Ellis Peters - George Felse 09 - Mourning Raga (14 page)

The half-hour was over, and Dominic and Tossa were just emerging into the blinding sunlight from the fragrant dimness of the temple. And the black briefcase was still there.

In the quietest corner of Nirula’s they gathered over the tea Felder had already ordered before the other two arrived. They had no heart for it, but he poured it, just the same. They were going to need every comfort, even the simplest.

‘But what went wrong?’ Tossa was asking, of herself no less than of them, and with tears in her eyes. ‘We did everything he said, we didn’t tell anyone else – they
can’t
have known about
you
! – and we didn’t say a word to the police – and you don’t know how unlikely that is, until you know Dominic, his father’s a police inspector, and all his instincts bend him their way, they really do! And yet we
did
play it the way we were told, and we were in good faith, though it’s horrible to submit to an injustice like that… And yet at the end of it all, here it still is, not touched, and we’re no nearer getting Anjli back!’

The briefcase lay on the cushioned bench-seat between them, plump and weighty as when they had surrendered it to the lame boy.

‘We just couldn’t believe it, Mr Felder! What are we going to do now? And what made them hold off? They can’t have known about you,
can they
? Could they possibly have spotted you hanging around, and called the whole thing off?’ She was ashamed of the suggestion as soon as she had made it, after all he had done for them. ‘No… I’m sorry, don’t listen to me!’

‘I don’t believe anyone did notice me,’ Felder assured her gently. ‘All the more because I did once wonder… but it turned out quite innocently. No, I just don’t believe it.’ His eyes lingered speculatively on the briefcase, smugly filled and flaunting its roundness. He frowned suddenly, regarding it. In quite a different tone, carefully muted so as to arouse no extravagant hopes, he said: ‘Open it! Go ahead, let’s be sure. Open it.’

Dominic stared and bridled, and then as abruptly flushed and obeyed. They were jumping to conclusions; they hadn’t even looked. He pushed a thumbnail fiercely under the press fastener that held the case closed – how flimsy, and how quickly sprung! – and drew out the identical biscuit-coloured bank envelope they had placed there, still sealed as it came from the bank, nearly four hours ago. He stared at it with chagrin; so did they all. Then abruptly Felder uttered a small, smothered sound of protest, and took up the packet, turning it in his hands. He ran his fingers under the transparent tape that sealed the flap, and wrenched it open. Out into his lap slid a tightly-packed wad of sliced newsprint. He ran the edges through his fingers, and the soft, close-grained, heavy segments mocked them all. There was not a banknote in the whole package, nothing but shredded newspaper.

‘My
God
!’ said Felder in a whisper. ‘After all! Then he
must
have been planted… No, I can’t believe it, they never had time!’

‘It wouldn’t,’ said Dominic slowly, ‘take very long. A fastener like that is a gift. But only if you had another packet ready to substitute. If they watched me go into the bank yesterday… But could you possibly guess at the bulk of it so closely? I suppose the bank envelope wouldn’t be any difficulty. But
could you
? And was there any time when it could possibly have happened?’

‘You could,’ said Felder, with soft, intense bitterness, ‘if there was enough at stake, I suppose. And yes… there was maybe two and a half to three minutes. I’d swear it wasn’t longer. There was this countryman from somewhere in the hills… I had the feeling he might have been planted on me, but when he went away so promptly…’ He told them, baldly and briefly. ‘It couldn’t have been more than three minutes in all, that I’ll swear. As soon as I told him, he went. He never even looked back. I’d know him again, that’s for sure! But God knows where he is now! And yet he sounded genuine, and when I told him his way he was off like a hare.’

‘Does it matter?’ said Tossa suddenly. Her eyes were bright and hopeful. ‘Maybe we didn’t pin him down, whoever he is, but does it matter so much, after all? The money’s been collected. It wouldn’t take much ingenuity to get hold of a large bank envelope, would it, once they’d seen Dominic go in there yesterday morning? But what matters is, the ransom’s been collected, after all. They’ve got what they asked for. They promised us a call this evening, if we played by their rules. They promised us a call “to arrange about the child”. They’ve got what they wanted, why shouldn’t they let us have her back now? They’re safer that way, and they’ve scored a success, haven’t they?’

She was right there was no doubt of that. Maybe they had failed on one count, but it was a failure that might very well net them a total success on the main issue.

And the main issue was, and always would be, Anjli.

They waited all the evening in Dominic’s sitting-room at Keen’s, whither Felder had repaired via the garden staircase and the balcony. Eight o’clock went by, nine o’clock, half past nine… The telephone remained obstinately silent.

But at a quarter to ten there was a sudden insinuating rapping on the door. Dominic sprang to open it, even though this was not at all what they had expected.

Into the room, serenely calm as ever, and beatifically smiling, walked the Swami Premanathanand. Down below in the courtyard the ancient Rolls stood with folded wings and reposeful outline, like a grounded dove.

I trust you will forgive,’ said the Swami courteously, ‘so late and unceremonious a call.’ He looked from Dominic to Felder, whom he had never seen before, and his wise brown eyes, behind the unequal lenses, refuged deep in the shadow of large ivory eyelids and kept their own counsel. He even seemed able to suppress the unnerving magnifying power of the strong lens when he chose. ‘I am afraid that I have interrupted a private conference. But you will understand that I am exercised in my mind about Mr Kumar’s daughter. I may speak freely?’

‘Yes, certainly,’ said Dominic, torn several ways at once and quite incapable of resolving the struggle. ‘This is Mr Felder, who is an old and valued friend of Anjli’s mother. Mr Felder is directing a film here in India, and he has been very kind to us since we came. And this is the Swami Premanathanand, of the Native Indian Agricultural Missions, who is an old friend of Mr Kumar.’

‘Delighted!’ said Felder feelingly. ‘We can certainly use another friend here… and another good sound head, too. If I’m right in taking it that the Swami knows what’s going on?’

‘I have that honour,’ said the Swami shyly, and modestly accepted the chair Dominic offered. Tonight he wore an old European trench coat, minus the belt, over his saffron robe, and when he stripped it off in the warmed room his one shoulder emerged naked and polished and adamant as bronze, bone and sinew without the more dispensable elements of flesh.

‘You have received no trustworthy news about Anjli’s whereabouts?’

‘No,’ said Tossa miserably, ‘But we
have
had a telephone call to say she’s being held to ransom.’ She could see no reason at all for concealing anything that had happened; passionately she recounted the events of the afternoon. ‘And we’re no farther forward at all, and they’re not going to keep their bargain. We’ve been waiting here all the evening for a telephone call, and
nothing
! They’ve cheated us. And now we haven’t any way at all of getting in touch with them, it was a one-way traffic. We’ve just poured that money down the drain, and it wasn’t even ours, it has to be replaced. And I can’t bear to think…’

‘If money has been demanded and taken,’ said the Swami, smoothly interrupting the downward cadence of her grief and self-blame, ‘then clearly money is the means to further negotiation. This first sum was very easily come by, there is a strong temptation to repeat the success. Do you not agree, Mr Felder? You are a man of the world, where money counts for more, perhaps, than we realise who want it only to invest in crops and food and development. The actual notes we scarcely even see. Nevertheless, they exist, and there are those who know how to value them. And there are those who have them, and know how to devalue them when there is something of great worth to be bought.’

‘I’d give whatever I could raise,’ said Felder warmly, ‘to get Anjli back. But I’ve shot not only my own bolt, but the company’s too. Right now I’m bankrupt. If Dorrie stands by me, I’ll pull out of it. If she doesn’t, I’m sunk. And what did I buy for her? Not a thing!’

‘You have done what you could. It is now for others, perhaps with greater responsibility, to do as much as you have done. Also it is for them to appreciate at its true worth the thing which you have done.’ Benevolently the great eye, like a rare and awe-inspiring omen, beamed through the pebble-thick lens, and again was veiled as his head turned. Like the lance of light from a light-house its brief, comprehensive flash encompassed them all, and withdrew itself into dimness. He raised a lean, long-fingered hand, and took off his glasses. Mild, short-sighted eyes, one brighter than the other, blinked kindly at Dominic. ‘Since I saw you I have been active ceaselessly upon one problem, that of where Satyavan Kumar might be found. I have sat beside the telephone and pondered the possibilities, testing all I considered valid. There are universities where he has studied, colleges where he has lectured, laboratories where he has taken part in research. There are the ordinary places where he directed, not always willingly, the business of his family’s interests. But there are also places to which he withdrew sometimes for refreshment of the spirit, ashrams, solitudes, hermitages… And some of these I have, in the past, shared with him.’ He looked up obliquely, smiling with the delicate pleasure of a child bringing gifts, but a child acquainted, in some obscure amalgam of innocence and experience, with maturity and age. ‘I have run up,’ he said, with the sprightly nonchalance that emerged so surprisingly from his normally measured and precise vocabulary, ‘the very devil of a telephone bill. But
I have located Satyavan
.’’

‘You
have
?’ Dominic shot out of his chair joyfully. This couldn’t be the whole answer, it couldn’t solve everything, and above all it couldn’t absolve Tossa and himself, but the surge of relief and release he felt was wonderful. The father should have been there from the beginning, he should never have let go, at any cost, of that fragile essence of himself that survived in Anjli. He shouldn’t have given up what was his; and he must know it, in this extreme, better than anyone. If he was found, they had an elemental force on their side, a tornado that would sweep away obstacles like a breeze winnowing chaff. ‘Where
was
he, all this time? What’s he been
doing
?’

‘Is he coming?’ demanded Tossa, slicing straight through to essentials.

‘Where he has been I cannot tell you, surely in many places. Where I found him was in a place of the spirit where we have sometimes rested together when there was need. One does not ask too many questions of those one meets there, for only the answer to one question is of any importance, and that is; from here, whither? And yes, he is coming. There will be a plane from Madras arriving to-morrow a little after noon.’

‘Then he didn’t know,’ said Tossa, quivering, ‘that his mother was dead? He didn’t see the newspapers?’

‘He did not know until it was too late… no. One does not always read newspapers. There is a time
not
to read them, if you wish to remain upright.’

‘Then you had to tell him?’ she said, her eyes, dark and luminous with sympathy, fixed on the austere old face that confronted her with such serenity. ‘That must have been very hard for you both. And then, his child…’

‘It is never easy,’ said the Swami apocryphally, ‘to return to the world. Until you have left it, you cannot know how hard. But there is no other way forward and none back. Yes, I told him all that it was necessary to tell. And tomorrow in the afternoon he will be here.’

‘But what can he do?’ demanded Felder. ‘God knows I shall be glad to have him emerge into the light again, and get hold of his responsibilities. He’s taken his time about it! But it’s the kid we’re concerned about, and how is he better placed than we are to get her back? Damn it, we did what they told us to do, we paid what they asked for, and they’re ratting on the deal. What more has he to offer, when it comes to the point?’

‘About twelve million rupees more,’ said the Swami Premanathanand with all the aplomb and all the cold blood of a banker or a saint. And he added patiently, as to unrealistic children: ‘Do not forget we are concerned with people whose requirement is essentially simple… money. That puts us in a very strong position, because Satyavan is in command of a very great deal of money – now, as you know, in almost complete command of it – and to him it means very little. It sweats from his finger-ends, money. Daughters are infinitely harder to come by. He will pay whatever is necessary to recover Anjli. He has told me so with his own lips. To the limit of what he has, he will pay for her.’

‘But how,’ wondered Tossa distractedly, ‘do we get in touch with them? They can reach us, but we don’t know how to reach them.’

‘That probably won’t be a problem,’ Dominic said bitterly, ‘as soon as her father emerges. After all, they must be watching absolutely any developments in connection with the family, they wouldn’t miss a thing like that.’

‘You may well be right. But in fact Satyavan has left as little as possible to chance. I have here the text of a personal advertisement which I have composed at his dictation.’ He felt in the deep pocket of the trench coat, which was draped like a cloak of office over the back of his chair, and produced a folded sheet of paper. ‘It is his wish that this shall appear in tomorrow’s newspapers… all the main ones – in the personal column. It is too late to get it into the morning press, but we are in time for the evening papers. If we are not successful with this approach, then of course it may be necessary to let the newsmen have some item to use concerning the return of Mr Kumar, but for the moment he judged it better to come home as quietly as possible and attempt a private contact.’ He unfolded the sheet of paper, and perched his spectacles back upon his long, narrow, beautiful nose. ‘This is how it reads: “Anjli: Am interested in your merchandise. High price if delivered in good condition. Full guarantees.” Then I had intended to give Mr Kumar’s home number and request a call at a fixed hour any evening – hoping, of course, that it will come tomorrow evening if the advertisement has been seen. But if you would permit, I think it would be better now to say only: “Call usual number, eight p.m. Kumar.” If you will allow this telephone to be used as before, I think it might avoid alarming the vendors.’

Felder uttered a soft whistle of admiration. ‘You think of everything!’

‘If one must do such things at all, it is necessary to think of everything. And therefore I cannot any longer avoid,’ said the Swami mildly, ‘pointing out to you the one remaining possibility with which, unfortunately, we also have to count. Though it may well be that you have thought of it for yourselves, even if you have refrained from expressing it. Anjli may already have been killed.’

Tossa nodded wretchedly, Dominic stood frozen eye to eye with the fear he had hoped she need not share, and Felder protested aloud, all in the same instant.

‘Good God, no! They surely wouldn’t hurt the child. I’m sure she must be alive and safe somewhere.’

‘It is common practice in cases of kidnapping. Such people tend to make certain that they can never be identified, and the obvious witness is the victim.’

It was doubly terrible to hear this said in that tranquil, matter-of-fact voice. Felder looked grey with shock and a little sick; but still he shook his head vigorously, resisting the foreboding. ‘No, it’s impossible. I’m certain she’s alive and well.’

‘Let us hope so. But the criminals have not kept their bargain with you. There must be a reason why you have not received the expected call. Either it is a further gesture of greed to hold on to her for still more money, since the first demand was so encouragingly successful. Or else they cannot produce her, and you will hear nothing more. Her father’s arrival will resolve that problem. For I must tell you that he will insist on seeing with his own eyes that his daughter is unharmed, before he even enters into negotiations. What is more, on my advice he insisted that you, who may now know her more certainly than he himself would, shall also see her and verify that it is indeed Anjli. He has not set eyes on her for six years, a substitute might be passed off on him if you were not present to confirm her identity.’

‘But how,’ asked Dominic with patent dismay, ‘can we hope to make them agree to taking a risk like that?’

‘That is for them to arrange as best they can. Satyavan will agree to any safeguards they suggest, provided he can satisfy himself that there still exists something to be bought. If they want their money – and it will be worth their while – they will go to some trouble to arrange it.’ He added: ‘I also have promised that the police will not be drawn into the affair by me, though of course, as you know, they are already informed about the crime itself. A quick settlement is therefore much to the criminal’s advantage.’

‘I hate,’ said Dominic with sudden and uncharacteristic passion, ‘to think of them getting away with it.’ And it came out as a plain protest against the Swami’s apparent acceptance of the possibility. True enough, the main thing was to recover Anjli alive and well, and restore her to her rediscovered father. But even so, the ugliest and meanest of crimes… not to speak of Arjun Baba’s thin but tenacious thread of life, snapped almost by the way…

The Swami rose, faintly smiling, and put on his trench coat. ‘I am more fortunate than you in this respect, that my beliefs assure me that no one ever
gets away
with anything. There is a constant account which must balance. In what form of life these people will return to earth it is useless to conjecture.’

‘Cockroaches, probably,’ said Tossa with detestation, and saw Felder wince perceptibly. In India cockroaches are the nightmare of the uninitiated.

‘Ah, cockroaches are sagacious and relatively harmless creatures! Do not attribute human malice to them. And now I shall leave you,’ said the Swami, ‘until tomorrow evening. If you agree that I may bring my friend here to hope for his daughter’s return?’

‘Yes, please do! None of us can rest until we get her back.’

Only after he had withdrawn did it occur to Tossa, to her amazement and shame, that they had not offered him any refreshment in return for his typist’s excellent coffee. The magnetism of his presence was such that one sat at his feet while he was in the room. And yet, when it came to the point, what did they really know about him?

Felder went out on to the balcony outside the window, and looked down into the courtyard, curious about the ancient Rolls with its tattered body and indestructible heart. The driver had just observed the Swami approaching from the garden entrance of the hotel, and slid nimbly out from behind the wheel to open the door for his master.

‘Wouldn’t you know he’d have that sort of car? I bet everything he does and everything that belongs to him measures up. Say what you like about this country, at least it has a sense of
style
.’

Tossa and Dominic came to his side and stood looking down with him as the Swami clambered majestically but athletically into the lofty front passenger seat, which had something of the throne about it. As Girish closed the door a large taxi came prowling into the patio from the drive, and its headlights focussed directly upon the Rolls. Girish moved at leisure round to the driving seat, head raised to free his vision from the momentary glare. Felder uttered a sudden sharp moan of astonishment, and leaned out far over the balustrade.