The Darya Nandkarni Misadventures Omnibus: Books 1-3

by Smita Bhattacharya

  ‘Well, at least there’s something you’re not sure of.’

  Darya continued, unperturbed. ‘Oleg had the same tattoo. Too tiny to see. But I’d seen him naked.’ The implication came to her only after she’d seen Zaltan with the same tattoo in the decades-old picture. ‘At the hostel, Vera told me Irina had asked to see Brian’s things. Vera hadn’t given it a second thought. She knew Irina was Mihai’s aide, and Mihai, after all, owned the hostel she was managing. But Irina hadn’t been able to look properly, or so she claimed. Later, I inadvertently let her know I hadn’t found Brian’s backpack amongst his things, and subsequently, she alerted Oleg.’ Darya stopped. An image of Brian had flashed momentarily in front of her. His slow grin. The bobbing backpack. His life snuffed out, because of a whim.

  The phone call Oleg had received at Cibin Market had been from Irina telling him to go and retrieve Brian’s backpack from the farmhouse, so as to not leave behind any clues.

  ‘But the Arlechin does not exist anymore,’ Ana-Maria said mildly. ‘Why would Oleg have gotten a tattoo done? It would be a sure shot giveaway, if found out.’

  ‘Oleg is a narcissist fool,’ Darya replied. ‘I presume he wanted to feel like a part of the group.’

  Darya told Ana-Maria about the quarrel she’d witnessed at the café. Irina had been telling him off for getting the tattoo. She knew it would implicate them if someone were ever to see. But Oleg had wanted to be part of the clique. He went ahead and put a permanent mark of it on himself.

  ‘The girl at Arlechin—the eponymous restaurant your father owned—told me about it,’ Darya said. ‘They’d had a brief fling. She’d seen the tattoo. But she’s from Biertan and she’d heard rumours about the cult. When she asked Oleg about the tattoo, he acted all funny. Clammed up and refused to see her again.’ Foolhardy and brash … why had Mihai chosen Oleg to help him? Darya would never understand this.

  Suddenly, Darya realised she was cold. And hungry. A stiff drink would’ve been particularly welcome at that point.

  ‘These are serious accusations, Darya,’ Ana-Maria said, her face back to being expressionless. ‘And you don’t seem to have much proof.’

  ‘I realise much of what I’m saying sounds circumstantial,’ she admitted. ‘Hard proof will be for the police to find. Or you … to help them with.’ Their eyes met. ‘Maybe my ideas are far-fetched, maybe not. How many people your father killed I cannot say. Oleg and Irina helped in the three we found. There might have been others before. Mostly he targeted young urchins, the marginalised, those with no families, like …’ she hesitated, ‘… Brian.’

  The church bell tolled in the far distance. A flock of pigeons flew past, their wings flapping vigourously. It was dawn. They had talked through the night. Darya had to get on a train in a couple of hours. Afterwards, a long flight … a long flight home. After which, yet again, another battle awaited her.

  It was time now to close this chapter, and return to her old, unfinished, and more painful one.

  She sighed. Gathered her energy.

  ‘More than anything else I wondered also …,’ she said, ‘… whether you suspected your father was involved. And if you did, why did you want Brian to be found at all? Because, if someone found Brian, finding what Mihai had done was inevitable. So, why did you ask me to look for him? You could’ve merely let it go. No one cared. Why did you pursue it? And why ask me?’

  ‘I suspect you’re about to tell me.’

  There was a tangible shift of energy in the room. Shadows moved. The blushing pale sky seemed to billow in and out of the windows, as if in an effort to drive out the darkness and stale air that had settled between them.

  A trickle of excitement ran through Darya as she realised Ana-Maria’s confidence was crumbling, albeit slowly, as if an ice figurine was melting in the sun.

  ‘I told you I did a bit of digging on Brian,’ Darya said. ‘It was inevitable. If I had to find out where he had disappeared, I was also going to look into his past. Who he was. Starting from when he was born. About his family.’

  Ana-Maria stayed silent. Waiting. Watching.

  ‘But that’s what you wanted me to do anyway,’ Darya said. ‘Correct?’

  Ana-Maria leaned back slightly and arched an eyebrow. ‘I wanted you to find out what happened to Brian. That’s all.’

  Darya muttered, ‘I did what you wanted me to. I found out what you were afraid to know. What your father died not knowing.’ A sad smile. ‘Or did he know?’

  ‘Which is …?’ The words barely a whisper

  Her own throat felt as if jagged with thorns and Darya couldn’t get the words out on her first attempt.

  ‘Well?’

  She swallowed hard.

  ‘That Brian was your son,’ she said finally.

  This time, Ana-Maria gave a visible start.

  She had known.

  But to hear the words out aloud …

  Then Ana-Maria let out a wild laugh.

  Fight or flight was an animal instinct. Darya had expected the initial denial, even the vehemence of it.

  But Darya saw something else in Ana-Maria’s wizened eyes. Fear. She hadn’t expected Darya to have gone that far. To find out everything. To link them together. To tell her.

  But what else could Darya have done? To find Brian and leave it at that?

  ‘You think I wouldn’t know my own son?’

  Of course, she knew. Or at least, she had guessed.

  Darya plodded on. ‘At first, I wondered that too. You would know him. How could it be that you didn’t?’

  Ana-Maria’s lips moved silently, like that of a netted fish, as if short of breath.

  ‘But you couldn’t know, could you?’ Darya smiled sadly. ‘At least, not for sure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Darya noticed her voice had cracked. Her lips quivered.

  ‘You left him when he was just a boy. You didn’t remember him. And you had changed so much in the years that had passed, there was no way he was going to remember you.’

  And now Darya saw in her a glimpse of what Ana-Maria’s mother might have looked like or even her grandfather: the passive-aggressive set of her face, the furious cold eyes, the flare of her nostrils, the frigid smile. When young, this face might have appeared stately, attractive even, but as the muscles loosened around them and wrinkles hardened, they transformed into something rancid, frightening.

  ‘He had come looking for you,’ Darya continued, firm in her resolution to reveal everything and not be cowed. ‘I knew he was looking for a relative. He told Oleg. He told Alina. I didn’t think much of it then, but later, when I thought back to our drunken night together in Brasov …’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Ana Maria interrupted. ‘Who was he looking for? Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘He came to Sibiu looking for you,’ Darya said.

  ‘Me?’

  Darya continued as if Ana-Maria hadn’t spoken. ‘Do you think that was why Mihai chose him to die? He was afraid you’d be found out?’ She tapped on the table with her knuckles, keeping her eyes fixed on Ana-Maria. ‘When I learnt about Brian’s history, it flashed through my mind briefly. Did you put your father up to this? Had you known about Brian already and that’s the reason you had him killed?’

  Ana-Maria’s lips turned a thin line. ‘I don’t know what you’re going on about,’ she said, and made a show of looking pointedly at her wristwatch. ‘It’s nearly morning,’ she said. ‘Your train leaves in a few hours, does it not? Christine will drive you to the gară.’

  Darya leaned forward again, unable to help the smile that sprang to her lips. She’d toy with Ana-Maria as she had toyed with her. ‘You want me to leave? Now? Don’t you want to hear everything I’ve found out?’

  ‘I’ve no idea where this is going.’ But she did not stand up to indicate an end to their conversation. She continued to sit like a convict at the guillotine, waiting for the final blow, knowing she deserved the punishment that was coming.

/>   ‘But this is what you wanted me to find out in the first place,’ Darya said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘About Brian.’

  ‘I only wanted to know what happened to Brian. And we know now, thanks to you,’ she replied tightly.

  ‘You made your own enquiries, didn’t you?’ Darya said. ‘Someone told you he was looking for you. Was it Oleg? Or Alina? Afterwards, when he disappeared, you did not file a formal complaint because you were afraid to be found out, but you wanted to know what happened to him anyway. So, you agreed readily when Alina suggested my name. Right so far?’

  With effort, Ana-Maria subdued the distress that leapt to her face.

  Darya continued, ‘Brian had told me about an accident that took his mother’s life. Her name was Alex Roberts. I googled her. Hers was a fairly recent accident, only a year old, and so it came up quite easily on the internet. I learnt Alex Roberts had worked as a surgeon at Calgary’s North Health Campus. Her parents had been employees at the hospital, too. While I read the reports, it struck me as odd that Brian had taken his mother’s maiden name.’

  Ana-Maria let out an impatient exhale. ‘Why … what …?’

  ‘I’d found a phone number among Brian’s things. Fortunately for me, Irina had missed it when she went through his things. I got through the number after several attempts. The lady on the phone grew chatty when I broke the sad news about Brian’s death and claimed to be his fiancé. She told me several interesting things. Two generations of the Roberts had been born and had lived in Calgary. The Roberts had never ventured to Europe, let alone settled there, but I knew Brian was digging for family history at Sibiu. Alina had told me one side of his family had Romanian roots. So, if it wasn’t his mother’s side of the family he’d come looking for, could it be his father’s?’

  Their eyes met again.

  Darya saw a flicker of something new in Ana-Maria’s eyes this time. A slimy darkness. Guilt.

  ‘Do you think he knew about you?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘I’ll spell it out for you, if you want,’ Darya said, crossing her arms over her chest. She knew she now had Ana-Maria completely under her power. ‘Should I go on?’

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

  She took a deep breath. Picking up her phone, she brought up the page she had bookmarked and flashed it in front of Ana-Maria. As the latter’s eyes focused, and she read the words, Darya watched in satisfaction as her countenance broke.

  Darya retracted her hand, settled back, and started speaking in a monotone.

  ‘You used to be Radu Rosetti. You married Alexandra Roberts in 1992 and had a son with her, Brian. A few years later, you left your wife and your son because you were tired of living a lie. Alexandra went back to her maiden name and later, Brian took her family name. Years later, when Brian was older, he came looking for you. He didn’t know you’d come back to Sibiu, because his mother had not known it either. Hell, no one knew. But Brian had thought this was the place to begin the journey to discover his roots. Where Radu Rosetti was born, YOU were born.’

  Beloved Calgary surgeon dies in freak accident

  Alexandra Roberts, thirty-seven, died on the slopes of Nariska Ski Area on Thursday after her ski bindings released … She flipped into a hole in the snow on Mount Cloak ... Alexandra, known popularly as Alex, was skiing with a group of three colleagues from North Health Campus (NHC) … one tried to give her CPR … They were on her last run of the day at Mount Cloak Meadows when the freak accident occurred … Alexandra leaves behind her elderly mother and an eighteen-year-old son …

  So, this was what ‘pin-drop’ silence sounded like.

  Everything around them had stilled.

  ‘You married young. Brian is about as old as you both were when you got married. That’s something to think about.’

  Silence.

  ‘I have a photo,’ Darya said softly. ‘Of the happy family that once was. You might find it interesting.’ She took out the picture she’d found in Brian’s locker and slid it across the table to Ana-Maria.

  Her shoulders slumped. Her face had taken on a furious red colour, her breathing came out laboured.

  Darya could smell it off her, the defeat.

  She wondered why she’d not guessed everything sooner. Now that she knew the truth, everything fell into place easily. It was always like that; you needed just that one vital piece for all of it to make sense.

  Darya sat up straight and trained her attention in front of her. She had practiced the words she was about to say next, several times.

  ‘At the back of this photo,’ Darya tapped the photo which had Ana-Maria’s fingers splayed over it, ‘is the name and number of Brian’s godmother. She worked with Brian’s mother at North Health Campus. Valerie Johnson. You know her, of course.’ Ana-Maria had turned over the photo and her fingers traced the letters on the back. ‘It was hard to get in touch with her. Valerie does not use a mobile phone, which I learnt later, and I only knew her hospital landline number from that.’ She pointed to the photo. ‘Valerie did not pick up the first few times I called. Eventually, I dialled the hospital’s board line number and got through to her. Turns out her direct phone was out of order. Bad timing, that.’ Darya remembered how she’d been on the verge of giving up—the attendant at the hospital board line had transferred her six times already—and her eventual relief, when at long last, a wobbly, melodic voice came through the line: Yes, this is she. And whom am I speaking with? ‘I told her I was Brian’s fiancé and she told me what I needed to know.’ Darya paused, recalling how the revelation had hit her in the stomach, like a hard punch. Until then, she hadn’t noticed the similarities between the short, petite man in Brian’s photo and the one sitting in front of her, but after she knew, she kicked herself for not guessing sooner.

  Darya had to ask Valerie to repeat herself several times.

  No, sorry … I didn’t hear that. What … what was Brian doing in Romania?

  Oh, but didn’t he tell you, dear?

  Brian had been heartbroken after his mother died, but it’d also given him an opportunity to take off in search of his father, whose mention his mother had forbidden when she was alive. Brian’s father had left his family when Brian was very young, so he’d known only a few things about him: his name and that he was from Romania. Also, the photo he had of his parents that Valerie had given to him. She hadn’t told him anything else; she’d promised Alex she would never tell him the real reason his father had left, worrying it might confuse him or break his heart.

  So, Brian had come to Romania in search of his roots. He’d moved from city to city, ultimately arriving in Sibiu, home to the Rosettis.

  What was his father’s name? Darya had asked Valerie.

  Andre Rose, she’s replied. He’d shortened his surname, he liked it that way. It used to be Rosetti. R-O-S-E-T-T-I.

  Darya had let out a gasp.

  Could it be possible Brian was of the Rosetti kin?

  And ‘Andre’ was after all just an ‘a’ short of ‘Andrea’.

  It was only when Darya took a second look at Brian’s family photo that it struck her. The implications became clear.

  Radu hadn’t died all those years ago, when his family claimed he had. He had merely run away from home, changed his name, and started a new life. He’d selected a name familiar to him, similar to that of someone he loved and whose attention he’d desperately craved for in his growing years. If Brian had mentioned his father’s name to Oleg, and later to Mihai, they might’ve have guessed the connection, too. It wasn’t that hard.

  Why did Andre leave? Darya had asked Valerie.

  We were never to speak of it. But now that both Alex and Brian are dead, I guess I can tell you.

  ‘She told me Nurse Rose had wanted to come out as a transgender woman. Alex had always suspected, but it hadn’t mattered at first, because the two were in love. However, when Andre had wanted to reveal it to the world, Alex had pro
tested. It would be humiliating for her. For her son.’ Darya recalled her body had grown heavy by the time Valerie stopped speaking. There was uncomfortable silence over the phone until Darya asked her:

  Why? Why then?

  Because he’d wanted to get a gender-reassignment surgery.

  ‘So, not only was he going to tell the world he was actually a woman trapped in a man’s body, he was going to show them too.’

  Ana-Maria shook her head slightly, ghost of a smile on her face. Her eyes glazed; she was looking somewhere beyond Darya. Her hands were folded tightly across her chest.

  Darya let a minute of silence settle between them and spoke again. ‘Afterwards, something else struck me. Something Smaranda had said. Alina, too. That you used to be a sickly child. You had fainting spells, a bad liver. Dry, yellow skin. Brian suffered similar symptoms. I know what it is called because Brian told me. Alagille Syndrome. And you know what I found when I looked it up? Alagille Syndrome is caused by a Y-linked genetic mutation. It can only be passed on from father to son.’ She watched as tears formed in Ana-Maria’s eyes. ‘Smaranda also mentioned Ana-Maria used to write to her regularly, but the letters stopped right after … when she … your mother, Andrea, passed away. When Ana-Maria returned to Sibiu, she did not visit Smaranda. Not once. That was puzzling. How could affections change overnight? Something had happened to Ana-Maria, after her mother died.’

  Ana-Maria’s composure was slipping, yet she managed in a gravelly voice to utter, ‘I’m sitting right here.’

  Darya looked at her sadly. ‘You were in Calgary when Ana-Maria was in Oban, and your mother breathed her last. There’s no point in putting up a show for me,’ she said. ‘I know everything.’

  Ana-Maria did not respond. Her gaze shifted back to the walls behind Darya and it appeared as if she were trying to bring her emotions under control.