Free A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) by Paul Scott Page B

Karim Muzzafir Khan understood English. He drew in a deep breath and glanced round, awaiting the MPS who, put off their stroke by the abruptness with which the interview had ended, made a somewhat patchy job of coming forward, saluting and leading the prisoner out.
    When the door shut, the officer picked the cigarette out of the artificial hand and sat smoking and making notes on the file. The episode, to Perron, seemed pointless. His own officer obviously thought the same because he pushed away the file he’d pretended to work on, leant forward, rested his forehead on his right hand and watched the other man’s note-taking; clearly inviting comment.
    At last the Punjab officer spoke.
    ‘I wonder whether your sergeant would ask the corporal next door to get hold of my driver and tell him I’ll be ready in about five minutes? The corporal will know where to find him.’
    ‘Oh, I’ll do that myself. I need to take a leak.’
    Perron’s officer got up and went into the other room. He left the door ajar. Perron collected the notebook and folder andtook them back to the other table. The Punjab officer stubbed the cigarette and began to repack his briefcase.
    ‘Were you able to follow every word?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘What did you make of him?’
    ‘He looked fairly harmless, sir.’
    The officer closed the briefcase. He leant back and looked at Perron. ‘His name has cropped up several times in depositions made in Germany in connection with the coercion of sepoy prisoners-of-war who were unwilling to join the Frei Hind force. In fact it has been linked with that of an Indian lieutenant suspected of causing the death of a sepoy in Königsberg.’ A pause. ‘But I grant you the harmless look, and, of course, he may be innocent of anything like that because a lot of these fellows are going to be only too ready to accuse each other to save their own skins.’
    He put his cap on.
    ‘Incidentally, your officer was singing your praises before you arrived. I gather you have a degree in history and are particularly interested in the history of this country. Have you studied Oriental languages too? I mean, systematically?’
    ‘Not awfully systematically, sir. Naturally I became interested in Urdu and learned some during vacations and had some practice in conversation with a fellow-student during term.’
    ‘An Indian fellow-student, at university?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘If you followed every word you’ve become very proficient. Have you taken Higher Standard out here?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘It’s not much use, of course, except in the army. It’s nice to be able to speak it. In my old job I generally had to use a mixture of bazaar Hindi and the local dialect of whatever district I happened to be in.’
    ‘What job was that, sir?’
    ‘The Indian Police.’
    Perron was surprised. Neither the ICS nor the police had been in the least co-operative over pleas from their officers to join the armed forces. Recruiting to these services had lapsed at the beginning of the war and the men had been neededwhere they were, administering the law, collecting the revenues, keeping order, preserving the civil peace. Perron judged the officer to be in his middle thirties. At that age he would normally have held a senior post in the police, which would have made a wartime transfer to the army even more difficult to arrange.
    The officer got up. He tucked the briefcase under the left arm which he then adjusted until it was clamped to his waist. The arm must have been amputated above the elbow. He took the spare glove and swagger cane in his right hand.
    ‘By the way, sergeant. I gather from your officer that you were at school at Chillingborough. When, exactly?’
    Perron told him and after a moment added, ‘Were you there as well, sir?’
    The officer paused before replying. ‘Hardly. I had quite other grounds for asking. Presumably you would know an Indian boy there, who called himself Harry Coomer. Actually Hari Kumar.’
    ‘Harry