by Tarquin Hall
“It’s testosterone,” he said.
“Is that all, Boss?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“It’s very common for guys to take that stuff these days, Boss,” Flush explained. “Everyone who goes to gyms is taking it. They all want Salman Khan muscles, so they’re pumping themselves full of dope. It’s readily available on the black market. Most chemists will sell it to you.”
“I don’t doubt Gupta wants big muscles,” said Puri. “But from everything we’ve learned about this man and his habits, I have a feeling his motives are different.”
“HIV, Boss? Maybe that’s why so much of his hair is falling out.”
“No, something else. Find out his doctor’s name. Has he seen him lately?”
Puri had given Rumpi and the servants strict instructions to make Mary feel welcome and asked them to put away the Hindu idols for a few days (he had to keep up the pretense that he was Jonathan Abraham, after all). He’d also sent Sweetu to his cousin’s house for a few days because he couldn’t be trusted not to blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Mary’s father only stayed at the house for a couple of hours and then headed back to the train station. His wife and younger daughter needed him at home, he explained to Rumpi.
A tearful Mary saw him off and then joined Monica and Malika in the kitchen, where she helped them prepare lunch.
When asked where she had worked before, she told them that this was her first job.
After lunch, Monica and Malika showed Mary the laundry room and taught her how to use the top-loading washing machine, which had to be filled with buckets of water because there was rarely any in the taps after eight o’clock in the morning.
Rumpi then took her shopping at a nearby market for new clothes. Mary picked out a few bright new kurtas, salwars and chunnis, some underwear and two pairs of chappals. Puri’s wife also bought the new maidservant a hairbrush and various bathroom necessities.
The next stop was a small private health clinic run by Dr. (Mrs.) Chitrangada Suri, MD, who gave Mary an examination. The doctor found that she was suffering from dehydration, malnourishment, worms and lice, and immediately wrote out prescriptions for a couple of different medicines, vitamins, minerals and oral rehydration salts.
Talking in English so Mary would not understand, Dr. Suri also told Rumpi that the girl had tried cutting her wrists within the past few months and although the blood loss had probably been significant, she was young and seemed to have bounced back.
That evening, after Malika returned home to her family, Mary and Monica made the evening meal, did the washing up, took down the laundry from the roof, ate their dinner and then went for a walk in the neighborhood.
They passed many other servants working for other households out enjoying the cool evening. Monica stopped to chat and gossip and bought them both ice creams from a vendor with money that Rumpi had given them specifically for the purpose.
At 8:30, they sat down with Madam in the sitting room to watch Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, one of India’s most popular soaps. Set in the home of a respectable industrialist family, the serial nonetheless featured shocking twists and turns with extramarital affairs, murders, conspiracies and kidnappings.
In the latest development, the main daughter-in-law had had a face-change operation and turned up as the wife of another man. But Monica said this was because the actress playing her had been fired after demanding a salary increase.
At nine o’clock, Rumpi said that Sahib was expected home and that it was time to sleep. A second mattress had been arranged on the floor in Monica’s small room and lying on it was a new Bagha-Chall set. Mary’s eyes lit up at the sight of the pitted wooden board and the bagful of pretty, polished stones, and she eagerly accepted Monica’s challenge to a game.
Mary proved a demon player, easily beating her opponent.
“I’m village champion!” she said. “I could beat all the men if they would play me!”
The two of them then settled down for the night and Mary was soon fast asleep. But Monica lay awake for a while, wondering why her new roommate was so sad and why she wore her bangles to bed.
Around midnight, she awoke in a fright. Mary was sitting up, screaming.
Monica jumped up and turned on the light and then put her arms around her new roommate, telling her that it had only been a bad dream. Now awake, Mary fell back on her pillow and started crying.
“I lost him!” she sobbed. “I lost him!”
“Lost who?” asked Monica.
But she didn’t answer and cried herself back to sleep.
Twenty-five
Flush called Puri the next morning to give him the name of Gupta’s doctor.
“How did you find it so quickly?” he asked him.
“He went to see him before reaching office,” answered the operative.
“What’s the doctor’s name?”
“Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh.”
“Six-B Hauz Khas village,” said Puri.
“You know him, Boss?”
“Indeed I know him,” said the detective with a chuckle.
“Well, Boss, it’s definitely Dr. Ghosh who prescribed Diet Coke testosterone. Afterward he went and bought more supplies.”
“Good. Well done. Now pack up and get out of there.”
“The operation is finished, Boss?”
“I’ll be taking over,” said Puri. “If Gupta is seeing Dr. Ghosh, there is only one meaning.”
Puri drove to the leafy area of Hauz Khas in south Delhi, built amid the ruins of the ancient Delhi Sultanate.
Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh practiced in the basement of the same two-story house that his father had built and in which he had grown up.
It had been more than six months since Puri had been there, but he knew the place well. He and the doctor had met during one of his first cases. The erudite Dr. Ghosh had been recommended to him as an expert on a medical matter. In the years since then, Puri had turned to him on many occasions for advice and the two had spent many a pleasant evening sitting in the Gymkhana playing chess and talking politics.
Puri opened the gate and, instead of knocking on the front door, which led to where the family lived, he made his way down the side of the building to the clinic entrance.
After letting him in, Dr. Ghosh’s assistant asked Puri to wait in reception. He sat down on the cane couch and picked up a copy of the Indian edition of Hello! The cover featured a leading Bollywood actress who had cropped up during one of Puri’s more sensational matrimonial investigations a few years earlier—the Case of the Absconding Accountant. She had been an unknown then and in the process of bedding half the producers, directors and leading men in Mumbai.
The spread pictured her sitting on a white couch with her parents and her pet poodles. “Putting Family First” read the headline.
With a disdainful chortle, Puri tossed the magazine back onto the table just as the door to the doctor’s office opened.
“Hello, old pal, this is a surprise!” said Dr. Ghosh with open arms. “Long time no hear, eh, Chubby? How long has it been?”
“Too long, actually,” answered the detective, embracing his friend.
“Well, come in. You’ll take some chai?”
“And some of those chocolate biscuits you keep hidden in your drawer.”
Puri stepped into the office and sat down in one of the two chairs in front of Dr. Ghosh’s desk.
“Extra sugar for my dear friend,” Dr. Ghosh told his assistant before closing the door behind him and sitting down in the chair next to Puri.
“My God, it’s good to see you, Chubby!” he said, giving him a friendly pat on the knee. “How are you?”
“World class,” answered Puri. “You?”
“All fine. But you’ve been neglecting me for too long.”
“I know, Shubho-dada.” Shubho was short for Subhrojit; dada meant older brother in Ghosh’s native Bengali. “But I’m nonstop these days. The city is going mental, I tell you
. There’s a crime wave like you wouldn’t believe. Not a day goes by without some girl getting raped or a businessman getting kidnapped. You read about the shootings in CP?* Can you imagine? Goondas running around knocking off businessmen in daylight hours! Someone even took a pop at me just the other day.”
“I heard. Rumpi called me. Said you’re working too hard and your blood pressure’s up. She asked me to have a word with you, Chubby. Frankly speaking, you do look tired.”
“Oh, please, the woman is keeping me half starved. How am I meant to live on daal and rice?”
“You’re off the chicken frankies, I take it?” said Dr. Ghosh, looking skeptical.
“Well, not entirely,” admitted Puri with a roguish grin.
“Hmm, I thought as much. And when’s the last time you had a holiday?”
“You’re doing an examination, is it, Doctor?”
“Tell me, Chubby. When was the last time you had even one day off?”
“I’ve no time for meter down, Shubho-dada,” he said. “People look to me for help. Who else they can turn to? The cops? When the director general, Central Reserve Force, is getting his journalist lover stabbed and throttled to death? Do you know in NOIDA, where gangsters are nightly holding up commuters with country-made weapons, the constabulary’s phones are cut off through nonpayment of bills? They’re not even having petrol for their vehicles!”
“I know how bad it is, Chubby. Believe me. Only yesterday, Rajesh Uncle’s house was broken into and they gagged and bound Sarita Auntie.”
“By God,” intoned Puri.
“Point is, it’s not your responsibility. You’re no caped crusader. This isn’t Gotham City. It’s Delhi. You can’t clean it up single-handed.”
“Someone’s got to bloody well do something,” said Puri, raising his voice. “Papa worked every day of his life to build a better India. I owe it to him to—”
“Your papa was a good man, we all know that,” interrupted Dr. Ghosh. “No one with a shred of decency could ever doubt it. Never mind the whispers. Let them be damned! But it’s not your responsibility to make amends for what happened. You’ve got to think of your own health and well-being. Let’s face it, you’re not getting any younger. Or slimmer! Think of Rumpi. She needs you, too.”
The doctor’s assistant brought in their tea on a tray and left it on the desk. Puri took his cup while Dr. Ghosh went behind his desk, opened the drawer and took out an already open packet of milk chocolate McVities digestives imported from the UK.
“I shouldn’t give you these, but you’ll only accuse me of being tight,” he said, handing Puri the packet. “There’s only a few left anyway.”
“I’m sure you’re having more stashed away there somewhere,” chided the detective.
“Could be,” said Dr. Ghosh with a wink.
They both bit into their biscuits and sipped their tea. By now the doctor was sitting behind his desk. On the wall hung his medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and his certificate from Harvard.
“So, Chubby, I take it this is one of your professional visits. What is it this time? You need to consult me on some poison? Or you’ve got another crushed skull to show me?”
“Actually it’s about one of your patients,” said Puri.
“Oh?”
“Don’t worry, Shubho-dada, I know all about your doctor confidentiality and all. No one’s asking you to betray any secrets. Without naming names, I want to tell you what I know about a certain individual. If my theory is wrong, just say the word.”
“Sounds fair enough, Chubby,” said Dr. Ghosh.
“Your patient is male, thirty-one, a senior BPO-wallah. He’s living in NOIDA in quite a fancy apartment. Has his own gym and talking toilet and all. Currently he is engaged and due to be married shortly. Quite the golfing fanatic, he is. He is worryingly obsessed with golf, in fact.”
Dr. Ghosh leaned forward on his desk, picked up a Parker pen and started doodling on his blotting paper.
Puri switched to Hindi. “I’ve been studying his habits and they are extremely suggestive,” he said. “At school he was a misfit, never had many friends and was prone to depression. Since then he has become extremely successful professionally, but he remains a private person in a way that very few Indians are. At the golf club, for example, he never uses the men’s changing rooms, but comes home to shower. He never consumes alcohol, either, presumably because he needs to maintain control at all times.”
Puri paused for a moment to finish his tea and reached for another biscuit, the last in the packet.
“You’ve been prescribing him testosterone,” he continued. “I’m guessing he’s been taking it since his mid-teens. Given your specialization, I would say that he has…well, let us call it a ‘special problem’ and it is something he has been keeping secret all his life.”
Puri chose his next words carefully.
“The irony is that he has nothing to hide, and that is precisely the problem,” he said.
The faintest of smiles played across Dr. Ghosh’s lips.
“Chubby, might I ask why you need to know?” he asked.
“I’ve been retained by his fiancée’s family. Now that I have discovered this man’s secret, I’m concerned for her future. If she’s not aware of the truth, then she is being deceived and I’m obligated to tell her.”
The doctor nodded and, wetting the end of his finger, dipped it into the cluster of crumbs left in the packet and licked them off.
“It’s certainly a private matter,” he said. “All I can suggest is that you go and talk with the girl.”
“Fine. In that case I’ll arrange an interview,” said the detective.
“Try to remember one thing, old pal,” said Dr. Ghosh. “Love can move in mysterious ways.”
The doctor stretched and looked at his watch.
“I’ve no more patients today. Shall we go to the Gym for a peg or two and a game of chess?”
“Think you can take me on, is it?” said Puri.
“As I recall, I won last time we played, Chubby.”
“You had me at a disadvantage.”
“How’s that?”
“I was completely piss drunk.”
Later that evening, Mary and Monica returned from their evening walk to find that Sahib had come home early.
Much to their frustration, he had parked himself in front of the TV and was watching the news; the prospect of being able to watch Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki now seemed remote. But Puri assured them he was only planning to watch the headlines and that afterward, the TV was all theirs.
Shyly, the two servant girls filed into the room and sat down on the floor at the foot of the couch, gazing up at the set in silence.
Five minutes later, the channel appeared to change (in fact Puri had pressed play on the VCR remote control) and a Hindi news report began about the Ajay Kasliwal case in Jaipur.
The pictures showed the High Court lawyer being led into court and Inspector Shekhawat telling the reporters that he could prove conclusively that the accused was guilty of killing his maidservant. The report, which was actually a number of reports Flush had edited together, cut to shots of the front of Raj Kasliwal Bhavan, then to a reporter saying that the maidservant, Mary, had been taken away in Kasliwal’s Sumo and dumped on the Ajmer Road. There followed more scenes from outside the court taken on the first day of the trial, including a few shots of Mrs. Kasliwal. The report ended with a clip of Bobby addressing the cameras, insisting on his father’s innocence.
Mary watched in wide-eyed disbelief, with her hand over her mouth as if she was suppressing a scream. When Bobby appeared, she pointed at the TV and let out a startled cry. Then her head flopped forward onto her chest and she fainted.
Mary awoke to find herself lying on the blue leather couch with a cold hand towel on her forehead. Rumpi was sitting next to her; Mummy was nearby in an armchair doing some knitting.
“Are you all right, child?” asked Rumpi in a gentle, caring voice.
“Try to rest; you’ve had a fright.”
Mary stared up at her with dozy eyes and then took a sharp, frightened breath and sat bolt upright.
“Madam!” she exclaimed. “I saw him!”
“You saw who?” asked Mummy.
“Him!” she said, turning away from her and burying her face in one of the purple silk cushions.
Rumpi put a gentle hand on her shoulder, saying, “Please don’t cry. Nothing is going to happen. Ask Mummy-ji, she will tell you.”
“Yes, nothing bad will happen to you now,” Puri’s mother assured her, putting aside her knitting and joining Mary on the couch. “We will look after you. Now stop your crying and sit up and have some tea. It is freshly made. Come. Sit up now.”
Mary did as she was told, rubbing her tear-stained face with the tissues that Mummy gave her.
“That’s better, child,” said Rumpi, handing her a cup of tea. “You are quite safe here. There’s nothing to fear.”
After Mary had drunk half her tea, Mummy asked her again what it was that had caused her to faint.
“If you tell us, then we can help you,” said Rumpi.
“Madam, I cannot say,” whispered Mary, looking frightened.
“Did it have something to do with what you were watching on television?” asked Mummy.
Mary bowed her head, staring down into her teacup. A few more tears fell into the brown milky liquid. Rumpi started stroking the back of the girl’s head.
“Child, if you know anything about the case you saw on the TV, then you must tell us,” she said. “It is very import ant. The man you saw, Shri Ajay Kasliwal, is accused of murdering a young maid who used to work in his house. She was called Mary—just like you. It is a serious charge. If he is convicted, Shri Kasliwal will spend the rest of his life in prison. There is even a possibility he will face the death penalty.”
But Mary continued to stare down into her teacup.
“Dear me, child, this will not do,” said Mummy, firmly. “Now you must finish your tea and tell us whether you worked for these people.”