Different Senses (9 page)

“Different job. Cops protect
and serve, and you’ll....”

“Snoop.”

“Well, yes.” He laughed. “You
look disgusted.”

“I’m not, not really.” I said
with a shrug. “Just not looking forward to finding clients.” I’d
looked at the advertising other investigators used, but the
boastful claims and services listed put me off using them as an
example. “Cops don’t need to go looking for people to help.”

“Maybe you need to work on not
seeing yourself as a cop any more,” my brother said. He picked up
his case. “Anyway, I’m off to work, and we need you back by six for
the kids. That’s still okay, right?”

“Sure. I already put it into my
packed schedule.”

He grinned. “Thanks. See you
later.”

I poured myself more chai and
contemplated my new career with no great enthusiasm. I’d let Kirin
and Yashi bully me into applying for the investigator’s license
because I knew they wanted the best for me and I had no better
ideas for how to spend my post-police life. Now it was a reality, I
wasn’t at all sure this was for me. The work, sure. I could do
that. But being a self-employed operator, hawking myself out....
Kirin had given me some contacts, and Yashi wanted me to exploit
the family connections, an idea I’d rejected immediately. The last
thing I wanted was to involve my parents and their political chums
in my work.

I needed to do more research, I
decided, procrastinating like a champ. So I decided to walk into
town to visit the main library and do some browsing on the subject.
There. That would take up a whole day and I could put off the
problem of clients for that long.

As I walked out into the humid
weather that heralded the wet season to come in a couple of weeks,
my phone went. “Javen Ythen.” I couldn’t make myself add ‘private
investigator’ to the end. Too cheesy.

“Sri Ythen, it’s Jyoti Tejal
Hiranya. Do you remember me?”

“Jyoti...oh yes! Kirin’s lab.
How are you?”

“I’m well, sir. And you?”

“Doing okay. What can I help
you with?”

“Do you recall you, uh, offered
to do me a favour? Did you mean that?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“It’s a very private matter,
Sri Ythen. Would it be possible to meet to talk about it? Perhaps
this evening?”

“Not tonight. How about
lunch?”

She agreed, and named a
time where she would meet me away from the laboratory. That meant
I’d need my auto, so I walked back to the house to collect it,
wondering what a quiet, respectable
banis
girl like Jyoti could want
with an ex-cop.

She looked as lovely as I
remembered her, though sadder, with white ribbons instead of purple
woven into her red braids.

“How’s work?” I asked as I
drove to my regular chai house.

“Very good. I recently received
a pay rise. Sri Nel is very happy with me, he says.”

“Excellent. So this isn’t about
work?”

“Not at all, and I don’t want
them to know about it. It concerns my family. A very great
sorrow.”

“I understand. Let’s talk while
we eat.”

Most of the customers in the
chai house at this time of day were there only to collect orders
and lunchboxes left in the morning, so we found a table easily. I
ordered a vegetable dish for both of us, and then asked her to tell
me what was happening, in her own time.

“My aunt and uncle live on the
Demultan Flats. They’re farmers, not wealthy people. Six weeks ago,
their only daughter hanged herself.”

Ouch.
“I’m sorry. That’s why you’re wearing white
ribbons?” White for mourning, same for Nihan and Kelon
alike.

“Yes. Though we believe in
reincarnation, a life cut short in this way is still a great
sorrow. She had lost her first child at birth two months before,
and that’s why she killed herself, we believe.”

“It’s very sad, but I don’t
understand why you need my help.”

She sipped her chai, discomfort
and sadness colouring her actions. “My aunt and uncle refuse to
accept it was suicide because there was no note. The police have
closed the case, there is no evidence of foul play, but yet they
find no peace or acceptance. My parents and I have visited three
times to try to help, but....”

“Sometimes people channel their
anger at the dead person into a supposed attacker, because they
feel that’s more acceptable. What do you want me to do, Jyoti? I’m
not a police officer.”

Her pale cheeks coloured
slightly. “No, but you are Kelon and you know how the police work.
I thought...perhaps you could ask them to re-examine it? Or ask
questions to see if there’s anything in what my aunt and uncle
believe? I want to help them so much. Their pain is so great, and
they are such good people.”

“I can talk to them but I can’t
promise I can help. Sounds more like they need counselling than
anything else.”

“I agree, but if we try this,
then perhaps they won’t be able to deny the truth any longer.”

“You believe your cousin killed
herself?”

She gave me a sad look. “I saw
Sapna two weeks before she died. She was a very unhappy person, and
grieved so much for her dead child. I believe suicide is the most
likely answer.”

“Yeah. So when do you want me
to go see them?”

“When is convenient? Ah, and
you would charge...?”

“Nothing. I told you, I owe
you. And who wants to profit from misery?”

She smiled a little. “This is
how I feel too. Thank you, Sri Ythen. Tomorrow? I’m not working,
and I will need to come with you as they speak little Kelon.”

“I thought all your people
spoke it.”

“
We learn it, yes, but
among those who avoid dealing with the
chuma
, they become rusty.
Where they live, the police are the only ones of your kind they
ever see.”

“
So we’re always bad
news. Great. Tomorrow’s fine. Let them know and I’ll pick you up.
But no promises to you or them, okay? They might not like
chuma
cops, but no police officer would overlook a murder. If
they say it’s suicide, then they have reason to think
that.”

“I understand.”

“We might have to stay
overnight. It’s a long way to the Flats. Would that be a problem?”
I had no knowledge of that part of the north and no idea what kind
of accommodation was on offer.

“My family will offer you
hospitality, Sri Ythen. I can spare three days, if you can.”

“I hope it won’t take that
long, and please—call me Javen.”

“Very well, Javen.”

We ate our meal in silence, and
I drove her back to work. Not the kind of case I would have chosen
for my first, but I’d told Jyoti she could ask me to help her out,
and I always kept my word.

~~~~~~~~

I barely had a chance to
speak to Yashi and Tara before they went out for their anniversary
meal, but felt reluctant to tell them what I’d been asked to do.
The ill-feeling between various parts of my family and me over my
empathy and what that meant for various assumptions regarding our
ancestry, still rumbled on eight months after my shooting. While
Yashi and Tara had wisely kept out of the arguments, bringing up
the
banis
might cause tensions in the house I’d rather avoid.
Besides, it was, as Jyoti said, a very private matter, and in the
nature of an act of charity rather than any
investigation.

So when I left the next morning
with an overnight pack, I only said I had arranged to visit a
friend of a friend with a view to possible employment. Yashi, busy
with the kids, wished me good luck and Tara told me to drive
carefully.

Jyoti had asked me to meet her
at the downtown bus depot—I got the impression she didn’t want me
to come to her home—and when I arrived, she was waiting with
another, older woman. “Javen, this is my mother, Tejal Priti Sunil.
She will come with us to assist with my aunt and uncle.”

And act as chaperone, I had no
doubt. “Good morning, Shrimati Sunil.”

She bowed her head. “Good
morning, Sri Ythen. Thank you for agreeing to help my brother and
his wife. It has been such a sad time.”

“No problem. Okay, everyone hop
in.”

The trip to the Demultan Flats
would take five hours by road, but we could save an hour and a half
by switching onto maglev transport for part of the way. My urban
auto wasn’t all that suitable for rural roads and I hoped to make
the journey without major damage to the vehicle.

I’d never been in close
proximity to
banis
women on my own before and the first hour of the
trip felt strained, conversations dying almost as soon as they
started. The fact I’d been a cop didn’t help, since the Nihan
regarded Kelon police with suspicion and Kelon cops didn’t deal
with the indigenous population any more than they had to. That my
passengers were intensely religious, and my people atheist by
political and personal inclination, didn’t do a lot to make things
easier either. Two of us being empaths and knowing exactly how wary
the other was, only made it more painful.

But Shrimati Sunil
finally asked me about my family, and I said I lived with my twin
brother and his wife who was a teacher. That gave us an opening,
because
banis
twins were rare and of great fascination.
Shrimati Sunil had been a primary school teacher for a number of
years, though she had retired through ill health a while ago. She
and Jyoti quizzed me enthusiastically about being an identical
twin, and how my brother and Tara managed raising twins themselves.
I heard a surprising amount about the different attitudes to child
rearing among the
banis
. Only of theoretical
interest to me, sure, but it helped the time pass.

While we talked, I learned a
little more about the suicide. Sapna’s husband was Kelon, something
I gathered had caused a stir at the time, and the family had never
accepted him. Sapna had been married for two years, and had been
looking forward to her first child, her parents’ first grandchild,
but she’d gone into labour prematurely while out on a farm
visit.

“She was all alone, and the
baby arrived too fast,” Shrimati Sunil said. “The cord was wrapped
around its neck, and the child choked.”

I winced at the image.

“Very bad luck, that was all,
but she blamed herself. Why, I’m not sure, but grieving people
sometimes aren’t rational. She hanged herself at the place where
she gave birth, and where her baby died.”

Sainted
reason
. “Which tends to support the idea
that she committed suicide, don’t you think?” I said.

“To my mind, yes. My brother
won’t accept it. If only the girl had left them a note. She must
have been too distressed to think of it.”

In my experience, a
suicide without a note was rare, but so far as I could tell, this
was the only remotely suspicious aspect of the case. The note could
have been mislaid or simply blown away if she killed herself
outdoors. The local cops would have looked.
I
would have
looked.

When we drove off the maglev,
the difference from urban Hegal and its wealth was immediately
obvious in the poor condition of the roads, the rundown signs, the
lack of lighting, and the lousy signal on my phone.

“It’s something our people have
complained of many times,” Jyoti told me. “But upgrading the signal
is apparently too costly for such a sparse population. Many farmers
rely on radio communication instead.”

“Radio? That’s primitive.”

“Yes, but at least we can keep
in touch. Everyone carries phones but half the time, we can’t use
them.”

City folk lived on their phones
and comms and datalinks. How did anyone do business out here? I
wouldn’t be surprised to find they still used tangible money
too.

The lousy roads weren’t the
only striking difference from the city. As I saw my first dwellings
raised high on stilts and connected by walkways, I gaped in
amazement, and Jyoti laughed at me. “It’s called the Flats because
the river floods every wet season. The water passes under the
houses, and then people move around by boat. There’s raised storage
for autos and farm equipment dotted between every few farms.”

“What a way to live.”

“Your people acquired the best
land,” Shrimati Sunil said, with only the barest emphasis on
‘acquired’. “But they didn’t want flood plains. The land is very
fertile but those who farm must put up with three months of
inconvenience.”

I’d better hurry up with my
investigation, I thought, or all the evidence would be underwater
in a month.

The ugly brown houses looked
liked ungainly water birds, picking their way through the flat
landscape. But the land’s fertility could be seen everywhere I
looked, with lush vegetation along every fence, and the fields
themselves head high with crops, being harvested by hand and
elderly-looking mechanical machinery in the field. Don’t ask me
what they were growing. Plants are plants. I know people, not green
things.

I’d never been to this part of
the country before. I never left Hegal except to visit my
grandfather up in the Tudon Hills, but why would anyone who didn’t
live in these Flats, want to visit? There was nothing here but
farms. The mines were west of us, while my ancestors had ‘acquired’
the pretty land to the south of Hegal and other prime property
elsewhere in the region and to a lesser extent, right across
Medele. Our people tended to spend their leisure time where they
could enjoy nice scenery without being troubled by red-haired
locals.

Jyoti’s family lived in a
commune of ten or so houses on stilts—more a village than a farm.
We pulled up under one of the houses and then climbed the tall
narrow steps up to the walkway. “How do people manage who aren’t
mobile?” I muttered, half to myself.