The Baghdad Railway Club (9 page)

I closed on Jarvis; a Ford van was parked behind him. He saluted, but did not snap to it as he had the night before.

‘Number four’s ours, sir,’ he said. ‘Very nice, sir, but dusty. The boy’s just giving it a clean over.’

We eyed each other; the music had stopped.

‘Your things are already in there, sir,’ said Jarvis, leading off along a gravel track between low brick buildings.

‘How are you acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd, Jarvis?’ I enquired as we walked. ‘He was leaving as I arrived.’

Jarvis didn’t break stride: ‘I’m not, sir, but I know who he is. I mean, I know he’s your governor in the railway department, sir. But besides that, I know he was at the railway station when the city fell. He was there with another officer, a man I do count a friend – or did.’

I was nearly but not quite so blockheaded as to say, ‘You mean Boyd?’

‘. . . Name of Captain Boyd, sir,’ Jarvis ran on. ‘The police team put the notice up in Part One Orders just after lunchtime, sir. Found dead at the railway station this morning – in the buffet.’

‘And you were breaking the news to the lieutenant colonel?’

‘They’d seen action together. I thought it only right. Everyone knows they were the first men into this place – if you take the station to be part of Baghdad.’

What would I ask if this were all new to me? I settled on ‘What unit was Boyd with?’

‘Hundred and Eighty-Fifth Machine Gun Company, sir.’

‘And how did you know him?’

‘I was batman to him down in Basrah. Before that, he’d done me a bit of a good turn, and that’s how we’d got acquainted.’

So I had been given as batman the very fellow who’d done the same job for the man whose murder I was investigating.

Was Shepherd behind this? Had Boyd himself been behind it?

‘You said he’d done you a good turn?’

‘Kut, sir . . . Saved my life, did Captain Boyd. I was very sorry when I was transferred back to driving duties after being with him three months.’

‘He saved your life? How?’

‘He brought me a drink of water . . . So I’m a bit down now, sir.’

And he did seem genuinely cut up by the death of a man he thought a lot of; I would have to get the details out of him later.

There were perhaps half a dozen small houses in the enclosure. An Arab stared at me from the doorway of one. ‘This is Ahmad, sir,’ said Jarvis. ‘He’s the boy.’

‘Hello Ahmad,’ I said, touching my cap.

‘
Ack
-mad,’ he corrected me.

He was about six and a half foot tall, and at least forty – a rather glowering sort of fellow in a black robe and white turban. I nodded to him and he stepped aside, saying, ‘You will like it here,’ as if to say ‘You’d
better
do.’

It was a hot box, really, with plenty of flies in it, but quite a decent diggings all considered, being pleasantly furnished, with two wicker sofas, scattered rugs on a stone floor, a divan, green-shaded oil lamps. Ahmad now upped the ante by saying, ‘You will
really
like it,’ a good deal of threat put into that word ‘really’.

One doorway connected to a slightly more modest version of the same room: Jarvis’s quarters; another led to a narrow stone room running along the side of the building – a sort of scullery. Jarvis too had a door leading into this area, which in turn had its own exterior door leading out into the compound. Ahmad, who had his own sleeping quarters elsewhere, would come and go by this.

We were back in the main room. Ahmad was pointing to the divan, saying, ‘You will have a piece of sleep.’

He appeared to be commanding me to go to sleep there and then. It struck me that he might mean the
peace
of sleep. Jarvis, who was distributing my things about the room, said a couple of words in Arabic to Ahmad, who then went off.

‘He’s squared for half a dozen bottles of Bass, sir,’ said Jarvis; ‘he’ll be back with them in a minute.

I said, ‘I hope he has them in a cool place. Do you suppose it was an Arab who did for Boyd?’

Jarvis may have nodded.

‘They’re starting to turn, sir. A stone was pitched through the window of the Hotel.’

‘They were throwing flowers when we arrived,’ I said.

‘
Some
of them were,’ said Jarvis. ‘You see they’re not all the same. There’s the Sunni and the Shia. They have a disagreement about the religion. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but the Sunnis have been top dogs in Baghdad under the Turks, and they’re shaping up to be the same with us. They know how to toe the line, sir.’

Ahmad returned with a bottle of Bass. I had a vision of him taking the cork out with his teeth – he had a good face for doing that sort of thing – but I saw it had already been removed. He handed it to me together with a small glass in a metal holder.

‘Clean glass,’ he said, in his sinister sort of way.

‘Thanks,’ I said, nodding, and setting bottle and glass down on the low table in the centre of the room.

‘Drink,’ said Ahmad, eyeing me.

‘Can you tell him to go?’ I said to Jarvis.

Jarvis got him out of the room, more by gestures than words.

‘Which do you suppose he is?’ I said when he’d gone. ‘Sunni or Shia?’

‘Shia, I think,’ said Jarvis.

So he was part of the awkward squad. That was a bad look-out. I took up the bottle of beer, and thought for a moment:
What if he’s poisoned it?
It would have been a perfectly reasonable move on his part; I knew for a fact that no Arabs were allowed in the kitchens of the Hotel or the Residency, but I was parched so I raised it to my lips. After I’d taken a belt, I said, ‘You’ll have one of these yourself, won’t you, Jarvis?’

‘I will do sir, yes. Later on.’

It wouldn’t really do for us to drink together, I knew that much.

Jarvis said, ‘I don’t believe it
was
an Arab who killed Captain Boyd, sir, and I mean to find out who
did
. I’ve plenty of free time, sir. I mean to turn detective.’

I gave this faintly alarming news the go-by, or tried to.

‘You were a detective yourself, weren’t you sir? On the railway force at York?’

I nodded.

‘Jarvis,’ I said, ‘how was it that Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd was actually here in Rose Court?’

He was fixing the mosquito net over my bed.

‘I saw him walking past the gates just as I was driving in.’

Having fixed up the net, Jarvis said, ‘This flipping place, sir.’

‘I thought you liked it.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, I do try.’

He was much less given to chirpiness than I’d first thought. And his uniform was quite black with sweat.

I traversed the Baghdad labyrinth. It was getting on for nine. The heat had hardly abated; the only difference was that the light had turned dark green again. Jarvis and Ahmad between them had prepared my evening meal: some species of spiced meat (Ahmad’s contribution), with fried potato (Jarvis’s doing). Jarvis had not eaten himself, but had gone off early to his bed with a bottle of beer. It bothered me that there was a connection between him and Shepherd. I’d now got possessed of the idea that they were in league; that Shepherd had been somehow instrumental in having Jarvis posted batman to me. But why would Jarvis have anything against a man who’d saved his life?

I must find out more about what had befallen him at Kut-al-Amara.

I turned into an alleyway, and saw a camel’s head on a pole. It stuck out from the front of a shop made bright by unshaded lamps and white tiles. In it sat two Arabs conversing pleasantly amid a litter of bloody camel parts. I saw two other camels’ heads further along, signifying another couple of butcheries. In fact it seemed this street was given over to the selling of camel parts just as certain quarters of any town in Blighty would be given over to the selling of motor-car parts. The heads put me in mind of one of my daughter Sylvia’s toys – hobby horse. That was a
horse’s
head on a stick, and it too looked pretty glum about it. I thought of the four weeks’ voyage that separated me from Sylvia. That was if malaria didn’t do for me, or cholera, or the ferocious Ahmad, or Shepherd and his associates (if any). In the ordinary military sense, I was safer in Mespot than I had been on the Western Front, only it was too hot here. It didn’t do to dwell on the fact, but I could hardly breathe.

I saw an alleyway going off, its name neatly and newly painted on a wall: ‘Clean Street’. Captain Stevens had come here earlier in the day – to number 11. That spot had also been marked on Jarvis’s map, and I hadn’t had the chance to ask him about it.

Clean Street was only clean in comparison to Dead Camel Street. I walked along the dusty, broken cobbles to the last building, which was long and low, with arched windows of dusty glass, yet it seemed as if I was seeing only the tops of the windows, as though the building had been pressed down into the ground. There were two doors, both painted with a number 11, and one of the two stood open. It gave on to a stone staircase, which took me down to a further door, and from beyond this came the sound of a rapid whipping, and a desperate groaning. I pushed at the door as a cockney voice within roared, ‘What’s your
purpose
, John? What’s your
purpose
?’

My eyes roved over a vast, echoing basement packed with boxing Tommies. Well, Tommies and sepoys both. There were three boxing rings, and shirtless men in white shorts either scrapping in the rings or milling about in between, or hitting at punchballs, or skipping, which accounted for the whipping noise. I looked at one of the skippers, and he doubled his speed, commencing a kind of dance into the bargain. It took me a second to realise that a horn gramophone was playing American music – all shaking drums with a band of lunatic trumpeters trying to keep up. The walls were green tiles, shining with sweat, and hung with home-made banners. I read ‘51st Sikhs’, ‘53rd Sikhs’, ‘2nd Leicestershires’. Clouds of steam somersaulted through the unbreathable air. The place was evidently connected up to a generator, for it was lit by crude electric lamps that would flash occasionally – or had I blinked twice in disbelief?

A rather faint voice behind me said, ‘You are to sign in first, sir,’ but I paid it no mind. The man who’d been roaring ‘What’s your purpose‚ John?’ was now down to ‘
Purpose
, John! Purpose!’ He was an instructor at the ring closest to me. One fighter – the purposeless John, who was taking a pasting – wore leather headgear to soften the blows and save the brain. These were a new thing in boxing and my governor in the railway police, Chief Inspector Weatherill (a champion army boxer in his day), was dead against them. The other bloke, the one handing out the pasting, hadn’t bothered with one.

‘What are you, sir? Welterweight?’ said the instructor. He wanted me in that ring – wanted to see an officer get bashed. ‘Get stripped off, sir, and you can go against the southpaw.’ As I stood stunned, he roared out ‘Two minutes!’ and the pair in the ring resumed their scrap.

A southpaw was a left-hander, I knew that much. But in the flurry of the scrap, it was the devil of a job to see which man fitted the bill. ‘
That
bloke’ll be your mark, sir,’ the instructor said, seeing my difficulty, and indicating the meaner-looking of the two, the one without the helmet, ‘Irwin – the little machine-gunner.’

At this, I started. ‘Machine-gunner? What company?’

‘Eh?’

I indicated the ring. I was pretty sure neither fighter had yet clapped eyes on me. ‘The southpaw,’ I said, ‘the machine-gunner. What company?’

The answer came back slowly. It was quite a mouthful, after all:

‘Irwin, sir . . . he’s in the 185th Machine Gun Company. I know that, see, because I’m in the 186th.’

I hadn’t exactly been clutching at a straw. There wouldn’t be more than a dozen or so machine-gun companies in Baghdad.

‘Kit’s over there, sir,’ said the instructor, ‘in that room by the little blokes.’

He pointed over to some Indians, who were watching one of their fellows laying into a punchbag – only he did more prancing than punching, and his pals laughed at him for it. They were near a low archway. I ducked down through it, coming to a cooler subterranean room that was half swimming bath, half changing room, which is to say the boxing kit was tumbled about in a series of baskets placed on the stone edging of the pool. The place was empty, crypt-like – a flooded crypt lit by candle stubs, and cooler than the gymnasium on account of the water, which was greyish, but damned inviting all the same.

I put my hands on some kit that fitted – all save for the gloves and headgear. This last was the key item. The man Irwin had not looked my way, and he never would get sight of my features as long as I wore the protector, which covered the cheeks and temples as well as the skull. I would quiz him from behind it. After all, boxers did talk in the ring; they weren’t supposed to but they did. It was usually of the order of ‘Stand still while I clout you, you fucking rotter!’ but I would ask Irwin about what if anything he’d seen at the Baghdad railway station on the night the town fell.

Glancing about, I saw two of the protectors spilled out of a canvas bag. I put one on and I thought,
I’m a fucking racehorse in blinkers.
Feeling a prize chump in baggy shorts, I found my way back to the ring and to the instructor, who was bawling at his fighters, ‘As you were, gentlemen, as you were!’, at which they left off punching. Irwin stayed up, the other climbed down. The instructor went off somewhere, came back with gloves for me. I held out my hands, and he laced them without a word. My opponent shadow-boxed in the ring; or he was dancing to the American music. As he moved, he was in a bath of sweat.

‘See your stance, sir?’ said the instructor.

I put up my fists, and he immediately wheeled away, as though in disgust. But it was just that another bloke wanted his attention. This other bloke was a big bloke – heavyweight – and had blood coming from his nose. It was coming down on to his chest, and every so often he’d swirl it about all over his front in a manner rather child-like; otherwise he didn’t seem too bothered about it. The bloodied man tipped his head back, and the instructor watched his nose bleed for a while, then sent him away with a word I couldn’t hear, but which made the other laugh. The instructor turned back to me, and made no remark on my stance, but just said, ‘Keep your chin down, sir. Don’t hit him with this . . .’ at which he nearly hit
me
with the palm of his hand.

I climbed into the ring, and the instructor shouted ‘Two minutes!’ which was evidently the signal for ‘begin’ as well as ‘stop’, and Irwin the southpaw machine-gunner came over and clouted me. Whether he’d done it with his left or his right I was for the moment too dazed to say, even though the protector had somewhat lessened the force of the blow. He then started dancing again. I aimed a couple of blows at his midriff, which he defended easily. You were supposed to go for the solar plexus, but where the hell was that?

‘You were at the station with Captain Boyd,’ I said. ‘On the night the city fell.’

He gave me a left and right to the head.

‘No talking,’ he said. He was a Londoner. His plimsoles squeaked furiously on the canvas.

I tried the following lie: ‘I was at school with him.’

‘You don’t sound like you were. Sorry sir, are you an officer?’

‘I am,’ I said, and he went into a faster dance, as though in celebration at having an officer to bash. ‘He’s been found dead,’ I said. ‘At the railway station again.’

‘I’ve heard that, sir,’ said Irwin, still dancing.

I said, ‘Did anything funny happen there? First time around, I mean?’

Irwin came for me again, and this time I defended better, or thought I did, but the instructor, looking up, said, ‘Box hard, box hard,’ as though I’d just been nancying about.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Irwin, ‘and how do you mean “funny”?’

The instructor shouted, ‘As you were, as you were.’

Was this the end of the bout or the end of the round? Evidently the former, for my opponent said, ‘Go again in a minute, eh sir?’

‘Captain Boyd went into the station with another officer,’ I said.

He nodded, went over to his corner for a towel, came back.

‘Boyd was my C.O., sir. A good man. We were in an advance party with some infantry. This other officer was with this infantry lot . . . I mean as far as I could make out. He went into the station where the Turks were. A little later, Captain Boyd went in.’

‘What happened then?’

‘They came out.’

‘In what order?’

‘Captain Boyd first, then the other chap, as far as I recall . . . There was a lot of smoke floating about, sir, some pretty hard scrapping in the vicinity of the station . . . and the train was pulling out. It was a confused situation, sir, and there was a hell of a din.’

‘Two minutes!’ called the bloody instructor. Then, to me, ‘He’s a southpaw, keep left!’ (Having observed my performance, he’d dropped the ‘sir’.)

Irwin was immediately dancing again. Talk about ‘passed A1’; he was as fit as a flea. He walloped me a few times, and I suddenly found I hardly had the energy to lift my arms, let alone take a shot at him. We went into some close stuff, tangled arms, and I wasn’t so much sweating as melting. I’d been scrapping for a little over two minutes, yet I was practically asleep on Irwin’s shoulder.

‘What did the other officer do when he came out?’ I asked, drowsily. ‘Was he carrying anything?’

‘Lead!’ the instructor was calling, ‘Lead!’ but it was a lost cause, and he knew it.

‘He was,’ said Irwin.

He was at me again with fists flying.

‘What?’ I said, reeling back.

‘Don’t know. A package; a box. He held it under his arm.’

I put a pretty good right on Irwin’s ear.

‘And what did Boyd do?’ I said.

Irwin was dancing again. ‘He told us we were to stand by. And then . . .’

‘Yes?’

The instructor was shouting again: ‘Time! Time!’ which, thank Christ, brought an end to the bout, leaving the two of us standing in the middle of the ring at rather a loose end. My head burned though. I would have to take the protector off in a minute.

‘Some more artillery came up, and it was all back to – you know – confusion,’ said Irwin. He walked over to his corner, picked up a towel; I followed him. New fighters were climbing into the ring. I nodded at Irwin, and we touched gloves.

I asked, ‘What was the expression on Boyd’s face when he came out of the station?’

‘The
expression
?’ said Irwin, evidently appalled by the question. ‘Well, it was the middle of a battle. So I suppose he looked
worried
. We all did.’

I nodded. ‘The other chap?’

Irwin hesitated, and a slow grin came over his face: ‘Winked at me, he did, just as he was walking by. It was very fast so it might not have been a wink. But I believe it
was
.’

Luckily, Irwin did not follow me to the changing room, where I pitched away the cursed protector, had a dunk in the water, and put on my uniform. With head down, I headed back through the gym towards the door, where the faint voice piped up again: ‘You’ve to sign out, sir, if you would be so kind as to do so. And I don’t believe you signed
in
.’

A young sepoy sat by the door, with a ledger, a pen, blotting paper and a watch on a little table before him. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He spread his beautiful thin fingers over the paper, showing me where I should have signed in, giving my unit and the time, and where I ought to sign out, putting the time again. He gave me a pen, and I did what every other man did – wrote scrawl, which was a shame, everything being so beautifully presented by the boy.

‘Your time in was nine twenty-five,’ said the boy as I scribbled. ‘Your time out is ten fifteen.’

If you did P.T. or sports you could cut certain fatigues, and that was the reason for the ledger. My eye roved over the list of names, and the one I didn’t want to see came towards the end: ‘Captain W. P. D. Stevens’ of ‘Corps HQ’. He had booked in at eight ten, left at nine fifty-five. In other words, he’d been in the place when I’d arrived, and left at about the time I’d completed my bout with Irwin. Well, it would only signify if (a) he was in league with Shepherd, (b) he’d seen me, and (c) he worked out that I was quizzing Irwin, and
why
I was quizzing him. But I had a pretty good notion that he
must
have seen me.

I stepped back into Clean Street hoping for cooler air, and not finding it. I turned into Dead Camel Street thinking hard, only faintly aware of the drone of a petrol motor. I’d not gone ten yards before I was blinded by a horrible glare. I raised my arm to shield my eyes, and turned away.

‘That’s no bloody good,’ said a voice.