Twenty-three
Puri badly needed some meter down. The journey to Pakistan had been exhausting enough, but dealing with Mummy left him spent. His mind was still reeling from the revelations about her past. It was simply incredible to think that his mother, the woman who’d bathed him, fed him that bloody iron tonic all the time, had once worked as a satri, an undercover operative.
It wasn’t only fatigue keeping him in bed that Monday morning, however. Before leaving for Pakistan, he’d forgotten to remove the peg from Rumpi’s scales. It was only a question of time before she asked to check his weight, and with the scales stuck on 196 pounds, the impressive progress he’d made thanks to the miraculous diet pills would be for nothing. He needed five minutes alone in the bedroom to undo his handiwork.
Unfortunately Rumpi was busy washing her hair in preparation for their grandson’s mundan ceremony later that afternoon. It was a lengthy and complex process; she began by oiling her long mane and applying an “herb tea” (a mix of warm water, shikakai, aritha, neem and sandalwood). This needed to sit for roughly fifteen minutes, after which her hair would be rinsed in cold water and then dried until damp. Finally coconut oil would be added as a conditioner and she’d spend ten minutes or so seated in front of the dressing table, brushing her shiny tresses.
In normal circumstances, Puri found the whole ritual powerfully alluring, a display of raw Indian femininity. The aroma of all the herbs and oils had been known to render him as giddy as a lovestruck teenager. But not today. The detective lay in bed, willing his wife downstairs, groaning silently into his pillow when she decided to also treat her scalp to a little amla oil, to help strengthen the roots, and then attended to her eyebrows.
“Chubby?” she asked, talking to the reflection in her mirror in the vague, dreamy tone she adopted while engaged in her personal grooming. “Before you go off today, we mustn’t forget to weigh you. It’s been over a week.”
He pretended to be half-asleep. “Yes, my dear,” he murmured, racking his brains for a way out of his dilemma. Perhaps if he just lay there long enough . . .
And then his prayers were answered: her mobile phone rang. It was her father. She had to pass Puri the phone.
“Good morning, young man,” said Brigadier Mattu, sounding fresh and alert. “I woke you? Could you meet me at the club in one hour? I’ve got bridge at ten. There’s something I need to show you beforehand. It’s not good news, I’m afraid.”
“You’re not able to solve the code, sir?”
“No, no, that was easy. This is something else. A grave matter. It would be better if we didn’t discuss it over the phone. Nine o’clock in the ballroom.”
Salvation.
• • •
“The answer’s been staring me in the face all these days,” said Brigadier Mattu when the two sat down a little over an hour later. “Someone with my experience should have seen it a mile off. I’m afraid old age is setting in.”
“Not at all, sir,” said the detective. “You’re a spring chicken, actually.”
“More like a headless chicken now that I’m retired,” joked the Brigadier. “Too much time on my hands. My advice to you, young man, is never hang up your hat—or should I say cap in your case? Retirement is a kind of surrender. Life should be a fight to the death.”
They were tucked away in a corner of the ballroom, the heart of the Gymkhana’s main building. During the day, it functioned as a lounge where tea, dry chicken sandwiches and oily samosas were served. The regulars were mostly elderly gentlemen killing time until the bar opened. Sometimes aunties in silk saris as crinkly as wrapping paper gathered there as well, but never alone.
“You cracked it, then, sir?” asked Puri, barely able to contain his anticipation.
“Yes, yes, the basmallah was the key—a value of 786.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket and took out four or five pieces of crumpled paper. These he laid on the coffee table that sat between them and smoothed out the creases with the palm of his hand. They were covered in his workings, a jumble of numbers and letters, some Perso-Arabic, others Roman.
“Yes, it’s quite simple, really,” said Mattu. “Your cricket-betting friends have been using the Abjad system.”
“Abjad, sir?” asked the detective.
“Derived from abjadiyyah. It means ‘alphabet’ in Arabic,” he said. “Abjad’s been around since the eighth century, since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Urdu uses more or less the same script, so our Pakistani neighbors are naturally familiar with its intricacies.”
The Brigadier picked up one of the pieces of paper. “See here,” he continued. “The first letter, ‘ã,’ is given the value of 1. The second, ‘b,’ equals 2. The third, ‘j,’ is 3—and so on. ‘Yā’ is ten; ‘k’ equals twenty; ‘i’ makes thirty, and so on. In standard Arabic there are twenty-eight letters. In Urdu there are thirty-eight, but that’s not relevant to the matter in hand.” Mattu listed the rest of the letters with their numerical equivalents. “So let us take the word ‘Allah,’” he continued. “In the Arabic script it’s written thus: . So it has a value of 1 + 30 + 30 + 5. That equals 66. Follow?”
Puri nodded repeatedly.
“Now,” said Mattu. “Phrases can be assigned a numerical value, also. Let us take the basmallah, which is repeated in Muslim prayers and at the start of each sura in the Koran, apart from the ninth—‘b-ismi-llāhi r-ramāni r-raīmi.’ It translates as ‘In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful.’ Now let’s look at how it breaks down mathematically.”
The total was 786.
“Now, where is the copy of the paper you took from Mr. Faheem Khan?” asked Mattu. “Aah yes, here it is. The first sequence reads twelve, eleven and six. So let us deduct seven, eight and six and we get five, three and zero.”
He took out his scorecard from the ICT match played the previous Sunday just hours before the murder.
“On the fifth ball of the third over, Kamran Khan bowled a no ball. See how it corresponds?”
“By God!” exclaimed Puri. He slapped the palms of his hands on his thighs in a playful manner. “Sir, you’ve done it! Hearties congratulations!”
His words echoed around the ballroom. Newspapers were lowered. Necks turned and twisted.
“So the same formula can be applied to these other sequences?” asked the detective.
“Seems the third digit indicates what kind of ball is to be delivered,” he explained. “Zero for a no ball. One equals a wide. Two stands for bouncer. Six for a full toss.”
“Mind-blowing,” muttered Puri. “Sir, you’re a genius, actually.”
“It’s nothing, young man, really,” said Mattu with a shrug as the waiter finally brought their tea.
The liquid was dark and acidic, the milk separate, just as the Britishers liked it. Puri and countless others before him had tried to get the club’s cooks to make it properly, “ready-made” in other words. But for some sixty years they had failed. Club tea was supposed to be prepared this way, the kitchen always argued. It had been ordained. Anything else would be a break with tradition.
The little stainless-steel pots, which invariably dribbled their contents all over the table as the tea was poured, were another part of that same system. Puri saw them as a metaphor for Partition: another British legacy still causing a mess on the subcontinent.
“Now, there’s something else,” said Mattu, a sudden gravitas to his voice. In his excitement, the detective had forgotten about the other matter. “It has to do with the second set of numbers you provided me,” added his father-in-law.
He was referring to the paper Puri had taken from Full Moon’s study.
“These relate to another match, the one played on the day your bookie was murdered: the Goa Beachers–Mumbai Bears showdown.”
Mattu moved closer to his son-in-law and said in little more than a whisper, “There’s another Pakistani bowler involved, Hamid Pathan. And”—he hesitated—“an Indian batsman, also.”
“Don’t tell me.”
Mattu brought Puri’s attention to his scorecard from Wednesday’s match. One name was highlighted: star batsman Vikas Patil.
“Aaarey!” exclaimed Puri in disbelief, causing another flutter of newspapers across the ballroom. “You’re certain, sir?”
The Brigadier nodded gravely. “I got hold of a recording of the match and watched it again,” he said. “There’s no doubt that he’s in league with Hamid Pathan.”
“But why?” asked Puri. “He’s making so much of money from sponsorships and all.”
“I would hazard a guess at blackmail,” replied Mattu. “He’s married, as you well know. But I’ve heard it said he’s very taken with the ladies. There are stories about him and some of these cheerleaders. At the after-match parties.”
“When he’s due to play again, sir, you know?”
“Tomorrow. And there’s something else. He’ll be facing none other than Kamran Khan.”
“How so?”
“He’s returning to India.”
“So soon?”
“Business is business I suppose,” said Mattu with a shrug.
• • •
The club’s acidic tea worked its way swiftly through Puri’s digestive system, and before heading to the office to follow up on Mattu’s revelations, he paid a visit to the men’s changing room. There, he spotted a set of electronic weighing scales and decided to check to see how his diet was coming along.
The LCD screen registered 200 pounds.
Confused, he stepped back off the pressure pad, looked to make sure the screen read zero and then tried again. Same result.
“Lohit!”
The “boy” who worked in the changing rooms came running. He was at least sixty-five.
“Sir?”
“Scales are malfunctioning,” complained Puri.
“No, sahib. Not possible.”
“I’m telling you. This thing has got my weight wrong certainly if not totally. See? Should read 196 or less.”
Lohit scratched his head. “Sir, it’s a new one,” he replied.
Puri decided that all the tea he’d drunk had skewed the result and went and relieved himself.
“Bloody thing is wrong!” he cursed when he weighed himself again and got the same result.
Lohit suggested that perhaps sahib might like to try the set of old-fashioned balance-beam scales in the gymnasium. These confirmed Puri’s worst nightmare. He hadn’t shed a single gram.
“Bloody use-less,” he cursed, throwing the last of his diet pills in the bin.
• • •
Tubelight called the moment Puri stepped into his office. The diamonds had been exported, complete with a bona fide certificate of origin stamped by Indian customs.
“What’s the destination exactly?”
“Antwerp, Boss. A company called Patel and Patel. The stones will be put up for sale there.”
“Tip-top,” said Puri, who promptly ordered Tubelight to return with Flush to Delhi, where he now needed them. He then called his client James Scott and asked him to find out everything he could about the Antwerp firm.
The detective’s next call was to a sports journalist who owed him a favor. “I’d be needing the mobile numbers of two ICT players,” he said, naming Kamran Khan and Vikas Patil.
“Saar, you should know media is not allowed direct access to players,” replied the journalist.
“Come on, yaar, don’t talk nonsense!”
Ten minutes later Puri had both the numbers as well as the names of the five-star hotels where the players would be staying.
Finally he put in a call to a former batchmate working for India’s external intelligence agency, RAW. Had he any information about Aga’s whereabouts?
“Nothing,” was the reply. “We’ve not had a sighting of him in months in fact.”
• • •
It was all over in a few seconds. A flash; a series of sharp cracks like a string of Diwali firecrackers going off; the sound of breaking glass; people all around him screaming.
Puri felt himself collapse onto the pavement. He lay on his side, staring at one of the shiny hubcaps of the Ambassador, the reflection of his face grotesquely warped, as in a house-of-fun mirror. The world was quiet for a moment, almost peaceful, and he found himself thinking how much he would love a nice plate of butter chicken right now, preferably without aconite. He became conscious of a throbbing pain in his shoulder and then a babble of voices crowded his thoughts. He rolled onto his back to find that a crowd had gathered around him. They were all staring as if at something unusual that had washed up on a tide.
Puri sat up, nonresponsive to the repeated inquiries as to his well-being. He began to run a kind of all-systems check to make sure there was no serious damage and found that the pain in his shoulder had been caused by his fall to the pavement, a bruise rather than a wound. Relieved, yet still dazed, he sat there for a moment or two longer, brushing away shattered glass from his clothes and then accepted the offer of an outstretched hand.
It belonged to Handbrake.
“Boss, are you OK?” he asked in Hindi as the detective got to his feet, still shedding bits of glass like a skyscraper in an earthquake.
“It was that same bloody bastard on the motorbike—one from other day, the paan wallah assassin,” he said, suddenly remembering what had happened.
“He got away, Boss. Sorry, too much traffic.”
“Anyone else is wounded?”
“No, Boss. Just a scrape or two.”
“Thank the God,” murmured Puri in English.
“And the car. The bullets hit the side, Boss.”
“Don’t tell me.”
Handbrake pointed out the holes.
“Bloody bastard,” cursed Puri. “I’ll get him if it’s the last thing I do.”
One of the jawans who “patrolled” Khan Market approached, dispersing the crowd with the tact and sensitivity for which the Delhi police are famed.
The detective suggested he might like to form a perimeter around the scene of the shooting before calling Inspector Singh and asking him to bring the ballistics boys over right away. Leaving Handbrake to guard the car, he returned upstairs to his office. He helped himself to a large Scotch and then opened the safe. Inside lay his .32 IOF revolver. This he loaded and slipped into one of the outside pockets of his safari suit.
• • •
Puri was an hour late picking up his wife from home, arriving in a taxi without the flowers he’d promised to buy. He didn’t want to have to tell her about the attempt on his life—she had a way of getting upset when people tried to kill him—so he said the Ambassador had broken down.
Thankfully, Rumpi let him off lightly and they spent the fifteen-minute journey to Lotus Gardens Phase Two reminiscing about their three daughters’ mundans—how their second-eldest had cried and cried when her head had been shaved, and how Radhika, their youngest, had reveled in the attention and giggled uncontrollably as her locks had been shorn.
“Such a silly little bachi,” said the detective with a fond smile.
The conversation set the tone for the afternoon. Puri and Rumpi entered their eldest daughter Lalita’s apartment to find it heaving with members of both their families. Soon, the detective was able to put all thoughts of poison, match fixing, Antwerp and attemps on his life out of his mind—at least for an hour or so.
“Getting so big, beta, haa?” said Puri as he held up his grandson, Rohit, and gave him a hug.
The boy blew a loud raspberry.
“And naughty, haa?” he guffawed.
“Very naughty!” chorused everyone approvingly.
Rumpi disappeared into the kitchen, where large amounts of kheer and ladoos were being prepared, and Puri’s son-in-law Arun brought him a cold drink.
“All well, Papa-ji?” he asked, as formal as ever.
“First-class.”
“You came from work?”
“Direct from office.”
“Heard there was some problem?”
“Where you heard that?”
“Mummy-ji said there had been some shooting?”
How the hell did Mummy find out these things so quickly? “Just a small misunderstanding, that is all,” he told his son-in-law.
“Misunderstanding with a gunman?”
“Correct.”
Inevitably the conversation turned to cricket, with most of the men in the room gathered together discussing a recent controversial decision by an Australian umpire, which had almost certainly lost India an important international match.
It took Mummy to put an end to it. “Cricket talk is getting over,” she said. “Come. Challo!”
They all adjourned to the dining room, where the family priest was sitting in the middle of the floor. After greeting the pandit and bending down to touch his feet, everyone found a spot on the Indian quilts that had been laid on the floor. Rohit, dressed in a smart kurta pajama, was brought forward by his mother.
The priest recited some mantras, sprinkled drops of Ganga water over the boy’s head, and then, with a pair of scissors, snipped away a few strands of his hair. A local barber, hired especially for the event, then took over. Using a straight razor blade, he began to shave the head clean, shearing Rohit’s mop like wool from the body of a lamb. The child began to wail and everyone tried to appease him—“No need to cry, baby”; “Not long now, bacha”—but the tears kept dripping down onto the floor along with his baby locks.
Puri found himself staring down at the hair, thinking back on the time when, as an adult, his own head had been shaved. He’d been in his early twenties, stationed in southern India. While on leave, he visited the magnificent Vishnu temple at Tirupati.
Like all pilgrims, he was required to get his head tonsured before entering the holy site. The shaving was carried out by one of the temple priests, a matter of a few minutes’ work, his hair mixing with that of thousands of others carpeting the ground.
Puri only came to know later that Tirupati, the richest temple in the world, sold approximately a ton of hair every day to the international cosmetics industry. In other words, his youthful locks had ended up as part of a wig. In the years since then, he’d derived a good deal of amusement from the thought that someone was walking around wearing his hair.
Tarquin Hall Page 23