Arjun didn’t want to disappoint him by saying him that news of that sort didn’t matter in Delhi. Instead he told the elderly Naga man that he had just come from his daughter’s grave. Mr Longkumer bowed his head.
‘Thank you. I hope you prayed for her soul?’
‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘Last night I met Amenla’s friend from the US embassy.’
He proceeded to give Mr Longkumer a summary of his investigative efforts so far, going into the Tony connection in some detail. He added that a typed report would be delivered soon.
‘Is this him?’ he asked Mr Longkumer, showing him the photo on his phone.
Mr Longkumer put on his glasses, peered at the photo and nodded. ‘That is him. Anthony Haokip.’
‘You didn’t like his friendship with your daughter, did you?’
‘What I was worried about was my daughter. I was in an NPG. Anthony’s father was a Kuki leader. Something could have happened to her.’ He gave a crooked grin, showing his perfect white teeth. ‘It was like Romeo and Juliet.’
Arjun smiled. ‘I have a strong feeling that Anthony holds the key to her death.’
‘Then go and look for him. That’s why I hired you, Mr Arora.’
‘He’s most probably in Manipur now.’
‘Yes, but that shouldn’t be a problem.’
‘You’re returning to Nagaland soon. Why don’t you make inquiries and let me know?’
Mr Longkumer shook his head. ‘Manipur is not safe for me. Things are different with the Meitei groups now.’
‘Then send someone.’
‘Who? Someone from Mokokchung would stand out. But you, you wouldn’t attract much attention. And you know the North-east, you must have contacts there.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘What? Are you scared?’
It was Arjun’s turn to laugh. ‘Not at all, Mr Longkumer. But if Anthony doesn’t turn out to be the key to the puzzle, then . . .’
Mr Longkumer leant forward towards Arjun. ‘I’ll pay. Just go. I know you’re the man who can solve this. Please.’
Arjun got up and walked around the bed to the windows, and looked out at the apartments and high-rises in the distance. A part of him had always known it would come down to this. Was that why he had accepted the case in the first place? Besides, getting away from Delhi for a while could do him some good. What did he have to lose?
‘Do you know what the police asked me?’ Mr Longkumer said, his voice suddenly cracking. ‘If Amenla would go out with men in return for money. That’s what they asked me, her father. I need to show them what kind of girl she really was.’
‘All right. I’ll do it. But I’ll need your help.’
‘Whatever you need, Mr Arora.’
On his way out he stopped at the door, having remembered something.
‘The items the police collected as evidence—did they return any of them?’
Mr Longkumer nodded. ‘A broken lock, and some clothes. They said they didn’t need them. Amenla’s cousin Nancy took them back to the flat.’
‘Okay. So they kept the phone charger with them?’
‘Yes. According to them it was . . . what was used to kill her.’
X
Back at the office, Arjun took his laptop out of its bag and updated his notes of the case till date. Occasionally he would jot down a point or write a question on his notepad. When he was done he leant back in his chair and tried to think of someone he could call, someone preferably in the army and still in the North-east. But whom? As Colonel Roy had pointed out a few days ago, he hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from the forces, let alone his regiment. Surely there had to be someone . . . he let his mind drift over all those people from the old days, people half-remembered and nearly forgotten, till a face came to him. A moustache on a gaunt, almost sorrowful face, close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a man of medium height and few words, a yoga expert. What had been his name? He closed his eyes and could see him again, downing peg after peg of whisky at the tea garden club near Jorhat, could almost smell the humid night air outside. Abbas. Yes, Javed Abbas. He had been in army intelligence, and they had met and drank a couple of times when Arjun had been posted to Jorhat.
It took him a while, calling Roy and then a few other people, but finally he had a phone number on the pad before him. Abbas answered after a few rings and seemed to have no trouble recollecting Arjun.
‘I heard you had gone into business in Delhi?’ he said.
‘You heard right. Where are you posted now, Abbas?’
‘I’m in Diphu for a while. Then back to Guwahati in a few months.’
Diphu was the headquarters of Karbi Anglong district in Assam, and just a stone’s throw away from Dimapur. Arjun felt as though luck was on his side.
‘I might be coming to the North-east soon, Abbas, will give you a call. In the meantime, I wanted to ask you about something. About someone, actually.’
‘Tell me, Arora.’
‘A fellow by the name of Tony Haokip, was or still is a member of one of the Kuki groups. Father was some sort of Kuki leader. Have you heard of him?’
‘I might have.’
‘Could you look him up? Where he is now, what he does, all that.’
‘Sure. Call me when you get here.’
‘All right. Hope to see you soon, Abbas.’
He hung up, feeling a deep nostalgia for the old days, hunting insurgents in Assam and Nagaland, and always that green, green landscape. But there were darker memories too, ones he wished to keep locked up.
Negi, who had been typing laboriously on his keyboard, came around to Arjun’s desk.
‘You were in the army, sir?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I was, a long time ago.’
The junior detective said, ‘Many of my relatives were in the army.’
Arjun nodded. ‘You never thought of joining?’
‘My father told me not to. His brother was killed in the 1971 war.’
‘It’s good you didn’t, else I’d still be looking for an assistant. What did you manage to find out about the transport company?’
‘It seems they’re having problems with their trucks and their delivery times. Lots of branches, but no proper supervision. The father, Prakash Chaudhry, isn’t well, he has blood pressure and other problems, while the son Rohit Chaudhry can’t look after the business like his father used to.’
‘Hmm. Any money problems?’
‘If there is, I haven’t heard about it. They’re still running on their old clients. But if nothing changes, then they’re in trouble two, three years down the line or even sooner.’
‘I see. You made any contacts at the office?’
‘Yes, an accounts person called Bhure Lal. I got some quotations for transporting furniture from him too. If I dig a bit more, there might be more information.’
‘All right. See if you can get anything on Rohit Chaudhry. Show this Bhure Lal some money if necessary.’
He put his laptop back into its bag and came out and asked Liza to see if she could book him a seat on a late morning flight to Guwahati for the next day. He told her he was going home for lunch and that he would be back later in the day.
‘Why Guwahati, sir?’ she asked.
Arjun paused on his way out. ‘Sometimes the past comes back and calls you.’
Liza stared at him blankly. ‘What?’
‘Never mind. And talking of flights . . . could you run a check for foreign trips on Amenla’s old passport? I’ll mail you photos of the new one from home.’
24
FROM 35,000 FEET UP IN the air the Himalayan chain of peaks stood starkly white and majestic against a blue sky, even as the lower reaches were blotted out by clouds and then haze, a dirty brown haze which rose up from the Gangetic delta over which the plane was flying. Arjun, sitting in the left-side window seat he had specifically asked for while checking in, tried to figure out where the Everest was. His roots—on his mother’s side—lay somewhere in that direction, bu
t for some reason he had never wanted to go and have a look. Something in him preferred to leave it a blank, just like the part of Punjab across the border where his father and grandfather had fled from. Home for him had once been where he was now headed.
He had left his house in a taxi a good six hours prior to the midday flight. Before the airport, he had told the taxi driver that he wanted to make a detour through Punjabi Bagh. It had taken them less than an hour to get there, and once he was outside Prakash Chaudhry’s four-storey maroon-and-white house he had called Rohit Chaudhry—thrice. Amenla’s ex-boyfriend had finally answered in a voice thick with sleep. When he realized it was Arjun he had let out a few choice Punjabi expletives at being disturbed early in the morning. Arjun explained that he needed to talk to him.
‘Call me later, yaar.’
‘I have a flight to catch.’
‘I’m still in bed.’
‘I’m outside your place.’
Arjun then saw a curtain on the second floor being briefly pulled aside. Fifteen minutes later, a smaller gate set into the red main gate had opened, and out stepped Rohit Chaudhry. He had been wearing a black-and-yellow tracksuit, flip-flops on his feet, and he had crossed the road with a swagger.
‘Where are you going?’ he had asked once he got into the back with Arjun.
With his tousled hair and puffy eyes, Rohit had looked like a college student. The driver had meanwhile got out to make a call on his phone.
‘To the North-east,’ Arjun had said.
‘How do you know where I live?’
‘I asked one of my staff to find out.’
Rohit had nodded, scratched his head and yawned. ‘Are you going to Nagaland?’
‘Maybe. I visited Amenla’s grave yesterday.’
‘Nice of you. I haven’t been in a while. Kept some flowers there a few months back.’
‘Do you do drugs, Rohit?’
‘What?’
‘Drugs. Powder. Tabs. Do you smoke up? Come on, be honest with me.’
A scowl had appeared on his face and he had looked away.
‘All right. I smoke up once in a while. Who doesn’t, yaar?’
‘Amenla didn’t, right?’
Rohit had continued to look away, his jaw muscles clenching and relaxing.
‘Why do you feel that you should have been able to help her, Rohit?’
Amenla’s ex-boyfriend had turned to him, breathing hard.
‘What the hell, man? You show up at my house early in the morning and start asking me this shit. If I was still with her maybe I could have saved her, do you understand?’
Arjun had rolled down his window and lit a cigarette. Rohit had rolled down his window too.
‘Why were you so insistent that I talk to Cooper Grant? I think he and Amenla were just friends.’
‘You don’t get it, do you? Amenla was murdered. Murdered! Some dangerous people are involved. I told you what I knew, now it’s up to you to find the killer.’
He then got out of the taxi and banged the door shut.
‘Goodbye, detective. Have a safe trip.’
Back in the present, Arjun turned away from the view of the mountains. Tilting his seat back, he closed his eyes. Somewhere at the back of his mind a hazy outline was taking shape, a possible sequence of events. But to complete the picture he had to track down Tony Haokip and talk to him. How and where he didn’t know; he would have to make plans as he went along, trust his instincts.
A tired-looking air hostess called out to him to ask if he wanted anything from the cart she was pushing along the aisle. Arjun asked her for a small bottle of free water. The stale, overpriced snacks didn’t tempt him. He would go hungry if necessary; he knew where he was going to have lunch. Half an hour later they banked over the Garo Hills, coming in to land at Guwahati. The newly harvested paddy fields just outside the airport with clusters of tin-roofed houses amid betel nut and banana trees made him feel an ache in his heart. Where had he been for so long?
He didn’t have any checked-in luggage, just a backpack with his clothes, so he walked out into the scrum of waiting taxi drivers and picked one. The people at the airport, and the buildings and cars on the airport bypass—like other places in India, he could see there was more money here now. They reached the tri-junction at Jorabat another half an hour later, and the driver took a right for Shillong. As the road started winding and climbing up after Byrnihat, the driver informed him that the four-laning of the highway was still under way, and that there were rough stretches. Still, the sight of the rolling green hills, dry now in the winter, stirred old emotions in him.
Nongpoh, the traditional halfway stop, was nothing like he remembered, trees and old shops torn down and the road extended on both sides. The driver stopped at a clean restaurant about a kilometre ahead of the market, and Arjun asked for a plate of chicken chow. His order came with the customary quartered onion and green chillies, and he polished it off with relish. It was dusk by the time they skirted the old reservoir known as Bara Pani, and as the taxi climbed the final few kilometres into Shillong Arjun could feel the bite in the air and rolled up the windows.
There was a long line of traffic at Mawlai Nongkwar on the outskirts of town. He looked at the trucks and buses in the roadside garages, the small houses and butcher shops, the lights on the far hills, and felt an indescribable tug in his heart. His thoughts turned to his parents as the taxi inched along: in another life they might have been here still. The driver took a shortcut through Mawlai coming out at the Polo Bazar, crowded now in the evening, the same shabby glitter as before. Arjun hadn’t booked a hotel, and he asked the taxi driver if he knew any quiet guesthouses. There was one in Motinagar, the driver said, and Arjun asked to be taken there.
From Polo Bazar they went up to the deserted stretch behind the Governor’s House, and then further up the steep climb at Lachumiere before coming down past Loreto Convent to Dhankheti. The city seemed more prosperous than before, and more crowded at the same time, while the young boys and girls on the streets were as stylish as ever. The guesthouse was an old Assamese-type house in the quiet environs up above the Fire Brigade field, and after Arjun had washed up and asked the caretaker for a cup of tea, he called Nancy Jamir, Amenla’s cousin. She said she was in Nongrim Hills, which wasn’t too far away, and Arjun told her he would drop by in a while.
He had his tea outside on the veranda, around which shrubs and trees were silhouetted in the dark. The guesthouse had four rooms and old-style wood-planked flooring. After Delhi, the crisp air and the quiet surrounding were a pleasant surprise, and he had put on his leather jacket. He smoked a leisurely cigarette, wondering if he had acted in haste. ‘Enjoy the ride,’ he told himself. It was good to be back in the North-east.
25
FROM THE GUESTHOUSE HE WALKED down to the field before the Fire Brigade station. The main road was packed with cars and old blue-and-yellow bazar buses, all moving slowly, while pedestrians moved about nimbly on the narrow footpaths and between the vehicles. Arjun took the road that went down from the field, past a large new hospital and Nagaland House opposite it, and then up another, smaller road with neat concrete houses on either side. It took him a couple of minutes in the dark to work out the house in the absence of numbers, but he finally saw a nameplate that said ‘Jamir’ beside a green-painted gate, behind which stood a two-storey house. He pushed the doorbell above the nameplate, and instantly there came the barking of a large dog.
A woman appeared on the small balcony above, asked him to wait and went in. Arjun looked around. On his way up, he had seen only one house of the sort that had been common during his time as a child in Shillong. A modest but respectable dwelling made of tin sheets and wood planks, a vegetable patch in front and a jeep standing in the short driveway. The two- and three-storey concrete dwellings with cemented courtyards had replaced most of those houses. The woman now came up and opened the gate. She was middle-aged, tall and was wearing pyjama pants with a grey fleece jacket.
&
nbsp; ‘You must be Arjun Arora,’ she said.
He followed her along a short path set in a tiny lawn outside the house, where the door to the sitting room was open. Inside, in the yellow light, he saw polished wood and well-dusted shelves, and framed quotations from the Bible on one wall along with a church calendar. There was also the faint smell of bamboo shoot and fermented food coming from the back of the house.
‘Please, have a seat,’ Nancy Jamir said. ‘I’ve never met a detective before. What will you do if you find the killer?’
Arjun smiled. ‘I’m a detective, not a hitman. If I find out who the person is, I’ll let your uncle know.’
‘And who knows what he might do,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Can I offer you anything—tea, coffee?’
‘Thanks, but I just had tea.’
‘Or something stronger if you prefer?’
Arjun raised a hand. ‘I’m good. Please don’t bother.’
‘Ama, ama,’ a child’s voice cried out, and a boy of about seven or eight burst into the room, stopping when he saw Arjun.
‘I have a guest, Andrew,’ she said. ‘Go inside now. Tell Aunty Baia I’m calling her.’
‘Okayyy,’ he said, and went away, looking at Arjun.
‘Your son?’
‘Yes, the eldest. We have a daughter too; she started school this year.’
‘Your husband?’
‘He’s with the customs. Posted in Kolkata now. This is his parents’ place.’
Arjun nodded. She was an attractive woman, and there was a confident directness about her that reminded him of Poppy Barua. He shook the thought out of his head.
‘So what are you looking for in Shillong?’ she asked him.
‘Actually, I came to talk to you. I need to track down Tony Haokip.’
‘But . . . after so many years . . .’
‘He was in Delhi shortly before Amenla was killed. She met him, and she appeared to have been, well, not disturbed, but maybe . . . affected . . . by meeting him.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
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