Captain Boyd was not here.
I walked towards the counter, set my lamp down there. What I thought had been soil was not soil. I licked my finger and dabbed at it: coffee. And the kettle was not a kettle either, but a coffee pot, and there were a couple more nearby. If this was the Salon de Thé, then where was the Thé?
I walked back on to the platform, and held my lamp up the next booth along, seeing in the glass only the reflection of an ill-looking British Army captain with lamp in hand. I could do with a shave. As I pushed at the door, another dead potted palm swung into my lamp beam. The place was full of flies. I heard a sudden shuffling from low down in the corner, and I thought: snake; I am in a reptile house. While transferring the lamp to my left hand, I took the Webley from its holster. I saw white-painted wicker chairs heaped at one end, iron tables at another. Cutlery was scattered over the floor. On the counter I saw several dusty spirit burners with silver kettles sitting on them with all the spouts pointing the same way – a kettle train. I moved a little way forward on the gritty floorboards. Many parchment-coloured moths danced around my lamp. They avoided the flies, but the flies did not avoid me.
I saw that there was a particular concentration of flies on the floor, and that they were all coming from or going to the same place: the mouth of a man. I turned away and then looked back, trying for a fresh start, but I had no luck: still the flies, and still the mouth. I was looking at a dead captain. The man was not dissimilar in appearance to me: regular sort of face, dark hair, dark eyes wide open with flies taking it in turns to settle upon them. I set down the lantern and closed the eyelids.
. . . Shirt and tie, with Wolseley sun helmet rolled a little way; three pips on tunic sleeve; Sam Browne belt, holster and ammunition pouch, but no gun to be seen. Beneath the belt, and below the ribcage, the man’s shirt went into his body. He’d been stabbed.
The face was grey, with lavender-coloured bruising about the cheek. I touched the face. There was some stiffness, but his eyelids had closed easily, so he had come through the phase of rigor mortis. He gave off a sweet smell – a garden smell. Not too bad. The gut not yet exploded.
The captain had been dead for something in the region of twenty-four hours.
I heard again the heavy shuffling from the corner, but the snake (if snake it be) fell silent again. I hunted in the pockets of the dead man’s tunic and quickly turned up identity card and paybook, both in the name of Captain C. J. Boyd. Whoever had done for him had taken his gun, but not troubled about his papers – or not thought to look for them.
The flies and moths were besieging me, and the shuffling was renewed in the corner. I walked fast out of the Salon, sat down on the edge of the platform and waited, revolver in hand, the unbreathable air closing about me. I leant forward, and the yellow stuff landed on the track gravel between my boots. I had not meant to chuck up in the station, but there was no help for it. Immediately a cool breeze seemed to come down the tracks towards me. I lit a cigarette. I had for the minute forgotten why I’d been hanging about alone in Baghdad railway station, and now I recollected. Boyd had evidence against Shepherd, evidence of the fellow being in hock to the Turks; evidence that would have seen Shepherd shot if proven. If Shepherd had somehow got to know of this . . . then it would be practically odds-on that Boyd should come a cropper. Had the body been put in this particular spot to make it look as though I had killed him? In which case the killer must have known of my arrangement to meet him. But if Manners at the War Office was to be believed, the communications between his office and Boyd were absolutely secure. Had Boyd let on to anyone he was coming here? I thought of the other intelligence man on the side in Baghdad, the one Boyd had been advised by Manners to contact.
. . . And who had been witness to my arrival at the station? I thought of the ferryman, the knife-grinder and his assistant or customer; I thought of the station master. He had shown not the slightest sign of knowing that his station harboured a body, still less of being responsible for the killing. I had told Jarvis I was coming to this side of the river, but that was all I’d said . . .
I threw my cigarette stump on to the tracks, and stood up. A minute later, I was striding fast over the flat rocky waste, under the dark trees. I came to the place where the knife-grinder had been, and entered one of the dark alleys leading back to the water. I came to the river-beach, and there was less of it than before, but quite enough for me to walk along, while inhaling the petrol smell of the river. There were quiet encampments on the flat roofs of the riverside houses: people sleeping under makeshift canopies, or no canopies at all. Not only did they sleep on top of their roofs, they also slept on top of their bedclothes from the looks of things. After ten minutes, I came to the bridge of boats. An Indian soldier saluted as I stepped on to it – one of a guard of four men. There were half a dozen loungers on the bridge: Arab insomniacs, as I supposed – and they did look to be wearing nightshirts. They watched the black river flowing fast away, or listened to it, for it sounded cool at any rate. The bridge moved as I walked across it, and I saw the reflections of the city moving in the water at the same time: the dark silhouettes of the music halls dancing.