Reprisal

by Mark David Abbott

  The G.M. shook his head unhappily. “No.”

  “Here’s my number.” Rajiv handed over a card. “Give me your card. I’ll be in touch if I need anything.”

  “Ruined his night,” quipped Ankit as they watched the unhappy G.M. head back into the hotel. Ankit glanced over Rajiv’s shoulder. “Now, it’s your turn.”

  Puzzled, Rajiv turned his head and groaned inwardly as S.P.I. Muniappa approached through the crowd. He stopped and stared at the body of Surya Patil lying on the car. Ankit stepped a respectable distance away while Rajiv waited for the recrimination that was sure to follow.

  “How could you let this happen?”

  “Sir?”

  Muniappa turned to face him and gestured toward the car. “This. He was in your protection!”

  “Sir,” Rajiv said through clenched teeth. “My job was to make sure we found whoever threatened him. If he throws himself out of a window, it’s not the fault of my team or me.”

  Muniappa scowled and turned to look back at the body.

  Rajiv couldn’t help himself.

  “I expect you’ll need to pack your bags, Sir?”

  Muniappa’s head whipped around.

  “What do you mean?”

  Rajiv kept his face expressionless as if just stating the facts.

  “Well, Sir, your benefactor is gone. We all know there’s no one in the Progressive People’s Alliance who can fill his shoes. Without Surya Patil, the party has no strength. He was the party. The opposition will take over.” Rajiv shrugged, his tone level. “It definitely won’t be pretty for anyone who benefited under Patil.”

  Muniappa scowled, drawing himself up to his full five-foot-seven height. Raising his hand, he pointed his finger at Rajiv. Rajiv braced himself. Muniappa opened his mouth as if to say something, hesitated, then his shoulders slumped. Rajiv watched as he turned on his heel and walked away.

  Rajiv caught Ankit’s eye and winked.

  “That felt good.”

  Ankit grinned and reached out a hand.

  “I’ll leave you to it.” He nodded toward the road where a line of police vehicles approached. “Looks like your guys are arriving. I’ll stand my team down.”

  “Thank you, Ankit.” Rajiv took Ankit’s hand in both of his. “It’s been an honor and a privilege. Despite the end result.”

  “For me too. Stay safe.”

  Rajiv smiled as Ankit walked away to gather his men.

  Neither of them noticed the tall Muslim woman in a black burqa slip out the front entrance.

  94

  Rajiv sent half his team up to the suite to photograph the scene, take fingerprints, and bag the whisky bottle, glass, and pill strip. It was all a formality since everything pointed to suicide. As to why, that was anybody’s guess. Rajiv had been on the job long enough to give up trying to understand the workings of people’s minds. People never did anything that made sense.

  Once the photographer finished photographing the body, Rajiv waved the staff from the morgue forward to take it away. The sooner it was out of there, the better. Someone had already tipped off the media, and they were crowding around the entrance, clamoring to be let in. Rajiv watched as the two men in dirty white coats pulled and tugged on the body, freeing it from the car’s clutches. Patil’s shirt rode up as they dragged him across the hood, exposing a bloated hairy belly.

  There was no dignity in death.

  His left arm flopped over the side of the car, and something about it caught Rajiv’s eye.

  “Wait.”

  He stepped forward and pulled out his phone. Turning on the flashlight, he shone it at the arm. Something had caught his eye, but he wasn’t sure what. He ran the light down the arm from the shoulder to the wrist.

  There.

  Reaching forward, he slid Patil’s shirt cuff higher. He frowned, peering closer at the red welts around the wrist. Leaning over the body, he grabbed the other wrist and slipped the cuff up, exposing a matching set of red marks. Rajiv stepped back and frowned. Strange.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  The morgue staff looked at him expectantly.

  “Yes, sorry. Take it away.”

  Rajiv watched them load the body into the ambulance, then turned and walked to the hotel entrance, deep in thought. Inside the lobby, he looked for Shashank and beckoned him over.

  “Yes, Sir?”

  Rajiv put a hand on his shoulder and drew him closer.

  “Where is the control room for the CCTV?”

  “I’ll show you, Sir.”

  Rajiv followed him behind the reception desk, and through a door to the back office. Shashank opened another door at the rear of the office to reveal a security guard, watching a movie on his phone while sitting in front of a bank of black-and-white monitors. Shashank cleared his throat, and the guard glanced over his shoulder, then sprang to his feet, noticing Rajiv in his uniform.

  “I want you to show me the feeds from today for the twenty-third floor.”

  The guard glanced at Shashank.

  “Ah, Sir,” Shashank stepped forward. “There are no cameras on the twenty-third floor. Sir, that is, Mr. Patil didn’t allow it.”

  Rajiv cursed inwardly. “What about the lifts?”

  “Yes, Sir.” Shashank nodded at the guard. “Show him.”

  Rajiv moved closer to the monitors. “Show me from... midday today.”

  “Yes, Sir.” The guard entered a few commands on the keyboard, then pointed to three screens. “These three, Sir.”

  “Good, fast forward. I can’t watch them in real time, it will take too long.”

  The guard fast forwarded the footage, and they watched as guests rode the lifts up and down.

  “I’m looking for the man whose photo I showed you earlier.”

  Shashank nodded and stepped closer, concentrating on the scenes unfolding before them.

  The three of them peered at the screens, pausing the feed now and then to double check a face before resuming the playback. The feed caught up to the present, but there was no sign of John. Rajiv closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. His instincts were usually good, but it looked like they had let him down today.

  “Play it again.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Again, they watched, the footage racing past in a black-and-white blur. Rajiv sighed, nothing.

  “Wait.” He pointed at the screen on the right. “Go back. Slowly.”

  The guard rewound the footage frame by frame.

  “There. Stop.”

  Rajiv leaned forward and stared at the screen. Despite himself, he felt his mouth twitch.

  “You clever...”

  “Sir?” Shashank leaned forward too and stared at the image of the guest in the lift, a woman in a burqa.

  “I don’t suppose you know who this guest is?”

  “No, Sir. I’ve no idea.”

  “No, I didn’t think so.” Rajiv patted the guard on the shoulder. “Thank you.” He nodded to Shashank and turned toward the door. “I’ve seen enough.”

  95

  John flashed his lights as he slowed for the barrier. The security guard stepped out of his cabin and raised the boom. John drove through, smiling, and waving as he did so. The security should have stopped him, asked for identification and who he was visiting, but John knew from experience, they were often flustered when seeing a westerner, assuming they lived inside the gated community. Driving from memory, although it had been years since he and Charlotte had lived there, he took a left, then a right until he pulled up outside the familiar house. Pulling over, he wound down the window and switched off the engine. A light was on inside and a late model BMW 3 Series was parked in the carport. The bougainvillea climbing the pillars of the carport had grown a lot since John’s time, and branches of red flowers cascaded over the roof, but the small patch of lawn was brown and in dire need of water—some things didn’t change.

  John felt strange sitting there, looking at the house where he had such happy
times with Charlotte. He hadn’t known what to expect but needed to see it, get some closure. At first, he felt nothing, but then slowly, the longer he sat there, the memories came flooding back—mornings having coffee at the table on the back lawn, Charlotte’s studio upstairs where he would find her when he returned from the office in her paint smeared jeans. An overwhelming sadness filled his body, tears welling. He gripped the steering wheel and closed his eyes. A clear vision of Charlotte appeared before him, the clearest for years. She was smiling, a lock of golden hair hanging down on one side of her face. She wore the blue shirt she always wore while painting, and her cheeks were smudged with color. She looked happy. She raised a hand to him, and John broke down as the stress and tension of the past few weeks gave way. He sobbed, banging the steering wheel until finally, the flood wave of emotion was spent, and he started smiling. Charlotte smiled with him, and he felt her reach to touch the tears on his cheek. John opened his eyes, wiped his face, and glanced toward the house.

  “It’s over, Charlotte. It’s over.”

  Reaching forward, he twisted the key in the ignition. He had a long drive ahead of him.

  96

  John woke with a start, disoriented. Sitting up, he looked around. His shirt was stuck to him, his throat dry. It took a moment to realize where he was.

  He had driven hard from Bangalore, taking National Highway 75 east toward Chennai before heading northeast at Chittoor, stopping only to bury the burqa in a hole on the side of the road. He had already thrown the cable ties and latex gloves out the window at various points on the journey. He skirted the famous temple town of Tirupati in the early hours of the morning before sleep finally got the better of him near the city of Nellore in Andhra Pradesh. Barely able to keep his eyes open, he had pulled off the highway onto a village road, then parked on the edge of a field. He had wound the windows down slightly, locked the doors from the inside, and reclined the seat. Within minutes, he was fast asleep.

  Something had woken him. He raised his seat back and looked around. The sun was up, and he glanced at his watch. He had been asleep for just over three hours. There it was again, the sound that had woken him. In his fatigued state, it took a moment for him to realize his phone was buzzing. He removed it from his pocket and glanced at the screen. Damn it—Rajiv.

  John thought for a moment. Should he take the call? His thumb hovered over the screen, indecisive. What were the risks? He was four hundred kilometers away from Bangalore. No one knew where he was, of that, he was certain. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure himself where he was.

  He answered the call.

  “Good morning, Rajiv.”

  “Where are you?”

  John forced a smile, hoping it would reflect in his voice.

  “Rajiv, you keep phoning me in Dubai and asking where I am? Perhaps, you need to think about a change in career?”

  “Did you kill Surya Patil?”

  “I’m in Dubai. Why would you ask me that?”

  “I’m serious, John. Did you kill him?”

  John unlocked the door and climbed out of the car, stretching the kinks out of his back, then leaned against the front wing.

  “How did he die?”

  John heard a sigh.

  “He appears to have fallen off a hotel balcony.”

  “Really? That was careless of him, but I have to say it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.” John stared across the fields as he waited for Rajiv to respond. He could hear Rajiv breathing, but he didn’t speak.

  “Perhaps, he jumped? Maybe he finally felt guilty for all the shit he’s caused?”

  “John...”

  John heard Rajiv sigh again.

  “John, you can’t keep taking the law into your own hands.”

  John watched a farmer guide his bullock cart down the track which led between the field John was parked in and the next one.

  “Rajiv, did you hear the rumor about his affair with an actress?”

  “Yes. Very recently.”

  “Well, I guess you won’t have heard he raped her three years ago.” John heard what sounded like a curse on the other end of the phone. “After raping her, he took control of her life, using threats and blackmail. Controlled what she did, who she met, what films she got.”

  “No, I wasn’t aware of all this.”

  “I didn’t think so. But now you know what I mean when I said it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.”

  John waited for a response. It was a while in coming.

  “John, you know I have a duty. I have to do my job.”

  “I know, Rajiv. You are one of the few honest ones left.”

  “I don’t think so anymore, John. I really don’t think so.”

  John could hear the conflict in Rajiv’s voice. He felt for the man who had become a friend of sorts. If only it wasn’t death that had brought them together. John pushed himself off the car and scuffed at the ground with the toe of his boot.

  “Don’t worry, my friend. I won’t trouble you anymore. Keep doing what you believe in. The world needs men like you.”

  Rajiv remained silent. John looked at his watch.

  “I have to go. Take care, my friend.”

  He still had a long way to go before he was safe.

  97

  Feeling a hand on his shoulder, John opened his eyes and looked up at the smiling crew member.

  “Sir, we are preparing for landing.”

  “Yes, yes, thank you.”

  John straightened his seat, folded the blanket, and stuffed it in the cubicle in front of him.

  He had made the overland journey back to Kathmandu in two-thirds the time it took him on the way out, but it had taken its toll, and he had slept most of the six-hour flight from Kathmandu to Doha, then again on the eight-hour leg from Doha to Lisbon. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until the flight had left Nepalese airspace, and he could finally relax.

  John was looking forward to a long hot shower and a shave—his beard itched like crazy—but most of all, he was looking forward to seeing Adriana again. At least now, he was confident they could live the rest of their lives without having to look over their shoulders.

  In the business class lounge in Doha, he had scanned the internet for news of Surya Patil’s death. All the reports spoke of his suicide and speculated about the reasons, most putting the blame on lasting depression since his son’s suicide years ago, compounded by his wife leaving him. John was relieved his plan had worked, and no one suspected foul play. He ignored the adulations and lists of Patil’s achievements—it was all bullshit.

  Thirty minutes later, he was on the ground. Immigration was swift and efficient, and since he had no luggage, he headed straight for the arrivals hall. His stomach churned a little, and he could feel his heart rate increasing. He felt like he was on a teenage date again. John saw her before she saw him, and he stopped and stared. She was more beautiful than he remembered—tall and slim with her raven colored hair tumbling loosely over her shoulders. She scanned the arriving passengers until her eyes passed over him. Frowning, she looked at him again, then her eyes widened, and she jumped up and down. John grinned and walked toward her. She threw her arms around him as he lifted her off her feet, spinning around and holding her tight.

  Burying her face in his neck, she hugged him as if afraid to let go. Pulling away, he looked into her eyes, eyes filled with tears. He leaned forward, kissed her lips, her eyes and forehead, then pulled his head back again and gently placed her back on the ground.

  “It’s done.”

  Adriana grinned and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  “Good.” She grabbed both his hands. “Now, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “I’m not planning on going anywhere.”

  “You look so different.” Adriana raised an eyebrow as her gaze went to his hair. “I’m not sure about that. Your roots need doing.” She let go of his hand and touched his beard. “But maybe this can stay.”

  John l
aughed, happy again for the first time in weeks.

  98

  Six months later

  John scanned his email inbox, mentally deciding what to read and what to ignore. An email from Steve with the subject line “Watch this” caught his eye. Intrigued, he opened the email. He hadn’t spoken to Steve for months, not since he had settled his bill for keeping a watchful eye on Maadhavi Rao.

  Clicking on the link in the email, his web browser opened, and the webpage of an Indian movie news site filled the screen. The video in the center of the page started auto-playing.

  “At the Sudarshan Film Awards this evening, Maadhavi Rao accepted the award for best actress for her role in the movie Hridaya Humbalisu Tade - The Heart Yearns. Despite Maadhavi now being based in Dubai, her career has really taken off in the last few months, showing the promise that was seen earlier in her career. The persistent rumors of her alleged involvement with a senior politician who took his own life earlier in the year do not seem to be holding her back.”

  The video switched to Maadhavi standing on a stage, an unusually shaped crystal award in her hand. The camera zoomed in as she made her acceptance speech. She was looking well, the dark circles gone from under her eyes, her face less puffy, her cheekbones now defined. She looked happy. John increased the volume.

  “I’m grateful to all of you for the support you have given me. For a while, my career seemed to be stalling, and I am so grateful you had the confidence to stick with me, to keep coming to see my films. Thank you. There is a lot more to come.” She looked down at the award, pausing for a moment, then held the award up in front of her and looked directly into the camera.

  “Most of all, this award is for you, William.” She winked. “Thank you.”

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