‘Social Services have them. That scuzzball would’ve burned them alive if he hadn’t been caught.’
As part of a raid on Bradshaw’s establishments, the police had found the children stashed away in an abandoned EGG bottling plant in a northeastern island off the coast of Great Yarmouth on the brink of the North Sea. Your only mode of transport to get there was the ferry – unless you had a chopper. Someone had come in and fed the children once in a while.
If Bradshaw had followed through with his planned arson rampage, those children’s bones and skeletons would have been lying around forever until they were either engulfed by the sea, from global warming, or discovered by someone who would have traced the barn to an unidentifiable name Bradshaw had originally bought it in. A clever beast, through and through.
Ritchie handed me a chocolate from the box. When I unwrapped it, a sleek platinum solitaire ring sparkled at me. I gasped in disbelief.
‘Will you be with me, Sandy?’ Ritchie whispered, taking my IV-free hand in his.
‘You still need a ‘yes’ from Appa and Sri,’ I warned, but I was already grinning through the mist in my eyes. ‘They’re on a plane to London right now.’
‘That day, your lungs collapsed and the medics had a tough time reviving you. On Ninth April. I actually lost you for a few minutes, San. Then you were in a coma for four days,’ Ritchie said gruffly. ‘Don’t ever do that to me again.’
‘We wouldn’t be here if the bobbies hadn’t arrived just then and fired at him,’ I said quietly.
‘A stonking shit show!’ Ritchie muttered. ‘If that old bleeder’s bodyguards hadn’t been strutting around outside that trap door, Aaron would’ve fetched the cops much sooner than he did.’
We weren’t doing too badly. Ritchie had undergone an operation in his leg and received treatment for some internal bleeding in his neck. My lungs were getting better. I was on medication for my dislocated shoulder, and a bacterial infection and some cysts I had developed from the ruptured blood vessels in my breasts. I was also doing physical therapy to get my arm working.
The head nurse poked in. ‘You’ve got visitors, Ms Raman.’
‘Send them in.’
Nimmy walked in, followed by the rest of the Sawants.
‘Happy twentieth, San! I’m glad you’re getting better,’ Nimmy gushed, offering me a big gift-wrapped box. ‘In case you don’t know, you’re a national hero now. The papers say multiple job offers are pouring in. You have a book deal and I read you’ve been invited to produce and host your own talk show on the BBC. Have you decided what you’ll do?’
‘I have to figure it out.’
‘A little gift from the rest of us. Happy birthday, child,’ Ashok interjected, pushing another parceled present into my lap.
‘We didn’t realise what that surgery could have done to Asha. She’s doing quite well now,’ Shailaja said.
Nidhi was sobbing into a handkerchief. ‘I hadn’t the foggiest I was dating the devil,’ she hiccupped. ‘To be honest, I began to have doubts about Melvin after you met me in the office. I dug around a bit and later found a post-it note from Aiden among some car insurance papers in Mel’s glove compartment. That’s when I went to the police – around the Ninth of April, I think.’
‘Yes, Davenport mentioned that the police were on a high alert, but they couldn’t do much at the time without evidence for a warrant. You deserve the real thing, Nidhi. I’m sure true love will find you if you believe in yourself.’ I took Ritchie’s hand in mine instinctively. From the corner of my eye, I saw a look of defeat on Nimmy’s face.
The head nurse peeped in again. ‘Ms Hoffman and her crew are here for your scheduled interview.’
‘We’ll let you get on with that,’ Ashok said, motioning for his family to follow him out.
A tall chestnut-haired woman walked in with a make-up artist and a cameraman in tow.
Sky News crime correspondent Beryl Hoffman.
‘Hello, Sandy. Thanks for your time, especially when you’re still recovering,’ Beryl smiled.
‘Not at all. Meet Ritchie. He’s a producer from Los Angeles – now a filmmaker in London. Also from LSE.’
‘Oh, we’ll be speaking to you, too,’ Beryl told him.
The make-up artist started dabbing foundation on my face.
‘She’s the one who exposed the perp behind a massive sex racket – risking her life all along,’ Ritchie said. ‘I was just the muscle at the end.’
‘Let’s start from the beginning.’ Beryl dredged up a copy of The Guardian from her briefcase and opened the broadsheet to the third page. The topsy-turvy letters of a familiar headline jumped out at me: ‘The Rants of a Sociopath.’ The commentary I had filed just two days ago, from the hospital recovery room.
‘It’s too bad she can’t change into a nice outfit, but I’ve styled her hair and added some colour to her face,’ the make-up artist announced. I looked down ruefully at my pale-pink hosiery slipdress.
‘She’s looking lovely,’ Beryl said, handing me a lavalier mic as the cameraman fussed over the tripod. Then he adjusted the lights and gave a thumbs-up.
‘That was a brilliant article you wrote in The Guardian,’ Beryl began. ‘Let me first read a few lines to our viewers.
‘The betrayed one pays the ultimate price of the betrayer. That was the lesson Eric Gregersen Group’s chief Lord Melvin Bradshaw learned as an orphan after losing his mentally challenged sister to a violent gangrape in Allentown, Pa., thirty-seven years ago. Life had betrayed Melvin, who went on to lead a parallel life as the kingpin of an underworld sex racket, exploiting special needs female care home residents across the UK and impregnating some of them to use their cord blood for stem cell research at his company’s pharmaceutical division in Warsaw. When the business mogul’s crimes caught up with him, he would ultimately pay the price of that betrayal.’
She looked up. ‘The betrayed one pays the ultimate price of the betrayer. What does that mean to you?’
I felt an odd sense of closeness to Lord Bradshaw as I spoke. ‘That’s only one-half of life’s story. In time, one finds that the betrayer pays the ultimate price of the betrayed one, too. I’ve realised that this philosophy and its converse are really two polar opposites blending to form one unified force. Like yin and yang. For me, it’s that unified force, which completes the circle of life.’
Beryl looked mystified for a moment. ‘I s’ppose that does make cosmic sense,’ she said at last. ‘On to my next question …’
Acknowledgements
The concept of ‘self-made’ is narcissistic at best; every endeavour is a team effort, where several individuals are working for us and with us, behind the scenes and otherwise, because they believe in our cause. I will start with giving gratitude to God for making this happen.
Countless professionals have played a role in the fruition of this novel over several years, even as I wrote it amidst studying for two post-graduate degrees, multiple country-to-country relocations or secondments, and hectic, full-time newsroom jobs on Wall Street. I can never thank them enough, but I will try.
Anuj Bahri, my literary agent at Red Ink, reposed his faith in me as a writer with potential and never wavered in his commitment to this novel. My wholehearted indebtedness to Subhojit Sanyal, my primary editor at Red Ink, who spent hours with me across continents, often at the expense of his sleep, going so far as reviewing street views and satellite maps on Google as we scoped out a crucial site.
All my love to my family and friends for being my rock and my anchor – my mother, Swati, and my father, Amar, who urged me never to give up, my partner, Swami Ganesan, who encouraged me to think big, invested in my research for this book and helped me stay focused and grounded, and my sister, Namrata and my friends Mike Saraswat, Ishan Jalan, Gaia Ines Fasso and Rachel Curtis, who have each reviewed various materials, including chapters of this book, ahead of its publication. I am truly blessed to have all of you in my life. I must point out that Mike, my old friend and former classmate at the
London School of Economics, inspired the character, Ritchie. As a London-based film producer and director, Mike served as a guiding post in terms of mapping out Ritchie’s own career aspirations in the film world.
Manasi Subramaniam, who originally acquired this novel at HarperCollins, gave it an opportunity to be where it is now. My HarperCollins editors, Prerna Gill and Swati Daftuar have put weeks and months into making this novel as compelling as it can be. I am in awe of their meticulous attention to detail and their discerning approach to fiction, astute observations, and their intelligence, kindness and wit. Thanks are in order to HarperCollins’s Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri and Diya Kar Hazra. Thanks to Sharvani Pandit at Red Ink, for her Midas touch to the novel, and to Aanchal Malhotra and Sanya Sagar at Red Ink for their active outreach and enthusiasm.
The research for this novel would not have been feasible without UK television script consultant and former Metropolitan Police Forces official, Jackie Malton and former Scotland Yard officer David Imrie-Cook. Jackie and Dave sketched out various possibilities integral to my plot, and contributed significantly to my development of every murder squad and police procedural scene in this book. I sincerely appreciate Doughty Street Chambers barrister Ben Silverstone’s inputs on the development of cases for the Crown Prosecution Service in the event of a murder trial. Thanks to officials at the Old Bailey in London for allowing me to physically attend a murder trial in court on extremely short notice. I am indebted to former BBC World Service executive Matilda Andersson and Barrie Kelly, who was a TV Series Producer at BBC Worldwide at the time of my research. Matilda and Barrie took great pains to go through every detail of programme commissioning at the BBC and the process of developing an exposé, investigative story and documentary in the context of various scenes in this novel. I must mention that Matilda, whom I have known since 2006, inspired my creation of the feisty Keisha Douglas.
I cannot fail to mention Morgan Radford of NBC News in New York for assisting me with all my follow-up questions related to an investigative story of the magnitude that Sandy takes on. I must acknowledge that Pavithra Selvam, previously a London-based digital planner for pharmaceutical companies around the world, assisted me with crucial scenes directly relevant to the plot of this novel.
Many thanks to Evi Boukli, a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics at the time of my research, and to Peter Dunn, formerly at the UK Victim Support Office, for their inputs on human rights, victims and witnesses, as well as to Gerhard Payrhuber of Maytree Foundation for his insights, which helped me realistically conceptualise various developments concerning Bread Breakers’ and the disability charity, SIGNAL. I sincerely commend National Health Services obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Arasee Renganathan who took me through the implications of hysterectomy and the legalities involving the concept of informed consent.
My sincerest thanks to James Mendelssohn, Vinod Surana, Beatrice Berglund and Khadijah Carter for assisting me with outreach for my preliminary investigations. I am beholden to Sage Publications’ Managing Director and CEO Vivek Mehra, without whom this novel may not been possible, and to agent and author Paula Munier of Talcott Notch in Boston. My respects and gratitude to my business editor, Jessica Davies, and my former boss, Tim Lawson. I drew upon their fine technique and acumen for news and narrative development to add the finishing touches to this novel.
It is likely that several others contributed to the culmination of this exercise. For all those whom I may have failed to mention, I plead your forgiveness. But, rest assured, your love and grace dwell within me and always will.
With all my heart,
Nish
About the Book
Sandy Raman, a stringer for the BBC, lives as a paying guest with the Sawants, a regular, quiet Indian family. Or so she thinks. Until she wakes up to a woman with a knife … and a dark secret.
It is only after she runs a sting operation on a home for the differently abled that Sandy makes a connection between an institute acting as a front for something sinister and the strange family she lives with.
Chasing the truth up a trail of brutal murders, Sandy must evade the grasping clutches of a thriving sex racket and expose the predators before her time runs out.
About the Author
Nish Amarnath debuted as an author at eighteen with The Voyage to Excellence, a critically acclaimed business biography. She has received awards for her short stories from Scholastic and Infosys, among others.
Amarnath was managing editor at Euromoney Institutional Investor and a senior journalist at S&P Global, formerly McGraw Hill Financial, where she was nominated for the Alerian MLP Awards [AMMYS] in 2017. She previously led a public diplomacy mandate for the UK Government on behalf of an affiliate of French multinational, Publicis Groupe.
Her articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Street, International Business Times, India Today, The Hindu, The New Indian Express and The Times of India’s city supplements, among others. She holds post-graduate degrees in media communications and journalism from The London School of Economics and Columbia University, where she was a James W. Robins reporting fellow.
Her enterprise story, ‘Citi and its Scuffle with the Watchdogs’, originally a Master’s thesis for Columbia University reviewed by Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind, was published separately as a book in 2014.
A former Londoner, she now lives in New York City.
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First published in India in 2018 by HarperBlack
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
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Copyright © Nischinta Amarnath 2018
P-ISBN: 978-93-5277-601-6
Epub Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 978-93-5277-602-3
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Nischinta Amarnath asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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