The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken (18 page)

Mummy handed the brochure back to Ritu. They were standing in the small foyer of their hotel.

'This is for NRI types, na,' said Mummy, confused.

'Not that part,' said Ritu, turning over the brochure. 'There. Where it talks about the boat. It says here they'll take us out into the middle of the Ganges to scatter the ashes.'

'A priest and helper will accompany you at sunset,' said the hotel manager, who was standing behind the front desk. 'It is experience of the lifetime, I can tell you.'

It had taken the manager all of three or four minutes, the time Mummy had used to visit the WC, to sell Ritu on the boat scheme. It was a nice idea but obviously flawed.

'You're doing seasickness,' pointed out Mummy.

'Madam, seasickness only comes at sea,' admonished the manager. 'On Ganges there is hardly a ripple. So smooth it is.'

'Honestly, I think it should be fine,' said Ritu.

'You were getting sickness in a paddle boat on Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh, even.'

'I had eaten so much of barfi beforehand, no?'

Mummy stood resolutely by her opinion. 'Listen, na,' she said. 'This evening, only, we'll take Bal's ashes to Har ki Pauri. That is the proper way.'

The manager could see his prospective customer (and presumably his commission) slipping away. 'Sacred Rights is offering ten per cent discount,' he said. 'One videographer first class is provided who will capture the ceremony for all eternity.'

Ritu's ears pricked up again. 'That does sound nice,' she said.

Mummy took her by the arm and led her away.

'Come,' she said as they stepped out of the hotel and hailed an auto. 'Better for all concerned persons we keep you here on land. Otherwise it would not only be Bal's ashes ending up in the holy Ganga, na?'

The three-wheeler squeezed up Haridwar's narrow lanes, straining against the mid-morning tide of pilgrims, ash-smeared sadhus and Western Hindu converts. Had Mummy reached out the side of the flimsy vehicle, she could have scooped up handfuls of chunky black cardamoms from open gunny sacks sitting outside spice shops or plucked plump marigold flowers from barrows stocked with the paraphernalia required for Hindu ceremonies.

The walls of the narrow buildings closing in around them had a waxy sheen, the grime that clung to the brickwork and plaster having been buffed and polished by generations of passing elbows and shoulders. Monastic doorways revealed steep stairways winding up into rooms that had been subdivided and then subdivided again. In one window, two tailors sat stacked one on top of the other like competitors in the game show Hollywood Squares, false ceilings only inches above their heads.

The lane soon fell down the hill and the auto shuddered over ruts and bumps, listing perilously when it sloshed through an open drain, and came to a halt in a small square. A banyan tree stood in the middle, gnarled and ancient. The prop roots growing from its branches had attached themselves to the facades of the surrounding buildings like the tentacles of a giant squid. Three or four cows grazed on freshly cut grass beneath the thick trunk. Nearby, three women with dupattas covering their heads, the ends between their teeth, were making patties out of manure and leaving them to dry in the sun.

'Banyan tree and cows - so far so good, na,' said Mummy as they dismounted from the auto.

'But I don't see a barber,' commented Ritu.

They were following directions that had been given to them fifteen minutes earlier at the home of the Panda responsible for keeping the records of the Ghatwal family, Ghatwal being the declared maiden name of Mrs Megha Dogra, wife of the Prince of Polyester and the first of Mummy's three suspects.

Mummy, who'd told Ritu that she was doing some research on behalf of a friend living in Canada, walked around the banyan and found the barber on the other side. His salon was arranged between the tree's roots with a mirror and washbasin attached to the trunk. Behind him lay the alley. It was too narrow for Ritu, given her girth, and she was unable to walk sideways thanks to her hips, so she elected to remain in the square.

'Pukka?' asked Mummy, hiding her relief.

'Don't worry about me. I'll be happy sitting here watching the cows. Such beautiful colours. Oooh, perhaps I'll buy some fresh milk! It's very good for you, no?'

The alley led into another smaller courtyard. From there Mummy was directed into a lopsided building. The floors sloped at a 15-degree angle and the doorways were all crooked like those in a fairground house of fun. The room in which she was asked to wait was bare save for a couple of dhurries and a bookstand.

Behind this sat the Panda - tall, lean, sixty plus, with a head of white hair pulled back into a ponytail. A red line ran from the edge of his scalp down to the bridge of his nose, an unusual tilak and one that somehow lent him a sinister air. His courteous greeting and pleasant demeanour immediately dispelled any sense of threat, however, and he called down into the courtyard for refreshments to be brought for his guest.

'Your family name is Ghatwal?' he asked.

'Actually not,' answered Mummy, who gave him the same story she'd told Ritu.

'You know which village your friend's paternal family originated from?' he asked. 'Without that information it will be very hard to help.'

Mummy got out her notes. Her friend Preeti, who worked in the National Archives, had done some research on her behalf and found Megha Ghatwal's 1947 refugee certificate. She'd been listed along with her mother, Harjot, a widow, who'd hailed from the village of Singhpuria in present-day Pakistan.

'That's north-west of Lahore,' said the Panda. 'Yes I believe I can help.'

He took a set of keys from his pocket, selected a large old brass one and opened a door at the side of the room. Beyond lay a chamber that looked like some secret monastic library full of forbidden gospels, the shelves packed with scrolls and parchments. The Panda spent a good fifteen minutes searching through them. When he emerged it was with an armful of dusty papers, which he proceeded to unravel on the floor before him.

Written on the brittle pages were the names and details of Ghatwals spanning back seven, eight generations. The newest writing belonged to his hand, but the earlier entries had been made by his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and so on.

'Anything earlier was put down on palm leaves but none have survived,' he explained.

It took him half an hour to find the right family lineage. The entry was written in the Perso-Arabic script.

'Here,' he said. 'Megha Ghatwal was born in 1927. Her father travelled to Haridwar in the month of Kartika in 1936 to scatter the remains of his own father. Look. Here's the updated information he provided on his immediate family and there's his thumbprint and those of the witnesses.'

'Megha had brothers and sisters?' asked Mummy.

'Two brothers. But seems they were both killed along with their father in 1947 - while the family was fleeing to India.'

The Panda turned the page and found it empty. 'That's strange,' he said. 'There are no more entries. The last was made in 1949 when Megha Ghatwal's mother, Harjot, visited Haridwar on pilgrimage and reported the death of her husband and sons.'

'There's no record of Harjot's death?'

'None. Her daughter has never come.'

Mummy noted down the details and paid him a couple of hundred rupees for his time.

It appeared that Megha Dogra was who she claimed to be; her maiden name was Ghatwal and she'd arrived in Delhi with her mother. Furthermore, her native place was a good 150 miles from the village where Faheem Khan lived in 1947. But why hadn't she recorded her own mother's death?

'Did you find what you're looking for?' asked Ritu Auntie, who was waiting in the square.

'Just I'm making progress,' she answered.

They climbed into their auto and started back up the hill, passing a man whom Mummy had seen earlier outside the hotel. Looking back, she watched as he mounted a scooty and followed after them.

THIRTEEN

THE SECURITY GUARD approached the Mercedes Benz, clipboard at the ready, as it stopped at the front gate of Full Moon's Chattarpur farmhouse.

'Your good name, sir?' he said once the automatic window had slid down.

'Pujji. Mahinder C. Pujji,' answered Puri. 'Sagittarius.'

The security guard either didn't understand the reference to his assumed star sign or lacked a sense of humour. He ran his finger down the guest list with a straight face.

'I see your name here, sir. But there's no mention of Ma'am.'

He was referring to the woman seated next to the detective, his eyes lingering on the tantalising flash of thigh revealed by the slit of her tight black dress. She was Puri's junior by a good twenty years, and had long black hair, high cheekbones that punctuated her faultless caramel complexion and bewitching oriental eyes.

'This is Miss Nina,' said Puri, adding in an emphatic tone, 'a friend.'

His escort let out a childish giggle and squeezed his left knee. 'Oh come on, Pujji wooji, I'm a good friend, yaar,' she said, her tone louche.

'Quite right, my lovely wovely.' Puri let out a hearty laugh that sounded especially sleazy. 'Better make that good friend, actually.'

The security guard apologised with heartfelt remorse. 'Unfortunately, sir, I cannot permit anyone to enter who is not here on the list,' he said.

'Come on, yaar,' insisted the detective. 'Just go check up, OK? No one told me anything of the sort.'

The guard agreed to do so, retreating to his sentry post, where, through the window, he could be seen talking on a phone.

All the while cameras mounted on the high walls surrounding the property peered into the interior of the car, their lenses opening and contracting like sea anemones.

'Full Moon takes his security most seriously,' murmured Puri. 'Wonder if he thinks he's the next target.'

The detective was taking no chances himself.

Mahinder C. Pujji was a persona he had developed and honed over the past couple of years for just such an operation. He was a Ludhiana resident with a successful machine tools manufacturing business, an account with the India National Bank, a driver's licence and, for good measure, membership of the All Punjab Rotary Club.

Mr Pujji was also armed with a number of handy gadgets. His mobile phone doubled as a voice-activated recorder. The gold medallion he was wearing as part of his disguise - he had gone for 'Indo Western', Western meaning cowboy - contained a pinhole TV camera and transmitter. And there was a location device secreted in the heel of his fake alligator boots.

The receivers for these devices were all in the back of a battered Bajaj three-wheeler van (one of thousands that plied the streets of Delhi and transported everything from chickens to schoolchildren) parked down the street. Flush, the young electronics and computer whizz, was secreted in the back. Tubelight was also on hand. And it was his mysterious Nepali operative Facecream who was playing the part of Puri's mistress.

No one else could have carried off the part quite as well as her, reflected Puri as they waited. The 'Pujji wooji' touch had been sheer genius.

'Ma'am may accompany you,' said the security guard when he returned. 'But before you can proceed I would need the password.'

'Most certainly,' said Puri. 'It's Humpty Dumpty.'

The automatic gates parted and the Merc purred up a driveway lined with giant dahlias. In front of the 'farmhouse', a mock Rajasthani-style palace with sandstone turrets, white marble balconies and a set of solid brass doors, stood a giant rockery with a bronze statue of Shiva mounted on the summit.

With Facecream hanging on his arm, her high heels making her the taller of the two by a couple of inches, Puri walked through a grand entrance hall and on into a galleried living-room-cum-hall. Stuffed animal heads stared down from the walls - as did the grinning likenesses of three generations of Full Moon's over-fed family. All of them had posed in their most garish finery for a professional photographer with a preference for soft lighting and smoky filters.

The match between the Goa Beachers and Mumbai Bears was being projected on to a cinema screen at the far end of the room. Some forty or so men, charged tumblers of whisky in hand, were engrossed in the live coverage. Amongst them Puri counted a minister, a couple of senior bureaucrats, a music video VJ, a high-ranking police officer and the Indian chief executive of an international bank. On the encircling chaise longues lounged leggy women of various hues.