He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: 'Anyone in?' His voice was no match for the deafening roar of the nearby generator. He looked around, following the uneasy shadows that skimmed over the cavernous darkness of the hallway. Then his ears picked up a sound, a dull pounding, like a drum. It seemed to be somewhere within the house, but it was hard to be sure because of the generator and the blaring loudspeakers.

He was about to go further into the hallway when a second beam of light appeared in the doorway. He heard an angry voice shouting: 'Who is that? Kaun hai? What are you doing here?'

He spun around and his flashlight fell on a man in a Nepali cap, running towards him, gesturing angrily with a chowkidar's nightstick.

Murugan gave him a two-fingered salute, affecting a cockiness he did not feel. 'Just looking around,' he said.

The Nepali watchman shook his stick under Murugan's nose, turned him around and began to push him down the steps of the portico.

'Just taking a look,' Murugan said mildly. 'I didn't touch a thing.'

The watchman launched into a long tirade; Murugan could only catch snatches of it: he was telling him that no one was allowed in, there was construction going on inside.

Halfway down the driveway, the watchman reached up and pointed angrily at a large tin signboard. It was nailed into the trunk of a tree, beside the driveway. Murugan was surprised that he had missed it on his way in. It said: Site for the Robinson Hotel : private property; no trespassing; pro prietor and developer Romen Haldar.

Murugan shook his arm free and went over to take a closer look. The watchman followed close behind, his voice growing louder.

Murugan turned on him suddenly. 'Who's that?' he said. 'Who is Romen Haldar?'

The watchman paid no attention to his question. He took hold of his elbow, jerked him sideways and began pushing him towards the gate. Murugan caught a glimpse of the hilt of a sheathed kukri, sticking out of the top of his trousers.

As the watchman pulled the gate open, Murugan turned to take a last look, shining the beam of his flashlight into the debris-strewn garden. It fell upon a clothes line, strung between the trunks of two palms. Hanging amongst the dhotis, underwear and saris was a T-shirt with a print of palm trees and a beach.

Then the watchman gave him a shove and slammed the gates shut.

Chapter 13

ANTAR POURED Murugan another cup of the restaurant's hot green tea. 'Do you have any theories about who Lutchman really was?'

'I've got some leads,' said Murugan. 'Too many, maybe. As I see it, he was all over the map, changing names, switching identities. My suspicion is that he was the pointman for whoever was the real brain behind the scheme.'

'I see,' said Antar. 'But do you know anything at all about him apart from what Ross had to say?'

'As a matter of fact I do,' said Murugan. 'There's a reference to him in a diary.'

'Whose diary?' said Antar.

'It's like this,' said Murugan. 'There was this one guy we know about who once spent a weekend in the house that Ron lived in, in Secunderabad. Lutchman was part of the household too: in fact he was almost like family for Ron.'

'Go on.'

'Remember,' said Murugan, 'that by the time Ron starts working on malaria he's a happily married man with a couple of kids. But he's also an army officer, working under military conditions of service. That means that while he's frying in the Secunderabad heat, his wife and kids are living up in the hills, with a parallel army of British military wives.

'Ron gives his extra-scientific life in Secunderabad exactly two sentences in his Memoirs: "On the 23rd [of April 1895] I left for Secunderabad… and I lived there in a bungalow en garcon, with Captain Thomas, the Adjutant, and Lieut. Hole, both first-rate fellows. We had our mess, and there was the Secunderabad Club, where we played golf and tennis; but I kept no ponies, as I expected to be put upon special malaria work at any time."

'You don't have to break a sweat trying to imagine Ron's set-up in Secunderabad: it's straight out of one of those BBC rent-a-serials: sprawling colonial bungalow; whitewashed walls, mile-high ceilings, cool, dark interiors, elephants parked in the driveway, turbaned servants salaaming the sahibs, doped-out punkahwallahs stirring the air with palm-leaf fans, polo ponies, tennis rackets, cummerbunds, the whole fucking paratha.

'He calls it a bungalow, but don't let him fool you: this place has a couple of dozen rooms, and half an acre of garden. Then there are the servants' quarters, way out back, where you can hardly see them: a long, low line of rooms. The rooms are pretty small, but some of them have six or seven people living inside and some have whole families in residence. This is where Lutchman moves in, exactly a month after Ron arrives in Secunderabad. But Lutchman's quite high up in the pecking order: he's been personally selected by the big doctor sahib. He gets a room to himself. He moves in all his stuff and gets nicely settled in.

'To Ron this bungalow-shit is pretty routine; he hardly notices it: ho hum another day. If he wasn't living like this out here in Secunderabad he would be doing the same somewhere else. Around the world there are thousands of British army officers who are living exactly this way – in South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Kenya, you name it. Most of them are dickheads who'd believe you if you told them that Plasmodium was Julius Caesar's middle name. It just so happens that in this particular bungalow in Secunderabad there's this one guy who's doing world-class science, and who's so caught up in what he's doing he hardly notices whether there's anything happening around him and there is, there's a lot happening around him, only the stupid son-of-a-bitch is such a fucking genius he doesn't know.

'And then one day this other guy arrives to spend the weekend. His name is J. W. D. Grigson; he's just out of Cambridge and he's joined an outfit called the Linguistic Survey of India. Twenty years down the road he's going to write a book called A Comparative Survey of the Phonetic Structures of the Languages and Dialects of Eastern India . It won't be a best-seller but in its subject its going to become the functional equivalent of Consumer Guide. This Grigson's quite a character: he's going to die in the forties, in northern Burma, trying to settle a tribal dispute.

'And wherever he goes Grigson takes notes. Boy, does he take notes: he keeps a diary, he keeps a journal. When Ypsilanti College bought his collected papers in 1990 they had to hire an eight-axle truck to ship the stuff out. There's nothing he doesn't make a note of: and that means nothing. For he's not just into languages: he's also seriously into anatomy. He'll hit upon anything that moves: if it can lift a leg he wants to get under it. So Grigson arrives to spend a few days at the bungalow that Ron's living in for the duration. It turns out he went to grade school with one of Ron's room-mates, Lieutenant Hole. They can't stand the sight of each other but their mamas have told them to be neighbourly. So when the lieutenant hears that Grigson's blowing into town, he asks him if he needs a place to stay; thinks he'll earn a few cheap brownie points. Grigson says, sure, what have I got to lose? He moves into the guest bedroom for a couple of nights.