The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries

by Michaela Thompson

  “Who reported that I was missing?”

  “The American consulate in Bombay, first. Then the driver of the consulate car, who was lured away from his post and given false information that he was to meet you at another place.”

  “I was with an employee of the consulate. Do you know—”

  “Mr. Vijay Pandit was injured earlier today. He is in hospital but I think is not seriously hurt.”

  Tears of relief welled in her eyes. The policeman sketched a salute, said, “I must leave you, Miss,” and dashed toward the light and noise. Marina sagged against the lumpy seat of the jeep.

  She stared for a while at the shadow play of figures moving back and forth. Then she got out of the jeep and walked shakily to the edge of the outcropping. She had to see.

  Below, bleached and unreal in the bright light, was the confusion of the police mopping-up operation. Men in khaki picked their way around fallen tents and kicked overturned cooking pots. Others herded prisoners, tied together with rope, toward a waiting truck. One of the dacoits shouted something in an anguished, angry voice, and a policeman hit him a solid blow with his fist. When the man regained his balance, the policeman hit him again.

  Marina’s eyes were drawn to a row of bodies, ten or so, laid out like game after a day’s hunt. She saw Nagarajan lying among them. The front of his shirt was stained dark red, his legs flung wide apart.

  “You must move back, Miss!” Sergeant Aziz cried, and she obediently turned toward the jeep. He hovered near her, as if afraid she would make some other unexpected move.

  “The leader of the dacoits— Baladeva,” she said. “He was killed, wasn’t he?”

  “He is dead. We found him at the edge of the camp. It is an odd thing. He was covered with blood, as if he had been wounded and run a long way, yet he was at the edge of the camp only.”

  She had shot him, and he made it back to camp only to collapse and die as the police opened fire. It was an irony he would have appreciated. She sat in the jeep, her mind blank.

  When Sergeant Aziz returned, he was carrying something. He handed it to her. “This is yours, I think. We found it in one of the tents.”

  She took her canvas shoulder bag. Everything was in it— her clothes, her tools, her passport. All seemed trivial. She closed the bag and put it at her feet.

  At last, Sergeant Aziz and several other policemen got into the jeep with her and the driver started the motor. The searchlights had been turned off. The area was as dark and featureless as when she had first seen it. The moon was setting. She turned her face toward the breeze stirred by the jeep’s motion.

  As they drove, her mind was filled with images as jerky and speeded-up as an old movie. She saw Nagarajan in his robes, his long hair flowing, and in his other incarnation as Baladeva. She saw Patrick and Vijay, and Clara and Agit More. She saw Catherine, and Sandy, and Eric Sondergard, and Bobo the Clown. As they whirled through her mind an unconsciousness descended from which she awoke when the sky was gray with dawn and the jeep was pulling up in front of a hotel just off the main square in Halapur.

  Sergeant Aziz escorted her inside, rang the bell insistently, and booked a room from the sleepy clerk who emerged from the back. “We shall wish to talk with you later, but I think you must rest first,” he said. “This afternoon I shall call for you.”

  The room was plain, but clean. The ceiling fan stirred thin curtains through which came the light of daybreak. She took off the green sari and folded it carefully, then stood in the uncurtained shower letting hot water stream over her face, her hair, her body, stinging the scratches and cuts on her legs and feet. Scrubbed clean, she lay in her bed, watching the fan and listening to the sounds of Halapur starting the day. The room was bright with the sun’s first rays before she fell asleep.

  She awoke in the afternoon and dressed in her Western clothes once more. They were not only badly crumpled, but scratchy from being washed in the river and spread on bushes to dry. Needing to eat something before she spoke with Sergeant Aziz, she went downstairs and found that she could get an egg and cheese sandwich and a Campa Cola in the hotel dining room. She was just finishing her food when she became aware that someone was standing in the dining room doorway. Expecting Sergeant Aziz, she looked up and saw Vijay.

  He looked worn and tired, and his glasses frames were held together on one side by white adhesive tape. He was smiling, though, his hair was neatly brushed, and his white shirt and beige linen pants were freshly laundered. He again resembled the crisp, dapper young man who had, only days ago, called on her at the Hotel Rama and waited decorously outside the door of her room.

  He walked to her table and pulled out a chair. Marina was almost unable to speak. “I was afraid you were dead,” she said.

  “I wanted to get you away from them. I couldn’t reach you in time.”

  They sat in silence. Marina stared at the red formica of the tabletop. She said, “Vijay, Baladeva was Nagarajan. He was going to kill me. I shot him.”

  He shook his head. “This cannot be true.”

  “It is.”

  “I have heard, of course, that Baladeva is dead. But how could he and Nagarajan be one and the same?

  Marina told him everything that had happened since she had left him waiting for the phone call in Goti. When she finished, his face was grave. “He would have killed you, because you knew his true identity.”

  Do you know who I really am, Marina? “Catherine is dead, too. My sister. I’m finally convinced of it. And Nagarajan told me he didn’t try to trick me into believing she was alive. He said he didn’t make the phone call or send the letters.”

  “So in fact, although we found out a great many things, we have not found the explanations you came to India to search for.”

  “I guess that’s right.” The words sounded desolate and small.

  After a moment Marina said, “What about Mr. Curtis?”

  “Mr. Curtis, as you may imagine, is not pleased.” Vijay’s voice had an edge of discomfort. “I have spoken with him this morning. With my father and mother also.”

  “Are your parents terribly upset?”

  Vijay wriggled as if bothered by an insect. “Terribly,” he said. “I am the youngest. They act as if I were still a child only. I had to beg my mother not to come here to Halapur to care for me.”

  “They’ve been frightened.”

  Vijay sighed. “Yes, yes.”

  Marina gazed at Vijay’s face. “Is everything all right? You aren’t going to lose your job, are you?”

  He frowned. “As I said, I have talked with my father and Mr. Curtis. They have also talked with one another. They agree that for the most part I could not have helped what happened, but Mr. Curtis feels that in some areas I overstepped. They have met at the club for a chat and decided that I shall be given another chance.”

  Marina thought she understood. “You’ll be given another chance under what condition?”

  “Condition?”

  “You can keep your job and make your parents happy if you marry Sushila and settle down. Isn’t that it?”

  He gave a rueful shrug. “Yes. That’s it.”

  Of course that was it. Had she ever imagined a different outcome? Yet she had told Vijay she loved him, and she had meant it. “Vijay, I wish I knew what to say.”

  “I must tell you one more thing, Marina.”

  “Yes?”

  “I sat by you when you were so ill at the home of Nathu Dada. I was terribly afraid that you would die. I held your hand. It was hot and cold, hot and cold. Sometimes you spoke aloud, words that made no sense. But very often you spoke the name Patrick.”

  California

  47

  THE FAULT TREE

  The person constructing a fault tree must have a complete grasp of the system under scrutiny. If the complexities of the system aren’t totally understood, the fault tree will be meaningless.

  Why Breakdown?

  The bathroom mirror in her apartment told Marina that her face w
as still peeling from sunburn. She looked drawn, too, but the relaxation, the near-torpor, of her last days in India had taken away the worst of the physical strain. Her sessions with the police and with Mr. Curtis had not been taxing. The police were more than willing to take credit for the discovery that Baladeva was Nagarajan, and for his death. Her part in the subsequent uproar was minimal.

  Indian reaction to the events had been shock and outrage, but the reasons for the shock and outrage varied. People were shocked and outraged that the police had killed Baladeva, or that Baladeva had turned out to be Nagarajan, or that Nagarajan had escaped from jail in the first place. A commission of inquiry was being established. Government ministers gave assurances that everything possible would be done to bring the facts to light. In the meantime, Marina refused to speak with the press and lay by the pool at the Taj eating hot, freshly roasted cashew nuts.

  She and Vijay met several times for lunch or tea, but clearly Mr. Curtis had him on a short leash and the occasions, while pleasant, were tinged with melancholy. She told him a little about Patrick, saying Patrick was a man she had been involved with until shortly before she came to India. Vijay smiled and said, “You are still involved with him, I think.” They rarely spoke of her imminent departure or his upcoming marriage.

  One afternoon she summoned the energy to call the Delightful Novelty Company and ask for Vincent Shah, the man who had placed the call to her from the Hotel Rama. Mr. Shah was away for a week, the secretary said. The telephone receiver was heavy in Marina’s hand. She should pursue this, insist on getting in touch with Vincent Shah. She hung up and lay down for a nap.

  Eventually, the word came that she could go. She made a plane reservation and packed her suitcase.

  Her plane left at six in the morning. She and Vijay drank milky tea from the stall in the airport, surrounded by the hubbub of transit— wailing children, quarreling porters, unintelligible announcements over the public address system. When it was time for her to leave, he said, “You know very well that my love goes with you.”

  “And mine stays with you.”

  Leaving him, she moved into the stream of travelers toward the plane that would take her home.

  She turned from the mirror and dressed slowly. She was still easing herself back into her San Francisco life. Her sweater felt scratchy, her boots heavier and more cumbersome than they’d seemed before. In the days since her return she had felt spent and sometimes tearful— not only at the news that Clara was ill with a disease that had yet to be diagnosed, but at Patrick’s copy of The Gramophone lying on a table, and a box of cereal sitting on the kitchen counter, and the downtown high rises glistening against the sun-washed sky. She recognized this emotional fragility as temporary. I lost something. Now, I have to figure out what’s next.

  There had been no word from Patrick while she was gone, no message of any sort. Which was only fair. He was probably busy with his new love. Marina could call him, in a friendly way, just to tell him he’d left The Gramophone at her place. The thought filled her with unease. It was a risk. There was no such thing as zero risk.

  When she stepped outside, the morning air was chilly, astringent, but with the slight softness of early March, and yellow forsythia nodded on the bush by the front door of her building. Flowers as yellow as mustard blossoms. A pollen-dusted bee crawled out of one and flew away.

  By the time she reached the waterfront the fog had started to burn off and the bay was glimmering in the emerging sun. When she walked into the office one of her co-workers, hurrying past, said, “Hi, Marina. How was vacation?”

  Don did a mock double take when he saw her and said, “What a tan! You lost weight, too.”

  “I might as well have gone to a health spa.”

  “We got your telex. There was a little something in the papers here, too. Listen, Sandy wants to see you instantly.”

  Sandy’s face sagged and his eyes were bloodshot. She had the feeling that his questions were perfunctory. “I’m sorry about your sister. It’s like losing her twice,” he said.

  “Yes. Thanks.” She was lost long ago. I won’t be searching for her again.

  Sandy picked up a bulging folder. “I’m glad you’re back, because we’ve got a ton of work. Since I took over Loopy Doop a lot of other stuff has had to slide.”

  “Speaking of Loopy Doop—”

  “OK. Let’s speak about it.” He put the folder down. “I appreciate that you were under stress, but you left the case. I hope you don’t have any idea of picking it up again.”

  Why the defensive tone? “It’s just that while I was in India I thought about it, and I wondered—”

  “The case is finished. We’re working on the final report now. Frankly, I don’t want you dividing your attention.”

  She realized for the first time that on some level he had been furious that she had left him in the lurch. “I’d like to know how it came out, then.”

  Sandy, his jaw set, didn’t reply.

  “Come on, Sandy. Won’t you even tell me what you found?”

  He grimaced. She wondered if he was just angry, or if something else was bothering him. “I’ll give you five minutes on it, and that’s it. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Sandy leaned back in his chair. “It got very sticky. The short version is, the maintenance guys blew it bad, and then faked records to cover up.” He stopped. “Why are you shaking your head?”

  She hadn’t realized she was. She remembered the maintenance chief with his tobacco wheeze and his terror of being blamed. He had sworn the inspections were in order. “How did you find out?”

  “The forms they recorded the maintenance routine on.”

  “But they were all perfect. I looked through them myself.”

  “Absolutely. Only all those perfect records were done on forms that weren’t even in use until the week before Loopy Doop went smash. The only way to tell was a number in the corner. All those checks in the little boxes were made after the accident and stuck in the files to make it look like the inspections had been done.”

  Stunned, she started to shake her head again, then caught herself. “How did you find out?”

  “One of the Fun World secretaries noticed the forms and told Eric Sondergard.”

  “What does the maintenance chief say?”

  “Screams he didn’t do it, he’s being framed, but don’t they always?”

  Marina started to ask why, if the maintenance chief had known he might be vulnerable, he had called Breakdown in the first place. He had been proud, she remembered, that he hadn’t waited for authorization. Instead, she said, “What broke the leg, then?”

  “We’re postulating excessive vibration because it was improperly lubricated.”

  “Postulating? What did the hub and shaft look like? And the bearings?”

  Sandy’s eyes were averted. “That was the other thing,” he said.

  “The other thing?”

  “Right after you left, Bobo ordered every Loopy Doop in the country dismantled and melted down for scrap. By the time we came up with this theory—”

  “There was nothing to look at.” Marina couldn’t argue. With Loopy Doop destroyed, there was no possible proof. When the maintenance chief had wheezed about how well he’d done his job she’d told herself that he would probably be trotted out to take the blame.

  Sandy shrugged. “I guess Bobo wants to forget Loopy Doop ever existed.”

  “Yeah.” She was having trouble taking this in.

  “So that’s that.” Sandy reached for the folder.

  Later, she put the folder on her own desk and dropped into her chair. At a time when she had been in desperate danger, she had scratched a fault tree in the dirt. She had decided somebody was lying in the Loopy Doop case. Sandy was saying she was right. The maintenance chief had lied and covered up. Why, then, did she feel dissatisfied?

  Because of the damn hardness test. Sandy’s explanation still meant that she had messed up the hardness test. In Goti, s
he had realized she didn’t have to assume she was always wrong, that maybe once in a while she was right.

  She opened the folder. There was a lot to do, and she’d better get started. With this much to occupy her, it wouldn’t surprise anybody if she decided to work late tonight.

  48

  Staring at the screen of her computer terminal, Marina jumped when something touched her shoulder.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” Sandy said. He patted her shoulder again. “Quitting time.”

  “When I finish this. Not much more to do.”

  “Listen. I wasn’t as nice about the Loopy Doop thing as I could’ve been. I’m sorry.”

  No matter how much he apologizes, I’m going to redo the hardness test. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

  “Sure.” She glanced past him. “Where’s Don?”

  “He left already.” He hesitated. “Don and I aren’t exactly together any more.”

  So that was it. “That’s too bad.”

  “Oh, hell, it happens all the time.” Sandy’s laugh sounded thin. “See you tomorrow.”

  After another half hour the pier was completely quiet. When she left her cubicle she waved across the interior to Fernando, the security guard, sitting at his table beside the door, his uniform cap perched on the back of his head. Her steps sounded loud in her ears, and she felt more nervous than she had expected. I’m doing this for my own satisfaction. If I did the test wrong, I’ll live with it. I want to see, that’s all. Tension traveled up her spine.

  She slipped the key to the evidence room out of its magnetized box. This isn’t wrong. Unauthorized, maybe. Against orders. Not wrong. Redoing a legitimate test isn’t wrong.

  The evidence room was dark, but she remembered where she’d put the fractured tubing. When her hand didn’t find it she turned on the light and surveyed the tiers of bins. In the bin where she’d put Loopy Doop’s leg, there was now a yellow molded-plastic automobile infant seat.