A Cut-Like Wound

by Anita Nair

  Gowda grinned.

  ‘What about some touchings?’ Stanley said, drinking deeply of his rum and Coke.

  Gowda brought a plate of chakli and peanuts and settled back in his armchair.

  ‘Shall we?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought this was a social call…’ Stanley sniffed.

  ‘We can socialize after we figure this out,’ Gowda said.

  ‘Fine.’ Stanley sighed.

  They got to work piecing together the murder. It began with a young man thrown out of his job.

  Mohan must have left the restaurant at 9.30 p.m. He shared a small house with three other boys from Kerala in Kammanahalli. He didn’t go back to his room however.

  Someone saw him board a Volvo bus that went to Hebbal. It was only logical to assume that he would have got off at either 80 Feet Road, Kalyan Nagar or Hennur Cross.

  ‘The bus ride from Marathahalli to Hennur Cross takes forty-five minutes, give or take a few minutes,’ Gowda said.

  What had happened thereafter?

  A call had come to the restaurant manager at a little past one. ‘He is dead; Mohan’s dead,’ a voice had said. But the man woken out of sleep had slammed down the phone in disgust. The little cocksucker was now trying to make him feel guilty, he decided, turning over to sleep. The manager had revealed as much when he was picked up for questioning by the CCB men.

  ‘In keeping with the calls that had been made to friends or family of the other targets. The murderer had a twisted sense of conscientiousness. It wasn’t enough to merely murder, he felt the need to inform so that the body wouldn’t remain untraced,’ Stanley said.

  ‘The estimated time of death is between eleven and eleven thirty. So we can assume that his last meal was eaten in the vicinity. Let’s say, a radius of four kilometres,’ Gowda said, circling a zone on the city map.

  ‘How many restaurants do you have there that serve Kerala food?’ Stanley asked.

  Gowda shrugged. ‘Quite a few!’ He put his hand to his mouth and stifled a yawn.

  Stanley looked thoughtfully at the diagram. ‘So what are we looking at?’ he asked.

  ‘The first thing to do is to make a quick round of all the possible eating places and see if anyone remembers him,’ Gowda said.

  ‘I’ll ask Santosh to take a couple of constables and a photo of the deceased. I’ll ask them to go to every eating place that sells Kerala food within this zone,’ he said, tracing the circle on the map, ‘and ask around. Waiters. Cleaners. The manager. Parking attendants. Paanwallahs nearby. Let them check if he’s been to any of those places. Who he was with, and for how long. This is going to pace up the investigation, Stanley.’

  ‘Gowda, wait, I don’t think Santosh should do this. I’ll have to send my men,’ Stanley said. ‘You know this is technically our case now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Gowda growled.

  Stanley shrugged. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Gowda looked away, too angry to speak. It was like that bloody story about the Arab and the camel all over again. He felt like the guileless Arab who had allowed the camel to stick its head through the flap of the tent so that it may keep itself warm. Before the Arab knew what was happening, the camel had taken over the tent and he was out shivering in the cold desert wind.

  SUNDAY, 21 AUGUST

  Gowda was in a little teashop in a shadowed alley that he didn’t recognize. Urmila sat across the wooden table with a scarred white Formica top. Overhead, an old ceiling fan whirred slowly. He smiled at her. He watched as she smiled back, raised the chipped teacup and dropped it on the floor. The cup smashed into shards of white porcelain. The tea splashed his shoes and formed a puddle of milky brown. ‘What the fuck, U?’ Gowda began and felt his words escape him as Santosh and the corporator walked towards them.

  Then, to his horror, Urmila reached for his cup brimming with tea and dropped it on the floor. The splintering sound of the cup filled his ears. All of them laughed at his consternation. The corporator, Santosh and Urmila, and was that Dr Reddy and his two ghoulish assistants behind them? Peals and peals of laughter that turned into a whickering note of mirth that drew closer and closer until it seemed to buzz through his ears. Gowda woke up, startled to hear the doorbell ringing through the house.

  He sat up, feeling like he had trudged up a mountain. Breathless, his heart racing, his eyes clouding over. He glanced at his watch on the bedside table. Quarter to nine. Shanthi had asked for the day off. Had she changed her mind?

  He ran his fingers through his hair and went to the door. ‘I thought you said you wanted a day off,’ he said as he opened the latch.

  Urmila stood there with a grin. ‘If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain … etc’

  He gaped.

  ‘I dreamt of you,’ he said nonplussed.

  She stared at him. ‘If anyone else had said that to me, I would have presumed that he was hitting on me. What were you dreaming of?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s complicated … sort of disjointed. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I thought I’d surprise you. It’s a Sunday and you said your maid had the day off. So…’ The confidence in her voice seemed to be dipping by the syllable.

  ‘Come in,’ he said.

  She followed him into the living room, which was a mess of dirty glasses, abandoned food and empty bottles. She wrinkled her nose. ‘Late night?’

  He grinned sheepishly. ‘Stanley, do you remember him? Stanley Sagayaraj, the basketball captain … he is in the police force too. He’s with the CCB and we are working on a case and we decided to bring the discussion here…’

  ‘And did it get anywhere?’ she asked, picking up the glasses.

  He stared at her for a moment. ‘Not really,’ he said, the grimness of his tone making her look up.

  She put down the glasses and went to him. She placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  He turned his head and, on an impulse, kissed her fingers. ‘No … but I am glad you are here.’

  She smiled and nuzzled her cheek against his arm. ‘Go take a shower. I’ll make you some tea and something to eat.’

  ‘A shower would be a good idea if it worked. Mine hasn’t for god knows how long!’

  She pushed him towards what she presumed was his bedroom. ‘Go!’

  Gowda stepped into the bathroom. He looked ruefully up at the shower. One of these days he would get around to sorting it out. All it needed was half an hour of a plumber’s time and he could have long hot showers. In the meantime, he would have to make do with a bucket bath.

  Gowda turned the tap on and adjusted the hot and cold streams. The water filled the bucket, splattering the silence of the house. He wondered what Urmila was doing. He hummed under his breath. He could hear his phone ring in the bedroom. He dipped the blue plastic mug into the bucket and threw water on himself. But the phone kept trilling, ruining the pleasure of water sluicing his skin. If he had been under a shower … no matter what, he would get the shower fixed this week, he decided.

  Urmila was making toast on the cast-iron griddle when he walked into the kitchen. ‘You don’t have a toaster,’ she said. ‘So it will have to be tawa toast for you…’

  He saw that she had opened the cabinets and found the porcelain plates. At her home, perhaps only the help and the dogs ate off steel.

  He shrugged. ‘You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. Shanthi must have left something in the fridge. Some food I can warm up…’

  She didn’t respond and continued to butter his toast. He watched, amused. ‘I can butter my own bread,’ he said.

  She looked at him steadily. ‘Really?’

  He flushed.

  ‘Good?’ she asked, watching him eat.

  He nodded. Her masala omelette melted in his mouth and the toast was precisely how he liked it: not too brown, but with a decided crunch and buttered liberally, so it flooded his mouth with an oozy, silky saltiness.

  ‘Thank you,’ he
said, sipping his tea, strong and not too sweet, again just as he liked it.

  ‘What now?’ she asked. Unspoken questions hovered in the air.

  ‘We are going to sit in adjoining chairs in the living room and read the newspapers. And when it’s eleven, we’ll open a couple of beers and then I am going to take care of some unfinished business with you.’

  She frowned. ‘What unfinished business?’

  He laughed and reached for her. ‘Actually the newspapers and beer can wait. What can’t is this…’

  She giggled against his chest. ‘But you just had breakfast…’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So nothing,’ she said.

  He pulled her up towards him but it was she who found his mouth.

  ‘You taste delicious,’ she murmured. ‘Of hot buttery toast.’

  Gowda thought he had never heard anything more erotic in his life. Fuck, here he was wondering how he was going to make that first move and she was already taking him into some other realm of desire.

  Her fingers crawled over his chest, snapping open the buttons on his shirt.

  ‘Hey, that’s what I should be doing…’ he protested, grabbing her hand. ‘Technically, the man ought to undress the woman first.’

  ‘Fuck technicalities, Borei,’ she murmured.

  ‘Mmm … the girl likes to talk dirty.’ He grinned. ‘One wouldn’t have thought that of Lady Deviah.’

  ‘Are we going to stand here talking all morning?’ she said, leading him by the hand to his bedroom.

  Who paused at the doorway? She or he?

  Suddenly it didn’t matter. The need to feel skin against skin overrode all other thought as he turned and, with an almost superhuman effort, lifted her in his arms and took her instead to the guest bedroom. Damn, he thought, as his breath whistled in his chest. How did those heroes in movies do it with such effortless ease?

  So this was how love could be made, Gowda thought, as laughter punctuated the waves of passion. Joyous, glorious joy that edged the crest of pure sensation as her mouth found his again and again. As her caresses evoked in him a need to respond and raise her to abject surrender.

  She wasn’t shy; in fact, it was Gowda who felt as if he was the novice as she taught him all the ways in which he could pleasure her. She led him on a voyage of discovery of his own body and hers. When he poised himself above her, she pushed him down and straddled him, letting her breasts swing in his face. He watched her draw pleasure with an abandon that aroused him as much as her low throaty moans.

  Suddenly she leaned forward and licked the sweat off his face.

  Gowda groaned and gave himself up to her, to the rush of sensations that pumped through him, one after the other.

  When Gowda opened his eyes, she was sitting at his side, watching him.

  She touched the tattoo on his arm. ‘I didn’t ever think I would go to bed with a man who has a tattoo.’ She smiled.

  He smiled back. He didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’ he asked, trailing a finger down her arm.

  ‘I had some unfinished business,’ she said, echoing him from a while ago.

  He frowned. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Come,’ she said, pulling him up.

  He rose unwillingly. ‘Can’t we just stay here?’

  ‘We could. But I want you to see something.’

  She led him into the bathroom of the master bedroom. ‘Get under the shower,’ she said.

  ‘The shower doesn’t work.’ He made a face. ‘I need to get it fixed.’

  ‘I know,’ she murmured, turning the faucet on. It came alive with silvery jets of water.

  ‘What the fuck! What did you do?’ he asked, as much in surprise as in delight, stepping under the spray of water.

  ‘I had picked up a can of WD-40 from a friend last evening and it was still in the car. So I sprayed some around the shower head, removed it and put it in some warmy soapy water for a bit and then for the pores that didn’t open, I used a safety pin from the outside and unclogged them. You could have done this yourself, Borei.’

  Gowda soaped himself lazily. ‘I could have. But what on earth is WD-40?’

  ‘It’s a wonder spray that loosens rusty nuts and bolts,’ she began, but the words ebbed as she saw the look in his eyes.

  ‘Get in here,’ he said, his eyes narrowing with intent.

  Urmila had left at seven. She had a dinner party to go to, she said. ‘I would have got out of it if I could.’

  Gowda had watched her leave, thinking, she didn’t even ask me if I wanted to go with her. I wouldn’t have. But she didn’t ask.

  Already it had begun, the gnawing loneliness, the relentless wondering: what was she doing? Who was she with?

  Gowda pressed the side of his glass to his eyes. What am I doing? I am forty-nine and fucked. Unable to love the woman I am married to and furiously entangled with a woman I cannot even dream of a life with. Career in tatters and not a dream to propel me through this bleakness called the rest of my life. If he were to start life again, who could he be? Where would he begin? He was unemployable. He couldn’t think of a single place that would have him.

  Gowda looked at the time. It was almost midnight. He sat nursing a drink. He felt as if his mind had stalled. He tossed the drink down his throat, then poured himself another drink and took it to the veranda. Then another. And another. At some point, he crawled into bed in a drunken stupor.

  MONDAY, 22 AUGUST

  In the morning, Shanthi gave him a disapproving look. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin felt coarse and dry. A sledgehammer slammed in the back of his head and his mouth tasted of metal. When his hand reached for a cup of coffee, he saw it shake. Shanthi saw it too.

  ‘It’s not my place to say this to you, sir, but you drink too much.’

  Gowda sipped the coffee. The hot fluid tasted like bitter dishwater in his mouth.

  ‘We look up to people like you to look after us, sir. And so if you…’ Shanthi concluded, walking into the kitchen.

  Gowda made a face. He knew she was right. He drank too much. In the light of the day he could hide his insecurities behind a mask of diffidence. Nonchalance even. But as the day wore on, the mask crumbled. It felt more and more difficult to summon up that ‘I don’t give a shit’ armour around himself. But when the first drink rolled down his throat and flooded his bloodstream, some of the inner resilience surfaced again. A light fuzziness that took the edge off every scathing remark. The innuendos and insults became less of a searing, open wound. A lifetime frittered away didn’t seem so terrible after all. The rum fumes chased all such dragons away with an ease nothing else could match.

  It was a pensive Gowda who went through the motions of eating his breakfast. Tear a piece of akki roti, dip in palya, chew. Tear. Dip. Chew. Tear. Dip. Chew.

  He could sense Shanthi’s affronted look. She had made him his favourite. And for what joy? It could very well have been the tablecloth he was eating.

  At the station house, he was unable to wipe away the sense of dejection that weighed him down. A mountain of files waited to be dealt with. And the closing time of restaurants and bars had reared its head again.

  The beat police had found a restaurant-bar in Kothanur that stayed open late into the night, much after the closing time of 11.30. Warnings had been issued, but the restaurant owner continued to keep his establishment open. ‘Let them do what they want, I’ll close my restaurant when I think it’s time and not when they think it’s time for me to,’ he was reported to have said.

  ‘You should have brought that idiot here and roughed him up a bit,’ Gowda said wearily.

  ‘But on what charges, sir?’ PC Byrappa had mumbled.

  ‘Don’t throw the law at me,’ Gowda frowned.

  ‘No, sir, legally he hasn’t done anything wrong,’ the man protested. ‘Each time we go there, the lights are off, shutters closed, etc., and he comes out looking innocent as a lamb and pretends he doesn’t know what we are a
ccusing him of. But I know for a fact that he’s still serving drinks inside!’

  ‘Raid the place,’ Gowda said, flicking through the file. He glanced at his watch. Stanley would be here anytime now.

  ‘We won’t find a thing. He claims the back portion of the building is his home. And the men drinking there are friends!’

  Gowda slammed the file shut. He would have to make a visit there himself today.

  Stanley appeared in the doorway. Gowda stood up slowly.

  ‘Have you been drinking all weekend?’ Stanley said in greeting.

  Gowda ran his fingers through his hair. He knew he looked a mess, a total wreck, in fact. But at least he had managed to shave, so he didn’t seem a complete lout.

  ‘Here,’ Stanley said, throwing a file onto Gowda’s table. ‘The post-mortem report!’

  ‘It’s your case, why do you want me to read it?’ Gowda couldn’t help the note of petulance in his voice. Stanley stiffened.

  ‘Look, Gowda,’ he said, not bothering to hide his annoyance, ‘I put myself out on the plank there for you to get this case back into your hands. Officially, you are to assist me with this. Unofficially, it’s your baby. If you are going to make a hash of it…’ Stanley reached for the file.

  Gowda put his hand on it and held it back. ‘No,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t mean … thanks, Stanley,’ he said. ‘I know you are sticking your neck out for me.’

  ‘Well then, clean up. You are turning into a caricature of a man. A middle-aged drunk, a useless son-of-a-bitch masquerading as a police officer so no one realizes that he is a middle-aged, useless, son-of-a-bitch drunk.’

  Gowda flinched. Stanley always went for the middle of the abdomen. He knew how to knock the stuffing out of you without shedding a drop of blood. Blunt-force trauma, Gowda knew, wreaked more damage than a stab.

  ‘I’ll get Santosh to start questioning the Kerala restaurants in the area we demarcated on Saturday,’ Gowda said.

  ‘Keep me informed at every stage, Gowda. I need to know,’ Stanley said, turning to leave.