by Leena Nandan
It was late night now. The cavernous hall with its machines and sterile walls was silent. The clerical staff had left and only the mainframe computer was on duty, silently reading the data with the occasional soft hum of the UPS for company. Dr Maken glanced at the page in front of him and smiled. The analysis he had made decoding key communication was validating his preliminary thesis and he permitted himself a satisfied smirk at the superiority of his analytical abilities. In another few hours, he would submit the final report whose results would be astounding, and his pioneering work would be lauded everywhere. No more of this anonymity. He would bask deservedly in glory—it had been his brainchild to combine scientific and psychological analysis—and now he and he alone would be recognised. How would it impact him in the long run? He would have to think it out.
Absent-mindedly, he patted his shirt pocket and then shrugged. It had no cigarettes and not only because they were not permitted inside the facility. He’d given them up a decade ago when his wife, usually so listless and anaemic, had wryly said that his famous self-control was markedly missing when it came to lighting up. He had to prove her wrong and he did it with that single-minded dedication that was his hallmark. No one could challenge him and get away with it—not even Natasha.
Just her name made a tremor go through him. Another instance, his subconscious reminded him, of loss of self-control. She was exotic as her name suggested; her striking looks, intense thinking, and aloof behaviour making a deadly package. Her intellectual abilities matched his and they often sparred on abstract issues. Both were egoists in their own way; she cleverer than him in masking it with social affability. Before he joined telecom research, he had been a physics professor of repute, surrounded by adoring students and a not-so-impressed faculty. The students gasped in admiration even as his questioning tore them into pieces. Part of the paradox was that socially, he was a favourite of hostesses. With devastating wit and elegant manners, he was a total contrast to his colleagues, the unfashionable professors. They disliked him intensely but no one could ignore him.
When he shifted to communication research for a private company, the job stimulated him mentally but he resented the isolation in which he had to work. And Natasha, of course, was a challenge. She had seemed impervious to his ruthless charm. Initially his assistant, she had later had been elevated to the status of his peer. He could not figure out himself why he had not made it an issue with Benoy that Natasha’s status was upgraded so soon from subordinate to colleague. No, he had not resented it at all. In fact, the close proximity and enforced secrecy, coupled with her arrogance, had given that added flavour to their relationship, till chemistry developed into all-consuming passion. Now that his daughter Leila had been settled and his wife was more into spiritual sessions, he could focus on himself and Natasha and he was impatient to meet her. He had called Natasha and given her the news. He just had to share it with her since she was leaving the next day on vacation. She would be in any time and he wanted to be sharp and focused when they met and discussed their plans, which she could mull over while away.
There was a pang at the thought of Leila. Had he made the right decision about her future? He stood up abruptly and decided to get a coffee. As he walked to the vending machine, he noticed that some water had fallen on the floor and the dark puddle was spreading. Fastidious to a fault, he hated to see any sloppiness and looked immediately for the mop. It wasn’t there. His irritation mounting, he unlocked the door by putting his palm on the identification plate and walked out to tell the guard.
The guard was nowhere to be seen. He’d probably gone out for an urgent commune with nature. The receiver of the intercom was askew, so Dr Maken picked it up to set it right and heard the whisper. ‘The report has been finalised. It will be submitted tomorrow, so now is the time.’
‘I’ll be there straightaway,’ said a voice in response.
Stunned, he looked at the receiver, wondering whether his ears were playing a trick, and realised that the new device installed had picked up a conversation just outside the perimeter. He would have recognised one of the voices anywhere, and he cursed himself for having flouted all security norms by bragging that the results would come in that day itself, twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. He had to get away with the report, but how?
Frantically, he returned to the table, rolled up the report and slid it into its hiding place. The earlier report was in a folder on his table, but it was meaningless as the findings and analysis weren’t conclusive anyway. In a fluid movement, he deleted from the computer all the last changes he had made to the analysis, activating also the firewall which destroyed the programme irretrievably. The guard was still not back at his post—but even if he had been there, now no one could be trusted—so Dr Maken went to the fire escape and slowly, painstakingly, let himself down. The massive iron gates would be locked electronically, but he remembered that the side gate was low and set off for it at a run. He knew that by now the heat sensors in the campus would have picked up unusual activity so there was no point in being slow and careful. He managed to climb over the gate, though not before being scratched viciously by the twin iron barbs which curved outward on both sides. The crazy thought came to him that he’d need a tetanus shot. He stumbled towards the road. Two people rushed to his side. Then everything went dark…
SIX
4 February
The shuttle bus had dropped Tina off on the main road and it was hardly any distance to the office from there. As she walked at a leisurely pace, she noticed a small girl who reminded her of herself at that age, proudly showing her new schoolbag to her friends. Unbidden, her mind went back to nursery, when her teacher had suggested that since she had missed several classes due to frequent illness, she should be retained in nursery for another year. Tina’s dimpled chin hid a resolute mind and she started practising the alphabet in big and small letters by writing on the margins of newspapers. The next task was mastering the numerical and here the pristine walls gave a flash of inspiration. So now there were misshapen ‘ABCD’ competing for attention with drunken-looking 1234 which barely managed to stand upright. Fortunately for all concerned, the teachers were able to read the writing on the wall and Tina cleared the class.
Yes, determination was definitely her second name. Her maiden performance at the annual sports day had been an indication of things to come. It was duck race and all competitors were required to waddle to the finishing line shouting ‘quack quack.’ The gifted athletes competed at breakneck pace and were announced as the prizewinners. When the older girls, tasked with the responsibility of clearing the field after every race gently tried to get Tina, the lone remaining duckling to waddle off, she responded with an indignant squawk, that her focus was the finishing line, not the prize and everyone could jolly well wait till she got there. The image of her quacking figure, waddling in solitary splendour to the end of the sports field, was still a source of great amusement for her parents.
Dad was quiet but doting and could never find fault with Tina though he vigorously denied Mom’s charge that he indulged her far too much. He was always reading books but moved from beginning to end in a suspiciously short time frame. Once when challenged by Mom he had stated, poker face, that he could guess the middle with complete accuracy. Mom was always so full of energy that in her absence the house seemed to lose all character. She loved cooking and would dive into the kitchen at the slightest opportunity. It was a family joke that to win her heart you only had to say you were hungry. She could never be still and had to be occupied with either knitting or cooking—but here the problem was that she’d forget she’d put something on the fire to cook till the distinctive smell of charred milk jogged her memory.
But she could be a martinet when the occasion demanded. Tina recalled only too vividly that sunny winter afternoon when, all of eight years old, she had proudly presented Mom with a bright red tomato plucked from their neighbour’s vegetable garden. The response practically knocked her out. Sternly rebuked, sh
e had crept back with Mummy’s words ringing in her ears: ‘This is stealing and you will have to give it back to Aunty with an apology.’ Though she had obeyed the strict instructions, it was only in part, as she could not summon up the courage to comply with the latter half. She had tiptoed to the plant and carefully placed the tomato back in its rightful place, but her sigh of relief was overshadowed by Selvam the gardener’s laugh.
‘I will tell Ms Rozy what you were up to,’ he’d called out as she hurried away with a thudding heart, her mind conjuring up hateful images of how her friends would look at her after they knew what she had done. That memory remained indelibly etched on her mind and nothing—not even the fact that Selvam probably forgot the incident straightaway—ever let her forget the basic lesson her mother had forcibly driven home, that you shouldn’t try to grasp what doesn’t belong to you. But Mom hadn’t told Dad about the minor transgression, almost as if she didn’t want him to think less of his little girl.
There were so many happy memories, and cherished moments; the only thing she had ever minded was not having siblings, but her close friendship with Jeet, who had two older brothers and a younger sister, Rozy, made up to a large extent for this deficiency. They were good-humoured to a fault—forever ready with their witticisms, and finding something to laugh at in the oddest situations, yet each sibling was fiercely protective of the others. She loved hanging around with them as they kidded one another about clothes, appetite, intellectual ability, rather, the lack of it—in fact just about everything under the sun. But though she always felt part of them, there was an inescapable feeling that what she was really missing in life was sibling camaraderie.
Jeet kept trying to include Tina in interesting activities but the more he tried, the more she felt he was doing it as a sense of duty; and though easygoing by disposition, any gesture which appeared charitable put her back up. In any case she had always been ambivalent about her feelings for him—he was such fun, but she, Jeet and Rozy had practically grown up together, so Jeet and she were old friends rather than childhood sweethearts. That rationalisation notwithstanding, she’d minded awfully when he had come over one summer vacation with Vani Shroff, and her mood had turned even gloomier when Rozy, who was Vani’s classmate, said that Vani was the prettiest girl around. She was certain the statement came from Jeet and he’d never said anything so nice to her. Sure he’d graduated from pulling her plaits—but he was constantly ribbing her about her clothes, her love of romantic songs (though she couldn’t sing to save her life!) and her passion for reading. She’d decided to retaliate by going into ecstasies about her colleagues, especially Raghav, but she still couldn’t determine whether it made any difference to Jeet. Should it make a difference to her that it did not seem to make a difference to him? She’d tried often to think that one out, but it always made her mind spin around in circles.
A high point of her childhood was the formation of a club called ‘The Fantastic Three’. Tina, Rozy and a third friend Dolly, were members and their hidey-hole was the unoccupied garage. They had a password which had to be whispered since Jeet was always trying to trick them into opening the hallowed portals of the garage to his gang. When they finally realised that the girls were cagier than the KGB in letting down their guard, they went off in a huff to form their own club called ‘Faithful Four’. Appropriately, this was housed in the vacant servant’s room, but a quip about the appropriateness earned Rozy a clip on the ear from Jeet. Expectedly, their enthusiasm waned rapidly, and soon all that was left of the club was a raggedy notice, hanging by the edge of its teeth to the door.
With the devotion worthy of a noble cause, the three girls persisted with their fantastic club. Earnest meetings were held with each of them seated solemnly on upturned empty plastic boxes wherein they discussed several matters of importance, like not opening up the membership to other children because then they’d be ‘swamped with requests and refusal would be a problem’.
One day, they decided to have a cultural programme. The function would comprise solo and group songs, solo and group dances, and a one-act play. Family members and close friends were invited and since this was in Tina’s garage, Mummy promised to take care of the refreshments. All respective siblings, without exception, bluntly stated that they weren’t coming—nine items by three girls, not known for their prodigious talent anyway, was a bit too much to stomach. Thankfully, the proud parents and some uncles and aunties of the colony came and sat through the entire programme, clapping enthusiastically after each item.
The one-act play was the high point of the evening. There was a father, a son and a servant. The father had a double role in the play, because he was also the robber who comes to rob the home, and ends up killing the faithful servant. Sadly, the audience quite missed the heroism of the servant saving the son and being shot dead by the robber/master, because the clothes of the robber/master hardly underwent a change, so the viewers thought that the master got fed up with the servant and shot him dead for no apparent reason. In other words, the double role was too finely nuanced and the pathos could not be appreciated easily. Nonetheless, the audience broke into vigorous applause, though Tina had a sneaking suspicion this was because they had announced that the play was the grand finale of the programme. What fun-filled days they had been, thought Tina and was reminded of the line: ‘How sad and mad and bad it was, but then how it was sweet’.
The evening after the sudden death of Dr Maken, the research centre looked even more depressing than ever. At full bloom, it was dull brown and grey in colour; with darkness setting in, the building looked downright menacing. A series of metallic rods extended upwards from the roof, looking like the tentacles of an alien creature and the overall effect was hideous.
The lone security guard of the research centre was one unhappy individual. He had received orders on telephone to admit the two creepy characters standing before him. The men were mean and vicious in appearance. One had a pockmarked face and a horrible scar which added nothing to his beauty. The guard didn’t even want to think of how he must have reacted to the knife slash. The other, the heavily bearded fellow, inspired a shudder. Sullenly, the guard opened the main door and switched on the floor light in the extreme left of the room, so that its beam would not be visible from outside.
The bearded man, who appeared to be more than a mere thug, painstakingly booted the main computer and scrolled through the files. Scowling, he ran the spy programme as well but could not find the data he was looking for. Had his information been wrong? Where was the blasted report? Suddenly, he exclaimed, as he saw the printer memory and realised what Dr Maken had done. He had printed the report, deleted the data and left no records on the computer. Panic rose in him as he visualised the fury of his boss. He tried to calm himself and then remembered their trump card.
‘Where is Natasha Grewal’s desk?’ he asked.
‘She hasn’t come today,’ mumbled the guard.
‘When was she last here?’ shouted the man. The guard looked frightened.
‘She hasn’t come after the third, I mean yesterday, when she arrived just after Dr Maken had gone…’ his voice trailed away as he saw the red rage on the man’s face.
‘You bloody idiot, why didn’t you tell us earlier? When did she reach and how long was she there?’
‘She must have come just after he left—in fact that’s why I didn’t see him go. I was patrolling the campus when she suddenly turned up. She kept honking the car horn and when I asked why she was there at night when the roster said next morning, she said she’d left her home keys on her desk. But she lied because she didn’t even go to her desk. She picked up the folder on Dr Maken’s table and ran out.’
‘Why didn’t you stop her, you fool?’
‘The alarm in the grounds had tripped and I thought I would check the campus thoroughly, because I hadn’t seen him leave. How was I to know he’d crossed over the gate and run off and she would reach in ten minutes?’
‘What are your instructio
ns in an emergency?’
‘Certainly not to ever allow unauthorised people inside, which I have done today.’
The shorter man with the pockmarked face took a step forward, his fist raised to strike the insolent guard, but the other held him back. They needed to come back for another attempt and this man was sufficiently frightened not to resist. They wiped all the surfaces they had touched and left; one of them itching to put his hands around the neck of the bitch who had messed up the operation…
5 February
Tina didn’t know exactly what woke her up. Was it just the ticking of the clock which had become unnaturally loud after all the sounds in the street below had faded away or was it something else? She wasn’t sure; all she knew was that her heart was thudding with fear. The night was cold, but she was perspiring. She reached out to switch on the night-light when her fingers connected with something cold and clammy. Like a whiplash, a hand covered her mouth, smothering her scream while another fastened itself on her throat. She was choking, her arms and legs flailing helplessly while the vice-like grip on her neck became tighter than a noose. Her hand knocked down the glass on the nightstand, and with a start she woke up. Frantically, she switched on the lamp and looked around. There was no one in her room. She had been in the throes of a nightmare.
It was two in the morning, but sleep was elusive. So she picked up the book she had been reading before she’d dozed off, and the words leapt out at her. The blood dripped slowly and steadily onto the carpet. It was like a crimson ribbon and would have looked decorative on her white throat, but for the fact that her eyes above it, sightless and lifeless, made it a grotesque ornament.
With a shrill sound, the telephone rang. Unable to help herself, she let out a small scream, then collecting her wits, scrambled to lift the receiver and said a faltering ‘hello’. There was only the sound of breathing on the other side and then a click as the phone was put down. It must have been a wrong number. She went to the kitchenette to get water and as she crossed the living room, suddenly she heard heavy footsteps on the landing outside her door. Someone stopped and she stood still, heart in mouth. This was no dream, it was happening. Then the footsteps walked past and she sagged with relief. It was the doctor in the flat opposite, returning from a late night shift. She gave herself a mental shake about reading too much into nothing, probably the effect of the gory murder mystery. She decided to soothe herself by going through her old photo albums—the more recent one seemed to have done a disappearing trick.