BLOOD RED SARI (11 page)

She knocked hard on the door.

There was no response.

She tried the knob and it turned. Her breath caught in her throat.

She knew she should back out of here, get out and call Delhi Police.

But Shonali was in there somewhere. And the men who had called her. They would be here, waiting; they had said so. If she retreated and called the police, they would make a run for it and escape. This was her only chance to get them.

Yeah, sure, a cripple in a wheelchair against Punjabi thugs. That’s very doable, Nachos. Great plan, girl.

It was a terrible, crazy, stupid-ass plan. She knew this. But she knew that bringing the police into it couldn’t help right now. Right now, she was here and she had to do something. It was the way she was wired, the reason she was in a wheelchair today, and the reason why she couldn’t turn away from trouble when confronted by it.

She pushed open the office door and rolled inside, pushing the door shut against the protesting pups before they could get in. She didn’t want their little innocent lives on her conscience as well.

The stench of faeces was unmistakable. She gagged on it but regained control of herself. It almost overwhelmed the stench of petrol, but as she wheeled further into the outside office, the petrol won out, making her eyes water and her nose run at once. She wiped her face on the back of the sleeve of her blouse, blinking away the tears. Her hand fumbled with the light switch and turned it on, but nothing happened. Why were the lights off? Had the goons done that as well? Were they still here? She couldn’t hear any sounds from this room – or the inside office either.

‘Koi hai?’ she said tentatively, her voice cracking. She forced herself to speak louder, trying to sound more authoritative. She’d be damned if she turned into a snivelling victim before them. ‘Hello? Anybody there?’ When there was still no answer, she asked tentatively, ‘Shonali? Shons, you there?’

The whining of the pups and their claws scratching at the closed office door were the only sounds that came to her. There weren’t even any traffic sounds from the street outside at this hour.

Damnit, woman, WTF are you doing here? You’re no superwoman to come swooping to the rescue.

But they had ordered her to come here or else … Shonali’s life was at stake. Or so the guy said.

She sat there in the darkness for another few minutes, trying to decide what to do next, trying not to breathe through her nose – the stench was awful. She wanted to puke but controlled herself. She was convinced the office was empty; but that didn’t mean she could just turn around and wheel her way out. Shonali might still be here, hurt or … or worse. Even if she was going to call the police or an ambulance, she had to know for sure.

She had to check the inside office.

The effort it took to wheel herself the few yards to the inside office door felt like the Wheelathon she had participated in once. That had been just fifty metres, but the competition had been tough because most of the other women were born paraplegics and had spent their entire lives manoeuvring wheelchairs, while she had barely been in one for a few years at the time. Still, she had been placed second and was proud of it because the other two prize winners had both been younger than her and much more athletic. She still had the trophy somewhere in the office: a trio of unisex figures raising their fists to the sky. A wink to socialistic ideology as well as bleeding-heart liberal sponsorships, she supposed. This felt much harder because there was no prize waiting at the end. On the contrary.

Finally, she reached the door of the inside office and pushed it open, entering hesitantly. That same stickiness under her wheels, but this time it was more liquid, and the stench of petrol much stronger. This part had been heavily doused, she guessed. Though why the goons would want to douse her office in petrol and then run away mystified her. Right now, she only wanted to know if Shonali was in here and if she was, then …

She fumbled with her Blackberry, holding it up. A part of her didn’t want to see whatever there was to see, but she had no choice. She had come this far.
Come on, Nachos,
she told herself sternly,
you survived your marriage and your in-laws. You can deal with this.
She had to check. She had to be sure.

5.3

SHEILA WAS STARING AT
an extraordinary sight. She was across the street from the gym, standing just behind a young peepal tree which, along with its neighbours, blocked the light from the streetlamps. She was invisible under the shadows, a fact that others had been aware of and taken advantage of frequently, judging from the stench of male urine on the wall behind her. She had started to raise her hand to pinch her nose when she stepped behind the tree a few moments ago but then she had caught a glimpse of what was going on across the street and had forgotten the stench.

The police were trashing her gym and office.

Thanks to the large glass facade of the gym and the fact that her office was visible from where she stood, she could see everything as clearly as if it were taking place on a proscenium stage. Some fancy set at a Bollywood entertainment awards nite, perhaps. Except that the men in white Kolkata Police uniforms weren’t group dancers and there were no film stars descending from the sky suspended from winch cables.

They were really tearing things up. She watched as they picked up and threw dumbbells through the glass partitions and walls, shattering them; put their shoulders to Nautilius machines and upended them; pushed exercycles over; shoved cross-trainers on their sides; threw member cards out of the slots on the wall-mounted board; smashed the juice bar and threw metal stools at the mirrors. She winced as she watched the mayhem. They were laughing and calling out to each other as they did it, clearly enjoying what they were doing.

It was more of the same in her office. Her desk was battered with lathis, drawers pulled out and their contents emptied out, a chair deliberately thrown through the glass facade. How could they be allowed to inflict such wanton damage? She gritted her teeth in frustration, her fists clenching. They were the police; they could do anything. Besides, she could almost hear what they must be saying in Bengali as they went about their task. ‘Tear down the bloody lesbian joint! Smash the deviants’ pleasure palace.’

Bastards
.

She saw the flash of yellow in a raised hand and all heads pausing and turning to look in that direction. A constable had found the manila envelope and was holding it up. The inspector who appeared to be in charge was standing at the far side of the gym, talking on his cell phone. He turned and beckoned the constable. The man ran across the ruined gym floor and gave the envelope to his superior. The inspector examined the exterior of the envelope for a moment, but didn’t pull out any papers from inside and look at them. Instead, he dialled a number on his cell and spoke to someone: even at this distance, Sheila could tell that he was being deferential. The call finished, he exited the building.

Her heart pounding with anger, Sheila slipped out from behind the tree and crossed the street diagonally, heading at an angle directed at the next adjoining lane. A little traffic came by and for a long tense moment, she was on the wide brightly lit street, fully exposed to the policemen on the first floor. Any one of them could have looked down and recognized her at once. But they had resumed their destructive pastime and nobody looked at her. The traffic passed by, horns blaring at the woman standing in the middle of the road, and she crossed at a steady, unhurried pace. Out of the direct view of the gym, she cut sharply back and went into the bylane that ran behind the building, the one she had left by when the police came. The wireless van was parked in the same place with the red-light car parked behind it. It was an Esteem in decent condition. That told her that the officer was not an inspector but probably an ACP. Curioser and curioser. She reached the back of the car and saw him standing by the wireless van, speaking to the wireless operator in the rear. The rear doors were open. The sound of the wireless radio giving off static punctuated their talk.

She crouched behind the Esteem, the metal of the dicky cool to her warm touch. She was trembling, not from fear but from anger. Watching the very people who were supposed to uphold the law and protect her from miscreants ruin the fruit of her hard work over the past several years did that to her. Who were these bastards? She knew now that this wasn’t just about Tasneem and Marhabha. It was bigger than that. Much bigger. The way the constable had held up the yellow manila envelope told her that. The fact that the ACP had taken the envelope but not bothered to look inside her told her the rest: they know what was in the envelope already.
It’s the reason why they came after me, why they’re tearing up the place.

An elderly man in kurta–pyjama and a young girl in shorts and a tee shirt walking a big happy golden retriever came by, passing her on the footpath. The old man and granddaughter didn’t notice her crouching by the car, but the dog sensed her and turned, pulling at his leash. The old man and girl pulled him back and walked on, too engrossed in conversation to turn and look her way. They were chattering in Bengali about something and Sheila caught a few words. The grandfather wanted to know what ‘sexting’ meant and the granddaughter was trying to fob him off with a bullshit explanation. Sheila felt the ACP get into the car before she heard him: the metal vibrated as he pulled open the door and did something in the car. Then the door shut again, hard, and there was silence except for the wireless crackling with a bored voice asking about traffic movement near Victoria Memorial flyover. Sheila raised her head over the rear of the car, peering out. She saw the ACP walking back across the street to the gym’s rear entrance. His hands were bare except for his cell phone.

She glanced through the rear windshield at the back of the wireless van. The constable who was the wireless operator was sitting with his legs sprawled, scratching his balls and smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, but if she moved within his frame of view, he would see her at once, she guessed.

She duck-walked around the back of the car to the pavement side, trying to stay low so the wireless operator couldn’t see her. She reached up for the car handle, praying the ACP hadn’t locked it. She felt the handle yield and the door open – just as something large and wet pushed itself into her armpit.

She resisted the urge to leap up and scream.

The golden retriever’s snout pushed against her neck and cheek as the dog licked her sloppily. Her found her ear and probed inside it with his tongue, slobbering happily.

‘Rancchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad!’ said a girl’s indignant voice from behind. ‘What is he
doing
, dadamoshai!’

‘Rancho, putra,’ said the old man’s voice in the manner of Bengali men trying to be stern and failing completely. ‘You will get us all arrested. That is policewoman’s vehicle!’

Sheila glanced over her shoulder just as the old man and girl regained control of the golden retriever’s leash and yanked him away. The dog’s tail slapped her on the side of the head, hard enough to almost make her lose her balance, crouched as she was on her haunches. The old man and girl seemed to notice nothing unusual about a woman crouching beside a police car. Policewoman’s vehicle indeed!

They continued up the footpath, Rancho barking an enthusiastic goodbye to her as he went. She shot him the finger and he barked one last time, happy to be acknowledged.

She glanced at the wireless operator. He was leaning over his wireless, speaking into the mike, seemingly unaware of the dog–woman encounter.

Sheila decided that this was her chance, take it or leave it.

She opened the rear door of the Esteem, slipped inside, and felt around on the back seat in the darkness until her fingertips brushed across what felt like an envelope.

Crawling back out, she pushed the door but didn’t shut it. That would have required banging it loudly and even a distracted wireless operator would notice an empty car door banging shut.

She duck-walked to the back of the car again, then continued in the same manner down the lane to the cross-street she had appeared from moments earlier. No grandfathers and granddaughters walking dogs here. She reached the corner and straightened up, slipping around the side and out of sight of her gym and the police vehicles. In the light of the streetlamps, she looked at what her hands held. It was the manila envelope again, with all the papers intact, exactly as she had left it back at her office.

She started walking, away from the life she had built for herself, the legitimate decent life of Sheila Ray. She crossed over, keeping to the darker side of the street, and kept walking.

Six