Patrick Mercer - Dust and Steel

Again Skene paused. Even Morgan was concentrating now, and one or two of the subalterns’ jaws hung slack with suspense.

‘And talking of gold, India ain’t England: the Rhani runs on graft and geld, so Keenan and I are here to collect enough guineas to buy her loyalty. I’m confident, gentlemen, that if she and her upright supporters – and, gentlemen, if you’d met the lovely Rhani you’d be upright as well…’ Skene had woven his spell so well that this little joke was met with a positive storm of laughter, ‘…will fight alongside us and help to tumble the Pandies to ruin. I look forward to being at your elbow when the prize money for Delhi is decided upon.’

Aye, thought Morgan, spoken like a real tyro, my lad, those of us that are still alive. And you can bet your best hunter that it’ll be A Morgan and the rest of the Old Nails that’ll be sent in first whilst you and the other nabobs hang back, leaving bloody Keenan with the last laugh.

As Skene finished speaking and the officers rose to talk and drink before dinner, Morgan saw a servant quietly approach the group of officers he was with, bow slightly to McGowan to attract his attention and then whisper urgently in his ear. The adjutant’s face contorted, he said something in Hindi to the servant, who shook his head and pointed outside before moving back to the edge of the room, clearly agitated.

‘That’s bloody odd,’ McGowan said to the group in general. ‘Bin Lal has been to the bungalow where we’ve put Forgett and his family but the doors are locked, all the shutters are down and barred, and there are no lights showing.’

‘Well, didn’t your man just bang the door down, then?’ Carmichael, slightly belligerent with too much brandy and hopes of bloodless glory on an empty stomach, asked.

‘No, a sepoy wouldn’t do that,’ the adjutant replied. ‘They’ve too much respect for a sahib.’

‘What, like they had in Sitapur?’ muttered Carmichael acidly – the news had just reached them of wholesale massacres in the garrison north of Lucknow just days before.

‘Well, we’d better go and see what’s detained him, hadn’t we?’ said Morgan, seeing the perfect way of avoiding a deeply awkward conversation with James Keenan.

‘Yes, I’d be delighted to have you with me, Morgan,’ said McGowan, as the pair moved towards the entrance to the mess. ‘Better take our revolvers, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, aye, quite so,’ said Morgan, taking the proffered Tranter and clipping its reassuring weight to his belt.

‘I’ll come too, if I may,’ Carmichael interrupted. ‘Too much toad-eating that bloody political for my liking.’

Yes, you too want to avoid Keenan, don’t you? thought Morgan. Keenan had seen Carmichael at his cowardly worst in the Crimea, and a meeting between the two of them would be almost as difficult as the one he was trying to dodge.

‘Do: get your weapons,’ said McGowan as the three of them set off to Skene’s bungalow, which lay with a series of others some quarter of a mile from the mess, just within the walls of the sprawling fort.

‘You’re a bit jumpy, ain’t you, McGowan?’ The night air had cooled Carmichael’s brandy-warmed head. ‘Thought we had to act as normal as possible; sahib bristling with ironmongery ain’t exactly calming for John Sepoy, is it?’

‘P’raps not,’ McGowan answered, ‘but you never quite know with Forgett. He discovered the whole of the mutineers’ plot, you know, by skulking around dressed up like one of them, skin stained, sucking betel-nut – the complete damn charade – all by himself. Slings the bat like a bloody native, he does, and has now made more enemies than you can count. That’s why we’ve dragooned him and his family into the fort.’

‘Think this is it…should be number eight.’ It was tropically dark. McGowan lit a lucifer and searched round the front door frame until he found a small, brass plate engraved ‘Sobroan House’, below a figure eight painted in the 10th’s regimental green. ’Aye, we’re here.’

He rapped on the door. ‘Forgett…Mrs Forgett, are you in?’

‘Does it look as though they’re bloody in?’ Carmichael asked quietly. ‘Here, let’s see if we can’t…’ and he pushed at the front door, which gave as he shoved, but refused to open. ‘There’s something jammed against the door from the inside. Here, Morgan, lend a hand.’

The two captains applied their shoulders to the door, and each time they crashed home against the woodwork, it opened a little more, inching something heavy and awkward away into the darkened room until there was just enough space for one man to squeeze in.

Morgan drew his pistol, cocked it and thrust his shoulder and chest into the gap, squirming between the door and the jamb.

‘Can you get a lucifer lit, one of you? I can’t see a blind thing.’ Morgan had pushed inside but his eyes were unaccustomed to the dark, and as McGowan scrabbled with another match, he stumbled hard over something on the ground, crashing onto the wooden floor, sending his pistol flying.

‘Goddamn…what filthy mess is this?’ As Morgan pulled himself to his feet he was aware of something wet and gluey that had stuck to the palms when he’d broken his fall. The feel was horrid yet familiar, and as he held his hands up to his unseeing eyes, a match flared behind him, showing him that his fingers, forearms and knees were covered in blood. Indeed, he was standing in a puddle of it, which spread as far as the pool of match-light reached, blackly red.

‘Christ alive!’ Morgan was appalled. ‘Come in quick, you two.’ But as the others barged through the half-opened door, Morgan looked at the bundle on the floor over which he fallen. ‘Careful, there’s a body there…there, just where you’re standing.’ Carmichael had hung back and as McGowan pushed in, he almost tripped over the corpse, as Morgan had.

‘I’ll get the lights going.’ All the bungalows were designed in the same way, and on the wall McGowan quickly found an oil lamp, which he tried to fire. It guttered briefly, shrank from the match and then caught, revealing everything in the room. ‘There, that’s done.’

Other than the heavy chaise-longue that had been used to bar the door, and the lake of blood, things were remarkably orderly. There was no sign of a struggle, but lying just inside the entrance was the body of a young woman. Both arms were pierced with bone-handled carving knives, which pinned her to the floor, whilst a brown satin dress was pulled up around her waist, showing her underwear and a bush of pubic hair between the separate legs of muslin drawers. There was blood on her thighs whilst round her mouth and neck a towel had been wound. Her auburn hair was thrown into chaos, both blue eyes wide open but seeing nothing.

‘God, that’s Kathy Forgett.’ McGowan instantly leant down and pulled her dress back over her bloody knees and ankles, returning a little modesty to her in death.

‘Oh, no…’ Morgan had seen dead women before during the famines back in Skibberean – but those corpses were different – and more dead men killed on the field of battle than he wanted to remember, but nothing like this. He, like the other two, pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and pushed it against his nose and mouth, for there was the most ghastly, foetid stench of blood and abused femininity all about them.

‘If this is what they’ve done to Mrs Forgett, where’s the Thanadar?’ McGowan dreaded the answer to his question, but as the three officers moved from the tiny hall of the bungalow to the sitting room and lit the oil lamp there, the answer was apparent.

‘What the hell’s that in his mouth?’ asked Carmichael.

‘It’s a pig’s tail,’ answered McGowan matter-of-factly.