Алистер Маклин – Borrowed Time (страница 9)
‘And I’ll do the same with mine. Keep me posted, Michael.’
As Mike began to fall asleep in his room at the cabin an hour later, less than a kilometre away a man called Ahmed Faiz was running for his life.
Ahmed had run for more than twenty minutes, through woods and thickets, down a ravine and across a rocky outcrop that tore the skin on his knees and hands. He was young, but the running and the fear had drained him, making his heart pound and his limbs drag like lead. He longed to stop and catch his breath, but to stop was to die.
‘Muhammad be praised,’ he panted, ‘Muhammad is good. Muhammad be praised, Muhammad is good. Muhammad be praised …’
Whenever he felt himself flagging, when his feet slowed and threatened to stumble to a stop, he thought of his wife and his three small children. He saw their faces and the image put strength in him.
‘Muhammad is good …’
He had to get back to where he came from, to the safety and enclosing love of his family. He had no idea how far he must still run until he was safe, he only knew he ran in the right direction; long ago, his father had taught him to read the stars. He drove himself to the west, the west and the border. Beyond the border lay Islamabad and the safety of his home.
‘Well now, Ahmed!’
He stopped and felt himself falling, losing his balance. He tumbled into the coarse grass and felt twigs tear his face. How had this happened? How did Iqbal get in front of him?
‘Up, little man! Up!’
He was hoisted like a doll and shoved against a tree. A torch came on, right in his eyes, the light painful as a knife. Ahmed shut his eyes, squirmed and felt another pair of hands take hold of him from behind the tree.
‘You were told, were you not, that there were severe penalties for stealing? You were told, also, that to flee would be senseless. There is no escape.’
Ahmed was panting too hard to reply. A heavy fist slammed into his stomach. Now he couldn’t inhale. The pain flared into his chest and he thought he would faint. Through the pounding in his ears he heard Iqbal, his mouth close, the breath warm on his ear.
‘There are no exemptions, Ahmed. You were well paid to do your simple job. You were given money to support your family. Yet you abused your master’s generosity. You stole.’
‘Twenty rupees!’ Ahmed gasped. ‘It was only twenty rupees! And I found it!’
‘You cannot find what is not lost, little man.’
‘It was lying on a bench!’
‘It was not yours. It was a simple test of your loyalty.’
Ahmed’s arms were gripped tighter. The torch was held higher as Iqbal stepped back. Ahmed heard the knife slide from under Iqbal’s sash.
‘Please! Please, I beg you! My wife and my children need me! I gave back the money, there is no need for this!’
‘There are rules, Ahmed. To break them is to commit a grave insult to your master. You knew that. You were not kept in ignorance of what would happen if you transgressed.’
‘Iqbal! No! I beg you!’
The kukri made a swift arc from right to left, slicing through Ahmed’s throat as if it was not there. It swung again from left to right and severed his head clean from his body.
Ram Jarwal woke Mike at six o’clock with a cup of coffee and told him he should be ready to leave in twenty minutes. Mike drank the coffee while he dressed. By the time he was ready, Ram was outside, tightening the laces on his walking boots.
It was a glorious morning. The sun shimmered through a light high mist and the air was fragrant and moist. Mike watched Ram do up the bolts and double-lock the cabin door.
‘It’s hard to imagine anyone would take the trouble to come all the way up here to burgle a cabin,’ Mike said. He had been gazing down the sides of the valley, which seemed incredibly steep. ‘On the other hand, some people might see it as a challenge.’
‘Some people might see it as an opportunity to get inside and wait for whoever lives here,’ Ram said. ‘Homicide robberies are not uncommon. The best you can do is make sure there’s no place for someone to hide. Before I moved in, I had all the trees within fifty metres cut down.’
Mike stood for a moment looking down into the valley. He pointed to a dark cluster beside a green thicket a hundred metres below them. ‘What’s that — the black patch? It looks like it’s moving.’
‘Vultures,’ Ram said. ‘They’re waiting for the police to leave.’
‘Police?’
‘There was a bulletin on VHF at five o’clock. A murder can’t stay hidden here for long. Vultures were spotted on the hillside. The police came up and found the body of a young man, they think he might be a Pakistani. Decapitated.’ Ram shrugged. ‘Another sadly frequent event.’
They set off walking south-east. They crossed sloping farmland and dusty roads, cutting across the natural lines and divisions of the land, taking shortcuts through woods and across gullies to a stretch of natural road. It was solid rock, the blunt edge of a ridge from which they could see terraced rice fields laid out like patchwork, every shade of green and yellow. A looming backdrop of dark hills to the north and east intensified the colours and provided a windbreak for hundreds of acres of cultivated land.
‘The pictorial view of Kashmir,’ Ram said. ‘From a distance everything is so orderly.’
After an hour the mist cleared, and even though they were high in the hills Mike and Ram began to sweat. They stopped to take water.
‘It’s a beautiful place,’ Mike said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I didn’t imagine it was anything like this.’ He pointed ahead of them, to a cluster of houses with a larger building at their centre. ‘Have we come to a community?’
‘Bahadur. The white cube bigger than the others is Reverend Young’s medical centre. The school is inside his mission, which is farther down the slope.’
‘This is where I do my UN fact-finder bit, is it?’
‘With a minimum of acting required,’ Ram said. ‘This morning we simply introduce you. Discussions can come later. Reverend Young is expecting us, so there should be something cool waiting — he makes an admirable lemonade.’
They walked down the slope to Bahadur. Ram led the way through narrow twisting streets to the mission. As they approached he looked puzzled.
‘I’ve never seen the door shut before.’
He went up the two little steps and knocked on the door, waited, then pushed it. It opened. He went in, took three steps across the tiny entry hall and turned.
‘Come in, quick,’ he told Mike. ‘Close the door.’
Mike pushed the door shut and caught the smell at once, heavy on the warm air. It was unmistakable, the odour of decomposing human flesh.
Ram went into the room beyond. Mike heard him groan.
‘What is it?’
Mike went through. It was a bare white room with two small windows high on opposite walls. On a wheeled examination table in the centre of the room lay the body of a priest, stretched out, the arms tied together under the table. The black vestments were covered with blood. The face had been beaten to a pulp. Shards of white skull bone stuck up from the scarlet mass, catching the light.
‘Is it Reverend Young?’
‘I assume it is,’ Ram said. ‘I recognize the ring on his hand.’ He touched the mangled head with a fingertip and drew it back. ‘Not more than a couple of hours dead. Another hour and the stench will be unbearable.’
They went outside. Ram fished out his mobile phone. ‘I’ll get the police down here. Nobody will have seen a thing, of course. There are never ever any witnesses. Not even if it was done in broad daylight in the middle of the street.’
Ram spoke for a minute to the phone, then switched it off and dropped it back in his rucksack. ‘The police will take care of everything,’ he said. ‘We can go. And it’s best we do, before the locals take it into their heads that you brought bad luck with you.’
As they walked back up the slope Mike felt they were being watched, but he saw no one. ‘Have you any idea who could have done it?’ he said.
‘Plenty of cut-throats to choose from,’ Ram said. ‘But I couldn’t narrow it down to one or even a dozen. As I said, I don’t know anybody who didn’t like Reverend Young.’
Sabrina arrived at Kulu on time, and the first stage of her planned transformation to a WHO official went to schedule. Wearing a
The car waiting for her was a ten-year-old two-door Peugeot 205, metallic blue with dabs of rust on the roof and the lower edges of the doors. The engine had been reconditioned and made reliable, there were new tyres and secure locks. A creative after-touch was the attachment of a loose aluminium plate to the underside of the engine mounting, which rattled and vibrated and made the car sound frail and barely roadworthy.
Sabrina’s change of clothes was in a holdall in the boot of the car. Staying low-key was always difficult, given her height, her figure and her looks, but UNACO Kitting and Outfitting had made the best selection they could: billowy blouses, long flowing skirts and baggy trousers in brown and ochre shades, stout boots and a couple of shapeless canvas jackets.