The India Spy Page 19

  I clicked on the search facility and typed in “child + sacrifice”. A few seconds later a long list of items appeared, the earliest dating back several years. I scrolled through the stories, looking at the more recent ones.

  “When did you witness the sacrifice?” I asked Dutchie. He stopped typing, still looking down at the keyboard. “March,” he said slowly. “Some time in March.”

  I returned to the list, searching for a corresponding date. Then I saw it.

  CHILD SACRIFICED NEAR PERIYAR

  The mutilated body of three-year-old Pradeep was found in a well outside Kumily yesterday, amid reports that he had been sacrificed to the Hindu goddess Kali. Police said they were treating the death as murder, but the nature of the boy’s wounds – his tongue, nose and ears had been severed – has convinced locals that it was a ritual killing.

  I became aware of Dutchie standing next to me. I pointed at the screen where I was reading but he was already looking at the copy.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I said quietly, monitoring Dutchie’s reaction.

  “He’s crossing the line. Making stories happen.”

  “Have a look at this,” I said, clicking on the sati story. I waited while he read through the text. “I put money on him being behind this one as well.”

  “Jesus. What’s he playing at?”

  I thought about Sir Ian’s morning news cuttings. “Spinning,” I said quietly. “Altering perceptions. Presenting India in a particular way to the outside world. Look at this lot: snake charmers, child labour, naked fakirs. You’d think India was medieval if you only read this.”

  “He’s a frigging spin doctor, too,” Dutchie said, walking outside to have a cigarette. He sat down on the edge of the doorstep, unfolding a patchwork pouch of tobacco. “And I thought he was just a witch doctor.”

  I smiled at Dutchie through the open doorway, warming to him, pleased that I had met him now rather than in his Class War days. I kept an eye on him as I searched the site for “Tinkoo”. Sure enough, the story of his morbid death came up, dated in early April, shortly before the man had appeared outside the British High Commission gates with his photos. Angrez, he had said. The tantrik had been English. Macaulay. It had to be. I glanced through some of the other stories: “Dead man to contest Indian general election”, “Indian village sealed off amid renewed fears of plague”, “Dowry deaths alive and well in India’. The true extent of Macaulay’s activities, and presumably the Club’s, was becoming increasingly apparent. Sir Ian was right: the Cardamom Club was against the very notion of a developed India. Someone must have felt very threatened.

  It was impossible to tell from the site what effect, if any, such a drip-feed diet of stories might have on the West without knowing who was buying into the service. The breaking news channel boasted two hundred foreign clients, which was a not insignificant number. Far more worrying was Macaulay the agent provocateur. When the figures dropped for child sacrifice, he stepped in, intervened, propped up the barbaric trend. Did Whitehall know? Sanctioning propaganda was one thing, but bloodshed? I couldn’t see it. Macaulay must have been doing his own thing, but what was he trying to prove? That India had sunk back into the Dark Ages the moment the civilising influence of Britain started to wane? I couldn’t get the image of the East India Company man out of my head, watching from beneath his umbrella as the Joogee woman was buried alive.

  20

  I rang Priyanka back, sounding more together this time, and we agreed to meet the following morning in Meerut, by an old Pakistani tank that she said was on display at a junction north of the town centre. She knew a journalist who lived nearby, a stringer for one of the national newspapers in Delhi who specialised in child sacrifice stories in northern Uttar Pradesh. I didn’t tell her about Macaulay, that he was probably arranging the sati as we spoke, drugging some poor woman, paying off her family. I just warned her to be careful. Jamie could have gone after her, frustrated in his attempt to find me. I would explain about Sir Ian, my other work in Delhi, remove the last layer of deception that hung like a purdah between us.

  Dutchie was reluctant to leave the relative security of Dharamsala but I persuaded him we would be safer on the move. It was a long drive to Meerut, and he insisted on travelling separately, riding his Enfield 350 Bullet. He had got it from another traveller, he said, in exchange for two sizeable slabs of charas from the Parbati valley. I liked Dutchie more and more, but I didn’t mind not sharing an Ambassador. I would have to mention the smell sooner or later, couch it in purely medical terms.

  We set off after lunch, driving back through Una, and slept for a few hours on the outskirts of Chandigarh. Ravi lay down on the Ambassador’s front bench seat, and I took the back, the doors open to create a draught. Dutchie rolled out a mat next to his bike. The night was warm and I couldn’t sleep. Ravi’s film music didn’t help, but he had the car radio on quietly and I couldn’t complain. He had started to look worried, which didn’t suit his laid-back style, and I needed him to hang around. More frustratingly, I had been unable to recall Priyanka’s face ever since I had put the phone down. I could see her sari, her feet, her hands, the swell of her thighs, her breasts, but every time I moved up towards her face I had an annoying image of someone else, the receptionist at work, the withered old woman who was collecting money outside the internet café. The more I tried, the weirder the images became. Eventually I fell asleep thinking of the back of her head, flattering myself that she had turned away from me, sated, exhausted.

  We reached Meerut just after dawn, the sunrise unable to awaken any beauty in its mundane cantonments. Meerut was a large army area, uniformly dull, with most of the boxed houses painted civic yellow. Despite the military surrounds, the Pakistani tank, with its faded star on the side of the turret, looked strange by the roadside, captured from the old enemy in 1965 and yet somehow standing guard.

  Priyanka was late. Dutchie was less bothered by the delay than I was, tinkering happily with his bike, which had developed a problem of some sort. Then I saw a promising white Ambassador approaching, its number plate beginning with “DL” for Delhi. Several others with similar plates had passed, but this car drew up next to us and Priyanka stepped out. I couldn’t believe that I had been unable to recall her face, now so instantly familiar, fresh, as if newly unwrapped.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, glancing past me at Dutchie, who was on his hands and knees, fiddling with the bike. “I went to see my friend, the local journalist I was telling you about.”

  “No problem,” I said. I wanted to hold her close, carry her away to a cheap hotel, but we hadn’t even kissed on the cheek. “What did he think?” I asked, moving breezily into journalist territory. The story was obviously preoccupying her. “Is he going?”

  “He doesn’t believe it. Says it’s a hoax. He’s chased up a few sati stories in the last couple of years, several around Bijnor, but said they were all just rumours.”

  Why were we talking like this, so formally? Her body language was restrained, her eye contact businesslike. I was already trying to store the images.

  “This is Dutchie, by the way,” I said. “Friend of mine.”

  Dutchie looked up and nodded, giving her one of his particularly disturbing grins. Priyanka glanced at me for an explanation, some reassurance.

  “He stayed with Macaulay on his island.”

  “Okay,” she said, looking at Dutchie in a new light.

  “I’m going to have to leave this here, let them strip it down,” Dutchie said. He gestured across the road to a shack with some worn lorry tyres stacked up outside. “The engine’s seized up.”

  We stood next to each other, watching as Dutchie wheeled the bike across the road and explained, in surprisingly fluent Hindi, that he wanted it fixed. I felt for Priyanka’s hand. She squeezed it lightly and then let go.

  “Come,” she said. “The roads will be bad.”

  We agreed to go in my car. Priyanka paid off her driver, telling him to return to Delhi, w
hich guaranteed us some time together. I caught Dutchie’s eye as he came back across the road, and nodded discreetly at the front passenger seat. He got the message and climbed in next to Ravi, dropping a small rucksack at his feet. Priyanka and I settled down in the back, our hands resting casually together on the seat between us. I didn’t want to do anything that might embarrass her. Respect, she had said. Respect. This was Meerut, not Delhi or Bombay, or London. I liked the veneer of restraint here, the veil of modesty. It allowed for so many more possibilities when the lights went off.

  We had only been driving for twenty minutes and I was already beginning to forget about Sir Ian’s departure, the menacing presence of Jamie. Priyanka was tired from her early start, the dusty drive up from Delhi, but she was full of chat, talking about Macaulay, her article. She tried to engage Dutchie in conversation, wheedle out a few anonymous quotes for the piece, but he was not very forthcoming. He had taken my nod very seriously, it seemed, and thought that he was disturbing something by even hearing us talk in the back. I was on the point of telling her about the darker side of Macaulay, how we suspected his hand in today’s events, when Ravi glanced anxiously in the mirror and then turned to look over his shoulder.

  I turned too and saw a muddy white Land-Rover directly behind us, all over our bumper. It was a Defender, but it wasn’t Jamie’s and it didn’t have diplomatic number plates. The windows were dark and the grilles protecting the lights were badly dented. There was no one else on the road, either in front of us or behind. A few seconds later the Land-Rover was knocking against our bumper. We were jolted forward – I shot out an arm across Priyanka, trying to stop her hitting her head on the back of Dutchie’s seat – and then Ravi was working the horn, jamming it down, barely letting it come up for breath.

  “What the…?” Dutchie said.

  “Keep going,” I shouted at Ravi. “Keep driving. Faster.”

  In Delhi Ravi would have stopped after a bump like that, stepped out of the car, and remonstrated firmly with the other driver, but he knew it was not that sort of incident. The Land-Rover hit us again, sliding us forward and forcing Ravi to break.

  He was not smiling this time, not like when we had been leaving Delhi. For a terrifying moment, he took both hands off the steering wheel, clasped them together in front of his chest and nodded at the flashing Shiva on the dashboard.

  “Who is it?” Priyanka said, looking round.

  “Were you followed here?” I asked her. “Did someone come after you?”

  “Not that I saw.” The Land-Rover bumped us again, this time much harder, throwing us all forward.

  “Oh man, oh man,” Dutchie moaned, beginning to lose it in the front seat. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “Raj, I’m scared,” said Priyanka. “Tell me who’s in the Land-Rover.”

  I said nothing.

  “Macaulay?” Priyanka persisted.

  I couldn’t be sure, didn’t want to upset Dutchie further. I nodded discreetly at Priyanka.

  Ravi was driving dangerously, breaking all the rules we had so painstakingly established in Delhi. Overtaking on blind corners, not slowing for bumps. I looked behind again. The Land-Rover was still there, filling the rear window. It knocked us again and Ravi hit back with his horn.

  “Sir,” he said. “Very costly.”

  “I know, I know. Just keep going. You’re doing fine.” I looked ahead and noticed a police checkpoint about five hundred yards away, a yellow-painted crowd barrier on either side of the road, separated by ten yards and forming a tight chicane. Four overweight officers were standing on the left-hand side. One of them was waving us down. He had yet to clock how fast we were going, but his manner quickly changed as we approached. He tapped a colleague, and they all started gesturing, moving to the side of the road. Ravi slowed down, which surprised me. I looked back and the Land-Rover was slowing, too. But as we drew near the barrier, Ravi suddenly accelerated again, swerving past the policemen and through the chicane. The Land-Rover was stationary, surrounded by the curious policemen.

  “Nice one,” Dutchie said, looking over his shoulders. He then made a V sign with his arm, laughing manically.

  “The English always stop for a bobby, no?” Priyanka said, still trying to make Dutchie out.

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  “Filth,” Dutchie mumbled.

  “Something to do with our upbringing,” I added.

  “Speak for yourself,” Dutchie said.

  “Bijnor?” Ravi asked.

  “Bijnor,” I repeated.

  “Small roads,” Ravi said, turning off left down a dusty track.

  The Land-Rover was nowhere to be seen.

  As we bumped our way along a series of increasingly poor tracks, I told Priyanka all about the Club, how Sir Ian had sent Dutchie and then me to discover what we could about Macaulay, and how the Club had now removed him from Delhi. I mentioned what had happened to my father and explained my other role at the High Commission. It didn’t seem to surprise her. As she pointed out, Ranjit had seen me a mile off at Frank’s, kept on repeating that nobody did only one job at an embassy. It felt strangely uplifting to be transparent at last, liberating, although I didn’t tell her about Jamie’s interest in her father. Her anger would have given Jamie too much pleasure.

  Finally, I recounted Dutchie’s experience with the child, how the boy had been sacrificed by a man we thought was Macaulay. After the initial shock – she, too, felt sick at the thought of having enjoyed his hospitality – she fell very still, and then leant forward, resting a hand on Dutchie’s shoulder. The gesture surprised me, but she motioned discreetly in Dutchie’s direction. He was sobbing quietly. I kept going, telling her about the man who had shown me pictures of Tinkoo, the reference to angrez, the image Macaulay was trying to portray of India.

  “So you think he’s going to be here, masterminding the whole thing in some way?” she asked, sitting back, trying to take it all in.

  “I’d put money on it.”

  “One sicko bastard,” Dutchie said, wiping his nose with the inside of his wrist.

  “What about the Land-Rover?” she asked.

  “The Club got rid of Sir Ian easily enough.” I turned to check the road behind us again. It was clear. “Now it’s our turn.”

  I watched Dutchie for a reaction, but he had sunk back in his seat, temporarily lost in his own troubled world.

  “We just have to make sure we find Macaulay before they find us,” I said, unconvinced by my own words.

  “What makes you think he’s suddenly going to show his face with all the media in town?” Priyanka asked. “The BBC are coming, Zee, CNN, all the newspapers.” “He’ll be in the shadows somewhere, in the background.” Shielded from the sun by an umbrella. “The media doesn’t suspect he’s involved.”

  “Even if we confront him, he’ll just say he’s covering it for his news agency,” she said. “Quite plausible, given he broke the story.”

  Priyanka was right, of course. Proving Macaulay’s involvement wasn’t going to be easy, which was why we needed to get to the area early, ask around, find out what, if anything, he had been saying to the locals. If our theory was right, he would be paying people off as we spoke, ensuring a smooth sati.

  We pulled into Ghanshyampur village and parked next to a line of cars, trucks and jeeps, just off the dusty track that ran through a small cluster of brick houses. Priyanka’s prediction was accurate: we were not alone. There were journalists everywhere. Priyanka chatted with a BBC reporter, who said that The World Today were going live with the story. He was leaning against a small aluminium step ladder as he talked. Behind him two BBC jeeps full of equipment were being unloaded. Technicians from CNN were setting up a small satellite dish just off the roadside, next to a stack of steel-rimmed crates. Plenty of Indian film crews were in attendance, too, including Doordashan, Zee, Jain and New Delhi TV, their wires scattered across the ground, tangled like snakes in a pit.

  I stood under a tree with Dutchie,
while Priyanka went off to find out what she could. She moved freely amongst a group of reporters who had gathered around a paan shop, a small tin-roofed shack with a half-empty cabinet of Mirinda bottles and a few plastic jars of boiled sweets. I felt odd watching her at work in a world that was alien to me, odd but thrilled. It was as if I had spotted a stranger in a crowd and knew, for once, that I had the confidence to introduce myself.

  A line of locals had gathered next to the hut, a mixture of the old and young, all of them fascinated by the proceedings. Most of the reporters were Indians, but there was a posse of Western journalists too, chatting on mobile phones, complaining the Mirinda wasn’t cold enough. Priyanka moved over to talk to one of them, a short man wearing glasses, who laughed, putting his hands out in mock despair. He occasionally looked behind him and joked with another Western journalist – gaunt, cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth – who had set up a laptop computer on a wicker stool under the shade of some trees across the road. A mobile phone was attached to the computer and he was trying, in vain, to get online. The mood was light, despite the nature of what might happen at any minute.

  “Nobody seems to know when or where this thing’s going to take place,” Priyanka said, walking back over to us. “This is the village that Macaulay mentioned but none of the locals know anything. They say nobody’s died in the area since the end of last year.”

  She stepped back a pace as a police jeep swept by and pulled up in front of the paan shop. A senior-looking officer climbed out of the car. He appeared hassled but not too much so as he talked to several Indian journalists, fiddling with a brown leather belt that was half hidden under his stomach.

  “That’s the correspondent I met this morning,” Priyanka said, pointing at one of the journalists who was talking to the officer. “He’s got good contacts, knows everyone in the area. The inspector’s asking him what’s going on.”