She was on her way out, her briefcase in hand, when the phone rang. Her heart thumping, she picked it up, full of both relief and trepidation. It had to be Duncan.
But it was Bent.
“Bent? Is everything okay? I’ve been trying to get ahold of Duncan,” Grace said.
“I thought maybe he called you,” Bent said. There was an urgency in his voice that frightened her.
“What do you mean? Isn’t he with you? Where are you calling from?”
“The hotel. We got here this morning. But something came up, and I had a car take him to Hikkaduwa, a guesthouse there. I told him to take Janie along because there would be more for her to do there than here. But now I don’t know where he is, or Janie.”
“I don’t understand. What was he supposed to do in Hikkaduwa? A meeting?”
“I can’t go into the details. But it seems there has been some sort of mix-up. The car that took him wasn’t the one I had ordered.”
“He went in a taxi?”
“No, a hired car.” Grace could hear the tension in his voice. “Grace, don’t panic, but I think he and Janie have been kidnapped.”
Grace’s briefcase thudded onto the floor, folders spilling out. “Kidnapped! My God. Who would kidnap them? Are you sure? Could they just have broken down on the way?”
“That’s what I thought at first,” Bent said. “I called our people who sent the car. That’s when I found out the car wasn’t ours.”
“What? Whose car was it then? Did you call the police?”
“They’re working on it. But Grace—”
“I’ll call my parents. They can call my uncle. He’s a deputy inspector general—”
“Grace, wait, listen. You can’t do that,” Bent said, his voice insistent.
“What?”
“There’s more going on than you know,” Bent said. “More than I can tell you right now. We think one of our competitors is behind this, maybe trying to get information from Duncan.”
“What competitor? You mean Novophil? Did you tell the police that?”
There was silence for a moment. “Bent? Are you talking about Novophil? Mortensen was here just now. The detective from the reunion. He said something about Novophil being involved. What is going on, Bent?”
“What did Mortensen say?”
“That two people who worked for Cinasat are dead. Did you know about that?”
“I just heard,” Bent said. “That’s what worries me about all this.”
“Mortensen’s investigating something at Cinasat. He wanted to talk to Duncan. Has he talked to you?”
“Not for a while. I don’t know what’s happening,” Bent said. “We have to be careful so that we don’t endanger Duncan or Janie. You need to keep quiet about this, Grace. I haven’t even told Janie’s mother. She’ll get worked up. I don’t want her to get the police involved. I’m doing everything I can. We’ll get it sorted out. I wasn’t sure I should call you, but I thought I’d better. I know your parents were waiting to hear from Duncan. I didn’t want them or you to . . . to get worried.”
“How can I not be worried?” Grace said. “What if something happens?” Then she realized what a stupid thing that was to say. Janie was only nine. How worried Bent must be. She couldn’t even imagine what he must be going through. “At least Janie’s not alone,” she said. “Duncan’s really good with kids. He’ll make sure she’s alright, Bent.” Unless he wasn’t alright himself, she thought. She could feel her heart racing harder, but she tried to calm her voice for Bent’s benefit.
“I know,” Bent said. “I know he’ll look out for Janie. That’s my one consolation. Someone’s coming over here now, from the team we’ve put together to help. They’re going to track down the car.” He sounded on the verge of tears. “Just keep this to yourself, Grace. I’m really sorry to have got you and Duncan mixed up in this. I didn’t know . . . It’s all so out of control,” he said.
“What shall I do? I should tell Mortensen,” Grace said.
“No, no, no,” Bent said. “That’s the last thing you should do. This is too sensitive. We can’t risk anything. I just want to make sure they’re safe. And there’s nothing Mortensen or anyone else can do from there. Please, Grace. I’ll call you soon. Just sit tight.”
After he hung up, Grace huddled in a corner of the sofa, hugging her knees. What was she to do? Was Yak Adura connected to this? Should she call Bent back and give him the number? But the email had said she should not even use her home phone. Trust no one. Your husband is in danger. Should she call Mo? It was ridiculous to think he could be involved. Trust no one.
There was only one thing she could do, she realized. She fished her laptop out of her briefcase and looked for the earliest flight to Sri Lanka. There were only two seats left. The price was much too high, but she had no choice. The flight was leaving in less than four hours. She could make it if she rushed. She would call the number Yak Adura had sent when she got to Colombo. It would be better to not call her parents beforehand. Otherwise there would have to be explanations, and she didn’t know what she could say.
She lugged a suitcase out of the closet and threw some clothes into it. The KIS sweatshirt she had got at the reunion was lying in a corner of the closet. She tossed it in a carry-on bag with a paper copy of her almost-finished grant proposal. When she finally drove out of the garage, she saw Gordy standing by the fence, trimming a wayward branch off her honeysuckle creeper.
“Gordy,” she called out. “Keep an eye on the house, would you? I’m taking a flight out today, to Sri Lanka.”
Gordy looked startled. “What, now?” He hurried toward her, the clippers dangling from his hand.
“I have to rush,” Grace said. “Plane to catch. To join Duncan for a few days,” she added, waving.
“Well, bon voyage, young lady,” Gordy said. “You be careful, out there on your own.”
Grace watched the house recede in the rearview mirror. She remembered that she had not had time to get Gigi started on the vials in rack thirty-nine. All those dissections still to be done. Soon those flies would be too mature for their ovaries to be of any use. Time would beat her.
35
DUNCAN
Sunday
On the screen, the adura was dancing, rocking from one foot to the other. His head was thrown back, his eyes wild, his painted face contorted with the emotions he was projecting. He passed one of the woven offering baskets over the patient’s head. The patient, clearly in a trance, touched the basket and wiped her face, her hands rigid. A relative, his own eyes wide with terror, guided her as she placed flowers, betel leaves, and a handful of rice in a woven tray placed before her, symbolizing both an offering to the demon and her freedom from the demon’s will. The adura threw a handful of some substance into the brazier. Orange balls of flame shot into the air, and smoke billowed out in gusts. The adura seized the live rooster that had been a part of the ceremony and held it over the incense burner. The power of the adura’s song, in turn terrifying and uplifting, reverberated in Duncan’s ears. Duncan had put on his headphones for fear that Janie might wake up. She had passed out on the couch after they had returned from the beach. She’d be terrified if she heard the chanting.
He slid one headphone off to scratch his ear and became aware of the sea calling through the open windows. He would have liked to go down to the main road and walk along the beach. He had been trying to be stoic about being cooped up, but he was starting to feel increasingly angry. Bent should have warned him that he would not be able to leave the compound. He wished he knew more about the danger Bent had mentioned. Why did Bent think he needed so much protection?
His eyes were heavy. Even though it was not yet bedtime here, his body was responding as if he’d just spent a whole night without any sleep.
“Sir is watching a thovile.” Jotipala’s voice came from behind him. Duncan, taking off the second headphone, turned to see him standing by the carved screen at the sitting room doorway. He looked displeased,
even angry, Duncan thought, although he spoke politely. How long had he been standing there?
“Yes, I am watching this for my work . . . for my job . . . ,” Duncan said, and then realized how ridiculous that must sound to Jotipala. How could he possibly explain why he was watching a video of an exorcism ceremony?
“Sir knows the woman who is ill?” Jotipala said, his eyes on the video as the patient came into view, her eyes rolled back in her head.
“No, I don’t know her,” Duncan said. He wished now that he had not been watching the video in plain view. He clicked on the icon to pause the video. The adura froze, his mouth open wide, holding the rooster high above his head.
“Then sir knows the adura? This is part of sir’s studies?”
“Part of my studies . . . yes, in a way, but I don’t know this adura,” Duncan said, hearing the apologetic note in his own voice.
“How did sir get this film?” Jotipala moved a couple of feet forward. There was an accusatory edge to the way he asked the question.
“My boss gave it to me,” Duncan said. “He . . . His company had it filmed when the exorcism was happening. The adura gave permission.” Surely that was true, Duncan thought. This was part of a scientific study. Ethics boards, in the US and here, would have approved everything. Papers would have been signed. Everything had been aboveboard, Carson Lacey had assured him.
“Someone must have given him money,” Jotipala said. “These things should not be filmed. Nowadays, even the sacred things are not respected. How can the ceremony work when there is no respect?” He shook his head, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown. “The spirits take revenge on such things. This is not a film. These are not film stars to be watching and enjoying.”
“I wasn’t enjoying like that,” Duncan said, horrified. “I would not . . . This is difficult work the aduras, the drummers, the dancers, everyone is doing. I respect what they do.”
Jotipala shook his head, his nostrils flared in anger. “This is very dangerous. How can the aduras, all of them, even the patient, be safe when filming is done? The purifications will fail. Sir does not know how terrible the demons are. Their power is great.”
Duncan knew about the elaborate purification rituals exorcists did before undertaking a ceremony. People in the villages feared demons and the unearthly havoc they were believed to wreak. During his time in Talgasgama, Duncan himself had seen things that he couldn’t easily explain. Once, during an exorcism, he had seen a young man leap impossibly high. The man had been an onlooker standing at the edge of the ceremonial area, by a tall coconut tree. At the climax of the ritual, when the adura had shouted the mantra for driving out the demon, the patient had emitted a shrill scream, and at the very same moment, the onlooker had let out a loud holler and leapt straight up into the air, high enough to touch the dangling fronds of the coconut tree. The coconut fronds had jerked as he touched them. It had happened very suddenly.
Later, Duncan had wondered if he’d imagined it, because he couldn’t see how a jump such as that, easily twelve feet into the air, would have been possible. But other ceremony attendees had seen it too, he found out; they’d been matter-of-fact, though frightened. The demon had been driven momentarily into the onlooker, they’d said. Even now, thinking about it, Duncan had no explanation for what he’d seen, other than to suppose that the power of what the onlooker believed had allowed him to make that superhuman jump.
Now Duncan struggled to find the words to mollify Jotipala. “The adura must have thought it was alright to let it be filmed,” he said. “He had a choice.” He wondered whether to mention that his work was to help develop a potent drug, but then he thought better of it.
“What choice,” Jotipala scoffed. “We make next to nothing doing these ceremonies. It is impossible to make a living doing this. Most of us work in houses or construction to be able to support a family. So if someone comes, some big-shot foreigner, and offers money, what choice do we have?”
Duncan struggled to find something to say. “The company I work for is trying to help people. This was for a good reason. You don’t understand . . .”
“Sir is the one who doesn’t understand,” Jotipala said. “Sir can’t understand our life. In England, in America, everyone is rich. No one has to struggle to fill their children’s bellies.”
“I can’t understand what it’s like for you, that is true,” Duncan said. “But not everyone in America is rich. I wasn’t rich when I was growing up. My father had to work hard.”
Jotipala scowled at him, the whites of his eyes stark against the darkness of his skin. “The way Fernando Sir works hard,” he said. “He sits at a desk and makes money. That is not the kind of work I am talking about.”
“My father didn’t sit at a desk,” Duncan said. “When I was small, he made money by collecting used oil from restaurants. The old oil that was left over after frying food. The restaurants use a lot of oil. When the oil gets too burned, they pour it into big buckets. My father left buckets at the restaurants, and then in the night, he came and collected them. He had enough money to have a truck, it’s true. But it was a broken-down old one. I used to go with him to collect the oil. After we collected the oil we used to take it to factories where people made chemicals, dump it into big vats. That was hard work. Our clothes were always dirty from the oil.”
Jotipala looked down at his own faded shirt, which was streaked with sweat and dirt from his gardening, and then at Duncan’s clean white shirt. Duncan felt like a hypocrite, talking about the hardships he had suffered. Providing access to free higher education, as Sri Lanka did, would be no help to someone too poor to get past eighth grade without having a job.
“I know it must be difficult for you,” was all he could find to say. “But we’re not so different. It has also been difficult for me, even if it was in a different way.”
Jotipala’s eyes rested on Duncan’s face for a second, and then slid away. “Janie baba must wake up now, to eat dinner. Karuna has made hoppers. If she sleeps any more now, she will be up all night.”
36
GRACE
Sunday
Grace had been trying not to think about where Duncan might be, where Janie might be, but images of them locked up in a hut somewhere kept intruding on her mind. Send positive vibes, that was what Marla would say in a situation like this. If only she had Marla’s attitude.
She arrived in the chilly departure lounge with fifteen minutes to spare before boarding. She pulled her sweatshirt out of her bag, and only then remembered the chicken curry stain on it. She had forgotten all about putting it in the wash. Then she saw, to her surprise, that there was no evidence of a stain at all. She took it into the light by the windows facing the tarmac and examined it again. Nothing. It looked brand-new, in fact. She pulled it on, and feeling something in the pocket, remembered Bent’s card. It was still in there. “Meet me—first bridge, northwest trail. 9 a.m.” She had forgotten all about that too. The card was still crisp; the sweatshirt had clearly not been in the laundry.
She thought back to the morning when Angie had died, when this whole mess had begun. She had been standing at the buffet table right next to Janie, serving herself chicken curry. At the first gunshot, her hand had jerked, splattering curry on the sweatshirt. She clearly remembered seeing the top of the K in KIS stained dark red. How was it unstained now? She lifted the cloth up and sniffed it. No odor. Could this be someone else’s sweatshirt? She had tossed it under her picnic bench later that day. Bent had dropped it off at her cabin. But maybe someone else’s sweatshirt had been there as well, and he’d picked that up instead.
Had Bent given the card to someone else, someone to whom the sweatshirt belonged? Did that person now have her own sweatshirt?
She looked again at the card. “First bridge, northwest trail. 9 a.m.” The northwest trail had been where the shots had been fired that day. Could Bent have met someone the morning of Angie’s death? It occurred to her with a shock: could the sweatshirt be Angie’s?
She called Marla on her cell phone.
“I’m fine,” Marla said, when Grace asked about her health. “Mo hasn’t returned my calls. Do you know anything else? Have they found out yet what Angie was working on? Do you want to come over? For dinner maybe?”
“Actually, I’m at the airport,” Grace said, trying to keep her voice casual. “Going to Colombo.”
“What? I didn’t even know . . . You’re done with your grant?”
Grace wished she could just open up, tell her everything. “Close,” she said, although she hadn’t looked at the unfinished application since seeing Mo the previous afternoon. “Duncan had to go to Sri Lanka for work. Unexpectedly. I decided to join him.”
“Really, this sudden—”
Grace broke in, not wanting to answer any questions. “Listen, I have to board soon. But I had a quick question for you . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I brought my KIS sweatshirt to wear on the plane, the one I got at the reunion. But I don’t think it’s mine. Mine had a stain on it. I think I might have picked up someone else’s.”
“You mean did I get your stained one? No,” Marla said. “But why do you care who got it? They’ll wash it. The one you have is yours. Good thing there was only one size.”
“But actually,” Grace said, “I just wondered . . . if it could be Angie’s.”
“Angie’s?” Grace heard the puzzlement in her voice. “Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know . . . Well, because obviously if she had one, it might have been left there. Did she have one?”
“She got one, yes, when she showed up to the picnic area that night,” Marla said. Her voice had sobered. “And now that you mention it, I don’t remember seeing it in the cabin later, after . . . you know. But anyone could have left one and not even noticed. Who was thinking about sweatshirts when we all left there? Mo said he left his. And maybe other people.”
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