“But you must choose something for yourself, Madam! Why not a sari? Something to remind you of your journey to India?”
A sari. So the shawl wasn’t sufficient. A picture of Catherine in her sari flashed through Marina’s head. Marina did not want a sari, but more than anything else she wanted to get Hari’s information and get out of Halapur. “Fine. A sari,” she said. “Let’s pick one out.”
She bought not only a sari, patterned in green and gold, but also the matching blouse and petticoat. And this, it seemed, was enough. As her package was being wrapped in brown paper, Hari said. “Beautiful choices, Madam. Shall we take some refreshment?
They ate oozing sweets and drank tea at a cafe next door. When Marina asked Hari again about the message he had taken to Baburao he dropped his head back and gazed at the ceiling. “Yes, yes, I remember,” he said. “Yesterday morning. I did not know the man. I have not seen him before. He paid me to take a message to Baburao.” His tone indicated finality.
After a moment’s silence, Vijay said, “What did he look like, this man?”
Hari shrugged. “A man. He spoke well.” Apparently dissatisfaction with the description showed in their faces, because after a moment he continued, “He was small, also. His body was twisted.”
Marina and Vijay exchanged glances. Raki himself had come to Halapur.
Hari smiled uncertainly. “This is what you wanted to know?”
“I don’t suppose you know what the message said?” Marina asked.
Hari looked scandalized. “It was private message. Also, the envelope was sealed.”
“I see.”
As she was thinking they had probably found out all he knew, he spoke again. “The twisted man told me something to say to Baburao when I gave message.”
He looked from Marina to Vijay, in obvious enjoyment of keeping them in suspense. At last he said, “I was to say to Baburao that he must not forget that a rope can have teeth.” He grinned. “When I have said this Baburao’s eyes were very large.”
The rope with teeth. Marina pushed her mouth into what she hoped was a smile and said, “Thank you, Hari. Thanks for everything.”
Hari was standing, bowing over his palms. “I must go. Maybe someone wants to send messages.” They said goodbye, and he left the café. A moment or two later, he rode past on his bicycle.
As her eyes followed Hari, Marina noticed two men standing across the street. One was smoking a cigarette and watching Hari ride away; the other was inspecting the gearbox of a black motorcycle. When Hari was out of sight the watcher spoke to his companion, and the two started across the street.
Marina touched Vijay’s arm. “Those men have been following us,” she said. “They were at Baburao’s, and they were at the square before we went to the More house.”
They stood up, and Vijay dropped money on the table. “They were near Palika Road, too,” he said. “I saw them not far from the corner.”
A curtain hung over a doorway at the back of the cafe. Marina and Vijay slipped behind it as the men reached the shop’s entrance. A man in a pink turban looked up, startled, when she and Vijay pushed past the curtain into a little kitchen cubbyhole, but before he could speak they were out the open back door. They were in a cobblestoned alley. One end was a cul-de-sac, the other led to a sharp turn. Marina thought she heard voices behind them. She and Vijay began to run.
35
Marina’s sandals slipped on the stones and she fell against the wall, recovered her balance, and ran on. Chickens squawked and fluttered in front of them. They needed to get back to the major streets, where there were people around, but doing that was bizarrely difficult. The spaces between buildings were so small that to squeeze into them would have meant immobilization, and each narrow pathway seemed to lead only to another just like it. She looked back to see one of the men, bony and shaggy-haired, rounding the corner.
Running in this heat was like pushing through viscous liquid, every step in excruciating slow motion. Sweat dripped off her hair, flowed into her eyes and her ears, ran down her arms and the backs of her legs. Vijay’s shirt, she saw, was clinging to his back, wet through.
They were in a passage where the backs of rickety buildings seemed almost to touch overhead. When they were halfway along it, a man leading a donkey turned a corner and started toward them. The donkey carried a load of wood that barely cleared the walls. The man and the donkey plodded forward. There was no way to get by them. Vijay halted and, unable to stop herself, Marina careened into him. They would have to turn back. Yet to turn back would be to run into the arms of their pursuers. The man and donkey continued, oblivious. They were so close that Marina could see how frayed the rope was around the donkey’s neck.
She looked around wildly. There was a tiny entry alcove a few steps behind them. She pulled Vijay back into it. The door into the building, she immediately discovered, was locked. The donkey lumbered along, neither he nor his owner looking at them. Now, she realized, the donkey was between them and their pursuers. The men would not be able to get down the passage until the donkey left it.
“As soon as he passes,” she hissed, and when the donkey’s tail cleared the doorway they darted forward. As they reached the end of the passage she heard angry voices, and in a brief glimpse back saw the two men shouting at the donkey’s owner. She and Vijay turned the corner and the sound faded.
Now they found larger streets easily. They were not, after all, far from the central square. All they had to do was get back to the car and driver.
They threaded their way through the late-afternoon crowds. The heat of the sidewalk baked through the soles of Marina’s sandals and traveled up her aching legs. Ahead was the peepul tree. They had reached the edge of the square. Hari and his bicycle were gone, but men still squatted in the shade and women were gathered at the fountain. The car— the car wasn’t where they had left it.
The driver must have moved it. Her eyes darted toward the side streets. It had to be pulled up close by. Vijay, she saw, was also looking around. “Where is it?” she asked, nudged by panic.
“I told him—”
Marina felt breath on the back of her neck. “You are to come with us,” a voice said. “I have a gun in my pocket.”
The man who had spoken was the taller of the two who had pursued them, the one with longish shaggy hair. The other, shorter and stockier, stood close to Vijay.
Not knowing what else to do, she moved in the direction he indicated. I could yell. Surely they wouldn’t shoot in front of so many witnesses. Maybe they wouldn’t, but maybe they would. She tried to catch someone’s eye— the beedi-seller on the pavement, the men who jogged by carrying a high-backed red velvet sofa— but life around the pump and the peepul tree continued in oblivious tranquility.
The men led Marina and Vijay into the building where they had been standing with their motorcycle earlier. The steps were stained with red splashes of betel juice, and a sign announced that inside could be found the “Everywhere Travel Bureau, Ltd.” Marina glimpsed an uninhabited desk and a few brochures scattered in a wall rack before she was hurried up creaking wooden stairs to an airless corridor. The shaggy-haired man nodded at a door and the stocky man unlocked it. They pushed Marina and Vijay inside.
“You will stay here,” the shaggy-haired man said, drawing a snub-nosed pistol out of his pocket. “One of us will be outside.”
Marina found her voice. “Why? How long?”
The man didn’t answer. He and his companion left them, and she heard the key turn in the lock.
36
They were in a small room, its one window shuttered. The few wedges of molten glare that seeped around the edges of the shutters provided the only illumination. The room was empty of furniture. The heat was intense.
“Nagarajan is going to kill us,” Marina said. They had waited too long. He had outwitted them. She should have known. She should have known.
Vijay went to the window and pounded on the shutters with his fists. He yelle
d in Marathi, his voice hoarse. Marina beat on the door, crying “Help!” as loud as she could. Her throat felt scalded.
Nobody came. They could hear from outside the faint sounds of Halapur going about its business. Her brain felt torpid with hopelessness. Pulling the hot, dusty air into her lungs seemed like insane effort. She sat on the floor by the wall, and Vijay came to sit beside her. He leaned his head back against the wall.
“What happened to the driver?” she said, finally. She had meant to speak normally, but her voice was a faint rasp.
“They have tricked him, or paid him, or killed him.” Vijay’s words seemed to come from far away, or from underwater. Water. She tried to ignore the dryness in her throat. At the Taj last night she had ordered a fresh lime soda from room service— a tall glass half-filled with crushed ice and lime juice, and a bottle of soda water to mix with it. She had left, she remembered distinctly, half an inch of diluted liquid in the bottom of the glass. What would I do for that half-inch now, what money would I give, what acts would I perform. Only a short distance from here people are buying cool bottles of beer for a few rupees. The thought brought her close to tears.
After ten minutes or so she heard something— a chair?— being dragged down the corridor outside. There were voices, the voices of their captors. “Can you understand what they’re saying?”
Vijay closed his eyes as he listened. “Something about nightfall.”
Marina sat up straighter. It was late afternoon already.
The dull, blank feeling of shock and its attendant despair had started to wear off. She was an engineer, a failure analyst, a problem-solver. She had to get them out of here.
She surveyed the room. The window was the only possibility. She stood up and crossed to it. The rusty hasp and ring that secured the shutters were fastened with a new-looking steel padlock. Running her fingers over the shutters and their rusting hinges, she thought about the kit she had put together back in California, the tools that had lain ever since in the bottom of her canvas handbag.
Scrabbling through her bag, pushing aside camera, wallet, the parcel from the Laxmi Emporium, she whispered hoarsely, “Let’s look at the window again. I’ve got something—” She found the knife, dug deeper for the screwdriver, and pulled them out to show Vijay.
He looked stunned. “My God,” he whispered. “It would never occur to them that a woman would carry such things.”
The shutters were held in the window frame with corroded hinges. If one side could be loosened, they could open the window. If they couldn’t get to the ground once the window was open, at least they could call for help.
There were three hinges on each side of the shutters. She wedged the knife under the head of one hinge pin and tried gently to pry it up. It didn’t move, and showed no sign of looseness. She pushed harder but the pin, corroded in place, didn’t give.
She chipped at the rust around the hinge, trying to clear the obstruction. After a few minutes Vijay took the screwdriver and went to work on another hinge. For a long time, she alternated chipping and prying without success. Her skirt and T-shirt were covered with flecks of rust, her hands orange-stained with it.
Eventually, when she pried on the pin, she felt the slightest movement. “It’s started,” she whispered. Biting her bottom lip, she gently eased the pin up. It was turning, it was loose. Leaving it half loosened, she went on to the next.
The remaining ones seemed easier, either because Marina and Vijay were elated by success or because the hinges were less rusty. Soon all were loosened.
Now to remove the pins and open the window. Carefully supporting the shutters, they removed the first two pins. At the critical instant when Marina, her fingers trembling, extracted the third, the shutter, without warning, shifted its weight with a metallic groan.
They had time to do no more than exchange an agonized look before the key turned in the lock and the shaggy-haired man entered, his gun pointed at them. When he saw what they had done, he smirked. “Now you see the bars on the other side,” he said.
It was true. The windows were barred. The whole effort had been for nothing, for worse than nothing. Their captor took the knife and screwdriver and slid them into his pocket. Then he picked up Marina’s bag and glanced through it, his eyes lighting up when he saw her camera. He slipped the camera in his pocket, looking very pleased. He dropped Marina’s bag and motioned them toward the door. His companion, evidently standing out in the corridor, called out what sounded like a question, and the shaggy-haired man answered. Then Vijay entered the conversation. He seemed to be making a protestation of some sort.
The second captor appeared in the doorway, and an animated discussion ensued. Vijay gestured toward the shaggy-haired man, appealing to his stocky companion. Then the two men shouted at one another. Marina took the opportunity to retrieve her bag, wondering if she’d be allowed to keep it. At last, a resolution seemed to be reached. The shaggy-haired man motioned to them to precede him down the corridor, where they stopped in front of another door. When he opened it, Marina saw that it opened into some sort of supply closet. There was a strong, harsh smell of disinfectant. Their captor motioned them inside and closed the door, and once again they heard a key turn.
The heat in the closet was even worse than in the previous room. Marina felt dizzy and nauseous. She sat down on a drum containing, no doubt, some noxious substance, and Vijay sat on a neighboring container. Mops and brooms leaned against the wall. Could they fashion some sort of weapon? Was there anything here that could deflect a bullet?
“What was all the talking about?” she asked Vijay.
“Negotiation,” Vijay murmured. “I have told the man in the hall that his friend has stolen your camera. I have said that if they let us go we will buy him a very good camera, so he can have one, too. He is now annoyed that his friend took your camera and was going to keep it and not tell him.”
“So what did they say?”
“They were hired, probably by Raki, to take us to Raki’s boss. I am not sure they know the boss’s name, and in any case they will not say, but you and I believe it to be Nagarajan. They fear Raki and the boss, and they are afraid of the consequences of letting us go. But I pointed out that the consequences of killing us, or harming us, would be far worse. I have told them that I work for the Embassy, and that you are a famous person in America. They are merely hired thugs, and not very intelligent. I don’t think the money they were paid to kidnap us was as much as we would pay for a camera.”
Marina shook her head. “But Vijay— am I missing something? If they want a camera, or money, or whatever we have, they just have to take it. Isn’t that right?”
“They are afraid to do that. They think the boss will be angry if he knows they took our money. They think their boss wants our money.”
“So what’s going to happen? Why are we being kept in here?”
“They have to decide between them how they want to proceed. I am hoping very much that we must buy a camera.”
Marina’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could make out a rag hanging on a nail, light around the cracks where the door closed, Vijay’s profile. She said, “I’m sorry, Vijay.”
Vijay said nothing. She felt him move slightly, felt his hand take hers and give it a faint squeeze. His palm was hot and dry.
Marina felt feverish. Bright, vivid images bloomed in her head. She thought she saw Patrick, dressed in his white tie and tails, ready to conduct a concert. She had something to say to him, but she couldn’t remember what it was, couldn’t get her lips to move, couldn’t speak because her throat had been burned in a fire. She tried to think of coolness. Quench and revive the very one you have burnt up. Quench and revive. Quench and revive. Patrick would never believe this. But he would. He had always believed her before. He believed her even when she told him she didn’t love him, could never love him. Patrick was dressed in his white tie and tails, and he was holding a glass of water. She reached for it, but he and the water were gone.
<
br /> 37
It was an hour or more before the closet door opened again. Their two captors displayed their guns, and then spoke with Vijay, who nodded in what seemed to be agreement. They motioned the two of them out into the corridor again, and led them to a filthy bathroom which they were allowed to use in turn. There was a faucet with a trickle of water dribbling out, and Marina rinsed her hands as best she could and drank as much water as she could catch. Then they were led down the stairs and out to the streets of Halapur. Dusk had fallen, and the square was lit by mercury lamps. Smoke and the smell of cooking filled the air, and a loudspeaker blared swirling music.
The men had replaced the guns in their pockets, but there was no chance of breaking away as they led Marina and Vijay along the main road. Marina looked at Vijay, and thought he gave her a tiny, reassuring nod. Vijay’s once-crisp white shirt was rumpled and smudged, his pants dust-streaked. Surely he and the car and driver would be missed in Bombay. Mr. Curtis would be worried. Vijay’s parents would be concerned, too.
Mr. Curtis might not be worried yet, though. Since Vijay’s involvement with her was strictly unofficial, Mr. Curtis might not want to know exactly what was going on. Also, Vijay had come on this trip in a defiant mood, with a trumped-up letter to mislead the police. Chances were he hadn’t told anyone his plans. The consulate might assume, too, that the car and driver were with Vijay, wherever he was.
As for his parents— Vijay was twenty-five years old. It was possible that he stayed out all night from time to time with no questions asked. Even supposing everyone was worried, and everyone knew Marina and Vijay were in Halapur, well— Halapur was a fair-sized place. Searching for the two of them would take time.
They turned a corner and walked down a street almost as busy as the first. Then one of the men spoke, and they stopped in front of a brightly-lighted shop, open to the street. A man in a white shirt and black slacks stood behind a counter. All around him, in glass cases and on shelves, sat rows of cameras.
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 78