Some Kind of Grace, page 4
‘It was recovered from the other murderer,’ murmured the Minister.
‘Is it not strange,’ said McLeod, ‘that a murderer should keep this?’ He held up the photograph. ‘You’d think this would be the very thing he’d destroy.’
‘Murder itself is strange and terrible,’ said the Minister.
‘What you have said would be the attitude of a sane man; but sane men do not murder innocent travellers.’
‘These men,’ said McLeod, after a long pause during which he felt the scent of the roses become almost unbearable, ‘have they been executed?’
‘You are convinced then that these objects are proof enough to justify condemnation and execution?’
‘Were the bodies ever found?’
‘We have wolves, bears, and vultures in our country.’
‘So they weren’t found?’
‘Murderers are more cunning than wolves or bears at disposing of bones, Mr. McLeod.’
‘They weren’t found?’
‘No. And now I shall answer your other question. These men have not yet been put to death.’
McLeod was startled.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘it would not be possible for me to see them?’
‘To question them, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
The Minister was silent. One plump, beringed hand lay on the desk, the other held his cigarette.
‘I can appreciate that our word is not enough, Mr. McLeod,’ he said at length. ‘You realise, of course, that what you are asking is most irregular?’
McLeod said nothing.
‘Your Consul Mr. Gillie has made the same request, but his was firmly refused. We may be poor and still very backward, but we have our rights as a sovereign, independent nation. Mr. Gillie’s request being official had to be officially rejected. But yours is not official; it is personal and private. Only there is one thing. If we allowed you to see them and speak to them, you would have to give your word of honour that you were dropping this so understandable but also so futile quest for your friend. Would you give it, Mr. McLeod?’
‘If I was satisfied, Excellency.’
The hand on the table gave a little jump; much restrained arrogance was in the gesture.
‘Of course, Mr. McLeod. But you are a reasonable man. You will not demand that the bodies be produced at your feet.’
‘Have you seen these men yourself, Excellency?’
‘Yes.’
But McLeod thought that the sudden stroking of the rose in the lapel indicated some kind of nervousness.
‘Were you convinced?’
‘Sufficiently to sign their death warrants. Please remember, we are all of us bitterly ashamed of this thing. We try to creep forward, with great difficulty; this pushes us back again into barbarity. Now for the arrangement of your visit. You are living at the hotel? Well, this evening about seven o’clock a car will call for you. It will take you to the prison. You will be allowed to ask whatever questions you please, but you will not, of course, be alone with the prisoners; this is for your own protection. Afterwards you will be taken back to the hotel, or to your Embassy if you so prefer. You may wish to make a report. Agreed, Mr. McLeod?’
McLeod rose, nodding. ‘Thank you, Excellency,’ he said.
The Minister rose, too. ‘Do not thank me, Mr. McLeod. The decision was made by the Prime Minister himself. Good afternoon.’
‘Good afternoon, Excellency.’
As McLeod went out he turned quickly to try and surprise some look on that big brown face behind the yellow roses that might tell more truthfully than the calm, plausible voice what the Minister really was thinking; but what he saw was a smile of correctly compounded friendliness, sympathy, and regret.
Outside, in the sunshine McLeod stood on the steps, smoking, reflecting, and casually glancing at the people on the street. It suddenly occurred to him that he might from now on be under police surveillance, and he gazed at the crowd with sharper interest. Here, though, everybody in sight could have been an agent in disguise: that ghoddy driver, pretending to be asleep while his bony horse drank from the ditch; the public letter-writer squatting at the corner, or his garrulous customer; the motionless coolie with the coil of rope and the jacket in tatters; the few women shuffling along under their faded shaddries; the chauffeur reading a newspaper in the red Buick on the other side of the street. But there was one not in disguise, rather in what might well have been the uniform issued to shadowers. This was a tall, thin man in a brown suit and a grey hat with an exceptionally wide brim; he was pretending to be intent upon the electric refrigerators and cookers in Siemens’ shop across the street, not far from the Buick. It was likely he could see McLeod reflected in the window, but that didn’t content him, for several times he peeped quickly round.
McLeod decided to find out. Crossing the street, he made to pass the shop window when he suddenly stopped and, with his hand outstretched, jovially approached the man in the brown suit, who was so embarrassed he seized the brim of his hat with both hands as if minded to pull it down over his face.
‘Sadruddin, of the Ministry of Education,’ cried McLeod, in Persian.
The other, in a kind of drill, pulled his tie straight, sheepishly tittered, knocked his knees together, and twitched both elbows.
‘I am not Sadruddin,’ he replied.
McLeod was incredulous. ‘You must be his brother surely.’
‘I have a brother who is said to be like me, but he does not work at the Ministry of Education. He is employed by the Ministry of Public Works; he edits a magazine.’
‘But you are very like Sadruddin.’
‘I am very like many men in this city.’
That was said rather sadly, but proudly, too; and it was true. The long, doleful nose, the brown, pock-marked cheeks, the mild eyes, and the frayed shirt collar, were all very common. The hat though was about as uncommon as a busby.
‘I am sorry,’ said McLeod, and walked away fast.
Footsteps pattered anxiously behind. He stopped so suddenly the other bumped into him.
‘Did I drop something?’ asked McLeod.
‘No, no. Yes, yes, you have forgotten your car.’ Even as he was saying it and pointing to the Land-Rover across the street he was almost in tears of dismay at his own foolishness.
‘My car?’ asked McLeod.
‘Yes, I think it is yours, sir. It is an English car, you see, and you are English.’
It was then that McLeod noticed the chauffeur in the red Buick was no longer reading the newspaper, but was gripping the wheel in a frenzy of indecision as to what he should do. Pursuit of the Land-Rover had been planned; by walking McLeod was breaking the rules.
He continued to walk, while behind him the detective and the driver quarrelled passionately in gestures, before the former, with a last despairing tug at his hat, came scampering after.
About a hundred yards ahead was a cinema, its radio wailing an Indian love-song, though the posters advertised an American film, with an actress whose breasts were much more conspicuous than her face. In that country of strict purdah, where the only females a man could see were his relatives, such a film was as water in a desert. The street outside was thronged with turbaned men gulping at those posters, as they waited for admission to the oasis. The small vestibule, too, was packed.
It said a lot for their native courtesy towards foreigners that no one protested when the man in the ticket office sold McLeod a ticket. He was too polite to mention as he handed it over that no seat was at present available. Hurrying into the cinema, McLeod was struck by the contrast between the strong smell of grease from fat-tailed sheep and the scene on the screen, which showed, in a bedroom of sophisticated, perfumed luxury, the poster woman exercising her bosom in front of a mirror; she seemed to be trying to portray the anger of love scorned. As McLeod hurried down the aisle he had to ignore attendants who wanted to instal him in a seat even if its present occupant had no wish to vacate it.
There was another exit, at the side of the screen. Going out by it McLeod found himself in a corridor that boomed with the snarled indignation of the giantess on the screen, whose scornful lover had evidently joined her: ‘Get out of here, and get out quick.’ Good advice, McLeod thought, turning a corner and coming upon a patron relieving himself. The latter, though a little startled, pressed his hand against his breast in friendly greeting, which McLeod felt bound to return.
Coming to a door he immediately opened it and entered. Within sat two men, one smoking a blue hubble-bubble pipe, the other counting a heap of the most dilapidated money McLeod had ever seen. ‘Salaam,’ he murmured to them, and made to go out by another door, but found it locked. Controlling his astonishment, the cashier jumped up, produced a key from somewhere in his baggy pink breeks, unlocked the door, and bowed McLeod out.
He knew where he was, in a side-street near the rear of the national bank. Into the courtyard of the bank he hurried, to find a squad of soldiers being drilled, with as many turkeys strutting about in what looked like deliberate derisive mimicry. Passing the open fire where the bank clerks’ pilau was cooked, and their bicycles stacked in dozens, he went into the bank by a side-door, with a smile to the soldier there, strolled along the corridor, and left by the main entrance. There was no sign either of the man in the wide hat or of the red Buick.
It was as good a time as any to pay another visit. Leaving his Land-Rover outside the Ministry of the Interior, where he thought there would be enough soldiers to look after it, he hired a ghoddy, in it crossed the bridge below which the river trickled, lurched down a side street of cloth-sellers where every bazaar was brilliant with red, green, blue, and purple drapes, and reached the main thoroughfare, called after a supposed victory over the British in the old wars. A monument, at present hidden behind scaffolding, commemorated the victory. At its foot were two field guns, claimed to be captured from the British Army; they had their wheels chained together, because there was always a chance that some enterprising chief from the hills might creep down and steal them.
Behind that broad street, in which could be bought such wares of civilisation as lavatory bowls and radiograms, was a section of the city unchanged for hundreds of years. There the smells were varied and pungent. Squatted among their weird and miscellaneous goods, shopkeepers drank tea, slept, or shouted banter at rivals. There was kebab to be bought, on long skewers of iron; sweetmeats virulently green in colour, or dark purple and gluey; guns of ancient design, with eagles and lions chased on the butts; moccasins like parrots, with the upturned toes their crests; skull caps beaded in many colours, to be worn in conjunction with snowy white cloth wound round the head; and even chamber-pots, copied, it would appear, from Genghis Khan helmets.
McLeod remembered that narrow, hot, smelly, cheerful street with fondness. He walked slowly down it, delighting the merchants by understanding their chaff and returning it. Several called to him to come and join them at their tea. At the entrance of the serai he was making for he hesitated, not sure yet that he really wanted to go in; and as he stood there, with one merchant trying to sell him a British sabre and another a sheepskin tunic, he remembered the girl he had come to enquire about. He did not see her against that background, but rather against a background of a green field by a river, with glades of thin poplars and mountains beyond. He saw her racing in that field, with a white rose in her glossy black hair, and her teeth whiter still in her face whose shade of duskiness and whose capacity for vivid joy he could never have described though thousands of times, as now, he had remembered it poignantly.
He went through into the serai. An old man with a shy, wispy beard dozed at the foot of some stairs. McLeod recognised him, and when he awoke seconds later he recognised McLeod, with a child-like giggling glee. Yes, yes, he cried, Abdul Rasaq Khan was upstairs in his office. Still giggling, and turning at every step to touch McLeod, he led the way up.
Abdul Rasaq Khan, the karakul merchant, was seated cross-legged on a rich red rug, with a silver teapot beside a silver tray with small cakes on it, and a cup and saucer as fragile as his own thin fingers. He wore native dress, loose, white silken trousers, black tunic embroidered in gold, and pale blue blouse with long sleeves. He was a man of about seventy, curiously sweet in that place of strong sheep smells, with his feet bare, and his beard as snowy as the turban on his head.
He welcomed McLeod with suave cordiality and invited him to sit beside him on the rug.
‘So you have come back, John McLeod,’ he said.
‘I said I would.’
‘Many words are said; much snow melts on the hills.’
McLeod remembered the high hills behind the house in the north, where the snow never melted.
‘You are looking very well,’ he said.
‘Thanks be to Allah. You also are well; a little fatter perhaps.’
‘And all the others of your family, are they well, too? Your brother especially?’
‘They are all well,’ replied Rasaq, with a smile. ‘Karima is married of course. She already has a son.’
For almost a minute McLeod sat, trying to smile; and the old man was silent, too.
‘Whom did she marry?’ asked McLeod at last.
‘A man with a hundred thousand sheep,’ said Rasaq. ‘Like them he is fat. He cannot run in the field.’ He paused. ‘It was not possible, John McLeod; you knew yourself at the time it was not possible.’
‘Because I didn’t have a hundred thousand sheep?’
‘That was one reason, of course. My brother would never have allowed his daughter to marry a man who could not pay a large sum for her; not because he is mercenary, but because he felt his honour as a chief was involved.’
‘If you had been her father?’
The old man smiled. ‘You alter all destiny,’ he murmured.
‘In any case, she will long ago have forgotten me.’
Rasaq shook his head. ‘She will never do that,’ he said.
‘I thought,’ said McLeod, ‘that I might be passing that way, on my way home. I thought I might call in. Now it is out of the question.’
The old man nodded. ‘I have heard you have another purpose in returning to our country,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘To enquire after the Englishman who disappeared some months ago, with a woman. It appears they were both murdered by thieves.’
‘You hear most things that are said, Abdul Rasaq. You have many contacts. Is it true they were murdered?’
The old man raised a frail hand in protest at that reputation of omniscience. ‘I am a quiet old merchant, who minds my own business,’ he said. ‘What I know about this matter everyone in the bazaar knows. The village where the crime took place was punished, and the two men accused were brought here to the city. They have not been tried; but then men are frequently put to death here in private without trial. And why not, if they have confessed?’
‘Perhaps their confessions were false.’
‘It is strange to confess falsely to murder.’
‘I meant perhaps the authorities are pretending they have men in prison who have confessed.’
‘It is not impossible. To be convinced one would have to see these men for oneself and hear their confessions.’
‘I am to see them this evening, but perhaps even then I won’t be convinced.’
The old man gently rubbed his beard. ‘You always had influential friends here,’ he said. ‘You speak our language so well, too. You could have become one of us. Many are lighter in skin than you are; in some northern valleys there are eyes blue as your own. Yes, you could have become one of us. Our faith is easy to accept and carry.’
‘It’s too late now,’ said McLeod. ‘Is she happy?’
‘She has her son.’
‘But is she happy?’
‘Her husband, though he is fat, in body and wits, is fond of her, and dotes on the child.’
‘But she’s not happy?’
‘No, John McLeod, she is not happy; and if she hears that you have come back she will be more unhappy still. So she must not hear. Please go away again quietly. Return if you like after many years, when both you and she are too old for regret, and I am dead. Will you promise that?’
‘If these men convince me they did kill my friend.’
‘I think they will convince you. The women in your country are beautiful, too. The one who was killed with your friend is still spoken about in the bazaars. It seems she was most memorably beautiful. So you will soon find one to bear your sons. I give you that advice,’ he added, with a little chuckle, ‘though I sought for more than fifty years and found none. Now tell me what you have been doing since we last met.’
Four
McLeod was brushing his hair in the hotel bedroom when the door suddenly burst open and one of the servants came in gasping. He was the little squint-eyed man who looked upon McLeod as his special responsibility. Now he tried to stammer some warning, but fear had driven a nail through his tongue. Next minute in marched, or rather imperiously waddled, General Mohammed Hussein, Commandant of the Secret Police, in an ostentatious green uniform with facings of scarlet and large epaulets of orange. His topboots were black and shiny. In his fat right hand he carried a cane with gold bands with which he began to strike the little servant across the face, at the same time yelling to him to get out.
Two brawny policemen, with thug-like faces, rushed in, seized the servant, and hauled him out.
‘Here, wait a minute,’ shouted McLeod in protest.
Hussein stopped him with a flabby, fond paw. ‘It is all right, McLeod, my friend,’ he said, laughing wheezily. ‘The little dog thought we had come to arrest you.’
‘I know he did,’ McLeod pushed past and went out into the corridor. Only the two big policemen were there. In glee they explained they had merely kicked the servant’s backside and sent him about his business.
Hussein took McLeod’s hand and led him back into the room. One of the policemen shut the door behind them.
