Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (21 page)

He lifted his revolver as he ran towards the pair. He was perhaps ten yards behind them when he remembered the skullcap in his pocket.

He halted, pulled it out and arranged it over his head. He slid the switch on the chin-strap to ‘on’ – expecting to feel some change as he was rendered invisible. He felt nothing, and wondered if the device was working.

Ahead, the pair turned a corner. Alfie ran after them and cried out, “I say! Halt right there or I’ll shoot.”

The fat man turned, his dust-caked face registering astonishment as he searched for his interlocutor. Alfie fired a warning shot above their heads, which had the effect of galvanising the pair. They took off at a sprint. Alfie cursed and gave chase.

“I said halt or I’ll shoot!”

The fat man turned again, growling something in a foreign language that turned Alfie’s blood to ice. He was startled not by the content of the exclamation – which he couldn’t comprehend anyway – but by the fact that it sounded Russian. Then the man drew a pistol and fired three times. Alfie dived into a recessed doorway. He peered out, fired again at the fleeing Russians but missed. The pair were careering around a corner, the fat man turning again to lay down a volley of warning shots.

Undeterred, Alfie gave chase. He came to the corner, turned and stopped dead, cursing his luck. He stared at the crowd surging down the wide street. The Russians were lost to sight. Alfie approached the corner and looked right and left, swearing to himself as he saw not the slightest sign of his prey.

He should have shot their blasted legs, he thought as he hurried back to the collapsed warehouse, winged the blighters and disarmed them, then interrogated them there and then in order to locate the Chatterjee girl. He had a dread suspicion, as he neared the warehouse, that he would find her among the debris, as dead as the hapless animals littering the area.

The children were still sitting on the opposite wall, gasping and laughing as if at a Punch and Judy show. He approached them and said in Hindi, “Do you know what happened here?” and only when expressions of bemusement crossed their features did he realise his mistake.

“Who said that?” a tiny girl asked.

Alfie ducked around the corner and, out of sight of the children, deactivated his skullcap. He pulled off the cap and re-emerged. “Did anyone see what happened to the building?”

The urchins stared at his uniform, sat up very straight, and all began jabbering at once.

Alfie held up a hand. “One at a time, please!”

He pointed to the little girl, who said, “We were playing kabaddi right here when the giant came!”

A bare-chested boy chipped in, “He came striding up the street. We were frightened, ah-cha, but we didn’t run away!”

“We hid behind the wall and watched,” said another.

The six urchins began chattering at once, each louder than the last. Alfie caught the odd word or phrase: “Crash!” and “hit the wall!” and “the girl...”

Alfie pointed to the tousle-haired boy. “Did you say ‘the girl’?”

“Ah-cha!” said the boy. “The giant ate her!”

He stared at the six as they looked down at him, twelve bare legs drumming the wall in excitement. They were jabbering again, their volume escalating in a bid to be the one to relate the terrible story.

“Listen to me!” Alfie shouted above the din. “I will give each one of you five rupees if one of you,
one
of you, answers my questions. It doesn’t matter who, just one of you. Now who will it be?”

“Five rupees?” said the tiny girl.

“Five rupees each,” Alfie said.

They debated amongst themselves, shouting and gesticulating, until finally the tousle-haired boy was nominated as spokesman. He puffed his chest proudly and said, “We were playing kabaddi, sir. Kapil was winning, but he was cheating also. He always cheats–”

“No, I don’t!” said a one-eyed boy.

“No arguments!” Alfie cried. “Now, what happened?”

“It was just one hour ago. The street was quiet, and then we heard a terrible crash!”

The little girl said, “Crash! Crash! Crash!”

“And we didn’t know what it was. It became louder and louder. We hid behind the wall and peered over. Then we saw the giant!”

“The giant?” What on earth, Alfie thought, were they talking about?

“He turned the corner from the alley and walked towards Horniman’s warehouse.”

Alfie peered up at the raconteur. “He was a man, a big man?”

“No! He was a giant, a metal man, sir. He was taller than an elephant and had flashing lights on the front of his body and he walked like this...” The boy rocked from side to side and pumped his arms and legs like stiff pistons, even though he was sitting down. “He was a metal giant and he walked towards the warehouse and he didn’t stop!”

Kapil leaned forward and interrupted, “He was the Mech-Man from Mr Clockwork’s Fabulous Emporium!”

“Ah-cha,” said the small girl, “he was the Mech-Man.”

“Ah-cha!” said the spokesman. “The Mech-Man walked through the wall, sir, smashing it to bits with his arms and legs. He ripped the front of the warehouse away, and all the dead animals and bottles and bricks came tumbling down.”

A mechanical man from Mr Clockwork’s Fabulous Emporium?

Alfie looked at each child in turn, attempting to discern from their expression whether they were lying. They were all staring at him in deadly earnest, their eyes massive, and nodded along to the spokesman’s account.

“And what happened then?” Alfie asked. “You said there was a girl...?”

“A girl was in the warehouse, and two men. The men were chasing the girl around and around. She was running away, and the Mech-Man marched into the warehouse and chased them. It was a madhouse in there, sir!”

“And then?” Alfie asked.

“And then the Mech-Man picked up one of the men and flung him away, and then he marched over to the girl, and he leaned over her and reached out with his big metal arm.”

“And then,” the little girl butted in, unable to contain her excitement, “the Mech-Man’s head came off, and he lifted the girl up and popped her into his belly and ate her!”

“Ah-cha,” the spokesman affirmed, “it is as Ana is saying. The Mech-Man ate the girl!”

“And what happened then?” Alfie asked.

“And then the Mech-Man marched away from the ruins, banging and crashing through the bricks. He went down the street and disappeared, and we didn’t want to be eaten also, so we decided not to follow him.”

“And you say that the mechanical man is from Mr Clockwork’s Fabulous Emporium?”

The girl nodded. “Ah-cha. We have seen it. One day we snuck in and saw the Mech-Man. Only then he was not moving, just standing like this.” She stiffened her hands at her side and stared straight ahead. “And it was not exciting. But today it
was
exciting!”

“Ah-cha!” Kapil said. “Today the Mech-Man ate a girl!”

Alfie withdrew the photograph of Janisha Chatterjee from his pocket and handed it to the first child. “And was this the girl?”

They passed the picture along the line, each urchin nodding in turn. “Ah-cha.” “Yes, sir.” “This was the girl.”

Alfie returned the photograph to his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He counted out six five-rupee notes and passed them to the children, who accepted the notes in stunned silence. And then, in the blink of an eye, they jumped off the wall like a troop of temple monkeys and went whooping and yelling down the street.

Alfie made his way back along the thoroughfare, passing crowds of curious onlookers come to see the destruction of the warehouse. Once back on the main street, he hailed a taxi and told the driver, “Mr Clockwork’s Fabulous Emporium.”

He sat back as he was carried even further north into the decrepit slums and crumbling tenements of the Karnaka district of Old Delhi. He had no doubt that the children had told him the truth – or the truth as far as they understood it. But far from eating the girl, Alfie surmised, the mechanical man had come to her rescue.

M
R
C
LOCKWORK’S
F
ABULOUS
Emporium was a peeling stuccoed building situated between a barber’s shop and a cinema bearing bloated images of Hindu film stars. It was a wholly unprepossessing frontage that bore no relation to its extravagant title painted on a panel above a khaki-coloured swing door.

Alfie pushed his way inside and found himself standing in a tiny foyer with a sticky red carpet and puce walls. A small door next to a ticket booth gave access to the emporium. He pushed the door open, stepped into the gloom, and stared around him in astonishment.

Aladdin’s cave came to mind, and Madame Tussauds’ waxworks, and even a railway museum. The emporium was an amalgam of all three, a fabulous chamber in which glittering vehicles of improbable design – part flying machine, part submarine – sat next to what looked like jewelled suits of armour, mechanical mannequins, improbable calliopes and impossible clocks, all glittering like treasure in the mysterious half-light.

“Can I help you, sir?” asked a voice in impeccable English.

Alfie whirled around. A tall, slim man emerged from between what looked like a four-legged grandfather clock and a gold- and glass-panelled gyrocopter.

Alfie introduced himself.

“And I am Mr Clockwork, sir, proprietor of this fabulous emporium and inventor extraordinaire. All the wonders you see before you, sir, began up here, in the humble abode of my cranium.”

Mr Clockwork’s appearance was as fantastical as his oratory. He wore curlicue Ali Baba slippers, a gold and tangerine striped dressing gown, and a fez. He had a thin, cunning face and a winning smile, and puffed a huge hookah pipe which rolled along behind him on a clockwork tea-trolley.

Alfie stared about him. “And I’m impressed,” he said. “You invented
everything
here?”

“Everything, sir. Everything. But then I have been labouring at my craft – might I even say my art? – for almost half a century.”

Alfie stared at the man. Granted, he had a full head of brilliantined hair, and the lighting in the emporium was low, but he would have guessed that Mr Clockwork was not a day over fifty.

Alfie remembered his mission. “And may I ask if you invented a device called, if I remember correctly, the Mech-Man?”

“Ah,” said Mr Clockwork, “the Mech-Man. Yes, that is my latest, and I might say finest, brainchild.”

Alfie considered how to phrase his next question. “And does it work of its own volition? That is–”

Mr Clockwork laughed. “Of course not, Lieutenant Littlebody. It is driven.”

“Driven?”

“By a pilot seated within its chest cavity.”

“Ah...” Alfie said. “I see now.”

“But might I enquire as to your interest?”

“Of course. I was wondering if it has been... stolen, or if perhaps you yourself have used it in the last few hours? You see, it was seen in the Karnaka district this morning.”

Enlightenment dawned on the inventor’s hatchet face. “That would be Anand’s doing. He took it early, bound for the Old Delhi railway station. You see, he is taking the Mech-Man by train up to Dehrakesh, where I have a second emporium – and where it will be on show for a month. I take it that nothing untoward has occurred?”

“Not at all. I was just curious; it isn’t every day that something as... as distinctive as a mechanical man is seen marching the streets of Old Delhi. You said this Anand was due to take the Mech-Man to Dehrakesh by train – at what time, might I ask?”

“The train is due to leave the station at midday.”

Alfie consulted his watch. It was fifteen minutes to twelve. If he set off in the next minute or two he might just apprehend the train before it departed.

“And who exactly is Anand?”

“My apprentice – my part-time apprentice, I should say. He is a most intelligent youth, wasted as a houseboy for the late Kapil Dev Chatterjee.”

Alfie stared at Mr Clockwork. “He works for Mr Chatterjee, the Security Minister?”

The inventor inclined his head. “That is, he did, Lieutenant. But when Mr Chatterjee fell ill, it was arranged that Anand should become my apprentice when eventually the honourable Mr Chatterjee finally passed away. I heard the tragic news of his death on the wireless earlier this morning.”

The pieces, Alfie thought, were beginning to fall into place. Anand had saved Janisha Chatterjee from the Russians with the help of the mechanical man, and they would soon be
en route
to Dehrakesh. Unless, of course, the Chatterjee girl had handed herself in to the safe custody of the nearest police station.

Alfie thanked Mr Clockwork for his time, shook the bemused inventor by the hand, and hurried from the emporium.

He hailed a taxi and a minute later was rolling through the streets of Old Delhi towards the railway station.

He would apprehend young Anand and quiz him as to the whereabouts of the girl. Alfie rather hoped that she would still be aboard the mechanical man, so that he could claim the plaudits for finding her. So swift a wrapping up of the case would look good on his record and please Brigadier Cartwright no end.