Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (33 page)

We set off through the white murk, hardly able to see more than a few feet before us. Very quickly my guide turned what I judged must be north and I grabbed him by the collar, telling him that I was not a fool and if I thought he was taking me awry he would regret it. He cowered and promised to set me right and we went on for a while, twisting and turning, me holding firmly on to his sleeve, but with no notion where we were heading. At last I heard footsteps behind me, their sound subdued by the fog, and before I could do
much but shift my weight to one side, I received a great crack on the shoulder – one that had clearly been meant for my head. I staggered and my guide slipped his sleeve from my fingers and ran off. Someone tried to grab my arms and another launched a blow at my head. I saw stars but managed to throw my weight backwards upon one of my attackers and grind my heel down his shin and on to his foot. He stumbled and loosened his grip, and I broke from him and dashed into the gloom, I knew not where. I came up swiftly against a wooden strut – a door post – and pressed myself against it, working away from my assailants. They shouted to each other and cried out to me that I might as well give in, describing in bloodcurdling detail what they would do to me when they found me. Unsurprisingly, this made me ever more determined to elude them. I continued to move slowly along the wall until I came to an opening. With relief I blundered into it, losing my balance and letting out a gasp before I set off down it at a run. This was enough to alert my pursuers, who chased after me.

So we went on for some several hundred yards and several turns, their shouts sometimes receding, then suddenly near. My trousers were spattered with muck to my knees and with every step the mud sucked at me and threatened to make me slip. Thinking them entirely too close, I put my last breath into a final sprint forward but at the moment I did so there came a voice near me which cried, ‘Stop!’

Such was my surprise that I did stop and found myself on the edge of a pond of stinking water: a seething cesspool. Two more steps and I would have gone in head first.

‘Who’s there?’ I gasped as I struggled for breath. A lean figure moved out of the gloaming, holding a lantern, with a thick comforter around its neck and its arms protruding too far from its sleeves. I peered again, not quite believing my eyes.

‘Mr Dearlove?’ I whispered.

‘Captain Avery?’ he answered, no less amazed. ‘I heard someone running, I feared they – you – would fall in. It happens too frequently.’

‘I am being pursued, we must take care,’ I said. ‘Where can we go?’

He pulled me to one side into the shelter of some ruin or other
and covered the lantern with his body. For some minutes we did not speak. We heard them pass some way away and then there was quiet. In a hushed voice I explained my situation.

‘I have been visiting some families on the other side of this cesspool with food and succour,’ he said. ‘They are godly people but poor, and living so close to this sump of filth the children are often sickly. I know these courts and will take you to Drury Lane, of course. But, Captain, just before I heard you I made a terrible discovery of my own, one which must take precedence for the moment. I have found a body, in the water.’

‘A body! Good God!’

He winced at my language. I apologized and asked how I might be of assistance. Moving swiftly through the fog, Dearlove brought me to his ghastly find.

It lay face down, entirely saturated with the stinking water. A big man, in good clothes, but without shoes.

‘Did he drown?’

‘I think he may have been stabbed but I did not get close enough to be sure. To be truthful, I could not bring myself to.’

It was hard to make much out in the dark. I found a piece of broken wood and endeavoured to turn the body a little, while Dearlove held the lantern up so we might see something of the face. I could not guess how long it had been in the water, but its features, while bloated and greyish white, had not been worn away. I had noticed before that dead men’s faces were often hard to recognize, but something about it caught at my memory, and requesting that Dearlove hold up the lantern a little longer, I poked at the rough sodden cloth of its jacket and stared at the face, the most arresting feature of which was its large bulbous nose.

‘What colour would you say the cloth was?’ I asked.

‘I could not swear to anything but black.’

‘Blue, possibly?’

He nodded doubtfully.

I said, ‘I think this may be a man who was employed to guard the dead newspaper man, Eldred Woundy.’

‘You believe it may be connected to your case?’ Dearlove’s voice shook slightly.

‘I cannot be sure, but it is possible.’

We debated how to proceed, Dearlove explaining that, if we left it, the body might have disappeared by the time we returned, and that it might also prove difficult to find a single constable willing to make his way into the rookery by night. I offered to remain with the body while he went to the new police, but he refused, pointing out that I was now shaking and reminding me that my pursuers might return. I wondered aloud whether we might appeal to Gentleman Joe.

‘You know him?’ he said, taken aback.

I explained hurriedly that I had come across him once.

‘You know he is the authority and thief master general in these streets,’ he whispered, ‘a murderous creature with no morals at all.’

We agreed in the end that there was nothing for it but to return to Drury Lane together and then proceed to the police station in Bow Street. I could not help wondering whether Sergeant Loin would take any more interest in this body than he had in the others we had brought to his attention.

By the time we reached Drury Lane I had not stopped shaking and my head ached so badly it felt as if it were held in a vice. Dearlove urged me to go home, promising he would go to Bow Street police station, and would pass on my details should they wish to interview me. With a degree of shame but no little gratitude, I gave in and took a cab to Dean Street. Blake was definitely improved. He lay on the settle, wrapped in his banyan, and a decent fire crackled in the grate. O’Toole had gone to Miss Jenkins’s, having been persuaded to pay for supper and lodging. He had initially sulked on being told that she did not allow spirits upon the premises, but had cheered up when I managed to convince her that half a bottle of port might be regarded as medicinal.

It took a little while for the shaking to stop, and the headache would not pass, so it was some time before I was ready to describe the rookery and my encounter with Dearlove. Blake listened with his eyes shut, and when I had finished said he would send to Gentleman Joe about the body and the two bruisers, for he was still owed a favour. I rattled slowly down the stairs to the back to call the ostler’s boy, who came up and waited while Blake laboriously wrote a note, sealed it and handed it over with a blunt, ‘You know where it goes.’

The boy nodded, deadly serious and eager too, and took the stairs by twos.

Blake fell back on the settle. ‘Now, tell me about the prison.’ And I did.

‘… And so he took her off in the carriage. I should be pleased for her, but I cannot help it. I did not like it.’

Blake did not smile, but listened intently.

‘It is absurd, I know.’ I took up the poker and stirred the burning embers.

Blake said, ‘Why did you leave India, William?’

‘Oh, a number of things. I was injured in Afghanistan. Helen wanted to return.’ Out of loyalty to my wife I knew I should say no more. And yet I wondered if the real reason I had come to London was to reveal my true thoughts to the only person to whom I felt such things might be said.

There was a brief silence. Then he said, ‘She never came round to it, then.’

‘No. I thought she might, but the place never held much charm for her. I think she imagined that it would all change once she was married, but of course the heat, the dust, the insects, the fevers, the strangeness, remained the same. But she tried. She came to Afghanistan with me, you know. We were just married and many of the other army wives were going north, and so she decided to accompany me, though I told her she could stay and set up a household in Calcutta. We went first up to Simla. We missed the worst of the heat, but it was very hard for her – and, of course, it took months.

‘We passed the monsoon months in Simla in the cool. Helen loved that. I was still the “hero of Doora”, and she was part of Society and made a great fuss of.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I am afraid I had tired a little of that, but I did not want to disappoint her since I was the reason she had come. I wanted to make her happy.’

‘And as a soldier?’

‘Oh, I took to it. I am a born soldier, it turns out. They gave me an infantry unit to begin with, then an irregular cavalry unit. Then in Afghanistan they made me captain of an irregular unit of cavalry riflemen. I did well enough. Got my promotion, won my medals.’

‘In Afghanistan? Hard place. When did you go?’

‘December ’38. The Governor-General and that martinet Macnaghten – you remember him?’

Blake, his eyes closed, nodded.

‘They said the ruler, Dost Mohammed, was in secret talks with the Russians. Threatening our borders, so we must depose him and reinstate the former king, Shah Shuja. Various senior army wives
Helen admired were going, so she decided to come too. It was as if she had completely forgotten how much she had disliked the trip from Calcutta. I think she thought it would be like some adventure from the
Arabian Nights
.

‘The initial campaign took about nine months. At first it seemed very straightforward. By August ’39 we had taken the cities – there are only a few of them – reinstalled Shah Shuja, and put Dost Mohammed to flight. But even then Helen was unhappy. She found the travelling hard and she hated seeing me go off to fight. She was sure that I was going to die and she would be abandoned. She was cheered a little when we took Kabul. Things were more settled. There were parties and banquets and plays. Then we found we were to be blessed with a child and so when many of the wives went home at the end of ’39, she chose to stay on. I wanted her to return to Simla, but I could see she felt fragile and unwell.’

‘And what of you?’

‘I felt the campaign had been too easy. But I liked my men, and my unit was very effective against the local tribes’ ambushes.’

‘Go on.’

‘After most of the army left in December, there was a turn for the worse. It had become evident that Shah Shuja – an entirely unworthy creature, heartily despised by his own people – would never keep his throne without the backing of the Company, and there were not enough of us. The campaign began to decline into confusion. Obvious mistakes were made such as even I could see. We were sent out on sorties against tribes who were not, to begin with, our most significant enemies. I lost men pointlessly, but all the commanders would say was that we had to be “kept on our toes”. Then the army moved to a new fort north-east of Kabul, far more exposed. Our supplies were left in Kabul. The perimeter was – is – too large to defend. If it comes to it, I do not see how the army will be able to defend itself. And,’ I said more sheepishly, ‘I came to feel we had no business to be there – in Afghanistan, I mean. It is an impossible place. I cannot see how the Russians could ever use it as a staging-post to invade India. The terrain is impassable. The tribes are wild and lawless; their sole wish is to be left alone. They hate Shah Shuja,
and increasingly they hate us. Of course, I could say none of this to anyone, and certainly not Helen. Even now – well, you are the only soul to whom I have spoken of it. Though I do not think I was the only one who felt things were going to the bad.

‘In the new year Helen became ill. She lost the child in April. I did not know what to do, how to make it better. I tried, but I could not seem to bring her any comfort.

‘A month or so later I was involved in a sortie against some tribesmen outside Kabul. It was not my finest hour. I had a difference of opinion with a senior officer. Things did not go well. The matter was … complicated. I was wounded, so my commanding officer decided to send us back to Simla on the pretext that I was to deliver despatches. My position had become difficult and I was injured. Helen was in a bad way, and it made sense. I thought I should have felt humiliated at leaving, but I did not. Save for leaving my men, I was happy to go. I could not abide Macnaghten. He fell out with our local man, Alexander Burnes, who knew more about the place than anyone else. Macnaghten will be the death of them all. He is surrounded by men who bow and scrape and agree with whatever he says. Well, perhaps I am wrong; I heard some weeks ago that Dost Mohammed surrendered in November. But I also heard that Macnaghten dismissed Willoughby Cotton and has put General Elphinstone in charge.’

‘Elphinstone? The stupidest man I ever served under.’ Blake lay with his eyes almost closed.

‘Indeed.’

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘The journey to Simla would have tried anyone. It was the last straw for Helen. It was as if Afghanistan had drained all her reserves. When we arrived she announced that she could not stay in India. I could not blame her. So we returned.’

‘There was no alternative?’

I sighed. ‘I suggested we move back to Calcutta, or set up home in Simla. I explained that in England I would not be able to keep her in the manner to which she had become accustomed. I even proposed that she return to England and I stay and send her funds. I
thought she might prefer it. But she was anxious and the thought of being alone frightened her. As it was, the officials at Simla took a most sympathetic view. Offered me a pension. In fact I am perfectly well now—’

‘Save for your limp,’ said Blake.

‘Well, yes, you would notice. The wound healed very well. In India I had the native doctors clean my wounds with ghee, like you did. I swear by it now, but I still have the limp.’

‘And you are quicker to use your fists too.’

‘I know,’ I said, ashamed.
And I am sadder too and he knows that
, I thought.