Chain of Custody (25 page)

‘The children won't open up in the first meeting. We are going to have to earn their trust,' Michael said.

A maid came in bearing a tray of glasses of juice. Gowda took a glass and gulped it down. Then he stood up and said, ‘Mind if I smoke?'

Urmila threw him a dirty look but she rose to open the balcony doors. Gowda suppressed his grin as he followed her.

‘What did I do now?' he asked her under his breath.

‘We were supposed to have dinner last night. That was what you said when you called me on Wednesday night. You said we would go out like a proper couple and drink a pitcher of beer between us. Do you even remember that? I waited for you at the pub for over an hour. And then I went home. Your phone wasn't reachable. Why do you do this to me, Borei? I deserve better. Do I have to be a victim to earn your time?'

Gowda hissed, an indrawn breath of remorse. ‘I forgot, Urmila. You know what happened last night …'

Urmila shook her head. ‘I do. But is it too much to expect that you would call to let me know? Courtesy, Borei. Is that too much to ask?'

‘I'll make it up to you,' he said, touching her elbow.

‘I don't know, Borei. I really don't know what you feel about me. Or if I am even relevant to you,' she said, stepping back into the living room and joining the others, who pretended not to be curious about the furious whispering in the balcony.

Gowda stayed in the balcony, trying to compose his thoughts.

Why couldn't he leave well alone? There was no need for him to have gone on that raid. Basavappa was someone he had implicit faith in. And yet, when he had heard about the young girl, he had wondered if it was Nandita. Even if it wasn't, he wanted to be there. He wanted to make sure nothing went wrong. Did that make him a control freak? Or was not being able to delegate a congenital flaw?

A stuffed toy hurled itself into the balcony and clambered at his knee. Gowda looked at Mr Right, and unable to help himself, smiled. ‘You ridiculous looking thing,' he whispered, bending down.

The dog leapt into his arms.

‘At least I can do no wrong in your eyes,' he murmured in Mr Right's ear.

Gowda left the bedroom and bathroom door ajar so the music would reach him. He had turned off the living-room lights and put a CD on. It was music that he hadn't listened to in a while,
but Urmila had given it to him and suddenly he felt like he needed to hear something that reminded him of a time when there were no suspicious wives, furious girlfriends, hostile and patronizing bosses or missing children – his maid's and his – to clutter up his thoughts.

As he stood under the shower, he wished he had called her; gone out for dinner with her, perhaps. Done the right thing for once. Almost as if on cue, Wishbone Ash burst into ‘
Error of my ways
'.

The shower rained hard on his back. Urmila had replaced his old one with a giant shower nozzle. ‘So you feel me on you,' she had said. ‘Twice a day.'

He had watched her fix the shower head as if she were a professional plumber. The woman had her own toolbox and a can of WB40 in her car at all times.

‘What are you reading these days?' he had guffawed. ‘Mills & Boon?'

‘No,
Fifty Shades of Grey
,' she said, tweaking his nipple gently with her pliers.

He had gasped. The eroticism of the pleasurable pain gave him a sudden hard-on. ‘Urmila!' he hissed, grabbing her.

Gowda smiled as he thought of that day. He missed her. Not in that savage, gut-hollowing way of his youth but with a gentle ache that was harder to deal with.

He raised his face to the shower and let the hard spindles of water knock out everything but the need to breathe.

When Gowda had slipped on his habitual track suit bottoms and t-shirt, a strange restlessness filled him. He poured himself a drink even though he had told himself he wouldn't drink alone. Just a small one, a tiny voice in his head wheedled. Just a teeny one.

He texted Urmila. But there was no response. Where was she?

He walked listlessly through the house and stopped at Roshan's room, as he knew he would.

Things were strewn around, but that was how Roshan was. There was order in his chaos, he claimed. Gowda smiled. He wished the boy were home. They could have talked. Gowda would have offered him a drink. Did the boy drink, he wondered. There was so much he didn't know about his son. Was he still a virgin? Or was it just a tug job under the covers? Actually, had he even kissed a girl? Condoms – what about that? The boy was a medical student and should know better than to take chances. But doctors were ruled by a misguided notion that disease always bypassed them. Some day soon, he would need to talk to his son. There were enough true-life accounts of boys going whoring without adequate protection and contracting HIV. Gowda shuddered.

His eyes fell on the rucksack. For a moment, Gowda hesitated. Just for a moment he felt ashamed of what he was about to do; this callous violation of privacy. Then he remembered the boy's face; that easy, happy-go-lucky expression, that everything-in-the-world-is-so-cool-right-now smile, and he unzipped the rucksack.

There was a laptop in it; they had bought him one for his birthday; headphones, a hard disk and power cables. In another pouch there was a notepad and a pen. In the secret pocket, he found a pouch that contained a coconut shell bowl, a little round metal tin, like the one his mother had kept her kumkum in, a box of rolling papers and filters. Gowda frowned, wondering what it was for. He opened the little round tin – it was a crusher. Gowda could smell weed. His heart sank. Roshan didn't just take a drag from a joint once in a while. He was a
regular marijuana smoker and this was the paraphernalia he used to justify his habit. To make it seem as if it were just as serious as smoking a pipe.

Gowda gnawed at his lip. He wasn't perturbed by the marijuana itself. It probably wasn't as harmful as tobacco. What worried him was Roshan's dependence on the substance. How deep was he into it? And would he stop with this or move on to hard drugs?

Gowda slid his fingers into the secret pocket. In a little resealable bag he found what looked like rice grains. Gowda opened the bag and sniffed. It smelled like vanilla. What on earth was it? It looked like solidified baby goop. He touched it and licked his finger. It tasted of nothing.

He tapped the bag into his mouth. Three or four grains fell on his tongue and it tasted like everything bitter he had eaten; all at the same time and magnified a million times. He took a hasty swallow of his rum and Coke. The bitterness stayed resolutely on his palate. What on earth was it, Gowda wondered as he put the bag back and packed Roshan's paraphernalia away. Should he leave it exactly as he had found it? Or should he make it apparent that he had been sniffing around? Should he be cop or father? Gowda sighed loudly. The truth was, he couldn't stop being either.

He had thought he wouldn't ever have to worry about the boy once he got past the age of sticking his fingers into plug points, falling off trees, and accepting dares to take condoms to school. It seemed with every year, the magnitude of worry only increased in both scope and intensity.

Gowda let the cop in him prevail.

He walked back to the living room, puzzled about the substance he had tasted. What was it? Some kind of aphrodisiac or an upper?

He threw himself into his favourite chair. Then he got up and went to the music system to change CDs. He knew what he was going to play. A curious lassitude unfurled in him as Mukesh sang ‘
Kabhi kabhi …
'

Gowda felt his eyes smart.

He scrolled down his text messages and checked his call log. Suddenly he felt a great yearning to speak to Stanley Sagayaraj, his basketball captain from college and now ACP at the CCB – ‘Central Crime Bureau that is, and not City Crime Bureau', Gowda had heard a vexed Stanley explain to a wet-behind-the-ears reporter from a local rag.

Gowda grinned.

Stanley picked up on the third ring.

‘How're you, machan?' Gowda said. He felt a slight furring of his throat even as he spoke.

There was silence at the other end and then Stanley said, ‘Everything all right, Inspector Gowda?'

‘Can't I call you just like that?' Gowda heard the petulance in his tone, but couldn't help himself. ‘Just wanted to connect, machan. What, you don't like me calling you that?'

‘That was a long time back, Gowda. But you can call me machan as long it's just you and me.'

‘So who else is here now?' Gowda guffawed.

‘I'm at an official dinner. Is there something urgent?'

‘Nope,' Gowda said, stretching out the word. ‘Just wanted to say I miss those days, machan. Remember Pink Floyd? We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control,' Gowda sang.

‘Is anyone at home with you?' Stanley asked gently.

‘N…o…p…e,' Gowda said. He liked this nope. NOPE. ‘Gowda, always on his own, that's me, Borei Gowda and his attitude … Someone told me you said that – that I am a good guy, a good
cop, but I have an attitude problem. But you know what, I don't mind, machan, you can say anything to me, you can ask me to fuck off … FUCK OFF! And I will take it from you because you are me captain!'

‘Gowda, I have to go. Let's catch up one evening,' Stanley said.

‘Let's do that. Love you, machan. You were always the best in this heartache city. But remember to leave on time.' Gowda burst into song again. When he had finished singing the chorus two times over, he realized that the call had been disconnected. Would that bastard hang up on him? N…o…p…e… Gowda thought. He must have moved into a black hole. Stanley was a good cop and a great man.

An amazing sense of happiness rushed through Gowda. He had to tell Urmila how he felt. When she didn't pick up, he recorded a long message of love and sexy endearments and what he would like to do to her inch by inch with his tongue, and finished it with his best rendition of ‘
I just called to say I love you
'. He then sent it to her on WhatsApp.

Gowda heard someone open the latch. He frowned. Head Constable Gajendra appeared in the doorway.

‘What are you doing here?' Gowda smiled.

Gajendra blinked at the expansive all-encompassing smile, the kind you might expect to see on the faces of babies, godmen and lunatics. What had happened to Gowda, he wondered.

When ACP Stanley Sagayaraj had called and asked him to check on Gowda, he had thought that Gowda was ill. At least then, he would have known what to do. But what could he do with this beatific Gowda except persuade him to go to bed? And it would be easier to put a porcupine to bed!

Dr Sanjay Rathore rested his head on the edge of the pool and looked at the stars in the night sky. He knew that overhead was Jupiter, blazing bright, and a little to the west was Sirius, diminished by Jupiter's magnificence. And that was how it should be, he told himself. Jupiter was a planet and Sirius was a star. Not just in life but among heavenly bodies too, each ought to have its place. And as long as each kept to its designated orbit, there would be neither anarchy nor chaos.

The community association had rules about how long the swimming pool could be kept open. He broke the rule anyway. If they protested, he would take them to court. They knew his reputation, so nothing more than a tiny protest had been voiced.

He had returned to an empty house. Both the boys were gone. He had called the security guards at the gate.

‘They left around ten this morning,' one of the guards said.

‘Why didn't you stop them?' Rathore snarled. ‘What if they have stolen stuff from my residence?'

‘We checked their bags. There was nothing in them. Besides, they returned their ID cards to us. So how could we stop them? This isn't a prison, sir.' The guard had sounded sullen.

All the other residents gave the security guards a gift for Diwali. An envelope with Rs 500 in it or a shirt. But the lawyer didn't. ‘We pay them. Why give them a bonus for doing their job?' he argued. He sent a box of sweets that they were all expected to share.