He drained the cup, ignoring her idea.
Kanakammal poured him another.
‘Any news from the Sinclairs? Iris?’ he demanded.
She was surprised he could remember. ‘Once Mrs Walker arrived, I left.’
‘Damn Ned, and his jealousy.’ He stood suddenly, steadied himself at the table. She stood too.
‘Don’t fuss, woman. I’m going to work.’
‘Is that wise? You are grieving. And Ned?’
‘Ned’s a fool, my father is dead. I can’t help either,’ he said, sounding savage. He strode into the hall and reached for his work cap. He pulled it on and, with one final haunted look, he was gone.
Kanakammal rushed out to the verandah but he was already heading down the road. She stared out across the hilly scape to Top Reef. She could see its big fly-wheel and the skeleton of its winding equipment, lonely against the darkening sky. As she watched her husband walk away from her, she placed a hand on her belly. It was early days, yet she could have sworn she heard crying. Kanakammal was convinced she was giving her husband a son and she cried with her son now, for the father and for the husband who was walking away from them.
44
It was an extremely large office with a clock sombrely ticking away the hours from the dark timber shelves lining three of the walls. Awards, cups, books and ornaments littered those shelves, as well as formal photos of the man who was seated behind the huge leather inlaid desk in the middle of the room. Around the walls hung pictures of former chief inspectors. He looked forward to the day when someone else behind this desk would glance up and see him frowning down.
But right now Chief Inspector Dravid, of the Indian Police in Bangalore, regarded Margaret Brent as he stirred jaggery into his tea. The tea was still frothy from where his aide had poured it from a height, cooling it slightly.
‘The Indian way,’ the chief inspector said.
‘How quaint,’ Mrs Brent said, somewhat waspishly, he thought, but then it suited her thin lips and those dead-looking eyes that glanced around his office with a constant glare of disapproval. She fanned herself endlessly, even though he’d politely turned the ceiling fan up a notch.
‘How do you breathe in here, Chief Inspector?’ she grumbled. ‘It’s airless.’
‘I am used to it,’ he replied calmly, continuing to stir, knowing it was annoying her. He didn’t like this English woman. She had come from Rangoon to discredit his police force. Dr Brent’s death had been unusual; odd rather than suspicious, and as far as he was concerned, it was death by accident.
He’d already had two conversations with her. During the first – by phone – he had asked her most politely why she continued to pursue this case. And while she had given a brief explanation of wanting to establish the truth, he had worked out for himself that Brent’s death had essentially signed the death warrant of the orphanage and his wife’s future in Rangoon.
During the second conversation, in Bangalore, details of Edward Sinclair’s very short stay in the orphanage had emerged. ‘Have you fully explored that, Inspector, as I insisted?’ she had pressed.
‘Chief Inspector, madam,’ he had corrected politely. ‘Yes, Mr Sinclair told us about the connection but they had only spoken briefly at the Walker house, not at the club.’
‘The man who found him was Sinclair’s friend. Does that not strike you as fishy, Chief Inspector?’
‘No, Mrs Brent. It struck our police officer as the coincidence it was. It is mentioned in his notes. I know you have repeatedly asked us to find motive, Mrs Brent, but once again I have to assure you that there was no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle, no unexplained fingerprints, there were not even the usual accoutrements of murder; no weapon, no blood, no guilty party the police were able to establish.’
She had been furnished with a full report and he’d hoped that would be enough. But now she was back, this time brandishing details of a previously unknown witness. Dravid thought the witness a particularly unreliable one, one who would certainly be discredited against the word of an Englishman.
With a long sigh Dravid had agreed to have this third and, he hoped, final meeting to try to explain to her why it was best to let the dead lie in peace … and take their secrets to their grave.
Ned’s mood was bleak and he had made this journey on the pretext of it being essential but the truth of it was he needed distraction. To see Iris standing in the arms of Jack Bryant had sickened him initially but very quickly that had given way to a dark, cold fury.
He stared at the mess of wires and grimaced. He looked at his colleague, a much older Anglo-Indian man called Verne, who’d driven up from Bangalore to meet him. Together they’d converged on this point not far from the town, in a field, where canny village folk had decided to divert some of the power that electrified Bangalore before it reached KGF.
Ned stood at the top of the ladder they’d carried in together.
‘I can remember the teams of people who used to move through the city each evening with their kerosene; filling lamps, trimming wicks and lighting up the place,’ the older man sighed. ‘And now we take instant light for granted.’
Ned was in no mood for reminiscing. ‘But too many people, like these jokers,’ he said, pointing to the jumble of wires, ‘have no idea how electricity works or how dangerous it is.’
‘If we dismantle it here, it will be back in no time somewhere else.’
‘Yes, I agree.’ Ned looked around, glad to have something to occupy his mind. He hated Jack, but in that moment of seeing them together, he hated Iris more. She was carrying Ned’s child, their marriage barely three months old, yet she was back in Jack’s arms again.
Barely three months. The words haunted him. The whispers in his mind had been repeating themselves since he jumped behind the wheel of the car. They jeered at his faith, mocked his belief that Iris could be pregnant so fast to him.
He closed his eyes momentarily to chase away the demons. ‘I’ve been giving it some thought, though,’ he said to Verne. ‘What if we change the voltage coming through from the power stations, convert it into a level none of the villagers can make use of, and then convert it back once it’s arrived at the destination?’
The old man scratched his head, then looked at Ned with a slow smile spreading across his face. ‘That’s so simple. I’m surprised we took so long to come up with it.’
Ned should have felt elated at his triumph – it was a damn good idea – but all he felt was a sense of hollowness, as though nothing would ever be worth smiling about again. He managed to feign just the right tone of responsibility. ‘Simplicity is the key. Whatever it costs, I think we have to do something. Lives are at stake.’
‘Agreed. All right. Can you make a report? I don’t think anyone else should steal your thunder.’
‘I could but I’d prefer if you did. It might sound better than me blowing my own trumpet.’ Ned knew his reasoning sounded far too modest.
‘Fine, but your name goes on the report and you get all the credit.’
‘I don’t need credit.’
‘But it’s important, son. And we need youngsters like you coming through with clever innovations.’
Ned nodded sombrely.
‘Are you all right?’ Verne asked.
Ned sighed. ‘A little preoccupied with how dangerous this is. Let’s get it all unravelled, shall we?’
His colleague stepped back. ‘No, I don’t think that’s our job.’
‘Well, someone has to.’
‘I won’t touch that. And you shouldn’t either. I know you understand it but it’s still too dangerous. Look at the tangle. You’d have no idea what’s live. We should bring a team down and talk it through before anyone touches it.’
‘A team of electricians? I’m an electrician, Verne. Fully qualified, fully capable of working this out.’
‘It’s nearing dusk, Ned. This is a job for another day … unless you want to die, fiddling around with high voltage in the dark.’
>
Who would miss me anyway? Ned thought miserably. Verne was waiting, looking up to where Ned was standing. ‘Look, I can’t leave here with this on my conscience. A child could be killed here tomorrow, when I could have done something about it today. Please go and get my equipment from the van. I’ll just see if I can’t at least make it safer until we can bring a team back.’
This seemed to appease Verne. He ambled off grumbling about medals not being handed over for courage in the workplace.
Ned watched him walk slowly away through the tamarind trees, his thoughts rapidly returning to his own problems that suddenly felt so insurmountable. Brent’s ghost was back from the dead and Ned couldn’t see his way out of the situation, not even with Jack’s creative mind at work. And whereas before, Jack had done all the lying for him, he wouldn’t get so lucky a second time. If the police interviewed him again, he would crumble, he just knew it, and end up telling them the truth.
From start to finish he wanted it told, needed it told. And even though he would be branded a murderer, he would at least be sent down as the man who took a serial child molester and killer off the streets. Cold comfort, perhaps, but Ned believed in truth, which is why seeing Iris in Jack’s arms again was the last straw. How could they do that to him? Had they been meeting behind his back all this time? Was he the laughing stock of KGF? Iris had been in an awful hurry to get married.
The only constant was his job. His work had given him a life. Now it could take it. Verne’s warning had suddenly showed him a way out of this mess … He hated where his thoughts were going but he couldn’t seem to stop them..
If he lost his life while on a shift, Iris would be taken care of. She’d get a pension from the mine plus other benefits. She and the baby would be all right – and they’d never have to go through the mess of a trial or see him jailed for murder. And if Jack was the man Iris truly wanted, at least this way she could have him guilt-free.
He stared at the jumble of wires and likened his thoughts to them … irrational, out of control, no longer safe.
Verne had paused to chat with one of the villagers before he collected Ned’s bag of tools. He was just entering the tamarind grove on the return journey when he heard a muted bang in the distance.
The sound was familiar. And it terrified him. He dropped Ned’s tools and yelled over his shoulder, screaming at the villager to fetch help. He began running, praying he wasn’t too late.
Verne arrived in the clearing, panting hard, and let out a groan of despair to see the young electrician sprawled forlornly on his back, the ladder also fallen away and the telltale spit and crackle of electricity sparking between some wires overhead.
Verne cast a prayer to the wind that the young man had simply fallen; a broken bone or two that would mend within a couple of months. But as he grabbed the youngster’s arms, dragging him away from where wires could fall and reach them, he could see young Sinclair’s eyes were glassy and staring, his mouth open, tongue lolling deep inside his cheek.
Unaware of his tears of frustration, Verne pumped Ned’s chest, hoping against hope he could resuscitate him using this modern method they had all been taught for emergencies. From the corner of his eye, though, he could see that both of Ned’s hands and part of his arms were burned; a sure sign that electricity had slammed into his body.
Still Verne kept the chest compression going, recalling now with renewed fear that Sinclair had only recently married.
The villager came speeding to the scene, halting abruptly and keeping his silence as he watched Verne doing his best to force Ned Sinclair back to life.
Finally, after ten more long minutes had passed and Verne was flagging, the villager crouched beside the older man and risked touching his shoulder lightly.
‘Too late for the young master, sir,’ he said, the whites of his eyes wide and bright around his chocolate-coloured irises. ‘God has him now.’
‘So, Mrs Brent,’ Dravid began, sipping his cooled tea. ‘Did your lawyer explain our position?’
‘He did, Chief Inspector, but I am not to be diverted from this path. I assure you that while my husband was a heavy man he was not a clumsy one.’
The senior policeman put his cup down and held up his palms. ‘Accidents happen to us all, madam,’ and then before she could launch into the tirade he could see was simmering, he held up a finger. ‘You see, Mrs Brent, forgive me, but I fail to understand what you’ve hoped to achieve with all the years of questions. Let me sum-marise your position. Seven years ago now your husband died in Bangalore. Not only the military but also a civil doctor confirmed that the depression in his skull was most likely due to a fall, during which he hit his head, suffered a serious contusion, subsequent concussion and internal bleeding, and death resulted.’
‘I know what the reports say, Chief Inspector.’
He understood she considered herself superior to him and that she was probably used to ordering around hapless little Burmese. India was changing – all of Asia was changing. One day soon the likes of Mrs Brent would be ‘out on their ear’, he thought, enjoying the quaint English phrase.
‘But, madam, what do you want to achieve here?’
‘Chief Inspector, we have a witness that places Edward Sinclair at the Bangalore Club on the night of my husband’s death. Now, that contravenes his statement, which surely demands that you question him again.’
‘Indeed. Mr Sinclair also has a witness that says he was at the home of Dr Harold Walker at the time of your husband’s death. The only person near your husband was a Mr John Bryant, known as Jack.’
‘A friend of Ned Sinclair’s!’
‘Well, madam, they had only met for the first time that week. And all those Englishmen who frequent the Bangalore Club are pretty friendly. You could probably cite half the members at the time who might have known Sinclair or Walker or Bryant, or your husband for that matter.’
‘So you have no intention of helping me?’
‘Please, Mrs Brent. This is what I am doing. I have no doubt your lawyer from Delhi is charging quite handsomely for his time. And I suspect he is the only person who will benefit from reopening the case. The witness you cite will most likely be discredited.’ Again he held up a hand to stop her bluster. ‘Sinclair’s original witness will be considered more reliable than someone found years later relying on an old memory of someone in the dark who might have been Edward Sinclair. Mr Ramesh’s description matches half the young Brits in Bangalore. What’s more, Sinclair has no motive.’
‘I’m telling you they had words. That boy was sullen and defiant. He walked right out of the orphanage, kidnapped his sister and then stowed away on a ship to India.’
Dravid smiled gently. ‘The way you tell it, Mrs Brent, it does sound damning. But Mr Sinclair was eighteen at the time, his sister was his kin and came willingly.’
‘I don’t agree.’
‘Nothing you’re doing will bring your husband back, even should you be successful.’
‘If I’m successful, Chief Inspector, then I shall sue Dr Walker, Dr Grenfell, Edward Sinclair, Jack Bryant, the shipping line who carried the Sinclairs, the Bangalore Club for its negligence, the police force for its shoddy work and anyone else I think is complicit in my husband’s death.’
He sighed. Here was the truth of it. Margaret Brent was seeking damages. ‘I see.’
‘I will clear his name,’ she pressed.
Dravid gave a flicker of a smile as the woman gave him the perfect opening. ‘I’m afraid that might not be possible.’
‘What?’
‘Please,’ he said, then made her fume by pausing to sip his tea. ‘There is something I should explain.’
‘I doubt there’s anything that can change my mind.’
He smiled wryly. ‘Mrs Brent, when your husband died in Bangalore it was necessary to look into his life to be sure that he had no enemies. You see, while you feel we made a cursory decision that it was death by accident, I must inform you that intensive police work was
conducted at the time. You may recall a visit or two from our colleagues in Rangoon?’
‘What of it?’
‘Well, in the process of those inquiries some details came to light that involved Dr Brent …’ He paused.
‘Yes?’ she said irritably.
‘Why don’t you read the report for yourself? I’ll give you a few moments.’ He turned around the manila folder that was open on his desk and pushed it forward before standing and taking his tea to the window. When he returned, Margaret Brent had developed a grey pallor.
‘Can I get you something, Mrs Brent?’ he asked politely.
‘Water, please,’ she croaked.
He obliged. ‘Better?’
She nodded and he noticed a tremor in her hand as she placed the glass down.
‘As you can see, I don’t think it would be wise for you to pursue your inquiries. I don’t believe there is any worthwhile new information relating to his death, but there is other information that will almost certainly be exposed relating to his life. Rangoon Police have several former students of the orphanage who would be willing to testify,’ he added.
‘Where did you get this?’ she asked, her voice pleasingly small and shocked.
‘Our police work is not so shoddy, madam. But I would like to assure you that what’s in that file stays in that file, if you would like me to keep it that way. I see no reason to besmirch your husband’s name. I would far prefer to keep the Brent name synonymous with the good work you have personally overseen regarding Rangoon’s orphans.’ He made sure his voice sounded very reasonable, with a soft note of encouragement.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ she said, sounding suddenly bewildered.
‘Shall I close this file, Mrs Brent? Put it away for good?’
‘Please do that, Chief Inspector.’ She even gave him a begrudging half-smile. ‘You’ve been very sensitive of my position.’
He shrugged magnanimously. ‘Let me have one of my drivers deliver you back to your hotel.’ He held out a hand, enjoying the way his twenty-four-carat gold ring on his small finger glinted beneath the desk light.
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