by Monabi Mitra
‘Shh, customer in there!’ There was a rustling and a movement and someone pushed aside the curtain. Sheena Sen, eyes smarting from the steam, let out a gentle snore and could feel the curtain drop.
A short while later, Pinky entered the room and stared in astonishment. The customer was sitting on the bed, fully dressed, rummaging in her handbag and coming up with a wad of notes, out of which a hundred-rupee one was extracted and pushed towards her. ‘Don’t ask any questions, just do as I say. Ask the girl with the loud voice in the next room to come here with my bill. There will be another hundred for you if you be good.’
Pinky’s slit eyes narrowed but the hundred-rupee note in her hand and the others that the customer was waving nonchalantly in the air caused a stir in her heart. She slipped out and returned, followed by a plump girl with red hair tied in a fishtail plait.
Sheena Sen wasted little time. She pressed a five-hundred- rupee note into the girl’s hand and said, ‘Who is Mala and where does she live? Quick! I won’t tell the manager!’
The girl smoothed out the note in a swift movement and held it up to the light, then whispered, ‘Her real name is Malavika but she calls herself Mala. She worked here for about a year, then left to join the movies.’
‘Was she Piloo Adhikary’s girlfriend?’
The girl looked stricken. ‘You heard what I said? I thought you were asleep . . .’
‘Address?’
‘I don’t know.’
Sheena Sen whipped out her police identification card from her bag and dangled it before the girl’s eyes for a moment. ‘Police. Crime Branch. Tell me and I’ll leave. No one will ever know.’
Pinky’s mouth had fallen open as she stared at Sheena Sen and the other girl.
‘It’s 24, Harrison Road. It’s a paying-guest accommodation. Second floor. Malavika Mandal.’ The red-haired girl looked over her shoulder and whispered, ‘If the manager hears that I’ve been talking to customers I’ll lose my job.’ Sheena Sen recklessly laid down some cash on the bill folder and pushed another hundred- rupee note into Pinky’s pocket. The girl sprang back in surprise but recovered enough to slip the note deeper into her pocket. Then, jabbing at her mobile phone, Sheena Sen headed for the door.
* * *
‘Did you get anything?’ asked Bikram. There was a pause and the phone crackled so loudly that the bank manager sitting opposite him caught a female voice.
‘. . . That’s good. I was hoping you would. Where did you say she stays? . . . I’m in a meeting at the Kolkata Bank on Harrison Road, so I’ll take a look once I finish.’
The bank manager sighed and a shadow passed over his saturnine face, making it look even uglier. This was the fourth telephone call in ten minutes and the interruptions were taking their toll on the conversation. Every time the manager began his speech and came close to his main agenda, which was the inefficiency of the police, a phone call came. The manager raised his eyebrows and tried to look distant and severe. The severity of his expression increased when Bikram leaned forward nonchalantly, took a piece of paper from his notepad and wrote something on it languidly before sliding his phone cover shut.
‘What a busy man you are!’ The manager sounded cross.
‘Am I bothering you? I apologize.’ Bikram smiled and his face looked boyish and engaging, but the smile did not reach his eyes. ‘It must be stressful, running a busy bank like this.’ He waved his hand towards the door, beyond which a bank slept in the autumn noon. There were no customers, the sentry dozed at the door and the employees crushed their empty styrofoam teacups and ground out cigarettes on the floor.
The manager seemed oblivious to the sarcasm. He scratched his neck and left wrist and scowled. ‘Did you get the man?’
‘We will. We know our duty. That’s not to say that the agency that handles Kolkata Bank’s ATM security knows how to look after its affairs.’
‘That’s not our matter. Bank security is outsourced, as you know, so I can’t help it if the man in charge fell asleep. But since you have an excellent video of the break-in you should have made a few arrests by now.’ He spoke peevishly and Bikram wondered fleetingly if the bank manager was Toofan Kumar’s brother, separated at birth. There seemed to be the same nagging insistence on quick arrests and speedy disposals, delivered in an identical rancorous manner.
Bikram smiled some more, though his grey eyes were now steely cold. ‘Look,’ he said patiently, ‘some wretched junkie entered an ATM booth armed with nothing but a heavy rod and tried to break the machine open under the misapprehension that wads of notes would flow out. All this while the ATM guard was snoring away on his chair outside. The junkie tries for a while, dents his rod and walks disgustedly away. This is hardly a serious crime. You should be lucky that I’m here at all to talk to you about it.’
But the manager was craftier than he looked. ‘Yes, then why are you here? Is there something else you want from me?’
Bikram drew a piece of paper out of his pocket and placed it before the manager. He had hoped for a cordial welcome and an informal chat that went beyond the official enquiry but the man seemed definitely antagonistic.
‘Court order. We’d like a full account of Piloo Adhikary’s banking details.’
‘It will take some time. I have very few men.’
‘This is the twenty-first century. How much time will a computer take to print details of all transactions? I’ll wait.’
The frost in the air was overpowering and the manager looked as if he could snap Bikram’s head off.
‘It’ll take half an hour,’ he muttered darkly.
‘Then I’ll be back after an hour,’ said Bikram pleasantly and left.
Should he take the car? Bikram looked at the traffic running pell-mell all around him and decided against it. He waved Mistry away and took a turn towards the College Street crossing with Debu trotting at his heels. Tuesday was a good day for a turn around the cramped roads of north Calcutta. The pavements were studded with teastalls, pakora sellers and fruit sellers with pyramids of Nagpur oranges. Bikram stopped before an old man who was sitting on a wooden stool and reading a newspaper with a pile of books at his feet. IAS, WBCS, Medical and Management Books Sold Here, said a rickety-looking inverted arrow-shaped signpost. His eyes fell on an IAS Study Circle booklet and a familiar feeling wrenched his heart as the cold days of his college and the interminable sorrow of failing the Union Public Service exam came back to him. A grubby tea boy jogged his arm and Bikram grimaced as drops of tea fell on his elbows and stained his shirt.
‘Hey there, you!’ shouted Debu. Bikram put up a hand and waved him away.
Where was 24, Harrison Road? They turned off the main road and into a side road that branched off into narrow lanes trailing away left and right. Here the houses were densely packed together like matchsticks and the road petered out into a cement passage. One could reach out and put a hand in through a window to touch a dining chair here or a bedspread there and catch a glimpse of a staircase that wound deep inwards. They could smell mouldy beds and airless bathrooms and dim kitchens and poverty. An old woman was bent low over a table-fan inside a room and Bikram asked her softly for directions. The old woman peered at him with rheumy eyes and answered in an indistinct voice that it was the last house on the left, beside the chatim tree. Bikram looked into the distance and could see a carpet of tiny star-like flowers on the rough cement.
He hoped she would be in. By rights he should have sent a nameless sub-inspector or Sheena Sen, but he had been too close by to resist. Leaving Debu outside, Bikram climbed up a flight of stairs that looked like they hadn’t seen a broom in a decade. Sparrows twittered and jabbered in the crevices and flew out in a rush of tiny wings. He went up unchallenged and remembered snatches from Dolly’s poetry book:
no head from the leaf-fringed sill,
leaned over and looked into his grey eyes
where he stood perplexed and still.
‘Why poetry?’ Shona had demanded, dangling her sister’s
copy of Calcutta University Poetry Selections and looking incredulously at him. Because it reminds me of my father and his lost causes, Bikram had thought. ‘Because it reminds me of you,’ he had said.
He stopped outside a door with an iron collapsible gate that had been gathered to one side. There were other doors and presumably another floor, for the stairway went up further. He took a chance and rang the bell, waited for twenty seconds and then pressed the bell again.
Someone came to the door and stopped. ‘Who is it?’ a woman’s voice asked.
There was no peephole and the door was an old-fashioned double-paned one.
‘My name is Bikram Chatterjee. I want to see Mala.’
‘You’re a year and a half late. She left this house last May,’ the voice sounded hard.
‘May I talk to you then?’
‘Why? I don’t know you,’ said the voice ungraciously.
‘Would this help? I’ll slide it under the door and you can make up your mind.’
Bikram took out his calling card and pushed it in with his index finger. There was nothing to do but wait. Bikram counted twenty again while the woman turned his card over in her hands and finally relented. The door opened a crack and Bikram hoped he looked young and handsome.
Perhaps he did. Bikram saw half a pair of spectacles and an eye glint at him, first suspiciously, then, at his un-policeman-like looks, somewhat surprised. The door opened and a young girl looked warily at him.
‘Sorry, but I’m alone,’ she said sullenly. ‘Come in.’
She looked young but plain and grim. With her shabby kaftan, rubber slippers and hair tied back at her neck with a rubber band she looked uncared for and rough. Her voice was as hard as her appearance and the room into which she led him as unlovely as both. Bikram sat down on a bed whose coverlet was faded and threadbare.
‘Why do the police want Mala? Of course, I had a feeling they would uncover the connection and be here someday.’
‘Won’t you sit down?’ said Bikram. The girl fetched a cane stool for herself and sat before him.
There was another bed in the room. A table and a steel almirah stood in front of each bed. Out on a narrow veranda a worn pair of panties and another faded kaftan hung desolately on a frayed nylon line. The remnants of what seemed like lunch lay on a melamine plate and a stainless-steel tiffin-carrier stood open beside it.
Perhaps his boyish appearance and the unselfconscious way in which he had sat down on her bed had already thawed her attitude. The girl followed his gaze and said, ‘We get food in the kitchen on the third floor but I got mutton curry for myself today from the shop across the road. You can’t live on thin dal and vegetables all the time. You’re lucky to get me here at this time. I usually go for classes but stayed back today for the mutton.’ After a pause she added, ‘It’s about her boyfriend, isn’t it, the one who got murdered? The film producer?’
Bikram had a vision of the girl sitting at her bit of a table and ladling out rice and mutton curry for herself before eating it alone. He asked, ‘Was she your room-mate here?’
The girl nodded.
‘Tell me about her.’
‘It’s the same old story. Nothing new for you, I’m sure. She, like me, was a small-town girl who came to Calcutta to study, but unlike me had other ideas for herself. Went out with the richer ones in class who were fishing hereabouts for a quick lay.’
‘And then?’
Perhaps it was the soulful eyes that looked at her, for the girl smiled fractionally. ‘You think I’m being mean and bitchy out of jealousy, don’t you? Mala got on in life while I’m stuck here with my books and my Tuesday mutton curry.’
‘Not at all. Mala blazed and will probably fall, like a meteor, but your rise will be yielding and last long,’ said Bikram.
‘Like a meteor,’ said the girl softly. ‘Yes, you’ve got her right. She was always dazzling, even when she was selfish. Was usually very overwhelming too. Also, she had never had any misgivings about cutting her family out of her life and rejecting her small-town background. Whereas I cling to my father and yearn to ease his burden a bit.’
‘What do you study?’
‘History. I hope to become a schoolteacher. That will do just fine for me. Twelve thousand a month plus twenty more from private lessons and peace of mind. Unlike Mala, of course. She often turned her nose up when I settled down with my books and threw a pillow at me. “Oh, do stop all this!” she would say. “Come to my beauty parlour and I’ll dress you right for the boys.”’
‘What were her parents like?’
‘Pushy and ambitious, like she was. Her father was keen on her becoming a soap star and her mother wanted her to marry rich. They had a small garments store in their town and apparently put Mala into the best school there, which was not much, but Mala picked up enough English to reproduce it with an American twang. Not like me—speaking English badly with a heavy, Bengali accent.’
‘So she found a job and gave up her studies?’
The girl seemed to have arrived at a point in the conversation where it was easy to talk to Bikram and the words simply poured out. ‘She found men, you mean. But yes, she began with a job at a beauty parlour as a receptionist, and went to the owner’s house on some business where she was clever enough to show her tits to that woman’s husband. They had their first time here, on that very bed, because all the guesthouses were full. I had to sit at my college library while it was going on.’
‘Didn’t you protest?’
‘Why should I? Mala would give me presents now and then— shampoo samples and lipstick—which I took for my sister back home.’ The eyes flashed. ‘Perhaps if I had been prettier, I too would have done the same.’
‘Why did she leave?’
‘Because Piloo what’s-his-name promised her a role in his new production and got her a flat somewhere. It wouldn’t do to be a starlet and live in a back room off Harrison Road with just a bed and a chair, would it? I had hoped she would leave me some clothes when she moved out but she took them all, even though she would need three cupboards to keep them all in.’
‘Did she leave any address for communication?’
‘No, why take the risk? She knew she was going to be a successful movie star and didn’t want her old boyfriends to be able to trace her, the ones with whom she spent time in the cheap lodges along the railway station. She didn’t want me to know either just in case I told her mother back home.’ The girl looked steadily ahead.
‘Did she ever have any quarrel with Piloo or mention any misunderstanding with him?’
The girl shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. Once she found Piloo she became all uppity and distant, as if she had found a top-notch Bombay film producer. Complained about the bathroom and the heat and deplored the lack of an air-conditioner and a proper plug point for her hairdryer in this room! She hardly spoke to me on personal matters any more.’
‘Can you remember anything else which might have a bearing on the murder? Whether Piloo Adhikary had any enemies or if your friend spoke of someone who wanted to hurt him?’
The girl shook her head. ‘He looked all wrong to me, of course, with his eagle nose and pockmarked face and gold chain, but Mala would look at him as if he were Prince Charming! Of course, he came here rarely. Only the first three times or so. After that Mala would dress up and pack a night bag and take a cab to meet him.’
Bikram rose to go. ‘I never asked you your name.’
‘Poornima,’ the girl answered absently, as if Mala and her deeds were still floating in her vision.
‘Poornima, if you remember anything else, can you give me a ring? You have my card.’
The girl looked down at the card in her hand and seemed to see it for the first time.
‘Are you the one whose name gets printed in the papers now and then?’
‘Occasionally, yes.’
She looked up at him and ran a hand over her forehead to smooth her hair and push it back behind her ears. Beyond her thick spectacles a
nd scruffy looks there was a crushed and put- down air. She hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Someone owes my father money back home . . . we’ve been to the local thana but they have no time for us. Suppose we were to come to your office one day?’
‘Yes,’ said Bikram. ‘Any day. With an appointment, of course, or you might have to wait.’
She showed him to the door and held it open. As Bikram stepped nimbly down the dark stairs he vaguely felt that he was leaving a tremendous sadness behind.
10
‘Followers of Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, and other detective heroes of fiction are quick to criticize the police for failure to clear up murder mysteries. They firmly believe that, were the skill of the superdetectives of the novels possessed and applied by police detectives, every murder would be solved . . .’
Ghosh opened his lunch box and grimaced in disgust. Inside was a single boiled egg, a few slices of apple already stained from the heat and one stale sandesh. Neither Mrs Ghosh nor the maid had exerted themselves. Thinking of the travails of policing, which included cold-hearted wives, he scraped the contents into the dustbin and rang the bell for a plateful of samosas. After five seconds, he reviewed his order and changed it to a stuffed dosa. Then he charged through three files dealing with attempted burglary and cheating. When he had finished he put the files carefully away and found that a long line of ants had begun to straggle from the window sill towards the sandesh. Ghosh cursed, walked over to the bin and began to grind out the ants with the heel of his right shoe.
The phone rang. Hoping it was Bikram, he found instead that it was the personal assistant of the deputy inspector general. ‘Briefing today at 6 p.m. at Virendra saab’s office,’ intoned a bored voice. Ghosh, who had been distraught all morning, wondered what he was to say to Virendra Singh to justify his recall to the headquarters. He hadn’t done much except go through routine files and indulge in heavy brooding. He put through a call to Bikram and wondered when the dosa would arrive, if at all.