Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  ‘And?’

  ‘She told me to get out. She never spoke to me again.’

  ‘She was that angry?’

  ‘She had been divorced two years before that. And had never liked anyone.’

  ‘Till Umesh.’

  ‘Till Umesh.’

  To his credit, Umesh wasn’t smug about this, about his fatal charm that caused women to hate each other. He was anxious, and disbelieving. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘it’s hard to believe that someone like Rachel would come so low in the world. I mean, blackmail like this…’

  ‘She is the only one who knows about us,’ Kamala said dully.

  Yes, Kamala knew more about anger, about the rotting remnants of friendship stored at the back of almirahs, old photographs and shirts given as gifts and souvenirs carried back from winter holidays in lovely Singapore, all of it curdling into black bitterness that burned through the day, morning and night, so that finally the only relief would be the blackmail. Not because it would yield money, but because it would cause humiliation and pain. Money was good, but healing and peace would come from elsewhere. Yes, Kamala understood. There was motive, and opportunity. Not enough to prosecute, but certainly enough to investigate.

  ‘Give me Rachel’s information, please.’

  Kamala wrote swiftly, all from memory, in her pretty looping hand.

  ‘All right,’ Sartaj said. ‘I will investigate. Your mobile number, please, Mr Umesh?’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘It’s enough for now.’

  ‘I thought you would want to know lots of things.’

  ‘If I have any questions, I’ll call you. Number?’ Sartaj wrote down Umesh’s number, snapped his notebook shut. ‘Remember what I told you,’ he said to Kamala. ‘Listen, just listen. And don’t be afraid of them. They may act tough, but they need you. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘So now you’ll investigate those calls?’ Umesh said. ‘Follow them up at the calling numbers?’ He was thrilled by the investigative process, by the potential pleasures of the story, even though it involved him directly.

  ‘Something like that,’ Sartaj said. ‘You like detective movies?’

  ‘Only Hollywood movies. Our Indian ones are so badly made.’

  There was no denying that. ‘That’s true,’ Sartaj said. ‘But sometimes the Indian ones get things right also.’

  Umesh plainly didn’t believe this, but he let it pass. ‘Why don’t you just have Kamala tell them that she’s going to pay, and then arrest them when they come to collect?’

  ‘Because they expect that, and already are working against it. That’s why they sent the chokra to get the money from her the first time. These boys are being careful. It’s too risky. No use tipping them off.’

  ‘They’re that good?’

  ‘Good, but not that good,’ Sartaj said. ‘We’ll get them. Let us work on it.’

  Umesh looked sceptical. Sartaj raised a hand in farewell, and left them sitting together, uncomfortable together but well-matched. Outside, he put his dark glasses on against the low late-afternoon sun. The glasses were quite out of style, he realized suddenly, by at least two years, maybe more. Maybe it was time to buy new ones. But he felt affectionate towards this old, battered black pair. They’d been through a lot together, and there was something to be said for the old and familiar and comfortable. Style was hard work, and expensive besides. He had got too old and too poor to work at it. Sartaj grinned at himself – what a boring, aged budhdha you’ve become – and drove on.

  Kamala Pandey had a good head for detail, but the blackmailers had been very careful. The phone calls were spread out over the northern suburbs, both east and west, and there was only one call from each number. The only pattern Sartaj could pick out was that the calls came either early in the morning, between eight and ten, or after six in the evening. Which meant that the blackmailers had jobs. They were taking care of this business around the work of making a living.

  ‘These are all PCOs,’ Kamble said. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘I know,’ Sartaj said. He had recruited Kamble into the investigation that evening, once he had figured out exactly how much legwork was going to be involved. Kamble was quite willing to be recruited, for a price: forty per cent of the take. But working with Kamble also meant drinking with him at the Delite Dance Bar, and playing alibi for him with his girlfriends. Sartaj had already lied, as instructed, to two dancers about where Kamble had been earlier that evening. Sartaj said to him now, ‘There’s only one call from each place, so it’s not likely that the operators will remember who made a call. But we’ll cover the PCOs, starting with the most recent calls first. You want west or east?’

  ‘West, boss.’ Kamble was staring hungrily at the three dancers on the floor, who were spinning languidly to ‘Aaja gufaon mein aa’. The sequined blue and pink and green of their ghagras was gorgeous to watch, Sartaj had to admit. They were young. But it was early in the night, and the Delite was nearly empty, and they weren’t being very energetic in their seductions. Kamble looked like he wanted to liven them up, by any means necessary. No doubt he would.

  ‘All right,’ Sartaj said. ‘I’ll take east. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Arre,’ Kamble said, ‘stay.’

  ‘Tomorrow will be an early day. Extra work to do.’

  ‘Every day is an extra-work day. Just have another drink with me.’

  ‘Had my limit.’ Sartaj got up.

  ‘You need to get some sex in your life.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘Any of these.’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘What, you think they won’t like you? Boss, don’t worry. They’ll eat you up.’

  ‘Exactly that.’

  ‘Too easy? Then go for the one that doesn’t want you. But you need to get back into the game, Mr Singh.’

  ‘I do? Why?’

  ‘What else is there?’

  Indeed. What else was there? Retirement, or retreat? Ma had her religion, but that was only after a full lifetime with Papa-ji. Could you step out of the game at an early age, like some sanyasi who gave up everything and set off for the hills? No, Sartaj knew he couldn’t do that. But he was going to get out of Delite for now. He was very tired, and he just wanted to go home. He raised his glass, emptied it. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, then.’

  Kamble wasn’t satisfied, but he gave in gracefully. He bared his big, toothy smile. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow we’ll see.’

  Sartaj called Iffat-bibi that night, just before sleep. She had phoned him soon after Katekar’s death, to express her condolences. She knew that they had been working together for a long time, but she also somehow knew about Katekar’s young children, and had offered a nicely medium-sized sum of money to help the family. Sartaj had turned her down again, but after that they had spoken often on the phone. She was cunning, funny, and had endless stories to tell about apradhis and policemen from the past. She offered him little bits of intelligence, rumours and locations and names, and asked for nothing in return but that Sartaj make it easier, if he could, for any of her company’s boys who went through his lock-up to meet their families. The information she provided was accurate and useful, but never concerned big cases or notorious apradhis. It was all comfortably small-time, and Sartaj felt their trade was fair, with no obligation left over on either side. And it was somehow restful to listen to her talk about Papa-ji. Papa-ji had talked to her about all his cases, it seemed, and Sartaj was getting a slowly emerging portrait of the old man that he could not have found anywhere else. Papa-ji, it turned out, was not so simply foppish as he may have looked, with his passion for double-breasted coats and custom-made shoes. He was vain, but without ego in the matter of his job. He knew his beat, and he had an instinct for what both apradhis and victims would do next. His arrests were not spectacular, but they were frequent, and they were steady and real, not fluff-jobs conjured up to bulk out an annual report. He was respected, despite his sartorial extravagances. But his vani
ty kept him mostly honest, at least in the big ways that made a difference to his career. He could not stand the thought that he, Sardar Tejpal Singh, was to be bought like a loaf of bread sitting on a shelf, like a packet of cigarettes. His pride kept him from being obsequious to his seniors: he was willing to ask for a favour, but he stopped at that. He found it impossible to persuade, wheedle, beg or bribe.

  ‘Such a stubborn man,’ Iffat-bibi said now, ‘but he kept his head up like he wanted. Not that it did him much good.’

  ‘Come on now, Bibi,’ Sartaj said. ‘Not everyone wants to earn a turnover like your Bhai’s. How much is it?’

  ‘Some newspaper said yesterday, eight thousand crores.’

  ‘That’s the newspaper. What do you think?’

  She snorted. ‘Bachcha, I’m an old woman, I don’t do accounts. But it’s enough.’

  ‘Enough for what? What does anybody do with eight thousand crores?’

  ‘Everyone needs a little extra. Not just for the things you need. For the things you want. Even your Sardar Saab.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Arre, nothing, I was just talking like that.’

  A shiver of unease moved over Sartaj’s shoulders. He sat up. ‘No, you were not. Tell me what you mean.’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘No, tell me. Iffat-bibi, don’t try and fool me. What is it?’

  ‘Beta, you are making a big noise about very little. I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘What is it? Was it a woman? Women?’

  ‘Arre, you dirty-minded bastard, no!’

  ‘Then what? Tell me.’

  ‘You are making a big fuss over a very small thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He liked to gamble.’

  ‘Gamble?’

  ‘Yes, yes. He loved horses. He liked to place bets on horses at the races.’

  ‘He went to the racecourse?’

  ‘No, never, someone might have seen and told your mother. I had one of my boys make the bets for him.’

  Yes, Ma-ji, with her refugee’s frugality, would never have stood for gambling in her household. She refused to buy lottery tickets because, she said, they were a complete waste of money, and anyone who thought they could get a crore by putting in one rupee was a complete jhalla. And here was Papa-ji, a regular money-scattering, gambling fool. But then, he did love horses. One of his great regrets was that he had never learned to ride. At the breakfast table, he would smooth out the newspaper with great care and point to a sports-page picture of a horse and say, ‘Look, how beautiful,’ and Sartaj and Ma never commented or replied or even noticed, because he had been saying it for ever. So instead, outside home, he had had a secret life, or at least a secret side. Sartaj coughed, to clear the congestion in his throat, and asked, ‘Did he lose much?’

  ‘Lose? No, he never bet that much to start with. He had a limit of fifty rupees, and then later he raised that to a hundred. But he was good at reading the racing forms. He won more than he lost. Actually a lot more.’

  Papa-ji won. He had this other universe, with its own rules and systems, its particular histories and tragedies and triumphs, and here he was a winner. He had beaten the chances, he had vanquished the game. A bittersweet flood of affection and nostalgia and regret came into Sartaj’s mouth and nose and eyes, and he had to hold the phone away a bit, to keep the sounds of his sentimentality from Iffat-bibi.

  ‘Sartaj?’

  ‘Yes, Bibi. I was just thinking, the old man was quite a character.’

  ‘Complete namoona. But, listen, don’t tell your mother, all right?’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Later that night, Sartaj wondered if Ma knew already. She and Papa-ji had had their difficulties, their silences which Sartaj could never decipher. He had heard raised voices behind closed doors, and one of their quarrels had lasted three days, but Sartaj never knew why it started and how it ended. All this was normal enough for any wife and husband, and these two had been devoted to each other for more than forty years. Maybe Papa-ji had his horses, and kept quiet about them, and Ma knew but refused to know. Maybe that’s how they had been happy together. But did she wonder that day, Sartaj’s birthday, when Papa-ji had brought in the biggest and most expensive Meccano set that anyone had ever seen? Papa-ji had put Sartaj on his shoulders, and Sartaj had echoed Papa-ji as he went around saying his Hello-jis, and everybody had laughed and been happy. Maybe one of Papa-ji’s horses had won that day. He and Sartaj sat up late that night, building a red and green house with a big wall around it, and Ma had crouched next to them, showing them where a courtyard should go in, and the proper location for the main gateway. Papa-ji wanted to put a flagpole on the roof, but Ma said that would make it look like a government building, not a home. Papa-ji and Sartaj worked hard, putting in the final touches, an actual swinging gate, a small shed for the chowkidar, and Ma let Sartaj finish the whole thing before she took him off to sleep.

  The next morning, there was a message waiting at the station house for Sartaj. It was from Mary: ‘Come to the Yari Road apartment tomorrow evening.’ And that was all. Sartaj turned the note over, puzzled, then folded it carefully in half and put it into his pocket. He was glad that Kamble hadn’t seen it, or he would have had to endure at least half a day of smirking jokes about ghochi and merry Mary and private trysts.

  Sartaj spent the afternoon driving from one PCO to another, reaping the expected harvest of blank looks and bafflement. An orange-haired, sixtyish owner of a shop near Film City put a paan in her mouth and gave it to him straight: ‘Baba, I know the call was just the day before yesterday. But you see how many people I get making calls in one day. I don’t sit here looking at their faces. They come in, they make their calls, they give me their money. Bas. I don’t even remember the ones who came today.’ She bent to the electronic meter on her desk, squinted at it. ‘Already today there have been a hundred and thirty calls. And the busiest time is the evening.’ Her hair was appallingly hennaed, but she was telling the truth.

  ‘You have a good turnover,’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Everyone needs to ring home,’ she said.

  There was a small queue of carpenters waiting for her two phones, pretending that they weren’t listening to the policeman’s questioning. They were Punjabis, stubbled and brawny. They had walked over from the shop three doors down, where they were building shelves. They were interested in the fact of a Sikh policeman in Bombay, but they were too scared of police inspectors to talk to him. Their families were probably in Gurdaspur, or Amritsar, and they had learnt caution.

  Sartaj went on to the next PCO. He went to nineteen in all, and at all of them there were the same men and women, making calls across the city and across the country. None of the owners or cashiers could remember two men among these thousands. At seven Sartaj called a halt and veered off to Yari Road. The traffic was dense, and by the time Sartaj got across the subway, the twilight was losing its fantastic range of orange hues. The bulb in the lift was fused, and Sartaj had to grope for the buttons. But Mary had light. She opened the door into a well-lit drawing room and grinned up at Sartaj. She had a duster in her hand, and a chunni tied around her hair, giving her something of a Rani-of-Jhansi air. ‘Hello, hello,’ she said. ‘And sat-sri-akal. Come in.’

  ‘Hello,’ Sartaj said. The drawing room was crowded with cardboard boxes, but had been scrubbed clean. Mary had put in a day of work all right, but she seemed relaxed, buoyant. ‘You have electricity.’

  ‘Jana has a friend at BSES. I paid the past bills, and her friend got it all switched on.’

  Jana was the kind of practical woman who would of course have a friend who could get electricity from BSES in a few days, instead of in a month or two. There was loud filmi music sweeping down the hall, from the bedroom. ‘Jana’s taking care of the shoes?’

  Mary nodded, twinkling. ‘And the clothes. She gets upset every two minutes because Jojo was too small for anything to fit her. Come on.’ She stepped
past Sartaj, calling, ‘Jana! Jana!’

  Jana also had a chunni tucked behind her ears, and the rapt look of a woman absorbed in her work. She greeted Sartaj with a quick nod and ‘Hello,’ and led the way into the study. ‘We started cleaning in here first,’ she said. ‘Because mostly we were going to throw all these papers and files away.’

  ‘We were throwing,’ Mary said. ‘And then Jana noticed one thing.’

  They were pleased with themselves, for being able to tell Sartaj that they had noticed. But they were pleasured also by the knowledge itself, by the pleasure of detection. Sartaj said, with exactly the right degree of eagerness, ‘What did she notice?’

  From the top of the filing cabinet, Jana snatched up an envelope. From it she pulled out a photograph, and held it up with a flourish. ‘This.’ And another photograph. ‘And this.’

  Sartaj put out a hand to steady the picture she was holding up. A girl. A girl in a model pose, looking over her shoulder. She wasn’t an especially attractive girl.

  ‘The photograph was in the bottom drawer of Jojo’s desk,’ Mary said. ‘Under some bills.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sartaj was trying to remember if he had examined these photographs himself when he and Katekar had searched the study. There was nothing distinctive about them, nothing to remember. ‘And so?’

  Jana was astonished. ‘You don’t recognize her?’ She held up another photograph.

  Sartaj took it from her. This one was a portrait, with the hair falling forward and a wistful look. He turned it over. The name was noted in a neat hand, ‘Jamila Mirza’. Which meant nothing to Sartaj. ‘Who is she?’

  Both Jana and Mary were looking at him with that tolerant, motherly patience that women practised when faced with male stupidity. Jana held up another piece of paper. ‘This is a list of monies. I think they’re payments, and they go on over months and years. Copies of passport pages, see, same girl. And copies of plane tickets, to Singapore. She went lots of times, see, sometimes every month. This wasn’t a casual thing. This one was a regular girlfriend.’