The Avatari (3 page)
‘Thought not. No identification on the body either. The cabbie says all the man was carrying was a cloth satchel; what’s left of it is on his lap. The lab boys will go over it as a matter of course, but I wouldn’t bet on them finding anything worthwhile. I had someone go through his things back at the village, but again I’m afraid there’s nothing that could offer us a lead.’
The inspector looked back and summoned the paramedic with a wave of his hand. The man came up and knelt by the corpse. Ashton knelt alongside and watched as the paramedic pulled the corpse’s right hand off its chest with some difficulty; rigor mortis was setting in. The skin on the chest covered by the hand was pale and unmarred, Ashton noticed, marked only by a tattoo of the Buddha.
The colours of the figure changing from red to blue and to many, many more hues.
A series of images flashed in his mind and he felt he was tumbling into an abyss. Ashton’s head whirled and he stepped back, pointing and muttering incoherently.
I have seen that image before – in the book at the monastery!
The inspector held him by the shoulders and asked urgently, ‘What colours?’ Then realizing that Ashton was in no state to respond, he shook him and said soothingly, ‘It’s all right, sir.’
Ashton felt his head clear slowly and realized that both the inspector and the paramedic, who had dropped the corpse’s hand and risen to his feet, were staring at him. His eyes strayed back to the dead man’s tattoo, which was now partly obscured from view. He saw no images this time.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ashton said, ‘can’t make out what came over me.’
‘It’s all right, sir. Did something to me too, the first time I saw the body,’ the inspector said sympathetically.
He took out his packet of cigarettes and offered one to Ashton, who gratefully accepted it. They lit up and the inspector indicated that they should walk down to the road.
‘Was there something in that tattoo you recognized?’ the inspector asked as they walked down. ‘It seems as if Liu Than had wanted to protect it – as if he wanted to ensure it would be seen.’
So he had noticed
, Ashton thought.
‘No, nothing,’ he now said, replying to the inspector’s question. He drew on his cigarette before adding, ‘Apart from the fact that it’s a Buddha figure. You would have got that, of course.’
‘Yes, we did, as a matter of fact, but there’s nothing unusual about that. A lot of college students of the dead man’s, well, ethnicity sport such tattoos. It’s either that or Bruce Lee.’
They had reached the road.
‘Well, then, sir, thank you for your trouble,’ the inspector said. ‘Actually, we had to follow all the leads.’
He indicated the ring of reporters and photographers waiting for him. Some of them were recording the proceedings on movie camera.
‘This,’ he said, gesturing in their direction, ‘is evidently going to be the biggest story in the county tonight.’
‘Jimmy, I mean, the cabbie,’ Ashton asked. ‘He’s all right?’
‘Aye, he’s a strong lad. Just a bit shaken. He’s the one who broke the news. Had to walk back to the village – the masked men knocked off two of his tyre valves. Couldn’t even use the spare. But they didn’t harm him.’
‘Lucky they didn’t go for him. They appear to be quite a desperate crew,’ Ashton remarked.
‘Professionals, really. They must have realized that bumping off the cabbie would serve no purpose. Their quarry, the guy – or whatever they were after – was back there,’ the inspector said, looking back up the slope. ‘Also has something to do with keeping the police interest low. The story is big right now, but the fuss will die down soon enough. There isn’t likely to be much of an outcry over an unidentified Oriental who apparently committed suicide. Killing a local boy would have been a different bag altogether.’
‘Would have shaken Jimmy, though,’ Ashton said.
‘Must have, but he seems a level-headed lad. You can have a word with him if you want to. He must be in the ambulance,’ the inspector said, pulling away as a constable indicated that his presence was required near the Rover.
‘Thank you again, Sir Henry,’ the inspector said before he left. ‘Do tell us if you get to know something.’ He reached into his pocket and handed over his card. ‘Seems like gang rivalry to me, though can’t really see where you come in.’
Ashton met the inspector’s quizzical eyes with his own steady gaze. The inspector nodded and extended his hand. The two men shook hands before the police officer turned away.
Ashton walked up to the ambulance and found Jimmy standing near it with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. He patted the young boy reassuringly on the back. Jimmy’s face was still pale from shock, but when he spoke, his voice was steady.
‘Good evening, sir,’ the boy said in greeting.
‘Good evening, Jimmy,’ Ashton responded. ‘Strange happenings, eh?’
‘You could say that again.’
Ashton saw Duggy approaching.
‘Hamiharu jaoon huzoor.
Let’s go, sir,’ he said.
Ashton was keen to stay for a while. He wanted to talk to Jimmy, but noticed that Duggy’s expression was firm, almost obdurate.
‘I’ll talk to you later, Jimmy,’ he said feebly.
They shook hands and Ashton walked down to where Duggy stood waiting.
‘Now what was all that about?’ he asked sharply.
‘I’ll tell you once we’re in the car.’
Cambridge, England
A
UGUST 1986
‘So what did Jimmy tell you?’
They had been on the road for a while before Henry Ashton asked the question. Concentrating on his driving, Duggy did not reply. Ashton grew impatient. Duggy could be really quite trying at times.
‘Nothing really,’ the house manager finally answered. ‘He’s got his call letter. Off to Belfast next week, I was told. With six six.’
This was a reference to the Sixth Battalion, the Sixth Gorkha Rifles. There was no point pushing, Ashton told himself. Duggy was going to take his time.
‘Oh, that’s good,’ he said, playing along. ‘Jack Mitchell is commanding. I’ll have a word with him. Who’s the RSM?’
‘Tara Bahadur,’ Duggy replied, then observing Ashton’s difficulty in placing the man, added, ‘he was an instructor at the Infantry Battle School at Brecon – the one with a scar below the right eye.’
‘Jimmy will be all right,’ Ashton declared, remembering the RSM as a hard but fair man.
‘Yes, sir.’
Ashton remained silent, but his fingers drummed on the dashboard and he contemplated reaching for a cigarette.
‘The Oriental gentleman told Jimmy something, though,’ Duggy volunteered after some time.
‘Ah, yes?’ Ashton affected unconcern.
‘Asked Jimmy to tell you that he found Cambridge very pretty.’
‘What sense does that make?’ Ashton asked, his voice edgy.
‘None, but perhaps if you link it up with this… ’
Holding the steering wheel with one hand, Duggy fished out an open envelope from his coat pocket with the other before handing it over to his employer.
Ashton took the envelope from him and noticed that it had a Cambridge postmark. Inside was a receipt for a single piece of baggage, issued that very day by the left-luggage service at the Cambridge railway station. The receipt was valid for three days. At the top of the sheet of paper, someone had marked the figures ‘078’ in pencil.
‘What the devil!’ he exclaimed.
‘Came in the evening mail, just before the police arrived,’ Duggy said.
As a rule, the house manager would open the mail and sort it out, placing the ones requiring Ashton’s attention on the table, along with the tea, by the time he got in from his walk.
‘What made you put this in your pocket?’ Ashton now asked Duggy, his tone absent-minded, his eyes still on the baggage ticket.
He checked the envelope again to see if it had anything else written on it. But all he saw was his name – Lieutenant Colonel Henry Ashton – followed by the address inscribed in a neat, precise hand.
‘I don’t know,’ Duggy replied. ‘I thought it curious enough when I took it out of the envelope and put it with the rest of the mail for you to go through. And after the police arrived, I knew there was definitely something more than ordinary about it. So I went back and picked it up; thought you should see it before they did.’
‘We should let the police know about this,’ Ashton said.
‘We could.’ Duggy’s voice was non-committal.
They drove on for some time in silence. Ashton knew that Duggy was leaving the next move to him.
Finally, it was the house manager who spoke again. ‘Did you ask yourself why a man who’s being pursued jumps out of a car and runs
uphill
?’
Henry Ashton mulled it over and grimaced. ‘Makes no sense – unless he
wanted
to get caught?’ he suggested.
‘Exactly. And the bonfire was really a way of telling his pursuers that they had now reached a dead end.’
Ashton knew that was what it was; that and another message –
which he alone would understand
. He suddenly felt overwhelmed by fatigue.
They had driven up to the house by now and as he stepped out of the car, Ashton instructed Duggy, ‘Tell Martha to bring a plate to my room.’ He paused before adding, ‘Let’s be getting along to Cambridge tomorrow, shall we?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the other man replied with what Ashton surmised was the faintest trace of a smile.
The next day, they were on the morning train to Cambridge. For Ashton, the place brought back happy memories of his life as a student from the time he had returned from Malaya. The Cambridge railway station had not changed much over the years, barring an increase in the number of young people with spiky hair. The two men followed the signs and soon found themselves in front of an open door with a sign above it that said, ‘Left Luggage’. Ashton halted. Taking the receipt out of his pocket, he handed it over to Duggy.
‘Not that it’s going to matter,’ he said, ‘but just in case.’
‘Well, I
am
Oriental-looking,’ Duggy acknowledged, catching on fast.
Ashton walked across to the kiosk and bought a paper. The news he had been anticipating was there on the very first page. ‘Self-immolation by unidentified man’, the headline screamed. The incident, Ashton realized, had been reported as a suicide. The details were, at best, fuzzy. The inspector had found a mention and the police were reported to be investigating the matter further. Ashton discovered that along with Jimmy and Mrs Harris, he too had been included in the list of people questioned by the police. He looked up to see the girl at the left-luggage counter glancing absent-mindedly at the receipt Duggy had presented, while carrying on a conversation with a young man who had apparently come to chat her up.
Nothing to worry about there
, he thought.
About five minutes later, Duggy came out carrying a small leather briefcase and handed it over to him. It had a small combination lock of three digits. Ashton looked at Duggy who suggested, ‘Let’s find a quiet place.’
Sir Henry nodded in agreement and the two of them left the station and walked into a small Chinese restaurant, its door chimes ringing out and signalling their arrival as they entered.
The waitress approached to take their order. The men asked for a pot of jasmine tea. Once she had moved off, Ashton placed the briefcase on the table and rotated the lock to ‘078’ – the numbers pencilled at the top of the receipt. The lock clicked open. Before taking out the bag’s contents, Ashton cast a cautious glance around him. They were the only customers in the restaurant; the lunch crowd had yet to appear.
He placed the bag’s contents on the table one by one: a well-worn olive green canvas army satchel, with ‘US Marine Corps’, ‘JC Wando’ and a service number stencilled on the flap in black ink. Inside it was an unsealed envelope containing a letter. Ashton unfolded the letter, scanning its contents to the very end. A small exclamation escaped his lips. He read the letter again, slowly and carefully this time, mouthing the words and coming back to the beginning, forcing away the images that were forming in his mind, so he could concentrate. It was written in a neat, unhurried hand, which was somehow incongruous with what it had to say:
My dear Colonel,
Pardon me for not having corresponded with you over the years, but you who know so much about us will understand. See how much liberty one can take with friends? If you are reading this, then surely the Divine is gracing us with His benevolence.
The bearer of this letter has no knowledge of its contents and it is best that it remain that way. If he is with you now, please do not divulge anything to him. His loyalty is beyond question, but we feel it is not right for him to be burdened with what I am going to tell you. If he is not with you, I can assume he has somehow managed to have this letter delivered.
Coming, as you would say, to the point. In the summer of 1966, soon after you had visited us, there came to the monastery a young US Army major from, I think, the Marine Corps. Though on leave, he wore his battle fatigues and was accompanied by a local guide. It was, as you realize, a trying time for all of us, with the war making our position difficult. We did not encourage people in uniform to come to us, but realized that this American was different. After all, he had come to our door alone and unarmed.
I was the one instructed to interact with him; there were then, as you are aware, very few of us who could speak English. He said he had heard of us and wanted to make a gift to the monastery, a memento his grandfather had apparently wanted to send us. The request seemed innocuous enough. He was in a hurry and needed to leave immediately, but before his departure, he insisted on having a picture of us both taken with his camera to record the moment as he handed the satchel over to me. I duly got one of the younger monks to take that photo. The American said he needed to send the photo back home. After that, he left.
I delivered the satchel and its contents – a narrow golden strip with symbols etched on it – to the Teacher. I remember the day well; it was the first time I had seen so much emotion on the Teacher’s face. Being much younger then, I took the liberty of asking him about the plate; I was simply told that it was a gter ma – a treasure. The Teacher did not say more and I did not press him for further explanations and soon forgot all about it.
Coming closer to the present, to the time when we were overcome by tragedy and evil. I had been appointed the Teacher’s personal assistant. He had not been keeping well for some years and the senior monk, Hieu Mi Che – I do not know if you have met him – had taken over most of the day-to-day affairs that running the monastery involved. Things have changed, as they often do, and not all of us feel it is for the best. There is now much more interaction with the outside world.
On the morning of that evil time, the boy who took the morning tea to the Teacher found him sprawled on his bed and rushed to call me. He had been stabbed with a needle, which was working its poison. The doors of the steel cupboard in the room were ajar. The satchel still lay inside, but the gold plate was gone; it was what the evil-doers had been after. We administered an antidote to counter the effect of the poison that had entered the Teacher’s body, but it had been working for too long. We were able to revive him only temporarily. The Teacher’s last wish was that I should ask you to help prevent the people who had taken the gter ma from using it to find the Burqan Qaldun. He repeated this over and over again as he lay dying, anxious that they should never find it. He also said the key to your journey would be found with the dogs at the seat of the Mar Yul and that once you entered the Gates, the Jhagun would assist you. All this is not clear to me, but I have tried to faithfully record and pass on the last words of the Teacher in his mortal form; he has foreseen that you will be the person to confront this peril, and I have boundless faith in his wisdom. The image of the Buddha has been tattooed on the messenger in the prescribed manner and the spirit of the Teacher will guide you in times of doubt.
His death has left us bereft of guidance. Those who control things here want us to accept that there was no evil in what happened. But they know that some of us believe otherwise and your task will, therefore, be fraught with danger. Trust no one; do not communicate with us or with anyone you do not have absolute faith in.
In your culture, I know that this missive would be regarded as an unwelcome imposition. But in ours, it is fated and we must all play our parts in what must unfold. I entreat you to assist us, but if you do not, I will understand. Please do not share the contents of this letter with anyone you do not trust implicitly.
Om mani padme hum.
Ru San Ko
PS: Mr Solomon Avery of the Cambridge branch of the Oriental Bank of Commerce may be able to assist you.