BLOOD RED SARI (13 page)

She couldn’t help them now. She couldn’t even help herself. She was coughing and felt her brows and hair getting singed by the flames; even the rubber on her wheelchair tyres melted and she could barely touch the metal parts. She looked around, desperately seeking some refuge, some way to escape the demon that threatened to eat her alive.

She saw the large old metal table near the entrance, the one that had been in the office when she leased the place. It seemed to have escaped being doused by the fuel and was relatively untouched by the fire. There were a few registered A.D. packages on top, with red-wax seals over the usual hemp twine which was already smoking and starting to catch fire, but she thought the table itself was not likely to burn. The fire couldn’t be hot enough to melt the table, could it?

She threw herself from the wheelchair, crying out as her bare hands touched the burning floor and were scalded. It was like dipping them in a tureen of hot oil being heated for frying samosas and jalebis – Shonali’s favourite breakfast, to gorge on which the girl would slip out of office every other morning and go down to Bengali Market. She used to bring some back for Nachiketa too at first, until Nachiketa forbade her: a woman in a wheelchair had to watch herself twice as carefully, and a regular diet of samosas and jalebis was not conducive to weight control.

She screamed as her hair caught fire, and then her clothes, and then she felt as if her entire body was on fire. A flame caught her cheek in passing and she felt heat sear her left eye, turning her vision white – and white-hot – for an agonizing instant. She was somehow inside the womb of the metal table that enfolded her body inside the cramped space; the strut hit her back hard but she didn’t care, the smoke made her cough and her head spin. She felt something beside her and turned and managed to see, from her right eye, the mangled bloodied body of Justice, her poor belly ripped open by the same sharp blade that had been used on Shonali, or so she presumed. That explained the stench of faeces too, and the reason why the pups had been clamouring at the front door. Justice must have tried to fend off the men to help Shonali and they must have cut her open as well. She must have crawled in here to die and breathed her last just before Nachiketa arrived. The dog was lying on a yellow manila envelope that looked vaguely familiar. It must have fallen to the floor and been kicked there somehow. She couldn’t bear to look at the poor sweet bitch’s snout, lips peeled back in canine rictus.

Oh well,
Nachos thought as the fire began to climb the walls and ceiling and the entire office turned into one enormous mass of blazing flame,
at least I won’t die alone.
She embraced the corpse of the dead dog and felt the flames eating at the back of her head before the pain overwhelmed her and she lost consciousness.

6.3

SHEILA WAS ALMOST AT
the Salt Lake Metro Station when she suspected she was being followed. She had had to walk all the way because there were no taxis. Apparently, Mohun Bagan AC had played a friendly match against visiting British team Arsenal earlier in the evening and the game had drawn record crowds. After the game, the crowds from the stadium had spread throughout Biddhanagar in search of bars and restaurants and cafes, all the way upto here in Sector V. Because this entire region was an IT and BPO hub, most of the sleek, gleaming glass-fronted buildings were owned by MNCs that had their own fleets of people carriers. Taxis did ply in the area, but they wanted to stay within the area or, at best, shuttle to Salt Lake City Airport and back, in the hope of getting liberal tips from unsuspecting foreigners who didn’t know tipping was not required in India.

Today, with over 120,000 football fans looking for food and drink after the game, the cab drivers were in taxi heaven. The fans were mostly young guys in groups wearing the colours of their team, all looking to cross swords with fans of the opposing team and ready for a brawl. They were everywhere, like extras in some movie about the end of the world. Sheila tried to argue with some of them when they muscled in and took a cab she had flagged down with some difficulty, but soon realized that they were more than happy to pick a fight. There were cops around, trying unsuccessfully to shepherd the traffic back towards the city, and it would be stupid to get noticed by them. Since she didn’t want to go back past her lane – the ACP might have been careless enough to leave the envelope in the unlocked car but he would have realized it was missing by now and would have put his men to work scouring the area – and she couldn’t get a cab for love or money, she had no choice but to keep walking uptown. Finally, she figured she might as well continue walking all the way to the new metro station and take a train to her destination.

It was while walking through the streets and bylanes, criss-crossing to get to the Salt Lake City Metro Station, that she became aware of a familiar sensation. It was her instinctive suspicious nature that made her check her rear, but it was sharp observation and good procedure that made her spot the possible tail without giving away the fact that she had spotted them. She was no amateur. She never turned her head or looked around. Instead, she waited until she saw a glass window-front ahead and angled herself towards it in such a way that it gave her a view of the entire street behind. The glass windows of a line of Qualises waiting for the end of a shift outside a BPO skyscraper, the polished side of a Volvo bus, the picture glass storefronts of a line of branded fashion stores, the facade of a McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, the side windows of a Staples, and after a few blocks she was sure that there were at least three men on her ass, none of them football fans or cops.

By the time she was nearing Salt Lake City Metro Station, she was no longer in doubt. They had turned too many times with her into lanes that led in opposite directions, backtracked more than once, and now they were following her up the long flight of stairs to the elevated terminus. They couldn’t all be guys who hadn’t been able to get cabs and had decided, as she had, to take the metro. Besides, there was something about the way they kept doggedly on her tail in the same triangular pattern that suggested a routine: these were guys who worked together often on such jobs. They had a system, one that had worked before, and they stuck to it no matter what.

And they weren’t policemen, she was sure of that too. They were rough-league, very tough dudes, bulked-up and well-fed, immaculately groomed and dressed. She was pretty sure at least two were foreigners: they had on cricket caps which hid their hair, but she was certain she had spotted the flash of blue eyes in the window of a MAC cosmetics store, and there was no doubt that the third man was of African origin yet too light-skinned to be just African. Who were these guys? What did they want with her? If they were working for the same people who had set Choudhry and his political mad dogs on her, or the cops, they would have stopped her by now. But they were just following her, keeping their distance, not making contact. That could only mean one thing: follow and observe. They wanted to see where she was going and whom she met.

The question was
why
.

She hefted the manila envelope in her hand. It had something to do with it, she was sure. Now that she had seen the contents of the envelope, she thought that maybe everything that had happened today was because of her receiving the envelope. Its contents justified the destruction of her gym, her business, her life. It warranted the use of political force – Choudhry could have tracked her down years or months earlier, why only today, after she received the package? It explained the use of the police to legitimize an illegitimate witch hunt. And now, after the politicians and police had failed to secure what they wanted, the powers that were behind this had dispatched these men. Perhaps they had been watching her gym all day, leaving the dirty work to the politicos and cops; waiting and observing in case the first two groups failed. As they had failed. And then, when they saw her about to slip out of their grasp, taking the Maltese Falcon with her, they had swooped in.

Except they hadn’t swooped in yet. They were only following her. Not making contact. So they had probably decided to wait to see whom she went to meet next.

Well. Let them come along if they want. It is a free country.

She reached the metro ticket counter and bought a one-way ticket to Howrah. She actually said ‘Maidan’ first, being accustomed to referring to the large field – ‘Lungs of Calcutta’, as her maternal grandfather had called it – that was the pride of the district, then corrected herself and added, ‘Howrah Station’.

The terminus was unsurprisingly full, most of the crowd wearing the familiar colours of the two opposing teams. What was surprising was the proliferation of Bengali faces wearing the British club colours. She wondered what her maternal grandfather – or her mother for that matter – would have thought of fellow Bengalis supporting a team opposing Mohun Bagan. Then again, this wasn’t her grandfather’s Kolkata. For that matter, it wasn’t
her
Kolkata either.

The train arrived in a hushed rush, slowing as if gliding on invisible wings. The doors hissed open, the cold air feeling refreshing after the long walk. She had taken a moment to buy a bottle of packaged water and she found a seat at the end of a bogie, from which she could watch all the entrances and most of the bogie, and she sat with the envelope on her lap, watching.

The men following her got into three separate cars. One on either side, the third in the same one as her, but at the far end. He sat without looking at her, but did take off his cap to run his hands through his hair and she had the petty satisfaction of seeing that it was, indeed, dirty blonde.

This east–west metro line was still new enough to be a novelty attraction, and most of the football fans who had come for today’s match were out-of-towners or from other parts of Kolkata. Large groups of young men stood and sat around chattering loudly, singing, cracking jokes, making obscene comments, and generally living up to the boisterous reputation of football fans the world over. Because Salt Lake City was built on reclaimed landfill poured over saltwater marshes and swamps, the ground was too soft and waterlogged to build underground lines. So for the first six stations, the metro ran on elevated rails. She could see the main bypass most of the way, weaving in and out as the metro line wound its way circuitously around Karunamoyee, then Central Park, the vast open darkness a visual relief after the blinding, gaudy brightness of the MNC BPO skyscrapers in Sectors IV and V. Most buildings in these neighbourhoods were two- or three-storey structures, apart from the corporate parks, of course, and the elevated line seemed to run through darkness most of the way, like a train across empty countryside, or an ocean liner on a dark passage. Perhaps it was the darkness hurtling past the polished windows, or the air-conditioning and brand-new smell of the Japanese metro coach cars, or the luxury of travelling like this in the city that Gunter Grass had once called ‘a pile of shit’ dropped by God on earth, but her mood began to darken, to change, and it was a familiar change, one she knew well but hadn’t experienced for a long time; had hoped – foolishly, perhaps – never to experience again.

She felt something ominous in the air, and smelt the violence about to come. She knew that this was serious shit she was involved in now, maybe the most serious shit ever. This wasn’t just some local police and underworld matter. These people were global, powerful, big time. They had big secrets to protect – big enough that governments and entire nations would let them do as they pleased and turn a blind eye. She was on her own now and had to do what she had to in order to survive. That would mean killing whether she liked it or not.
Not
, was her choice. Like all people who are capable of deadly violence, Sheila never desired it or liked it. Only fools and madmen desired or sought war. The truly sane avoided it – and chose to run rather than fight. She was running now. But she would have to fight soon. And when she did, it would have to be for keeps. She had to let these people know at first contact that she wasn’t a pushover. If she was going to go down, it would cost them.

She waited until the train had left Salt Lake Stadium and was moving towards Phoolbagan before she made her move. The circumstances being what they were, she knew she would have only one shot at doing this right, and that meant hitting hard and fast and not caring who got hurt or how badly. She had no choice: whoever these people were, they meant business. And because she intended to come out of this alive, so did she.

Seven