‘But how exactly do the Suri family and the Rajah fit together?’
‘At the moment, I’ve no idea. Maybe it’s money. If Verghese is behind the violence, he has to have money to pay the thugs who do his bidding.’
‘There’s enough money in this place to equip two armies,’ she protested.
‘But it’s not ready cash. It’s money tied up in expensive tapestries, gold vases, precious jewels. Verghese may initially have had a safe full of rupees, but he must have been paying men to stir up violence for some time, and the more violence he creates, the more money he’ll need. The bank is not an option. They would suspect where the money was going and report it to central government. Unless, of course, there’s a private Sikaner bank. That’s always a possibility. But my guess is that he’s selling off the crown jewels.’
‘And the Suris?’
‘Someone has to sell the goods and who better than a slime like Suri.’
‘And the families knew each other,’ she said eagerly. ‘Suri’s sister married the Rajah’s son. They must have kept in some kind of touch.’
‘There were probably years when there was no contact. When Karan was killed, for instance, and Parvati driven from her family. But that doesn’t mean communication couldn’t be reinstated. If Verghese needed money, Suri might have been employed to sell on the black market. You said his house was stuffed with antiques. He’d have been more than happy to oblige his one-time relative. No doubt there was a tidy commission involved and if I’m right about a catastrophe looming, he must have been doing a fair amount of selling of late.’
He was sure that he’d guessed right but it didn’t exactly help. They were prisoners and likely to remain so, unless the Rajah had ideas of getting rid of them entirely. That would be foolish of him since their disappearance would almost certainly bring retribution. If they didn’t return, Mike would alert every branch of authority. But the man was half-mad. He had to be to contemplate the kind of massacre Grayson suspected was in the offing. Perhaps the old man calculated that once mayhem ruled, another two dead bodies would go unremarked. And the more he thought of it, the more certain he was that mayhem did threaten. Something far, far worse than the sporadic violence the region had seen up until now. Some last great push. That’s how the Rajah would see it, he was sure. The man would go down fighting and hundreds, if not thousands, would perish with him.
He couldn’t allow that to happen. He had to get out of here and get Daisy to safety. But she hadn’t been far wrong when she’d said escape was impossible. He’d tried to rally her spirits but privately conceded her point. The only chance he could see lay with the guard who brought them meals. Presumably a man would arrive with food, if the Rajah wanted them to stay alive, and for the moment he must. They couldn’t be expected to exist on two gelatinous bowls of porridge. So the food would arrive, he thought, and if there were just one guard—maybe even two, if he were quick—he might just manage it. The heavies who’d brought them down here had left him unbound, for which he was thankful. He suspected he’d gone unmolested because he was seen as an English gentleman. The kind of gentleman the Rajah knew well and despised equally. An Englishman who played by the rules, he thought wryly. Except that he didn’t.
He pulled up the second chair and sat down beside Daisy. Neither of them spoke for a long time. The only sound to break the oppressive silence was the constant drip of water from the outer walls and an occasional scurry of small feet as the mice played hide and seek in an adjoining cell. Daisy didn’t appear to hear them, but in any case, she was unlikely to panic. She had survived attempted murder, a ne’er-do-well husband and the rigours of the London Blitz. She would survive a few mice, he thought. Even a few rats.
She had fallen into a fitful doze where she sat, her feet and fingers occasionally twitching and then being deliberately stilled as she forced herself awake. There was something she was struggling to remember. Something beyond this cell, beyond last night’s disaster, beyond even the search for Javinder. Something of the utmost importance. But what was it? Her mind jolted first in one direction, then another, a dizzying, random lurching, where nothing met, nothing connected, nothing made sense. And her eyelids were so very heavy and pulling her down into a blessed nothingness. To a place of peace. But she mustn’t stay. She must make herself remember. Then it was there, floating in the spaces of her mind. The ring. The fulfilment of her quest, the end of a long, long journey. That moment when she’d first glimpsed the ring had disappeared beneath a torrent of guilt. Guilt and recrimination at pushing Grayson into this terrible predicament, at sentencing Javinder to almost certain death. But now it was once again before her eyes. The ring.
‘Adeep’s ring,’ she said suddenly.
Grayson looked across at her.
‘Did you notice his ring?’ The question quivered with a suppressed excitement.
‘I saw you were unable to take your eyes off it. Was it that fabulous?’
‘It wasn’t special, a simple trinket as Adeep said.’ Her expression belied the downbeat words. ‘It once belonged to Karan Verghese.’
‘Which is why I imagine Adeep took such pride in wearing it. The ring makes him the true successor.’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘but there’s something else.’ She seemed to have difficulty continuing, and he waited. Then the words came tumbling out. ‘It was fashioned around the same image as my mother’s brooch. It was the emblem of the goddess Nandni Mata, the daughter.’
‘That girl gets everywhere,’ he said lightly, but she could see he’d begun to feel uncomfortable. He thought her disturbed or exhilarated, or both. Whatever it was, he didn’t like where the conversation was going.
‘But she doesn’t, that’s the point,’ Daisy said earnestly. ‘She doesn’t get everywhere. In all the time I was in India, I saw her image only twice. Once at the temple you took me to, and once when I really looked at the photograph of my mother. And now I’ve seen it a third time, on a ring belonging to Karan Verghese who just happened to have been a patient at the Pavilion hospital at the same time as my mother was nursing there.’
‘I don’t see how that’s significant.’
He was playing down her discovery, she thought, fearing no doubt that it would end in tears.
‘They knew each other,’ she said. ‘Karan must have given her the brooch.’
‘That’s quite a jump to make. But what if he did? Perhaps she helped him in some way. Perhaps they were friends.’
‘They were lovers,’ she said flatly. ‘They had to be. He gave my mother the brooch; she gave him the ring. A lovers’ exchange. The ring would have been returned to India when he died on the battlefield. The Rajah wouldn’t have known who gave his son the ring, and if he still had feelings for Karan, he might have kept it as a memento of a lost son.’
‘Lovers! But that’s a preposterous idea. A wild stab in the dark, even for you. You mustn’t pursue such a crazy notion. If you were right, it would mean—’
She looked directly at him, her gaze unwavering. ‘It would mean that Karan Verghese was my father.’
He stared back at her for several long minutes, his face a study of incredulity. ‘That’s impossible. More than impossible.’ He had to dissuade her from such a lunatic idea.
‘The dates fit,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Karan died at the Somme in July 1916, and I was born early the following year. Before he died, he wrote to Parvati telling her their marriage was over, that he wasn’t coming back to India when the war ended. He’d met an Englishwoman and fallen in love. I know that’s true. Anish told me that he read that letter from his father years later, and hated the man for what he’d planned to do. The Englishwoman was my mother, Grayson. She had to be.’
She took a large gulp of air, but it didn’t prevent the tears from spilling down her face. ‘Her lover died before I was born—he probably didn’t even know my mother was pregnant. That’s why nobody ever came for me.’
The best he could do was pat her hand ineffectu
ally. He’d been thrown completely off balance by her fervent acceptance of what seemed to him romantic fantasy. It was clear, though, that the discovery of the ring had affected her profoundly, and he tried to be diplomatic. ‘I suppose it might have happened as you say, but if so, it would be an extraordinary twist of fortune.’
She got up from the hard, wooden chair and for some minutes walked up and down, from one wall of the cramped cell to the other. ‘I know it sounds far-fetched,’ she conceded at last, ‘but it explains so much.’
‘Why you were consigned to the Cobb Street orphanage?’
‘It explains being an unloved orphan, yes, but a lot more too. My skin colour, for instance. For a long time, I’ve suspected that my father was Indian. I told you as much. And that woman at the Officers’ Club all those years ago, her words are ingrained in my memory. She looked at me and said, Touch of the tar brush, I reckon.’
He got up and walked over to her, stilling her restless pacing. ‘Daisy, my love, I’ve no idea who this woman was, but your complexion is certainly no darker than many English skins. We’re a mongrel race.’
‘It’s not an English skin, though, is it?’ she insisted. ‘And there’s the fact that when I arrived in India for the first time, I immediately felt I’d come home. And I went on feeling that, even though bad things were happening to me.’
He hunched his shoulders, trying to quell his exasperation. This was getting out of hand. They were into impressions now, vague feelings of belonging and not belonging that his hard-headedness judged pointless. He might as well say that when he first walked through the hallowed doors of the Secret Intelligence Service and found work and colleagues that were congenial, he knew he’d been born to be an SIS officer.
She loosened her hands from his grip and resumed her slow walk to the far wall, then turned and paused. She wasn’t giving up.
‘And Anish,’ she said.
‘What about him?’
‘You do realise that this makes him my half-brother? That’s why I felt such closeness to him.’
‘A half-brother who would have had you killed.’ He couldn’t resist the jibe. He needed to bring her down to earth.
‘I loved him. I’ve grieved for him,’ she went on. ‘It’s why I haven’t been able to get over his death.’
And why, he thought, this obsession has grown too strong and too wild. But if there was just a chance that she was right—and he had to concede there was an outside chance—then Talin Verghese was her grandfather. The Rajah had imprisoned his granddaughter in one of his dungeons. It was a thought he didn’t share, but it wouldn’t be long before the realisation dawned on her. The realisation, too, that she had a grandfather who was willing to kill and maim to maintain his privileged existence.
He had to shut down the conversation before she got that far. If they were to have any chance of escape, he needed her calm and with a clear mind. ‘It’s a lot to take in and now is probably not the best time. You should sleep while you can. The bed hardly looks inviting but it’s a good deal better than the flagstones.’
She seemed about to argue, but then drifted across to one of the narrow straw pallets. ‘How long do you think they’ll keep us here?’
‘Until they’ve decided what to do with us.’
He saw her scared face and berated himself for his clumsiness. He hadn’t meant to frighten her. ‘I doubt they’ll kill a British government agent and a visiting tourist.’ He wasn’t at all sure but there was no point in alarming her unnecessarily. ‘And while they’re deciding what to do, rescue will be on its way. I haven’t been able to get through to Mike as I promised him.’
‘How does that help?’
‘He’s expecting my call and when he doesn’t get it and no other message reaches him, he’ll know we’re in trouble. He’ll mobilise the army to come looking for us. I had words with the area commander before we left Jasirapur.’
All that was true, but it was the timing that was making him anxious. It would take several days for Mike to get worried enough to ask for help. Then his colleague would have to convince the army chiefs that the situation was dangerous and that they should intervene. And more time for the military to arrive. He wasn’t sure just how many hours they had.
But his mention of Mike seemed to comfort her, because she settled herself on the hard truckle bed and closed her eyes. He lay down on the other pallet, his head teeming with one plan after another. Everything he considered seemed to have a crucial flaw and eventually he was forced back to his first idea, that the guard might in some way be distracted and then overpowered. He would have to wait and see what happened when their next meal arrived.
When it did, there were two guards. Not what he’d hoped for. One stood outside wielding the key, while the other carried a tray of food into the cell. It smelt marginally more appetising than the breakfast gruel, but fell a long way short of yesterday’s feast. He stayed lying on the bunk while the guard put the tray on the table and backed out of the room, keeping the pair of them in sight the whole time.
If there were always to be two guards, how best to tackle them? His mind began its restless churn again. When he was certain he’d devised the best plan possible, he went over to where she was sleeping. Or wasn’t sleeping, he thought. Her eyes were closed and her legs scrunched into a tight knot. She looked horribly vulnerable and he cursed himself for ever agreeing to bring her here. He knelt down at the bedside and stroked the part of her arm that was visible.
‘They’ve brought some food, Daisy. Some rice and vegetables—pretty frugal, but it doesn’t look too bad. You’ve got to eat something—you’re going to need all your strength in a short while.’
And then he explained just what he wanted her to do.
Her stomach had started fluttering unpleasantly the minute Grayson told her his plan. It seemed risky, highly risky, but she understood there was no other choice if they were to have the smallest chance of escape. And he seemed intent on escape for there was no further talk of rescue. She was to play an important part in his plan, and that in itself was miraculous. She’d thought herself unforgiven, thought he’d never absolve her from destroying whatever hope he’d had of rescuing Javinder. Before their arrest, he’d hardly spoken a word. He’d seemed unable even to look at her. But once they’d been thrown into this wretched cell, he’d suppressed whatever anger he still felt and shown her only kindness. He’d even listened when she’d poured out what she believed was the truth of her identity, though to him it must seem nothing but wild speculation. He was a good man, a staunch friend, what Connie would have called ‘a keeper’. He was a man she could trust with her life. She couldn’t truly believe they would escape from this terrible place, but if ever they did, she would remember that.
The afternoon wore on, the light gradually fading from the small oblong grille above. She felt her shoulders tighten and her hands grow clammy. Any moment now the guards would bring supper, and they must make their break for freedom. She could see Grayson listening intently, and then his signal came. He’d told her she needed to stage the best performance of her life, and she retreated to the bed in readiness. As soon as she heard the first distant footsteps, she began moaning, pulling her legs up to her chin and rocking herself from side to side. Her hands clutched fretfully at the lumpy straw. She could only hope her acting would pass as realistic.
Meanwhile, Grayson had leapt to the iron door and was banging on its bars, making as much noise as he possibly could. ‘Help,’ he yelled, ‘you men, help! I’ve been calling for hours.’ That was a clever touch, she thought. They would never know it for a lie. The cell must be many feet underground and way below the servants’ own quarters. The two men came up to the cell and peered in. They looked confused by the clamour.
‘She’s ill, damn you. Can’t you see? What was it you put in those vegetables?’
The man carrying the tray shook his head vacantly. ‘Nothing.’
‘Something bad must have got into the food. She’s been like th
is for an age—’ Grayson flung his arm towards the bed ‘—and she’s getting worse. I’ve called and called, and not one of you came. She needs a doctor.’
‘We go to ask—later.’ The heavyweight with the keys appeared unimpressed by Daisy’s theatricals.
‘Then ask, man, and do it now or her death will be on your hands.’
She glimpsed the other servant from the corner of her eye and saw that he was visibly shaken. He muttered a hurried, ‘Yes, yes,’ and put the tray down on the floor outside the cell. He was making off rapidly back down the corridor when his comrade shouted after him. ‘Deliver the food, Manu. We can ask later.’
‘No, no, urgent,’ was all they heard.
The remaining guard stayed outside the door, the keys hanging from a belt on one side of his shirt. ‘Back!’ he barked at Grayson, who was still clutching the bars of the cell door. She hoped he was as stupid as he sounded.
‘Okay, I’m going.’ Grayson feinted a few steps and then said over his shoulder, ‘Your friend has dropped his keys. I think you should know that.’
The man looked down on the floor for the non-existent keys and, before he realised that he was the only one to possess any, Grayson had leapt forward and shoved his arm through the narrow gap in the bars. His hand was on the man’s throat. There was the most horrible rattle as the Indian fought for breath. Daisy hoped she would never hear such a noise again in her life and it seemed to go on for ever.
There was a thud as their jailor’s body met the floor. Grayson bent down and put his fingers on the man’s neck. ‘Don’t fret.’ He looked up and grinned at her. ‘He’s still alive. Just. Out for the count but not for too long. We have to move quickly.’
He unhooked the ring of keys from the man’s belt and flicked through them, choosing the largest. He was right. The door swung open. ‘Sesame! Come on.’ He was at her side, dragging her towards the door.
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