The Burning Grounds
Also by Abir Mukherjee
A Rising Man A Necessary Evil Smoke and Ashes
Death in the East
The Shadows of Men
Hunted
The Burning Grounds ABIR MUKHERJEE
This novel is a work of fiction. In some cases true life figures appear but their actions and conversations are entirely fictitious. All other characters, and all names of places and descriptions of events, are the products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons or places is entirely coincidental.
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First published by Harvill in 2025
Copyright © Abir Mukherjee 2025
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The only thing that separates women of colour from anyone else is opportunity.
Viola Davis
Day 1 Saturday
ONE
Sam Wyndham
If you’re Hindu and you’re dead, chances are you’ll wind up at the burning ghats.
From twice-born Brahmin to wretched untouchable, this is where you’ll find yourself in the end. Countless lives, disparate journeys, yet they all end in the same place, here, upon the funeral pyres at the river’s edge. For such an inequitable religion, the burning ghats are a pretty decent leveller.
Some get here early of course, eschewing the recommended three score and ten, often hastened towards reincarnation by less than natural causes, anything from a stranger’s knife in your ribs, to a strychnine-laced hilsa fish prepared by a disgruntled wife, and this night, as the rains beat down and the heavens thundered, it was one such early bird that I was staring at.
A bolt of lightning arced through the sky, for a moment illuminating his face. Jogendra Prasad Mullick – JP to his friends – looked up at me from the mud yet seeing nothing on account of him being dead; a nice, three-inch incision across his throat. Neat job, too. His killer knew his business. If he ever fancied a career change, there was probably room for him among the surgeons at the police hospital on Amhurst Street.
J. P. Mullick’s career, however, much like his windpipe, had been tragically severed. I didn’t know the man other than by what I read
in the papers, but on that measure, everyone in the city knew him. You couldn’t open the pages of almost any rag without coming across an article extolling his business acumen or his latest act of philanthropy: the establishment of another medical clinic in the name of his dear departed mother, or the bankrolling of yet another tedious, headache-inducing Bengali theatrical production. Yet all that generosity of spirit seemed not to have done his own spirit much good.
Poor Mullick. He was rich, generous, disinclined towards politics and dead. Just the sort of Indian we liked, give or take the last part. Tycoon, patron of the arts and the burra-est of burra babus. A man among men, right up until the point an hour or so ago when he wasn’t. Because from then on he’d been lying here in the mud on the banks of the Hooghly, a shroud covering his modesty and a makeshift cot of wood and string sinking into the slime beneath him.
The stench of the river mingled with the scent of damp wood from the sodden funeral pyres. If it hadn’t been for the downpour, Mullick’s body might have been cremated and we’d be none the wiser. But for once, the corpse burners weren’t doing a roaring trade.
Singh, my subaltern, held the umbrella over my head and muttered a prayer. He was a hulking great chap, like Ayers Rock on legs, an attribute that came in handy these days, what with the natives’ growing disregard for the authority of a white uniform, or a white face for that matter.
‘Singh,’ I said, ‘kindly do the needful.’
The young man handed me the brolly, then lumbered forward like a tank division, dropped to his haunches and began going through Mullick’s clothing with the dexterity of a pickpocket at Dum-Dum junction. On another day I might have done the job myself, but old JP was fast becoming one with the river and I wasn’t overly keen on getting stuck in the mud of the Hooghly, however holy.
Singh looked up. ‘Nothing, sir. Body is picked clean.’
His expression was pained, as though he took the dead man’s inability to hold on to his possessions as a personal failure. Poor Singh. He was a nice enough lad. Not too much between the ears, which was surprising given the ample volume of his head, but nevertheless keen as mustard.
I turned to the lal-pagri, the red-turbaned constable who stood sheepishly at a distance, leaning on his lathi.
‘Who found him?’
The man gave a lopsided grin. ‘Me only, sahib.’
‘And he was just lying there?’
‘No, sahib. He was being carried here by some corpse bearers.’
Corpse bearers.
Every district in Calcutta had them. Untouchables of course, but not of the clan that worked within the confines of the burning grounds. They transported the bodies of the deceased from their place of passing to here, their final journey, at least in this life. Ritual dictated they receive a meal from the family of the deceased for their troubles, but these days many preferred their hot rice to be supplemented with cold cash.
‘You saw them?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So where are they?’
He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I shout at them to stop, but they drop chowki here and run off.’
Of course they had. Nothing in this town was ever simple.
‘You get a good look at them?’
‘No, sahib. It was very dark already.’
‘You didn’t question them when they first came through the gates?’
The man grimaced. ‘No, sahib. I was doing my round.’
That may have been true, and then again maybe the dear constable had fallen asleep at his post and the men who’d brought
Mullick here had simply waltzed past him, dumped the body and run.
I looked him in the eye. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Hã, sir.’
‘And they were definitely corpse bearers, not goondahs ?’
His expression curdled. ‘They were old men, sir. Too skinny to be goondahs. Too poor-looking.’ The disgust in his face seemed genuine enough. Untouchables and thugs were different breeds, and it sounded like the constable had seen the former. In the distance, more of their kind were loitering, waiting for the rains to stop so that the funeral pyres could be prepared for the morning.
‘You think they killed him?’
‘I do not think so, sir.’
No, he was likely correct in his assessment. They would merely have been paid to bring the body here. Pay them enough and they wouldn’t ask too many questions, and ‘enough’ in this case probably wouldn’t have been a lot.
Close by, a clutch of white-clad mourners and semi-naked sanyasis waited, caught out by the sudden downpour, as four skeletal men struggled to carry the rotund remains of a Brahmin back from his sodden pyre to the shelter of what I took to be a temple. The Brahmin’s sacred thread was taut over his ample gut, restraining him from departing this life as though fearful for what the next might hold. When alive, the man would likely have shied away from the men who now carried him, recoiling even from their shadows for fear of ritual pollution. In death though, he seemed less concerned.
I turned to Singh. ‘You think they were going to burn Mullick’s body?’
The subaltern shook his head. ‘Not the ones who brought him, sir. Only the Doms can burn bodies. It is their preserve and their living.’
Of course, I should have recalled. The Doms: that special
sub-caste of untouchables who lived and worked within the confines of the burning ghats. Whoever had transported Mullick here would’ve known they couldn’t have burned his body themselves. The Doms would have beaten them to a pulp if they’d even tried. Cremation was a closed shop after all. If this were England, they’d probably be a guild – the honourable company of corpse burners – with their own livery and a great hall somewhere on the banks of the Thames. But this was India, and while outside the ghats they might be the lowest of the low, inside its grounds the Doms were bestowed a special respect. They were keepers of the sacred fire, the only ones authorised to maintain the funeral pyres, and they made a good living out of that fact. Rumour had it that the head Dom was a very rich man. His house, its lights burning in the distance, was certainly better appointed than my flat.
The question was, why had Mullick’s murderers brought his body here? Why risk getting stopped and arrested by the constable who should’ve been at the gate? A cold wind bristled, the rainlashed waters of the river shivered, and on the bank, stray marigold petals spiralled heavenward. I pulled my collar up against the chill. I’d been feeling the cold lately, which was ridiculous as this was Calcutta where the temperature never fell below forty even in the dead of winter. Maybe I was getting old, or maybe I was just going native.
An ambulance pulled up, bells clanging like a puja procession.
‘Cover the body,’ I said to Singh, then turned and headed in the direction of the main gate. ‘And make sure it gets to the mortuary. Tell the pathologist that our friend here was a VIP, and tell him I said it might be in his interests to make haste with the postmortem. Once word gets out, Lal Bazar will be breathing down his neck anyway. We might as well afford him a head start.’
Singh struggled to keep pace.
‘Hã, sir. You are not staying?’
There wasn’t much point. It was late, I was off the clock, and for
a good while now, I had fallen out of favour with the high priests of the Imperial Police Force. By the morning, an important case like this would be farmed out to someone else; someone . . . amenable; someone with only half a brain probably, but amenable.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m off to find a drink.’
TWO
Sam Wyndham
Calcutta.
It was impossible to love it unless you were a sadist of some sort. Impossible, that is, right up until the moment you realised you could no longer live anywhere else, and then you loved and hated it in equal measure. Calcutta was like the splinter that pierced your flesh, an exquisite pain that dulled and ossified till you stopped noticing; a foreign body that became part of you, assimilating you as you assimilated it, yet always there, always ready to hurt you when you pressed too hard. Calcutta was a fever dream, a melange of the infernal and the angelic, its gullees and paras brimming over with poverty and hunger and fear and brutality. And yet there was that other side too, oft caught only fleetingly, like glimpses from a speeding train, when the city showed you a different face, its humanity and its gentility. And then it was beautiful.
Calcutta was slum and cholera and palaces and culture, it was heat and dirt and white and brown all packed together till you could hardly breathe or tell where one ended and the other began; a hothouse that surrounded and pounded your senses till you accepted this most alien of aggregations as normal and maybe even the correct state of affairs. It was White Town and Black Town and a population segregated by the strokes of a council cartographer’s pen. Yet those lines, designed to divide by race, each day would
blur and fray and buckle a little more under the simple expedients of commerce and human nature. Because prosperity depended on trade, and trade depended on goodwill and interaction between the races, and because for British and Indian, at least, blood came second to bank balance.
If both races had one redeeming feature, that was it – a tolerance born of the implicit understanding that whatever we might profess to believe, deep down we knew we weren’t that different, certainly not different enough to prevent us from making money together, albeit granted that the relationship had been rather lopsided of late. And Calcutta, this bastard city – neither British nor Indian but a deeply flawed union of the two – was the most wondrous flowering of that tolerance.
I still hated it though.
It took a while to find a tonga. On nights like this, when the heavens opened and the roads flooded and even the rats set off in search of less benighted climes, any sort of transport was in high demand and their owners charging wallet-gouging rates. I took the price on the chin and told the driver to make for Park Street.
It was late now, or early depending on your proclivities. Gone 11 p.m., around the time when the city got interesting; when its choice venues opened for business: the clubs and the bars and the places where you only got in if you knew the right name to whisper in the right ear.
It was at times like these when the siren song of the opium sang loudest in my ears. I may have been clean for four years now, but clean and free are two different things. My former addiction still pulled at my senses, its tendrils reaching into my cerebellum, infiltrating my thoughts, sapping my will.
It didn’t get easier; each night, the battle had to be refought, won again, over and over without end; each success feeling less like a
victory and more like a stay of execution. The trick, as with so many things in life, was not to put yourself in the way of temptation, so I avoided those parts of town like Tiretti Bazar and Tangra where the opium houses knew me and would welcome me back like the prodigal son or possibly the fatted calf.
Other distractions helped too, and these days, my distraction of choice was a place called the Idle Fox, a gin joint owned by an Armenian called Petros, which, like its owner, had pretensions towards sophistication. When it came to race, though, Petros was a liberal and didn’t mind what your skin colour was, so long as your shirt was starched and your wallet was fat.
The Idle Fox was the sort of place where you’d find, if not the city’s crème de la crème, then at least the crème that maybe had been left out in the sun a little too long: the businessmen who’d made their money in ways that weren’t quite pukka; the bureaucrats who’d gone a little too native to be trusted; the second sons of minor maharajahs; and the educated, high-caste young Indian men who frequented such places for alcohol and an illicit thrill. Around all of them buzzed a bevy of rather attractive women, the kind with looks and brains and who, in a fairer world, wouldn’t have to spend their time trying to catch the eye of one of the men in here. But the world was what it was and the Idle Fox was the natural home to these people. It had dark wood, and dim lights, and leather-trimmed booths whose best days were behind them, and it was home to a Chinese singer named Mae with a voice like warm honey and a figure that curved in all the right places. Indeed, it was hard to decide what drew me to the place more: her or the booze. With my limited salary, I was hardly the Fox’s ideal patron, but Petros made an exception for men like me – men with potential, as he put it, which I took to mean men with the power to arrest him.
The doorman greeted me with a nod and opened the door.
Maybe it was the typhoon raging outside but the Fox seemed busier than usual, the air thick with cigar smoke and sandalwood incense and the tang of hard liquor. The usual subdued hum, which I appreciated for it allowed me to concentrate on the sound of Mae’s voice and maybe some of her other qualities, had tonight been replaced by a thrum of raucous voices and laughter, mainly from a gaggle of people I didn’t recognise and who had pushed Mae from her prime spot on the stage over to a corner by the grand piano, so that they might cut a rug or two. She put up with it but didn’t seem best pleased. It wasn’t conducive to the sort of evening I wished to enjoy and I might have headed straight for the door were it not for the storm still raging without and the fact that I had nowhere better to go.
To the sound of Mae’s tones fighting to be heard over the noise, I made my way over to the long mahogany counter, polished to within an inch of luminescence, behind which stood Axar, the barman, in front of mirrored shelves lined with an impressively diverse array of spirits. I pointed to a bottle and asked Axar for a double. He was as much a fixture of the place as Mae or the leak in the WC, dressed to the nines in white shirt, tie and double-breasted jacket. He poured a miserly measure and I took a seat on a high stool, turned to the stage and contemplated life as Mae leaned on the piano and sang about blue skies.
Recently, I had found myself drifting. I’m not a religious man, which is to say that the Lord and I have not seen eye to eye for some time now, not since the Somme anyway, though to be fair to Him, I have my doubts He was even there. And then, what with the untimely death of my wife in the epidemic at the end of the war, we never really had much of a chance for rapprochement seeing as I wasn’t interested in anything He might have to say in mitigation.
The problem with falling out with the Almighty though is that
it tends to leave rather a large void in one’s existence, and not just at Christmas, and voids by their very nature ought to be filled. In place of religion, I had espoused the philosophy that the universe was cold, capricious and made infinitely worse by the fact that mankind, the main actor on its stage, was for the most part, pretty damn awful.
Life, as far as I could tell, served no real purpose, which seemed a tragedy because that made it rather a waste of time and effort on everyone’s part. Some Nordic philosophers would tell you that the only sensible thing to do with life therefore was to end it quickly, which sounded perfectly sensible if you had to live in Scandinavia but seemed rather precipitous for the rest of us. Besides, suicide didn’t appeal to the contrarian in me. I wasn’t about to give either the universe or certain colleagues in the Imperial Police Force the satisfaction of seeing me dead, certainly not before the full-time whistle.
According to Freud, the path to happiness lay in fulfilment at work and in love, which was unfortunate, because I was hardly excelling at either. My relationship with Annie Grant had foundered of late, due apparently to my inability to move beyond an altar built to a deceased wife, and my general tendency to be an arse.
As for work, I had fallen somewhat out of favour for several years now, for reasons too tedious to mention, suffice it to say that I had followed my conscience and disobeyed the orders of my superiors, not once but twice. I had been sidelined, then frozen out of all but the most mundane of cases; and then, to add insult to a kick in the teeth, was forced to report to a new senior officer called Healey, who was about as competent as the man who’d suggested the Light Brigade take a little canter towards the Russian guns at Balaclava.
The real conundrum was why they hadn’t sacked me, or, for the matter, why I hadn’t resigned. I sipped my drink and, not for the first time, pondered the question. Maybe it was time to move on,
start afresh, maybe somewhere like South Africa for instance, or the Antipodes. Yet my pride would probably keep me here, at least until I had something positive to celebrate. I couldn’t bear Annie, or Healey, or anyone else thinking I’d left with my tail between my legs, and anyway, a broken man’s home was in a broken city; and they didn’t come more broken than Calcutta.
It was then that I saw her: a woman sitting at a table, flanked by half a dozen men in dinner jackets: slim, olive-skinned, and with a figure that could make you forget your troubles if only for a moment. She was the sort of woman you didn’t see too often. Not in Calcutta. Not anywhere. The type whose beauty could cause clocks to stop, empires to fall and a thousand ships to launch. The usual laws didn’t apply to women like her, maybe not even the laws of physics. I didn’t know her, and yet she looked familiar.
She must have felt the weight of my stare, for she turned in my direction and for an instant our eyes met. I found myself holding my breath and sitting up just that little bit straighter. Behind me, Axar called out: ‘Another whisky, sir?’
By the time I’d said yes, she’d turned away and was back in conversation with the men around her, smiling politely as some wag made a joke.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked Axar.
He raised an eyebrow as though concerned that I may have been living under a rock, or possibly in Daaca.
‘That is Estelle Morgan.’
‘Who?’
‘The actress? You must have seen her, Captain sahib. They call her the Tasmanian Angel.’
‘I don’t go to the cinema,’ I told him, but the name did ring a bell. Annie Grant had possibly mentioned her on one of the occasions she’d tried to persuade me to accompany her to the Globe or the Picture House.
‘You an aficionado of the silver screen, Axar?’
He beamed, exposing faultless white teeth, which soured, I thought, slightly into embarrassment.
‘I . . . like the movies, sahib.’
‘So what do you think brings this rose to our dungheap?’
He gave a shrug as though the question was better posed to a philosopher, and before I could get more out of him, he moved to serve another patron. I sipped my whisky and turned back to Mae onstage. Normally I’d have been happy to spend a few hours just propping up the bar and listening to her sing, but tonight my attention kept wandering to the woman at the table, the actress called Estelle Morgan.
The men hovered around her like bees around their queen – all except one gentleman, who sat next to her and looked at the others as though he detested them; either that or he was paying for all their drinks. From the vantage of my bar stool, I watched as waiters ferried them champagne that cost more than I earned in a month. It was all rather gauche, I thought, which is not to say that I wouldn’t have been right there beside them, doing the same thing, if I were in her company and my finances weren’t quite so terminal. Nevertheless I got the impression that she was going through the motions, listening to their stories and laughing at their jokes; but her posture was stiff and her laughter short.
She looked in my direction again, and this time when our eyes met, I was certain. Estelle Morgan was bored. It’s a gift I have – a policeman’s knack of being able to read a mind from a mere glance – or it might just have been wishful thinking. She threw me a hint of a smile and I raised my glass to her, drank down the last of the contents and then turned to Axar and ordered another. By now I was on to cheaper stuff, the kind that was far easier to appreciate once you’d already had a skinful.
When I turned back, Estelle Morgan was no longer in her seat.
Her erstwhile suitors, meanwhile, made awkward conversation among themselves like guests at a funeral. Maybe it was the alcohol dulling my senses, but I didn’t notice her until I caught the scent of her perfume and found her standing next to me, calling out to the barman.
‘I’d like to try a local cocktail. What would you recommend?’
Axar seemed as surprised to see her there as I was.
‘I could make you a Darjeeling Martini, memsahib,’ he stammered, ‘or maybe a Bengal Fizz?’
‘Tell me about the Martini.’
‘It’s gin, vermouth, a splash of cold Darjeeling tea, shaken with ice, then poured and served with a twist of lemon.’
‘And the Fizz?’
‘Rum, fresh lime juice, cucumber slices, mint leaves, watermelon syrup, soda water.’
‘Which is better?’
Axar shrugged. ‘I could not say, ma’am.’
‘I’d go with the Martini,’ I said.
She turned to me and looked me over. If it was some sort of appraisal, I must have passed, because she smiled, and in that moment I could have happily spent eternity just looking at her.
‘Why thank you, Mr . . . ?’
‘Wyndham,’ I said, ‘Captain Wyndham, but please, call me Sam.’
‘Captain Sam,’ she said, as though trying out the name, and to my ears at least it sounded rather perfect coming from her lips. ‘A nautical man?’
‘I would be,’ I said, ‘but I get seasick in the bath.’
She exhaled a laugh and that made me happier than it should have.
‘I was a captain in the army, back in the war.’
That seemed to impress her.
‘And now?’
‘Now I’m a detective with the Imperial Police.’
That seemed to impress her even more.
‘A detective? Now I am intrigued.’
Women have a thing for detectives, assuming, that is, they aren’t personally being investigated. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s a fascination with death, but then they don’t exactly queue up to marry mortuary assistants or funeral directors, so maybe not.
‘What sort of things do you investigate?’
‘Murder, mostly,’ I said, which was rather stretching the truth these days, and gave her a look which suggested that the cares of the world rested on my stoic shoulders. ‘And you are?’ I asked, doing a decent act of feigning ignorance.
I thought I saw the flicker of something in her eyes.
‘Estelle,’ she said. ‘Estelle Morgan.’
‘Well, Estelle, as I said, I’d go with the Martini.’
She pondered for a moment.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Certainly,’ I said, and it was true, mainly because I’d never heard of the Bengal Fizz. Indeed, I had a suspicion Axar had just invented it right there on the spot.
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘maybe I’ll go with the Fizz,’ and gave me a teasing look which seemed to linger. ‘Will you join me?’
‘I make it a point of never saying no to a lady, or to a drink,’ I said.
I turned to Axar.
‘Two of your finest Bengal Fizzes, and put them on my slate.’
‘No,’ Estelle Morgan cut in. ‘Put them on the bill of my table over there.’
‘That’s most generous of your friends,’ I said. ‘Are you sure they won’t mind?’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘What makes you think they’re the ones paying?’
There was something in that comment, that streak of independence, that reminded me of my late wife, and for a moment I felt something akin to guilt.
‘Fair point,’ I conceded. ‘It’s just that the modern world has taken its time reaching us here in Calcutta. I’d expect your friends there to insist upon paying.’
She gave me a nod, as though honour had been satisfied. ‘They did insist as a matter of fact, at least for my previous drink, so it’s only right and proper that they pay for these too.’
Behind the bar, Axar filled a cocktail shaker with liquor and ice, closed the lid and set to work.
‘So, Estelle,’ I said, ‘am I to take it you’re new to Calcutta?’
‘You could say that.’
‘And how are you finding our fine city?’
Her eyes widened and she gave me the sort of smile that seemed a tad too bright.
‘I haven’t had a chance to see much of it yet.’
‘I’m surprised,’ I said. ‘I’d have thought those gentlemen over there would be falling over themselves to show you the town.’
‘But a girl should be choosy about which offers she takes up, especially in a strange city. Isn’t that so, Mr Detective?’
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘Not every man is as trustworthy as, say, a policeman.’
She laughed at that and touched me gently on the arm.
Axar strained the drinks into two glasses, added a sliver of cucumber to each and placed them on the bar atop two white napkin squares. We reached for our glasses and I raised mine in toast.
‘To your time in Calcutta.’
‘And to trustworthy men.’
I watched as she lifted the glass to her perfect lips and sipped.
‘Now that,’ she said, ‘is a proper drink. What do you think, Captain Sam?’
‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘I could get used to it with a bit of practice. Maybe we should pencil in a few for tomorrow night?’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ she said, and I tried not to take it personally.
‘So what brings you here, Estelle? Business or pleasure?’
She took a breath and looked as though being here was the most tiresome thing in the world.
‘Most definitely business.’
‘And what business would that be?’
‘Movies,’ she said. ‘I’m an actress.’
I feigned surprise. ‘And you’re here to shoot a picture?’
‘Alas yes. We’ve been filming out in the middle of nowhere for the last week. I had to insist we return to civilisation for the weekend. Anyway, it’s all so . . . boring. I’d much rather you tell me all about being a Calcutta detective.’
‘It’s a thankless task,’ I said. ‘Non-violence might be popular across the country, but in this town people still seem hell-bent on murdering each other.’
She looked at me as though this were some sort of revelation.
‘Really?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ I said. ‘Calcutta is rather a unique place, unfortunately. The worst of humanity tends to wash up on our shores: Pathan cut-throats, Bihari smugglers, Sikh assassins and more Scots than you can shake a stick at. And then there are the locals. Bengalis are a hot-headed lot. They like to think of themselves as cultured but I’ve never met a race of people more willing to stick a knife in each other’s guts if they feel they’ve been wronged. They’re like Italians but without the virtue of good wine.’
She gave me a teasing glance.
‘Well, then they’re truly lucky to have such a fine officer such as yourself protecting them.’
‘Maybe you should tell them that,’ I said.
She took a sip of her drink. ‘Oh, I shall, and exactly what should I tell them you’ve done for them today?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve been investigating a man found with his throat cut.’
‘An Englishman?’
‘Worse,’ I said. ‘An Indian, but a rich one. They bring ten times the trouble of a murdered white man. There’s always a dozen family members vying to convince you that the murderer was another relative – a son or an uncle or a cousin – and they’re generally right.’
‘So who do you think did it? Have your powers of detection, the ones upon which the people of Calcutta so undoubtedly depend, led you to a conclusion yet?’
‘Steady on, I need time to think. To ruminate. To let theories percolate.’
‘Is that why you’re in here?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, raising my glass to her. ‘When it comes to stimulating the brain, I find there’s nothing quite like a Bengal Fizz or three.’
She gave my preferred modus operandi an appreciative nod.
‘But really, what are you going to do?’
The truth was, nothing. It probably wouldn’t be my case by tomorrow morning, but there was no point in ruining the story for Miss Estelle Morgan.
‘Arrest the whole family, I expect. All the way down to second cousins if we have the jail cells. Then wait till someone snitches.’
She looked at me as though unsure whether I was joking, and in all honesty, it was probably as good a strategy as any.
Before I could expound further upon my methods of detection, the sour-looking man from her table got up and made a beeline
for us. He was tall, filled his suit well and didn’t look like he was coming to wish me a happy birthday.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked. ‘Your father?’
Estelle Morgan laughed under her breath. ‘My agent.’
‘Estelle, darlin’,’ he said, ‘it’s time we were moseyin’ back to the hotel.’
American, I guessed, judging by the way he mangled the language.
Estelle Morgan turned to me.
‘Sam, may I introduce Sal Copeland. Sal, this is Captain Sam Wyndham of the Imperial Police.’
The information seemed to bounce off him. ‘We need to go, Estelle.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Copeland,’ I said, and stuck out a hand which he declined to shake.
‘Sure, fella. Good to meet you too.’
Estelle finished her drink. ‘Sam’s been telling me all about Calcutta and criminals and he’s introduced me to this drink which you really must try. It’s called a Bengal Fizz.’
To be fair, it was Axar who’d introduced the drink to the both of us, but this was India and it was par for the course that a white man be given the credit for the work of natives. I’m sure Axar didn’t mind. Indeed, he wouldn’t even have thought to mind. It was just the way of things.
Copeland helped her from her seat.
‘Maybe another time.’ He turned to me. ‘Thank you, Mr Wyndham, for entertainin’ Miss Morgan, but she has an early start tomorrow and we really must be goin’.’
‘Well, goodbye, Sam,’ Estelle said, ‘and thank you for the conversation.’
I gave her a nod.
‘And thank you, Miss Morgan, for the drink. When you’re back, if you need someone to show you around Calcutta,’ I said, ‘you can always find me at Lal Bazar, police headquarters, or failing that, right here on this bar stool.’
And with one last smile she was gone, leaving me to the dregs of my Bengal Fizz and an unexpected sense of loss, and suddenly I didn’t feel like hanging around the Idle Fox any more.
The doorman found me a tonga. It didn’t take too long, and soon the familiar outline of College Square came into view. Beyond it lay the crumbling buildings of Premchand Boral Street and the flat that I rented on the first floor of a rather shabby edifice, above a brothel and next door to another one.
The street was quiet now, the weather, I imagined, having put rather a dampener on business. Up on the balconies, several girls sat listlessly on the lookout for any passing strays they might persuade to join them upstairs.
One of them called out to me as I descended the carriage.
‘Captain sahib, you looking tired. Come here. We look after you.’
The girl was called Mona. At nineteen, she was one of the older ones; old enough certainly to know how to handle men. She smiled coquettishly.
‘Don’t make me arrest you, Mona,’ I said.
She grinned. ‘On what charge, Captain sahib?’
‘We can start with wasting police time and take it from there.’
I entered my building and climbed the stairs to the first floor. Reaching the landing, I stood for a moment, struggling to fish the key from my pocket. Before I could manage it, the door opened and Sandesh, my manservant, stood there grinning at me like a goat in a rubbish tip. It was a surprise to see him. The man was not exactly the most industrious. Indeed, finding him awake at any time
was generally in the gift of the gods, but to see him there, at half past two in the morning, gurning inanely, made me worry he’d been drinking illicit hooch again.
‘Master sahib!’ he said. ‘Look! Look! See who is here!’
He stood to one side and held the door open. There, just beyond the threshold, dressed in a white dhoti and chador and sporting the sort of wispy, travesty of a beard favoured by Bengali pseudointellectuals, stood a man I hadn’t seen in such a long time.
‘Hello, Sam,’ said Surendranath Banerjee.
THREE
Surendranath Banerjee
I suppose some explanation is needed.
I had been away from Calcutta, and from India, for several years, far longer than I had originally anticipated. The cause of my flight – charges of attempted murder and sedition – had quickly been dropped, yet it still angered me that they had ever been brought. If there was a silver lining, it was that their levelling had made one thing abundantly clear to me, namely the nature of British rule in my country. Of course it did not come as a complete surprise. No Indian truly believes that the British administer our country out of sheer benevolence and a sense of Christian charity. Yet the myth that their presence is benign still lingers, and is accepted to some degree by many, most notably themselves. I had once believed I could work with the British to the benefit of my own people. Experience had taught me the naivety of that. A man cannot, after all, serve two masters.
I had spent those years in Europe, remaining because I had nothing pressing in India to come back to. I thought I might be of use among the émigrés drumming up support for the cause of independence overseas. I traversed the capitals of Europe, or at any rate the colder ones: Berlin, Moscow, Vienna, Paris and, for a while, even London. In that time, I learned two things: first, that the only thing worse than an Englishman was a Frenchman, German, Russian or
Austrian; and second, that India’s freedom would be won on Indian soil and not in the salons or talking shops of continental Europe. Maybe I should have come home earlier; the gods know I had seriously considered that. Yet fate contrived to keep me there. The problem, you see, is that I fell in love.
FOUR
Sam Wyndham
The sight of Suren, after all this time, and dressed like a tea-stall Tagore, made me think I might be dreaming. Maybe I’d succumbed once again? Maybe I was in some opium den and this whole night, from the murder of Mullick to Estelle Morgan and now Suren, was just some sort of fever dream. But no, this was real, and the Suren that stood in front of me was flesh and bone and as tangible as I was.
He’d lost weight, which was a concern, as he’d had precious little to lose in the first place. His face was haggard and his eyes sunken. Perhaps I should have said something; asked about it there and then, but that is not the English way, and anyway, I felt he should be the one to do the talking. He might start by explaining where the hell he’d been for so long. I stood in silence for some moments, long enough for Sandesh to intervene.
‘Look, sahib, Suren-babu is come!’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So he has.’ I walked past him into the hall and turned to Suren. ‘You’re back then?’
He gave a smile, a degree of embarrassment at its corners. ‘It would seem so.’
‘For good?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How long has it been?’
‘Three years, give or take.’
I nodded.
Three years. Give or take.
Three years since I’d helped him board a ship in Bombay and flee the country. It should only have been for a few months, until the charges against him were dropped. In the end, it had taken even less time than that. He should have returned.
But he hadn’t.
‘You’re two and a half years late,’ I said. ‘And not a word from you in most of that time.’
He shuffled on the balls of his feet, the look of discomfort on his face only growing.
Good.
‘I assumed the censors were monitoring our correspondence,’ he said.
I supposed it was possible. Military intelligence had a whole department of eager young ladies, armed, I assumed, with kettles, steaming opening the mail of dissidents and revolutionaries and Ghandi-ites, and preparing reports on whatever they might find inside – mainly talk of illnesses and stomach complaints, one imagined, in the case of the Bengali ones. Still . . .
‘They dropped the charges,’ I said. ‘Why would they open your mail? Why would they even need to? Lord Taggart sent you a letter personally requesting you return. I thought it was settled. You were going to come home. You should have come home.’
He opened his mouth to speak but then paused and uttered a sigh.
‘It was not that simple.’
And there it was, that infuriating way he had of obfuscating. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d been to Cambridge. He’d learned from the best.
‘How long have you been waiting here?’ I asked.
‘About three hours.’
Three hours. It was nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it was still quite a wait.
‘I suppose you’d better come through then.’
He followed me in silence to the sitting room. There he stood, looking around as though this were the Sistine Chapel instead of a flat above a brothel, the place he’d lived in for almost five years. What exactly was he hoping to see? As far as I could tell, the room hadn’t changed in the slightest in the time he’d been gone. I headed for the armchair.
‘When did you get back?’
‘A week or so ago.’
I looked up at him. He was still standing. Awaiting my permission to sit. Well, he could wait a little longer.
‘And it’s taken you this long to come over?’
He looked to the floor. ‘I was not certain you would be pleased to see me.’
‘Fair point,’ I said. ‘You owe me your share of three years’ rent.’
I directed him to sit and he took his old spot on the sofa, under the ceiling fan, where, he said, the breeze was muted and less likely to induce a chill, but that was Bengalis for you. No people on God’s green earth are more terrified of coughs, colds, bronchial infections and influenza.
‘So,’ I said. ‘The prodigal son hath returned. Should I break out the fatted calf?’
He grimaced. ‘You know I don’t eat beef.’
‘Fine. The fatted goat then, though it’s a moot point because I haven’t any of either. You’ll have to settle for whisky.’
‘That would be acceptable,’ he said, though the look on his face suggested it was still more hardship than pleasure.
‘Dear God, Suren, I’m hardly asking you to drink hemlock.’
I called out to Sandesh, and in that mixture of simple English
and pidgin Bengali which served as our mutual medium of communication, ordered him to bring a bottle and fresh glasses, and, given that Suren was now technically my guest, a plate of cashew nuts, assuming we had any.
As Sandesh poured, I cast a glance at my erstwhile friend. Once more I was struck by his sheer wretchedness: he looked almost emaciated, to an extent I was sure must have had his dear mother in tears at the sight of him. Many Indians seemed to suffer a similar fate when living abroad, as though the severance of the umbilical connection to their motherland induced a certain degree of emotional and physical withering. That and the fact that they were just fussy about foreign food.
His skin too was paler, the sheen that came from living in the tropics replaced with a coarseness conditioned by colder climes. It was his eyes, though, which drew my attention. Those eyes, always so full of the spark of life, now seemed hollow; almost haunted.
He picked up his glass in salute.
The drinks in the Idle Fox might have dulled my intellect somewhat, but questions still buzzed in my mind like mosquitoes at dusk. So many things to ask. So much to say, and yet I said nothing, a silence born, I liked to think, of British reserve, but which Annie Grant might tell you was down to my tendency to be a stubborn, pig-headed arse.
In the end it was Suren who broke the ice.
‘It is good to see you again, Sam.’
‘And yet it took you a week to come here.’
‘To be honest, I did not expect you still to be living here. I imagined you would have been somewhere nicer, with Miss Grant maybe, in her flat near Park Street. But it seems . . .’
I sipped malt whisky in the hope that it might sweeten my mood and moderate my words.
‘Yes, Miss Grant and I are no longer . . . that’s to say, we don’t have . . .’
‘So I see,’ he said. ‘I assumed all was well between you.’
I gave him a look which I hoped conveyed my feelings on the stupidity of his assumption.
‘Yes, well . . .’ He coughed. ‘Maybe that was naive of me. When did she, I mean when did it . . . end?’
I gave a shrug, making it clear that the matter was trivial to me.
‘A long time, now. Almost two years, I should think . . . And it was a mutual decision.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it was,’ he said, a tad too vehemently.
‘We decided we wanted different things.’
As clarifications went, it was, I realised, rather poor and only opened me up to the fire of further questions.
‘But I’m sure,’ I continued, ‘you didn’t come here and hang about waiting for me just to discuss my romantic affairs.’
His face grew grave. ‘No. That is quite true.’
He stopped and it seemed the interrogation was over for now. Gratefully, I forced thoughts of Annie from my mind, banishing them back into the shadows, pushing them down to the pit of my stomach and suddenly thoughts of Estelle Morgan filled the void. I did my best to ignore them.
‘So what are you doing here?’ I asked.
He sipped his whisky, then looked me squarely in the eyes.
‘Sam,’ he said, ‘I need your help.’