A Killer Among Us

by Ushasi Sen Basu

  Nandana stopped short. ‘But, wait a minute. If it’s all so innocent why didn’t you tell us? And more importantly, why didn’t you explain yourself rather than throwing my crockery at me?’

  ‘It’s shameful, na? What will people say? But now I realise, if people must talk, let them discuss the real reason and not some malicious gossip imputing perverse motivations to Dilip, poor lamb.’

  Nandana bridled again. The bitch!

  ‘I was doing nothing of the sort, but if you’d told me the truth earlier, then yes, I could have added your explanation to the people I told.’

  ‘Aha! Who did you tell, tell me! The girls? I did feel like they were looking at me strangely yesterday over tea.’

  ‘Wait, what tea?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t call you, did we? Seeing that you are the sort to spread rumours about our husbands?’

  But I saw Deepa yesterday afternoon…Nandana was thinking, not wanting to admit that it hurt her like she was a five-year-old left out of a game of tag.

  Pallabi said, ‘We didn’t call your bestie Deepa either, we just used to put up with her because of you. She gives me the creeps.’

  ‘We-ell, I guess you had to explain Dilip’s “sleepwalking”,’ Nandana sketched heavy air quotes in the air, ‘to them too. At least to explain why I’ve been cut out of the group.’

  ‘No, they didn’t even ask why you weren’t invited, so no explanation was needed.’

  Nandana seethed.

  Pallabi had gone all innocent again. ‘Now that I’ve clarified everything, you won’t go around telling people, na?’

  There was something almost childlike in Pallabi’s logic.

  ‘This is not a simple matter of his going into some house and wandering out. Dilip was out and about, er…sleepwalking…’ Nandana injected heavy irony into the word, ‘…on the night of the murder too.’

  Deep furrows appeared between Pallabi’s overplucked brows, the signal that a tantrum was on the way. Her moods flipped every ten seconds. Talking to her was always volatile, like playing with mercury.

  Nandana tensed, but Pallabi favoured a passing ‘uncle’ with a smile and a cheery wave, instead. She presently took a deep breath and said, ‘I wish you would stop lying. Is it for attention? Or are you jealous?’

  ‘Lies? You just admitted he goes into people’s homes at night. Within the space of the same conversation you have decided to change your version? Talk about lies!’

  Pallabi gritted her teeth. Nandana watched as her fists curled into balls. She felt a giggle rise in her gorge when a scene from her son’s favourie movie flashed across her brain. Let’s see if she turns green….

  Pallabi had reined her fury in because they were in public. Nandana wondered if she regretted the decision to ambush her here.

  Pallabi’s voice came out overly patient, like she was explaining a simple concept to an idiot child. ‘I don’t know why you keep bringing up the night of the murder. Yes, Dilip probably walked into your apartment a few weeks ago, and a few others. He has no memory of it but he…I can sometimes tell he has gone wandering, when the door is ajar in the morning or there is mud on his bare feet. I sit and worry about it. He never does any harm, right? He just leaves. But just because you need a sacrificial goat you cannot foist a serious accusation like this….’

  ‘Don’t you think trespassing into people’s homes is serious enough? Look at how you’re brushing it off! And after what happened on the 6th, I cannot see….’

  Pallabi broke in again, ‘We were away, got it? We were away that night. And though not ideal, we have an alibi for it too. Yes, I couldn’t stop it, but one of our neighbours did. Dilip had “trespassed” as you call it, the night before the murder and the bastard of 503 had called the police on him. He was in lock-up till Friday night, and I was running pillar to post trying to get them to drop the charges, rustling up the ‘fine’ the police station required, talking to lawyers in case the neighbours didn’t drop the charges, calling a doctor up to provide an appropriate certificate. Okay?

  I have told the police people as much, all they have to do is look up their own records.’

  Pallabi threw her head back and cackled at Nandana’s crestfallen face. ‘So disappointed! You’ll pay for this… you bitch!’ The last word was a merest whisper. ‘I told you, you messed with the wrong family. Watch how I turn the whole building against you and your kids. No one will even stop and talk to your family now.’

  ‘You’re the one with a pervert husband who spent a day and night in jail, you seem to be very confident they’ll take your side over mine!’ Nandana felt a twinge of conscience. Perhaps Dilip’s behaviour really had a medical explanation? But, this was Pallabi! She had watched her fake a child’s illness to get out of a bind.

  Pallabi was rolling on, full steam. ‘There are always things I can say about you. What about going all dressed up to the lake? Standing around alone looking for company? Wandering around on the second floor in your negligée in the wee hours of the morning? Don’t think that has gone unnoticed in our complex. I think some whore gossip (again the whisper) always trumps boring news about a man taking medication and walking into somebody else’s house by mistake.’

  Nandana’s hand drew back of its own accord, but someone caught it firmly from behind.

  Ira brought her hand down and entwined Nandana’s fingers with hers, so that it looked to unsuspecting passers-by like they were holding hands. ‘What the hell is going on here? Did you just say “whore”?’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Nandana said, trying to untangle her fingers from Ira’s impatiently. ‘You said he sleepwalked. Now he “walked in by mistake”?’

  Pallabi didn’t miss a beat. ‘Doesn’t matter. Either way, he isn’t a murderer. Your new…,’ she looked Ira up and down and at their intertwined fingers, ‘friend is probably the one, my dear; and the truth will soon come out.’

  ‘You’re a liar, everyone knows! It’s a sickness! I know what I heard, let GO of me,’ she shook Ira’s hand off in fury. ‘I heard your door open and close, minutes before the body was discovered. He was probably taking the body to the lift at the time….’

  She glanced at Ira to back her up, but the younger woman’s face looked contemplative.

  ‘Now this, this is not possible. Ask the police! I left the kids at my mother’s and was at the police station all day and night. Please feel free to contact the police station.’ Pallabi flashed her perfect teeth again.

  ‘I know what I heard! I heard the door open and close…’ Nandana could hear the conviction in her voice flag. Something about what Pallabi said gave her pause. Pallabi lied more glibly than anyone she knew, but she realised her neighbour would have taken care to fabricate a less embarrassing alibi, given the choice.

  ‘Ask the people at 503, go, right now!’ Pallabi pointed dramatically upwards, all caution forgotten.

  ‘You and your friends are just on a witchhunt! You are basing your whole accusation on what you heard? Will you now claim to have seen Dilip? You are lying for some agenda of your own… I always knew you were jealous….’

  Nandana had fallen silent. A small circle of people had begun to gather a few feet away; they muttered and asked each other what was going on. They were quite happy to let matters play out. Entertainment was in such short supply on most days.

  Ira took her hand again and tugged gently, ‘Come on, let’s go; your kids will worry.’

  Pallabi had turned to her audience, she had obviously decided to be the one to explain and get the crowd on her side. ‘She claims to have “heard” my husband on the night of the murder, blaming an innocent, sick man. As if our door is the only one in the building that she can hear! She is covering up for her own and her friends’ guilt. Look who her friends are!’

  Some of her audience nodded and muttered. They glowered at Nandana and Ira’s retreating backs.

  *****

  Ira led her into the lift and towards her flat still clutching her hand. Nandana was in a daze. C
ould she have been so wrong all along?

  This was the building in which she was always privy, yes indeed privy, to noises of all sorts emitting from other people’s homes. She heard the man who roared ‘whaaaack’ every morning. A necessary part of the ablution process after brushing one’s teeth for some people; and a most unmusical alarm clock for the rest. On a daily basis she heard toilets flush, children being scolded and their consequent wails, and on two occasions―the sound of a man raging followed by cries of pain and ‘please stop’ in a woman’s voice.

  On both occasions, she could not tell where it came from, from her own building or from one of the neighbouring wings, even though she stood close to the window trying to place the source of the cries as they bounced off the walls. Of course, the immediate neighbours of the family knew who it was. How could they not? Her enquiries, however, had been met with deathly silence. After all ‘what people did in the privacy of their own home was their business, no? Neighbours had no right to meddle’. Odd that this fastidious respect for privacy didn’t apply in most other cases, often in consensual activities.

  She glanced at Ira leading her by the hand like she was a child. This girl here probably had brought a boy home a few weeks ago, which had set the whole building ravening at her heels like rabid wolves. It was a logical conclusion then that wife beating was well within the ethical code, though it warranted (if at all spoken about) some token head-waggling, tsk-tsking with sadness and ‘what to do?’ shrugs; but a young girl making her independent life choices wasn’t.

  Ira broke into her thoughts, ‘Your kids are home? They’ll let us in?’

  ‘The door is open, I think.’

  Ira emitted an incredulous snort and turned the handle. She went straight to the dining area, flipped a glass over that had been left face down, and filled it to the brim from the flower-printed plastic jug.

  ‘Drink this water and tell me what happened.’

  Nandana shook her head. ‘I had been assuming…based on well…prior things. Not baseless, but assumptions, none the less.’

  ‘Ma, where have you been? We’ve been waiting. We’re hungry!’ The children, still in their uniforms, piled into the living room.

  ‘Not right now, go away,’ Ira said with a shooing flap of her hands.

  Nandana looked up at her angrily, but nodded at the kids and said, ‘Piya, can you take your brother inside for ten minutes? Change and wash up. I’ll be done by then.’

  Piya looked like she was about to argue, but took her brother into their room and shut the door instead.

  Nandana covered her face with her hands, ‘I never dreamt I would say this, but Pallabi’s right.’

  ‘About what?’ Ira asked, impassively.

  ‘What she said about my hearing her door….’

  Ira nodded, like she thought as much. ‘Are you wondering if you heard it at all?’

  Nandana beetled her brows, the question annoyed her, but she let it go. There had been enough acrimony in the past week to last her a lifetime.

  ‘No, I heard it. It was soft, but I definitely heard it. It’s unusual to hear doors open and close at 2 am. I just assumed because of what had happened with Dilip earlier that he…was making sure to be quiet….’

  ‘Okay. You’re saying it could have been any other door in the building? Perhaps from a floor above or a floor below?’

  Nandana massaged her forehead. ‘I couldn’t have been that mistaken… I wasn’t listening for it exactly! Nor do I have ears like a bat!’

  ‘Your floor then?’

  Nandana made a face. ‘Yes, my floor.’

  Ira’s eyes widened.

  A fresh-looking Prithwish bounded into the room again. ‘Ma, I’m hungry! And Didi pinched me!’

  Ira smacked her hand to her forehead, every limb saying, these kids have the damnedest sense of timing!

  Nandana stood up. ‘I’m coming, shona.’

  Ira held her hand up at the boy as if warding him off. She looked at Nandana, ‘You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?’

  Nandana nodded mutely and drank all the water down in a gulp. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. I have suspicions but this time it makes far less sense. I’ll call you as soon as I’m free. We can’t possibly discuss this while these two are awake.’

  Her children looked back at the two women, round-eyed and disappointed.

  ****

  Ira knocked on Nandana’s door softly as instructed. Kushal wrenched the door open, and stood looking at her.

  Ira opened her mouth. She wondered whether to explain or ask for Nandana but Kushal stepped aside saying, ‘Yes, Nandana told me you are expected. Please come in and have a seat, she’s just telling our younger one a story. He can’t sleep without his mummy’s bedtime story. Baby of the family, you see.’

  Ira grinned in response.

  ‘Mamma’s boy, too.’ He faux whispered.

  Ira nodded and smiled once more, remembering with some traces of shame her rather shabby treatment of the kids earlier on in the day.

  Kushal looked at his watch, swung his arms awkwardly a few times, and cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps she’s fallen asleep. She often nods off before our son does! 9.30! Let me go in and send her out, shall I?’ He left with alacrity.

  Ira remained standing in the middle of the living room floor, glad that the awkward conversation was done.

  Sweet and attractive, in a resigned, old guy kind of way. But she really wanted to speak to his wife. She had plans to go out with Ayan, later that night. It would be the first time they went to a party together. As a ‘couple’ she supposed, if one had to label it.

  Nandana came out patting her curly, flyaway hair down. ‘Sorry! I can never stay awake. I tell some very effective bedtime stories.’ Her face sobered almost immediately.

  She gestured to the sofa and said, ‘Please sit down. Didn’t Kushal ask you to? Really!’

  ‘Oh no, no, I’m just feeling a bit jumpy. Can’t stay still.’

  ‘Yes, yes. It’s already feeling a little unreal to me. I mean, I felt like I knew who it was but really…it can again be a mistake.’

  Ira smiled. ‘Hoping it’s a mistake?’

  ‘That too. And if I’m right, it makes even less sense than earlier.’

  Ira was chewing her lip, deep in thought. ‘Okay, full disclosure. I haven’t told you quite a bit of what I found out.’

  ‘The timing thing? Yes, I remember.’ She smiled at Ira and quirked an eyebrow at the memory of their argument.

  ‘That’s the least of it. Mrs Ghoshal and Kedarnath are inextricably linked with all of this.’

  ‘Hyan? I wasn’t thinking of them at all…,’ Nandana subsided. ‘Go ahead, tell me everything.’ Let’s be methodical about this.

  Ira tied her hair up again as she began to talk. The Ira version of ‘girding her loins’, Nandana guessed. How did one actually gird one’s loins? Which parts were loins exactly, she began to wonder.

  ‘Are you listening?’ Ira barked, making Nandana jump.

  ‘Ye-es, you were asking if I knew that Kedarnath-da didn’t actually get gastroenteritis, he was poisoned.’ Thank God for automatic recall, Nandana thought absentmindedly, it had saved her many a time in school too. What was wrong with her, she just couldn’t concentrate, must be some late-onset shock. She sat up straight with a jolt. ‘Hang on a minute! Poisoned? Who would poison him?’

  ‘Thank you for paying attention,’ Ira said with mock sweetness. ‘It was his dear old mum.’

  Nandana’s mouth hung open, she had no trouble focussing now.

  Now that Ira had her full attention, she ran Nandana through the events around Kedar’s inadvertent poisoning and his mother’s subsequent confessions to her. Nandana’s mouth opened wider until she clicked it shut at the point Mrs Ghoshal identified the dead man as her nephew.

  ‘Manoj, she said his name was.’

  ‘That man’s name was Manoj and he was her nephew?’ Nandana remembered the tense couple of minutes a few days ago in Mrs Ghoshal
’s living room. Three pairs of eyes had looked down at the laughing, handsome young man draped insolently on Kedarnath’s shoulder in the photo album. Manoj. Died recently. Kedarnath’s cousin. Kedarnath’s visible relief when Nandana had shut the album. Her mind jumped instantly to the dead man’s face. Much corrupted by time and made grotesque by death, but it was unmistakable. He wore the hair the same way, the dead mouth twisted in a leer could very well have flashed the same infectious smile. This was what her mind was nudging her to recognise that day. The dead man’s face was branded in her memory, it was a wonder she hadn’t made the connection immediately.

  ‘This is what Mrs Ghoshal told me. Kedarnath was cagey, didn’t deny or admit it.’ Ira had continued talking, oblivious. ‘They kept it from the police this long, they weren’t about to tell me!’

  Nandana pondered this for a while. ‘I saw the dead guy. In the photo album. I’m pretty sure it was him. Manoj.’

  ‘What! Are you sure? What photo album?’

  ‘Mrs Ghoshal’s, last week. Kedarnath came in and saw her showing it to me and seemed upset. At least as much as Kedarnath-da can be.’

  Ira slapped her hand down on her thigh. ‘Finally! Something concrete!’

  ‘But…but Mrs Ghoshal says she poisoned both her nephew and her son?’ She just couldn’t wrap her mind around all this. Till a few hours ago she had been so convinced it was someone else.

  ‘See, here’s the thing, this is what she claims. I have my doubts. There is incontrovertible proof that she poisoned her son, but the nephew I’m not so sure of. Besides, that doesn’t explain who bludgeoned him to death, kept him hidden for half a day and then left him in the lift, because Mrs Ghoshal has no recollection of any of that.’

  ‘Ke-ke-kedarnath-da?’ Nandana felt quite breathless from all the new suspicions.

  ‘It is strange that he opened the lift at 5, instead of 6, but that can be explained by the fact that he normally takes the stairs, took it by habit, but decided against it at the next floor because it was dark in the stairwell. Also, I doubt he could have hidden the dead body in the flat and taken it out without Mrs Ghoshal spilling the beans to me later. She seemed very keen to make a clean breast of it to me.’