by Tim Parks
‘John lives in London.’
‘Does he? Does he indeed? Yet right now he is in Delhi.’
‘He is?’ Only now did it cross Paul’s mind that it was John whom the police had taken away. ‘Helen didn’t know her son was in India,’ he said quickly. ‘They hadn’t been in touch.’
‘Ah. Is that so? The mother and son were not in touch?’
‘No.’
‘And he wasn’t staying at his mother’s address?’
‘No. But …’ Paul stopped.
The policeman watched him. ‘And you don’t know where he was staying?’
‘How could I, if I didn’t know he was in Delhi?’
With an abrupt change of tone, the officer asked, ‘Where were you last night, Mr Roberts?’ He started to tap his fingers on the desk.
Paul hesitated. ‘You need to know where I was? What on earth for? What—’
‘Mr Roberts, you must cooperate. This is a most serious matter.’
‘Okay.’ Paul took a deep breath. ‘So, yesterday afternoon a guest arrived at Dr James’s apartment, the son’s girlfriend from London.’
Realising the officer was looking at him blankly, as if ‘girlfriend’ were not a category he recognised, Paul explained: ‘A young woman who is a close friend of John’s and of the family came to Dr James’s apartment because she believed John was in Delhi and thought he was staying with his mother. In fact, that was our first inkling that John might have come to Delhi. Then, since Dr James was on night duty here at the clinic, I took the young lady to her hotel, and to dinner, and then, because she had never been to Delhi before, I drove her round the old town.’
The policeman was in some difficulty with this. He had taken his glasses off and was rubbing them with a tissue, frowning, as if clean lenses might help him grasp the point of what Paul was telling him. After a moment, he asked. ‘Why did this woman come to Delhi, where did she travel from, how old is she, why did you take her to dinner and round the town?’
‘As I said’ – Paul realised that the story might not make much sense to a man of the policeman’s background – ‘the girl, her name is Elaine, is a close friend of the family. Maybe she will become John’s wife. Anyway, she came from London to visit him. He had told her he was in Delhi, but not where he was staying.’ When the policeman still seemed unconvinced, Paul added, ‘In these circumstances it was a normal courtesy on my part to take her out. She doesn’t know India.’
‘You drove her around the old town also? In the rain?’
‘Yes. Then we had a drink. Off Connaught Place.’
‘The lady will verify this?’
‘Of course. She is staying at the India International Centre. Her surname is Harley, I think. I can’t remember the name of the bar, but I could certainly take you there.’
‘And what time were you taking this lady of yours home?’
‘Not my lady,’ Paul corrected. ‘Let me see,’ he made a show of thinking. ‘I was back in Helen’s flat at one-thirty, as I recall.’
‘One-thirty? You are out with a girlfriend of the family until one-thirty!’ There was a decidedly unpleasant sarcasm in the officer’s voice. He scratched at one corner of his moustache and exchanged a smile with the young man labouring with his pen. Then his phone rang again. ‘Hello?’ He hurried to the door and spoke in a low voice in the corridor. An elderly man in a white coat knocked, came into the room, handed a file to the young policeman behind the desk, said a word or two in Hindi and hurried out.
The officer returned and spent a few moments looking through the new file. He grunted two or three times, as if hardly satisfied. ‘So,’ he looked up, ‘what did Dr James say when this family friend arrived.’
Paul was aware of feeling extremely tense. ‘Helen was very surprised,’ he said carefully. ‘She had no idea John was coming to India. She didn’t expect this young lady to visit. She didn’t know what exactly the relationship between them was.’
‘Was Dr James happy that her son was in Delhi?’
‘She still didn’t believe he really was.’
Very abruptly the policeman said: ‘There was a quarrel between mother and son, wasn’t there, Mr Roberts. Don’t equivocate. Dr James was afraid of seeing him in Delhi.’
‘No,’ Paul protested.
‘Why didn’t somebody use the telephone and call the son also? This situation is not credible, Mr Roberts.’
‘His phone was turned off …’ Paul began.
But now the officer’s own phone buzzed again, and again the man hurried out of the room to talk. Feeling extremely anxious now, Paul sat still, aware of the low voice out in the corridor and the young policeman intent on his notes, making corrections, occasionally glancing at this file that had appeared. The room was lined from floor to ceiling with wooden shelves and boxes of medicines. Then, from the one small window, came the sound of a peddler crying his wares in the street. ‘Pa-tai-yei, pa-tai-yei.’
Paul listened, understanding nothing. ‘Ma-tai-yei!’ Why did I dream of a voice calling? he wondered. India was full of urgent voices. Some residue from religious infancy, perhaps? Calls, duties. Then, as if physically nudged, he remembered Helen’s story about the dent on the table, the stone elephants, her son’s weird behaviour. He was in Delhi after all. Suddenly, Paul was terrifically alert. The candle had tipped on the table and burned his hand. ‘Do you think he meant to kill me?’ Helen had asked. The question had struck him as absurd, melodramatic, definitely out of character. But now something had happened. A very serious matter. ‘Ma-ti-alli-yei!’ came the voice. ‘Pa-tai-yei!’
Five minutes had passed. Listening, Paul realised that the officer was no longer talking in the corridor. What the hell is happening? He jumped to his feet. The young policeman looked up. ‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ Paul said.
The man seemed to hesitate. ‘You must wait,’ he said.
‘Delhi belly,’ Paul told him. ‘It’s urgent.’
He hurried out into the corridor. People were jostling in lines or hurrying back and forth but there was no sign of the officer. I must find Helen, Paul decided. He opened a door and saw a dark cupboard, closed it again.
‘Where is the main ward?’ he asked a man with a broom and trolley. Without stopping, the man pointed. Paul hurried along the corridor, turned a corner and saw a larger double door. She would be here, surely. He should have come straight to her the moment he was in the hospital. Paul pushed the doors open.
On each side of the big room was a row of beds. The air was sour with powerful smells. Chemicals and vomit. On the third bed to the left a man was retching. At his side a nurse, a rather fat young woman, was holding his head over a plastic bowl. The man was in his mid forties, thin hair plastered in sweat, eyes bloodshot, neck straining with each spasm, each attempt to throw up. The nurse was speaking in a low voice, her face quite close to his.
Again the man retched. A trickle spattered from the corner of his mouth, dribbled down his chin and onto his sleeve. The nurse spoke softly. Other patients had turned away from the scene, lying on their beds. Someone was reading a magazine. An elderly woman had propped herself up to work at some kind of embroidery, a broad silky weave of blues and greens. She seemed indifferent to the coughing and rasping.
Suddenly, the man’s whole body jerked back then forward again and the vomit poured out of his mouth. It was unexpectedly dark. Paul heard the clatter and splash in the plastic bowl. It must have splashed in the nurse’s face, he thought.
The patient retched yet again, in vain this time. The nurse was young and held his head tight between puffy hands, speaking kindly. Bihar, Paul thought. He was fascinated and repulsed. In Bihar, you will be holding that head. You will be splashed by vomit. Why? Why do you want to do this?
‘Mr Roberts?’
At last aware of his name, Paul turned.
‘Mr Roberts, I was questioning you about a crime. Why did you leave? Do you want me to put you under arrest?’
‘I need to speak to Helen,�
� Paul said.
The officer’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to be weighing the American up. ‘Follow me,’ he said.
Again Paul was taken down the corridor. This time they turned to the left. In a few moments he recognised Helen’s surgery and saw at once that the wood of the door was splintered around the lock.
‘What’s going on?’
A policeman with a rifle allowed him to cross the threshold.
‘You can approach the tape, but do not go further,’ the officer told him. ‘We are awaiting an expert to examine this.’
With the blinds raised, the room was in full sunlight. Paul stepped to a red and white plastic tape that had been stretched from a cupboard on the left to the handle of the French window on the right. Beyond the tape was a large desk, but stepping to the right of that Paul saw two bodies, one each side of a low mattress. On the far side was an emaciated teenager in grey-white underwear; his head was thrown back, eyes closed, mouth twisted in a painful smile. On the near side, in a beam of sunshine, Helen’s body was obscenely outspread, as though for some particularly unpleasant form of pornography. From face down to knees, the white skin was oddly mottled, the outflung limbs seemed contorted, the belly slightly swollen.
Involuntarily, Paul brought his hand to his mouth. He couldn’t look and he couldn’t look away. Above all he couldn’t understand. The body demanded his gaze and repelled it. It seemed so much bigger, longer, whiter, more present – immediately, materially present – than a living person could ever be.
‘Helen,’ he muttered.
‘What was that?’ the officer asked.
The man’s voice was sharp. He was observing Paul carefully, but Paul paid no attention. He couldn’t see any way forward from here, or back for that matter, away from this body. The shiny plastic, police-incident tape prevented him from getting closer. But he couldn’t turn round and walk out. He couldn’t think at all. Her breasts were flat and misshapen, her pubis brutally exposed to the bright morning light. Only yesterday they had been in bed together.
‘Her son was slapping her face when we broke in,’ the policeman announced. He seemed satisfied to see the American shocked. ‘He refused to open the door.’
‘Her son was here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Slapping her face?’ Paul couldn’t understand. ‘But who’s the boy? What happened?’
‘The young man is a patient at the hospital.’
‘A patient?’
‘Mr Roberts, any son would be upset to find a mother in this undressed state with an unknown man also. Don’t you think? It is too clear what has happened. Unfortunately John James refuses to answer our questions. Now—’
‘But how did they die? He couldn’t just have—’
From along the corridor came the sound of angry voices. They both turned. There was a clatter of footsteps and something banged. Even in Hindi Paul recognised that it was someone he knew. He knew that voice. A man was shouting, objecting, insisting. Other voices were raised against him. The corridor echoed. The argument was hurrying towards them. There was a yell, then Kulwant Singh pushed in. His bearded face was distraught, his eyes gleaming, his black turban not quite straight on his round face. Fending off every attempt to block him, even taking a knock from a rifle butt, he hoisted up the plastic ribbon, ducked under and at once let out a roar of pain. ‘Helen!’ he shouted, ‘No!’
Three policemen grabbed at him, but Kulwant was already down beside the body. He was shouting. He had his head beside hers. He grabbed her wrist for the pulse, threw it down, clasped the body against his own. ‘No!’ he yelled again.
Paul watched, humiliated by the bigger man’s energy and evident grief. Kulwant was embracing the nude body in a frenzy of denial. ‘No, no, no!’ he went on. The officer shrieked at him. He was spoiling a crime scene. At last, the two young policemen had hold of his arms, forced him to let go of the body and pulled him back. The Sikh was trembling violently, his strong fleshy mouth alive in the grizzle of beard. A torrent of Hindi poured out. His eyes were thick with tears.
Paul listened. He understood nothing, only that Kulwant was profoundly emotively involved with Helen in a way he himself had not been. The man cared enormously. There was a back-and-forth between the officer and the Sikh now. Kulwant seemed to be explaining who he was and why he was there. When the officer interjected, Kulwant snapped back, his voice full of contempt. The man didn’t intimidate him at all. For a moment his powerful wrists wrenched and struggled. Then he rounded on Paul.
‘These idiots are asking me questions about her son. They don’t understand anything.’
Paul was unable to respond.
Kulwant made another lunge, shook off his minders and grabbed one of four or five small plastic bags from the desk. There was a syringe inside and he waved it in front of the officer shouting excitedly. Again Paul couldn’t follow. His eyes were drawn back to Helen’s body. The combination of outflung arms, ugly exposure and wax-white stillness was uncanny.
‘The American will confirm every word I am saying.’ Kulwant turned on Paul again. ‘This is a terrible terrible tragedy. Her husband got her to kill him six months ago, isn’t that right? She killed her husband at his request. He wanted to die. And no doubt he asked her to do the same to herself. He incited her. I have seen her thinking about this for many months. I have been warning her, many, many times. Her husband was a sick man, isn’t that right, Mr Roberts? You are writing about him. You must be aware of that. He was a brilliant man, but sick, with sick impulses, very sick, very contorted, very afraid. I have been telling Helen for many years. Oh I can’t believe this. It is my fault.’
Weakly, Paul said, ‘I am sure Albert James would never have persuaded anyone to kill themselves. Let alone his wife. That was quite the opposite of his character.’
‘But all his thinking was going that way!’ Kulwant cried. ‘Anyway, what is this?’ Again he waved the syringe and turned to the policeman. ‘You will find a deadly mixture in this syringe. I am sure. Probably insulin and Valium. It is very swift.’
‘That is enough now,’ the officer said sharply. ‘A man who is dead six months cannot incite anyone to kill themselves. I said enough!’ he repeated, when Kulwant opened his mouth again. ‘It is true we have found four syringes on the floor. They will be examined of course.’ The officer left a short silence. ‘However, there are other questions also to be answered.’ He touched his moustache for a moment. ‘Why did the son not tell his mother he was in Delhi? Why has the woman left no note, if it is a suicide? If he found his mother already dead, why did the son lock the door behind him? Why did he refuse to speak to us?’
Kulwant suddenly seemed exhausted by his emotions. ‘Perhaps there is a note,’ he said lamely. ‘I still can’t believe this. It’s too horrible. Perhaps she has sent an email to someone.’
The officer turned to Paul: ‘Do you think Dr James could have killed herself? Was she talking about such matters while you were staying with her?’
Very slowly, Paul’s mind was beginning to function. Had Helen said anything? Perhaps she had and he hadn’t understood. ‘What about this boy here?’ he asked carefully. ‘Why would the boy be dead if it was suicide?’
Kulwant turned back to the bodies. He crouched down but without trying to get closer this time. ‘Dear God,’ he muttered. ‘Helen!’ He raised a hand to his forehead, adjusted his turban, stood up again. ‘I see no marks on him,’ he sighed. ‘There is no blood. You will see he also died from an injection.’
Then in someone’s pocket a phone began some urgent melody. A bhangra dance tune. It sounded rather merry.
‘There must be an autopsy,’ the officer was saying.
Kulwant dug into his trousers, pulled out the phone and checked the illuminated screen. ‘Jasmeet!’ He pressed a button, lifted it to his ear and demanded, ‘Where in the name of God are you, Jasmeet?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
JOHN WAS HELD in a police cell in Naya Bazar Road, not half a mile from the
clinic. He denied that he had struck his mother. Perhaps he had slapped her face in an attempt to wake her. His last memory, he was finally able to explain to the police after more than twenty-four hours’ paralysed silence, was that of crouching to pull her up from the floor and get her to put some clothes on. What most upset him was to find her naked. No, he could not say at what point he had realised she was dead. Perhaps even now he hadn’t taken it in.
But yes, he did remember the questioning, John said, and honestly he had tried to respond, but he had been ‘under water’, he told the officer. He couldn’t open his mouth. The receptionist of the Govind Hotel, John stated, would confirm that he had spent the night in his room there and left shortly after 6 a.m. He had come to Delhi, it was true, to see his mother, but then hadn’t gone to her at once because the meeting frightened him. He hadn’t been feeling well. He couldn’t say why. There were important matters to discuss between himself and his mother. No, he couldn’t really say what.
‘Maybe I just wished he was still alive,’ John muttered.
‘Why did you lock the door to your mother’s surgery?’ the officer asked.
They sat across a table in a police interrogation room. A recording device had been switched on. John declined the offer of a lawyer. He had done nothing wrong.
‘Did I lock it?’
The officer was exasperated. It was the first time he had dealt with a crime involving Europeans.
‘Since there was no one else in the room, Mr James, no one else who was alive, you must surely have locked it. It was locked, from the inside.’
‘I suppose I wanted her to myself,’ John eventually said. He hesitated: ‘There were so many patients in the corridor, you know? My mother was always very busy helping people.’
‘Did you recognise the boy who was with her?’
John was silent. He looked down at his knees. Finally he said: ‘I have never seen him before.’
‘You don’t know what was his relation with your mother?’
‘No.’
