Smoke and Ashes

by Abir Mukherjee

  ‘The inquest can wait,’ I said. ‘Now, where’s the prince?’

  ‘Top floor,’ he said, pointing to the stairs.

  A shot rang out and the plasterwork behind my head exploded into a hail of splinters. The shot had come from the top of the stairs.

  The four of us scattered, taking what cover we could. Another shot rang out and I tried to locate the gunman.

  ‘It looks like we’ve found our man,’ I shouted to Dawson. ‘Is there another way up?’

  ‘Two more stairwells,’ he said. ‘One at either end of the building.’

  ‘You and Allenby take one of them. Get up there and secure the prince’s quarters,’ I said. ‘We’ll deal with Gurung.’

  The Section H men rushed off along the corridor and I turned to Surrender-not. The sergeant had taken shelter behind a doorway. ‘You think you can keep him occupied?’

  Surrender-not’s response took the form of a shot fired up the stairs towards the first-floor landing.

  ‘Good,’ I said, as Gurung let off another volley in reply. I prepared to rise from my crouched position. ‘Get ready to give me some covering fire.’

  Surrender-not shot back at him. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to outflank him,’ I said. ‘Ready?’

  Surrender-not nodded, then fired two shots. I sprinted from my position to the corridor which would take me to the stairwell at the opposite end of the building from the one Dawson and Allenby had made for. Gurung saw me and fired, the bullet crashing into the wall behind me.

  I made it to the corridor and ran. Doors on either side lay open, the rooms deserted. Behind me came the sound of more gunfire. I reached the door at the end and burst through to the stairwell, then raced up to the first floor.

  I gently pushed open the door on the landing, which I hoped led to a corridor that would take me back to the central stairwell where Gurung was holding out. Peering round, I spotted him, rifle in hand, lying flat on his stomach and taking potshots at Surrender-not downstairs.

  I crept slowly into the corridor with my gun drawn, and hoping that Gurung was too occupied to notice, I made it to the first open door. I entered the room, and from the relative safety of the doorway stuck my head back out into the corridor. Gurung, still prostrate, was no more than thirty yards away.

  Taking a breath, I raised my revolver and stepped out into the corridor.

  ‘Drop your gun, Gurung!’ I shouted.

  The Gurkha swivelled round, and in one fluid motion turned onto his side and pointed his rifle at me. I fired before he could pull the trigger, hitting him in the leg. Stunned, he cried out in pain, then regained his composure and fired back at me. I ducked back into the doorway as he fired another shot, splintering the door jamb. But before he could do much else, a shot rang out from the lower floor.

  I leaned into the corridor and fired, hitting nothing but air. Leaving a smeared trail of blood behind him, Gurung was dragging himself across the floor, making for one of the rooms. I fired another shot. This one found its mark, hitting him in the chest. The rifle fell from his grasp. I walked up and, with my revolver trained on his head, kicked his weapon away. He was still alive – just. Over the sound of his ragged breathing, I called out to Surrender-not who came running up the stairs.

  ‘See what you can do for him,’ I said. ‘I’m going to find Dawson.’

  Two shots rang out on the second floor, then another.

  Surrender-not and I turned to each other in horror.

  Gurung tried to speak. ‘You’re too late,’ he rasped, then coughed blood.

  The stairwell began to spin and a black dread began to form in the pit of my stomach. If Gurung was here, why the gunshots upstairs?

  ‘Stay here,’ I shouted as I made once more for the stairs. ‘And keep him alive!’

  The second-floor landing looked like a battlefield. Three men, all in uniform, lay dead. Two had had their throats slit. The third lay face down, his back despoiled by multiple stab wounds. Stepping over the bodies, I headed in the direction from which the gunshots had come. It wasn’t hard to find the prince’s room. Two sentries lay dead on the floor and beside them sat Allenby with a hole in his head.

  Inside the room, someone was talking. It wasn’t a conversation, just a rambling monologue.

  With my revolver raised, I stepped into the open doorway. Dawson was lying wounded and unconscious on a sofa, but that was the least of my worries. In front of me stood a uniformed British officer holding a gun to the head of the kneeling prince. His cheeks were wet and it looked like he was trying to explain something to his prisoner. The prince though didn’t seem to be listening. His face glistened with sweat and he looked shell-shocked: like a man unable to grasp what was happening to him.

  Involuntarily I took a step back as I realised I recognised the officer. I’d seen him that morning, mainly through a pair of binoculars.

  ‘McGuire?’ I said, not quite believing what I was seeing.

  He snapped out of his soliloquy and turned towards me, his eyes red and half mad.

  ‘Don’t come any closer, Wyndham. I’m warning you, I’ll kill him.’

  I didn’t doubt his sincerity.

  ‘Put the gun down, Colonel,’ I said calmly. ‘We can sort this out.’

  He gave an odd laugh. ‘It’s a tad late for that, don’t you think?’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘The same reason as Gurung – poison gas took my son as it did his. I watched his son die in agony – in my hospital – burned beyond recognition. Killed by experiments carried out under my watch. I’ve relived that death a thousand times since. Have you ever seen a boy die from mustard gas exposure, Wyndham? My own boy must have suffered the same way. Someone has to pay for that.’

  ‘You’ve had your revenge,’ I said. ‘Dunlop, and the others, they’re all dead. No one else needs to die.’

  ‘Revenge? Do you know what it is to lose a son? Do you think the king does? Of course not!’ He shook the prince by the scruff of his neck. ‘This little bastard didn’t even go to the Front. He was too precious to risk! But it was OK for my boy to serve and to die. And in whose name do you think butchers like Dunlop create their wretched weapons? It’s all done for king and country! Well, the king’s going to feel my pain – a father’s pain.’

  The man was unhinged; destroyed by his grief. He wasn’t going to release the prince. Not while he had an ounce of strength left in his body. I tightened the grip on my revolver. Wrapped my finger round the trigger.

  He noticed the tensing of my arms and took a step to one side, revealing a metal cylinder with an improvised trigger mechanism at one end attached to a cord. It was the final missing canister.

  I’d spend a long time reliving his next actions, analysing them to see if there was something I could have done, but the truth is, he had a gun to the head of the Prince of Wales and I didn’t stand a chance. In one swift motion he pulled on the cord, then swung his revolver from the prince’s head to his own and fired. The cylinder ruptured with a crack as McGuire’s lifeless body hit the floor. A wisp of yellowish smoke began to seep out, infiltrating the room.

  Instinctively I rushed forward. Wrenching a heavy curtain from its hooks, I threw it over the canister, then grabbed the prince who was doubled over, coughing, and hauled him out of the room.

  ‘Are you all right, Your Highness?’ I asked.

  The prince continued to cough, but looked up and nodded.

  Leaving him there, I took a deep breath and ran back in, this time to rescue Dawson. My lungs began to ache as I dragged the wounded spymaster into the hallway before turning and shutting the door.

  The major had lost a lot of blood. ‘Help me get him down the stairs,’ I said to the prince, and between us, we carried him down to the first-floor landing where Surrender-not was still seeing to Gurung’s wounds.

  The next few minutes passed in a blur and my memory became a mere tableau of images: helping the Prince of Wales with his gas mask; p
utting on my own; driving him to the nearest checkpoint; sending a detachment of men in gas masks and a medical unit back to the officers’ quarters. An hour later it was all over bar the shouting.

  Surrender-not and I were held for questioning. Not in the dungeon Dawson had placed me in two days earlier, but in a nice, walnut-panelled office with thick carpets and a picture of the king-emperor on the wall. Surrender-not was held in a waiting room while a very pleasant chap called Smith with neatly parted hair and a well-pressed suit questioned me rather affably for longer than seemed necessary, given that we were on the same side. A debrief he called it, not that there was much I could tell him, seeing as I was still trying to make sense of it myself. I told them that the best person to ask would be Rifleman Lacchiman Gurung, who, the last time I’d seen him, was still alive, and who, according to Surrender-not, had been taken under guard to the infirmary five minutes after Major Dawson. In the end, the debrief became more of a warning. A message delivered in no uncertain terms that Surrender-not and I weren’t to discuss what had transpired with anyone, not even each other.

  ‘Is there anything we can do for you, Captain?’ asked Smith, bringing our conversation to an end.

  ‘I’d like to question Rifleman Gurung as soon as possible,’ I said. ‘He’s wanted in connection with a series of murders in Calcutta and Barrackpore.’

  Smith did his best not to laugh in my face, which was nice of him, then stood up and walked to the door. ‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Captain,’ he said, opening it. It was my cue to leave. ‘All those matters will be dealt with by Section H.’

  FORTY

  They shot Gurung at 6 a.m. on 31 December. A firing squad at Fort William on the coldest day of the year, though as a man of the mountains, I doubt he’d have felt the chill. I wasn’t there of course. Neither was Surrender-not, but Dawson was, and it was he who told me. It wasn’t that we were now fast friends – far from it. He just saw it as a repayment for me returning for him after I’d got the prince out of harm’s way. You’d think saving a man’s life might incline him to reconsider his views about you, but I got the feeling that in Dawson’s case, saving his life only made him resent me more. Not that I cared. To me it didn’t matter if it was Dawson, Kaiser Wilhelm or even the Devil himself who’d been lying wounded in the room. I’d have gone back for anyone, because you don’t leave a man to the gas. Still, when he sent over a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glenfarclas to my office by way of a thank-you, I wasn’t about to turn it down. The silver lining to having a secret policeman as your enemy is that he tends to know all about you, even your favourite whisky. I even invited him round to join me for a glass but he declined.

  Instead we’d met early one morning on a bench beside the reflecting pool at the Victoria Memorial. The location was his choice. It was the sort of innocuous rendezvous point spymasters love, not that there was anything clandestine about our meeting, but I suppose old habits die hard.

  He was already there when I arrived. In civvies, with a cane at his side and his pipe stuck in his mouth. On his lap was a small brown packet of peanuts. He took one, shelled it, and threw the two reddish nuts within onto the grass where a small flock of birds had gathered in expectation.

  ‘How’s the leg?’ I asked, taking a seat next to him.

  He shelled another couple, dropping the detritus at his feet. ‘Bloody awful. Doctor says I might be left with a permanent limp.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s better than being dead.’

  ‘I was going to say that cane gives you a certain gravitas. Spymasters need that.’

  He looked over and scowled.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ I said.

  He removed the pipe from his lips and placed it on the bench between us.

  ‘We interrogated Gurung. He was more than happy to tell us everything. On being posted to Calcutta, he went to see Anthea Dunlop to thank her for her earlier kindness towards his son. She told him how his boy really died and how her husband was being recalled to England to continue his work.

  ‘Odd lady, Mrs Dunlop. We questioned her too of course, but it was difficult to get much out of her other than the wrath of God. She believed her husband was doing the Devil’s work and needed to be stopped. She was the one who introduced Gurung to Colonel McGuire. It appears the doctor never recovered from the loss of his son to the gas at Passchendaele. Saw it as some sort of divine punishment for the experiments that were going on at his facility. When he found out that the government had recalled Dunlop to Porton Down to restart his work, the man snapped.’

  Dawson shelled another nut and once more threw the contents to the birds.

  ‘According to Gurung,’ he continued, ‘he was happy just to kill Dunlop and those others he held directly responsible for his son’s death. It was McGuire’s idea to go after the Prince of Wales. The man seems to have been driven mad by grief. They staged his abduction at Barrackpore as it was the only way McGuire could get clear of my men. Then they infiltrated the crowd outside the town hall and Government House and set off their smoke bombs, surmising we’d mistake it for a gas attack and take the prince to Fort William.’

  ‘But what about McGuire’s assistant, Nurse Rouvel?’ I asked. ‘Why did Gurung try to kill her?’

  Dawson shook his head. ‘Gurung hadn’t gone there to kill Rouvel. He’d gone to deliver a message to McGuire but by then the doctor was in the protective custody of my men. He’d hoped to persuade Rouvel to deliver it, but when he arrived at her door she just started screaming as though the sky was falling in.’

  ‘That would have been my fault,’ I said. ‘I’d spoken to her no more than ten minutes earlier. Told her that someone might try and kill her that night.’

  Dawson shelled another nut. This time, though, he offered the contents to me.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  He shrugged and popped the two nuts into his mouth.

  ‘I hear you’ve decided to take a leave of absence,’ he said.

  ‘It’s good to see nothing gets past you,’ I said, ‘even when you’re supposed to be recovering.’

  ‘Going anywhere nice?’

  I was off to a Buddhist monastery near a place called Jatinga, in Assam, where, according to Dr Chatterjee, the monks helped you cleanse your body of opium. But I was sure he already knew that. And unless you considered withdrawal sweats, vomiting and close examination of one’s own stools to be pleasant experiences, nice it certainly wouldn’t be.

  ‘Assam,’ I said.

  ‘Bit cold this time of year, no?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  I left him with his pipe and his starlings and began walking back through the grounds towards the taxi rank on Chowringhee. I had a few things to do before catching the train to Darjeeling at noon. Not that there was much chance of the thing leaving on time. A new round of strikes by signalmen had reduced the railway time-table to a work of fiction. Indeed, all across Bengal the natives had, with renewed vigour, embarked on making the lives of us British as miserable as possible. It was Basanti Das’s fault. Actually it was my fault for letting them arrest her that day on the Maidan. As Surrender-not had foreseen, sticking her in a jail cell had been a huge political error. It had shocked the locals in the way that someone throwing Queen Victoria in prison might have shocked the English, and though the military released her soon afterwards, the damage had been done.

  As for the Prince of Wales, once the initial impact had worn off, he seemed to view the whole thing as some extraordinary adventure, and it took all the persuasive powers of the viceroy, the India Office and, according to Dawson, a telegram from his father, the king, to convince him to keep his mouth shut about the whole affair. He’d spent Boxing Day at the races, then boarded a ship for Southampton and the press reported the whole trip a great success, with the exuberant natives even letting off firecrackers and smoke bombs in their appreciation of the princ
e, as though it was some sort of bloody custom. Of the gas attack on Fort William, there was nothing save for an official dispatch, recording an accident that had occurred during the transportation of some toxic chemicals, which had resulted in the deaths of several men and officers, and injuries to some others. Everything else was swept away and forgotten about.

  From the memorial I took a cab, not north towards home, but south, to Alipore. Ordering the taxi-wallah to stop outside the gates to Annie’s house, I alighted, paid him and, after a few words with the durwan, started on the not inconsiderable walk up the curved driveway.

  At a distance, the house looked serene, and, set among the palm-fringed rolling lawns, it seemed a world away from the turmoil that gripped streets only a few miles distant. I turned the bend and was grateful to see no sign of the monstrous Hispano-Suiza that had been parked outside on my last visit.

  As I approached the end of the driveway, the front door opened and out stepped Annie’s maid, Anju, dressed in a faded orange sari and carrying a jute bag. She turned to shut the door then slipped on a pair of sandals which sat nearby on the veranda.

  ‘Morning, Anju,’ I said.

  The maid spun round in surprise. ‘Captain Wyndham, sahib,’ she said, quickly adjusting the aanchal of her sari so that it covered her head.

  ‘Off somewhere nice?’ I asked.

  ‘To the market, only,’ she said, proffering the jute bag as corroboration.

  ‘Is her ladyship at home?’

  ‘Memsahib is home, sir.’ She nodded. ‘But she is not expecting visitors.’

  ‘I was in the area,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d drop by.’

  Anju left me in the drawing room, with its brocade sofas and Hindu sculptures, while she set off to inform her mistress. I was much too nervy to sit down, and ignoring the sofa, I walked over to the window and gazed out onto the lawns, yet again mentally rehearsing what I’d come to say.

  In the distance, two mynah birds were playing under a coconut palm. They were clever birds, mynahs. Some saw them as a nuisance and there’d been a cull a few years earlier, but the mynahs had learned to spot the traps set out for them and began avoiding them. Rumour had it they’d taught their offspring how to avoid them too.