by Monabi Mitra
He lifted his eyebrows in question.
She turned to her cupboard and hesitated a moment, plucking nervously at the lapel of her housecoat, then suddenly, having reached a decision, opened it and flung open a box.
Bikram slipped the cartridges into the revolver and put the revolver in his pocket. At the same time, Nisha found what she was looking for and turned round to meet him. Her eyes carried a clear, direct, almost savage look. ‘You came to get something out of me and so you shall.’ He reached forward for the piece of paper that she held out. She held on to it tightly and looked at him. Their eyes met and the stillness in the room became unbearable. Suddenly, a crow cawed on the other side of the slatted windows and the tension snapped. Bikram shook his head almost imperceptibly and tugged gently at the paper. Nisha Bose sat down on the bed with her head bowed. It was a piece of paper torn out of a notepad that had Nisha Bose printed on the top in beautiful calligraphy. Underneath was the text, written in a shaky, unformed hand.
I am responsible for my own death. I can’t take this life any longer. Nisha has no time for me and spends it with others who can give her what she wants. But I know all about her and the things that go on downstairs and in the other bedroom when they think I am asleep. Whoever you are, doctor or policeman, please don’t let them get away! But spare Nisha, she was helpless in their hands, my poor little doll!
Robi Bose
Bikram read it through once, then again, and looked helplessly around him.
‘If you want samples of Robi’s handwriting, Mithu can get them for you from his room.’ Nisha Bose’s voice was hard.
Bikram looked at the letter and pursed his lips. He remembered Buro’s frightened face, cornered by an unforgiving system for a crime he had not committed. Then he looked at her, and the anger in his heart was tempered by a twinge of pity for this woman whose almost pathological self-centredness had wrecked her whole life.
He asked, as kindly and gently as he could manage, ‘Where did you find this?’
She sat quietly for a while and then began quickly, as if she did not trust her own voice. ‘It was by his bed, when I came up that night. I had drunk a little too much and, had … had … a little something else. At first I thought he was sleeping. I usually don’t look in at night, but that evening Tara had been in, suddenly, without my having called her in, and I was worried that something was on. I tiptoed in and found that piece of paper and tossed it aside. Then I found that the bedcover was in a mess and the room smelt. I called Buro, picked up the piece of paper and read it and my world crashed. I could hear Buro coming up the stairs and I didn’t want him to know about it. I stuffed it into my pocket. Buro came in and looked hard at Robi and then at me. I’ll never forget the expression in his eyes. Then he came and stood beside me, very close, too close, and smiled.’
‘Did he accuse you of anything?’
‘No, but the way he smiled, as if I had killed Robi! God, I wasn’t too sober, and then that evil man standing there. I felt so messed up, I completely lost my head. That’s when I came to my room and hid the letter. I had an idea that a suicide meant the police and I was scared of what Buro might say and do. So I decided to keep quiet and pass the death off as a heart attack.’
‘And after Sudip Pyne came it was too late to produce it?’ Bikram’s voice was as gentle as possible.
She shuddered and said, ‘Yes. I was too far gone by then.’
‘You could have shown it to him.’
‘I was scared, thought I could shoo him away and get in another doctor through a hospital administrator called Chopra, whom I knew well. Anything to stop the police from coming to my house.’
‘What about the bedcover that was changed?’
‘That was Buro’s idea. He said that if the sheets were switched and the new one looked cleaner, then the next doctor who came in would easily swear to death by cardiac arrest or something and let us go. I pointed out that people who have a cardiac arrest or a cerebral stroke do vomit and froth from the mouth, but for some reason he went ahead and changed it and hid the old sheet. Perhaps he did it deliberately, to make the death look suspicious and make things difficult for me. We were like cats in heat in that house, circling around one another, not trusting anyone or anything, plotting and planning all the time.’
‘Why didn’t you show me the note on my visit after that? You could have saved yourself some trouble.’
There was no answer. She sat looking impassively ahead.
‘Was it because you had an idea that it could now be used to your advantage? To implicate others, perhaps? Tara, or Buro?’
She shot him a quick disapproving look and became quite still again.
‘With Tara out of the way on a murder charge you could dictate terms to her father, who would, no doubt, be a broken man by then, and gain full control of this house. And with Buro out, you could get rid of someone who was beginning to be difficult. You could, in fact, kill two birds with one stone.’
There was silence and then she said emptily, ‘What else could I do?’
‘Are you happy now?’ he asked her.
She pondered for a while, then lifted her face, and said, ‘Actually, I am, yes.’
Bikram looked gravely at her but she pretended not to notice.
Then her face broke into a smile and she said mischievously, ‘But I’d like to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else. For the first time in my life I’m feeling sorry for someone. Would you like to know whom?’ She leaned forward and brought her face near his till it was only inches away. When she spoke he could see her even white teeth and the finely chiselled bones of her neck. Her hair smelled of mountain flowers.
‘I can’t imagine.’ He answered slowly, with a hint of irony in his voice.
‘You!’
‘Because?’
‘Because you cannot charge me for possessing drugs, for taking them or peddling them! If you try, I’ll get Rory Ganguly to defend me. I have money enough for that, and he’ll tear your poor accusations into shreds. I’ll say that Buro did everything. Buro tied up with my friends, unscrupulous beasts that they are, and used the house of an invalid and his innocent wife for his dirty activities. And finally, there was no homicide! The death was a suicide, with a perfectly justifiable suicide note, which a poor, panic-stricken wife could not remember to hand over, but that is hardly a crime. Am I right, Bikram?’
Bikram put the paper in his pocket, turned around and went to the door. Multiple Bikrams looked at him from the mirrors that lined the walls. At the door, he turned round and looked at her. Nisha Bose had let her hair down and was stroking it gently with a faraway look in her eyes. She was a vision—a beautiful woman standing temptingly in her bedroom. Bikram saw a broken woman in her mid-thirties who would have to find a new keeper, a new livelihood.
He said, ‘You’ve lived life dangerously for some time now, and you are getting away with it. And yet, be careful, Nisha. I’ll be keeping an eye on you. Don’t do anything … rash … again. Your luck might run out the next time.’
Then he ran down the stairs, ignoring the piercing pain that now stabbed his back, and went outside into his car. ‘Mistry, Lalbahadur, the two of you can take a bus or walk home. I need to drive.’
He rang up Ghosh.
‘Location?’
‘Looking for you, but your phone was switched off, so I thought I’d take a look at the Bose house. That Tara girl frightened me badly; she actually challenged me to arrest her as a potential suspect. She seems to be on the verge of a mental breakdown.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Near the Silver Mall, stuck at a traffic signal.’
‘Can you see me in my car near the signal?’
‘No, wait a minute, yes I can! What a coincidence! You’re driving,’ he added dubiously.
‘Come and join me, I have news to give.’
The lights had turned green but Ghosh ignored them, stepped ponderously out of his car, asked the driver to make a U-turn and fo
llow Bikram’s car, then walked over.
Ghosh clambered in and looked at his companion. A funny look crossed his face.
Bikram selected one of the pens from his breast pocket and handed it to Ghosh.
‘It’s that new camera and tape recorder we got from Delhi last week. I couldn’t check it midway through but if you go through the footage, you’ll know what happened. But,’ he hesitated, and suddenly looked at Ghosh pleadingly, ‘don’t think ill of me; I had to do it that way. I hate playing with emotions but she would have never confided in me otherwise.’
The agitation and perplexity in Ghosh’s mind increased. To cover his disquiet, he said, ‘Has she confessed?’
‘Read this.’
Bikram gave him the suicide note. He pressed the accelerator and the car jumped forward, changed lanes and almost mowed down a motorcyclist overtaking from the wrong side.
Ghosh read it and looked up. He looked shaken.
‘Is it real?’
‘Yes,’ said Bikram shortly. ‘Later you can check with the handwriting analysts. She hid it so that she could fix either Tara or Buro. Even one out of the way would have settled at least one front of her turbulent life.’
The car was now on a flyover and Ghosh could feel the wind whistling in his ears and see the billboards flashing past. Below, at the intersections he could see the traffic stuck in irregular jagged lines. ‘She could have been arrested also.’
Bikram overtook a car that, in turn, was overtaking another and, for a moment, all three were frozen, crazily hanging upon the flyover.
‘She took a risk,’ said Bikram, adding, ‘some are like that. They like to live life in the fast lane.’
Ghosh’s phone rang. It was Chuni. He put it on loudspeaker and a breathless voice filled the car and struggled with the traffic noises for attention.
‘We’ve got it, Sir. It’s all over!’
Ghosh’s heart jumped.
‘Is he dead?’
‘No! He has confessed! We crushed him so completely that he has confessed, not just to the drugs and all that but also to the murder! It’s all right, don’t you see? I couldn’t get the DSP on the line so I told Sheena Sen and she’s informed Toofan Kumar. The press meet is at 8.30 p.m. in his office but the journalists have already started swarming in. Buro killed Robi Bose because he was threatening to call in the police over his drug deals.’
Ghosh disconnected the line and stared at the pen camera recorder in his lap and at Bikram by his side.
Bikram had pulled the car over to the kerb. They both said nothing for a while and then Bikram suddenly shook his head, put it down on the steering wheel and started laughing.
‘Ghosh, can you take over? I need to go home.’
PENGUIN BOOKS
UK | Canada | Ireland | Australia
New Zealand | India | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
This collection published 2012
Copyright © Monabi Mitra 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Printer’s Devil
ISBN: 978-0-143-41754-5
This digital edition published in 2016.
e-ISBN: 978-8-184-75659-3
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.