A Rising Man

by Abir Mukherjee

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I said. ‘Taking them alive might have provided some useful information.’ It might also have provided Section H with a new pawn to replace Sen, but I kept that particular thought to myself.

  ‘We got the money and the weapons,’ said Dawson. ‘That’s all that matters.’

  ‘How many weapons?’

  ‘Three crate loads: small arms, rifles and explosives. Enough to start quite a nasty little war.’

  We walked down a path towards the garrison’s cemetery.

  ‘Can I see the prisoner?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s outside your jurisdiction, Captain.’

  ‘Your men haven’t been over-zealous in their questioning, I hope.’

  Dawson smiled. ‘Not at all, Captain. This is India. We have certain rules that we maintain steadfastly out here. One is that we never strenuously interrogate a white man, even an Irishman. That would send an unacceptable message to our native soldiers. I admit, though, it does make things a bit complicated in this case.’

  So they hadn’t beaten him up, and they’d not managed to get anything useful out of him in over two days. I guessed Section H’s interrogation techniques centred more on brute force than astute questioning. Take away their knuckledusters and they were left floundering.

  ‘He might talk to me.’

  Dawson puffed on his pipe and considered it.

  ‘Very well. I suppose we might make an exception. Just this once.’

  The cell block still smelled of disinfectant. I followed the sepoy down a long corridor to a cell at the far end.

  ‘Hello, Byrne,’ I said, as the sepoy unlocked the cell door.

  ‘Captain Wyndham!’ he said, startled. ‘By God am I glad to see you! Maybe you can explain to these gentlemen that they’ve got the wrong man and get me the hell out of here.’ His knuckles were white as he gripped the bars of the cell door.

  I had to hand it to him, he played the innocent textile salesman pretty well. Even so, he must have known the game was up.

  ‘Are they treating you well?’

  ‘Not in the slightest. Sure, I’ve been locked up here for forty-eight hours without any explanation and no access to a lawyer.’

  ‘You’re lucky you’re not Indian,’ I said.

  ‘Can you get me outta here?’

  ‘It’s going to be difficult. They tell me you had a hundred and fifty thousand rupees in cash on you when they arrested you. Did you rob a bank?’

  He smiled anxiously. ‘Ah, not at all, Captain. You know I was working on a large sales contract. The cash was just the payment on it.’

  ‘A hundred and fifty thousand rupees for a textile deal? What did you do, Byrne? Sell them the Shroud of Turin?’

  He was pleading now. ‘I’m tellin’ the truth. I swear.’

  Except of course, he wasn’t.

  ‘It was me who put them on to you,’ I said.

  He looked genuinely confused.

  ‘You? Why the devil would ye do that?’

  It was a fair question. One I’d asked myself a few times.

  ‘Because textiles isn’t your real business. In fact, I doubt Byrne is even your real name.’

  There was a slight stiffening of the muscles of his jaw. It was enough.

  ‘That night when I met you on the stairs. We were talking about Sen. You said he resembled Leon Trotsky. How did you know what he looked like?’

  ‘I… I must have seen his picture in the papers,’ he stammered.

  ‘I don’t think you did. Our police files didn’t even have a picture of him, not so much as a sketch, but you knew what he looked like. I’m guessing your friends in Ireland are supplying weapons to their fellow revolutionaries here in India and you’re their man on the ground. You’ve probably met a whole host of Indian revolutionaries. I think you must have met Sen at some point, maybe even over the last year when you were in Assam and he was hiding out in East Bengal.’

  ‘That’s all nonsense, Captain.’

  Maybe it was. Maybe he really had only seen a picture of Sen in a paper, but that didn’t explain what he was doing next to a warehouse full of weapons with a hundred and fifty grand in his luggage.

  ‘Let me give you some advice, Byrne,’ I said. ‘Confess quickly. Do it here. Do it before they send you back to Britain. It’ll be less painful for you.’

  I turned to go.

  ‘Wyndham,’ he called from behind me. ‘There’s a storm comin’. Both in India and in Ireland, and when it breaks, there’s going to be a reckoning. Men of good conscience are going to have to stand up and be counted. You’ll have to choose which side you’re on.’

  I should have told him to save his breath. After all I’d been through, my conscience was anything but good. And as for what side I was on, well Taggart had already told me: I was on the side of the status quo. I guessed I could live with that as long as the alternatives were bloodier.

  I called for the guard to let me out and walked back down the corridor to the sound of cell doors being locked behind me.

  I moved out of the guest house the next day. It seemed to be for the best. Mrs Tebbit’s attitude towards me had cooled somewhat after I’d returned bruised and bloody the night Digby had had his head ventilated. It wasn’t really my appearance she objected to, rather it was my insistence that she provide a room for Surrender-not. She’d protested quite vociferously, appealing to my common sense. Of course, she personally had no problem with a darkie under her roof, but what would her other guests make of it? No, it just wasn’t possible. She’d only relented when I pointed out that the sergeant had a first-class law degree from Cambridge, and even then she couldn’t help a parting shot.

  ‘That’s the problem with these natives,’ she muttered as she stalked off, ‘too smart for their own good.’

  My trunk stood packed and upright in the downstairs hall. It contained pretty much all my worldly possessions. I’d requisitioned Salman the rickshaw wallah and a few of his comrades to transport it the short distance to my new lodgings in Premchand Boral Street. They were nothing fancy. The landlords of the fancier places tended to object to my choice of flatmate.

  Surrender-not was at first mortified by the idea of sharing accommodation with a sahib senior officer, but I was quite insistent. I told him it would be good for his career and he eventually relented. I had my reasons. I felt partly responsible for his parents kicking him out. It was, after all, my fault he hadn’t resigned his position. The truth, though, was that he’d saved my life twice in the space of a week, and only a fool parts with such a lucky rabbit’s foot.

  A week later I was in conversation with Surrender-not over a bottle of some local firewater. It turned out that our lodgings were cheap because they were situated above one brothel and beside another. It wasn’t a problem for either of us, and I think Surrender-not secretly enjoyed it. I’d caught him staring wistfully at one particular girl who worked in the place next door. Not that he was the type to do anything other than stare. Even talking to her was beyond him. I was in the process of questioning him about it, employing the twin strategies of pulling rank and getting him hopelessly drunk.

  ‘Come on, Surrender-not,’ I said, ‘faint heart never won fair lady.’

  ‘I don’t need to worry about that, sir,’ he replied, shaking his head in that curious Indian manner. ‘When it comes to my marriage, you can rest assured that my mother will be anything but faint of heart. And she’ll make sure it’s a fair lady. It would be a social disgrace for her to have a daughter in law with dark skin.’

  ’So you’re not even going to talk to the girl?’

  ‘As I have explained to you several times already, sir, I find it difficult to converse with the opposite sex. It is not a problem, though. As an Indian, I never really have to talk to a woman until I am married to her. It’s just one of the many ways in which my culture is superior to yours… sir.’

  Maybe he had a point. The Indian way probably saved a lot of time and effort, not to mention he
artache.

  ‘But surely you must have been in love with a woman?’ I teased, alcohol getting the better of my discretion. ‘Or some nice girl’s fallen in love with you?’

  The young man blushed and shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘A good-looking lad such as yourself, I’d have expected you to be fighting off the ladies.’

  ‘That’s not really how it works in our culture.’

  ‘What about when you were down at Oxford?’

  ‘Cambridge.’

  ‘Cambridge, then. Same thing. Surely there must have been some warm-bosomed suffragette who took you to her bed? I believe taking an Indian lover is all the rage among certain classes of politically active women. It burnishes their socialist credentials, apparently.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he lamented, ‘I’ve never had the pleasure of burnishing any woman’s credentials, socialist or otherwise.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  I looked at Surrender-not. ‘You expecting anyone?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  From the hall came the sound of Sandesh opening the front door. MacAulay’s old manservant was now in my employ. It seemed a good fit. He needed a job and I needed someone to iron my uniform, and so far, things were working out well.

  I heard a woman’s voice. The door opened and Annie walked in. I hadn’t seen her since I’d left her place the morning after I’d been attacked. She looked as beautiful as she did the night we’d had dinner at the Great Eastern.

  Surrender-not rose unsteadily to his feet, grinning like a chimp.

  ‘I’m going out for a walk,’ he said. ‘I think the air will do me good.’

  I nodded and he left at a pace that suggested his shoes might be on fire. I picked up the bottle and gestured to Annie to join me for a drink.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Buggered if I know. Some local gut-rot that Surrender-not picked up from the liquor wallah. It’s my fault really. I should have gone myself. The boy knows precious little about alcohol.’

  ‘And you’re teaching him?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  I poured her a glass. She picked it up, knocked it back and set the tumbler down on the table. I was impressed. The stuff tasted like petrol. It had brought tears to my eyes when I first drank it and poor Surrender-not had fallen off his chair. I poured her another.

  ‘I haven’t heard from you in over a week,’ she said.

  That much was true. I’d been avoiding her since the night of Digby’s death.

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘So I see, Sam. Nice little place you have here.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I decided to go with just the one servant. You might remember him. By the way, how did you get the address?’

  ‘Your friend, Sergeant Banerjee,’ she replied. ‘I came to Lal Bazar looking for you. They told me you were on leave but that the sergeant could get a message to you. I asked him where you were staying and he was most obliging. He didn’t mention he’d moved in too.’

  ‘I like to keep my friends close.’

  She took a couple of cigarettes from a silver case in her bag and offered me one. I took it and lit us both. She took a drag and exhaled.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what I’ve done wrong, Sam?’

  I looked into her eyes. Even now it was difficult not to be besotted by her.

  I picked up my drink and walked out onto the balcony. It was easier to talk with my back to her.

  ‘You should have told me,’ I said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Buchan.’

  I expected her to lie, but she was above that sort of thing. Instead, she came and stood beside me.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘He knew too much about the investigation. He knew I thought Sen was innocent. Someone was passing him information. At first I suspected Digby, but it wasn’t him. It was you.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘The night I was attacked. It was him you were out with, wasn’t it?’

  ‘MacAuley was his friend,’ she said. ‘He asked me to keep him informed of your progress. I don’t regret it.’

  ‘And what did he promise you in return? Surely you didn’t think he’d take you as his wife? Or were you content just being his mistress?’

  She slapped me.

  ‘He offered me money,’ she shot back. ‘He offered me security. That’s something no one else has. Maybe you haven’t noticed, Sam, but Calcutta isn’t exactly a bed of roses for half-castes.

  My cheek stung.

  ‘How much money?’

  ‘Enough to leave this place and make a fresh start.’

  ‘And that was enough to betray me?’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t betray you.’

  ‘Did you sleep with him?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  I guessed she was right about that.

  ‘Where would you go?’

  She looked flustered. ‘I haven’t decided. I thought Bombay. Or maybe even London.’

  ‘Not London,’ I said. ‘Trust me, you wouldn’t like it. And as for Bombay, I’ve never been, but I doubt it’s a patch on Calcutta. All human life is here, you know.’

  She smiled, despite herself. ‘Calcutta’s always an option.’

  ‘You should consider it most carefully, Miss Grant,’ I said. ‘You should stay here tonight and consider it. I could help you.’

  She looked at me and thought about it for a moment, then lifted her hand to my reddened cheek.

  ‘No, Sam,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THIS BOOK WOULD never have seen the light of day without the support and encouragement of a great many people, first and foremost, Alison Hennessey, Sam Copeland, Bethan Jones, Jon Stock and Richard Reynolds, the judges of the Daily Telegraph/Harvill Secker Crime Writing Competition. In particular, my thanks go out to Alison who became my editor, for her expertise and guidance, and her patience in taking an accountant and turning him into a writer; to Sam my agent for his tireless encouragement, constant reassurance and good humour; and to Jon for his advice and insight into the daily travails of being an author.

  Thanks also to everyone at Harvill Secker/Random House, especially Penny Liechti, Simon Rhodes, Kris Potter, Rowena SkeltonWallace, Bill Donohoe, Anna Redman and Vicki Watson.

  I’m grateful too to my sister, Elora and to Sherrie Steyn for their good sense, keen eyes and wise words; to Alan Simon, the finest mentor and English teacher one could wish for; to Amit Roy for his comments, advice and insight into all matters Bengali and his ongoing support for the future adventures of Sam and Surrender-not; to Alok, Hash and Neeraj, my partners at Houghton Street Capital for their understanding and patience; and to the good people at the Glenfarclas Distillery for their fine bottlings, especially the 25-year-old, which proved invaluable to the creative process.

  A special thank you to my mother Suchitra Mukherjee for her faith and constant love, and to my father, who passed away last year, without whose nurture, love and guidance I would be nothing, and who taught me that looks, charm and wit are far more valuable than hard work.

  The biggest thank you, of course, goes to my wife, Sonal, for her patience, her unwavering support and her love, for which I give thanks every day.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  EPUB ISBN: 9781473522466

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  Copyright © Abir Mukherjee 2016

  Abir Mukherjee has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Harvill Secker in 2016

  (First published in the United Kingdom by Random House in 2016)

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library