by Irene Black
Sometimes, however, the talk became more personal as Srinivasa gently probed into more private matters.
“And did you never…how to put it…have you never become romantically attached to any one of the many ladies who have undoubtedly passed through your life?”
“There was one,” Ashok said, after a moment’s pause. A face forced itself into his mind, but he pushed the image aside. He wasn’t about to explain to his father why this affair had finally convinced him that a traditional match was the only way to avoid suffering.
“It was a long time ago.” He paused again before adding quietly, “She died.”
Oh, Maighréad. If only it had been that simple.
* * * *
“Some fortress.” Hannah gazed up at the hill on which the massive ruins of the Golconda citadel festered like an elaborate but crumbling sandcastle.
Willi Groot nodded, for once speechless. From the moment she had run into the Dutch girl, in the foyer of the Krishna Hotel shortly after she had booked in on the previous day, Hannah had warmed to her. How could she fail to get on with someone called Willi?
Hannah was always attracted to opposites. She put it down to her curiosity, the same curiosity that drove her career. Hannah Petersen: People’s Investigator. But no, not career. Vocation.
Willi had taken Hannah to the local telecom office, from where she had rung Duncan, her publisher, and left a message on his answering machine to let him know where she was. Later, during a meal together at the Osman Restaurant opposite the hotel, Willi had suggested the excursion to Golconda.
It seemed that Willi, in her cropped, black mini-top and low-cut orange jeans, had to work as hard to look conspicuous as Hannah did to look anonymous. Willi’s ensemble framed her exposed belly button, which had been pierced with a ring, from which dangled a small green feather. And where in all India, Hannah wondered, did she manage to get hold of the coloring to touch up that extraordinary mop of punk-like, yellow hair? The expression on Willi’s soft, round face was open and affable: an old-fashioned powder puff with a stubby little pushed-up nose, like a blob of Blutack. The edges of her ears bore at least half a dozen rings each—they reminded Hannah of a spiral bound book. She almost expected the ears to fly open and flap about. The effect was completed by another ring, this one through the left nostril.
In her beige cotton skirt and brown T-shirt, Hannah needed no props to advertise her presence. She knew that her height and her hair did that for her. Her heavy tresses were hot against her neck: hair like a lion’s mane, her mother used to say. During the last year, she’d sometimes considered dyeing it, but thank goodness she’d resisted the temptation. What was the point? He knew where she lived. Now the very idea of danger in India was ludicrous.
Hannah bought a flimsy guidebook from a tout at the entrance. They made their way across the grassy base to the steps up to the citadel, past the first ruins, and along the Grand Portico. From there, they gazed up at the old granite walls, splendid and still powerful in their decaying glory. As if the hill upon which they stood had thrown them up in some cataclysmic collision of wills.
They climbed slowly up hundreds of steps that led to the top of the hill. They were alone, apart from one woman, who was also making the pilgrimage to the top, some distance behind them. Totally enveloped in a black burkha, her face was veiled and invisible. Hannah again pushed aside a frisson of discomfort. Don’t be absurd, she told herself.
Halfway through their climb, they looked down at the countryside beyond the fortress perimeter walls. Dust clouded the air and clung to the low bushes and hovels scattered across the landscape. Animals meandered along the road—a cow with blue painted horns, yellow pariah dogs, a little flock of sheep and goats, heavy, gray buffalo. Out of nowhere, women, bright as birds of paradise, appeared with silver pots upon their heads. Dominating the tableau like jet on a pebble beach stood the Qutab Shahi Tombs, each the domed mausoleum of some ancient Islamic noble.
“Wow!” Hannah breathed. “Got to get a shot of that view.”
“Nice camera.”
Hannah nodded. “Photography’s my…” She was about to say hobby but then remembered. “My job. I’m really a portrait photographer.” She reminded herself that for the next few months she would indeed, quite legitimately, be a portrait photographer. That, after all, was the reason for her journey, the official reason at least. Duncan had put the idea into her head. He’d always admired the photographs that accompanied her investigations. “Why don’t you do a coffee table book?” he’d suggested. “I’ll publish it. You’re a big enough name for this to be a success.” Poor Duncan. Little did he realize that his suggestion would give her the chance to escape from England and from him.
She muttered to herself, “For standing on the Persians’ grave, I could not deem myself a slave.”
“What’s that, Hannah?”
“Byron. Wrong country, of course. He was writing about Greece.” But it is the right sentiment, she thought to herself. Here I feel free again.
“Greece. Huh!” The Dutch girl sniffed at some memory.
“You don’t like Greece?”
“Jan and I split up in Poros. Silly argument. You know how men are, always wanting things their way.” She shrugged. “Relationships—better off without them.”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “I do know how men are. Much better off without them.” As she spoke, she felt a pang of loneliness.
“How about you? You have a fellow? Or is it women you’re into?”
Good God! How on earth did Willi know? Was it written in code across Hannah’s forehead? Best not to get into that.
“I lived with someone for a while,” she replied, “Duncan. Couple of years. We split up about a year ago, when I came to my senses.”
“Duncan. The guy you phoned yesterday? Still simmering on, eh?”
“Professional reasons. He’s my publisher. I’m doing a book of India photos.”
As they climbed, they explored the citadel buildings and took photographs of their surroundings and of each other. They tried to build up a picture of what life had been like there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, before the city of Hyderabad had become the capital and Golconda was finally abandoned.
At the summit, they wandered into the twelve-arched Durbar Hall.
“Used for general assemblies,” Hannah explained, perusing the guidebook. “If you clap your hands in the Grand Portico by the entrance to the fort, it can be heard in here. So the book says. Look, it’s down there.” She pointed.
“Let’s try it,” Willi exclaimed. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll clap my hands when I get to it. You listen out for me.”
“I want to go down the other way—past the harem. You’ll end up waiting ages for me.”
“No problem. I need to find a loo in any case—lingering touch of Delhi Belly. If you’re still not back, I’ll just go on to the tombs. I’ll tell the driver.”
A third figure had silently slipped into the Durbar Hall. The woman in the burkha studied the graffiti-covered walls intently, seemingly measuring each section in her mind before moving on to the next. Hannah wished she could strike up a conversation. Find out something about this woman’s life. Were her presumptions justified? Or was there another dimension to life beneath the burkha? She smiled. But there was something chilling in the emptiness behind the black shroud from where the eyes, unseen, were watching. For one instant, she thought she caught a whiff of something. Was the nightmare beginning again? No, she told herself. This time it really was her imagination.
Willi waved as she skipped off down the hill. Now Hannah was alone again. To her relief, the woman had also started the descent, some distance behind Willi.
Ten, twenty minutes passed, and Hannah started to get tired of waiting. In addition, a party of noisy school children had arrived, clad in crisp white and green uniforms, the little girls with their hair in identical bunches. They crowded around Hannah, who was clearly far more interesting than the ruins.
Laughter convulsed them as they tried out their English on her.
“Hallo!”
“From where you are coming?”
“How do you do?”
More laughter as Hannah snapped them with her camera. Such expressive eyes. Such innocent delight. Such intensity. All good material, but it obliterated any chance of hearing Willi clapping.
Accompanied by choruses of “bye-bye,” Hannah started off slowly down the hill, taking a different route so that she would pass by the harem palaces. Little was left to testify to their former magnificence except the huge façade that now provided perching places for small green parakeets. It was a beautiful setting, and Hannah took her time.
No sign of Willi at the entrance to the fort, and Hannah returned to the car.
“Madam has gone to tombs,” the driver said. “Come, I will bring you.”
“Did she find a toilet?”
“Toilet? No, Madam. No toilet here. Toilet is in Hyderabad.”
Ah well, Hannah thought, knowing Willi, she probably found a convenient bush.
By now the sun was getting fierce. Hannah glanced at her watch. It was twelve o’clock. She sweltered in the heat. The driver offered her a bottle of Thums Up cola.
“Tums Up, Madam. Drink plenty.”
The tombs were moments away, and she left the driver in the small car park outside the gardens.
The whole place seemed deserted. Still no sign of Willi, and Hannah assumed that she was inside one of the massive mausoleum buildings that loomed over the dry, but once lovely, vegetation.
She stood mesmerized. Unlike pictures she had seen of the pristine, white marble Taj Mahal, the blackened limestone domes of these colossal, square edifices testified to the passing of centuries, and despite the harmony of the architecture, they purveyed a sense of emptiness and desolation, which mirrored their purpose in a way that shocked.
Here Hannah lost all sense of time and forgot about Willi. She wandered along sandy paths under bougainvillea-covered pergolas from one mausoleum to another, admiring the cold perfection of Islamic arches and elaborate stone balustrades. Inside they were empty except for a black basalt sarcophagus, or sometimes two, that formed the centerpiece of each mausoleum.
“Madam, that is not the real tomb.” A young man with an open face and honest eyes was smiling at her as she contemplated the sarcophagus of one of the rulers of Golconda. “Real tomb is in room below. This is replica.”
“Why?”
“Ah. This is because in our religion ladies must not cast eye upon resting place of the dead. So they may see only the copy. If you wish you may go down. Steps are over there.”
“But I am a lady, too.”
“You may look, Madam. For you is permitted.”
“Because I am not a Muslim lady?”
“That is so, Madam. Come, I will take you down. I am guide.”
Hannah looked at her watch. Two-thirty. She hadn’t realized that more than two hours had elapsed since she had left the fortress. Willi must be back with the driver by now.
“Sorry. I hadn’t realized the time. I must go back.”
As she walked to the car, she was plunged into thoughts of childhood that had been triggered by the guide’s comments. She saw herself once more in Manchester, standing with the women at Omi Rosen’s house door, watching her grandmother’s coffin being loaded into the hearse, the male mourners leaving the house to follow it to the cemetery. She heard herself sobbing and screaming, trying to break loose from the grasp of a female neighbor. Ladies don’t go to funerals, dearie. It wouldn’t do for us to see men cry.
Omi Rosen, her mother’s mother, who had survived Theresienstadt, her best friend and only confidante through the early years at boarding school. “Never let life push you around, Mädchen. Always remember, you’re the boss.” Friday evenings at Omi’s, a weekend escape from Ashley House, enveloped in a featherbed of caring and the aroma of chicken soup. Omi never spoke of her past, memories not for sharing. She drove herself forward through life and took pleasure in those she loved.
Funny, Hannah reflected. This place. So far from home, and yet perhaps not quite as far as mere physical distance would suggest.
She noticed that several other tourists were now scattered throughout the gardens: an Indian family with two children, a loud, elderly couple, evidently Australian, and a fat, blond man with a beard. She reached the car.
“One English fellow is telling that Madam has gone back to Hyderabad,” the driver announced. “Seems she is not feeling so good.”
“Was it her stomach?”
“I don’t know, Madam.”
It sounded plausible. Willi was resourceful. “You’re never alone in India,” she’d told Hannah, describing some of the people she’d picked up on her travels. No doubt this Englishman had given her a lift. And after all, Hannah had kept her waiting for ages.
“In that case I’ll just go and have another look,” she told the driver. “Won’t be more than ten minutes.”
She headed back to the tomb she had just left, stopping for a moment to watch a couple of workmen high up on a domed roof, as confident as crows, no safety devices to hold them in place. Hannah unscrewed her wide-angle lens and attached her massive telephoto. It was a heavy object, and she regularly cursed it, but she knew it was essential. She took a couple of close-ups of the workers and continued on into the mausoleum. The young guide had disappeared. She was alone again.
No door marked the entrance to the vault, merely a black gash in the wall, like a gaping wound. Hannah stepped inside and felt her way down the stone stairway in the pitch darkness. After some ten or twelve steps, she felt flat ground beneath her feet. She shivered in the clammy coldness and waited while her eyes got accustomed to the lack of light. Gradually she began to make out shapes: arches and thick stone pillars, behind them recesses like black holes. She stepped through an archway farther into the room. Now she could see light shining in from the far side, a narrow exit directly to the outside. She remembered that she had had to climb up steps to get into the mausoleum in the first place, which explained why her descent into the vault had placed her back on the same level as the garden. The light illuminated a great sarcophagus, draped in crimson silk, that stood in the center of the room. Hannah drew nearer to it. The walls receded into blackness behind the arches. She walked around the tomb. Who was inside it? What kind of a life had he led? Certainly the immense coffin belonged to a man, an ancient ruler of the Kingdom of Golconda.
A damp, musty smell pervaded the room, and something else: some abhorrent odor that invaded her like an unpleasant memory. As she circled the tomb, a slight movement behind her startled her. She spun around. In the black void beyond the arches, she could make out the outline of a burkha-clad figure. No eyes were visible behind the thin black strip of muslin set into the swathe of impenetrable black, only the all-seeing blankness that she had first encountered in the Durbar Hall. Lurking, watching…
…watching from behind the garden shed, lurking in the bushes, waiting…
Then Hannah knew. This was no Muslim woman. Behind the veil lurked the eyeless face that haunted her waking nightmares. Evil had followed her to India.
* * * *
Duncan Forbes sat at the wood and metal 1980s desk in his garden room, watching December rain sliding down the window. His fingers tapped idly on his computer keyboard as he considered the letter that his secretary had just faxed through to him. The question in his mind was should he or should he not tell Hannah. Probably not. Certainly not while she was still obsessed with this mythical stalker. He’d had enough trouble as it was, getting any sense out of her during the past few months. In any case, there wasn’t anything that Hannah could do. Especially from some remote town in India. Where did she say she was? Hyderabad?
His eyes strayed from the window to the photograph in a simple clip frame on top of a filing cabinet. He was standing by a river, his arm around Hannah. They were looking at one another, smiling. As he gazed at the
picture, a flood of emotions overwhelmed him. She’d changed so much over the past year. All this stuff about being followed. He blamed it all on the American experience. What had they really done to her in New York? That psychoanalysis rubbish had addled her brain. Like his business partner, Piers Hamilton, Duncan now handled very few authors personally, an exception being Hannah. These days, Duncan only trekked from Guildford up to his office in London a couple of times a week. Piers spent more time on the golf course than at his desk. Duncan hated golf. He got enough exercise at the squash club and had no need to cultivate new business colleagues. His stolen days were spent on a more sedentary and, he hoped, fruitful pursuit. Information technology. That was the buzzword of the early nineties. Duncan knew that he had to be there, leading from the front. His colleagues, Piers included, might consider him eccentric, but Duncan knew he was right. The technological revolution was taking the world by storm, and soon the publishing business would be swept along with it. You either embraced the opportunities that were rapidly opening up or you sank without a trace.
Hannah was at the very heart of his professional success. She was his most prestigious author. All of her books had made it to the top of the non-fiction list. Hannah’s subject matter was the kind of stuff the general public would normally ignore. But Hannah had a way of forcing attention onto injustice in society, a magic touch that could turn an insurance scam across the Pond, or the sad life of a battered teenager, into a cause célèbre. With Hannah, his reputation was assured. At least, that was the way it had always been. But now?
He turned his attention back to the faxed letter. Even the poor quality of the fax could not disguise the lavishness of the headed notepaper. J. Croxley Burnett. Attorney at Law. An address in lower Manhattan. So his fears had not been groundless. Elliot Bannerman, director of the East River Psychiatric Center, was threatening him with a court injunction to stop the publication in the US of Hannah’s new book, Fair Game.
