The Custom of the Country

Book 593: Murder Room

by P.M. Hubbard

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Suspense

Synopsis

By the time Jim Gilruth returns to Pakistan, twenty years after he served as a law officer in a small village near Lahore, colonial rule has given way to Pakistani officialdom. His strange and enigmatic mission is painfully involved in the brutal clash of the old and the new - but why has he been chosen as the instrument of coercion? Then the details of a half-forgotten murder that he had long ago adjudicated begin to come back in all their bewildering nuances, and Gilruth, in an eerie repetition of the circumstances of a generation ago, is powerless to save the life of a good man, or bring a murderer to justice.

Release date: September 6, 2012

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 250

Sample

TOBY SAID, “JIM? JIM, I THINK I’VE WANGLED A TRIP abroad for you. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

I said, “Where to?” I had already in my mind settled on South America. He said, “Pakistan,” and my mind abandoned the dream and went to work on the known but buried
reality. “That’s your old stamping ground, isn’t it?” he said.

“It could be. What part?”

“I’m not quite sure. They’ll tell you. But I mean—they know you were out there. That’s why they got on to you. I said you’d go and see them.”

“Who are they?”

There was a pause, and when he spoke his voice was half deflected, as if he was reading from a paper on his desk. He said, “Anglo-Pak Enterprises, they call themselves.” He
pronounced it Pack. “That doesn’t tell us much. I got the impression they were in minerals of some sort, but I’m not sure.”

“What do they want, then?”

“A report. A survey on the spot and then a report. Some sort of opinion survey, I gather. Sounding out local opinion on something they’re interested in. They assume you have the
language and so on. I thought it would be just the thing for you between books. We haven’t actually discussed terms, but I’ve no doubt they’ll pay well. I’ll deal with them
on that, of course. All I want you to do is to go along and see them, and see if it’s the sort of thing you could do, and whether you’d like to.” For a moment neither of us said
anything. Then Toby said, “Jim? What do you think? You’d like it, wouldn’t you?”

I said, “Oh, I’ll go, all right. It’s just— Yes, of course I’d like it. I’m a bit frightened, that’s all. It’s twenty years, you know,
Toby.”

“Yes? Well, they know that, of course. So far as they’re concerned—”

“No, I wasn’t thinking of that. It’s me. I’ve buried it all pretty thoroughly. Of course, I’ve often thought of digging it up again. But I didn’t really think
I ever should, and it frightens me, that’s all. But I expect in fact I’ll get some enjoyment out of it. And you say the money’s right.”

“I told you, nothing’s been said yet. But I assume that. You go and sort out the job with them, and I’ll fix the money. Will you do that?”

“All right. Yes, of course. Sorry, Toby. This must sound all very ungrateful. I should have liked Brazil.”

Toby put on his professional desk-side manner. “I know, Jim,” he said. “But it’s your experience they want, you see. I mean—you don’t know Brazil, do
you?”

“No, no. All right. I’ve never sailed the Amazon, I know. And I suppose I never will, as in the song. But don’t let it worry you. What’s the address?”

He gave me an address in Pump Court and a telephone number. “A man called Carruthers. You phone his secretary for an appointment.”

“Not my old friend Colonel Carruthers of the Waziristan Scouts? Has he got a stiff upper lip?”

Toby hung back a little. Then he said, “I’ve only spoken to him on the phone, but I should say his underlip is stiff as hell. Not, I think, the Waziristan Scouts.”

“Ah,” I said, “one of the Carruthers of Camberwell?”

“Or Coblenz,” said Toby. “Anyway, go and see him and tell me what you make of him.”

“All right. I will. Sorry to be so irritating.”

“That’s all right. There’s always my ten per cent. But you’ll phone at once, won’t you? You’ve got the number?” He repeated it.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ve got it. I’ll ring him.”

“Right. Good-bye, Jim. Let me know.”

“I will. Good-bye, and thank you.” Toby swallowed into the receiver and put it down. He was a good agent, and did not have to pretend with me very much.

The first thing I noticed about Mr. Carruthers was his cuffs, or his right cuff, anyway. Almost the whole cuff showed below the coat sleeve, and it was exquisitely laundered.
So was his hand, which he held out palm downwards, with the fingers closed and the thumb widely separated, smiling silently into my eyes as he did so. He had the face and head of a jolly monk in a
Victorian picture, only there were strands of very dark hair brushed across his tonsure, and I did not think the multitudinous seas would ever, in my mind’s eye, wash that white hand wholly
clean. He said, “It is nice of you to come along, Mr. Gilruth. Did Mr. Cooper tell you what it is we want?”

I had expected him to say “put you in the picture,” just as I expected him to have a reminiscent and superficial knowledge of the country we were there to talk about. I said,
“Not really. I gather it’s a research-and-report job. That’s not primarily my line, you know. I write novels mostly.”

He had waved me to a chair and sat down again himself. He sat back in his chair with the desk between us, looking at me with his head slightly on one side. He was still just smiling. “I
know,” he said. “I have read them. One I liked very much.” He waited to see whether I would ask which, but I only nodded, and he went on, “But you have done reports too. I
mean, since you left India.”

“I write anything I can get paid for,” I said.

“That’s it. And you know the place we’re interested in, and you speak the local language.”

“I used to,” I said, but he waved this aside.

“It will come back,” he said.

“What is the place you’re interested in?”

“It’s northwest of Rawalpindi, the area surrounding, more or less, a place called Pind Fazl Shah. The civil district is Fazilpur.” He pronounced the names with the careful
imitative correctness of the radio commentator, and for the first time it occurred to me that he did not know the country himself, but had been scrupulously briefed.

“Yes,” I said. “I was at Pind Fazl Shah for a time not long before I came home.”

He said, “You were Sub-Divisional Magistrate there in 1945 and 1946.” The statement was matter-of-fact and completely neutral. He was not trying either to impress me with the
completeness of his information or to convict me of evasion. He smiled slightly as he said it, but he had smiled slightly all along.

I nodded. “That would be it,” I said. “What is it you want me to do?”

“We have a development project in hand there. Our people out there will tell you all about it better than I can. My only present concern is to secure your services. Or
someone’s.” He smiled rather more broadly. He was immensely sure of himself and of me. I decided he already knew nearly all there was to know about me, including the color and extent of
my bank balance and the rent I paid for Estelle’s flat. Such information was said to be available now in business circles. I should have loved to turn him down. He said, “There’s
a great deal of industrial development now in West Parkistan. I expect you know that.”

“I’ve heard so. I haven’t been out there since Independence.”

“No. Well, you can understand that in an area like Fazilpur a major industrial development is going to have considerable social repercussions. It is still at present purely
agricultural.”

“And service,” I said. “It’s one of the great recruiting grounds, or was in my day. I expect it still is. Half the men have been in the army at one time or another. The
cultivation is unirrigated and always uncertain. The pay and pensions come in, rain or no rain.” I thought for a moment. “Do the Pakistan Government want their best fighting men drawn
off into industry?”

“They want foreign capital.”

I nodded. “And you want me to examine the social repercussions of what you propose to do before you do it? That’s very considerate of you.”

His eyes widened suddenly without changing the expression of his face. I found it rather unnerving. He spoke with an almost finicky deliberation and preciseness. “I think you will
find,” he said, “that our people out there wish to ascertain local feeling before they commit themselves.”

“They want me to ascertain it for them?”

“I think they want an independent view. An independent view still has its value where local interests are heavily engaged. As of course it always did. You know that, Mr. Gilruth.
Now—” He sat forward suddenly, and his fierce, jolly face came bobbing towards me over the polished top of his desk. He had finished with handling me, and wanted the whole tiresome
business over with. “Now,” he said, “can I take it that you’ll do this for us? It is expected to take you three weeks or a month. We shall of course pay all your expenses
and whatever fee is agreed with your agent on your behalf. Well, Mr. Gilruth?”

He was already half out of his chair, and I as near as nothing said no just to see him sit down again. But I did not really want to say no. The mere trip was a first-class offer, and I had no
doubt that Toby was right in thinking he could take them for a reasonably outrageous fee. I got up myself.

“Yes,” I said, “all right. I confess I find myself still very much in the dark about what I’m supposed to do. But I expect I’ll find out when I get there. Anyway, I
think I’d like to go. You’ll let Toby Cooper know the details? I can go any time, more or less.”

Mr. Carruthers said, “I know that,” but by that time I was past caring. He was not the only one who wanted the interview finished.

I said, “Better get it done before it gets too hot. I don’t know how I’d stand up to June temperatures after all this time.”

“Yes,” he said, “I see,” but I knew his briefing had not extended to June temperatures in Fazilpur and he was no longer interested.

I phoned Toby and told him I had said I was ready to go but had very little idea what they wanted. He said, “Does that matter?”

“I suppose not. It’s odd, though, isn’t it? Why Coblenz, by the way?”

“Why what?”

“Coblenz. Carruthers of Coblenz. Not Camberwell, I agree. And certainly not the Waziristan Scouts.”

“Oh, I know. It was the voice, I suppose. I didn’t see him, remember. Does he look English?”

“I don’t see why not. But mentally stateless. I don’t think he knows anything about Pakistan but what he’s been told. That’s all correct, I don’t doubt. But
once he saw he’d got me, he simply wasn’t further interested.”

Toby said, “Once we’ve got the money, nor am I. I’ll get on to them about that and let you know.” He said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “I can’t think
why you’re making such a thing of it, to be honest.” He sounded mildly exasperated.

“It’s a sore spot,” I said. “I’m touchy about my time out there in half a dozen ways, and instead of talking myself out of it, I’ve tended to bury it. Now
that I’m being thrown back at it suddenly like this, I suppose I panic a bit.”

“Well, for God’s sake, what is there to panic about? If they don’t like what you do for them, they’ll have wasted their money, that’s all. No one’s going to
review it in the Times Literary Supplement.”

“I know that. I don’t think it’s the report I’m worrying about. Come to that, I still don’t know what that’s supposed to be.” Toby said nothing, and I
felt him waiting for me to get off the line. “Anyway,” I said, “thank you for getting the thing. It’s a godsend financially, I don’t mind saying.”

“I didn’t get it, in fact. It just came out of the blue. But I’ll see the money’s right, you can count on that.”

I thanked him and rang off.

Estelle could not see what I was making a fuss about either. She had thrown her hat and her bag on to a chair and was standing in front of the long glass, shaking her hair back
out of its professional formality, when I let myself in. She looked at me out of the glass through the glistening cascade while I told her what had happened. She said, “Good old Toby. I think
it’s marvelous.” She began using her brush. “You won’t be very long away, will you?”

“Three weeks to a month, they said. And I don’t think good old Toby had much to do with it, though God knows I don’t grudge him his cut. These people had decided I was the man
they wanted and simply came after me. And not much credit to me, either. It’s just that I happen to have been where they want the job done. They’re thorough, all right. They know all
about my local qualification. Now I come to think of it, they must have started from the other end. But I don’t doubt Toby will squeeze a bit more out of them than I could have. That’s
what an agent’s for, after all. Same as a tax accountant. It’s always easier to haggle on someone else’s behalf, surely.”

Estelle stopped brushing and turned and looked at me direct. Her flower-like face could look very uncompromising. She said, “You’re an ungrateful bastard sometimes, aren’t you,
darling?”

“I don’t really think it’s a question of gratitude or ingratitude. I wouldn’t be without Toby for all the tea in China, and I don’t say he doesn’t do his
professional best for me. But he is a professional, after all. As, indeed, I am myself.”

She turned and went on with her brushing, only now she looked at herself in the glass, not me. “I suppose so,” she said. She said it very lightly, as though she had no further
interest in the subject, but I knew that in fact she was merely dismissing it from the conversation. It was a trick she had that was part of her disconcerting elusiveness. “Anyway,” she
said, “you’ll enjoy it, won’t you?”

“I suppose so. It’s a thing I’ve often thought of, of course. To go back for a strictly limited time and with a strictly limited responsibility. It might well lay a ghost or
two, at least.”

She got up, put her brush down and gave herself a long hard look in the glass. Beauty was her business, and she, too, was every inch a professional. “You have too many ghosts,” she
said. “It’s people you’re short on. Are we going out, do you think? I don’t want to be late.”

We went out, but to a quiet place, and did not talk much. Estelle had something on her mind she did not want to talk about, and I was still disturbed about my projected return to Fazilpur. I had
been very young, to my present way of thinking, when I was at Pind Fazl Shah. It was perhaps the only job in my short, not very happy service I had really given my heart to. I had made so many
mistakes and so many friends there, and I had been such a much more innocent and incompetent person than I was now. But that was twenty years ago, and I did not know how I should take the thing up
again, or which of my successive selves I should, if I went back there, find myself to be. Also, I did not doubt that Pind Fazl Shah, too, had changed, even if it was, as Mr. Carruthers had said,
still purely agricultural. If we had both changed almost out of recognition, it could all be fairly easy. But in my experience the past is never so wholly lost, even under the most systematic
burying, that you can count on it not to get back at you if the correct stimulus is applied. Few things are more painful than a recrudescence of innocence.

I had begun to worry, too, about the language. I had prided myself on my use of the local Punjabi when I was out there, but I knew that my proficiency had been measured only against the
breathtaking linguistic incompetence of the average English official in India. It had been a matter of surprise and compliment then to hear an Englishman talk intelligible Punjabi at all. Now that
the Englishman was, as I assumed he was, merely one foreigner among others, I did not see why he should be indulged any more than an Englishman speaking inadequate French in France. And I did not
know how my Punjabi, even fully revived, would measure up to this standard.

I went into the flat with Estelle to pick up my things, but did not stay. She said, “I’m tired, Jim” as soon as we got inside. This was a standardized formula of dismissal, but
I said, “As a matter of fact, I’m tired too.” She came up and looked at me with more directness and interest than she had the whole eve. . .