by Monabi Mitra
‘But you have. I had warned you to keep off this man.’ There was a touch of asperity in Prem Gupta’s voice.
Bikram rose, saluted and prepared to leave. What more was there to say!
When his hand was on the doorknob, Bikram heard Prem Gupta say gently, ‘The judges who might be sitting in tomorrow and day after are both well known to me. Perhaps, if God wills it, we can arrange for police custody for a week. Will that satisfy you?’
Bikram turned round and smiled and even Prem Gupta was dazzled.
‘You are as audacious as you are handsome, Bikram. Keep it up!’
* * *
Ghosh and Bikram met in his room.
Ghosh raised his eyebrows enquiringly.
‘Well?’
‘I’ve done my best. We have to leave the rest to . . . Do you believe in God or fate, Ghosh?’
‘I’m not religious,’ said Ghosh gruffly. ‘Besides, this is the age of evil: kalyug. He’ll get away.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘They always get away,’ continued Ghosh lugubriously. ‘Gaur Mohan and his kind, they laugh their way out of the courtroom. How many of the shiny, glittering, big-time villains have we ever managed to get? Have you seen the way they swagger while in custody? And smirk while they’re waiting for bail! It’s a dead end.’
‘These things must not be thought of, Ghosh, or they will make us mad,’ said Bikram softly.
For a while they sat quiet. Finally, Ghosh broke the silence.
‘One thing beats me. If Monica knew Piloo would be killed that evening, why didn’t she stay out of the house till the puja wound up, around 3 a.m.? Why did she slip back by eleven? Ashu tells me she never really provided a satisfactory answer to that one.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Bikram. ‘Why?’
‘I think I can guess. Curiosity! Women, even the most hardbitten ones, can’t resist poking and prying and making a nuisance of themselves. She wanted to know and rushed back, even if that was risky. I’ve got two of them at home, so I know,’ said Ghosh peevishly.
After a moment Bikram stretched. ‘Perhaps. Meanwhile there’s the Dhiraj Kumar case to work out. I’ll pay the complainant a visit tomorrow. Perhaps that can be connected with this one.’
‘Tomorrow is Christmas.’ Ghosh looked at Bikram’s lean figure and lined face and said, ‘Maybe you should take it easy for a while. Get some sleep and good food and watch a movie.’
‘Let’s get some food now. How about dinner at Mainland China tonight? A treat to celebrate Gaur Lal Mohan’s possible arrest.’
Ghosh looked embarrassed. ‘I would have loved to, sir, but I . . . well, I promised to take the wife and daughter out shopping. To the new supermarket near Golf Club Road. Asha is doing well now and I wanted to create a happy family kind of feeling.’
He suddenly remembered something.
‘The Piloo Adhikary murder case is solved, so tell me now, what did you say to Asha that made her come back from hospital two days after the suicide attempt, all quiet and bashful and without any hint of trouble?’
Bikram looked uncomfortable.
‘Just some gentle counselling.’
‘Such as?’
‘Nothing, a little reassurance . . .’
‘About?’
‘You are determined to find out, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
Bikram took a deep breath.
‘I told her to give it a month. If she couldn’t forget him even after that I undertook to . . . er . . . revive the relationship, carry messages and take them out for tea and convince you to let them get married.’
‘She believed you?’
Bikram’s ears had turned red and he had begun to feverishly play around with a coaster.
‘I . . . um . . . gave some examples from my personal life to discuss various aspects of love and how . . . sometimes . . . time helps one decide whether one’s love is strong or just an infatuation.’
For a moment there was silence and then Bikram said gently, ‘She understood what I was saying. She is no longer a child, Ghosh. Sometimes parents are the last to realize that the children have grown up. How is she now?’
Ghosh brushed away something that looked like a tear from his eye and said a little hoarsely, ‘She’s forgotten him, I think. Heard her singing in her bath this morning. I guess she will be fine.’
‘Then you’d better hurry for the shopping plan. It’s six-thirty already.’
Ghosh paused at the door. ‘Merry Christmas, sir.’
‘Is tomorrow really Christmas? We began with a murder on Diwali night and now you say it’s time for another festival already. Happy shopping!’
Bikram cleaned his table of files and rang the bell for his car.
Instead of the peon who usually carried his briefcase it was Lalbahadur, his cold blank face looking unnaturally animated. He saluted and went up to Bikram conspiratorially. He said, ‘Sir, there’s been a shoot-out in a village near the airport. Two men from rival political parties. They had trouble over some land deal and the one who was shot dead has been identified as Amir Ali.’
Bikram’s eyes seemed to cloud over a little but otherwise he took the news serenely.
‘How do you know?’
‘A friend works in the Dum Dum thana. I had rung him up for some information and he told me to call back later because he was trying to control the crowd. Murder of a goon called Amir Ali, though the inspector at the site thinks he had other names and identities.’ Lalbahadur compressed his lips meaningfully and stared at the floor. He had been to Ten Miles Village and had perhaps done some sleuthing of his own. Bikram knew that he was aware Amir Ali alias Murari Koyal had been Toofan Kumar’s informer.
Bikram’s lips curled at the corner but he put on an impassive face. He wondered, briefly, whether Koyal had been getting so troublesome that it was circumspect to get him out of the way through a politically motivated shoot-out. You wanted excitement and you’ve got it, he smiled inwardly. Perhaps there would be a textbook ending to Gaur Mohan too.
Outside it was crowded. Mistry drove through a festive- looking Park Street, past the bars and the Chinese restaurants all ready for the New Year. Shops had bunting on their windows and cotton-wool snow surrounded plastic Santa Clauses. There was a long queue outside cake shops and Saint Paul’s Cathedral was brightly lit. Feeling light and empty he hummed tunelessly to himself and asked Mistry how his mother was coping with her illness.
Near Mayo Road, Mistry swore and pressed the car horn viciously at a cab that was driving sluggishly along the middle of the road. In the beam of the headlight Bikram could see a couple kissing urgently in the rear seat and furtively touching each other.
Back home, he leaned back in the lift and watched the floors glide past. Children laughed and TV sets blared from the other flats, but his own was cold and lonely.
He went in for a bath and stood under the shower for two minutes, then turned off the hot-water tap and felt the chill of the cold water trickling down his body. He towelled himself slowly, slipped into jeans and a jumper and wondered what to do. For a while he stood undecided in his bedroom before moving resolutely to the balcony and staring out.
Would there be another cricket match soon? The sky was white with the floodlights from the Eden Gardens stadium. He remembered the last match and the way Gaur Mohan had laughed at him in the stands. He remembered Shona and the way she had been upset by Gaur Mohan’s behaviour. She’s a decent girl and I need to protect her, he thought. It’s time to get over my self-importance and marry her.
After a while he became aware of someone behind him.
He did not turn his head because he did not need to. They could by now communicate soundlessly: mere presence without words.
He stretched his hands out behind him and felt her long, soft hair as she buried her face into his back.
He smiled.
The chapter heading quotations in this book are taken from Police and Modern So
ciety: A Practical Study by August Vollmer © 1936 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press.
From the same author
F.I.R
The first authentic Indian police procedural
Dashing DSP Bikram Chatterjee of the West Bengal Police hates his boss, the boorish SP, Toofan Kumar. And he knows his boss especially resents his affair with screen goddess Shona Chowdhury—it’s a rank thing. Bikram is keenly aware of the two distinct worlds he inhabits: the posh circles of Toofan and Shona—a world he instinctively distrusts—and the grimy world of crime with which he is familiar, even comfortable.
Then Robi Bose, former darling of Calcutta’s Page 3, is found dead with bloody froth on his lips and Bikram is given the task of investigating this high-profile death in double-quick time. This, in addition to all his other duties—cultivating informers, breaking up drug-smuggling rackets on the Indo–Bangladesh border and providing security for occasionally violent football matches. And as the investigation draws him in, Bikram finds his two worlds colliding in unexpected ways.
Gripping, gritty and one hundred per cent honest, F.I.R. inaugurates the DSP Bikram series.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 2013
Copyright © Monabi Mitra 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-143-41755-2
This digital edition published in 2016.
e-ISBN: 978-9-351-18290-0
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.