Night Train to Jamalpur(36)

The room was green. The window blind – half down over the window – was also green, and there was a brown scorch mark in it. I wondered if the sun alone had done that. No electric fan twirled, and yet Khudayar Khan wore a tightly buttoned double-breasted top-coat, and his white tunic shirt was tightly fastened at the neck with a gold pin. As a Moslem high up in the elite police, Khan was a very rare bird indeed, and he seemed to know it. He was handsome in a bony kind of way, and very commanding with his silences, during which he was usually smoking. I had never heard of his brand before; it was called Advantage.

A constable had brought us a cup of sweet tea, and I too smoked.

Khudayar Khan began by asking about my life and police work back home. I was determined to put our interview on an equal footing – we were men of the same rank, after all – and so I in turn asked him whether he had visited Britain. He reluctantly admitted that he had attended London University for a while, and I told him my boy was there at the present time.

He said, ‘And your daughter is here?’

‘She is,’ I said, ‘She is enjoying the social life.’

‘An expensive business,’ said Khudayar Khan, and I felt I’d fallen into a trap. ‘When I was in London,’ he said, after watching me through smoke for a while, ‘I lodged in a place called Somers Town.’ He then spelt it out for me. ‘Not “summer” as in fine weather: that inference would have been grotesque.’

‘It rained all the time, I suppose.’

‘Of course it did, yes. It was a sort of hostel I was staying in. A terrible place.’

I felt like saying, ‘Don’t blame me for London; I’m hardly ever there.’ Instead, I observed: ‘It’s near King’s Cross station.’

‘The trains made a dreadful racket as they came out.’

‘Well they’re working against the grade—’

‘I’m sorry. They’re doing what?’

‘Going uphill. So you’ll get the cylinder beat. I think it’s one in a hundred and seven through Gasworks Tunnel, and much the same through Copenhagen Tunnel. That’s quite steep for a railway.’

He drained his little teacup, watching me carefully.

‘But it levels off at Finsbury Park,’ I added.

‘We haven’t got the results back from the fingerprinting,’ Khan said.

‘You’ll find my prints all over his compartment. I was in there talking to him for a good while.’

‘Talking and drinking whisky.’

‘Sort of,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘In the first place, it was only “sort of” whisky . . .’

He didn’t like that. It was an implied criticism of his country, although as a Moslem of course Khudayar Khan would not touch a drop of alcohol.

‘. . . And in the second place, I personally only had one glass of it.’

‘Are you saying he was drunk?’

‘No. My prints will also be found on the warrant badge in his pocket book,’ I added.

‘Why?’

‘He passed it over to me to look at – as I said in my statement.’

I assumed he’d read the statements. There were no papers on his desk, nothing on it but a black statuette of a horse. Come to that, there was no picture of the King-Emperor on his wall.

‘John Young was shot with a high calibre pistol,’ said Khan.

There was a period of silent smoking on both sides.

‘You were found to be in possession of such a pistol.’

‘As would about half the former army officers in India.’ But not Major Fisher. Why not? Should I disclose my suspicions of him? Should I ask what Khudayar Khan had made of the man? Instead I remarked, ‘The reservation chart was missing.’

Khan was now putting out his cigarette.

‘They’re always missing,’ he said, ‘or very often. Shall I tell you something, Captain Stringer? The Youngs live out at Tollygunge. Three months ago, the police – the civil police, I mean – were called out to deal with a row between the father and the son.’

‘It had become heated?’

‘Violent.’

‘What was it about?’

‘Money.’

‘Are you saying the boy is a suspect?’

But my question was met with a question: ‘You saw a dacoit riding away? He was in Indian clothes?’

I nodded. ‘There were two others with him, but further off. They wore, you know, pyjamas.’

He didn’t quite like that, either.

‘Shalwar,’ he said. ‘Loose, light trousers, wide at the top, narrow at the bottom, and then kameez – a long shirt or tunic. The two together are called shalwar kameez.’