A Rising Man

by Abir Mukherjee

  ‘You’re late,’ he rasped, nervously taking a drag, ‘I was about to—’

  Digby silenced him with a stare. ‘We had to take a few precautions. Or maybe you’d rather we just turn up on time with a couple of Congress wallahs in tow?’

  The man raised his hands in surrender. ‘No, no. Of course not!’ He ran a hand across his scalp, flattening strands of greasy black hair onto his head. ‘Come, this way,’ he said, leading us to a stairwell and down to a claustrophobic cellar that stank of sweat and camphor. He pointed us to some wicker mats scattered around a low wooden table, while he retrieved a bottle and some glasses from a rough-hewn cupboard that looked like it had seen better days.

  ‘What do you say, Sub-inspector?’ said the Indian, raising the bottle. ‘A little drink before we do business?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Digby.

  He set down the glasses on the table and filled each of them with a golden-brown liquid from the bottle.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Arrak,’ he replied with a smile. ‘Very good liquor it is and no mistake. It comes from the South only.’

  Digby nodded and took a sip. I followed his lead. It was fiery stuff. Enough to put hairs on your chest, or burn them off if you spilled some.

  ‘Not for me,’ said Banerjee, pushing his glass away.

  ‘You do not partake of the strong liquor?’ asked the native. ‘Indians all should drink liquor. And eat meat also. Red meat, especially the beef. The Britishers,’ he said, pointing at Digby and me, ‘all are partaking of the liquor and beef, even memsahibs. That is why they are strong. We Indians, alas, are too much teetotal and vegetarian. That is why we are in state of subjugation.’

  ‘Enough of this,’ said Digby tersely. ‘What have you got for us, Vikram?’

  The Indian gave a sly grin. ‘This MacAuley business. Very upsetting it is to the Britishers. Your English papers are calling it “outrageous calamity” and demanding killers be caught and urgently made example of.’

  It was clear where this was heading. Vikram had information – a commodity he knew we wanted. He would try to talk up the value of what he had to sell. It was simple supply and demand. Whether it was London or Calcutta made no difference: a snitch was a snitch and economics was universal.

  ‘The sahibs and the memsahibs,’ Vikram continued, ‘verily they are consumed by state of panic.’

  ‘Get to the point, Vikram,’ said Digby.

  ‘There is much talk,’ continued the Indian, ‘up Cossipore way. Much gossip, much speculation. You know, Sub-inspector, how we damn Indians like to talk. You Britishers are even passing the laws to stop us talking, but still we persist. And people are always gossiping with their local paan wallah. I am hearing things—’

  Digby cut him off. ‘I’m not interested in gossip, Vikram. Either you have something or you don’t. Stop wasting my time.’ He made to rise from his seat.

  ‘Wait!’ cried the Indian. ‘You know I am having good sources. Value of my informations is tip top!’

  Digby looked the native in the eye, then slowly sat back down. ‘So, what have you got?’

  The Indian hesitated, no doubt pondering his next move. Selling information is like selling sex. You have to tease the customer. Reveal just enough to whet his appetite, but leave enough to the imagination so that the fool buys the goods.

  ‘Two nights previous, on the night of unfortunate demise of the burra sahib, there was proscribed meeting in a house in Cossipore. Some no-good rascals spouting all manner of seditious what-nots to crowd of locals. Fiery speeches and big-big talk about the need to send a message to the Britishers. I have all informations on the meeting, and also of what is transpiring thereafter. I am thinking these informations would be of value to you, Sub-inspector?’

  ‘Do you have names?’ asked Digby.

  ‘One especial name has been mentioned to me jointly and severally.’

  Now it was Digby’s turn to ponder.

  ‘Okay. You’ll get the usual amount. Now let’s hear it.’

  The snitch gave a servile laugh. ‘Please, Sub-inspector, with my informations you will surely be putting the miscreants behind bars. And with big case like this, the burra sahibs will give you promotion and no mistake!’ He rubbed the thumb and fingers of one hand together. ‘I am thinking that is worth “extra” to you?’

  Digby made a decent show of nonchalance, but we all knew it was a bluff. ‘All right,’ he said finally, ‘an extra twenty.’

  ‘Fifty,’ the Indian shot back.

  Digby snorted. ‘An extra thirty and that’s more than you’re worth. Take it or leave it.’

  An oily smile broke out across the snitch’s face. Instead of a reply, he simply nodded his head in that peculiar way Indians have, like a figure of eight, which leaves you wondering whether they’re agreeing, disagreeing or merely reserving the option to decide later.

  Digby took out his wallet and counted out eighty rupees in notes and passed them across the table. It was a little over five pounds, not cheap, but still good value if the snitch’s information was as good as he was claiming.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s have it. Chapter and verse.’

  Vikram quickly pocketed the cash, then picked up the bottle. He refilled the glasses and toasted our health before continuing.

  ‘So, the meeting in Cossipore,’ he said, ‘it is taking place at the abode of one fellow by the name of Amarnath Dutta, a most fiery radical. Previously he is running Bengali news-sheet called New Dawn, then Britishers are shutting it down. But Dutta is still involved in whole “freedom struggle” business.’ He gave a wave of his hand. ‘All nonsense, obviously. Nevertheless, I am hearing that some fifteen men were in attendance, all good types: traders, engineers, lawyers. Dutta is giving speech, but all had really come to hear one different person: Benoy Sen.’

  ‘Sen?’ said Digby, suddenly animated. ‘So he’s back in Calcutta, is he?’

  Vikram nodded, keen to please. ‘Oh yes, and no mistake! Apparently Sen is giving speech about need for strong actions in face of British aggression. He is saying there is need to send a message that Britishers cannot ignore. All the listeners became most thrilled by his hot-tempered agitations! Then Mr Dutta is telling all people to heed Sen’s call for vigorous combat, after which meeting is dissolving.’

  ‘What happened then?’ I asked.

  Vikram smiled. ‘That is the most intriguing aspect, Inspector sahib! When body is being found next day, people are saying it must be the doing of Sen.’

  ‘Why not one of the others at the meeting?’ I asked.

  The snitch shook his head. ‘It is not possible, sahib. Those men all are lawyers and accountants; what you Britishers are calling the armchair revolutionists.’

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked Digby.

  ‘I agree with Vikram,’ he replied. ‘Calcutta’s full of that sort of Bengali: all mouth and no trousers. Their idea of action is writing a stiffly worded letter to the Viceroy. They’d never actually kill anyone. No, it has to be Sen.’ He turned to Vikram. ‘And where is he now?’

  The snitch made a show of looking dismayed, ‘Alas, sahib, this I do not know. I can try to find out, but these types of informations are not coming cheap. It would be most efficacious if I am having some advance to cover expenses?’

  Digby threw another ten on the table. Vikram smiled and pocketed the note.

  We left the snitch and headed back over the wall and into the safe house, and from there retraced our steps back to the car on Grey Street.

  It was late but Digby was bouncing about like a Hun in a sausage factory. We all sensed a possible breakthrough in the case, but he was the most excited. In a gesture of bonhomie, he offered to drop me off at the guest house. He even offered to drop Banerjee at a rickshaw stand en route.

  ‘Tell me about Benoy Sen,’ I said to Digby, after we’d left the sergeant at the stand.

  ‘He’s the de facto leader of Jugantor,’ he replied, ‘one of countless revolutio
nary groups trying to kick us out of India. Nasty chaps, responsible for assassinating quite a few policemen. During the war, they hatched a plan to smuggle in weapons from the Boche. They hoped to launch an armed insurrection and start a mutiny by native army regiments. The plot was quite sophisticated and would have caused countless deaths if Section H hadn’t got wind of it. In the end, we were waiting for the shipments as they arrived. Managed to take the ringleaders by surprise. Most of Jugantor’s high command were arrested or shot trying to escape. Sen was the one that got away. Rumour had it he’d gone into hiding somewhere up in the hill country near Chittagong. They must be planning something pretty big for him to risk coming back here.’

  As Digby dropped me off outside the Belvedere, I brooded on whether I’d been a trifle unfair to him. He’d impressed me tonight, handling his snitch with aplomb. If I was being honest, he was responsible for pretty much every advance we’d made, from identifying the body and calling it as a political crime, to now identifying a chief suspect. Underneath the bluster and colonial pretence, he was actually a pretty decent officer. It made me wonder why he was still only a detective sub-inspector.

  The lights were still on in the parlour as I let myself in. Dinner had finished almost two hours ago but it sounded like Mrs Tebbit and several of the guests were still up. I sensed they were waiting for me. They’d probably seen the headlines in the Statesman and wanted the inside gen. I closed the front door as softly as I could and tiptoed across the hallway, hoping to slip unnoticed to my room like some errant schoolboy returning to dorms after lights-out. I made it as far as the staircase when the parlour door swung open and light streamed into the hallway, outlining the unmistakable silhouette of Mrs Tebbit. It seemed everything about that woman was formidable, even her shadow.

  ‘Ah, Captain Wyndham, there you are!’ she cried as if greeting the second coming of the Lord. ‘I thought you’d be working late, so I saved you a cold supper. You must be ever so hungry.’

  ‘Very kind of you, Mrs Tebbit,’ I said, ‘but I’m fine, thank you.’

  ‘Oh come now, Captain, you’ve got to keep your strength up. After all, we’re relying on you to protect us from those nefarious natives in these uncertain times.’

  From where I was standing, it looked as though she’d be perfectly capable of protecting herself from the natives, nefarious or otherwise. And given the heft of the woman, if anything it would probably be the natives who’d need protecting. However, short of being rude, there seemed little chance of avoiding her food or her questions, so I surrendered to the inevitable. At least I was trained to deal with the questions. I smiled, followed her into the dining room and sat down as she poured me a glass of wine and brought over a cold meat pie with a few slices of bread and butter. Simple fare. Hopefully that meant there was less chance of her getting it wrong. As I cut into the pie, Byrne and Peters traipsed in, ostensibly to keep me company. Mrs Tebbit poured them both a glass of wine, taking a small sherry for herself.

  ‘Abominable business this MacAuley affair,’ said Peters to no one in particular.

  ‘Absolutely dreadful,’ tutted Mrs Tebbit. ‘It makes you wonder if any of us are safe in our beds.’

  I could have pointed out that MacAuley hadn’t been murdered in his bed, but five miles away in an alley behind a whore house. But I suspected they wouldn’t want to hear that. Instead, I concentrated on the meat pie.

  ‘It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is, Mrs Tebbit,’ Peters continued. ‘The gall of it. To kill a representative of the King Emperor, in cold blood, here in the empire’s second city. I don’t know where these bloody wogs get the nerve.’

  He continued in this vein for some minutes, working himself up into a lather while Mrs Tebbit clucked in agreement.

  Mrs Tebbit turned to me. ‘You couldn’t put our minds at ease, could you, Captain?’

  I gave her the usual flannel – we’re doing all we can; investigating the crime thoroughly, no stone left unturned, et cetera, but that didn’t seem enough for her, so I followed up with: ‘There’s nothing for you to concern yourself about.’

  ‘That’s all well and good, Captain,’ she said, ‘but what if this is the start of a concerted campaign? If it continues, Europeans will be afraid to walk the streets after dark.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ I said. ‘Besides, I’m surprised at you, Mrs Tebbit. A fine woman of good English stock. I’d have expected you to be the last person to be intimidated by the actions of some disgruntled natives. You need to stiffen your upper lip, madam!’

  That did the trick. When logic fails, I’ve found that a naked appeal to patriotism often has the desired effect.

  ‘Oh, of course not,’ she gabbled, ‘I didn’t mean…’

  ‘The Captain’s right,’ said Byrne. ‘Ah sure, you know yourself, Mrs Tebbit, we’ve seen this sort of thing before. Besides, if you ask me, the violent ones aren’t the problem. It’s the ones preaching non-violence that are the real issue altogether. They might call it “peaceful non-cooperation” but economic warfare’s what it really is. This boycott of British cloth. It’s hurtin’ the trade somethin’ fierce. Sure, my orders are down thirty per cent on last year, fifty per cent in some parts. If it carries on like this, I’ll be out of a job by the summer.

  ‘Christ almighty, it’s not just happenin’ here in Bengal, but all over the country. And the worst of it is there’s nothin’ we can do about it. I mean, it’s not as though you can lock folk up for not buying cloth.’

  A sombre mood seemed to settle over the table as Byrne’s words sunk in. Mrs Tebbit looked as though her world was collapsing. Peters just fumed. I had some sympathy for them. In their eyes, they and their kind had built this country and now everything they’d made was threatened. It was the impudence of it all that they couldn’t understand. How, after everything they’d done for this land, could the natives have the effrontery to want to send them all packing back to Blighty? At the heart of it, I recognised the real fear. Mrs Tebbit and her kind might think of themselves as British, but India was the only life they really knew; a life of garden parties and cocktails at the club. They were like a hybrid flower transplanted to India and acclimatised to such an extent that if returned to Britain, it’d probably wither and die.

  I cleared my plate and Mrs Tebbit whisked it away.

  ‘It’s late,’ said Peters, ‘I’d better call it a night.’ He rose and bade us goodnight, his tired footsteps echoing slowly as he traipsed up the stairs. Mrs Tebbit, realising there was no more information to be gleaned, also made her excuses and retired. That left Byrne and me and half a bottle of red wine. He pulled out a couple of cigarettes and offered me one. I took it and lit up.

  ‘Are you very much involved yourself in the MacAuley case, Captain?’ he asked. Not that he sounded particularly interested. I got the feeling he just wanted to fill the silence.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ I replied, ‘but I can’t tell you any more than I told the others.’

  ‘I can appreciate that.’ He nodded. ‘It’s just that, security wise, things seemed to be improving. I’d hoped we’d seen an end to all the independence nonsense when the war finished.’

  ‘You’ve no sympathy for their cause?’ I asked. ‘I’d imagine a lot of your countrymen might have a slightly different opinion.’

  ‘As a textiles salesman, I can tell you I have absolutely no sympathy for them at all. As an Irishman, though…’ He smiled. ‘Well, sure now, that’s a different matter.’

  He raised his glass in a toast.

  ‘The thing is,’ he continued, ‘for the most part your average Indian terrorist, at least the Bengali ones, are somewhat incompetent. They spend a lot of their time fightin’ each other, an’ when they’re not – most of the time, thankfully – they manage to blow themselves up without hurtin’ anyone else. When, on occasion, they do actually manage to kill someone, as often as not it’s some innocent passer-by rather than the feller they were aimin’ for. All in all, it’s usually not long befo
re they get caught or shot themselves. Rest assured, Captain, they could carry on like this for another hundred years without making the slightest dent in the foundations of the Raj. The problem, y’see, is this: your classic Bengali revolutionary is a dilettante. Look at them – they’re all upper-caste, upper-class toffs who look on the whole thing as some sort of noble, romantic struggle. Now that’s all fine an’ dandy in a university debatin’ chamber, but sure if you want to end over a hundred years of British rule, you need real hard-men. Working-class lads that know how to get the job done. Not a bunch of effete intellectuals who have trouble tellin’ one end of a Mauser from the other.’

  ‘If they’re as incompetent as you say,’ I asked, ‘why has MacAuley’s murder got everyone so spooked?’

  Byrne ruminated, taking a sip of wine before replying. ‘D’you know how many British there are in India, Captain?’

  ‘Half a million?’ I guessed.

  ‘One hundred an’ fifty thousand. That’s all. An’ d’you know how many Indians there are? I’ll tell ye – three hundred million. Now how d’ye suppose one hundred and fifty thousand British keep control of three hundred million Indians?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Moral superiority.’ He let the phrase sink in. ‘For such a small number to rule over so many, the rulers need to project an aura of superiority over the ruled. Not just physical or military superiority mind, but also moral superiority. More importantly, their subjects must in turn believe themselves to be inferior; that they need to be ruled for their own benefit.

  ‘It seems everything we’ve done since the Battle of Plassey has been with a view to keepin’ the natives in their place, convincing them they need our guidance, and our education. Their culture must be shown to be barbaric, their religions built on false gods, even their architecture must be inferior to ours. Why else would we build that bloody great monstrosity the Victoria Memorial out of white marble and make it bigger than the Taj Mahal?