Dishonored (42 page)

She continued to cry, quietly, until the tears slowly dried up and the tightness in her chest eased. Then she gave up on the
hanky and blew her nose on Oliver’s part of the sheet. He won’t be needing it tonight, she thought, thank God. She lay back
and closed her eyes. A lucky escape by all accounts, she told herself. The only problem was, it didn’t feel like a lucky escape,
it felt more like a miserable disappointment.

T
HE MAN WAS OF MEDIUM HEIGHT, THIN WITH A BEARD
. H
E HAD
no muscle but he was powerful, he carried his power in a machete fastened to his belt. He was an Indian, living in America,
ordinary looking, he blended in to the environment. They didn’t see him, not once, he was far too skilled for that.

In his hotel room, late in the day, he stripped his shirt off and dropped the belt and knife down on to the bed. He was in
a second-class hotel and it pissed him off. He wanted to do the job and get out of there; he hated the heat, the smell, he
deserved better than the shithole he was in. He walked across to his telephone and dialled the operator to place his call,
then he went into the bathroom to wash. He was filthy, crawling on the ground, hiding, it was the part of the job he despised.
He liked to kill. Women, that was his thing, he was a professional and the suffering turned him on.

The phone rang.

He came out of the bathroom and picked up the receiver. “Yeah, Khan here.”

“Mr. Khan. What have you got for me?”

“Something has happened,” he said, “I think they have what you want.”

“You think?” The man on the other end was derisive. “I don’t pay you to think, Khan, I want to know!”

Khan swallowed down his anger. “Yeah, well they’ve been to three different places in the city today. I watched them; they’re
at the gymkhana club now. They’re following some sort of trail, a map.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He was more than fucking sure, he’d been close enough to spit in their path.

“Good. We don’t have to move yet, then.”

“You want me to leave the girl?” Khan was openly angry. He had been wasting his time, he had been planning…

The man on the other end cut into his thoughts. “If she has what is rightfully mine, then yes, that is exactly what I want
you to do.” The man paused. “For now.” He let his words sink in. “There is no need to take her, we do not need a bargaining
tool, she has what I want. If she did not then it would be a different matter, Mr. Khan. You do understand that?” Khan remained
silent. “I want you to keep on them. I will ring in a few days.”

Khan lit up a foul-smelling cigarette. “I need more money,” he said.

“When I arrive. Not before.”

“No, now! Get someone to deliver it. This place is a dump. I don’t do anything until—”

“You do as I tell you! Mr. Stone got greedy, look what happened to him.”

Khan dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out under his heel. He kicked the stub off the skin. “What if they find
what you’re looking for first?”

The man on the other end was silent. “Then they lead me to it,” he said after a pause, “and you kill them.”

“What are you looking for?” Khan asked.

“None of your fucking business!” the man snapped. “Understand?”

Khan took his knife out of its sheath and flicked it across the room. It landed, its tip embedded in the wood of the window
frame. “I understand all right, Mr. Rai,” he said. And without another word, he hung up.

John sat on the floor in his study. He had moved the desk, his chair and the small filing cabinet out into the hall and had
spread the four relevant newspapers out over the carpet, along with a historical account of the 1857 mutiny open at the chapter
on Moraphur and his Polaroids of the jewelry collection in the British Museum donated by Phillip Mills’ family. He sat and
stared at all this information; he had been sitting there for three hours and had not come up with anything. Picking up his
notepad, he started again, thinking aloud. It was the only way he was able to work anything out, talking to himself. He’d
done it for years, ever since Caroline died and there had been no one left to listen.

“Right, there’s the account of the inquest and the mention of the British Consulate asking for an independent coroner’s report,”
he said. “Then there’s this report, stating quite clearly that it seemed unlikely that the strength of the blows inflicted
on Phillip Mills could have been done by a nine-stone woman, unless she was very strong, which Jane wasn’t. Also…” He
leaned forward and picked up the paper with the article in, “There’s this odd thing about the Indian woman found. States time
of death as two to three hours after Phillip Mills and a clean, skilled severing of the throat. How could Jane possibly have
known how to do that?”

John knelt back. “Come on, John, think!” He dropped the paper down and rubbed his hands over his face. “The British consulate
asked for an independent report, i.e. they weren’t happy with what had been filed. The report raises some questions that were
never answered. Jane didn’t kill Phillip Mills, I know it, so maybe they knew it as well? And if Jane didn’t kill Phillip,
who did?”

He knelt forward and looked at the book on the mutiny. “A man with a history in India… Colonel Reginald Mills… Ah,
here it is.” John read the passage he had already gone over twenty or so times. “Phillip Mills knew India, did he ever mention
anything about it?” John thought back. He could only ever remember meeting Phillip four or five times and each time he’d been
charming, affable and entertaining but rather shallow. The women loved him though. Clare thought he was terrific, especially
that time he came to dinner.

“Dinner!” John suddenly exclaimed. “The dinner, here. My God! That story about his family, it had Clare agog!” He sat back
on his heels. “God, what did he say now, what was it…?” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and
thumb. “Damn, what was it all about?”

He stretched across the carpet and grabbed the Polaroids he’d taken at the British Museum. “That’s it! After the mutiny and
the murder of his wife, Colonel Mills had thrown some Indian into prison, where he’d died, and then stripped the family of
all their wealth and dishonored them. The family swore revenge.” He looked down at the photographs. “The family were jewelers.
Mills stole a bird, this one, one of a pair.”

John stood up and stepped over the mess, across to the window. He stared out at the garden. “Surely not.” He shook his head
and dug his hands in his pockets. He was getting too old for all this, he wasn’t thinking properly, he was imagining things,
rambling. Revenge: it was the stuff of fiction, not real life. He turned back into the room and surveyed the floor. But if
Jane didn’t kill Phillip, then who did? Someone must have set Jane up as the culprit and that took planning; it required patience,
skill. John went over each thing he had accumulated in the room, his eyes flicking over the floor. He was a soldier, he had
fought in the Second World War, he knew what men were capable of, what evils, what suffering they could inflict. He stepped
across the papers to the photographs and looked at them a final time.

So, if he was right that someone wanting revenge had killed Phillip and set Jane up, then what in God’s name did all of that
have to do with Indi? How did she get involved, taken out to India and stranded there? What was the connection, if there was
one at all? He sighed heavily and squatted down.

“Dead end,” he said to the empty space. “Unless…” He got up and turned to the books that lined one wall, running his
hand down the shelves, looking for something. “Unless, unless… come on, where is it? Ah!” It’s a long shot but you never
know, he thought, pulling the file down. He flicked through the pages and found the leaflet—Sotheby’s Fine Art. He filed everything,
always had, thank God. He carried it out to the hall, picked up the phone and dialled the London number.

“Yes, hello,” he said, “I hope you can. I wanted to contact someone about Indian jewelry, nineteenth-century to the present
day. You do? Mister who? Oh, well if that’s possible then yes. Super, thank you. Of course,” John took up his pen and reached
for the pad, “of course I’ll hold on, no problem at all,” he said.

Indi and Oliver were at a corner table in the dining-room of the gymkhana club. They had taken to eating there; it was one
of the cheapest and best places in the city and Oliver felt safe there. It was one of the few places he did. In the gymkhana
club he didn’t have to constantly look over his shoulder, check what was behind them, what could be in front of them. He could
relax, of a fashion, and he could forget for a while that what they were doing was potentially very dangerous indeed.

They sat, late in the evening, their dinner over, with the file of press cuttings that Rob Jones had sent from Delhi and the
book open on the page they had got to. They said nothing to each other, they read in silence. Every now and then Oliver would
glance across at Indi to check she was all right—he couldn’t help himself, it was instinctive. Since the incident the other
night they had been together all the time and yet not “together” at all. They circled around each other, saying nothing personal,
making no contact. They simply discussed the book, the clues, the trail. He thought he understood, it was so much for her
to face up to, all the horror of the truth, and then there were moments when he just wanted to shake her and shout, Whoa!
Stop a minute, look at me, talk to me! There were moments when he didn’t even understand his own feelings, let alone hers.

Oliver looked down at the page in front of him and tried to take his mind off her. He concentrated on the book, on the clue
they were well and truly stuck on. He read and reread the verse, Sappho, he thought it was and thankfully it was written in
English. For a reason perhaps? He wasn’t sure, but the picture, the dark water-color that went with it he was sure about.
That it was different from the rest of the work, that much he was certain of. It was strangely different, as if something
had fueled it, something had happened to raise it above the level of art. It was emotional, vivid, alive. And there was a
line of Hindi at the bottom of the page, written in a different hand from the rest of the script. That was odd too. He read
the verse one last time, murmuring the words under his breath.

“If you will come

I shall put out

new pillows for

you to rest on.”

Indi looked up. “That’s beautiful,” she said.

Oliver closed the book. “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” He reached out and went to place his hand over hers, then thought better of
it. He drummed the tabletop with his fingers. “You look tired, Indi,” he said.

“I am.”

“Are you all right? I mean, all this, it’s not too much for you is it?”

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. It was awful, every word she read made her feel sick, it was a terrible
journey of self-discovery, finding that she was no longer safe and secure in the knowledge of who she was, she was no longer
just Indi Bennet, but was now the daughter of a murderess. She cleared her throat.

“Have you seen this, Oli?” she asked, changing the subject. She passed him a photograph in one of the articles. He looked
down at it and saw a group picture, Jane and Phillip Mills, the maharajah of Baijur and Ramesh Rai, the maharajah’s close
friend.

“It’s odd, isn’t it,” he commented, “looking at old photographs in black and white? They seem so far removed from how we are
today.”

“God, I hope so!” Indi blurted. “I would hate to think that I was capable of doing something like my mother did… I…” Her voice faltered and she turned abruptly away.

Oliver glanced at her for a moment, then he too turned away. He didn’t know what to say.

Suddenly Indi scrapped her chair back and ran from the table. Oliver saw her shoulders sag and knew she was crying. He sat
motionless for a few seconds, afraid of interfering and yet frightened of her being alone, then he gathered up their things
and, calling out to the waiter that they’d be back, darted out after her.

Indi ran out of the doors of the dining-room and across the terrace, down onto the lawn. She stopped running, once in darkness,
and slowed to a walk. The club had remained practically unchanged for seventy-odd years. Formerly open only to the British,
it was now open to everyone, and as she wandered down through the flame trees, Indi glanced behind her and saw it lit up,
an old colonial building, the same one her mother would have known. She swallowed and stood for several minutes, looking back
at it.

“You don’t honestly believe that Jane committed the murder do you?” She turned and saw Oliver. “Not after all that you’ve
read, about the independent coroner’s report?” Indi shrugged and Oliver stepped closer to her. “Well, I don’t,” he said. “I
cannot imagine it, and nor should you.” He kept his arms locked by his side because the temptation to hold her, to surround
her with his arms, to press her close to his body, was so strong, it made him ache.

“Indi?”

She turned away. “No,” she answered at last, “no I don’t.” She began to walk on and Oliver walked after her. They went down
through the trees to the end of the lawns, the moon lighting the way, and then through an arch in an old wall, hung densely
with creepers. They came into the ruins of a water garden and walked down the steps toward the first pool, still strangely
kept filled with water, black and still, reflecting the sky. They stopped and Oliver glanced around him, instinctively wary.

Indi sat down on the edge of the pool and looked at her reflection. She saw Oliver behind her and the trees, the pale orb
of the moon. Then suddenly, she swung around. “The water garden!” she cried. “It’s the water garden!” She reached for the
bag, pulling it out of Oliver’s hands. “Here! Wait!” Scrabbling in it, she found the book and flicked it open onto the right
page. “Look, Oliver, here!” The drawing was the reflection of the water, the sky, the moon, the trees.