Chain of Custody (29 page)

This was a nightmare. She would wake up any moment now. A chill ran through her. She began shivering. Soon the shivering wouldn't stop.

When Tina woke up, an IV was attached to her arm and there was a bandage on her face. Tina stared at the ceiling of the hospital ward. The old woman sat at her side and the boy came in with a glass of tea and two maska paav.

‘I've had enough of this hospital duty,' the old woman said, dunking a piece of the bun into the tea and popping it into her mouth.

Tina's stomach rumbled. Hunger gnawed at her. She licked her lips. They were dry and cracked but it didn't hurt to open her mouth any more.

‘I …' she croaked. ‘My mummy …'

‘Forget that you had a mummy, daddy, bhai, behan, whoever … you are here now and if you do as they say, they will treat you all right,' the old woman said through a mouthful of soggy dough. ‘Ask chooha here if you don't trust me,' she said, pushing the boy towards the bed Tina lay on.

Rat. Was that the boy's name?

The boy's eyes met hers and then his glance dropped. Tina turned her head away. The little rat was the reason she was here.

‘Didi,' he mumbled. She refused to look at him. Go away, rat, she thought.

‘Didi, sorry,' the rat said. ‘My name isn't chooha. It's Abdul.'

Tina turned to glare at him. ‘Why did you do it?'

Abdul darted a glance at the old woman. He didn't speak.

Tina had a new home. Platform 4 on the Kalyan station. And a shadow, Abdul. There were other girls. They were in the trade. They get fed and paid, he told her.

Tina stared the old woman down. ‘No,' she said. ‘I won't. You can't make me.'

The man came back. He had a name. Mohan. He wasn't from here, Abdul said. He was from Bangalore. Tina sat still, refusing to move. She shoved the plate of food away even though she was faint with hunger. ‘Let me go,' she said. ‘I won't tell anyone. Just let me go!'

Mohan stared at her impassively. ‘What about all the money I spent on you at the hospital?'

‘My mother will give it to you. Twice the amount. Just let me go. We won't tell anyone.'

‘For a little girl you are very bold,' the man said.

‘I am not little. I am twelve years old. Did you hear what I said? Let me go.'

The man's eyes narrowed. ‘No, not until I recover my money.'

‘I said my mother will give it to you.' Tina's voice was shrill as she leaned towards him.

‘If your mother is so concerned, why aren't the police out looking for you? It's been five days since you went missing. Do you think your mother cares?' the man said softly.

Tina stared at him. What was he implying? ‘No,' she said. ‘My mother loves me.'

‘Does she?' His voice was a whisper now. ‘You are still in Mumbai. Why aren't the police knocking on my door yet? I have been accused before of abducting girls. Why aren't they questioning me?'

Tina didn't know what to say. Or think. Was he right? Her mother loved her. The man was just trying to rattle her.

She sat with her head pressed to her knees. She would pretend to do whatever he asked. And at the first chance she would flee. She was still in Mumbai. She would find her way home.

‘What do you want me to do?' she asked. ‘I'll do anything but what the other girls do. I'll scream if a man comes near me.'

‘How old did you say you are?' There was a reluctant note of admiration in his voice.

‘Twelve,' she said.

‘Twelve going on thirty.' He laughed. ‘And no, my dear, you don't have to do that. Not yet.'

Later that evening, when he asked her to go with him, Tina went quietly. Abdul dogged her steps. They are taking us away, the boy whispered. Tina's heart stilled. But she ignored the boy. She hadn't forgiven him.

‘Where are we going?' She plucked at Mohan's sleeve.

‘You'll know when you get there,' he said. It wasn't the train station they went into but another room where a man in a white shirt and brown trousers waited. He had a high forehead
and a beaky nose. Tina thought he looked like the priest at the Hanuman temple.

The man looked at her and smiled. ‘You are Tina,' he said in Marathi.

‘Uncle, please take me home,' she cried.

‘Ssh …' he said, patting her head. ‘Don't worry. I'll take care of you.'

‘Make sure you don't touch her,' he said, turning to Mohan. ‘Light brown eyes and dark skin. She is a rare commodity, too precious for you to fiddle around with.'

Mohan dropped his gaze. ‘I wasn't going to,' he said almost defiantly.

‘What?' the man in white demanded.

‘Nothing, saab,' Mohan said.

‘Good. I will let you know when to start for Bangalore,' the man said, walking to the door. He turned to look at Tina. ‘Be a good girl!'

The door slammed. Tina felt tears cascade down her cheeks. How was she to escape if the man took her away to Bangalore?

‘Stop crying,' Mohan snapped. But she continued to howl. ‘Stop it,' he said, twisting her arm. ‘I won't let you go.'

She stopped abruptly. ‘You will help me?' she asked.

‘The thekedar thinks he is a big shit. But he doesn't know me. He doesn't know what I can do,' the man said.

Then, with a small smile, he grabbed her hair and slammed her face into the wall. Once. Twice. Thrice. Tina cried out.

Abdul whimpered in fright.

‘Shut up, you chooha! Watch … just watch without a squeak!' the man growled.

Then, with few words and an economy of movement, he unbuttoned his jeans, pushed her skirt up and held her against
the table the man had perched on. He spat on his palm and smeared it in her anal region, separating her buttocks.

Through the pain in her skull and the blood trickling down her forehead, Tina knew a greater excruciating agony. She felt a hard object split her. Tina screamed.

Mohan continued to ram the hard object into her while the boy Abdul watched, biting on his hands to stop the scream from escaping his mouth. He was too afraid to scream.

‘How did they get here?' Gowda asked.

Michael sighed. ‘I don't know. We haven't got that far. She stopped talking. Tomorrow I'll try again. I've asked Urmila to join me. Perhaps with a woman in the room, she may be less frightened.'

Gowda nodded. The girl had spoken in a flat monotone as if she were recounting what had happened to someone else. She had used the word ‘I' just once.

Gowda stood up and went to the window. The children at the home were the children of convicts serving their sentences. For no fault of theirs, they were ostracized by the society they were part of. But they had a chance of reprieve. They would be able to shrug off the stigma. But this girl and the little boy … would they ever survive this? What could any counsellor say to these children to help them move on?

5.30 p.m.

At the station, Gowda told Gajendra, Byrappa, Santosh and Ratna what he had heard.

None of them spoke. Instead they all went back to what they had been doing. A dead lawyer was easier to deal with than the story of children entombed alive.

Ratna said she had to go. She was meeting an NGO friend.

‘We have managed to take screenshots of the lawyer's two visitors. One was a young man and the other a couple,' Santosh said, opening the images on his laptop.

Gowda looked at the grainy pictures. There was nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinary. What was he missing?

Santosh stretched and yawned.

‘The station seems a little quiet?' Gowda said.

‘It's Sunday, sir,' Gajendra murmured.

Gowda smiled. He had forgotten. So much had happened in the span of a week that the days had merged into one breathless moment.

The fatigue began deep in his bones and weighed him down with a weariness that made him close the files and rise.

‘I'm going home,' he said.

The others looked at him, but said nothing. Gowda saw it on their faces, that they felt it too. On an everyday basis, they dealt with human culpability, but in a matter of three days, they had seen human depravity and the extent to which it could descend had left them all with a sense of hopelessness. Neither law nor its enforcement seemed to have made any real impact.

‘I think all of us need to go home and get a good night's rest,' Gowda said. ‘The two children are at the shelter. And there is nothing we can do for the lawyer now. As for Nandita, we are doing everything we can.'

Santosh opened his mouth to protest, but Gajendra beat him to it. ‘It helps to look away for a moment; we'll come back with a clearer gaze,' he said, rising.

7.30 p.m.

Roshan was waiting for him at home with another boy. ‘Appa, this is Suraj,' he said as Gowda entered the house.

Gowda gave him a curt nod, and then remembered to stretch his lips into smile. Roshan had complained as a child that he was reluctant to invite friends home.

‘Why?' Gowda had asked. He had been polishing his shoes at the time.

Roshan had brought a small mirror and held it to his face. ‘Look at yourself,' he said. ‘You look at everything, whether it's your shoes or my friends or me, as if we have done something wrong. You frown and glare as if we are guilty.'

Gowda had learnt to smile after that. He smiled at his shoes, after that Roshan's friends and Roshan.

‘Give me a few minutes,' Gowda said, going into his room. He closed his eyes and turned the shower on. The water rained on him and washed away some of the greyness he felt within. Gowda dried himself and stepped into a fresh pair of clothes.

‘Yes,' he said, walking into the living room and dropping into a chair. What had the boy done?

Roshan cleared his throat, signalling for his friend to speak. Suraj twisted his fingers and said, ‘Uncle, there is this boy who is troubling my sister.'

Gowda looked at the boy's anxious face. ‘How old is your sister?'

‘Seventeen. She just turned seventeen and she's got involved with this bastard who's threatening her.'

Gowda's eyebrows rose at the epithet.

‘He's got some photographs of him and her and he's threatening to put them up on Facebook,' Suraj said. He made
no attempt to hide the fact that his sister had shamed him and their family. But as her older brother he had to do what he had to do.

The boy swallowed. ‘If that happens, my parents will murder her and probably kill themselves.'

Gowda nodded. Was there a season for crime as well? Everything in the past few days had to do with girls in trouble.

‘Which is why I am afraid to write a formal complaint. My parents … they are very conservative,' Suraj mumbled.

‘Appa …' Roshan leaned forward. ‘I think you know Suraj's father. They live a street away from us in Jayanagar. And his father works in the same bank as Doddappa.'

‘My father's name is Shankar,' Suraj said.

Gowda groaned. He couldn't think of a more dyed-in-the-wool conservative family from Mysore; the kind that believed in the healing and holy properties of cow pee and observed a fast every second day.