‘And then ACP Brownie stepped forward, his face ekdum grim, and all my chakras started whirring and jangling. All I could think was one of us is a murderer. One of us is a murderer! And I decided then and there ki no-carbs-after-seven rule be damned and pulled out my emergency muesli bar and started munching.’
As Cookie Katoch polishes off her muesli bar, Bhavani Singh looks about the room, his expression grave.
‘Our thanks to Roshni madam for permitting us to hold this unusual meeting here. Hopefully the medical staff will continue to tolerate our presence—’
‘My husband is on this hospital’s board of trustees,’ Roshni says in a low voice.
‘Ah!’ Bhavani smiles. ‘In that case, all is well! Or rather, all will very soon be well!’
Khurana cocks an eyebrow. ‘You know who it is, then?’
Bhavani nods respectfully. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘About time.’ Khurana snorts scornfully. ‘After all the nautanki that played out on the TV yesterday, I’m surprised you can show your face anywhere!’
Padam Kumar, standing unobtrusively by the door, winces at this public takedown of his superior. Bhavani, however, appears unmoved.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replies pleasantly. But the quality of his voice has changed now. It is still genial, but somehow, harder. His kind eyes seem to glint with a steely light. ‘We will nat have any more interruptions, please. Speak when you are directly addressed or nat at all.’
And such is the authority his chunky figure suddenly radiates that a room full of highly influential and volatile people pipe down and listen quietly.
‘We will begin from the beginning. But what is the beginning of this story, really? Did it begin almost two hundred years ago, when the DTC was established, a symbol of oppression, conspicuous consumption and class privilege? Did it begin when a little girl and a little boy met and fell in love and made vows about forever? Did it begin with an incorrigible storyteller drinking whisky in the sunshine, spinning stories which get wilder and more improbable with every retelling? Or with a very young woman who has foolishly followed her heart and ended up in trouble? Or with another young woman, eager to be independent, who encounters predators wherever she goes?’
He lets his words hang, his eyes moving from person to person as he speaks, observing their reactions to particular words or phrases, making mental notes about who flinches, who stays blank, who goes just a little too still as he speaks.
‘But we will keep the timeline linear. When we were summoned to the DTC the day after Tambola Sunday, we were an outsider at the gates. Rather like Leo Matthew. He too was an outsider, a boy from an orphanage, growing up on scraps and hand-me-downs tossed his way by people who wanted to ease their guilty conscience and buy some good karma. Father Victor will understand.’
The priest nods silently. Seated next to him, uncharacteristically quiet and odourless today, Randy Rax nods too.
Bhavani continues. ‘Let us have no secrets in this room. Several of you received a song via WhatsApp message from Leo Matthews. This song.’
He presses his phone lightly.
An insistent backbeat fills the plush, high-ceilinged suite. A husky, knowing female voice croons tauntingly.
You think your secret’s safe,
You think you left no trace
You’re sure that no one knows
You’re smelling … like a rose
But fate has a way of catching up with sinners
At the end of the day there are no free dinners
And I will make you pay
Oh, I will make you pay
P p p p p pay
P p p p p pay
Pay, pay, pay and stay worried,
‘Cos I know where the bodies are buried
Stay, stay, better stay worried,
‘Cos I know where the bodies are buried
The music hits climax and dies away.
The suite stays silent. Unnaturally silent.
Bhavani looks about sombrely. ‘What made us zoom in on this particular song, from the many songs and videos on Leo Matthew’s phone, was the fact that this song was followed by a link to the Badshahpur Children’s Village website. And everybody who had received this song, and that link, had made a donation to the BCV. This, to us, suggested blackmail.’
‘My goodness!’ Father Victor’s face is ashen with shock. ‘But I thought … he told me that … I mean, I marvelled and thanked God daily for the generosity of Leo’s friends and clients but I had no knowledge he was doing anything like this!’
Bhavani acknowledges this disclaimer with an impassive nod. It is impossible to tell if he believes it or not.
Plump little Cookie Katoch is horrified. ‘Haw! Dekho toh! And I had no clue! Whom-whom did he send that song to?’ She looks about the gathering wide-eyed, but suddenly everybody seems to be fiddling with their phones.
Finally, Bambi puts up her hand. ‘Me for one,’ she says lightly. ‘He had found out about Mammu’s little … er … problem somehow … and he used that to extract a tonne of money from me.’
Roshni’s tight, bony face softens with sympathy. ‘You silly girl! We all know about your mum’s little problem! Nobody holds it against her!’
‘What?’ Bambi gives an incredulous little laugh. ‘You guys know?’
‘Sure.’ Cookie Katoch shrugs. ‘So sometimes your mother absent-mindedly puts some things into her purse! What’s there? Everybody has mental health issues nowadays! Deepika Padukone, Winona Ryder! You were a fool to pay him, Bambi! How much did you pay?’
‘Oho, Cookie, how does it matter!’ Roshni snaps before Bambi can speak. ‘It’s not like you know a place that’s having a sale where she could’ve gotten a better deal!’
A few people giggle nervously. Cookie frowns. Bambi looks teary-eyed with relief.
‘Thanks, you guys,’ she mutters gruffly. ‘This mean a lot.’
‘No interruptions, please,’ Bhavani says pleasantly.
Everybody quietens down at once.
‘Bambi ji was unusually honest and came forward with her secret. Everybody else, perhaps because they were hiding larger, more complicated secrets, did nat cooperate with the police … so we initiated inquiries.
‘Leo’s modus operandi was to befriend drivers, maids, nurses, security guards, cleaners, anybody who worked in the homes of the rich. His rags-to-comparative-riches story was inspiring to them – the way he had started off as a waiter, then a waiter on a cruise ship, then a dancer on a cruise ship, until finally his current place as a famous trainer made them think they could make the same magical leap too. These people had no clue that he was living off the secrets they betrayed unknowingly to him …’
He looks around the room. Everybody is listening raptly.
‘Through this network he managed to infiltrate the homes of several of you in this room. It was a dangerous game he was playing though – and it got even more dangerous when he stumbled upon a huge secret – something far bigger than the petty adultery and embezzlement that were his usual stock in trade. Through his network, he learnt nat about a metaphorical buried body – like Mrs Todi’s kleptomania – but about a real dead body buried in the kitchen garden of the DTC three years ago.
‘But old Guppie Ram was an unreliable source. In fact, he was notorious for taking a kernel of the truth, and spinning a fantastic tale around it. Even then, Leo decided that the kernel was worth taking a cautious shot in the dark at. So he started looking about for people who he thought could be the murderer Guppie Ram had helped that night, three years ago.’
Bhavani pauses, scanning the listening faces keenly. ‘So what all had been happening three years ago?
‘General Mehra was the head of the horticulture committee, ably assisted by Mrs Aggarwal, Mrs Khurana and Mrs Todi. Under their direction a deep composting pit was dug. We can safely assume that when the murderer ended up with a body on his or h
er hands, their mind went immediately to the freshly dug pit in the kitchen garden, and that is why the phone call was made to old Guppie Ram in the dead of night.
‘There were already rumours floating around the Club about the general’s alleged affair with Ganga, and speculation about the whereabouts of Ajay Kumar. Clearly Leo heard these stories and decided to take a chance, and sent the song to the general.
‘That’s two people who received the song so far. Bambi Todi. And General Mehra. Now let us come to the third recipient of the song – Urvashi Khurana.’
She’s been sitting with her head bowed, but at the mention of her name, she looks up with the quiet dignity of a queen.
‘Yes, let’s.’ She smiles evenly.
Bhavani doesn’t smile back. ‘Although Urvashi madam also received the song, we could find absolutely no event in her life from three years ago that could have resulted with her having a dead body on her hands. Besides, she was the one who ordered the digging up of the kitchen garden in the first place, to lay the rainwater-harvesting plant, so that seemed to indicate that she was unaware of the fact that a body was buried there.’
She sits with her chin raised slightly, her beautiful face in repose, her eyes half-closed. ‘Fascinating. Do continue.’
‘And so perhaps in Urvashi Khurana’s case too, like in that of Bambi ji’s, the “buried body” was a metaphorical one and nat a physical one …
‘But then we learned that Urvashi madam had been very fond of old Guppie Ram too – in fact, she had even attended his funeral! He died of entirely natural causes, by the way; we checked that out quite thoroughly. Was it possible that during one of their cosy chats he told her too, like he did Leo – about the body buried in the kitchen garden? And could Urvashi ji have decided to use this body to confuse the investigating team, derail the investigation, and draw attention away from the recent murder – the murder she may very well have committed – the murder of Leo?’
The colour on Urvashi’s face fluctuates through this speech, but she remains entirely expressionless otherwise.
Bhavani ploughs on. ‘After all, it was Urvashi ji who ordered gas balloons for Tambola Sunday. It was Urvashi ji who had four bunches of them placed in the four corners of the gym – in such a position that, if a bunch was loosened – through a window left open for that very purpose – it would float up and obscure the camera completely for a few vital minutes. On a cold foggy night, no security guard would be in a hurry to leave his warm heater and trudge across the freezing, misty lawns to take down a balloon that may very well drift away itself in a while.
‘Mukesh ji was already working out in the gym; how easy it would have been to offer to pick him up that day. Standing outside the gym, she could have loosened the balloons and waited till they drifted up to cover the camera inside. Then walk in, go to the fridge on the pretext of “getting some water” and slip the Pinko Hathni into Leo’s protein shake, with Mukesh ji none the wiser! Then Mukesh ji would have locked up the gym – as he had promised Thampi – and Urvashi ji would have walked out and driven home with her husband smelling, as the song says, like a rose!
‘Yes, in the case of Urvashi Khurana, the problem was not one of opportunity, but of motive. Why was Leo blackmailing Urvashi ji? What was the “buried body” she was hiding? With her blameless, clean, open-book life, her loving daughters, her flourishing business, her loyal husband to whom she was a devoted wife? What did Leo know about her and how had he found out? We found no evidence whatsoever that Leo had an informant in the Khurana household, nor, in spite of all the rumours put out, we suspect by the General Mehra camp, did she seem to be having an affair with Leo.
‘Fortunately for us, Urvashi ji put us on the right track herself. She was arguing with General Mehra in the Daily Needs the other day, and in reply to his statement that he knew how to keep his cool and make split-second decisions even in the heat of battle, she retorted that she was sick of his war stories, and that she had pushed out a baby without any painkillers and without any fuss while there were rioters at her door, and the entire city was burning!’
A small gasp comes from Urvashi’s throat. She seems to want to speak, then thinks better of it.
‘With your permission, madam, may we continue?’ Bhavani asks her quietly.
She nods, very pale but composed, her eyes looking around for her husband. ‘Mukesh?’
‘Yes.’ Mukesh Khurana steps forward, grasps his wife’s hand firmly, and looks around the mystified room. ‘We’ve discussed this,’ he says gruffly. ‘We don’t want to hide anything and we damn care what people think!’
Bhavani nods. ‘Thank you, Mukesh ji.’ He raises his voice slightly. ‘Well, it did nat take us very long to do the mathematics. The incident Urvashi ji seems to be referring to – “with rioters at the door and the entire city burning” – could only be the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. And Urvashi ji got married in 1990, at the age of twenty-three.’
‘That could just be a mistake,’ Bambi, who has been listening intently, leans forward to say. ‘Maybe she was so angry that she exaggerated a little bit? We all do sometimes. Maybe some chhota-mota rioting happened in the nineties too! I mean, this is Delhi we’re talking about! She could’ve been flexing about that!’
Bhavani shakes his head gently. ‘We checked it out, Bambi ji.’
Her eyes widen uncertainly. ‘And …?’
‘And there is a record of a seventeen-year-old Urvashi Narang giving birth to a boy child in Civil Lines’ Teerath Ram Shah Hospital in 1984.’
The entire room seems to suck in its breath collectively.
‘A child subsequently given up to the Badshahpur Children’s Village. A child christened Rakesh, and known as—’
‘Rax!’
The word bursts from the crippled man’s lips with pride. His crutches clatter to his feet as he raises his arms in uncertain triumph, his beady eyes still slyly mocking, but now also bright with hope, and a vulnerability which is heart-rending.
Everybody turns to look at him, slack-jawed. Even Aryaman Aggarwal struggles to sit up.
‘It’s true,’ Rax confirms happily. ‘I still can’t believe it but it’s true. This beautiful lady is my mother. She explained everything and she’s going to adopt me! I met her husband, and my half-sisters already and I know I’m gonna fit right in.’ He leans forward and adds confidentially, ‘They’re all as ugly as me!’
16
The A to my B
‘Girls, mera mind toh ekdum blow ho gaya!’ Cookie declares to her girlfriends the next day. ‘Matlab, we all used to say ki she is in too good shape to be mother-of-two, and now we were finding out ki she is mother-of-three! And here I am with my bums so big after only one C-section delivery twenty-three years ago! It’s too unfair, yaar, but what a chhupa Rustam she turned out to be, no? That woman can really keep a secret!’
Rax’s statement is met with a stunned silence by the group, and then, as comprehension dawns slowly upon their faces, there are exclamations and whispers all around. In the midst of this muted uproar, Urvashi gets gracefully to her feet, walks up to Rax and stands behind his chair to face the room. Mukki follows, solemn-faced and fiddling nervously with his yellow suspenders.
‘I don’t owe anybody in this room an explanation except Rakesh and Mukesh and they’ve both already had one,’ she says with quiet dignity. ‘But for the sake of justice, and for the proper investigation of these crimes, I will share this much. Yes, my parents did send me away to my father’s ancestral village in Punjab when I was seventeen. It was supposed to be a sort of punishment for being so wild and disobedient and flirtatious, but I decided to turn it into a punishment for them by having an affair with a local boy. What I hadn’t bargained for was getting pregnant. I didn’t have the guts to tell my parents about it till I was quite far along, and so then, of course, I had no option but to have the baby. It was given up for adoption as soon as it was born – they didn�
�t even let me look at it, or tell me the gender, or even the fact,’ her voice drops, she bites her lip, ‘that it was born with some physical and mental challenges …
‘The only information I had was the name of the institution that had taken the baby, and so I sent them money every year. I pictured my first child as healthy and happy, and hoped he had been adopted into a loving home, so imagine my horror when Leo showed up, and told me that this was very far from the truth. Nobody had adopted the baby, he had stayed in the orphanage all his life, and what, asked Leo, would my husband, and the world, say when they found out that Urvashi Khurana had abandoned her firstborn simply because he was not as perfect as she would have liked him to be?’
‘So you paid him off,’ Roshni murmurs.
‘Yes,’ Urvashi says quietly. ‘But I didn’t poison him. And the ACP can theorize all he likes, but Guppie Ram and I were never close, and I attended his funeral only out of common decency. He never told me anything about burying a dead body in the kitchen garden, and I didn’t order for it to be dug up in order to get General Mehra into trouble. I had enough going on in my own life, thank you very much.’
She bends and hugs Rax, who glows as proudly as a child.
Bambi Todi jumps to her feet. ‘You just put the mum in Chrysanthemum!’ she cries in a trembling voice, dashing tears from her face. ‘Three cheers for Urvashi Khurana!’
Club You to Death Page 30