The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  She cautiously pushed through a screen of beads and entered a dark corridor down which echoed a sound of distant chanting. She came to a door marked Office, and was confronted by the impressive figure of Dorothy Yanamandra scolding a typist. She whirled around and beamed at Christine.

  “Ah! The lady from the Dubashi Guesthouse. You have come to us!”

  “Yes. I thought I should find out more about the ashram.”

  “Excellent. Come into my office.”

  It had rough whitewashed walls, but contained smart office furniture and the latest computer equipment.

  “Atmapriksa is Hindi meaning soul-searching, Christine,” the business manager said. “That is what we do here, following the ancient spiritual tradition of guru-shishya, in which shishya, or disciples, are mentored in their soul-searching by a guru, which in our case is Swami Bhatti. I have many leaflets here that will be of interest to you, but first I would ask you to fill in a questionnaire.”

  Christine filled in the sheet asking for basic information about herself, but with a blank space left at the end to answer the question, Why are you here? Christine wrote, To come to terms with the death of my mother, then wondered if that was really the right way to put it. Could you come to terms with death? Perhaps Swami Bhatti would tell her.

  Mrs Yanamandra studied her answers, nodding sagely over the final reply. “You have come to the right place, Christine.” She typed into her computer an appointment time for the following morning for her to meet the guru. “Now I shall take you on a quick tour of our facilities.”

  They followed the corridor to an open courtyard paved with stone flags. In the arcade that surrounded it Christine saw about a dozen people, mostly young and Western in appearance, performing exercises or domestic chores - washing sheets by hand in a large tub, sewing and cleaning.

  “It is part of the discipline by which the shisbya learns respect for the guru,” Mrs Yanamandra explained. “There are other Australians here, and Americans, and people from all over.”

  They moved on to a wing of rooms, very simply furnished, in which disciples slept, then to a yoga class and another courtyard in which people sat in meditation. As they moved on again Christine tried to imagine Mrs Darling here.

  “Now we’ll collect your leaflets and say goodbye until tomorrow,” Mrs Yanamandra said, and led her back to the street door. Christine went out with a feeling of hope that this peaceful place in the heart of the ancient city might be able to help her.

  Unfortunately the map wasn’t able to help her find her way back to the hotel, and she became lost in the labyrinth of narrow streets. At one point she stopped, realizing that she was going around in circles, and turned to go back, and as she did so she saw a man watching her from a doorway. She had a split-second image of an evil-looking face, a grubby dhoti and a red turban, before he darted away into the shadows and disappeared around the corner of an alley.

  Christine took a deep breath, feeling her heart pounding, and wondered if she should ring Sub-Inspector Gupta, but by the time she got back to the hotel she decided that she had been overreacting.

  Mr Dubashi and his wife were having an argument when Christine came down after breakfast the next morning. She gathered that it had been sparked by her mentioning her appointment to meet the Swami Bhatti.

  “Christine is here to learn,” Mrs Dubashi said. “Why should she not find out what the ashram has to offer?”

  “All I’m saying is that she should be careful what those people’s motives are,” her husband said stubbornly.

  “You should never have said those things to the police inspector yesterday. You made it sound as if Mrs Yanamandra had stabbed Mrs Darling with her own hands.”

  “Well, that wouldn’t surprise me!” Mr Dubashi insisted truculently.

  “Rubbish! I admired Mrs Yanamandra’s nitty-gritty approach. She calls a spade a spade. I bet she keeps those mystics in line.”

  “A strong woman,” Mr Dubashi groaned.

  Christine left them to it. She found her way to the ashram more easily this time, with only one disturbing moment, when she thought she caught another glimpse of the dirty red turban belonging to the evil-looking man she suspected had followed her the previous day, but she couldn’t be sure.

  She was met by a young woman of about her own age, with an American accent, dressed in an orange sari. She was one of the Swami’s sbisbyas, she explained, and launched into a gushing account of the life of the ashram, the sense of comradeship among its guests, and the profound experience of its spiritual life. By the end of it Christine felt that she had been thoroughly softened up.

  She said, “Did you know Mrs Darling?”

  “Oh, poor Elizabeth. We were so devastated. She was like a second mother to me - well, a first mother actually. I had some problems back home with my mother and her fourth husband.”

  “She was happy here, was she?”

  “Oh, yes. She’s been coming here every spring for quite a few years. She and the Swami were very close... in a spiritual sense, I mean. He’s been in deep retreat ever since it happened. You’re about the first person he’s agreed to see since then. Come along, I’ll take you to him.”

  Swami Bhatti was a small man with a large white beard, wrapped in an orange shawl and with a matching orange bindi on his forehead. He was sitting in the full lotus position on a plain cotton mat, and gestured to Christine to sit facing him. His eyes gleamed at her through large rimless spectacles, which reflected the flames of candles set up around the room.

  “Christine,” he said, in a voice so soft that she had to lean forward to hear his words. “You have set out on a great spiritual journey. You feel like a traveller without a map, a sailor without a rudder, a bird without a sense of direction.”

  “Yes.”

  “You grieve for your mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are deeply troubled by your loss.”

  ‘Yes.”

  “You seek closure.”

  Christine hesitated. She wished he hadn’t used that word.

  “Here we can help you to find closure, and to put this behind you, so that you can move forward in your spiritual journey.”

  The Swami closed his eyes and a deep murmuring sound filled the room. It took Christine a moment to realize that it was coming from him. It stopped and he opened his eyes again.

  “Often there are impediments to closure - a feeling of guilt, for example.”

  “Oh, yes!” Christine nodded vigorously.

  “Property, for example. Things that the dead beloved left behind.”

  “My mother left me her house.”

  “Exactly. It weighs upon you, like a debt, it fills you with guilt.”

  The guru blinked and gave a little cough, as if he were getting ahead of himself. “But we can speak of that later. For now it is enough to recognize your need for forgetfulness and closure, so that you can begin again your spiritual journey, here, with us.”

  He was interrupted by a sudden commotion outside in the courtyard. A woman - Mrs Yanamandra perhaps - was shrieking and then a man shouted, “Where is that thieving bastard!”

  The door of the meditation room in which Christine and the guru were sitting crashed open and Mrs Darling’s son stood there, a furious expression on his face. “Ah, there you are!” He glared at Swami Bhatti, who was scrambling to his feet in alarm. “Come here, you little scumbag. I’m going to wring your bloody neck!”

  Christine watched in alarm as Jeremy Darling charged into the room. The candle flames flickered and the Swami stumbled back against the wall as the furious interloper lurched forward, hands bunched into fists, and then several young men, some in dhotis and some in jeans, came running in and grappled him, falling to the floor in a struggling heap.

  Mrs Yanamandra appeared, wild-eyed. “Swami! Are you hurt?”

  Swami Bhatti had pulled himself together. He took on the dignified stoop of a martyr. “I am perfectly
fine, thank you, Dorothy. This poor man is sadly deluded.”

  “Yes, yes.” Mrs Yanamandra pulled out a mobile phone from beneath her sari and called the police. On the floor the bodies had stopped struggling. The young men got to their feet, hauling Darling upright. “What shall we do with him, Dorothy?”

  “Lock him in the store room,” she snapped. She turned to Christine. “Come with me.”

  As she waited in the office, Christine thought back over her meeting with Swami Bhatti. There had been the disconcerting mention of property just before Jeremy Darling had appeared, but the guru’s words before that had also made Christine feel uneasy. All that talk of closure - he seemed to want to numb her feelings about the death of her mother and cover them up. But she didn’t want forgetfulness. She was angry at its unfairness and she wanted to hang on to her anger and fight against those awful memories, not blank them out.

  “Christine!”

  She looked up and saw Sub-Inspector Gupta in the doorway.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She described what had happened.

  “So you heard Darling make threats against Swami Bhatti’s life?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “He was very angry. He said the Swami was a thief.”

  “That’s absolute rubbish,” Mrs Yanamandra said, coming out of her office. “The man’s a menace. You must arrest him for attempted murder.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “We have locked him up in a store room. I’ll show you.”

  Sub-Inspector Gupta followed her out to the corridor, where two uniformed policemen with rifles were waiting, and they set off to make the arrest. A little later they were back, the sub-inspector giving orders to the other two, who ran out into the street.

  “He broke through the tiled roof of the store room and climbed down into the alley behind the ashram,”‘ Gupta said, getting out his phone. “He’ll be miles away by now.”

  When he finished his call to headquarters, Christine said that she felt sorry for Jeremy Darling. In a way they were both the same, seeking answers to the death of a mother, both angry at the unfairness of it. And although Mr Darling’s anger at Swami Bhatti might be financial in nature, that may just be a mask for his deeper feelings of loss.

  Sub-Inspector Gupta looked at her with a smile. “You try to see the best in people, Christine, although in this case I think Mr Darling’s motives are straightforward. His mother’s legacy consisted almost entirely of her house, in an expensive part of Sydney Harbour, worth many millions of dollars. She left it to Swami Bhatti to establish an ashram there, to further his work.”

  A house, Christine thought - another parallel.

  “So long as Mr Darling is free, we shall have to post a guard here to protect the Swami.”

  “And meanwhile Mrs Darling’s killer is on the loose.”

  “That’s true. My superiors who have taken over the case are not making much progress. The autopsy has shown that she was stabbed by a long, narrow blade, but we have no record of such a weapon, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility, and we still have no eyewitnesses coming forward, even though she was surrounded by dozens of people when she was killed. It is a baffling case. If only I could solve it, I could make a considerable name for myself.”

  Christine remembered the impression that Mrs Darling had made on her when they had met so briefly before her death. “It would be nice to think that some good might come of it,” she said.

  Christine returned to the Dubashi Guesthouse feeling disappointed by her visit to the Atmapriksa Ashram. Perhaps she hadn’t given Swami Bhatti a fair trial, she thought, but his words had not resonated with her.

  Mr Dubashi called out to her when she stepped inside. “You do not look uplifted by your meeting with the guru, Christine.”

  She told him what had happened, and he nodded smugly. “You confirm my suspicions. He is all right for gullible tourists who want to pay a lot of dollars for a mild taste of Indian mysticism, but not for a serious pilgrim like yourself.”

  “What should I do, then?”

  “If you ask me, fate has brought the answer right here to your side. Here, under this very roof, is a true student of the mysteries of life and death.”

  “Mr Nemichandra?”

  “Exactly, a Jain monk. If anyone can help you it is surely he. And do you know, Christine, it may help us in another matter if you talk to him.”

  “How is that?”

  “Jain monks and nuns live by the five mahavratas, the five ‘great vows’, which are non-violence, truthfulness, honesty, asceticism and celibacy. Of these, the first, ahimsa, non-violence, is the most important, and if there is a clash it takes precedence over all the others. So, what if telling the truth would cause someone to suffer violence? A Jain would then have to remain silent, and I am wondering if this, rather than the knock on his head, is what is preventing Mr Nemichandra telling us who he saw kill Mrs Darling, for the Indian Penal Code prescribes death as the penalty for murder.”

  “I see,” Christine said. “Yes, that would be a terrible dilemma, wouldn’t it?”

  “Indeed. Come, let us pay a visit to Mr Nemichandra, and ask him to instruct you in his philosophy, and perhaps we may find a way to discover what he knows about Mrs Darling’s death.”

  So they climbed the stairs and knocked on the door of Mr Nemichandra’s room. Christine heard a slight scuffling inside, and then the door was opened by the monk, dressed in his usual white robe, a square of muslin hanging in front of his mouth. Mr Dubashi explained their purpose and, reluctantly Christine felt, Mr Nemichandra invited them into his room. He and Christine sat on wooden stools by the window overlooking the Ganges, with Mr Dubashi perched on the end of the bed, and Christine explained about the death of her mother, and her search for a way to come to terms with it.

  Mr Nemichandra cleared his throat, making the muslin square flutter. “A Jain believes that death is an inevitable part of the cycle of existence, by which each soul passes from life to death to rebirth in a form according to its karma, as some new living being. We believe there is no god, only the endless cycle of nature, of birth, death and rebirth, which a soul can only escape through the complete shedding of its karmic bonds to attain divine consciousness. Therefore your mother’s soul has already been reborn and there is no purpose to your grieving for her in her old life. We must learn to give up all such bonds and concentrate on living a pure life without attachments for people or things or places in this world.”

  Christine tried to absorb this stark view of life. She could see that it might have its appeal as a way to cope with the chaos and pain of the world, but still, she found it rather chilling, and knew she could never abandon her mother’s memory. She was about to say something along these lines when Mr Dubashi jumped in.

  “Tell me, Mr Nemichandra,” he said, ‘is it not the case that a murderer - say the murderer of Mrs Darling - will be reborn as one of the hellish beings, and must suffer the torments of hell until he has paid for his crime?’

  Mr Nemichandra turned to look at him, eyes narrowed. “Yes, it is so,” he said softly.

  “Therefore, would it not be merciful to him to help him on his way to the next life as rapidly as possible, since it cannot be avoided and must be endured?”

  Mr Nemichandra clearly didn’t like this ingenious argument, but as he pondered an answer Christine had a sudden feeling that Mr Dubashi had been right. She said, “Mr Nemichandra, you know who murdered Mrs Darling, don’t you?”

  The monk stared at her, a look of shock on his face. “You must go now,” he said sharply. “I have nothing more to say.”

  The coroner having released Mrs Darling’s body, it was arranged for her cremation to take place the next day as specified in her final instructions. That morning Christine rose before dawn as usual to join the pilgrims on the ghat below the guesthouse. Today she decided to take one of the boats that plied up and down the river, and joined
three Indian women in bright saris in a boat rowed by an old man and a boy. They went upstream first, along the great wall of buildings that formed the edge of the city on the river’s left bank, passing the succession of ghats, the flights of steps that spilled down to the Ganges, some crowded with people and boats, some with just a few people sitting on the steps and bathing in the sacred river, and others with women washing laundry and spreading it out on the bank to dry. The far side of the river was quite different, a low bank of silt that vanished into the hazy morning light.

  The boat turned at a place that the old man said was the Harishchandra Ghat, one of the two burning ghats, where bodies were brought to be cremated on the shores of the river. This one was open to people of all religions, he explained, while the other, Manikaran Ghat downstream, was for Hindus only. Christine looked at the stacks of timber piled up on the shore, and realized that this was the place where Mrs Darling’s body would be brought later in the day. She swallowed, wondering how she would deal with that, and the old man, seeing her expression, reached under his seat and offered her a bottle of water with a toothless smile.