There is a heaviness about my heart. Pain in my left arm. Lead and ice. Lucasta tells me it’s no good investing so much feeling in you, but it’s like ordering the sun not to set in the evening. The other day she called my love for you a ‘galloping gangrene of the soul’. She doesn’t understand a thing. Jealous, I suppose. She says my love for you will kill me eventually. She’ll never succeed in putting me off you, never. I only need to shut my eyes and I see you – the way you were as a child – a halcyon creature – a circle of golden summer round you. So lovely, so warm, so bright . . . I must stop. You never liked me when I went on. Sodden with a sick kind of self-pitying sentimentality, I can hear you say!
Your letters. I cannot get your letters out of my head. I can recall every single word you wrote. I find it impossible to believe you’ve done any of those things. Shall I tell you what? I think you made it all up in order to punish your foolish old father for what he said to you that day. Well, I deserve to be punished for being unable to control myself. Perhaps I deserve to suffer.
They do something called ‘anger management’ nowadays. Some nonsense. I’m too proud to do anything about my moods, you see. I can’t express my feelings properly. I was furious when you refused to do as I told you. Please, forgive me. I can’t help loving you. Is that such a terrible thing? All I wish for is that you should come back – make up with me – ut amem et foream – allow me to love and cherish you once more – get married to the right boy – lead a good life – a normal life.
I dreamt you came back the other night. I felt so happy, so relieved. I fell to my knees and asked you for forgiveness. You kissed me and allowed me to kiss you. It was a reconciliation scene on the grand scale.
What a thick black cloud that is. As black as a tar-barrel. I think it has wings! How fast it comes. It looks like some monstrous crow.
I refuse to believe that you – that you are about to marry an Indian gangster. That’s what you wrote in your last letter. Roman is a cool guy who collects automated weapons and kukris – the curved knives favoured for decapitation. You made that up, didn’t you? You can’t possibly marry an Indian gangster. Such a preposterous idea. I absolutely refuse to believe the other things you wrote either, in your earlier letters.
I have been engaged in transactional relationships for some time now. There is no economic reason to be moral. I have been trading sex for money. I am expensive and high maintenance. A night’s ‘work’ buys me a Louis Vuitton bag.
You couldn’t really have worked as a professional call girl, could you?
Trading sex for money. Nonsense. I can’t believe it. I can’t. I can’t –
* * *
Lord Justice Leighton gasped and the silver-topped cane slipped from his gloved hand. It’s true of course, he thought. He knew it was true, the news of the forthcoming nuptials with the gangster. In his latest report over the phone, Knight had told him that his daughter now went round with a young Indian whose name people in the streets of Goa whispered with awe and fear. A young man who was extremely, murderously jealous of Ria. Those had been Knight’s exact words. Apparently Knight had witnessed a row between the two. Then the rest must be true too – what Ria had written about acting in a film. A blue movie, she had called it in the American manner.
He shut his eyes. The caress of the mist through his hair seemed human and caused him to shiver. He started shaking.
You slut. You unprincipled whore. To have descended to the very depths of Gomorrah. Trading sex for money. Was that really what you wanted? To fuck in front of a camera? First with men, then with other sluts as well? While being watched? You wrote as though you’d enjoyed every moment of it. How can you do this to me? Is that your gratitude, for everything I have done for you?
Lord Justice Leighton’s right hand went up to his chest. There it was again. The pain. Lead and ice. Only now it was sharper, much sharper than the other day. Like a knife cutting through him. He found it difficult to breathe.
Ria, he whispered. Ria.
He kept his back against the oak. Dazed and numb. He looked round. There was a man with a dog. Not too far. Would he see him? It was so dark, or were his eyes failing? He put up his left hand. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. Perhaps the man would notice him if he moved away from the tree? He took a tentative step to the right, waved his arms and suddenly pitched forward.
He fell into a heap of dry leaves. The rotting smell in his nostrils was overpowering. Was that it? Was that it? Was that the end? Death. Contrary to what Henry James said, there was nothing distinguished about it. It wasn’t how he’d imagined it. To die like a dog. Like one of Iris’s dogs. How ridiculous. Lucasta’d be upset. Had he signed his new will? Lucasta actually loved him. Shame that he no longer wanted her love.
He tried to raise his head. How dark it was. Was he going to die without seeing Ria? The pain came again – quick and sharp as that of fire – excruciating. No sensation whatever in his left arm – a chilling numbness was wrapping itself about his heart, creeping into it. He gasped as he felt something like a taut wire snap. The next moment the monstrous crow descended upon him . . .
Lord Justice Leighton didn’t see the man and the dog start walking fast in his direction. Nor did he see his wife and his sister who were following at a run.
‘There he is, there he is,’ Lucasta reiterated and she pointed with her forefinger. ‘He will be all right. He will be all right . . . Toby! We’re coming, darling! You will be all right!’
Iris Mason-Stubbs’s hands flailed ineffectively in the air as she stumbled over a tree root. She had already managed to lose her glasses. With her wild hair and round eyes she brought to mind the White Queen in Alice. As it happened it was she who arrived first and kneeled beside her brother’s body.
‘Oh dear. My poor Lucasta,’ Iris said after a pause. ‘He is dead.’
4
The Bone Collector
Thousands of miles away, in Goa, Sarla Songhera was roasting a whole chicken in her oven. She kept opening the oven door and poking at the chicken with a fork. She was impatient. The chicken was neither too big, nor too small but of moderate size – exactly as the kala iilam had instructed. She had got up at dawn and wrung its neck herself. Eventually the chicken was ready and, putting it on a plate, she carried it across her fully modernized kitchen to the table beside the window.
She proceeded to eat. She needed to consume every piece, every scrap of flesh, very fast. Her eyes remained dull but her teeth chomped away in an energetic manner and she tore at the chicken with her bare hands. Her fingers with their long red-painted nails – not unlike Kali’s lolling tongue in the black statuette on her shelf – glistened in the sun. It looked as though she ate greedily but in fact she hardly noticed what the chicken tasted like; that was not the point of it. She tried not to think of anything, that had been the other instruction. Following the instructions was of paramount importance. She did her best to ‘empty’ her mind, she tried to think of a blank wall, but she found it difficult. Thoughts and images kept intruding. Those two – entwined. She was a seething cauldron of resentment, of jealousy and of frustration. She was filled with a sense of hurt, so deep she couldn’t breathe. When she finished eating, she broke up the chicken’s skeleton, again with her bare hands. That was easy. Snap, snap. For some reason she laughed.
She then put the bones on a platter (a silver one, with ‘Harrods’ engraved on the bottom), which she placed outside, on a small table on her balcony. Three days in the sun, she had been instructed, but she had no patience. She didn’t think that part of it really mattered. What mattered was her belief in what she was doing, in the results she would be able to witness soon – and her belief was strong.
Sarla sat down in a peacock chair made of rattan and waited, gazing at the bones fixedly all the while. Every now and then she reached out and touched them with the tips of her fingers. She kept waving the flies away. The heat was intense, but her brow was cold with sweat. Her raven-black hair soon felt as t
hough someone had set it on fire, but she decided not to put on a scarf or a hat. That slut, with her long golden-brown hair and enticing ways – a professional slut, Sarla had heard it whispered – an English girl called Ria, whom Roman desired more than anything in the world.
Sarla had had a wig made, exactly the same style and colour as Ria’s hair. She had gone all the way to Delhi for it. The wig had cost a fortune. Sometimes Sarla put it on, covered her face with peach-coloured liquid foundation, applied bright red lipstick to her mouth and plenty of mascara to her eyelashes and imagined she was Ria. Well, unless her mirror was a liar, the resemblance was uncanny.
Perhaps one day she should go to Ria’s bungalow, get into the bedroom and put on the gossamer-like silk dress she had seen Ria wear once – it was slashed to the navel. She would make her face up. She would then lie in the bed and wait for Roman. Her thighs were too dark, she hated her thighs, but perhaps she could cover them in peachy make-up too? Now, if she made herself up properly and wore the wig the whole time, Roman would never know it was her. Roman would think it was Ria! He would kiss her tenderly – passionately – fold her in his arms – make love to her. But first she must make sure Ria was not coming back. Yes. They wouldn’t want Ria barging into the bedroom and disturbing them, would they?
It took the bones less than half an hour to become really dry – as dry as, well, as a bone – wasn’t that what the English said? A funny way of putting it. The English – they had a lot to answer for, Sarla thought grimly. Roman was in love with the English. Carrying the platter back inside the flat, she tipped its contents on the highly polished floor. She had pushed all the chairs (imitation Sheraton) out of the way and rolled up the carpet (an original Axminster). She had a beautiful house. What she didn’t have was love.
She was ready and eager to start. High time! She felt excited, full of hope. She kicked the ornate slippers off her feet, pulled up her sari and put on the wellington boots. They were brand new and reflected the sun. She had never worn them before. They had been a present from her husband. Roman had bestowed on her a number of useless presents before they had parted. English things – a porcelain cow creamer, which had been insensitive of him, given their religion, but then he’d never had any respect for their religion – a pair of big shining garden cutters, what the English called ‘secateurs’ – a set of silver fish knives – a set of silver fruit knives. As though she’d have any use for a fruit knife! She had pretended to like them; she’d gasped in admiration; she had wanted to please him. She had been hungry for his kisses. The boots were olive-green, with black rubber soles, and looked incongruous next to her red-and-gold sari.
She remained still for about a minute, concentrating on what she was about to do next. She thought of the instructions the kala iilam had given her.
Whip yourself up into a frenzy of anger and the vilest of detestations. Allow all the hatred of the world to penetrate your body and spread fast, like the poison of a krait. She pushed back her long black hair and shut her eyes. A krait, she’d nearly stepped on a krait once, in the back garden. She had flattened its head with a stone. That was what she’d like to do to that slut. She might still do it if this thing didn’t work . . . Concentrate . . . She groaned. She had seen them . . . those two . . . entwined . . . rolling in bed . . . whispering dirty words into each other’s ears . . . lovey-dovey . . . Tears started rolling down Sarla’s fat sallow face and her lips quivered, then her monstrously bloated body shook.
She saw terrible things happening to Ria: it was as though a film was being played before her eyes. (Not the kind of film she normally watched; it was highly doubtful whether the Bollywood dream factory would ever produce such a film.) She saw Ria engulfed by flames – torn to pieces by two tigers – stung by a krait, her body swelling and turning black – strangled by a woman who looked like the Queen of England – poisoned by gas as she lay in her bed – drowning in the ocean while swimming, her corpse washed up on the beach, covered in seaweed – caught in a wood-cutting machine, her body mangled, mutilated beyond recognition . . . Envisioning her wishes, the witch doctor had told Sarla, would add great potency to the hex.
Be thinking of all this while doing this hex and when it says, ‘With these bones I now do crush,’ take a hammer or use feet and crush the chicken’s bones to powder. Feet is better.
Sarla spoke.
‘Bones of anger, bones to dust,
Full of fury, revenge is just.
I scatter these bones, these bones of rage.
Capture my enemy – into the cage!
I see my enemy before me now,
I bind her, crush her, bring her low.’
It was at that point that she stepped across the chicken’s bones with her booted feet.
‘With these bones I now do crush,
Make her turn to dust!
Torment, fire, out of control,
With this hex I curse her soul!’
Sarla was gratified to hear the crunching sounds from under her feet. She went on stomping – faster and faster – faster – as fast her weight allowed. Soon she was breathing stertorously. Sweat poured down her face.
Her eyes had glazed over. ‘You scarcely know my name, let alone what it stands for,’ she said in English in a voice that did not sound like hers. ‘It stands for Despair, Bewilderment, Futility, Degradation and Premeditated Murder.’
Then it was all over. She was done. The bones had been transformed to powder, almost. She was not aware that she had spoken at all. She swept them up and placed them in a bag. She was going to sprinkle them later around Ria’s bungalow first, that was where Roman and Ria met, then around Coconut Grove, in case Ria moved in with Roman. I hate him too, Sarla said, her eyes filling with tears. I want him dead.
The procedure, she had been told, might have to be repeated if it didn’t work the first time. And if it didn’t work the second time or the third time, well, she would have to think of some other way of getting rid of Ria. Actually, she didn’t want Roman to die. She wanted him – back.
‘Only her!’ Sarla raised her voice. She shook the bag with the powdered bones. And once more she addressed the spirits, which, she felt sure, were all around her, ‘Do you hear? Only her. ’
She felt a sudden sharp pain, just above the collarbone. So sharp, it made her gasp. She had the funny feeling that one of the shadowy figures she had seen earlier on, the ‘Queen of England’, had plunged a fruit knife into her throat.
5
Another Country
‘Miss Darcy has that priceless gift, part Ancient Mariner, part Scheherazade, that keeps the reader turning the pages,’ Major Payne read out. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? They do love your stuff.’
‘I don’t know. They seem to,’ Antonia said over her cup of coffee. Her new book had come out the week before.
‘What do you mean, “seem to”? They love your stuff. Listen to this. The plot is subtly pitched between unfathomable and coherent: at first there are only questions without answers, and then gradually information is given away – but only by minute degrees. That’s praise of the most undiluted kind.’
‘Look at the bottom – they call the denouement “somewhat outlandish”.’
‘Most readers love outlandish denouements.’
‘Do they?’
‘Aunt Nellie loves outlandish denouements, don’t you, darling?’
‘I adore outlandish denouements,’ Lady Grylls said absently. ‘So what do you think, Hughie?’
He went on reading. ‘Miss Darcy deals with the familiar country house set-up in a refreshing and exhilarating way.’
‘So what do you think, Hughie? Good idea, eh?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Payne looked up. ‘We can’t just up and go, darling. You don’t really expect us to make a snap decision about that sort of thing.’ Over the last five minutes Payne had been dividing his attention between his wife and his aunt. ‘You make it sound as though Goa is Hampstead Heath.’
‘Planes, you seem to
be forgetting, are the magic carpets de nos jours. Besides, Charlotte is my oldest friend. I wouldn’t say my dearest friend, she was never that, but she is one of the very few still round. She was the mistress of somebody I knew quite well, who’s dead now. She writes most persuasively. See for yourself.’ Lady Grylls tossed the letter across the breakfast table.
Major Payne felt obliged to put The Times to one side. There was a pause. ‘She says foreign travel broadens the mind. She says she’ll take care of our travel expenses and we’ll get the second best bedroom at the house. She says we won’t have to spend a penny. A freebie, eh? Does she mean that?’
4.Little Victim Page 3