‘That’s true. I think she was about to confide in me too that day.’ Nandana nodded her head, relieved. She rather liked the man. And why would he draw so much attention to himself by doing that?
Her mind jumped to the next thing. ‘This Manoj was blackmailing them? About what?’
Ira shrugged. ‘Lots of different things, I think. He’s a professional blackmailer, Mrs Ghoshal told me. He lived with them all his life, up until the time they lived here, and even then for a while after, until he had to leave for some reason.’
Professional blackmailer, Nandana mulled over the term. That was even a thing? Before Nandana could sink into another brown study, Ira broke into her thoughts.
‘So that’s what I know. In light of this, do your suspicions seem less likely?’
Nandana blinked. ‘Well, in light of this, I see absolutely no reason why it would be who I thought it was. I had begun to have suspicions purely based on the noise of the door…since it wasn’t Dilip or Pallabi….’
‘You were thinking it was Deepa, weren’t you?’ Ira asked, in her direct way.
Nandana felt uncomfortable and disloyal, but she had to admit what had been echoing around her head all evening. She nodded. ‘But it was just based on guesswork. I was wrong before…and now I’m obviously wrong again. It’s either Mrs Ghoshal or Kedarnath-da or both together, don’t you think?’
Ira shook her head in impatience. ‘Can’t you see? If we tease the tangles out of the whole mess, and though we have very little proof, it all adds up.’
Nandana stared at her. ‘How so?’
‘Who else lives on this floor apart from Pallabi and you? Deepa. You heard her door that day, not Dilip’s. In the time you took to decide to go after her, find your phone, housecoat, keys and go, Deepa must have slid the corpse into the lift. She must have worked really fast, or worse still, taken her son’s help to do it.’
Nandana hung her head, wretchedly silent. ‘It’s an assumption, hardly grounds to conclude anything…and now that we think the victim is Mrs Ghoshal’s nephew….’
Ira pressed on, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Mrs Ghoshal told me Manoj was blackmailing her, and that this was how he made a living, as far as she surmised.
A blackmailer usually collects money from more than one target. So if that were taken as motive,’ Ira raised a palm at the protesting Nandana, ‘Yes, again an assumption; just bear with me―who else in the building would have the motive to kill Manoj because they were being blackmailed? Someone who has lived here long enough to come into contact with him when he first lived here. Who else, but Deepa?’
Nandana nodded reluctantly, it did make sense. The police must have come round with that horrid photo to Deepa. She must have realised who it was. Why had she never mentioned it to Nandana? Slipped her mind, or didn’t feel like it? Had she honestly not recognised him or did she want to stay out of police matters? Or, did she not speak up because she had something to hide?
Ira asked Nandana, ‘Has Deepa ever told you about a secret in her past?’
Nandana shook her head, but she privately remembered―Deepa had once told her in an unguarded moment, that her husband left her because of some indiscretion in her past.
Nandana said at last, ‘Her husband…he lives in this city with his parents, not Australia, like she tells people. She has commented once or twice on how a wife is judged on a different scale for offences husbands have often already committed and been forgiven for. But those were unguarded moments, she is really quite a reticent person.’
‘Then let’s say yes, she had a secret that was potentially something she could be blackmailed for,’ Ira said.
Something struck Nandana as she nodded in agreement.
The child, Arun, describing the condition of the corpse in lurid but accurate detail, to Nandana’s son. That made sense now. At the time she had blamed some senseless adult who had been there for passing on the information, complete with grisly details, but she knew all the people who had been there and no one barring Talukdar seemed the sort, and he hated children. It stood to reason, now that she thought about it, that Arun had seen it himself.
Poor boy, all his innocence lost! What madness had possessed his mother to murder a man, and why didn’t her child’s presence stay her hand? Monstrous. She just couldn’t reconcile her idea of Deepa with this spectacular loss of sanity.
‘Her boy Arun gave the most appalling details of the corpse’s condition to my son…,’ Nandana said aloud. ‘I thought he must have overheard an adult talking…but perhaps it was because the corpse had been, oh God, sitting right there in the flat with them. It’s all so circumstantial, though!’ Nandana protested, guiltily. ‘We’re drawing our own conclusions from perhaps-es and maybe-s.’
Ira sat, chewing her lip, turning something over in her mind.
‘Oh!’ Nandana suddenly erupted like a joyful firecracker and clapped her hands. ‘It couldn’t be! It couldn’t be! I was there! I was there for our Wednesday chaa and taa!’
‘What on earth are you going on about?’ Ira sounded testy. ‘Keep your voice down or your kids will come stampeding back in here.’
Nandana subsided back onto her sofa with a laugh. ‘Oh my goodness! To think I suspected her even for a minute! We have a weekly ritual, we meet for shingara and tea on Wednesday afternoons.’
Ira looked thoughtful. ‘So, you were there during that time window? That the police have narrowed the murder down to?’
‘Yes!’ Nandana was already beaming at the thought of telling this anecdote to Deepa. Deepa, a murderer! Ridiculous.
‘For how long?’
‘From…’ Nandana faltered and changed tack, ‘…long enough to know she couldn’t have done it!’
Ira looked suspicious. ‘I hope you’re telling the truth, Nandana.’
‘Of course!’
Scrutinising Ira’s expression, Nandana said: ‘If she killed a man, are you happy to live on the same floor with her, have your children go over and play in her house?’
‘I suppose not,’ Nandana replied. ‘But the point’s moot now. I was there! I’m her alibi. And she is mine!’ She laughed again, feeling giddy with relief.
Ira looked at her watch and stood up abruptly. ‘Alright then. But best not to discuss this with Deepa, okay? You don’t want another scene like the one with Pallabi downstairs.’
‘Haha, okay,’ Nandana’s smile was sheepish. ‘I suppose Deepa would tease me in that sarcastic way of hers. That’s worse than all of Pallabi’s huffing and puffing.’
‘Right. Time I left then!’ Ira rose.
‘We should let this go, I suppose. We’re both in the clear and so are most people we know. Time to get back to our lives.’
It didn’t seem like such a bad idea to Ira. She could focus on more pleasant, frivolous things, like the party they were headed to tonight. ‘Goodnight!’
‘Goodnight, Ira!’ Nandana raised her hand in farewell, and shot the bolt on the door as the younger woman began to descend the stairs.
She wanted to unburden herself to Kushal. Let the whole story come tumbling out. Even though their relationship was better than it had been in years, she hadn’t confided in him about her little investigations and theories, for fear of being laughed at. Now that all her fears and suspicions had disintegrated into dust, she could laugh about it all with him. Kushal was bored of my conversation filled, as it was, with the minutiae of my day―about the kids’ exams and absentee maids. Here was an interesting anecdote, for sure. Suspecting every friend and neighbour in turn and playing Watson to Ira’s Sherlock Holmes. Or had they both been Sherlocks? Nandana wondered. More like two Watsons, seizing the wrong ends of their respective sticks, she concluded with a laugh.
Ira hurried into the kids’ bedroom and found her whole family asleep, with her husband and son peacefully ensconced under the same Ben 10 blanket. Piya slept in the upper bunk, looking at least five years younger in repose; still like the little girl who had thought the world of her and foll
owed her every move.
It had started raining outside again.
Let them sleep. This story could keep till tomorrow. Meanwhile, she would very quietly clear up some of the mess the kids had made. Prithwish had left all his paints rolling around and the bright green water had sloshed over from the little chipped cup he used for his painting. The bilious looking liquid had soaked through the mat and formed into a small neon puddle on the floor next to it.
Nandana picked up the paintbrushes first and wondered which, of her assorted grades of rags, she should use to soak up the paint. Something that was disposable, she decided, God knows if these paint stains came out easily….
She straightened up so fast, her back crackled ominously.
In her mind’s eye, Nandana saw a stain on another floor, an unusual watery pink, surrounded by bottles of paint. The stain had been washed with water and the resulting diluted spill soaked up with Deepa’s prized kitchen towels. She remembered how she’d stared at the stain and felt pleased that fastidious Deepa had slipped up for once. And idly wondered where the brushes had gone.
They had all just been put there. The paper that had been lying there had been blank, a vast expanse of white but for a drop of watery pink. No one had done any painting at all. She knew Deepa well enough to know her son would never dare paint in the living room and make such a mess―it was all put there to disguise the bloodstain, perhaps seconds before she had walked in, when Deepa remembered that she was expected any moment….
Nandana recalled nibbling at the shingaras, while Deepa kept darting glances at her, the stain, and then out of the window. She had made no move to clean it, nor said a word about it as she sat there. Under normal circumstances, Deepa would have been on her knees and scrubbing away at the spot while they talked. She must have been at pains to not draw attention to it, though if Nandana hadn’t been so damned self-absorbed that day, this uncharacteristic behaviour would have been the first thing to strike her.
How she had first said one thing and then another about Arun’s presence in the house and her peculiar discouragement of Prithwish coming over to play. A child will run all over the house, after all… Deepa never had a problem with that except the day of the murder.
Nandana had shoved these anomalies from her mind, brimming over, as it was, with dissatisfaction for her own marriage and life. She had missed all the strident alarm bells and put it down to Deepa’s brusque nature.
Nandana had sat there for a full fifteen minutes, in God knows what proximity to a dead body. Or had he still been dying by inches from a head wound as she sipped her tea?
Her stomach turned.
And then Arun’s bat, one of his few treasured possessions. How did he lose it? Was it lost or disposed of by his mother because it was the murder weapon?
Nandana suddenly felt unnerved and vulnerable. She went to the door and checked the lock again.
She walked mechanically to the master bedroom and lay down on the bedcover. Nandana drew her knees up against her chest and closed her eyes. Everything she’d seen and heard over the last two weeks kept flashing through her mind, faster and faster, louder and louder, the images lurid and horrifying.
Nandana sat up. Her phone, where was it?
Back in the living room, she flipped a cushion or two over before she found it wedged in the L of the sofa.
She stared into space for a while, before taking a shaky breath and typing out a WhatsApp message.
Deepa, I need to talk to you urgently, call me the moment you see this.
She stayed on the sofa a long time, weighing her phone absent-mindedly in her palm. There was comfort in the reassuring sameness of the phone in her hand. Nandana glanced at the clock, it had been twenty minutes. It was past 10.30, at least an hour and a half after Deepa and her son’s bedtime, she knew. None of Nandana’s staying up till questionable hours and regretting it in the morning for Deepa. She was disciplined to a fault.
That was the Deepa she thought she knew at any rate.
Nandana would turn in. This was all madness. Before that, she felt compelled to re-read what she’d written―perhaps she should just delete the message, not mention anything to Deepa, and let everything blow over?
She looked at the screen of her phone. The tick had gone blue. Deepa had read it almost immediately after she’d sent it, judging by the ‘last seen’ information. It had been twenty minutes and she hadn’t thought to even ask what could be so urgent.
Nandana’s head jerked up as she heard the discreet sound of a door opening and shutting in a vivid déjà vu of that night. Her skin prickled as she moved to the door.
Nandana paused with her fingers on the door handle, as she listened to the sound of a trolley suitcase being rolled along, and a quick shushing when a younger voice piped up. Then the lift rattled open, slid shut again. And there was silence.
She removed her fingers from the door handle and went back to bed.
What was done was done, and could not be undone.
*****
19
Friday, 20th October 2014 (a month later)
‘I’m going to delete the messages,’ Nandana announced. ‘I should have done it long ago. No doubt Deepa intended me to delete them the minute I read them, but I’ve hung on to these messages for a month out of sentimentality.’
‘You still have them?’ Ira’s eyebrows had shot up high on her forehead. ‘Yes, you definitely shouldn’t have a record of any communication with her.’
Nandana’s finger hovered over the delete button when Ira said, ‘Wait! Let me read them again before you do.’
Nandana handed the phone over to her friend.
Using Manoj’s phone to send this message, after which I’ll throw it into a passing waterbody with the other stuff frm his pockets. He had pics of me on it. No doubt there are backups of the pics somewhere, but one can only do so much. I only thought of recovering the phone after putting the body in the lift. I had to risk everything. Go up two floors so it showed 6 on the display, call the lift and search his pockets in a few seconds flat after you guys had seen him. Ridiculously big risk but it worked.
Anyway, enough said. Stay well, Nandana. Thank you. Wish us luck.
A second message that had come in a minute later read:
BTW, I got more than I was looking for in his pockets—jewellery and money that will help us for 6 months if we’re frugal. I’m guessing it’s Mrs G’s―she deserves far worse than losing a few baubles. For bringing that devil into our lives, enabling him and making him rottener over the years. Also, sorry to your friend for those nasty anon letters. I did what I had to do to buy time. Leaving was always the plan, you just let me know when the time was right.
Have a great life! Perhaps we shall talk again and know how it all turned out. Will miss you.
Nandana and Ira sat in the former’s potted plant-filled balcony sipping coffee. The pots were on the small side, but they were everywhere: standing or hanging from every conceivable place. They held every kind of flowering and fruit plant, it seemed to Ira; and the effect was soothing.
To make allowances for the limited space, Nandana used tiny but tasteful furniture which could also be folded up and put away during the rains or when her children and their friends were on the rampage.
The rains had finally given over to that lovely period in Kolkata when sweet breezes blew, and one could climb a flight of stairs without needing a bath immediately afterwards. This weather would last till Pujo was over, and slowly progress to the pleasant cold of winter.
It was 10 am and Nandana’s kids had already been in school several hours. Ira smiled wryly that the boy never really took to her after the tense circumstances of their first few meetings, but the girl seemed to hero worship her, dress and talk like her and follow her about whenever she could. Only last week she had announced she would grow up to be a journalist.
‘How’s my mini-me and her brother?’
‘They’re well. Don’t be too flattered, her last hero w
as Deepa,’ Nandana added, sadly.
Ira chuckled, ‘Ah well then, I can safely say I am an ever so slight improvement. I wouldn’t know how to bludgeon a man to death if I wanted to, which I do sometimes with this Ayan. So irritating he is sometimes…perhaps I should ask your son for a loan of his cricket bat!’
Nandana was torn between outrage and laughter. ‘Don’t say such things! You’re awful.’
Ira shrugged and sipped her coffee with a smile.
‘You told me Mrs Bhattacharjee asked to meet you again? What did she say?’
‘She warned Ayan and me to be less obvious about living together or to just go get married already. She couldn’t take the calls from Mr Talukdar anymore.’
Nandana laughed again, ‘Poor lady! She’s got a heart of gold and you guys make life so difficult for her. All those calls from Talukdar and his chums, and the letters in September…’ Nandana’s face fell at the memory.
Ira smiled. ‘She’s a saint. It’s true. Speaking of the letters…I must say I have a grudging respect for Deepa. To pull off those anonymous letters, to make them sound exactly like an irate Talukdar would: pompous, threatening, officious! If she hadn’t told you about it, I would have been ready to swear it was that fat bastard. Your friend is…talented.’ Ira said it as a matter of fact, without a trace of sarcasm.
Nandana sighed. ‘She actually is. There’s no excuse for murder, I still can’t wrap my head around it. I still can’t see somebody as calm and well…sorted…as Deepa doing something like that. All I can say is, she’ll always have to be on the run now, looking over her shoulder; to avoid what? A few embarrassing pictures being leaked? I’m not sure how graphic they were, but perhaps if she had relocated to another country where stuff like this doesn’t matter….’
‘Well, she has gone to Australia, hasn’t she?’ Ira grinned, trying to lighten the mood. ‘At least the police have bought that story of yours.’
‘Have they really? I’m anxious about that. I get the occasional nightmare, too. It doesn’t do to lie to the police. My only protection is, I told them Deepa had told me so before leaving. If push comes to shove, I can say I had been lied to as well.’
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