BLOOD RED SARI

by Banker, Ashok K

  The delivery boy handed her the change.

  ‘Keep it,’ she said, starting to walk away quickly. She didn’t look back or turn around or hesitate, just began walking towards the rear wall of the compound.

  ‘Thank you, madam,’ she heard the Chennaiite say before she went out of earshot.

  The rear wall was barely five feet high. She vaulted over it easily, and was in the compound of the adjoining property, another office building which was closed for the night. She walked through the empty compound all the way to the far wall, then crossed over that as well. That led her to a back lane which wound its way circuitously through various bylanes before connecting with the main road. She continued walking, meeting almost nobody except a security guard or two and a few stray dogs who sniffed excitedly at the bag of food in her hand. They reminded her that she was carrying her dinner and after a moment’s thought, she dropped the bag and continued walking. The sound of the strays tearing open the packets of food followed her for several yards.

  She thought quickly as she walked: if they had stretched out the long arm of the law to reach for her at the gym, they would already be at her house. There was no point going there either. Luckily, she was carrying her wallet. She had no idea if they could or would go to the extent of freezing her bank accounts, but she wouldn’t put it past them. All it would take was an income tax order. If they had planned this as thoroughly as it appeared, the order would have been issued weeks earlier, ostensibly dispatched to her office or home address via registered post but cleverly diverted either to an incorrect address or intercepted and torn up en route. She remembered using an ATM somewhere in this locality a couple of months ago. She found it nestled outside a bank branch that was shut for the night. The security guard barely glanced at her and she was relieved to find that cash was still there in her account. She withdrew the maximum limit allowed by the card, fifty thousand rupees, dividing the red thousand-rupee notes into two bundles, folding each in half and stuffing it down the front pockets of her jeans. She used the respite to look through the wallet which was too thick to fit in her pocket. It was mostly stuffed with various papers and stuff related to the gym. She tore them all into strips and discarded them in the waste paper basket overflowing with ATM receipts, pulled out the couple of thousand rupees cash, all her credit and ID cards, and stuffed those into her rear pockets before dumping the wallet too.

  She felt as if she were bulging at the buttocks as she exited the air-conditioned ATM cubicle and stepped out into the balmy night air, but a quick glance at her reflection in the glass door showed only a slightly fuller look. Nothing that would attract unwanted attention – well, at least not unusual unwanted attention.

  Her car was back at the gym. She would have to forget about that as well. She was on the run now and would have to assume everything she owned or possessed was gone for good. She had always realized this day might come someday, but the last year or so had lulled her into thinking that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t. That was why she had stopped taking her usual precautions – stashing money away in off-site safe places, moving house every six months, etc. This has been the longest she had stayed in one place since the Munshi kidnapping. Since Bhasker had died. She would have to assume she no longer had a home, workplace, car, possessions … nada. Just the clothes on her back and the cash in her jeans. Period.

  She was crossing the highway when she remembered that she had left the contents of the yellow manila envelope behind as well.

  Five

  5.1

  ‘WHAT PACKAGE?’ ANITA ASKED.

  Philip looked at her with a vicious shine in his eyes, as if she had just asked him who he was and what he was doing here. ‘The one she sent you, crazy whore.’

  She was taken aback by the sudden nasty streak. ‘Hey, take it easy. I’m asking because I haven’t a clue.’

  He sniggered and wiped his nose on his sleeve, curling his elbow and wrist in a peculiar way which reminded her of a spin bowler. That was old. ‘Yeah. You just came here for the fucking funeral.’

  She stared at him silently until he realized she wasn’t speaking and looked up at her.

  ‘What?’ he asked sullenly.

  ‘I did come here for the fucking funeral,’ she said. ‘You were the one who called me and told me the news, remember? Why else would I come?’

  He stared at her, then looked away and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. For your share?’

  Now she was really foxed. ‘My share of what? I don’t know what you’re talking about, brother.’

  He looked at her intently, his eyes watering. His nose was running too, she noticed. He wiped both on his sleeve. ‘Really? But you opened the package, no?’

  She sighed and got up, putting down the empty cup and wanting more. ‘I told you, I don’t know anything about a pack—’ She stopped, turned and looked at him. ‘Was it a yellow manila envelope, about yay big?’ She held her hands apart to indicate the size.

  He smacked the heel of his hand on his forehead. ‘Sheh, budhiyillatha … Yes, chechi. Which other package?’

  ‘And you said Lalima sent me that envelope?’

  He nodded, affecting a look of long-suffering misery.

  ‘That would mean she had sent it just before she died …’ Anita trailed off.

  Philip was shaking his head. ‘She had given it to some lawyer in Kozhikode, with instructions to mail it out if anything happened to her.’

  Anita blinked rapidly, then sat on the bed again. ‘What do you mean, “if anything happened to her”?’

  He spread his hands. ‘Like what did happen, pottee. She died or what?’

  ‘Yes, but people don’t give instructions like that to their lawyers if they’re expecting to live to a ripe old age and die of natural causes at eighty-nine. Are you trying to say Lalima thought she was in some kind of danger?’

  He looked at her, his mouth gaping open, slack-jawed. She was sure he was on meth. Nasal intake. That would explain all the symptoms, which was good because it meant he hadn’t progressed to the intravenous stage yet; he could still be treated. ‘Obviously, da? Why else she was killed?’

  Anita leaned forward. ‘What did you just say? Lalima was killed?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said sullenly, as if it were obvious. ‘Naturally she was killed. She went too far. They warned her.’

  ‘Who?’ She almost shouted. Even said in a normal tone, he still flinched. ‘Who killed her? And why? What does all this have to do with that envelope?’

  Philip stared at her.

  ‘You didn’t open the package,’ he said at last, uncertainly at first, as if afraid to hope. Then, with more certainty: ‘You didn’t open it!’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Answer my question, Philip. Why would anyone kill Lalima? She was just a social worker, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Social meddler,’ he said with evident scorn. Then, seeing her reaction, he tried to make amends. ‘To them! They said. She was meddling in things that were too big for her to handle. She should have walked away when she had the chance.’ He added belatedly, ‘They said,’ but with a sullenness that left no doubt about his own low opinion of such meddlers.

  ‘But she didn’t walk away,’ Anita said, realizing that the best way to get it out of him was to set up a rhythm. ‘Instead, she …’

  He nodded, falling in line, ‘Instead she stole this data key belonging to Father Yeshua …’

  ‘… and …’

  ‘And she made copies and printouts and sent them out to god knows who, but I knew she had sent you one because she mentioned you. She said Anita would kick their asses. She said you would come here and go to town on them.’ He sniggered and wiped his nose and eyes on the sleeve again. ‘She thought you were fucking superwoman, MrsChristianBaleBatmandarknightrises…’

  He mumbled something else under his breath, something she couldn’t catch. Then he said without looking up, ‘So they made me call you here for the funeral, knowing you would definitely come because you won’t miss your best
friendfirstlover’s fucking funeral, would you?’ Suddenly, he released a massive snorting exudation and began to cry. ‘Now they have sent me to get the package from you, because that was the only reason they called you here, to get the package and make sure you hadn’t told anyone else yet …’

  ‘… about what’s in the package,’ she prompted gently.

  ‘About what’s in the package,’ he agreed, crying. ‘So please, chechi, just give it to me and I’ll give it to them and everything will go back to the way it was before …’

  ‘Before …?’ she asked, careful not to sound too interrogative, just a gentle uplift at the end of the word.

  ‘Before that Greenpeacebitch came to the orphanage and fucked it all up,’ he said, digging the heels of his hands into the sockets of his eyes and rubbing viciously, as if trying to erase his eyes from existence. ‘Before …’ He broke down, sobbing.

  Anita put her arm around him and held him for a while. From the corridor outside, she could hear the sounds of children yelling and running. Several minutes passed slowly. She held him tightly, feeling the way his body trembled spasmodically. When she thought he had calmed down sufficiently, she said softly, ‘Before …’

  ‘Before, everyone was great,’ he said. ‘Father Yeshua liked me and I liked my work. Everything was so good, so clean, so pure. We were doing God’s work. Jesus’ work.’

  ‘Praise Jesus,’ she said.

  ‘Praise Jesus,’ he replied automatically. Then, turning his head so he could look at her. ‘Sing the song, chechi.’

  ‘The song,’ she said, knowing exactly what he meant.

  ‘Sing, no. Please.’

  She took a deep breath and sang softly. ‘One day at a time, sweet Jesus, that’s all I’m asking of you, just give me the strength to do every day what I have to do …’

  He sang along in the second verse, coming in late and off-key. ‘Yesterday’s gone, sweet Jesus, tomorrow may never be mine.’

  She continued singing until she couldn’t remember any more verses and was repeating the same ones over and over again. At some point he stopped and grew still, swaying from side to side in rhythm with the tune. She sensed his breathing changing, but continued to the end of the refrain. When she stopped and looked down at him, he was asleep.

  She laid him down gently on the bed. He stirred, turned sideways and curled into a foetal position, hugging his knees as if cold. She covered him with the unused sheet. He slept like a baby.

  She waited until she was certain his breathing had settled into a deep-sleep pattern. Then she went to her bag and unzipped it softly, moving slowly and being very quiet to avoid waking him up.

  It was right at the bottom. The only reason she had even brought it along was because it had Lalima’s name at the back, with an address c/o a law office in Kozhikode. She had forgotten all about it since the time she received it.

  Now, she cut open the sealed flap with the nail file from her cosmetics pouch and removed a thick stack of what appeared to be photocopied documents. A loose sheet fell out from the bottom. She caught it and glanced at it: it was just a list of dates and places which meant nothing to her. She put it aside.

  Riffling through the pile of documents, she saw what seemed to be pages and pages of some kind of financial data, with notes scribbled in the margins, and figures and rows highlighted in grey – they had probably been highlighted in the original document and then photocopied, which meant these were copies of a particular printout with extra highlights and notes in the margins. There were pages of some kind of transcripts of telephone conversations. Emails – there were a lot of them. Property ownership records, car ownership documents, photo IDs of numerous people, some kind of trust ownership deed, details of bank accounts, wire transfers, mutual fund statements, and several other financial documents that she couldn’t make head or tail of at first glance.

  She sat cross-legged on the carpet, picking up sheets, looking over each one, then putting it aside, trying to make sense of all the raw data, figures and documents. The margin notes and highlighting helped, but it was still mostly unintelligible to her. She desperately craved more filter coffee but she didn’t want to use the phone or have someone ring the doorbell. She needed Philip to sleep while she figured out what the fuck was going on here, and why the hell anyone would kill Lalima over these documents.

  The rest could wait until Philip woke up.

  5.2

  EVEN AS NACHIKETA PULLED into the building compound, she knew something was wrong. She could hear the dogs barking and the security guard was nowhere in sight. The building was in darkness and this part of Vasant Kunj was fairly secluded and upscale. The trees added to the privacy but also isolated the buildings, creating pools of shadow that the street lights and ambient light couldn’t penetrate entirely. It made the street more than a little creepy at night.

  It took her a good five minutes to shift from her driver’s seat to the wheelchair and get rolling, and during those minutes, the voice in her head kept urging her to call the police. But she didn’t. By the time she was moving into the building entrance, she knew it was too late, that she was on her own now because even if she called them now, there was no way they would arrive in time to be of any assistance. She paused at the foyer in front of the lifts before turning down the corridor that led to her office.

  Know what you’re doing, Nachos? She asked herself.

  Yes, came the grim reply.

  She rolled down the corridor. It was pitch dark. Justice’s pups were in the passageway, and they came bounding to her in the darkness. She heard their eager yelps and whining and felt their rough tongues rasping on the back of her hands as she steered the electric wheelchair. Usually she would be afraid of running over one of the puppies, but now, in the dark, there was little she could do; so she just steered until she felt the front guard bump against the wall. The closer the dogs came to her office, the more agitated they became. The pups went crazy, barking and scratching at the door, as if wanting to go inside.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ she whispered. Where was Justice? Surely the goons who had called her hadn’t done something to the poor dog?

  In the darkness, she could still smell the urine from the night before, on the front door of her office, and overpowering that disgusting odour, the pungent stench of something else. Something she couldn’t identify.

  She felt something wet and sticky beneath the wheels of the wheelchair and knew that was bad. It reminded her of wheeling her way through the aisles of movie theatres where Coke or caramel popcorn had been spilled. This felt similar – sticky and wet, yet yielding. The smell made her want to gag. Whatever that odour was, it was related to the stuff leaking out from under her front door. She used her Blackberry to see what it was and almost dropped the cell phone. In the garish bluish light from the phone screen, it looked like blood. But it couldn’t be blood. There was too much of it. Moving the cell phone to and fro, bending over as far as she dared, she sniffed and immediately recognized the pungent vaporous odour: petrol. Where was petrol coming from? Had someone spilled a can on the floor inside the office? What the hell had happened here? And there were streaks of something darker, more viscous mixed with the petrol. Was that blood? She thought it might be. Did dog blood look the same as human blood? She couldn’t remember. She didn’t know whether to be more worried about Shonali or Justice or both equally. Whoever these men were, they were clearly unscrupulous.

  She knocked hard on the door.

  There was no response.

  She tried the knob and it turned. Her breath caught in her throat.

  She knew she should back out of here, get out and call Delhi Police.

  But Shonali was in there somewhere. And the men who had called her. They would be here, waiting; they had said so. If she retreated and called the police, they would make a run for it and escape. This was her only chance to get them.

  Yeah, sure, a cripple in a wheelchair against Punjabi thugs. That’s very doable, Nachos. Great p
lan, girl.

  It was a terrible, crazy, stupid-ass plan. She knew this. But she knew that bringing the police into it couldn’t help right now. Right now, she was here and she had to do something. It was the way she was wired, the reason she was in a wheelchair today, and the reason why she couldn’t turn away from trouble when confronted by it.

  She pushed open the office door and rolled inside, pushing the door shut against the protesting pups before they could get in. She didn’t want their little innocent lives on her conscience as well.

  The stench of faeces was unmistakable. She gagged on it but regained control of herself. It almost overwhelmed the stench of petrol, but as she wheeled further into the outside office, the petrol won out, making her eyes water and her nose run at once. She wiped her face on the back of the sleeve of her blouse, blinking away the tears. Her hand fumbled with the light switch and turned it on, but nothing happened. Why were the lights off? Had the goons done that as well? Were they still here? She couldn’t hear any sounds from this room – or the inside office either.

  ‘Koi hai?’ she said tentatively, her voice cracking. She forced herself to speak louder, trying to sound more authoritative. She’d be damned if she turned into a snivelling victim before them. ‘Hello? Anybody there?’ When there was still no answer, she asked tentatively, ‘Shonali? Shons, you there?’

  The whining of the pups and their claws scratching at the closed office door were the only sounds that came to her. There weren’t even any traffic sounds from the street outside at this hour.

  Damnit, woman, WTF are you doing here? You’re no superwoman to come swooping to the rescue.

  But they had ordered her to come here or else … Shonali’s life was at stake. Or so the guy said.

  She sat there in the darkness for another few minutes, trying to decide what to do next, trying not to breathe through her nose – the stench was awful. She wanted to puke but controlled herself. She was convinced the office was empty; but that didn’t mean she could just turn around and wheel her way out. Shonali might still be here, hurt or … or worse. Even if she was going to call the police or an ambulance, she had to know for sure.