My Brother’s Keeper

- 10 -

I slept late and woke to a silent house. The clothes set out by my bed fitted perfectly — no surprise there, they obviously belonged to Leo. Downstairs there was no sign of Ameera or of the wizened Chatterji, but the table was set in the dining room and a full buffet breakfast laid out in warmed chafing dishes on the long sideboard. As I helped myself, one of the servants peeked in through the door that led to the kitchen, and a minute or so later he was back with Royal Worcester teapot and coffeepot.

Whatever I thought of Leo’s habits in India , there was no denying that he had lived like a king here. I couldn’t help comparing this with my own travel experiences, a dreary succession of cramped hotel rooms and warmed-over meals.

As I ate boiled guinea fowl eggs and buttered toast I pondered again the document that Ameera had left me in the middle of the night. My first look, the moment that I awoke, had been doubly unrewarding. My eyes refused to focus properly, and the blurred and fuzzed image that I could see seemed to be mostly random numbers and letters. The symptoms were not a new problem — I’d encountered the same thing in the hospital — but Sir Westcott had given me stern instructions on what I had to do when it happened. No reading or concentrated eye work until the effects wore off. I was forced to sit there and wait, trying to swallow my impatience.

The food seemed to help. As I drank Darjeeling tea from a delicate porcelain cup, I took another look at the paper. Ameera had said that it was intended for me, but I felt sure she was wrong. For one thing, many of the words were written in an unfamiliar script, either Hindustani or more likely Arabic. Underneath a first paragraph of that came the cryptic “CBC, sdb 33226; Code: Redondo Beach .” After that, the only words of intelligible English: ” 35 Amble Place , Middlesbrough , England .”

My address, for the flat I kept in north Yorkshire . It was the first tie that I could relate definitely to me. For the rest, I had to have help.

The house had no telephone, or at least not one that I could find. I went outside. After a couple of false starts, my arm-waving and shouts of “Taxi-taxi” got through to the man at the little gate house. He nodded and shouted to a boy of about ten who was leaning against the wall outside the house. The lad ran off along the street and trotted back a couple of minutes later leading the way for an old blue Peugeot and its turbanned driver.

“Grand Hotel? Chowringhi?” I said.

A nod, a grin, and we were off at a sedate crawl along the crowded streets. As we chugged along it occurred to me that I would have trouble finding the house again without assistance. I handled that in the only safe way I could think of — I didn’t pay the driver when I went inside the hotel, but left instructions with the English-speaking Head Porter that I might be in my room for quite a while, and if necessary he should make sure that the driver had a meal at my expense while he waited for me.

Chandra, thank Heaven, was in his office. Most of his days were spent at one or other of the family jute factories north of the city, and running him to earth there might have been difficult. He responded to my call for help with typical courtesy. I couldn’t tell how inconvenient my request might be. All he would say was, “I will come at once.”

While he was on the way I packed my cases in five minutes, checked out of my room in another three, and paced the lobby impatiently until he appeared. When he arrived I was trembling and my head was hurting like hell again, but Chandra was as unflappable as ever.

He took the page from me and studied it in silence for a couple of minutes. When he looked up his smooth face was puzzled.

“Can you understand it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “The words? Certainly. But before I can tell what they mean I think we ought to take a look at this.” He tapped the sheet where the coded message appeared. “This part is clear enough. ‘CBC’ is the Central Bank of Calcutta , and I imagine this is simply the number of the Safety Deposit Box, and the code that we need to access it.”

“And the other messages?”

“I do not know about the English address. But the message here says that in the absence of Mr. Singh, household decisions are all to be made by Ameera, and that all bills are to be sent to the Central Bank of Calcutta for payment.” Chandra arched an eyebrow at me. “Do you know of the woman Ameera?”

“Yes.” It seemed to be time to tell Chandra more about everything, if he had time to listen. “Can you get what is in this safety deposit box?”

“I don’t see why not. But what am I to do with it?”

“Bring it with you to a house near here. The driver outside can give you directions how to get to it.”

Chandra looked at me again, but apparently decided to let further questions wait. We parted, and as the driver puttered his way back to the house I wondered again what I was going to do next. No matter what was in Leo’s safety deposit, I couldn’t see how it would take me any closer to the mystery of T.P. or the Belur Package.

Ameera was still missing. I spent the time until Chandra arrived looking again at the papers in the study, and confirming my intent to call Sir Westcott as soon as I could. Something was worse inside my head, and I had to know what it was.

I went upstairs to the bedroom and ran cold water over my hands and forehead. When I came down again Chandra was there, talking rapidly in Bengali to Chatterji. He had a package of papers under his arm.

“I think we must talk in private,” he said, and I led the way through to the study. His look suggested that I had to provide some explanations. I poured a brandy for each of us — Chandra, like me, had a good musician’s digestion — then told him everything I knew. His look changed slowly from skepticism to intrigue.

“You are two people now? Lionel and Leo? It is a tale from Hindu myth, Parmara and Peruma.” Chandra tapped the package he was holding. “Leo has a sense of humor, too. Did you know that this house is owned by a Mr. Singh?”

“Chatterji — the man you were talking to — called me Singh when first he saw me.”

“That was Leo’s joke. ‘Singh’ means ‘lion’ — just the same as Leo and Lionel do. This was Leo’s house, and according to these papers, you now own it and all its contents.” Chandra gave me an odd look. “All its contents. And that means you now have the responsibility for looking after them. Goods and people.”

“People! How many people? This house seems to be full of them.”

“Eight, according to Chatterji.” Chandra tapped the package again. “If you have worries about the cost of supporting them, this will reassure you. The assets that ‘Mr. Singh’ holds in the Central Bank of Calcutta are considerable. But there is one other complication.”

Chandra paused, and the look on his face told me I wouldn’t like what was coming.

“I don’t see how it could get much more complicated,” I said. “Eight servants and a house — I’ve never owned as much as a dog kennel before.”

He coughed. “Perhaps not. How much do you know of the Code of Manu — the forms of marriage ceremony that are practiced here?”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It is the old code that enumerates the permitted forms of marriage. There were eight of them, but these days only two are still in use. There is the Brahma, the approved form, and there is the Asura, which is a form of purchase of the bride by the bridegroom. It has been officially banned, but is still in use. These documents show that your brother, under the name of Singh, went through the Asura form of ceremony with a woman who was brought here from Bihar .”

I knew what was coming.

“Ameera?”

“That is correct.” Chandra didn’t look either surprised or shocked. “This may be a complication.”

I admired his gift for understatement. It seemed like a time for another brandy, though I was still not sure what drink might do to my aching head.

“Any other bombshells in that package? We might as well get the whole thing over at once.”

“No bombshell, but it seems that your brother went to extraordinary measures to keep this house and his financial affairs in this city a secret. There are bank statements here, both deposits and withdrawals, but the deposits are always money orders rather than checks, and the withdrawals are always via another local bank — hard to trace back here. What do you think your brother was doing?”

What indeed? I shook my head, then wished I hadn’t. “That’s what I’m here to find out — if I can. These other things, the house and Ameera, they certainly make things more difficult. Is there anything else at all in that package? So far I’ve heard nothing but trouble.”

“A list.” Chandra puffed out his full cheeks. “It is of places and people, but they mean nothing to me. I looked again when you told me of the men who pursued your brother, but I see none of their names here. Perhaps you will be able to find some clue that I cannot see.”

As he spoke, I heard voices outside the study. A few seconds later Ameera moved to the doorway and stood there, turning her head from side to side. She clearly knew we were in the room but she was not sure where we were sitting. I stood up and moved to take her hand. As our fingers met I instinctively drew my thumb gently across her palm. She gasped, and I felt a tingle through my scalp. Somehow I knew it had been Leo’s gesture of greeting to her. I led Ameera across the room to settle in an armchair next to me.

Chandra was frowning as he took a close look at her. Instead of his usual polite greeting he gabbled a quick question in Bengali. Ameera gave him a terse answer. He nodded and spoke again, and after a brief questioning frown she rose and left the room. I marvelled again at the easy way she navigated through the furniture, knowing precisely where each chair and table was placed.

“Another little problem,” said Chandra as soon as Ameera had left. I winced. “She has gone to have tea served to us. I thought it better to talk without her here.”

I looked at him warily. “What now?”

“You seem to know little of Indian women. We are a race that matures early, and we marry young.” He smiled. “Think of me as the exception that proves the rule, all right? As soon as I saw Ameera I thought that she must be much younger than you realized, so I asked her age.”

“Nineteen?” I said hopefully.

“Fourteen.” Chandra leaned back in his chair. “Illegal, of course, but not at all uncommon. It does mean that an Indian court will take Ameera’s side should there be any argument as to rights. We must assume that your brother was sleeping with her, I suppose?”

He was diplomatically looking away from me.

“I suppose so.” My voice sounded hoarse and (to me, at any rate) full of guilt.

“I will leave any discussion of that between the two of you.” Chandra stood up. “If there are financial matters that I can help you with, of course I’ll be happy to do my best. For the rest, I suspect that the arrangements in this house may be settled better without me.”

“What about your tea?” I said stupidly.

“Some other time.” Chandra grinned, and something in his look took me back five years, to the days when he was the biggest Romeo on the concert circuit — and that was saying something.

“Cheer up, Lionel. Responsibilities sometimes have their compensations. The ladies of India are not without their charms. Do not forget that.”

He left.

Fourteen, I kept thinking. Fourteen.

As Chandra left I wondered about the Indian penalties for statutory rape.

Chandra had left the package of papers on the chair. I picked it up and was sorting through it when Ameera came back with a young boy in tow. As he poured tea and then left, she came to sit on the arm of my chair.

“Your friend has gone,” she said happily. (How did she know?) “Why did he ask for tea and then leave without drinking it? That is very impolite.”

“He is a very busy man. His work called. I should not have asked for his help.”

“But I am glad he has gone,” she went on illogically. “I prefer to be alone.” She snuggled closer to me on the chair arm.

I cleared my throat and wriggled on the leather cushion. “Ameera, I really need your help. Did Leo ever talk to you about his business — about his work?”

Ameera’s look of satisfaction and pleasure was replaced by a wary expression.

“Sometimes. Sometimes we talked. But he did not want his work here — he said this was his — ‘hideway’?”

“Hideaway. A place where he could feel safe.”

“Hideaway. Where we could be close.” She reached out and ran her fingers softly over my cheek and forehead. “He was safe here. He said that he could keep us all safe if he did not talk about his work. But sometimes, when he was tired or sad, he would talk.”

“That’s good. I’m going to look through the papers that Chandra brought from the bank, and perhaps I’m going to ask you about things I find there. Not about the money — Chandra can tell me about that. Damnation!”

Ameera smiled. “You sound the same as Leo-yo — he would say that. What is wrong?”

“I might need to ask Chandra questions, and there’s no telephone here.”

“But there is! There is a special one, down in the pantry. Lee-yo used it only two times. But you can use it when you want to.”

A hidden phone, used only in emergencies. When we were still in our early twenties, Leo and I had talked about setting up our own secret hideouts, places where we could say and do whatever we liked without anyone bothering us. To me that had been just dreaming, building our castles in Spain . But my brother had done it, from foundations to battlements.

And what else had he done? I took the sheet of names and places from the packet of papers.

Ameera snuggled closer, her breath warm against my cheek. “What does it say there, Lee-yo-nel?”

I saw what Chandra’s problem had been with the list. Leo had created a jumble of names, places and descriptions. But I believed I could see more than anyone else — Leo and I always thought the same way, and now we were in some sense one person. I ran my eye over them quickly. Promising. For example, there was a line about halfway down the first page. It stood out to my eye like a beacon. “B.P. Get from Cut. 026411, take with 0433 to Ri., contact 277 + double bl.”

It was the sort of entry that I expected from him. Leo would not keep elaborate notes — why should he, when we shared the same accurate memory? He would only bother with numbers and addresses, and maybe a couple of names when he wasn’t sure of them. It was a reasonable bet that B.P. would be the Belur Package. But what about the rest of it? I needed help.

“Ameera, did Leo mention somebody or somewhere that began with C-U-T? It is something in his notes here.”

“Yes.” Was the expression in her voice relief? It certainly sounded like it. “I think he went to Cuttack , he had to do something there. I am sure of it. When he was last here in Calcutta , he went to Cuttack .”

“Where is that? Do you know how to get there?”

“You can go there by the new railway. It is not far — two hours from here, on the coast in Orissa.”

“Do you know who he went to see there? Maybe a man called Belur?”

“I do not know. Maybe.”

“How about something that begins with R-I? A place or a person.”

“I do not know.” It seemed to me that there was now an evasiveness in her answer. “It could be Riang, or Riga in Assam . They are far away from here.”

I realized that I was being irrational, asking a blind fourteen-year-old girl for details of Indian geography. Ameera could help only if she recalled something particular that Leo had said or done.

“Ameera, did Leo ever tell you about his work in America ? Who he worked for, or what he was doing in India ?”

There were tears welling from the dark eyes. I felt ashamed at what I was doing to her.

“No, Leo-yo-nel. If he told anyone, would it not be his own brother, when the brother was from one egg? Did he not tell you?”

“No. He did not tell me.”

And that was the curse of it. Leo hadn’t told me, and he was having trouble telling me now.

“Ameera, I will go tomorrow to Cuttack . Do you know where the man lives that Leo went to see?”

“Some company. A company that makes — what is the word? — computings? Things that are used for calculations.” It seemed to me that there was definite relief in her voice. “Lee-yo-nel, if you go there, to Cuttack , can I come with you? I can speak the language — it is Oriya spoken there — and I want to help you. I cannot help you if I stay here in the house.”

It seemed to me that I could easily find somebody there to act as an interpreter — but even if I couldn’t, I didn’t want Ameera with me. I had no idea what we’d be finding.

“No!” I spoke more loudly than I had intended. “I do not know what might happen there. Definitely not.”

Ameera did not speak; but the tears that welled silently from those dark eyes were more persuasive than any words. I swore under my breath, and most of it was directed at the right half of my brain. But some of it went to the prurient fantasies that were conjured as I put an arm around Ameera to comfort her.

“Hello? Operator, what in God’s name is happening on this line? I can hear four other people speaking.”

“One moment more, sir, you will be connected.”

I stood in the dark of the pantry, sweating and swearing. For twenty minutes I had been struggling to get a connection through to Sir Westcott at the Queen’s Hospital Annex in Reading . The lines were full of chattering monkeys and dolphin-like squeaks and chirps, and every few minutes the line went entirely dead.

“Hello?”

“Hello, hello?” I felt like a character in a P.G. Wodehouse short story. “Hello, hello, hello.”

“No need to shout like that — I’m not deaf. What do you want?”

Thank God. It was the familiar grumbling voice. “Sir Westcott, this is Lionel Salkind. I’m calling because I’m having trouble — trouble inside my head.”

“What do you expect, if you go piddling off all over the globe? You ought to be back here, where we can keep an eye on you.”

He didn’t seem at all worried. It was a huge relief just to hear that gruff complaint.

“So what’s your symptoms? Something new?”

The line had that built-in quarter-second delay that indicated it was being sent via satellite transmission.

“I think so. I’ve been getting bad headaches, and sometimes I don’t seem to have the proper control over the things I’m doing.”

“Join the club. Look, is that all? ’Course you’re getting bad headaches — didn’t you read that stuff I gave you when you left? You’re gettin’ atrophy of the Schwann cells now they’ve done their stuff, an’ the axons are beginning their main growth. That’s what the Madrill treatment is all about. Read the bloody reports — why do you think I gave ’em to you?”

I felt like an idiot — the papers he had given me were still sitting in my suitcase. In the excitement of leaving for India I hadn’t given them a thought, and it had certainly not occurred to me that they might be useful to tell me what was going on inside my head.

“D’yer read the papers out there?” Sir Westcott’s voice had taken on a new tone. “I don’t think this would be in ’em anyway. I hate to say it, but I owe you an apology. Remember you told me about somebody called Valnora Warren?”

“What about her?”

“She’s dead. They fished her out of the Cherwell four days ago — dead a couple of weeks. An’ she’d been beaten to death before she was put in the water. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you. Do they know who did it?”

“If they do, they’re not telling.” Sir Westcott sounded grim. “Watch your step out there — I’ve put in too much work on you to have it buggered up by some bunch of gangsters.”

“I’ll be careful.” I had just got the closest I would ever get to an expression of concern for my welfare from Sir Westcott.

“Another thing while we’re at it. Remember tellin’ me that your thug friends thought you were carrying Nymphs?”

“I’ll never forget it.”

“Well, I did a bit more checking with the police here about where the drug is coming from. It gets to England from Athens , like I told Tess. But it’s manufactured a lot further East — somewhere like India . An’ Calcutta is one of the biggest centers for use of Nymphs. So keep your eyes peeled for that while you’re there.”

I didn’t say anything — it seemed to me I had more than enough problems, without throwing Nymphs into the act.

“Anyway, are you ready to come on back home yet?” he went on. “Tess seems to have been worrying about you. Beats me why.”

“Tell her I’m fine.” I drew in a deep breath. “I wanted to ask you another thing — not about me this time, and not about Nymphs either. There’s somebody here with an eye problem, and I think it’s caused by childhood ulcers that have scarred the cornea. Can it be operated on?”

“If you’re right about the cause of the problem, it should be easy enough. How old is the patient?”

“A teenager. A girl.”

I don’t think that I imagined the sniff over the phone. It was easy to visualize him, scowling into the set on his desk. He seemed to be a thought reader for my guilty conscience.

“Aye. A girl, you say? Well, a patient is a patient. If you bring her here, I’d see what we could do for her. But watch what you’re playing at. No point in fixing up her eyes if the next thing you know Tess is scratching ’em out. Behave yourself out there — you know damn well Tess is too good for you. Don’t you try—”

The line chose that moment to die completely. I was left standing sweating in the cool of the dark pantry, cursing India in general and its telephone company in particular. Upstairs, the gong was sounding. Ahead lay another evening with Ameera, and whatever went with that thought.

Damnation.

I climbed slowly up the stairs. Leo had got me into all this, completely against my will. It seemed only fair that he ought to be doing a lot more to get me out of it, and I had no doubt at all that the secret of the Belur Package lay in the city of Cuttack. But although Leo’s notes and Ameera’s recollection both pointed in that direction, together with a deep instinctive feeling that perhaps came from my brother, I had no sensation of accomplishment or progress.

What I felt, like a tightness in my gut, was powerful foreboding.