‘Uh-huh?’ Ira spoke up.
‘Well, one such day, Kushal was working late―it was around midnight, and I’d left the TV on in the sitting room while I finished up in the kitchen. I heard a noise and I came out, pretty sure it was from the TV.’
‘And?’
‘And I see a man walking down the connecting corridor towards the bedrooms. I didn’t recognise him but I let out a shout, and when he swung around and faced me I realised it was Dilip. There was something about his expression and his stance that scared me. I ran back into the kitchen to get a knife; and in the few seconds I was in there he disappeared.
I was really rattled, I can tell you that. I locked the front door and checked all the bedrooms to make sure he wasn’t hidden somewhere under the beds or in the bathrooms. I didn’t know what I could do. When Kushal came home I told him. He was disturbed and upset by it; but as we talked it over he increasingly came ‘round to the idea there was some rational explanation for it. Is there any explanation for such behaviour? A grown man walking around my home uninvited at midnight?
I’ll confess to you, my mind was filled with strange and sinister fears. How confidently the man was walking down to the bedrooms! Whose bedroom was he headed to? What was his plan? I was frantic!
I woke the kids up early the next day so I could question them closely. My daughter who, at thirteen, thinks she’s much wiser and more level-headed than me, dismissed my story outright. Said I must have been dreaming. I haven’t smacked her in five or six years, but overwrought that I was, I can say I came very close to it that morning.
My son seemed to believe me, but didn’t understand why I was so disturbed by it. Dilip had been to our place once or twice, back in the days when we invited the menfolk for our pot luck get-togethers. We later realised it meant double work for us, since they just sat around and expected to be served while they chatted, so we made it ladies-only parties after the first few times. So Prithwish, in his innocence, believed that Dilip uncle had simply lost track of time and had come in for a chat.
After these mixed reactions from my own family, I decided not to talk to his wife, Pallabi, about it. Though I most definitely hadn’t imagined it as Piya said,’ Nandana added, bitterly.
The mother-daughter wars had begun for this family, Ira noted with a smile.
‘I conceded that I might have been overreacting. After all, if it had happened only a few hours earlier, I would have thought very little of it. People are always letting themselves in and out of everybody’s houses; we’re neighbourly like that. Sometimes people get off on the wrong floor and walk into someone else’s flat thinking it’s theirs.
It was a stretch to think this episode was a genuine mistake. But I―and Kushal―wanted it to be one, it was far less hassle.’
Ira opened her mouth to ask Nandana if she knew about the other flats this had happened at, but Nandana rolled on, perhaps interested in getting the whole story out before she changed her mind. Ira shut her mouth again.
‘Then that night, the night of the murder, or in the wee hours of the morning rather―I was still awake, struggling alone with the finishing touches on my son’s “Family Tree” homework that was due the next day. My son, needless to say, had been happily asleep for hours. I heard the front door of the opposite flat open. I wanted proof this time, and needed my phone camera. I just couldn’t find it under the piles of chart paper and photographs that lay in a heap around me. After much scrambling I located it, only to realise I was wearing a very flimsy negligee that just wouldn’t do outside the walls of my home. I ran to get my housecoat and looked for what seemed like an age for my slippers. My daughter has a habit of borrowing and then leaving them in the damnedest places in the house; so I ultimately abandoned that search. By the time I had everything I needed, it might have taken me anything between three to four minutes from hearing the noise. I emerged into the corridor to find he wasn’t there, of course. I eased myself out of the door, barefoot and careful not to make a sound. I wondered what I should do, then I glanced at the lift display and saw it had stopped at 2. I waited, indecisive, only for a beat and took the stairs so as not to tip him off that I was following him.
It was a mistake. By the time I reached the second floor, there was no one around. Almost like it was me creeping around up to no good. I waited for a while. Perhaps two minutes? Possibly just one? Then I felt cold and quite frightened and just wanted to be safely behind my own door. So I pressed the lift button, not caring to creep up the stairs again. Who knew if Dilip had been hiding in the shadows there? For all I knew he’d watched me from some corner as I walked past him down the stairs! I figured the lift would be lit and fast.
Then the doors slid open and I saw that ghastly man. I am not a nervous sort I think, but then the lights went off! Plunged into complete darkness when I was just inches away from a dead body!
I was still recovering when you turned up.’
That explained the hysteria of this woman when she found her. Ira supposed she might have had a heart attack in the same situation. Her respect for Nandana increased several fold.
Ira leant forward. ‘Do you think this Dilip killed him?’
Nandana looked upset. ‘See, I’ll be straight with you. If you’d asked me that night, I would say I knew it was him.’
‘And now?’
She looked away. ‘It could have been anybody. I only heard his door open and close. In the time I took to follow him, he could actually have gone back in.’
Ira felt incensed. So much benefit of doubt for him, when he was walking around right before the body was discovered? But it was okay to accuse her for no reason at all?
‘You saw me, right, you saw me come up the stairs? How could I have had anything to do with the body?’ Ira demanded.
Nandana raised her eyebrows. ‘All three of us were there―it could have been any of us.’
Ira looked at Nandana. Was it you, then? She thought.
Nandana’s eyes held hers. ‘Or it could have been a fourth person entirely,’ she continued, almost in answer to Ira’s unspoken question.
******
‘The police came by my place this morning,’ Ayan said, sliding into his side of the booth which had quickly become ‘their place’ at the dosa joint around the corner.
‘Really?’ Ira couldn’t keep the worry out of her voice.
‘Bright and early. I wonder what took them so long.’
Ira doubted he would have been at all questioned, had they not sniffed out (or been told) his connection to her. She decided to keep this thought to herself for the time being.
Ayan was rattling on, oblivious to her mood.
‘They seem quite uninterested in this case, what with the MLA’s daughter eloping. Given that the whole state is looking for the pair, it’s admirable how good a job they’ve done of hiding. The MLA guy is totally losing his shit too, accusing his opponents of engineering this. Did you read that in the paper today?’
Ira didn’t need to, she had worked on an article on the subject the night before. She made a non-committal noise and waited for him to return from his digression.
‘They asked me standard questions, I think. Seemed bored. Thomson and Thompson showed me a picture of the corpse, though. Absolutely ghastly!’ Ayan said with relish. ‘Caught me in the middle of my morning coffee and biscuits. Can’t say it did much for my digestion.’
Ayan caught sight of Ira’s gloomy expression and said, ‘I think you’re going to feel better when you hear what they asked me.’
‘Hmm? What’s that?’ She doubted anything of the sort.
‘They wanted to know what I was doing between 4 and 6 pm on the 5th.’
‘Huh?’ That didn’t even make sense, they didn’t even know each other on the day of the murder. For a minute, in spite of Ira’s interest in what Ayan had to say, she felt a sharp surprise that even a week ago they hadn’t known each other. It felt like they’d been like this, joking over meals and stealing kisses in the corrido
rs, for months.
He clapped his hands and laughed at some joke that she missed.
‘…and mentioned it was purely a standard question they were asking everyone―you know, generally what my movements were between 4 pm and 2 am that day. But more specifically,’ Ayan crooked an eyebrow and paused for effect, ‘four and six in the afternoon.’
‘So I told them I was at work or travelling to it at the time. If only one had the freedom for a spot of murder in the afternoon of a weekday, one’s life would have been sorted.’
Ira’s suppressed laugh came out as a snort.
‘Then I asked them, all innocent surprise, why they were asking about the four to six time period when the murder happened around 2 am; and they said the post-mortem report, which they have only recently received, had narrowed it down considerably.’
Ira and Ayan sat in silence for a while, processing this information and everything it meant. It hadn’t even occurred to them, had it? Complete amateurs.
‘Then, I said, hadn’t people used the lift all evening? The cops just shot each other conspiratorial looks and said nothing more.
This is fascinating stuff. If he had been killed in the afternoon, surely they don’t mean people had been riding up and down with the body for 9–10 hours before it got noticed? He was put there later. Not killed in the lift itself.’
Ira cast her mind back to her brief glimpses of the man in the lift. It was just a second’s work, considering the images lingered behind the lids of her eyes at all times.
‘That makes…sense, there was absolutely no blood in the lift, I realise that now.’
‘That would mean…,’ Ayan said, his eyes shining in a most inappropriate manner, ‘…the corpse was just sitting around in somebody’s place in your building. They waited to dispose of it late at night to ensure it would be undiscovered till morning. Putting it in the lift was genius! You can’t tell which floor the body was put in at!’
‘Yes, genius and also very, very wrong.’ Ira smiled in mock reproof. ‘Besides, it didn’t exactly work out that way. The whole building found the body at 2 am.’
‘Minor technicality. He got away with it, didn’t he?’
‘He/she or they,’ corrected Ira from a long-standing editorial habit, and based on her private, ever-growing list of suspects, which she was reluctant to share with Ayan yet.
Ayan ignored her and forged on. ‘He couldn’t very well have put the body out with the trash for housekeeping to clear it away, right?’ Ayan’s eyes abstracted for a while. ‘Someone dragged the chap to the lift possibly moments before you saw it.’ He rubbed his hands in undisguised glee. ‘Interesting, no?’
‘I’ll tell you what else is interesting,’ Ira leaned in, getting into the spirit of the conversation, ‘now that I think about the lift and its contents….’
‘Yes, go on!’ Ayan looked all agog.
‘I saw the body twice. The lift opened twice while I was there. The first time he was sitting up and then someone must have called the lift away. It stayed there for a while…then it went higher. The next time the door opened at our floor he was lying down.’
Ayan looked stunned. ‘Somebody called the lift away and altered the position of the body while everyone stood there? Audacious! Why would someone do that?’
Ira considered what she’d learnt so far. ‘His pockets had been picked clean! It was done right under our noses! While all of us milled around on the second floor, someone coolly called the lift away and completed his unfinished business. It could have been either of the two times….’
‘Which floors did the lift go to in between, do you remember?’
Ira closed her eyes and thought, while Ayan practically writhed in excitement.
The cheese masala dosas and filter coffee were set down on their table. Steam and all sorts of delicious intermingled aromas rose up in a cloud between them.
‘The first time it did, Kedar-da saw the body and ran down the stairs immediately. I think! The second time it was a higher floor. I’m pretty sure it was six.’ She saw in her mind’s eye the number 6 flashing on the display as she dealt with the different reactions of all her neighbours and security.
‘6,’ Ayan breathed. ‘Who’s on 6?’
******
In Flat 603, old Mrs Ghoshal was worried. It was unlike Kedar to be this late. And he wasn’t answering his phone, which was understandable the first couple of times she called; perhaps he was talking to someone important where he worked. But by the third time she rang, he was wont to get worried and pick up, no matter what. Mrs Ghoshal knew this because she would test out his response time often; re-dialling repeatedly until Kedar answered, his voice neutral and even.
She finally gave up around 9 pm after the sixth or seventh try; it was time for Amrita-r Shongshaar anyway. The phone trilled right when Amrita was delivering some choice zingers to her daughter-in-law, who thought she was too la-dee-dah to cook for the family. ‘Why not get a cook?’ the younger woman was drawling, with a horrendous lipstick-frosted sneer on her face. It trilled again, but Kedar would get it, wouldn’t he? Everyone knew she was not to be disturbed during her soaps.
Finally, when the incessant ringing annoyed her beyond all patience, Mrs Ghoshal hoisted herself off her easy chair and trotted towards the small table in the corner that held their landline. The phone stopped in mid-ring. She stared at it, mutinous, ‘After all that trouble!’ She walked back to her seat in front of the TV with something akin to alacrity, when the phone began to peal again.
Mrs Ghoshal wished she knew some bad words. Of course, she was aware of some, but didn’t know exactly how to use them. This seemed like a good time for some foul language, it would relieve her feelings. She would use some on that Kedar when she saw him too.
She felt a twinge of worry when she answered the phone, now that she recalled that Kedar was incommunicado.
‘Hallo?’ Her cracked voice came out half-strangled. She cleared her throat.
‘Mashima?’ Came a familiar voice on the line, ‘It’s Shiben.’
‘Who?’
‘Mashima, Kedar has been taken severely ill, we’re at the hospital now, me and some of his other co-workers. Don’t worry, the doctors told us a while ago that they have pumped his stomach and washed out whatever was ailing him, as much as possible. He will pull through, they’re saying.’
‘Pull through? Who is this, is this a joke?’ It was easier to be offended, it was always easier to be offended rather than to face the truth.
‘Mashima, I will try to come by tomorrow morning to explain to you in person. I am Shiben, we have met a few times. You might have forgotten me.’
There was a pause. Mrs Ghoshal thought she heard a third voice and then Shiben spoke in a rush, ‘Anyway, I’ll hang up now. Just wanted to let you know, because you must have been worried. He’ll be fine soon, don’t fret at all.’
She didn’t like Shiben. Of course, she remembered him, she just liked to tell him that she didn’t and listen for the hurt in his voice. His proprietary air towards her son annoyed her the most.
‘Achha, alright. What time will Kedar come home?’
There was a pause. ‘Mashima, he might need to spend a few days here. I will come tomorrow and explain. I must go now.’
‘Okay, okay,’ her voice cracked hopelessly. She cleared it again.
The phone line went dead. ‘Hallo?’ Her question was half-hearted and her hand trembled as she set the receiver back in its cradle.
She felt very near tears.
Mrs Ghoshal heard the jingle of her favourite soap play. The end credits were rolling. Tears slid down her crinkled cheeks in earnest now.
She let them fall.
******
14
Sunday, 16th September 2014
Ira was having a nightmare. A murderer was using an axe on the door while she ran helter skelter though her flat, sobbing. She was looking for a place to hide, but each place she tried seemed inadequate. Either her head stuck out or
her legs―finally she curled up in a foetal position under the plastic dining table. They wouldn’t look there.
At a particularly loud bang, her eyes flew open. Someone was pounding on the door and getting progressively more irate. Ira unwound herself from the tight foetal position she found herself in, checked to see whether she was decent, and ran to get the door.
‘I’m coming, I’m COMING,’ she roared. She hated being woken up, but she always was, on the slightest pretext. If this was that pest Talukdar she would do him an injury, she swore to God… She wrenched the door open to find a bony, diminutive woman, standing there looking as incensed as Ira felt.
‘Why doesn’t your doorbell work?’ the woman demanded.
Ira rubbed her eye with more force than she intended. She winced and touched her smarting eye tentatively. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong flat.’
‘Na, na, Mashima asked me to tell you something.’
‘Which Mashima?’
The woman still glowered at her like she had offended her mortally.
‘Flat 603, that Mashima.’
‘Ah, Mrs Ghoshal?’
‘I suppose. Am I expected to know all my employers’ names?’ She answered with a flick of her head. ‘She’s asked you to come and visit her as soon as you can, she needs to talk to you.’
‘Everything okay?’
‘Aah, I don’t know all that, I’m late already and my next boudi will give me a hard time now because it took me ten minutes to run this errand.’ She glared balefully and turned away. As a slight concession to politeness, she muttered a parting, ‘Elam.’
Ira wondered what Mrs Ghoshal wanted with her. And whether it was urgent enough to warrant her door being practically broken down for. As she went about the process of making herself people-ready for the day, a nagging unease made her hurry through it more than her wont. About thirty minutes later she decided to skip breakfast in favour of haste.
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