Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  ‘Madam…’

  ‘No, you listen to me. He doesn’t give us enough to meet one-quarter of what his children need. Every other paisa I spend, I earn. All this furniture and art you see, this is for my business. I work hard.’

  ‘Interior decoration?’

  ‘Yes. And now I am going to open an art gallery with two other partners.’

  ‘Very good. But there is still the matter of too much money, maybe. Questions have been raised.’

  ‘Where? Listen, we do all our business in white. My accountant has every receipt, a copy of every cheque from every client. We can show you everything you want.’

  Rachel was wearing a loose linen shirt in white, with grey pants of the same texture. The outfit brought out the rich brown of her very good skin, and the softer amber of her eyes. She had her hands poised elegantly on a knee, but she was worried now. Sartaj pressed on. ‘Madam, there is no business that is done all in white. Especially interior decoration. It is all a matter of proportion. If we don’t feel there has been enough co-operation, of course we will have to investigate properly.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Sartaj stretched, and said very casually, ‘Do you own a video camera?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A video camera, madam. To take videos, you know, of marriages, prize-giving events, parties.’ He mimed the action of taping. ‘Nowadays very common.’

  ‘Yes. We have two. One is old, and one is new. But, what…’

  She was very confused now, and – Sartaj thought – a little afraid. It was time for a bit of the old police lathi. He leaned forward, and stared at her until she began to shift about on her pretty Mughal-style divan. The hostility in his eyes came easily when he summoned it, it swept from some endless reservoir of contempt for wrongdoers and rule-breakers, and he knew it was also tightening his shoulders and colouring his cheeks. ‘Why two video cameras, madam? Why do you need so many?’

  ‘I paid for the new one on a credit card, you can see…’

  ‘That is not what I asked. What do you use the cameras for?’

  ‘Like you said, celebrations. When we go on holidays. Like that.’

  ‘Have you given a camera to anyone else? Lent it?’

  ‘No. But why are you asking?’

  ‘There is a case of blackmail I am investigating. A video camera was used.’ He watched her carefully, and now he was sure that he had struck some potentially rich seam of fear. She was at the edge of the divan now, deportment forgotten. ‘There is some indication that you may be connected to the case.’

  ‘Me? How? What are you talking about?’

  Sartaj shook his head. ‘Madam, better that you do the talking now.’

  Rachel wanted to, he could see that, but she grasped one hand over the other and swallowed and finally sputtered, ‘I have nothing to say.’

  He was sure she had heard the line in some TV serial. He stood up. He wasn’t going to get a full confession just by showing up at a suspect’s house. It had been known to occur, but it wasn’t going to happen with this one. They would need to apply more pressure, perhaps with hard evidence picked up elsewhere. Meanwhile Rachel Mathias would worry herself into a nerve-racked condition of fear ripe for breaking. ‘As you wish,’ Sartaj said. ‘Here is my card. Please call me if you change your mind.’

  On his way to the door, Sartaj saw, on a marble-topped table, a picture of two boys laughing against a background of green mountains. ‘Your sons,’ he said. ‘Very nice-looking boys.’

  But this only seemed to frighten Rachel even further. She flinched. Sartaj was enjoying himself now. ‘And not a bad frame either,’ he said. ‘Silver, and quite heavy. An antique, unless I’m mistaken. And even if I am, still expensive.’ He ran a finger over the broad-leafed vine that ran around the edges of the frame, and then left her with, ‘We will be watching your house.’

  In the lift he felt quite victorious. This was an interesting suspect, this woman who had remade herself after being abandoned by her husband, who had constructed a new life. Who were the co-conspirators who were making the calls to Kamala? How had she found them, hired them? It would be interesting to find out.

  Sartaj and Kamble were walking opposite sides of the street in front of the Apsara cinema, at rush hour. They were looking for Kamala Pandey’s urchin, a boy of indeterminate age and appearance who wore a red DKNY JEANS T-shirt, who had been attired in red when he had picked up blackmail cash from her a month and a half ago, who carried a black tooth in his mouth. Kamble had been sceptical about their possibilities of success, and sulky, but they were out here looking. It was almost six, and the crowd shifted and swarmed over the pavements. The car horns made a fanfare that lifted Sartaj’s heart. Pyaar ka Diya was the movie showing at Apsara, and it was a hit. Sartaj could feel it in the relaxed, post-climactic ease of the viewers coming out of the cinema, and in the happy eagerness of those going in. In this Apsara, on this evening at least, the flame of love still alight. Sartaj edged sideways through a gaggle of sharp-looking collegians dialling busily on their mobile phones. ‘Jhakaas movie, yaar,’ one of them said into his phone.

  There were beggar boys and girls working the crowd, holding up their hands and trying out their patter. ‘Hello, Aunty, give me something, only one rupee, aunty. One rupee, Aunty, I’m very hungry. Please, Aunty.’ The chokras wore a variety of ragged shirts and banians, but no red T-shirt. Sartaj made his way down the road, all the way to the corner where the crowd thinned, and then he came back. He knew already the faces of the black-marketeers, who strolled the pavement with their own pitch: ‘Bolo, balcony two-fifty, stall one-fifty.’

  Kamble came across the road, dodging through the cars. He was in full black today, including new black shoes with some sort of silver lining on their complicated heels. He raised his chin at Sartaj, and Sartaj shrugged. ‘No?’ Kamble said. ‘I saw three red T-shirts, but not on any chokra. One was a nice little round item, hair down to her gaand, and these…’ He raised his cupped hands in front of his chest. ‘Nice. You saw the blackies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s also a toli of pocket-maars on that side. See the chutiya in the blue pants? He’s the talker. Then over there on the left, the old man with the newspaper? No, no, there. He’s the lifter.’ There was a clean-shaven grandfather type in a very respectable and crisp white shirt moving inconspicuously along. ‘Then, over there, that’s the hand-off man.’ This one was younger, slim and dashing in dark glasses and a loose grey shirt. ‘Ah, there they go.’

  Blue pants stepped up to a family party, mother and executive father and two children, and spoke to the father. Asked him directions, it looked like. The father was pointing up the road, making hand motions, go right, go left. Blue pants touched him on the shoulder, thank you. And at that very moment the grandfather made his move, stepped past the father and behind him.

  ‘Got it,’ Kamble said. ‘Did you see it? He got the wallet.’ His voice was tight with admiration.

  Sartaj had seen a movement of the grandfather’s hand between the bodies, that was all. ‘Budhau is very good,’ he said. ‘Daddy doesn’t know it yet.’

  ‘He won’t know until he tries to pay for ice-cream. I hope he doesn’t have the cinema tickets in the wallet. Ah, there’s the hand-off.’ The grandfather and dark glasses moved past each other, their shoulders brushed. Dark glasses strolled away, the wallet already under his shirt. ‘Do we go?’ Kamble said. ‘Let’s get the bastards.’

  ‘No, leave it. We have other things to worry about.’ An arrest or two was always welcome, but Sartaj didn’t want to cause a commotion in front of the chokras. Any of them could be the boy in the red T-shirt. Sartaj didn’t want to be revealed as a policeman until they had him.

  ‘We’re not going to get the red T-shirt boy like this,’ Kamble said. ‘Let’s catch up a couple of his friends. There’s a lot of the little bastards running around. We’ll ask them. Two minutes and two slaps and they’ll talk.’

  ‘And maybe the
y won’t. In any case, you’ll send him running all the way to Nashik. Have patience, my friend. He’s a poor boy who lives on the streets. He’ll wear his red T-shirt tomorrow, if not today.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe he bought a new blue one with the money the apradhis gave him. But how long do we stay?’

  ‘Until the rush is over. Another half an hour. When the public leaves, we leave.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Hold on for a minute.’ Sartaj reached into his pocket and brought out his phone, now looking a little worn. He tapped at the tiny black keys. ‘Hello, saab?’

  ‘Sartaj. How are you?’ Parulkar said.

  ‘I’m good,’ Sartaj said. ‘I am following an investigation, sir, and I need some help.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m in Goregaon, sir. At a cinema. There’s a team of pocket-maars working the crowd, an old fellow with two boys. The lifter is the old one, maybe sixty-five, seventy. He’s very good.’

  Parulkar was quiet, for a moment. One of his many policing talents was that he had a memory like one of Yama’s assistants, he never forgot a crime, not even the smallest one. He remembered apradhis from forty years ago, could tell you their family histories. A boy who stole a bicycle for a joyride found his misdemeanour written down permanently in the inescapable registers of Parulkar’s recollection, to be brought up again when he was a grandfather. ‘This pocket-maar,’ Parulkar said now, ‘is he bald? Heavy-set fellow?’

  ‘No, sir. White hair, nice neat haircut. Very respectable-looking.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Five seven, five eight? Stoops a little to the front, like he’s about to collapse?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He looks very harmless.’

  ‘That’s Jayanth. K.R. Jayanth. He’s got great hands. We only arrested him twice, in seventy-nine and eighty-two. He lived in Dharavi then, used to work the trains on the western line, with a first-class pass. He wore very serious-looking glasses, carried a briefcase and everything. He got his son out to the US, through Mexico I think. The son worked as a taxi-driver, got a green card. Jayanth said he was making eighty thousand dollars a year, as a driver. He told me he himself had retired. This was in eighty-eight, eighty-nine. I haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘He’s working again, sir.’

  Parulkar chortled. ‘It’s hard to sit at home, you know, after retirement. And this Jayanth has a lot of skill. Not many like him left nowadays. Now they all want to do smash and grab. Nobody has that dedication any more.’

  ‘That’s true, sir.’

  Sartaj thanked Parulkar and tucked the phone away. Kamble had figured out some of Parulkar’s information from what he had half-heard, and Sartaj filled him in on the rest of it. ‘Maderchod,’ Kamble said, ‘that Parulkar is good.’

  ‘Yes. He is the best.’

  ‘And on his way up again. He’s like some circus jhamoora, you knock him down flat, he pops up straight.’

  ‘He’s very skilled, Kamble. Very experienced and very cunning.’

  ‘Of course he’s cunning, my friend, he’s a Brahmin. He’s a Brahmin and he’s got cunning and resources and family in good places.’

  Sartaj laughed. ‘And you are just a simple dehati boy?’ Kamble was a Dalit, and he never brought it up, but he sometimes had things to say about OBCs and Marathas and Brahmins.

  ‘I am learning, Sardar-ji, I am learning from people like Parulkar only.’ Kamble was grinning now. ‘The word is that he’s distanced himself from the Suleiman Isa company, and has aligned himself with the Rakshaks. After so many years of being close to the S-Company, he has completely defected to the other side. So that’s why the Rakshaks love him suddenly. Is this true?’

  Sartaj had heard this rumour also. He shrugged. ‘You’ll have to ask him.’

  ‘Boss, no need to ask. He has taught me a lot already. I have already learnt that you get the money, you make the connections, you rise up, you make more money, more connections, you then get real power, then you make more money, then you…’

  ‘I get it,’ Sartaj said. ‘I get it, guru.’

  ‘No, no, I am nobody’s guru, not yet. But Parulkar Saab is my guru, even if he doesn’t know it. I am like Eklavya, except that I am going to keep my thumb and my lauda and every other maderchod thing.’ Kamble’s smile was now at its widest and most ferocious.

  Sartaj couldn’t help smiling back. Kamble had a way of being deadly serious and sunny at the same time. He was a self-proclaimed badmash, but he was a charming one. ‘Let’s get back to work.’

  But Kamble hooked his thumbs into his belt-loops and rocked back and forth on his heels. He was looking down at his scientific shoes. ‘Boss,’ he said finally, ‘do you really think there’s a bomb in the city?’

  Sartaj had told Kamble about Gaitonde’s nuclear shelter on their way to Apsara. He had felt very afraid, in the slanting afternoon sun, and he had wanted to tell someone, and Katekar was dead. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe Gaitonde thought there was some danger from a bomb.’

  ‘But that was months ago. If they wanted to blow us up, they would have done it months and months ago. One day, phataak, just like that. We’re still here, so that means there’s no bomb.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds logical.’ It was good logic. Maybe Gaitonde had had an urgent threat perception. But time had passed, and Gaitonde was dead, and the threat hadn’t materialized. So maybe he had been deceived, maybe he had gone mad. ‘No bomb, yaar.’

  ‘Crazy idea.’

  Kamble nodded at Sartaj, and Sartaj nodded back at him. Then Kamble went back to his side of the street. Sartaj did another sweep up the pavement, edging diagonally to the wall and then back to the road as he walked. He knew they had been trying to reassure each other with all their nodding, and he knew that they both were afraid. They were both policemen, and they knew that disaster didn’t announce itself and act in predictable ways, like in the movies. There was that woman who went to Bandra Reclamation with her family to a fun fair. The kids wanted to go on the Giant Wheel, so the doting parents went along. The mother was young, pretty and very proud of her perfect, long, deep-black radiant hair. On this Sunday she had it open down to her waist, falling like a fragrant fountain. The wheel took them up, the wheel sped up, the wheel made the mother’s hair fly, the wheel took the mother’s hair around a turning spoke, and the wheel ripped the mother’s whole scalp off. Or, you were a father close to retirement, you would be going about your business one day, quietly buying vegetables and chocolate, and an electrician’s wrench would drop off the seventeenth floor of a new Daihatsu building, bounce through two layers of scaffolding, plummet and bury itself in your skull. That had happened in Worli, when Sartaj had been a two-month sub-inspector. Bombs went off as abruptly. You couldn’t feel their presence before they exploded, they didn’t give you a tingle on your forearms, they had no smell. There had also been that day, that long-ago Friday in 1993, when the phones had started to ring in the station at Worli. And Sartaj had sped out on his motorcycle, followed by a van, and had driven over pavements, past the stalled traffic, towards the Passport Office. There were men and women walking, running and then walking again. And a thick grey smoke ahead, a silence without birds. Sartaj kicked down the bike-stand, and ran down the road, past a green Fiat exposing its rusty innards like a tipped-over crab. Then his feet began slipping, and he looked down, and he was walking on blood, splashing through it.

  Stop it. Just stop it. Sartaj cracked his knuckles, and the small pops brought him back to the pavement where he was walking now, to Apsara and Pyaar ka Diya and its posters, in which the lead pair paid tribute to the bent-back Raj-Nargis pose from Awaara. Concentrate on the problem at hand, Sartaj told himself. Do the job. Watch the crowd, look closely at the faces. Sartaj did that, but he was unable to rid himself completely of the memories, of the body parts which had been littered through the wreckage. An upper arm, a foot. Yes, bombs just went off. They exploded. Sartaj reached the end of his beat, and turned around and did it again.

  Kamble came
back across the road a little before the half-hour was up. The public had been mostly sucked into Apsara, or they had gone home, but some of the chokras were still hanging about. Sartaj watched Kamble stepping across the divider, and worried about his lack of patience. Strength was good to have, and courage was sometimes necessary, but the main requirement of the job was to be able to spend countless hours completing small, boring, maybe meaningless tasks. Katekar, now, would never have wanted to leave Apsara so early. But Katekar was dead.

  ‘Do you think the kattus did it?’ Kamble said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bomb. If there’s a bomb in the city, it’s got to be the Muslims who brought it in.’

  ‘Yes. That is true. It must be the Muslims.’

  ‘So let’s go and talk to this Zoya kutiya. Maybe she knows something. If we go straight to her house, she can’t turn us away. After all, we’re policemen.’

  After all. That was true. ‘Calm down. There’s no use rushing in. We have time. You said it yourself, it has been months. If there is even a bomb, it hasn’t gone off yet. It’s not going to go off tonight. Or tomorrow morning.’

  Kamble spat into the gutter. He stretched his shoulders back. ‘Of course. I’m not saying that. But we could just go and talk to the randi. So what if she’s acting like one big film star? That’s all she is, one randi. Anyway, you page me and tell me when we need action.’

  ‘I will. We can’t summon her to the station, we have limitations. So we have to figure out an approach to her. We don’t want to scare her.’

  ‘Fine, fine. Are we finished here? I’m going to find myself a woman. Too much bomb tension, bhai saab.’

  ‘Just one more minute. I have an idea.’ Sartaj was watching, across the road, K.R. Jayanth the distinguished pocket-maar strolling towards the bus stop, licking at an ice-cream cone. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to give themselves a little after-work treat. ‘Come on.’