Twenty minutes later, they are driving through a large, rather ramshackle gate on a kachcha road, into the compound of the Children’s Village.
A game of basketball is in progress on the newly cemented court. As they alight from the Gypsy, several of the boys raise their arms and wave at Kashi, who waves back. A lean, dark man in his mid-thirties breaks away from the group of players and strides towards them, letting down the cassock that he had hitched up around his waist.
‘Kashi!’ he greets the lawyer. ‘How are you, men? Good to see you again! What’s happening?’ His gaze travels to the quiet, homely stranger standing beside Kashi, and his face grows slightly apprehensive. ‘Has … has something happened?’
‘This is ACP Bhavani Singh,’ Kashi says formally, looking at the priest with troubled eyes. ‘We don’t have good news I’m afraid, Father Vick …’
In his little office, lined on three sides with metal filing cabinets, Fr Victor sits behind a metal desk, a crucifix and a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi on the wall at his back, and stares at his guests, his expression stunned.
‘Dead! Dead yesterday morning! Lambu! I can’t believe it! I just spoke to him on Saturday!’
‘We saw your call history on his phone,’ Bhavani replies.
‘You have his phone?’ Fr Victor looks startled. ‘Yes, of course, you would have his phone … what am I thinking …’
‘My men tried to call you.’
Fr Victor turns to look at the policeman in an uncomprehending sort of way. ‘They did? I’m sorry, I didn’t see … Mornings are so busy here … all the boys have to be bathed and dressed and fed …’
‘Of course, of course,’ Bhavani murmurs.
‘How … how did it happen? An accident? That accursed motorbike!’
Victor listens intently as Bhavani explains the details. Then breaks down and asks for permission to go away and pray. Bhavani nods very solicitously, and grants it.
The priest returns after twenty minutes, his eyes bloodshot, but his expression calmer.
‘This is going to hit the boys hard,’ he says sombrely. ‘They’re all so fond of their Lambodar bhaiya. They work so hard to impress him, and they’re all hoping he’s going to give them a big leg-up career wise and so on … He’s the big success story around here, for sure—’ He looks up at Kashi, ‘You know that, men!’
‘Yes of course.’ Kashi’s voice is reassuringly steady. ‘I’ve personally seen how much the kids idolized him – but right now it’s you I’m thinking of Fr Vick – you two were,’ he pauses (that damn phrase again!), ‘childhood friends, right?’
Fr Victor nods, his eyes still stunned. ‘We grew up right here in BCV – Lambu, me, and our friend Rax. I was the good boy – always did what I was told and so on. Rax was born with a misshapen leg – and the Brothers used to say that his mind was even more twisted than his twisted body. And Lambu … he was the tallest and the strongest boy in all of Badshahpur, all of Haryana perhaps! We were a good, tight team and we watched out for each other, and all the little fellows too. When we got older, I went off to the seminary, Rax got an accounting job in a sports store, and Lambu got placed as a waiter in a small café in Mangalore.’ He gives a short, unsteady laugh. ‘He used to get angry if anybody called him a waiter – he said he was doing hotel management, if you please! But he did well … he was noticed by the senior people, and soon he got a job as a cleaner on a cruise ship! It was the lowest paying job on the ship, but Lambu always knew how to talk to people and charm them – and soon he was cleaning on a bigger, better cruise ship – and then he wrote to me that he was learning dancing, and that they let him work out in the gym for free …’
His gaze grows distant. They all sit quietly for a while – the only sound in the room is Bhavani Singh steadily working his way through a cup of tea and a packet of Parle-G biscuits.
Fr Victor draws a deep, shaky breath, then continues.
‘When he came back for my ordination ceremony, I couldn’t recognize him, men! His hair was long, and he had this accent, and he moved differently – the dancing had opened up something inside him! He was different inside his head too – he said watching people spend his entire month’s salary on a bottle of wine on the cruise ships had changed the way his brain was wired. He was nicer in some ways – but he was also …’ Fr Victor’s voice dips, ‘darker in some ways. It troubled me.’
He goes quiet for a while, seeing things they can only sense.
‘I spent the day I received my holy orders feeling jealous of my best friend. I resented the amount of money he was clearly earning, his dashing looks, his expensive clothes, the motorcycle he showed up on, his casual sexual conquests – not that he boasted of them or anything, but I could sense a certain smugness in him. It made me feel small on what should have been my big, glorious day. We fought.’
He falls silent. Outside, the basketball game seems to be getting more boisterous.
‘Rax tried to stop it, but not wholeheartedly. He is essentially a mischief-maker – the kind of person who enjoys it when people around him fight. The Lord makes some people like that. Lambu was hurt and angry. I was self-righteous and envious – both terrible things for a priest to be. It was horrible.’
‘But it got better,’ Kashi says.
Fr Victor nods gratefully. ‘Yes! We lost touch … six years went by … but I remembered Lambu in my prayers every single day! Perhaps, he too thought of me … Rax was the only point of contact between us, and Rax … is Rax. “Blessed are the peacemakers” was a psalm he’d always laughed at! Just enjoying the importance of being the guy in between, and doing nothing to heal the schism! Anyway, then I was transferred back here and one blessed day, out of the blue, Lambu came to see me. He said he knew a lot of rich people who wanted to do good works – donate money and volunteer and so on. He said he wanted to contribute in some way too; BCV was his home and that Rax and I were his family.
‘I was so relieved I can’t tell you, men! My prayers to the Lord to heal the rift between Lambu and me had finally been heard! And then, what blessings poured down on us from above! Lambu’s clients were generous – too generous! We have done so much good work with the money he has been sending us! The new wing for the younger boys, the laptops for the senior boys, the new basketball courts … it has all happened through Lambu’s donors!’
Bhavani Singh puts down his teacup. ‘Would it be possible to see your list of donors, Father Victor?’
It is a very pale, taut-jawed Kashi Dogra who arrives at Bambi Todi’s 6, Aurangzeb Road home that evening. The guards at the gate aren’t impressed when he emerges from a ramshackle UberGo – they make him wait for a while. Finally, after a short exchange on the intercom with somebody inside, their manner changes and they allow him in with a deferential bow. He strides quickly through the familiar driveway and garden and into the portico, pressing the bell above a massive marble Ganesha impatiently.
Still as smug and loathsome as ever, he thinks as he surveys the Ganesha with undisguised hostility. They have a history – at the age of eight he had knocked the trunk off that thing with a cricket ball, and it had to be stuck back with Araldite. The faint crack is visible even now. Bambi’s mother had pretended not to care, but she has disliked him ever since – which is cool, the feeling is mutual. He hopes she isn’t home; he really doesn’t want to meet her or drink any of her foul mocktail concoctions. All he wants is a quick, no-bullshit conversation with Bambi. She must be home – there’s no way they’d have let him in if she wasn’t.
She is. She answers the door herself, dressed in a Red Riding Hood–type flannel dressing gown, loosely tied over a short white nightie that leaves her smooth, creamy thighs bare. She beams at him, looking more like a cinnamon-sugared cupcake than ever. Kashi struggles to hold on to his anger.
‘Oh my God! Kashi Dogra in the house!’ She holds out her arms in enthusiastic greeting. ‘How long has it been since you came ho—’
‘Oookay.’ Bambi pulls a face, then grabs his wrist and leads him up the marble staircase. ‘C’mon! I’ve redecorated since you were last here – what d’you think?’
She throws open her bedroom door and turns to him with a smile. He registers a cool mintiness where there once used to be a lot of hot pinkness, then locks eyeballs with her.
‘Was Leo Matthew blackmailing you?’ he asks quietly. ‘Why? And don’t even try to lie to me – you know I’ll know at once.’
Staring down at her with angry, entitled eyes, he watches as a live, breathing girl turns into a statue. She goes so stony and still that for a moment, Kashi is reminded of the marble Ganesha downstairs. Suddenly scared, he gives her a little shake.
‘Bee!’
‘Hmm?’
‘Talk to me!’
She blinks. Her eyes lose that scary blind look and focus on him – which should be good – except that they’re blazing with anger.
‘Why?’ She gives him a little push. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Another little push. ‘What makes you think you can just barge into my house, and demand I tell you stuff I haven’t told a single human soul?’ It’s turning into a series of little pushes punctuating her words, each slightly harder than the one before. ‘What makes you so special, huh?’
Backed against the closed door now, Kashi grasps both her hands, which are flattened against his chest, into one of his.
‘But I’m …’ His voice falters, his eyes are troubled. ‘You’re my … You used to tell me everything, Bambi!’
‘Used to.’ She nods, breathing hard, her voice bitter. ‘But you’re “very happy with your girlfriend” now, na!’
His jaw sets. ‘That’s not fair, Bam.’
She gulps. ‘I know!’
Breathing as hard as her, he leans in to urgently say, ‘Fuck all that. Tell me what’s going on.’
She shakes him off. ‘No. This whole “friends” idea was silly. We should just let it go.’
The pain in her voice is raw.
Kashi grabs her hands. ‘Tell me,’ he says steadily. ‘Tell me what’s been happening, Bambi, why did your Zumba trainer send you that stupid, threatening song and why have you donated half a crore to the BVC?’
She sits down on the minty green bed with an ungraceful thump.
‘It’s Mammu. She steals things.’
When Kashi just looks at her blankly, feeling absurdly anticlimactic, Bambi explains, ‘It’s kleptomania. She started small, just stuff from the hotels she used to stay in – low risk, easily explained away, not at all a biggie – but then she started getting more ambitious. I don’t understand it too well, but apparently the greater the risk of being caught, the more of a high you get out of doing it. She’s been desperately unhappy for a while—’ She gives a bitter little laugh. ‘Paapu’s some sort of a manwhore apparently.’
‘Bambi!’ Kashi reaches for her, appalled – she used to be such a daddy’s girl, the man could do no wrong according to her.
She backs away, but holds on to his fingertips, pulling him to sit beside her on the bed. ‘Never mind him. Let me tell you about her. Ya, so anyway, she went to some fancy-ass party, and while everybody was singing happy birthday to the birthday girl, she slunk off and picked up two gift boxes from the gifts table and snuck them into her bag, and Leo took a video of her doing so.’
Kashi cocks a quizzical eyebrow.
‘Whatthefuck was he doing lurking around the gifts tables with his camera out? What a dog!’
Bambi gives a rather manic giggle. ‘Yeah, I think he suspected her already – he had this way of knowing things about people.’ She gives a little shiver. ‘It’s bloody scary.’
Kashi gives her a quick side hug. ‘Then what happened?’
She stares down at their inter-laced fingers. ‘Then he sent me that stupid Cheeky Peaches song. That’s what you saw on his phone, na?’
Kashi nods. ‘Yeah.’
‘Naturally, it freaked me out a bit. Had he cottoned on to Mammu’s problem? But I brazened it out, acted like I didn’t know what he was talking about. So then one day after class, he slithered up to me and showed me the video.’
‘And Bambi Todi ki phat gayee,’ says Kashi whimsically.
‘Naturally! Especially as those little boxes had really expensive earrings inside them! Like diamonds and shit. Anyway, he showed me the video, which was bad enough – seeing Mammu with that crazy gleam in her eyes, furtively sweeping loot into her handbag – but the lecture he gave me after that was even more fucked up. He was such a bloody hypocrite! He said this was an opportunity to do penance and give back to the disadvantaged, and how the rich have a responsibility to the poor – and that he’d delete the video right away if I donated some money to this orphanage he was into. As if Todi Corp doesn’t give back at all!! I wanted to tell him ki listen, behenchod, we have a huge-ass CSR wing and we do a lot!’
She pauses, breathing hard.
‘He thought he was Robin Hood,’ Kashi says defensively. ‘He had a pretty shitty life, Bee.’
‘He thought he was God,’ she says vehemently. ‘Bypassing the legal system, handing out “justice”, granting absolution … Like, what the fuck?’
Well, seen from Bambi’s point of view, Leo Matthew does seem to be a bit of a choot, Kashi has to admit.
‘So then …?’ he asks.
She shrugs. ‘I sanctioned a sum of fifty lakh to his stupid orphanage from our CSR funds, what else? I did it in bits, so nobody would question the decision – we’re not some lala family-run business, you know.’
‘You didn’t tell your folks?’
She rubs her eyes tiredly, looking like the child he remembers so well. ‘No ya, Kashi – you’ve no idea, my home life is hell. Mammu’s anyway refused to get treatment for the kleptomania and gone off to her brother’s place in LA. She’s been holed up there these past three months. Paapu’s never home either. We’re all just looking for reasons to stay the fuck out of this house.’
There is silence in the room for a while.
Sensing his disapproval, she adds defensively, ‘Besides, you know, it was for a good cause and all. Like, that orphanage is legit. Maybe it’ll help him get some brownie points in Heaven.’
‘Well, you can’t let it go any more,’ Kashi says decisively.
She grimaces. ‘Why? Leo deleted Mammu’s video once I transferred the money.’
‘I know,’ Kashi replies. ‘There was no such video on his phone. We checked it out thoroughly today.’
She breathes a sigh of relief. ‘So then it’s all cool.’
Kashi grips her hands. ‘No it isn’t.’
She looks confused. ‘Why?’
‘You weren’t the only person Leo was blackmailing, Bambi.’
Bambi’s pretty mouth falls open. ‘What?’
He nods grimly. ‘And his death wasn’t a gym accident. He was murdered. His protein shake was poisoned.’
‘Shut up!’ Her eyes are huge. ‘What are you saying! You mean one of the people he was blackmailing offed him? Oh my God, Kashi, who all did he even send that song to?’
‘All people with secrets, I guess,’ Kashi replies grimly. ‘Seems like he was running a proper blackmailing ring. And one of them got sick of Leo yanking their chain and decided to take him down. We have to find out who.’
7
A Snake in the Garden
‘You left the milk on the gas,’ Bhavani Singh’s wife looks up from her book to tell him when he emerges from their bathroom later that night in his half-sleeved vest and striped pyjamas. ‘It curdled.’
‘So give us paneer bhurji for breakfast tomorrow,’ he replies as he pulls on his warm ‘sleeping’ sweater. ‘Shalu, do you know what is Zumba?’
She shuts her book, amused. ‘Why? Who’s doing Zumba i
n Chanakyapuri?’
He stands by the dresser and just looks at her for a while. The sight of her soft, bright face, loose, brown hair and familiar red-and-purple batik kaftan is so restful to the eyes after a long, hard day.
‘All of us,’ he informs her as he clambers into the bed. ‘From the constables to the commissioners. We are all real hip-cats in the Crime Branch.’
Shalini gurgles with laughter. ‘Bhavani, nobody says hip-cats any more!’
‘Oho, Shalini ma’am thinks she’s so up-to-date because she teaches teenagers!’ he says teasingly, as he eases his pillow out from behind her. ‘But let us tell you, Shalu, that retro is cool now! You remember that old Cheeky Peaches song – “Secrets”?’
‘Cheeky Peaches!’ she exclaims. ‘We used to like that band!’
‘Well, we had a dead body today.’ Bhavani sighs as he sinks back against the pillows. ‘He died because of the Cheeky Peaches.’
‘What? What?’ Shalini puts away her book and turns to her husband attentively. ‘Tell!’
The Crime Branch would frown upon their cases being discussed so freely in the marital bed, but Bhavani and Shalini have always shared everything. Food, fears, colds, chores, sweaters, socks, dreams and information. It had made them a formidable combination as parents, always united before their two strong-willed little girls, and now that the girls are settled and they themselves are much older, it is the glue that binds their marriage.
Shalini listens, absorbed, her chin resting on her fisted hand, as he fills her in on the main points, ending with the call he has just received from Kashi while in the bathroom, confirming that Bambi was indeed being blackmailed by Leo.
‘Kleptomania isn’t that bad,’ she says finally.
He nods. ‘But the others probably had worse secrets. He was playing a dangerous game.’
‘But the murderer played it safe,’ she says. ‘We’ve heard of Pinko Hathni. The kids are popping it at all the parties – a really tiny, white pill, like a homeopathy ki goli, which acts two minutes after you’ve consumed it. Which is why another nickname for it is Maggi.’
Club You to Death Page 11
