Sacred Games (61 page)

‘Aai is at her meeting.'

‘What meeting?'

‘There is a Family Welfare Group. She is a volunteer, so she has to go once a week.'

This was certainly new. It had been a little over two weeks since Sartaj had last visited, and Shalini had a new routine. Life moved along. ‘Volunteer for what?'

‘They give information. Aai goes and talks to women around here.'

‘About health?'

‘Yes. And I think about saving money. And cleanliness. They are planning to clean up the lanes. There are some pamphlets somewhere here if you want to see.'

‘No, no.' Sartaj knew the groups, and the NGOs that worked with them, usually with government or World Bank funding. The groups were rackets for somebody or other, for the NGOs or the government or the Bank, but they did good work sometimes. And Katekar had been a great one for cleanliness, so Shalini's work was a fitting tribute. ‘Here,' he said, and handed over the packets he had brought.

‘Thank you,' Rohit said, in English. He had been working very hard on English recently, and planned to enrol in a beginners computer course in a month or so, immediately after his exams. Sartaj had made sure that a seat had been reserved in the Prabhat Computer Classes, which were reputed to be the best in the area. ‘Learn Computer and Internet For Only Rs. 999', they advertised in multicoloured advertisements pasted on every other wall. Rohit was going through the bags, laying down the plastic pouches of dal, and atta, and rice. ‘Eh, tapori,' he said to Mohit, and tossed him two comics. ‘Latest Spiderman,' Rohit said. ‘Say thank you.'

Mohit couldn't take his hands off the comics, but he wouldn't say thank you. Sartaj wondered what his neighbours had told him about his father's death, who he had learned to blame. He was a strange boy, he had become a glowering little tyke, very opaque and very jerky, tightly sprung from within. ‘Our Mohit likes Spiderman,' Sartaj said, ‘but he is a patriotic Indian. He doesn't like saying thank-you-thank-you all the time, like those Americans.'

Rohit laughed. ‘Yes, rudeness is our birthright.' He tweaked Mohit's nose, and Mohit made a spitting noise and ran past the partition into the other room. ‘He really does want to be Spiderman though. For two days now he'll sleep with the books. Kartiya sala.' Rohit tapped his forehead.

Sartaj unbuttoned his breast pocket, brought out an envelope. ‘Ten thousand,' he said. He handed it over, and scratched at his beard. It was getting hot, settling into the absolute grim stillness and dejection of the pre-monsoon months. His collar was soaked with sweat.

This time Rohit didn't say thank you. He got up, holding the envelope to his chest, and then Sartaj heard the metallic creak of a cupboard opening and closing. Rohit came back with a glass of water. Sartaj drank. He was a good boy, Rohit, and he was too young to be putting money in cupboards and thinking of how to raise his little brother. But then there were six-year-olds making a living on every street corner down to Colaba.

They sat for a while, talking about computers, the Middle East, and whether Kajol would do any more films. Rohit thought Kajol was the best actress since Madhubala. Sartaj hadn't seen a film for a long time, but he was glad to agree. When Rohit talked about Kajol, he grew intense and happy, and gestured emphatically with his hands at Sartaj's chest while he described Kajol's virtues. Kajol was not only a great actress, she was a good wife and mother. Sartaj found himself smiling, and was happy to listen, and agree, and let the night come on.

 

The next morning, Sartaj met Mary at her sister's apartment. As he had expected, it had taken several weeks to get Jojo's apartment handed over to Mary, her sole surviving relative. But now, he had been glad to report to her on the phone, he had the key, everything was ready. Tuesday was Mary's day off, and he had agreed to meet her first thing in the morning, before he went to the station. He had got himself up early, dragged himself into the shower, and was at the building punctually at six-thirty. She was waiting for him near the lift, as they had agreed. With her was a very tall, very thin woman, who was looking at Sartaj with mild amusement.

‘This is my friend, Jana,' Mary said.

Sartaj had not expected friend Jana, but it certainly made sense that Mary would bring a friend. ‘Namaskar, Jana-ji,' he said.

Jana took in the muted sarcasm, and grew more amused. ‘Namaskar, Sartaj-ji,' she said.

Sartaj grinned, and quite unexpectedly Mary smiled. Her jaw thrust forward a little, and her eyes narrowed, and her face quite transformed.
The dragging seriousness went from her, vanished. Sartaj wasn't quite sure exactly what she found funny, but it was a relief and a revelation to see that she could be diverted. ‘Shall we go?' he said, pointing towards the lift.

‘Yes, yes,' Mary said. ‘Jana has come to look after me.'

Standing close to the two of them in the lift, Sartaj could see that Jana was very competent indeed. She wore a smear of sindoor in her carefully parted hair, and a dull red kurta over black salwars. Her shoes were sensible, and she carried a large, square shoulder-bag with wide shoulder straps. Inside it she carried a plastic bottle, no doubt full of boiled water. That was a mother's bag, nice-looking but capacious and hardy. It would carry lunch, chocolates, medicine, vegetables and school books. It was a trustworthy bag.

The lock to Jojo's apartment was tightly bandaged with coarse canvas that took in the latch as well, and the layers were secured by a drippy seal of red wax marked by the Mumbai Police. Sartaj handed Mary the key, and reached inside his gym bag for a pair of large black scissors. He had come prepared. The seal came off with a rip, and then Sartaj watched as Mary struggled with the key against the jammed lock. ‘Let me,' he said, and Mary shook her head briskly and set her shoulders to the task. Jana gave Sartaj a rueful look over Mary's head: this is what she's like, let her be. They waited. Then the lock came open with a screech, and they were in.

Jana rushed around opening windows, revealing the drawing room in sections. Mary was still near the door. Sartaj reached behind her and ran his hand down the row of switches. No lights, no electricity. ‘Yaar, this is a
nice
place,' Jana called from the kitchen, mingling surprise and a fat dollop of outrage.

Women were always outraged when officially bad women made money, had taste, enjoyed a little happiness, Sartaj thought. But Mary was unreadable. She walked through the apartment, paused in each room and took it in, and was very silent. Jana's commentary rolled on: in the bedroom, Jojo's lavish collection of footwear called up a moment of stunned silence, then two minutes of affronted references to Jayalalitha and Imelda Marcos, and then a long painstaking inventory. Mary was standing in the doorway, her hands by her sides.

Sartaj pushed a window open. ‘There were some photo albums here,' he said. ‘They must be somewhere in here.' The room was a mess, and the scattering of shoes and clothes and magazines lay under a thick slough of dust. ‘Ah, there,' Sartaj said, and came around the bed to the dresser. He
picked up the top album, and thumped it. A fine ash ballooned off the cover, and Sartaj was suddenly aware of how loud his voice had been, how triumphant. The direct light from the window didn't quite reach Mary, and he couldn't see her face. ‘You should go to the BSES office, and have the electricity switched back on.' He put the album back on the dresser. ‘There must be some outstanding bills. Okay, then, I must go.' He nodded, took a step and stopped.

Mary backed into the corridor to let him pass. Sartaj raised a hand at Jana, and she nodded, but she was watching Mary. Sartaj was all the way down the corridor when Mary spoke. ‘Thank you,' she said.

‘Yes, yes,' Sartaj said. ‘Don't mention.'

‘I haven't forgotten.'

‘What?'

‘About your investigation of Ganesh Gaitonde. I tried to think about Jojo, if I could remember anything.'

‘Thank you.'

She smiled again, and again this time it came suddenly, without warning. She raised her left hand and did a curious little wave, holding out her hand towards him and turning it only from the wrist. Sartaj nodded, and shut the door.

 

An hour and a half of shifting and coiling had left Sartaj exhausted, but more awake than when he had got into bed. He had settled in just after midnight, feeling virtuous about the earliness of the hour, and clean from a long shower. But now a small and relentless agitation was working under his skin. He had drunk three whisky-and-waters. And still there was no sleep. He sat up. Shadows of wires swayed across the window-pane. He couldn't remember the name of the dog. There had been that small white dog that Kamala Pandey's husband had thrown out of the window. Sartaj remembered its stiff-legged sprawl in the car park, but he couldn't remember the name of the gaandu thing. He still had her number. He could call Kamala Pandey and ask her, what was the name of the dog your husband killed, that the two of you killed together, as you played your dirty games?

Sartaj swung his feet to the floor, rubbed at his eyes. He couldn't do that, it would be police harassment, persecution, something. But he knew who would be awake at two in the morning. He dialled, pressing at the lighted keys with a shaky finger. He listened to the ring and waited, holding up his hand. He was very tense. I need to get a blood-pressure test, he thought. There was a history in the family: Sartaj's father had struggled
against hypertension and high cholesterol all his life. He had survived one heart attack, and died quietly in his sleep nine years later, of causes that the doctors said were natural.

‘Peri pauna, Ma,' Sartaj said.

‘Jite raho, beta,' she said. ‘Did you just get home?'

‘Yes. Casework.' Work was an acceptable reason for calling this late. Admitting to insomnia would occasion an enquiry into his eating habits, his consumption of alcohol and his health. He would be pre-emptive. ‘Ma, you sound hoarse. Are you getting a cold?'

‘A cold, me? I never get colds. Your father was the one who always got colds. He had that thin Bombay blood. We grew up in a good clean climate, we were used to good cold winters.' This was an old theme, that the north-western sardar was tougher than the Bombay sardar. The sisters were the toughest of all, and Navneet-bhenji was the eldest and the hardiest of the sisters. Here it came, the story of the stalwart and long-lost aunt. ‘Navneet-bhenji used to bathe in cold water even on January mornings. At six-thirty in the morning because she had to get to early class at college. Even Papa-ji would tell her to put in a little hot water, but she never listened. And if you looked at her, you would think what a delicate, beautiful thing! She was a literature student, she looked like she should be counting pearls in a palace, but she was strong as some peasant. She used to paint really well also, you know. These scenes of the village fields, and houses, and cows. There was one she did of our new house that was wonderful, it was so exact.'

Now there was a pause. This halt was also a familiar one, as Ma mourned the dead sister. Navneet-mausi had been killed during Partition, but Ma had been talking about her for as long as Sartaj could remember. She was dead, but she had always been in Sartaj's life. All the children and grandchildren in the family knew her well, this absent mausi. They had lived with her, with the stories and the rigidity that would come over the faces of the elders as they spoke of her. Sartaj had tried now and then to press past that constriction of muscle and nerve, that freezing of emotion, to what exactly had happened during those bloodstained days. But all that Ma had ever said was, ‘Those were bad days, very bad days,' and that was all. And that was what they all said, all the uncles and aunts and grandparents. That, and an occasional curse against Muslims: beta, you don't know, they are bad people, very bad people.

But tonight Ma was not angry about old hurts, or bitter, she was just quiet. So Sartaj finally said, ‘I don't know how you remember such old
things. Exact paintings and things like that. I can't even remember the name of a dog.'

‘What dog?'

So Sartaj told her the story: the husband, the wife, the dog thrown out of the window.

‘What a horrible man!' Ma said. She liked dogs, and they liked her. ‘Did you arrest him?'

‘No.'

‘Why?'

‘The wife wouldn't file charges.'

‘Arre, there was abuse of an innocent animal.'

‘She wouldn't even say he had thrown it out of the window.'

‘Maybe she was scared of him.'

‘She's not so innocent either.'

‘Why? You saw her again?' Ma had spent decades tussling with a policeman, two policemen, so she had developed her own skill at catching nuances and unvoiced truths. ‘What's wrong with her?'

It was an ugly story to tell this late at night to his mother, but Sartaj told it. He made a quick little report on the wife, the pilot, the camera, the blackmail. He left out the bribe the wife had offered, and her tight little white top. Ma had severe opinions about shamelessness in any guise, and he didn't want to overly prejudice her against Kamala Pandey. The errant wife was surely condemned in any case. ‘Of course I told her that I couldn't work on her case, without a complaint. She's a fool,' he said. ‘A fool who thinks she can get whatever she wants, can do whatever she wants.'

‘Yes,' Ma said. ‘Her father must have done whatever his little daughter wanted, and given her no discipline. People spoil their children nowadays.'

Sartaj laughed out loud. This was why he called his mother in the middle of the night, for these sudden vaulting leaps of insight, these confirmations of his own hunches. She was quite amazing sometimes. ‘Yes, she's a brat. Very irritating.' He sat up in bed, and drank a long draught of water. He was feeling better already, hearing her voice, listening to her breathing. ‘Did you and Papa-ji talk much about his cases?'