BLOOD RED SARI (19 page)

She handed him the package. He almost dropped it, not expecting its weight. She put it on his lap. He opened the flap and reached inside. She put a hand on his thin wrist. The skin was cool and wrinkled like muslin cotton, it felt rougher than the frayed sleeve of the kurta he had on. ‘I will call you tomorrow and you can tell me what you think this means. Okay?’

‘Roger Wilco,’ he said, winking his bright brown eyes at her. ‘Will can do, sergeant-major!’

She paused at the door before leaving and looked back. He was already poring through the documents, examining the rows and columns of figures and computations and statistics as eagerly as a hungry child eating at a wedding feast. She hoped she was doing the right thing by involving him. She had no choice: she needed an expert to confirm her suspicions and decipher the things she couldn’t understand.

The odour of putimaachi followed her down the green staircase to the street and into the taxi where the Bangladeshi sighed wearily and started the engine as if he had been kept waiting all night and a day.

The driver’s attitude of sullen indifference cracked when he saw her destination. ‘Burj Banglar!’ he said. ‘Amara sekhane?’

‘Turn left off the Bypass,’ she said. ‘Then go straight via—’

‘Yes, yes!’ he said vehemently. ‘I know!’

He increased speed, cutting off a dawdling Honda Civic to get off the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. Sheila had been here only a couple of years earlier and it was impressive how fast the area was developing: the whole countryside seemed to be one vast bed of construction. Yellow metal giants towered and loomed and hulked everywhere: cranes, earth-movers, trucks and machines she didn’t even know the purpose of. Skeletons of half-constructed towers dominated the skyline, rising above a forest of stunted buildings. Redwood trees in the concrete jungle. Farther back, they had already passed the four-tower cluster on Prince Anwar Shah Road, until recently the tallest buildings in Kolkata. Now, there were a half dozen others coming up that promised to be twice as tall, even among the tallest in the country. In Kolkata! Who would have believed it? It was expected in Mumbai, where even billionaires weren’t satisfied with lavish mansions and raised entire skyscrapers to house their families and their egos, but not in aamaar Banglar. But Banglar had changed. Perhaps this was the new Banglar, creaking and rattling and groaning in its metal womb to rise above the stunted past of British occupation, babu corruption and Communist regression.

The Bangladeshi was actually humming by the time they turned into the road that led to the building she was visiting; she couldn’t identify the tune but it was definitely not Rabindra Sangeet. She sympathized with his enthusiasm. The building was an impressive sight from afar and grew only more impressive as they approached. An elongated diamond glittering in the night, illuminated in some kind of scintillating pattern that must make Chowringhee elders snort in disgust and pull their drapes tight to avoid being kept awake by bhadralok envy. Despite the name, it was apparently not related in any way to the similarly named Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building. She supposed the name was aspirational rather than literal, making clever use of an existing brand word.

Something occurred to her and she leaned forward. ‘Burj shobdo-ta … ki Arabi?’

He paused in his humming without losing the beat. ‘Tower. Burj mane tower.’ He gestured at the diamond looming ahead.

She sat back, enlightened. Being Bangladeshi and Muslim, she had guessed he would have a little more familiarity with Arabic than she did. So burj simply meant ‘tower’. That made her feel silly. Since the word simply meant ‘tower’ it could hardly be copyrighted. Right now, it was a lonely tower, isolated in this emptiness by its choice of location. Was this reclaimed marshland or was it the bigha owned by the royal family of Darbhanga? She couldn’t recall. But it was a good kilometre from the Bypass turnoff and the road being still unfinished, it was rough going. There was a construction site on her left and large earth-digging machines were noisily at work, creating noise in a decibel level so high, she could only hear the Bangladeshi humming intermittently. The name of the song came to her unbidden: it was the title song from the new Aamir Khan movie, the one in which he played an eighteen-year-old autistic mute seeking revenge on the men who had murdered his parents and special ed. teacher.

Her cell phone rang when they were still a few hundred yards from the building. She would have missed it, except it was on vibrate-ring. She pulled out the iPhone and looked at the screen. It was a miracle it had survived her flight from the foreign assholes and the fight in the metro station, but it seemed okay, snug in its black rubber condom cover. She didn’t recognize the number but the city code was one she didn’t recognize either, and that was unusual. It was an Indian city, but that was all she could tell. The time was just past six-thirty though it was dark already, thanks to Indian Standard Time. Unlike the continental US which had almost the same longitudinal width as India, the subcontinent followed a single uniform time for the whole nation. That meant that the sun rose and set much earlier in the east – where she was – than on the western coast of the country. In other parts of India, it might still be working hours. This could be a telemarketer. For some reason, she didn’t think it was. Out of sheer curiosity and some sixth sense, she took the call.

Ten

10.1

‘
HELLO, COULD I SPEAK
to Aadila Shah, please?’ Anita said. She glanced around. It was nearing closing time, judging from the way the crowds were heading in the general direction of the exits. She would have to leave too, unless …

‘Who’s speaking, please?’ said a very cultured voice with a perfect English accent.

‘My name is Anita,’ she replied. Security guards were genially waving the crowd on. They were a few dozen yards away but weren’t looking in her direction yet. She remained seated on the bench. ‘It’s important.’

The voice told her to hold on for a moment. She could hear music playing somewhere in the background. It sounded like jazz. Something by Coltrane, though she couldn’t be sure. She had never been a big fan of jazz but had briefly been involved with a woman who was a blues singer and had made her listen to all the classics, especially when in bed. It brought back sweet memories. Where was Charmaine now anyway?

Someone came to the phone. Only now did she realize that the cell phone call had been forwarded to a landline. A younger voice said, somewhat breathlessly, ‘Yeah?’

‘Aadila?’

‘Aadila’s on a trek.’ The younger voice shouted something over the Coltrane and someone else answered in the background. ‘She’ll be back Sunday night. You can reach her at her office Monday morning.’

‘It’s a bit urgent. Hasn’t she carried her cell?’ Anita asked. The security guards had reached her and one of them was gesturing to her to move on. She nodded to him, trying to smile around the HTC.

‘She has, but you know those hills; no signal,’ said the girl. ‘If it’s urgent you can always try Sadia’s cell.’

Anita didn’t want to get into who Sadia might be. ‘Is this … her sister?’ she took a wild shot.

‘Um, no, this is her daughter Aasma speaking,’ said the girl, not particularly bothered by the question.

She sounded so helpful, Anita decided to brave another, more foolish question. ‘Err, Aasma, this is going to sound a bit dumb, but could you tell me what your mother does?’

The answer came pat without any hesitation, ‘Yeah, she’s an accountant, na. A.S. Shah & Associates. Are you a client?’

The security guard was gesturing to her to get up. Anita nodded and started to rise from the bench she was sitting on. Her foot cramped with the pain and she almost doubled over in agony. It had been fine so long as she was walking around but she had spent the past few hours just sitting here, eating peanuts and sipping a fruit drink she had bought at a vendor’s stall, and it hurt like hell now when she tried to step on it.
Son of a …
‘… Bitch,’ she whispered.

‘What?’ the voice on the HTC sounded shocked. ‘Hey, who is this?’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean you. I hurt my foot, that’s all. Yes, I’m a potential client. Your mother was recommended by a mutual friend, another client. Is there any other way I can get in touch with your mother this weekend?’

The girl sounded a bit dubious now.
Way to go, Anita. Call a teenager a bitch and expect her to tell you all about her mother.
‘I don’t know. Maybe you should try the office on Monday, okay? I have to go now. Bye.’

‘No, wait—’ Anita said, but the girl had already hung up. She didn’t blame her.

The security guard was looking at her doubtfully. He had spotted the bloodstains on her neck and shoulder and seen the way her foot hurt. ‘You are wokay, madam?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine,’ Anita said, then in a fit of mischief, ‘just put my foot in the crocodile’s pond, that’s all.’

She limped away, grinning inanely.

The grin vanished after a few yards.

Her foot hurt with each step. Finally, when she was by the rhino habitat, she knew she couldn’t make it this way. Even if she managed to limp out of the zoo in this state, she wouldn’t go fifty yards before being noticed. There would be police outside the zoo as always. She had mingled with the crowds when coming in this morning, but now, the crowds had thinned out suddenly, and a woman fitting the description, limping this way, moving at a snail’s pace, would be easy picking.

She stopped and leaned against a concrete wall. In a field of wet mud, a pair of rhinos stood and munched grass. The air smelt of rhino shit and wet mud. She tried to think. What were her options?

Not much, if I don’t get some medical help fast.

She had a sudden burst of inspiration. Seeing a security guard coming towards her from the opposite direction, she waved him down. He came up, smiling in the friendly Malayali way. ‘Closing time, madam,’ he said.

She pointed to her foot. ‘I think I stepped on a broken bottle. My foot is hurt,’ she said.

He lost his smile and clicked his tongue. ‘You want me to call ambulance, madam?’

‘No, no need for ambulance. I need first aid,’ she said. ‘You have first aid?’

‘Yes, madam, we have doctor and first aid.’ He pointed in another direction, past the tiger section. ‘Animal hospital.’

‘Please, could you help me there?’ she put on the sweetest smile she could manage, raising her arm to indicate she needed to lean on him.

‘Yes, of course, madam,’ he said, offering his shoulder. He was a thin skinny chap, but strong enough to take her weight. She grunted as his foot kicked her injured toe accidentally. It felt like it had swollen ten times its size although there was no swelling visible with the shoe on. She leaned on him and together they limped in the direction he had pointed.

The first aid clinic was a proper emergency facility. A doctor and a male nurse attended to the patients who came to the single-room clinic attached to the zoo’s main animal hospital. The authorities clearly gave it the importance and facilities it required. There was a boy with a gash in his hand and his mother and aunt there, and an elderly man lying on a cot who appeared to have got too much sun. The doctor examined her foot and looked up at her through his brown-rimmed spectacles, frowning. He was a youngish man about her age in his early to mid-thirties.

‘This injury is from today?’ he asked, his tone suggesting it wasn’t.

‘No, doctor. I stubbed my toe last night before going to bed. It hurt when I put my shoe on in the morning but I thought if I walked on it, it would be okay. Why?’ she asked, keeping her face straight. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Toe is broken. I think foot is also fractured.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We will need X-ray. I’ll have you taken to the hospital.’

‘Can’t you just bandage it or something?’

He looked up at her, frowning. ‘You need an X-ray, madam.’

‘Please. Just bandage it, then you can have me taken to the hospital.’

He shrugged. ‘Okay, but you will have to sign release form.’

‘Of course.’

‘Wokay.’ He gave her the form and watched her sign.

Fifteen minutes later, he had finished. ‘I will call the ambulance now.’

She nodded. The other patients had left by then, the boy being treated to a constant barrage of admonishments by his mother and aunt for some hare-brained stunt he had pulled, the old man taken away in a wheelchair by his daughter and her husband. She was alone for a moment in the clinic. Even here, the smell of animals overpowered the odour of disinfectant. An elephant trumpeted in the distance. A lion coughed in response.

She decided to use the time to make another call.

She consulted the receipts and dialled the woman in Kolkata named Sheila.

The phone rang.