Different Senses (33 page)

Two people hadn’t called—my
parents. Of course they knew the story was nonsense, but not to
have a complaint about the annoyance wasn’t like either of them.
Which could mean almost anything, really. I didn’t feel like
chasing it up.

Madan was first into the office
after me. “I hear you had an exciting weekend,” he said, hanging up
his coat.

“Everything you heard is a
lie.”

“But you don’t know what I
heard.”

“Still a lie. Madan, I need
dirt on Timin Veringe. Do you have any contacts with the drug
dealers and users? Mine are a little out of date, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but my
instincts are this guy doesn’t bother with the street users. His
clientele will be the same as the ones who buy the artefacts and
the art.”

“Society women? Wouldn’t they
just ask their doctors to prescribe what they want?”

“
Depends if prescription
drugs
do
what they want. Say you’re a bored thrill-seeker, and
you’ve heard that
larin
cut with
nodil
can
give you the ride of your life. Who are you going to
ask?”

“That nice Sri Veringe who
brings you the pretties?”

“Got it in one. It’s a theory,
anyway.”

I sighed. “Not one I can
prove though. My mother will go thermonuclear if I start asking her
friends if they’re sniffing
larin
.”

“Then you have a problem. I’ll
ask around but I don’t hold out much hope.”

“Do what you can. Thanks.” As
if this case wasn’t confusing enough.

Prachi and Vik wandered in a
little later. Prachi grinned as she saw me. “When’s the wedding,
boss?”

“Don’t you start. Seriously.
I’m lucky Shardul doesn’t hold it against me. How the hell did
those reporters get my brother’s phone number, and mine?”

“Not me,” Prachi said.

“Me either,” Vik said
hastily.

“It’s okay. I think I know you
two have enough sense not to give that kind of thing out. But it’s
an object lesson. Because of who I am, who my family is, and the
work we do for the Institute, we can be targets anytime, and the
attention won’t always be friendly. We can’t afford to fuck up in
public. Nice to have your pictures in the news when you’re all
dressed up and enjoying yourself. Not so nice when someone’s trying
to take your investigator’s licence or your freedom away.
Understand?”

They nodded, the grins gone
completely. Behind them, Madan nodded too, in approval.

“But I know you’re both
sensible, so take the warning and stick it in your mental files.
Just get on with your jobs and I’ll do the best I can to make sure
I don’t bring that kind of attention on you.”

Still solemn, they went to
their desks. I hated doing that to them, but I’d seen young cops
screw their careers by carelessness, and damn it, I should have
seen the whole ‘romance’ thing coming myself. Who knew what
repercussions that might have for me or Shardul, considering how
our respective communities felt about the other?

My phone went. I checked the
caller before I answered. “Hello, Mum.”

“Javen, can you come to the
residence this morning?”

Her voice vibrated with
tension. Anger over the press stories, or something else? “Sure,
Mum. I can be there within the hour.”

“Soon as you can.”

She abruptly closed the call. I
stood. “Have to head out. You guys got everything under
control?”

They did, so I left. If my
mother had called me over to the residence just to chew me out, I
was not going to take it well. But somehow I thought not.

She hadn’t. As soon as I walked
into her office, I knew she was upset, not angry. “Mum, what’s
wrong?”

“I spoke to Harinakshi Narl
yesterday. Yashi told me you were away so I waited to call.”

I sat down. “Thanks. Sorry
about the...you know.”

She dismissed my apology
with an impatient wave of her hand. “Never mind that. Harinakshi
received the bracelet as a gift from her husband on her fiftieth
birthday. Which was
three
days
before Timin delivered the bracelet
to me.”

“What? That can’t be.”

“Exactly. Harinakshi’s very
angry. Not with me, exactly, but....”

“I need to talk to her and her
husband.”

“
Absolutely
not
.
Javen, I’ve involved them in
criminality
.” Her eyes darted
around as if she expected to be arrested at any moment.

“No, you haven’t. And Shrimati
Narl hasn’t committed a crime either.” I didn’t want to say “done
nothing wrong” because it wasn’t exactly true. “Mum, the only way
to get you out of this mess is to prove Timin Veringe stole from
you. I need to speak to them and have the bracelet examined. One of
the versions has to be a fake. The piece is unique.”

“I don’t believe this. I just
thought it was a way to make a little career on the side as an art
dealer. I never thought this would happen.”

“You’re not dealing in art so
much as people’s lives, Mum. Their history and their pride.”

“You think I deserve this.” She
brushed angrily at her eyes.

“I think...I’m glad you’re not
going to do it any more. Because it’s wrong and it hurts people who
can’t fight back. Jyoti’s family once owned pieces like she wore to
the ball. But they sold them because they were poor and the money
offered was ridiculously high. They shouldn’t have had to sell
them, and she could have worn them as of right, instead of
borrowing them. One day she’ll be married, and she won’t have her
family’s own finery to wear on that day.”

“I never stole anything from
her.”

“No. But we did. The Kelons
did.”

Her lips thinned. “I was never
involved in any discrimination or harm to those people. My parents
only arrived here forty years ago, long after the second
colonisation began. How dare you accuse me?”

“I’m not.” Her anger beat on my
head like a metal pipe. “This is getting off track, Mum. I need to
speak to Harinakshi Narl and see the bracelet, let an expert
examine it. It can all be done with complete discretion.”

“She doesn’t want her husband
to know a thing about this. He’d be furious.”

“All right. But would she visit
here to see me, and let someone look at the bracelet?”

“I can ask.” Her manner was
cold now, not distressed. I’d insulted her and that was uppermost
in her mind. “Why don’t you confront Timin, make him tell you the
truth?”

“Without some proof, he’ll
laugh in my face, maybe even sue me. I’m pursuing other lines of
investigation, but I need to talk to Shrimati Narl.”

“She won’t give up the
bracelet.”

“I understand. She won’t have
to.”

“Very well.” She made a show of
looking through papers on her desk. “I have someone coming to see
me shortly.”

“I’ll wait to hear from
you.”

She didn’t say goodbye.
I’d pushed too hard, but somehow the message had to get through to
her that what she’d been doing was flat out
wrong
. Unfortunately,
a son wasn’t the right person to ever tell a mother they were wrong
about anything. At least, this son with this mother.

I called Shardul as I
walked to where I’d left my vehicle. “Want to hear the latest
wrinkle? There are
two
bracelets in this mess. Shrimati Narl received
hers before my mother did.”

“One’s a fake. Has to be.”

“I know. So who can I ask to
verify which Shrimati Narl was wearing?”

“My aunt will know someone.
I’ll send you their name.”

“Thank you.”

I’d be screwed without
Shardul’s help, and yet he’d said from the start he didn’t want to
be involved. Was taking Veringe down enough to change his mind,
even if my mother got off the hook as a side effect? Or maybe he
was like me and couldn’t stand a bad job being done when he had the
power to fix it. I’d known the guy over a year and there was so
much I didn’t know about him. Sure would like the chance to find
out though.

I hadn’t even reached my auto
when my mother called me. “Harinakshi Narl has agreed to let you
talk to her tomorrow at eleven, here, on the understanding that you
arrive separately from her and so does this ‘expert’.”

“Uh, I don’t even know if I can
line someone up that fast, Mum.”

“I’m not rearranging this,
Javen. Have your person ready, or do without.”

Aren’t I
doing
you
the favour, Mother dear?
I shook
my head. The
derda
wass
indeed.

I messaged Shardul to let him
know what Mum had decreed, not much caring if he called back and
told me he couldn’t arrange an expert in so little time. I wished I
was back in the hills with my grandfather and his lovely little
garden. Life was sweet and simple with him, and dealing with my
parents was neither.

I had work to do, clients to
chase up, but it was a beautiful if chilly day, and I just did not
feel like dealing with other people’s stuff. So I drove out to the
riverside park, and went for a walk. At this time of day, the park
belonged to young mothers and the occasional father, out walking
their babies and toddlers. As many Nihan as Kelon, keeping to
themselves, but sharing the same paths, doing the same thing,
because under the physical differences, they were all the same.
People, with the same dreams and hopes and worries, some with more,
some with less. A picture of how the world should be, if we could
get past race.

But as I walked, the cop
in me, the trained observer, noticed hair colour and eyes weren’t
the only difference. The indigenous mothers were all neatly, almost
too neatly dressed for casual outings, and none of their odd
traditional strollers was even slightly dingy or dirty. Like they
knew they would be watched, and judged, and any fault held against
their whole people. They walked with more care, more wariness, and
ducked their heads as they passed a
chuma
, as if they didn’t think
they had the right to look one of our people in the eye.

Which was such
shit
. Why
should someone like Jyoti have to hide her pride in her identity,
her calm fearlessness, just because a Kelon woman’s gaze met hers?
Why would someone like Shardul ever need to worry about being
judged? Yet they both did, and if they did, how much more for these
women here, and the children who would never, unless things
changed, have a fair chance to compete against richer, more
privileged offspring?

Great
. I’d come out to get away
from things and here I was getting all worked up about injustices
that had started long before I was born, and would be around long
after I was ashes. I’d be better off back in the office snarling at
potential customers and pissing them off.

My phone went. “Yeah?”

“Is it me or do you always
answer the phone like that lately?”

“Kirin, I’m sorry. I’m in a
fucking foul mood.”

“Oh. Then I suppose it’s the
wrong time to suggest since it’s such a lovely day, that we could
eat lunch together in the sun.”

“You know what? That’s a
brilliant idea. Are you free now?”

“But it’s not eleven yet.”

“Oh. Okay, forget—”

“No, I’ll come. I’ll bring
samsa and unni appam and chai, and coax you into telling me why you
are biting the heads off innocent phone callers. Where are
you?”

I told him, and he said he’d be
there soon. And I didn’t feel the slightest anxiety about it at
all. I had no idea why, but I could think of Kirin now just as a
friend. A good friend, and today, someone I really wanted to
see.

I walked back to the car park,
and he pulled up a couple of minutes later, leaping out of his
vehicle, bearing bags of food and a rug to sit on. “This is exactly
where I wanted to come today, and exactly the company,” he said,
giving me one of his bright, winning smiles.

“You might change your mind
about that. I wasn’t joking about the mood.”

“No, I can see that. Let’s find
a warm place to sit and you can tell me all about it.”

We found our spot in a pretty
tree-ringed clearing, where parents were setting out rugs and
baskets for their children’s lunches. “Haven’t done this in an age.
Not since....”

“Not since us,” I finished.

“No. Nice to be with a
friend.”

“Yeah,” I said, and meant
it.

He poured us chai from a flask,
and handed over one of the little sweet cakes he knew I liked. “Is
it all that silliness in the press that’s making you cranky?”

“No, not really. It’s annoying,
but that’s not the problem.”

He stretched out on the rug and
picked at the food while I complained about Mum, the second
bracelet, her snottiness, the general greediness of Kelons, and the
unfairness that meant I couldn’t persuade Shardul to sleep with me.
Actually, the last one just popped out without me thinking about
it, and it was only when I looked down, saw Kirin’s wide smile and
crinkling eyes, that I realised I said more than I should have.
“Uh...maybe you should forget about what I just said.”

“Come off it, Javen. I saw you
two at the ball. You were devouring him with your eyes, and he was
just as bad.”

“
He was
acting
.”

“Uh huh. You weren’t.”

“No. He knows how I feel but he
won’t sleep with a Kelon and that’s that. I don’t blame him. The
things he fights against every day, are things you and I don’t ever
have to think about. I even had to bully the taxi driver into
taking him and Jyoti to the ball, would you believe?”