‘They found the body inside a well, out in the Aarey Milk Colony.’ Inspector Jamshed Bukhari glanced up at the stuttering ceiling fan as it ladled the glutinous air around his office, gently ruffling his thinning hair. ‘Burned black. No idea how long it’s been out there. ACP Shukla took one look at the First Investigation Report and decided it was some petty ruffian come to grief at the hands of the local underworld. Case closed.’
‘But you’re not convinced?’
Bukhari tapped his finger on the lunar-cratered surface of his ancient desk. ‘Something’s not sitting right, Chopra. You know what I mean, I’m sure.’
Inspector Ashwin Chopra (Ret’d) did know.
During his thirty years on the force he had come to believe that a policeman’s intuition was a finely calibrated instrument, something good officers developed over time, an instinct meticulously honed and polished, kept in precise working order by the twin lubricants of conscience and duty. Since his forced retirement from the service the previous year – the result of a bout of unstable angina – that instinct had weighed heavily upon him. The result had been the Baby Ganesh Detective Agency, and a renewal of his commitment to the cause.
Now he increasingly found himself consulted on cases that the overstretched Mumbai police service had neither the resources nor the will to tackle themselves.
Bukhari was an old friend, and an admirer of Chopra’s spotless reputation. After three decades in the Indian police service – recently ‘lauded’ by a national paper as only the third most corrupt institution in the country – his companion’s achievement was, in and of itself, worthy of accolade.
‘Who found the body?’ Chopra asked.
‘Two schoolkids. They were looking for somewhere quiet to canoodle. Their statements are in the file.’
‘Forensics?’
Bukhari gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Last week Shukla told us not to switch the fans on until the thermometer hit thirty. You think he’s going to waste money on forensics for a dead nobody?’ He picked at his khaki shirt, saddlebags of sweat under his arms. ‘There’s been a turf war recently. Petty criminals turning up dead all over the place, like bad pennies. If Shukla’s right then this one was dealt with in a particularly brutal fashion. I have a horrible feeling our friend was burned alive.’
‘There’s been no autopsy?’
‘I’ve asked for one. The pathologist has promised me the results later today.’
‘Won’t Shukla hit the roof?’
‘Possibly. But some things cannot be allowed to stand, can they, old friend?’
These words stayed with Chopra as he headed to the Sahar hospital.
In the rear of his modified Tata van, Ganesha, the baby elephant that his long-vanished uncle Bansi had sent him a year earlier, looked out into the impossibly crowded streets of Mumbai, a phantasmagoria of honking rickshaws, hooting trucks, buses, bicycles, handcarts, cows, goats, dogs and the occasional lumbering elephant.
Chopra still had no real idea why Bansi had sent him such a strange bequest.
In time he had accommodated the little elephant into his life – no easy task for a man who lived on the fifteenth floor of one of Mumbai’s trademark towers. Ganesha now resided in a compound behind the restaurant Chopra had established after his retirement, a restaurant that also served as the headquarters for his fledgling detective agency.
Recently he had got into the habit of taking the elephant out on his rounds – Ganesha needed the exercise, and his keen senses had proven useful on more than one occasion.
In the hospital mortuary, Chopra found his old friend Homi Contractor elbows deep in a fresh corpse.
‘Do I look different?’ asked the pathologist, from behind his bottlegreen surgical mask.
Chopra hesitated.
He knew that Homi, depressed after his recent fiftieth birthday, had embarked on an all-consuming programme of diet and exercise. It seemed strange that a man so successful, with a stable marriage and children he could be proud of, could fall victim to such late-blooming insecurity. Homi himself didn’t understand it.
Yet Chopra also knew that, even in a city of twenty million, loneliness and disillusionment stalked the gilded towers of the rich as readily as the slums of the poor. In his late forties now, he too sometimes succumbed to an inexplicable feeling of melancholia.
‘As good as Sachin batting on a hundred.’
This brought a smile to Homi’s lips. They were both cricket lovers, and fans of Sachin Tendulkar, India’s premier batsman.
Homi pulled the corpse out from the row of cold storage units.
Chopra regarded the blackened body, a few wisps of burned hair remaining on the melted scalp.
‘He was—’ Homi began.
‘You’re sure it’s a he?’
Homi gave him a caustic look. ‘He was immolated, old friend, not given a sex change.’ He showed Chopra a photograph of the body as it had arrived in the mortuary. ‘You see the pugilistic stance? It’s a result of muscle contraction as the body burns. We found elevated levels of carboxyhaemoglobin in his blood and soot in the airways. Do you understand what that means?’
‘That he was burned alive.’
‘Yes,’ said Homi, emphatically.
‘How old?’
‘Early to mid-thirties. Take a look at this.’ Homi put an X-ray up on a lightbox. It showed the back of the victim’s skull, fractured by a spider’s web of cracks. ‘Blunt force trauma. Heavy object. Definitely ante-mortem. Looks like someone tried to bash his head in, then burned him with an accelerant to cover up the crime.’
‘How long has he been dead?’
‘Best estimate, based on insect colonisation of the body: two to three weeks. There’s a couple of other things, might help with an ID.’ Homi put another X-ray onto the lightbox. ‘First, he has a metal fixation plate in his right tibia. From what looks like a Y-type fracture of the right tibial plateau, a few years old. Second, he has a tattoo, just above the heart. I found it using infrared photography. Most of the body had third-degree burns, destroying the dermis, but this patch was relatively shielded, possibly because his arm was slumped over it when the initial burning took place.’
He handed Chopra an infrared photograph of the tattoo.
It showed Christ on the cross, the foot of the cross enfolded by a banner emblazoned with the words: ‘Only God forgives’.
‘He was stripped naked before he was burned. My guess is because the killer wanted to make sure his skin was fully blackened. The clothes were never found.’
‘Why? I mean, why would the killer do that?’
‘Because this was no local ruffian. Our victim is not even Indian.’
‘What does that mean?’
Homi hesitated. ‘Based on an analysis of the skull – the mastoid process, the nasal aperture, the palate – it is my belief that this is the body of a Caucasian. A white man.’
Chopra felt the wind go out of him.
He considered the ramifications of a Western tourist murdered in Mumbai – in such a grotesque fashion. He felt the case coil itself around his throat like the tail of a snake.
The Aarey Milk Colony: a sprawling, four-thousand-acre expanse in the suburbs of the city, housing villages, lakes, gardens, Mumbai’s Film City, and some sixteen thousand cattle spread across innumerable farms and smallholdings.
It was on one of these smallholdings that the body had been discovered, in an area of relative wilderness.
The plot, a collection of crumbling brick buildings and tin cowsheds, was fenced in with rusted chain-link. A faded sign on the gate said ‘KEEP OUT. PROPERT Y OF OMKARA LAND DEVELOPMENT PVT. LTD’. A ragged tear in the fence beside the gate negated the sign’s edict.
The sun beat down mercilessly as Chopra scanned the area. Witch grass burned dry as tinder. An old wagon wheel propped against the nearest building, two spokes missing. A wooden outhouse, the wood warped by cycles of monsoon rain and relentless sun.
He walked into the outhouse.
Vines from a strangler fig behind the building had worked themselves through the roof, and hung down in snaky fronds. A scorpion scuttled away from his shoe.
The well was at the rear of the space, filled in to all but the top three feet. It was in this cavity that the body had been discovered by the two teenagers. It was, Chopra supposed, a comment on the city’s chronic overpopulation that youngsters had to come out to this desolate wasteland to find privacy.
Who was he? How had he ended up here?
Outside, he circled the plot, looking for anything, any sign out of the ordinary.
Ganesha watched him, then began to do the same, snuffling at the ground with his trunk. An elephant’s trunk was one of the most sensitive organs in the natural world.
Chopra’s eye was caught by a flash of white. He bent down to a log pile stacked up against the outhouse; a piece of paper caught between two gnarled and desiccated trunks.
He plucked it out.
It was a single page from a pocket bible, charred around the edges. The bottom of the page was stamped ‘St Francis Gospel Mission, Mumbai’.
He turned and saw Ganesha rooting around in a patch of darker soil by the edge of the plot, under the fence. The little elephant had found something.
Chopra walked to the patch of discoloured earth, fell to his knees, and began shovelling at the loose soil with his hands.
A foot down he found the charred ashes of clothing.
The St Francis Gospel Mission was a low, whitewashed building in the gentrified suburb of Malad East.
Inside Chopra met with the white-robed Brother Victor Mascarenhas, who examined the bible page that he had been handed with a frown. ‘Yes, this is from one of our texts. It is troubling that you found it while investigating a murder.’
‘Did you have a white man staying with you recently? About five-nine, dark-haired, early to mid-thirties. He would have vanished, probably without warning, some two to three weeks ago. He was last wearing blue jeans, possibly a white t-shirt.’
‘Many people don’t inform us that they are coming, or when they will leave. We are a house of God, open to all in need of shelter.’ Mascarenhas hesitated. ‘But there was a man who corresponds to your description. He stayed with us for a number of months, though he spent most of his time outside the premises. The name he gave us was John. I’m afraid that is all. We do not ask for identification. However, it is my belief that he was English. I have met many Englishmen and I can always recognise the accents.’ Mascarenhas gave a faint smile. ‘I asked him why he was here. I could see that he did not wish to discuss the matter, but once, in a moment of weakness perhaps, he joked that he was searching for a mirage, the ghost of a long-dead woman, and that he had a message to deliver to the past. It reminded me of an English film I had once seen: Brigadoon. Though the woman in that film wasn’t exactly a ghost, I felt the same sense that John was chasing something not quite real.’
John – John Doe’s – room had remained unoccupied since he had vanished. Mascarenhas explained that they had touched nothing, awaiting his return.
Chopra searched it quickly. There was little to find. A suitcase full of clothes – John Doe hadn’t bothered to hang them up in the room’s solitary steel cupboard. Some toiletries in a plastic bag. A pair of worn sandals.
Under the mattress of the steel-framed bed he discovered a folder.
Chopra sat on the bed and flicked through it. It was a scrapbook of sorts, tracing, haphazardly, the genealogy of an Indian woman named Nirmala Bhagayshree Wadhwa. Nirmala had been born in 1928, the only daughter of a royal Indian household, the Wadhwa dynasty of the Palsekar clan. The Palsekars, Chopra knew, had once served as military commanders to the Peshwas, the ancient rulers of the Maratha Empire.
Nirmala had married in late 1947, shortly after the upheaval of Partition, and had had a daughter in 1948. She had died just months after the birth.
The file tracked the daughter, born Kalpana Bhagayshree Shankar, up until the age of about fifteen – photocopies of old newspaper articles, official registry documents, land records – then the trail stopped cold.
The file was incomplete.
Why would John Doe be digging into the history of a long-dead Indian noblewoman?
‘May I keep this file?’ Chopra asked.
‘If it helps you to identify this poor young man, then, by all means,’ said Mascarenhas. ‘In the meantime, I shall pray for his soul.’
The British High Commission in Mumbai was housed in an imposing glass skyscraper in the elite Bandra-Kurla complex in an affluent suburb of the city. Chopra called ahead and managed to wangle a fifteen-minute meeting with the high commissioner.
Inside the commissioner’s office, he was greeted with hurried enthusiasm.
Robert Mallory was newly in post and was discovering that wading through the swamp of Anglo-Indian diplomacy was a trickier endeavour than he had expected. Chopra had become acquainted with the man during his recent investigation into the theft of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, brought to Mumbai as part of a special exhibition and subsequently stolen in a daring heist. By recovering the great diamond he had made a friend of the high commissioner, and, through him, earned the gratitude of the British government.
‘What can I do for you, Chopra?’
Mallory was in a brisk pinstripe suit, pacing up and down as his personal assistant read out the agenda for his upcoming address to the Indian Christian Theosophical Society, an encounter he was dreading. He stopped mid-stride as he saw Ganesha trot into the office behind Chopra. Bending down he chucked Ganesha under the chin, the little elephant responding with a delighted tap of his trunk on Mallory’s cheek. ‘How are you, young man? Still hard at work in the detecting business?’
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ said Chopra. ‘I wanted to speak to you personally before this matter becomes public news … Two days ago a body was found in the Aarey Milk Colony. The man had been dead for two weeks, maybe more. He had been attacked, violently, then burned alive. Initially, the police thought he was a local. But we now know that he was a white male, almost certainly English.’
Mallory straightened, exhaling slowly, his finger tapping at the side of his leg. ‘Do you know why the previous incumbent of this office quit, Chopra? It was all that trouble over the Sussex woman raped in Delhi last Christmas. Turned out she was from a well-connected household – connected all the way to the House of Lords. But, in spite of my predecessor’s best efforts at cajoling the Indian authorities, neither he, nor they, got near to finding the culprit. The stress almost killed him.’
‘I remember,’ said Chopra.
The fallout had led to acrimonious words between the British and Indian governments, a public spat that had left a lingering bitterness in both countries.
‘What do you know so far?’
‘Not much.’ Chopra then quickly brought the commissioner up to speed.
‘Let me guess. You want me to make some calls, see if I can find out who your John Doe is?’
‘Yes,’ said Chopra. ‘That is precisely what I wish.’
The commissioner called back six hours later, as Chopra was sitting down to an uneasy dinner with his wife, Poppy. The day had drained him. The revelations of John Doe’s death – the thought of a man burned alive, his last moments – stirred something inside him, killing his appetite. He had seen death in all its forms. Good deaths and bad deaths. But this was something else; a death that called from beyond the grave.
‘Are you sitting down?’ said Mallory.
Chopra stood up and went to his office, closing the door behind him, ignoring the expression of irritation on his wife’s face.
‘Tell me.’
‘It was the combination of the tattoo and the steel plate,’ said Mallory. ‘I contacted some old friends in the security services, people who are used to finding other people … Your John Doe is a Jason Edward Latimer. Born in London, aged thirty-five, married … Here’s where it gets sticky. Latimer is a career criminal. He’s been in and out of prison since he was fifteen. Eleven months ago, he was released from a category B prison after serving three years of a six-year sentence for aggravated assault.’
Chopra was silent. The feeling of unease that had been with him all day seemed to sharpen to a point. ‘What was he doing in India?’
‘No one seems to know. Passport and airline records show that he entered the country precisely seven months and eleven days ago. Effectively, he’s overstayed his visa. What he’s been doing here in all that time is anyone’s guess. His former parole officer told us that he had been involved in petty drug trafficking for many years. It’s a good bet that he was in India looking for a new supplier. It might explain what happened to him. Perhaps he made enemies of the wrong people. A deal gone bad. I’m sure you know better than me the sort of thing I’m talking about.’ Mallory sighed. ‘Look, I know this is a terrible thing to say, but it’s probably for the best that he’s turned out to be a bad penny. I mean, compared to the alternative.’
Chopra felt a rush of anger at Mallory’s palpable relief. He did not share the commissioner’s sentiments. ‘What about next of kin?’
‘Already notified. His wife is on a plane. She’ll be here in the morning.’
‘I will pick her up from the airport.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘You are correct,’ said Chopra. ‘I don’t have to. I wish to.’
Susan Latimer’s flight arrived at what had once been Bombay International Airport, before the government’s frenzied renaming spree, an attempt to excise the lingering echoes of the country’s colonial past.
Chopra was an hour early.
His first surprise was to discover that Susan Latimer was pregnant.
She was a tall, elegant woman, dressed in jeans and a simple cotton blouse, strawberry blonde hair cut short to the nape of a long neck. An angular, but pleasant face, set with two brilliant blue eyes.
‘Are you sure you won’t go to the hotel first?’ asked Chopra.
‘I want to see his body.’
She spoke only once more. ‘Why do you have an elephant in your van?’
Chopra hesitated, a slight flush rising to his cheeks. It was always this way when he was asked about Ganesha. What could he say without sounding insane? The elephant was not his partner. Ganesha didn’t speak, or fly, or solve mysteries. But there was something about his young ward that defied explanation … And he could not deny that in these past months he had learned to appreciate the little calf ’s company. He had stopped dwelling on how fantastical it was for him to be wandering around the city with a baby elephant in tow. And, after all, this was India, where the impossible became merely the improbable.
‘I … ahh … I look after him,’ he said eventually. ‘Though sometimes I feel it is the other way around,’ he muttered, under his breath.
Ganesha looked on from the rear of the van with solemn eyes.
In the morgue Chopra observed her quietly as she gazed down at what was left of her husband, presumably the father of her child.
He thought that she would cry, but she did not.
‘The British Embassy will fly him back to England once you give your consent,’ he said.
‘No. I want him to be cremated. I’ll scatter his ashes in the river. Isn’t that what you do here?’
‘He is Hindu?’ said Chopra, surprise lifting his eyebrows.
‘No. He’s a born-again Christian. But it’s all the same in the end, isn’t it? Stories for children.’
He drove her to her hotel.
In the lobby they sat down and he explained what he had learned in his short investigation. He floated the theory that Jason Latimer had come to India to source drugs.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, vehemently. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘My understanding is that he spent many years in the drug trade. His last spell in prison was the result of an assault on a rival dealer in London.’
‘Whatever else he was here for,’ said Susan, firmly, ‘the one thing he most certainly was not here for was drugs. I know because I was the prison counsellor that got him out of that life.’ Her hands clasped each other in her lap, but her gaze was strong and steadfast. ‘It’s how we met, how we fell in love. He was a prisoner, a criminal with a record, but I saw him for what he was – a basically good man who had made some bad choices. A man seeking redemption. I helped him to find it. And then, at some point, God took over.’ She sighed. ‘I encouraged it at the time because I could see the effect his new-found faith had on him. He became a model prisoner, and that took years off his sentence. When he was paroled we moved in together.’
She took a photograph out from her handbag and handed it to Chopra.
Jason Latimer, a brown-haired, handsome man with dark, quick eyes and an easy smile.
‘He made me laugh. You may not want to believe this, but he was one of the most honest men I had ever met. Beneath everything that was his life, he had a sense of morality, a conscience. It bothered him, what he was: a criminal; but he could never find his way out of the maze. I helped him do that.’
‘Why did he come to India?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me he was going. Just left a note.’ She handed Chopra a slip of paper.
It read: ‘I’m going to India. There’s something I have to do. If I don’t sort it, it won’t let go of me. I’m sorry.’
‘You have no idea what he meant by this?’
‘No.’
‘Did he ever mention a prior connection to India?’
‘None.’
‘Why do you think he didn’t discuss this with you?’
‘I don’t know. I guess he thought I would talk him out of it.’
‘I discovered a file in the room that he was staying in,’ said Chopra. ‘Did he ever mention a woman named Nirmala Bhagayshree Wadhwa? She died in 1948.’
‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘Look, he’s never even been out here before. But his grandfather was stationed in India, a long time ago. He died recently.’
Chopra filed this away. ‘Did he call you from India?’
‘Yes. On and off. I begged him to come back, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘He knew that you were pregnant?’
‘Yes. He kept telling me he was almost done, that he was getting closer.’
‘Closer to what?’
‘I don’t know.’ Grief quivered her cheeks. ‘I guess, in the end, it was closer to his death.’
Chopra left the woman in the hotel lobby.
Sitting in his van, he went back through the folder he had discovered in Latimer’s room, examining each document anew. He found something that he had missed. A photocopying receipt, tucked into the spine of the folder, stamped with the name of the charging organisation: the University of Mumbai.
The drive to the university, which was located in the southern half of the city, took an hour along potholed roads and through gridlocked traffic. If the road to hell had been paved by the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, Chopra had often thought, sinners could have slept safe in the knowledge that they would not be arriving at their destination anytime soon.
In the university library he spoke to the librarians one by one, showing them the photograph of Jason Latimer. He found a youngish woman who remembered him. An Englishman was a rare enough sight to be memorable. They had got talking. She recalled that he had mentioned he was working with a Professor Vikram Shroff in the Department of War Studies.
Professor Shroff was a military historian in his sixties, with a thick head of wavy grey hair, albatross eyebrows and an intense stare.
‘Yes, of course I remember him. He asked me to help him access old military records – British army records in India. Specifically, the court martial of a British officer in 1947.’
Chopra felt his senses quicken. ‘Who was the officer?’
‘A Reginald James Willoughby. Aged twenty-six at the time; commanding lieutenant of the First Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. The battalion was based in India throughout the war and helped oversee the transition of power during Partition, supervised by the Mumbai High Command. The First was the last British unit to leave the subcontinent, in fact, in late 1948.’
‘Why was this Willoughby court martialled?’
‘It was unusual, to say the least. A British officer tried under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code: outraging the modesty of a woman.’ The professor shifted in his seat. ‘You have to remember that in those days the British rode roughshod over both our laws and our women. It was inconceivable to put a British officer on trial for such an offence.’
‘But they did … I presume you managed to get the trial documents for Jason?’
‘The trial was conducted behind closed doors; the proceedings have been sealed for decades. But I have a contact in the military who was able to dig up the records.’
‘Do you have copies?’
The professor fetched a manila folder from a battered steel filing cabinet.
Chopra scanned the documents while Shroff waited.
There was a photograph of Lieutenant Reginald Willoughby. He compared it to the one of Jason Latimer. The likeness was too distinct to be a coincidence. ‘This man was Jason’s grandfather.’
‘Yes, I believe so. Though he never admitted it.’
‘Who was the woman he was accused of…?’ Chopra hesitated.
‘Raping?’ Shroff pursed his lips. ‘Her name was Nirmala Bhagayshree Wadhwa. Nineteen-year-old daughter of a princely household. Her twin brothers both served in the Somerset Lights – officer level, of course – that’s probably where they befriended Reg Willoughby. He became a regular at their residence in Pune – it was close to the Mumbai base. They were keen polo players, and Willoughby was, by all accounts, a good horseman. I believe it was only because of the influence wielded by the family that Willoughby was even tried.’
‘Did he do it?’
‘He was found guilty,’ said Shroff. ‘But in absentia. You see, just after he was charged, Willoughby deserted. Fled the city. A deserter’s record was created for him, but no one knows what happened to him.’
What happened, thought Chopra, was that Reg Willoughby found a way to return to England, changed his name, and spent the rest of his life living in the body of his false persona. Until his death, when, burdened by the same conscience that was Jason Latimer’s curse, he had revealed his crime to his grandson. The decades of guilt must have bled into his soul. He could not die without absolution and so he had sent his grandson to find it for him.
‘Jason had compiled a file on Nirmala. He was tracking her family. Do you know why?’
‘He wanted to find her living descendants. It is my belief that he wished to meet them.’
To carry his grandfather’s deathbed confession, his apology, to those who now stood in Nirmala’s place, thought Chopra.
‘Did he find a name?’
Shroff nodded. ‘I asked an acquaintance, a genealogy expert, to assist him. She traced the family to the present day. Right here in Mumbai.’
‘Give me the name.’
The bungalow rose up, ghostly white, against the Mumbai night, a bright moon picking out the red tiles of the roof, the jharoka-style decorative windows.
Chopra left Ganesha in the van and spoke to the security guard drinking chai and smoking a roll-up outside the gate. He took out the photo of Latimer, showed it to him.
A call was made to the house and Chopra was taken to the front entrance.
A servant led him up a grand spiral staircase to a large, bookish room – a study.
A tall man rose from behind the solitary desk and dismissed the servant.
As the door closed, the man came around the desk to stand before Chopra.
He was a big man, six-four or five, thick through the shoulders, hefty midriff, with a square bush of dark hair, a burly moustache and hard-boiled eyes.
‘You say you are investigating the death of an Englishman. What has that got to do with me?’
‘You are Vikaas Khanna?’
‘I am.’
Chopra took out the photograph of Latimer. ‘Do you recognise this man?’
‘No.’ But the slight contraction of that hard stare spoke volumes.
‘His name is Jason Latimer. He was murdered, burned alive. His body was found in a plot in the Aarey Milk Colony. The plot belongs to Omkara Land Development Pvt Ltd. I checked the company’s details with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Omkara is owned by Sunrise Textiles Corporation – your company.’
‘My company owns many plots.’
‘At the time of his death Latimer was investigating the family of Nirmala Bhagayshree Wadhwa. Nirmala passed away in 1948. The circumstances of her death are shrouded in mystery, but there is a good chance that she committed suicide. She was survived by a daughter, Kalpana Shankar.’ Chopra paused. ‘Your mother.’
Khanna breathed deeply, but said nothing.
‘Your mother married Vikrol Khanna, the textile king of Pune, in 1971. You were born in 1972, an only child. Your father passed away fifteen years ago. Since then you have looked after your mother. I would like to talk to her.’
‘No!’ Khanna stepped closer, something wild in his eyes.
‘Your security guard remembers Jason Latimer arriving at your residence two weeks ago. He does not remember him leaving. One way or another the police must be involved. It is your choice what happens next.’
For a second Chopra thought the man would charge him. He stood there, like a bull, his hands writhing by his side.
And then something went out of him. He walked behind the desk, slumped into his chair, glassy-eyed. ‘Yes, he came here. An Englishman full of his own moral righteousness, seeking absolution for an evil that took place all those years ago.’
‘His grandfather raped your grandmother.’
‘His grandfather violated us all.’ Khanna’s eyes flared. ‘A month after the rape, my great-grandfather arranged for his daughter to be married to the son of a man he knew. This man – my grandfather – was told nothing of the rape. Eight months later my mother was born. A half-white baby with dark hair and dark eyes. It is fortunate, is it not, that the women of our family have always had fair skin?’ He almost spat the words. ‘My mother knows nothing of this. And, until two weeks ago, neither did I.’ He lifted his gaze to meet Chopra’s eyes. ‘Yes, Latimer came here. In the space of half an hour he destroyed everything I have ever held dear. He tore down my past. He wanted to speak to my mother. He wanted to tell her everything, beg her forgiveness. He wouldn’t accept that my mother’s ignorance was the best thing for her. She does not need to know. She must never know. It would destroy her.’
‘You killed a man to keep her from the truth.’
‘I did what I had to. I did it to protect her and to protect my children. Do you understand what it would mean for us if this were to become public?’
‘I understand,’ said Chopra. ‘But this does not change the fact that you burned a man alive to protect your secret.’
‘I … I didn’t realise that he was alive. Not until he started scream—’ Khanna stopped, unable to continue, his great head bowed with guilt.
Chopra took out his phone, held it across the desk.
‘Will you call the police, or shall I?’