Barbara Cleverly (32 page)

‘Still the policeman! Minutes from death, Sandilands, and you’re still trying to understand.’ He smiled pityingly. ‘And again failing utterly!’

He paused, wondering, Joe feared, whether to shoot him dead out of boredom and have done with it or to succumb to the urge he had seen so often in killers, an urge to explain themselves. To make someone, even the arresting officer, aware of their compulsions. They work in solitude, they cannot confide in anyone, cannot justify their actions and, the moment they are discovered, they have an uncontrollable need to pour out their story. He gambled on this same need in Prentice.

‘No wonder people took you for an Indian,’ he said. ‘You’re very familiar to me — we’ve had several conversations — but even I would find it hard to distinguish you from a real native

’

Prentice gave a short bark of derision. ‘Clod!’ he spat out. ‘You don’t see it, do you? You’re as perceptive as that crass Superintendent Andrew keeps in office. The unseeing idiot interviewed me twice and each time he could see no further than a brown skin, a layer of saffron and ash, a caste mark and a turban. I am Indian! Half Indian to be precise. My father was English and my mother, my real mother, was Pathan, a Pahari from the mountains.’

Joe gaped at him in astonishment. What had Naurung senior said about his interview with the ferryman? ‘He was Indian, sahib, to the soles of his feet.’

With an impatient gesture, Prentice shook one sleeve of his baggy shirt down to his armpit, revealing a muscular brown arm. ‘No need for dye! I can appear naked before any Englishman and all he sees is an Indian. It was easy to get close to those stupid, unseeing Englishwomen. For them a brown man is a sight to make them avert their eyes, less important than a piece of furniture.’

The tone was bitter and Joe instantly seized on this. ‘You have no liking, I think, for memsahibs? You showed your victims no pity, in fact I would say that you took considerable satisfaction in killing them.’

‘No liking? I loathe them. You probably know that it is the charming English tradition for a gentleman to put aside his Indian mistress when he at length marries? When my father married a woman fresh from England, he cast my mother off though he continued to visit her. The Englishwoman, fulfilling his requirements in all other respects, did not have the children he wanted her to have. I was born to my Pathan mother and my father had the cruel notion of making his wife acknowledge me as her own. We were stationed at a very remote outpost of the far north-west and there were few to know and none to tell about his deception. My real mother was made to appear as my ayah and I grew up at her side, loving her and loving the Pathan way of life. My English mother hated me, naturally, and went out of her way to make my life uncomfortable. Indeed, she was most ingenious in her cruelties.’

‘ “Give me a child for the first seven years of his life and he is mine for ever.”—’ Joe quoted. ‘Who said that? The Jesuits, was it? And, equally, hatreds and fears acquired during those tender years would affect your life ever after.’

‘Who are you quoting? Freud? Jung? Sandilands? Spare me the psychology! I will simply say that Englishwomen with their white faces, their sharp tongues and their idle ways became anathema to me.’

‘But you married Dolly?’

‘I took a wife to further my career, Sandilands.’

‘And Midge?’ Joe hardly dare ask.

‘Oh, I think

no, I’m quite sure

that she is my daughter if that’s where you’re leading. But the child Dolly was carrying when she died

well, who knows?’

‘But the women that you killed,’ said Joe, desperately, ‘each in a different way and each in a manner that would be most terrifying to her

?’

‘And, again, you forget Chedi Khan! We pulled him out of a blazing village and the fear of fire remained with him to the end of his days

’

A picture came into Joe’s mind of the rows of fire buckets lining the corridor of the burned bungalow. Not to calm Dolly’s fears but Chedi Khan’s.

‘

and, at the last, it was fire that caught him. I think every day of what it must have cost him, the terror he must have felt as he turned back and fought his way through the flames to try to save — what? — a drunken, worthless Englishwoman!’

‘But Midge — Prentice, you must know that from that night twelve years ago, the fear of fire has been strong in Midge’s heart! You have pity for Chedi Khan and his terror, can’t you feel the same emotion for Midge?’

‘I close the circle,’ said Prentice again. ‘It is just. It has to be. She won’t be alone. My work is done and I will go with her.’

At this last chilling declaration Joe gave up all hope. At last he understood. There was no reason he could use, no persuasion, no bargaining with a fanatic who had decided to kill himself.

For some time he had been aware of slight sounds in the house behind him. Joe had raised his own voice in an attempt to cover them. Could Midge have regained consciousness? Was she listening? If so she would understand what was going on and run for help. Perhaps she would come into the room? Even that might provide just the distraction Joe needed. Such was the intensity of his thought, Prentice had been unaware of the sounds. But now he fell silent, the silence which precedes violent action. ‘ “The dreary, doubtful hours before the brazen frenzy starts”,’ thought Joe but in this case not hours so much as seconds. To cover any further sounds, Joe leapt to his feet as though in acute distress, and began to yell wildly at Prentice.

‘You bastard!’ he screamed. ‘You’d murder your daughter, and carry that as a curse through all eternity?’

The muzzle of the Luger followed Joe’s movement, trained on his abdomen.

‘You may call it murder

’

A figure appeared in the doorway. A figure holding a .22 Smith and Wesson target pistol.

Nancy rested the barrel across her left forearm and fired.

The bullet hit Prentice in the shoulder and spun him round. His gun jerked from his grip, slid across the desk and clattered to the floor on the far side. She fired again but the bullet went wide. She fired a third time, hitting him squarely in the chest. A gout of blood spewed from his mouth and trickled down his white shirt.

Joe kicked the Luger to the far side of the room, drew his own pistol covering Prentice and began, ‘Giles Prentice, I arrest

’

His words were cut short by a cry of impatience and another shot from Nancy’s gun. She hit Prentice a second time in the chest and began to move carefully into the room, covering him every inch of the way.

Pale and haggard, Nancy gazed unwinkingly into Prentice’s eyes. Harshly she spoke to him, ‘Look at me, Prentice! Look! What are you seeing? You know so much about fear, don’t you! Are you face to face at last with your worst fear? A white-faced, sharp-tongued Englishwoman? A memsahib who hates you? A memsahib who’s just put three bullets into you and who’s about to put a fourth one in your neck?’

She raised her pistol to his neck.

Prentice rocked on his heels and seemed about to collapse. A dribble of blood flowed from each corner of his mouth. He lurched forward and groped at the desk for support, his eyes never leaving Nancy’s face. But he did not fall. With sudden convulsive strength, he reeled towards the open door. Half staggering, half running, he fled clumsily down the passage and towards the back door and the servants’ quarters, leaving bloody hand prints on the wall, leaving a trail of blood on the floor.

With a curse, Nancy fired at his back and made to run after him.

Joe put out a restraining hand. ‘No! Leave him, Nancy! Care for the living. Midge! She’s in her room. Go and look after her. She’s drugged, unconscious, in danger!’

‘It’s all right,’ said Nancy. ‘We found her. Dickie’s with her. She’s unconscious but she’s alive. When you didn’t turn up to do your shift I checked your bungalow. Naurung had had the same thought and we guessed you’d have come here.’

‘Dickie’s here? Then — between you — get her out of here, for God’s sake! She mustn’t see this. She mustn’t wake to this!’

There was a confusion of voices and hurried footsteps in the hall. Dickie emerged from the shattered bedroom with Midge in his arms while Andrew, leaning on Naurung’s arm, limped awkwardly into the house. He stopped and looked aghast at the bloodstains, sniffing the smell of cordite, the sound of the shots still ringing in his ears.

‘Nancy!’ he said. His voice was almost a groan. ‘Nancy! Say you’re all right!’

Clumsily he took her in his arms while tears ran down his face.

‘I heard shooting. Oh, God! I thought you were another victim! That devil! Where is Prentice?’

‘Come with me,’ said Joe. ‘We’re going to find out. He’s gone off with four of Nancy’s bullets in him. And Nancy — go with Dickie.’

‘Yes,’ said Naurung with sudden informality, ‘do, Bibi-ji, as the Commander says.’

‘And you, Naurung — you’re in charge here now. Let no one in. Do what you have to do.’

‘Sahib,’ said Naurung, ‘be careful. The cobra has slid into his hole.’

In a voice of cold resolution Andrew replied to him. ‘I’m armed.’

They set off down the passage following the trail of blood.

‘I can guess where he’s going.’ said Andrew. ‘At the bottom of this garden there’s the river and he usually has a boat moored down there. A few hundred yards away and you’re into the Indian town. If he gets as far as that we’ve lost him for good.’

‘He’s not going to the Indian town,’ said Joe.

They walked carefully out into the moonlit garden, through the hedge and into the unkempt garden of Prentice’s old house. Here, perpetually torn by trailing rose briars and picking their way with difficulty through the undergrowth, they found at last a little path and followed it together. In his clumsy haste, Andrew cannoned into a mohwa tree bringing down a cascade of heavily scented waxy blossoms.

‘Be careful,’ said Joe, ‘he may yet be armed.’

They moved silently on.

The Mogul garden house was now in plain sight and, in spite of his foreboding, Joe paused for a moment, struck by its beauty. Pale and serene in the moonlight it seemed deliberately to set itself apart from the bloody doings of that night. Its Islamic dome rose to the starlit sky; fretted shutters closed its windows and a cascade of small fragrant red roses trailed and climbed. Joe pointed silently at the open door.

Andrew took out his gun and one on either side of the door they stood and listened for any sounds. There were none. Joe nodded and they entered. At first they could see nothing but after a while they became aware of Prentice, who seemed to be kneeling across the foot of a charpoy, his head buried in his arms.

Joe dropped on one knee beside him, parted his drapery and felt for his heart. Holding up a bloodstained hand he said, ‘Dead. At last.’

‘What was he doing?’ said Andrew in wonderment. ‘Why did he come here?’

Joe took a match from his pocket and struck it. Seeing a small lamp on a table, he lit it and held it up. The room was lined with patterned cupboards, each painted in glowing colours in the manner of the Mogul empire with lovingly depicted, and no less lovingly restored, scenes from Mogul mythology. On a table there were set out paints and brushes. The room had something of the quality of a shrine.

With surprising tenderness, Andrew reached forward and took Prentice by the shoulder, turning him over on his back. The dead hands clutched — of all incongruous things — a pressed flower which might once have been red and a battered school exercise book from which, as Andrew disturbed him, a sheaf of papers and photographs fell to the floor. Joe picked one up and saw a strikingly beautiful young man. Smiling, he stood by a river naked to the waist in a pair of cotton drawers. The next photograph showed the same figure a few years earlier mounted on a pony. The third Joe recognised. He had seen the same photograph in the Prentice family album, a laughing, handsome man in whose glossy dark hair was twined a spray of roses. The photographs told the story of Chedi Khan’s youth and young manhood. Happy to the last. Beautiful to the last.

‘Who’s this?’ said Andrew. ‘Who could this possibly be?’

‘It’s Chedi Khan,’ said Joe. ‘Eternally the love of Prentice’s life.’ And he explained.

They turned from the photographs to the exercise book across the front of which was stamped ‘st luke’s mission and school, armzan khel.’ The pages were stained with Prentice’s blood and they opened them one by one.

‘A child’s exercise book,’ said Andrew. ‘A child learning to write in English, it seems.’

‘Chedi Khan,’ said Joe. ‘Prentice sent him to school. St Luke’s Mission. Anglican Fathers but he ran away twice and each time went back to him.’

They turned the pages over and searched on, coming at last to a page of clear writing — evidently an exercise.

‘How’s your Hindustani?’ asked Joe. ‘Can you read this?’

‘Ought to be able to,’ said Andrew, tracing the writing with his forefinger. ‘Let me see

Well, it says, “To G.P. from C.K.” No puzzle about that. Now, what’s this? Er

“Don’t stop me following you”

I think that’s right

“because wherever you are

I will follow you

” Here, wait a minute,’ said Andrew. ‘I know this! Dammit, this is a translation from the Bible! Just the sort of thing, I suppose, the Fathers would have set as a writing exercise or a translation into Hindustani.’

He half closed his eyes in an effort to remember the text and slowly recited:

‘ “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for wherever thou goest, I will go, and wherever thou lodgest, I will lodge: my people shall be thy people and thy God my God.

‘ “Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so unto me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.” ’

They looked at each other.

‘From the Book of Ruth,’ said Andrew, marvelling.

‘It’s a love letter,’ said Joe. ‘It’s Chedi Khan’s declaration to Prentice when he sent him away to school. “

if aught but death part thee and me

” That’s it. That’s what it was all about. And Prentice saw it as the most beautiful thing in his life. The only thing in his life. Andrew, we can only touch the fringe of this!’