different circumstances I might have enjoyed his discomfort, but not now. Not today.
‘We haven’t found him,’ I said. ‘Though the wife was tied up in one of the bedrooms.’
Dawson let fly a string of expletives. ‘How the hell did we lose him?’ he exclaimed, his voice reverberating off the walls.
‘Mrs McGuire can tell us what happened, but my guess is Gurung targeted her. He would have realised that McGuire would be under surveillance, but there was a chance that his wife wouldn’t be. He grabbed her, then sent McGuire a note, forcing him to come back here.’
‘So where are they?’ asked Dawson as his men continued their search.
‘Gone,’ I said.
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘Who knows?’ I shrugged.
‘Well, they can’t have got far,’ he said. ‘They’re probably still in the cantonment somewhere.’
‘You could try locking down the base,’ I said, ‘but I expect Gurung’s done his homework. He’ll know how to slip in and out of this place without getting caught. Besides, there’s a bloody great river at the foot of the garden. If he had access to a boat, he could be halfway to Calcutta by now.’
Dawson reached into his pocket and fumbled for his pipe. ‘We can’t just wait here and do nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m going to order the complete shutdown of the base and a watch on the river.’
It was the right thing to do, of course, but it was a bit late to be shutting the stable door. Our horse hadn’t just bolted, he’d taken the prize filly with him and was now off to set fire to the farm.
‘Do what you need to,’ I said, ‘but if you really want to avert a catastrophe, cancel the prince’s engagements today.’
Dawson sighed. ‘You know that’s not going to happen. The viceroy’s hands are tied.’
‘Then you’d better pray that Gurung decides that carving up McGuire is vengeance enough for the death of his son. If he could enter a cantonment like Barrackpore with impunity, what chance have we got of stopping him if he decides to murder innocent civilians in the middle of White Town? Not just British. Indians too.’
The major’s face darkened. ‘Let me worry about the British,’ he said. ‘You just focus on keeping the Indians off the street.’
THIRTY-FOUR
The car sped towards Bhowanipore and Das’s house. Surrender-not and I sat in the rear, licking our wounds. Twice now we’d had the opportunity to catch Gurung and twice we’d come away with nothing, and I was too much of a fatalist to think we might get a third chance. Dawson should have been as concerned as I was. The only sensible course of action would be to cancel the Prince of Wales’s engagements, to stop the immediate risk to thousands of civilians and buy us time to apprehend the Gurkha, but that wasn’t going to happen. As Lord Taggart had told me earlier, any cancellation would be seen as a victory for the forces arrayed against us, the forces of Gandhi and Das and chaos. And so as the minutes ticked away, instead of redoubling our efforts to find Gurung, here we were dashing across town in the hope that we could convince our opponents to cancel their plans. It felt like a fool’s errand, but we had no choice.
Beside me, Surrender-not had that look on his face – the one that told me his brain was overheating, probably trying to untangle some Gordian knot that it had tied itself into.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Sir?’
‘What’s bothering you this time?’
He pondered the question before replying.
‘McGuire,’ he said. ‘Why did Gurung abduct him? Why not kill him on the spot?’
‘Maybe he didn’t have time,’ I said. ‘He wants his victims to bear the same scars as his dead son, remember, and he had no idea how long it’d be before we worked out where McGuire might have gone.’
‘That would suggest he’ll kill McGuire as soon as he gets the time to do so.’
‘Probably.’
‘And yet, on each of the previous occ
asions he’s waited before killing his victim: we know he asked questions of Dunlop before he murdered him, and the wounds to the hands of Ruth Fernandes and Prio Tamang suggested they were tortured for information. Maybe he’ll do the same with McGuire?’
‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘McGuire was in charge of the facility. He was the top of the tree after all, but we can’t count on that. In the meantime, we’d be better served if you put McGuire out of your mind and worked out how to convince Das to call off his demonstration.’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘What if Das refuses to comply?’
‘In that case,’ I brooded, ‘he’s going to end the day either back in jail or dead, alongside many of his devoted followers.’
Das’s manservant opened the door tentatively and greeted us with a look that suggested he’d have been happier opening it to a gang of dacoits come to rob the place. Not that there was much chance of that, what with the armed police stationed around the entrances to the property.
We were shown into the same overlarge drawing room with its mirrors and portraits and waited while the servant went to fetch his master. Neither Surrender-not nor I felt like sitting. With Rifleman Gurung still on the loose, the last place we wanted to be was in the salon of an overpaid lawyer with a martyr complex, taking tea and explaining to him the finer points of mustard gas exposure and the need for him to call off his demonstrations.
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