Алистер Маклин - Borrowed Time

‘Will you come then, Ram? Something awful has happened. I have to …’ Arberry put his hands over his face for a moment. ‘I have to make contact with someone who can influence outside help. I – I am frankly distraught.’

Ram told him to wait in the car. He went back inside. He called Mike at police HQ and explained.

‘I’m going with him now. No, he hasn’t said. He’s too agitated to give explanations. Maybe you and Lenny should meet up with us at his place. Move fast and you could be there first.’

Mike and Lenny got to the Arberry estate in a police car a full three minutes before Ram and the doctor arrived in Arberry’s black Mercedes.

‘We didn’t see any signs of activity so we sat tight,’ Mike said. ‘What is it, Doctor?’

‘Please follow me.’

Arberry led them along the side of the mansion and around to the back. There was a sloping floodlit lawn. The butler and the maid stood by a dark bundle lying ten metres from the back of the house.

‘I heard a sound like nothing I can describe,’ Arberry said, striding ahead, combing the fingers of both hands through his hair. ‘It was hideous. Then I came out and found this.’

They stopped where the butler and maid stood with their backs to the bundle. Mike crouched, confused by the shadows, reaching for his torch. He flicked it on and saw that the bundle was a boy, his head protruding from the folds of a dark garment, his tousled hair moving gently in the breeze. He was obviously dead.

‘Any idea what happened?’ Lenny said. ‘Who is he, anyway?’

‘What happened was an act of unbelievable savagery,’ Arberry said. ‘I know nothing more about it than that. The boy worked for me, I employed him as a general servant in the household.’ Arberry stared at the waxen face. ‘He was a fine young man.’

Mike pulled back the collar of the garment and began to see what had happened. The boy’s head was not attached to his body. Neither were his arms or legs. They lay in a loose pile on his abdomen. The head rested on the grass where it had fallen.

‘My butler threw the cloak over the remains,’ Arberry said.

Mike stood up. ‘Whoever did it used a machete,’ he told Lenny. He turned to Dr Arberry. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any idea–’

‘The bandits!’ Arberry said. ‘The damned bandits, that’s who! They’re not content to ply their squalid trade, they have to live up to type. They have to disrupt and terrorize and destroy …’

‘Would there be any reason in this case?’ Lenny said. ‘Any specific reason, that is?’

‘The same old reason, the one that’s behind this escalating campaign that’s costing good decent lives!’

Nobody said anything. They waited for the doctor to get control of himself.

‘They want me out of the Vale of Kashmir.’ Arberry was staring off into the darkness beyond the lower slope of the lawn. ‘I’m a unifying influence, you see. People like me give law and order a foothold. The bandits hate that.’ He turned and looked at Mike. ‘What can be done? Are we simply to give in to the barbarians? Do we move aside and let them have this place for themselves?’

‘I think we may be close to effecting a solution,’ Lenny said carefully. ‘I can’t go into details, not yet. But we have hopes.’

‘And we’re staying on the case,’ Mike added.

Ram, feeling as inadequate as the other two, came forward and said he had told the police driver to radio for the detectives.

‘They will come and they will go through the motions,’ Arberry said wearily. ‘Now every minute that passes without something being done, I will be reminded that by just staying here, I’m putting other lives at risk.’

‘You’re an asset to this place, Dr Arberry,’ Mike said. ‘It would be a borderline tragedy if you left. I promise you, whatever action is possible, we’ll make sure it gets done. And soon.’

Ram, Mike and Lenny travelled back to the cabin in the police car. As the headlights cut over the rim of the final rise, bringing them round on to the flat ground at the front, they saw another car parked by the door. It was a beat-up Peugeot.

As Mike stepped from the police car the Peugeot’s door opened and Sabrina got out. For a moment he didn’t recognize her in the baggy clothes and straw hat.

‘Well, and aren’t you a sight,’ he said, pecking her cheek. ‘What kept you?’

‘Devotion to duty. If you don’t have it naturally, it’s a hard concept to explain.’

Mike wrinkled his nose at her. ‘This is Ram, and I think you know Lenny.’

‘Nice to meet you, Ram.’ Sabrina shook his hand. ‘And hello again, Lenny. It was Colombia last time, I think.’

Lenny nodded. ‘Barranquilla. It was the only time I ever saw a woman beat up a Caribbean dope pusher and take his gun off him.’

‘Memories,’ Sabrina sighed, ‘memories …’

They watched the police car leave, then Ram unlocked the cabin and they went inside.

‘You must be hungry after your journey,’ he said.

‘Hungry and weary,’ Sabrina admitted. ‘I got lost a couple of times or I’d have been here sooner.’

‘I’ll rustle you up something.’ Ram paused in the kitchen doorway. ‘Scrambled eggs, melba toast, coffee?’

‘Magnificent,’ Sabrina said. ‘You’ve made a dusty, poorly-dressed woman very happy.’ She turned to Mike. ‘Did you get the pictures?’

‘What pictures?’

‘They came through after you left,’ Ram shouted. He came to the kitchen door again. ‘There was a note on the cover sheet. It said you were due for a surprise, so watch out. Signed Uncle.’

Mike looked at Sabrina. ‘What’s he up to now?’

Amrit Datta was taken in the back of a small covered truck to a place in the countryside southeast of Srinagar. Two others travelled in the van with him, both young men, both warned like himself to say nothing on the journey.

‘You will wait here until someone comes for you,’ the fat man told Amrit as he pushed him into a small hut with a wooden bench along one wall. The other two, he noticed, were led to separate little huts.

It was obvious they didn’t want the recruits to talk to each other on any account. No comparing of notes, no knowledge of one another. It made sense. In the van, they would have had to shout above the noise of the engine to make themselves heard and any communication between them would have been detected at once. In a hut together they could have whispered; hence, Amrit thought, separate quarters.

He put his face to the side of the hut and was able to see through the slats. Although it was night there was a bright moon. He could see he was on a small farm, one of the dozens that dotted the countryside in that region. Chickens were wandering around and he had heard goats as he was shown into the hut. There was no way to establish his co-ordinates; it would be too risky to carry anything electronic since they were bound to search him. He had seen the town lights briefly as he got out of the truck and he knew he was looking at Srinagar from the south-east. That was something.

He patted the front of his thin shirt and realized he had made a reflex action. Countless times a day, most days, he checked to be sure his gun and his ID were still there. Now he had nothing on him, nothing at all. There were only his habitual reactions to give him away.

He remembered what Mike Graham had said: ‘Assume you’re being watched at all times, for you won’t know when they’re not watching. You can’t carry two amulets, so a freshly loaded camera and a gun will be delivered to you after you’ve been declared clean. Remember, give no sign that you’re anything but what your appearance suggests – a shambling untouchable.’