by M. N. KRISH
‘How long have you been a watchman here?’
‘Come January it’ll be six months.’
‘Where were you before that?’
‘Railways. Retired last year but was feeling bored so took this up.’
‘Egmore station?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s the pension? Five thousand? Six thousand?’
‘Six.’
‘How much do they pay you here?’
‘Thousand a month.’
‘Is there another watchman?’
‘Yes, he’s at the other gate, on the other side.’
‘Is that the main entrance?’
‘No, this is. I am the main watchman. He is only an assistant.’
‘Lot of brahmins in this building?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stingy lot, aren’t they?’
‘Yeah, tell me about it.’
‘Somebody gives you coffee?’
‘Yeah, one good lady does. That’s the main reason I’m still here.’
‘Why don’t you move to Sri Hara in Purasaiwakkam? They pay a little better I heard.’
‘True, but my house is nearby. I can just walk here. If I have to go to Sri Hara, I have to take a bus. Whatever little extra they pay will go away for the bus.’
‘What about Casa Sivaganga? It’s only at end of the road. I’m sure they pay more – they’re a bit upscale. I can get you in if you want.’
‘Oh, that’s a problematic building. Lot of police trouble. That’s why they pay more. No watchman lasts more than a month. They take their first month’s salary and run away. Who wants to go there? It’s not like I need the job so desperately. I still get my pension. I just need some break from my wife’s nagging; I don’t want to jump from frying pan into the fire trying to escape from her.’
‘The same lady I just saw delivering your lunch bag when I was pulling over, the one with a little limp?’
‘Yeah, the same rakshasi.’
‘Why don’t you come and work at my hotel? Hotel Oceanic? They pay you double and you don’t even have to see your wife for lunch. You can eat there for free.’
‘But I have to dye my hair and wear a stupid costume there; and stand in the hot sun and keep saluting complete strangers. Don’t want to do that. I know everybody here. This place is like family.’
Lakshman did not realize when they shifted course; like sailing down a meandering river, he didn’t notice the twists and turns in the flow of conversation. It was a full five minutes later when he realized that Durai had the watchman eating out of his hand . . .
~
Joshua was getting restless under the tree. He could see both Durai and Lakshman; though it was Durai who was clearly leading the conversation, it was Lakshman who looked affected by what was being said. His face had clouded over and, as the minutes passed, he began to look positively stunned.
After what seemed like forever, Lakshman and Durai finally began to walk towards the car.
‘I should have thought of it first, but . . .’ Lakshman shook his head and muttered, half regretful.
‘What happened? Isn’t this the right address? Doesn’t he live here?’ Joshua asked.
‘This is the right address, but he doesn’t live here now,’ Lakshman said.
‘Do you at least have his name?’
‘Yeah,’ Lakshman said. ‘Narasimhan. Narasimhan Thathachari.’
Lakshman signalled to Durai to rev up the engine and before long they were on their way back to the campus.
33
Lakshman opened his office and let Joshua in. By the time the ceiling fan squeaked its way to full speed, Lakshman had unlocked his drawers and was busy foraging through them. He picked out a file and began leafing through the pages, his reading glasses poised on his nose.
‘Is that the register from the conference?’ Joshua asked.
‘Yes,’ Lakshman said. He didn’t even look up.
Soon he turned to a page Joshua had dog-eared earlier for reference. ‘Aha, there it is, on the same page as Jeffrey’s entry,’ he said. He turned the file around and pushed it towards Joshua. ‘Simon Thathachari. Narasimhan Simon Thathachari. Grad student at TDU. Jeffrey’s partner-in-crime.’
Joshua ran his eyes over the entry and gasped in shock. ‘Jeez!’
‘You brought your student Jeffrey to India and now he’s brought his. The conference was their perfect decoy – nobody would suspect them if they were up to anything funny.’
‘So that’s what you meant by his not living there now?’
Lakshman nodded. ‘He was only staying with his parents’ when he was visiting the city; a working vacation, I guess. He went back to the US after that.’
‘So if we could track down his phone number at the
university–’
‘Don’t count on it,’ Lakshman said.
He brought up the web browser on his PC and landed on the TDU website in no time. A couple of mouse clicks and a little clattering of keys . . .
He browsed through the page and turned the monitor towards Joshua. ‘Here.’
It was article in the campus newspaper. The title read:
Grad student dies in freak accident in swimming pool
It was dated one day before Jeffrey’s death.
~
Temple View Gardens, Egmore. Minutes after the Expanzo swallowed Joshua and Lakshman and disappeared in a cloud of smoke, a motorbike carrying two men pulled up at the very spot under the neem tree where Joshua had stood savouring the traffic fumes. The man on the pillion got off the bike and walked up to the watchman at the gate.
The watchman dropped the magazine and sprang up from his seat. ‘There’s nothing for rent, there’s nothing for sale. Anything else?’ he asked.
34
They sat for a while in stunned silence, punctuated by the squeaking of the fan and the odd screeching of monkeys on the trees outside. Two people had died after attending his conference and Lakshman was in as much of a daze as Joshua.
It was Joshua who spoke first.
‘This cop Carla’s been holding back on me,’ he said.
‘Since when did you start expecting cops to tell you everything they know? From each according to one’s ability, to each according to one’s need,’ Lakshman said. ‘Do you think Jeffrey knew about his death?’
‘Most likely. Especially if he was involved in it.’
‘You mean Jeffrey could have been behind Simon’s death?’ Lakshman asked.
‘I can’t rule out anything at this stage,’ Joshua said. ‘It could’ve been Jeffrey, it could’ve been somebody else. We really can’t be sure unless we know how much Simon knew about Jeffrey or to what extent Jeffrey had involved him.’
‘If it were somebody else, then Jeffrey might have suspected he was in danger too.’
‘That’s possible. But it’s equally possible that he thought it was an accident. That’s what it looks like on the face of it. The report clearly indicates a high alcohol level in the blood.’
‘Yeah,’ Lakshman said. ‘Is that common? People going for a swim after a drink and drowning?’
‘It’s not unheard of. Perhaps not as much as drunk-driving but it happens more frequently than you would expect: Grad student going partying with friends at night, then going for a swim, and the next thing, is found dead in the pool next morning. It’s an all too familiar story,’ Joshua said.
‘But how was he killed without any traces or marks left on his body? I’m sure the cops there would have done a thorough investigation before ruling out foul play.’
Joshua shrugged. ‘If he was drunk, he might not have been able to fight back too much when he was held under water.’
Pause.
‘So what do we do now?’ Lakshman asked.
‘Connect to
my mail server and check my email like I was planning to originally,’ Joshua said.
‘Right. Forgot about that,’ said Lakshman. ‘Why don’t we go to the lab? I’ll set you up with someone who can help you hook up to your server.’
Lakshman led Joshua into the lab with some hesitation. The smell wasn’t as noxious as it had been the previous day, but it still lingered. The floor could easily do with another lick of Dettol water. Making a mental note to ask Mahendran to get the cleaners, he looked around for a trusty hand from his team. The first person his eyes rested on was Biju John. The poor fellow had been waiting for an audience with him since morning. Lakshman had finished reading his thesis and summoned him to his office to give feedback. But between chasing Pomonia’s hat size and clues for Joshua, he hadn’t found the time to see Biju. He’d asked him to wait in the lab and promised to fetch him as soon as he was free.
Biju stood up expectantly when he saw Lakshman entering the lab. Lakshman was about to draft him for Joshua’s business but changed his mind when Divya stumbled into his roving gaze.
The girl was working at her favourite terminal by the far end windows, oblivious to his arrival. She had played hooky at home once again and come down to the department, much to Meenakshi’s consternation. She had gone to bed last night thinking that the write-up for Joshua was more or less done and she would stay home today and help her mother in the kitchen and also chip in a few hundred Sri Ramajayams. But she woke up in the morning with a new flash of inspiration which promised to greatly embellish her proof of the algorithm and improve the exposition of the paper. She was so excited she didn’t even stop to browse the newspaper for weekend movie releases as she had been planning to do. She stuffed two puffy idlis into her mouth and zipped away on her Scooty before Meenakshi got the chance to kick off her harangue.
Lakshman walked up to Divya and asked her to help Joshua link up to his server. He asked Biju to vacate his terminal for Joshua and meet him in his office to discuss his thesis. Biju gladly obliged and followed Lakshman back to his office sporting a big smile on his face which would get wiped away the very moment he saw his thesis looking like a victim of some gruesome accident, each page bloodied with comments and corrections in red ink.
Divya took down the details of the server from Joshua and began typing. After a few false starts she asked Joshua to key in his password. Seconds later, he found himself staring at his mailbox.
He thanked her and let her return to her post near the windows and began plodding through the mailbox, burning in anticipation.
Pampered over the years on the PC, Joshua had difficulty navigating his mailbox in UNIX. But he got the hang of it gradually. His inbox was inundated with thousands of emails that had accumulated over the course of the last six weeks, not counting all the junk swept away into a separate folder. There was no easy way for him to filter out emails that contained words like Jeff, Jeffrey or Williams and he began scanning through them one by one, starting with the latest. But he lost patience after a while and decided to try a different tack, sorting the mails by the sender and running through them, leapfrogging from sender to sender . . .
But there was no mail from Jeffrey to be found.
On a hunch he tried searching for Edwin Miller and Simon Thathachari next . . .
But there was no trace of them either.
Unsure what to do, he sorted the mails by the date and began skimming through them, this time starting with the oldest.
He spotted an email from Nancy with the innocuous title ‘library request’ in the subject bar. She had explicitly tagged the mail as low priority and Joshua’s first instinct was to skip it and move on, but something made him open it. A word in the main text hit him in the eye and sent an eerie tingle down his spine: TDU.
35
Dear Josh,
As you are aware, a copy of the English transcript of your old interview with Mrs Ammal has been kept in the Wiener library along with the original audio-tape. The old tape in the library has been damaged and the Wiener folks have been trying to reach you to make a new copy to fulfil an inter-library loan request from TDU. Since it’s going to be a while before you return from India, they asked me if I could make them a copy from your records. I didn’t see any harm in doing it as you have already placed everything in the public domain. So I just went ahead and fulfilled their request without waiting for your return. I hope you are okay with this. I just wanted to let you know in any case.
Thanks,
Regards
Nancy
‘Oh my God!’ Joshua gasped. Something Durai had said suddenly started making sense to him. Jeffrey had not come down south as a rubbernecking backpacker. Lakshman was totally wrong about that. And so was Carla, about 70209. ‘Oh my God!’
All heads turned in Joshua’s direction, Divya’s included: What was wrong with him?
Once Joshua managed to calm down, he called Divya to his terminal and asked her to print out a copy of the email for him. He snatched the printout before it was even fully out of the printer and dashed out of the lab.
Without even bothering to knock first, he opened Lakshman’s office door and shoved the printout in his friend’s face. ‘Take a look at this!’
Lakshman was in the middle of a discussion with Biju John, the latter’s thesis spread open on the desk. He put on his reading glasses and started reading as a bewildered Biju looked on.
Lakshman was gasping for breath within seconds. ‘Oh my God! . . . I don’t believe it!’
‘Remember everything Durai said?’ Joshua asked.
‘Very much,’ Lakshman said. ‘Everything makes sense now. I thought it was we who were going after him, but it was he who has somehow been after us all this time.’
‘So are you going to pack a toothbrush and go fishing in the waters of the Cauvery with me or –’
‘Or? Of course I’m going with you,’ Lakshman cut him short.
He quickly sent Biju away with his bloodied thesis and asked Joshua to sit down.
‘When do we leave?’ Lakshman asked.
‘You tell me,’ said Joshua. ‘Is tonight a good time? How long does it take to get there?’
‘Yes, tonight will be good time to start. We’ll get there in the morning.’
‘This guy Durai says he knows the routes inside out. He even offered to take me on a tour. Should we take him or call someone else?’
‘I’d rather not trust these hotel drivers with night-time driving on the highway. Or any driver for that matter. We’ll have no idea what they do once we doze off in the seat. By the time we wake up we may have arrived in heaven already.’
‘Then how do we travel? I’m sure there’s no airport nearby.’
Lakshman nodded. ‘Train would be best, but it’s too late to make a reservation for tonight. All things considered, bus is the best option we’ve got. They may not be as great as your Greyhound, but if we get an AC coach it shouldn’t be too bad. If you’re okay with that, I can call my travel agent and book the tickets.’
‘Sounds good. Go ahead, book the tickets,’ Joshua said. ‘I’ll tell Becky and work on other things.’
‘Okay then.’
‘Speaking of other things,’ Joshua said. ‘Do you have a copy of the book? I think it might be useful.’
‘No, I don’t have it. Haven’t read it at all, to tell you the truth; I’ve only heard of it.’
‘I think we should try to get our hands on a copy.’
‘The library may have a copy here, but it should be available in the bookshops – Higginbotham’s or Landmark on Mount Road.’
‘Okay, I’ll go check them out in the afternoon. If I don’t find it, maybe you could check with the library here. I’ll call you.’
‘Okay.’
‘Another thing,’ said Joshua. ‘Do you have a copy of the transcript?’
‘Yes. I should have
both the transcript and the tape and all the notes I made at the time.’
‘Great! I thought I was the packrat here. You aren’t so bad yourself.’
Lakshman rose from his chair and made for a shelf lined with box files and folders. He panned through the racks, browsing the spine labels and homed in on a file whose sticker read ‘R Old’.
‘I keep all the stuff in this,’ he said and pulled the box out. It slid off the rack with surprising ease. Flinching a little, Lakshman took a peek inside.
He was right.
He twisted around and placed it on the table for Joshua to
see . . .
‘Oh my God!’ Joshua gasped.
36
The box was empty.
His heart thumping faster, Lakshman scoured through other files with an ‘R’ label and then all other labels. But what he was looking for was nowhere to be found in his office.
And then it hit him: something that happened during the conference.
Lakshman was on his way to a plenary one morning and had come rushing to his office to pick up his visiting cards when the door lock opened without so much as a click, before he even fully twisted the key in. Suspecting something amiss he ran his eyes around. His desk and the shelves looked a little messy, but then they were always like that, especially these days when the conference preparations were driving him crazy. As he was in a bit of a hurry then he went in for a quick litmus test, checking the most valuable possessions in the room: his laptop, desktop and the petty cash he had stowed in the drawer. All three were intact and so he had presumed that in all the hustle and bustle about the conference he had not locked the door properly the previous day and left it at that.