The Taj Conspiracy (30 page)

Mehrunisa jolted awake. The scream was stuck in her throat, her chest was heaving and perspiration dotted her forehead. Her quilt was on the floor. She glanced around her room. The nightlight cast a pale amber patch on the carpet revealing a reassuring floor.

A cold winter night and she was perspiring as if it were a blazing summer day in Delhi, when the mercury soared and even birds fainted from sunstroke. Pulling herself upright, she gently turned her neck to ease the pain.

She had a name for these serial torments: the beheadings. Evocative, but not entirely original, for the old masters, painters whose work she had studied and admired, had deployed Biblical themes for inspiration, and tales of decapitations were abundant in the Bible, whether of John the Baptist, Saint Catherine or Goliath.

In Mehrunisa’s case, ‘the beheadings’ was an epithet for the trauma from the unexpected loss of her father. Since her mother had revealed on her deathbed that her father was a spy, the nightmare had frequented Mehrunisa, and with the approaching anniversary of her father’s disappearance, presumed death, the beheadings gathered frequency. It was her subconscious acting out her guilt— Mehrunisa had enough acquaintance with Freud to know that she blamed herself for not preventing her father from disappearing. If she had loved him enough, he would have returned.

The fresh nightmare had left her with a parched throat. Shivering, she swung her legs out of bed. The sudden motion made her wobbly. Steadying herself with an outstretched hand, she breathed deeply. Finding the jug on her dresser empty, she headed for the kitchen.

A shaft of light from the professor’s room fell on the hallway floor. As she passed it, she cast a cursory glance inside the room. The curtains on the window were half-drawn, just as she had left them. Light came from a tall floor lamp positioned in a corner so the shade, which dangled at the end like some bulbous fruit, pointed at the professor’s footboard. This way, it lit the room without throwing the light into his eyes. As Mehrunisa moved her gaze to the spot where her uncle reclined, she froze.

A click sounded; faint, but audible.

Mehrunisa looked quickly around the room. Nothing. She unfroze enough to lunge inside, throwing herself on the professor’s bed. With desperate hands, she went for his head. For once she regretted not having long fingernails as she frantically strove to rip the plastic apart. It was distended with carbon dioxide. She grabbed the glass on the bedside drawer, flung the water, smashed the glass against the corner and plunged the jagged edge into the plastic bag. It ruptured, discharging air with a whistle, and collapsed about the professor’s neck where it was fastened in a tight knot. Mehrunisa clawed at the plastic, shredding it into strips.

Professor Kaul’s eyes were open but glassy. His face had the pallor of a dead man. He was unconscious. Clutching both his shoulders, Mehrunisa shook him hard. ‘Uncle! Kaul uncle!’ she screamed hysterically.

Getting no response, she flung his quilt away, then the pillows. She climbed the bed and holding the professor’s legs, she dragged him flat and tilted his head back, his chin pointing up. Placing one hand under his head she lifted it gently. With the other she pushed his forehead down. Noiselessly, Mehrunisa listened. The tongue should have moved to open the airway. She brought her left cheek and ear close to his mouth and nose. No. She could feel no air!

The professor’s chest was still. Mehrunisa opened his mouth and probed for any foreign matter inside. None. Maintaining the head’s backward tilt, she pinched the professor’s nose, inhaled deeply and sealing her mouth around his, blew four quick but full breaths as fast as she could.

She watched his chest for movement.

None.

Mehrunisa repositioned his head and tried again. This time she changed her rate to one breath every five seconds. After a minute or so, an exhausted Mehrunisa sat back. The professor lay supine in front of her. Tears filled her eyes. As she cradled his head, a faint sound reached her.

Mehrunisa bent to catch it. Yes, air was passing through the professor’s nose. Drawing back she saw his chest move gradually. The dam within her burst.

Mehrunisa clung to her uncle, tears streaming down her cheeks into his woollen sweater, her torso shaking with emotion. The next instant rough callused hands were caressing her head, stroking her straight black hair away from her face. Mehrunisa looked up to see a forlorn Mangat Ram stooping beside her.

In a hoarse voice she said, ‘Call the doctor. Tell him it’s an emergency!’

Delhi

M
ehrunisa was chilled to the bone. No heater, no quilt, no layers would help. Just that morning Mangat Ram had brought rather disquieting news. As he fetched milk from the Mother Dairy booth at the lane’s end, he bumped into the night watchman who enquired about the midnight arrival of an ambulance at the professor’s door.

When Mangat Ram assured him the professor was fine, just a minor attack, and made to leave, the watchman held him back. Placing a hand on his shoulder, he revealed that the previous night, as he was doing his rounds, he had seen a man coming out of the professor’s house. As the man unhurriedly clicked the latch back on the gate, the night watchman hailed him. But the stranger refused to look, only pulling his cap more securely around his face, before he sped off on a motorcycle. He was wearing a coarse brown overcoat and a monkey cap.

If her nightmare had not roused her, her godfather would be dead. Monkey-cap expected the enfeebled professor to die soundlessly and had been brazen enough to walk into the house. The guard that R.P. Singh had deployed was bundled under his quilt on the cot in the patio, struck unconscious by chloroform.

Mehrunisa had learnt the basics of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at a Girl Scout camp one summer. Only once before had she needed to perform it: when an elderly tourist had collapsed in the Florentine heat. The doctor had said a delay of minutes would have proved fatal for Professor Kaul.

An enraged Mehrunisa stood in the patio, fists clenched by her side. Once she had possessed a terrible temper. Papa said she inherited it from Maadar’s cousin Uncle Massoud, the eccentric artist who splashed paint on his work or hurled paint cans at hapless servants when unhappy.

‘You have to be strategic with your anger, Mehr,’ he would counsel, ‘channelise it into something useful.’

Mehrunisa struggled with that advice until the day her father disappeared. When all her angry fulminating did not bring Papa back, she had pushed the aggression deep inside and sealed it with a glacial mask. Now it was set to explode.

She had spent the day watching over her uncle in his hospital room. Mangat Ram had taken the night shift and she, back at home, was too beat to sleep.

Abruptly, Mehrunisa started to pace the patio, arms tight like a robot’s. She wanted to climb a mountain, start the arduous journey from the foot to the rounded peaks, clamber over grassy hills, scale treeless ridges, trudge, trudge, trudge upwards until her breath was ragged....

In a corner, Mangat Ram’s rickety bicycle reclined against the wall. She lunged towards it.

Pre-dawn mist floated in the quiet garden. Mehrunisa cut through it as the pedals spun furiously, tyres crunched the dewy grass, and the old cycle creaked alarmingly.

In her mind’s eye she saw Maadar, forlorn at Tehran airport, Papa, kissing her on the forehead before departing for Syria, Kaul uncle, deathly still on his bed....

Round and round she went, new tyre treads smudging the earlier ones until the lawn was marked by a swathe of flattened grass and she was drenched in mist, sweat and tears.

Agra

I
nspector Bharadwaj of the CISF strode down the central walkway of the Taj Mahal. He had just returned from dinner in the Taj Khema area and was reporting for night duty.

In the Taj Khema area was also located the office of the police constable who manned the CCTV cameras. There were eight such cameras that monitored the traffic approaching the monument and it was Karam Singh’s duty to look out for suspicious vehicles and alert security. After his meal Bharadwaj had bought some paan and stopped by to chat.

As he took the offered paan, Karam Singh lamented that only one camera was functioning. The other seven had been rendered useless because squirrels had chewed the wiring. He had put in a written complaint but the matter was yet to be rectified.

Bharadwaj commiserated with the constable, clucked his tongue about delays, spat red juice in one corner and said he would make sure to convey his grievance.

Now, he surveyed the Taj complex with a smug smile. Within the monument, in the Red zone, all was well. Unlike the security outside in the Yellow zone, because, unknown to Karam Singh, his complaint had never reached the requisite authority. Between the CISF, the state police and the Provincial Armed Constabulary, there was enough red tape to ensnare such alerts. Not to count the Vibhishana in their midst.

Bharadwaj squirted a jet of orange juice into the shrubbery. Like the legendary traitor who brought down Lanka by revealing its secret, Bharadwaj would watch the marble monument get destroyed as he operated from within it.

Delhi

R
.P. Singh and Mehrunisa crouched next to the hedge bordering Raj Bhushan’s garden. The CBI officer was livid at the monkey-capped assassin’s third murder attempt, this time on the enfeebled professor. Meanwhile, Mehrunisa, suspicious of the ASI director since the attack had come close on the heels of her accusation, wanted to scour his house for evidence of guilt. R.P. Singh didn’t see the historian in a cabal of criminals with Monkey-cap, but all were suspects until he found his behrupiya.

Raj Bhushan was a bachelor with no full-time staff, and he was travelling overnight; his house was bound to be vacant, Mehrunisa had reasoned. It was a government bungalow, one in a row of similar white-washed erstwhile colonial barracks converted to provide housing in a capital city teeming with officials. Mehrunisa was familiar with such houses—at one time Professor Kaul had stayed in one—and knew that their decrepit state could be counted on to ensure that a window or a door or a door-plank somewhere would be loose enough to give.

Dressed in a midnight-blue tracksuit, hair secured in a ponytail, she approached a row of windows at the rear while R.P. Singh kept a lookout. Glass panes, no grilles— which was a relief—and a mosquito netting. She ran her right hand against the wooden window frame, her fingers seeking a vulnerable spot. On the third casement she felt a lower corner that jutted out.

Torch in mouth, she clasped it with both hands and tugged. The wood was swollen, which accounted for the protuberant part, and the casement had probably been jammed in. She tugged, pried, heaved, her fingers bruising, until she felt it give. A quick glance back at R.P. Singh who motioned all-clear.

The casement yielded stiffly. A mosquito mesh covered the window frame. She tugged at the bottom and the net peeled off.

Once she had clambered inside, R.P. Singh followed. They found themselves in a living room. As they waited for their eyes to get used to the darkness they observed the sparse furnishings: some wicker chairs, an ikat-patterned durrie against one wall, a bronze Nataraja.

The room’s glory was the centrepiece: a glass-topped table. It stood out amidst the modest furnishings by its sheer size. It was also a curious shape ... Mehrunisa shone her light on it as she advanced softly. Yes. The glass was placed on an elaborately carved wooden door, the kind popular with havelis. The base consisted of a large black iron trunk. As she circled the table, Mehrunisa breathed in sharply.

‘What is it?’ R.P. Singh hissed from where he was examining a TV cabinet.

She beckoned him over. ‘Unless there are two identical pieces, I saw this table last in Arun Toor’s residence!’

‘Are you sure?’

She nodded.

She had shared a couple of meals with Arun, one in his home as they worked over lunch. The beauty of the wooden door and its incongruous use as a centre table had surprised Mehrunisa. She had attributed it to Arun’s eclectic style. Yes, there could be no mistaking the piece.

‘Why would the ASI director-general remove Arun’s table and place it in his home?’ R.P. Singh asked. ‘Kleptomaniac?’ he grinned and bent towards Mehrunisa who was on her knees examining the table.

A
rat-tat-tat
crashed the stillness.

R.P. Singh dived, taking Mehrunisa with him. He lifted his head a few inches and scanned the room for a clue to the sound. Had the owner returned? Was there somebody in the house? Momentarily, he was distracted by Mehrunisa’s heart throbbing beneath his forearm and the scent of mint in her hair.

A shadow fell across the rear windows.

Someone was prowling, tapping a thick staff against the windows, rattling them as he went. He had made sure to shut the window behind him. As the shadow disappeared from view, the rattling turned to a rhythmic tapping on the ground. It was the night watchman on his round, indulging in a routine inspection meant to deter intruders such as them.

He released air from his chest and relaxed.

As his hold loosened, Mehrunisa wriggled out rubbing her upper arm.

‘Sorry,’ Singh said, realising he had clutched her arm.

Mehrunisa waved it off with her hand, which struck the trunk and touched a cold lock.

She turned the torchlight on the trunk: it was a large modern brass lock.

They looked at each other, brows raised.

‘Odd, hanh?’ Singh grunted.

‘For a man with Raj Bhushan’s taste, it is out of character with the ornate table,’ Mehrunisa added.

R.P. Singh fingered the heavy lock. ‘It’s clearly not an ornamental piece, it was meant to secure the contents. Question is—’

‘What is in the trunk?’ Mehrunisa finished

‘Got a hairpin?’

Mehrunisa removed a barrette from her hair. R.P. Singh snapped off the clip where the ridged side turned into a U. Sticking the broken end into the lock, he twisted it one way, tugged at the lock, twisted it another way, tugged again. Outside, the wind must have picked up, for the house had begun to sigh like an old woman.