The East Indiaman Read online

  Kite felt the cold certainty of betrayal clutch his guts; it was the fulfilment of Sarah’s premonition and the reason for Rose’s lack of confidence. He leaned forward. ‘You are reneging, sir,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Not at all, not at all. There will be other opportunities…’ Hooker blustered and then, sensing Kite’s change of mood, added, ‘I shall of course pay you for my passage outwards.’

  Kite was affronted, but a life in commerce had trained him not to react passionately.

  ‘Surely you have not invested all your capital in this venture with this Captain Grindley?’

  Hooker shook his head. ‘No, no, of course not. I called upon the Parsee builder Wadia, he is laying down two ships and has offered me a share or two in either…’

  ‘A share or two?’ Kite stared at his so-called partner in disbelief. He set his jaw and awaited more of Hooker’s bluster but Hooker was consumed by the euphoria of self-esteem. Hooker was very pleased with himself and Kite could go hang!

  ‘It is another great opportunity and, mark my words Kite, there will be others, Upon my soul there will be, of that I am certain but, for the time being, we shall settle matters between us by my paying for my passage. This will give you a small sum of personal capital to add to your own fortune.’

  His fortune? Kite was conscious of having been completely deceived, out-manoeuvred and utterly humiliated. By God, this would make them laugh in Liverpool! Inwardly he was seething with a cold fury but, for the time being he had perforce to affect acceptance of this. With an effort he pretended indifference and shrugged. ‘Very well, you shall pay me as you say, but since I must rely upon my own wits, you must satisfy my curiosity: does this Captain Grindley of yours take silver or opium to China?’

  Hooker looked at Kite sharply. Kite caught the guile in his eyes and watched as they softened. ‘Ah, that eh? Opium or cash, as the Chinese call it…’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I believe Captain Grindley has a consignment of opium on board, yes.’ Hooker paused, and then as though thinking of some fact with which to placate Kite, he added, ‘there is a certain risk inherent in the voyage to which I did not wish you to be exposed.’

  ‘Risk? You mean the Chinese are unwilling to permit uncontrolled imports of opium into China without it paying duty?’

  Hooker shrugged. ‘As I say, there are some risks and I wished to protect you from any chance of your losing…’ Hooker’s voice trailed off and then he said in the cheerful tone of one forcing a change in the subject of the conversation, ‘you have met the industrious Ali Rahman?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Kite, ‘I have.’ He bit off his inclination to add that he trusted the Indian topass more than the hideously obese and by now thoroughly repugnant Englishman sitting before him.

  The mood at dinner that night was strained, even though the cook had butchered a fresh fowl for their table and neither man had acquainted his respective wife with the disagreement that lay between them. Ship-owning and ship-broking had inured Kite to making too free a demonstration of his personal feelings, while Hooker’s own plans precluded any free and frank discussion of their prospects. Instead Hooker gave the ladies an account of his hours ashore, of whom he had met on what sounded like an uncomfortable whirl of social and commercial visits. He dropped names to little effect as far as either Sarah or Kite were concerned, though clearly Rose was impressed and her face bore excited little smiles and, from time to time, she gave an anticipatory squeak that Kite found faintly salacious.

  In due course, however, they retired to their beds, the Hookers for the last time aboard ship. Aware of her husband’s preoccupation, Sarah asked what was the matter.

  Putting his finger to his lips Kite had whispered that it was best that he deferred an explanation until the morning. Personally he wanted time to think and, long after Sarah’s breathing told that she was asleep, he lay awake, staring at the pale deckhead and wondering at the strangeness of fate that had brought them to this pass. He felt drained of all resolution, utterly defeated and devoid of resource. What was he to do now that Hooker intended to abandon him, for he had no further faith in the man’s vague, half-promises? The one thing he was determined upon was to cut loose from Hooker and he rued the day he had succumbed to little Jack Bow’s pleas in Leadenhall Street.

  Kite was dreaming of his father and a cold Cumbrian morning in his youth when the screaming woke him. Sarah shot bolt upright beside him as he threw himself out of their cot. The piercing noise came from Rose and Kite burst into their half of the cabin, almost tearing the flimsy door from its hinges.

  The first light of dawn threw a pallid light into the space, revealing Rose, half naked, kneeling upon the deck, her hands tearing at her face so that the nails ploughed the flesh and dark streams of blood poured down her cheeks.

  Before her lay her husband, his body a mass of fleshy folds that seemed almost fluid as it subsided under its own weight. At first in the half light Kite could not distinguish what was wrong with Hooker, so seamed was the body with its own corpulence. The he saw that Hooker had had his throat cut and lay in an expanding pool of his own blood, the strong smell of which mingled with the fetid stink of the man.

  Suddenly Hooker’s feet twitched and Kite heard the faint bubbling respiration as he fought for his last breath through his severed windpipe. A second later it was all over. There was an expiring fart and the white corpse seemed to settle further, as though, half liquid itself, it sought the level equilibrium of its spreading lifeblood.

  Chapter Nine

  Hostages to Fortune

  Kite appearance had cut short Rose’s screaming. Sarah, having followed her husband into the cabin, moved round the body and, taking Rose by the shoulders, drew her away. Kite’s heart was thundering; he had been dragged from the depths of an exhausted sleep and for a moment could think of nothing but the dead body before him. Then Harper arrived, his presence announced by a sharp intake of breath. Then there were shouts from forward which rose rapidly to a crescendo of alarm. Kite raced up the companionway with Harper behind.

  The planking of the deck was grey beneath the starlight and forward there was a swirl of shadows from which McClusky emerged.

  ‘Cap’n Kite! The dacoits have gone, sir. Cleared out and gone…’

  ‘No, they’ve been taken sir,’ another voice called. ‘Look, there’s blood all over the rail… and it runs across the deck here.’

  As if reminded of something Kite turned to Harper. ‘Can you make out any blood on the after companionway, Zachariah?’ he asked, staring at the pale shapes of his hands, as though he might have been contaminated by some of it during his rapid ascent. Then, leaving Harper to have a close look, Kite went to the rail and stared out over the harbour. He thought he saw the faint gleam of a phosphorescent wake, as if from a rowed boat, but it was gone behind the dull, half-manifestation of a country trader and it may well have been nothing more than a fish jumping.

  ‘William…’ Sarah’s voice, cool and measured broke into the tempest of his thoughts. He turned and saw his wife, head and shoulders above the coaming of the companionway over which Harper still bent.

  ‘Yes. What is it?’ He saw her beckon and crossed the deck. ‘Well?’

  ‘The chest, Hooker’s chest, it’s gone…’

  ‘That’s what they came for Cap’n,’ offered Harper, ‘that an’ to despatch Hooker. Look there’s some blood smeared here… and here….’ Harper straightened up. ‘Damn me, Cap’n, begging your pardon Ma’am, but he made some enemies in a short time.’

  ‘Or already had them, Mr Harper,’ Sarah said, adding, ‘you’ll keep mum about the chest, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course, Ma’am.’

  ‘I think I had better raise the alarm,’ Kite said at last, straightening up from staring at the dark bloodstains.

  ‘I’ll do that, sir. You stay here; I’ll take a boat to that snow of the Bombay Marine,’ Harper volunteered.

  ‘Very well,’ Kite said, ‘and find out any s
cuttlebutt that you can, Zachariah, there’s a good fellow, and what the devil the procedure is for a death like this.’

  ‘I’ll go back to Rose,’ Sarah offered and Kite was aware of the keening whimper of the widow rising up from the hot and smelly interior of the schooner. As Harper went forward calling out for the boat to be manned and Sarah went below, Kite swore and stared about them again. Then, walking quickly to the stern he looked for the boat lying astern on her painter. All he found was there was the end of a cut rope. He turned forward.

  ‘Belay that, Mr Harper. The boat’s gone, you shall have to swing out the other.’

  There was a pause during which Kite guessed that Harper swore fluidly under his breath and then came the acknowledgement of the order. ‘Swing out t’other boat, sir, aye, aye.’

  And leaving Harper and the men to their task, Kite turned to go below. He was just about to duck his head under the companionway when he saw McClusky walking aft.

  ‘Cap’n Kite, sir, can I have a word?’

  ‘What is it?’ Kite asked shortly.

  ‘Mr Harper says that Mr Hooker’s been murdered, sir, like the two dacoits.’

  ‘Yes… What about it?’

  ‘Then does that mean the other dacoits are dead? Or did they have something to do with the killing of Mr Hooker?’

  After the long, long voyage it was easy to forget that McClusky was no seaman, but a clerk with the shrewdness natural to a town-bred and ambitious Irishman. Kite’s tired brain was past grasping McClusky’s allusion. He asked McClusky to explain himself.

  ‘Well sir, the dacoits who went ashore with Hooker didn’t come back with him last night. Harper told me he thought it odd and asked if the two that Hooker had left behind were still on board. I told him they were and gave the matter no thought until, well until this all happened. Now the mate tells me you’re sending him over to the naval ship and I thought he should mention it.’

  Kite forbore from correcting McClusky’s assessment of the Bombay Marine’s cruiser, it was not important. ‘To tell the truth, Mr McClusky, I never gave the dacoits a second thought last night. We’d had such a drubbing what with wind and rain…’ Kite paused a moment and then said, ‘look, you’re a bright fellow. Do you go with Mr Harper and see what the commander of the cruiser says. Give him all the details including the intelligence about the dacoits.’

  ‘Very well.’ And when the boat was finally swung outboard and lowered into the water Kite watched her pulling towards the dimly perceived shape of the snow. Then he finally went below.

  In his own half of the divided cabin Sarah was comforting Rose, sitting on the cross bench under the stern window, her arm about the Indian woman as she sobbed out her grief. Sarah pursed her lips for silence as Kite stumbled into the space and poured himself half a glass of wine. Taking a sip he put it down on the table, took a candle from the sconce and went through into the Hookers’ half cabin. The stern window was open, a cool breeze wafted in bearing the exotic scents of the shore. Lighting a lantern he held it over the body, at the same time pressing a handkerchief to his own nose.

  Hooker lay on his back, both legs straight. He wore a checked cotton sarong which had been pulled half off so that the whole of his vast torso above his genitals rose and fell like the landscape of an undulating island. A feather of hairs ran upwards from his pubic area and disappeared into the surprisingly small, neat coiled orifice of his navel. Across his chest, between white breasts that, confined by an artful corsetière, might have flattered a comely woman but which now spread in a lateral divergence that belied the physical strength of the man. It occurred to Kite in a perceptive if irrelevant moment that had Hooker not spent most of his life over-indulging in the tropics, he might have been a finer specimen than the muscular Harper.

  ‘Well, well,’ muttered Kite to himself. At all events Hooker had been overcome like a shorn Sampson, for he seemed to have put up little of a struggle. Judging by the lack of noise, Kite concluded he had known little of his end, for he had been sleeping on the deck where a blood-soaked blanket was spread out over a shallow palliasse. He had been dragged clear of this, it was true, but possible only to ease access to the locker beyond, where, Kite knew, Hooker had stowed the chest containing his liquid assets.

  Moving the lantern upwards over Hooker’s corpse Kite illuminated the wound. The haemorrage had ceased and the blood was already dark and clotted, blurring the edges of the knife’s incision. Hooker’s expression was barely one of astonishment. His eyes stared, but not from horror or fear, and though his mouth too was open, the effect was merely one of mild surprise. He looked much as he might have looked had Kite himself called him unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

  Was that because he had not known what was happening to him? Or because the person upon whom he last set eyes was familiar to him? A dacoit, for instance?

  Kite straightened up. Perhaps that was how some men died; awake but in ignorance of the fact that they were being murdered. There was something almost amusing about it, thought Kite as he stared down at the body, in the same way that Hooker’s extreme corpulence was distantly amusing to an observer. But on close acquaintance amusement turned to repugnance and then revulsion. Kite’s nose wrinkled and, in a fit of sudden coughing, he rejoined Sarah and Rose. Easing himself onto a chair he recovered his breath and contemplated the scene before him. Rose continued sobbing, though she was quieter now and Kite coughed and said, ‘Rose, I must talk to you. Would you like a glass of wine?’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No, William, it is against her religion, I have already asked.’

  ‘Will she answer me a few questions?’

  Sarah turned to Rose. ‘Rose, William wishes to answer…’

  ‘Yes, I heard.’ Rose stirred and drew apart from Sarah. Her face was ravaged by her self-mutilation, and streaked with kohl; in the lantern-light she looked hideous in her grief. Pressed with the urgency of affairs, Kite barely noticed. He was thinking of the brief talk which Hooker had had with his wife when he had returned from the shore.

  ‘Rose, I have sent Harper across to the Company’s cruiser to report what has happened, but there are some things that I must ask you. Did you see anything when… I mean to say, were you aware of anyone?’

  Rose shuddered, but then said nothing.

  ‘You saw nothing, no-one at all? Then what woke you?’

  Rose tried to speak, but nothing more than a croak came from her. Instantly Kite advanced with his wine-glass. Rose waved it away, but he pressed it on her.

  ‘Come my dear, a little wine will not hurt you.’

  After hesitating a moment, Rose tentatively gave way and sipped the wine. A moment later she had drained the glass and Kite, kneeling before her and staring up into her eyes, asked again, ‘Rose, my dear, what woke you?’

  ‘They moved him,’ she said as the wine uncoiled its warmth in her belly.

  ‘Who moved him, Rose?’ Kite asked softly staring up into her eyes.

  She looked away evasively. She seemed frightened, but Kite did not wish to press her. He was almost certain he knew who had murdered Hooker; he also had some questions he wished McClusky to answer but which he had forgotten to ask before sending the clerk off with Harper. As suspicion clouded his mind, Kite thought of something else, something which inserted itself like a knife blade into his own consciousness: if anyone knew that Hooker had cheated him of a promised command, it was just possible that they might attribute the fact sufficient a motive as to make Kite himself a suspect. He was grateful that he had deferred mentioning the matter to Sarah, but how much did Rose know, and was this the reason for her present circumspection? He tried another tack.

  ‘Rose, I know Josiah had agreed to put money into a venture, that he had had an excellent offer yesterday which he could not pass up. Do you know if he had actually paid any money?’ Kite thought it unlikely for Hooker could not have had the time to complete the transaction.

  Relieved not to be pressed on the matter of the murder and wit
h the wine doing its insidious work, Rose seized the change of subject almost eagerly and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, her voice almost inaudible, ‘he was to attend to the matter tomorrow…. today…’

  ‘And where is your money now? Is the chest stolen?’

  Rose nodded. ‘They dragged it out and passed it through the window.’

  Kite recalled the open stern window, the sash lifted to admit the cool night air. ‘The dacoits took the chest and passed it through the stern window into a boat.’ He couched the sentence as a statement and Rose murmured yes, without realising what she had done. Kite, pleased with the accuracy of his guess knew now why the boat painter had been cut. He barely heard her mutter something about Josiah being sorry and ‘paying it back,’ attaching no importance to this half-apology for her husband’s deception of himself. As for the blood on the deck, it was clear that it was Hooker’s, borne by the dacoit who had slit Hooker’s throat. When they looked in daylight he guessed they would find the trail ran from the cabin, up the companionway and forward, where a native boat by which the dacoits who had been taken and left ashore by Hooker, had returned to the schooner. Two boats made good sense too, the Spitfire’s prepared to get away with the treasure manned and most certainly hauled up under the stern by the two dacoits left aboard to keep the bum-boats at bay off; the native boat to create a diversion as the rest of the dacoits got away.

  ‘I apprehend that Josiah was betrayed by his own men.’ Kite said to Sarah, ‘but what I doubt whether I will fathom, is the reason why, unless it was simply their desire to seize his fortune.’

  ‘That would seem a powerful enough motive to men of little means,’ Sarah replied. ‘They must have been aware of his wealth…’

  ‘But he tried to keep it from them as much as possible,’ Rose broke in and Kite wondered if this too was part of the extraordinary subterfuge of the London tenement.

  ‘So that is that what happened, Rose, is it?’