Assassins (12 page)

By time he rang the doorbell of Fatima's hotel room, exhaustion and edginess held him in a tight vise. Then Fatima opened the door and Vishal felt someone had injected a large dose of Viagra straight to his heart.

Freshly bathed, rested, happy she'd gotten Leon back on track, in a white cotton T-shirt and knee-length denim skirt, Fatima looked
good
. Despite the late hour, expecting company, she had done her hair and her makeup was in place.

“Come on in, Mr. Bhardwaj.” She stepped aside with a smile, waving him toward the sofa. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Vishal is good enough for me.”

“Vishal it is.”

Whether because he was tired or because he wanted to, Vishal misread the signals: he thought Fatima was giving him a come-on. He felt something within stir as he headed for the sofa. “I'd love a whiskey, thank you. A little soda and some ice.” Throwing himself on the sofa he loosened his tie.

If Fatima found that strange, she kept it to herself. Handing over a drink, she said, “I thought it best to let you know what I expect from you.”

“Sure.” Vishal eyed her over the rim of his glass. He was only half listening.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Leon jolted awake. For a moment the brightly lit unfamiliar room confused him. Then he saw the chessboard, his notebook beside it, and his brow cleared. Realizing he had dozed off and how tired he was, he dreaded the drive back to Jorbagh, but knew he could not stay on here. His operational instincts, suspicion of Om Chandra, and recent meeting with Vishal made that idea unacceptable.

Perhaps a few moments more.

Picking up the Coke Zero that had come with the Subway meal, he took a sip. Grimaced. The Coke was by now flat and lukewarm. He was putting it down when the chessboard caught his eye. The thought of the recently played game with Vishal made him smile; Leon took pride in the quality of his game. Chess had been one of his most enduring memories. It was also the one thing he associated most closely with his mother; they'd played almost daily, right through his childhood.

The chessboard Dad gave me had been bigger. And the pieces so much better … solid marble.

He remembered his mother's smile whenever he'd told her, “I'm going to be a grand master one day.”

His smile turned bittersweet; he might have been one, too, if it hadn't been for Edward and Ravinder.

They stole all my dreams.

The smile mutated into an angry scowl. Unfeeling fingers began to toy with the sand timer kept by the chessboard to mark time for the players. Flipping it. Unseeing eyes watched the sand slither down, with grim finality. Then the sand ran out. Flip. Out. Flip. Out.

As the sand ran through the hourglass, again and again, three decades slipped away.

*   *   *

Leon could not decide what was worse. Being shackled and frog-marched by two bland-faced, sweaty bobbies down a crowded corridor at the Old Bailey, with everyone turning to stare at him. Or that he would soon be confronting his mother. The stricken look he knew she would give him seared his heart, making him wish he, not Farah, were dead.

The sight of Farah's dead face hammered at him again.

She didn't deserve to die.

Leon again wondered why Farah had screamed rape. The last he remembered, they had been sitting by the fireplace playing chess. Farah wasn't in his league, but decent nevertheless. And they had been drinking. Not heavily, but steadily. Then Farah had pulled out some weed and started smoking. She'd offered him a toke.

Why the hell did I have to smoke it, too?
Leon lamented. Drugs of any kind were not something the freakishly health conscious Leon indulged in. But that day he had. And he still didn't understand why.

Kismet. Or perhaps just the compulsion to impress Farah.

The weed multiplied the effect of the whiskey. On both of them.

Leon's next coherent memory was of Ravinder at the door, staring at them. Farah and Leon were still by the fireside, but now naked. And he was mounted on her.

Ravinder looked stunned, the amazement of a man who walks in on his best friend making out with their other best friend's fianc
é
e.

Then Farah had screamed, “
No! Help me.”

Leon had not been able to figure out why she had done so. But he did remember she'd done so
after
seeing Ravinder. He remembered that clearly.

Her ear-shattering scream jolted all three of them out of the frozen tableau.

Then everything got blurred and bloody. He vaguely recalled Ravinder running forward, pulling him off Farah, and hitting him. Leon
could
remember hitting back. But he could not recollect who had brought the poker into the fight. He thought it was Ravinder, but …

Was that wishful thinking?

Denial?

Damn! Why can't I remember?

The next hot flash of memory was Farah lying on the floor. Still stark naked. But now in a tight fetal ball. And blood was pulsing out of a gash on her forehead. And dripping off the tip of the poker in his hand.

But I didn't hit her. I know I didn't. I just snatched the poker from Ravinder to save myself.

Now Ravinder was screaming. And there was blood everywhere.

Then the door burst open and a sea of blue flowed into the room.

Bobbies. So many of them.

Leon hadn't ever seen so many cops in one place.

*   *   *

“Keep moving.” The cop on Leon's left tugged his elbow, shattering his memories of that gruesome day.

Leon gulped a deep breath, trying to inject oxygen into his brain; it was suffocating.

He knew his case had drawn considerable press; it is not often an Imperial College senior is arrested and tried for the rape and murder of a fellow student, especially not one who regularly made the Dean's List and the local press for his prowess as an athlete: boxing, rowing, cycling, javelin, shooting. Leon was a natural.

The accusatory glares and
oh-my-God-look-there-is-that-monster
whispers as the cops thread their way down the packed corridor, with Leon sandwiched between them.

“I'm innocent,” Leon wanted to scream. “Don't judge me without hearing my side of the story. I did not rape her. And I did not kill her.”

But no words emerged. He could not feel his tongue. Or even reach his thoughts. As though he was suspended in a vacuum.

Ravinder will set it all right. He will tell them what happened.

Leon felt hope bubbling under his skin, threatening to break free. Unaware he was suffering the same delusion all those under trial do—that they would be miraculously found innocent and exonerated. He knew Edward, completely besotted by Farah, would never believe it had been anything other than rape. But Leon was certain Ravinder would tell the truth.

Ravinder is a stand-up guy, and we have always been close. Much closer than Edward, whose strange, somewhat prissy upper-class mannerisms surface every so often. But Ravinder is like us, one of the blokes … he is a good man.

Then Hope, always a fickle mistress, did a somersault.

What if Ravinder didn't?

Despair came sweeping out of the darkness. Leon felt his heart plummet.

“Keep moving.” The policeman on the left yanked his arm again, harder this time. Leon sensed his tension; the crowds jamming the corridors of Old Bailey were making the policemen nervous. There were so many people, the numbers increasing every moment, and they looked really angry.

As though handed a cue, someone shouted, “Lynch the sod!”

“Cut his nuts off!” The cry was taken up and grew louder.

The cop's grip on his arm tightened and they got moving again. The corridor seemed endless, but the onward motion felt good. Leon could feel his despair trickling away. He was suddenly eager to reach the courtroom.

They
will
believe me. More important, Mom will understand. Once Ravinder explains what actually happened, she will understand. She
has
to.

They hit a security barrier. Considering the publicity and angst Farah's rape and murder had thrown up, the cops had barricaded this part of the courthouse. They were checking identity and purpose before letting anyone in.

Of course, Leon and his escorts were hustled through. And immediately they sped up. Past the barrier, the crowd was sparser. Soon they turned the final corner to the courtroom.

Leon started as he saw all three of them. His mother was to his left, facing Edward and Ravinder. Edward had his back toward Leon. Ravinder and his mother were also facing away from him, at an angle. None of the three saw him.

Excited, Leon made to call out.

But a roar went up from the picket line across the road, beyond the trio, distracting him. It was a robust crowd, mostly female. The sight of Leon had incensed them. Their words were drowned out by the incessantly flowing traffic. The placards they were waving were not.

Hang Binder.

Leon's heart plummeted.

Castrate the rapist.

Despair skyrocketed.

He turned hungrily to the trio ahead.
Ravinder can save me.

Before he could speak, Leon heard his mother say, “My Leon is a good boy. Both of you know him. Help him.
Please!
He would never hurt a fly.”

“Neither would Farah,” Ravinder shot back brusquely. “And she's dead. How could he have done this? Farah was Edward's fianc
é
e.”

That Ravinder, not Edward, had uttered those words struck Leon like a body blow. His mind reeled. He almost blacked out. Hope flamed and charred. Then from those smoldering remains arose rage. Phoenix-like. A dark and dangerous rage. The likes of which Leon had never experienced before.

The rage blocked everything out, smothering Leon in a dark, dank cocoon as he swept past them into the courthouse. They had seen him now and were looking at him. His mother was calling out to him, but Leon had nothing for her. Blindsiding them, he surged ahead, pulling along the surprised cops. Ignoring even his lawyer, Leon walled himself off from everyone and everything.

That rage stayed with him as he watched the courtroom drama play out. Only when they asked him to stand for the verdict did he look at his mother, cringing in the corner. Her stricken expression said it all, a confused cacophony of hope and despair. Leon could tell she didn't want to be there, was ashamed to be there, and yet would not have missed it for anything, in the hope that they would find her beloved son innocent.

Leon saw her hopes being dashed one by one. Inch by inch he saw her die.

Though his ears did not hear his being pronounced guilty or his mind assimilate its implications thereafter, not once did his eyes leave his mother's face. Every wrinkle of pain on it was etched on his heart. Even today.

And the pain was only to get worse.

The judicial system inside the jail was far swifter and infinitely less merciful than the one practiced at Old Bailey.

Child molesters deserve death by castration. And rapists get raped.

That was the law. And it was delivered in Leon's case, too. Mercilessly.

They came for him the very first night. Six of them. Lifers who no longer feared the law. They held him down and raped him again and again. Through that endless night Leon suffered more pain and humiliation than he had believed possible. No one heard his screams, stifled by the stinking sock stuffed into his mouth.

Even if they did, no one cared. Neither the other inmates nor the prison guards patrolling the corridor. Not even the security cameras, which usually missed nothing.

It was only as dawn broke, as Leon lay crying on the cold prison floor, mind and body mangled, that the last memory flash burst in on him.

Ravinder was rushing toward him, the poker raised in the air, when his foot caught on the rug, sending him and the poker crashing down. Ravinder hit the floor and the poker thudded on Farah's head, hard. The blow hammered her down. And blood began to trickle from a gash in her forehead.

The flash of memory was brief. So fleeting Leon was not sure he had seen it at all. Then it strengthened, whether because Leon's memory had refreshed it or due to cognitive dissonance, he could not be sure.

But I am
.
I remember now. I am sure. Ravinder killed Farah.

Doubt counterattacked.

How is that possible? I'd been through this with my lawyer a dozen times. How could I
not
have remembered earlier?

The fog of confusion refused to lift.

But I know. I didn't kill Farah. Ravinder did.

Conflicted, Leon sat up on the cold prison floor, his pain and humiliation forgotten. Swamped by this bigger and bitter one.

That's why Ravinder refused to meet me. In fact, even refused to meet my eye all this while.

Leon swore.

That is why the bastard had been in such a hurry to crucify me.

“I will make him pay.” Leon realized he'd shouted only when his cellmate told him to shut up. He lapsed into a listless sleep, itching for morning so that he could speak to his lawyer. There was hope in his heart. Again.

But when he woke the next morning, he was no longer so sure.

Did it really happen like that? Was Ravinder the real killer?

Doubts plagued Leon, tormenting him.

Had he imagined it? What was it, hope or reality?

For a long time, Hope and Despair seesawed madly, driving him to the brink. In the end, it was Despair that seized the day.

Even if it was true, would anyone believe me?

As it turned out, no one did. Not even his lawyer; he didn't say so, but it was written all over his face.