by Anita Nair
‘Since morning, it’s been one thing or the other. Whose face did I see when I woke up?’
Ibrahim looked at the floor as if to say ‘not mine! Who did you sleep with last night?’ There were all kinds of rumours about Anna but none of them paid any attention to what they heard. Anna was their big brother, and sometimes when one’s big brother does something strange, you look away.
‘Have you found someone suitable yet?’ Anna asked again. He leaned towards the wall and pressed a switch. Somewhere within the house a bell rang.
‘There’s a boy,’ Ibrahim began.
‘No children. I told you that.’
A woman slid into the room. Ibrahim looked at her in surprise. So it was true after all, what he had heard. Anna had a bunch of chhakkas in his house.
‘Akka,’ the corporator said, ‘I need some coffee. And some tea for him.’ He gestured at Ibrahim. ‘And if there’s any naastha left, bring it over.’
The eunuch’s eyes raked Ibrahim. Anna didn’t extend hospitality to any of his minions. What had brought this on? Tea and tiffin! What next?
Ibrahim licked his lips. What had come over Anna? In all these years, not once had he offered him a glass of water and suddenly he was being given tea and nibbles.
Anna wasn’t a kanjoos. In fact, he was generous to a fault. New clothes, sweets and an envelope of cash for the Hindus for Diwali, and for the Muslims at Eid. Sometimes a gift box would arrive at their homes for no real reason. Anna had an open palm, but he didn’t open his home to anyone who worked for him or with him. So why was he suddenly being so hospitable? He really must be perturbed.
‘No, Anna, I’m fasting,’ Ibrahim burst out. ‘Thanks very much, Anna, but no, no, please, I don’t need anything.’
He saw the eunuch try and hide a smile. The eunuch had seemed as surprised by Anna’s sudden burst of hospitality.
Anna made a sweeping move of his arm. Whatever.
‘He’s not a child, Anna,’ Ibrahim said. ‘A young man in his late twenties. Looks like the son everyone would want to have. Well-built, soft-spoken. No one will suspect him at all.’
‘Where did you find him?’
Ibrahim flushed. Then, with an almost coy grin, he said, ‘At Boobi ma’s.’
Anna’s eyebrows rose. Boobi ma ran a whorehouse in Tannery Road area. Or used to. He thought she had retired. ‘She’s still around?’
‘Boobi ma’s too old. Though some of her old customers still come to her. But her daughter’s young and there are a few other young women.’ Ibrahim’s expression softened at the thought of the pretty girl with her turned-up nose. He was going to ask for her the next time. ‘Boobi ma’s son introduced him to me. The new boy and I got talking and he seemed perfect for what we had in mind.’
‘You trust him?’ The corporator rubbed his left temple with his index finger to relieve the pressure building up there.
‘I handpicked him myself. He is trustworthy. But is anyone fully trustworthy? I don’t know … but we have to take our chances.’
The corporator pressed one nostril shut and drew in air noisily. ‘My sinuses are all clogged,’ he said in explanation.
‘Steam inhalation helps,’ Ibrahim said.
The corporator nodded. ‘And you have briefed him already.’
‘I have told him what is expected of him. Not the details. We’ll keep that for the last minute.’ Ibrahim lowered his voice. ‘Especially as the police seem to be moving in.’
The eunuch appeared with a tumbler of coffee on a tray. Silver, Ibrahim noticed. The gossip was Anna’s dog had a silver water bowl and Anna shat in a gold pan.
‘Akka, your phone…’ The corporator stretched his hand out. The eunuch looked nonplussed. Then, from deep inside her blouse, she pulled out a phone.
‘I’m going to have to use your number for a while, Akka. Here, Ibrahim, take this down. You call me on this to inform me about anything confidential. But don’t forget to call once in a while on my number. I don’t want them to know I know.’
Ibrahim grinned.
‘I’ll call you later this evening or tomorrow. I need to meet this boy. See for myself if he is all that you say he is.’ Anna sipped his coffee with a loud slurp.
Ibrahim turned to go.
‘One more thing,’ Anna called. ‘I don’t want anyone coming here for a few days. Pass the word around.’
The eunuch watched Ibrahim leave. She licked her lips, unable to make up her mind. ‘Ruku called this morning.’
The corporator waited for her to continue.
‘The police were at the mother house, wanting to know about me and what my role in your home is. Do you think I should go away for a few days?’
‘You are not going anywhere, Akka,’ the corporator said. ‘Besides, the police have set up shop outside our gate anyway. We just have to be careful.’
The eunuch stared. ‘What are we going to do?’ A whisper.
‘Nothing. As long as we do nothing, we’ll be safe. It’ll give me time to plan how to go forward. For now, we just sit on our arses and wait.’
‘My boys just called in with their report,’ Stanley said. ‘They didn’t see any unusual comings and goings. The phone calls too haven’t revealed anything that would interest you.’
‘Tell me,’ Gowda whispered into the phone. ‘Has the surveillance thrown up anything that has anything to do with the counterfeit currency?’
‘Hmmm…’ Stanley mumbled. ‘Early evening, a man called Ibrahim arrived. We’ve had our eyes on him for a while. After he left, the corporator’s phone went significantly slow.’
‘So?’
‘So, I think one of ours is on the corporator’s payroll and he’s passed the word on about the surveillance.’
‘Can you get Ibrahim?’ Gowda asked.
‘What?’
‘I said, can you get Ibrahim picked up?’
‘Listen, Borei, these fellows won’t squeal no matter what. And they come in mouthing the Human Right Commission’s guidelines. I don’t want trouble.’
Gowda laughed. ‘We can make him talk without inflicting a single bruise on him. Or, at least, Gajendra will. He’s the expert. I am still learning from him…’
‘What do you mean?’ Stanley couldn’t hide his curiosity.
‘You’ll see. Trust me. But we have to grab Ibrahim asap. Once Ramzan’s over, it will be difficult…’
‘What’s the connection with Ramzan?’ Stanley asked.
‘I can’t explain now but Ramzan is part of the process … it will make everything that much easier. Trust me, Stanley, he will talk.’
WEDNESDAY, 24 AUGUST
The factory was in the middle of a field. On the other side of the road they were driving down was a quarry. A thin veil of grey dust hung over it as stone was cut and crushed to form gravel. Gowda’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the ravaged landscape. Deep gouges, mountains of gravel and the constant whirr of the crusher as it reduced sheets of rock into pea-sized bits.
‘The factory stopped functioning almost fifteen years ago,’ Santosh said, as they turned towards the building. ‘The woman told the auto driver that her house was at the end of this alley and the road is all dug up.’
The road was dug up. In fact, it was a sea of mud. It had rained the night before and the road had turned into a stretch of puddles and slippery slopes. Beyond it was nothing but an abandoned vineyard with cement posts standing in sentinel rows under the open skies. Further away was a row of gnarled trees, a few broken-down buildings and a derelict temple. But no houses of any sort.
‘What is this place?’ Gowda asked curiously.
‘The owner was a bit of a nut case, I heard. I’ve been making some enquiries. He ran a garment factory here. Long before the IT companies started doing it, he would bring the employees in a bus. Alongside the factory was this vineyard. All of this, thirty acres in all, was his and he came here every day till he died. The family put an end to everything after his death and the corporator bought it off them,�
� Santosh replied, waiting for the man lurking outside the gate to open the padlock and chain.
The police vehicle drove up the gravelled pathway towards the main door.
The man pushed the gates back in place and ran to open the door. ‘Anna said you would be coming. I have been waiting here for you all morning,’ he said in explanation for his presence.
Gowda raised an eyebrow. Santosh leaned forward. ‘Anna?’
‘Corporator Ravikumar. We call him Anna! He is our big brother…’
He turned back to the door and slid a key into the giant lock. He pushed the bolt back and the door swung back quickly and easily.
‘So Anna comes here often?’ Gowda’s tone was bland.
The man cocked his head. ‘Hardly. There’s nothing here but some broken bits and pieces of old sewing machines. Anna’s going to turn this into a dairy farm. And there will also be an orphanage and old-age home…’
‘Did you say your Anna’s name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi?’ Gowda asked carefully. Santosh muffled a laugh.
The man shook his head, refusing to take umbrage. ‘He could very well be another Gandhi.’
Santosh decided to step in before the man clammed up. ‘Tell me, Manjunath, that’s your name, right? Tell me, Manjunath, what about the quarry? Won’t it be a nuisance? The noise, the dust…’
The man smiled. ‘You see, the beauty of it is that the quarry belongs to Anna too. Once everything’s functional here, he’ll close it down.’
Gowda could see the beauty of it. As long as the quarry worked, no one would buy the factory and the land. The owners must have gone down on bended knees to thank the corporator when he made them the offer. He must have got it for almost nothing, the bastard, Gowda thought, surveying the acreage from the doorway.
He followed the man into a veranda from which a warren of rooms opened. Once, it must have housed the administrative part of the business. A thick sheath of dust covered the floor. The whine of the stone crusher filled the room. Dust rose as the man opened a window. Gowda coughed. He pulled out his handkerchief and covered his nose. The man led the way through a central corridor onto the factory floor.
The false ceiling beneath the asbestos roofing was broken in parts. Remnants of ceiling lights were still attached to beams rigged expressly for that purpose. The windows were latched shut and there was an odour of mustiness and rodent urine. Manjunath pushed open a window. A rat scuttled from a pile of rubbish and disappeared into what was once a built-in rack system.
Gowda looked around him.
It was empty except for a lone sewing machine and a heap of wooden planks, a broken chair and parts of sewing machines.
‘There used to be three hundred workers in this room,’ Manjunath said. ‘Imagine!’
Gowda shuddered. Three hundred workers in a room that could hold two hundred. No wonder he had chosen to locate his factory so far away. It had been a sweat shop. Probably the sweat from one brow running down to the arm of another. How had they borne it?
‘What happened to the machinery?’ Santosh asked curiously.
‘The daughter sold it after her father’s death,’ Manjunath said. ‘If it had been a son, he would have continued his father’s business. What can a daughter do?’
Gowda hid his smile. If Urmila were to hear him, she would probably impale him on a spike with a sternly spoken ‘this is what daughters can do, you sexist oaf!’
On the other side of the factory floor was a door that led to the packing and dispatch section. ‘And this was the office room,’ Manjunath said, leading them to a room with sheet glass for a wall.
Gowda frowned. The rest of the factory was wreathed in dust and giant cobwebs. But this room was clean. There was a table and two chairs, and an old maroon-coloured Rexine sofa-cum-bed.
‘Where does the door lead to?’
‘To the car park. The owner didn’t like using the main entrance. He had his own entrance,’ Manjunath said.
‘There, that’s him.’ He pointed to a series of framed photographs mounted on the wall.
Gowda moved closer to peer at them. In one, the man was in a suit in a busy street in some foreign city. In another, he was shaking hands with Venkatasubbiah Pendekante, governor of Karnataka. In the last one, he sat flanked by his family on either side. Daughter. Son-in-law. Grandchildren.
‘I think his name was Ranganathan,’ Manjunath said.
Gowda didn’t respond. He stared at the photograph, again remembering the body on the mortuary table; the grieving daughter, the son-in-law and his important connections.
‘You know something, sir,’ Manjunath said. ‘Anna’s father used to work here as a watchman. And Anna used to come here as a boy with his father. Isn’t it destiny that a mere worker’s son is now lord and master of all this?’
Gowda stared at the man unseeingly. He reached across and pulled at the cord. The Venetian blind clacked down smoothly, shutting the factory floor out. Gowda looked around the room again.
Someone came here regularly, no matter what Manjunath claimed. Someone who used the side entrance door. Someone who had wiped the dust off surfaces, opened and closed the blind. ‘Where’s the key to the door?’ he asked.
‘I think Anna has it. Have you seen what you wanted to?’ Manjunath asked, glancing at his watch.
‘Not yet…’ Gowda began and paused. From the corner of his eye, something had caught his attention. In the crevice between the sofa back and seat was a pale-brown fleck attached to a small line of black. He bent down and used his handkerchief to extract it.
A hairslide and, attached to it, a withered jasmine. Gowda wrapped his handkerchief around it and slid it into his pocket thoughtfully. Someone had been here a few nights ago.
He stood gazing at the photographs again.
‘So did you find what you were looking for?’
Gowda turned around abruptly. The corporator stood before him and, as always, a few steps behind was his runt of a brother. When had they crept in here? But Gowda was adept at camouflaging his feelings and retorted in a clipped voice, ‘It depends!’
The corporator nodded as though that was the answer he would have expected anyway. Gowda saw the younger brother’s eyes narrow. He was very protective of his anna, Gowda had heard.
‘I have had this place only for two months now, Inspector. You can hardly hold me responsible for what happened here before that…’ the corporator said with a smile. A disarming smile, if I didn’t know better, Gowda told himself.
‘But you know this place well enough,’ Gowda said quietly.
‘What are you insinuating, Inspector?’ It was the brother who spoke up.
Gowda looked at him in surprise. The boy had spoken in English, unlike his older brother, who could speak only Kannada, Tamil and Dakhani Urdu.
‘Ramesh went to college,’ the corporator said, throwing a fond look at his sibling, who seemed to be bristling on his behalf. ‘I never went beyond the fifth standard. But he is an MA, the first in our family. And he has a black belt in karate. Are you a postgraduate, Inspector?’
Gowda held up his hand to stem the corporator’s eulogy of his brother. ‘Enough,’ he snapped. ‘I didn’t ask for your brother’s bio-data. All I asked was if you were familiar with this factory.’
‘We both are,’ Chikka said. ‘Our father used to work as a watchman here. We came here when we were children. So we know this place well.’ He went to stand by his brother.
‘When did you come here last?’ Gowda asked.
The corporator frowned. ‘A week ago, I think. The engineer who’s going to help convert this factory into a dairy farm came with me. Why?’
‘I hear you have grand plans for this place. An old-age home, an orphanage…’
The corporator met his brother’s glance. ‘Someone’s been talking, I can see!’
‘I told you, Anna, there was no need for you to discuss your plans with Manjunath. He has a mouth like a pot without a bottom,’ Chikka muttered.
‘Is
it wrong to help the destitute, Inspector?’ The corporator smiled again, opening his hands out in a gesture of not knowing.
Gowda ignored the corporator and turned to the younger brother. ‘So Mr Postgraduate, tell me about all those Ravi Varma prints in that mansion you two live in.’
Santosh stared at Gowda, amazed. What was he doing?
The young man bit his lip as if to control his fury. Then he spoke carefully, imitating, it seemed, his older brother’s silken tones. ‘Is it a crime to hang up Ravi Varma prints?’
‘Did I say that? I was just curious.’
‘Well then, I like them. I like art, Inspector, and Anna gave me a free hand to choose what to put up on the walls. Does that satisfy you, Inspector?’
Santosh hissed. Gowda grinned. ‘I like you, Chikka.’
‘I don’t think I can reciprocate the emotion,’ Chikka snarled. ‘I don’t like men like you. Full of yourself. Full of how superior you are to the rest of us. Full of answers even if you don’t know an ant from an arsehole.’
‘Hush, Chikka.’ The corporator put his hand on the young man’s arm. ‘What is all this about?’
‘Hot-headed, is he?’ Gowda asked, putting on a concerned expression. ‘Not good at all. You must advise him.’
‘What do you want, Inspector? What is it you are looking for?’
‘I would hardly tell you, would I, Caddy Ravi?’ Gowda walked to the door. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t find out your street name?’
‘That was a long time ago, Inspector. We don’t always stay in our past.’ The corporator’s eyes alone gave away the extent of his fury.
‘I can see that,’ Gowda said, his gaze falling on the car parked outside. A brand-new Honda CRV. In the sunlight, its whiteness gleamed. Leaning against it, with his arms crossed, was a boulder of a man. Anna’s driver and bodyguard. He had a name. Godzilla? No, it came to him now. King Kong.
People like the corporator made him furious. It seemed to him that they knew precisely how to work the system to their advantage. They knew which holes to plug and which knots to untie so the system worked for their benefit alone. People like the corporator made Gowda feel even more like a loser.