'So what was his real name then?'

'I wish I knew,' said Murugan. 'But I don't. Farley didn't mention it in his letter. He left Calcutta the same day he posted the letter. He was seen boarding a train at Sealdah Station and a young man who fits the assistant's description was carrying his luggage. They were also seen getting off the train together later, at a deserted little station. Farley was never seen again. A few months later, in May 1895, "Lutchman" walked into Ronald Ross's lab in Secunderabad.'

'That could just be a coincidence,' said Urmila.

'Could be,' said Murugan. 'But there's another coincidence left to account for.'

'Yes?'

'It's just this,' said Murugan. 'I've established from a different source that Lutchman's name wasn't a real name either.'

'What was it?' said Urmila. 'Laakhan.' said Murugan.

Urmila's hands flew to her mouth. 'Tell me,' she said. 'Quick: what was the name of the station where Farley and the assistant were last seen?'

'Renupur,' said Murugan.

She stared at him soundlessly.

Murugan took hold of her hand and shook it. 'Hey, wake up,' he said. 'What's up?'

'It's just that I think I may be able to fill in a part of the picture,' Urmila said.

'How come?'

'Last night I went home with Sonali-di and she told me something: a story she'd heard from her mother, about something that happened to Phulboni many years ago.'

Chapter 38

IN 1933, SOON AFTER he got his first and only job, Phulboni was sent on a trip to the remote provincial town of Renupur.

Phulboni was working for a well-known British firm, Palmer Brothers, which made soaps and oils and other household goods. The company was famous for its extensive distribution network, which reached into the smallest towns and villages. Every new recruit to the company had to spend a couple of years travelling within a region, visiting village shops, getting to know the local merchants, sitting in tea-stalls, visiting fairs and fairgrounds.

Being new to the job, Phulboni had never heard of Renupur. Upon making enquiries he was pleasantly surprised to discover that, tiny though it was, the town boasted a railway station. A train that connected Calcutta to the cotton market of Barich passed through it every other day.

As the crow flies, Renupur was no more than three hundred miles from Calcutta but the journey was a slow and rather tedious one, meandering as it did through Darbhanga and a wide swath of the great Maithil plain. But far from being dismayed at the thought of spending two days on a train, Phulboni was delighted: he loved everything to do with the railways – stations, engines, Bradshaws, the acrid creosote smell of teakwood sleepers. There was nothing he liked better than to daydream by an open window with the wind in his face. He was particularly enthusiastic on this occasion because he had been told that the forests near Renupur offered good hunting. Typically, he had spent his first month's salary on a new.303 rifle. Now he was looking forward to the prospect of putting the gun to use.

It was mid-July. The monsoons had set in and the whole of eastern India was awash in rain. Several of the famously restless rivers of the region had burst their banks and swept across the broad, flat plains. Those waters, so full of menace to those they nourished, presented an entirely different aspect to a casual spectator in a train, watching from the safety of a tall embankment. The still waters, lying in great silver sheets under the lowering monsoon skies, presented an enchanting, bewitching spectacle. Phulboni, raised amidst the hills and forests of Orissa, had never seen anything like this before: this majestic, endless plain mirroring the turbulent heavens.

Before leaving Darbhanga Phulboni had asked the guard on the train to let him know before they arrived in Renupur. The journey took eight hours, but to the young writer it seemed to pass in a matter of minutes. Long before he had slaked his appetite for the landscape, the guard appeared to tell him that they were almost at Renupur.

Phulboni was astonished: looking out of the window all he could see were flooded fields, the still waters broken only by the careful geometry of bunds and embankments. An occasional distant curl of wood smoke, spiralling out of a thicket of trees, suggested a village or a hamlet but he could see no sign whatever of habitation on a scale that might earn entitlement to a railway station.

On expressing his surprise to the guard Phulboni learnt, to his alarm, that the town (or rather village) of Renupur was some three miles distant from the station that bore its name. Renupur was by no means large or important enough to merit a deviation in the tracks that linked Darbhanga to Barich. Those of Renupur's villagers who wished to avail themselves of this facility were expected instead to make the journey to the station in a bullock cart. Indeed, the station of Renupur owed its existence more to the demands of engineering than to the requirements of the local population. Railway regulations decreed that single-track lines such as this were required to have sidings at regular intervals, so that oncoming trains could pass each other in safety. It was thus that Renupur came to boast of a station: it was really little more than a signboard and a platform attached to a siding.

It was all just red tape and regulations of course, the guard said. There was no real need for a siding on this line. This was the only train that ever used this length of track. It went chugging along, stopping wherever the slightest pretext offered itself, until it came to the end of the line. And then it simply turned around and headed back. It never encountered other trains until it reached Darbhanga.

The guard was an odd-looking man. He had a grotesquely twisted face: his lower jaw was so much out of alignment with the upper that his mouth was perpetually open in a crooked, leering grimace. Now he began to laugh, in his dry, rustling voice. Leaning out of the window he pointed to a length of track that ran alongside the main line for a couple of hundred yards before rejoining it. The tracks were so rusted and overgrown as to be barely visible.

'And there you see the Renupur siding,' he said, thrusting his face close to Phulboni's and showering him with blood-red pan-spittle. 'As you can tell, it's not used. They say it's only ever been used once, and that was many, many years ago.'

Phulboni paid no attention: he was too busy wiping the pan-stains off his face.

The train ground to a halt and the guard flung a door open and scurried down carrying Phulboni's gun-bag and portmanteau. Before Phulboni could tip him, he was back on the train waving his green flag.

'Wait a minute,' Phulboni cried, taken aback.

With a blast of its whistle the train pulled slowly away.

Phulboni looked around him and saw, to his considerable surprise, that he was the only person who had disembarked at Renupur. He cast a last, lingering glance at the train and saw the guard watching him from a window, his mouth hanging maniacally open. Then the train gave another blast of its whistle and the strange twisted face vanished into a cloud of smoke.

Phulboni shrugged and bent down to pick up his luggage. He was impatient to be on his way to the village and instinctively he held up a hand, to summon a coolie. It was not till then that he noticed that there were no coolies anywhere in sight.

The station was the smallest Phulboni had ever seen, smaller even than those tiny village stations that sometimes loom unexpectedly into view as one drowses in a speeding train, only to disappear again, just as quickly. For even the smallest stations usually have at least a platform, and often a few wooden benches too. But the platform at Renupur was a length of beaten earth, its surface covered in weeds and a few cracked paving stones. Two creaking signboards hung beside the track, separated by a hundred yards, each bearing the barely legible legend: 'Renupur'. Halfway between them, serving as a signal-room-cum-station-house, was a ramshackle tin-roofed brick structure, painted the usual railway red. There were no houses or huts anywhere in sight, no villagers, no railway guards, no staring rustics, no urchins, no food-vendors, no beggars, no sleeping travellers, not even the inevitable barking dog.