‘So you wouldn’t steal it. What would you do instead? Buy one in India and have it shipped to England?’
‘No, I wouldn’t do that, either.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’d leave a trail connecting me with the tiger.’
‘So you wouldn’t steal it, and you wouldn’t bring it in yourself. What’s left?’
‘I’d arrange it for someone else to bring it into the country, without them knowing that they were doing it for me.’
‘And how would you go about that?’
Patterson scratched his head. ‘There, I must admit, sir, you’ve got me completely stumped.’
‘Think about it,’ Blackstone ordered him. ‘Where, in London, can you get whatever your heart desires?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Aren’t there some organizations which make a positive virtue out of the fact that they can lay their hands on anything you want?’
‘Not that I…’ Patterson paused, and then grinned. ‘The big department stores!’ he said.
‘The big department stores,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘Find out if any of them has fulfilled an order for a man-eating Bengal tiger, and if so, who placed that order.’
Seventeen
‘It wasn’t your tiger?’ Patterson asked. ‘You’re sure of that?’
‘It wasn’t our tiger,’ the general manager of Harrods’ Pet Department replied firmly. ‘I have told you that twice already, and if you put the question a hundred more times, the answer will still be the same.’
The manager, a man in late middle age with cotton-wool hair and large belly, looked the epitome of Dickensian geniality. And possibly he would have been with a normal customer. But Patterson was not a customer at all. He was a policeman attempting to connect a very respectable business with a very reprehensible crime—which made him an enemy of the store.
‘How can you be so certain it wasn’t your tiger?’ Patterson asked. ‘Do you brand them with the Harrods trademark? Do you shave the name of the store into their fur?’
‘Of course we don’t. That would be absurd.’
‘Then for all you know, it could well have been one of yours.’
The manager sniffed. ‘Leaving aside for one moment your obviously mistaken impression that we sell tigers in much in the same way—and in the same volume—as we sell our famous fruit preserves, I still maintain that it is ludicrous of you to claim that the beast could be ours,’ he said severely. ‘Harrods has a reputation to consider. We would no more provide tigers for kidnappers than we would supply skeleton keys to house burglars.’
‘So you haven’t sold any tigers?’
‘I did not say that.’
‘Then you have?’
‘I will need to check.’
As if it were something he would be likely to forget, Patterson thought, as he watched the manager lift a thick, leather-bound ledger on to the counter and slowly begin to thumb through the pages.
‘Could you see whether you’ve sold any polar bears, while you’re at it?’ Patterson asked.
The manager looked up. ‘Are you suggesting that a polar bear might also have been used for criminal purposes?’ he demanded.
‘No,’ Patterson admitted.
‘Then why…?’
‘Just curious.’
The manager shot the sergeant a look of intense dislike, then returned his attention to the ledger.
‘Yes, it does appear as if we recently fulfilled an order for a tiger,’ he admitted reluctantly.
‘How recently?’
‘How recently was it ordered? Or how recently did we deliver it?’ the manager asked, using the delaying tactics which—it seemed to Patterson—every manager and minor official in the country was born with the innate ability to manipulate.
‘Both,’ Patterson replied. ‘When it was ordered and when it was delivered.’
‘You will appreciate that there is inevitably some considerable time lapse between those two pivotal points in the transaction?’ the manager asked.
Patterson wondered how long it would take the store to get him a gorilla and—once it had arrived—how long it would take him to train it to beat up the supercilious manager.
‘Give me both dates,’ he said.
‘It was ordered over a year ago.’ The manager consulted the ledger yet again. ‘And it was delivered two weeks yesterday.’
‘And who was it delivered to?’
‘It was delivered to a Colonel Howarth, who is, I believe, a retired military gentleman.’
Given that he was a colonel, such a supposition was a better than even bet, Patterson thought, but he contented himself with saying, ‘Where exactly was the animal delivered to?’
‘To Colonel Howarth’s estate in Berkshire.’
Which was just about as close to London as anyone could hope to keep a tiger-in-waiting, Patterson thought.
***
The British government had been sending emissaries to see the Maharaja almost from the moment he had returned to Claridge’s. The first had been a fairly minor figure in the India Office. Then, as the afternoon wore on, and an appreciation of the implications grew, the visitors began to be more and more important. Their status did not matter to the Maharaja. He had refused to see any of them. In his current mood of despair, he would even have declined to see Lord Salisbury himself, should the Prime Minister have chosen to put in an appearance. Yet in contrast to all his refusals, he was willing to see the man waiting outside at that moment, even though the rank of the man in question was low—and his prospects even lower.
The secretary opened the door. The visitor stepped into the room and gave an unsteady bow.
‘It is only late afternoon and already you are drunk, Major Walsh,’ the Maharaja said sternly.
The other man nodded. ‘You are quite right, Your Majesty,’ he agreed.
‘When I first knew you, you were a man I could put great faith in,’ the Maharaja said. ‘And did I not, as a symbol of that faith, entrust to you—rather than to any of my own people—the task of finding me a bride? Did I not send you to all the other Indian courts in search of an appropriate wife?’
‘You did, Your Majesty. And it was both an honour and a privilege to serve you.’
‘It is a decision I have never regretted taking,’ the Maharaja said, ‘for not only did you find me a wife who could strengthen my dynasty, but you brought me a woman I could love. I would have raised you to great heights for that act alone—even above the princes of the blood royal. But you made that impossible for me, did you not?’
Walsh looked down at the ground. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘A man can only follow one master, and you chose the bottle as yours. Within a year of my marriage, you were no use to your own queen and of no use to me.’
‘That’s quite true, Your Majesty,’ Walsh agreed.
‘So why am I wasting my time by talking to you now?’
‘Only you can answer that, Your Majesty,’ Walsh replied. ‘Only you can say why you agreed to see me.’
‘But you have your own thoughts on the matter?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘And what are they?’
‘A blunt knife is better than no knife at all, especially when all your other allies are carrying nothing but feathers.’
‘Any idiot can quote wise sayings at me,’ the Maharaja told him, feeling his anger rising. ‘But your case into plain words.’
‘Very well, Your Majesty. If you had been back in Chandrapore, you would already have known who was behind your son’s kidnapping. You would have set your own people to work on it, and they would have found out—at whatever the cost to others. But this is not Chandrapore. You must rely on the British, and they do not understand the Indian mind at all.’
‘Are you saying that my son was taken by Indians?’
‘I do not know, Your Majesty. And neither do you. But we can both name people in your court who would not be displeased at what has happened t
oday. And if Indians are involved, then you need a man close to the centre of the investigation who knows how they think.’
‘And if Indians are not involved?’
‘You will still need a man to represent your interests.’
‘Are the British incapable of representing my interests?’
‘No, but they also have interests of their own.’
‘They do not want to see my son returned to me?’
‘That would be the easiest solution for them, but their prime concern is to avoid trouble in Chandrapore. Thus, while some of their energy will be devoted to returning your son to you, some will also be devoted to developing a plan of action to follow if they cannot. That is why having your own representative at the heart of the matter is of vital importance.’
‘And that representative would be you?’
‘I cannot think of anyone else it could be, Your Majesty.’
The Maharaja nodded. ‘What would I have to do to ensure that my ‘representative’ is at the ‘heart of the matter’?’
‘Very little. Simply insist that whatever my enemies in the India Office might say, I should be allowed to work closely with Inspector Blackstone.’
‘And what is in this for you?’
‘The honour of serving Your Majesty.’
‘Only that?’
Walsh hesitated. ‘I have fallen a long way,’ he said, ‘but not yet so far that it is impossible to begin climbing again. If I succeed in having your son returned to you, I will have earned a great deal of credit with both Your Majesty and the British government. With new possibilities spread out before me, I might at last be able to triumph in my battle with my own weakness.’
‘And what if you fail?’
‘If I fail, I will be persona non grata everywhere in the British Empire. But that will not matter, since I will not live long under the weight of such indignity.’
‘Why? Are you ill?’
Walsh laughed. ‘No, Your Majesty. Apart from my liver, I am in excellent health. But you and I both know that if I fail you, I will be discovered in an alley one early morning—with an axe in my head.’
‘You are suggesting that I would have you killed?’
‘Of course not, Your Majesty. But perhaps one of your loyal subjects—motivated by a purely natural desire to please you—might think that was what you wanted and thus carry out the act.’
The Maharaja nodded. ‘Even when you were at your drunkest and most useless, we still understood each other, didn’t we, Walsh?’
‘Indeed we did, Your Majesty.’
‘Very well. I will use my influence to have you attached to Inspector Blackstone. But remember, as you have just pointed out yourself, I have many loyal subjects who would see it as no more than their duty to avenge me if you fail.’
‘And so they should,’ Walsh said. ‘I accept Your Majesty’s terms, both those stated and those implied.’
‘Then you may go,’ the Maharaja said, and watched unmoved as Walsh gave him another shaky bow and then backed uncertainly out of the room.
Eighteen
The lamp lighter made a slow but measured progress along the Embankment, stopping at every lamp standard and using his long pole to ignite the flame. His mind, not needed for the task in hand, was elsewhere. But even had he been more aware of his surroundings, he would still not have noticed the tall, thin figure who was watching him from the second-floor window in Scotland Yard.
‘The illuminator,’ Blackstone said softly to himself. ‘The bringer of light. We could use a bit of that round here.’
‘What was that, sir?’ Patterson asked.
‘Nothing,’ Blackstone said gruffly. ‘Just thinking aloud.’
In his orphanage days, when most of what he knew of the world had been observed through a barred window, he’d watched the lamp lighter whenever the opportunity had arisen. It had seemed to him, back then, that there could be no finer job in the world than to bring light out of the darkness. And he still believed that—though now he was old enough and wise enough to understand that there were many kinds of darkness a man might choose to grapple with.
He turned to face Patterson. ‘So this Colonel Howarth ordered a tiger from Harrods, did he?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And he was the only one to do so?’
‘You make buying tigers sound like buying jars of fruit preserve,’ Patterson replied, unconsciously echoing the manager of the pet department.
‘But you did check everywhere else, didn’t you?’ Blackstone asked. ‘And I mean everywhere?’
‘Yes, I did, sir. Zoos and circuses excepted, Howarth’s is the only tiger which has been imported into England in the last ten years.’
‘Then tomorrow morning, we’d better go and check if it’s still where it’s supposed to be,’ Blackstone said. He crossed over to his desk and sat down next to his sergeant. ‘I’ve had a report on the two Black Marias,’ he continued.
‘Were they the real thing?’
‘No. I never expected they would be. Stealing the cabs to stage that little fracas on Westminster Bridge was no real risk—they only needed them for an hour. Stealing Black Marias, on the other hand, was a risk—because they’d have had to do it several hours before the kidnapping, and that would have alerted us to the fact that something was wrong.’
‘Must have been expensive to get fakes made,’ Patterson said.
‘Money doesn’t seem to be a problem to this gang,’ Blackstone said. ‘Nor time. That’s one of the things that makes it unique in my experience.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’ve never heard of a criminal who was prepared to wait for over a year to carry out his plan. But that’s what these blokes have done—and we know that because of the tiger.’ He paused, thoughtfully. ‘How did they know they had so much time to get organized, do you think?’
‘A great many of the Queen’s engagements are fixed well over a year in advance,’ said Patterson, who counted knowledge of courtly protocol among the many subjects he stored in his dustbin of a mind. ‘Besides, they had a marker to pace themselves against.’
‘And what marker was that?’
‘The elephant.’
‘Of course it was,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘Stupid of me not to have thought of it myself. Once they’d learned of the Maharaja’s plan to have an elephant in his procession, they’d have known exactly how long they had to put their own arrangements in place.’ He clicked his fingers, as if hit by a sudden thought. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’
‘I’m not sure that I do,’ Patterson confessed.
‘They could have learned about the Maharaja’s visit from someone in London, but to know about the elephant they must have had a source in India.’
‘Are you sure? Couldn’t the Indian Office have been informed about it from the start?’
‘Could have been—but wasn’t. According to Major Walsh, the Indian Office wasn’t told until last week.’
‘Why the delay?’
‘I expect the Maharaja’s advisers thought that if our government found out about it earlier, they’d raise some objection. But so close to the date, they couldn’t regard it as anything but a .fair accompli. So the information had to come from India—possibly from inside the Maharaja’s own court! And that’s got to be as good a lead as we’ve had so far, hasn’t it?’
Patterson seemed unwilling or unable to be caught up in his boss’s enthusiasm. ‘I’m sure the Maharaja has enemies enough in his own court,’ he said. ‘There’s probably never been a king in the world who didn’t. But even so, there’s a hundred other ways the kidnappers could have found out.
‘For example?’ Blackstone asked, reluctant to abandon what had seemed a promising line of investigation.
‘Unless they walked the elephant to the nearest port in India—and Chandrapore’s a bloody long way from the sea—they’d have to have made special arrangements with the railway company. They’d have informed the shipping company w
ell in advance, too. And think how many hungry clerks there’ll be working in the railway and shipping companies—clerks who’ll only have been too glad to earn a few bob by passing on that kind of information.’
‘True,’ Blackstone agreed gloomily. ‘So we’d better pray that when we take our trip out to Hertfordshire tomorrow morning we don’t find the tiger happily frisking around his enclosure, just as he’s supposed to be. Because if that happens, we’ll have nothing. Bloody hell, lad, we’ll have less than nothing.’
***
Aggarwal sat at his desk in the sitting room of the Maharaja’s suite. He was pretending to study the papers which were spread out in front of him, but his mind was enveloped in the swirl of intrigues and plots which were the staple of life in the court of Chandrapore.
The prince had been kidnapped, but for what purpose? The obvious answer was that it was the work of ordinary criminals, intent on no more than collecting a ransom. But Aggarwal did not really believe that. His instinct, which had enabled him to rise from obscurity to a position of some power, told him that there was a plot afoot—a plot which, if he did not tread carefully, would bring about his downfall.
Yet though he was sure there was a conspiracy, it was not a conspiracy he had even begun to understand. If the object of the conspirators had been to seize power, then why kidnap the boy? Why not just kill him and his father by the side of the dead elephant?
A further series of questions presented themselves to him. Who were the conspirators? What did they want? And might it be to his advantage—once he had identified them—to go over to their side?
The knock on the door startled the secretary, but did not alarm him. There were six bodyguards on duty in the corridor, he reminded himself. In such confined spaces, even an army set against them would take some time to make headway. So he was safe—at least, for the moment.
There was a second knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ he said.
Blackstone and the Great Game (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 2) Page 9