The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken (25 page)

Seven officials all dressed in salwar kameez, which made it frustratingly impossible to tell their designation or seniority, sat nearby. They were smoking, apparently a pastime still permitted in public places in Pakistan, and chatting among themselves. The detective was able to eavesdrop on their conversation, hanging on every word as if they might start discussing some sinister ISI plot. But it was all pretty mundane stuff. A nephew was getting married . . . an uncle had been taken to hospital . . . sheep were being purchased and fattened for Ramadan . . .

Somehow Puri hadn't expected to fully understand the language, despite the fact that spoken Urdu and Hindi are more or less the same. Perhaps this was because he'd grown so used to regarding Pakistan as a distant, disconnected entity shut off from the rest of the world. The common past the two countries shared - thousands of years of history in fact, their common language being a product of centuries of intermingling of cultures - had become an irrelevance. Mutual distrust, hatred even, defined the relationship between the two modern nations.

And yet hearing some of the turns of phrase and enunciation took the detective back to his childhood, when he used to roam the streets of Delhi's walled city where, after Partition, Urdu survived among a few old Dilli wallahs. In those days the bazaar storytellers used to gather on the steps of the Jama Masjid on Thursday evenings and the young detective would sit and listen to them recount the great epic the Dastan-e Amir-Hamza. Tales of dashing princes, cloaks of invisibility and evil djinns had held him transfixed for hours.

And the language!

The language had been pure nectar - long phrases linked like carriages to create a train of thought fraught with multiple meanings. A phrase as simple as 'the moon rose' would be rendered as 'the sorcerer of this world changed his robes'.

Modern Hindi, which had been systematically purged of most of its Persian and Arabic words since Partition, had lost this essence. Bollywood's lyrics were but a poor reflection of the genius of Mirza Ghalib and Mir Taqi Mir. On the rare occasion these days that Puri heard their prose, the richness sparked a longing in his heart. It was like recalling an early memory, something that stirred deep in his subconscious.

He looked up, suddenly aware that he had been daydreaming. The immigration officer had come and sat down near him.

'Sorry, sir! It won't be long, insh'allah,' he said, and smiled, offering the detective a cigarette.

'Not for me,' Puri replied, deliberately stand-offish.

The immigration officer fidgeted, evidently keen to engage.

'Sir, you're going where in Pakistan?' he asked.

'Rawalpindi.'

'You're on business?'

'Business.'

More silence, more fidgeting. Then, 'Where are you from in India?'

'Delhi.'

'That is where my family is from originally.'

The detective nodded and checked his watch again. He had been sitting there for half an hour.

'Sorry, sir,' repeated the immigration officer with an awkward smile, holding up his hands to heaven as if it was Allah who was responsible for running the electricity grid.

Just then, a young man wearing dirty overalls entered through the main door carrying a jerrycan. He called out to the immigration officer, 'I've got it!' and then exited again. This was the immigration officer's cue to return to his desk. Once he'd put on his glasses, he called to the detective to step forward.

Puri heard a generator hum to life outside the building. The lights flickered on. The computer beeped.

'You see! I told you it would not be long!' said the immigration officer.

The detective's passport was inspected and scanned. He was asked to look into the camera fixed to the counter and stared, unsmiling, at the lens, uncomfortable with the idea of the Pakistanis having his photograph in their system.

'Enjoy your stay, sir. Please proceed.'

As Puri stepped out through the exit, he heard the generator putter to a stop.

A smartly dressed chauffeur moved forward, the only individual waiting outside the building. He was holding up a piece of paper with Puri's name written on it in big, bold letters.

'Timur Baloch sent me,' he said, taking the detective's bag. 'I've been asked to take you to the airport.'

He led the way to a car. A police jeep was parked behind it. An officer and three jawans sat inside. They watched Puri closely as if he was a criminal whom they'd be chasing for years.

'Did you say airport?' asked the detective, when he was ensconced in the back seat of the car. He did his best not to sound alarmed.

'You've a flight to Rawalpindi, sir,' explained the driver.

To insist on going by road and thereby admit his terror of flying would be to lose face at the worst possible time. He would have to grin and bear it.

'Good,' he said, his tone officious. 'Flying is so much quicker, actually.'

The vistas along the side of the road to Lahore were patently familiar - wheat fields, brick kilns, boys playing cricket on dusty patches of open ground. But there was no mistaking the stamp of Islam on the landscape. The petrol stations all had mosques or prayer rooms attached. The women they passed, whether on foot or riding in bicycle rickshaws, were all, without exception, veiled. And although the fat-faced Punjabi politicians looked remarkably similar to their Indian counterparts, they nearly all wore prayer caps and pious beards.

All this went to affirm Puri's view of Pakistan as a deeply conservative state, and this in turn made him feel a good deal better about his own country. India was a secular democracy - tolerant and inclusive. It struggled with its corruption no doubt, but not once had it been ruled by the military; Pakistan on the other hand had remained under the thumb of the Generals for the best part of its existence.

He also took comfort from the fact that Pakistan (or at least the few miles of it he'd seen so far) looked down at heel compared to India. There were few new cars on the roads. On the outskirts of Lahore little construction was under way. And most of the petrol stations were closed, the government having imposed fuel rationing.

Perhaps that explained why there was so little traffic. Or did the locals know something he didn't? Had an ambush been laid up ahead?

Puri had rarely felt so tense, or so conspicuous. It seemed to him as if everyone outside his window - ordinary people carrying shopping along the road, that old man over there on the bicycle - knew he was an Indian and were all, potentially, a threat. Every time the car stopped at a light and a motorbike pulled up next to them, he imagined the driver was about to pull out a pistol and open fire. When the car hit a pothole in the road, he flinched. A truck backfiring almost gave him a heart attack.

He and the driver reached the edge of Lahore without incident, however, and proceeded along the elevated ring road. With no high-rises to block the panorama, the majestic sandstone minarets and white marble domes of the Badshahi Mosque, so similar to Delhi's Jama Masjid, floated above the city's small houses.

'Sir, Lahore is a city of poets and Sufis,' said the driver, sounding as if he had been prepped. 'Perhaps you have heard of our Shalimar Gardens, most beautiful place in all the world?'

Puri had heard of the Shalimar Gardens of course. The Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh had enjoyed walking through them in the years after he had seized the city from the Mughals. Lahore was also legendary for its cuisine, particularly its kebabs. The one thing he had been looking forward to on the journey was sampling some of them. But that now seemed like a remote possibility. A sign on the ring road indicated they were approaching the airport.

The detective felt the palms of his hands growing increasingly sweaty and wiped them on the car seat.

He didn't know what he feared more: aeroplanes, Aga or beardy weirdies.

The flight went as well as could be expected. The twin-prop Fokker took off sharply, rattling and jostling like an old mixie. And the landing was no better, the plane coming down at an acute angle like a rollercoaster car. It was fortunate that Puri hadn't stuffed himself with kebabs and kulfi before boarding. The Bhale Bhale Dhaba paranthas caused problems enough. Puri had to make use of the paper bag in the pouch in front of him, as well as that of his neighbour, who changed seats soon after take-off.

He still looked off colour when, less than an hour after touching down, the car that had been sent to collect him from the airport reached Rawalpindi.

The Mohanpura district was not unlike the colonies of south Delhi: big cubist villas with high walls and elaborate gates standing on dusty streets. The Khans' mansion looked as if it had been modelled on a frosted wedding cake. There were eight or nine luxury cars and a couple of police jeeps parked outside. Puri sensed that he wasn't going to be meeting with Kamran Khan alone. This hardly came as a surprise; nor did it matter greatly. It would be enough to put a few questions to him, look him in the eye, make one hundred per cent sure that he had not been involved in the murder himself - and of course gauge his reaction to the death of Full Moon.

If possible, he also wanted to get a look at Faheem Khan's belongings, the possessions he had taken with him to Delhi and which, presumably, had been brought back by his son along with the body.

Look for any books, Brigadier Mattu had advised. One of them could hold the cipher. It should show signs of having been especially well read - creased pages, bent corners, anything underlined obviously.

A servant led Puri across a cavernous entrance hall with a sweeping marble staircase to a waiting room. He was invited to freshen up in the en suite bathroom. A tray of light snacks and tea was also provided.

The servant returned thirty minutes later and this time Puri was shown through a tall set of oak doors coated in shiny lacquer. The reception room beyond was arranged like a modern durbar with leather couches along the walls and a thirty-foot-long silk oriental carpet gracing the centre.

There were eight men in the room, standing in clusters of two or three, all holding delicate cups of tea. All eyes turned on the Indian as he entered. The conversation faded.

'Mr Puri, welcome,' said a voice in a polished Oxbridge accent.

The detective recognised the athletic, confident figure of former Pakistan captain Timur Baloch, who was striding towards him, hand extended.

'I trust you had a good journey?' he asked with a strong handshake and welcoming smile.

'No complaints, sir,' replied the detective. 'I've you to thank for the transport?'

'It's the least we could do.'

'And for sorting out the problem with the visa, it seems.'

'Your visa, Mr Puri? I wasn't aware there was a problem.'

'Never mind. Seems I've another guardian angel.'

'I think you'll find there are plenty of people here in Pakistan who want answers as much as you do. Now come, I'd like to introduce you to everyone.'

Puri shook hands with the deputy head of the Pakistan Cricket Board and his own deputy; the local representative of the International Cricket Federation; the Rawalpindi deputy Chief of Police; a senior lawyer (an advocate of the Supreme Court, no less); Kamran Khan's personal assistant, who'd been charged with recording the proceedings with a rudimentary tape recorder; and the local parliamentary representative, who claimed to have been 'a close, personal and above all trusted friend of Faheem Khan' and was 'assisting the family in their time of grief'.

'Kamran will be along in a minute,' explained Baloch. 'In the meantime, I think it would be useful if we clarified a few things.'

He motioned to an empty seat. It was a quarter of the way along the far wall. Puri sat down, feeling surrounded on all sides.

'First of all, and I know I speak for all of us, I'd like to welcome you here to Pakistan,' continued Baloch. 'I'm told that you are a man of integrity and that you are one hundred per cent committed to investigating the shameless murder of our dear friend Faheem Khan.'

Normally this sort of praise would have caused Puri to swell with pride, but he acknowledged the words with a sober nod, conscious that the other eight men in the room were scrutinising his every mannerism.

'On a personal note, I'd like to say that I joined the Clean Up Cricket organisation because I want to root out corruption in the sport. Cricket is bigger than any one nation and we must rid ourselves of any rotten apples before they spoil the crop. If there are any here on the Pakistan team then we should not hesitate in imposing the severest penalties.'

This statement was met with a general murmur of approval.