BLOOD RED SARI (20 page)

10.2

NACHIKETA KNEW SOMETHING WAS
off the instant the man stepped through the door. He was chewing gum and had a cap on, pulled low over his forehead, but there was something about his eyes that was hard and cold. He was white, not just fair but really light skinned, and the hair visible on his sideburns and arms was reddish brown. He was wearing a denim jacket over a white tee shirt and jeans. His eyes found her the moment he came through the door.

‘Nachiketa Shroff?’ he said in a distinct north-European accent, either Germanic or Nordic.
Natch-ee-quetta Schrauff?

‘I’ll deal with this,’ Advaita said, getting up and stepping around the bed. One foot didn’t fit into her sandal again and she paused by the foot of the bed to bend and fit it properly. ‘Visiting hours are over, and she’s really in no condition to receive—’

The man’s hand slipped into his jacket and Nachiketa cried, ‘Addy, look out!’

The hand emerged holding the very object she had feared – a gun. It was short and snub-nosed and with a black matte finish, not like the guns in RGV movies. The man pointed it at Advaita and shot her.

But she was bending over sideways at just that moment, and the shot went through the folds of her Fabindia sari pallu, ripping the fabric, zipping on past her matronly bulk, and shattering the glass of the window she had been looking out of only moments earlier. She reacted to Nachiketa’s scream more than the shot – she hadn’t even seen the gun yet – leaping forward, straight at the man. Typical of Advaita: when attacked, fight back. It didn’t matter that the man had a gun.

Advaita crashed into the man like a football tackle, losing her balance on the half-worn sandal and tripping as much as hitting him. The man wasn’t expecting it and fell back with Advaita on top of him.

In that same moment, Nachiketa used her hands to pull herself off the bed, rolling to the right and falling heavily to the ground. Her shoulder hit the ground hard enough to hurt and her hands screamed in pain. Yes, the medication had worn off.
I’m sober now, girls.
Her dead feet got caught up in the tucked-in sheets and she found herself hanging half-in and half-out of the bed. She pulled hard at the sheets and they came free with an effort. Her hands felt slippery inside the bandages, as if they were bleeding, and she thought that the burn sores must have split open. The doctor had warned her about that. She screamed at the top of her voice.

Under the bed, she had a clear view of the floor by the doorway. Advaita was on top of the European guy, wrestling with him. She bitch-slapped the man twice, then tried to reach for his gun. ‘Lauda madarchodh,’ she roared in her full-fledged tigress mode. ‘Bloody rapist–murderer …’

The man’s gun barked once more, then a third time. Advaita stopped short, lurched forward, and collapsed, gasping.

The man pushed her aside with an effort and stood up, looking at the bed where he expected Nachiketa to be.

Nachiketa threw the bedpan at his foot from under the bed. It was full of her piss and the dark yellow fluid splashed everywhere as the shiny kidney-shaped chrome pan struck the gunman in his shin. That must have hurt like hell because he exclaimed, mouthing an abuse even she recognized from the German movies she had watched: ‘Scheisse!’ And his gun went off, the bullet hitting the frame of the bed and producing a loud pinging sound with a vibrating echo that Nachiketa felt in her bones and inner ear. He fell over again, landing on his knees, clutching at his shin, and his gun hand landed in the pan full of Nachiketa’s urine. ‘Scheisse!’ he yelled, louder this time. He shook the gun, spattering piss everywhere as he rubbed his hurt shin with the other hand.

Nachiketa was already searching for something else to throw at him. One advantage of using a wheelchair for years was that it built upper body and arm strength, and she took hold of the only thing available, upended it, and threw it. She was hampered considerably by the fact that she was lying on the floor, only able to move from the hip upwards, and her lower body was still entangled in the bed sheets, but she used the strength of desperation.

The object she threw was the IV stand beside her bed, drip and all. The other end of the drip was in her hand and she forgot that momentarily. The stand itself was solid aluminium with a steel or iron base and it probably weighed 5 kgs. It went top first at the gunman and struck him across his torso, hitting his elbow and jaw and then his chest. He was knocked to his rump, landing hard. He yelled out and fired again, the shots whooshing into the ceiling and one hitting the television set on the wall in front of the bed, the LCD screen shattering with a sound like metal crumpling. Physics caught up with the IV line trailing out behind the stand, and the needle of the IV, still embedded in Nachiketa’s hand, was yanked out with a ripping sensation and she cried out in pain, the needle tearing free and pulling out the white plaster holding it in place.

She began trying to crawl away, not caring where, just wanting to put something else between her and the assassin. Traffic sounds from Park Street and polluted warm Delhi air from the broken window came from above her head, and she struggled with the bed sheets like a beached mermaid desperate to get back into the ocean. She could see Advaita dying from under the bed, her mouth wide open and gasping in air with furious effort. Blood was pooling across her belly and on the floor beneath her and her eyes were filled with rage.

The man cursed again, this time exceeding Nachiketa’s one-word knowledge of German vulgarity, and kicked the IV stand away from him. Still seated, he had a clear line of sight beneath the bed and could see Nachiketa still struggling with the sheets. His cap had fallen off and he had one of those stylish haircuts that looked like you had bed head all day long. He was young, no more than twenty or maybe in his early twenties at the most, and looked very fit and well-trained. Something about him gave off the air of being a professional, someone who had gone through shit like this before and survived. He was still focused on finishing his job and his gun hand was already rising, dripping with her piss, the dark hole of the barrel on a vector that could only end with her body or brain.

He brought the gun to bear on her and fired.

Something crashed down on the German gunman’s hand as he fired. Nachiketa recognized it as an upturned wooden stool. It smashed his hand, the fingers cracking like walnut shells, and he screamed, already turning to deal with the new threat. Nachiketa assumed it was Advaita at first, fighting with her last breath. But it was someone else entirely, someone who had come in from outside and flung the stool at the killer’s hand. She had no idea where the shot went, although she saw the muzzle flash and it looked as if it was aimed directly at her. She watched as the person who had hit the German with the stool raised it and smashed it into his head this time. The impact produced a sickening sound, breaking several of the young man’s teeth, and blood and teeth spilled on the shiny tiled floor. The stool came down one more time, then the German lay still. Beside him, Advaita was still jerking and rasping.

The hand holding the stool whose corner was now bloody, came around the bed and the saviour saw Nachiketa still struggling with the sheets. She screamed instinctively, holding up her hands, and saw Rajendra Powar’s bandaged hands and head. He looked like a Sikh, or a Jat with a bad toothache. He dropped the stool and fell to his knees, untangling her legs from the bed sheets. She gasped, half in relief and half in shock, and tried to convey to him that she wasn’t the one who needed help.

‘Advaita …’ she managed as he pulled the sheets down, exposing her paralyzed lower body in the hospital pyjamas. ‘Usse help karo …’ She pointed.

This time he got it. He leapt up and ran out of the room, jumping over Advaita and the German to reach the door, which was still jerking spasmodically as the door closer tried to shut it. Nachiketa had a moment of panic when he left, thinking,
No, no, no, bastard, don’t go, don’t leave me alone here …

Then she saw Advaita gasp one last time, issue a copious amount of blood – trickling down the side of her fleshy face and neck like viscous red vomit – from her mouth and lie still.

Nachiketa stared into her friend’s wide-open, dead eyes, kohl smudged and running with the tears she had shed as she died in agony, and thought:
Another one down.

And she was still alive.

10.3

‘HELLO?’ SHE SAID, AND
could hear just the faint tones of a human voice because of the earth-digger about fifty yards to her left.

‘Hello?’ she repeated. ‘I can’t hear you, hold on a sec, will you?’

She rested the iPhone on her shoulder and leaned over the front seat, tapping the Bangladeshi’s shoulder to get his attention – the noise of the construction was that loud. ‘Ekhane thamuna, please.’

He didn’t hear her the first time, so she repeated herself, literally yelling and pointing to the side of the road farther down. It took a third time before he finally got it – showing him the phone did the trick – and he pulled over to the right a little ahead. The noise was still annoying but at least now she could hear a little better. She got out of the taxi on the far side from the construction, using the car as a shield.

‘Hello, who is this?’ she asked.

‘You don’t know me,’ said a female voice with a faint accent that Sheila couldn’t identify. ‘My name is Anita, I’m a consultant from Mumbai.’

Sheila was silent for a moment.

As if reading her mind, the woman on the phone said, ‘I’m calling from Kerala right now, but I’m based out of Mumbai.’

‘What kind of consultant?’ Sheila asked.

Another pause, this time at the other end. ‘An investigator. Private.’

Sheila raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? So then there are
two
of us in that shithole of a city?’ She paused. ‘Well, I’m not in Mumbai anymore. I meant, when I was based there. So how come I never heard of you back when I was in Mumbai?’

‘Because I’m not officially licensed by the police. I mostly do corporate work. For law firms, a little forensic accounting, that kind of stuff.’

Suddenly, Sheila got the connection. But she didn’t want to say it herself. So she asked, acting casual, ‘What’s this about?’

‘About a package you received a day or two ago. Probably yesterday? At your …’ a pause like she was reading off the address, ‘… Salt Lake City, Kolkata address …’

‘Yes,’ Sheila said, abruptly.

At that instant, the construction site machines stopped. Just like that, all at once. The silence that followed was almost deafening out here, with nothing else around for kilometres except the distant burr of traffic on the E.M. Bypass.

‘I got that … package,’ Sheila said. ‘Did you send it to me?’ She recalled now that the address of origin had been Thiruvananthapuram. And the caller had mentioned she was in Kerala at the moment.

‘No, but a friend of mine did. Lalima Mukucundan. She had left instructions with a lawyer to send out four packages by courier if she happened to die.’

‘So technically the lawyer sent it, not your friend,’ Sheila said a little more sharply than she intended, then realized what an ass that made her sound like. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to correct you, it’s just been a long couple of days here.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Anita. ‘Get shot at much?’

Sheila looked around. The Bangladeshi had got out of the taxi too and was crouching in front of his taxi, staring up at the diamond-bright tower ahead as if it were a religious symbol. The light from the tower reflected off all the windows and windshield of the taxi, even the dusty metal body, making it somehow look glamorous by extension. She herself was bathed in the blue–green light, her skin tinted by it.

‘Actually, yes,’ she said, deciding she would have to trust this Anita long enough to at least find out what she wanted. ‘You too?’

‘Yes,’ Anita said, then nothing further.

Sheila found herself liking the other woman. An amateur – or a man – would have described the encounter, maybe exaggerating a little, definitely using it to promote himself or herself a bit. By simply admitting it without comment, Anita had told Sheila a whole lot about herself: she was a woman who did what she had to in order to survive, taking no particular pleasure or satisfaction from violence, and fuck the ego trip.

‘Interesting,’ Sheila said. ‘And this is because of the package?’

‘I think so. My friend was probably killed because of it. Because she tried to gather the information and pass it on to someone who might do something about it.’

‘Is that what I’m expected to do? Why me? I could hardly make sense of it all. Have you seen those documents?’

‘I got one too. That’s why I came to Kerala. Though I found out it was a trap. I wasn’t supposed to come here at all. I was supposed to do something with the documents.’

‘What?’

‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be calling you now.’

‘Well, I’m still trying to figure it out myself, Anita. While trying to stay alive in the process. In fact, I’m on my way to see someone right now. I think he might have some answers.’