A Cut-Like Wound (33 page)

‘So nothing,’ she said.

He pulled her up towards him but it was she who found his mouth.

‘You taste delicious,’ she murmured. ‘Of hot buttery toast.’

Gowda thought he had never heard anything more erotic in his life. Fuck, here he was wondering how he was going to make that first move and she was already taking him into some other realm of desire.

Her fingers crawled over his chest, snapping open the buttons on his shirt.

‘Hey, that’s what I should be doing…’ he protested, grabbing her hand. ‘Technically, the man ought to undress the woman first.’

‘Fuck technicalities, Borei,’ she murmured.

‘Mmm … the girl likes to talk dirty.’ He grinned. ‘One wouldn’t have thought that of Lady Deviah.’

‘Are we going to stand here talking all morning?’ she said, leading him by the hand to his bedroom.

Who paused at the doorway? She or he?

Suddenly it didn’t matter. The need to feel skin against skin overrode all other thought as he turned and, with an almost superhuman effort, lifted her in his arms and took her instead to the guest bedroom. Damn, he thought, as his breath whistled in his chest. How did those heroes in movies do it with such effortless ease?

So this was how love could be made, Gowda thought, as laughter punctuated the waves of passion. Joyous, glorious joy that edged the crest of pure sensation as her mouth found his again and again. As her caresses evoked in him a need to respond and raise her to abject surrender.

She wasn’t shy; in fact, it was Gowda who felt as if he was the novice as she taught him all the ways in which he could pleasure her. She led him on a voyage of discovery of his own body and hers. When he poised himself above her, she pushed him down and straddled him, letting her breasts swing in his face. He watched her draw pleasure with an abandon that aroused him as much as her low throaty moans.

Suddenly she leaned forward and licked the sweat off his face.

Gowda groaned and gave himself up to her, to the rush of sensations that pumped through him, one after the other.

When Gowda opened his eyes, she was sitting at his side, watching him.

She touched the tattoo on his arm. ‘I didn’t ever think I would go to bed with a man who has a tattoo.’ She smiled.

He smiled back. He didn’t know what to say.

‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’ he asked, trailing a finger down her arm.

‘I had some unfinished business,’ she said, echoing him from a while ago.

He frowned. ‘What was that?’

‘Come,’ she said, pulling him up.

He rose unwillingly. ‘Can’t we just stay here?’

‘We could. But I want you to see something.’

She led him into the bathroom of the master bedroom. ‘Get under the shower,’ she said.

‘The shower doesn’t work.’ He made a face. ‘I need to get it fixed.’

‘I know,’ she murmured, turning the faucet on. It came alive with silvery jets of water.

‘What the fuck! What did you do?’ he asked, as much in surprise as in delight, stepping under the spray of water.

‘I had picked up a can of WD-40 from a friend last evening and it was still in the car. So I sprayed some around the shower head, removed it and put it in some warmy soapy water for a bit and then for the pores that didn’t open, I used a safety pin from the outside and unclogged them. You could have done this yourself, Borei.’

Gowda soaped himself lazily. ‘I could have. But what on earth is WD-40?’

‘It’s a wonder spray that loosens rusty nuts and bolts,’ she began, but the words ebbed as she saw the look in his eyes.

‘Get in here,’ he said, his eyes narrowing with intent.

Urmila had left at seven. She had a dinner party to go to, she said. ‘I would have got out of it if I could.’

Gowda had watched her leave, thinking, she didn’t even ask me if I wanted to go with her. I wouldn’t have. But she didn’t ask.

Already it had begun, the gnawing loneliness, the relentless wondering: what was she doing? Who was she with?

Gowda pressed the side of his glass to his eyes. What am I doing? I am forty-nine and fucked. Unable to love the woman I am married to and furiously entangled with a woman I cannot even dream of a life with. Career in tatters and not a dream to propel me through this bleakness called the rest of my life. If he were to start life again, who could
he be? Where would he begin? He was unemployable. He couldn’t think of a single place that would have him.

Gowda looked at the time. It was almost midnight. He sat nursing a drink. He felt as if his mind had stalled. He tossed the drink down his throat, then poured himself another drink and took it to the veranda. Then another. And another. At some point, he crawled into bed in a drunken stupor.

MONDAY, 22 AUGUST

In the morning, Shanthi gave him a disapproving look. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin felt coarse and dry. A sledgehammer slammed in the back of his head and his mouth tasted of metal. When his hand reached for a cup of coffee, he saw it shake. Shanthi saw it too.

‘It’s not my place to say this to you, sir, but you drink too much.’

Gowda sipped the coffee. The hot fluid tasted like bitter dishwater in his mouth.

‘We look up to people like you to look after us, sir. And so if you…’ Shanthi concluded, walking into the kitchen.

Gowda made a face. He knew she was right. He drank too much. In the light of the day he could hide his insecurities behind a mask of diffidence. Nonchalance even. But as the day wore on, the mask crumbled. It felt more and more difficult to summon up that ‘I don’t give a shit’ armour around himself. But when the first drink rolled down his throat and flooded his bloodstream, some of the inner resilience
surfaced again. A light fuzziness that took the edge off every scathing remark. The innuendos and insults became less of a searing, open wound. A lifetime frittered away didn’t seem so terrible after all. The rum fumes chased all such dragons away with an ease nothing else could match.

It was a pensive Gowda who went through the motions of eating his breakfast. Tear a piece of akki roti, dip in palya, chew. Tear. Dip. Chew. Tear. Dip. Chew.

He could sense Shanthi’s affronted look. She had made him his favourite. And for what joy? It could very well have been the tablecloth he was eating.

At the station house, he was unable to wipe away the sense of dejection that weighed him down. A mountain of files waited to be dealt with. And the closing time of restaurants and bars had reared its head again.

The beat police had found a restaurant-bar in Kothanur that stayed open late into the night, much after the closing time of 11.30. Warnings had been issued, but the restaurant owner continued to keep his establishment open. ‘Let them do what they want, I’ll close my restaurant when I think it’s time and not when they think it’s time for me to,’ he was reported to have said.

‘You should have brought that idiot here and roughed him up a bit,’ Gowda said wearily.

‘But on what charges, sir?’ PC Byrappa had mumbled.

‘Don’t throw the law at me,’ Gowda frowned.

‘No, sir, legally he hasn’t done anything wrong,’ the man protested. ‘Each time we go there, the lights are off, shutters closed, etc., and he comes out looking innocent as a lamb and pretends he doesn’t know what we are accusing him of. But I know for a fact that he’s still serving drinks inside!’

‘Raid the place,’ Gowda said, flicking through the file. He glanced at his watch. Stanley would be here anytime now.

‘We won’t find a thing. He claims the back portion of the building is his home. And the men drinking there are friends!’

Gowda slammed the file shut. He would have to make a visit there himself today.

Stanley appeared in the doorway. Gowda stood up slowly.

‘Have you been drinking all weekend?’ Stanley said in greeting.

Gowda ran his fingers through his hair. He knew he looked a mess, a total wreck, in fact. But at least he had managed to shave, so he didn’t seem a complete lout.

‘Here,’ Stanley said, throwing a file onto Gowda’s table. ‘The post-mortem report!’

‘It’s your case, why do you want me to read it?’ Gowda couldn’t help the note of petulance in his voice. Stanley stiffened.

‘Look, Gowda,’ he said, not bothering to hide his annoyance, ‘I put myself out on the plank there for you to get this case back into your hands. Officially, you are to assist me with this. Unofficially, it’s your baby. If you are going to make a hash of it…’ Stanley reached for the file.

Gowda put his hand on it and held it back. ‘No,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t mean … thanks, Stanley,’ he said. ‘I know you are sticking your neck out for me.’

‘Well then, clean up. You are turning into a caricature of a man. A middle-aged drunk, a useless son-of-a-bitch masquerading as a police officer so no one realizes that he is a middle-aged, useless, son-of-a-bitch drunk.’

Gowda flinched. Stanley always went for the middle of
the abdomen. He knew how to knock the stuffing out of you without shedding a drop of blood. Blunt-force trauma, Gowda knew, wreaked more damage than a stab.

‘I’ll get Santosh to start questioning the Kerala restaurants in the area we demarcated on Saturday,’ Gowda said.

‘Keep me informed at every stage, Gowda. I need to know,’ Stanley said, turning to leave.

‘And what about you?’ Stanley asked curiously from the door. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going home. I am going to switch off my phone and sleep till I wake up. When I return, I hope I will be less of a caricature,’ Gowda muttered.

Stanley smiled. The last time he had ticked Gowda off, he had brought home the basketball championship for the college.

Santosh and Gajendra were tired and hungry. They had started trawling the Kerala restaurants in Banaswadi and Kammanahalli at a little past noon. One by one. But no one seemed to remember a thing. Santosh produced a photograph of the deceased. But all of them shook their heads.

‘Besides, it was a busy time, sir,’ one of them said. ‘He looks familiar enough. But I could have seen him anywhere. So many people come and go, so unless there was something unusual, why would we remember them?’

Santosh looked at Gajendra helplessly. He had been certain that the glory of the day would be his, but it seemed they would have to return with nothing to report.

Gajendra cleared his throat. ‘This young man, our victim, was not alone. He was with a woman,’ he said.

The owner of Kerala Magic frowned. ‘Here, let me take a look at the photo again.’

Santosh stared at Gajendra. Why hadn’t he thought about asking that? He knew what Gajendra would say. He would raise a leg and delicately rub the back of his other leg with it and say, ‘Experience, sir … nothing can duplicate experience!’

‘So?’ Gajendra asked.

The restaurateur peered at the photograph again and suddenly jabbed a finger at the photo card furiously. ‘Yes, now I remember.’ He turned and hollered, ‘Gopal, come here!’

A young man hurried to their side. ‘This is him, right? The son-of-a-whore and that bitch.’

Gopal peered at the photo. ‘Yes, sir, this is him. I’ve kept the note aside in an envelope. I’ll bring it.’

‘We have a takeaway counter,’ the man explained. ‘So this man, boy actually, he couldn’t be more than twenty-two, came two nights ago. He ordered eight Kerala parotas, a plate of mutton curry and two pieces of fried fish. The bill was three hundred and ten rupees. The woman with him offered to pay and produced a thousand-rupee note. We gave them change, they collected the food parcel and left. Next morning, my accountant said the note was fake.’

‘How do you know that it was the young man’s?’ Santosh asked curiously.

‘We have two separate cash counters. One for the restaurant, one for the takeaway section. Friday night, the takeaway counter had received only three thousand-rupee notes. The other two are my regular customers,’ the man said.

‘When is the police going to do something about these counterfeit notes?’ he demanded abruptly.

Santosh held up the note and looked at it carefully. ‘Soon.
The Crime Branch is working on it,’ he said absently. He hoped they were. But what else could he say?