Authors: Shakuntala Banaji
Hugging herself as if she was cold, Sara faced the two Goan police officers. 'Sara Ann McMeckan. Capital M.'
'Your date of birth? Just for the record, ma’am, could you say it instead of pointing? Okay now. Let's just get a few little things cleared up, shall we.'
'Uh huh, that's why I'm here, to “clear things up”.’
'All right, no reason to get sarcastic with us.' This last was said with a smile that took the sting out of the words but Sara had anger in her eyes anyway.
'Ask me anything.'
'Well, you came to us, ma’am. Why don't you just get it off your chest?’ His eyes did not even flicker towards her body, so why did she feel so vulnerable?
‘But perhaps we could start with what it was you failed to tell the police in Delhi.' DC Mazumdar named the city as if it was an uncomfortable size for his mouth, almost as if he would spit it out if he could.
Sara started her tale just as she had done three weeks previously with Detective Karmel, who had been so courteous towards her. Meanwhile Adam, bored after six hours on the beach, was biting his nails and craving cold beer.
'And this watch you took from the body – can we have it?'
'Here.' She slipped the watch out of her pocket and handed it to the detective who placed it on the table between them and said loudly – Miss McMeckan has just handed over an analogue watch, metal-plated.'
'I never thought . . . we were so scared. We thought we would be . . . ' She stopped.
'Was this man your boyfriend, Sara?' Inspector Ribera spoke for the first time. Her voice was low and musical, a complete contrast to her accent, which Sara found difficult to comprehend.
'Things are complicated.' Sara paused. 'Are you sure that none of this'll get back to Adam, I mean Mr Loach?'
'We can't promise you anything ma’am, but we'll do our best.'
'Well, Cameron is . . . was . . . very handsome, very charming. I'd met him when I came to university and we became friends. We hung out a lot. I kind of . . . We'd er . . .we were er. . . '
'
Sleeping together
, is that what you mean?' Sara fancied that there was contempt for her written onto both their faces. She was furious.
' – engaged to be married!’
‘Congratulations.’
‘I
gave him the watch.'
'You?
'
'Yes, if you look on the other side you'll see . . .' Ribera nodded to Mazumdar to turn it over. Mazumdar shook out his handkerchief and did so, gingerly, reading the inscription. 'That's from you is it, Miss McMecken?'
'Yes.'
'Go on. I can tell you have not yet got it all off your chest.' This from Ribera.
'Oh god! Adam didn't know about this and he's also . . . '
'Carrying a torch for you? Romantically involved?' Both detectives looked up, the apparent sympathy on their faces so slight that it could have been genuine.
'For me?' Sara sounded uncertain, confused.
'Is young Mr Loach in love with you? Is that why you've played this big charade with the watch and all? Are you protecting him? Maybe you would like to marry him now that your Cameron has gone?'
'No! No, certainly he isn't in love with me! Nor I with him! He . . . He was mad about Cam. I mean Cameron.'
'Mad as in angry or
mad
as in…?' The woman was implacable. Sara fought for self-control.
'I think they'd been in a relationship – when they were at school. Long time ago.' Both detectives released audible sighs. They didn't raise their eyebrows, but Sara felt as if they had.
'Ah, he was
that
way. A homo huh? So what's the problem, Miss McMeckan? Why did you withhold evidence from Delhi police? Did you or Adam identify your friend's remains? Did you verify the position with the local consulate? The boy's family … think of them. Couldn't you find it in your hearts to put them out of their misery?' The inspector shot all this at her with incredible speed. Sara felt disgusted. Humiliated. Stupefied.
'I er. . . . we never felt . . . We weren't sure. It could've been someone else's body … maybe they stole his watch?' Her speculation was greeted with silence. She rubbed her lips with a finger. Her face felt itchy, dry, full of heat.
'You're right. We knew it was him. We should have said something back in Delhi. We thought they might implicate us if we told them it was Cameron.'
'And why would that be? Ogch, so stupid we are, us Indian police!'
'I've had
enough
. . . Enough! Can I have a lawyer?' She gasped at last and closed her eyes before starting to cry.
The inspector nodded to her colleague and left the room. Detective Mazumdar switched off the tape and handed Sara a strangely old fashioned green melamine phone. 'Go ahead, miss, make your arrangements,' he said, completely bland and friendly, as if they'd been having a chat about a train timetable. Sara sobbed and sobbed. When she was finally able to stop her tears, she whispered, 'I
don't need
a lawyer. Why was she so angry. . . ? I've told you everything I know!'
'Not quite.' DC Mazumdar was leaning away from her in an unthreatening, waiting kind of way. The tape machine was silent. The room with its stark white paint, lack of windows and scuffed chairs seemed less claustrophobic, more intimate. Entirely forgetting that her words were being recorded and her expressions monitored by the seemingly relaxed officer, Sara felt comforted and safer.
'How do you mean? Do I know something else? Please explain.' He seemed to think for a moment and then, leaning towards her confidentially, asked, 'What can you tell us about the connection between your friend Cameron Croft and Mister Antonio Sinbari?
*
Sinbari was alone. Sadrettin had departed, with Rimi Charoot and Nelson Cornell and a couple of others, on his mission to the hills.
For a while he remained seated in his cool office, pondering the day's hectic business meetings and listening to the bubbling of air through the fish tank that was so harmoniously placed against the far wall. Then his contemplation moved to a photograph of his son, Vincent, on the desk before him and a smaller unframed one of his wife, Elisa, tucked into the frame of the former.
They were both so far away: she, having refused to relocate with him when he decided to run his Indian empire in person and now estranged from him by distance, religion and experience; Vincent, because he did not comprehend the value of commerce, of the money that his father perpetually coveted, and seemed to feel instead a detached contempt for it and for all the other accoutrements of business and power which meant so much to his parents. The boy's loathing reminded him of his own growing distaste for European life, his sense of contentment when he found himself back in India where he felt himself to be revered, and – failing that – feared, by all who knew him. Unlike most of his successful contemporaries, Antonio Sinbari had little interest in returning to his own country. He had always had a penchant for games – especially the kind that meant he could meddle in politics without staking anything and in people's lives without jeopardising his own or ever having to consult that faint and skeletal echo which used to be known, in more religious times, as a conscience.
Italy, for all its labyrinthine political games, was dangerous territory. And so he compromised by leaving his Italian domain to Elisa, morbidly religious and formal as she had become, in the hope that power would compensate her for the husband she so rarely saw. He did love his wife and son, in his own way, but thinking about them did not make him happy. For such a man, India, with all its social fragmentation, bureaucracy and corruption, was a perfect playing field.
Having contemplated for a long enough period of time, he felt a need for action. He had finally managed to get his Himalayan team off to a good start. What a bore that Sadrettin was becoming restive. The boy would have to be diverted, somehow. Now, however, Antonio was ready to do battle for his new idea, his little piece of mountain paradise that was, as yet, undiscovered, he hoped, by any but those naïve students and Cameron – the extraordinary disappearing architect. In a good mood, he found himself feeling mildly curious about what had happened to his first and only emissary on this long-harboured, secretly brewed project. Was Cameron’s really the corpse so unceremoniously abandoned by those silly British youth? Or could he have done battle over some Himalayan beauty only to find himself too powerful an adversary and the man before him slain? It was all so intriguing. Danté would not have constructed it better. Whatever had happened, it was all to the good. But he had no interest in allowing his connection with Cameron to become public knowledge. Or not just as yet. A scandal, judiciously revealed, which drew attention to his little paradise place but maximum scrutiny to bureaucratic errors, would be just the thing he needed to convince the Indian Government that a more formal tourist complex was crucial for the survival of young foreigners in those hills. India should be glad of any investments made on its soil, given its humiliating international record.
Dismissing his secretary early, he logged onto the Internet. He scanned local and international headlines, listened to current marketing forecasts and accessed his mail. It took him less than a minute to realise that someone had accessed his files without authorisation and purged some of them. Like Sadrettin, he too was unaware of the backup directory and, as he usually left all complicated computer work to others, he was generally naïve about the ways in which such technology worked. His tanned wrists jerked spasmodically as he clicked and scrolled and clicked. There was a sound in the room and he spun round to see the office cleaners waiting respectfully by the door with their equipment.
His face grew pale and he clenched his teeth in disbelief when he realised just which files had been deleted.
*
At that precise moment Karmel too had gone pale. Shrinking from the unknown embrace, he had tried to make out the contours of the other person's body without waking them. Of one thing he'd felt guiltily certain: this person was not Thahéra. Having breathed in her scent of wood-smoke and sweat, he knew that he wasn't mistaken. The figure clinging to his back smelt of earth and water, a sad, outdoors smell.
Initially only partially awake, Karmel had felt curiously lethargic, at peace, and almost drifted back to sleep; only the thought of Thahéra who would appear soon, bearing his tray of food, stirred him to action. He'd rolled over and sat up, dropping his feet gently to the ground. The shock of icy damp mud against his soles caused him to cry out. Then he knew, and the knowledge drained all strength from his limbs.
Whether it was the fact that his movement made no difference to the person or that his conscious mind finally made connections with the smell, he wasn't sure, but he raced in panic around the cabin, banging his shins on the trunk and stumbling over his own belongings until he had located his pack. Yanking the strings apart he rummaged inside and exhaled in relief when his fist closed around the handle of his precious flashlight. Cursing the foreigners for getting him into this horrific situation and himself for not being more careful, he directed its powerful beam towards the bed. His intuition was confirmed: there on its side, and now almost pathetic in remnants of nudity and rags, lay the white man's corpse.
Karmel sagged to the ground, not faint now, just mystified. He did not scream, as many would have done; nor did he wish to leave his tiny cabin and its forlorn occupant; but he did feel acutely puzzled and more than a little angered by this threat – if threat it was.
He knew that it was vital for him to rid the cabin of the body before anyone arrived. Even if someone suspected what his mission was, he still hoped to keep it from public knowledge for a few more days. He wrapped the hideous corpse in a huge film of clear plastic and then in a shroud of sackcloth that he had brought with him in just such an eventuality. Anyone from the village or from another village in the surrounding area might have watched him in the past two days. Perhaps someone had followed him all the way from Delhi, but that seemed almost laughable. Or someone might have become suspicious as he asked directions and decided to follow him during the past week – in which case he had other villages to worry about and even less chance of discovering the grim jester.
The one possibility he did not wish to countenance seemed the most probable – the killer lived in the vicinity, had noted his presence and guessed his errand with little difficulty.
Hoisting the tightly bound corpse onto his shoulders, he pushed his way through the door into the watery darkness outside. His flashlight illuminated a patch of ground about a metre round but he could faintly make out lights twinkling in dwellings across the mountainside, although the one adjoining his own was unlighted. Turning his back on the whole village, he made his way through the trees for about ten minutes.
His task was more arduous than he had anticipated for, though the moisture had made much of the soil damp and easy to handle, he had nothing but his hands to dig with and kept cutting himself on tree roots. At last he had sufficiently covered the body to be certain that no casual villager passing would stop to dig the body up. Scattering leaves and earth over the whole thing again, despite his fatigue and tension, he realised that he had not cleaned up the cabin and that a visitor coming unexpectedly upon the disordered bed would wonder what he had been up to.
He hurried back, fighting nerves. Branches and flowers traced their spidery fingers over his face or snagged his clothing. His boots sank into the much-softened earth; there was a moist, fresh smell in the air and the wind was beginning to blow bitterly cold. It was past eight o'clock. He reached the cabin almost at the same time as Thahéra. She was carrying a tray. When Karmel took it from her, she made as if to leave but he asked her to sit with him during the meal, forgetting, in his pleasure at her presence, the mould and mulch and mud on the sleeping bag and the smell pervading his room, then embarrassed and stammering in surprise when foetid air rushed out at them through the open door.
Karmel ate in silence.
Thahéra had accepted his explanation of the sullied cot – accidental spillage as he transferred samples from container to container – and had even helped him to clean it up. The floor was neatly swept again, the sleeping bag ensconced in its former position as a buffer between human flesh and vicious rope mattress.
As they had worked side-by-side Karmel's agitation had grown until he had nothing in his mind, no coherent thoughts, no conversation, only a space the shape and size of the woman beside him. He'd felt his arms beginning to itch in all kinds of places. He'd felt the hair on his scalp tingling and the saliva in his mouth tasting as foreign as the gruel she had served him. His armpits were drenched in sweat. She kept her eyes upon him as he ate, never meeting his ravenous gaze but watching astutely the jerky motions that lifted food to his mouth or brushed strands of hair from his eyes. As soon as the plate was empty she reached for it and fled, allowing him a glimpse of her smile.
Outside in the gloom a stealthy figure stood watching the lights of the village. Stooping low, it descended the pathways Karmel had travelled and remained for a few moments staring down at the roughly hidden corpse. Head bent, the figure appeared to stand guard but was, in reality, weeping.
Later that evening, Karmel found himself wide awake. Plagued by a sexual longing that he could neither satisfy nor master, he too decided to wander the village by darkness. A spiky chill rain followed him and split his torch beam like shards of glass.
He tramped downwards from his cabin, full of energy because of his earlier nap and determined to find out more about the village than it seemed willing to tell him. His watch told him that it was barely eight and there were lights glowing in several directions. He walked towards the town's shabby brick toilet, built no doubt for some visiting dignitary in years gone by and now allowed to rot by the locals who were better off relieving themselves downstream of their village. His choice of direction was dictated less by his physical need, although he acknowledged a certain tightness in his abdomen, than by his wish for an alibi, should he be challenged by anyone and questioned as to his prowling. As he walked, he thought about Delhi and the ways in which he had created a life for himself there.
At fifteen he had been a bright and intelligent scholar, the pride of teachers at the Delhi Mission School, where he was placed by Mrs Letti, his generous benefactress, after she rescued him from the streets. In those days, nothing was too insignificant for him to know and knowledge was all he craved. He excelled at literature, languages and history, topped the class tests, made no friends of his own age but spoke always with those many years his senior. The fact that he could also pick locks and cauterise wounds, sneak unseen into dark spaces and repeat verbatim conversations he heard held his would-be tormentors at bay. Sons of petty businessmen and of minor local dignitaries, whose parents thought that a Christian education would stand them in good stead, they were bored and angry enough to have lynched Karmel – had he not kept his wits about him.
He practised his English diligently at first, listening to television programmes about wild life and cricket commentaries on the radio in the hotel where he worked at night, operating the lifts and carrying luggage. His smile guaranteed him good tips, but he used it less and less frequently, preferring to remain unnoticed and to overhear the conversations of guests. The English language became his passion, accompanying him through sleepless nights and enclosed, neon-lit Sundays. When he finally decided to apply for a position with the Delhi police force, he had acquired an understated dignity that drew older people to him and made his contemporaries lower their voices in his presence – if they noticed him at all, that is. And yet, beneath the steady exterior, fear boiled and snaked its way through his veins: he had no family, no credentials and no idea what would be required of him. He invented his bio-data, lied through the interview and failed to be accepted onto the force. And there it would have ended, had Hàrélal not taken him on first as protégé and then as an assistant during criminal investigations. No one knew what he was doing, questioning suspects in the middle of the night, and no one dared to ask, because Hàrélal's protection meant a lot in those days, despite the fact that he was only a Deputy Chief. The first time Hàrélal left him in sole charge of a case, Karmel was twenty and terrified.
'Young man. Stop a minute. Stop a minute and speak with me.' Karmel started out of his thoughts and into a vision of cloth and light and wrinkled woman. She was seated in an alcove, coloured orange by her lamp, and her hair hung uncovered in metallic strands down her back. Karmel decided that her profile looked as if she was perpetually waiting, a tilted mark, a question.
'Greetings, older sister. You startled me on my way to the toilet.'
'You can finish your errand later. Now come and keep me company.' Her voice was so soft that she hardly seemed to be speaking at all and yet he heard her clearly above the patter of the rain. Her house stood sandwiched between two others. He stepped through the doorway, finding for once that he did not have to bend. On a neatly made bed in the far corner of the room another woman lay asleep under a quilt. Her face was peaceful, and resembled that of his companion with mocking accuracy.
'Are you staring at my daughter? She's beautiful, no?' When Karmel nodded, she continued, 'So, you're our Thahéra's new guest.' Then, abruptly, 'Is she kind to you?' Her voice gave an impression of loudness that was unnerving.
'Kind? She has been very, yes, yes.' Karmel found his heart pounding in a slightly sickening rhythm to the woman's speech. She had not once raised her eyes to look at him, but he sensed her absorbing his responses through every pore. The beautiful girl on the bed stirred and turned over in her sleep, the blanket covering her just enough to accentuate her large breasts and pregnant stomach. Karmel looked away.
'Call me mother.'
'Er –'
'Young man – you find it difficult to call a woman mother but you will shamelessly flatter until you get what you want. You think you are different because you've suffered. You don't even have a mother, do you and you were about to tell me that you had never called anyone mother. No – don't speak. Don't tell me that I'm right. I don't ask anything unless I already know the answer and that should be your guide too. In your line of work.'
Karmel felt faint. Was this woman some kind of spy sent here to check up on him? Who in the whole world knew that he was motherless except his boss, who would never be so cruel as to tell this to a complete stranger. This woman. This Stitching Woman, who seemed to make more and more quilt and hem as her tongue darted in and out. Mentally he spluttered, enraged, curious. But she jumped in before he could speak.
'Ask me about Thahéra.'
'What can you tell me, mother?' She laughed raucously when he called her 'mother' and he flinched, thinking that the young woman would wake, but she barely stirred.
'She is some years older than you, but not many. Her older boy is not really her son, he is her husband's son by another marriage. He watches her all the time when her father is gone, but he isn't sure if he should any more. Twice abandoned and foolish, the boy is! She's always been kind to him, as she is to everyone, but he fears too much. Doesn't know whom to trust! She does not care about her husband but then not many of the women here do care much. For their men. They love the children, but the men just come and go. Long distances, short distances. They ask for food – and other things, then they leave again. Thahéra's no different.' The monotonous whisper was interrupted by another terrible laugh. 'No different when it comes to men.'
Karmel ran a hand through his hair. Stitching Woman looked up at him and he realised with a twinge of fright that her eyes were opaque, irises covered by cataracts like cloth window blinds in an up-market office, impenetrable, improbable and witch-like.
'Go on now,' she said. 'Ask me something. I know you want to. But think carefully about the answer first.' Her hands didn't stop moving but something about her waiting posture convinced Karmel that he could surprise her; she expected him to ask about Thahéra. He spoke slowly and respectfully.
'Tell me, mother, tell me about how many foreign visitors you've had in the last year.' Inwardly he chuckled for he was fairly sure of the answer and his satisfaction showed on his face as the faintest of smiles. It took a second for her to adjust to the change of topic but then she too twisted her wrinkled face into what could have been a smile.
'Three have been here. Two were together for a while. One I encountered only once. One I see all the time.'
'Did you ask their names?'
'No.'
'Was it a man and a woman who were together?'
'No.'
'Two men? And you saw the woman once only?'
'What do you think?'
'And which one of them do you see all the time?
'You already know the answer.'
'Do I? Well that may be. You didn't ask their names but you know everything already. So tell me their names.' Her hands flittered back and forth over the cloth. She frowned, warning Karmel that she was insulted by his flippant reference to her wisdom. Then, abruptly, she raised those milky irises to him.
'What I know is that it is time for you to leave.'
And he left, despite the curiosity and irritation engendered by her nebulous replies. He struggled up towards his cabin, using the torch continually, shining it around him at the dripping foliage and the saturated ground. He urinated a few feet from his wall, then scribbled notes for some hours, drawing diagrams that linked Adam and Sara to the third foreigner, that linked Adam to the man and made Sara an outsider, that falsified all the evidence he had collected so far, that confirmed his intuition of the tourists' deceit. His mind returned to the face of Stitching Woman, to her irises, so strangely cloaked in white. How much could she actually
see
, he wondered, and what was her evidence worth?
Two of them were in the plains, so that left only one of them, who was probably the man they had come to find, Cameron Croft, unless yet another foreigner had taken up his abode in the area. Was Croft still here then? Was he hiding somewhere in the trees? Had he killed another man and left the area weeks ago?
More likely, the old hag was speaking metaphorically and meant that she could see his face in her minds' eye –
that he was dead and she knew it!
Perhaps Adam had reached the village before his girlfriend; he'd certainly had plenty of time to kill Croft. That would account for why Stitching Woman had
seen
two men several times over. That would explain why Sara was lying – to cover for her boyfriend, Adam, to give him an alibi. And it would account for the expression on Adam's face as he'd told his tale, the expression Karmel had neither been able to charm away nor to comprehend: deepest, most painful, guilt.