My Lady of the Bog (24 page)

“Good to see you, Houlihan,” I said.

“Likewise,” he said, with something almost like affection. “N’other words, bunk, this thing ain’t gonna quit—if that’s, you know, the two of you was hoping.”

On a table in the interrogation room they’d laid out the “murder weapon.” It had a prop-like air, as if its sight was supposed to jog my memory.

Houlihan shifted his position and tone. He tweezed his pant crease between his thumb and pointer and hiked his cuff, exposing too-short socks and a hairy band of skin the color of inorganic poultry, before setting his pointed
Italiano
shoe on my chair. He leaned in closer, exhaling the odor of mint Life Savers.

“Look, we got possession of the murder weapon. We got motive, opportunity. Just trying to figure how it all went down. Help me, here. I’m sure there’s a reason well-set-up guy like yourself . . . Hey, he insult you? Accuse you of coming on to the wife?

“Look, way I see it, you didn’t
plan
it.
Nah.”
Houlihan shook his head in vigorous self-agreement. “You brought him the sword as a
wedding present . . .”

“That’s why you nicked it. Along with the treasure.”

Houlihan ignored his partner’s remark. “. . . ‘Cept you got into an argument and it got outta hand and,
wham
, you whacked him one. Am I right?”

“Wrong. I told you. I didn’t kill Jai. I don’t even think it was Jai they were after. I think it was Vidya. And that they still are!”

“And who is ‘they’?”

“I don’t know for certain. But here are two names. One, Bunzo Doi—Ibby Habib’s soldier.” And I saw the
yakuza’s
enormous trapezius and tattooed tree-trunk neck. Vidya was naïve. You don’t walk away from a man like Habib with trinkets worth a quarter of a million dollars.

“And the other?” Houlihan asked, unimpressed.

“Henry Carlson Lewis Jones.”

That stopped the conversation. “And how you know him?”

“I have my sources.”

“You know he’s dead?”

“No. How’d he die?”

“Let’s just say that’s ‘classified.’ ”

He looked at me. But I saw the information enter.

“Anyway, this sword isn’t from the treasure,” I continued. “Look at its condition! And if I had killed Jai, would I really be so stupid as to bring the murder weapon
home
?”

“ ‘. . . weapon in question,’ ” the CID man read, “ ‘. . . is a twelfth-century blade of Kura . . . Kuruz . . . Cora . . .’ ”

I snatched at the page. “ ‘
Khorasan
. . .’ It’s in Iran.”

He snatched it back. “. . .
‘manufacture
, worth in today’s antiquities market from ten to twenty thousand pounds . . .’ ”

“Was that?” the lieutenant wondered.

“Twenty, thirty thou.”

“For a
sword
?” Houlihan whistled through his teeth. “I can see why you weren’t gonna chuck it in the river.”

We all turned and looked at it again. Rainbows danced in its damascened steel. I reached out and hefted it—quick as a whip. “This knife probably severed hundreds of heads. They used to build them into towers, you know, or pile them up like so much cabbage in the market.”

They looked at me tensely, clearly sorry they had brought it in. I cut at the air, once, to unnerve them further, then laid it back down. It was removed.

The questioning went on for several more hours. If I’d had any sense I’d have called my attorney and stayed mum—but I was beyond sense. Having dodged pikes, spears and arrows, I believed I could handle whatever Houlihan & Co. threw my way.

Why had I killed Jai? Wasn’t Vidya involved? Hadn’t I seen her at the party and been so smitten by her beauty that I’d resolved then and there to slaughter anyone who stood in my way?

“Oh, yeah. I like a girl, I just kill her guy. Why fool around with
dating
, eh, Hools?”

Then they switched crimes. How had I come into possession of the book?

“Because Jai’s isn’t the only murder under investigation. I was probing one myself before I was accused of this one.”

“Trouble is you started probing with your dick.”

I invoked
upeksh
ā
and let it go.

Houlihan sighed, put his feet up on someone else’s desk, leaned back in his chair and switched personas. Suddenly, it was the
philosophical
Houlihan. “You know the
law
, Donne?”

“Enough to know I haven’t broken any.”

“Cause what I discovered in the course of my
over
long and
under
paid public career is there’s
two
sets of laws, the
writ
and the
un
writ.
Writ
is what they teach at law school.
Un
writ is a certain
predisposition
on a part of the judge slash jury to think in certain ways. One of the more
innaresting
of these little-known,
un
writ laws of
jersprudence
is what we call ‘The Bimbo Walks Rule.’ Ever hear of it?”

I hadn’t.

“Rule says, in a felony conviction with more’n one defendant one a who’s a babe?
Male
defendant’ll have the book trown at ’em while the bimbo
walks
. Just the way it is. Maybe folks don’t feature sending ladies lovely as Vidya Prasad up the river.”

“What exactly are you trying to say?”

“Saying, this case goes to trial? You, my friend, are looking at L-wop.”

“ ‘L-wop?’ ”

“Life—without parole.”

“L-wop.”

“While your partner, the beau
tee
ful Vidya Prasad? Even if convicted, is gonna get five years,
max
. Trust me. Why? The bimbo
walks
!”

I turned away. I knew
bheda
when I heard it—“divide and conquer.” I wasn’t falling for it.

In my cell, some of my defiance departed. I’d eaten nothing all day but a relish sandwich and two mugs of oversweetened tea, and I wasn’t depressed so much as
empty
.

I lay on the bunk and tried to rally, telling myself they didn’t have a case. But they
did
have a case and not a bad one at that. Many poor sods have been hanged by the neck until dead on evidence more circumstantial.

On that cold thought, I fell asleep and had the most vivid dream. In it . . .
I was back at the palace, reviewing troops with my father, the Shah. Storm clouds were amassed in the west and a harsh wind buffeted the canopy under which we sat, making its timbers squeak and groan.

Lightning flared and thunder crackled, startling white cranes into flight. That’s when another sound sickened my heart, as if the bones of the very earth were breaking—a fractious roar that shook the desert floor. And the Tent of Heavenly Dignity folded.

Blessedly, I found myself unhurt. My father, however, lay pinned by a heavy spar, the toes of his slippers pointing at heaven. He murmured, then started to gurgle and gasp, as though drowning in some invisible sea.

Sami, his boy, threw himself on him, lavishing his pumpkin beard with kisses. Then the dome of heaven broke and fat drops of hot rain began to spot the desert floor. Scattered at first, they grew quickly closer until, within minutes, the drops converged into rippling, wind-whipped sheets of water that swept across the desert plain. And wherever these curtains of water touched down, spray boiled up in all directions.

An ecstasy seized the audience. They began to dance, revelling in the start of the monsoon season and praising aloud the Lord of Storms.

Thunder broke so close it hurt. The strange confluence of the people’s joy, the pouring waters, and my father’s crushed and sodden form united with my own bewilderment and shock to make me want to scream aloud. But though I did, no one heard me.

Even those who’d heard the tent collapse believed it was a peal of thunder—when in fact, I tell you now, it was the sound of an empire falling.

“Bada-
boom
, bada-
bing
!” Houlihan pronounced as he led me from my cell.

“Time?”

“Six thirty-five.”

“A.M.? Jesus, Houlihan . . . Not more questions!”

“Nah. You’re headed home.”

“You mean . . . I’m being
extradited
?”

“Did I say that?” Houlihan tucked something in the pocket of my shirt, the way my grandfather used to slip me money. A policewoman brought a wire basket containing my wallet, change and keys.

“What’s going on . . . ? Where’s Vidya?”

Houlihan looked surprised. “You don’t
know
?” He shifted uncomfortably. “Thought you’d put her up to it.”

“Put
who
up to
what
?”

He took a breath. “Your girlfriend—Miz Prasad—one you been telling us coulda never done a thing like that?” He waited to make sure we were both thinking of the same person. “‘Just confessed.”

Chapter 32

B
y the time I got home it was still early morning, though given the day’s unchanging gray light, it could have been any hour between dawn and dusk.

Other than the charge against Vidya, Houlihan had told me nothing. I called her solicitor, but learned little more. Vidya was claiming she and Jai had argued, and that at some point he had whacked her with the flat of the sword. Insulted, stung, she had wrested it from him and the next thing she knew Jai was dead on the floor. Panicked, she’d frozen for the next several hours, before thinking, at last, to call on me.

I wanted to see her, to hear from her own lips her confession, but being neither kin nor counsel, my requests for an interview were ignored.

Stranger still, even if she were a cold-blooded murderess who’d hacked her husband into a dozen bloody chunks, some part of me still loved her. Wasn’t that bizarre?

I called Houlihan. But all he would say is: “She’s claimin’ self-defense. But the evidence shows she came at ’em while he was sitting and practically took off his head.
Nasty.”

I hung up again and sat back down. Had it all been a lie? And, if so, to what end? Or had she thrown herself at me the night of Jai’s murder like a drowning woman, hoping I would somehow save her? But how in the world was I to do that? And yet some part of me wanted to shield her from everything cold and cruel in this world, even as a wiser part said that I couldn’t, nor should I even try.

Did Vidya have a temper? Sure. “Fiery” is how she’d once described it. But though she may have barked a bit, it was always short-lived. That she was capable of killing I knew full well. But I could not see her raising a sword or machete and butchering Jai—and
while he was sleeping
.

Unless she hadn’t killed him for any good reason, some stubborn voice inside me said. Unless she killed him because she’s
bad
.

And that grim little tongue of darkness and terror darted and licked my heart once again.

I badly wanted to shower and change, but an elderly woman, big boned and formidable-looking, was knocking at my door. Once upon a time, she must have been “handsome.” Now, the rosebuds on her scarf were the only feminine traces left—the rest subsumed in that British matriarchal style that eschews as nonsense all softening refinements such as lipstick, jewelry or footgear other than “sensible shoes.” My visitor’s most distinctive features were a Grecian nose, flanked by a pair of feline eyes that were green, lit, and unreadable as a jaguar’s.

“Marla White,” she informed me briskly, holding out a large, nicotine-tinged hand. When I showed no signs of recognition, she said, “Marla White-
Strugnell
. And you are . . .
Donne.”
She made it sound less like my name than condition.

“How do you do? Funny, I was only recently speaking with your husband.”

“Very. As my husband’s dead. You were speaking with my son.”

I must have looked as surprised as I felt, for she raised a brow.

“. . . I . . .thought you were . . .
deceased
!”

She barked a laugh that managed to sound both decadent and proud. “Whatever gave you
that
idea?”

I started to say, then caught myself.

“Well, I suppose we should get down to it. I came here, you see, to ask that you stop interfering in Wooland’s affairs.”

“How so?”

“You’ve upset him terribly.”

“I have? And did Wooland ask you to tell me this?”

“Of course not.” Her mouth and chin were like a marionette’s, with deep grooves and hidden hinges.

“Then what makes you think that, Mrs. Strugnell?”

“I prefer White. Because he was doing far better before all
this
began.”

“All
this
?”

She started to answer, then stopped and studied me anew with an aversion that almost approached admiration, the way you appraise a wonderful monster. “You’re a smooth one.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You can’t gull
me
.”

I could see him in her now: the same oversized frame and rampant energy. “Pardon me, Mrs. White, but your son must be . . . forty—and it will be
his
decision and
mine
to terminate our friendship, should we so decide.”

She glared at me. Then her eyes rolled weirdly upward, her pupils grew, and for an instant that was almost one instant too long, some ferocious old intelligence looked out at me. I saw it see me—and I saw that it saw I saw.

Then like the spectacle lids of a snake, her pupils shrank, the presence vanished, and the horrible old Englishwoman reappeared.

“You’re a very
disagreeable
young man!” she pronounced as if it were official. “Good day.” And lifting her umbrella, she opened it with a threatening
thwock
, raised it like a banner, and marched off into the rain with that heads-up, eyes-straight, forward-leaning bearing with which the British once subdued the world.

The message light on my answering machine was blinking, and hoping they were calls from Vidya, I played them back. The first was from Rumple, announcing my suspension from the Royal Commission until my legal status was “resolved.” Until that time, my access to commission files and materials was, he said, “rescinded.”

The second was from my department head, who wanted to talk about my “affiliation with Exeter,” though we both knew what he meant by that was my soon-to-be “
non
-affiliation” with Exeter.