Truth Lake

by Shakuntala Banaji

  Quick identification was improbable at this stage, though he was convinced that the corpse had not been in such a state ten days back. Apart from the skull trauma, which had led to severe bleeding, there appeared to be no major contusions on the corpse; the way in which the body had deteriorated suggested that it had been lying on its front for some period before it was turned to the position in which he'd found it. This implied that the British youngsters may have handled it, had not simply run screaming, had perhaps taken the time to turn it over.

  Had they recognised this man?

  He felt weak and unable to concentrate. He had seen corpses before – listening to the jargon-filled verbiage of Dumajit, the ‘tame’ forensic pathologist whom Hàrélal favoured – and the smell of this one was less potent than that of some he had encountered; but the fingers, with their swollen, mottled flesh and indents of bone, were gruesome enough to make him wish the task at an end.

  He took photographs and collected samples of soil from around the body. Although he had a penchant for working alone, he had never done so before without the awareness that a team awaited him and would test his theories against their specialist knowledge; it grieved him to admit that, almost always, his findings were called into question for political reasons, even when he knew them to be accurate. So now he was alone: and no one would be able to challenge or check him.

  Seated on the damp leafy soil next to his mournful companion, Karmel removed chewing gum from his pack and unwrapped a piece. Popping it into his mouth, he began to plan ahead.

  He would leave the body where it was for the present and return to wrap sterile plastic sheeting around it on the morrow; after securing it, he would have to make a different journey to the one intended, for he had to find some means of contacting Hàrélal. Now that he had done part of his job and found the body, he felt less in need of guidance than before but he knew that Hàrélal would be frantic for his return and would hopefully argue that it could now become an official murder investigation whatever Mr Sinbari had to say about keeping things private. Jurisdictional issues would come into play and local officers would be dispatched to question the villagers. He would be released to return to Delhi. He looked forward to interviewing the tourists again and felt sure that he would get more out of them.

  A light drizzle had begun to fall and he had barely noticed the growing dampness around him and the passing of the sun during his strenuous cataloguing. Now, seated in the gloom of the riverbank, he felt unprotected and chilled.

  Karmel's thoughts stayed on Sinbari and the young travellers Adam and Sara. He felt unsettled every time he thought of them and his conviction that more deception was afoot became strong at the precise moment when he heard what he thought was a muffled cry. Almost choking on his flavourless chewing gum, he jumped to his feet.

  The noise that had startled him was not repeated but he continued to look around him with apprehension. Concealing the body once more by laying leaves lightly beside and over it, he marked its position on his quickly sketched map of the area and began to retreat up the mountain. Raindrops thickened as he walked and at first their growing patter comforted him. Then there was a louder snapping sound behind him and he turned fiercely to glimpse a hooded figure sliding between two heavily burdened trees.

  Brushing aside the flowers he set off in pursuit but came upon nothing. Panting, he stood still and listened. All around him the grim little strike and trickle of rain and the hiss of the earth as it ate up its due was the only refrain. He took a step, felt someone touch his shoulder and heard, simultaneously, a sighing, in-drawn breath. Refusing to be intimidated he whirled around to face his tormentor but found only heavy bunches of pink flowers, sweet and limp in his face.

  After that he resolutely stalked upwards, refusing to see or hear anything. Whatever or whoever was following him could come and club him over the head or tear out his entrails for all he cared. In the aftermath of fear, wasted adrenaline curdled in his bloodstream. He was sick of this woeful place with its solemn women and its funereal flowers. Quite prematurely, as it turned out, he decided he would be on his way back down to the plains within twenty-four hours.

  A sense of relief crept over Karmel when he saw the outlying huts of Saahitaal before him. His watch said it was only four in the afternoon but the great masses of cloud swinging low across the lake had almost shrouded the village too. It was not raining hard but there was a general air of humidity and dampness about the whole village.

  He passed several women and children sitting on steps or in doorways; one was stitching something with a quick flicking movement of the wrist, in out in out; he could see her with his peripheral vision long after he had passed. None of them greeted him, but all stared as he passed them and again he fancied there was something malevolent in their eyes, as if he were an unwelcome interloper. He had not eaten due to the discovery he had made and his stomach churned with acid tension.

  Once inside his bare cabin he castigated himself for being so paranoid. Throwing himself fully clothed onto his sleeping bag and the string cot, he tried to still his mind and find some peace.

  He did not consider himself a religious man. Although rules at the Manek Foundation had included a strict regimen of prayer and fasting for all the boys, he had never fully engaged with any of the rituals. They touched him in some way but none had ever entered his soul. Many of the elders along his path of self-improvement had wished to gather from him some promise of fidelity to one of the Gods so frequently called upon for guidance and aid. Mrs Letti, who had fed and educated him when he was thirteen because kindness was in her bones, had begged him to become a disciple of the almighty and worship Yesu, son of God and Mary, his blessed mother. Hàrélal too, often held forth about his wife's guru; but Karmel resolutely stopped himself from hearing. Now he wished he had taken their advice, for he felt afraid, stripped to the kind of loneliness that one can seldom experience in a great teeming city. The absolute mystery of his parentage, his lack of siblings, wife, children or family pressed upon him a kind of isolation without boundaries. He fell into sleep like a young child, hugging himself, and woke many hours later in the darkness to feel the weight of someone else's arms around him.

  13

  Hugging herself as if she was cold, Sara faced the two Goan police officers. 'Sara Ann McMeckan. Capital M.'

  'Your date of birth? Just for the record, ma’am, could you say it instead of pointing? Okay now. Let's just get a few little things cleared up, shall we.'

  'Uh huh, that's why I'm here, to “clear things up”.’

  'All right, no reason to get sarcastic with us.' This last was said with a smile that took the sting out of the words but Sara had anger in her eyes anyway.

  'Ask me anything.'

  'Well, you came to us, ma’am. Why don't you just get it off your chest?’ His eyes did not even flicker towards her body, so why did she feel so vulnerable?

  ‘But perhaps we could start with what it was you failed to tell the police in Delhi.' DC Mazumdar named the city as if it was an uncomfortable size for his mouth, almost as if he would spit it out if he could.

  Sara started her tale just as she had done three weeks previously with Detective Karmel, who had been so courteous towards her. Meanwhile Adam, bored after six hours on the beach, was biting his nails and craving cold beer.

  'And this watch you took from the body – can we have it?'

  'Here.' She slipped the watch out of her pocket and handed it to the detective who placed it on the table between them and said loudly – Miss McMeckan has just handed over an analogue watch, metal-plated.'

  'I never thought . . . we were so scared. We thought we would be . . . ' She stopped.

  'Was this man your boyfriend, Sara?' Inspector Ribera spoke for the first time. Her voice was low and musical, a complete contrast to her accent, which Sara found difficult to comprehend.

  'Things are complicated.' Sara paused. 'Are you sure that none of this'll get back to Adam, I mean Mr Loach?'


  'We can't promise you anything ma’am, but we'll do our best.'

  'Well, Cameron is . . . was . . . very handsome, very charming. I'd met him when I came to university and we became friends. We hung out a lot. I kind of . . . We'd er . . .we were er. . . '

  'Sleeping together, is that what you mean?' Sara fancied that there was contempt for her written onto both their faces. She was furious.

  ' – engaged to be married!’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘I gave him the watch.'

  'You?'

  'Yes, if you look on the other side you'll see . . .' Ribera nodded to Mazumdar to turn it over. Mazumdar shook out his handkerchief and did so, gingerly, reading the inscription. 'That's from you is it, Miss McMecken?'

  'Yes.'

  'Go on. I can tell you have not yet got it all off your chest.' This from Ribera.

  'Oh god! Adam didn't know about this and he's also . . . '

  'Carrying a torch for you? Romantically involved?' Both detectives looked up, the apparent sympathy on their faces so slight that it could have been genuine.

  'For me?' Sara sounded uncertain, confused.

  'Is young Mr Loach in love with you? Is that why you've played this big charade with the watch and all? Are you protecting him? Maybe you would like to marry him now that your Cameron has gone?'

  'No! No, certainly he isn't in love with me! Nor I with him! He . . . He was mad about Cam. I mean Cameron.'

  'Mad as in angry or mad as in…?' The woman was implacable. Sara fought for self-control.

  'I think they'd been in a relationship – when they were at school. Long time ago.' Both detectives released audible sighs. They didn't raise their eyebrows, but Sara felt as if they had.

  'Ah, he was that way. A homo huh? So what's the problem, Miss McMeckan? Why did you withhold evidence from Delhi police? Did you or Adam identify your friend's remains? Did you verify the position with the local consulate? The boy's family … think of them. Couldn't you find it in your hearts to put them out of their misery?' The inspector shot all this at her with incredible speed. Sara felt disgusted. Humiliated. Stupefied.

  'I er. . . . we never felt . . . We weren't sure. It could've been someone else's body … maybe they stole his watch?' Her speculation was greeted with silence. She rubbed her lips with a finger. Her face felt itchy, dry, full of heat.

  'You're right. We knew it was him. We should have said something back in Delhi. We thought they might implicate us if we told them it was Cameron.'

  'And why would that be? Ogch, so stupid we are, us Indian police!'

  'I've had enough. . . Enough! Can I have a lawyer?' She gasped at last and closed her eyes before starting to cry.

  The inspector nodded to her colleague and left the room. Detective Mazumdar switched off the tape and handed Sara a strangely old fashioned green melamine phone. 'Go ahead, miss, make your arrangements,' he said, completely bland and friendly, as if they'd been having a chat about a train timetable. Sara sobbed and sobbed. When she was finally able to stop her tears, she whispered, 'I don't need a lawyer. Why was she so angry. . . ? I've told you everything I know!'

  'Not quite.' DC Mazumdar was leaning away from her in an unthreatening, waiting kind of way. The tape machine was silent. The room with its stark white paint, lack of windows and scuffed chairs seemed less claustrophobic, more intimate. Entirely forgetting that her words were being recorded and her expressions monitored by the seemingly relaxed officer, Sara felt comforted and safer.

  'How do you mean? Do I know something else? Please explain.' He seemed to think for a moment and then, leaning towards her confidentially, asked, 'What can you tell us about the connection between your friend Cameron Croft and Mister Antonio Sinbari?

  *

  Sinbari was alone. Sadrettin had departed, with Rimi Charoot and Nelson Cornell and a couple of others, on his mission to the hills.

  For a while he remained seated in his cool office, pondering the day's hectic business meetings and listening to the bubbling of air through the fish tank that was so harmoniously placed against the far wall. Then his contemplation moved to a photograph of his son, Vincent, on the desk before him and a smaller unframed one of his wife, Elisa, tucked into the frame of the former.

  They were both so far away: she, having refused to relocate with him when he decided to run his Indian empire in person and now estranged from him by distance, religion and experience; Vincent, because he did not comprehend the value of commerce, of the money that his father perpetually coveted, and seemed to feel instead a detached contempt for it and for all the other accoutrements of business and power which meant so much to his parents. The boy's loathing reminded him of his own growing distaste for European life, his sense of contentment when he found himself back in India where he felt himself to be revered, and – failing that – feared, by all who knew him. Unlike most of his successful contemporaries, Antonio Sinbari had little interest in returning to his own country. He had always had a penchant for games – especially the kind that meant he could meddle in politics without staking anything and in people's lives without jeopardising his own or ever having to consult that faint and skeletal echo which used to be known, in more religious times, as a conscience.

  Italy, for all its labyrinthine political games, was dangerous territory. And so he compromised by leaving his Italian domain to Elisa, morbidly religious and formal as she had become, in the hope that power would compensate her for the husband she so rarely saw. He did love his wife and son, in his own way, but thinking about them did not make him happy. For such a man, India, with all its social fragmentation, bureaucracy and corruption, was a perfect playing field.

  Having contemplated for a long enough period of time, he felt a need for action. He had finally managed to get his Himalayan team off to a good start. What a bore that Sadrettin was becoming restive. The boy would have to be diverted, somehow. Now, however, Antonio was ready to do battle for his new idea, his little piece of mountain paradise that was, as yet, undiscovered, he hoped, by any but those naïve students and Cameron – the extraordinary disappearing architect. In a good mood, he found himself feeling mildly curious about what had happened to his first and only emissary on this long-harboured, secretly brewed project. Was Cameron’s really the corpse so unceremoniously abandoned by those silly British youth? Or could he have done battle over some Himalayan beauty only to find himself too powerful an adversary and the man before him slain? It was all so intriguing. Danté would not have constructed it better. Whatever had happened, it was all to the good. But he had no interest in allowing his connection with Cameron to become public knowledge. Or not just as yet. A scandal, judiciously revealed, which drew attention to his little paradise place but maximum scrutiny to bureaucratic errors, would be just the thing he needed to convince the Indian Government that a more formal tourist complex was crucial for the survival of young foreigners in those hills. India should be glad of any investments made on its soil, given its humiliating international record.

  Dismissing his secretary early, he logged onto the Internet. He scanned local and international headlines, listened to current marketing forecasts and accessed his mail. It took him less than a minute to realise that someone had accessed his files without authorisation and purged some of them. Like Sadrettin, he too was unaware of the backup directory and, as he usually left all complicated computer work to others, he was generally naïve about the ways in which such technology worked. His tanned wrists jerked spasmodically as he clicked and scrolled and clicked. There was a sound in the room and he spun round to see the office cleaners waiting respectfully by the door with their equipment.

  His face grew pale and he clenched his teeth in disbelief when he realised just which files had been deleted.

  *

  At that precise moment Karmel too had gone pale. Shrinking from the unknown embrace, he had tried to make out the contours of the other person's body without waking them. Of one thing he'd felt guiltily certain: this
person was not Thahéra. Having breathed in her scent of wood-smoke and sweat, he knew that he wasn't mistaken. The figure clinging to his back smelt of earth and water, a sad, outdoors smell.

  Initially only partially awake, Karmel had felt curiously lethargic, at peace, and almost drifted back to sleep; only the thought of Thahéra who would appear soon, bearing his tray of food, stirred him to action. He'd rolled over and sat up, dropping his feet gently to the ground. The shock of icy damp mud against his soles caused him to cry out. Then he knew, and the knowledge drained all strength from his limbs.

  Whether it was the fact that his movement made no difference to the person or that his conscious mind finally made connections with the smell, he wasn't sure, but he raced in panic around the cabin, banging his shins on the trunk and stumbling over his own belongings until he had located his pack. Yanking the strings apart he rummaged inside and exhaled in relief when his fist closed around the handle of his precious flashlight. Cursing the foreigners for getting him into this horrific situation and himself for not being more careful, he directed its powerful beam towards the bed. His intuition was confirmed: there on its side, and now almost pathetic in remnants of nudity and rags, lay the white man's corpse.

  14

  Karmel sagged to the ground, not faint now, just mystified. He did not scream, as many would have done; nor did he wish to leave his tiny cabin and its forlorn occupant; but he did feel acutely puzzled and more than a little angered by this threat – if threat it was.

  He knew that it was vital for him to rid the cabin of the body before anyone arrived. Even if someone suspected what his mission was, he still hoped to keep it from public knowledge for a few more days. He wrapped the hideous corpse in a huge film of clear plastic and then in a shroud of sackcloth that he had brought with him in just such an eventuality. Anyone from the village or from another village in the surrounding area might have watched him in the past two days. Perhaps someone had followed him all the way from Delhi, but that seemed almost laughable. Or someone might have become suspicious as he asked directions and decided to follow him during the past week – in which case he had other villages to worry about and even less chance of discovering the grim jester.