Penumbra (19 page)

‘Are you sure he said nothing else about this man? How old he might be? His nationality?’

Iqbal shook his head. ‘I am truly sorry. He mentioned the man briefly in passing, and then only as the Man in the Black Suit.’

Rana nodded. ‘That might be helpful, anyway.’ She stood and paused by the door. ‘Thank you for your time.’

‘Would you care to join me in a pipe, officer?’

Rana smiled. ‘While I’m on duty, Iqbal? I think not.’

Iqbal gave a sly smile of disappointment. ‘So goodbye, and may Allah go with you.’

Rana hurried down the narrow staircase and made her way to the car. She slipped into the back seat and said to the driver, ‘Do you know a good tailor?’

‘Excuse me?’ The driver looked at her in the rearview mirror.

‘Please take me to Calcutta’s most expensive tailor.’

He gave Rana an odd look and spoke hurriedly into his communicator. Seconds later he turned to her. ‘Ah-cha. I’ll take you to Nazruddin’s, yes?’

The car started up and edged through the alleyway. Monsoon clouds were gathering to the east, great blue thunderheads stacked over the sea. Seconds later the deluge began, drumming on the roof of the car.

Rana sat back and considered what a break this might be, so early in her career on the eighth floor. But no, it was too much to hope for - that her last interview should provide the clue. But wasn’t it often the case? The very last key of a bunch was the one that opened the door; the last bazaar tried had the finest papayas - as if all along fate had been tempting you to give in and abandon your search.

They entered the relatively new district of the city, the business sector boasting skyscrapers and the latest poly-carbon architecture, domes and ziggurats and pyramids, like something from a travel brochure for the colonies. The driver parked the car outside a double-fronted store with a platoon of mannequins in the window dressed in the latest fashions.

Rana jumped from the car and sprinted through the downpour and into Nazruddin’s.

At the sight of her uniform, the manager ushered her into a back room, fearful of what his customers might think. ‘How might I be of help?’

‘Do you stock sabline, a material produced on Madrigal?’

The manager blinked. ‘You wish to make a purchase?’ he asked. ‘You see, I’m sure that on the salary of’ - he glanced at her stripes - ‘a Lieutenant—’

‘I’m here on police business.’ She showed her ID card. ‘Rana Rao. Homicide. Now—’

‘Sabline. Of course. We are the oldest established tailors in Calcutta, after all.’

‘Have you recently sold suits made from the material?’

The manager laughed. ‘Suits? My dear, we have
never
sold suits of sabline. Do you have any idea of the expense? Please . . .’

He gestured for her to follow him, and moved along an aisle between racked garments. He came to a series of thin drawers extending all the way up the wall, positioned a pair of step ladders and pulled out a drawer high above Rana’s head. He descended with a slim box perhaps the size of a pix album. With a flourish he lifted the lid. Within folds of tissue was a cravat or neckerchief with the lustre of midnight made tangible.

The manager said, ‘Go on, feel it.’

Rana reached out and touched the sabline neckerchief. It was as soft as down, finer even than silk. She wanted to lift it from the box and bury her face in its heavenly folds.

‘Sabline is manufactured from the pelt of an animal native to Madrigal,’ the manager told her. ‘These animals shed their pelts only once a lifetime - the sabline is damaged if taken from a dead animal. It is ludicrously expensive. For example, this cravat . . . what do you think?’

‘A thousand rupees?’ Her wage for a month.

‘Six thousand would be nearer the mark. A suit. . .’ He shook his head. ‘There is no demand for sabline suits, unfortunately. You would be talking about a figure approaching two hundred thousand rupees. The material is hard-wearing. A suit is guaranteed to last the lifetime of its owner without deterioration.’

Rana ran her fingers through the material for the last time. ‘Do you know if any tailor in India sells sabline suits?’

‘Well, the tailors of Bombay have manufactured sabline suits in the past, but only for the fabulously rich.’ He shook his head. ‘I haven’t heard of one being made for years.’

He replaced the lid and slipped the box back into its drawer, and Rana thanked him and returned to the car.

She arrived back at headquarters as the monsoon rains were letting up. The sun was setting in glorious strata of tangerine and jade green, like an aerial representation of the Indian flag, and the ad-screens were climbing into the dusk sky. Vishwanath was off duty and so, thankfully, was Naz.

Only Varma was at her desk, like some overweight Hindu deity guarding the amassed knowledge of the files. She glanced at her watch as Rana passed her desk. ‘I thought you went off duty two hours ago?’

‘Working on a lead, Varma,’ Rana said and hurried on.

At her desk she activated the com-screen and wrote a report detailing her findings: the discovery of traces of sabline at three of the murder scenes, and Iqbal’s testimony that Ali Bhakor was dealing with a man in an expensive black suit. Tenuous, she thought, but at least it was a lead.

She put out a priority call to the Bombay, Madras and Delhi police forces to forward details of the manufacture and sale of sabline suits over the past ten years. Then she downloaded the report of her findings to Vishwanath’s terminal, marked
urgent.

She sat back and considered what to do next.

Rana went through, step by step, what she had done so far, the leads she had examined and the people she had interviewed. The computer system, programmed to flag any significant correlation of fact, no matter how coincidental, had come up with nothing. It was down to the power of the brain, an individual’s ability to think laterally, to move the case forward. That, or pure blind luck.

She sat up. She recalled her earlier thought that the killer might be an off-worlder. If the sabline came from Madrigal, then perhaps - it was a long shot, she knew - perhaps so did the killer. If, that was, the killer was the Man in the Black Suit.

She opened her com-screen and accessed internal files. She logged on to the colonial crime file and typed in the key words: Madrigal, Laser Charge, Crucifix. She gave a fifteen-year remit and waited, expecting to be deluged with thousands of files that would take hours to sift through.

Minutes later her screen flashed with the message that only ten murder files awaited her inspection online.

She downloaded them into her com-screen and called them up one by one. Madrigal, it appeared, was a tiny planet with a population of only three million citizens, mainly miners, space line workers and scientists. Seven of the ten murders involving laser charges had been solved, the perpetrators tried and sentenced. Two cases were awaiting trial, with the accused pleading guilty. That left one case, the seemingly motiveless murder of a psychiatric patient almost fifteen years ago. The killer had never been apprehended, even though an eye witness to the killing had provided a description of the alleged murderer.

Now this was more interesting. Rana requested the computer-generated image of the suspect, sat back and waited.

A minute later the image filled her screen. Rana stared at the thin-faced, dark-haired man, something sickeningly confident and self-assured about his expression, though she reminded herself that it was only a computer-generated image. He was Caucasian, aged perhaps thirty in the pix - which would make him forty-five now - and other information supplied by the witness suggested that he was just under six feet tall and of athletic build. The witness had not noticed the suspected killer’s clothing.

Rana sent a copy of the pix through to Vishwanath’s terminal, suggesting that they should put out a request for a search and detention order to all forces.

She made a copy of the pix, propped it on her desk and stared at the dark, handsome face for a long time. She wondered if the reason she thought the face looked familiar was because, to her, Western faces did tend to share certain similar characteristics. How many bronzed, finely chiselled male faces had she seen on holodramas over the years?

But there was something about this face . . .

She told herself to be sensible. She had concentrated on the crucifix killings so intently over the last month that she was becoming obsessed.

She looked at the big digital clock on the wall. It was nearly ten o’clock, way past the time her shift finished. She killed her screen, said goodbye to Varma, and left the building.

The orange glow-tubes of the street-vendors illuminated the rain-slicked street. A constant procession of traffic surged back and forth, horns blaring in a mindless concerto of futility. Rana walked briskly through the humid night. She was still energised from concentrating on the case, and she knew that sleep would be a long time coming.

She hadn’t seen the kids down at the Howrah bridge for over a month - what better way to empty her mind of the day’s events than to chat with Vandita and her friends over a chai?

She took a cab to the Ganges, paid the driver and crossed the pavement to the railings overlooking the broad sweep of the water. The tide was out, revealing a slick expanse of mud-flats. Stick-thin figures in dhotis and vests waded up to their knees in the estuarine silt, poking about with long poles for who knew what. From beneath the arching span of the Howrah bridge, Rana heard the echo of children’s voices and laughter, and she was reminded of the spirit of community and camaraderie she had missed for so long.

Of all the children she had worked with over the years, in every part of the city, she had an affinity with the Howrah bridge kids most of all. There were many reasons for this: the self-help and co-operative scheme she had set up here a couple of years ago was still running successfully; the twelve-year-old Brahmin girl who organised the children, Vandita, reminded her so much of herself; and once she too had made her home between the steel pillars on the bridge’s northern bank. Now the kids would be gathering there after a hard day’s work, pooling their money, sending out for daal bhat and chai, gathering around the fire for a few hours of chatter before one by one they fell asleep.

Rana moved to the bridge and peered into the shadows. A flickering fire illuminated a circle of brown faces and bright eyes.

Vandita saw her and leapt to her feet. ‘Rana-ji!’ she cried. ‘Where have you been?’

Rana felt a stab of guilt. ‘I’ve been promoted, Vandita. I didn’t want the job, but I couldn’t refuse.’

Soon they were milling around her. They touched her uniform and the polished butt of her pistol protruding from beneath her jacket, as if it were some kind of talisman or good luck charm. Vandita took her hand and dragged her into the makeshift home beneath the bridge. They had laid boards on stones clear of the mud, covered the wooden slats with scraps of carpet and cloth, and had even found mattresses and old charpoys to sleep on. The three enclosing sides, two steel pillars and the brick wall, were hung with garish pix of Hindu gods, Shiva, Vishnu and Ganesh, alongside holodrama stars and skyball players. They even had a big, battered tea pot bubbling on a brazier.

Rana removed her boots and sat down on a mattress, her back against a pillar.

‘Chai, Rana?’ Vandita asked.

A chipped mug was pressed into her hand, full of sickly sweet, spiced chai. She looked around the beaming faces. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t called for such a long time,’ she said in Hindi. ‘Any problems?’

‘The people who clean the bridge want us to move,’ Vandita reported. ‘We said we’d move out until the bridge is cleaned, and then move back in. But they’re not happy with this. They want us to go for good. They say we dirty the bridge, but this isn’t true.’

‘Have you told Private Khosla?’ Rana asked. ‘He’ll talk to the authorities and come to some arrangement.’