A Rising Man

by Abir Mukherjee

  I poured us both another brandy.

  ‘You don’t think he might be tellin’ the truth, do you? About MacAuley, I mean.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I lied. ‘Anyway, he’s been transferred to the military. He’s their problem now. No doubt they’ll get to the truth.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ chimed Byrne. ‘So what’s he been up to these past four years?’

  ‘Hiding out,’ I replied. ‘Moving around in the east. By the sounds of it, he’s been everywhere from Chittagong to Shilong. Claims he’s been studying, that he’s turned to the path of non-violence. I will say this for him, he’s a fascinating man. I’ve met fanatics before, but Sen’s different. He’s calm. Unflappable. As if he’s worked out all the answers and knows what has to happen.’

  ‘And what would that be exactly?’

  ‘That he has to die in the service of his cause.’

  Byrne smiled. ‘Sounds like the lad’s got some ticket on himself. He’s too intellectual for his own good.’

  I finished my cigar, made my excuses and headed up to my room. Locking the door, I sat on the bed and contemplated taking a morphine tablet. It was tempting, but first I needed to think. This was no time for drugs. Drink, on the other hand… I reached for the whisky bottle on the floor beside me. There wasn’t much left. Nevertheless I picked it up and poured out a measure. Taking a sip, I lay back and rested the glass on my chest. I needed to make sense of it all, and whisky generally helped.

  If Devi was to be believed, MacAuley hadn’t just been passing by Mrs Bose’s brothel that night, he’d actually been inside. And by her account, it wasn’t the first time either. The Reverend Gunn’s statement corroborated that. But whether MacAuley went there for his own ends that night, or for Buchan’s, still wasn’t clear. What I knew for sure, though, was that MacAuley had gone there after an argument with Buchan at the Bengal Club. If Buchan had sent him to garner whores for his party, why hadn’t the girls turned up at the club? Besides, if that had been his reason for going to Maniktollah Lane, surely Devi would have known about it? Wouldn’t she have been one of the girls to be sent? That she wasn’t suggested MacAuley went there for his own ends. But that would contradict the Reverend Gunn’s claim that MacAuley had recently turned over a new leaf. Heading off to a brothel after a party wasn’t really typical behaviour for a man who’d just found God.

  But that wasn’t the only puzzle. There was also the small matter of the killer. Devi thought she saw a sahib. That exonerated Sen and drove a coach and horses through my theory that the murder was linked to the attack on the Darjeeling Mail. But why would one white man kill another in the middle of Black Town and just how credible a witness was the young prostitute anyway? If she’d seen the whole thing, why hadn’t she mentioned the note? I guessed she might be a fantasist, but then she didn’t fit the profile. Fantasists were generally attention seekers. Devi, if anything, was terrified at the very thought of talking to us. For every question answered, another two seemed to rise up to take its place.

  I thought back to the conversation with the Reverend Gunn. He’d said there was something else troubling MacAuley, something bigger, something that was connected to Buchan. But what?

  I felt a headache coming on.

  I had only two suspects: Buchan and MacAuley’s deputy, Stevens. So far, neither’s motive seemed particularly strong. So Buchan used MacAuley to source prostitutes. In my book, keeping that fact concealed was weak grounds for murder, whatever the Reverend Gunn might think.

  And as for Stevens, MacAuley’s manservant, Sandesh, had said that MacAuley feared Stevens was after his job. According to Annie Grant, the two had argued over import duties on goods from Burma. Stevens had spent time in Rangoon and was presumably well connected there. It was probably nothing, but who knew what passions burned in the hearts of bureaucrats like Stevens? Men were strange creatures, after all. I’d once investigated the case of an accountant who’d murdered his wife of twenty years after becoming infatuated with a teenage shop assistant simply because she’d always smile at him when he entered the shop.

  I sighed and took a sip. Things were not much clearer, even with the whisky. My mood was hardly helped by the thought that I’d been wrong about the attack on the Darjeeling Mail. It might not be linked to MacAuley’s murder, but it probably was linked to the attack on the Bengal Burma Bank. If terrorists were behind both raids, they now had the funds they needed for their campaign. All that remained was for them to acquire the arms.

  There wasn’t much I could do about that. Dawson had warned me off in no uncertain terms. The problem was, once I get a sniff of a case, I find it difficult to keep my nose out of it. And I don’t take kindly to threats.

  TWENTY–SEVEN

  Monday, 14 April 1919

  COME THE MORNING, everything changed.

  I’d slept well on the back of a whisky and morphine cocktail, which proved an effective remedy for both pain and nightmares. No doubt some enterprising chap, an American most likely, would one day market the combination as a health tonic. To be fair, I’d buy it.

  I awoke to silence. No voices from the street, no muezzin’s call. Not even the usual chorus from the damn crows. I showered and dressed, avoided the dining room and went straight out into the street. Salman was missing from his usual spot. All of the rickshaw wallahs were. That was inconvenient. There was a lot to do and time was running out. Finally I felt like I was on to something. I needed to question Mrs Bose and Devi again and make the trip up to Serampore to confront Buchan. Of course the city also had bigger issues. If I was right, nationalist terrorists now had the funds to bankroll a campaign of violence. They had to be stopped before they could start waging their war. But that was no longer my problem. Not technically, anyway.

  With little other option, I chose to walk the mile or so to Lal Bazar, through streets that were oddly quiet. They weren’t entirely deserted, though, motor cars still sped to and fro, and the trams were running. There just seemed to be fewer natives than usual. The kiosk on Central Avenue where I sometimes bought coffee was closed and a number of the shops in College Street were still boarded up. I guessed at a public holiday or religious festival. Between them, the Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Mohammedans could be relied upon to have some or other holy day at least once a week.

  Lal Bazar, however, was bordering on panic. Officers barked orders to rows of lathi-wielding constables and frightened-looking peons hurried hither and thither, rushing notes from one desk to another. I ran up to Digby’s office.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said gravely. He leaned back in his chair. ‘We were beginning to worry you’d got caught up in all the excitement outside.’

  ‘Excitement?’

  ‘Heightened state of alert. Seems there was an attempted insurrection yesterday.’

  A chill ran down the length of my spine. It seemed the insurgency was already beginning. My worst fears were being realised.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Amritsar. It’s a thousand miles away from here. In the Punjab somewhere. No need to panic, though. The army seems to have nipped it in the bud. Still, Delhi’s put the whole province under martial law.’

  ‘Why the alert here?’ I asked.

  ‘Bengal’s a hotbed of political agitation, old boy,’ he replied. ‘Rumours spread like wildfire. You can bet those rabble-rousing Congress wallahs are spreading tales of British brutality just to get the crowds onto the streets. There are already reports of rioting up near Baranagar. The L-G wants the city locked down, just in case there’s any trouble.’

  ‘I should tell you,’ I said, ‘I spoke to Dawson yesterday. He told me there had been a raid on a bank in town. They got away with over two hundred thousand rupees. He thinks it might be linked to the failed attack on the Darjeeling Mail.’

  Digby’s face fell. ‘That rather complicates things, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s just as well the army’s been called out. The Imperial Police Force really isn’t
equipped to handle a national uprising.’

  That much was true. ‘What about Cossipore?’ I asked. ‘Can we still get up there?’

  Digby puffed out his cheeks. ‘It’s probably not a good idea to go running around right now. We should wait for the situation to stabilise. The L-G’s called out the garrison at Fort William and I’m always nervous when there are armed natives on the streets. It doesn’t matter if they’re wearing our uniforms, they’re still bloody Indians. Either deliberately or incompetently, one of them’s bound to end up shooting at you.’

  I left him and headed for my office. For once there were no notes on the desk, and no Surrender-not waiting at the door. I telephoned the pit. There was no answer. With nothing better to do, I made my way to the communications room on the top floor. The room was our eyes and ears, connecting us through telegraph, telephone and wireless radio to the rest of India and the world beyond.

  The room itself was hot and cramped and smelled of burnt electrics. One wall was taken up by a colossal Marconi radio transmission and receiving device, its front a chaos of knobs, valves, gauges and glowing dials. Beside it several desks overflowed with telephones, an electrical telegraph machine and numerous wooden boxes with dials. A confusion of wires and twined cords stretched between the devices and onto the floor like the hanging roots of some monstrous mechanical banyan tree.

  Three officers manned the equipment, a young Englishman and two native subordinates. One of the natives wore a large black headset. On the desk in front of him sat a heavy, steel-grey microphone. He furiously scribbled notes, before passing them to his colleague who typed them into official communications reports for the top brass. The place hummed like a well-oiled machine.

  I read the raw reports as they came in. Things were still hazy, but a picture was forming. It looked as though Digby was right. Some time the previous afternoon, a detachment of Gurkhas under the command of a Brigadier General named Dyer had opened fire on a revolutionary mob, many thousands strong, at some place called Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. The Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab was crediting Dyer with averting an armed insurrection. He’d requested the Viceroy for permission to declare martial law throughout the province, permission that had been swiftly granted.

  The more I read, though, the more the picture muddied. The first hint that things might not be quite so cut and dried came with news that the Viceroy had ordered a news blackout. Then came the casualty reports.

  Initial estimates spoke of three hundred fatalities and over a thousand wounded, including women and children. In my experience, an armed mob planning insurrection weren’t fond of taking their wives and children along to enjoy the spectacle. As for Dyer’s Gurkhas, they hadn’t suffered a single injury, not even a scratch. Impressive given there were only seventy-five of them facing a hostile enemy numbering in the thousands.

  A feeling of dread began to well up in the pit of my stomach. Images of a massacre filled my head. If my fears were justified, it would explain the need for the news blackout. Not that you could keep something like that quiet. Not these days. This was the information age, after all; the same technology that allowed us to receive information from a thousand miles away in a matter of hours was also available to the natives. You could keep it out of newspapers and the wireless, but you couldn’t stop Indians talking to each other on the telephone, not without paralysing the administration at the same time. It was probably too late, in any case. If the reports of riots in Baranagar were accurate, word had already reached the streets of Calcutta. If it had reached Calcutta, it would have reached Delhi, Bombay, Karachi, Madras and all points in between.

  All of a sudden the L-G’s decision to call out the army made a lot more sense. If I was correct, a tragedy was unfolding in the Punjab and its ramifications would be felt throughout the subcontinent and maybe beyond. This man Dyer may just have lit the match that would ignite a national revolution that could burn the Raj to the ground, and all of us with it. The problem was there was little I could do about it. Sometimes you just need to hold tight and hope the tide of history doesn’t sweep you away.

  Surrender-not was sat on the peon’s stool in the corridor outside my office when I returned. He looked more depressed than usual. I told him to take a seat inside while I fetched Digby. For a moment it looked like he wanted to say something, then thought better of it and morosely went and sat in my office.

  Soon all three of us were crammed around my desk, Digby in a state of nervous excitement, Surrender-not looking as though someone had just shot his dog. There was no point in discussing the events in Amritsar or on the streets outside, so I cut to the chase.

  ‘We’re going to bring in Mrs Bose and the girl Devi for questioning.’

  That wiped the smile off Digby’s face.

  ‘What for?’ he spluttered.

  I told him of the previous day’s developments, about the Reverend Gunn’s revelation that MacAuley had been providing prostitutes for Buchan and that, before he’d been murdered, he was going to come clean. I also mentioned Devi’s account of seeing MacAuley leave the brothel and argue with a white man just before he’d been murdered. I left out my suspicions about the girl’s reliability. Digby wasn’t exactly convinced.

  ‘Are you seriously suggesting that one of the most senior men in the ICS was running whores for Buchan, and that he was killed because he was going to stop?’ he exclaimed. ‘What absolute bloody rot. I don’t know what hold that blasted native, Sen has over you, but you’re clutching at straws.’

  He was right. The theory had more holes than one of General Haig’s battle plans. We were obviously missing something and I was determined to find out what.

  ‘I know it sounds far-fetched,’ I said. ‘That’s why we need to question Devi and Mrs Bose again. They’re the key to this.’

  Digby sighed. ‘Right,’ he said eventually. ‘If that’s your decision, I’ll go and bring them in.’

  ‘We’ll all go,’ I said firmly.

  Surrender-not, who’d sat silently throughout, now decided to speak up. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘may I speak to you in private? It could take some time.’

  ‘Can’t it wait?’ I asked. The whole country looked like it might be about to go up in flames and this was the time he needed to have a chat?

  He looked green. ‘I’m afraid it can’t.’

  ‘Look, old boy,’ said Digby to me, ‘I can go up to Cossipore with a couple of constables while you deal with the sergeant here.’

  ‘Very well.’ I nodded.

  ‘I’ll get going, then,’ said Digby, rising from his chair. He left the room, closing the door behind him. I turned to Banerjee.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Sergeant?’

  The poor boy fiddled with his pencil. He was sweating and looked like he was about to bring up his breakfast. He swallowed hard.

  ‘I am afraid, sir, that the conduct of His Majesty’s troops in enforcing the policing action in the city of Amritsar yesterday, utilising a force entirely disproportionate to the threat facing them or the government of Punjab province, without justification either legal or moral, has—’

  I didn’t have time for this. ‘Look, Surrender-not,’ I said, ‘just tell me what’s bothering you in words of two syllables or less.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must resign, sir.’

  He took a crumpled envelope from his pocket and placed it on the desk in front of me. It was damp with perspiration. ‘My letter of resignation.’

  ‘Because of what happened in Amritsar yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You do know that the reports are saying that an armed insurrection was put down?’

  ‘With respect, sir, those reports are… erroneous. The stories we are hearing from Indian sources paint quite a different picture.’

  ‘And what do these sources say, exactly?’

  He squirmed in his seat. ‘They say a peaceful, unarmed crowd was gunned down indiscriminately without warning or chance to disperse.’

 
‘These people know that such gatherings are illegal under the Rowlatt Acts,’ I said. ‘They shouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘Sir,’ he began. There was a steel in his voice that I hadn’t registered before. ‘I do not wish to debate the rights and wrongs of the current system of laws in this country. All I can say is that I no longer feel I can be a part of a system that treats the people of this country – my own people – in such a manner.’

  I didn’t blame him. In his position I’d have done pretty much the same thing. I might even have been tempted to take the law into my own hands and shoot a couple of my oppressors into the bargain. It was turning into quite a morning: a massacre in the Punjab, riots in Calcutta, and my most competent junior officer threatening to resign. And all before breakfast.

  ‘What are you going to do afterwards?’ I asked.

  The boy looked surprised. ‘I haven’t given it much thought.’

  That was a good sign. If he hadn’t thought it through, there was a chance I might persuade him to reconsider. But sitting on opposite sides of a desk debating the rights and wrongs of British governance in India wasn’t going to achieve much. If I was going to convince him to retract his resignation, I had to appeal to him somewhat more subtly.

  We were in a coffee house in a lane near Lal Bazar. The place looked like it had seen better days. Then again, any day was probably better than today. It was a native joint, ill-frequented by Europeans, not that it was exactly packed with Indians this morning. In fact, the place was almost deserted and had the despondent air of a funeral parlour after the coffin’s left for the cemetery. In one corner hovered a couple of waiters, studiously avoiding eye contact with the few patrons.

  We were sat at a small table. One of its legs was shorter than the others, which caused the whole thing to list precariously when disturbed.

  Surrender-not took a sip of his coffee and winced.