‘Why are you crying?’ Darya asked in a horrified whisper.
Veda looked like she was going to say something but thought better of it and pursed her lips.
‘I can’t tell you.’ She hugged herself and looked away.
‘Please,’ Darya said. ‘Just… talk to me.’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘I can’t. You can’t solve this. And… I just can’t.’
‘What is it?’ Darya asked gently, not willing to give up. She touched her lightly on the elbow. ‘Is it the job? Or… that chap?’
Veda took a shuddering breath.
‘Is it Viktor again?’
‘I don’t know,’ Veda said softly, as if talking to herself, ‘but it could be. That’s what I went to find out.’
‘Went to find what out… What are you talking about, girl?’ Darya said, her voice urgent. ‘Tell me.’
‘You won’t believe me.’
‘Try.’
Veda chewed on her bottom lip.
After a painfully long few minutes, Veda spoke, ‘Do you remember the time I told you about Viktor and you didn’t believe me?’
Darya nodded unwillingly. ‘I didn’t not believe you—’
Veda interrupted. ‘You thought he was an idiot, a baby who couldn’t harm a fly.’
Darya didn’t remember saying any of that, but she wanted to know where this was going, so didn’t counter.
‘You didn’t believe what I saw,’ Veda continued. ‘So, today I went to the reception to check his phone when he wasn’t there.’
‘You did what?’ Darya asked, surprised. Veda was the careful sort; this kind of brashness was usually Darya’s forte. And now she kicked herself for not thinking to look for it when she was down at the reception half an hour ago.
‘He wasn’t inside; I checked,’ Veda said.
Viktor must have been in room 101.
Darya nodded to show Veda she was listening.
‘I found it inside the first drawer of his desk. Only it wasn’t a phone. It was a mini DVR with an LCD screen. It looked expensive. Fancy.’ She screwed her eyes shut as if to remember correctly. ‘I turned it on…’ the last few words were barely audible to Darya. She saw Veda hesitate as if steeling herself to say what she had to next.
‘What did you find?’ Darya prompted.
Veda’s eyes locked with Darya’s. ‘Two movie clips in the DVR’s internal memory.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘I clicked on the first. It was grainy and of poor resolution. The colours were washed out, as if the video had been taken a long time ago.’
Veda swallowed. Darya waited.
‘Will you believe me if I tell you,’ Veda said, her face upturned, a crazy gleam in her eyes, ‘that the girl… the girl in the video I opened… the girl was Debbie?’
Darya sat bolt upright. ‘What?’ A tremor passed through her. ‘How’s that even possible?’ she said.
Veda looked at her steadily. ‘It was her. I took a picture of the movie while it played,’ she said grimly. ‘To make you believe me. I wanted to get the DVR itself to show you, but it was stuck to another device… wrapped together with wires. I couldn’t get it off. And I was scared someone might find me if I stayed any longer.’
‘Show me the picture,’ Darya said.
And when Veda extended the blurry photo to her, Darya still couldn’t believe it. She stared at it stupefied.
It was definitely porn. The photo was a still of a sex act in progress, most likely a hidden camera shot. The room looked like an ordinary bedroom; it was not at the villa. A girl lay on the bed, naked from the waist down, an older man on top of her. Half of the girl’s face was hidden by hair, but the other half… it definitely was… Darya squinted… it did look a lot like Debbie. A much younger version of her.
There was silence as Darya digested this. Who had taken this video? Why had it been taken? Did Debbie know it existed? And why did Viktor—Darya gulped down a wave of disgust at the thought—have it with him?
She glanced at Veda. Hands clasped between her knees, she rocked herself.
Darya handed the phone back to her.
‘What do you make of this?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’ Veda asked.
‘Why would Viktor have his sister’s porn clip with him is what I mean.’
Veda flashed her a wounded look. ‘There’s something wrong with them… with him,’ she muttered. ‘This is it.’
‘But…’ Darya said, ‘this is…’ She grasped for the words. ‘Too much!’ But this wasn’t wholly true. Darya had often wondered at their atypical intimacy, at the overt gestures of affection, at the sheer number of hours Debbie spent at the villa when there clearly was no need to.
Something was off between them.
Veda looked at Darya, a disappointed look on her face. ‘This is it,’ she repeated.
But Darya couldn’t get herself to accept it. After a pause, Darya asked, ‘The man in the clip… do you recognize him?’
‘No,’ Veda said. A nerve twitched in her face. ‘Some pervert.’
‘He looks familiar,’ Darya said. ‘And for all you know, it could be Debbie’s husband, and this was taken by a camera they didn’t know was there.’
‘Debbie isn’t married.’
‘You don’t know that for sure,’ Darya said. ‘Did Jasmine tell you Debbie wasn’t married?’
Veda nodded.
‘Did you talk to her today?’ Darya asked, remembering Jasmine’s parting words to her that morning, wondering if that was the cause of Veda’s foul mood.
Veda dropped her eyes. ‘Yes, I did.’ She flicked a page on her magazine.
‘And?’
‘None of your bloody business.’ At first, the words were so hushed, Darya wondered if she had misheard.
‘What did you say?’ Darya asked.
She said it again.
Darya was so stunned she couldn’t speak.
‘This is between Jasmine and me,’ Veda muttered. ‘Keep out of it.’
Darya was silent. She didn’t feel anger, only confusion. There was something troubling Veda, something she didn’t want to tell Darya about, something significant enough to make her behave the way she was. Veda had never spoken to her like that before, nor, for that matter, anyone else.
Darya wanted to shake it out of her. Tell me, tell me, tell me.
‘He’s not going to get away with it,’ Veda said unexpectedly, gritting her teeth.
Something in her tone made Darya’s heart lurch. She was talking about Viktor.
‘What are you planning to do?’ she asked.
‘Bloody pervert,’ Veda said.
‘What are you going to do, Veda?’
‘Teach him a lesson.’
A creeping sense of dread overcame Darya. ‘What exactly?’ she asked.
Veda didn’t reply. Awkwardly, Darya slid close to her and patted her knee, as if the act of touching could put some sense into her. ‘He’s stupid, Veda. Leave it. We should leave the villa instead. It’s only another month.’
‘Not before I teach him a lesson,’ Veda said. ‘Outing him for the fraud he is.’
‘But what are you going to do?’ Darya asked.
Veda turned an expressionless face towards her.
‘I’m going to steal that DVR,’ she said. ‘To show you. To hand it over to the police. But mostly, to show you. So you believe me. It will teach that sneaky bastard. Watching his sister having sex. Taping people in the privacy of their homes. Filthy dude.’
‘You don’t know if it was he who taped her.’
‘It was.’
Darya’s throat was dry. She couldn’t deny that stealing the DVR was the first thought that had crossed her mind, but she’d be damned if she’d let Veda do it. She looked half frenzied as it was, even as she spoke about it. Darya was certain Veda would end up doing something careless and get caught. Worse still, get hurt.
‘How will you do it? Viktor hardly ever leaves the reception,’ Darya said.
‘
He did today. He goes out sometimes.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I’ll wait.’
Darya couldn’t shake off her rising unease. ‘Veda, listen,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we just move out now? And tell the police.’
Veda stared at her. ‘Tell them what?’ she said. ‘We have no proof. Even you won’t believe me. And I don’t want to move.’
‘Veda, please,’ Darya begged. ‘I do believe you. Don’t do anything brash.’
At long last, she murmured, ‘Yeah, okay.’
‘You promise?’ Darya asked, unsure if Veda had said it only to end the badgering.
‘Yeah.’
‘Say the words.’
‘I won’t steal the DVR.’
‘Thank you,’ Darya replied. ‘And if you feel uncomfortable staying with him… them, we should just move. Think about it and tell me tomorrow. I’m serious. But please… don’t steal anything. Don’t do anything impulsive.’
‘Yeah, got it.’
Nevertheless, she ignored Darya for the rest of the evening.
It hit her sometime during the night, hit her so hard that Darya woke up with a start, wildly nervy as if someone had injected coffee into her bloodstream.
Her heart was pounding.
‘Veda,’ she whispered at the figure next to her. ‘Are you asleep?’
Veda curled up in bed more comfortably, the sheet rustling around her.
‘Veda.’ Darya’s voice grew more urgent. ‘I just thought of something. Wake up! I need to talk to you.’
Veda grunted and turned over.
Darya prodded her back.
‘Don’t,’ Veda protested, her voice thick with sleep. ‘What is it?’
Darya got up to put on the lights. She needed to see clearly.
‘Wake up,’ she said. ‘Show me your phone.’
‘Why?’
‘Wake up. You’ll need to have your eyes open to see what I’m about to show you,’ Darya said. ‘And you’ll find it very interesting, I promise you.’
Looking Into Things
Darya was about to take matters into her own hands and delve deeper into what was happening around her. She decided to skip class to set forth her plan.
First, she scanned the internet for information. Viktor’s Villa did not have Wi-Fi and the internet on her phone was not going to be able to withstand all that she was planning to do, so she scouted for and found a cybercafé at Hill Road where she spent an hour in a discreet corner surfing on a battered old desktop.
‘Curled snake on a sword’ threw up references to a staff carried by Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. Darya recognized the symbol; it was commonly used in pharmacies and hospitals. She found no equivalents in Indian mythology. The nearest she got was an urumi, a sword with a flexible whip-like blade, but it didn’t look anything like the symbols on Jasmine’s notepad. ‘Indian cult worshipping goddess’ brought up the book Cults of the Mother Goddesses in India by W Crooke (1919), which Darya read for the better part of an hour with great interest. She learned that the female deity was commonly worshipped in many parts of India and there were several folklores woven around them. In Crooke’s book, she learned about Manasa, the Hindu folk goddess of snakes, and googled her. Worshipped in Bengal and North India, the goddess not only kept snakebites at bay but also granted the twin boons of fertility and prosperity. This goddess was closest to what Darya was looking for, but not quite, as there was no mention of witchcraft. ‘Chapel Road goddess’ brought up the profile of a young girl from Minneapolis, USA who called herself that on Facebook (Why on earth?). Darya found nothing else of note. There were several recent articles on the Angel Killer and Eileen which Darya bookmarked to read in leisure later. But she knew the facts were old, regurgitated, sensational, and pointed to nothing she didn’t already know. The media outlets were growing feverish in their speculation by the hour. Soon they’d be saying the killer is an alien from Mars, she thought, chuckling at what she knew to be a bad joke.
With around twenty pages of printouts and twelve bookmarked pages, Darya completed her hour of internet scavenging and moved to her next task.
She phoned Inspector Nourahno, her father’s friend, stationed at the Panjim police station, and asked him if he had any contacts in Mumbai police, especially at Bandra police station, someone who she could talk to about the ongoing investigation. By a stroke of luck, he did know someone at Hill Road police station.
‘I know Inspector Gawde,’ he replied after a few minutes of dilly-dallying. ‘But he is not associated with this case, Darya, at least not directly.’ Darya heard the palpable relief in his voice as he said this. ‘In any case, he’s on his wedding leave presently.’
Darya took down his number anyway, thanking Inspector Nourahno profusely, knowing his favours to her were mounting by the day. He was being indulgent towards her, much like her own father usually was, despite how much annoyance she caused him. In fact, Inspector Nourahno had told her last year, after she’d helped him solve the murder of her uncle, how much he admired her spunk. ‘But be careful,’ he cautioned now. ‘Luck does not always favour the foolhardy.’
Darya moved to the third task of the day, something which she hoped would yield better results than the previous two. She walked to Chapel’s Pride to chat up the matriarch, who, she by now knew, was called Rosaline.
Rosaline was sitting in front of her house, as always, ensconced in a heavily scratched tomato-red plastic chair. Darya had exchanged glances with her several times in the past and the woman had granted her an unsmiling nod in return, which was more than Darya had received from anyone else on the street, apart from Kishen, the grocer. So, Darya knew, if she tried, Rosaline would definitely welcome a chat.
She wasn’t wrong.
‘Do you know where Jasmine is, Aunty?’ asked Darya, thinking it to be a good way to start the conversation. In any case, she’d wanted to know. The bungalow had lain in darkness ever since their chat yesterday. No sign of Jasmine.
‘Went away. To be with her mother, I think,’ Rosa replied, feverishly fanning herself with a folded newspaper. ‘Bad news, she was.’
‘Why, Aunty?’ Darya asked, leaning against the porch’s wall.
A loud buzz from a passing car drowned what Rosaline said next. Darya asked her to repeat it.
‘Some… what they call it… MMS there was,’ she muttered. ‘Like her sister had. Poor Nancy. Everything changed after her husband died.’
‘What MMS?’ Darya asked.
Rosa shook her head sadly. ‘A sex movie. I never saw. My granddaughter told. All these women! Even Linda had something… from that bodybuilder boyfriend of hers. Why do girls do these things?’ She turned to Darya.
‘Someone taped them in secret?’ Darya volunteered. ‘They weren’t careful enough?’
Rosa made a hissing noise. ‘Why do all this when you are not married? Bad upbringing, that’s what it is.’ She seemed disinclined to talk any further on the subject.
The afternoon was hot with no signs of rain and the traffic was less than usual on the street. Darya thought she saw a reporter or two prowling about. She turned her back to the street to avoid making eye contact with them.
‘What will happen to the bungalow now?’ asked Darya. ‘Are the D’Mellos coming back?’
‘They better not come back. Nothing here for them anymore.’ She cocked a hairy chin up at Darya. ‘How’s that witch?’
Darya knew who she was talking about but played innocent. ‘Who do you mean?’
A theatrical shudder coursed through her body. ‘The Mascarenhas were ill omens the moment they stepped into the lane. They say she killed her mother at birth. They don’t talk to anyone, don’t mingle. She told some cockamamie story of their father dying and them inheriting money to buy the villa. Shady people are visiting and staying with them all the time. Shady parcels come. I’ve heard the music… the chanting….’ She peeked at Darya, one eye wobbling. ‘How long are you staying for?’
‘Two months.
One over.’
‘Leave. Leave as soon as you can. Debbie is the devil.’ She shifted her bottom and the chair shook. ‘We can’t ask her to leave Chapel Road but believe me people have tried. She called the police on them.’ She scratched a thigh. ‘She knows powerful people.’
‘Do the Mascarenhas and D’Mellos mingle?’ Darya asked. It had struck her as odd that Viktor had been allowed into the D’Mello house when Jasmine had such dislike for Debbie.
Rosaline looked bewildered at the question but thought for a minute before answering, ‘Never seen them talk. Debbie doesn’t mingle with the likes of us.’
‘And that thing about her being a witch…’
‘Interested, is it?’ Rosaline said, sounding satisfied.
Darya nodded vigorously.
‘She looks like one, no?’ Rosaline said. ‘See her clothes, how she behaves. She’s pretty, I know. She also knows that. Turns every head on the street when she walks. Even now. Tailors. Storeowners. Grocery boys. Even my Rodrigo. She’s a bad influence.’
She took a pause and Darya cut in, ‘What about the chanting… the music?’ Darya had never heard any music herself and was curious to know what Rosaline meant.
‘Oh, she doesn’t do it anymore. Many people complained and she stopped.’ Rosaline sighed. ‘It was two years ago. Her mother used to stay for months at that time. She was sick, poor thing. There were complaints of noise, of chanting, of beatings, domestic abuse. Two years ago something happened and her mother…’ Rosaline corrected herself. ‘Her stepmother, Sharon I think her name was, a Christian name although she was a Maharashtrian Brahmin.’ A perplexed look passed through Rosaline’s face and Darya got the feeling Rosaline had marvelled at this puzzle before. ‘Anyhow, she and the other boy, Daniel, barely come anymore. I see them only sometimes. Must be staying elsewhere.’
Darya’s heart leapt.
‘What… who?’ she asked.
Rosaline gazed up at her. ‘What’s the matter?’
Darya leaned closer, her heart thudding. ‘Viktor’s twin… Daniel… he’s dead.’
Rosaline stared.
‘Daniel died when he was a boy,’ said Darya.
‘What… truly?’ Rosaline said. She squinted, seeming to think hard. ‘I’m quite sure he said his name was Daniel. Yes, Viktor’s twin. But…’ She hesitated. ‘I talked to him only once, four years ago, by chance, when he introduced himself. He doesn’t talk to me anymore, but I see him come and go every now and then. He uses the back gate.’
The Darya Nandkarni Misadventures Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 39
