A Rising Man

by Abir Mukherjee

  ‘Lots.’ She shrugged. ‘Almost everyone here in the finance department, a lot of people in the L-G’s office, railway officials, the military who provide the security. It’s not exactly a secret, it happens every year.’

  Two hundred and seven thousand rupees. Enough cash to keep Sen and his gang in arms and explosives for a very long time. And they’d have had it too, if MacAuley hadn’t taken the documents home and then got himself killed. My head buzzed. Suddenly I had all the pieces. All I needed now was to find Sen.

  NINETEEN

  IT WAS FOUR p.m. when the telephone rang.

  Lal Bazar was an oven, but it was still preferable to being outside. I was in my office, reading through the post-mortem report that Dr Lamb had sent through. I set it down and picked up the receiver. It was Banerjee. He was breathing heavily.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘they’re on the move!’

  ‘Section H?’

  ‘Yes, sir; two cars and a truck. They were spotted approaching the Howrah Bridge about five minutes ago.’

  ‘Can your men catch them up?’

  ‘I think so, sir. There’s always a bottleneck at the approaches to the bridge. At this time of day, it’ll probably take them around thirty minutes to get across and through the jam at the other side. A man on a bicycle should be able to catch them.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Order your men to keep them in sight and to report to you at Lal Bazar. Give them their orders, then get back here as soon as possible.’

  Section H had managed to track Sen down far quicker than I’d expected. They must have had informants everywhere. It was a testament to the size of their budget if nothing else, and made me wonder how they’d failed to track him down over the last four years. But that was a question I didn’t have time to worry about.

  The next few minutes passed in a blur. I called through to Digby, relayed Banerjee’s message and told him to be ready to leave in five minutes. I then wrote a note for Lord Taggart. What I wanted was too complicated to explain to a peon without the aid of a diagram and several dictionaries, so I ran up to Taggart’s office with it myself, taking the stairs two at a time. I burst in to Daniels’ anteroom and startled the man for the second time in three days. It was becoming a habit. I thrust the note at him and ordered that he wait ten minutes before delivering it to his boss, giving me enough time to leave the building. After that, even if Taggart wanted to stop me, it would be too late.

  I ran back down to my office and checked my Webley. It was clean and loaded. Banerjee arrived as I reholstered it. His breathing was ragged.

  ‘Any news, Sergeant?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Call ahead to the thana at Howrah. Tell your men to forward the message there. We can pick it up when we get across the river.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Have you got a gun?’

  ‘No, sir, but I’ve had rifle training.’

  ‘In that case check out a Lee Enfield and meet me at the car.’

  Within minutes, Digby, Banerjee and I were racing along the Strand Road, heading for the Howrah Bridge. The bridge itself was no more than a metalled road laid across two dozen floating pontoons, the central sections opening to allow ships to pass up- and downriver. As Banerjee had surmised, the approaches were clogged with all manner of traffic.

  ‘We should get out here and make our way across on foot,’ he said. ‘I’ve arranged for a car from Howrah thana to meet us on the other side.’

  We jumped out and began running towards the bridge. Before us lay the Hooghly. It was a distributary of the Ganges, not that the natives distinguished between the two. Coming from a small country, it was hard to appreciate the scale of the Hooghly. Even here, eighty miles from the sea, it was still about ten times wider than the Thames at London. It stretched all the way to the horizon, a great brown gash across the landscape. Now, running over the bridge under the glare of the Bengal sun, it seemed we would never reach the other side. As we approached the central section, the reason for the congestion became clear. Traffic had been stopped so that the bridge could be opened to allow a steamer to pass downriver. I ran up to the official who looked to be in charge and ordered him to stop. He was an Anglo-Indian in a peaked cap bearing the badge of the Calcutta Port Authority. Any thoughts he may have had of remonstrating were quickly shelved as I unbuttoned my holster. Frantically, he shouted at a number of native coolies to close the bridge. They stared back in confusion until a stream of invective jolted them into action.

  Another ten minutes and we were across the bridge, all three of us drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. In front of us lay the squat structure of Howrah station. Banerjee pointed to a police car, which hurtled down the road and screeched to a halt beside us. Exhausted, the three of us piled into the back and the car took off towards Howrah thana with its siren wailing.

  If Calcutta was the belle of Bengal, then Howrah was its ugly sister. A town of lean-tos and go-downs, the whole place looked like one giant marshalling yard. We drove past innumerable warehouses before skidding to a halt outside a small police station. Banerjee scrambled out and ran into the thana, returning a few moments later clutching a scrap of paper.

  ‘They’ve stopped,’ he said, panting.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Kona. About five miles from here, on the Benares road.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  He jumped in and barked directions to the driver, who quickly reversed the car and accelerated back down the road. We left Howrah behind, passing swiftly through suburban townships before emerging into open country. Our progress should have been rapid, but the road soon turned into little more than a dirt track, pitted with potholes large enough to swallow an elephant or two. Not that the driver seemed to notice. He just ploughed on like a man possessed, and, whether through divine providence or some native sixth sense, managed to get to Kona without killing us all.

  We reached the village in darkness. There was no sign telling us we’d come to the right place, but then we didn’t need one. A throng of villagers were gathered in the middle of the road. Men were shouting. From somewhere close by came the growl of engines. We headed on in the direction of the commotion, villagers scattering in front of us. The headlights illuminated clouds of dust recently churned into the air. From around a corner came the glow of lamps and I ordered the driver to make towards it. There, in the headlight beams of a military truck, an agitated crowd had gathered. Angry voices shouted at impassive sepoys who, with bayonets at the ready, blocked them from advancing any further. We drove up to the edge of the cordon and the sepoys opened a gap and waved us through. In the darkness, the sight of two sahibs in uniform was all the identification they needed.

  We stopped next to a couple of stationary vehicles. Colonel Dawson stood a few yards away, in conversation with a group of officers. Pipe in hand, he gestured towards a building in the distance. I turned to Banerjee.

  ‘Find the nearest building with a telephone line and get a message to Lord Taggart,’ I said. ‘Give him a sit rep and our location.’

  He saluted and hurried off in the direction of some telephone poles while Digby and I headed for Dawson. Suddenly, a bottle came flying out of the darkness and crashed at the feet of one of the soldiers. Shards of glass splintered, striking him in the leg. He cried out in pain and turned to his superior, a subedar with a white handlebar moustache, who stepped forward and glared at the mob. If he’d hoped to cow them he was soon disabused as first a stone, then a brick, and then a hail of objects came hurtling towards them. The subedar flinched and his sepoys fell back a few paces. He turned towards Colonel Dawson, who with pipe clamped tightly between his jaws, gave a curt nod. The subedar immediately barked a string of orders. They were aimed as much at the crowd as at his men, though I doubt many of them heard it over the noise. There was no mistaking what followed, though: the rhythmic clicking of rifles being readied for firing. Another shouted command. The sepoys raised their weapons, and took aim at the
crowd. There was a sudden hush followed by a collective groan, like the sound of a wounded beast, as people realised what was happening. Those at the front frantically began to turn and push backwards.

  ‘Fire!’ shouted the subedar.

  A thunder of rifle shots. Then screaming terror. Men and women trampled one another in an attempt to escape. Minutes later the street was all but deserted and a ghostly quiet had settled. I expected to see perhaps a dozen dead or wounded, but other than a few villagers picking themselves up off the ground, there didn’t seem to be any injuries. The sepoys must have raised their rifles at the last second and fired overhead.

  The acrid smell of cordite filled the air. Suddenly I was back in 1915, the sound of shellfire ringing in my ears. I screwed my eyelids shut against the avalanche of mud and earth that would rain down on me any second. But none came. Instead, the scent changed to pipe tobacco.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Captain.’

  I opened my eyes to see Colonel Dawson walking over. If he’d been surprised to see us, he hid it well.

  ‘Illegal gathering,’ he said. ‘We’d have been within our rights to shoot ’em, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry.’

  I pulled myself together.

  ‘Sen?’

  Dawson nodded.

  ‘We’ve found him.’

  Found him was good. It meant they hadn’t arrested him yet. Found him was better than got him. And much better than shot him.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He’s holed up in there,’ said Dawson, pointing with his pipe to a nearby building.

  By the light of the moon, I made out a squat, single-storey, flat-roofed house, surrounded by a low wall on three sides. It looked like the fourth side backed directly onto a canal. The place was in darkness, the door barred and the windows shuttered.

  ‘You’re sure he’s in there?’

  ‘Almost certain. Our man saw him go in. Hasn’t seen anyone come out. Of course, there’s a chance he left by another way before we got here in force, but it’s unlikely. We’ve set up a perimeter around the house.’ He pointed to several places where his soldiers had taken up position. ‘All the exits are covered.’

  ‘Anyone with him?’

  ‘We think he has two, maybe three, accomplices.’

  ‘Armed?’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘Are your men in place?’

  He gestured with his pipe once more. ‘That’s the last of them moving into position now. We were about to issue him with an ultimatum when you arrived.’

  ‘Any civilians inside?’

  ‘What’s your definition of civilian, Captain? Because as far as I’m concerned, anyone in that house is abetting a terrorist.’

  ‘What about women and children?’ I asked. ‘If Sen decides to ignore your ultimatum, we should make an offer of safe passage to anyone else who wants to leave. Besides, we might glean some information from them on the building’s layout… and whether Sen’s actually in there.’

  Dawson fixed me with a stare. His face was expressionless, but behind it he was clearly assessing the options.

  ‘Okay,’ he said at last, ‘we’ll do it your way.’

  He called over to a sepoy holding a loud hailer who was crouched behind a wall at the front of the house. The soldier ran over, bent low. Dawson spoke to him in his native tongue and the sepoy saluted and returned to his position.

  ‘Here goes,’ said Dawson.

  The sepoy called out to the occupants, the loud hailer lending his voice a hollow tone. There was no movement from the house. A minute later he repeated his message. This time a shot rang out from the building. The bullet hit the wall not far from the sepoy, and a brick exploded in a shower of dust and splinters.

  ‘There’s your answer,’ said Dawson.

  He called over the subedar and gave the order to open fire. Immediately, a volley of shots rang out from soldiers positioned around the building. Plasterwork and wood splintered along the façade of the house. The fugitives inside returned fire, their bullets ricocheting off the walls and vehicles.

  On a nod from Dawson, the sepoys attempted to rush the building. Any veteran of the trenches could have told them it was a mistake; that the enemy needed to be worn down before attempting a frontal assault. But Dawson wasn’t a veteran and his men were cocky. Within seconds, two sepoys had been hit: one left screaming on the ground, the other mercifully dead. The rest pulled back to relative safety behind the perimeter walls.

  ‘This won’t end until everyone in there is dead,’ Dawson said with a sigh.

  ‘Let’s hope they run out of ammunition before that,’ I replied.

  Dawson laughed drily. ‘If they do, they’ll save the last bullets for themselves.’

  Banerjee returned from placing the call to Lord Taggart and crouched beside me. The shooting subsided. The terrorists were conserving their resources, only returning fire when they saw movement on our side. The wounded sepoy’s screams turned to cries. I didn’t understand the language, but I didn’t need to. A mortally wounded man only ever cries out for one of two things, his god or his mother. His comrades tried to reach him but were forced back by fire from the house. Then he fell silent. I knew his death would mark a point of no return. His comrades would seek revenge and no prisoners would be taken. If I wanted Sen alive, I’d need to take matters into my own hands.

  I left Dawson’s position, taking Digby and Banerjee with me and scouted out the perimeter. Dawson’s troops were arranged behind the wall around the house, covering its front and sides. At the rear of the building was the canal. There were only two windows at the back of the house, both shuttered. No shots had come from these, and Dawson had placed only a few screening troops on the far bank to guard against the possibility of escape by that route. These men were laid out on the grass, their weapons trained on the shuttered windows.

  I dropped to my stomach and crawled slowly towards the canal bank. Digby and Banerjee followed. The water smelled of something unholy. One of the soldiers on the opposite bank spotted us and raised his rifle, then realised he was aiming at sahib officers and quickly lowered it again. The three of us slipped into the warm, stagnant water and swam across to the other bank. Once across, I gestured to my colleagues to take up position with the troops covering the windows. Then I asked Banerjee for his bayonet before returning to the canal and swimming back to the bank immediately under one of the windows.

  Against the bank was a shallow ledge. Standing on it allowed me to keep my head above water. There, I waited. Things seemed to have gone quiet. I assumed Dawson was reassessing the situation. A few minutes later, shots again began to ring out at the front of the house. It sounded like the sepoys were preparing for another assault. I looked up. The window was about eight feet above me. From inside came snatches of foreign conversation, a muffled cry then frantic, staccato shouts. My heart was racing. It was now or never.

  I took Banerjee’s bayonet and rammed it into the wall above my head. The blade was strong and sharp and easily cut through the plasterwork, lodging firmly into the brick beneath. Holding it with one hand, I used the other to find a handhold and pulled myself up. I then pulled out the bayonet and smashed it back in, further up the wall. Once secure, I reached up towards the window frame. As I did so, one of the shutters opened. Metal glinted in the moonlight: the barrel of a rifle. I flattened myself against the wall. A woman appeared and looked down. She saw me and instantly swung the rifle downward. I closed my eyes. There was precious little else I could do. A shot rang out…

  They say that when you’re about to die, your life flashes before you, a tableau of treasured memories flitting across the mind’s eye. In my case there was nothing. Not a single flash. Not even the image of Sarah’s face. I flinched, expecting the end. Half welcoming it. But there was to be no end. Above me I heard the woman groan, then slump forward. I looked up at her lifeless hand hanging over the ledge.

  I dragged myself up on to the ledge and only now realised that there were iro
n bars across the window. They hadn’t been visible with the shutters closed. The woman lay slumped against them. I cursed my stupidity. I’d assumed the window would be empty behind the shutters. For a moment I sat dripping on the ledge, considering what to do. The only option was to keep climbing. I stood up. Above the window was another concrete ledge somewhat thinner than the one I was standing on. I guessed it acted as some sort of protection from the monsoon rains. I reached up, took a hold and pulled myself up on to it. The roof was now only six or so feet above me. I continued my ascent, using the bayonet and any cracks in the crumbling plasterwork as handholds, and finally wrenched myself over the lip of the flat roof.

  I reached over and retrieved the bayonet, then took a minute to catch my breath and get my bearings. The firing seemed to be intensifying. Ahead of me was the outline of a door, which I assumed led to the stairwell into the house. Beyond that lay a body, slumped against the far wall.

  Pulling out my Webley, I ran to the door, gently pushed it open and stood back. No shots rang out. I peered into the stairwell. All was dark. Slowly, I crept down the stone stairs and into a hallway. To one side, a passageway led to the rear. To the other, two doors, both open, led to the front rooms. In the gloom, I made out the shape of two figures: one on the floor, hardly moving and possibly wounded; the other, nearer the window, holding a rifle and firing outward. The shouts outside were louder now. It sounded like Dawson’s men were moving in for the kill.

  I ran into the room, my pistol at the ready, and shouted for the figure to drop the weapon. The man spun round. It might have been Sen. I’d no way of knowing, and I hadn’t come all this way to kill my prime suspect. I aimed for his leg and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. The firing mechanism must have clogged while I was in the canal. The terrorist hesitated, then fired. I dived to the floor as a searing pain tore up my left arm.

  The man began frantically to reload. Time seemed to slow down. I heard the front door smash open. Boots in the hallway. They weren’t going to reach me in time. The man finished reloading and raised his rifle. I had one chance. I reached for Banerjee’s bayonet with my right hand and hurled it at my attacker. He saw it coming and deflected it with the muzzle of his gun. So much for a last-ditch reprieve. All I’d done was buy a few more seconds. But it was enough. A soldier entered and fired. The man fell back, a hole in his chest. The soldier turned and took aim at the other body, prone on the floor.