The Girl from Cobb Street (32 page)

She started to walk down the road she’d chosen, but had gone only yards when she heard a voice calling. Calling her name. She swung round and saw the figure of Grayson Harte at some distance, waving vigorously at her. He wanted her to stop, wanted to catch up with her. But she didn’t want his company. In her mind, an undefined suspicion still hung over him and she could not rid herself of the feeling. If Gerald could be involved in such a crime, why not him? Why not both of them together? They’d known each other since they were boys at school and who was to say for sure they were the enemies Grayson had suggested. She had only his word for it. Gerald’s too. Her husband was adept at deceit and could easily have pretended a dislike he didn’t feel. It was fanciful, horrible even, but she was no longer certain whom she could trust.

She hurried forward and saw he was beginning to gain on her. She broke into a trot and then a run. Panic overtook her and, without thinking, she plunged into a maze of narrow, ill-smelling streets. She ran on until her breath was coming short and she had a sharp pain in her side. Gasping for air, she dribbled to a stop. At least she had lost Grayson Harte, but where on earth was she? The crowds had melted away, and not a single soul was visible. Her nerves on edge, she turned to retrace her steps. The air seemed unnaturally still. Not a sound came to her. It was as though everyone had fallen off the edge of the world and left her here alone. She mustn’t be alarmed, she told herself, she must simply return the way she had come.

The sky had darkened even further since she’d left the river, and now the blackest of clouds were forming a column of threat, which seemed to stretch upwards into infinite space. An unbearable feeling of pressure bore down on her, and her head began to ache. She needed to get home, needed to lie down on her hard, narrow bed. It had never seemed more inviting. She wondered whether Gerald was still waiting by the car, or whether he’d grown worried and was even now scouring the streets looking for her. If so, they must soon find each other, for the town was not large.

Out of nowhere, a hot wind arose, pasting the skirt of her dress tight against her legs and swirling violent clouds of dust in her face. Along the street, unbattened wooden shutters began a loud clatter. But their noise was as nothing. A deafening crash overhead made her freeze where she stood. It was as though a bomb had gone off a hundred feet above. Suddenly the black sky broke apart, disintegrating into a vast avalanche of water. Within seconds, she was soaked to the skin, the power of its onslaught nearly forcing her to her knees. She staggered upright and tried to walk forward but everywhere water was gushing uncontrollably. The smell of the land soaking up its first real rain was pungent. Cracked earth, hard as concrete, which over the months had formed itself into a dull ochre mosaic, began to soften rapidly and in no time she found her feet glued in mud. She must find shelter.

Through the sheeting rain, she saw the faintest outline of a large house, an old merchant’s home, she thought, once rich enough to boast a crumbling stone portico. Blindly she stumbled through the deluge, and found herself a temporary refuge beneath its roof. But water was thundering on either side of her, cascading from the stonework above her head, and it would be only a matter of time before her shelter vanished. The water was already inches high. Shivering, she crouched as far back against the crumbling stone as she could. Flashes of lightning were streaking overhead. One huge strike of jagged crystal zipped through the blackness, tearing the sky almost in two, and by its neon light she saw a figure standing a few feet from her. She had no idea how he’d come to be there, and no intention of waiting to find out. She had to flee. She took one step out of the porch when, with startling speed, a hand came from behind and clamped a sickly-smelling pad over her mouth. She felt her legs buckle, and then she knew no more.

She was emerging from a tunnel. There was a suffocating darkness and she could see and hear nothing, except for a far-off echo thrumming in her ears. That was her breath, she realised, coming in short, sharp gasps. Now the tunnel was expanding and the darkness was not so opaque. There seemed to be the slightest chink of light away in the distance. She opened her eyes a fraction and pain arrowed through her head. Her eyelids shut fast and she drifted back into a black haze.

Minutes ticked by, and gradually her body began to come back to life. Her head was heavy and throbbing and seemed detached from the rest of her limbs. She stretched out her fingers and beneath their tips felt a rough blanket, spread over the hard, mud floor on which she lay. When she tried to open her eyes again, she thought she could see brown—brown walls, walls made of mud. Cautiously she turned her head, and the shape of a door cut into the furthest wall swam into her vision. She felt wretchedly sick. Her eyes closed once more and she lay unmoving, curled in a tight ball of misery.

It was a long while before she felt strong enough to try to make sense of where she was. Very slowly she allowed her gaze to wander around the room. This time she managed to focus on the one source of light, a thin bead of brightness at the top of the door. It showed her that the room she lay in was very small, hardly larger than a cupboard. Wherever was she, and how had she come here?

She tried to remember back to her last waking moments. A motley of colour and noise filled her head, a confused jumble of gongs and goddesses, people and shouting, a river, water. Water—that was it. She’d been sheltering from water, from rain. And what rain! She had seen nothing like it in her entire life. It was night, and she’d been sheltering beneath a stone porch; it was old stone, ornamented. A tracery of flowers and birds was cut into its hard surface, she’d noticed. All around the road was flooded, rivers of water flowing over her shoes and wetting her ankles. But where was this porch, and why was she taking shelter there? Her head felt as though it had been battered by a hundred cudgels, and she strained to remember.

She’d arrived there breathless. She’d been running, running away but, away from what, from whom? The answer came to her slowly. She’d been running from Grayson Harte. How curious. But then she remembered how she’d flown into an irrational panic when she’d heard him calling her. She’d been desperate to get back to the square and to Gerald and the waiting car, desperate to get back to safety, but she’d run the wrong way. Had Grayson caught up with her? Someone had. They had made her a prisoner. She became aware then of how badly her arms were hurting. They had been pulled awkwardly behind her back, and her wrists were sore. Sunk in a coma, she’d been too dazed to realise, but she was bound with a rope and, when she tried to flex her legs, she found that they, too, were hobbled. Surely this couldn’t be happening. It was a nightmare she was living through and not real life. But when she managed to focus hazily a few inches from her face, she saw a piece of white cloth, a pad, the pad that had sent her into oblivion. This was no nightmare. This had happened, and now she could see the scene clearly: the lightning strike overhead, the figure of a man, a rough hand covering her mouth and something sweet in the air. Chloroform. It was little wonder she felt so ill: she had been drugged. Again.

A slight noise caught her attention and she looked towards the door. Now she could see there was a slit about two-thirds of the way up, and a face had pressed itself against the wood. An eye was watching her. The bolts on the door were slid back, and a vaguely familiar figure walked towards her and jerked her roughly to her feet. It was the Indian she’d seen in the garden, the Indian who had been outside her bedroom door. He bent down to untie her ankles and for a moment she thought wildly of kicking herself free of his hold when once the rope was slack. But through the open doorway she’d glimpsed other men, other figures moving around, and she knew there was no chance of escape. He pushed her forward and she nearly fell, her legs forgetting how to walk after the long confinement. Another push in the back, and she was out of the door and into an enormous space. It looked like a deserted warehouse and was completely empty, except for several dirty plastic chairs and the group of men, none of whom she’d seen before. She counted them as she stumbled forward, one, two—six in total, but Rajiv was not one of them. At the very end of the warehouse, and what seemed a mile away, a door to the outside world stood very slightly ajar, a door she had no realistic chance of reaching.

The man pushed her down onto one of the plastic chairs which had been placed, deliberately it seemed, with its back to the open doorway. Her arms, still bound, were wrenched over the back of the chair and her ankles tied with rope to its front legs. Her body was screaming with pain, but she bit her lip, refusing to betray weakness. Weakness would not help her cause. No sound had reached her in her prison cell but here the rain beat a relentless tattoo on the iron roof. Over its staccato, she heard a deeper roar. Then it came to her—it was the sound of the river. No longer the gentle water of a few hours ago but a raging torrent. She was back by the riverside again. But why had she been brought here? Why was she a prisoner and who were these people? They were dressed in peasant clothes, dirty, slightly ragged, but there was nothing to distinguish them from the hundreds who toiled in the fields every day. If they spoke even a little English, she thought, it might be worth trying to talk to them, convince them they’d made a dreadful blunder. It was evident they were hoping to be paid a ransom—what other reason could there be for her captivity?—but they could not have chosen a worse victim. Her stomach clenched. When they discovered there was no money to be had, would they turn on her? She searched their faces for some sign of humanity, but the harshness of the overhead neon, striping the immense, empty space, blanked all expression.

The man who had fetched her from the small dungeon took up his station to one side of her. He spat noisily on the earth floor, and then relaxed into immobility. He seemed to be waiting, the others too. They had ceased shuffling back and forth and were standing silent and still. Her ears had become better attuned now, and she heard his footsteps before the man came into view. It was a sure tread and drawing nearer. She felt the Indian at her side stiffen, almost to attention. She turned her head slightly and saw a familiar figure, a familiar face. Anish!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘
T
hank God, it’s you!’ She was almost crying with relief. ‘Tell them, Anish, tell them they’ve made a terrible mistake. Please.’

He said nothing, but picked up another of the plastic chairs and sat down facing her. She was confounded. Why wasn’t he setting her free? Her mind went into overdrive. He had to negotiate, that was it. He’d been brought here to negotiate her release. They were kidnappers, as she’d thought, and Anish was the go-between. She tried to control the tumble of thoughts, but his first words shook her into a vortex of disbelief. And utter, wrenching nausea.

‘Why didn’t you go to Simla, Daisy? I told you to go. Gerald told you to go. If you’d only followed our advice, this would all have been over by the time you got back.’

‘This?’ she croaked, struggling to understand.

He waved his hands at the men standing silent and watchful. ‘You’ve become a worry to my henchmen.’

‘You know these men! Who are they? And why have they imprisoned me?’ Her voice broke on a half-sob.

‘I’m sorry you find yourself in this predicament, but you have only yourself to blame. You’re here because you know too much. And these gentlemen are very aware of that. You could hang each and every one of them.’

‘These men are your friends?’ Through a mist of bewilderment, she tried to grasp at any kind of certainty.

‘That may be stretching things a little. But they are my companions. Companions in arms, shall we say.’ Anish sat back in his chair and contemplated her.

‘So you … it was you who stole the guns?’ There was a long pause while she tried to absorb this dreadful knowledge. ‘That’s why you wouldn’t go to the Colonel when I told you what I’d discovered.’

‘How very astute.’ She flinched at his mocking tone.

‘But how? It’s not possible you could have stolen them.’ She knew his pride in his regiment, his loyalty to his comrades.

He took her words literally. ‘You’re right, it isn’t possible. An Indian officer has no access to the armoury—another of those petty discriminations we discussed. But if
I
have no access, I have a friend who does.’

‘Gerald?’ But she already knew the answer. It explained in an instant why his conversations with Anish were so often halted the minute they caught sight of her.

‘Indeed, Gerald. He was the man I needed. And he needed me. He’s been busy for years constructing a daydream. His only problem was that he hadn’t the money to sustain it. That made him a desperate man, a man willing to do anything.’

‘So Gerald is a thief and a traitor.’ She felt scorn rising within her, acrid and unstoppable.

‘I fear so. But don’t judge him too harshly. He’s an accidental villain. At the outset he intended only to facilitate one consignment—’

‘“Facilitate”? Don’t you mean, steal?’

‘If you like. As I say, our bargain was for just one consignment but when that didn’t quite pay his debts, he agreed to another. And then, of course, another. Poor Gerald. His fantasy trapped him on a treadmill he couldn’t get off.’

‘And now? How many more thefts will he facilitate? And where is he? Surely he should be here, gloating in triumph.’

She spoke bravely, but she knew her words were hollow. Anish had dealt her a mortal blow and her courage was failing. When she’d first seen his calm, kindly face, her spirits had leapt. She’d brimmed with relief. He was a true friend and he would rescue her. But in seconds, the benign vision she’d always carried of him had splintered into a thousand small pieces. It was too hard, too much to bear.