One evening they were talking of a murder. I say “they” because lately I had been slumped over in my chair for weeks, silent but always nervous, shifting from one side to another incessantly. Subramaniam had been watching me all this time. Now I was very interested in the details of the murder. I wanted to know how they had been killed. It was a husband and wife and they had been found bloodied in their apartment in Colaba. The papers were full of it. The fact that there were no signs of a struggle gave me a particular satisfaction. I nodded rapidly. The others watched me, uneasy.
“No great mystery there,” I said. “It must have been love. Sex, you know.”
“Or gold,” Desai said. “Property. It says that the police are questioning the servants.”
“Something like that,” I said. “Simple and stupid.”
“Or the most complicated thing of all,” Subramaniam said suddenly.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t you know?”
He was smiling gently. I collapsed suddenly. I must have been insufferable, and they had been very patient and very kind.
“No, sir,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me?”
He laughed, his shoulders shaking. Then his face became serious, and he looked at me for a long time. He nodded with that peculiar motion of his, from side to side.
“All right,” he said. “Listen.”
*
The body was almost submerged in the ditch, but what Sartaj noticed about it as he squatted beside it was its expression of pride. One arm was curved out of the water and rigid. The passerby who had found the body was a driver on his way to the milkstand for his memsaab’s bottles, and he had seen through the rain a hand, reaching up out of the rushing stream as if for something. It had been raining for three days and three nights and through the morning now, and the water was actually roaring as it pushed below a culvert. The dead man was jammed in between the curving brick wall and the broken metal grill. The driver had stood next to the ditch and shouted until people in the nearby buildings had come out, and then he had stood guard until the police came. He seemed to think that somehow it was his responsibility since he had found it, but now he was trying not to look down at it. The skin on the palm of the hand that emerged from the water was a strange bluish grey.
Sartaj Singh, who was an inspector in Zone 13 and used to bodies, was squatting carefully next to the ditch, looking at the ground, but there was running water everywhere and it was likely that the body had drifted. He walked the few yards to the next culvert, feeling his boots sink into the mud. A gust of wind blew water into his face. The flashbulbs were freezing the drops in the air in their sudden glare. It was the first heavy rain of the monsoon, and he knew that the next few weeks would be miserable with mud, with clumsy raincoats and flooded streets, clothes that always seemed wet, and the impossibility of keeping a crease in one’s pants. Anyway there was nothing to be found. The photographers had finished.
“All right,” Sartaj said. “Get him out.”
They put a crowbar against the grill and pulled at the dead man’s arm, his shoulders. Finally one of the constables, whose name was Katekar, shrugged, took off his boots, and got into the water. It beat against his waist and chest as he strained and finally the body came free. The driver gasped as they dragged the body out and over because under the chest, on the right side of the belly, the flesh had been eaten away. The rats had been at him before the water took him and covered him over. But the face was unconcerned and smug.
“Turn around,” Sartaj said to the driver. “What’s your name?”
“Raju.”
“Raju, take a look at him quickly. Do you know him?” Finally Sartaj had to take Raju by the elbow and steady him. “Look,” Sartaj said. Raju was in his early twenties and Sartaj knew that he had never imagined his own death. Now in the early morning he was looking at a corpse. He shook his head so violently that Sartaj felt the jerks in his arm. “All right. Go over there and sit down. We’ll need your statement.”
“Robbed, sir,” Katekar said as he pulled on his boots. He pointed with his chin at the white band of skin around the dead man’s wrist, which showed up clearly even after his colour had drained away into the water. “Must have been a good watch.”
“It was a big one anyway,” Sartaj said. “Big enough to get him killed.”
*
He had been dead at least eight and not more than twelve hours when he was found. The cause of death was a single stab wound, under the sternum, only an inch and a quarter long but deep. The blade had pierced his heart.
“What was taken?” Parulkar said. Parulkar was Sartaj’s boss. He had been promoted up to deputy commissioner from the Maharashtra police service, and still lived in Ghatkopar in what he called his ancestral abode.
“Wallet,” Sartaj said. “And a watch.”
“Ah, I see,” Parulkar said. “Bombay was never like this.”
Sartaj shrugged. “It’s a new world. He was fifty or thereabouts, no distinguishing marks.”
He looked up and Parulkar was smiling. Sartaj had been cleaning his boots with a moist rag, scrubbing away the mud caked around the tread and the ankles.
“It’ll get on again as soon as you go out,” Parulkar said.
Sartaj nodded. “Yes, sir. But the point is to keep trying?”
“Of course, of course,” Parulkar said, standing up and hitching his pants over his considerable belly. His uniform was always bunched up somehow, looking as if it had been made for someone else. “Young fellows must be tip-top. Carry on, carry on.” But he was still smiling as he walked out of the room.
Sartaj stood up and walked across the room to a map of the state. In the glass, over the dark borders and the blue roads, he could see himself, and he checked his shoulders, the tuck of his shirt, the crispness of his crease. Now when the moisture hung in the air it was difficult to come close to the perfection he wanted to see in the glass, but he patted his turban and ran a finger over his sagging collar. He did not mind Parulkar’s smile at all, because he was a dandy who came from a long line of dandies. His father had retired as a senior inspector in Zone 2, and every street urchin had recognized the swagger stick with the shining steel tips and the gleaming black boots. Sartaj’s grandfather’s upturned moustaches had been acknowledged as the most magnificent in all of Punjab, and he had died in service as a daroga, in a gun battle with Afghan smugglers near Peshawar. The legend went that when he was hit he was eating a dusseri mango. He sat down, not far from a babul bush, finished the mango, crossed his legs, held out his hand for a napkin that his seniormost havaldar was holding for him, wiped his fingers, dabbed at his mouth, twirled his moustaches, and died.
Sartaj had never been able to eat a mango without thinking of the old man, who he had met only through the garlanded portrait that hung in his mother’s house. Next to that picture was a portrait of Guru Nanak, another one of Guru Gobind Singh, and then one of Sartaj’s father, who had made it to retirement and had passed one night in his sleep, resting on his back with his hands folded neatly on his chest. Sartaj was eating a mango now, holding a slice with his fingertips as he leafed through the reports from the Missing Persons Bureau with his other hand, stacking the probables to the left, face down, and the rejects to the right. He was looking mainly for the age, but also for the kind of man who would have wanted what the dead man wanted. He had it down to fifteen when the phone buzzed angrily. In the quietness after the rain it was very loud.
“Are you still in the office, you sad man?” a boy’s voice said.
“Yes, I am,” Sartaj said.
“Doing what?”
“Eating the last alphonso mango of the season.”
“You should go home.”
“You’re still up. You must be very happy or very sad.” It was Rahul, his wife’s younger brother, who was now in his second year at Xavier’s and therefore always falling in love with someone or out of it.
“Happy, actually,” Rahul said quietly. “I bought a n
ew shirt at Benneton today.” They had a mutual interest in clothes, although they mystified each other with their choices. They talked for a while about this shirt, and then suddenly Rahul said, “When’s the exam tomorrow?” Sartaj flipped over another report as Rahul talked nonsense about college. What that meant was that someone had come into the room, and Rahul was pretending that he was talking to a college friend. Finally Rahul said, “See you at college tomorrow. Go to sleep soon. Night,” and hung up.
Ten minutes later the phone rang again. “Hello, Sartaj,” his mother said. “I just called home and of course you weren’t there.” She lived alone in Poona, with a rose garden and one aging Alsatian. When Sartaj’s father had been alive, they called every Sunday, but now she allowed herself a daily call.
“Peri pauna, Ma,” Sartaj said.
“Jite raho, beta,” she said. “Did you find a cook?”
“No, not yet, I’ve been busy.” Which, of course, was no excuse. Sartaj held the phone loosely against his ear, and turned pages, and his mother spoke at length about bad diets and nutrition. He could see clearly the sofa she was sitting on, the little table next to it, her small feet which he had just touched in devotion, her hands with which she had blessed him, and the sari wrapped around her plump shoulders, and the garlanded pictures on the wall.
“It’s too late, Sartaj,” she said finally. “Go home and rest.”
“Yes, Ma,” Sartaj said. But he stayed for another two hours before he walked home. Even then he walked slowly, stopping sometimes to watch the water as it roiled around the gutters and made whirlpools. He leaned against a wall and scanned the layered many-coloured mess of movie posters and political slogans, dominated by the latest broadside bearing the crossed spears of a right political party. He read all this with the concentration of an archeologist smoothing away layers of ancient dust. What he was avoiding was the small bundle of foolscap paper that sat on his dining table, wrapped in a white ribbon. Rahul’s sister had sent him these papers, and he couldn’t bring himself yet to say the word for what she wanted. But he was supposed to be distinct now from her and her family, disengaged. He had been told that they considered him dead. Which was why Rahul made phone calls late at night: maybe that’s when you talk to the dead.
*
Sartaj found the next of kin, whose name was Smt. Asha Patel (“wife of missing person”), but not on the batch of missing persons reports that he had. It was in another stack that came three days later from the Missing Persons Bureau. The name of the dead man was Chetanbhai Ghanshyam Patel and the age was right, but what clinched it of course was the entry under distinguishing marks and features: “Wearing a gold Rolex watch, value Rs. 2,18,000/-.” Chetanbhai was then a man who liked people to know the make of watch that he was wearing and its exact and precisely calculated value. Sartaj did the missing-property paperwork (in triplicate as required), and out of habit made some phone calls to his usual official and non-official sources, although he had no hope that he would ever see this grand keeper of time, but in this he was wrong because that same afternoon there was a phone call from the station at Bandra. Two of their constables, at seven that morning, had picked up one Shanker Ghorpade, a known bad character, beggar, suspected pilferer, and drunkard. The suspect had been observed in the very early morning hours to be staggering proudly through the bazaar at Linking Road, wearing an ornamental timepiece clearly beyond his means and needs. Since he was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation they had brought him in, and had already been commended for their alertness.
The station house was hardly alert in the sudden, sultry heat of the afternoon when Sartaj held the watch up to the light. It was indeed a Rolex, large and heavy and very yellow, with a pleasing glistening feel under the thumb. Moitra, the Bandra inspector who had pulled it out of her desk, was leaning back and rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands.
“Big fucker,” Moitra said. “It should tell more than the time.”
Sartaj was turning it over and then over again. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Moitra said. “Moon phases. The time in Tokyo. Whatever shit people think they need to know.”
“We all want to know the time in Tokyo. Come on. Let’s see him.”
In the detection room Ghorpade groaned as he came through the door, hunched over and shuffling.
“Have you been third-degreeing him?” Sartaj said.
“For what?” Moitra said. “Why to waste energy? He’s a fucking bewda. By tonight, for a drink, he’ll confess to killing Rajiv Gandhi. And haven’t you received the memorandum from up high? No third degree, ask them questions with love and caring and tenderness.”
She laughed. It looked to Sartaj that the confession might actually come sooner than nightfall, judging from the trembling of Ghorpade’s hands. “Sit down,” he said flatly. It was his interrogation voice. He knew his head was leaning forward from his shoulders, and that his eyes had become opaque.
“Have fun,” Moitra said as she left. For a long moment afterwards Sartaj could hear her whistling down the corridor.
“We found the man, Ghorpade,” Sartaj said.
“What man?”
“The one you knifed.”
“I’m a bewda. I don’t kill anyone. I just wore his watch.”
Sartaj had to lean closer to him to hear the words in the voice full of phlegm. Ghorpade had a small, lined face, dry lips, and days of grey stubble on his cheeks. He stank of sweat and monsoon damp.
“Why did he let you take it?” Sartaj said.
“He was lying down.”
“On his back?”
“No. Face down. So I took it.”
“Did you know he was dead?”
Ghorpade looked up with yellowed eyes. He shrugged.
“Was he in the gutter?”
“Yes.”
“Was it full of water?”
“No. It was just starting to rain. There was just a trickle.”
“Was there any blood?”
“No.”
“None?”
“No.”
“What time was it?”
Again Ghorpade shrugged.
“Did you look for a wallet?”
“It wasn’t there.”
“Why didn’t you sell the watch?”
“I was going to. A little later.”
“Later till what?”
“I just wanted to wear it for a while.” Ghorpade wrapped his arms around himself. “It was a good gold watch.”
“Do I look like a fool to you?”
Ghorpade shook his head, slowly.
“But I must look like a fool to you. Otherwise why would you be telling me this fool’s story?”
Ghorpade was quiet. His ruin seemed complete.
“All right,” Sartaj said. “I’ll be back to talk to you more. You think about what you’ve done. About this children’s story you’re telling me.”
Ghorpade was absolutely still, with his head lowered.
“I’ll be back,” Sartaj said. He was almost at the door when Ghorpade spoke, and the words were indistinct, and his face was turned away. Sartaj took the three steps back and leaned forward, narrowing his eyes and blinking against the smell that hung over Ghorpade. “What did you say?”
Ghorpade turned his face close to Sartaj, and Sartaj saw that he was really not very old, young perhaps, in his thirties. “I’ll be dead,” Ghorpade said.
“Nobody’s going to kill you.”
“I’ll die,” Ghorpade said. There was no fear in his voice. It was a statement of fact, and it required no sympathy in response, or any other kind of emotion. Sartaj turned and walked away.
*
The door to Chetanbhai Ghanshyam Patel’s sixth-floor apartment was made of dark wood inlaid with criss-crossing copper bands and raised ivory studs, with Chetanbhai’s name in gold at the centre. It was a door that belonged in some last-century haveli, with an elephant parked outside and durbans in safas. Now a window opened at the middle of it and a y
oung face peered out through the bars.
“Yes?”
“Police,” Sartaj said. The boy’s eyes took in Sartaj, and the bulk of Katekar’s shoulders behind him. Sartaj was watching him carefully. This was something that Parulkar had taught him: go to their homes, watch their fear, and you will learn everything.
The door opened and Sartaj stepped in. “Regarding the matter of one missing person Chetanbhai Patel … Your good name?”
“I’m his son. Kshitij Patel.” He was about nineteen, a little shaky.
“Who else is in the house?”
“My mother. She is sleeping, not well. She was very worried. The doctor has given her some medicine.”
Sartaj nodded and walked past him. The drawing room was large by Bombay standards, and cluttered with brass lamps and furniture and many-coloured hangings on the wall. The sofas were huge and an alarming red. On the wall to the left there was a long painting of a brilliant sunrise and another of a sad shepherd. Against the back wall there was an Apsara pouring water. Sartaj walked over to it and saw that she was almost life-size, with deep round breasts and huge eyes. She was all white, plaster, and quite startling to find in an apartment in the Narayan Housing Colony, far north and west of Andheri West.
Kshitij was watching him, and Sartaj felt the edge of his resentment without surprise. He used his ability to stalk into people’s lives as another tool. What they felt about him was usually instructive.
“Please come to the morgue with us,” Sartaj said.
In the long moment then he saw recognition, regret, the usual struggle for control, and then Kshitij said, “Yes.” But he did not move.
“Do you want to put on some shoes?” Sartaj said. He followed Kshitij into his room, which was shocking in its austerity after the gaudy brilliance of the rest of the house. There was a shelf stacked neatly with books, a desk, a bed, and a calendar with a goddess on it. There was a window that opened out onto an expanse of swampy vegetation. It had begun to drizzle again. “Is there somebody to take care of your mother?”
Love and Longing in Bombay Page 8