MONEY TREE Read online

  Money Tree

  Gordon Ferris

  author of the acclaimed

  Douglas Brodie Quartet.

  Also by Gordon Ferris

  DANNY MCRAE SERIES

  TRUTH DARE KILL

  THE UNQUIET HEART

  DOUGLAS BRODIE: THE GLASGOW QUARTET

  THE HANGING SHED

  BITTER WATER

  PILGRIM SOUL

  GALLOWGLASS

  MONEY TREE

  GORDON FERRIS

  Merula Books

  Published in ebook and paperback in Great Britain in 2014 by Merula an imprint of Merula Books Limited.

  Copyright © Gordon Ferris, 2014

  The moral right of Gordon Ferris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record is available from the British Library.

  Paperback ISBN: 978 0 9929281 1 7

  E-book ISBN: 978 0 9929281 0 0

  Merula Books Limited

  Acre House

  11/15 William Road

  London NW1 3ER

  www.gordonferris.com

  For Sarah

  “But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

  I have spread my dreams under your feet;

  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

  W B Yeats – The Cloths of Heaven

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty one

  Twenty two

  Twenty three

  Twenty four

  Twenty five

  Twenty six

  Twenty seven

  Twenty eight

  Twenty nine

  Thirty

  Thirty one

  Thirty two

  Thirty three

  Thirty four

  Thirty five

  Thirty six

  Thirty seven

  Thirty eight

  Thirty nine

  Forty

  Forty one

  Forty two

  Forty three

  Forty four

  Forty five

  Forty six

  Forty seven

  Forty eight

  Forty nine

  Fifty

  Fifty one

  Fifty two

  Fifty three

  Fifty four

  Fifty five

  Fifty six

  Fifty seven

  Fifty eight

  Fifty nine

  Sixty

  Sixty one

  Acknowledgements

  Appendix 1 – The Real People’s Bank

  Appendix 2 – The Neem Tree – the village pharmacy

  Douglas Brodie 1 : THE HANGING SHED

  Douglas Brodie 2 : BITTER WATER

  Douglas Brodie 3 : PILGRIM SOUL

  Douglas Brodie 4 : GALLOWGLASS

  Danny McRae 1 : TRUTH DARE KILL

  Danny McRae 2 : THE UNQUIET HEART

  ONE

  The hard afternoon light forced the three travellers to pull down the wooden blinds and sit in shadow, peering at the passing world through thin slats. The baking heat, and the cradle rhythms of the wooden carriage stilled the women’s anxieties. They pushed the blinds back up as night fell, but their sense of insulation was sustained by the darkness outside.

  So there was no warning, no gentle transition as the train erupted into harsh light and noise. The engine shuddered and squealed to a stop at the platform. An angry mob was waiting for them, ready to drag them from the safety of their carriage. A torrent of noise poured through the glassless window as people fought to be heard in the rising excitement of arrival and departure.

  Panic seized Anila’s throat. She couldn’t swallow. How had she let the madness bring her here, so far from home? It was one thing to walk out on a husband. It was another to abandon the security of her tiny village and plunge into this pitiless labyrinth on an implausible quest. Why wasn’t she content with her small and bounded life? Why did she go looking for fights? She looked at her two travel companions sitting opposite. Eyes wide and blinking, lips parted. Chests fluttering as though they were about to run away. But it was too late for that. The trance was broken.

  A loudspeaker snarled at them in rapid English, then Hindi. Anila caught the words New Delhi. City of thieves and rapists. It broke the paralysis. She had a responsibility to her friends. It had been her wild idea that had brought them here. She had better follow it through. At least get them off the train. She forced a smile on her broad face and tried to lift her perpetually sad eyes.

  ‘We have done it. We are here. It will be good to move.’

  She stood up stiffly and massaged her back in a pantomime to show how good it was. All around, passengers who’d shared their hard ride were stirring and bustling to get off. Pretty Leena looked up at her big friend, eyes like a terrified child’s. She could never hide her emotions for long.

  ‘Anila? I am so scared,’ she whispered. ‘There are so many people out there. We have heard so much about what they do to women here. Are you sure you know where we are going? And where we will sleep?’

  Anila leaned closer, protectively. She touched her shoulder, felt her tremble.

  ‘They are only people. Once we are out of the station it will be much easier, you will see. And I have the map.’

  She dug into the cotton shoulder bag she’d lifted off the wooden rack and pulled out the folded sheet.

  ‘Remember, Rajnish the teacher drew it. I have studied it and studied it. Rajnish worked in Delhi for a whole summer, so he knows all about it. I know exactly where to go.’

  This with a thousand times more confidence than she felt. Their train from Bhopal in the far south had broken down and they had lost over half a day. She hadn’t bargained with finding her way in the dark. As she hoped, her other companion, Divya, found her courage. She unfroze and took Leena’s hand.

  ‘Come on, Leena. We have come this far, we might as well get out and take a look.’

  She stood up and pulled Leena to her feet. The three women mustered their empty plastic water bottles, their fragments of now stale bread, and the cotton shawls they’d been sitting on, and stuffed them into their shoulder bags. At the train door, Anila helped a young woman manoeuvre her old mother down the high steps. The old woman smiled and gripped her arm briefly in gratitude.

  Then the three friends gathered themselves and plunged into the dense crowd that filled the platform. They clung desperately to each other, Anila their tall anchor in this human storm. The map was useless here, and Anila had no sense of the direction to take. But others seemed to. As the disembarking passengers surged forward, the three women cast themselves into the current.

  They were swept along by the crowd as it poured off the platform, down
onto the oily sleepers and then over the tracks. They clambered up the other side, grabbing each other’s hands, pulling and pushing in turn. The human tide caught them up again, and crushed them through a narrow exit like a torrent between two rocks. They were spewed onto a concourse, stumbling over islands of squatting and lying people that the more knowledgeable crowd negotiated automatically.

  They edged round touts, and peddlers of hot food. Their mouths watered at the sight and smells of the hot samosas and vegetable bhajis. But they could not afford such luxuries. Not yet. There seemed to be men everywhere, singly or in groups, prowling, assessing, measuring their chances. Eve-teasers, surely.

  The three women pressed forward and broke clear and could breathe again. But walking a further few paces, they stumbled out of the cordon of light thrown round the station. In the contrast, it was as dark as a cave.

  Anila told herself that she was used to darkness. Sometimes in the village, when the night sky clouded over, it would be like staring into charcoal. And there would be animals to watch out for; wild dogs or a wounded tiger. But in the village she could cling to familiar smells and sounds. Here she had no bearings. Her sight had gone and the noises and the smells were different and threatening, for they were made by men. A line of silent taxis blocked their way. Their keepers watched them with hungry eyes, weighing them as customers, targets. Men’s soft voices called to them. Was this how the assaults on women started?

  The crowd was thinning and dispersing, and abruptly Anila had no idea where to go next. Rudderless and reckless, she cast about. She recognised the old woman she’d helped. She was limping past a few yards away, supported by her daughter. Anila called out.

  ‘Mother? Mother we are strangers here. Is this the right way to the Kinari Bazaar? It is near the Chandni Chowk.’

  The two women stopped and the old one came close and peered at her.

  ‘Daughter, you are a long way from your fields. What are you doing in this terrible place?’

  ‘We have business here.’

  Anila’s stomach jolted. The business she spoke of was nothing less than personal survival. She went on.

  ‘I have a cousin who lives near the Kinari Bazaar. We will stay with her this night.’

  She wouldn’t. There was no cousin. She didn’t want to confess this to the old woman, from pride and fear of ridicule. She glanced significantly at her companions to bind them to her lie. Their plan had been to arrive in the afternoon and scout out a park to sleep in or a temple wall to lie beside. But the train delay had ruined everything. Now all they hoped was to get somewhere near to their destination and shelter in a doorway. It was high summer so the night would stay hot. The old woman reached out and took a fresh grip of Anila’s arm.

  ‘Daughter, tell me that your business is not with men. It is a terrible life. You must not go down this path.’

  Leena and Divya glanced at each other, then Anila, their eyes wide. Anila put her own hand over the old woman’s and leaned close so the old woman could see her smile and judge her eyes.

  ‘It is not with men. That is not what we are here for, mother. We are coming to see a bank.’

  ‘A bank! That is as bad as going with men!’

  Then her face broke and she chuckled.

  ‘Walk with us and we will show you the way. You are in luck. My own daughter’s home lies close to your bazaar.’

  Her daughter smiled in agreement. It was just over a mile, but at the old woman’s speed and having to cross two great roads with hurtling traffic, it took them over an hour. By the time they reached the street of Anila’s mythical cousin the old woman had milked them dry of their story. She herself had been born in Madya Pradesh, near Jabalpur, and had recognised their accents.

  They stopped to say their farewells. The three travellers stood uncertainly and unconvincingly as the old woman hobbled off on her daughter’s arm. Within a few steps the old woman stopped and turned back. She curled her finger. Anila stepped towards her. Once more she took Anila’s arm and peered up at her.

  ‘Perhaps your cousin has left the city? Perhaps she has gone away and not told you?’

  Anila’s eyes smarted with the discovery. She lowered her gaze.

  ‘Perhaps you are right, mother.’

  ‘Then you had better come with me.’

  Without waiting for a reply she turned and walked on, leaning hard on her daughter. The three women looked at each other briefly and followed. They were shown into the tiny front room and given hard mats to cover the concrete floor. They washed as best they could and tumbled like stones into troubled sleep.

  TWO

  The email hit the sidebar of his screen. Its first words blinked at him, goading him:

  Are you lying or just muck-raking? The People’s Bank…

  Dammit, the Tribune’s firewalls were supposed to protect him from whingers. Ted Saddler hit the delete key without reading further. He returned to his draft column about the infiltration of Japanese banks by gangsters, the Yakuza. He was struggling to give it urgency; in Japanese corporate life it was old news. As he nibbled at his thumbnail a second email flashed on screen. Same opening, same mention of the shady Indian bank that was spreading its tentacles worldwide. He gazed at the email, then killed it and waited. Sure enough, it popped back up. Spam or persistence?

  His cell phone buzzed and shuffled on his desk, like a flat beetle on its back. Even as he flicked the screen, it buzzed again, and again. Three texts, all from a withheld number but each starting with ‘Are you lying…’

  This wasn’t communication, it was bombardment. Ted closed his cell without opening any of them. He studied the email again. He could simply leave it till morning. Have the IT security boys check for a virus. He was getting good at putting things off. Like letters from Mary’s lawyer. On the other hand his boss had become unusually interested in these rip-off merchants. Was this some new test? Ted sucked in air and clicked. The full challenge was spelled out:

  Are you lying or just muck-raking? The People’s Bank deserves better. I can’t believe the Tribune (of all papers!) is putting its reputation on the line like this. Not to mention your own! Do you want to hear what’s really going on or are you only listening to one side?

  - Diogenes-

  Ted pursed his lips. Diogenes - the ancient Greek who went out in the midday sun with a lamp looking for an honest man. Who does this guy think he is? What does that make me?! In his 20 years in newspapers Ted had seen every variation on the crank letter, email and voice mail. More conspiracy theories than cold beers. He point blank refused to blog or tweet about his column because of the loonies it encouraged. He hadn’t checked Facebook in months; just personal drivel and photos of smug couples claiming to have a good time. Fakes and flakes.

  He wasn’t about to let the flicker of interest this one raised turn into a flame. But it rankled strongly that he might have been suckered, or worse, that he was biased; he was still a pro, right? This was the third article he’d written about People’s Bank and each time his gut indignation had grown.

  He clicked on the front page of the business section again and re-read his latest copy, entitled: ‘Candy from a baby; money from the poor?’ A snappy and accurate description of a bank that specialised in milking the destitute. After eight years of ripping off its customers, Ramesh Banerjee, the Chief Executive of the self styled ‘bank to the poor’ was finally being put on trial for corruption. The Indian government claimed he’d personally offered hush money to investigating authorities. Wasn’t that how they did business over there?

  Maybe the bit about ‘an exclusive interview’ was stretching a point. It was little more than email gossip from someone he knew on the Asia desk who’d bumped into a junior minister over cocktails. He’d found the minister desperate to inflate his self-importance by being expansive about events well outside his portfolio. Ted curbed his rising doubts and flicked to the next paragraph.

  His quote from Burton Stacks, a very senior and respected financial analyst
at Global American bank, hit the mark: “Tapping the underclass used to be the easy pickings of the money lender or shark. People’s Bank seems to have found a lucrative new business, making money out of the needy.”

  The World Bank would only speak off-record but they hinted at their concerns and allowed Ted to raise questions about how any third world outfit could consistently turn down a hand-out from the world’s central bankers. Worried about having to open the books?

  There was a video clip of one of the Tribune’s glamour girls spouting a cut-down version of his article for lazy net-browsers. Ted couldn’t listen. He knew her emphasis would be on all the wrong words, as if it were a foreign language. He switched to the clip with Chief Executive Ramesh Banerjee, looking and sounding more like Gandhi than a banker. There was sweat on his temple and running down the sides of his face. Ted knew how hot those camera lights got. Or maybe it was the prospect of twenty years in an Indian prison modelled on the Black Hole. The eyes were big and defenceless behind the glasses and seemed to be staring directly at Ted, daring him, as though he knew he was watching. As though he knew that Ted had substituted safe quotes and an old journalist’s nose, for awkward and time-consuming investigation.

  Ted clicked him off. They were always like that. All innocence until the evidence proved they were sleeping with the other man’s wife, or they’d bought the election, or they’d duped their followers with guarantees of a hereafter for a hundred bucks down and lifetime instalments. That’s how it was. Dirty. He wished he could be wrong. It’s why he’d started in this business.

  He looked north from his eyrie in the brightly lit newsroom high above Pearl Street. The Brooklyn Bridge was solid with red tail lights. A line of commuters anxious to get home to lit rooms and the hallway kiss and the day’s gossip. Such domestic bliss had long since evaporated for him and Mary. But sometimes he missed the mess of cotton buds on the sink. The tissues smudged with make-up. The dent in the mattress and the smell of her pillow. Just knowing another heartbeat shared the echoing rooms. The first few nights after she’d gone, he’d slept on her side. Well, not slept so much as lay there, trying to get her perspective, to see what it had been like for her. He wondered if she was happy now, wondered what he was like. Now he wondered how long he had left there; it wasn’t much of an apartment, but her lawyers were after a slice.