Tall, handsome, unmistakable, and I nearly choked on one of the bubbles in my tea. Shayak or Mayank or whatever!
It didn’t appear as though he had seen me, and my body did an about-turn without consulting my brain on the subject, getting ready to walk with all the speed I could summon to put as much distance between myself and the man as possible. But I hadn’t made it much farther than the bubble-tea stall when I felt at least a dozen heavy drops of water assault my body from all sides.
I thought of braving it through the rain, but it came down faster and harder, forcing me to step under the awning of the tea stall again to grope around in my bag for an umbrella with one hand, clutching my teacup with the other. No luck. And then I saw Shayak—whatever his name was, for the time being it would have to be Shayak—standing before me.
‘What are the chances?’ he said, a small smile at his lips.
‘Not as slim as you would think,’ I said wryly.
‘And why do you say that?’
‘I seem to run into people I know on an almost daily basis. Something about Calcutta, I guess.’
‘Really? The city of fourteen million people is too small for you? Well, you are a journalist. You must meet loads of people on a daily basis.’
I returned his smile. ‘So, what brings you here?’ I asked.
‘Business,’ he said.
‘And you?’ I paused, feeling a trace of panic. I was an out-of-practice private investigator, but this shouldn’t be hard, I reassured myself. ‘I had a spot of shopping to do, and then I stopped to get some bubble tea.’
‘Bubble tea?’
‘You’ve never had it?’ I asked, grabbing at the distraction. I turned around and asked the young girl behind the counter for another. All too soon the drink was ready, and I handed him a sealed plastic cup, identical to my own, with a thick green straw sticking out of it. ‘Try it. It’s huge in the Far East—Hong Kong, Shanghai, Korea.’
I watched Shayak’s face for a reaction to Hong Kong, though I couldn’t detect one. But it didn’t take long for a look of disgust to register on his face. A mouthful of smooth, somewhat slimy pearls of starch was clearly not to his taste.
‘What are these things?’ he scowled, thrusting the cup at me.
I shook my head. One was quite enough. ‘Tapioca beads.’
‘Drowning in sugary milk?’
‘That’s the tea.’
‘Yech.’
‘Yech?’ I repeated with a smile, as he tried to take another sip and rejected it in quite the same manner.
‘Sorry, but I am a black coffee person,’ he declared, chucking the cup unceremoniously into a waiting bin.
‘At least we have that in common.’
Mischief flashed in his eyes. ‘I am sure that is just for starters. Why don’t we find out over lunch?’
I looked up into his smiling face, unsure of what to say, surprised and pleased—without the time to ask myself why. But this man was the enemy now, and I wouldn’t give in so easily.
‘Now, if we could only find a cab.’
It seemed as though Shayak, or Mayank, had assumed that I was accompanying him for a meal.
‘Impossible,’ I said. ‘Impossible to get a cab in this weather, in this area.’
Shayak was just about to dash out from the shade of the tea stall when he turned around to look at me, raising a questioning eyebrow.
He bounded out with long, sure strides, hands in his pockets. In two minutes, sufficiently damp but victorious, he waved to me. Even in the rain, he held the door open, waiting for me to scramble in.
Perfect, I said to myself, unable and unwilling to resist. And then I told myself that Shayak was a person of interest in the Agarwal matter, so it was my job to get to know more about him. I got in at last.
‘So where are we headed?’ he asked.
‘If you’re taking me out, shouldn’t you choose the place?’
‘I’m from out of town. And besides, aren’t you the food expert?’
‘Fair enough.’ I gave the cab driver directions. ‘Since the tea I just subjected you to was from the Far East I’d like to stay with the general theme and redeem the culinary traditions of the region.’
As long as I was being railroaded into lunch, I told myself, I could at least kill two birds with one meal. We reached Middle Kingdom and I headed first for the restroom upstairs, grabbing the chance to look around. Mallika was not there, and if Abhimanyu was, he must be in the kitchen.
One look in the mirror and I was appalled by what the rain had done to me. I looked in a state of apparently irreversible dishevelment. And of course, it was too much to expect me to have carried a comb.
When I emerged, I found that Shayak had evidently also visited the men’s room and looked as unruffled as ever. His hair, neat and just damp, curled above his nape. There was definitely some grey there, and it didn’t seem as though it he would have dyed it. His tall frame was so trim that it was hard to imagine him carrying additional weight. Face to face, it seemed impossible that this man was the Mayank Gupta from the photograph so I would have to go with the relative theory, though that hardly exonerated him of suspiciousness.
Shayak flashed me a grin.
‘What?’ I asked as I took my seat.
He tilted his head, which transformed him from distinguished to devilish in under two seconds. ‘You don’t look like a food writer,’ he said.
‘And what is a food writer supposed to look like?’
He examined me carefully and unapologetically. ‘More frothy, maybe? Not to mention a little less … athletic.’
‘Athletic?’ I could hardly contain the joy that touched my self-loathing heart. I would take ‘athletic’, I told myself, sucking in my tummy and sitting a little more upright.
But then I saw a hint of a smirk and bristled. ‘What do you mean by ‘frothy’? Don’t take me for one of those goth types just because I wear black,’ I said.
Shayak looked thoroughly entertained by my delayed outrage. ‘I don’t even know what “goth” is. All this jargon young people use nowadays… I must be getting old.’
The waitress arrived before I could ask him just how old ‘old’ was.
Shayak handed me the menu. ‘All yours. I won’t get between a woman and her area of expertise.’
With this I happily complied. The dim sum menu Abhimanyu had told me about was there, and I ordered a plate of Shanghai’s soup dumplings, xiaolongbao— ‘These come highly recommended,’ I told him—barbecued pork pastries, sauteed bok choy, spareribs, soy-garlic-tossed cucumbers and a bowl of dan dan noodles, split in two, and a couple of bottles of beer.
‘You certainly do know your way around the menu,’ he said.
‘I’ve been here before. And it’s my area of expertise, as you put it. If you receive a business plan from a company that you are interested in, you know exactly what to look for, right?’ I hoped like hell that was what venture capitalists did.
‘Right,’ he said.
‘So, I know what to look for on a menu, and I do my research.’
‘It seems like a lot of work.’
‘Really? How many times do you eat a day?’
‘Five.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘Small meals,’ he said with a shrug.
‘And how long do you take over each meal?’
‘Fifteen minutes if I am eating alone and the meal is ready, up to two hours if I am cooking.’
‘So that is anywhere between seventy-five minutes and multiple hours a day. A lot of time to spend over an activity worth no thought at all.’ I was surprised to find myself on the defensive. Usually, I was the last one to take my writing job seriously. The PI stuff, however, was personal.
‘Did I say it wasn’t worth the effort? I am sorry if it came across that way,’ he said. ‘I simply meant that the process seems far less off the cuff and requires more homework than I would have thought.’
I busied myself pouring out our beer, which had just arr
ived, silenced by the thought that I might be encountering the perfect man, except for the fact that at the very least he was a liar, and at the very worst a murderer.
Our food and drink arrived in a flurry and demanded our undivided attention for a few moments. I quickly went for the dumplings.
Now I knew these parcels were supposed to be filled with soup, so I scooped one up with chopsticks, placed it gently on my spoon and made a small incision with my teeth. I then gently sucked out the soupy goodness within. Insides more or less drained, it came down to a reasonable temperature, and it was safe to put the rest of it into my mouth.
Shayak stifled a smile. ‘You seem to have that figured out.’
‘You need a lesson?’ There was that edge again.
‘No.’
‘Can’t use chopsticks? Go for it with your spoon.’
He shook his head. ‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Don’t tell me you aren’t having any?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘Of course I will.’
‘Then why are you smirking?’
‘I object to your terminology. I was merely noting the difference in our mode of attack. I love xiaolongbao but I prefer to wait for the dumpling to cool slightly so I can put the whole thing in my mouth at once.’
I felt self-conscious enough to put down my next dumpling altogether.
Shayak didn’t hide his amusement anymore. ‘Please, eat. It is interesting to watch you talk about and eat your food with so much … zest.’
I suppressed an angry ‘hmph’. He was diverted by my food talk, but what else was I expected to say to a complete stranger? That I believed he may be mixed up in a murder? That I never spoke to men I met in bars, on principle? That my hand blazed from where he had touched it while I was getting into the cab?
I managed a well-mannered though evasive ‘hmm’ instead and popped a dumpling into my mouth as a distraction. As I bit in, the still-too-hot liquid exploded and left me breathing out in the futile hope of saving my insides from permanent damage. Damn him. This was a dangerous activity that required the utmost care!
Shayak clucked sympathetically and poured me some more beer. I drank it gratefully, the cold liquid smothering some of the protest.
‘Are you okay? he asked, seemingly genuinely concerned.
‘Fine, fine,’ I lied.
There was a brief pause while we both concentrated on some of the non-scalding dishes on the table.
‘Why don’t you ask me what it is you want to know?’ said Shayak.
‘Huh?’ I seemed out to prove the limited range of my vocabulary to this man. Not only did he make me feel like I was in high school again, but he also had the unhappy ability to constantly take me by surprise, and I didn’t like it one bit.
‘I don’t do this either. Strike up conversations with people I meet in bars. And then offer to save them from the rain. But I did it this time. So, ask what you want about me.’
‘For the record, I did not require saving,’ I said.
Shayak put down his chopsticks to give me his undivided attention, his intense black eyes showing no trace of discomfort. How was he so unfazed all the time? I, on the other hand, clutched at to the cutlery as though I could will them into nunchucks if the occasion so demanded.
‘How old are you?’ Inane, but it was a beginning.
‘Thirty-six,’ he said.
A decade older than me. ‘Are you married?’ Bolder, better.
‘No.’
Relief. But how would I know if he was lying? ‘Have you ever been?’
‘Yes.’
Which led me to believe his previous answer.
‘Do you have kids?’
‘No.’
Mild relief. ‘What brings you to Calcutta?’
‘I thought we’d covered that already during our first meeting at the bar.’
So I was likely to make no real headway in that department. If there was indeed any to be made.
‘What were you doing in Vineeta’s restaurant yesterday?’
‘I don’t know who Vineeta is but if it was a restaurant, I must have been having a meal.’
‘An Indian one. Around dinner time. You saw me there, didn’t you?’
‘I had an early dinner. I was hungry. It was in the neighbourhood.’
‘Why did you disappear?’
‘Without talking to you? You looked busy; I was done and had some place to be.’
I was silenced by the questions I couldn’t ask him. For instance, ‘Why did your marriage end?’ or, ‘Are you a wife beater?’ In short, roundabout ways to reach the answer to my real question, which was, ‘Why are you single?’ This was a conundrum that I could make as little sense of as the other, unmentionable riddle about how this completely unreadable man sitting before me could have anything to do with the life or death of Prakash Agarwal.
Could I be wrong? Could my eyes be playing tricks on me? Perhaps the man in the picture I saw online had nothing to do with the man sitting across from me now. Just a bizarre, coincidental resemblance. Stranger things had happened, right?
Having run out of safe territory, I offered a role reversal. ‘The questioner is now prepared to become the questionee.’
Shayak broke his gaze at last to examine his beer glass briefly. ‘I think I’d rather take my time to find out,’ he said at last.
My stomach dropped down to my feet.
By the time we left the restaurant, the rain had grown into a deluge and the road resembled a fast-flowing stream. Not a cab in sight.
‘Wait here,’ said Shayak.
‘In this weather—’
But he was gone. In less than five minutes he reappeared seated in a cab and jumped out. Now there was no doubt left—anyone who could get me a cab in the worst downpour of the season was nothing short of Prince Charming in a rather greasy charger.
He held the door open for me and I stood there, rain pouring down my face, like a schoolgirl staring at her first crush.
‘This was … unexpected,’ I said.
‘Yes, it was,’ nodded Shayak.
I didn’t have his number and he didn’t have mine, but I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up. ‘Well, goodbye.’
‘Don’t be silly. Get in,’ he said.
I sat down.
He looked at me expectantly. ‘Well? Scoot over! You aren’t getting the only cab left in Calcutta to yourself.’
I quickly scuttled across the seat, and he got in and closed the door. I told the driver where to go amidst intense internal confusion. Did he expect to come to my place?
It was a ten-minute ride home, and my feeble attempts to make conversation were not at all memorable. I was relieved when the cab finally pulled up outside my gate. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the damage had already been done: there was ankle-high water all the way to my stoop.
Shayak stepped out of the cab to let me out. I climbed out after him and stood there, all but soaked through, still without a clue about what to say next.
‘Well, bye!’ I said, hearing a rather unattractive, high-pitched note creep into my voice.
Shayak smiled. ‘In a city of fourteen million people, expecting more than one coincidental reunion may be a bit optimistic.’
‘Of course,’ I said. I dug a piece of paper and pen from the depths of my bag, scribbled my number on it and handed it to him. He took it and slipped it into his pocket.
‘Goodbye, Reema,’ he said finally.
I walked away, knowing he stood there in the water, soaked to the bone, waiting for me to enter my little flat. It took every ounce of my paltry willpower not to look back. As I opened the door, I chanted one line over and over again in my head: ‘Please don’t let him be a murderer. Please don’t let him be a murderer.’
It wasn’t too much to ask for, was it?
fifteen
I walked into an empty house—Amit was out. After my run-in with Sharma that morning I had texted to inform that it was better he didn’t go to work for a few days,
as it would be easy for the police to track him down there, so I wasn’t sure where he was. I only hoped he had sense enough to stay out of trouble.
I changed into dry clothes, mind racing, and not just because of the lunch with Shayak. I had to organize my thoughts, to get a handle on two disparate cases and what I needed to do next. I opened a notebook and began with the Agarwal case. I wrote down what I knew—and what I thought I knew—before calling Mallika again. Her phone was now switched off. I called Mrs Agarwal who confirmed she still had not heard from Mayank Gupta. I wondered if I had made a mistake in holding out on Shayak; perhaps if I had just asked him, I would have had some answers by now. But what reason did I really have to trust him? There seemed nothing to do but wait to hear from Uncle Kumar about the case histories and any possible link to what Santosh da had dug up.
I then moved on to Aloka’s kidnapping and became even more frustrated. I had, at the end of the day, nothing more to go on than Amit’s word and some vague intelligence about the police investigation. I was getting nowhere.
But then I remembered the items that had been moved. And it wasn’t during the break-in; it was sometime after it. I went back to my crime-scene photos and confirmed my suspicion—I had definitely left the hairbrush on the makeshift vanity. I didn’t have photos of the inside of the cupboard, but I was fairly certain about the jeans going missing—they had been hung in order, left to right, of increasing blueness. It was the middle pair which was gone.
I made myself a cup of coffee. An idea was just forming in my mind, almost like a forgotten dream that comes back more as a feeling than a narrative. But then my phone rang, shattering the amorphous thought.
‘Hello, baby.’
‘Hi, Ma.’
‘Dear, Hema is coming tonight! I am so excited!’
‘Yes, Ma, I remember,’ I said, whacking myself on the forehead. How could I forget? ‘What do you two gals have planned?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ll see if the old lady is tired and needs to rest. But I am sure she’ll want to see you soon.’
The Masala Murder: Reema Ray Mysteries Page 14
