‘Do you know where you’re going?’ I asked.
The ADC shot me a look that could have frozen the Ganges.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately the roads towards Chowringhee are closed for a religious procession. We are therefore required to take an alternative route through the Maidan.’
Though this seemed an odd choice, it was a pleasant day and there were worse ways of spending it than cruising through the park in a Rolls-Royce. In the rear, Surrender-not was in conversation with the prince.
‘So, Adi, what is it you wanted to talk about?’
I turned in time to see the prince’s features darken.
‘I’ve received some letters,’ he said, fiddling with the diamond collar button on his silk tunic. ‘It’s probably nothing, but when I heard from your brother that you’re now a detective sergeant, I thought I might seek your advice.’
‘What sort of letters?’
‘To be honest, calling them letters affords them an importance they hardly deserve. They’re just notes.’
‘And when did you receive them?’ I asked.
‘Last week, back in Sambalpore. A few days before we left for Calcutta.’
‘Do you have them with you?’
‘They’re in my suite,’ said the prince. ‘You’ll see them soon enough. Although why aren’t we there yet?’ He turned irritably to his ADC. ‘What’s going on, Shekar?’
‘Diversions, Your Highness,’ replied the ADC.
‘These letters,’ I asked, ‘did you show them to anyone?’
The prince gestured towards Arora. ‘Only to Shekar.’
And how did you receive them? I take it that one doesn’t just post a letter to the Crown Prince of Sambalpore, care of the royal palace?’
‘That’s the curious thing,’ replied the prince. ‘Both had been left in my rooms: the first under the pillows in my bed; the second in the pocket of a suit. And both said the same thing . . .’
The car slowed as we approached the sharp left turn onto Chowringhee. From out of nowhere, a man in the saffron robes of a Hindu priest leaped out into our path. He was little more than an orange blur. The car came shuddering to a halt and he seemed to have disappeared under the front axle.
‘Did we hit him?’ asked the prince, rising from his position on the back seat. The ADC cursed, flung open his door and jumped out. He hurried round to the front and I saw him kneel over the prone man. Then came a thud, the sickening sound of something heavy connecting with flesh and bone, and the ADC seemed to collapse.
‘My God!’ exclaimed the prince. From his standing position, he had a better view of the situation. I threw open my door, but before I could move, the man in saffron had stood up. He had wild eyes between dirty, matted hair, an unkempt beard and what looked like streaks of ash smeared vertically on his forehead. In his hand an object glinted and my insides turned to ice.
‘Get down!’ I shouted to the prince while fumbling with the button on my holster, but he was like a rabbit hypnotised by a cobra. The attacker raised his revolver and fired. The first shot hit the car’s windscreen with a crack, shattering the glass. I turned to see Surrender-not desperately grabbing at the prince, trying to pull him down.
All too late.
As the next two shots rang out, I knew they would find their mark. Both hit the prince squarely in the chest. For a few seconds he just stood there, as though he really was divine and the bullets had passed straight through him. Then blotches of bright crimson blood began to soak through the silk of his tunic and he crumpled, like a paper cup in the monsoon.
TWO
My first thought was to tend to the prince, but there was no time, not while there were still bullets left in the assassin’s gun.
I rolled out of my seat and onto the roadside just as he fired a fourth shot. I couldn’t say where the bullet ended up, only that it hadn’t passed through me. I dived back behind the Rolls’s open door as the assailant fired once more. The bullet struck the car just in front of my face. I’ve seen bullets rip through sheet metal as if it was no more than tissue paper, so it seemed a miracle when this one failed to penetrate the door. Later, I’d learn that the prince’s Rolls was plated with solid silver. Money well spent.
I shifted position, expecting a sixth shot, but instead came the wonderful click of an empty gun. That suggested a revolver with only five chambers or an assassin with only five bullets, and though the former was rare, the latter was unheard of. I’d never yet met a professional killer who skimped on ammunition. Taking my chance, I pulled my Webley from its holster, rose, fired, and missed, the bullet splintering the trunk of a nearby tree. The attacker was already running.
On the back seat, Surrender-not was kneeling over the prince, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the man’s chest with his shirt. At the front of the car, Colonel Arora rose unsteadily to his feet and put one hand to his bloodied scalp. He’d been lucky. His turban seemed to have absorbed much of the blow. Without it, he might not have got up quite so quickly — or at all.
‘Get the prince to a hospital!’ I shouted to him, as I sprinted after the attacker. The man had a head start of about twenty-five yards and had already made it to the far side of Chowringhee.
He’d chosen the location of his attack well. Chowringhee was an odd street. The opposite pavement was one of the busiest thoroughfares in town, its boutiques, hotels and colonnaded arcade packed with pedestrians. This side, however, open to the sun and bordered only by the open expanse of the Maidan, was generally deserted. The only people on this side of the road were a couple of coolies, and they weren’t exactly the sort who came running to help at the sound of gunshots.
I chased after the assassin, narrowly avoiding several cars as I raced across the four lanes of traffic. I’d have lost him in the throng outside the whitewashed walls of the Indian Museum if it hadn’t been for his bright orange robes. Firing into the crowd was too dangerous. In any case, taking a shot at someone dressed as a Hindu holy man in front of so many people would have been madness. I had enough to worry about without instigating a religious riot.
The assassin dived into the maze of lanes that ran off to the east of Chowringhee. He was in good shape, or at least better shape than I was, and if anything, the distance between us was lengthening. I reached the top of the lane, tried to catch my breath and shouted at him to stop. I didn’t hold out any real hope — it’s not often that an assassin armed with a gun and a good head start does the decent thing and heeds such a request, but to my surprise, the man did just that. He stopped, spun round, raised his gun and fired. He must have reloaded on the run. Pretty impressive. I threw myself to the ground in time to hear the bullet explode into the wall beside me, sending shards of brick and powder into the air. I scrambled to my feet and returned fire, again hitting nothing more than air. The man turned and fled into the labyrinth of streets. He turned left into an alley and I lost sight of him. I kept running. From ahead of me came a strange rumble: the sound of massed voices and the rhythmic beating of drums. Emerging from the lane, I turned the corner onto Dharmatollah Street and came to a dead stop. The wide thoroughfare was jammed with people, natives to a man. The roar was deafening. Voices were chanting in time with the drums. Towards the head of the throng was a monstrous wheeled contraption, three storeys tall and resembling a Hindu temple. The thing was moving slowly, pulled along by a mass of men hauling ropes a hundred feet long. I searched frantically for the assassin, but it was no use. The scrum was too thick and too many of them wore saffron shirts. The man had disappeared.
THREE
‘How the hell am I supposed to explain this to the Viceroy?’ roared Lord Taggart, slamming his fist down on his desk. ‘The crown prince of a sovereign state is gunned down in broad daylight while in the presence of two of my officers, who not only fail to stop it, but also allow the assassin to escape scot-free!’ The vein in his left temple looked ready to burst. ‘I’d suspend the pair of you if the situation weren’t so serious.’
It wasn’t often he lost his rag, but I couldn’t blame him. Surrender-not and I had been working together for over a year now, and it was fair to say this wasn’t exactly our finest hour. Surrender-not was probably in shock from witnessing the death of his friend. And as for me, I was suffering from what felt like the onset of influenza, but which I knew heralded something quite different.
After losing the assassin, I’d made my way back to the Maidan to find the Rolls gone. Other than tyre marks on the concrete and some broken glass, there was precious little sign that anything had taken place. I’d scoured the grass verge, though, and found two shell casings. Pocketing them, I’d hailed a taxi and set off for the Medical College Hospital on College Street. It was the closest medical facility to the scene and the best in Calcutta. Surrender-not would have been sure to take the prince there.
It was all over by the time I arrived. The doctors had tried frantically to stabilise him, but the moment the bullets struck, the prince was as good as dead. There was little else to do but return to Lal Bazar and break the news to the Commissioner.
‘Tell me again how you lost him.’
‘I chased him from Chowringhee,’ I replied, ‘through the back streets as far as Dharmatollah. I couldn’t shoot at him there on account of the crowds. Once in the alleys, I loosed off a shot or two.’
‘And you missed?’
It was an odd question given that he already knew the answer.
‘Yes, sir.’
Taggart looked incredulous.
‘For Christ’s sake, Wyndham!’ he erupted. ‘You spent four years in the army. Surely you must have learned to shoot straight?’
I could have pointed out that I’d spent half of that time in military intelligence reporting directly to him. For most of the rest of the time I’d sat in a trench and done my damnedest to avoid being blown up by German shells that came out of nowhere. The truth was that in almost four years, I’d hardly shot anyone.
Taggart regained his composure somewhat. ‘Then what happened?’
‘He continued running towards Dharmatollah Street,’ I replied, ‘where I lost him in some religious procession – thousands of people pulling some monstrous contraption.’
‘The Juggernaut, sir,’ said Surrender-not.
‘What?’ asked Taggart.
‘The procession that Captain Wyndham got caught up in, sir. It’s the Rath Yatra – the progress of the chariot of the Hindu deity, Lord Jagannath. Each year his chariot is pulled through the streets by thousands of devotees. At some point, the British confused the name of the god with his chariot. It’s from him that we derive the English word juggernaut’.
‘What did he look like?’ asked Taggart.
Surrender-not looked perplexed. ‘Lord Jagannath?’
‘The assassin, Sergeant, not the deity.’
‘Lean, medium height, dark skin,’ I said. ‘Bearded, with long, matted hair that looked as though it hadn’t been washed in months. And he had some strange markings on his forehead: two lines of white ash, joined at the bridge of the nose, on either side of a thinner, red line.’
‘Does that mean anything to you, Sergeant?’ asked Taggart. When it came to native idiosyncrasies, the Commissioner, like me, had long since learned that it was best to ask one of their own.
‘It has a religious significance,’ replied Surrender-not. ‘Priests often wear such markings.’
‘Do you think the assassin might have something to do with that religious procession?’ asked Taggart.
‘It’s possible, sir,’ replied Surrender-not. ‘It may have been more than simple coincidence that he ran straight into the crowd on Dharmatollah.’
‘He was wearing saffron-coloured robes,’ I added. ‘There were a lot of them wearing saffron in the crowd.’
‘So this might have been a religious attack?’ surmised Taggart. He seemed almost relieved. ‘God, I hope so. Anything’s better than a political motive.’
‘Then again, the robes may have been a disguise,’ I cautioned.
‘But why would a religious extremist want to kill the Crown Prince of Sambalpore?’ asked Surrender-not. ‘In the time I knew him, I’d hardly have described him as religious.’
‘That’s for you and the captain here to find out,’ said Taggart. ‘And let’s not discount the religious angle. The Viceroy would prefer to hear that this is a religious attack and has nothing to do with his precious talks. Sambalpore brings with it almost a dozen other princely states and the Viceroy hopes this momentum will persuade some of the more recalcitrant middle-ranking kingdoms to sign up.’ He took off his spectacles, wiped them with a handkerchief and replaced them gently onto his face.
‘In the meantime, you two are going to catch this assassin and you’re going to do it in double-quick time. The last thing we need is a bunch of these maharajas and nabobs leaving town on the pretext that we can’t guarantee their safety.
‘Now if that’s all, gentlemen,’ he said, rising from behind his desk.
‘There’s something else you should know, sir,’ I said.
He looked at me wearily.
‘What should I know, Sam?’
‘The prince had received some letters that seemed to be troubling him. That’s why he wanted to meet Sergeant Banerjee today.’
His face fell. ‘You’ve seen these letters?’
‘No, sir. Though the prince informed us that he had them at his suite at the Grand Hotel.’
‘Well, you’d better get over there and retrieve them then, hadn’t you?’
‘I was planning on doing so immediately after briefing you, sir.’
‘And what else are you planning on doing, Captain?’ he said tersely.
‘I’d like to interview the prince’s ADC and also the Dewan of Sambalpore, a chap called Davé. It looked like there might have been some tension between him and the prince. And I want to get a sketch of the attacker made up. We can get it in to tomorrow morning’s papers, both English and native. If he’s still in the city, hopefully someone will know where he is.’
Taggart paused, then pointed to the door.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘What are you waiting for?’
At the opposite end of the corridor from Taggart’s office was a room that, it was rumoured, had the best views south over the city. It should have been occupied by a senior officer, but on account of the good light, it had been allocated to a civilian, the police force’s resident sketch artist, a diminutive Scotsman by the name of Wilson.
I knocked and entered to see a picture window and walls covered in pencil-sketches, the vast majority of them head-and-shoulders portraits of individuals, mostly men and mostly native. In the centre of the room, in front of an inclined desk, sat Wilson. He was a grizzled chap, with the pugnacious attitude of a terrier and a passion for beer and the Bible, indulging in the latter on a Sunday and devoting most other evenings to the former. Indeed, it was the coming together of the two that had led him to Calcutta in the first place. And after a round or three, he’d happily tell you his life story: of how, in his younger days, his ambition had been to drink his way from one end of the bar to the other in the Bon Accord public house in Glasgow, something he never quite managed without being hospitalised. In hospital he’d found God, and God, in what I presumed must have been a joke, had told him to come to Calcutta as a missionary, a task for which he was temperamentally unsuited, his eagerness for a punch-up being rather at odds with the missionary ethos, and in the end he’d parted ways with the brethren and somehow ended up sketching for the Bengal Police.
‘It’s no’ often we see you up here, Captain Wyndham,’ he said, with a grin on his face. He rose to his feet. ‘And the ever-faithful Sergeant Banerjee too! What a ple
asure this is. Have ye come tae admire the view?’
‘We’ve come in search of a good artist,’ I said. ‘Do you know of any?’
‘Aye, very funny. Now tell me what ye want.’
‘We need a sketch done. An Indian chap, and we need it urgently.’
‘You’re in luck, boys,’ he said. ‘Indian chaps are my forté. What’s your man done, by the way?’
‘He shot a prince,’ said Surrender-not.
‘That’s quite serious.’ He nodded sagely. ‘So where’s your eye-witness?’
‘You’re looking at them,’ I said.
He raised an eyebrow, then laughed. ‘You two? You were on the scene when the big cheese got knocked off?’
I nodded.
And you let the shooter get away? My word, Wyndham, a wee bit careless that, no? What did old Taggart have to say about it?’
‘He was philosophical.’
Aye, I’ll bet he was. I’m sure he had some choice philosophical words for you. Swears like a docker does that one when he’s angry.’
And how would you know?’ I asked.
‘His office is down the corridor, man. I can hear him! Call yourself a detective, man? I’m surprised he’s no’ got the two of you on traffic duty, checkin’ the licences of rickshaw wallahs. Anyway, ye better get on wi’ describin’ the chap. I’ve got better things tae do, even if the two o’ you huvnae.’
I started on the description, the beard, the ash on the forehead. Eventually Wilson shook his head. ‘So you got given the slip by a priest? Good show, gentlemen. I wish I’d been there tae see it.’
‘The man was armed,’ said Surrender-not loyally.
‘Aye, and so was yer boss, here,’ he replied, pointing a charcoal-smeared finger at me.
In between the running commentary, Wilson sketched away, adjusting the subject’s hair or eyes in response to our comments. Finally I was satisfied.
A Necessary Evil Page 2