Алистер Маклин - Borrowed Time

‘Help me carry the money, Deena.’

They made their way out to the daylight. Deena stumbled as she walked, still shaking and dazed.

‘Oh, glory!’ Sabrina pointed. At the edge of a stand of trees her car was parked. Branches had been thrown over it in a casual attempt at camouflage.

Sabrina ran to it, pulled off the branches and opened the passenger door. ‘Put the money on the back seat, Deena.’

‘Will you keep it?’

‘I hadn’t planned to.’ As they put the last bag in the back Sabrina pointed to the writing on the sides. ‘What does that say?’

‘They are the names of towns. They are not far away.’

‘I’ll find them on the map, then I’ll drop the money outside the police station in each place. First, though, I’m taking you home.’

‘Will that not cause you inconvenience? It is two hours away.’

‘If you get back to where you came from without being seen around here, and say nothing about being taken away, then no one will connect you with what happened to Hafi.’

Deena understood. She slipped into the front passenger seat. Sabrina got behind the wheel and started the engine. ‘The sooner you’re home, the sooner I’ll do the Robin Hood bit, and the sooner I’ll be on track again.’ She glanced at Deena. ‘You maybe find it hard to believe, but I have a serious job to get back to.’

Philpott was on the telephone. ‘Speak to me, Michael,’ he said, ‘and try to keep it informative. I’m pressed for time, as ever.’

‘I wanted to go on record as saying it was a great idea of yours to draw Lenny Trent into our act. He’s an ace co-ordinator.’

‘I had to weigh his obvious merits against the probability that the two of you would put your friendship before your function as colleagues on a mission.’

‘We both have a sense of professional balance, sir. With respect, I think you sometimes oversimplify things.’

‘And for my part I think you occasionally evaluate my motives in a childlike way,’ Philpott said coolly. ‘Which is all beside the point. Tell me how things are shaping.’

‘You know about Reverend Young being murdered, and I told you about our visit to Dr Arberry. No headway has been made on the murder and there’s not likely to be any. As for Arberry, I’ve now had time to read his notes. His suspicions about bandit activity, especially the drug-running kind, tend to be supported by several things Commissioner Mantur told Lenny.’

‘I gather, from Trent’s comments in his last report, that there is suspicion of a new kind of trade in top-quality drugs, with rich clients and dealers waiting to collect. Do you go along with that?’

‘I do,’ Mike said. ‘I also find it credible that the source of supply for the new trade is right here in the Vale of Kashmir.’

‘In that case,’ Philpott said, ‘I think you should be formulating a plan to seek and destroy.’

‘That’s what we’ll be doing, as soon as we’ve some idea of where our target is. First off, I’m setting up a local agent of Drugwatch International to make himself available for mule duty. Then I plan on getting myself up into the hills and sniffing around a convoy or two.’

‘With a view to what?’

‘Thrashing them at their own game, sir.’

‘Splendid.’

‘Any news of Sabrina?’

‘I spoke to her an hour ago,’ Philpott said. ‘She’s suffered another setback, but she’s on the road again, moving up towards you and learning about India the hard way.’

‘What happened to her this time?’

‘I’ll leave her to tell you herself. It’ll make colourful after-dinner talk.’

‘How’s the review of techniques and procedures coming?’

‘You mean,’ Philpott said icily, ‘the bureaucratic plot to bring me to heel? We’re trying to mount a counter-attack, we being myself and Whitlock.’

‘Do they stand a chance of nailing you?’

‘I pray not, Michael. I’ll know better what I’m up against after lunch tomorrow. I’m meeting an old friend whose ear is tuned to the rumblings of the disturbed creatures who run Policy Control.’

‘Best of luck, anyway,’ Mike said.

‘Luck be damned,’ Philpott snapped. ‘If I win this one, it’ll be on the strength of the combined talents of Whitlock and myself. Luck’s for people with no resources of their own.’

‘This is Amrit Datta,’ Mike told Commissioner Mantur. ‘We have high hopes for him.’

Mantur winked at the young Indian. ‘They say they have high hopes, Amrit, yet they want you to take a risk similar to marching blindfold across a Delhi street at rush hour.’

‘Such is my destiny, Commissioner,’ Amrit smiled. ‘I was born to be put upon.’

He was twenty-seven, a slim Kashmiri with fine, regular features and a boyish quiff of sleek black hair. He had a look of innocence that suited him for his job. The last thing he resembled was an enforcement officer, but in two years with Drugwatch International he had helped dismantle major trafficking operations in three Indian cities.

‘I can’t say I have a pleasant morning organized for you,’ Commissioner Mantur said. ‘Mr Graham here selected the illustrative material, so blame him. Not many laughs, but it will be instructive.’

The Department of Records at Srinagar Police HQ was in the cellar, a green-and-cream painted room with fungus on the walls and a smell like wet livestock. An early model Kodak Carousel slide projector was set up on the table, its lens pointing at an old projection screen on a rusty stand. The Commissioner, Mike and Amrit sat down in canvas chairs and the clerk in charge of records doused the lights.

The first slide on the screen showed a young Indian woman smiling stiffly at the camera. She was ordinary looking, a healthy enough person whose clothes indicated she was quite poor.

‘Kadija was recruited as a mule six months ago by a man who stopped to buy a paper at her father’s corner news stand in Allahabad. She swore to tell no one about the offer, but of course she told her best friend, since best friends are not other people, they are extensions of ourselves. The best friend told us Kadija thought about the proposition for a week, at which time the man returned for her answer. She said yes.’ Mantur shrugged. ‘It was an extremely tempting offer. Ten thousand rupees for one job. In English money that would be about two hundred pounds, Mr Graham. A fortune for a peasant girl trying to scrape a living in the city.’

Another picture came on the screen. It was the same girl. This time she was not smiling. Her eyes were half closed and her tongue protruded at one side of her mouth.

‘She paid the penalty for being caught,’ Mantur said. ‘Police on the Chinese border stopped her and found two kilos of heroin. She was put in a detention cell, where she took a capsule of cyanide from her navel and swallowed it.’

The next slide was of a man in a business suit, complete with club tie and a dark yellow silk handkerchief in his breast pocket.

‘You’re not saying he was a mule?’ Amrit said.

Mike nodded. ‘That’s what we’re saying.’

‘What tempted a man like that? He looks like he doesn’t need money.’

‘Come on, Amrit, everybody needs dough. The point the picture demonstrates is that no one knows for sure what he’s looking at. Keep it in mind. The trick of selling yourself as something you’re not is to conceal by display.’

Amrit pursed his mouth politely. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

‘I mean you can best hide something about yourself by covering it with something that says more, or says otherwise. Any seasoned undercover police officer will tell you – when you’re pretending to be what you’re not, make sure you throw in a percentage of exaggeration, just to hide the fact that you are hiding something.’