I asked Jafri, “What exactly does the inspector want me to do?”
“He wants you to get the feel of things, find out how the land lies.”
“He is aware that I know nothing of police methods and I may muck things up for him?” I had visions of walking over tracks murderers are supposed to leave on flower-beds.
“Our Ozzie is not very keen on science in detection. He says that science is great for proving your case in court once you have got the killer in your hands. He does not think it helps very much in actually recognising and apprehending the guilty party.” Jafri smiled at me impishly. “D’Cruz suggests that you shuffle around and get the feel of things.”
“All right, I get the feel of things; then what?”
Zainah poured him more tea and Jafri drank some of this before answering. “Then you stir them up. I didn’t quite understand what Ozzie meant by this but he said that you would know.”
I remember watching Ma make marble cake. Into the vanilla mix she would pour blobs of chocolate and strawberry mixes. These she would encourage to flow into the vanilla. Even as she did I could see the slices of cake with intricate brown, pink and yellow designs on their surfaces. It is sometimes possible to see the end-point even as one sets forces in motion.
“Yes. I think I know what he means.”
“He said to cause as much disturbance as you can. Feel free to ask any questions you want and even suggest that you are working with the police and know who they suspect.”
“I understand what D’Cruz is getting at but what happens if I do uncover anything?”
Jafri smiled. “You speak to me or to him. As Ozzie said ‘We must not expect mummy’s boy to get shit on his hands.’ ” Jafri continued, “He said to tell you that you have motive and method to solve this crime. Now we are providing you with opportunity.”
“Aren’t motive, method and opportunity the things murderers are supposed to have?”
“Yes,” he replied. “You may not realise this yet, How Kum, but hunters and prey have a good deal in common.”
Later as the al-Misris drove me home I asked, “You don’t quite approve of the way in which D’Cruz is conducting his investigations, do you, Jafri?”
He shrugged. “No. I think good old Ozzie is barking up the wrong tree. The killer we are looking for is not the kind that he is accustomed to dealing with.” He stopped talking as he overtook a car. “The poor tormented soul who has committed these crimes is, I think, more a candidate for psychotherapy than the hangman’s noose.”
I was upset by what he said: by the fact my best friend Jafri could view the person who had stuck a knife into Vanita’s heart with anything like sympathy. The smell of soap and talcum powder wafted across from Zainah in the back seat. I inhaled deeply and didn’t bother to hide from myself the kind of longing it roused in me.
ON FRIDAYS I GO through our stocks of meat at Nats. I do this with Loong. Checking the meat supply is a relaxed affair and gives us plenty of time for chat. Normally Loong used this time to fill me in on the variety of ways in which Chinese culture was superior to all other cultures and so enumerate the spiritual rewards that come with a mastery of taekwondo.
Today he was quiet. It would have been a good time to stir things up and provoke the supervisor along the lines suggested by D’Cruz. Several openings presented themselves but I hesitated. I knew why Loong had been Vanita’s lover for over a year and was in a position to make revelations that could be painful, raise doubts that, with Vanita dead, could never be resolved.
I knew that, to come to terms with Vanita’s murder, I should have the courage to see the world I had fashioned around her destroyed, and the ingenuity to put together another. Right now I possessed neither. I was overcome by a lethargy that made even walking between the rows of frozen carcasses an effort. Instead of talking about Vanita, I prodded a piece of meat and remarked that it looked like it had been thawed and refrozen. Loong examined it, humphed and said that he would bring it to the attention of our suppliers. We passed on to some egg-mix. I remarked how susceptible this was to infection by salmonella. It had a slight curdle on the top which suggested that it might already be harbouring the germs. I didn’t go on to take a specimen to find out if it was.
My lassitude stayed with me while I sat alone in my office. It kept Vanita’s ghost at arm’s length. I understood why I felt the way I did. I was waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for something to tell me how things were making out, the way in which I should stir the cake-mix. Something that would tell me if I was looking at a moonrise or a sunset.
I picked up the phone. Almost before it rang.
Mohan’s high-pitched, amiable voice said, “Father is wanting to know if you could dine with us this evening? There is something he needs to say but he has not revealed the nature of this communication to me. Nevertheless…”
I agreed before he could go any further. Things had begun moving again.
It was dark when I arrived at Cairnhill Circle. Number 39 seemed more forlorn than ever, the amber glow of its antiquated lights almost invisible in the aggressive fluorescence of the surrounding high-rise apartments.
The past was gone but there must be ghosts. I stooped and touched what little there remained of the past, an old-fashioned kerb-stone. Ghosts gathered around me.
I see children playing in the narrow gardens of terraces and on the manicured lawns of bungalows; hear the voices of mothers calling them in to dinner. In the shadows I can make out lovers, young, impatient, fumbling in their caresses. In them, I see myself and Vanita, realise that the pain of her loss will extend into the past and continue into the future. Escape was impossible. Resolution had to be found.
I stood up and dusted my hands. Walked the last few steps and rang the door-bell.
Leela let me in. I noticed how tiny and wizened she was. She reached up and touched my face. Her hand was rough as a root. She smiled at me in the way of the very old, bringing to life the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. Her smile was a beacon. It told me that my life was again on course. It also told me that I had found an ally.
The front rooms of the house were empty of everything except the smell of incense, and Leela indicated that I go to the room at the back. Here I found Mohan doing his yoga exercises.
He had explained these to me before. I found him in what I knew was the padangustansana posture. This was supposed to strengthen the spine and reduce the demands the genital organs made on the body so that the energy one put into sexual activity could be directed towards higher things. I don’t know what it did for the libido but there was no doubt that holding it required great strength and muscular control.
Mohan squatted on the toes of his left foot while his right leg was rigidly extended in front of him. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes looked straight ahead. I knew better than to disturb him.
After a measured number of breaths he moved out of the padangustansana and into the myurasana position with which he always concluded his exercises. To get into this he knelt forward and placed first his head then his hands on the floor. Then very slowly he began lifting his knees off the ground, supporting the entire weight of his body first on both hands then, unbelievably on one. His body was soft, effeminate. His belly, with a deep navel at its centre, hung close to the floor. Yet he held the position with ease and the face he turned to me when he was done had no trace of sweat on it.
“You are displaying the kind of patience that all students of yoga aspire to.” He slipped on a shirt. “Father should have completed the lengthy prayers he engages in these days and I can only hope that the smell of incense has not demolished your appetite.” We moved out of his room. “It will have to be an all-vegetarian meal that we are eating today as it is a Friday. I heartily enjoy vegetarian food myself and often eat it in preference to meat. My only objection is being compelled to eat it on certain days. Why Friday and not Thursday? Why not every day if we subscribe to the ecological arguments our vegetarian fr
iends are every day advancing? It is not this or that practice that I am objecting to. It is irrationality and superstition that I cannot…will not subject myself to.”
We were now in the dining-room where Leela was setting up the meal. In the manner of old servants she ignored us and went about the business of putting pickles and various condiments on to brass trays on the table. In the centre of each tray was a large depression intended for the rice. Into this Leela sprinkled a few drops of water.
“We wipe these off before the rice is served,” Mohan explained, “symbolically washing our plates.” He giggled. “Notice how we adhere painstakingly to all the nonsensical rituals of our religion but ignore its essence.” He jerked his head upwards.
I listened and heard the sounds of bajans from the room upstairs. I felt an emptiness in the middle of my chest as I listened to the songs my beloved used to sing and I wondered if it would ever be possible to fill the vacuum that seemed to have replaced my heart. I listened more carefully and detected two voices singing. Then I looked at the table and noticed that Leela had set four places.
“Yes,” said Mohan with a snigger. “We are having His Lordship, the high-priest of mumbo-jumbo with us tonight as we do more and more these days.”
“Kishore?” I asked.
“Who else but that scoundrel. He sticks to father as a leech to a man’s life-giving veins. The rogue realises that father is weakened and made foolish by the loss of sister. He also knows how rich we are and that father is in sole charge of the family’s moneys and ownings.”
I had told D’Cruz that Sundram owned a fair bit of property. I had not actually worked out how much this was. The house in Cairnhill alone would be worth several million dollars. In addition to this Vanita had mentioned several small shopping complexes and a few houses in choice locations around the island. Sundram was a millionaire several times over.
Mohan seemed to have tracked my thoughts. “Yes,” he said, “this house alone is worth a million or two and we have four residential properties besides. We also own sizeable commercial properties. Kishore has knowledge of them all. He has told father that he needed to see them to understand more fully the conflict between father’s soul and his material circumstances. He was, as will be clear to any one with a fragment of common sense, making an assessment of the real estate we owned.”
I asked, “Who will inherit all this when your father dies?”
Mohan looked at me sideways. “It is customary among us Tamils that the family fortune passes to the first-born male child. This has been our tradition for thousands of years. It is also the dharma that is strictly adhered to. And because dharma is generally accepted by us, wills have never been necessary in our community.” His mouth drooped. “But recently some doubts have been entering my mind. Father has seen a lawyer and a document has been drawn up. It is not clear how the property will be divided but I have reason to suspect I may not be the main beneficiary.”
“Are you trying to tell me that your sister may have been your father’s heir?”
“Father loved Vani. Perhaps more than a man should love his daughter. He has hinted that this gives him the right to contravene the dictates of dharma. Only a man who does not comprehend Hinduism can talk like that but I think there is some sickness that has entered his mind and is destroying it. Also he is guided by a man who is as cunning as he is dishon…”
The door opened and Kishore led Sundram into the room. Tears streaked the older man’s face and his lips still trembled. I was not the only one who was moved by the singing of bajans. I reached out to him and he embraced me.
“You are all I have for comfort,” he said. He ignored the dirty look Mohan shot him and continued, “You must understand this for there are plans that Kishore-ji has drawn up in which you are to be included.”
“Plans? What plans?” Mohan shouted, not bothering to hide the suspicion in his voice.
“Kishore-ji wishes to invoke the spirit of my dead child. He will do this tomorrow. What he intends to do is to halt her atman as it flies towards blissful union with the Infinite.”
“And how,” asked Mohan, his nostrils flaring and his lip curling, “is our great guru going to achieve this miracle?”
Kishore was undaunted. “By the chanting of ancient prayers, by the mouthing of incantations, by the burning of rare fragrances and the casting of spells known only to my family.” He spoke in a sing-song voice, as though the ritual for summoning Vanita’s spirit had already begun.
Sundram placed palm against palm and directed his salutation towards Kishore before saying, “I am right, master-ji, to say that this young man, who I now look upon as a son, will have to be with us tomorrow when you use your powers to summon the spirit of my dead child?”
I turned to Kishore and he said, “You, Menon, were the last person to be close to the girl. You were beside her when her essence was drained from her body. You must be with us when we recall it.”
Kishore was clearly a crook who was taking advantage of the old man. Common sense decreed that I should align myself with Mohan. Yet there was something that made me want to be involved in summoning Vanita’s spirit back to the world. I was being invited to participate in a dance. I could barely hear the music, didn’t know the steps but I wished, wished more than anything else, to be a part of it. I did not understand why till Mohan spoke.
“Let us all be charitable and assume that this man has supernatural powers and can recall the spirit of my dead sister. What will we say to the dead child when we have her with us? What questions will we ask her?”
“Whatever you ask the spirit will answer,” Kishore assured him. I knew why I felt elated, why I felt part of the game again. I also knew what I wanted to ask Vanita: I wanted to ask her who her killer was. One thing, however, bothered me.
I turned to Kishore. “How will Vanita speak to us?”
He looked at me suspiciously. “The spirit will speak through me.”
“I know,” said Mohan, now laughing openly. “I know exactly what will happen. Our friend here will go into some kind of fake trance. After a lot of chanting and shaking he will speak to us in a funny voice which we will all have to believe is the voice of my sister.”
Kishore looked at him contemptuously, but his voice was even. “I will at the start of the ritual speak the mantras which are known only to members of my family. I will speak them in the order determined by the asterism of the full moon at the time of her death. If the invocation is successful her spirit will enter my body and will take over my whole person including my voice and my thoughts.”
Mohan began to giggle and Kishore added, “You can laugh now but I can give you an assurance that by tomorrow evening not one of you will doubt that it is the girl that speaks through me.” Leela, deciding that we had talked enough, began serving the meal. We ate in silence. From time to time, Mohan caught my eye and made funny faces. I continued to eat, unsmiling. I was excited at what was happening, shuddered at the turn of events which suggested that they were progressing, though in a direction I could not, as yet, understand.
We finished the meal and I stood up to leave.
Kishore said to me, “Tomorrow will be a day of exhaustion for you. Sleep early tonight, drink only milk and water tomorrow. Do not under any circumstances permit the emission of semen till after we have made contact with the dead girl’s spirit.”
Mohan laughed with genuine amusement. “I know that How Kum is half Malayalee and Malayalees are well-known for their prodigious sexual appetite. But Vani has not been dead one week and Malayalee or not I do not think that he has found a replacement for my sister.”
Sundram reached out as though to strike his son, then let his hand fall to his side. I wanted to tell him that his son was wrong. Vanita was not just one of a number of women in my life. She was my first woman, my only woman. The woman I had waited for.
Before I could do so, Mohan said, “I’ll walk you to the MRT station, How Kum. I will be needing a good deal of cold night ai
r to clear my head of the rubbish a bogus guru has put into it.”
His father looked fixedly at him and said, “I don’t know why you have taken to wandering about at night.” He shook his head sadly. “A thousand times I have begged you to take a wife, so you can find contentment in a bed instead of walking restlessly around the town.”
“Don’t worry, father,” Mohan retorted. “I give you an assurance, here and now, that no amount of wandering I do will lead to the emission of semen from me or on the part of anyone else.” He paused to emphasise his point. “That is more than you could have said about your dear, dead daughter, isn’t it?”
Sundram hung his head.
I was discouraged by Mohan’s remark. I was being moved along a course, was beginning to recognise signposts. The night breeze moved the angsana to wave leafy hellos as I passed. Happy people bubbled up at me as I rode down the escalator. The train arrived as I willed it to and the doors opened to the touch of my eyes. I would find out why Vanita died. However painful, I would find out.
IT STAYED WITH ME: this feeling of being on course. I realised that things would happen that would disturb the picture that was beginning to form in my head. These I must view as distractions, side issues to the main theme. But I would go with them and, in time, incorporate them into the total picture.
I was especially glad that I had come to see things this way till I opened the paper the following morning.
The front page of Saturday’s Straits Times was taken up by details of more murders that had taken place in East Coast Park the night before. The victims, two girls in their late twenties, had been killed not far from where Vanita had died. One of them had been stabbed with a knife similar to that used in the earlier murders. The other had had her neck broken. Though both girls were described as being “in a state of undress”, neither appeared to have been sexually assaulted. The newspaper story did not explain why they were naked except to state, somewhat coyly, that they were known to be very good friends.
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