More Bodies Will Fall

by Ankush Saikia

  ‘I’m never too busy for you. Come for lunch. Can you do me a favour? Get some pork from the shop at Jor Bagh market on your way, I’ll make some Naga-style pork.’

  ‘Sounds good, Papa.’

  If no one offered him a Naga meal, he would cook one himself, he thought. And if Rhea came over she could help him with going through Amenla’s social media accounts.

  18

  IT WAS HALF PAST SEVEN when he reached the offices of Star Global in Gurgaon, a few kilometres down the road after a right turn at IFFCO Chowk. Lights blazed from the buildings within the complex, two of the larger ones topped with several large satellite dishes, while white Innova cabs drove in and out through the gates, ferrying employees to and from their round-the-clock shifts. Arjun found a parking space among some cabs waiting outside, and walked past cigarette and cold-drink stalls and makeshift shacks selling Maggi and bread–omelette where youngsters smoked and ate and chatted. He could make out a few North-eastern faces among them.

  At the gates he had to show his ID to the guards, and a call was made to Ronny D’Souza to check, following which Arjun had to enter his details in a ledger, and was given a visitor’s pass along with directions for one of the buildings. He walked past the cabs and the employees, with a generator thrumming somewhere nearby, towards the building, where the guard at the entrance pointed out the seating area for visitors on the ground floor. Five minutes later, the manager walked up to Arjun. He was a chubby, middle-aged man whose casual attire of jeans, sneakers and a red Arsenal jersey seemed a little forced.

  ‘Mr Arora?’ he asked.

  Arjun stood up to shake hands.

  ‘We could talk here, or you could come up to my office.’

  ‘Let’s go up,’ Arjun said. ‘I was hoping I could meet a few of Amenla’s colleagues too.’

  They entered a lift on the ground floor; D’Souza pressed the button for the fourth floor.

  ‘What is this about?’ he asked as the lift rose up.

  Arjun decided to keep it simple. ‘I’m a detective. Amenla’s father has hired me to look into the case. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the police haven’t made any headway.’

  ‘It’s something we’ve been discussing,’ D’Souza said, as the lift doors opened. ‘Come along.’

  Arjun followed the No. 14 Thierry Henry jersey down a wide corridor, and then right into a vast, open-plan hall where scores of young people sat before computers wearing earphones with attached microphones, their eyes fixed on the screens as they talked to their customers. No. 14 walked along the edges of the hall, past glass walls partitioning off what looked like managers’ offices till he came to one where he entered, and asked Arjun to take a seat.

  D’Souza sat behind his desk and was immediately peering into his computer screen before typing something out.

  ‘Sorry, bit of a heavy workload this week,’ he said.

  ‘You said you’ve been discussing it. What exactly? And who’s been discussing it?’

  ‘Oh, just the whole group. How no one was caught. Amenla was a popular girl.’

  Arjun looked around the room. A whiteboard with words and phrases scribbled on it, an Arsenal club poster, framed office photos with colleagues and team members.

  ‘Are there any theories that have come up? Who might have . . . done it.’

  D’Souza gave him a sad smile and said gently, ‘Aren’t you supposed to do that?’

  ‘I am, but after a year . . . the trail’s gone cold. If I could ask you a few questions?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What was she handling here?’

  ‘Collections for an American credit card company. She was good at her work. In fact she would have got a promotion by now.’

  ‘How long had she been here?’

  ‘A little more than three years.’

  ‘Her PF you mentioned—must have been a tidy little sum then.’

  ‘Yes, a few lakh rupees. I made sure it went into her parents’ account.’

  ‘And what was your impression of Amenla?’

  ‘A good worker, I’ve already told you that. I kept an eye on her, I felt protective. Not in any other way, just that since she came from a small town far away from here . . . I mean I know what that feels like. I come from a village in north Goa. And she was a good person.’ He shook his head. ‘To come to know that she had been killed. My God!’

  Arjun gave him some time before the next question.

  ‘Was there anyone here from Churachandpur—that’s in Manipur, by the way—who was friendly with Amenla, and who spoke to her over the phone?’

  ‘Churachandpur?’ D’Souza rubbed his jaw. ‘I don’t think so. At least not in her group. There were two girls from Mizoram; one of them is still here.’

  ‘Okay. Was she ever going around with anyone from the office at any time?’

  D’Souza shook his head. ‘No. She was professional that way. No hanky-panky business.’

  ‘You must have seen her at office parties. What was she like?’

  ‘I never saw her high, if that’s what you mean. She would have a glass or two of wine or a Breezer, that was it.’

  ‘No drugs?’

  ‘No. She would have been the last person to do that.’

  ‘Any colleagues of hers you knew were into drugs?’

  D’Souza rubbed his jaw again, thinking. ‘Not really, no. Just some people who might occasionally smoke some grass or hash. But a lot of people do that here. Young kids, you know, we can’t be too strict. But Amenla was cool with that . . . she knew how to keep her distance when required.’

  ‘No one who might have had a crush on her or something?’

  ‘Plenty of people liked her . . . but to kill her? That would be a bit extreme.’

  ‘I know. The thing is . . . there’s a strong possibility she was killed to hide something. Do you remember anything she might have said to you, just before the incident?’

  D’Souza leant back in his large executive chair, looking up, then suddenly came forward. ‘There was something she mentioned to me, not too long before the . . . incident. I wondered about it later, if it was important in any way.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Her group was taking a break one night, out on the balcony. I had joined them. Some of them were smoking, some were having coffee. I asked Amenla about a project she had been assigned to, and also when she planned to go home. I was going home for Christmas too. Anyway, she was talking about her parents, and then she said something like, “Ronny, sometimes the past comes back and calls you,” and I asked her what she meant by that, but just at that moment I think someone started laughing at a joke and everyone wanted to know what it was and I lost track of that. I do remember thinking that I would ask her later what she had meant, but I never got the chance.’

  ‘That was what she said? “Sometimes the past comes back and calls you”?’

  ‘Yes, that was it, more or less.’

  ‘And you haven’t been able to figure out what she might have meant?’

  ‘No, it didn’t mean anything to me. Or even to the others—I told them about it.’

  ‘Was she the secretive type?’

  ‘Not really. But she was a private person. Kept to herself.’

  ‘All right. Thank you for sharing those details. Do you think I could meet her team?’

  D’Souza nodded. ‘I don’t think my conscience would allow me to say no.’

  Arjun followed the manager out of his office and on to the calling floor. What had seemed like a big, open hall to him earlier was now arranged into different sections by means of shoulder-high dividing panels running outward from some of the pillars. There could be close to a thousand people on the floor, he estimated.

  D’Souza led him to the middle of one such section, where he called out to his charges; they laid down their headphones and spun their seats around, looking with curiosity at Arjun. The manager explained why he was there, and added that he wanted to talk to them about Amenla. D’S
ouza motioned for Arjun to start, and stayed where he was, not moving away. It didn’t make a difference to Arjun, who asked them if they could tell him about their ex-colleague. The majority of them were young, in their teens to mid-twenties, with just a few older-looking callers, among them a girl Arjun thought might be the one from Mizoram.

  They all had good things to say about her, about how she had been a friend and how they missed her. But when it came to theories or suspicions, they were vague, blaming the stalled probe on the police. The girl whom he had thought might be from Mizoram turned out to be so, and he asked her if there was anyone from Churachandpur Amenla had known, or maybe anyone using a number from there, but she said she didn’t know of anyone like that.

  But he was glad he had taken the effort to talk to them. Listening to a tall Punjabi girl describing how they had all gone out, about two weeks before Amenla had been killed, to the Atlantic Mall for dinner and drinks and then a movie, all courtesy of the company, was to get a better sense of the camaraderie they seemed to share. He gave his card to Ronny D’Souza, asking his team members to get in touch with him if there was anything they happened to remember. He thanked D’Souza and left, handing back his visitors’ card and signing out at the main gate. An Innova pulled up at the gate as he walked out; for one disorienting moment he thought it was Amenla looking at him from inside the cab, till he realized it was someone else of course, at second glance, probably a Meitei girl, going by her looks.

  He turned left at IFFCO Chowk and drove slowly along the packed main road lined with malls and apartments. There was a time Arjun could still remember when this had been all there was to Gurgaon, apart from a call centre or two elsewhere. The thought came to him: had Amenla grown into a different sort of identity here along with her co-workers? The brave new generation the media liked to talk about. Sometimes the past comes back and calls you. And then had it been something from her past, something from the troubled lands back home, which might have led to her death? World’s Yours—the world is yours.

  A particular mall in black stone and glass up ahead caught his eye; he realized it was the one the Punjabi girl had mentioned, the place where Amenla had accompanied them during her last team outing. On an impulse he turned over to the other side of the road and went into the mall. He left the car in the cavernous underground parking lot and took the lift up. It wasn’t something he liked doing, visiting malls, but now he spent some time wandering past the glitzy shops and showrooms, in the company of youths who looked like call-centre employees and young couples; they made him feel old.

  In the end he went into the Mexican-themed diner Amenla’s colleague had mentioned, where he had some passable chilli con carne for dinner (he drank only Coke), and then went up to the movie theatre where he bought himself a ticket to a Hollywood action film. Somehow it was enjoyable sitting in the plush seat in a darkened hall after so long, but Arjun’s mind was only half on the movie. He was thinking about what he needed to ask Mrs Sodhi’s son the next morning.

  He got back to CR Park past midnight, a lone figure trudging up the steps to his flat.

  19

  THERE WAS A SHORT SHOWER early in the morning, and it was grey and chilly outside as Arjun headed towards Safdarjung Enclave for the third time that week. The weather made him think with some expectation of the pork he would cook for lunch, and he called Rhea to make sure she didn’t forget to pick up the meat. This time he went through the RWA gate in B Block, and parked his Scorpio alongside the front wall of the Sodhis’ residence. He was a few minutes early, and smoked a cigarette in the car before stepping out at 9.30 a.m. and entering through the front gate.

  Mrs Sodhi answered the doorbell. Her manner was noticeably cooler this time.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said to her. ‘I just need to talk to Vivek, it won’t take long.’

  ‘Good morning. Follow me.’

  He followed her up to the first-floor landing where she rang the bell. His gaze automatically went up to the closed second-floor door. A while later, the door was opened by the son. He was fair and lanky, but not as tall as the photo had made him seem, and was wearing flip-flops, grey trackpants and a loose blue T-shirt. He blinked several times behind his spectacles as his mother introduced Arjun.

  ‘How do you do, Mr Arora? Come in.’

  Mother and son went through the darkened sitting room—the lights weren’t on—and turned right. Arjun followed them out on to the balcony, where amid the potted plants was a small wooden table with three plastic chairs around it, and a MacBook and two notebooks on it. Vivek Sodhi sat down and tapped the laptop keyboard a couple of times.

  ‘Just checking my mail,’ he said to Arjun, who had taken a seat opposite him. ‘I need to keep in touch with the hospital even when I’m here.’

  His fingers drummed on the table, and Arjun could feel the nervousness in the man. Was this how he usually was?

  ‘Singapore, right? Mrs Sodhi was telling me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Singapore. It’s a nice country, very disciplined.’

  ‘Would you like to come back to India?’ Arjun asked.

  Mrs Sodhi, who had been inspecting the plants, now announced, ‘Mala hasn’t been watering these regularly na, beta?’

  ‘You should tell her,’ Vivek replied with irritation.

  ‘How much will I tell her,’ Mrs Sodhi said in a resigned way. Then she asked, ‘Should I make you all some tea?

  ‘No, Mama, it’s okay,’ Vivek snapped.

  Arjun said he was fine too. Mrs Sodhi looked around, then said she was going downstairs.

  ‘I’ve already told Mr Arora what happened that day,’ she said to her son as she left.

  Vivek followed her out, and Arjun could hear her murmuring something to her son in the sitting room. The sound of the door opening and closing, a bolt being drawn, and he was back.

  ‘Sorry. You’re all right without tea? I could give you some green tea if you want.’

  ‘It’s fine, don’t bother,’ Arjun said. ‘How long are you here for?’

  ‘Just three days. Some check-ups for my father. I need to be there.’

  ‘I see. Family?’

  ‘They’re in Singapore. The kids have school.’

  ‘Your parents must want you to come back?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ he left the sentence incomplete as he got up with a jerk, rummaged in a corner of the balcony grilles and returned with an ashtray and a packet of Mevius Sky Blue.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ he asked Arjun.

  ‘Thanks, I have my own,’ Arjun said, taking out his Gold Flakes.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Vivek said, as he lit up. ‘We Indians will drink with our parents, but won’t smoke in front of them.’

  ‘How many a day?’ Arjun asked as he accepted the light.

  ‘Oh, just a handful. But these are lights. Stress of the job. I have to keep checking my mails even when I’m on holiday.’ He continued, ‘I know what you’re thinking. A doctor who smokes?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Arjun said. ‘I’m sure you know why I’m here. I’ve already spoken to your mother. I just wanted to go over the events of that day again, just in case something new emerges.’

  ‘All right. I was interviewed by the police as well.’

  ‘Inspector Sharma?’

  He nodded, puffing continuously on his cigarette. If he was innocent, Arjun thought, he was doing a good job of trying to act guilty.

  ‘He knows I’m here,’ Arjun said. ‘Now, that evening you were out . . .’

  Vivek sprang to his feet, and began pacing up and down the short balcony.

  ‘We had gone out to one of those malls. To meet Maya’s sister and have lunch. Maya, by the way, is my wife. Then a bit of shopping. There was a bad traffic jam that day, I remember. By the time we got back home in the taxi it was almost 7.30 p.m.’

  ‘What did you do after that?’

  ‘We were downstairs with my parents. We had dinner with them and came upstairs late, as we were watching a movie.
’

  ‘What time did you all come up?’

  ‘It was close to midnight.’

  ‘The iron grille below was closed by then?’

  ‘Yes. Mama closes it by 11 p.m.’

  Vivek sat down and put out the cigarette in the ashtray. The information matched what Mrs Sodhi had told Arjun, and yet . . . the way he had said it seemed too similar.

  ‘You didn’t come up between the time you got back and left your parents’ place?’

  Arjun was watching, and he could sense a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Vivek said. He fiddled with the packet as if thinking of lighting another cigarette, then put it aside. ‘Early the next morning Mama rang the bell. I went upstairs. She was already dead by then.’

  ‘Who else was there in the room?’

  ‘Our worker, Suresh.’

  Arjun stubbed out his cigarette and looked at the plants. Even to his untrained eye they looked well-watered.

  ‘When you came up around midnight, was the light outside Amenla’s door on?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t . . . I mean, I didn’t notice. I think it was on.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘I wasn’t looking at the light, so . . .’

  ‘Was it usually on or off at that time?’

  ‘Usually? Usually it was on. I don’t think I was concentrating on the light that night.’

  ‘But still. Amenla was found dead in the morning. Surely you’d remember?’

  Vivek stared at Arjun, tapping his fingers on the table.

  ‘Well, actually, the light was off. Yes, I remember now. It was off.’

  ‘What about the door? Open or closed?’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘What about Amenla? Would you speak to her?’

  ‘Just hi and hello if we met on the stairs.’

  ‘Nothing more than that?’

  He shook his head, and then reached for the packet to light another cigarette.

  ‘Did Inspector Sharma ask you about the upstairs light?’

  Vivek Sodhi shook his head.