Sea of Innocence

by Desai, Kishwar

  Something held me back from allowing her any sense of victory. Nothing would please her more than to know that the person whom she held responsible for her harassment was gone.

  In this battle, Marian was the loser. Forever.

  I struggled to keep my voice casual.

  ‘Nothing urgent. We were to have lunch together. If you see her let me know.’ It felt strange to say that, since I knew Marian was dead. Was I the only person on the beach who had learnt about this tragedy?

  It was difficult to pretend that everything was fine, but I had to do it, till I reached those rocks and found out more about what had happened there.

  This felt almost as bad as when I had been ‘drugged’, as Veeramma had put it. There was a surreal quality to everything, as I walked faster and faster to the other end of the beach.

  Nearing the rocks, I found Dennis sitting outside a shack and drinking a beer, waiting for me. He waved and got up to give me a hug and a quick kiss when he saw me.

  ‘What’s happened? Thought you’d forgotten about our lunch!’

  Then he saw my face and asked, ‘Bad news?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  I put my arms around him and hugged him tight. Silently he held me close, rubbing my back for comfort. I allowed myself just a moment or two to pretend everything was fine.

  Then I forced myself to pull back and showed him the message.

  He took a deep breath, blowing it out with full force. ‘Jeeesus. Is this . . .’

  He’d never met Marian. And now he never would.

  I was overcome with remorse at being so irritated with her, when she was probably on the run and had been threatened – not just by the gremlins but by the police as well. I had thought she had got her passport and would escape – but Curtis or even Vinay Gupta might have decided that she was becoming a nuisance and it was best to dispatch her.

  Who could have executed the actual order? Had Raman and Joseph got to her? It seemed the most obvious explanation. I remembered their confusion when they discovered that she had escaped from the hotel. Had they tracked her down after our meeting and bludgeoned her to death?

  She had even told me how she had to stay on the run from those two men. Perhaps I should have at least warned her to take care. But because she said nothing, I had kept quiet too.

  Could she have predicted her own fate? Did she have a premonition of what was going to happen to her? Was that why she had met me and told me her side of the story that day? And she had also explained about the bargain she had made.

  Lost in thought I suddenly realized Dennis was still waiting for an answer.

  I found myself shivering as I said,‘Yes, it’s Marian. Liza’s sister. This probably happened just yesterday.’ I gestured towards the rocks.

  ‘Right here? That’s odd, because no one has mentioned anything. Surely someone would have found her body.’

  ‘Perhaps the water sucked her in, she might be still stuck somewhere. Let’s go down and check.’

  I knew I was hyperventilating and sounding high-pitched and hysterical, but I didn’t care. Nor could I help it. I was overcome with grief that I hadn’t tried to help Marian a little more. Though I didn’t quite know what I could have done differently.

  Dennis quickly paid the bill and we scrambled towards the rocks. Waves lashed across them and I remembered my own wasted attempt to cross here. The memory of almost falling into the sea swam back to me, and hanging on to Dennis, I peered into the water for any sign of Marian. I checked my phone again and again. The picture showed the same overhanging hill, the same type of vegetation. The placement of the rocks seemed identical as well. But there was no body trapped anywhere. There was no blood, no sign of struggle. Nothing.

  Marian’s body had completely vanished. Had it been taken away swiftly by the police, early in the morning? Or by someone else? Or had it been dragged out by the tide? I knew the current could be very strong in this area. In which case, either she’d already have become fodder for fish – the fate Dennis had predicted for whoever challenged Gupta – or her body would be washed up a few days later.

  Over the sound of the sea, I shouted out at some of the beach boys, who were idly fishing, to ask if they had seen anyone come this way yesterday.

  ‘Lot of people come here,’ one of them yelled back. ‘Who you want?’

  ‘A woman. Long blonde hair.’

  He shook his head and carried on fishing.

  Dennis suggested that we go to Marian’s home. It was good that he was there to negotiate the way there, because I was still feeling like a criminal, castigating myself for doubting her.

  After some hunting we found ourselves in front of a slightly rundown four-storey building. Most of the bright green paint was peeling off, revealing a shocking-pink undercoat. Like many house owners in Goa, this landlord had an interesting taste in colours.

  Marian lived in the ‘penthouse’, as someone on the ground floor described it. It was a euphemism for a studio apartment right on the top floor. There were no immediate neighbours and she probably had a private terrace from which she had a fine sea view.

  When we reached her flat it looked as though someone else had already entered unannounced. The door was slightly chipped and broken around the latch, and still ajar. Either the lock had been tampered with or it had always been like that, and she had left in too much of a hurry to lock it. Nervous about what we would find, we entered the flat cautiously.

  There seemed nothing overtly suspicious or disturbed in the sitting room and open-plan kitchen at all. Everything was neatly and rather interestingly arranged. In fact we were confronted by a colourful mélange of textiles draped from the ceiling and around the windows. The sofas were in bright colours and the walls had hand-painted murals on them. The whole ambience was very Indian, just right for a fortune teller. No doubt she took appointments at home as well.

  On the kitchen table I noticed that there were two glasses and a water bottle. It seemed someone had been visiting her. An empty sandwich-box with two plates lay in the sink.

  In the bedroom, too, nothing looked disturbed, except that the computer chair was at some distance from the computer, as though someone had got up very fast, or been pulled up by force, and it had skidded away. The computer light was still blinking. When Marian left, or was taken away, there had been no time to shut it down. Or maybe it had been left on deliberately.

  The cover of the bed had been pulled down and folded at the bottom of the bed. She obviously hadn’t been able to spend the night in her own bed. Again, there was no sign of a struggle.

  But there were two coffee cups on the computer table. One cup had spilt, and the coffee was still dripping slowly onto the floor.

  Careful not to disturb anything, wrapping a handkerchief around my hand, I used the mouse to open the computer screen. To my relief and excitement, Marian’s inbox opened up. I clicked on a few unopened messages, which turned out to be innocuous requests for astrology sessions and invitations for beach parties. They had all arrived in the last hour or so.

  Curiously, all the emails prior to that had been opened, which meant someone had been here after Marian’s death, and was here until one hour ago. It was one opened message in particular which astonished me, especially the attachment.

  It was the same video that had been sent to me on my phone. And it had reached this inbox at just about the same time it had been sent to me. It was of Marian’s body on those rocks.

  Why had a picture of her body been sent to her computer? It seemed like a cruel joke, and it made no sense at all. I noted down the sender, victoryatlast@gmail.com. It sounded like someone had wanted to see her dead.

  While Dennis looked around the cupboards and the bathroom, checking to see if Marian had left any clue of her seemingly hasty departure, I decided to find out if I could track down Liza’s email.

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to spend too long on it, as I found it was registered to this computer: lizakay@gmail. com. The password h
ad been saved as well. Perhaps when Liza was here, she had also used this PC.

  But to my shock, as it opened up, I found it was still an active account; the last email had been sent only yesterday.

  Did that mean Liza really was somewhere around? That all the sightings of her had been real? That she had been coming to this flat and using the account? In that case, why had Marian pretended to us that she was missing? She would have known about her sister’s visits, surely?

  I called out to Dennis to help me go through the emails. I also needed a witness to note down what was on the computer. Fortunately, he had a memory stick with him, and we quickly downloaded whatever we could find that could be useful. We didn’t know how long we had before someone came in. The best would be to copy whatever we could and study it later.

  The last opened email said simply, ‘Look out. We’ll meet soon.’ It too had been sent by ‘victoryatlast’. It sounded as though Liza and this unknown person knew each other quite well.

  Each of the emails sent from Liza’s address was accompanied by the photograph of Liza smiling into the camera.

  In the sent items I found the three videos of Liza that I had received so far, though my name did not feature in the list of people to whom the videos had been sent. Was it possible that they had been sent to me by someone else? Also, mine had arrived on my mobile phone, and the number had been withheld. Anyone who had received the emails could have been responsible for forwarding the videos to me.

  I went through the list of others who had received the videos but found I knew only one of them personally, Amarjit. Apart from the Inspector General of Police in Goa, they had also been sent to Vinay Gupta and a few ministers in the government. As I opened them one by one I found that, unlike me, the others had also received written messages. All the videos had been sent to the same people.

  Liza was not making an effort to hide the fact that she was back, and wanted to create a stir.

  The first message, sent out just a few days before Amarjit had met me, was accompanied by the video of Liza dancing with Curtis and the other boys, after which we had feared she had been raped. The message said, ‘Hello everyone. It’s nice to be back.’

  The one where Liza was brutally raped on the beach simply said, ‘Remember this?’

  And the video in which Liza was sitting on Vinay’s lap said, ‘Miss you, baby.’

  The close-up of Durga’s tattooed arm was not in this list. So, obviously whoever had my number was solely responsible for sending that. Perhaps it was a private message, meant to scare me off, as it had been copied from my phone.

  All of this appeared to point to the involvement of more than one person, and I couldn’t discount the possibility that Liza and Marian had been working together. Though I still didn’t know the identity of the person who had sent me the videos, I finally felt we were reaching the endgame. A pattern was emerging, and unless there was yet another twist to the story, I was sure we would soon be able to learn who had sent the videos and why.

  As we quickly went through the list of sent items, we found that Liza’s account had been dormant for about a year; it was only around two weeks ago that it had been activated again. The password had been changed at the same time.

  One possibility was that someone was misusing this account. Perhaps Marian was playing a dangerous double game to get revenge for her sister’s death? But then why would she wait a whole year before she started to do so? Wouldn’t it have been better to start the sting operation last year, when the evidence was fresh?

  The timing made me wonder once again if perhaps – bizarre as it seemed – Liza was actually back. After all, there was no evidence to prove that she was dead.

  Possibly she was in hiding till she had succeeded in exposing, or at least frightening, those who had assaulted her, and Marian had decided to protect her. Maybe she had hidden her in this very room? That could explain Marian’s secrecy and her hurried exits; her confusion and her reluctance to give me her address or tell me the whole story; her desire to shake off Vinay Gupta’s men.

  Could it also mean that Liza had run away after the assaults on her, and then, with Marian’s help, come back to nail the culprits?

  I remembered that Curtis had said he hadn’t seen her for at least a year. He had been very surprised when I had told him that Liza was back. My information would have alerted everyone concerned to keep a close watch on Marian. And on me.

  But where had she got the videos from? She obviously couldn’t have shot them herself. And they seemed very authentic.

  Perplexed, we walked around the room, hunting for any further clues.

  I unlocked the terrace door and had barely opened it when something hissed and leapt out at me. I screamed and ducked, only to find it was a fluffy white cat. No doubt she was more terrified than I was, having been left outside in the heat, without food or water. There was no sign of any feeding bowl. How long had she been locked out? She wasn’t a stray and she ran swiftly towards the kitchen, obviously sure about knowing where she would find food and water.

  Watching her pad imperiously through the apartment, I doubted that Marian would have deliberately locked her out so callously. It had to be whoever else had been here, and from what we had seen so far, that person had broken in, shut the cat out and then explored the ‘penthouse’. There were no signs of a fight or a struggle anywhere, so possibly Marian was not here at that time. Was she already dead? Had the killers come here after they had got rid of the body?

  Perhaps it was they who had hacked into her computer, drunk coffee and been startled to find that video of her murder on the computer. Assuming they did not film it themselves, they might have suspected that someone had seen them kill her.

  Crucial parts of all the videos sent to me so far had been edited out. This one, I realized, was no different. The first part of the video, in which there would be information of how she had fallen onto the rocks, was missing. One thing which I rejected outright was that somehow Marian had tripped and died.

  Whoever entered this room and left just one hour ago were either the assailants themselves or they now had an idea who her assailant was. Something in the video had startled them, spilling coffee as they rushed out.

  Or it was someone unconnected with the killing, who had found the video on the computer and then gone to check, as we had, whether her body was still stuck on the rocks.

  Either way, the person or persons had left in a hurry. And it was likely they would be back quite soon.

  Which meant that we had better leave. But there were still a few things we needed to do.

  Hearing my shout, Dennis had rushed out to the terrace to put an arm around me (as he was beginning to do quite frequently) and I must say at that point it felt good to have someone with me. Now both of us stood in the kitchen, discussing all these possibilities.

  After taking some milk out of the fridge and pouring it into a saucer for the cat, I thought hard about Marian. She was becoming a bigger mystery to me than Liza. Was she really Liza’s sister?

  ‘Let’s see if we can find that passport of hers. She said the police had just returned it,’ I said, determined to check everything. This was no time to break down or become emotional. But it was very difficult for me, as I kept thinking of how mistaken I had been about Marian and whether I was misjudging her again.

  ‘Let’s also see if we can find anything connected with Liza, in case she actually came back and hid out here for a while. But we must be quick, because I have a feeling that whoever was here earlier will soon be back,’ I added.

  We did a quick search through the cupboards, under the bed, inside the set of drawers. For the passport, photographs, for anything connected to her past or her identity. But Marian – or her killers – or Liza, had left no documents behind. Not a single photograph or piece of paper. So perhaps we would never know the truth about the two girls and how and why they had disappeared. This was worse than I had imagined.

  The thought had barely crossed
my mind, and Dennis had just slipped the memory stick into his pocket, when there was a sound at the door.

  Both Dennis and I became rigid with tension. We quickly went into the sitting room, just as the front door creaked open. For once in my life I wished I had a gun. My instinct was to run, as the people who had been here previously, especially if they had eliminated Marian, were not going to be kind or understanding towards us.

  Helplessly, we watched the door creak open.

  And I sighed, giddy with relief.

  It was Stanley. It was the second time in a single day that his appearance had startled me.

  Seeing me in the room with Dennis, his sleepy eyes opened wide with surprise. But then he grinned with his now-familiar insouciance.

  ‘Hi – it’s you again,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Come to meet Marian?’

  I didn’t know what to say to him, as he stood there smiling, swaying on his feet in his tiny red t-shirt and loose pyjamas. I couldn’t even remember the morning clearly, so much had happened since then. It seemed like I had met him many years ago.

  It was obvious he still knew nothing about his older daughter’s murder.

  I felt a surge of sorrow for him, because I knew that he and Marian had, in many ways, considered each other kindred spirits. I doubted if he would be able to accept Marian’s death with the same ease as he had accepted Liza’s disappearance. I remembered Marian under that giant banyan tree with him, barely a few days back, kissing him, obviously proud of the father who had decided to follow his own path in life, however unconventional it might be.

  This was the most tragic anniversary celebration he could have imagined.

  On the other hand, I did not know if it was safe to ask him if he knew that Liza’s email address was still being used. It, however, was not clinching evidence; it might only mean that someone wanted to give the impression that she was alive.

  Even as I puzzled over what to say, while Dennis stood silently by my side, I heard footsteps on the staircase outside, and the door swung open again. All three of us turned to look at the door, and once again my throat constricted with fear.