The Ninth Buddha (15 page)

Abruptly, he turned and left the room, without another glance at the thing on the bed.
 
As he came into the main room, he saw something that had escaped him on his way in: Cormac’s desk had been tampered with. He went up to it.
 
Drawers had been pulled out and small cupboards opened.
 
Papers were heaped on the writing surface in total confusion: letters, bills, reports, all thrown together at random.
 
Some lay on the floor, crumpled where someone had stepped on them.
 
He picked up a large blue file and set it on the desk.
 
It bore a title in large black letters:

“Kalimpong Houseflies: A Statistical Survey of Breeding Rates in Captivity’.

That explained the flies: Cormac had been running an experiment, and his killer must have broken his breeding cases and let the insects loose.
 
The sound of their buzzing still hammered out mindlessly from the bedroom.
 
They were dying, cold and blind and gorged with blood.

He glanced through the papers carefully, but found nothing of interest.
 
Whoever had killed Cormac had taken what he had come for.
 
The silver cross that the doctor had said he found on Tsewong was not there either.
 
Had the killer taken that as well?
 
Then Christopher remembered what Cormac had said: “I’ve still got it hidden away in my desk.”
 
Was there a hidden drawer somewhere?

It did not take Christopher long to find it.
 
A simple lever at the back of one of the recesses operated a spring mechanism that released a drawer near the top of the desk.
 
He reached in and drew out a packet of thick brown paper.
 
Inside were several photographs, perhaps about two dozen in all.
 
For the most part, they were in pairs, held together with plain pins.
 
Most of them were pictures of girls from the orphanage first, a photograph of each girl in the grey Knox Homes uniform that Christopher remembered from the evening before, then a second showing the same girl, usually in a said, wearing jewellery and make-up.
 
All of the first photographs seemed to have been taken by the same camera and against the same background, but in each case the second photograph differed in size, in quality, and in setting.

There were also a few unpaired photographs of boys in what appeared to be the male equivalent of the girls’ uniform.
 
At the bottom was another set of photographs, again of a girl.
 
The top photograph showed her, like the others, in the grey uniform of orphan hood
 
But when his eyes fell on the second photograph, Christopher felt himself gasp for breath and grow dizzy.
 
The buzzing of the flies as they feasted blurred and mingled with the roar of blood rushing in his head.
 
He put out a hand to steady himself.

The second photograph was of the girl in the street, the girl whose bloody fingers Christopher had watched at work less than an hour before.
 
She was looking straight at the camera like someone staring at something a long way away.
 
It was the same girl as the one in the first of the two photographs.
 
The same girl and not the same girl.
 
In the first photograph, she seemed perfectly normal, even pretty.
 
She had not been disfigured when she lived at the Knox Homes.

On the back of each second photograph, someone, probably Cormac, had pencilled a few words: a personal name, a place name, and, in several cases, a date.

“Jill, Jaipurhat, 10.2.15’;

“Hilary, Sahibganj, 9.5.13’.
 
But on the back of all the photographs of boys, the place name never varied and was always followed by a question-mark: “Simon, Dorje-la?”
 
1916’; “Matthew, Dorje-la?, 1918’;

“Gordon, Dorje-la?”
 
1919’.
 
Dorje-la: was that the name of the monastery presided over by Tsewong’s mysterious Dorje Lama?

Christopher wrapped up the photographs in the paper and stuffed them into a pocket of his jacket.
 
His heart was still beating.

It was like a nightmare in which he was haunted first by the voice and now by the face of the mad girl from the street.
 
Had these photographs something to do with whatever it was Cormac had been talking about the night before?
 
Had it been them that the doctor had intended to show him?
 
One thing seemed clear:

whoever had killed the doctor had not even guessed there might be something in the desk.

He put his hand into the drawer again, to the very back.
 
His fingers came in contact with something cold and hard.
 
There was a fine chain attached to something.
 
It was the silver cross.

Christopher lifted it out carefully.
 
The flies were buzzing more loudly, and he was growing afraid.

It was a plain cross bearing the nailed figure of Christ.
 
Both wood and flesh had been transformed to silver.
 
Something about the cross made the hair on the back of Christopher’s neck rise.
 
It was so improbable that he did not see it at first.
 
He recognized the cross.
 
It was not strange that he did: he had seen it many times before.
 
As a child, he had held it in his hands often.
 
He turned it over and saw on the back, cut into the silver beside the hallmark, the letters “R.
 
V.
 
W.”
 
his father’s initials.
 
Robert Vincent Wylam.

It was his father’s cross, the one heirloom that had not been sent to England with the medals and the cuff-links.
 
From the feet and hands of the tiny Christ-figure, the heads of minute nails protruded.
 
When he was little, Christopher had touched them in wonder.
 
Now, his hand clenched tightly about the cross until its sharp edges began to cut into his flesh; a thin, red trickle of blood ran out between his fingers.

He heard the voices of the flies, mumbling feverishly in the darkened room, and the voices of the dogs prowling along dark, stinking lanes in search of offal, and the voice of the girl singing to him out of the gloom.
 
His bleeding fingers clutched the cross and he stood in the centre of the room, crying bitterly, adrift, abandoned, not knowing where he was or why.

Christopher lost all sense of time passing.
 
He remained in the room, clutching the crucifix, oblivious of his surroundings.
 
He had entered the presence of Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies, there in that tiny room, amid the clamour of wings.
 
His head was filled with images of his father dying in a blizzard, of the disfigured girl singing outside his window, of men he had killed or watched die.

And yet a part of his brain was icily calm and thinking hard about what had happened.
 
Someone had overheard his conversation with Cormac the night before of that he was convinced.
 
And that had led to a hurried and bungled attempt to suppress the doctor’s knowledge and its imminent revelation.
 
Carpenter or someone close to Carpenter was responsible for the killing.
 
Christopher no longer doubted that the missionary was mixed up deeply in whatever was going on.
 
And that meant he was somehow involved with William’s kidnapping.
 
Beyond that, he hardly dared think; but in a corner of his mind his father’s voice was whispering from the past, whispering words Christopher could not quite hear.

He stood up at last and put the crucifix carefully into the inside pocket of his jacket.
 
He spent a little while going through the contents of Cormac’s desk, but could find nothing else connected to Carpenter, Tibet, or the photographs.

It was time to go.
 
He knew exactly where he was headed.
 
This time John Carpenter would tell him all he knew, even if Christopher had to drag every word out of him by brute force.
 
He got up from the desk.

There was a heavy knock at the front door.
 
Christopher froze.

Suddenly, footsteps sounded in the entrance hall.

“Doctor Cormac!
 
Are you all right?”
 
It was the orderly who had given him directions at the hospital.

A second later, the door of the living room burst open and three men stepped inside: a British police captain and two Indian constables. The orderly hung back in the corridor outside.

Without speaking, the captain motioned to one of his constables to search the other rooms.
 
The man made straight for the bedroom.

Christopher could still hear the sound of flies buzzing loudly.

Moments later, the constable returned looking distinctly sick.
 
He stepped up to the captain, muttered a few words to him, and then went with him to the bedroom.

When the captain came out of the room, he had turned pale.
 
He was young, probably just out of police academy, and this might have been his first murder.
 
What rotten luck, thought Christopher.

“What is your name?”
 
the captain demanded.

“Wylam.
 
Major Christopher Wylam.”

The word “Major’ threw the policeman a little.
 
But he quickly pulled himself up to his full height and addressed Christopher in the prescribed manner, as laid down in regulations.

“Major Christopher Wylam, it is my duty to place you under arrest for the murder of Doctor Martin Cormac.
 
I have to advise you that you will now be taken into my custody, to be delivered in due course to the Chief Magistrate of Kalimpong District for examination with a view to being referred to trial.
 
I must also caution you that anything you now say may be recorded and used later in evidence against you.”

He nodded at the constable who had found the body.
 
The man unhooked a set of handcuffs from his belt and stepped towards Christopher.
 
Now that routine had taken over, the policeman seemed more at ease.

“Please hold your hands in front of you,” he said.

Christopher did as instructed.
 
The man came closer and made to clip the first cuff over Christopher’s right wrist.
 
As he did so, Christopher swung round, grabbed the policeman’s arm, and spun him in a circle, grabbing him across the neck with his free hand.
 
It took only a moment to find and retrieve the man’s gun.
 
Christopher raised it and held it tight against the policeman’s head.

“You!”
 
he shouted at the orderly, cringing in the passage.

“Get in here!
 
Juldi!”

A European would have made for the door and raised the alarm.

But Indian hospital orderlies suffered a double dose of authoritarianism: a medical hierarchy headed by representatives of the master race.
 
The peon stepped into the living-room.

“Put your guns on the floor, then place your hands on your heads,” Christopher instructed the two remaining policemen.

“Slowly, now!”

They did as he told them.
 
He spoke to the orderly again.

“Go to the bedroom.
 
Find something to tie these men up:

neckties, strips of bedding, anything.
 
But hurry up!”

The orderly nodded and did as instructed.
 
Christopher heard him retching when he got inside the room.
 
A minute later he reemerged with a sheet.

“Tear it into strips,” Christopher ordered.

“Then tie them up.”

The orderly’s hands were shaking and he looked as though he might be on the verge of fainting.
 
But he managed somehow to make his fumbling fingers do what was demanded of them.
 
The policemen were told to sit in straight-backed chairs while they were trussed up.
 
All the time, the English captain fixed his eyes on Christopher, as though committing his face to memory.

“Now this one,” Christopher ordered.
 
The orderly tied the third man to another chair.

“Please, sahib,” he pleaded when he had finished.

“You don’t have to tie me up.
 
I am staying here as long as you want. I am keeping quiet.
 
Not interfering.”

Christopher ignored his pleas and tied him to the desk chair.
 
He turned to the captain.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’ll be a good deal sorrier when you’re pulled in.
 
You won’t get away, you know.
 
Better to give yourself up now.
 
Save yourself a lot of trouble.
 
Save yourself getting hurt.”

“Yes,” said Christopher.

“I’d like to do that.
 
But I didn’t kill Martin Cormac and I don’t have time to waste proving it.
 
This isn’t a police matter.
 
Tell your people to keep their noses out of it.

Speak to somebody at DBI.
 
Ask to talk to Winterpole.
 
He’ll explain.

He’ll explain everything.”

He turned and made for the door.
 
Behind him, the flies had started moving into the living-room.

Two large cars were parked outside the Knox Homes.
 
Christopher recognized them as Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts: they were popular cars with some of the local potentates.
 
Evidently, Carpenter had visitors.
 
Important visitors.