BLOOD RED SARI (14 page)

7.1

ISAAC’S GUN WENT OFF
as he tried to fend off the flying Bible Anita had tossed at his face. He swatted the holy book, but the corner still struck his face just below the cheekbone, probably hitting the eye–tooth nerve because he cursed in pain and blindly squeezed off another two rounds in her direction as he turned his face away, eyes watering instantly. Her ‘direction’ meant the place where the other two men were standing as they approached her bed, and Anita had already ducked and was ramming her head and shoulders into the abdomen of one of them, like an American football tackle. That had been the only plan she had: to come between them and get them to shoot at each other. She knew she had succeeded when she heard the unmistakable punching-bag sound of one of Isaac’s shots striking human flesh and glimpsed blood splattering in her peripheral vision.

She didn’t see where the other two shots went because at that instant she rammed into her target hard enough to make him fly backwards, striking the dressing table mirror with the back of his head and upper body. The mirror splintered as one of the shots hit something else that shattered too. A man screamed, but it wasn’t the guy she had rammed into: he was sprawled backwards on the debris of the dressing table, head cocked at an unnatural angle. She didn’t recognize him at first glance and was already turning left, using her forward momentum to propel her towards the door of the hotel room.

Behind her, she heard Isaac’s gravelly voice shout something even as she saw Graham’s fleshy fair face loom in front of her. He had a gun too, but was staring wide-eyed at something to his right, distracted momentarily. She caught a glimpse of a man beside Graham clutching at a spurting red geyser. It took her brain a fraction of a second longer to recognize that the spurting geyser was his carotid artery and that it was Philip and he had been struck in the throat by one of Isaac’s wild shots.

She rammed into Graham, sending him lurching backwards, hands flying up and outwards for balance, the gun hand rising as well, firing a shot up into the ceiling and one over her left shoulder, the heat of its passing searing her collarbone like a red hot whip. Then he struck the jamb of the open room door and something cracked in his head or back and she saw his eyes roll up, the whites flashing as he went down. She was at the door now, and practically flew through it. Now she was in the corridor outside and there were two men standing in front of her, staring dumbly.

Both had guns, but only one had his in his hand. He raised it but she kicked it hard, missed, and hit his right hipbone instead. The impact sent a sharp burst of pain into her big right toe, and the man lurched and fell against his partner, the gun going off, two shots going wild. The other man lost his footing and fell sideways against a room service trolley piled with discarded dinner dishes and chrome-plated dish warmers and everything went flying in a clattering cacophony.

She leapt over the sprawled body of the first man, feeling something give in her right foot as she landed. Then she was racing down the corridor and down the stairs. Mercifully, there were no more men with guns barring her way and at this hour, the Papanasam Sea Resort was deserted. She reached the lobby and ran past the reception. A man was at the desk, talking urgently on a cell phone; he pointed at her as she went past, saying her name into the phone. She went from the lobby into the courtyard, looking around for some form of transportation. Her toe was broken or hurt badly because she wasn’t able to put her weight on the right foot properly. Adrenalin had got her down the stairs, but every step was agony. Broken. No mistaking that sensation. She needed to get transportation fast or they would catch her right here in another minute, and after the mess she had caused in the room, she had a feeling they would expect more than a night’s rental.

She saw Philip’s Norton on its stand in the car park. It was one of the old WWII models which used a push-button start instead of an ignition key. She prayed that he hadn’t had it modified for whatever reason and swung her leg over the saddle-seat. Pressed the button. And grinned with sick relief when the powerful 850 cc engine turned over like butter on hot toast. Thank God for Philip and his obsessive care for Achchan’s old Norton.

She put the bike into gear, fumbling a moment because her right foot was already going numb with the shock of the broken toe. Her left collarbone felt like it was on fire and bathed in hot oil. She felt wetness and assumed she was bleeding where the shot had scored her, but there was no time to waste on first aid. She fumbled through the first, then managed to get it into second gear and turned the accelerator, roaring out of the courtyard and turning onto the new road. She heard shouts from the hotel – one was definitely Isaac’s voice yelling from the window of her room above, and then she heard gunshots. Something burst behind her and things whizzed and splattered in the darkness beyond the road, but she pushed the Norton into third and roared off down the road, leaving the guns and men and yelling behind, for now at least, though not for long, she knew. They would catch up with her sooner or later, that was not in doubt. The main thing was how much she could get done before they did.

7.2

NACHIKETA EMERGED FROM A
miasma of pain and heat. She felt as if she had been cooked and roasted and was still in the oven. Vision swam out of the murky horizon, rushing at her like a panorama painted on the side of a monorail superfast train and reality collided with her consciousness. She gasped and tried to fumble at the object lodged in her airway but found her hands bound by her side. Hissing and pinging and other life support sounds provided an orchestra by her bedside. She sensed the sickening odours of disinfectant, pus, blood and bodily unguents, and knew she was in a hospital room. The logos of various pharma companies marched across the walls of the room, masquerading as public service messages. She gasped and choked and struggled until people in white swam into and out of her field of vision, making irritable sounds and doing things to the apparatus to which she was hooked up.

Finally, the obstruction in her airway was removed and she was able to speak. ‘Police,’ she said. ‘Need … speak police.’ Her voice sounded hoarse, like female friends who smoked too much, the kind of husky womanly voice she had always thought men found sexy. She hated the sound coming from her own ravaged throat. ‘Please … urgent.’ She was gasping, she realized.

‘You need rest, madam. We have to insert oxygen again.’ The nurse was a hard-faced woman of indeterminate age and ethnicity. Her accent was classic Dilli.

‘No, please,’ Nachiketa said. ‘It is police matter. Urgent.’

The sound of voices from somewhere to the right distracted the nurse. She left Nachiketa’s bedside for a moment. The next face that swam into view was a man’s, unrecognizable with a bandage around his head. He was good-looking in a rough Jat kind of way. Nachiketa spent a moment staring at him and wondered if she had lost her memory entirely because she had no clue who he was. For a moment her heart lurched, thinking that he might be the man who had called her, one of the bastards who had raped and killed Shonali and tried to burn her to death as well. But what would he be doing here?

‘Memsaab,’ he said, ‘yourself not recognizing? Myself Rajendra Powar, watchman.’

The security guard of her office building. What the hell was
he
doing here?

He folded his bandaged hands in front of his forehead, tears springing to his bloodshot eyes. ‘I am so sorry, madam. They hit me on head from behind and go in. I was behosh all time. I wake up and see all burning.’ He lapsed into Haryanvi for a sentence or three, and all she could make out was that he was describing the fire.

She tried to make sense of his words. Her brain still felt like it was on slow boil, as if the blood in her veins would start popping and crackling at any moment. ‘My office …’ she asked hoarsely. ‘All … gone?’

He nodded, wiping errant tears from his face. ‘Fire brigade say maybe they save building, maybe not. I take out you in time. Come in ambulance with yourself.’

She tried to keep him in focus. ‘
You
pulled me out?’

He nodded vigorously. ‘You screaming–screaming. Kuttey bhaunk rahein the. Dog barking? I hear. Go inside. You near door, under table. I take you out.’

He showed her his hands. They were both bandaged in large swathing bundles. She realized that his hair had burned away too, and his eyelashes and eyebrows. Was that how she looked too?
Probably worse. You weren’t a good-looking Jat to begin with, Nachos
. She felt something swimming to the top of her consciousness but it kept slipping away.

‘Where are we now?’

‘AIIMS,’ he said.

As if on cue, a doctor appeared with the same nurse beside him, looking irritable and impatient. ‘Ma’am, it is AIIMS policy not to treat burn victims. For humanitarian reasons, we gave you emergency treatment, but you will have to make arrangements to continue your care elsewhere.’

She tried to absorb this new twist in the tale. ‘Where am I supposed to go?’

‘We can have you transferred to another hospital. Your brother will have to go with you; he is also a burn patient.’

She began to correct him then realized it didn’t matter. ‘Right now?’

‘Ambulance is waiting outside.’ He turned and spoke to the nurse, then left the room. The nurse said something in Haryanvi to Rajendra Powar who answered in like fashion.

‘Powar,’ Nachiketa said hoarsely.

He said something else to the nurse, then turned back to her.

‘My friend, Shonali …’ she asked, hoping against hope.

He raised a bandaged hand to his face, making a groaning sound. ‘What to say, madam. I am lost job, don’t care. Lekin goondas come into my building, rape and kill and burn office, I cannot forgive myself.’

She had been expecting that, but it still felt like a blow, as if Shonali had only just died. In the darkness of the inside office, she had still hoped that her inability to find a pulse was due to her inexperience. Now she knew. Shonali was dead. She was supposed to have died too in that fire trap, and the only reason she had survived was because of an overzealous young Jat security guard who had risked his own life to save hers.

‘What about …’ she thought of her office, all her documents, court papers, passport, the detritus accumulated over the past few years that she had been in Delhi, her law practice, but that was too overwhelming right now, too much. For the moment, she had to try and figure out what had happened, why Shonali had been killed, why those men had tried to kill her. What had they wanted, damnit? Why hadn’t they been there when she reached the office? The man on the phone had talked about something she had which they wanted back. But what?

Then it came to her, unbidden, along with the gruesome memory of Justice’s corpse, tongue lolling, lips curled back to reveal canine fangs. ‘Powar …’ she rasped. ‘There was a package …’

Rajendra Powar nodded at once, surprising her by seeming to know exactly what she meant. ‘Yes, madam, you holding it saying something English. Important, na?’ He left her bedside for a moment, then came back holding something gingerly between his bandaged hands. Even with the stains of the dog’s blood and charred corners, she could make out the yellow manila envelope, the one that had somehow landed under the very table beneath which she took shelter. It was scorched but mostly intact.

7.3

A HORDE OF FOOTBALL
fans had boarded at the sports stadium stop. They milled about now in the passenger car, boisterous and irrepressible. Sheila turned to one promising-looking bunch near her wearing Arsenal colours, and addressed the tallest and biggest among them with the harshest, most venomous tone she could muster: ‘Arsenal is the full form of arse, isn’t it?’

There was a moment of stunned silence into which she added, smiling, ‘So what does that make you all? Arsenalholes?’

And she turned and walked away, moving quickly through the aisle until she reached the Mohun Bagan group she had settled on earlier. In perfect contrite Bengali she said, putting on her best damsel-in-distress face: ‘Those men are threatening me, they say we Mohun Bagan fans are Bengali bastards and bitches. Please help.’