Chapter Four

The shorter of the two police officers who had visited the Khosler’s that morning, Ajit Yadav, was on duty. His superior officer, Lala, was off due to a sudden urge to try to take his own life. He had put his service revolver up to his reflection in his shaving mirror and pulled the trigger. Shards of mirrored glass had lodged in his face, slashing him beyond recognition. On the ground floor of the station opposite Bhatia Hospital, Lala’s cumin seed coloured chair with lumps at the corners, was now empty, Ajit lowered himself in slowly. The leather groaned but his bum fitted into the hollow left by his superior, perfectly.

‘Gopal come here, hurry up,’ Ajit was testing his voice.

Gopal, assistant to his superior came in, clasping his hands together as if in prayer.

‘Get me hot chilli pepper chicken, paneer wrap and lemon chutney,’ said Ajit.

Gopal came forward bending at the side of the chair, ‘but the money sir where’s the money?’ His voice was high enough to be a child’s but with a guttered harshness that comes from hissing and spitting words behind the backs of people he hated.

‘Where’s the kitty Gopal?’ Ajit had to stretch his neck to see into Gopal’s face.

‘Lala Sir took it, home,’ said Gopal.

‘Okay. Forget it.’ Ajit’s mind went to the wad of Khosler money. He would count it when alone and then decide how much to give the other officer who unfortunately had insisted on coming with him to see the girl, Buju. ‘Now the Mangal boy, where’s the file?’

‘There is no file,’ said Gopal.

‘Then make one.’

‘All the files are used up. The last murder case has taken up twenty nine folders as you can see. Each folder has five files, as you can see. If we are to make a new murder enquiry file I will need some twenty rupees. Then if we are to make a forensic file I will need some more rupees. Then if there is to be a duplicate made for Delhi, some more rupees. You see...Sir?’

Ajit crossed his arms over his chest, ‘did you take the phone numbers down or not?’

Gopal took two sheets light as tissue and thin as tracing paper that were lying next to a black ‘Remington Noiseless Eight’ typewriter, polished with his own saliva. ‘As you can see, all of them are noted.’

Ajit read the list. First were the boy’s parents, Mr and Mrs Avasthi - far too poor, next were relatives of the boy who were useless as many of them were out of Mumbai, the occupants of the Maya building - something he would have to think hard about, and last was the number for Mr Khosler. Ajit stroked the tip of his nose wanting to pick the morning’s dirt out of his right nostril but felt Gopal gawping. His mind went to the pistachio green, metal wardrobe in Mr Khosler’s flat, ‘isn’t there anyone else?’ he snorted.

‘No one,’ said Gopal.

The Sharmas would be difficult, especially the father who was an accountant to some big shots. That could mean trouble for Ajit later on, he had to take it slowly, ‘call the Khosler flat, tell him we have more questions, they’ll have to come here,’ he said.

‘Are they...the suspects? I thought the Sharma’s son, Vivek, is most likely and we haven’t called him, I think we should do him first -’

Ajit picked up Gopal’s little finger and squashed it into the space between the ‘G’ key and the damply inked typing carriage of the typewriter. He pressed the glass topped letter ’G.’ A pain like the stab of a pin went into Gopal’s head. Ajit pressed it again and again until a very blurred ‘G’ stained Gopal.

‘Yes of course, you know the Khosler’s are probably the ones. You are the Detective in this station now that Lala is preoccupied. I am nothing. I am nobody,’ said Gopal.

Gopal had stopped dreaming about a computer when the Superior Officer, Lala, had become his boss. No, computer, no never think about it, never, why do you think you are worthy? He settled on desiring the Remington Noiseless Portable like the one at the Peddar Road Police Station instead. In a fancy green, an extra wide carriage and a deluxe leather cover with a compartment for stationary supplies. How he wanted to possess it and often saw it dangling over his bed when he went to sleep at night, always out of reach. When Lala took compulsory leave and Ajit Yadav became his ruler, he had started to have hope, until now.

Ajit released his prey. Gopal picked up the phone on his desk and called Bu’s father. Ajit returned to his chair, put his feet up on his Superior Officer’s desk. He would do nothing else but wait for the girl and the cripple because he was an Indian Police Officer and did not have to.

That night Bu was uncomfortable in her bedroom that was also the kitchen. Since her mother had died, five years ago, she had been living in a flat with her father that was quarter the size of the one in which she had spent her childhood. She was also sleeping on a much harder bed but this was the first time her thin mattress poked into her neck and middle of her back with its sculptured points of cotton stuffing and coconut hair. She wanted to sleep but Mangal’s body kept floating around her mind. She remembered something one of her real Uncles had once told her, ‘the ear lobes and toes curl up but that’s not the best way to tell if a person is dead. It’s from behind the eyes - everything feels like it has flown away.’

Bu sat up and turned her flat top pillow over. Her father was still awake - she could hear him flapping his ‘Bharat’ cotton, woven blanket in the living room. Through the window near the bathroom came the clunking of dishes from the Rosewood Hotel kitchen. Known for their two star buffet dinners where every dish is five rupees and served coated with the same tan coloured, greasy sludge. Tomorrow they would have to see the Police officers again but this time at the police station. Her father would pay another ten thousand rupees and then what? Would it be over? Whatever this was that she had started? Bu was nervous although she had done nothing wrong. She forced sleep to come.

Bu was on the fifth floor of the Maya Building. She looked up, the roof was missing and the sky was far away blue. She rang the bell of Kalpana’s flat. No one answered. She stood for three hours like a temple statue made of stone waiting for someone to arrive, to call her name, to offer her some money and to bring her to life. She rang again, the bell looked larger this time but no one came. She went downstairs. There was no noise at all. Every door was bolted with a brass padlock, except for one - the Sharmas - that was wide open. Vivek stood in the doorway, his hands wet and red, his face splashed with tears, ‘don’t just stand there, Bu, why don’t you help me, please? Help me...’ Bu wanted to speak but the words were not coming out of her mouth. Vivek began to sway and got so close to her that he almost fell forwards gently into her arms but he then fled down the stairs instead. Bu’s heart wanted to follow him but something drew her head and the rest of her into his flat. Crows were everywhere, sitting on the beige rugs, the table, the shoulders of Venus D’Milo and the outside sill of the kitchen window, black bodies’ blacker against the white floor. They made gurgling noises and pointed their charcoal beaks at her as she went into Vivek’s bedroom. In some washy way she knew they would not attack her the minute she stopped staring at them.

Mangal was on the bed, his eyes shifting under his lids.

‘Mangal, Mangal, get up,’ Bu heard herself say louder than she normally spoke, ‘everything’s going wrong now because of you, especially for me. Come on Mangal, wake up now. Are you dead, are you?’

Mangal’s hands flinched, ‘oh I know I am...’

‘...so how come I’m talking to you...?’

‘...thank you...’ said Mangal, his eyes still closed.

‘Mangal...Mangal...’ Bu was shouting. Mr Khosler was already over her soothing her brow with sandalwood paste. She grabbed his neck, her father was really in front of her but her heart was still in Vivek’s room. After a few minutes Mr Khosler went to the living room. Bu flopped back onto her bed - it had just been a dream. As her head cleared, she started to feel something pulling from inside her. Her conversation with Mangal - dead boy, spirit, non human whatever - in Vivek’s room had not been her imagination working overtime. She had talked to him and he had talked to her. Of course or else how could Mangal have known her name when she had never met him before? The dead are obviously smarter than the living. Bu tapped her feet together. She felt bizarrely happy, no one at her school could talk to the dead. Her closest friends would be jealous, something brilliant had happened to her and not to them. She had the urge to scribble it, everywhere, the gas cylinder at her knees, the tea coloured ceiling above her head, she had spoken to Mangal Avasthi, one of the dead.

There was no privacy on any of the three floors of the Police Station opposite the Bhatia Hospital. The only toilet for the eleven officers who used the building was on the ground floor. The stopper was stuck out - it had been painted over so the door could neither be locked nor closed. The place had been painted on orders from a higher authority. The old opal white wall behind the Superior Officer’s desk had a large stain slightly bigger than a man’s skull, made over nine years by the Superior Officer, Lala. As he leant his head back, it would create a circle of Alma’s Hair Oil and scalp tonic. It was now gone and wide stripes of green and orange exactly matching the Indian flag coloured the walls, nicer for the tourists it had been decided. Ajit Yadav looked out onto the main road. Little alleys like long fingers that squeezed off tight blocks of flats, tatty secluded bungalows, tailoring or barber shops were clogged with people. He decided that the toilet was his only option.

‘Gopal go buy a hammer,’ he shouted.

Gopal a vegetarian by birth did not have the advantages of meat eating officers. They had real guts like a tiger but he simply had lentil gravy running through his veins. He scurried off to the nearest ironmonger stopping at a small street temple concreted onto the pavement. He bowed his head, took out a rupee coin and placed it carefully at the feet of the sitting statue, ‘Lord Shiva, please let today not be my day of death. My family, Lord, think of my family.’

Gopal returned with a hammer wrapped in yellow plastic. Ajit took it to the toilet.

‘Oh no, not in there, such an inauspicious place to be leaving Mother Earth,’ said Gopal.

Ajit swung the hammer high above his head, and struck the toilet door. Tiny, rusty screws flew in all directions and the bolt fell to the floor. Ajit went in and leaned against the closed door. Two crispy cockroaches were lying on their backs in a corner, still wriggling for life and the toilet smelt of concentrated urine. The bowl that had been white nine years ago was streamed with what could have been liquid Cadbury’s Drinking chocolate but Ajit, being the detective, knew that it was something else. Ajit took the unopened wad of rupees from his trouser pocket that Mr Khosler had been kind enough to part with.

‘Sir, sir the Khoslers.’ Gopal said listening at the door.

Ajit undid his brass buckle only so he could do it back up in front of Gopal and tried flushing the toilet but it just burped at him.

Bu was wearing a long Indian tunic and her hair was in two plaits caught at the ends with blue ribbons that made her look much younger and sweeter than her last encounter with the police.

‘You have more questions?’ said Mr Khosler positioned directly under the only ceiling fan.

Ajit, rocking in his chair, first sent Gopal out of the station. ‘The thing is Mr Khosler,’ he said, ‘we have witnesses that your daughter once had a certain relationship with the son, err V...Vijay...Sharma... So you see how it looks now. A friendship. People do all sorts of things for friends, like stealing or if they are really, really friendly friends, maybe... murder. And the boy was definitely murdered,’ Ajit edged closer to Mr. Khosler breathing on him, ‘and someone in your condition should be more careful what type of company your daughter keeps.’

Bu searched for moisture in her mouth, she wanted to form enough to spit at Ajit. Mr Khosler told Bu to wait outside.

‘But Dad, tell him we’re innocent.’

‘Do as I tell you,’ it was the first time her father had snapped at her. Bu went outside and for twenty minutes, she was not able to see or hear anything from inside the station. Women were lugging shopping bags and small kids and people in their seventies were busy going about their business, Bu could not see a girl or boy of her age group anywhere. She had been stupid, if she had not gone into Vivek’s room she would be at school now doing Hindi English. Up the road, Bu spotted Gopal who was slurping tea from a saucer at the ‘Noorani’ Café. Then she saw Mrs Pravin, holes in her ears the size of chick peas from wearing twenty two carat gold earrings non-stop for the thirteen years of her marriage, she was putting a comb as red as a toy through her greasy scalp as she walked. Bu watched rice coloured flakes fall onto her naked belly - she was glad Mrs Pravin was not her real Aunt. Bu asked if everyone from the Maya Buidling was coming to the station one by one. In the back of her mind she thought that maybe if she stood there long enough she would bump into Vivek again. She began to prepare herself - pulling creases out of her tunic and hiding sore bits of her mock leather handbag. If she was to ignore Vivek she would have to do it properly, which meant looking good, but Mrs Pravin had come alone.

‘Did you know the dead boy?’ said Mrs Pravin.

Bu did not know anything about Mangal, not even that he had been a star of the TV ghee ad campaigns, he was the ‘Gee Gee Ghee’ boy and that everybody had loved him except Bu. She shook her head.

‘Best thing, lie, just lie to the police,’ Mrs Pravin said snarling her face up, ‘get out of this murder business. It won’t matter to the boy now anyway, dead means dead.’