Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  Majid stroked his moustache upward. He had a spreading motion with thumb and index finger that he used when he was concentrating. ‘Very interesting. I don’t think there’s a real problem with the case.’ He meant that keeping it off the station books wouldn’t be very difficult, or unusual. There was the possibility of good money, which always made discretion possible. Majid raised his glass. ‘And, Sartaj, if she’s so nam-keen, investigating her could be fun.’

  ‘Arre, Majid, I’m not interested in her.’

  This made Majid straighten up, turn to Sartaj. ‘Yaar, you said that she was sexy. She’s giving it everywhere. She’s got the chaska for it. So what does interest and no interest have to do with it? Take some.’

  The logic was impeccable: if a woman was unfaithful once, she was therefore definitely available. Blackmailers sometimes used knowledge of an affair to take for themselves, to grab what was being distributed. Kamala Pandey’s blackmailers hadn’t tried that yet, but maybe they would, once she had run out of money. This was how the economy worked, there were many ways to pay. Sartaj spat over the railing. ‘Ma said I should help her,’ he said.

  ‘Of course she would.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘You don’t have interest in the money, you don’t have interest in the woman.’ Majid shrugged. ‘So don’t help her.’

  ‘Yes. But what about those blackmailer bastards?’

  They nodded at each other, grinning. They knew each other too well. Whatever he thought of Kamala Pandey, Sartaj was certain that he completely, unambiguously hated the blackmailers. He didn’t like them operating in his zone, in his locality, in his area, in his mohalla. Maderchods, bhenchods, he wanted to squeeze their golis and see if they cried. Majid, who was scratching his thigh under his shorts, felt the same way. Sartaj could see it. Majid had a theory that all really good cops came from strong mothers. He had met Sartaj’s mother, and his own Ammi was a tiny, wizened harridan who terrorized her daughters-in-law and still arranged marriages for her grandchildren without consulting anyone. Majid thought that a mother who kept an orderly house, who maintained cleanliness and had clear rules about what was right and what was wrong, actually ended up training her sons to be good policemen. He would list the names of department men he admired, and tell you about their mothers. Sartaj thought there was something to Majid’s theory. Katekar’s mother, for instance, had been a tough, massive-hipped matriarch. Years after her death, Katekar had spoken of her anger with awe.

  ‘I think,’ Majid said, leaning forward to clink glasses, ‘Inspector Sartaj, that if your Ma tells you to, you have to put those blackmailers out of business.’

  Sartaj had to agree. ‘I’ll call the Pandey woman,’ he said. ‘After dinner.’

  At dinner Sartaj watched Majid and Rehana banter with each other. They argued about each other’s parents, which set was more eccentric. Their own children giggled. Majid told stories about Rehana’s mother that Sartaj had heard before, but he laughed again. Rehana was affectionate with her own children, with Farah and Imtiaz, and Sartaj thought that neither of these children would ever make good police. He had no doubt that Rehana was an efficient mother, and kind, but she didn’t occupy her children’s lives in the old-fashioned way that Majid had been talking about. She was their friend. And anyway, the kids were both too ambitious to consider a career in the force, which produced decrepit types like their father’s sardar friend.

  Sartaj drove home, burping loudly all the way. He went very slowly, quite aware that he was drunk. A perfectly round moon dodged behind buildings and darted out between billboards for next week’s Shah Rukh Khan release, a grand love story. Sartaj tilted gently past a traffic circle, and thought that the posters had become a lot glossier than the hand-painted ones he remembered from his childhood, which had made Dharmendra look like an alien with an inflated head. Love was altogether shinier now, or at least it had that appearance. Kamala Pandey was discovering how grimy it could be, how bare and bleak hotel rooms looked through a camera lens. Stopped at a traffic light, under another Shah Rukh poster, Sartaj considered the possibility of profits from her: did he want to take Kamala Pandey? Would he? Sartaj thought not. She was irritating, self-centred, spoilt. And anyway chodoing her would be dramatic, it would require an effort of will and force that would be exhausting, that would be anything other than pleasurable. No, if he helped her, it would be for the money, and only that.

  Sartaj got home, took off his shoes and socks and dialled Kamala Pandey’s number. She picked up on the first ring, and Sartaj could hear the panic in her ‘Hello?’

  ‘This is Inspector Sartaj Singh,’ he said. He heard the breath that went from her then, as if someone had hit her hard under the breastbone.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ Under her voice, there was conversation, music. A man was talking, close to her. They were in a restaurant, the successful young couple.

  ‘I want to see you again. At the same place, at four o’clock.’ She said nothing. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I am going to help you.’

  ‘Okay. Thank you.’ She was working hard to sound casual, as if she was speaking to a girlfriend about hair appointments.

  ‘Did they call you again? Just say yes or no.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Relax. Bring that list of their numbers. Four o’clock, same place.’

  ‘Okay, yes.’

  Sartaj hung up. He put his feet up on the coffee table, loosened his belt. When he got paid on this job, maybe he would take Ma to Amritsar. He would take her to Harmandir Sahib, and watch her pray. It was comforting to feel the intensity of her devotion, it moved through him like a kind of familiar warmth. He wasn’t sure if this was because he had grown up with the murmur of her prayers always sounding somewhere near, or whether within himself there was some forgotten, subterranean strand of belief that resonated into partial life when she hummed and sang. Anyway he would take her to Amritsar, and ignore her reckless remarks about this journey being her last one. If Ma wanted him to help the odious Kamala Pandey, let her profit from the job too. It was only fair, only fit.

  Kamala Pandey wore a black outfit the next day at Sindoor. She was seated at the table near the kitchen when Sartaj came into the restaurant a few minutes after four. She had a bottle of mineral water in front of her, and an impossibly tiny mobile phone. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and Sartaj knew that the black blouse was definitely casual, but she still looked sleek enough to be on television, on some music channel.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ She had a way of tilting her head down when she smiled, so that she was looking up at you with very large eyes.

  ‘Did you bring the money?’ Sartaj said. He wanted short conversations with her, limited to professional requirements and concerns. She scrabbled in her bag, which was not the silver one she had carried earlier. This one was a black triangle, made out of some iridescent material. ‘And the numbers?’

  ‘The money is more today than yesterday,’ she said.

  There was thirty thousand in the envelope. Sartaj nodded. ‘They called yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘Yes. At one twenty-five. I told them what you said to say, that I need time to collect the money. They are not nice people.’

  ‘They abused you?’

  ‘They were saying very-very bad things.’

  Her handwriting was full of curves and dashes and flourishes, but she had been meticulous about noting the dates and times of the calls in orderly columns with headings. ‘When did you make the first payment?’ Sartaj asked, and made a notation on the page. ‘And when they called, did you hear anything interesting? Anything?’

  ‘No. I tried. A car or a scooter passing by, now and then. But nothing else.’

  ‘Keep trying. They will be very abusive, they will threaten you. Just delay. I need some time to look into this. I will call you soon.’ Sartaj gathered up the envelope and pushed his
chair back.

  ‘Wait!’ She held out an imperious hand, and then lowered it under Sartaj’s glare. ‘Please. You said you wanted to meet Umesh. He is coming.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes. He was supposed to be here at four. Sorry.’ She was being deferential now, subdued.

  ‘Okay,’ Sartaj said. He looked at his watch, and then they sat. Sartaj had nothing to say to her. She played with her phone, pressed the keys, read a text message. Then she put it down, and looked through her bag. She peeped up at Sartaj, who kept himself very neutral, and then went back to her investigations. She was getting nervous and fidgety. This was not a woman who was used to men being silent around her. Sartaj was starting to enjoy himself. It was cruel, but he kept himself absolutely quiet, and the minutes passed.

  When Kamala Pandey started to look slump-shouldered and forlorn, he took pity on her. It was too much to watch her droop. ‘Is Umesh always late?’

  That revived her like a bite of a tart lemon. ‘He’s on time for his flights, but for everything else he’s late. He takes more time to get ready than me. You should see his bathroom, it looks like a chemist’s shop. He has more shampoos and conditioners and scents than me and your wife and five other women put together.’

  Sartaj let it pass, the little lure about his wife. He said, ‘And he always calls and says he’s on the way, he’s in the car, he’s rushing, he’ll be here in fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Yes, yes. And then two hours later he shows up, with some story. He used to drive me crazy.’

  She was unable to help being just a little wistful. Sartaj was sympathetic: drama and craziness were painful, but you could miss that madness as you missed food or water. Until you settled into the dead calm of no hope, no disappointments. But Kamala Pandey still enjoyed talking about the sins of her ex, it revived her. ‘Maybe he had other stops on the way?’ Sartaj said.

  She laughed out loud. ‘Umesh always has two or three fools on his strings. He doesn’t even hide it too much. He just makes you feel that he hasn’t found the right one yet, that maybe you are the one where all the searching ends. He’s honest enough that you believe him.’

  ‘You saw the truth after all.’

  ‘After a long time.’

  And after all this knowledge she was still unable to cut away the yearning for him. Sartaj saw this as soon as Umesh walked in. Umesh shook hands firmly with Sartaj, and touched Kamala Pandey on the arm in greeting, on the bare skin. She kept herself stone-still, rigid. Sartaj abruptly remembered how he had fought down the vibration echoing up his arm when the estranged Megha had touched him lightly on the wrist, when she had bent towards him. He had strained with all his back and shoulders then to keep himself from tilting towards her in turn, and now he could not clench his throat shut against a warm pang of sympathy for this wandering wife.

  ‘Hello,’ Umesh said. ‘I should make some excuse about being jammed in traffic, but really, I just got more and more behind this morning. Sorry.’

  He certainly was beautiful. He wore dark red jeans, and a tight white T-shirt over pumped shoulders. The jeans were preposterous, but on Umesh they were perfect. He glowed golden, from his long arms up to the light brown eyes, which were very like Kamala’s. She must have looked into them and seen herself. ‘Sit,’ Sartaj said. The man had an open, happy charm, and Sartaj wasn’t going to give in to it.

  ‘I’ll just use the bathroom and come back,’ Umesh said. ‘It was a long ride.’ He put his phone and a set of keys down on the table and hurried off. The phone was exactly the same model as Kamala’s, satiny and small. His keys were attached to a model of a car, something low and fast.

  ‘It’s a Porsche,’ Kamala said. ‘Umesh likes cars.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sartaj said. ‘And he drives too fast, right?’ She nodded. That’s how they must have gone up to the guest house, Sartaj thought, going too fast and weaving through the traffic, excited by the bursts of speed. ‘What does he drive?’

  ‘A Cielo.’

  ‘A red one?’

  ‘No, no. Those are just his pants. I told him red is not his colour, but he likes to be noticed. The car is black.’

  Umesh came back into the restaurant and slid into the chair across from Sartaj. He was tall, an inch or two over six feet, and had the smallest waist Sartaj had seen on a man in a long while. He narrowed like an inverted triangle from the shoulders to the hips, and the quick travel from the gym-broadened shoulders to the absence of belly gave him the look of a cartoon figure. Kamala liked this superhero, though. She had tensed up again.

  ‘Ah, Inspector saab,’ Umesh said. ‘Now I am totally at your service.’

  ‘I know the main story,’ Sartaj said. ‘But I want to know about this guest house. What is it called?’

  ‘Cozy Nook Guesthouse. On Frichley Hill, near that big Fariyas Resort. Cozy is a little place, not too crowded, nice view. It’s just a cottage really, which the owners rent out. C-o-zed-y.’

  He was looking at Sartaj’s notebook, in which Sartaj had written ‘Cosy Nook Guesthouse.’ He was smiling warmly, and the joke was on the impenetrable English language, so it was impossible to be angry with him. He was altogether too pretty, but he was a good fellow. Sartaj could see how he would charm the ladies, he would tell them all his faults, and pay full attention with those sunlit eyes, and smile. You would have to be charmed. ‘Yes,’ Sartaj said. ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘A friend used to own a house near it, we used to drive past it. It’s an old place.’

  ‘Did you notice any new waiters? Any change in the staff?’

  ‘No, not really. I wasn’t paying that much attention, you see. But if I’m correct it’s all the same people.’

  ‘Any idea who could have taken those videos?’

  ‘No, sir. There is the staff. But then also the other guests. I don’t remember anybody specific, though.’

  ‘You didn’t ever recognize any of the other guests?’

  ‘No, no. Never. If that had happened, I would have remembered.’

  ‘Do you know which dates those videos were taken on?’

  ‘No, you couldn’t really tell. And I didn’t note the dates we went up there.’

  ‘How many times did you go to this Cozy Nook?’

  ‘Over all those months? I don’t know, maybe six, seven times?’

  ‘More like eleven times, maybe twelve,’ Kamala said. ‘The last time was at the beginning of May.’

  ‘I thought you broke up six months ago,’ Sartaj said.

  ‘We had.’

  So they had gone all the way to the Cozy Nook for broken-up sex. They had probably argued all the way up there, and been silent on the way down. Judging from the bitter set of Kamala’s lips, they had an argument coming now. Maybe more broken sex, although for Kamala’s sake, Sartaj hoped not. There was little comfort to be gained from such transactions, especially when they involved a man like Umesh. Nice fellow, but not sturdy. Not at all like the decidedly unbeautiful but dependable Mr Pandey.

  Now Sartaj asked Mrs Pandey, ‘Who hates you?’

  ‘What?’ Kamala’s shoulders hunched, and she curved in on herself and just a little bit towards Umesh.

  ‘Who are your enemies?’ Sartaj said evenly.

  ‘Kamala is a very nice person,’ Umesh said. He had his arm behind Kamala now, with fingertips resting on her shoulder. ‘I don’t think she has enemies.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kamala said. ‘I mean, I’ve had quarrels with people, but enemies?’

  ‘Everyone has enemies,’ Sartaj said. ‘It’s better to know who they are.’

  That silenced them for a moment, as they tried to calculate which friend or acquaintance might harbour enough secret loathing to qualify as a genuine foe. ‘So you think this is personal?’ Umesh said.

  ‘Blackmail is usually about cash. But it may be worth thinking about friends and adversaries. Anybody who is in a position to have information, and who may be angry about something, or need money urgently.’

  Umesh was
shocked. ‘Even someone connected to me? Wouldn’t they have approached me as well?’

  ‘You are not married. And you are a man.’

  ‘And I support my parents and sisters. I don’t have much cash flow. So they would go for the easy target.’

  ‘So who can it be?’

  Both the men looked at Kamala. Her cheeks were congested, flushed, and Sartaj wondered if she would weep. This time he would believe it, maybe. But she gathered herself and named her enemy. ‘I had a friend named Rachel.’

  ‘So you fought?’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘About what?’

  Kamala laughed at his obtuseness. It was an ugly sound. ‘What do you think?’

  Of course. They had quarrelled over Umesh. There had once been sisterly love, maybe years of it, and then the beautiful Umesh had come between them. ‘Rachel was your best friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘We met Umesh together. At a party.’

  ‘And Rachel liked him?’

  ‘Arre, boss,’ Umesh interjected, a hand reaching across the table. ‘I never even did anything with that woman. I met her a few times with Kamala, and God knows what all this Rachel assumed.’

  What Umesh thought was not of any consequence, given the circumstances. ‘What did Rachel feel?’ Sartaj said to Kamala.

  ‘She liked him.’

  ‘From the beginning?’

  ‘Yes. We talked about him after the first time at that party. She kept saying what a perfect man he was. Masculine, but sensitive.’ This last with a roll of her eyes.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘What had to happen, happened.’

  ‘When did you tell Rachel?’

  She remembered exactly when. ‘One Sunday two months later. I came back from a flight and went straight to her house. I just couldn’t stand it any more.’