her by her mother. I have been considering, indeed – I intended to telephone you today and ask you to call… Some proper provision must be made, of course. But I did not… This is terrible! You do not think that someone has lured her away…? But who knew of her presence here? Your friends of the film unit, you tell me, are in Benares. Otherwise who could know you – and Anjli – here in Delhi, and know where to find you?’
‘We’ve been in contact with a lot of people in the town, of course,’ admitted Tossa, ‘but only casually, the sort of tourist contact one has with shops, and restaurants, and guides… and what could be more anonymous? The only place where we’re
‘Of course! ’ Dominic snapped his fingers joyfully. ‘Why didn’t I think of it! Kishan Singh! A slightly grubby little note brought by a paid messenger… It could be! Kishan Singh may have had some news of Anjli’s father. Perhaps he’s home!’
Vasudev looked first dubious, and then hopeful; and after a few seconds of thought, both excited and resolute. He came out of his western chair in a nervous leap. ‘Come, we shall take the car and I will drive you over there to Rabindar Nagar. We must see if this is the case. Indeed, one hopes! That would resolve all our problems most fortunately.’
He ran to the rear door of the palatial hall, and clapped his hands, and in a few moments they heard him issuing clipped, high-pitched orders. Presently the car rolled majestically round on to the rosy gravel, with a magnificently turbaned Sikh at the wheel. A glossy new Mercedes in the most conservative of dark greys, and its chauffeur’s pride and joy, that was clear by the condescending forbearance with which he opened the door to allow them to enter its sacred confines. But that morning he was not to be allowed to drive it; Vasudev did that himself, and did it with a ferocity and fire they had not expected from him. Their taxi driver, on the first occasion, had taken half as long again to get them to Rabindar Nagar.
At the first turning into the new suburb from the main road Vasudev braked, hesitating. ‘It is long since I was here, I have forgotten. Is it this turn?’
‘The second one. N block, it’s only a couple of hundred yards farther on. Yes, here.’
At the half-finished houses the bold, gypsyish, stately women of Orissa walked the scaffolding with shallow baskets of bricks on their heads, and made a highly-coloured frieze against the pale blue sky, their fluted skirts swaying as though to music. At sight of the opulent car the half-naked children padded barefoot across the open from their low, dark tents, running beside it with pinkish-brown palms upturned and small, husky voices grating their endless complaint against possessing nothing among so many and such solid possessions. There was no obsequious tone in this begging, it accused, demanded and mocked, expecting nothing, and ready to throw stones if nothing was given. But this time the plump lady from next door did not chase them away. She was there, she and a dozen others, clustered round the open iron gate of N 305, all shrilling and shrugging in excited Hindi, a soprano descant to a louder, angrier, more violent clamour of male voices eddying from within the compound. No one had time now for errant children; the centre of all attention was there within the wall, out of sight. And even the Orissan infants, having come to beg, sensed that there was more to be had here than new pice, and winding the excitement, wormed their way in under elbows, between legs, through the folds of saris, to see whatever was there to be seen.
‘Oh, God, no!’ prayed Tossa silently in the back seat, tugging at the handle of the door. Little girls vanished, little girls reappeared, horribly changed. Everybody knew it happened. But not here! With all its violence and despair and hunger, somehow India had felt morally clean and safe to her, she would have walked through Old Delhi at night, alone, and never felt a qualm, something she couldn’t have said for Paddington. Yet unmistakably this had the look of a crowd round the police van, the ambulance, the sorry panoply of murder or rape.
They clambered out of the car, clumsy with haste.
‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! ’ Vasudev keened, his voice soaring with agitation. ‘Something has happened! Something is wrong here! Miss Barber, you should please stay in the car…’
But she was already ahead of them, boring into the small butterfly crowd about the gate, and thrusting her way through without ceremony. They followed her perforce, clinging to her arm, urging her to go back. Tossa hardly noticed. It was bad enough for them, but it was she who had taken on the job, so lightly so selfishly, coveting India and hardly thinking, at first, about the child who was being posted about the world like a parcel…
She extricated herself frantically from the gold-embroidered end of a lilac and white sari, and fell out into the open space of the compound, and Dominic flung his arm round her and held her upright. The door of Satyavan’s house stood wide open, and on the white paving before it Kishan Singh, his guileless eyes round and golden with fright, sobbed and protested and argued in loud Hindi, alternately buffeted and shaken between two vociferous Punjabis in khaki shorts and tunics. Another man in khaki, obviously their superior, stood straddle-legged before the trio, barking abrupt questions at the terrified boy, and swinging a short rattan cane of office in one hand. He was a handsome turbaned Sikh, his beard cradled in a fine black net, his moustache waxed fiercely erect at the ends. Whatever had happened, the Delhi police were in possession here.
Kishan Singh, turning his bullet head wildly from one persecutor to the other, caught a fleeting glimpse of the new arrivals, and uttered a shrill cry of relief and joy. Crises in India are chaotic, voluble and exceedingly noisy, and he had been adding his share to this one, but only out of panic. With someone to speak for him, he regained his sturdy mountain calm.
‘Sahib, memsahib, please, there is very bad thing happened. You tell these men, I am honest, I have done nothing wrong… Why should I call police here, if I did this thing?’
Dominic looked squarely at the Sikh officer, who was plainly the man to be reckoned with here. ‘Kishan Singh is the caretaker of this house, and has been a good servant to Shrimati Purnima Kumar and to her son. If Shrimati Purnima were still alive, I know she would speak for her boy, and I feel sure Mr Kumar here, her nephew, will tell you the same. I don’t know what has happened here, but I know that Kishan Singh is to be trusted.’ Did he really know that, after one short encounter? Yes, he did, and he wasn’t going to apologise for the brevity of the acquaintance to this man or to anyone. With some people, you know where you stand, with some you don’t. Kishan Singh belonged among the former group. There is an innocence which is absolute, and there’s no mistaking it when you do meet it.
‘I understand,’ said the Sikh officer, eyeing them narrowly, ‘that this boy is the only resident here. Is that the case?’ His English was all the better because his voice was a sombre bass-baritone.
‘Yes, I understand that is true. Apart from the old man who lives in the compound here, as a kind of pensioner of the family.’
‘Ah… yes,’ said the police officer gently. ‘That is the point. We are, unfortunately, debarred from referring to this elderly gentleman as a witness.’
‘I know he is blind. You mean there has been a crime on these premises?’
