Venom, page 29
She waited through a coughing fit that lasted almost a minute. When it was over he pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. ‘That's better.’
‘Your wife must have been a saint, Captain.’
‘Why?’
‘To put up with your snoring, if nothing else.’
‘She wasn't a saint, Mademoiselle. She just thought she was.’
The phone rang. She stared at it, letting it ring. Budjinski frantically gesticulated to her to pick it up.
Finally: ‘Hello?’
‘Miss Breton?’ The soft-spoken Thai operator pronounced her name Blettun.
‘Yes.’
‘I have a long-distance call for you. Please wait.’
She heard the crackle of the international connection. Then: ‘Valentine?’
‘Michel?’
‘I'm afraid something has happened. I had to leave urgently.’
‘Leave? Where are you?’
‘India. Varanasi. Can you join me here?’
He sounds so calm, as if he's inviting me to his beach house for the weekend. ‘India? What are you doing in India?’
‘I’ll explain later. Do you have a pen and a piece of paper?’
She glanced at the bedside table. Budjinski had laid a fresh pad and two ball-point pens carefully beside the phone the previous night.
‘Yes, yes. Go ahead.’
‘Listen carefully …’ A few minutes later Valentine put down the telephone. She nodded at Budjinski. It was done. He was right, Michel was never going to let her go. This was the only way.
‘Well?’ Budjinski asked her.
‘He's in Varanasi. He wants me to meet him there tomorrow.’
She picked up the coffee cup. Her hand was shaking so badly it spilled everywhere. She burst into tears. Budjinski cradled her in his arms and told her it was going to be all right but they both knew it wasn’t.
Chapter 43
Varanasi, India
The Ganges springs from its source in the crystalline ice of the Hindu Kush across two and half thousand miles of the hottest, driest, most densely populated plains anywhere in the world, finally winding its way to the Bay of Bengal.
Halfway along its route it flows through the city of Varanasi, the most sacred of all Indian cities, old as Babylon, a place almost unchanged for forty centuries. It was here that Buddha preached his first sermon and where Emperor Ashoka erected a temple bearing a sandstone pillar engraved with the dharma chakra, the wheel of law, the emblem still displayed today on the Indian national flag.
All this three hundred years before Christ.
By the time it reaches Varanasi, the Ganges is no more than a sluggish and sulfurous sludge. Sewage from the teeming city is pumped directly into the river and garbage scows, almost hidden behind wheeling and screeching black clouds of jackdaws, dump their stinking cargo of filth and rubbish into it.
Yet to the Hindu, the river is Devi, the Divine Mother, flowing between heaven and earth. Devotees believe that no water is more pure, more sweet. To bathe in the celestial river at Varanasi is to wash away all sin. Thousands come to the ghats each morning to perform their act of faith in this holiest of all rivers, stripping to their dhotis and stepping deep into the brown swirling water, their hands raised in supplication to the fireball sun that rises across the broad bank of the river. It is considered a worthier act than spending one's whole life in meditation and prayer.
And to die in Varanasi is to go straight to heaven.
There are crematoria on the ghats all along the river, open pavilions where outcastes known as chandals ignite the pallets bearing the corpses of the dead, while widows in white saris wail their hymns of grief. When the body is finally reduced to charred ash and bone, it is committed to the river, to be washed away on the current with the rose and marigold petals.
It is a spectacle beyond imagination, beyond understanding, a riot of beggars, sadhus and flower-sellers, the dun towers of the ancient city smudged with the ropes of smoke from the funeral pyres.
It was here that Michel came one lemon dawn, to the bottom step of the Dasaswamedh ghat, and slowly stripped off his clothes. He smeared mustard oil on his chest and arms to help ward off the cold and then, wearing only a white dhoti, he walked down the slimy steps of the ghat into the murky river.
He stood there for a long time, his hands joined in prayer. Then he bent his knees and dipped his head under the water, staying fully immersed for a long minute. When he finally emerged goose-fleshed from the water, he raised his arms in salute to the warming sun, huge and yellow, squatting on the far plain.
He had absolved himself of all sin. He was whole again.
He was pure.
Don Muang airport, Bangkok
The final boarding call for the Air India flight from Bangkok to Calcutta had been announced. From there Valentine had a connecting flight to Varanasi.
Budjinski pushed his way through the crowds in the terminal, a flight bag thrown across his shoulder. The pearl-grey suit was heavily creased and there were permanent sweat stains under each armpit.
He was wheezing.
‘Fucking country,’ Budjinski grunted. ‘Too much pollution. Bad for your chest.’ He sat down and lit a Gauloise. ‘Have they called the flight?’
‘Just now,’ Valentine said. ‘Where did you go?’
‘I rang the Interpol man in Delhi yesterday. He's an old friend of mine. I asked him to have the Varanasi police check out this hotel where he’s meeting you, Clark's. I just rang him to see if he’d come up with anything else.’
‘Is he there?’
‘They haven’t seen anyone answering the description. That doesn't mean anything, of course.’
‘So - what happens now?’
‘We go ahead as planned. We'll travel together until we reach Varanasi and check into Clark's separately. I won't let you out of my sight.’
‘Will the Indian police help us?’
‘Like I said, the Interpol man in Delhi is an old friend of mine. He's told all sorts of lies to the cops in Varanasi. They'll help us.’
Budjinski looked up at the departure screens on the wall. ‘Merde. Final call. Come on. Don't worry, I won’t let you out of my sight. I promise.”
Varanasi, India
Clark's Hotel was on the cantonment near the railway station. It had been built in the 1930s, a grand two- story Edwardian edifice with showers of bougainvillea screening the white-painted porticoes and terraces. Snake charmers squatted in the shade of banyan trees in the gardens.
Valentine climbed out of the yellow and black Ambassador taxi and went into the lobby. She had expected Michel to meet her at the airport. Although she had not seen him, she had the uneasy feeling that she was being watched. Thinking back now, on how they had met in Paris, she wondered how many times he had tracked her before.
There was a man sitting in the lobby reading the Times of India. He looked up at her as she walked in, then returned to his newspaper. A policeman? She hoped so.
‘I'd like a room,’ she said to the desk clerk. ‘A single.’
‘For how many nights?’ The man was a handsome Gujarati, with a gold, gap-toothed smile.
‘I don't know.’
‘That is quite all right,’ he said, and pushed the register towards her. ‘Your name and address please.’ He went to the board behind him and got a key.
‘Are there any messages for me?’ Valentine asked him. ‘My name's Breton. Valentine Breton.’
‘Ah, Miss Breton? Yes, yes.’ He went back to the row of pigeonholes behind him and produced an envelope.
He put it on the desk in front of her. Valentine recognized Michel's handwriting. ‘When was this delivered?’
‘This morning.’
‘Who delivered it? What did he look like?’
The Indian shrugged. ‘I cannot remember.’
‘Not a European?’
‘Oh, no definitely not.’
‘Thank you,’ Valentine said.
She took the key and went to her room, the porter hurrying ahead of her with her luggage. She tipped him, then shut the door.
She opened the envelope, her fingers trembling:
Chèrie,
I am sorry I could not be here to meet you. It cannot be helped. Meet me tomorrow at noon at the intersection of Raj Bazaar Street and The Mall. I will explain everything.
I adore you, Michel
♦ ♦ ♦
Detective Inspector Lai Gupta Singh's office in Varanasi's crime branch was cluttered with dusty files. There was an accumulation of grime on the khaki walls. A sign hung above the desk:
A police officer is a citizen in uniform,
and every citizen is a police officer
without a uniform.
There were two three-tier filing cabinets on one side of the room and the drawers of one of them hung open, spilling papers on to the floor. More files teetered on the edge of an ink-stained wooden desk.
Gupta Singh studied the man on the other side of the desk. He was unshaven, and he had the look of a gambler after a long night at the tables. His suit was crumpled and ash-stained. Good Heavens. He must have slept in it.
Delhi had told him to give this man every co-operation. Detective-Superintendent Engineer himself had hinted that the man responsible for the sensational robbery and double murder at the Ashoka Hotel was now in Varanasi. It was an unbelievable stroke of good fortune. A successful conclusion to the case would almost certainly mean promotion. He might even get his name in the Times of India.
‘Delhi has informed me of your arrival,’ Gupta Singh said, ‘all my resources are at your disposal.’
‘Thank you, Inspector,’ Budjinski said. ‘I appreciate it.’
The little Indian policeman bobbed his head. ‘You have a photograph of this criminal?’
Budjinski reached into his pocket. ‘Only these. I obtained them from his girlfriend.’
He pushed two color photographs across the desk.
‘The girl in this picture? She is here in Varanasi?’
‘That's right. I'm hoping she'll lead us to him.’
‘There are arrest warrants for this man? Detective- Superintendent Engineer indicated that he was involved in this most shocking crime at the Ashoka.’
‘Interpol have at least two outstanding extradition orders for him.’
‘I see. And what name does he use?’
‘He's used several. The Thai police know him as Jean-Paul Dhuisme. He told this woman his name was Michel Giresse.’
‘Well if he is in Varanasi I assure you he will not escape us. Do you have any leads?’
Budjinski gave the Inspector the note that Valentine had received that afternoon.
‘Then we have him,’ Gupta Singh said triumphantly. He clapped his hands together in delight. ‘We have him!’
Chapter 44
Budjinski sat in a shabby street cafe and sipped from a glass of Coca-Cola. He grimaced. Warm. The crumbling shophouses that faced the Mall had hand-painted signs in Sanskrit and execrable English: ‘Chemists and Durrgists’, and next door ‘Taillers and Drappers’. The square was filled with motor scooters and pony rickshaws, bicycles and taxi-cabs.
He loosened his tie, feeling fat and uncomfortable in his suit jacket. He did not want to take it off and show all Varanasi that he had a Beretta pistol in a shoulder holster under his arm.
He looked at his watch. Twenty-five past. Something had gone wrong. Valentine was still on the corner, her face hidden under the wide-brimmed straw hat and dark glasses. She had found a little shade under a banyan tree, but she had spent the last half an hour fighting off an endless stream of hawkers and rickshaw drivers. He could see that she was getting anxious.
A wedding procession made its way along Raj Bazaar Street. The clash of cymbals and sousaphones and the deep, booming rhythm of the drums grew louder. Budjinski stared without interest.
The musicians were being pushed along on a gaudy mobile bandstand, their music - if you could call it that, Budjinski thought - amplified by loudspeakers. A crowd was milling around the groom, who sat astride a white horse. He was no more than a boy, and he looked utterly miserable even in his princely clothes and his yellow turban flashing with cut-glass jewels.
The procession wound along the street behind him on its way to the bride’s house. Some of the guests carried chandeliers of acetylene lights. Everyone except the bridegroom seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.
He looked again at his watch. Half-past.
What had gone wrong?
Why would he have left a note, why had he not been there to meet her in person?
There were a dozen plain-clothes police posted around the square, on foot and in cars, waiting for his signal. The worst that could happen was that Michel would not come.
Valentine was in no danger.
Valentine …
He looked again.
She was gone.
♦ ♦ ♦
She had been wondering how long she should wait. He was half an hour late. Something must have happened. He clearly wasn't coming.
She watched the wedding procession making its way towards her along the road. The mood was boisterous. Despite herself, Valentine smiled.
The wedding band in their frayed white jackets, blue trousers and red caps were making the most of their moment in the sun. Harmony had been happily sacrificed to volume. The clash of the drums and the trumpets was deafening.
Distracted by the noise and color Valentine didn’t see the Vespa motor scooter until it was almost on top of her. It stopped at the curb, a few feet away. The rider, a dark-skinned Hindu in turban and dhoti was waving at her.
She stared back in astonishment. It was Michel.
‘Quick! Get on! We're being followed!’
She hesitated. Budjinski was just fifty yards away, on the other side of the square, but the procession had momentarily obscured him from her view. Had he seen what was happening?
‘Valentine! Quickly!’
If she didn't go with him now, he would know what she had done. He would vanish for good.
She jumped on the back of the scooter.
Moments later they were gone, Michel weaved expertly through the press of traffic on Grand Trunk Road.
He made for the pakku mahals, the rabbit warren of medieval gullies between the ghats and Madanpura Road. He drove too fast down ancient alleyways, sending small children and even an ancient sadhu scurrying out of his way. Valentine heard the wail of the police siren in the distance.
Michel braked to a halt and leapt off. He grabbed her hand. ‘Quick! This way!’
He led her down the noon-dark streets. Black monsoon thunderheads billowed over the city. A storm was coming.
Valentine was dragged along behind him, overwhelmed with terror and with panic. The whole plan had gone horribly wrong. They reached another narrow gullie. It was a dead end, the way to the river blocked by a pile of yellow rubble where a riverfront building had collapsed into the Ganges. Michel stopped, his chest heaving, sweat running down his face in rivulets.
‘Michel …?’
He released his grip on her hand.
‘Hello Valentine.’
‘What's happening?’
He tore off the turban. She was shocked by his appearance. He had dyed his hair blond again, and it emphasized the dark lines of desperation etched into his face.
‘They are following us,’ he said.
‘Who?
‘The police. Didn't you see them? They were all round the square.’
‘I didn't see any police, Michel. What is happening? Why are we here, what have you done?’
He didn't answer her. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I'll make sure we haven't been followed.’
He ran back down the gullie and was gone.
Valentine stared after him. I must get out of here, she thought. Everything’s gone to shit. She ran to the corner. Two men shuffled past her carrying a white-shrouded body on a pallet, headed for the burning ghats. An old white-bearded sadhu sat cross-legged on the ground, his naked body smeared with white ash.
Which way? Just get away from the river, she thought. Back towards the new town. But it was not quite so easy; the gullies of the pakku mahals twisted between tall dun-yellow houses, shops that were no more than holes in the wall, and anonymous doorways where sightless beggars reached for her with scabrous claws. The further she ran the deeper she got into the maze.
A bare-ribbed cow, vapor streaming from its nostrils, brushed past her, forcing her back against a wall.
The sky opened in a torrent. Budjinski, where the hell are you?
♦ ♦ ♦
Budjinski got out of the blue police Fiat and stared at the press of humanity around him; women in homespun saris, brown men in kurtas and white dhotis, near-naked rickshaw wallahs, and tourists returning from the ghat, loaded down with Nikons and Canons.
No sign of Michel or the girl. Bordel de merde, how did this happen? He had promised her he would look after her. How had this gone wrong?
Twenty cops in the square and somehow they'd lost her.
♦ ♦ ♦
Don’t panic, she thought. Just keep calm. An emaciated Hindu, perched on a stool inside his tiny shop-house, watched her with frank curiosity. He was almost lost among all the puja he had for sale; bottles of holy water, the colored tilak powder, the trays of lat-i-dana, the white sweets the Hindus offer to their gods.
One eye was opaque, covered with a cataract. He bobbed his head in her direction, like an evil genie summoned from one of the dark bottles that surrounded him.
‘Please . . . how do I get back to the street?’ Valentine asked him.
He thrust one of the bottles at her, betel-blackened teeth bared in a parody of a smile.
‘The street!’ Valentine repeated. ‘Hotel!’
He shook his head and shouted something at her in Hindi.
‘Clark's Hotel!’
He pawed at her sleeve and tried to push the bottle into her hand. It was no use.
She ran blindly, away from the river, just get away from the river.
♦ ♦ ♦
Michel watched her run down the gullie towards the Maha Durga temple. This had been her last chance to prove her innocence. If she had waited for him, as he had told her, he might have doubted his own instincts. But now he knew for certain that she had betrayed him.
‘Your wife must have been a saint, Captain.’
‘Why?’
‘To put up with your snoring, if nothing else.’
‘She wasn't a saint, Mademoiselle. She just thought she was.’
The phone rang. She stared at it, letting it ring. Budjinski frantically gesticulated to her to pick it up.
Finally: ‘Hello?’
‘Miss Breton?’ The soft-spoken Thai operator pronounced her name Blettun.
‘Yes.’
‘I have a long-distance call for you. Please wait.’
She heard the crackle of the international connection. Then: ‘Valentine?’
‘Michel?’
‘I'm afraid something has happened. I had to leave urgently.’
‘Leave? Where are you?’
‘India. Varanasi. Can you join me here?’
He sounds so calm, as if he's inviting me to his beach house for the weekend. ‘India? What are you doing in India?’
‘I’ll explain later. Do you have a pen and a piece of paper?’
She glanced at the bedside table. Budjinski had laid a fresh pad and two ball-point pens carefully beside the phone the previous night.
‘Yes, yes. Go ahead.’
‘Listen carefully …’ A few minutes later Valentine put down the telephone. She nodded at Budjinski. It was done. He was right, Michel was never going to let her go. This was the only way.
‘Well?’ Budjinski asked her.
‘He's in Varanasi. He wants me to meet him there tomorrow.’
She picked up the coffee cup. Her hand was shaking so badly it spilled everywhere. She burst into tears. Budjinski cradled her in his arms and told her it was going to be all right but they both knew it wasn’t.
Chapter 43
Varanasi, India
The Ganges springs from its source in the crystalline ice of the Hindu Kush across two and half thousand miles of the hottest, driest, most densely populated plains anywhere in the world, finally winding its way to the Bay of Bengal.
Halfway along its route it flows through the city of Varanasi, the most sacred of all Indian cities, old as Babylon, a place almost unchanged for forty centuries. It was here that Buddha preached his first sermon and where Emperor Ashoka erected a temple bearing a sandstone pillar engraved with the dharma chakra, the wheel of law, the emblem still displayed today on the Indian national flag.
All this three hundred years before Christ.
By the time it reaches Varanasi, the Ganges is no more than a sluggish and sulfurous sludge. Sewage from the teeming city is pumped directly into the river and garbage scows, almost hidden behind wheeling and screeching black clouds of jackdaws, dump their stinking cargo of filth and rubbish into it.
Yet to the Hindu, the river is Devi, the Divine Mother, flowing between heaven and earth. Devotees believe that no water is more pure, more sweet. To bathe in the celestial river at Varanasi is to wash away all sin. Thousands come to the ghats each morning to perform their act of faith in this holiest of all rivers, stripping to their dhotis and stepping deep into the brown swirling water, their hands raised in supplication to the fireball sun that rises across the broad bank of the river. It is considered a worthier act than spending one's whole life in meditation and prayer.
And to die in Varanasi is to go straight to heaven.
There are crematoria on the ghats all along the river, open pavilions where outcastes known as chandals ignite the pallets bearing the corpses of the dead, while widows in white saris wail their hymns of grief. When the body is finally reduced to charred ash and bone, it is committed to the river, to be washed away on the current with the rose and marigold petals.
It is a spectacle beyond imagination, beyond understanding, a riot of beggars, sadhus and flower-sellers, the dun towers of the ancient city smudged with the ropes of smoke from the funeral pyres.
It was here that Michel came one lemon dawn, to the bottom step of the Dasaswamedh ghat, and slowly stripped off his clothes. He smeared mustard oil on his chest and arms to help ward off the cold and then, wearing only a white dhoti, he walked down the slimy steps of the ghat into the murky river.
He stood there for a long time, his hands joined in prayer. Then he bent his knees and dipped his head under the water, staying fully immersed for a long minute. When he finally emerged goose-fleshed from the water, he raised his arms in salute to the warming sun, huge and yellow, squatting on the far plain.
He had absolved himself of all sin. He was whole again.
He was pure.
Don Muang airport, Bangkok
The final boarding call for the Air India flight from Bangkok to Calcutta had been announced. From there Valentine had a connecting flight to Varanasi.
Budjinski pushed his way through the crowds in the terminal, a flight bag thrown across his shoulder. The pearl-grey suit was heavily creased and there were permanent sweat stains under each armpit.
He was wheezing.
‘Fucking country,’ Budjinski grunted. ‘Too much pollution. Bad for your chest.’ He sat down and lit a Gauloise. ‘Have they called the flight?’
‘Just now,’ Valentine said. ‘Where did you go?’
‘I rang the Interpol man in Delhi yesterday. He's an old friend of mine. I asked him to have the Varanasi police check out this hotel where he’s meeting you, Clark's. I just rang him to see if he’d come up with anything else.’
‘Is he there?’
‘They haven’t seen anyone answering the description. That doesn't mean anything, of course.’
‘So - what happens now?’
‘We go ahead as planned. We'll travel together until we reach Varanasi and check into Clark's separately. I won't let you out of my sight.’
‘Will the Indian police help us?’
‘Like I said, the Interpol man in Delhi is an old friend of mine. He's told all sorts of lies to the cops in Varanasi. They'll help us.’
Budjinski looked up at the departure screens on the wall. ‘Merde. Final call. Come on. Don't worry, I won’t let you out of my sight. I promise.”
Varanasi, India
Clark's Hotel was on the cantonment near the railway station. It had been built in the 1930s, a grand two- story Edwardian edifice with showers of bougainvillea screening the white-painted porticoes and terraces. Snake charmers squatted in the shade of banyan trees in the gardens.
Valentine climbed out of the yellow and black Ambassador taxi and went into the lobby. She had expected Michel to meet her at the airport. Although she had not seen him, she had the uneasy feeling that she was being watched. Thinking back now, on how they had met in Paris, she wondered how many times he had tracked her before.
There was a man sitting in the lobby reading the Times of India. He looked up at her as she walked in, then returned to his newspaper. A policeman? She hoped so.
‘I'd like a room,’ she said to the desk clerk. ‘A single.’
‘For how many nights?’ The man was a handsome Gujarati, with a gold, gap-toothed smile.
‘I don't know.’
‘That is quite all right,’ he said, and pushed the register towards her. ‘Your name and address please.’ He went to the board behind him and got a key.
‘Are there any messages for me?’ Valentine asked him. ‘My name's Breton. Valentine Breton.’
‘Ah, Miss Breton? Yes, yes.’ He went back to the row of pigeonholes behind him and produced an envelope.
He put it on the desk in front of her. Valentine recognized Michel's handwriting. ‘When was this delivered?’
‘This morning.’
‘Who delivered it? What did he look like?’
The Indian shrugged. ‘I cannot remember.’
‘Not a European?’
‘Oh, no definitely not.’
‘Thank you,’ Valentine said.
She took the key and went to her room, the porter hurrying ahead of her with her luggage. She tipped him, then shut the door.
She opened the envelope, her fingers trembling:
Chèrie,
I am sorry I could not be here to meet you. It cannot be helped. Meet me tomorrow at noon at the intersection of Raj Bazaar Street and The Mall. I will explain everything.
I adore you, Michel
♦ ♦ ♦
Detective Inspector Lai Gupta Singh's office in Varanasi's crime branch was cluttered with dusty files. There was an accumulation of grime on the khaki walls. A sign hung above the desk:
A police officer is a citizen in uniform,
and every citizen is a police officer
without a uniform.
There were two three-tier filing cabinets on one side of the room and the drawers of one of them hung open, spilling papers on to the floor. More files teetered on the edge of an ink-stained wooden desk.
Gupta Singh studied the man on the other side of the desk. He was unshaven, and he had the look of a gambler after a long night at the tables. His suit was crumpled and ash-stained. Good Heavens. He must have slept in it.
Delhi had told him to give this man every co-operation. Detective-Superintendent Engineer himself had hinted that the man responsible for the sensational robbery and double murder at the Ashoka Hotel was now in Varanasi. It was an unbelievable stroke of good fortune. A successful conclusion to the case would almost certainly mean promotion. He might even get his name in the Times of India.
‘Delhi has informed me of your arrival,’ Gupta Singh said, ‘all my resources are at your disposal.’
‘Thank you, Inspector,’ Budjinski said. ‘I appreciate it.’
The little Indian policeman bobbed his head. ‘You have a photograph of this criminal?’
Budjinski reached into his pocket. ‘Only these. I obtained them from his girlfriend.’
He pushed two color photographs across the desk.
‘The girl in this picture? She is here in Varanasi?’
‘That's right. I'm hoping she'll lead us to him.’
‘There are arrest warrants for this man? Detective- Superintendent Engineer indicated that he was involved in this most shocking crime at the Ashoka.’
‘Interpol have at least two outstanding extradition orders for him.’
‘I see. And what name does he use?’
‘He's used several. The Thai police know him as Jean-Paul Dhuisme. He told this woman his name was Michel Giresse.’
‘Well if he is in Varanasi I assure you he will not escape us. Do you have any leads?’
Budjinski gave the Inspector the note that Valentine had received that afternoon.
‘Then we have him,’ Gupta Singh said triumphantly. He clapped his hands together in delight. ‘We have him!’
Chapter 44
Budjinski sat in a shabby street cafe and sipped from a glass of Coca-Cola. He grimaced. Warm. The crumbling shophouses that faced the Mall had hand-painted signs in Sanskrit and execrable English: ‘Chemists and Durrgists’, and next door ‘Taillers and Drappers’. The square was filled with motor scooters and pony rickshaws, bicycles and taxi-cabs.
He loosened his tie, feeling fat and uncomfortable in his suit jacket. He did not want to take it off and show all Varanasi that he had a Beretta pistol in a shoulder holster under his arm.
He looked at his watch. Twenty-five past. Something had gone wrong. Valentine was still on the corner, her face hidden under the wide-brimmed straw hat and dark glasses. She had found a little shade under a banyan tree, but she had spent the last half an hour fighting off an endless stream of hawkers and rickshaw drivers. He could see that she was getting anxious.
A wedding procession made its way along Raj Bazaar Street. The clash of cymbals and sousaphones and the deep, booming rhythm of the drums grew louder. Budjinski stared without interest.
The musicians were being pushed along on a gaudy mobile bandstand, their music - if you could call it that, Budjinski thought - amplified by loudspeakers. A crowd was milling around the groom, who sat astride a white horse. He was no more than a boy, and he looked utterly miserable even in his princely clothes and his yellow turban flashing with cut-glass jewels.
The procession wound along the street behind him on its way to the bride’s house. Some of the guests carried chandeliers of acetylene lights. Everyone except the bridegroom seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.
He looked again at his watch. Half-past.
What had gone wrong?
Why would he have left a note, why had he not been there to meet her in person?
There were a dozen plain-clothes police posted around the square, on foot and in cars, waiting for his signal. The worst that could happen was that Michel would not come.
Valentine was in no danger.
Valentine …
He looked again.
She was gone.
♦ ♦ ♦
She had been wondering how long she should wait. He was half an hour late. Something must have happened. He clearly wasn't coming.
She watched the wedding procession making its way towards her along the road. The mood was boisterous. Despite herself, Valentine smiled.
The wedding band in their frayed white jackets, blue trousers and red caps were making the most of their moment in the sun. Harmony had been happily sacrificed to volume. The clash of the drums and the trumpets was deafening.
Distracted by the noise and color Valentine didn’t see the Vespa motor scooter until it was almost on top of her. It stopped at the curb, a few feet away. The rider, a dark-skinned Hindu in turban and dhoti was waving at her.
She stared back in astonishment. It was Michel.
‘Quick! Get on! We're being followed!’
She hesitated. Budjinski was just fifty yards away, on the other side of the square, but the procession had momentarily obscured him from her view. Had he seen what was happening?
‘Valentine! Quickly!’
If she didn't go with him now, he would know what she had done. He would vanish for good.
She jumped on the back of the scooter.
Moments later they were gone, Michel weaved expertly through the press of traffic on Grand Trunk Road.
He made for the pakku mahals, the rabbit warren of medieval gullies between the ghats and Madanpura Road. He drove too fast down ancient alleyways, sending small children and even an ancient sadhu scurrying out of his way. Valentine heard the wail of the police siren in the distance.
Michel braked to a halt and leapt off. He grabbed her hand. ‘Quick! This way!’
He led her down the noon-dark streets. Black monsoon thunderheads billowed over the city. A storm was coming.
Valentine was dragged along behind him, overwhelmed with terror and with panic. The whole plan had gone horribly wrong. They reached another narrow gullie. It was a dead end, the way to the river blocked by a pile of yellow rubble where a riverfront building had collapsed into the Ganges. Michel stopped, his chest heaving, sweat running down his face in rivulets.
‘Michel …?’
He released his grip on her hand.
‘Hello Valentine.’
‘What's happening?’
He tore off the turban. She was shocked by his appearance. He had dyed his hair blond again, and it emphasized the dark lines of desperation etched into his face.
‘They are following us,’ he said.
‘Who?
‘The police. Didn't you see them? They were all round the square.’
‘I didn't see any police, Michel. What is happening? Why are we here, what have you done?’
He didn't answer her. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I'll make sure we haven't been followed.’
He ran back down the gullie and was gone.
Valentine stared after him. I must get out of here, she thought. Everything’s gone to shit. She ran to the corner. Two men shuffled past her carrying a white-shrouded body on a pallet, headed for the burning ghats. An old white-bearded sadhu sat cross-legged on the ground, his naked body smeared with white ash.
Which way? Just get away from the river, she thought. Back towards the new town. But it was not quite so easy; the gullies of the pakku mahals twisted between tall dun-yellow houses, shops that were no more than holes in the wall, and anonymous doorways where sightless beggars reached for her with scabrous claws. The further she ran the deeper she got into the maze.
A bare-ribbed cow, vapor streaming from its nostrils, brushed past her, forcing her back against a wall.
The sky opened in a torrent. Budjinski, where the hell are you?
♦ ♦ ♦
Budjinski got out of the blue police Fiat and stared at the press of humanity around him; women in homespun saris, brown men in kurtas and white dhotis, near-naked rickshaw wallahs, and tourists returning from the ghat, loaded down with Nikons and Canons.
No sign of Michel or the girl. Bordel de merde, how did this happen? He had promised her he would look after her. How had this gone wrong?
Twenty cops in the square and somehow they'd lost her.
♦ ♦ ♦
Don’t panic, she thought. Just keep calm. An emaciated Hindu, perched on a stool inside his tiny shop-house, watched her with frank curiosity. He was almost lost among all the puja he had for sale; bottles of holy water, the colored tilak powder, the trays of lat-i-dana, the white sweets the Hindus offer to their gods.
One eye was opaque, covered with a cataract. He bobbed his head in her direction, like an evil genie summoned from one of the dark bottles that surrounded him.
‘Please . . . how do I get back to the street?’ Valentine asked him.
He thrust one of the bottles at her, betel-blackened teeth bared in a parody of a smile.
‘The street!’ Valentine repeated. ‘Hotel!’
He shook his head and shouted something at her in Hindi.
‘Clark's Hotel!’
He pawed at her sleeve and tried to push the bottle into her hand. It was no use.
She ran blindly, away from the river, just get away from the river.
♦ ♦ ♦
Michel watched her run down the gullie towards the Maha Durga temple. This had been her last chance to prove her innocence. If she had waited for him, as he had told her, he might have doubted his own instincts. But now he knew for certain that she had betrayed him.
