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- Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
When elderly Professor Mudgood, a well-known rationalist and fervent critic of right-wing forces in India, is found dead in his home in Bangalore by his daughter, Assistant Commissioner of Police Borei Gowda is quite certain that this is a homicide. Although all evidence points to the murder being politically motivated, the more Gowda delves into the case, the more convinced he is that it isn't an assassination. As he and his team launch a parallel investigation, they stumble upon a secret and murky world where there are no rules or mercy. When Gowda's hand is forced, he takes a calculated risk and infiltrates the sinister domain to bring the truth out into the open… Will he succeed? And at what price?
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3
HOT STAGE
Anita Nair
A BOREI GOWDA NOVEL
5
With gratitude and love for Jayanth Kodkani—friend for almost three decades and first reader of all my writing, and for telling me all those years ago, ‘Isn’t it time you thought of getting your work published?’
6
7
‘I may have described it as, “Just sit quietly and look innocent.”’
Michael Minerva, defence attorney, Chi Omega Trial
Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes
‘I am drunk, Inspector, to-day keep your hand off me.
Inspect me on the day you catch me sober.’
Wafā’I Ahmad Haji, Baburnama8
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1
27 NOVEMBER 2012, 3 P.M.
A grimy nylon string dangled from a hook in the ceiling that was once the colour of ivory but was now an indeterminate brown. The man standing inside the bar-counter cage grabbed a piece of newspaper from the bunch of squares shoved onto a nail on the wall.
The punter tossed his first cutting of Old Admiral brandy down his throat as he watched the bar attendant hold aloft a boiled egg on a piece of paper and use the string to slice the egg so that it burst into bloom. He marvelled, as he always did, at the artistry. The egg was no longer an egg but a frangipani flower with fat white petals and a yellow heart. He watched the man sprinkle onto it a mixture of pepper and salt from a greasy blue plastic bottle.
Gulping his second cutting, the punter took the paper plate heaped with the sliced egg. He ate it slowly, relishing each bite. The egg-flower followed the Old Admiral into a happy place inside him.
He gestured for a refill. This time a 90 ml, he indicated with his thumb and forefinger. The brandy sloshed against the glass as he walked to the island of tables at the centre of the bar. He 10plonked himself down in a chair. He had had a good day and had decided to treat himself to an afternoon of pleasure. He looked up, still flushed with a sense of well-being, at the man seated opposite him.
‘Namaskara,’ the punter said, jumping to his feet and joining his palms together to indicate his total subservience. He gave the man a nervous smile as he took his glass and himself to one of the counters that ran alongside the wall of the dark, dingy bar.
He stared at the brandy in his glass and told himself that he was lucky to have got away without having his nose broken or his teeth on the floor. No one sat at Oil Mill Jaggi’s table. Not unless he invited you to.
There was a time when Oil Mill Road was just a road. No one knew it by name. People coming in from the city took it to get to the newly built Jal Vayu Vihar, an apartment complex for naval and air force officers. The army, not to be left out, had set up Sena Vihar across the road, soon turning Kammnahalli into this bustling area with people from different parts of India and foreign countries. It was difficult to walk through this stretch without running into Arabs, Africans, Koreans and God knows who else, the punter thought. Not that it bothered him one bit. He liked crowded places.
But Oil Mill Road was still his territory. He knew most of the shop owners by name and could even squeeze them for a ‘temporary loan; return guaranteed’. The punter felt like he belonged there. Usually. But not this afternoon. The presence of Oil Mill Jaggi had unnerved him and made it seem as if he was trespassing in an area he should have steered clear of.
The curtains parted and a man walked in. Even though it was three in the afternoon and the sharp light of the November sun blazed in the street outside, the punter felt a chill down his spine. He recognized the man by face. He wasn’t a regular at this bar or at any other. But the punter knew him; knew of him. He was called Military. He didn’t speak much but you knew when Military was 11in a good mood. For he would sponsor a drink for anyone who caught his eye. You also knew when Military was in a bad mood. The punter had seen him smash an argumentative drunk’s face into the wall and drag it against the surface, all without a bead of sweat popping up on his brow.
Military walked to Oil Mill Jaggi’s table and sat across from him. He gestured to the man in the cage.
‘Jaggi,’ Military said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Oil Mill Jaggi shrugged. ‘Do I need to state the obvious?’
‘Don’t forget… it’s a big day—the day after tomorrow. This isn’t when you drink yourself into a state where you don’t know your elbow from your knee.’
Oil Mill Jaggi narrowed his eyes, and then, as if he had changed his mind, ignored the presence of the glass with some alcohol in it and said blithely, ‘Chill, Military. I haven’t been drinking. This is where I come to think.’
The man frowned. ‘My boss won’t like it.’
‘Your boss and I go back a long way. Long before you started calling him boss.’ Oil Mill Jaggi yawned loudly and stretched. ‘Relax and have a drink, Military. Why are you getting so worked up? Or is it that you don’t trust me anymore?’
‘It’s big stakes, Jaggi. I can’t relax. I have a lot riding on this,’ the man said, pulling out a chair.
‘You will be a rich man and so will I,’ Oil Mill Jaggi said and pushed the plate of mudde and mutton curry from the next-door Naidu restaurant towards him. ‘Or we will be fucked. It can go only two ways, so why stress?’
Military looked at the ragi balls as if they were pieces of dog turd and said, ‘I just had lunch. Besides, how can you eat this? It gets stuck in the throat.’
Oil Mill Jaggi flexed his enormous biceps at Military. ‘Mudde is what began this and mudde is what keeps it going.’ He tore a piece off the purplish brown ball, daubed it in the mutton curry, forked a piece of meat with his fingers and popped all of it into his 12mouth, almost defiantly. Then he swallowed it with a convulsive movement of his throat.
The punter would have liked the mudde. He looked at it hungrily. And without thinking, he let his gaze wander to Military. For a fleeting moment, their eyes met. His two cuttings dissipated into a thin vapour of fear.
The punter took his glass and moved to the farthest end of the counter. Any further and he would be in the toilet. But it was best to keep his distance from those two, he decided. He didn’t want to be accused of listening in. Or get caught in between if the two of them broke into a fight. The punter wondered at their power equation. It was hard to tell who feared whom and who would survive if they got into a fistfight.
He saw Military toss his rum down his throat and leave the bar, squeezing Oil Mill Jaggi’s shoulder on his way out. A little later, Oil Mill Jaggi followed. The punter heaved a sigh of relief and finished his drink in one gulp. What a waste of money! He had treated himself to a better brand instead of his usual Silver Cup. It felt like he had drunk one quarter of rasam rather than brandy. ‘Thoo, bosadi magane,’ he swore, spat into his hand and wiped it on his shirtsleeve. There was something immensely satisfying about calling those two men sons of a whore. It didn’t make up for the wasted afternoon but it was some compensation, he told himself.
Then, because it was prudent to do so, the punter drew out a brand-new razorblade still in its sleeve from beneath the multiple red threads wound tight around his right wrist. He took the blade out and popped it into his mouth. It would buy him enough time to escape and flee if either of them decided to pounce on him for being in the bar when they were there.
The punter chewed on the blade as he walked on to Oil Mill Road with the furtive step of a rat on the prowl.13
2
29 NOVEMBER 2012, 2 A.M.
It had been a joke between his wife and him. She called his night wheeze a cat and now he thought of it as just that, except he had chosen to give it a personality: A raggedy, saffron-coloured cat; yellow eyes; a pushy beast; rasping and yowling even as it dragged its claws through his ribcage and tickled his throat with its tail.
All evening the cat had stayed in its place. All evening it had done nothing but purr. And he had thought that there it would stay, without troubling him.
Why did it always choose to stir at two in the morning, he asked himself as a bout of coughing racked him. He turned on his side slowly, hoping it would offer some relief. But the cat and cough persisted.
A ball of viscous phlegm filled his mouth. He tried to swallow, but it was too thick and slimy. He should have accepted his daughter’s offer of placing a spittoon near the bed. ‘Mary will clean it up in the morning,’ she had added.
Instead, he had glowered at her and asked, ‘Do I look like a feudal landlord to you?’
It was inevitable that he would have to get up, he thought, as the ball of slime wobbled within his mouth. He kicked the quilt off slowly and turned on the bedside lamp. His glasses were by the pillow. He pushed them onto his nose and sat up carefully. He counted under his breath: one to sixty, as he had been told by his doctor in Dharwad.
Another bout of coughing erupted, and the ball of phlegm escaped his mouth, splattering on the floor. He wondered if he should wipe it clean. It would dry on its own in a bit, he decided. And if it didn’t, tough luck. No one expected anything better from eighty-three-year-old men except that they be doddering, clumsy fools.
14The bruises on his arm and wrist hurt dreadfully. There was an open wound where the skin had been scraped off on the heel of his palm, and a welt on the side of the palm. He blew on it. Then he touched the scratch on the side of his neck. It stung as well. Somewhere in the bathroom cabinet was a bottle of Nebasulf. If he could summon the energy to get up, he would dust some of it on the scratches.
He reached for the shawl slung on the bedpost. Despite the sweater he wore, he felt the cold deep in his bones. The shawl would help. It had belonged to his wife, Kausalya. Why did she have to die before him? So very selfish of her.
He nudged his slippers towards his feet and slipped his feet into them. He reached for the Vicks bottle at his bedside and popped it into his pyjama shirt pocket. Then he stood up and reached for his walking stick. One step at a time. He inched his way through the corridor to the kitchen, switching on the lights as he walked. The tip-tap sound of the brass cap of the walking stick on the terracotta tiles echoed through the quiet of the November night.
He paused at the bathroom and went in, fumbling with the pyjama fly. He didn’t always wear his pyjama bottoms but tonight the chill had seeped through from the floor into his shins. He had pulled them on reluctantly but was now glad for it as a draught from somewhere froze his ankles.
He held his flaccid penis in his hand and aimed it into the bowl. Each time he hoped that by some miracle of mechanics a steady stream of urine would arrive. Each time it dribbled, paused and dribbled. His bladder would never feel empty again, he told himself in disgust. And you really should shave, he admonished the mangy old man staring at him from the mirror on the bathroom cabinet. But the thought of lathering his face and using his old-fashioned razor without nicking himself seemed too much of an effort. He washed his hands. There was grime stuck under 15his fingernails from the fall. For a moment, he wondered why he was standing there. He remembered the anti-bacterial powder he had intended to use on the scratches. He had almost forgotten about that. He sighed and reached for it.
He had planned for every contingency he could think of. He had put aside money for building the house on the land he had bought on the outskirts of Bangalore many decades ago and for house repairs when the need would arise; his daughter’s education and her wedding; and his retirement, hospitalization and funeral. All that was left to do was bequeath his books to the library of the college he had reigned in for several years. First as principal and then as Professor Emeritus. But he hadn’t foreseen this. The debilitating of the self with age. Of how, at eighty-three, he would be so incapacitated that what had once been commonplace would somehow turn into a feat.
He washed his hands. The trickle of water from the tap made him want to pee again. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past two. He would try peeing again before he went back to bed, he decided.
In the kitchen, he found the electric kettle. His wife had hankered for one after she had discovered a tea-making tray in a hotel they had stayed in while at a conference. When Kausalya was alive, she had never got around to using it, but now it seemed it was all they used: the electric kettle, teabags, coffee sachets and milk powder. So much easier, Appa, his daughter said, as though she was the one who had to make it. What was he paying that flibbertigibbet maid for, he wondered as he plugged it in.
If his daughter really cared about him, she would have moved in here with him and looked after him. Instead, she had asked him to move in with her. He didn’t want to be an appendage in that household. Why couldn’t she see that? ‘Bitch,’ he said aloud. And then, because it didn’t seem adequate enough as an insult, he muttered, ‘Fat, rich, selfish bitch.’
16The kettle wouldn’t work. The power was off and the house was running on the back-up. He sighed and found a steel vessel. It was big, with an open mouth. It would be ideal for the steam inhalation that he needed to do if he planned to get some sleep tonight. He knew that his daughter would nag him for having used it. Your sambar will smell of Vicks now, she would grumble. ‘Fuck off,’ he said aloud. It felt good to hear it being said in his speaking voice, which even at eighty-three was loud and strident.
So he said that and a few other expletives he had only read in racy novels while he waited for the vessel to fill. As he struggled to carry the full steel vessel to the stove, he called out for Mary Susheela. When she didn’t respond, he called her a few names too. Then he remembered the events of the evening. He wished he hadn’t frightened that idiot woman off. It was all his daughter’s fault.
It was meant to be a little experiment to validate the paper he was writing, ‘The Hegemony of Hearsay in Right-wing Thought’. Besides, it had felt absurdly youthful, uncomfortable as it had been, to crouch on the steps beyond the back terrace, waiting for Mary Susheela to step out. No matter how many times he had told her to put the kitchen waste into the compost pit dug especially for it, she liked to fling everything over the parapet wall onto the slope below. There was a spot she seemed to prefer, he realized, as the stench of rotting food and kitchen waste from the ground hurled up his nostrils. Several sturdy hibiscus bushes grew there. He had found the perfect spot.
As he had expected, she came to the head of the steps to throw out the dinner debris. His heart had beat faster but she hadn’t seen him. The wall light barely reached the edge of the cemented terrace and the bulb on the lamppost attached to the wall was flickering. He was well hidden on the fourth step.
As she began to toss the food he had abandoned on his plate, he had reached out and pressed down his late wife’s upper denture 17on her ankle. He hadn’t meant to press so hard, but the angle he was crouched at made his feet wobble precariously, and to stop himself from falling at her feet he had put his entire weight on his arm to steady himself. Even then, he should have resisted from pressing the dentures down into her flesh so hard. But the thought of the oversalted, tasteless rasam and the under-sugared, watery coffee she thrust under his nose every day rose to the surface as an acid reflux of desperate fury. Only the old know the helplessness of being too frail to demonstrate anger, he would tell himself several times a day. But in that moment, rage lent iron to his trembling fingers.
Mary Susheela screamed loudly and kicked out to lob away whatever had sunk its teeth into her. Professor Mudgood felt himself totter with the force of the movement. His arm slammed into the rusty iron pipe that was the handrail, and it broke his fall. The hibiscus bushes alongside the handrail rustled as his shoulder crashed into them. They cushioned the impact. He grabbed the handrail to steady himself, even as he felt a bit of the step give way under his feet.
The woman screamed even more loudly as she heard what seemed like rustling and slithering. ‘Snake, snake…’ she hollered at the top of her voice. His daughter, who was in the work area attached to the kitchen, had dropped the clothes she had been stuffing into the washing machine and rushed towards Mary Susheela. She hurried the distraught woman indoors.
While the women’s voices rose, he had examined the dentures. The bloodstained teeth grinned at him. He laughed aloud. A little wheeze of a laugh, for laughter too had gone the way his mobility had. He had hauled himself up with a great deal of difficulty, thrust the denture into his waistcoat pocket and reached for his walking stick slung on the handrail. He shuffled up the steps, holding on to the handrail and hoisting himself up with the walking stick, one step at a time. His arm hurt where he had taken the impact of the handrail, and the skin on the heel of 18his palm had scraped off. But a wicked chuckle escaped his lips and accompanied him. On to the back terrace and around the house to the front verandah. The giant avocado tree alongside cut the light from the verandah and he stumbled again in the dark, knocking a stack of terracotta pots. Which fool had kept pots on the walking path?
It had been a cold night and he hadn’t thought of wrapping his muffler around his throat. He had known even then that the feral saffron cat would keep him awake at night.
His daughter had burst into the verandah a few minutes later. ‘Mary has been bitten! I don’t know what she is going to need… anti-venom, rabies shots or just a tetanus shot… I can see teeth marks, so I am not taking any chances. I have put a tourniquet above her ankle for now,’ she had said.
He had stared at her, trying to get his breath back. He lurched, and as she reached to steady him, he had clutched her forearm.
She had squealed in pain. ‘Look what you’ve done, Appa,’ she snapped, peering at the finger marks on her forearm.
‘Don’t fuss. It will heal in a day or two.’ Why on earth was she acting as if he had bitten her?
His daughter had glared at him and said furiously, ‘Does nothing matter to you unless it concerns you, Appa? Did you hear what I said? Mary has been bitten!’ She repeated it so loudly that their nearest neighbours, the nuns who lived an acre away, would have heard it too.
He had glared back at her. ‘I heard you,’ he said. ‘Look, I have scraped my wrist and scratched my neck. Is there any of that antiseptic powder? Why isn’t that idiot Paul Selvam coming anymore? He needs to prune the bushes, and the backyard is a jungle…’ He examined his wrist and blew on it. He looked up and added, ‘And at my age, I don’t give two hoots about anyone. All that is important to me is my life’s work.’
His daughter had stared at him with a strange expression. Why did she look so incredulous? She was getting fat, he had thought, 19taking in the yellow and green kameez that ballooned around her. Her rich, real estate developer husband would soon start looking elsewhere if he hadn’t already. She had been a pretty child but now she reminded him of something else. Then it came to him. ‘You are beginning to look like a Dalda tin,’ he had said. ‘If you don’t look after yourself, your husband will find himself a bit on the side. Or worse, a slender young bride.’
She had glared at him as if she couldn’t believe what she had heard. Then she had snapped, ‘Go to hell!’
She had turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her. Why was she acting as if he had said something offensive, he had wondered. People didn’t like hearing the truth. They preferred to believe what they thought was the truth.
His daughter had bustled the moaning Mary Susheela into her car and driven away with a screech. That had been a few hours ago. He could already see the rumours shaking themselves off every parthenium plant on his land: Mary was bitten by a scorpion; Mary was bitten by a bandicoot; God knows what bit her. They say that the land is haunted. Haven’t you heard the strange noises that emerge on new-moon nights? Haven’t you heard Mary had something going on with the old man? It is actually a stab wound by her angry husband. Professor Mudgood chuckled at the thought of how hearsay would soon be treated as fact.
The water began to bubble. The lid on the saucepan clanged. He turned off the stove and waited. The light on the power plug turned red. The power had come back. He would make a cup of tea for himself after the steam inhalation. Perhaps he could add to the notes for the talk he was scheduled to present at the Town Hall along with a compendium of other speakers, including a strident student leader from JNU, a movie-star-turned-citizen-rights advocate, a playwright and a political satirist.
He had titled his talk ‘Why I Am Not a Hindu’. It was expected that he would lambast the Hindutva movement that was gaining 20momentum and support by the day. He had already called them ‘fascist’ at least a few times. His assistant, Gurunath, had left in a huff that morning. The idiot had taken umbrage at the point of view of the paper. ‘It’s one thing that you are playing with fire, sir,’ Gurunath had said. ‘But I don’t agree with your politics and I can’t work for a man whose politics are diametrically opposite to mine.’
‘Really, and what is your politics? Decimating the minorities? Crony capitalism? Gagging freedom of expression?’ he had retorted.
Once, he may have held back. Not anymore. He was too old to care and too frail to negotiate sitting on a fence.
His hand hurt when he lifted the saucepan of water. He placed it on the kitchen table near the wall and found a towel in the work area where the washed clothes waited to be ironed and put away. The back door was open, he saw. Mary Susheela in her consternation had forgotten to latch it. He grimaced as he pushed the bolt up into the latch.
He sat on the chair and drew the saucepan closer to him. He opened the Vicks bottle and drew out a blob on the tip of his index finger. He flicked it into the water carefully before pulling the towel over his head as he inched his face towards the rising fragrant steam.
A scurrying noise made him look up. Was it a mouse? What was that Yeats poem?
Now strength of body goes;
Midnight, an old house
Where nothing stirs but a mouse.
He put his glasses back on. But the lenses were fogged with the steam. He took them off to wipe them. That’s when he saw the shadow. ‘Who is there?’ he asked in the loudest voice he could 21summon. He put his glasses back on and smiled at his own fancifulness. Next he would start seeing ghosts.
He removed his glasses again and placed them on the table alongside the cauldron. He pulled the towel over his head again. Suddenly, an excruciating pain tore through him as something struck the side of his head. He felt himself slump against the wall.
Several minutes later, Raghava Mudgood stirred. He groaned as he raised his head. What had happened to him? How had he lost consciousness? Did he have a blackout? But the side of his head throbbed. He felt nauseous. He tried to hoist himself up, but he couldn’t. His hand hurt and he couldn’t put any pressure on it. He whimpered, ‘Kausalya,’ and tried again to sit up straight.
He felt someone loom behind him, and before he could put his glasses on to see who it was, his head was being pushed into the cauldron of hot water. The heat cut through the pain and he tried to drag his face away from the vessel, when something or someone—man, beast or ghost—pushed his face into the saucepan of scalding water.
He struggled, but the hand held him down. His hands groped for anything he could find. He heard his glasses shatter on the floor. Water entered his nostrils and mouth and burnt the skin on his face. He clawed at whatever it was he could reach to escape the grip. The table, an arm, life itself.
After a few minutes, he stopped struggling. It was 2.45 a.m., 29 November 2012.
30 NOVEMBER 2012, FRIDAY
1
Their seats were together but separated by an aisle. ‘That way it won’t look as if we are travelling together,’ Gowda had said, not quite meeting Urmila’s furious gaze.
She had shaken her head ever so little, a wry tilt and the raise of an eyebrow to show what she thought of his forever pussyfooting. ‘Whatever suits you, Borei,’ Urmila said with an affected breeziness.
Gowda swallowed down the dread he felt. He could see she was annoyed, hurt even. He had tried to make up by being extra attentive. He insisted on stowing her bag in the overhead locker. He bought her a tin of salted almonds and juice when the stewardess came pushing her trolley down the aisle. Urmila had accepted them without a word or a smile and buried her nose in her book. Gowda watched her work her way through the nuts without even offering him a nibble.
When Urmila had said she was taking him away for a short trip, he had protested. ‘Why do we need to go anywhere?’ he had asked.
‘Precisely because we don’t go anywhere. It’s always your home or mine. I want to do things with you. Like normal couples do.’
He had flinched at the word ‘couple’. Or was it the word ‘normal’?
23‘I want to go to bed with you, wake up in the morning with you there, have breakfast, lunch and dinner with you, without you looking over my shoulder or at your watch or mobile once. I want to go to a movie with you. Go for a walk, share a cab with you…’
‘Things most people would call mundane,’ Gowda had interrupted softly.
‘Except for us it isn’t, Borei,’ she had said. And then she stared at him, as if demanding, is it?
The perversity of human nature—or was it destiny—struck Borei Gowda like a shard of ice. What Urmila wanted was what Mamtha, his wife, had, and to whom it meant nothing at all. And perhaps Mamtha wanted what Urmila had. What about himself? What did he want? And as was customary for Gowda to do, he parked the query in a remote corner of his mind.
He had pulled himself together, and, summoning what seemed like a fair proximation of enthusiasm, smiled at her as he asked, ‘Where shall we go?’
‘Is that a yes?’ Urmila’s eyes had lit up.
She had planned it all. The flights, the hotel, the houseboat cruise, the stroll through the streets of Fort Kochi and his birthday dinner. They had come back from a day of exploring the Alleppey backwaters in a houseboat and were sitting in the balcony of their posh hotel and watching distant boats bob on the water when the doorbell had rung. A steward had come in holding a cake aloft. Behind him was another steward pushing a trolley with covered dishes and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. Gowda had flushed with pleasure and embarrassment. No one had made such a production of his birthday ever.
He had thought she wouldn’t remember it was his birthday. ‘Why do you think I insisted on us going away?’ she had said from across the table, on top of which sat the ornately iced, square-shaped cake lit up with fifty-one candles.
Gowda had reached out to take her hand. What does she see in me? he had thought, looking at the stately Urmila with her 24clear, light skin, chiselled features and long, straight hair; all grace and graciousness, and a full, fruity voluptuous perfume.
She had intertwined her fingers with those of the tall, broad man whose once striking features had blurred into a mostly harried-looking expression. She often teased him that he must be the only policeman without a moustache. Men with a cleft in their chin make me go weak at the knees, so I am willing to overlook your lack of a moustache, she would add, and he would grab her and press her to him with a mock growl.
As Urmila nuzzled into his chest, he had felt the slight curve of her paunch sink into his more defined one, and known an indefinable happiness that he never had when their bodies had been svelte and their minds hungry. The thing about middle-aged love, Gowda had thought, was that you grew less conscious of how you looked or how the other person did and instead sought to please each other in ways you wouldn’t have imagined in youth.
With the tips of her fingers, she had traced the tattoo on his arm. A wheel with wings. ‘Maybe I should get one too,’ she had said.
Gowda had grunted.
She had hoisted herself on her elbow and peered into his face. ‘Shall I get one on my belly? A flower around my belly button?’
He had stared, unable to decide if she was serious or joking. ‘It’s very painful U…’ he had said. ‘You would be better off getting a Ganesha sketch or a little butterfly on your forearm.’
The perfection of that evening had wrapped them in a cloud of happily together forever. Except, as it is with perfection and all other unnatural states of being, it didn’t last, and here they were, sitting together on a flight but separated by an aisle. It felt like the ocean and not seventeen to nineteen inches of carpeted space.
Gowda looked at her from the corner of his eye.
She was engrossed in her book. And as if that wasn’t enough, she had her headphones on. Gowda sighed. He closed his eyes 25and tried to sleep. But his mind wandered to what awaited him at Neelgubbi Police Station.
A body had been found in one of the eucalyptus groves beyond Doddagubbi Lake, Head Constable Gajendra had messaged him last morning.
A shepherd had found the dead man and notified someone who had called the police. Gajendra had sent him a photograph. A muscular young man with scars on his face. He had been found wearing a half-sleeved shirt and jeans. His feet were bare. There were no stab wounds. His lip was split and nose broken. Blood had crusted around the bridge of his nose. Even with the shirt on, Gowda could see the man’s shoulder jutted at an awkward angle as if it had been dislocated. He looked like he had been in a fight which didn’t go his way.
Gowda looked at the photo on his phone again. Something bothered him. Then he realized that the light-blue shirt the man wore was spotless. There wasn’t any blood, or even a dirt smear on it. Something wasn’t kosher, as Urmila liked to say.
The body had been sent for postmortem. No Missing Person complaint has been registered for him yet at the station, Gajendra had added in his brief message. And neither did the deceased match the description of any missing male anywhere in the city limits.
Four months ago, another body had been found in one of the abandoned quarries. A burly young man. Just as the latest body, he had been wearing almost-new clothes that weren’t smeared with dirt or blood. He had been barefoot as well, and Gowda had noticed his blackened soles and dirt-encrusted toenails. In his late twenties, Dr Khan had told him. The young man had several concussion spots and two sets of fractures—the fingers of the right hand and his shin—but what had killed him was a brain haemorrhage, the forensics surgeon had continued. ‘And 26Gowda, what is puzzling is I don’t see any blunt-force trauma on his skull. If someone hit him with a wooden club or even a metal object, there would be a skull fracture. But this is curious… almost like someone bundled him into a sack and beat him to death.’
Gowda had stared at Dr Khan, who was washing his hands again. For a moment Gowda saw Lady Macbeth instead of Dr Khan. In high school, they had performed the play, and Gowda, much to his chagrin, had been chosen to play the part of one of the witches. He had been forced to wear a bra padded with rags, a black caftan and a straggly wig. None of the boys in his class were thrown by the wig or caftan and had thronged around him to squeeze his padded bra with great glee.
He didn’t remember much of the play except that Lady Macbeth seemed to be forever washing her hands, and the chant that he had had to memorize: ‘Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble. Cool it with a baboon’s blood. Then the charm is firm and good.’
‘What are you mumbling under your breath?’ Dr Khan had shot him a curious look.
Gowda flushed. ‘Something that I had forgotten all about suddenly popped up in my head.’
The corpse was never identified, and the body was handed over to one of the government medical colleges. But every now and then, the dead man’s face came back to haunt Gowda. Who was he? How had he died? And here was one more dead man. Were these two deaths connected? He would know when the postmortem report reached him.
Gowda shifted in his seat. He darted a glance at Urmila. She was in animated conversation with the man sitting next to her. A corporate honcho type with his Omega watch and manicured hands, Gowda thought with a sudden taste of bile in his mouth. Her kind of man. And not like him, a middle-aged cop with no real prospects in sight.
27Gowda looked away and through the window at the fat white clouds. The man next to him had his laptop open, his fingers flying over the keyboard. Gowda sneaked a look at the screen. It seemed to be a legal document. The man’s elbow took up most of the armrest. Gowda glowered at him. Were all lawyers born assholes? Or did their profession turn them into one?
Dr Sanjay Rathore had definitely been one. Was that why he had been murdered? And then out of nowhere a young man had surrendered confessing to the murder. When Gowda had tried to question the legitimacy of the confession, a senior bureaucrat whom Gowda had tried to reason with flung his arms up in helplessness. ‘You have no evidence to validate your accusation. What do you really expect me to do, Gowda?’
Gowda had flinched. Through most of his career as a police officer, he had had to wear the stigma of the moniker he was given: ‘B Report Gowda’. The man whose cases came to nothing for want of evidence. Gowda had nodded and walked out of the room, seething with helpless rage.
A few more raids were conducted, and ten trafficked children were rescued, and a photo of Gowda was published on the fourth page of an English daily. Inspector Gowda became Assistant Commissioner of Police Gowda. They had bought him off by giving him a promotion that was long overdue. That’s what they had done. A promotion ostensibly for the work he had done on the child trafficking case, but he had known it was to handcuff him and gag his mouth. For everything was the same—his duties and his ambit of power—but he was now ACP Gowda, no less and not very much more. He had hoped for a new boss, but they presented him with Vidyaprasad, who had been promoted to Deputy Commissioner of Police Vidyaprasad.
The pilot announced the aircraft’s descent. Gowda straightened his seat and touched Urmila’s elbow. She looked at him. He gestured to the seat-belt sign. She nodded and put her book away. 28As the aircraft touched the tarmac, Gowda placed his right foot on the curve of the bulkhead.
‘What are you doing, Borei?’ Urmila laughed out loud. ‘Are you trying to stop the plane?’
Gowda looked embarrassed and smiled. She shook her head in resignation. ‘You are a nut job, Borei.’ She giggled, and just like that, forgot to be angry with him.
‘Are you afraid of flying?’ Urmila asked.
He nodded. ‘Petrified. I didn’t want to grab your arm at takeoff and landing. That’s why…’ He gestured to the aisle separating them.
‘Oh darling…’ Urmila said, and, throwing him a mischievous look, added, ‘So you don’t mind if I do this and someone sees us.’
She blew him a kiss as the plane came to a halt.
2
Head Constable Gajendra looked around him. His living room always filled him with a tremendous sense of pride. The wooden sofa with its intricate carvings and maroon velvet cushions, the 32-inch LED TV, the showcase filled with brassware and stuffed toys, including a cross-eyed hippopotamus his daughter had given him for something she called Father’s Day. ‘What ra, is your father only important on one day of the year?’ He had teased her though he had been very pleased to receive a stuffed toy. He didn’t think he had ever had a toy as a child.
At the sight of the empty space where the interlocked steel chairs had once been placed, he ran the tip of his index finger along the line of his moustache, back and forth. His daughter, who had started college five months ago, had insisted they move the chairs into the verandah.
‘But why? I paid good money for them,’ Gajendra had said.
29‘It looks like a dentist’s waiting room,’ she had scoffed. She took out her phone and showed him pictures. ‘No one keeps these things in their hall.’
He had acquiesced but he had been on the lookout for a couple of stand-alone chairs to place there. Until then, the space niggled like the empty nest of a lost tooth.
The fragrance of ghee and jaggery filled the house. Gajendra’s wife, Kamala, came into the hall where Gajendra was flicking an imaginary piece of lint from the velvet cushion. ‘Why don’t you eat your breakfast when it is still warm?’ she asked.
He followed her into the dining room where on the chrome and glass table was a plate stacked with obattus. ‘What’s the occasion?’ he asked at the sight of the sweet.
‘Raji Akka may come by this afternoon and I don’t want to offer her just biscuits.’
Gajendra nodded and put one of the obattus onto his plate. He whispered a thank you to his sister-in-law whom his wife couldn’t decide if she loved or hated. But each time she visited, Kamala cooked something that was guaranteed to mellow her high-pitched complaining voice into silence.
The obattu was soft and flaky, its filling sweet and fragrant with cardamom. Kamala drizzled ghee on it and Gajendra tore a piece off and put it into his mouth.
‘How is it?’ she asked.
‘Super,’ he said through a mouth full of obattu.
‘What?’ Her voice rose in consternation.
He swallowed and said, ‘Super.’
‘You say that about everything I make.’ She smiled.
‘It’s the truth,’ he began when his phone rang. Gajendra looked at the number and frowned. He picked it up with his left hand hastily. ‘Yes, what is it?’ he asked.
Kamala watched Gajendra drop the piece of obattu he had in his fingers.
‘What?’ Gajendra barked. He listened even as he crumbled 30the obattu on his plate. ‘I am on my way,’ he said, rising from the chair. He looked at the obattu longingly and hastily stuffed another piece into his mouth. Kamala sighed and took away the tattered obattu to nibble at while she prepared lunch.
The airport cab veered to the left at Sahakar Nagar. Gowda’s gaze met Urmila’s. It was in this vicinity that they had found Nandita, Gowda’s maid’s daughter who had been kidnapped. The investigation had led them into uncovering a sex trafficking ring that made no difference between children or adults, girls or boys. The child trafficking case had tainted their understanding of humanity, changing them forever. Urmila’s hand reached for his. Not just Gowda and Urmila, but each one of them, Santosh, Ratna, Gajendra, Byrappa and Michael. Everyone who had ever had to deal with the rescued children would never be who they were. That much was certain.
‘The real horror isn’t what we discovered—the extent of depravity—but the fact that even at this moment, countless children are being trafficked,’ Urmila said, her fingers tightening around Gowda’s, speaking aloud what continued to haunt Gowda.
‘I know,’ he said, trying to gently extricate his fingers from her clasp. The driver had his rearview mirror adjusted so he could take habitual glances at them.
Gowda’s phone rang. He felt Urmila tense. Usually, when Mamtha called, Urmila or he would leave the room as if to exorcize the spectre of adultery that wafted in.
Gowda glanced at the number. ‘It’s not her,’ he said, and almost bit his tongue in exasperation. Had the driver heard him?
Urmila watched Gowda’s face. The bland expression that sat on it when a work call came in changed swiftly to one of unease. His forehead furrowed, his eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened to a line. ‘Does the deceased have a name?’ Gowda asked.
‘His name is Professor Raghava Mudgood.’
‘Are you sure?’
31‘Why, sir? Who is he?’
‘I’ll be there soon,’ Gowda said shortly and put his phone on the seat.
‘Something has come up,’ he told Urmila. ‘I think you should drop me at my place and…’ He paused, knowing that what he had to say would upset Urmila. The original plan was that she would stay with him for the day and night. ‘And I think you should use the cab to head to yours,’ he said in a rush, picking up his phone again.
Urmila looked outside the window and bit down the angry words that threatened to erupt.
Gowda was still officially on holiday, but Urmila knew him well enough to know that he had already transported himself to the crime scene. After almost six months of pushing files and trying to chase petty criminals, he finally seemed to have a big case on his hands. And nothing was going to keep him away. Not even her.
3
Assistant Sub-Inspector Ratna looked up as she heard the police vehicle drive in. She glanced at the woman who sat on a single-seater sofa. She hadn’t spoken a word except to say, ‘There,’ gesturing towards the kitchen.
Ratna saw the Bolero pull up as she went to the verandah. Sub-Inspector Santosh and Head Constable Gajendra emerged from the police vehicle.
‘Gowda Sir is on his way,’ Gajendra said.
‘Isn’t he on leave?’ Ratna asked, surprised.
‘Not anymore,’ Santosh said, his eyes darting around, seeking something to indicate a break-in. ‘Let’s take a look,’ he said. Gajendra walked to the left of the house where a clump of trees grew while Santosh headed to the right.
32A giant avocado tree stood very close to the house and around it was a paved pathway leading to the rear of the house. The backyard was a wide, cemented yard with a low parapet wall. A few steps led down to the overgrown land on the next level. The land stretched past that as well. Through the dense trees and bushes, it was impossible to see what exactly lay beyond. Santosh walked towards the back door. He wound his handkerchief around his fist and pushed it open. It swung inwards and the smell of death came out in a sudden waft.
Half an hour later, Gowda rode through the open gates on his 500 cc Bullet. Ratna looked at him and sighed. No matter what you thought of the man, the bike had a way of imbuing an air of stability and strength to the rider, making it seem that this was a person you could depend on in a crisis. She wondered if she should consider buying a Bullet herself. When the bike spluttered to a stop and Gowda took his helmet off, Ratna felt that familiar sense of confusion the man evoked in her. There was so much she liked about him and so much she abhorred him for.
‘Did he live here by himself?’ Gowda asked by way of greeting.
‘Apparently there is a live-in maid but she wasn’t here when it happened,’ Ratna said.
Gajendra emerged from the clump of trees and Santosh from behind the house.
‘The deceased’s daughter said that she had unlocked the main door. There seemed to be no indication of foul play,’ Gajendra began.
‘No, sir,’ Santosh interrupted. ‘We don’t know that yet. The back door was not latched. And there are a few broken flower pots on the side of the house as if someone ran into them in the dark. Possibly while trying to flee.’
Gowda climbed the two steps onto the verandah. On one side hung bamboo blinds and in the alcove thus created was a wide, sturdy wooden table and an old-fashioned heavy wooden chair. 33An anglepoise lamp sat on the table, which also contained a cup full of pens and a stack of notepads. Alongside the wall was an open bookcase with several books in it.
Gowda looked at the titles of the books. He hadn’t heard of even a single one. ‘He won the Rajyotsava Award two years ago. He is what they call a Public Intellectual.’
Gajendra swallowed. What on earth was a public intellectual?
‘Who called to report the death?’ Gowda asked, as he walked into the house, his eyes scanning the room. Old-fashioned wooden sofas and a rug, in the middle of which was the teapoy, though everyone called it a coffee table these days. There was a rosewood cabinet running the length of one wall. On it was a TV, several plaques bearing testimony to attendance at conferences and awards won and piles of papers and books. A few framed photographs stood with an air of uncertainty amidst such intellectual verisimilitude.
The curtains were thick and the room showed no signs of break-in and entry. On one of the single-seaters sat a woman with her head in her hands.
‘That is the deceased’s daughter. She called the control room,’ Ratna said in a hushed voice.
Gowda cleared his throat. She looked up, a slightly blowsy woman, in her forties perhaps, dressed in a long-sleeved, apple-green silk kurta and white linen pants, and wearing adequate diamonds to suggest that while she may have several troubles, money wasn’t one of them. He had noticed the red Skoda Octavia parked in the porch.
On the teapoy was a bag like the one Urmila had. She said it was a Louis Vuitton and cost enough to pay for a brand-new Bullet.
The daughter stood up and said in a voice that was flat and tinny, ‘Inspector, I called about my father.’
Santosh butted in, ‘It’s ACP, not Inspector.’
Gowda waved the correction away with a flick of his hand. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘You found him, Mrs…’ he began.
34‘Mrs Janaki Buqhari,’ she said.
Gowda hid his surprise. One of his colleagues at the BBMP local authority responsible for the city’s municipal works had talked about a land-grabbing case and the accused had mentioned Buqhari Builders. But that wasn’t all. Urmila had mentioned a fundraiser she had attended in the neighbourhood. It had been held by a Mrs Buqhari at the club in the gated community she resided in. Is this what they called six degrees of separation?
Gowda pulled his mobile out as he followed Gajendra into a passage that led towards the kitchen where the deceased had been found. The stench hit him even in the passageway. Gajendra stopped at the end of the passage. The door to the kitchen had been shut, and a prod with a pen opened it wide. Gajendra waited for Gowda to enter before following him.
Gowda had his kerchief to his nose, but he couldn’t avoid gagging. The kitchen was filled with the putrid smell of decay; clogged drains and stale food, rotten eggs and rotting vegetables; and overlying it all, the reek of decomposing flesh and dried-up faeces. He shoved his nose and mouth into the handkerchief hastily. It was only then he saw the slumped man on the kitchen chair, his face submerged in a cauldron. At his feet were his shattered glasses. On the floor was a rust-coloured towel.
‘What a ghastly way to go.’ Gajendra’s voice was muffled as it emerged through the handkerchief he clutched to his face. He turned abruptly on his heel and walked to the work area. The obattu churned in his stomach. A sour liquid filled his mouth. He willed it to return to where it had sprung from. Then, clearing his throat, he turned to Gowda, who, he noticed, was shooting pictures of the dead man on his phone.
‘Sir, the work area door was shut but not latched,’ Gajendra reminded him.
Gowda looked at the door. He took a picture of that as well. ‘What about the kitchen door? Was it shut or open when the 35daughter found the deceased? Find that out, will you?’ Then he looked at the photos and dialled a number. The Deputy Commissioner of Police needed to be informed. But he chose to call his DCP friend at the Central Crime Branch rather than his idiot boss. ‘Hello, Stanley,’ he said into the phone.
Gajendra saw Gowda smiling at whatever DCP Stanley Sagayaraj said. The two had been college mates, and some of the Gowda-haters had accused DCP Sagayaraj of being indulgent with Gowda when what he needed was a vicious rap on his knuckles.
Gowda took a deep breath and said, ‘This is a work call. I am at the residence of Professor Mudgood. He is dead. Looks like a cardiac arrest but we’ll know for certain when the postmortem is over. There is no sign of break-in and entry but the back door to the house wasn’t latched. Nothing at this point to suggest death under suspicious circumstances. But I have sent you some pictures.’
There was a long pause as the voice at the other end took in the implication of the neatly inserted ‘but’. ‘Have you informed DCP Vidyaprasad yet?’
‘Not yet.’ Gowda’s reply was just as terse.
‘Do that. Meanwhile, we are on our way. And Borei, for now, don’t let him know that the CCB is interested in the death.’
Gowda stepped outside. He needed to fortify himself before he contacted DCP Vidyaprasad, who picked up the call with a long-suffering tone. ‘Yes, Gowda. What is it now?’
Gowda felt his fingers curl into a fist. ‘I wanted to inform you about a death. Professor Raghava Mudgood. Prima facie, it looks like a cardiac arrest.’
‘Oh,’ said DCP Vidyaprasad. ‘Look, I am getting my annual medical exam done so I am busy. Keep me informed.’
Gowda cut the call and slipped the phone into his pocket. Vidyaprasad hadn’t recognized the name of the deceased and his connection to Buqhari Builders or he would have been rushing 36to the crime scene with a pack of newshounds. ‘The CCB is coming in,’ Gowda said, seeing Gajendra had followed him. ‘They have an interest in the case,’ he added quietly, seeing Gajendra frown.
4
Gowda went into the living room where the daughter sat. He heard a car door slam. Through the window, he saw a white BMW SUV pull up behind the Skoda. A tall, good-looking man wearing a navy-blue shirt and beige chinos stepped out of the passenger seat and ran up the steps to the verandah. He burst into the living room and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the men in uniform.
‘Jaanu, what happened?’ he said, going to the woman’s side. She shook her head and buried her face in her hands. ‘Appa’s dead…’ she said through a bout of tears. The man patted her shoulder. She flinched involuntarily. He pretended not to notice and scanned the room. He quickly looked past Gajendra and Santosh and settled on Gowda. He stretched his hand out. ‘Sir, I am Iqbal Buqhari, Professor Mudgood’s son-in-law. What happened?’
Gowda nodded as he shook hands with him. The man was wearing the ‘His’ version of the watch the wife wore, he noticed. Together, the watches would buy a Harley. He also had a 4-inch gauze bandage on his right forearm. ‘Assistant Sub Inspector Ratna will give you the details,’ Gowda said softly. Ratna shot a surprised look at Gowda. She cleared her throat and spoke as if she were standing in the witness box: ‘Control room received a call at 10.00 hours this morning from Mrs Janaki Buqhari. I was in a patrol vehicle and we arrived here almost immediately at 10.20 hours. Mrs Janaki Buqhari was here and she directed me to the kitchen where the deceased was.’
‘May I see him?’ Iqbal Buqhari asked.
37A well-built man in his mid-thirties came to stand near Iqbal. Not alongside him but a few inches behind. He was dressed in a full-sleeved white shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans with a brown belt and tan-coloured shoes. When he moved, his shirt clung to his muscles. The man looked like a boxer, Gowda thought, taking in the squashed nose and strong neck. He didn’t seem like just another minion.
Iqbal gestured with his chin. ‘My personal assistant. Right now, he’s driving me around because of this…’ He raised his forearm to show the bandage.
‘What happened?’ Gowda asked.
‘A dog bite.’ He turned to the man and said, ‘Deva, you stay with Madam in case she needs something.’
When the man went to stand beside Janaki, she gave him a curt nod. Gowda saw Iqbal Buqhari’s mouth tighten but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he turned to Gowda and asked, ‘Could I see my father-in-law, sir?’
‘Yes, but don’t touch anything,’ Gowda said. He gestured for Santosh to go with the man.
‘Why? Do you think it wasn’t a natural death?’ His face paled.
‘Police procedure,’ Gowda said, watching the man’s gaze drop for a moment. What was he hiding?
Iqbal nodded and went with Santosh. When he came back, he was wiping his face with his handkerchief. He looked like he had strolled into hell and been disembowelled by the devil himself.
He slumped into a chair alongside his wife. A long moment later, he sat up straight. ‘My wife and I tried to persuade him to move in with us. But he was stubborn about living alone. What do we do now, sir?’ he asked, standing up.
Gowda looked into the middle distance. It sounded as if Iqbal was merely making appropriate noises.
‘He wouldn’t listen to anyone,’ Janaki said. ‘He wouldn’t move in with us. So I came to visit him every day. And most days we 38ended up arguing about one thing or the other. But I should have remembered how old he is. In fact, that evening he had almost fallen and I had to help him steady himself,’ she said staring at the floor. She looked up after a moment. ‘Do you know what my last words to him were? Go to hell.’
Iqbal caught Gowda’s eye and shrugged. A you-know-how-it-is shrug.
Gowda didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he turned to Janaki. ‘Madam, did your father live alone?’
She shook her head. ‘There is a live-in maid but she wasn’t well and had been hospitalized.’
Gowda nodded. ‘Once the formalities are over, the body will be released. Meanwhile, there is nothing you can do by waiting over here. I would suggest you go home, and we’ll send someone to take your detailed statement.’
The husband went towards the wife. He offered her his hand. She ignored it and stood up. She turned to the kitchen for a fleeting second and then walked towards the main door.
‘Something is not right in that marriage. I can bite the grit in the rice,’ Gajendra said to no one in particular.
Santosh stared at the couple who were driving away in their individual cars. Then he gazed at Ratna, who took a deep breath and gave him a hint of a smile.
‘Call me when DCP Sagayaraj gets here,’ Gowda said to Gajendra, who had been considering leaving a PC in charge.
5
Gowda dragged his suitcase into the bedroom. Everything looked shipshape within the house. The newspapers had been placed neatly on the coffee table and the surfaces gleamed dust-free. His eyes widened in surprise. Shanthi, his maid, wasn’t given 39to tidying frenzies. It was only when he would pointedly run a finger on a grimy surface that she flicked a duster with a snort, ‘I just dusted yesterday… I can’t help the construction work and dust settling on everything here.’
Earlier, when he had dropped his suitcase inside the door on his way to Professor Mudgood’s house, he had noticed with delight that both his bike and car were sparkling clean. It was unusual for Shanthi to clean the vehicles without a reminder. Something was afoot, he had thought then. And now he was certain.
