White Rage (23 page)

‘And this is going to happen soon?'

‘I can't give you a time. There's still work to be done.'

‘But you expect our organization to hibernate?'

‘That's up to you. I'm telling you this just so you know that our relationship is finite.'

She said, ‘And if I see you in the street, I look the other way.'

‘You won't see me in the street,' he said.

‘It's a small world.'

‘Not as small as some people think.' He unlocked the drawer of a writing bureau. He took out a white envelope and handed it to her. ‘The regular contribution.'

‘The organization thanks you,' she said.

He ran a finger under his glasses and scratched the top of his nose. He had the lined face of a traveller accustomed to long trips by rail across dry landscapes.

He said, ‘I always had an urge to ask you what drew you into this “cause” of yours in the first place. Now I'm not so sure I want to know.'

‘I believe some people don't belong in this country,' she said.

‘Well well. You surprise me.'

She ignored his sarcasm. ‘They don't have rights. But they come anyway, and they keep coming. They come in like this endless fucking tide. They come illegally, they make demands. And the system can't cope and the people who have genuine rights, the citizens, are the first to suffer. Meantime, the dregs are saving give us food, give us proper houses and money for cars and free health. It's all gimme gimme gimme. And the country goes to hell.'

‘Simple as that, eh?'

She saw a small patronizing smile on his mouth. She said, ‘I'm giving you the basic version.'

‘Racism Lite,' he said.

‘Is it racism to protect yourself? If somebody pitches a tent in my backyard without permission, don't I have the right to kick him out?'

‘You sound like a landlord,' he said.

‘Only I don't bother with eviction orders.' She knew he was scrutinizing her, although she couldn't see his eyes.

‘What if this trespasser is white as bone?'

‘Then it depends.'

‘On what?'

‘Ethnic background. Immigrant status.'

Oyster paused. ‘A Jew, say.'

She closed her eyes. She had an image of a transport train, Jews peering through slatted wood on their way to a death camp. ‘I don't altogether believe they
rule
the world, but they have power out of all proportion to their numbers. Zyklon B wouldn't be my first choice.'

‘Hitler had the right idea, but the wrong techniques?'

‘He might have benefited from more sophisticated technology.'

‘You're a cold wee bitch.'

‘More compliments,' she said. ‘My heart's racing.'

‘Your heart's iron.'

‘I like to think it's an alloy.'

‘Of what?'

‘Steel and patriotism.'

‘Patriotism? I think your version of that idea is the sanctuary of some sorry people who don't know how to make it in the everyday world.'

‘Let me guess. You look at me and see just one more sad lonely bastard who spends too much time on Internet chat-rooms talking to kindred spirits about how to rid our country of its unwanted scum. But you associate with people like us anyway, because you need us now and then. You're not exactly in the running for a peace prize – so what does that make you?'

‘I'm a businessman,' he said.

‘A bloody judgemental one.'

‘I don't hold the necessary moral high ground to make judgements,' he said.

‘Killing blacks and Asians is okay if it suits you, and wrong if it doesn't.'

‘I don't give a fuck either way. I'm not lumbered by a racist agenda. Blacks, Indians, Jews. I'm a pragmatist.'

‘That covers everything,' she said.

It's a handy word. It means I can associate with anyone I like, provided there's some mutual advantage. Now, if we're finished … I'll walk you out.'

I'm not finished,' she said.

‘I am.'

‘I want to tell you more about how I got to where I am.'

‘Assuming I want to know your history, of course.'

‘Fuck you, Oyster. You're dying to know.'

‘Some other time.' He went with her to the front door. He touched her elbow briefly. She felt a slight thrill. Also some anger. She didn't want to leave. The conversation dangled unfinished.

He said, ‘Phone me tonight. The usual number. Usual time …'

‘By the way.' She took a handkerchief-wrapped gun from the inside pocket of her leather jacket, and handed it to him. He unfolded the linen and examined the weapon.

‘One little gun duly returned,' she said.

‘Hold onto it,' he said. ‘You never know.'

She stepped onto the landing. She heard the door shut behind her, and the chain slot back in place. She stuffed the gun back inside her pocket, then she headed slowly downstairs and out into Kennyhill Square.

After the still silence of the tenement the traffic roaring along Alexandra Parade was a cacophony; it was as if she'd passed from one city into another, the first quiet and cloistered and safe, the second raucous and exposed and volatile.

26

Perlman drove back to Pitt Street, parked his car. He needed focus. He needed a break of some kind, a passing of the clouds in his head and a moment of illumination. His thoughts had congealed, a form of cerebral constipation. How long before he met Miriam? He was impatient, wishing the hours away.

He entered the building. A woman approached him as soon as he stepped into the foyer, laying a hand on his arm. He'd never seen her before but he knew at once that she had to be Madhur Gupta; she was small and delicate and tragic, eyelids swollen, mouth sad. She was in her mid-forties and might have been pretty, but grief had robbed her.

‘Is there a place where we can talk?' she asked.

‘Upstairs –'

‘No, not here, not in this building. Too many policemen, they remind me … I prefer to walk. The open air.'

Perlman followed her into the street. She wore a long dark blue coat and matching trousers. She had a blue scarf drawn round her head. She moved on high-heeled shoes with an air of uncertainty, as if she might keel over any moment.

I'm Indra's mother,' she said.

‘I assumed that.'

They walked slowly down Pitt Street. The recent rain had left the pavements slick. Without thinking, Perlman offered his arm to the woman; he didn't want her to slip and fall. Her grip was tight.

‘I don't have much time, Sergeant. I have many things to attend to at home. Things I wish with all my heart I could avoid. You understand that.'

‘Of course. Do you want to get a cup of tea somewhere?'

‘I prefer to keep walking. I can't stand being still.'

They turned left into Waterloo Street. Madhur Gupta said, ‘This morning I heard Indra's alarm clock go off. I'd taken some sleeping pills but they didn't help. I lay all night long with my eyes open and I kept thinking that what had happened was not real. Then I heard her little clock and I had to go inside her room and turn it off and I drew her curtains back to let light in, to wake her – the bed was empty, of course. Silly of me to think I might find her there. Isn't that silly. Sergeant?'

Perlman said, ‘I don't think so. It's natural.'

‘Natural? Tell me what is natural? For a mother to survive a child – is this natural?' She stopped, turned to look up into Perlman's eyes for an answer. Some faces hide nothing, he thought. Some people have no masks to protect themselves. Madhur Gupta, in her grief, looked as if she'd been scooped out inside, and sorrow was the only sensation she'd feel for as long as she lived. He had an urge to put his arms round this little woman and hug her. Oy. This loss of detachment was a sign of the downhill path he was on. He needed diplomatic immunity from feeling.

He said, ‘No, that's not remotely natural.'

‘A man kills my daughter, Sergeant. Shoots her. I feel her pain.'

Madhur Gupta gazed down Waterloo Street, which ended at Hope Street.
Hope
. Finding irony in the street name was too easy, Perlman thought. What in God's name was he supposed to tell this woman? How was he to help ease her pain?
We're doing all we can
, he might say. That chestnut had been in the fire too long.
We'll bring this criminal to justice
, another candidate. But Madhur Gupta didn't look like a woman who wanted justice. Revenge was what she sought. Blood. She wanted a gun and she wanted to blow the killer away.

‘Your investigation,' she said. ‘How does it go?'

‘You want me to say we're close to the killer?'

‘I don't want lies, Sergeant.'

‘You won't get them from me, Mrs Gupta. We're not close. We have a couple of avenues of exploration, but I'm not going to tell you we've got anything substantial. Not yet.' Christ, how he hated pap:
avenues of exploration
. ‘There's a lot of work ahead, and it requires a lot of questions. Takes time.'

‘And luck too, I imagine.'

‘I wouldn't spit in the eye of a lucky break,' he said.

They moved along the block in silence. At the junction of Wellington Street, Madhur Gupta stopped. She released Perlman's arm. ‘Poor Indra. She didn't do anything to deserve what happened to her.'

She's going to tell me something
, Perlman thought. He had the feeling that Madhur Gupta, who'd lived quietly in the background of her husband's life, a dedicated wife and mother, had decided to step, however briefly, out of the shadows.

‘She had the misfortune to be Bharat's child, Sergeant. Do you think Bharat's nephew Tilak
fell
from the balcony of his flat?'

I'm not sure.'

‘Such terrible luck in one family? You think this is chance?'

‘I'm not a big fan of chance, Mrs Gupta. What are you telling me?'

‘This is difficult for me. To be open … Our lives have been less than ordinary in the last couple of years, Sergeant.'

‘How so?'

‘Are we talking in confidence?'

‘Complete.'

She paused, stuck a finger under the watchband of her small silver watch, then twisted the links nervously. ‘My husband has various businesses – I pay little attention, it isn't my place. I manage our household. I tell the cleaners what to do. This is my role. I understand some of Bharat's enterprises are – let me say, not always run by the book of rules? Do you understand me?'

‘Dodgy,' he said.

‘Yes. In the last two years or so, there have been events that have made me uneasy, and others that frightened me. But Bharat always said they were the work of business enemies.'

‘What kind of events, Mrs Gupta?'

‘Anonymous letters of a threatening kind. I received a few. I know Indra got at least one. She told me. Bharat always said they were empty, they meant nothing, we should destroy them and forget them.'

‘Which you did.'

‘Destroyed, yes. Forgot, no.'

‘What kind of threats?'

‘Some were vague,' she said. ‘Others were death.'

She glanced at her watch, checked the time. Perlman guessed she'd slipped out of her home unseen, and she'd have questions to answer when she returned. Only desperation could have driven her out of a house of mourning.

‘Your husband did nothing about these letters?' he asked.

‘You have to understand this – Bharat is a good husband. He has always,
always
, looked after the family. He has never consorted with other women. He loves his children. He's protective of the family, the home. When he said the letters were worthless jokes in bad taste, I was ready to believe him. Perhaps I hid from the truth.'

‘Apart from the letters, anything else?'

‘Anonymous phone calls. Always the same rough voice, the same message.
You're going to die. You can't escape
. Somebody once slashed the tyres of Dev's car. Somebody also broke into Tilak's flat and wrote obscenities on the wall. Racial nonsense. Then there was the stranger Indra said was following her. Bharat continued to be very reassuring. But I began to pick up little stories. A dry-cleaning establishment he owns had been set on fire deliberately. A supermarket in which he has a sizeable investment was vandalized. I asked him why did he not go to the police. It was a private matter, he said. It was something he'd settle himself. He's a very proud man, Sergeant.'

Pride's fine, Perlman thought, but it didn't explain why Gupta refused to report these events to the police. Something else. Maybe he just distrusted the authorities. Maybe he didn't want cops involved in his business affairs.

Madhur Gupta said, ‘He had a company install security devices in our house. Alarms, sensor lights. He always has some of his employees watching the house. They sit in a van parked in the driveway. When he drives each morning to his office, he always travels with two men whose purpose he has never explained to me. I'm certain they're bodyguards. Meanwhile, the van always stays behind, parked outside the house.'

A siege condition, Perlman thought. ‘If he's so keen on security, why didn't he send somebody to make sure Indra reached school safely?'

‘Indra trusted her father's attitude to the threats. Why wouldn't she? She adored him.'

Perlman thought about this. Fearless Indra. She didn't need protection. She felt safe. Complacency kills. He thought of her staring into the killer's gun, and all her assumptions of security draining out of her. He gazed at Madhur Gupta; her face, framed in the dark scarf, seemed almost white. ‘You think your husband's enemies are behind her killing?'

‘I think it is a possibility you must consider, Sergeant. Think of Tilak too. He wasn't the kind of boy who'd take his own life. Believe me. Wild, certainly. Self-destructive, never.'