The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (73 page)

“An Indian fan, he would think, an admirer on the subcontinent who has remembered my birthday. How terribly kind! And full of anticipation he would rip the package open . . .

“Surprise!

“I hoped he’d have time to take in the writing on the inside lid of the box before the bang. I’d cut it from the title page of one of my father’s sermons and pasted it
there.

“It read:
On Divine Retribution
by DLP Lachrymate DD.

“Yes, he was a three initial man too. Perhaps that was why it was so easy for Uncle Harry to ensnare him.
Three forenames means a man comes from a family with a pride in their past
,
Dad would say.
You can always trust a man with three initials. Never buy a used car from a one initial man. Hesitate to lend money to someone with only two. But give your hand and your trust
when you see that third initial!

“Four he felt a little ostentatious except in the case of royalty.

“I have three, of course. PDL. Same as my father’s only the order is changed.

“That’s me all over. All the same elements as my father only the order is changed.

“I too believe in retribution and hellfire, but I want them now!

“I wouldn’t like you to think that I have spent my life obsessing about my poor father’s fate. I was only six when he died. To me, one day he was there, the next he
wasn’t. Everyone talked about him being in a better place, but how a place could be better that didn’t have me and Mum in it, I could never fathom. As to how he got there, throughout my
youth I was well protected from any real knowledge of what had actually happened. Certainly without him the place we were in seemed a great deal worse. My mother continued to work at the Mission. I
don’t think she really had a wage, just the occasional subsistence level hand out. I expect it was the same for the rest of them. It was probably believed that any complaints about wage
levels could be answered by pointing to the squalor and abject poverty around us and saying, ‘How can you look at that and still complain?’

“Myself, I don’t think Mother gave a toss about remuneration levels. I don’t even think she had any real interest in the Mission’s work. All she wanted was see me through
to the age of independence then, with a sigh of relief, give up the ghost and go to join her lost husband, which is exactly what she did.

“It was after the funeral, in dribs and drabs, that Sister Angela told me the story. She had to support her own memory of events from a report she had written for the Mission Trustees at
the time. It was couched in a curious mixture of Indian Civil Service jargon and King James Bible English. It went something like this.

“‘The comprehensive recording procedures installed at the Mission by the present writer acting on the excellent advice of CK Bannerjee (Bachelor of Law-University of Bombay) by
the grace of God our legal officer, enable us to trace precisely the first appearance of the subtle serpent, Keating, on our premises. For it is clearly written in the Book of Visitors that he was
a guest in our midst at tea-time on the fifteenth day of May in the year of our Lord, 1974, as testified by his own signature, HRS Keating.

“As her narrative unfolded, it took me some time to realise that this serpent she was talking about, the architect of all our woes, was in fact Uncle Harry.

“Not really my uncle, of course. But within a very short time of his first appearance at the Mission, that’s what I was calling him. I remembered him very well, and all my memories
were pleasant ones. He was a merry, voluble man in his late forties, always willing to spend time with me and treat me to ices from one of the street vendors that my mother warned me against but
whose wares I adored. (In fact I never had any stomach trouble all my life till I came to England and tried a Shepherd’s Pie out of a pub microwave.) I knew vaguely that he was some kind of
writer and Sister Angela now confirmed that the fraud by which he gained access to the Mission was that he was gathering material for a book about the disenfranchised, destitute and often criminal
classes that my father worked amongst. Certainly he had real creative talent. Often when his visits coincided with my bedtime, he would fill my head with marvellous stories of high adventure and
wild excitement. These were a rare treat. Mother had no narrative gift and for Father any story that did not come from the Bible was so much factitious frippery.

“Curiously, it is Dad’s tales of Samson pulling down the temple, and the death of Jezebel, and the slaughter of the Benjamites, that remain with me while Uncle Harry’s
marvellous stories have all faded. But at the time I waited like a drug addict for the next instalment.

“But the real evidence of Uncle Harry’s powers of invention lies in the way he took in my father.

“I think the trouble was – and Sister Angela confirmed this – that Dad believed his life was directed by God. When he asked a question, God answered it with the result that in
decision he was incisive and in judgment, absolute. And for the twenty years of his adult life, this had worked.

“So when he asked God about Uncle Harry and he thought he heard God telling him
Harry’s OK
, that was it. In my father’s eyes, friends, and enemies, were forever.

“Thus when Uncle Harry came to him in a distracted state, he didn’t hesitate. The pitch was that Harry’s widowed mother who lived in the States was seriously ill and her only
chance of survival lay in a new transplant procedure, which only one hospital in the country could offer. Harry was on his way to see her now. He had realized his assets and managed to raise most
of what was needed to pay for the procedure. But he was still short, and though he would have the rest in a fortnight’s time when an investment bond matured, by then it might be too late.

“I can remember Uncle Harry’s distraction, though its alleged cause was of course unknown to me till Sister Angela filled me in. My reason for remembering was purely selfish. It was
19 May, my sixth birthday, and I felt I ought to be the centre of everyone’s attention.

“Not that Harry’s pretended agitation prevented him from bringing me a splendid present, a wooden locomotive big enough for me to straddle which made whooping noises just like the
real thing when you pulled a cord.

“It might have been this generosity, plus of course the three initials, that made my father rise to the bait.

“ ‘How much do you need?’ he asked.

“ ‘Fifteen hundred pounds,’ said Harry.

“Now you should understand that the Mission finances were on a very hand-to-mouth basis. Only the big charities could afford to do national appeals in those days, and even they
weren’t yet the streamlined corporate machines for extracting money from the public they have since become. So the Mission relied very much on local charitable donations and there was rarely
much in the kitty. But just the day before, a rather dodgy local businessman had decided to spring-clean his conscience by donating a couple of lakhs of rupees. He’d been on the brink for a
week or so, and the proposed act of charity had almost turned into a bazaar haggle with my father as to how much, or rather how little, would see him right with the Christian God. My father had
probably entertained Uncle Harry with a description of the man’s hesitations. Finally the previous day, a threat of police investigation had made the vacillating villain decide he needed help
from all the deities available and he’d turned up with the cash which was now in the Mission safe.

“How much cash?

“In sterling, about fifteen hundred pounds.

“Surprise.

“To my father this was evidence of God’s handiwork.

“To Angela, with hindsight, it was evidence of Uncle Harry’s brilliant opportunism.

“Dad, who had a key to the safe – why wouldn’t he? – gave Harry the money on the promise that it would be paid within two weeks. Harry left that night with protestations
of eternal gratitude and the cash. Probably his gratitude was genuine enough, or does a con man simply despise his mark? Whatever, Uncle Harry and the fifteen hundred pounds quickly vanished from
Bombay and our lives, never to be seen again.

“It evidently took my father a whole month to admit that neither was about to reappear.

“So that was it. A sting. Not a particularly big one in the grand scale of stings, though fifteen hundred was worth a lot more back then. The trustees of the Mission took it, if not in
their stride, at least with the resigned philosophy of men long accustomed to dealing with humanity at its worst. They read Sister Angela’s report and, judging that chances of the police
catching up with Uncle Harry were remote and of recovering the money non-existent, they decided it was better to hush the whole thing up rather than risk putting off other potential
benefactors.

“So, all in all, an unpleasant experience which many men after the first shock might have treated as a rough but salutary lesson.

“Not Dad.

“You see it undermined that supremely confident belief in his own God-backed judgment which had been the mainstay of his being these many years. If he’d got this wrong, what else had
he got wrong? It pulled away or at least seriously damaged one of the mainstays of his faith.

“Within a fortnight of recognizing he’d been conned, a fortnight during which by Angela’s account he worked like a man possessed, he went out on some errand of mercy one night
and that was all that anyone saw of him till his body was pulled out of the Mazagon Docks a fortnight later. The fish had worked at it so much that cause of death could never be established.
Suicide? I don’t like to think so. I want to believe he just took a risk too far and paid the price.

“All these memories rolled through my mind as I sat on that bus, and the violent jolt as the vehicle crashed to a halt at my stop took me by surprise and I almost dropped the package. As I
stepped onto the pavement, despite the cool autumn air I was sweating.

“I had walked the route before while making my plans so I set off at a brisk pace towards my destination. Getting the package delivered without arousing suspicion was always going to be
the hard part, but I’d worked out a method. It was not without risk, but apart from knocking at Uncle Harry’s door and handing it over to whoever answered, I couldn’t think of
anything better.

“Now the end was near, I felt only relief. Like I say, at the time of Dad’s death I’d been a child, and was devastated like a child, and then had adapted like a child.
Mother’s death had hit me harder. And when I learned from Angela that Uncle Harry’s chicanery had ultimately been the cause of both of them, I got very angry.

“But I was only eighteen and at eighteen you’re very angry at a lot of things. The main long term effect of learning the true facts was to finally make me dump the religious baggage
I’d been dragging after me all my short life. I looked around and saw that the world was full of goodies and the only way to get your share was to go in hot pursuit. So that’s what I
did, mainly in the sub-continent where I’d grown up, with occasional forays to Malaysia and the Antipodes.

“Then with youth well behind me and my fortieth birthday lumbering ever closer, I got the chance to come and work in England.

“Why not? After all I was English, that’s what my passport said. So back I came to this cold, damp, unwelcoming country. After six months I was beginning to think it was a mistake. I
reached the dreaded fortieth in May and in this dreadful climate, it felt more like fifty. I had to get out, but my contract bound me here at least till Christmas. By the end of September I was
feeling desperate. I looked back at my life and it seemed a wasted journey, and I looked forward and saw only a road to nowhere. Then one evening as I travelled back to my lonely apartment, I
picked up a bookshop magazine that someone had left on the train.

“Now I’m not a reading man myself, and it was in a mood of cynical mockery that I glanced down a list of newsworthy forthcoming events in the literary calendar. Who the hell could
really be interested in dinners to award prizes to novelists or the publication of a ghosted life of some idiot sportsman too thick to write his own biography?

“Then something leapt out at me.

“
Notable Anniversaries

“
On 31 October, the distinguished crime writer and well known figure on the London literary scene, Mr Harry Keating, best known as the creator of the famous series of books featuring
Inspector Ghote of the Bombay Police, will be celebrating his eightieth birthday, to general rejoicing.

“Keating . . . Bombay . . . it couldn’t be coincidence. This had to be Uncle Harry!

“When I arrived at my station I popped into the bookshop.

“Quite a lot of his books were on the shelves. I bought a couple and took them back to my flat.

“I raced through them. The detailed knowledge of Bombay life and topography could only have come from a man who knew the city inside out. And when I looked at the author photo on the back
cover of the book, I knew I was right.

“He had attempted to change his appearance by growing a rather fine bushy beard, but there was no disguising that splendid hook nose.

“Uncle Harry. The subtle serpent who had destroyed my family’s personal paradise.

“I thought of my dead parents. Then I thought of this man, approaching eighty, basking in the love of friends and family, acknowledging the applause of the world of literature. And
suddenly it seemed to me that here was fate offering me a chance to do at least one meaningful act before I died! I told you that Dad used to believe God spoke directly to him. It must be in the
genes. For the first time in my life I heard a voice speak in my head.

“Let him get to eighty. But make sure he gets no further!

“God? I didn’t think so. After all, I don’t believe in God. I refuse to believe in God!

“But as I approached Northumberland Place I found myself thinking, this is the real test, this is where things need to go absolutely smoothly or it’s all in vain. If the Almighty
really reckons this is a good idea, then the next few minutes will be a stroll in the park.