He was a big man, six-four or five, thick through the shoulders, hefty midriff, with a square bush of dark hair, a burly moustache and hard-boiled eyes.
‘You say you are investigating the death of an Englishman. What has that got to do with me?’
‘You are Vikaas Khanna?’
‘I am.’
Chopra took out the photograph of Latimer. ‘Do you recognise this man?’
‘No.’ But the slight contraction of that hard stare spoke volumes.
‘His name is Jason Latimer. He was murdered, burned alive. His body was found in a plot in the Aarey Milk Colony. The plot belongs to Omkara Land Development Pvt Ltd. I checked the company’s details with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Omkara is owned by Sunrise Textiles Corporation – your company.’
‘My company owns many plots.’
‘At the time of his death Latimer was investigating the family of Nirmala Bhagayshree Wadhwa. Nirmala passed away in 1948. The circumstances of her death are shrouded in mystery, but there is a good chance that she committed suicide. She was survived by a daughter, Kalpana Shankar.’ Chopra paused. ‘Your mother.’
Khanna breathed deeply, but said nothing.
‘Your mother married Vikrol Khanna, the textile king of Pune, in 1971. You were born in 1972, an only child. Your father passed away fifteen years ago. Since then you have looked after your mother. I would like to talk to her.’
‘No!’ Khanna stepped closer, something wild in his eyes.
‘Your security guard remembers Jason Latimer arriving at your residence two weeks ago. He does not remember him leaving. One way or another the police must be involved. It is your choice what happens next.’
For a second Chopra thought the man would charge him. He stood there, like a bull, his hands writhing by his side.
And then something went out of him. He walked behind the desk, slumped into his chair, glassy-eyed. ‘Yes, he came here. An Englishman full of his own moral righteousness, seeking absolution for an evil that took place all those years ago.’
‘His grandfather raped your grandmother.’
‘His grandfather violated us all.’ Khanna’s eyes flared. ‘A month after the rape, my great-grandfather arranged for his daughter to be married to the son of a man he knew. This man – my grandfather – was told nothing of the rape. Eight months later my mother was born. A half-white baby with dark hair and dark eyes. It is fortunate, is it not, that the women of our family have always had fair skin?’ He almost spat the words. ‘My mother knows nothing of this. And, until two weeks ago, neither did I.’ He lifted his gaze to meet Chopra’s eyes. ‘Yes, Latimer came here. In the space of half an hour he destroyed everything I have ever held dear. He tore down my past. He wanted to speak to my mother. He wanted to tell her everything, beg her forgiveness. He wouldn’t accept that my mother’s ignorance was the best thing for her. She does not need to know. She must never know. It would destroy her.’
‘You killed a man to keep her from the truth.’
‘I did what I had to. I did it to protect her and to protect my children. Do you understand what it would mean for us if this were to become public?’
‘I understand,’ said Chopra. ‘But this does not change the fact that you burned a man alive to protect your secret.’
‘I … I didn’t realise that he was alive. Not until he started scream—’ Khanna stopped, unable to continue, his great head bowed with guilt.
Chopra took out his phone, held it across the desk.
‘Will you call the police, or shall I?’
Matricide and Ice Cream
William Burton McCormick
It was a burning 35°C in the Kiev train station when I bought the first two tubs of ice cream. A kiosk on the second level, sandwiched between overstacked magazine stands and flowery souvenir shops, sold a range of Ukrainian frozen delights. With President Poroshenko’s trade restrictions choking off Russian imports, European products filled the gap, flooding Ukrainian shelves with goods in trendy Western packaging. A little digging in the freezer, however, and I found the tubs made of the old-fashioned materials I needed: insulated cardboard packages little changed since Soviet days. I purchased Витчизна brand – ‘Homeland’ ice cream – in chocolate and banana-strawberry flavours and hurried back to the train and the compartment I shared with Mother.
Soon we were on our way, the unending passenger train chugging west over the Dnieper Upland on a fourteen-hour trip towards the border town of Uzhhorod, where my fiancée and her expensive tastes lay waiting. The summer was the hottest in Ukrainian history. Passengers lay drenched in sweat, infants crying, the elderly cooling themselves with cheap hand fans bought at the station. No one drank the national alcohols; only water would do at such nightmarish temperatures. Few moved, fewer still could think. It was Hell. It was opportunity.
At Lviv station, along the route, I found two more Витчизна icecream packets.
At Skole, in the first foothills of the Carpathians, I bought the final pair.
Six in total. I hoped it would be enough.
Returning from this last ice-cream purchase, I slid open the door to our compartment, the cabin little more than an emaciated broom closet: two small bunks climbing one wall with Mother resting in the lower, a solitary window, and a recess over the door, where we’d shoved our luggage, the whole bag collection looking like it might crash perilously down on us at the slightest bump or change in acceleration.
‘Well, Milo,’ wheezed Mother in her gravelly voice, ‘what did you buy this time?’
‘Some treats for us. And a present for Vika when we get to Uzhhorod. Another four hours or so…’
‘The money of mine you spend on that girl.’
‘Mother, I’m a man. I’m thirty-eight. I don’t—’
‘You’re thirty-eight, Milo, but you’re far from being a man. At this rate, you’ll never get there.’
‘Thanks, Mom.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Just because it’s true, doesn’t mean you need say it.’
Mother propped herself on one elbow, watching me as I set the icecream tubs in the bag with the others. I could feel her disgust from here.
‘Does Vika realise that I’m cutting you off? I won’t support two, Milo. Or three if you plan a family.’
‘Mother, all Vika knows is that you are coming to the wedding and you’re very excited about meeting your new daughter-in-law. These should be happy days for us all. Let’s not argue.’
She held up a cigarette-yellowed index finger. ‘Not a cent after the honeymoon, Milo. Not one—’
Her words were cut off as her wheezing breaths turned into a succession of coughs, her fleshy face contorting in pain…
‘Mother?’
The coughing grew more aggressive, her skin turning purplish as she tried to get air.
The sight didn’t completely displease me. Still, I pulled a bottle of Bon Aqua from among our things and poured the water into a plastic cup.
‘Here, drink slowly, Mother…’
After several choking minutes sipping the water, the cough faded and her colour returned.
‘Did you take your medicine?’
‘Yes,’ she said as if it were somehow my fault that she’d smoked three packs a day for fifty years. But then most things were ‘my fault’.
‘You know the physician at the hotel said you shouldn’t travel today, Mother. It’s too hot with your emphysema. And Doc Folger back in Rochester didn’t even want you to go abroad this summer.’
‘Well, what was I supposed to do? Miss your wedding? You’d never let me live that down.’
‘I’m just telling you, Mom—’
‘You’re in no position to tell anyone anything, Milo.’
‘Fair enough.’ I sighed and gently took the cup from her. ‘Have a rest, Mother.’
She lay back on the bunk and closed her eyes. I sat on the floor, as always, the dutiful son at her side, listening to the train pull away from th
e station.
My thoughts growing ever darker.
Once twenty minutes had passed and I was sure Mother was asleep, I took her large foot-wash tub, which she’d carted with her all the way from New York, and quietly exited the compartment.
The corridor outside was nearly empty, only a few children at the other end of the car looking out of the window at the rising terrain of the Carpathian foothills. I went in the opposite direction, to the public toilet, stepped inside, and filled the washtub to the brim with water. I felt its weightiness, the water shifting from side to side with the train’s every shudder. A glance in the mirror and I discerned weight of a different character, one of consequence, of pending fate. Mother or Vika? Who gave me more pleasure? I couldn’t live with both. And Mother might linger another twenty years…
A man has his rights.
With a remorseful sigh, I returned to my cabin. Mother slept on.
I set the washtub at the foot of her bunk. Next, I withdrew a pair of scissors from our luggage and an ice-cream packet from its plastic bag. I carefully cut out the large, semicircular dry-ice coolant bar from the packet’s bottom and set it on the cabin table.
Mother stirred, coughed a bit. I waited her out.
When she was again restful, I removed five more dry-ice bars from their packaging and placed them with the first. Then I closed the window and, taking an old Cornell University t-shirt from my things, I rolled it up and set it along the bottom of the cabin door.
With the window shut and the door draught blocked, the room’s already sweltering temperature quickly rose. Perspiration rolled over my brow and dripped off my nose as I worked, my shirt growing damp and stained.
With something between a prayer and a wish, I dropped the first dry-ice semicircle in the washtub, then the second, and watched the white clouds rise to fill the lower half of the cabin. By the third dry-ice bar, the tub’s water had nearly evaporated, and I had to use every last litre bottle of Bon Aqua as I fed it bars four, five and six.
The mist thickened. I could barely see Mother on the bunk, but I could hear her coughs as her frail lungs tried to pull usable oxygen through the clouds. I climbed up to my own bunk, up with the free air that had been pushed higher by the heavy dry-ice clouds. There I waited and listened.
Her coughing grew hoarser, more violent. I thought of my boyhood. I thought of Vika, of sex and money.
I awaited freedom.
My gold-plated birthday watch, the one with the digital display, said the temperature in the sealed cabin was 111° Fahrenheit and rising. At 115°, Mother’s gasps and explosive coughs reached their apex. I thought I heard her call my name. Or maybe it was only my conscience speaking…
By 122° Fahrenheit both Mother and conscience were silent.
I waited another ten minutes, then climbed down and checked the body.
No pulse. Eyes dilated. A perfect smothering.
Emancipation.
I’m not certain I truly thought in the next few minutes. I only reacted, mindlessly following the plan I’d imagined a thousand times before. I opened the window to air out the cabin, and when the clouds were dispersed, I lifted the t-shirt from the bottom of the door and stuffed it into the luggage.
Taking the washtub, and shutting the compartment door securely behind me, I followed the corridor again to the toilet, passing a young woman in a flower-print dress carrying a little dog. She smiled but said nothing. Inside the restroom, I emptied the remaining water into the toilet bowl and washed the tub clean of any film with paper towels. Then I flushed the towels and water down the vacuum of the train’s drain and returned to my cabin.
That first foray into my new murderous reality exhausted me. Several contemplative minutes passed before I found any strength for further action. When I did, I dumped the ice-cream packets out the window, casually, one by one over a half-hour. Let them be lost forever in the Ukrainian wilderness.
I scoured the cabin for anything I’d missed.
Empty water bottles? Not suspicious in this heat.
A pair of scissors? Nothing unusual. Still, I slipped them into a pocket of the luggage. Why answer questions about what I was cutting?
I looked through the plastic bag, discovered a receipt for ice cream, and had just thrown both bag and receipt out the window when a knock came at the cabin door.
I shut the window, gave a last glance around the room, calmed my nerves then answered the door.
It was the young woman I’d passed in the corridor earlier, her dog down on a leash, a chocolate bar in her hand.
‘Would you like a sweet?’ she asked in accented English, a smile on her pleasant, twenty-something face.
‘A sweet?’
‘I saw that your ice cream had spoiled. So I thought you’d enjoy a chocolate bar.’
‘My ice cream spoiled?’ She’d seen me eject the last packet … seen it from her cabin window … or the dining car…
OK, OK, I was a litterbug. What of it?
I willed my pulse to slow, answered her in a whisper. ‘Please excuse us. My mother is sleeping. Would you mind coming back later?’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. Forgive—’
‘No trouble. And take your pet…’ I pointed down. Her dog – a toy beagle – had curled up on the floor at our feet.
The woman laughed loosely, her hand on my shoulder. ‘He likes it here. Pocket beagles can sense kind-hearted people, you know.’ She bent down and picked up the dog. ‘Maybe he’ll drag me back to you one day.’
‘Another time,’ I said firmly.
‘Enjoy the chocolate.’
‘Thank you. Good day.’
I slid the door shut. Locked it.
I released a long breath. Well done, Milo. The first conversation was over, though it had shredded my nerves. Again, I searched the room, checking for any final detail that had escaped me. All looked clear. I scooted the washtub below Mother’s bunk, then with a bit of inspiration, pulled off her colourful stockings, shoved them into a bag overhead and sprinkled droplets of water over her feet from the remnants in my last Bon Aqua bottle.
Done.
With my preparations complete, I relaxed, ate the chocolate bar the stranger had left and dumped its wrapper out the window.
One had to be consistent.
At last, I pooled my courage for the penultimate moment. I reclosed the window, let the temperature rise again, then threw open the cabin door and shouted: ‘Help! Help! Someone, please … my mother … she’s not breathing!’
A buzz of Ukrainian voices filled the corridor, faces popping out of every cabin door.
I screamed again. ‘Please! Somebody help us!’
Porter Panchenko came running up the corridor.
‘It’s my mother,’ I cried, my voice cracking. ‘She won’t wake up.’
The hefty porter shoved his girth into the compartment and bent over my mother on the bunk. For several minutes, Panchenko examined her, muttering sad-sounding words in Ukrainian. At last he said in thick English, ‘The heat has claimed another one.’
I thrust my face into my hands. ‘It’s my fault, my fault. She has allergies and emphysema. And I had the window shut…’
‘Mr Capela, don’t blame yourself. This happens all the time with older passengers. There are warnings in the stations for those over sixty not to travel on days over thirty centigrade.’
‘I can confirm the heat was stifling, porter,’ said a feminine voice. The stranger with the beagle appeared in the doorway. ‘My dog collapsed when I visited this cabin not half an hour ago. I had to lift the poor little thing out, didn’t I, Mr…’
‘Capela. Milo Capela,’ I said between sobs.
‘Beagles are well-suited to high temperatures, Porter Panchenko. They’re among the most heat-tolerant of all canines. To affect my dog in mere seconds, I’d guess the room was what, Milo? Forty degrees centigrade? The dog lapped up a quarter-litre of water as soon as I got back to my own cabin.’
My opinion of the woman changed drasti
cally. Perhaps she was helpful after all.
The porter sighed. ‘It’s a tragedy all too common this time of year. I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Capela. There’s nothing we can do until we reach the Mukacheve station, I’m afraid.’ He offered me his hand then, unsure of American customs during a tragedy, sheepishly retracted it. ‘Unfortunately, every cabin in the train is occupied. If you don’t wish to travel with the deceased I can offer you only the porter’s booth.’
‘No one should be alone when losing a parent,’ said the woman. ‘He can stay in my cabin, if he wishes, Porter Panchenko. You’ll remember my colleague missed the train and left an open spot.’
‘Thank you, miss,’ I said. ‘I may take you up on that offer. But for the moment I wish to be by myself. This is so … so … shocking.’
‘Of course. If you need me I’m in berth sixty-four, two doors down in this car.’
‘Thank you.’
The woman placed a gentle hand on my forearm. ‘She wouldn’t want you to grieve, Mr Capela. Life is for the living. Your mother is waiting for you in a better place.’
‘If I need you, I’ll come.’
She disappeared from the doorway. Porter Panchenko reiterated his condolences, then told me he’d return shortly with some paperwork.
Soon, I was alone.
So far, so good…
I shut the cabin door. Took a Valium. Changed my shirt. I considered texting Vika, but it occurred to me that the beagle lady was quite attractive.
How sympathetic might she be to a man who’d suddenly lost his mother? European sexual morals, after all … I put on some cologne.
Leaving Mother to her fate, I set out for berth sixty-four. I found the door open. The woman sat inside, reading a Rankin novel, her dog curled up on the floor at her feet. She’d changed out of her dress into casual jeans and a form-fitting black t-shirt with ‘Miss Quote’ across the breast.
‘Hello,’ I said, rapping on the door frame. ‘Is that invitation still open?’
She looked up from her reading and smiled. ‘It is.’
Her cabin was larger than ours, with a full-sized twin bed on each wall. I sat across from her, the pocket beagle jumping up onto my lap.
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