Different Senses

by Ann Somerville

  “Cursed insanity. Shardul is going to eviscerate me.”

  “Never mind Shardul. Dad must be spitting blood.”

  “Are you making this up?”

  He showed me the screen. There, in full colour, was a shot of me and Shardul dancing, staring into each other’s eyes like a pair of lovestruck fools. I groaned, and pulled the sheets back over my head. “Shoot me now.”

  “So when are you going to bring him around to meet us as your new partner?”

  “Never. It’s ridiculous. He went with Jyoti, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Language. Mum must be delighted.”

  “They know it’s rubbish. At least, they’d better. Fuck, Shardul!”

  “Did you?”

  “Yashi, piss off. I need to call him.”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t want to listen to your ‘private affairs’, after all.”

  I threw my pillow at him and he made his escape. Then I found my phone. A message was waiting for me. “Have read news report. When should we announce wedding?”

  I groaned in pain. Bloody stupid reporters.

  I called Shardul’s number. He picked up immediately. “Ah, my intended. How are you this morning, sweetheart?”

  “I had nothing to do with this, I swear.”

  “I know. It’s hilarious. My aunt nearly choked to death laughing. My first call this morning was Jyoti, giggling her head off and telling me to read the news report.”

  I relaxed. “I suppose it could be worse.”

  “Indeed. And if you care to read further, there are some flattering pictures of Jyoti and Vik, without too much in the way of snide commentary. Just don’t read comments on the articles. They’re vile as usual.”

  “I won’t. So...a success so far as you’re concerned?”

  “Not a failure. Though if you’re breaking off our engagement, I suppose I ought to issue a press release so it’s known I’m back in the game.”

  “You do and I’ll break your lilywhite neck.”

  He laughed. “Come on, Javen. It’s funny and relatively harmless. Your parents will be furious.”

  “They will. My brother’s hugging himself with glee at the prospect. Of course it’s not his head it’ll come down on.”

  “Of course not. The press will move on in a day or two. And the images were quite nice, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.” I might even print them off, but I’d never tell him. “Shardul, while you’re in such a good mood...what do you know about Veringe and any illicit activities? Other than the artefacts, I mean.”

  “What I’ve heard is that there is very little he won’t buy or sell, and he’s not choosy how he obtains the goods. I know at least two cases where grieving spouses were persuaded to part with heirlooms at a time when they were emotionally vulnerable, and some of the items I saw last night are ones that disappeared from our community under suspicious circumstances.”

  “Stolen goods?”

  “I’m not using that term in a potentially recordable conversation.”

  Wow. “You’re scared of him.”

  “You should be scared of him. He has powerful friends and flexible ethics, shall we say.”

  “What about not so powerful friends—the kind who might be able to enter a residence unnoticed?”

  A long silence. “This, I won’t discuss on the phone. Give me some time.”

  “Sure. I’d be grateful for the help.”

  “Anything for you, my suckling child.”

  He closed the call as I tried to control my gag reflex. What a way to kill off my fantasies, Shardul.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Yashi didn’t think the whole thing so funny when some enterprising little squit, having discovered his personal number, called him over breakfast to ask about my ‘private affairs’, and I ended up being forced to bar calls from anyone not already on my contact list. I messaged my people, Kirin and Jyoti to warn them to do the same for the weekend, and then I fled up to my grandfather’s house. Yashi and Tara decided it was a good day to take the kids to the beach.

  The whole thing tickled my grandfather, though he understood how aggravating it was for the family. He’d read the reports and been curious, he said, about his new grandson-in-law to be. “Fine looking fellow, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But he’d never marry me or any other Kelon.”

  “Sorry about that, aren’t you?”

  Granddad radiated nothing but warm sympathy, so I told him the truth. “Very. Please don’t tell Mum and Dad.”

  “Do I look like a fool, Javen? I can imagine the conversations at the governor’s residence this morning. But all the same...he’s a fine young man.”

  “He’s gorgeous, but considers himself too good for me.”

  “Hmmm. Then maybe he’s the fool. Let’s do some gardening. That’ll take your mind off it.”

  It didn’t, but it gave me a chance to mull a few things about the bracelet case, and other cases I was working on. And about Kirin, and Shardul, and dreams unfulfilled.

  Back in Hegal, the office message system was full of crap from reporters. I’d got in early just so I could deal with this nonsense, and deleted them all unread. Fortunately—unfortunately for the victims, of course—a beautiful young actress and her lover had died the night before in a murder suicide, and the feeding pack moved on. A governor’s son and a possible indigenous lover had nothing on sex, glamour and death.

  Two people hadn’t called—my parents. Of course they knew the story was nonsense, but not to have a complaint about the annoyance wasn’t like either of them. Which could mean almost anything, really. I didn’t feel like chasing it up.

  Madan was first into the office after me. “I hear you had an exciting weekend,” he said, hanging up his coat.

  “Everything you heard is a lie.”

  “But you don’t know what I heard.”

  “Still a lie. Madan, I need dirt on Timin Veringe. Do you have any contacts with the drug dealers and users? Mine are a little out of date, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, but my instincts are this guy doesn’t bother with the street users. His clientele will be the same as the ones who buy the artefacts and the art.”

  “Society women? Wouldn’t they just ask their doctors to prescribe what they want?”

  “Depends if prescription drugs do what they want. Say you’re a bored thrill-seeker, and you’ve heard that larin cut with nodil can give you the ride of your life. Who are you going to ask?”

  “That nice Sri Veringe who brings you the pretties?”

  “Got it in one. It’s a theory, anyway.”

  I sighed. “Not one I can prove though. My mother will go thermonuclear if I start asking her friends if they’re sniffing larin.”

  “Then you have a problem. I’ll ask around but I don’t hold out much hope.”

  “Do what you can. Thanks.” As if this case wasn’t confusing enough.

  Prachi and Vik wandered in a little later. Prachi grinned as she saw me. “When’s the wedding, boss?”

  “Don’t you start. Seriously. I’m lucky Shardul doesn’t hold it against me. How the hell did those reporters get my brother’s phone number, and mine?”

  “Not me,” Prachi said.

  “Me either,” Vik said hastily.

  “It’s okay. I think I know you two have enough sense not to give that kind of thing out. But it’s an object lesson. Because of who I am, who my family is, and the work we do for the Institute, we can be targets anytime, and the attention won’t always be friendly. We can’t afford to fuck up in public. Nice to have your pictures in the news when you’re all dressed up and enjoying yourself. Not so nice when someone’s trying to take your investigator’s licence or your freedom away. Understand?”

  They nodded, the grins gone completely. Behind them, Madan nodded too, in approval.

  “But I know you’re both sensible, so take the warning and stick it in your mental files. Just get on with your jobs and I’ll do th
e best I can to make sure I don’t bring that kind of attention on you.”

  Still solemn, they went to their desks. I hated doing that to them, but I’d seen young cops screw their careers by carelessness, and damn it, I should have seen the whole ‘romance’ thing coming myself. Who knew what repercussions that might have for me or Shardul, considering how our respective communities felt about the other?

  My phone went. I checked the caller before I answered. “Hello, Mum.”

  “Javen, can you come to the residence this morning?”

  Her voice vibrated with tension. Anger over the press stories, or something else? “Sure, Mum. I can be there within the hour.”

  “Soon as you can.”

  She abruptly closed the call. I stood. “Have to head out. You guys got everything under control?”

  They did, so I left. If my mother had called me over to the residence just to chew me out, I was not going to take it well. But somehow I thought not.

  She hadn’t. As soon as I walked into her office, I knew she was upset, not angry. “Mum, what’s wrong?”

  “I spoke to Harinakshi Narl yesterday. Yashi told me you were away so I waited to call.”

  I sat down. “Thanks. Sorry about the...you know.”

  She dismissed my apology with an impatient wave of her hand. “Never mind that. Harinakshi received the bracelet as a gift from her husband on her fiftieth birthday. Which was three days before Timin delivered the bracelet to me.”

  “What? That can’t be.”

  “Exactly. Harinakshi’s very angry. Not with me, exactly, but....”

  “I need to talk to her and her husband.”

  “Absolutely not. Javen, I’ve involved them in criminality.” Her eyes darted around as if she expected to be arrested at any moment.

  “No, you haven’t. And Shrimati Narl hasn’t committed a crime either.” I didn’t want to say “done nothing wrong” because it wasn’t exactly true. “Mum, the only way to get you out of this mess is to prove Timin Veringe stole from you. I need to speak to them and have the bracelet examined. One of the versions has to be a fake. The piece is unique.”

  “I don’t believe this. I just thought it was a way to make a little career on the side as an art dealer. I never thought this would happen.”

  “You’re not dealing in art so much as people’s lives, Mum. Their history and their pride.”

  “You think I deserve this.” She brushed angrily at her eyes.

  “I think...I’m glad you’re not going to do it any more. Because it’s wrong and it hurts people who can’t fight back. Jyoti’s family once owned pieces like she wore to the ball. But they sold them because they were poor and the money offered was ridiculously high. They shouldn’t have had to sell them, and she could have worn them as of right, instead of borrowing them. One day she’ll be married, and she won’t have her family’s own finery to wear on that day.”

  “I never stole anything from her.”

  “No. But we did. The Kelons did.”

  Her lips thinned. “I was never involved in any discrimination or harm to those people. My parents only arrived here forty years ago, long after the second colonisation began. How dare you accuse me?”

  “I’m not.” Her anger beat on my head like a metal pipe. “This is getting off track, Mum. I need to speak to Harinakshi Narl and see the bracelet, let an expert examine it. It can all be done with complete discretion.”

  “She doesn’t want her husband to know a thing about this. He’d be furious.”

  “All right. But would she visit here to see me, and let someone look at the bracelet?”

  “I can ask.” Her manner was cold now, not distressed. I’d insulted her and that was uppermost in her mind. “Why don’t you confront Timin, make him tell you the truth?”

  “Without some proof, he’ll laugh in my face, maybe even sue me. I’m pursuing other lines of investigation, but I need to talk to Shrimati Narl.”

  “She won’t give up the bracelet.”

  “I understand. She won’t have to.”

  “Very well.” She made a show of looking through papers on her desk. “I have someone coming to see me shortly.”

  “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  She didn’t say goodbye. I’d pushed too hard, but somehow the message had to get through to her that what she’d been doing was flat out wrong. Unfortunately, a son wasn’t the right person to ever tell a mother they were wrong about anything. At least, this son with this mother.

  I called Shardul as I walked to where I’d left my vehicle. “Want to hear the latest wrinkle? There are two bracelets in this mess. Shrimati Narl received hers before my mother did.”

  “One’s a fake. Has to be.”

  “I know. So who can I ask to verify which Shrimati Narl was wearing?”

  “My aunt will know someone. I’ll send you their name.”

  “Thank you.”

  I’d be screwed without Shardul’s help, and yet he’d said from the start he didn’t want to be involved. Was taking Veringe down enough to change his mind, even if my mother got off the hook as a side effect? Or maybe he was like me and couldn’t stand a bad job being done when he had the power to fix it. I’d known the guy over a year and there was so much I didn’t know about him. Sure would like the chance to find out though.

  I hadn’t even reached my auto when my mother called me. “Harinakshi Narl has agreed to let you talk to her tomorrow at eleven, here, on the understanding that you arrive separately from her and so does this ‘expert’.”

  “Uh, I don’t even know if I can line someone up that fast, Mum.”

  “I’m not rearranging this, Javen. Have your person ready, or do without.”

  Aren’t I doing you the favour, Mother dear? I shook my head. The derda wass indeed.

  I messaged Shardul to let him know what Mum had decreed, not much caring if he called back and told me he couldn’t arrange an expert in so little time. I wished I was back in the hills with my grandfather and his lovely little garden. Life was sweet and simple with him, and dealing with my parents was neither.

  I had work to do, clients to chase up, but it was a beautiful if chilly day, and I just did not feel like dealing with other people’s stuff. So I drove out to the riverside park, and went for a walk. At this time of day, the park belonged to young mothers and the occasional father, out walking their babies and toddlers. As many Nihan as Kelon, keeping to themselves, but sharing the same paths, doing the same thing, because under the physical differences, they were all the same. People, with the same dreams and hopes and worries, some with more, some with less. A picture of how the world should be, if we could get past race.

  But as I walked, the cop in me, the trained observer, noticed hair colour and eyes weren’t the only difference. The indigenous mothers were all neatly, almost too neatly dressed for casual outings, and none of their odd traditional strollers was even slightly dingy or dirty. Like they knew they would be watched, and judged, and any fault held against their whole people. They walked with more care, more wariness, and ducked their heads as they passed a chuma, as if they didn’t think they had the right to look one of our people in the eye.

  Which was such shit. Why should someone like Jyoti have to hide her pride in her identity, her calm fearlessness, just because a Kelon woman’s gaze met hers? Why would someone like Shardul ever need to worry about being judged? Yet they both did, and if they did, how much more for these women here, and the children who would never, unless things changed, have a fair chance to compete against richer, more privileged offspring?

  Great. I’d come out to get away from things and here I was getting all worked up about injustices that had started long before I was born, and would be around long after I was ashes. I’d be better off back in the office snarling at potential customers and pissing them off.

  My phone went. “Yeah?”

  “Is it me or do you always answer the phone like that lately?”

  “Kirin, I’m sorry.
I’m in a fucking foul mood.”

  “Oh. Then I suppose it’s the wrong time to suggest since it’s such a lovely day, that we could eat lunch together in the sun.”

  “You know what? That’s a brilliant idea. Are you free now?”

  “But it’s not eleven yet.”

  “Oh. Okay, forget—”

  “No, I’ll come. I’ll bring samsa and unni appam and chai, and coax you into telling me why you are biting the heads off innocent phone callers. Where are you?”

  I told him, and he said he’d be there soon. And I didn’t feel the slightest anxiety about it at all. I had no idea why, but I could think of Kirin now just as a friend. A good friend, and today, someone I really wanted to see.

  I walked back to the car park, and he pulled up a couple of minutes later, leaping out of his vehicle, bearing bags of food and a rug to sit on. “This is exactly where I wanted to come today, and exactly the company,” he said, giving me one of his bright, winning smiles.

  “You might change your mind about that. I wasn’t joking about the mood.”

  “No, I can see that. Let’s find a warm place to sit and you can tell me all about it.”

  We found our spot in a pretty tree-ringed clearing, where parents were setting out rugs and baskets for their children’s lunches. “Haven’t done this in an age. Not since....”

  “Not since us,” I finished.

  “No. Nice to be with a friend.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and meant it.

  He poured us chai from a flask, and handed over one of the little sweet cakes he knew I liked. “Is it all that silliness in the press that’s making you cranky?”

  “No, not really. It’s annoying, but that’s not the problem.”

  He stretched out on the rug and picked at the food while I complained about Mum, the second bracelet, her snottiness, the general greediness of Kelons, and the unfairness that meant I couldn’t persuade Shardul to sleep with me. Actually, the last one just popped out without me thinking about it, and it was only when I looked down, saw Kirin’s wide smile and crinkling eyes, that I realised I said more than I should have. “Uh...maybe you should forget about what I just said.”