A Cut-Like Wound (18 page)

Gowda nodded. She, er … Ananya had a point. On a whim, he said, ‘I’d like to bring along a friend, Lady Deviah.’

Ananya smiled. ‘Actually it was Urmila who suggested that we invite you.’

Gowda wondered if his mouth had fallen open again. ‘You know her…’ he offered weakly.

‘She is one of the trustees,’ Samuel said.

‘In which case…’ Gowda smiled. ‘I’ll be happy to. When is the inauguration?’

‘Tomorrow at 6.30 p.m. Shall we send a car to pick you up?’

‘No, no, I’ll drive myself,’ Gowda said.

When they left, Santosh bustled in. ‘What did they want?’

‘They came to invite me for a photo exhibition. It’s tomorrow at 6.30 p.m. You should come too,’ Gowda said carefully.

The young man’s eyes lit up. ‘Certainly, sir. I have always been interested in photography,’ he gushed.

Gowda felt his mouth curl. The fool had fallen for Ananya. What would he do when he discovered who she really was?

Gowda rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. It was almost half past six.

Roshan walked out of his room and stopped in his tracks, surprised to see his father. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, nonplussed.

‘I do happen to live here…’ Gowda raised his eyes to his son.

‘You are never home this early,’ the boy mumbled.

Gowda sighed. There, he was doing it again. In a gentler voice, he explained, ‘I know, but I had some work to do and the station was bustling with petty cases and the incessant ringing of the station phone and mobiles.’

Roshan nodded.

Then he peered at his father slyly. ‘Are you going out this evening?’

Gowda stared. ‘Why?’

‘I have to go out … I am meeting some of my school friends and I didn’t want you to think I would be at home.’

Gowda tried not to show the relief flare in his eyes. ‘No, that’s fine. I have some things to do as well.’

‘Will you be late?’

‘Will you, Roshan?’ Gowda answered with a question.

‘By eleven…’ Roshan shrugged.

‘I should be home by then too. Don’t latch the main door. You have your key, don’t you?’ Gowda said, placing the files back on the table and rising.

He had come home early with the post-mortem reports of all three deaths. Stanley had ensured that a copy of Roopesh’s post-mortem had reached the station by lunchtime. Gowda had needed to be on his own to find what he knew would be that one vital link that would take this case forward.

Only Kothandaraman’s body had been available for them to draw clear conclusions of a violent strangulation. In Liaquat’s case, the strangler hadn’t completed the job and so Liaquat had survived only to die of burns rather than strangulation. And Roopesh’s body had already entered a state of decomposition when it had been found. Was he, as the ACP said, clutching at straws?

But what of that one fact staring him in the face – the glass encrusted ligature? The MO linked the murders. What else? Think, think, Gowda. The words swam in front of his eyes.

Had anyone thought of doing a DNA match? He groaned. That should have been the first thing to do. No doubt Stanley would get there eventually. But why wait until then?

He drew his phone out and called Stanley.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Urmila asked as he sipped his drink wordlessly.

‘Oh, what?’ Gowda said, startled out of his reverie. He looked at her as though he didn’t recognize her.

‘Have you talked to Roshan?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘No.’

‘You must, Borei. You have to deal with it. It won’t go away because you don’t talk about it.’

How could he tell her about the slap? The very thought of it filled him with a deep sense of shame. Gowda clinked the ice in his glass. Pale cubes of melting ice.

‘Shall I fix you another and will you then tell me what’s wrong?’ Urmila leaned forward and took the glass from his hand.

He watched her go towards the bar counter in a corner of her living room and unscrew a bottle. ‘The same, right?’ she called out.

He rose and walked towards her. ‘I’m sorry I am not a great companion this evening … the case has me all twisted up inside.’

She poured herself a small whisky and took both glasses to the veranda. ‘Let’s sit here,’ she said. ‘It’s a beautiful night.’

Something within Gowda froze. What next? She would put on ghazals now, he thought. As he stood there, she glided past him, suffusing him in a wave of expensive perfume. Melon and mandarin oranges, jasmine, lily of the valley, sandalwood and incense. All of it in one scent that rode up his nostrils and left him feeling that he had walked into a dream.

The music preceded her. She put off the stronger overhead lamps, leaving only the table lamps on. ‘This is better. Less like an interrogation room!’ She cocked her head and stood
there, looking at him. Then she reached out and took his hand in hers. ‘Borei, you still are such a pussycat.’ She laughed and led him into the veranda.

She dropped into a cane chair without letting go of his hand and so he had no option but to lower himself into a cane pouffe placed at her side.

‘You haven’t asked me about my husband,’ she said quietly.

Gowda’s mouth went dry. He had studiously avoided the subject.

‘He…’ Gowda began, not knowing what he should say next. ‘I … I didn’t want to embarrass you,’ he said finally.

‘He turned our marriage into an embarrassment with his serial philandering. But when he took up with a woman in the neighbourhood, I felt … I couldn’t bear to see the pity in the eyes of our friends.’ Her smile was bitter.

Gowda took a sip of his drink. In the silence, the whisky slipping down his throat made a distinct sound.

‘Will you go back?’ he wanted to ask. ‘Do you want to go back?’ In a day they had assembled the basis of a relationship. Text messages and calls that punctuated the day. Random meetings which were not allowed to have even the slightest whiff of an assignation. But through it all, there had been an undercurrent of ‘this has to go somewhere’.

And it seemed that the moment had come.

‘Borei,’ she said, her voice dropping, ‘do you ever think of what our lives would have been like if we hadn’t broken up?’

He looked at her, wondering if he should be honest or say what she wanted to hear. All his life, the dilemma had burdened him. His inability to speak the right words instead of the biting truth. But it seemed that Urmila wanted no
answers from him tonight. She was content to merely speak her thoughts.

‘Sometimes I think it’s best that we went our ways when we did. We are two different people now and the people we have become – mature, calmer – will allow us to enjoy each other better.’ Her voice acquired a dreaminess that strangled his every thought.

‘I…’ he began. Whatever it was she was suggesting, how could it be? He was married; he had a son; he had his responsibilities. Unlike her, he was not a free being.

‘Ssh … Borei.’ She put a finger on his lips. ‘Hear me out, please. I don’t want to take anything from your life. I don’t want Borei the husband or father.’

She took her finger away and said, ‘I don’t want what you have given Mamtha or Roshan. I want us to live in a parallel universe. You and I, no strings attached. No fangs, no claws, no blood, no tears, no hurt. But I want a long-term relationship. One that’s all about laughter, stars, dreams, life … You there for me, and I there for you. But without hurting anyone else in the picture. I think we can, my Borei, I think we can.’

Gowda felt his breath snag in his throat. For once you can have your cake and eat it too, a little voice whispered. A voice that resembled the ACP’s in that it bore the timbre of corruption. But then young Santosh’s incredulous tone overrode it with a ‘Sir, but it still is adultery…’

Gowda squirmed. His eyes that never ceased searching any room he sat in, fell on a coffee-table book on the table. A big glossy book, and on its cover was the painting of a woman juggler. But what caught his eye was the earring she wore.

Urmila whispered, ‘Am I asking too much of you?’

Gowda stood up. ‘No, you are not. But you need to give me some time to allow this to grow…’ He paused, and then
unable to help himself, he asked, ‘May I borrow this book? I promise to return it in a day or two.’

She looked at him wordlessly as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

‘We are meeting tomorrow, aren’t we?’ he asked, stricken by the expression on her face.

‘Do you really want to? I am not so sure.’

‘You know I do.’

She looked away.

He saw her trying to feign a nonchalance she didn’t feel. She didn’t see the complexity of the situation. All she knew was she had been rejected again.

He reached for her, unable to help himself. ‘I can’t bear to leave you looking like this.’

FRIDAY, 12 AUGUST

Chikka smoothed the page down with the tip of his index finger. Again and again, as if the glossy photo plate in the book had been irrevocably crumpled.

The page was smooth, the man noticed. It was as if he were stroking a small animal. A cat or a squirrel, perhaps. The absent-minded, mechanical stroking with the tip of the middle finger got on his nerves. The man cleared his throat.

‘How much longer will he take?’ he said, not bothering to hide his irritation at having been kept waiting for almost forty-five minutes.

The stroking stopped. Chikka’s eyes settled on the
man’s face briefly. He looked away. ‘I said he cannot be interrupted.’

‘Well, you’d better interrupt him as I really can’t wait any longer. I work for the government, not your brother,’ the man snapped, rising from the chair in his rage.

‘My brother is the government.’ Chikka’s voice rasped.

The man flinched. He walked to the window. These bloody bastards. They knew they had him by his balls. They knew that he needed them more than they needed him. A son whose admission at DGS Engineering College had to be paid for. A daughter who had found a place at the IIM but whose fees had to be paid. A house that needed renovation. The slum clearance board official had needs that weren’t commensurate with his salary. In a moment of frustration, he had acquiesced. A few signatures here, a few papers that went missing. A file that rose to the top of the pile.

‘You are not doing anything wrong,’ the corporator had reassured him. ‘All you are doing is looking away, moving the place of a file, organizing a few signatures, throwing some paper into the waste basket … tell me, don’t you do this anyway, every day?’

Ramachandra, who in his twenty-six years of government service had restricted his criminal doings to petty pilfering – taking home some pencils and erasers – saw the expectant faces of his children and wife. They depended on him, but what had he ever done for them beyond the usual? Here was his chance to make things better for them. Here was his chance to be truly Ramachandra – the benefactor.

‘No one will know,’ the corporator had added. ‘If there is an enquiry, what will they discover? Nothing. Negligence at the most. And what will they do to you then? A suspension at the most. And I am there to make that go away.’

Ramachandra complied. He did everything as he had always done; only, now he was rewarded for it.

The next time, it needed a little more effort, but he was given a bigger reward. Ramachandra’s family looked at him with greater respect. But corruption is like the worm in a mango, he soon discovered. It waits there unseen but boring with its rabid jaws the flesh of your soul, the juices of your life. A rot that taints the very breath from within. Ramachandra saw how his colleagues eyed him; the diminishing of the deference in the corporator’s gaze. The worm gnawed and gnawed…

He turned to Chikka. ‘I managed before the two of you entered my lives. I will again if I have to. So go and ask your brother to stop whatever it is he is doing and see me.’

Chikka put the book down. He rose and went out.

It was a big room. Long, rather than broad. And the doors to it stretched the breadth of the room. Teakwood frames were inlaid with intricate carvings of what was claimed to be fake ivory, but which Chikka knew for a fact was ivory. When it came to what Anna wanted, he had his sources, legal and illegal. The twin doors, gigantic beasts of doors, were embellished with brass strips. Two heavy brass rings hung from the middle of each door and the threshold was plated with brass. The doorway resembled that of a temple, which was exactly how Anna wanted it.