Chain of Custody Page 16

  Daulat Ali looked at her for a long moment. ‘Get back to your cubicle. There is someone coming in.’ Daulat Ali turned to look at Nandita. Something about the girl bothered him. He couldn’t put his finger on it but it would come to him sooner than later. Nothing escaped Daulat Ali for too long. Runaway girls, non-paying clients, debts or wandering thoughts.

  Sid glanced at his phone. Where was she? She was late by twenty minutes. They needed to get to a service apartment in Indiranagar. In the rush-hour traffic, there was no way they would get there in time.

  Bitch, fucking cunt, he thought as he messaged her: Rex, where are you? He would have to park his bike somewhere on Church Street and take her on the metro.

  He saw the double-tick appear. Received. He saw the double-tick turn blue. Read. What the fuck! Why wasn’t she responding?

  He called her number. The phone rang but she didn’t pick up. The money in his wallet burned. It was the advance he had received. He was to pick up the balance once he dropped her off.

  He slammed the petrol tank of the bike with his fist. Money was one thing, but the person he had talked to was not going to like it if he didn’t deliver as promised. Displeasure was shown in many forms, the cucumber seller had warned him. ‘Don’t get into it if you can’t keep your word. At this point, saying no won’t cost you anything. But once you take up a job, if you don’t finish it, you’ll be screwed. Royally. Left and right. Up and down. In and out. You won’t know if you’re breathing through your nostrils or your arsehole.’

  Sid had laughed at the man’s rhetoric. Only now he thought he was going to cry. What had he got himself into? What was he going to do? If she didn’t turn up, his arse was fried.

  Where the fuck was she? And why wasn’t she taking his call?

  Rex … Come on, baby … he whispered, calling her again. And again.

  They were sitting in the living room watching a DVD. It was one of their favourite things to do. He peeled an orange and gave it to her segment by segment. When his phone vibrated on the coffee table, he looked at it, frowning.

  He put the orange down and rose. Then he picked up his phone and walked to the next room. She gazed up at him.

  ‘Why do you leave the room each time you have to use the phone?’ she asked. ‘What is it that you don’t want me to hear?’

  ‘Wife, I don’t want to ask you to lower the volume of the TV.’ He smiled and whispered, ‘Back in two minutes.’

  She paused the film. He walked out into the verandah.

  ‘Pujary, where is the girl?’ the MLA barked into his ear.

  ‘Isn’t she there?’ he asked softly.

  ‘If she was, would I call? You fucking ruined my mood …’ the man grumbled.

  ‘Let me sort it out,’ he said, trying to placate the man.

  ‘Ah, forget it! I’m going home. You are a useless fellow, I say.’ The phone went silent.

  Pujary felt his heartburn begin. He walked back into the room.

  ‘Who was it? Your girlfriend?’ Gita asked. ‘Why did you leave the room to take the call?’

  ‘Gita, don’t ever say that to me again,’ he snapped. ‘Do you hear me?’

  She stared at him, unable to hide her fear and dismay. ‘I …’ she said, ‘I was only joking.’

  He dropped to the floor and laid his head on her knees. ‘I am sorry … I am sorry … I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘Everything all right?’ she murmured, running her fingers through his stubble-length hair.

  He rubbed the middle of his chest. ‘Acidity!’ he said, making a face. ‘And that call didn’t help.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have had so much of that mango pickle at lunch!’ she scolded.

  ‘I know.’ He smiled.

  He felt his heartburn turn into a lump of cold rage and fear.

  Gita knew something was troubling him even though he tried to hide it behind that wornout excuse: acidity.

  She was not a fool even though he liked to think she was naïve. That her world was all black and white with the two of them firmly entrenched in the light of white. Government servants, as he often referred to himself in the early years of their marriage, had limited means. When their first house and car were acquired, she knew that he had stepped into the grey zone of compromise. They had more than what a government servant could afford. But she had looked away like she did when he touched himself under the sheet with his back to her. He needed his release like he needed challenges to shape his day. Besides, she knew that he wasn’t a bad man. He wouldn’t do anything that moved from the grey zone into the midnight space of black. She knew that about him. Sometimes she thought she knew him better than he knew himself.

  Gita took his hand in hers and began cracking his knuckles one by one. He smiled at her.

  12 MARCH, THURSDAY

  Mavelli Tiffin Room was crowded. But that was to be expected, Pujary thought as he left the car running and rushed in. They knew him by sight and name. He had been doing this for almost three decades now.

  Old Bangaloreans like him saw in MTR one of the last links to the past, while the new Bangaloreans, he thought, throwing a contemptuous look at a group that sat wolfing down their tiffin. They came here for the food as much as to be able to mention breezily their visits to MTR. That way everyone else would see them as true-blue Bangaloreans and not those upstart immigrants with software degrees, overpaid jobs in one of the IT companies, pseudo trans-Atlantic accents that slipped every few minutes, and no roots.

  Pujary paid for his order. He had ordered breakfast in advance.

  ‘Idlis, chutney, vada and chandrakala.’ It was Gita’s favourite breakfast. Every Thursday they went to Lal Bagh and picnicked there. He would push her wheelchair for a little stroll along the paths on which it was possible to do so. They would return home by lunchtime.

  Gita would have liked something else once in a while. And another place. She was bored with the Thursday routine. But he was a very busy man and yet he kept aside this time for them. So she said nothing and played along. Besides, that was the only time they reverted to being the madly-and-recklessly-in-love couple they had once been. They chatted, they laughed, and for once he stopped treating her like she was fragile China.

  But that morning there was something unsaid between them. Who would speak about it first, each of them wondered as they sat silently in the car.

  Eventually, Gita said in a small voice, ‘I would like to go home.’

  Pujary nodded. He took a U-turn at the Lal Bagh gate and they drove back in almost total silence.

  She felt his gaze on her as he put the food away. ‘We’ll have it for tiffin in the evening,’ he said.

  She smiled. It wrenched at his gut. He had never seen her look so forlorn or unhappy. Not even when she had been told she would never walk on her own again.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  When his phone buzzed, it was a welcome reprieve. ‘I have to go, wife,’ he said. ‘There is something I need to deal with right away.’

  She watched him leave without once asking her if she needed to be helped upstairs. It had never happened before.

  She had been awake when he came into their room last night. She couldn’t sleep. The sleeping pill had slipped out of her hand and fallen on the floor, and she had decided to go without, rather than ask him for another one. He had been troubled all evening and she didn’t know what she could do to help. It was on days like this that she wished he had walked out on her. She could see he was fretting about something, a worry that he couldn’t toss into the air and make it disappear like he always did. But he had pretended everything was wonderful as always. She had lain in bed, wondering what was wrong as he straightened the quilt over her. But she hadn’t asked. And she wouldn’t.

  Once upon a time they had shared a bed. Once upon a time, every few weeks, he would make love to her as if she were the most beautiful creature on earth. He would kiss and caress her so her breasts tingled, but she felt n
othing below her waist and lay there like a log spliced into two halves. God, that lazy woodcutter, gave her at least that much, she told herself. She could give him an orifice to expend into.

  A few years ago she had suggested that they have twin beds rather than share one. She hoped he would take that as a cue that she no longer wanted intimacy between them. It was time he had a real woman in his life.

  Did he have another woman? Gita had often wondered. She wouldn’t blame him, she thought, looking at her shrivelled legs and caved-in cheeks. She wouldn’t grudge him anything. She would kill for him; she would die for him.

  And he would do the same for her, she knew.

  Usually he joined her in an hour, by which time the sleeping pill would have taken effect and she would feel his lips press down on hers as he whispered, ‘Good night, my love.’

  That night, he had done the same as always. Turning her on her side so she faced his side of the bed, smoothening the side of the bed she had been lying on. Tucking the quilt under her chin, and then turning off the bedside lamp. He kissed her on the lips and got into the twin bed. She had pretended to be asleep. She would ask herself again and again why she had not let him know that she was awake.

  He had ordered a special mattress for her to make sure she didn’t develop bedsores. But once a night, he woke up and shifted her position. He didn’t see it as a chore and when she suggested they bring in a carer – ‘You aren’t getting any younger, husband’ – he had been upset.

  ‘Have I ever reneged on my promise?’ he had asked.

  ‘No, but you need to sleep, a full night’s sleep,’ she had replied. Some days his love for her stifled her.

  He was propped up against the pillows, reading the Bhagwad Gita, when the call came. She saw him reach for the phone and look at it. She felt him glance towards her. Then he murmured softly, ‘Yes … I am setting it all up for the weekend. One of the girls is already here. The other girl will reach tomorrow … Yes, they are both twelve years old like I said.’

  Suddenly he had looked her way and met her gaze. She closed her eyes. He had cut the call then.

  ‘Gita,’ he had whispered.

  But she hadn’t stirred. Her eyes were pressed shut.

  ‘Gita, I …’ he began and then said nothing.

  He must have a reason for talking about the children. What was he going to do with them?

  All these years, the climb to prosperity had seemed a natural progression for someone as ambitious and hardworking as her husband. He was a businessman. But what was the nature of his business?

  She had asked a few times and he had said, ‘Property. Commodity. Security. You name it and I have something to do with it. But you wouldn’t understand, wife. Don’t worry about it. I am here to do all the worrying for you!’

  She had felt him continuing to look at her. For the first time in all the years they had been together, she felt uncertain. Who was this man? What did he really do? What did he need two twelve-year-olds for?

  When she heard Pujary’s car drive away and the creak of the gates as the watchman pulled shut, Gita pressed the button on her motorized wheelchair and rode into the study.

  She opened the drawers of his desk and began looking at the files he kept there. She put her glasses on and started reading.

  Pujary realized that he was being kept waiting. And that when MLA Papanna decided to see him, it wouldn’t be an easy conversation.

  He wondered what the politician’s tone of voice would be: Angry? Sarcastic? Condescending? Dismissive? Abusive?

  Whatever it was, he had no option but to take it without fuelling his rage any further.

  ‘I thought I was sitting on a gold mine; now it’s just a kakoos because of you,’ MLA Papanna said by way of greeting.

  Pujary flinched. The MLA was a crude man and he had expected nothing less from him. But he hadn’t heard the colloquial term for a hole-in-the-ground toilet in a long while.

  ‘It was 200 crore … do you hear me? That’s what the lawyer agreed to and now he has changed his mind. Who got to him? One of your rivals?’

  Flecks of spit splattered Pujary’s face. He drew out a handkerchief and wiped himself calmly. ‘We’ll find another buyer …’ So MLA Papanna was the man behind the aggregator.

  The MLA calmed down. He took a long gulp of water. ‘What happened to the lawyer?’

  Pujary shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He agreed to everything and suddenly changed his mind. ‘

  MLA Papanna asked slyly, ‘Are you losing your touch? The lawyer’s gone off the deal and you know nothing about it. And that lovely morsel you promised me didn’t turn up either. Are you up to playing this game? Or have your teeth and talons blunted, Pujary?’

  For a few moments, Pujary asked himself the same. Had he turned soft?

  At first, crime had been his way to survive and make life better for Gita. Then it became a profession. And now the rush of it kept him going. Manipulating lives and deals; it let him forget that he had little control over his own life or the slavish love that he had for Gita.

  ‘There is another party,’ Pujary said. ‘But he needs to be coaxed.’

  ‘So what are you waiting for?’ the MLA snorted.

  ‘Two young girls,’ Pujary said, remembering what he had heard about the mining baron’s preferences. ‘Someone I know is setting it up.’

  The MLA’s eyes lit up. ‘Virgins? How young?’

  ‘Twelve, I am told. Apparently they are the same height, same size, everything, the only difference is that one is ebony and the other ivory …’

  The MLA almost smacked his lips. ‘And when he’s done, I want them. I want an orgy too.’ He used the English word orgy, only he said it like ‘froggie’.

  ‘You will have your orgy when I receive my commission.’ Pujary mimicked the MLA with a straight face.

  Pujary thought of the girl he had set up for the lawyer and how that had misfired. He was going to fix that arrogant bustard. But before that, there was one more thing to take care of.

  I woke up with a start. My mobile was ringing. It was by my pillow. I picked it up. It was a little past ten in the morning and the thekedar was calling.

  ‘Saab …’ I said, sitting up.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, saab …’ I wiped the sleep from my eyes with the back of my hand.

  ‘I have a job for you,’ The thekedar said.

  I swallowed. What was going on?

  The previous evening, I had called the thekedar. I was his trusted lieutenant and I thought he would listen to me. He did, and then said no.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  The thekedar was silent. Then he asked, ‘Do I hear some rumblings of dissent? All for a girl. The scriptures teach you that again and again: Kingdoms fall for the love of gold and lust for women. Who would have thought you, my Krishna, would succumb too?’

  ‘She is worth a lot,’ he said when I didn’t respond. ‘I can’t let her go just like that.’ Then, for the first time ever, the thekedar spoke almost as if to justify his decision. ‘It’s not really in my control. There are others who have a greater say in what we do. And they will not allow it.’

  I imagined I was looking straight at him and said, ‘What if I pay the price?’

  ‘They may consider it then. But it will be a lot of money …’ I heard the surprise in his voice. ‘What has got into you, boy?’

  ‘How much?’

  The thekedar pretended not to hear the belligerence in my tone. ‘Two lakhs. Do you have that much?’

  ‘I will by the end of the week. I have never asked anything of you, thekedar. Will you wait that long? Please …’ I kept my voice low and imploring.

  ‘I can’t promise anything but I will do my best,’ he said. ‘What’s so special about the girl?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  I squashed the fugitive hope that he may have called with a solution. The thekedar wasn’t given to grand gestures. He would extract every single
drop of my blood, sweat and semen too, before he let me have her. But I was prepared.

  Across the city, at a watch shop in Safina Plaza, Gowda stared at the watches on display. ‘Is there something you like?’ he asked Roshan, who was staring at his phone again.

  ‘Oh, what?’ he asked, looking up. ‘Appa, I told you I don’t want a watch. No one in my generation wears one.’

  ‘But you are studying to be a doctor. Don’t you need to time the pulse rate?’

  The sales clerk behind the counter suppressed a sigh. Each time a fond father wanted to buy his son a watch, the brat always wanted something else.

  ‘My phone is better. It has a stop clock. So if you really want to get me something, please make it a hard disk,’ Roshan said. ‘Or a set of new headphones. Actually what I would like are boots.’

  Gowda rubbed his forehead. ‘Why would you need to wear boots in Hassan? It’s so hot there …’

  ‘I thought we were here to buy Thatha a gift,’ Roshan said.

  ‘He doesn’t want a watch either,’ Gowda growled.

  The sales clerk sighed. ‘It seems to me, sir, that neither the young nor the old perceive any value in watches. It’s only us middle-aged who wear them. We have a very fine everyday wear range. Would you like to look at it?’

  Gowda was tempted, but he knew he wouldn’t feel right without the old HMT on his wrist. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said as they stepped out.

  Gowda had taken the day off. It was his father’s birthday, and his brother Nagendra had insisted Gowda and Roshan join the family for lunch.

  Gowda had said he would drop by in the evening. But Nagendra, who seldom said much, snapped at his brother, ‘It’s once a year, for heaven’s sake, Borei. Do you think he is going to live forever?’

  Gowda had been mortified. Urmila was right. He didn’t see the forest for the trees. ‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring Roshan along.’ Even if I have to handcuff him and drag him by the scruff of his neck, he thought.

  So here they were, on the way to the birthday lunch. And Gowda, who was doing his being-a-good-son bit, had tried to extend it to being-a-good-father. Except it seemed to him that he had not a clue how to be either. His father looked at the shirt Gowda gave him and grimaced. ‘Why do you waste money like this? Do you know how many shirts I have in my bureau?’