A Cut-Like Wound (44 page)

She touched the topaz in her navel. She imagined a tongue probing her navel. She shivered.

Kamakshi, the wanton-eyed, who knew how to make it all possible.

5.48 p.m.

It was a small lane with a line of houses running into each other on one side and the corporator’s wall on the other. A goat was tethered to a stake. Washing flapped on a roof. There was a corporation tap and children on the road, playing. Women sat on the doorsteps cleaning rice, braiding flowers or doing whatever it was women seemed to need a doorstep to do it on. A line of granite stacks barred traffic from entering the road. A two-wheeler could squeeze through, but nothing wider than that. Some of the pilgrims had spilled over into this lane as well.

The street lights came on, flooding the lane and casting pools of shadow. Santosh leaned against the wall.

‘Aren’t you coming?’ a pilgrim called out to Santosh, hastening to the mouth of the lane. ‘The chariot’s almost here!’

Santosh straightened up and walked slowly towards the granite stacks. In the distance he could see a sea of people moving ahead in waves. As he watched, he saw a glowing object enter his line of vision. A ripple of sounds and singing as people entered the street.

‘The procession will stop before it turns at the corner,’
someone called out. Elbows dug into his side as the pilgrims tried to push past him in their haste to reach the chariot.

Without wanting to, Santosh found himself near the chariot, ablaze with light. Within the chariot was the six-foot statue of Mother Mary clad in a saffron sari, standing holding Infant Jesus. ‘Amma, amma…’ the voices called around him as they threw flowers and held up candles.

The chariot tilted dangerously. Would it topple? Santosh worried. The cross on top seemed too big. All that was needed to start a stampede was one panicked pilgrim. Santosh tried to extricate himself from the crowds and push back into the lane. As he turned, he saw a movement near the gate.

Through the little gate, someone emerged. Santosh pushed through the people around him, to move closer. For a moment the shadows swallowed the figure. Then he saw a woman emerge into a pool of light. A woman dressed in a saffron sari.

Bhuvana. This must be the Bhuvana Gowda had mentioned. And suddenly Santosh knew something else. This was also the woman he had seen with the eunuch.

He followed the woman with his eyes, walking towards her even as he speed-dialled Gowda. ‘Sir,’ he said.

Gowda held the phone away from his ear. Santosh’s voice would perforate his ear drum, he thought. In the background, he could hear the crowd noises – people talking, the blare of horns, music playing, ‘Yes, Santosh,’ Gowda said. ‘What is it?’

‘Sir, I think I saw the woman.’ Santosh’s voice quivered in excitement.

6.10 p.m.

Gowda looked at his watch. It was a little past six. Evening had disappeared without a trace into night. A few drops of rain fell. He raised his face to the sky, to the raindrops.

‘Sir,’ one of the policemen called out. ‘You’ll get wet. Why don’t you sit in the vehicle?’

Gowda nodded and walked towards the Bolero. How far had Santosh got tailing Bhuvana? Something akin to disquiet washed over him. Would the boy be safe? He was young, inexperienced and eager to make a mark – just the combination to make him take risks he shouldn’t. Rain thudded above him noisily. Gowda peered at the cross above the steeple and murmured a prayer: Mother, keep him safe.

6.24 p.m.

Santosh had managed to not lose her despite the crowds. She wasn’t in a hurry anyway. She seemed lost in thought as she glided through the streets. Gowda had told him to follow her, but had he realized that Bhuvana was the woman with the eunuch? The one they were certain was the killer. Though it seemed impossible when you looked at her. She was small and fragile-looking.

The rain had begun to fall heavily now. He saw her duck into the canopied doorway of a shop. There were a few other pilgrims jostling for space. Santosh stepped in and joined them.

He stood right behind her. She was small. So small that she came only up to his chest. And he was only 5’8” in his socks.

Every follicle of his skin sensed her. He smelt jasmine. Was it her perfume or the flowers she wore in her hair?

She gathered the end of the sari around herself and Santosh noticed the earrings she wore. The breath snagged in his throat. It was an exact replica of the one that had been found on Liaquat. But how? There was someone else, Santosh decided. The actual killer was someone else. She was merely the bait to lure the victims. And that was when Santosh decided what he must do next.

She felt the warmth of his gaze on the nape of her neck. She felt his eyes wander and rove over her. It wasn’t the animal lust that men’s eyes seemed to emanate. This was a gentler gaze; of a man curious, a man attracted, a man gathering a memory by the moment.

She shifted her stance so he could see her better. She brushed a lock of hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. This was how it had begun with Sanjay too. The warmth of a glance.

A sob rose in her throat. Her Sanjay.

Stabbed and stabbed again. His intestines falling out of the wound. She thought of a rat she had seen; lying on its side with its intestines spilling out while a crow feasted on it with a hop, skip and a tilt of its head. Her insides heaved. Her head whirled. She felt the ground rush towards her.

Santosh felt rather than saw her slide towards the floor. Instinctively, he reached out and gathered her into his arms. She weighed almost nothing.

A moment later, she recovered. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said hastily as others turned towards them.

‘Anything wrong?’ a man asked.

‘No, I am all right,’ she said.

‘She’s with me. All the crowd pressing in … nothing serious,’ Santosh said and turned to her. ‘Are you all right?’

She nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘You shouldn’t have stepped out while it was so crowded,’ Santosh said and almost bit his tongue. What was he saying?

‘I had to be here.’

‘Were you going somewhere?’

She glanced up at him and tightened her lips. Then she threw him a piercing look. ‘Why? Why do you want to know?’

‘Sorry,’ he said stiffly. ‘It’s none of my business.’

‘No, no, I didn’t mean it that way.’ She spoke urgently as if to bridge the distance he had wrought between them.

‘I am just so confused. I don’t know what I am saying.’ She turned to him with imploring eyes.

‘Look, do you want me to take you home? I can drop you wherever you want me to,’ he said.

She looked at him again.

He didn’t understand the purport of that gaze. His heart was beating too hard for him to try and figure it out. What would she say?

In the end, they were all the same. Seeking merely to gratify their egos and their pricks. Everything else was an act. For a moment there, she had thought he was different. Like she had thought her Sanjay was.

But even Sanjay had turned out to be a sham. Masquerading as a prince when he was a villain within. His life had been as shadowed by darkness as hers was. And she had thought he was untouched by all that constituted her life. She had thought that here was sweetness, here was perhaps even true
love. In the end, he too would have wanted of her what the others did.

She turned to him, her unlikely saviour. Her eyes narrowed as she took him in. The way he stood with his fingers hooked to the waistband of his trousers. His saffron shirt open at the neck. The short hair. The clean-shaven jaw. The glint in his eye. And she realized why he seemed so familiar. She had seen him before. He had accompanied Inspector Gowda. So he was on the prowl, was he? Well, well, well…

Kamakshi smiled at him.

7.04 p.m.

Gowda glanced at his phone every few minutes but it stayed resolutely silent. Where was Santosh, he wondered. Why wasn’t he reporting in?

The rain wasn’t deterring the crowd. Policemen hated evenings like this when even the weather seemed to conspire against them. Every moment was a potential threat to peace. So many lives. So many random acts. A purse snatched. A breast grabbed. A toe stamped upon. An earring lost. Nothing planned or premeditated. Nothing anyone went seeking.

The wireless crackled. A report of an elderly couple found dead in their Koramangala bungalow … a boy missing … a building collapse in Beggars Colony…

Gowda stepped out of the vehicle. The rain had quietened down to a drizzle. ‘I need to leave,’ he told the SI, holding a hand over his head.

‘Sir, we can’t move for another hour at least … the traffic, as you can see…’ the man apologized.

Gowda nodded. He had used the police vehicle to get here. Downright stupid of him. He should have brought his bike and parked it nearby. He could hardly go looking for Santosh on foot.

7.23 p.m.

She seemed to know the way through the maze that was Shivaji Nagar. Santosh followed her, not daring to ask her where they were going.

‘Do you come for the car procession every year?’ she asked. The rain had cooled the night. Santosh wished he had brought his jacket.

‘It’s my first time. And you?’ He stepped around a puddle carefully.

‘Ever since I was four.’ She dimpled at him.

He still hadn’t managed to look at her properly. But even in the patchy light he could see she was pretty. What was her connection with the corporator’s household?

‘Are you going to drop me to an auto stand or all the way?’ she asked suddenly.

‘All the way. I don’t like the look of these streets at night,’ he said, taking in the narrow lanes speckled with rubbish and people, mostly men. He saw a man by the side of the street watching them. A toothpick dangled from his mouth. The man adjusted his crotch and murmured something.

‘It’s not safe for a woman,’ Santosh added.

‘Actually, this is the safest place for a woman to be,’ she said. ‘It’s crowded any time of the day or night and if a woman makes even one sound of distress, there will be at least ten men wanting to know what’s wrong…’

‘Rowdies, all of them.’

‘You sound like a policeman.’ She darted a look at him.

‘I am a … er,’ he began and then changed it to, ‘I am a man. I know how men think!’

Santosh glanced at his watch. He hadn’t been able to text or call Gowda. He must be furious.

‘I need a smoke,’ he said abruptly. ‘Do you mind?’

She paused while he ducked into a petty shop. ‘One India Kings,’ he said, remembering the brand Gowda smoked. As the man pulled out a cigarette, Santosh took his phone out to text Gowda:
Following B. At Shivaji Nagar now
.

Sensing her at his side, he pressed send and put his phone in his pocket.

He took the cigarette, tapped it against his chin and said, ‘Actually, I’ll smoke it later … I am trying to quit!’

She smiled.

She asked him to find them an autorickshaw. Her house was some distance away. She would direct the driver, she said.

‘You are new to Bangalore, aren’t you?’ she asked.

He smiled wryly. ‘Is it so obvious?’

And then with a certain slyness, he added, ‘Only new to the city!’

She smiled at him and drew her sari pallu around her. She enjoyed this part of the game. The flirtation, the banter. The innuendo. The sidelong glances. The cat-and-mouse game.

In the autorickshaw, their shoulders touched. Sometimes it threw them against each other when it entered or exited a dug-up road. And one time, when it caused their hands to brush, she felt him take hers in his.

‘Do you mind?’ he asked.

Meaning, do you want to fuck?

Yes, she wanted to.

She shook her head shyly. That was part of the game. The kind of men who went for someone like her wanted that. A touch of shyness. A downcast face. A virgin even if she had been fucked silly before. In the end, all men were the same.

7.47 p.m.

Gowda walked up Jumma Masjid Road, weaving through the traffic, and cut into Commercial Street. The shops were all ablaze with light.

If Mamtha saw him now. All these years, he had never accompanied Mamtha any time she had asked him to go with her to Commercial Street. She did her annual shopping before Ugadi and he had always pleaded work as an excuse to extricate himself from what it entailed trailing her from shop to shop, looking for the same item in six different shops, the dithering, the pointless discussions on merits and faults. And yet, here he was, his eyes seeking every face and shop front: Was Santosh here?

He called Santosh again. Not reachable, an electronic voice declared.

Gowda would have to call Urmila.

He would ask her to drive him. She would be game, he knew. Here is your chance to be part of my working life. So don’t ever complain I don’t tell you anything, he would joke.

He could imagine the smile that would appear on her face. He could see her even dress the part. Pulling on jeans and a shirt, slipping her feet into sneakers that had never known a scuff mark. Choosing to take the Scorpio rather than the Audi A4 she drove. This was police work after all.