The local strongman answered curtly. He seemed harried and irate. Rajat knew he would be.
“Rajaji, Rajat here. I know you must be busy, but something strange has happened and I need your advice. You know there is no one else in the town that I know and trust, the way I can trust you.”
The old man softened a little and he asked Rajat what it was.
Rajat narrated the whole incident, including the attacks of the foxes in the evening and how the villager had emerged out of nowhere.
“Is something going on that I am not aware of? I have no desire to get involved in anything local, you understand. Especially, when I have a friend who is not well and two ladies with me,” Rajat concluded.
“What is the man’s name?”
Thank Rakesh. “He said his name is Nivrutti Hari Pade,”
Before Rajaji answered, Rajat turned around to see what was happening in the living room. His view of the old man was still blocked by Rakesh’s huge frame, but the air in the room had suddenly become very tense, and Rajat saw Rani, the only other person who still had the view of the villager, gasping in fear.
Rajaji’s voice was curt, and a little angry, “Are you playing some kind of a joke on me son?”
“No Rajaji, why?”
The answer to his question, and the reason for the tension in the room came to him almost simultaneously. One delivered by his ear, the other by his eyes. Rakesh had straightened and backed to his left, holding his hands up. Everyone was talking at the same time. The villager was standing, and in his right hand was the biggest knife Rajat had ever seen in his life. He was waving it around talking loudly.
Rajaji’s voice came clear despite the miserable weather screwing the wireless connection, “Nivrutti Pade was a farmer union leader here. He was killed along with his wife and children in the great fire of 1995.”
The phone dropped from Rajat’s nerveless hands as he finally placed what it was about the stranger that had bothered him the moment he saw him for the first time.
The stranger had walked from among the foxes to Rajat’s house. While coming towards the porch, he had walked under a streetlight. Now, he was standing in Rajat’s living room with the tube light directly behind him.
And both the times the stranger cast no shadows.
Rajaji stared at his mobile phone, as if he would get some answer out of it. Even in a day as fucked up as this, the call made him more nervous than the two murders at the school. Rajat was a nice boy, a little too quiet perhaps, but he was not a schemer. In the light of his phone call, Rajaji had two options to choose from. Either the boy was playing him on (bad for the boy), or there was some bad shit going on in his little town.
Rajaji remembered Nivrutti Pade clearly. Primarily because, during the festivities of the night in 1995, he was among the first ones to be killed. Rajaji and his troop had ambushed the union leader near his house in the dark, and Rajaji himself had sunk the sharp end of his meat cleaver into Nivrutti’s stomach, cutting it open like a fruit. Rajaji remembered the strangled cry that his victim gave. He had then tried to push his intestines back with his hands, two of Rajaji’s goons simply held his hands by his side, till crying and pleading for mercy, he had bled to his death.
Later on the two goons hacked Nivrutti’s wife and his fourteen year old daughter. Rajaji would have liked to participate in that too, but he had to return to his palace to orchestrate the political fallout of the night’s killings.
Rajaji turned to his aide, a villager named Suresh Bhosale, and asked him, “How far is the Sathe’s bungalow from here?”
Bhosale took a moment to place the name, and then answered, “About a mile, it is right next to the Rajwade’s house,”
“We need to go there. Something urgent,” Rajaji said. Bhosale, a true soldier if there ever was one, ran outside in the rain to fetch the jeep.
Before walking out to get inside the jeep, Rajaji went inside his house and took his .38 pistol from the drawer of his dressing cabinet. His wife was knitting. Rajaji did not spare a glance at her.
“Drive quickly, there might be some trouble,” said Rajaji, punching some numbers on his mobile. He was calling reinforcements. Two quick calls ensured that at least five more men would be there, when he went to investigate the mysterious villager apparently resurrected.
Rajat walked inside his living room, and started taking a few careful steps in the direction of Nivrutti. The old man was waving his knife, and shouting incoherently. When it came to coherence, Rakesh and Ragini’s efforts to placate him sucked big time too. Rajat could not make out a single word out of anyone.
“Calm down, old man please, we are leaving in another ten minutes, as soon as we pack our things. Please put the knife down and sit. We are leaving really, we do not want trouble, and we have a sick friend with us. We do not want trouble really,” Rajat kept his voice as high as he could, partially to make himself heard and partially, to keep the stranger from noticing the fear in his voice.
Nivrutti turned to him and said, “Went to call that butcher who calls himself Rajaji, didn’t you? You fucking people! You would side with Satan himself just to keep your miserable cheating lives going on peacefully. You have bought peace by killing innocents for centuries together. You were killers, or you were the witness who would not speak for what is right. But not anymore……………. Now you will pay along with the butchers, for now the minority has awakened and they are revolting.” The old man obviously meant to end this clumsy monologue by sticking the knife into Rajat’s ribs, but he never got the chance. For one moment Rajat was standing trying not to piss his pants, and the next moment there was a loud explosion and the top half of the old man’s head simply disintegrated. His body was thrown against the wall knocking a chair down in the process, and then he slid down the wall and lay still.
Rajat who never had the opportunity to even duck, turned around and saw Neeraj Joshi standing in the door. He had Rajat’s gun in his hand.
“And that my friends was the sound of the empire striking back,” Happy said and Rajat and Rakesh began to laugh hysterically.
On the cue, the foxes began howling outside. Their noise was loud enough to muffle the sound of the rain pouring on the roof. Inside the living room, Ragini collapsed on the floor, and Rani was shaking and sobbing loudly. Rakesh was the first one to get over his laughter. He walked over to Ragini and helped her to her feet, walking her to the nearest chair with an arm around her waist. Neeraj walked to Rani and patted her shoulder talking to her in a low soothing voice. To Rajat’s surprise, Happy did not leave his place by the window.
“Happy, are you ok?”
“No I am not ok, nothing is ok and can’t you see this man was dead the moment he walked inside?”
Rajat blinked uncomprehending.
“What do you mean Happy?” Rakesh asked him.
“What he means is the man signed his death sentence, the moment he walked in to a houseful of high strung gun toting freaks.” Rajat said looking at Neeraj desperately. ‘Please don’t give the whole thing away buddy. I am sorry you have to be the fall guy.’ Right then Rajat hated Happy for letting two already scared women know, that the man lying in a pool of blood was not only killed by one of them, but that he was killed for a second time in his life.
Then when Rajat turned around, he saw that he was using the term pool of blood only figuratively. The old man’s head was split in two by the gun blast, but there was not a drop of blood anywhere. It was like bashing the head of a doll.
In the split second it took him to force the rising bile down back his throat; Ragini’s eyes followed his, and saw what he saw.
The next moment Ragini began screaming loudly.
Rajaji’s jeep screeched to a halt near Rajat’s house amidst the torrential downpour. When Bhosale saw the beasts surrounding the house, he stopped in his tracks and turned to his Boss. Rajaji, who noticed the beasts too, said nothing, but put a restraining hand on his aide’s arm. He turned back to see if his other peopl
e had arrived. He had seen a few of them turning onto the main road from a side street, on motorcycles. They were not too far behind. But for now there was no sign of the motorcycles or the men.
Rajaji took out his mobile and dialed Rajat’s number. It kept ringing and there was no answer. He could see the single storey red colored house from the living room side from his vantage point. The windows were closed obviously, but he could see silhouettes moving in the living room. He could sense panic in their movements. Something was out of whack here.
“Stay inside the jeep, lock yourself in but keep an eye out for me. I am going into the house.”
“Rajaji let the other people come,” there was a note of fear in Bhosale’s voice. Rajaji consciously kept the uneasiness out of his voice and said, “What for? I can handle this myself,” He stepped out of the jeep without another glance. The foxes were circling the house. Now a couple of them turned around to see the new arrival and began advancing towards him. Rajaji debated going back to the jeep, but decided against it. He did not want his aide to see his boss being scared of fucking animals and more than that the curiosity about what was going on in Rajat’s house was stronger. He pulled out his pistol from his pocket, and carefully aimed at the nose of the animal closest to him.
In the rain he almost did not hear the warning. As he was about to squeeze a shot off, he sensed a movement about ten feet to his left and turned to take a quick look.
Inspector Kamble was standing with his feet firmly apart in a shooter’s stance. His police service revolver was aimed at Rajaji. Obviously he was unable to identify Rajaji through the thick curtain of rain separating them. A couple of feet behind them, Rajaji saw a man about his age, and a woman in her early twenties. The older man too, had a pistol leveled at Rajaji.
Rajaji raised his hand, and shouted for Bhosale to switch on the headlights. Bhosale heard it, and switched on the engine. Now Vinit could see the person holding the gun was the local leader. Rajaji lowered his gun, and slowly raised his huge hands.
“It’s ok, I know this man,” Vinit said, and walked to the local leader. The city cops followed him cautiously.
“Careful there are foxes here,” Rajaji said.
“What foxes?”
Rajaji turned around and all he could see was the rain soaking everything in sight. The faint light, coming through the closed windows of the house, revealed no animals anywhere. They all had disappeared in the few seconds that he had taken his eyes off them.
“Never mind,” Rajaji said, now fighting to keep the panic out of his voice. First the Sathe boy telling him that the man he had murdered was back, and then a pack of foxes showing up in the rain like this and then disappearing without a trace in the span of a few seconds. What was going on?
“Rajat called me sometime back claiming that a villager was harassing him and his friends, I came here just to make sure everything is ok.”
“Do you go out with your gun drawn every time you want to make sure everything is ok, Sir?” The girl spoke, the face visible under the raincoat hood was at once young and hard. Rajaji did not know this kind of woman.
“There is a lot of unrest in the town since yesterday madam, as I am sure Inspector Sahib would have told you. Didn’t want to take any chance, that’s all,” He answered in a level tone.
“Let’s go inside and find out who is this stranger,” Vinit said but Shilpa put a restraining arm on his hand.
“Aren’t you forgetting Mr. Joshi Inspector?”
Vinit felt foolish, and his face blushed deeply. He had really forgotten that they had come here to arrest a man charged with gruesome murders.
“I am sorry, Rajaji please go back to your jeep and leave. If there is trouble we will handle it.”
Rajaji sensed something amiss. Clearly this woman was superior to Vinit in rank and the stranger in Sathe’s house was not on her priority. What was she doing here? Outwardly, however, he did not give any sign of understanding and said, “Ok, I will go back and sit in my jeep, but I will not leave unless you come out and tell me that everything is under control. That boy’s father was like an older brother to me, I cannot leave like this.”
Vinit knew this was no time to argue. He nodded, and watched Rajaji walking back to his jeep and climbing into it.
“Now how do we go about it?” DYSP Raje asked.
“Vinit goes to the front and knocks; the door is likely to be opened by one of the hosts. I will walk in behind you, and tell everyone to shut the hell up. Then we search for Mr. Joshi. Raje will be back up. He will wait for both of us near the rear compound wall.”
Raje nodded, and walked across the narrow path that circled the farmhouse and reached near the rear compound wall. Vinit saw him moving back under a big tree. In the rain and darkness of the night he was barely visible.
“Let’s go Inspector,” Shilpa said in a soft voice. Both of them drew, and cocked their guns.
Rajaji’s experienced eyes noticed the guns and he chuckled softly. Bhosale, sitting next to him saw the guns too, but did not speak. The sudden disappearance of the foxes had sent him in a shock.
Chapter 9
In the hysteria following the discovery of the lack of blood in the dead man’s body, Neeraj simply laid the gun down, and walked out of the house. Nobody, including Happy, noticed him. He worked his way behind the toilets outside, and ducked under the barb fence to reach the narrow dirt road leading to the main road that eventually finished on the beach.
The rain or the mud did not bother him in the least. He walked quickly, as if he had walked the road many times before. He was thinking furiously.
There was a lack of fear in Neeraj, which was easy to mistake for inhuman apathy. While ordinary people across the world cursed and spat, and thought evil things about their spouses, bosses and colleagues, while doing nothing really harmful beyond an occasional road rage fight, Neeraj saved all that energy, and used it to think, plan and eventually to murder. From the day he had managed to drown the bully from his village middle school, Neeraj did not think of danger the way an average, should we say normal, man would. There was nothing truly shocking for a man like him. Except, a situation like this.
From the day Happy had asked him if he could see it coming, Neeraj’s keen instincts had told him that there was something not quite right about this sleepy little town. The feeling was so strong that he actually considered going back, but the fisher boat that was due to pick him up tonight, was going to come to this beach. There was no way Neeraj cold have changed the pick up place without going back to Mumbai and risking discovery. So, he ploughed on. When he reached the town, he witnessed the death of the labor’s daughter, and knew how this was going to play out. And then there was that night in the fields.
The night Doctor Thombre was murdered in his house; Neeraj had gone for a late night stroll on the beach. Lost in his thoughts, he had accidentally wondered in the woods nearby. There he spotted the fire burning in the meadows and walked towards the fire with no conscious reason to do so.
About hundred feet from the fireplace, Neeraj suddenly felt as if he was hit in the chest with a hammer. As bright bolts of pain streaked through his left arm and chest, he realized that this could be a cardiac arrest, and then just as instinctively, he also knew that this was no reflection on the state of his heart, but something to do with this place. This was a bad place, a cliché, if there ever was one. He stepped forward, and the pain became so intense that he doubled over and fought for breath. But throughout this pain, a part of his brain was working. He took a step back, and then another. Almost magically, the pain eased a little, leaving his arms numb. At least, now the breathing was not difficult. Neeraj kept his eyes on the fireplace and took another step back. Again, the pain eased a bit further. He took about ten steps back like this and then rested against a fallen tree trunk. Reaching inside his jacket he took out his cigarette pack and noticed that his hands were shaking badly. He did not remember when it was the last time that his hands shook with fear. He had
felt no fear when he had buried Aadesh Bandodkar alive on a beach similar to this; he had felt no fear when he had patiently waited for Hamiz and Rashid to come to their senses, before cutting the former’s throat with a knife and then strangulating the later with a stout nylon rope. His hands were always steady, even when he was chopping their fingers using a barber’s razor. They were even steadier when he had walked towards Sania, and handed her the envelope containing the goon’s fingers.
Neeraj, like many men before him, realized that he had been scared into a heart attack, despite his rather impressive courage in the usual sense of the term. The reason was simple. In his life, he had never met with anything truly fearsome. Fear was not about screaming when the heroine gets slashed in the Friday the 13th movie. It was not ringing a doorbell in the dead of the night, to see a mean growling dog blocking your exit. It certainly was not to have two paid goons trying to rough you up. This unknown place, with the fires burning brightly, was fear. The unknown feeling, which your mind was too primitive to articulate, yet your body was smart enough to feel, was fear. Having spent twenty nine years of existence in a shallow world that did not know the true meaning of any basic instinct, Neeraj felt almost humbled by coming face to face with a feeling so profound.
Of course, even this feeling did not leave him at a loss for long. He had regained his composure by the time his smoke was finished. He threw the butt, and ground it but did not get up. He was still trying to work this thing out. Then he heard the footsteps. Without waiting to investigate, he ducked behind the tree trunk and watched.
A small girl was walking all by herself, followed by three men. The first feeling Neeraj got was they were not among the living. The girl was in front of the group not like a playful child running ahead of her parents, but like a leader leading her men to a battle. Their walk had a sense of purpose in it.
Neeraj allowed the strange party to go ahead of him, and then came out from his hiding place. Dropping on one knee he examined the small path, which the girl had walked on. The footsteps were clear in the soft muddy ground. They all headed towards the woods, exactly in the opposite direction of the girls’ path. The confirmation of his feeling shook him but did not scare him in the least. The hunter in him was awake again. He started following the party, keeping about twenty feet between them. When they reached the beach, the girl turned around and talked to the three men, giving them orders. The men nodded, and walked towards the main town. The girl walked towards Rajat’s farmhouse.
Kumbhpur Rising Page 15