Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

The contrast to the Civil Lines was hard to ignore. Nasal songs blared out of doorways; children scampered and shouted. In the distance a clashing cymbal or a reverberating gong occasionally split the night. Lights flickered like fireflies in each twisting alley; the glow thrown by oil lamps filled most open doorways. Fathers and children ate from brass trays on the doorsteps, the mothers often standing behind them and scanning the street, as if taking the chance to get out.

Another alien world, but somehow more inviting.

At Sinha’s house the servant let him in and told him the master had retired. McColl was glad—he didn’t want a barrage of questions from his friend.

Caitlin was waiting anxiously in their room, and he wasted no time in telling her what he’d found out. “Right to the top. Right to the bloody top.”

“As we expected,” she said quietly, putting her arms around his neck. “But what about you?”

“I’m a potentially dangerous loose end. If I don’t disappear myself, they’ll do it for me.”

“Oh, Jack, maybe you should.”

“We’ve been through that. If I didn’t owe it to others, I’d owe it to myself. And I know you feel the same.”

She sighed and let him go. “I do,” she agreed, walking across to the window and leaning back against the sill. “So how are we going to find them?”

He smiled for the first time that night. “I saw a sign outside a shop this afternoon.”

Soon after nine on thefollowing morning, McColl paused in the shadow of another doorway, this one on Ballimaran Road, a few hundred yards from its junction with Chandni Chowk. The day’s heat was still building, and the light seemed preternaturally bright, turning each passing tonga’s dust into a whirl of flashing specks.

Across the street, a professional letter writer was seated at his folding desk, taking dictation from the client who sat cross-legged in front of him. Ten yards to his left, a group of young boys, the oldest no more than twelve, were sparring good-naturedly in the mouth of an alley. Between these two centers of activity, a doorway opened onto a flight of stairs, and above it hung the sign that McColl had noticed the previous day: ahmed mirza—consulting detective. The same words appeared on the larger board that fronted the balcony above, and there was movement in the windows behind.

Glancing up and down the busy street, McColl saw no sign of fellow Europeans or Indian policemen. He waited for a gap in the procession of tongas, then sauntered across the sunlit road at a suitably Asian pace and started up the stairs.

A woman kneading dough on a wooden board was sitting on the top step, and after squeezing past her, McColl found himself facing a door bearing another notification of Ahmed Mirza’s profession. He knocked, and a voice called, “Enter,” in Urdu.

The room was spacious and surprisingly cool. Like most Indian rooms, it seemed half-empty to a European, but the detective’s desk almost made up for the lack of other furniture—it was at least six feet long and more than half that wide.

There were two men present. The one behind the desk presumably greeted most of his clients Indian-style; shaking hands across it, as he and McColl discovered, was a serious test of balance. “I am Ahmed Mirza,” the man said in English. He was in his forties, McColl guessed, but looked physically fitter than most Indians of that age. His hair was cropped quite short, unlike his mustache, which seemed in serious danger of running riot. As if in recognition of this fact, the detective began stroking it back into submission the moment he had reseated himself. His clothes were European; a lightweight white suit, white shirt, and red bow tie.

“And this is my friend and colleague Dr. Din,” Mirza added, gesturing toward the other man. The doctor was older than Mirza and dressed in traditional Indian clothes. He brought his palms together and flashed a smile full of golden teeth at McColl. “You may say before this gentleman anything you say to me,” Mirza added. “He is completely deaf.”

McColl sat back in the upright seat. “My name is Stuart,” he began spontaneously. “Charles Stuart. I assume that anything I say in this room will be treated with the utmost confidentiality.” He was speaking Urdu, hoping to show the detective that he wasn’t a complete beginner where India was concerned.

“Of course, Mr. Stuart,” Mirza said. “I must say, your Urdu is excellent,” he went on in English. “Which language would you prefer to use?”

“Your English is also excellent,” McColl said.

“I was in the army for eighteen years. Subahdar-major, Sixty-Sixth Punjabi Rifles.”

McColl was impressed, which was presumably the intention. “May I inquire as to why you changed careers?” he asked, thinking it a good idea to find out as much as he could about his prospective employee.

“It was time for a change,” Mirza said, not at all disconcerted by the question. “And—perhaps I should not say this; I do not wish to be political—but I had risen as far as is possible for someone like myself, and it is not a good feeling to pass down orders to brave young men knowing that those orders are not sensible.”

“The Sixty-Sixth were in Mesopotamia, yes?” McColl asked. They seemed to have settled on English as their lingua franca.

“Indeed so.”

“Then I can sympathize with your feelings.” Compared to the Mesopotamian campaign, the one on the Somme had been almost inspired.

The Indian nodded absent-mindedly, as if the memories had taken over for a moment.

“And so you became a ‘consulting detective?’”

“Yes. I’m sure you recognize the phrase.” He smiled brightly. “I read my first Holmes omnibus in Kut-al-Amara, during the siege, and it was the only book I had in the Turkish prison camp. Which turned out to be a good thing. But that is often the case, is it not? The darker the place, the easier it is to see the light.” He stroked his mustache again. “So, to business, Mr… . I assume Stuart is not your real name, and I assume you’re in trouble with the British authorities?”

“What makes you think so?” McColl asked, thinking he already knew the answer. What other reason would a European have for visiting an Indian private detective?

“There is a faint line around your head dividing two areas of skin, one slightly darker than the other. Since the exact curvature of this line is unique to those wearing Afghan turbans, I must assume that you have been disguising yourself as a tribesman, and since you have come to me for help, it seems unlikely that you’ve been dressing that way in the service of the king-emperor.”

McColl smiled. “I’m impressed,” he said. “But I’m afraid I have only a straightforward task for you. I want you to find some people for me.”

Mirza picked up his pen and pulled a sheet of paper onto his blotting pad, looking slightly disappointed. “Very well. Who are they?”

“Three men. An American named Aidan Brady, a Russian named Sergei Piatakov, an Indian—a Bengali—named Durga Chatterji. They are probably staying somewhere together—the American and Russian almost certainly so.”

“A group like that should not be hard to find in Delhi,” Mirza suggested.

“They will not be making themselves obvious. They’ll probably be staying in a private house and rarely, if ever, going out.”

“Why is that?”

“I would rather not say.”

“Ah. But you are certain they are here in Delhi?” The detective seemed more interested now.

“Yes.”

“Very well. Can you give me descriptions?”

McColl did so, relying on memory for Brady, Caitlin’s account for Piatakov, and the photograph that Cumming had shown him for Chatterji. Mirza wrote it all down in bright blue ink, his British-made pen scratching at the rough Indian paper.