Ghostwriting (7 page)

Anne looked up from where she was sitting at the table.

He took her hand. “Come on. I want you to come with me.”

“Where?” she said, surprised.

He gestured with the software box. “I’m taking this back. I... I don’t need it anymore.”

They hurried from the house and drove along the lane. “Steven...? I don’t know what’s going on, but I love you.”

He smiled at her. “And I love you too, Anne, more than anything in the world.”

She stared at him, then smiled as Rhodes turned and drove into town along the main road.

Taipusan

Calcutta, 1948

When the pitch of the ferry’s engines modulated from a constant, full-steam-ahead roar to a laboured throbbing, Charles Madison left his cabin and leaned against the timber rail of the foredeck. In his pocket was the letter from McAllister, creased and worn through many re-readings, the content of which had brought him up the coast from Pondicherry.

Calcutta came into view, its erratic skyline a dark silhouette against the pale dawn light. There was something at first exotic about the horizon – with its minarets and garlic towers – and then, as the ship docked and the buildings resolved themselves in the strengthening morning light, the picture-postcard aspect of the city dissolved to reveal a wave of slums receding into the distance: grey, shabby box-like buildings piled one atop the other with little thought of safety and still less of architectural aesthetics.

Deck-hands flung bundled ropes onto the quayside, where they uncoiled lazily of their own volition like stirring cobras. Madison picked up his travelling case and approached the gangway. The ship’s arrival had brought about a riot of activity on the quay. Porters and food-vendors, beggars and suspicious-looking characters in impeccable suits all jostled to meet the ferry’s passengers. Calls and cries rent the humid morning air.

When his turn came to disembark he did so with care, the narrow walk-way bouncing beneath his tread. He stepped onto the reassuringly solid cobbles and straight into the dubious custody of a dozen importuning locals. He was assailed with questions and quick fingers plucking at his clothing and baggage, the colour of his skin marking him as a legitimate target. He pushed through the melée, found a taxi rank and slipped into the leather comfort of a battered Ambassador.
 

He gave the driver the name of a hotel and the engine throbbed into life. They left the quayside and raced down narrow thoroughfares, often brought up short to idle in a gathering miasma of petrol fumes, halted by bottle-necked crowds or bullocks clopping negligently down the middle of the street.

Five minutes later they pulled up outside a dilapidated Victorian hotel. Madison retrieved his bag from the back seat, entered the foyer of the hotel and checked in. His room overlooked the sprawling city, spread out beneath the exacting light of the rising sun. Straight away, before bathing, Madison took McAllister’s letter from his pocket and dialled the four digit telephone number printed beneath the address.

After an interminable wait, he was connected on a crackling line to someone who answered, “McAllister speaking. May I help?”

“McAllister, this is Charles Madison. I received your letter. You don’t know how grateful...”

A hesitation, then, “It was the least I could do, dear chap, in the circumstances.”

“I was wondering if we could meet?”

“Capital idea. Tonight, around seven?” McAllister suggested.

He arranged to meet McAllister at the hotel that evening. Then he showered, turned on the ceiling fan, and tried to nap.

~

Madison selected a table on the third floor patio, ordered tea and admired the view. The sun was setting over the jumbled city, the line of the horizon bisecting the swollen orb.

A minute after seven a tall, stooped figure in a white suit and a battered Panama hat paused indecisively in the entrance and scanned the tables. Madison was one of only three people dining at this hour, and the only Westerner. McAllister raised his stick in greeting and limped across the patio, carrying a scuffed leather briefcase. He was much older than Madison had assumed, thin of face and unhealthily pale. Madison judged him to be in his eighties.
 

“Mr Madison, my pleasure.”

They shook hands and McAllister pulled out a chair and seated himself with difficulty. A waiter arrived and McAllister ordered Earl Grey.

They exchanged polite small talk, McAllister enquiring as to Madison’s journey, Madison in return sketching his amusing discomforts. He felt that McAllister was uneasy, perhaps nervous in his presence.

“I was in the Lancers before I retired,” McAllister told him. “Went back home, but nothing was the same, don’t you know? Decided to return to the only real home I’d ever known. I’ve lived in Calcutta ever since. How about yourself?”

Madison smiled. He wanted to question McAllister about Caroline, but at the same time feared being seen as impolite. “I run a small engineering company near Pondicherry,” he said. “Though I’m thinking of selling up and returning to England.” He hesitated, then went on, “India doesn’t... let’s just say that India doesn’t agree with my wife.”

McAllister’s mouth hung half open, revealing less than a full complement of teeth in a state of advanced decay. “Please excuse me one moment,” he said, extracting a silver snuff box from an inner pocket. He nipped a quantity of white powder – not snuff, as Madison had expected – lay it on the back of a palsied hand and snorted.

At Madison’s quizzical expression, McAllister explained, “A very powerful and wonderful drug.”

Madison ventured, “Have you considered going back home for treatment?”

McAllister laughed. “Oh, Mr Madison, the drug is not what you might term medicinal.” He cocked an eye at Madison. “I can see that I have shocked you.”

Madison smiled, at a loss for words, and McAllister went on, “The drug is killing me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Without going into too much personal detail, Mr Madison, I have suffered various tragedies over the years. I am not... let’s say that I’m not too enamoured of this existence. Imagine my joy when I discovered the balm of the drug.” McAllister paused and regarded Madison across the table. “I suspect that you find my nihilism contemptible?”

Madison shifted uncomfortably and lied, “Not at all.” He decided he could restrain himself no longer. He leaned forward and asked, “How did you come to meet my wife, Mr McAllister?”

Caroline had left their home in the south two months ago, after they had argued. He had assumed she would come back to him, contrite, but as the days turned to weeks and she failed to return, Madison had grown frantic with worry.

McAllister stared out over the city, his watering eyes giving the impression of tearful emotion. “I came across Caroline about a month ago, in a tea-shop along the Kumar Gange. The proprietor supplies me with my... my medicine, you see. One evening at sunset I arrived to find a woman sitting at the back of the cafe. That she was a woman was odd enough – in this society, women do not frequent cafes, Mr Madison. That she was English was even odder. She was drinking tea, and she seemed lost and frightened. We fell into conversation. She’d just arrived in Calcutta, intending to spend a few weeks in the city. She told me she was interested in Hindu culture. It was quite obvious that she was naive about the place. She didn’t stand a chance. She seemed so young...”

“She is thirty,” Madison said.

“Thirty? I put her nearer twenty at that first meeting.” McAllister smiled and went on, “I offered to show her around the city. I told her what I knew of Calcutta, convinced her of my credentials, so to speak. I took her to a reputable hotel and arranged to meet her the following day. Over the next week we met every other day and I showed her the city. She was a good student, very bright.”

“That sounds like Caroline,” Madison said.

“To be frank, I enjoyed showing off, impressing her with my knowledge. I didn’t realise myself how much I’d picked up in my time here.” McAllister paused, then said, “She didn’t seem happy, Mr Madison. She mentioned you, an argument...”

Madison nodded. “My wife was... she was having difficulty in coming to terms with the reality of India.”

McAllister opened his mouth in a silent, “Ah...” and nodded. “I must admit I was surprised when Caroline evinced an odd fascination with the more extreme aspects of Hindu culture.”

Madison leaned forward. “Extreme aspects?”

McAllister hesitated, then said, “She showed a special interest in certain cults of appeasement and mortification. Physical torture, mutilation and the like. Quite gruesome. Caroline made copious notes. She told me she was a writer.”

“She’s written a couple of books back in London. Popular psychology texts.” Madison hesitated, then said, “She was interested in the masochistic impulse in human nature.”

He had only found out about this aspect of her personality a year after their marriage in London, when he had brought her out to India. She took a while to adjust to the teeming sub-continent, to the flagrant disparity between the rich and the poor, to the blatant injustices suffered by the disadvantaged.

She had adapted, in her own way. She had begun charity work, setting up a feeding centre for street children in Pondicherry. Madison considered her altruism a form of compensation for the guilt she felt at being white, rich and privileged. She seemed to want to identify with the poor of India, to a certain extent take on some of their pain.

That had been the subject of their last argument. Madison had accused her of patronising her charges in attempting such empathy, and Caroline had accused him of cold-hearted cynicism.

The following day she had left.

McAllister stared off into the distance. He resumed, “We spent many hours in my modest flat, just talking.”

The sun had set, in its place a great proscenium of roseate light. The chunter of combustion engines and vendor’s cries rose from the street below.

McAllister went on, “I... I showed her everything, told her all I knew. I even got her into a couple of Taipusan ceremonies that not many outsiders had ever seen.”

“Taipusan?”
 

“A particularly secretive cult,” McAllister said, and continued, “A week ago, Caroline failed to turn up at one of our pre-arranged meetings. I went to her hotel and was told that she’d left with someone the previous night, a local. I searched the city, made enquiries. A few days ago I took possession of her effects, clothes and notebooks. I took the liberty of reading through them. I found copious notes on the Taipusan sect, and a sub-sect known as the Disciples of Kurti.” McAllister paused, then said, “I found your address among her papers, and thought it wise to write to you.”

Madison nodded, considering. “Do you have any idea, any notion at all, why Caroline should be interested in this particular sect?”

McAllister gazed past Madison at the afterglow on the horizon. “Mr Madison, Kurti is a relatively new god in the Hindu pantheon. It is a god of retribution, demanding sacrifice.” He paused. “I was loath to mention this, but I fear less what Caroline might find of interest in the sect, than what the sect might find of interest in her.”

McAllister took a manilla envelope from his battered briefcase and passed it across the table. “Her notes, Mr Madison. The rest of her affects I have in my rooms. I will arrange to have them delivered.”

Madison thanked him and took the envelope.

“I am afraid that I can be of little further aid,” McAllister said, “though I do know of a particularly efficient investigator who might be able to help in your search.”

They chatted for a while, before McAllister made his excuses and departed.

That night, Madison stayed up well into the small hours, reading Caroline’s notes on the Kurti sect. They told him more than he wished to know, and at the same time less. They gave no clue as to Caroline’s current whereabouts, but provided ample evidence of her state of mind.

She seemed obsessed, in her note-taking, with the sect’s desire to appease the god Kurti. It was, as McAllister mentioned, a god of retribution, a balancer of the cosmic scales of justice. Again and again he read of Caroline’s guilt, of her need for personal atonement. The weight of human misery loaded upon her by the state of society in the sub-continent had finally proved too much.

Madison slept, at last, as dawn was breaking beyond the hotel window.

~

He left the hotel at noon, bought a map of the city and negotiated the crowded streets, passing down narrow alleys teeming with citizens. The noise from traffic, street vendors and petrol-driven generators – compensating for the city’s frequent power failures – was incessant, and together with the heat made him dizzy and disoriented. His progress was the focus of disconcerting attention; he became aware that he was trailing a crowd of curious observers.

The private investigator had his office on the sixth floor of an ugly concrete block wedged in a row of Victorian buildings. A rickety timber staircase, wide enough to admit only one person, switchbacked from floor to floor. Each level was sub-divided into offices little larger than cells.

The office of D.K. Begum was no different. Madison stepped into the tiny room, peering into the dimness. At a shouted command from an obese man seated behind a desk, two young boys sprang to their feet, sweeping the floor and lighting incense sticks. Through the resulting fug of blue smoke, Madison made out a dozen clay statues: Hanuman the monkey god, the multi-armed Laxmi, Gannesh and Kali.

Begum snapped an order in Hindi, and the boys slipped from the room. He indicated the chair before the desk with a massive, complacent palm. “Please, be comfortable.”

The investigator was bald, hook-nosed, his eyes half-hooded in an aspect of judicial lassitude. A tikka spot marked the centre of his forehead like a bullet hole.

“How can I be of assistance, Mr...?”

“Madison, Charles Madison. You were recommended by a mutual acquaintance, Mr McAllister.”

“Ah! My good friend, the esteemed and venerable McAllister,” Begum beamed. “Please, tell me more. Elucidate...”

Behind the smokescreen of burning incense, Begum gazed lazily at Madison. The man’s verbal dexterity was at odds with his demeanour of bovine lethargy.

“I am looking for my wife,” Madison began, and recounted what McAllister had told him. The heat of the afternoon, and the airless atmosphere in the office, combined to make him drowsy.

The investigator listened to Madison and placed his palms together, as if in prayer, forefingers to his lips.

At last he said, “And you say that your wife, your beloved Caroline, had certain interests in... did you say, a cult?”