Jackpot, keen not to facilitate any more change in the village, would have refused Mr Patel’s offer. He didn’t know what the developer was like, but if he was a man with power, used to getting his way, this could have angered him, pushed him over the edge. He could have put his hands around Jackpot’s neck to threaten him and then found he couldn’t stop himself. It was a likely scenario, one he had experienced before.
Chupplejeep drained his bottle of beer and leaned back in his chair. He wondered if he had overheard Roshni talking to Mr Patel that evening by the lake. Had she plotted with the developer to get rid of her father so she could sell the properties and make a tidy profit? Was that why she was worried Chupplejeep was investigating the death of her father?
He leaned forward towards Dilip. ‘You said there were two reasons for Talika’s change in behaviour. What was the other reason?’
‘Well, Detective, if you were surprised at the last revelation, you’ll certainly be surprised by this one.’
Ah, so Dilip had another golden nugget of information. Jackpot owning the eight villas had not been his finale. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘Another beer first, or a glass of feni,’ Dilip said. Chupplejeep could tell he was enjoying this, recounting the village gossip. He stood up and retrieved two glasses and a bottle of cashew feni from the cupboard. The detective glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearing eleven o’clock and Christabel was still not home. But she had only left at eight. The evening was still young. She would be chatting with her new friends. He poured the fermented cashew drink into two glasses and passed one to Dilip. Then he remembered the dodol. He had left it on the sideboard – the jaggery and coconut milk pudding tasted best at room temperature. He took two plates from the cupboard and cut two slices of the thick, dark brown pudding, placing a slice on each plate.
‘Delicious,’ Dilip pronounced as he put a forkful of the dessert into his mouth. ‘I haven’t had this treat in a long while. Not good for the arteries,’ he said, patting his chest.
‘No,’ Chupplejeep agreed. ‘But the taste is worth it.’
‘Now we have our pudding, let me tell you what I know about Jackpot.’
Chupplejeep put his fork down. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Jackpot was having an affair,’ he said. A smile spread across Dilip’s face. Smug that he knew what Chupplejeep didn’t.
‘An affair?’ It was hard to imagine a simple fellow like Jackpot having an affair. He was someone Pankaj would have referred to as a jolly villager – happy with what life had given him, not looking for anything more or less.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Dilip said. ‘And to some extent I agree with you, but you know what they say: truth is stranger than fiction.’
Chupplejeep nodded. ‘You know he was having an affair for certain? Or you have heard this from someone?’
‘Arthur, I’m just telling you what I know. If you don’t want to know…’ Dilip said.
‘No, no, what you are telling me is perfect,’ Chupplejeep said, trying to regain his friend’s confidence. ‘You’re helping me no end with my investigations.’ He made a mental note to check everything that Dilip had told him. ‘So, tell me, who was Jackpot rumoured to be having an affair with?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Dilip said. He paused for effect. ‘Jackpot was having an affair with the owner of the yoga retreat. The slim, sophisticated lady,’ he said. ‘Sneha Dhanjwant.’
~
Dilip had given Chupplejeep quite a bit to think about. He had even alluded to Detective Kumar having being involved with a gang some time before he was made a detective, something that Kumar had been keen to deny when he had been previously accused. If Kumar had been part of a gang in his youth, it was likely that he had committed some crimes, crimes he was keen nobody knew about. Pankaj may have been right. If Jackpot knew Kumar’s history then it was possible that Kumar wasn’t just being lazy in labelling Jackpot’s death as natural but that he was hiding something, his own culpability perhaps.
Chupplejeep took his mobile phone out of his pocket. He was about to dial Pankaj’s number when he noticed the time. It was past midnight. Too late to call Pankaj. He quickly fired off a message. And odd that Christabel was still not home. Dinner with friends, she had said. It was good to make new friends, Christabel said, because friends always cheered you up when your family were getting on your nerves. He hoped she wasn’t referring to him.
He dialled her number, but an automated voice told him she was out of reach or that her phone was off. Her phone was never off. She said she was having dinner at the retreat, and he was sure there was mobile phone reception there. But who exactly was she having dinner with? He had assumed Bhumika, who she had been talking about endlessly. Bhumika was going to introduce her to that author, Arjun Chopra; she knew him or was related to him or something. Christabel had been very excited about that, but Chupplejeep had tuned out. He wasn’t really interested in her new friend. Now he felt guilty; he hadn’t paid enough attention. There was a murderer on the loose in Toem Place and he had paid no thought to protecting his own girlfriend. No wonder she was losing patience with him. He should have known something was wrong when he saw that she was wearing that necklace.
The necklace! Dilip had arrived before he had the chance to check if the pendant found in Jackpot’s boat was where he had left it. He strode over to the bedroom, opened the drawer and put his head in his hands. Christabel hadn’t taken this piece of evidence. He had been stupid to think she would have, and a terrible boyfriend for accusing her of doing so. She had walked out of the villa full of anger. He was supposed to be making things better between them, not giving her something to add to his list of failings. Never had he known her to have taken something that was not hers. What had he been thinking? The case was getting to him, but he couldn’t let it get to his relationship. He was already on thin ice as it was. Then another thought occurred to him. If Christabel didn’t take the necklace, then someone must have given her the damn thing. Was that how the murderer marked out their victims? By giving them rose quartz pendants before he finished them off?
He grabbed his keys and raced out of his villa towards the yoga retreat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It had been a hard task getting Tim to have dinner with her. Christabel had been avoiding him in order to ready herself for his advances, but when she finally prepared what she wanted to say, those advances did not come. At first she thought that she had got it wrong, that he didn’t fancy her and she had been mistaken, but after watching him standing with Sneha, looking at his sandals as he asked her about some yoga asana, she realised it wasn’t that she had got it wrong; Tim was just shy.
Time was running out. She was already halfway into her holiday, and she needed to make Arthur jealous now, not on their last day. She couldn’t wait for Tim to make a move; she had to take matters into her own hands. So she had waited outside their yoga class until all the other students had gone. Tim would be the last to emerge from the room, as he always was, making small talk with Sneha and dawdling. She would ask him out for dinner, boosting his confidence as well as letting him have the date with her that he so badly wanted.
When he finally emerged, he had been startled to see her there, and she couldn’t help but smile at his surprise.
‘I was thinking,’ Christabel said as she blocked his escape from the classroom, ‘if you’re free later and I’m also free later, we could have dinner together.’ Her cheeks burned as she asked the question. She had never done something like this before.
She saw the hesitation in his eyes. ‘I-I,’ he stuttered.
‘You’re free, great,’ she offered. ‘We can have dinner in the coffee shop.’ Her palms were sweating, so she couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for someone as naturally shy as Tim.
‘I–,’ he started, but she cut him off.
‘I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you at the coffee shop at eight,’ she said, leaving him standing ou
tside the classroom, watching her, his mouth ajar.
Now Christabel looked at her watch. It was just past midnight. When she had arrived for her date with Tim, she was seething. Part of her wanted to never return to Arthur. How could he accuse her of taking something that was not hers? How little did he think of her? If Tim hadn’t been droning on about home brewing for so long, she would still have been mad at Arthur, but Tim’s monotone dialogue had calmed her down. Still, her boyfriend was not completely in the clear, and he was taking his time in coming to find her. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay listening to Tim talking about the merits of making your own beer. Why would anyone want to brew their own beer when they could buy it so cheaply at the store, she didn’t know. The more he talked about yeast and hops and sugar, the more it irritated her.
But the true reason for her annoyance, the reason Christabel didn’t really want to think about, was Tim’s opening soliloquy, where he explained his shock at being asked out by her and had considered not showing up. She had stared at him then, and he had continued with his speech. With a confidence she had not seen in him before, he told her she was not his type, but after taking advice from his friend Erik, he had got nowhere with the woman he really fancied, and that was their yoga instructor, Sneha, so he was hoping that she would have some advice for him.
At that point, she was going to say that he wasn’t her type either and that she was only using him to make her boyfriend jealous, but she found that after just one beer Tim’s tongue had loosened considerably and she couldn’t get a word in edgeways. All she managed was a half grunt before he continued telling her about his long journey to Goa and the poor state of the Indian railway system. Even the tasty, spicy rawa fried slices of Kingfish couldn’t lift her spirits. It was in between mouthfuls of the fried fish, as Tim told her about his failed attempt to start a barbeque on Anjuna beach, that Christabel wondered if her plan to make Arthur jealous was worth all this. She suppressed a laugh. Sneha Dhanjwant was welcome to him, not that a modern, sophisticated lady like her would want him.
For the eleventh time during the course of the meal, the automatic glass sliding doors opened and Christabel looked up. She smiled. Finally, Arthur had arrived. She put down the spoon she had been playing with, adjusted her hair and looked intently at Tim, who was still talking about pitching yeast, whatever that was. She nodded, adjusted her smile and even put her hand out to gently touch Tim’s arm as she threw her head back with a laugh. She felt Arthur approaching, and the hairs on the back of her arms stood on end. This was it.
‘Thank goodness I found you,’ Arthur said, paying no attention to Tim. ‘I was worried, worried something had happened to you. I tried calling your cell, but couldn’t get through. I was concerned something may have happened to you.’ Chupplejeep took a berath. ‘And I wanted to apologise too. I should never have accused you of taking that pendant. I don’t know why I did. I’m sorry.’ He took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
Christabel pulled her hand away, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear. ‘I’m having dinner with a friend,’ she said, emphasising the word friend. ‘A good friend I have made at the retreat.’ She nodded at Tim, who, now on his fourth beer, looked glassy-eyed. He was grinning like a mongoose.
‘Oh,’ Arthur said, glancing over at Tim and then back to Christabel. ‘I thought…I assumed that you were with Bhumika.’
Christabel smiled. This was worth pretending to listen to Tim talk nonsense.
Arthur held out his hand to Tim. ‘We haven’t met,’ he said. ‘I’m glad Christabel is making friends here at the retreat. I’ve been overthinking again – one of my vices, I’m afraid. With what happened at the lake to the ferryman, I was worried about my girlfriend’s safety.’
‘Yeah, nasty business that,’ Tim said. ‘I understand. Look, why don’t you join us for a drink. I was just telling Christabel about brewing my own beer.’
‘Interesting,’ Arthur said, pulling up a chair and motioning to the waiter to bring him a beer. ‘I’d love to hear about this. Maybe I could try it sometime myself.’
Christabel clenched her teeth and scowled, not that either man at the table noticed. They were already talking about beer. Arthur hadn’t batted an eyelid at her dinner with Tim. Why hadn’t Arthur seen Tim as a threat? Didn’t he care? She leaned back in her seat and studied her new friend.
Tim wasn’t a man like Arthur; he was a boy who she had nothing in common with except for the fact that they were at the same yoga retreat. She looked at Arthur. She knew his fat stomach would be hanging over the waistband of his trousers under his shirt. She had a sudden urge to hug him, but she refrained. Arthur should have been jealous of Tim’s youth, of his date with his girlfriend.
It was worth another shot. There would be no harm in overtly flirting with Tim. Tim was probably too drunk and far too concerned with himself to notice, but Arthur might. She flicked her hair and was about to ask Tim a pertinent question about a previous girlfriend, something she recently read in her magazine that was essential to ask any prospective new boyfriend, when a shrill cry stopped her.
‘He’s dead,’ a woman shouted as she ran through the lobby of the yoga retreat, her arms flailing, her mascara smudged. ‘He’s been murdered!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Chupplejeep sank into the grandfather chair. It had been a long night, but if he closed his eyes now, he could still manage some sleep before he had to be up. Pankaj had texted him to say he would be calling mid-morning. Chupplejeep had only messaged him a few hours ago to tell him of Jackpot’s windfall and already the boy was onto it. He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t sleep – thoughts of Erik and Sneha and that property developer kept him awake. Somehow these people were connected – he just didn’t know how.
After the woman had run into the yoga retreat screaming murder, she had turned to their table and pointed at Christabel’s friend Tim. ‘You,’ she had screamed. ‘You.’ The poor boy nearly jumped out of his skin, and Christabel was understandably worried that she had been having dinner with a felon. The woman was hysterical – saying there was a dead body on the lakeshore close to the yoga retreat. ‘I was going for a midnight walk when I saw it,’ she said with a faint German accent. ‘The body was white, white as a sheet.’ But she wasn’t accusing Tim with her pointing, much to Christabel’s relief. It was her way of saying it was his friend’s body she had seen. His friend was dead.
After that, there was a furore. Sneha emerged in jeans and a linen tunic, which he only paid attention to because Christabel was jabbing him in the thigh, muttering that she never saw the owner of the retreat in western-wear. As Sneha enquired as to what had happened, Tim had started crying, saying that even though he had only known Erik for a few months, they were close like brothers. Chupplejeep thought it was unlikely; the emotion was probably the result of one too many Kingfisher beers. Tim had taken consolation from Sneha, who had held him against her bosom and stroked his hair. Christabel had rolled her eyes at this, at which point Chupplejeep decided it was best if he took a look at the body.
Sneha had insisted on going with him. ‘It’s my business,’ she said. ‘He’s one of my students.’ And Chupplejeep had reluctantly agreed.
‘It’s terrible we keep meeting under such horrible circumstances,’ she said as they walked towards the lake. ‘Do you know what’s happening with Jackpot?’ Sneha asked, as if the man was still alive. ‘Kumar says it was a heart attack, but you don’t see it that way and are making further investigations, if what I’ve heard is correct.’
‘Who’d you hear that from?’ Chupplejeep asked, noting the familiar way in which she referred to the detective.
Sneha ignored his question. ‘Why are you digging deeper into this?’ she asked with an air of superiority. ‘What have you to gain?’
‘Justice.’
‘Don’t you think you’re going to make this harder for his family?’
‘You know them well?’ Chupplejeep asked. That was rich, he thought, e
specially if what Dilip said was true – that Sneha was having an affair with Jackpot.
She shrugged. ‘Talika’s distraught by her husband’s passing. Let the dead rest in peace, no.’
‘Would you rest in peace in the same situation?’
‘Jackpot was spiritual. In death he’d want rest, no matter what happened. He was the type of person who’d leave the past in the past regardless of whether justice needed to be served. He had told me that enough times to know. Jackpot was simple in a beautiful way. He lived for the moment, for the present. We can all learn from someone like him.’
‘To know someone’s spiritual beliefs often signifies a deep understanding of the person.’
Sneha was silent.
‘Where were you the night of Jackpot’s death?’
She cleared her throat. ‘What I was doing bears no relevance. Besides, I don’t have to answer that,’ she said. She looked towards him then and touched his arm, quickly changing the conversation. ‘You must come to the retreat under less stressful circumstances,’ she said. ‘Come to one of my classes. Christabel’s enjoying them. I think you would too. Yoga doesn’t just exercise the body, it also exercises the soul.’
Chupplejeep silently considered why Sneha was being so guarded. Was it because of her affair with Jackpot, something he still found hard to believe? Although it was clear from the way she spoke she had a fondness for the man. Or was it because she had been responsible for his death? She was certainly hiding something.
‘I was enjoying a drink at the retreat, or at least about to enjoy a drink, when the woman who found Erik’s body came in.’
‘Yes, you were with your wife,’ Sneha said.
‘Yes,’ Chupplejeep said and noticed that for the first time the word wife hadn’t made him break out into a cold sweat. He was about to correct the yoga instructor when out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar face. It was the same man he had seen going to the reading of Jackpot’s will, the property developer who was building the hotel on the lakeshore. He turned in his direction, but the man appeared to have disappeared. He looked around, and for a moment he wondered if he had imagined him. What was he doing lurking around the lake at night? It wasn’t as if any construction work was taking place. He looked towards the concrete structure surrounded by bamboo scaffold tied together with thick rope. It was dark and deserted. Just a naked bulb hung in one of the window openings, for security rather than anything else. He asked Sneha if she knew much about Nilesh Patel.
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