‘That school is a den of vice.’ Bhavani shakes his head.
‘We love our school,’ she says at once.
‘And they love you!’ He snorts. ‘That’s why you get so many flowers from those horny boys on Teacher’s Day!’
She laughs. ‘We don’t care for flowers, Bhavani. Except pink Oriental lilies. Now, they are something special!’
‘At a hundred and fifty rupees per stick!’ he replies ruefully. ‘We agree, they are indeed something special!’
‘Not stick, Bhavani, stalk,’ she corrects him laughingly. ‘Accha, wait, we’ll get you a glass of cold milk.’
Bhavani always has trouble sleeping the night after a corpse-sighting. Plain, iced milk, with a little cardamom, helps.
‘No need to get out of bed now.’ He puts a hand on her arm. ‘It is too much trouble for you.’
But Shalini is already on her feet. ‘It’ll be more trouble for us if you toss and turn all night,’ she says plainly. ‘You shake the whole mattress! We won’t get a wink of sleep – and even if we do, we’ll dream we’re on some sinking ship, being tossed about on the high seas, and about to end up in a whale’s belly.’
When she returns with the milk, she finds him scrolling through a sleek iPhone 11 and raises her brows. ‘That’s his phone? An expensive toy!’
‘Not just a toy if he was using it to record people doing shady things and then blackmailing them! More like an … investment, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Drink your milk,’ she replies.
He chugs down the milk, then picks up the iPhone again.
‘But there’s nothing on it,’ he says grumpily as he hunches over the device, scrolling this way and that. ‘Our technical people have checked it out thoroughly. Maybe he had another phone.’
‘So get his house searched tomorrow.’ Shalini wipes the milk moustache off his square, homely face. ‘And put that thing away. Sleeping with a corpse’s phone will only give you nightmares.’
‘Aren’t those gauraiyas, sir? We thought they were extinct!’
Thus, Bhavani Singh, with determined cheerfulness, to Devendar Bhatti the next morning, in what appears to be a large vegetable garden at the rear of the club. Padam Kumar and he have tracked the Club president down with a certain amount of difficulty to this pretty, enclosed space, full of neatly laid-out vegetable rows. Bhavani identifies carrots, potatoes, several sweetly scented herbs and, under a huge, spreading jacaranda tree, a wide bed of beetroot, easily identifiable by the deep red stems from which their light green leaves spurt. Bang in the centre of the beds is a rocky, dappled birdbath, in which tiny house sparrows hop and splash gaily, entirely oblivious to the documented fact of their extinction.
The entire garden is ringed by a rustic wooden fence abloom with bright yellow zucchini flowers, and rises, at one point into a gated arch. Framed within this gateway stands the ex-home secretary of India, clutching a red plastic basket half-full of muddy, reddish-orange carrots in one hand and a humble iron khurpi in the other. Bhavani notices that he looks less like an indignant hen today and more like a slightly guilty hen. Maybe he isn’t supposed to be purloining the DTC’s veggies …
‘Well, they were certainly almost extinct,’ Bhatti responds stiffly, waving his khurpi in the vague direction of the gaily hopping sparrows. ‘But we built all these nests, and put out water and seed, and made them feel welcome, so they came back.’ There is a pause and then adds, tetchily, ‘As did you.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Bhavani says brightly. ‘Enquiries are going well, sir.’ He has decided that the less he shares with the Club president, the better.
Bhatti makes a small, snorting sound.
‘Take Bhatti sa’ab’s basket, PK,’ Bhavani tells his subordinate. ‘And dig up some more vegetables for him. Was it carrots you were wanting, sir?’
‘Beets,’ grunts the old man. ‘They’re damn good here. Red as blood.’ He addresses PK, ‘You understand beets? Chukkandar.’
Padam Kumar, resplendent in a pink Rajasthan Royals jersey today, nods, but not very happily. Squatting resignedly down in the vegetable beds, he plunges the khurpi into the beetroot patch. As he inhales the sweetish, overripe scent of organic compost rising from the damp earth, he shudders quietly. Tea leaves and eggshells and rotting banana peel and jhootha leftovers and what-not! Why people just can’t use honest, government-backed urea fertilizer is beyond his comprehension.
Meanwhile, Bhavani and Bhatti sit down on a stone bench under the jacaranda tree.
‘I still say it was suicide,’ Bhatti maintains stubbornly. ‘Or if it wasn’t, then Behra Mehra did it.’
‘O really, sir? The general? Why, sir?’
There is a longish silence.
‘My stint at the Home Ministry didn’t end too well,’ Bhatti says finally. ‘My boss and I didn’t see eye to eye. My values were secular, while hers were rabid.’
Bhavani blinks. Bhatti sa’ab is clearly going to be taking the long route home. So be it. He settles his buttocks as comfortably as he can upon the stone and stares down at his knobbly knuckles, radiating sympathetic attentiveness.
‘Anyway, I had hoped, after serving my time in the seething snake pit that was North Block, to retire in peace and have some good times with friends and family here in the DTC. I love this place – I grew up here and I suppose I idealized it when I was too busy to visit it regularly.’
‘And now, sir?’
‘And now, ACP, I realize that every paradise has a snake in it.’
Bhavani looks about the garden perplexed.
‘Snake, sir?’
‘Yes! There was a snake in the Garden of Eden and there is a snake here too!’
He stares at the policeman, panting a bit. The slightly obsessive gleam in his eyes makes Bhavani speculate uneasily about paranoid delusions and early onset dementia.
He nods soothingly. ‘Understood sir!’
‘No, you haven’t understood anything,’ Bhatti says irascibly. ‘Let me explain properly! We hold elections for the post of Club president once every two years. Traditionally, the presidency alternates between the defence chaps and the bureaucrats. So it was the faujis’ turn this time, and that slick sycophant Behra Mehra was more or less the agreed-upon candidate, damn his eyes! He’s a big darling of the press, a great war hero – Amitabh Bachchan played him in the disgracefully jingoistic Jhelum Bilge. So he was sitting around smugly, waiting for me to bugger off while he wrote his acceptance speech and planned his tie and socks combination, when Urvashi threw her hat into the ring and queered the pitch!’
He gives a dry chuckle of laughter. It’s an odd, gleeful laugh.
‘She doesn’t give a damn about our alternating fauji-and-civil tradition! And she has some bloody good plans too! Tax-saving ideas her hubby’s come up with, and a brilliant scheme for a new rain-harvesting plant. The fact that Chrysanthemum just received a fifty-crore investment helped sway the voters in her favour too! Naturally Mehra’s chaddis got into a twist!’
He stares at the rows of vegetables pushing quietly upwards in the winter sun, and slowly his face darkens.
‘Unfortunately, Urvashi’s husband, like the husbands of so many other good-looking, capable women, is her weakest link. And so Behra Mehra and his supporters, crafty trench fighters that they are – launched an attack on her, through him. They started taking Khurana out for drinks and suggested to him that she was having an affair with our dead boy on the bench press.’
Bhavani nods sombrely. ‘Yes sir, we heard about that-all, a little. You suspect that these people wound Khurana up like a cuckoo clock till he went cuckoo and killed Leo in a fit of jealousy, sir?’
‘Well it sounds terribly melodramatic when you put it that way,’ Bhatti admits, ‘but now that you say that it is murder, after all – that’s my theory, yes. My theory B, I mean. My theory A remains suicide.’
‘So the snake in this particular paradise i
s …?’ Bhavani murmurs.
‘Mehra, of course!’ Bhatti explodes, bits of spittle flying out of his mouth and hitting a startled butterfly. ‘The so-called hero of the so-called surgical strikes! He struts around like he polished off a nest of terrorists himself, but all these generals do is send out young men to die, while they themselves sit safely in Army HQ, massage the egos of their political masters, strike heroic poses before the press cameras, and negotiate fancy posts for themselves post-retirement in exchange for agreeing to reduce the pensions of their brother officers!’
Bhatti’s voice has risen to a squawk and his Adam’s apple is bobbing alarmingly.
Bhavani attempts to soothe him. ‘Sir, the surgical strikes are well documented—’
Bhatti’s eyes bulge. ‘Pakistan has never acknowledged them! They say they never happened! Never!’
‘Yes, but we are not Pakistanis na, sir,’ Bhavani points out gently. ‘We are Indians.’
‘You’re a fool,’ Bhatti says bluntly. ‘If that chap becomes DTC president, this whole place will be overrun by uncouth Gujarati riff-raff, wearing chappals and pyjamas and demanding we only serve veg food …’
He rants on in this vein for a while. Bhavani lets him. Padam Kumar, still industriously harvesting the beetroots, thinks privately that the defence minister is right – the DTC is a den of anti-nationals.
When Bhatti finally stops, Bhavani says gently, ‘Sir, but even if Mehra instigated Khurana, the point is that, according to your theory B, Khurana is only the actual murderer, sir.’
Bhatti stares at him with glazed eyes for a while, panting lightly. Then he continues as though Bhavani hasn’t spoken at all.
‘On top of that, he’s constantly harassing the girl who works at the Daily Needs here! Sweet, simple child, young enough to be his granddaughter! It started when his wife was alive and her husband was around! Now his wife is conveniently dead and the husband has conveniently vanished! That’s the kind of low life that fellow is! Urvashi Khurana is worth thirty of him!’
Bhavani is wondering how to compute this new angle, when an angry female voice pierces the barrier of the rustic wooden fence, making them all jump.
‘Helllllooo … bhaisaab! You can’t just waltz in here and dig up beets for free! You need permis—’
Bambi Todi appears in the arched gateway, her small frame rigid with outrage, glaring accusingly at Padam Kumar in his muddied pink jersey. Then she spots the two old men sitting under the jacaranda tree and relaxes, smiling.
‘Oh hi, Bhatti uncle. ACP Singh! I didn’t realize you guys were hanging here.’
‘So Kashi filled you in on my … uh … dealings with Leo, huh,’ Bambi says hesitantly to Bhavani a little later, as they walk back under the shade of the neem trees to Guest Cottage No. 5 together.
He nods solemnly. ‘You’ve been through a tough time, Bambi ji.’
She shrugs her slender shoulders. ‘That’s okay …’ Then she turns to him impulsively. ‘But I hear I wasn’t the only one? He was squeezing other people too?’
Bhavani’s homely face grows inscrutable. ‘That’s classified information.’
She pulls a face. ‘You told Kashi – but not me.’
‘Vakeel sa’ab is partnering us unofficially in this investigation in his capacity as Leo’s lawyer.’
‘Ghanta.’ She snorts. ‘I was there when he decided to be Leo’s lawyer and there was nothing legal about it!’
He looks down at her smilingly. ‘Even so.’
‘I’ll worm it out of him.’ She grins outrageously. ‘He tells me everything.’
O really, thinks Bhavani wryly. We wonder if he’s told you that his roof-builder girlfriend and he have perfect tuning and they complete each other’s sentences.
Aloud he says, ‘Thank you for being so frank. The information you shared with him last night has put us on the right track really fast.’
‘And yet you don’t trust me,’ she complains.
‘Actually,’ he says, his expression growing thoughtful, ‘we would like to enlist your help today.’
Bambi’s eyes widen with excitement. ‘Oooh, tell!’
‘Are you aware of a young lady who works at the Daily Needs store?’
Her face closes down a little. ‘Ganga? Of course. I only got her the job.’
‘Bhatti sa’ab alleges the general is obsessed with her,’ Bhavani says. ‘He hinted at some sort of a chakkar between them. What do you think?’
She says, rather curtly, ‘I think the general’s name was on Leo’s list of blackmail victims.’
Bhavani smiles. ‘You’re a smart woman, Bambi ji. But please answer the question.’
Bambi pulls to a halt. ‘Look, ACP, I’m very protective of Ganga. She’s had a crap life with an abusive husband and she’s finally finding a little peace now that he’s deserted her. She’s single, Mehra uncle’s single, and in life I just try to stay as non-judgemental as possible! God knows I can’t afford to point fingers, what with my klepto mum and all!’
So the general and this girl probably do have an arrangement, thinks Bhavani. But if everybody knows about it already, and they’re both single, then how is that even a motive for blackmail and murder?
‘Fair enough,’ he tells Bambi. ‘Also, we want to interview the Khuranas separately. One at a time. But we want to make it look like it happened casually. Could you help?’
Bambi’s face grows troubled. ‘So Urvashi auntie was being blackmailed too? Ugh! I don’t know why I thought this would be fun … You’re just going to keep poking and prying and digging with a blunt stick into people’s lives, aren’t you? Just like Leo!’
‘Yes,’ he says gently. ‘But we’re not doing it for cheap thrills or to hurt people or to make money. We’re hunting down a murderer, Bambi ji. Surely, that makes it worthwhile?’
She shakes her head violently. ‘No! Don’t you see? It means that somebody I know, somebody who is part of this club – which, unlike the shitty house next door, is my safe place, my strong place, the closest thing I have to a home – is a killer! And that makes it much much worse!’
Tears stream down her cheeks. The tears she had been so embarrassed about not being able to shed yesterday.
Bhavani puts a fatherly arm about her small shoulders.
‘Bambi ji, we have not been privileged enough to go inside, but from outside your home looks like a palace! If that is a shitty house, then our home in Police Colony is a bear cave!’
She sniffs loudly and unselfconsciously. ‘Don’t patronize me, ACP. I’m sure you’re very happy in your bear cave in Police Colony.’
‘But that is because we are a bear,’ he says whimsically. ‘And you are a princess.’
She gurgles. ‘You’re sweet.’
‘Mrs Cookie Katoch says we are a walnut brownie,’ he says. ‘If we keep coming to the DTC, we will get an inflated head soon.’
‘So the fellow’s been poisoned to death, I heard?’ Mukesh Khurana’s nasal voice holds a distinctly gloating tone. ‘Well well, I won’t pretend to be heartbroken about it!’
Nobody prepared Bhavani for the unloveliness of the accountant and he is recoiling slightly. For reasons best known to himself, Khurana has chosen to wear a brown tweed cap pulled low over the forehead, which makes him look rather unintelligent. He is also sporting his favourite suspenders, today over a fearsomely cabled sweater, and has tied a shiny, navy-blue cravat around his pudgy neck. It doesn’t improve matters that his eye is blackened and swollen. The whole effect is unaesthetic in the extreme.
None of this visual overload seems to be affecting Bhavani on the surface.
‘So nice of you to not be a hypocrite,’ he says warmly. ‘So, matlab, frank and refreshing!’ He throws his hands into the air in a gesture of speechless admiration.
Khurana glows purply under this praise. ‘O, I am ekdum frank!’ he says airily. ‘Ask anybody!’
B
havani smiles and tries out a little frankness of his own. ‘Khurana sa’ab, humne suna ki there was some kind of khat-pat between you and the deceased in the East Lawn on Tambola Sunday?’
Mukki laughs thinly and points at his blackened eye. ‘You call this a khat-pat? It was assault – pure and simple! And now he’s dead! Chalo, he got what he deserved!’ He utters a loud neigh of laughter.
‘You are saying he had it coming?’ Bhavani Singh murmurs encouragingly.
Khurana seems to swell up before his eyes. ‘Aji, the fellow was a bloody troublemaker! Slithered in out of nowhere, shaking his bum, and made all the women unsatisfied with their husbands! None of us were getting any action in the night any more because the chap wanted only well-rested, “fresh” maal for Zumba at dawn! And not just Zumba – he was giving them all “personal training” too, if you please, touching their upper arms and bellies and hips, and tsk-tsking about how soft it all was! Sab kuch ekdum cool and professional on top, but underneath oho, underneath it was all salsa and lalsa and goodbye Guru ji ka khalsa! Naturally we chaps got hassled.’
‘Naturally, naturally,’ murmurs Bhavani, as Khurana sits back, breathing heavily. He adjusts his cap which makes him look even more ape-like, then winks at the policeman.
‘But I’m a chap who’s all for healthy competition, ACP. Matthew had raised the bar for sure, so I just told myself: Mukki beta, you’d better raise your game too! Your wife’s a lovely woman and you’ve always been a plain chap, but you owe it to her to at least stay in shape!! So what I did was, I zoomed in on Thampi. He’s a smart, respectful fellow and he knows all the tricks of the trade. I took him aside and I told him my goals. It’s been seven months now, and just see what he’s done with me! Wonders!’
He flexes his biceps. Bhavani dutifully makes wordless noises of appreciation. Mukki beams.
Club You to Death Page 12