BLOOD RED SARI (9 page)

Still no response.

An argument appeared to have broken out four or five lanes to her right. She couldn’t see much because all the Qualises fencing her in were higher than her eye-level. But she thought it must have something to do with the Qualis convoy blocking up all lanes. She could hear the angry raised voices even through her closed window, air-conditioning and the soft rock playing on 107.1 FM on her car radio.

Dogs barking.

Not here, not at the Delhi–Gurgaon toll.

On the phone.

Dogs were barking in the background. Close by.

It sounded like Justice and her pups. One grown dog’s high-pitched hoarse ruff and a chorus of smaller ruff-ruffs pitching in for support.

‘Hello? Who is this, please?’ she asked sharply. With one hand, she switched off the radio and used the other hand to cover her open ear to block the rising noise of the argument outside. People were getting out of their cars to peer in the direction of the fight. All the firangs stayed inside their Qualises, no doubt terrified of being massacred by sardarjis. She would have probably been out there if the effort of shifting to the wheelchair, then lowering herself out, then coming back and doing it all over again wasn’t so Olympian.

‘Hello, will you please answer me? I know you’re calling from my office. I can see the number on my caller ID. Who are you?’

The dogs stopped barking briefly. In that moment of respite, she distinctly heard the sound of someone breathing. A man. It sounded like a man breathing with the phone receiver held to his ear.

‘I can hear you breathing, you bastard. Mard hai to kuch bol, gaandu! If you’re a man, then speak up, assfucker!’

The Hindi abuses and challenge to his manhood did the trick. He spoke up at last, speaking in a coarse Punjabi accent.

‘Where is package? We want now. Tell us.’

Who was this guy? What package was he talking about? A dozen recent and some not-so-recent cases passed through her mind, but none of them had anything to do with any packages. All were about women: those were the only cases she took. Women’s rights, battered women, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, rape, spousal abuse, a few high-society divorces to help pay the rent … but no packages she could recall.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she replied.

The man said something in Punjabi, but not to her, to someone else with him in the room –
in my office, the fuckers!
– then came back on the line.

‘Soni kudi hai. Bada mazaa aaya. Ab bol tu phataphat. Package kahaan hai. Gudiya ki jaan pyaari hai to bataa varnaa bye-bye bol abhi.’

She was struck dumb for a moment, then recovered. ‘Who is this? Kaun ho tum? Main abhi issi waqt police ko phone kar rahi hoon. You won’t get away with this, you bastards!’

He sounded unimpressed by her threats.

‘Package! Madam, package is where? Please tell fast-fast. Time is short.’

‘I don’t know what package you’re talking about,’ she said. ‘But if you hurt even a hair on that girl’s head—’

The man on the phone said something to someone else in her office.

Then he disconnected the line.

The Qualis in front of her moved forward. The fight appeared to have escalated because she could see heads bobbing over the tops of Qualises, people clearly fighting, even some arms rising and falling, then the distinct sound of glass breaking and something heavy striking the metal body of a car. The car behind her honked long and hard for her to move forward. She glanced to the right: she was boxed in on that side. But on the left, there was a gap similar to the one in front of her, caused by the driver being distracted by the fight and forgetting to move forward in the queue. Horns were blaring everywhere now, adding to the chaos and confusion. The driver in the car beside hers had opened his door and was standing on the seat to get a better view. He was grinning and passing a running commentary to the other occupants of his car.

Nachiketa put the paddle shift into gear and eased out of her line, cutting across the car to her left and swinging around. She cut around it and U-turned, then drove back the way she had come, earning several horn blasts as drivers reacted angrily to her lack of civic sense. But most were distracted by the fight and the confusion, and in the chaos, she was able to slip back and turn into the lane heading back towards Delhi. In another moment she was back in the flow, heading towards Delhi Gate. She thought she could be in her office in half an hour at this hour, maybe even less. Tears began spilling from her eyes as she accelerated, overtaking car after car in rapid succession. She wondered what people made of the ‘handicapped’ sign on her rear windshield when she overtook them: they probably thought it was a joke. Crippled drivers didn’t go racing on one of the world’s deadliest highways. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. She had never done anything like this before and her heart was pounding.

Then again, nobody had ever broken into her office, taken her assistant hostage and then called her to say in guttural Punjabi: ‘
Lovely girl, this one. We had a great time. Now you speak quickly. Tell us where the package is. If you want to see this girl alive again, speak fast or say your goodbyes.
’

She made it in twenty-two minutes.

4.3

IT WAS LATE BY
the time Sheila dropped the last photocopy on the dishevelled pile beside her. Her habit of neatness made her gather up the pages and slip them back into the envelope. Then she stared at the thick envelope, stupefied. Her stomach had stopped complaining about half an hour ago though she had forced herself to stop reading and order some takeout from the Chinese restaurant around the corner. She had the tendency to get acidity if she missed a meal. That, and the fact that she had barely eaten all day, had worked out harder than usual, and she had burnt as many calories from stressing as from physical activity. But right now, food and calories were the last things on her mind. She was just too stunned by the contents of the yellow manila envelope.

She sat back, leaning her head against the wall. It was difficult to rest her head because the inside of the wall was coated in those faux half-stones used for weatherproofing that resembled stone walls of some ancient castle or fort. This side of the building leaked during the monsoon and she had had the waterproofing done just three months ago. Now, how the hell would she recover that cost? Forget that. How would she continue her business with these goons breathing down her neck? Assuming she didn’t give up the girls – which was a given – how the hell was she going to survive? Everything she had was invested in this place. She would lose it all.

Yet she wasn’t able to think about that either.

All she could think about was the contents of the manila envelope.

And what they meant.

She sat like that for several minutes, barely aware of the passing of time. The sound of someone calling out roused her. It was coming from the front of the building. She frowned and got to her feet and walked out of her office to the adjoining yoga room which was empty except for a pile of rubber mats neatly stacked in a corner. She had booked an up-and-coming power yoga instructor from the city to come down on alternate days for two sessions of fifty minutes each day. The classes were over-subscribed already and not, she assumed, because the instructor happened to be male and charismatic. Now she would have to call him to cancel and let him swallow the one month’s advance she had had to pay to book him.

The yoga room had floor-to-ceiling glass and brushed-aluminium French windows running along its length. She slid them open and stepped out, leaning out to look down at the front of the building.

A man was standing, peering up at the lit windows of her office, the only part of the building still illuminated.

‘Hello?’ she called out, waving to attract his attention.

He turned and saw her, and held up a plastic bag in one hand. ‘Parcel?’

Of course. The place was locked up. She had come in through the rear service entrance, but he must have been foxed by the locked front door and dark entranceway. She pointed to the rear of the building and said in Bengali: ‘Go around to the back. There’s a door there. I’m coming down.’

He nodded and began walking in the direction she had pointed.

She shut the French windows behind her and went through the gym room back to her office. Her handbag was on her desk. She unzipped it and pulled out her wallet and left the office.

He was waiting outside the rear door when she came out. Little more than a kid, thin and gangly. ‘Sorry to confuse you,’ she said in Bengali, ‘I forgot that the front door was locked up.’

He smiled at her awkwardly and she noticed his distinctly south-Indian features.

‘Bengali?’ she asked.

He smiled again and shook his head. ‘Chennai,’ he said by way of answer.

She nodded and paid him. This was the new Kolkata where nobody watched Bengali films anymore and Hindi movies ran to full houses, and your home delivery was more likely to be dropped off by a young man from Chennai than a native Bengali. After all, she was in Salt Lake City, the most modern township in the region, built entirely by Yugoslavians on contract. Anything was possible.

The bill came to Rs 267 and she had given him three hundred-rupee notes. He was counting off the change when she saw the red light flashing, reflected in the glass window behind the delivery boy. It seemed to hover in mid-air, disconnected from any other object, floating steadily in an arc as it approached. It went down the bylane and then was hidden from her view by the building.

She didn’t need to go to the front of the building to know that it was a police wireless van with the red light blinking on top, or that it had stopped outside her gym, or that it meant the police had come for her. She should have expected things to escalate quickly once she didn’t cooperate immediately with the municipal thugs. It was obvious that the big guns meant business this time. Their harassment, she might have endured stoically. But by sending in the cops, they had upped the ante, forcing her to fess up or get fucked. They knew her history; they knew she wouldn’t bear scrutiny by the authorities. They knew that Kolkata Police would love to take her in for questioning and hold her for as long as the big guns wanted her held.

The delivery boy handed her the change.

‘Keep it,’ she said, starting to walk away quickly. She didn’t look back or turn around or hesitate, just began walking towards the rear wall of the compound.

‘Thank you, madam,’ she heard the Chennaiite say before she went out of earshot.

The rear wall was barely five feet high. She vaulted over it easily, and was in the compound of the adjoining property, another office building which was closed for the night. She walked through the empty compound all the way to the far wall, then crossed over that as well. That led her to a back lane which wound its way circuitously through various bylanes before connecting with the main road. She continued walking, meeting almost nobody except a security guard or two and a few stray dogs who sniffed excitedly at the bag of food in her hand. They reminded her that she was carrying her dinner and after a moment’s thought, she dropped the bag and continued walking. The sound of the strays tearing open the packets of food followed her for several yards.

She thought quickly as she walked: if they had stretched out the long arm of the law to reach for her at the gym, they would already be at her house. There was no point going there either. Luckily, she was carrying her wallet. She had no idea if they could or would go to the extent of freezing her bank accounts, but she wouldn’t put it past them. All it would take was an income tax order. If they had planned this as thoroughly as it appeared, the order would have been issued weeks earlier, ostensibly dispatched to her office or home address via registered post but cleverly diverted either to an incorrect address or intercepted and torn up en route. She remembered using an ATM somewhere in this locality a couple of months ago. She found it nestled outside a bank branch that was shut for the night. The security guard barely glanced at her and she was relieved to find that cash was still there in her account. She withdrew the maximum limit allowed by the card, fifty thousand rupees, dividing the red thousand-rupee notes into two bundles, folding each in half and stuffing it down the front pockets of her jeans. She used the respite to look through the wallet which was too thick to fit in her pocket. It was mostly stuffed with various papers and stuff related to the gym. She tore them all into strips and discarded them in the waste paper basket overflowing with ATM receipts, pulled out the couple of thousand rupees cash, all her credit and ID cards, and stuffed those into her rear pockets before dumping the wallet too.

She felt as if she were bulging at the buttocks as she exited the air-conditioned ATM cubicle and stepped out into the balmy night air, but a quick glance at her reflection in the glass door showed only a slightly fuller look. Nothing that would attract unwanted attention – well, at least not
unusual
unwanted attention.

Her car was back at the gym. She would have to forget about that as well. She was on the run now and would have to assume everything she owned or possessed was gone for good. She had always realized this day might come someday, but the last year or so had lulled her into thinking that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t. That was why she had stopped taking her usual precautions – stashing money away in off-site safe places, moving house every six months, etc. This has been the longest she had stayed in one place since the Munshi kidnapping. Since Bhasker had died. She would have to assume she no longer had a home, workplace, car, possessions … nada. Just the clothes on her back and the cash in her jeans. Period.