by Vaseem Khan
He removed the sketch and set it onto the table, then coughed loudly to reassert his sense of mission. “What did you discover?”
Taylor leaned over. “Okay, so I sent a photo of the picture over to a colleague in Delhi. He’s an expert on Indian art.”
“I thought you were an expert?”
“To a certain extent. Though my colleague thinks I’m just a glorified saleswoman.” She shrugged. “He’s not the easiest man to work with.” She tapped the sketch with a manicured nail. “This is a preparatory composition for a much larger work. Artists sometimes create these when they are considering a large canvas, but don’t want to draw a full-sized outline directly onto it. The sketch itself—and I should have realised this myself, I suppose—is very reminiscent of a series of paintings by Shiva Swarup at the beginning of his career. I’m sure you know who he is, right?”
Chopra nodded. “Yes. I met with him earlier.”
“Really? What did you think of him?”
“He is an interesting man,” said Chopra primly.
“Well, until this auction, he’s never really given me the time of day. His paintings sell well enough, of course, and he’s a household name, at least, here in India. But a very prickly persona. Which isn’t always a bad thing. Creates a bit of mystique. A bit like you, I suspect.”
“I do not have a prickly persona,” said Chopra. “I have principles. There is a difference.”
Taylor put up her hands, as if surrendering. “I meant it as a compliment… Anyway, back to the sketch. Some thirty years ago, Swarup launched his career with a series of paintings called the Laughing Indian cycle.” She tapped on her mobile phone, and turned it to Chopra. The screen displayed a single canvas of an old, naked Indian man, propped against the wheel of a handcart, a grotesque smile on his face.
There was a distinct similarity between this full-blooded canvas and the black-and-white sketch discovered in Hollis Burbank’s suitcase.
Taylor scrolled through a series of similar paintings, until Chopra sat back.
“What does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Taylor. “All of these paintings have Shiva Swarup’s signature on them. But your sketch is initialled K.K. Neither I nor my art-expert friend have any idea who that might be. Of course, it could be a dedication to someone else, someone important to Swarup at the time.”
“If Swarup did draw this thirty years ago, then how did this sketch come to be in the possession of Hollis Burbank? My understanding is that he had never visited India prior to this trip.”
“Not to my knowledge,” agreed Taylor. “And I certainly never sold him that sketch. Funnily enough, Swarup has never left India either.”
“Swarup denied knowing anything about it when I showed it to him. Why would he do that if he was responsible for it?”
“Beats me. He’s a real man of mystery, Swarup. Never gives interviews. Hates talking about himself. He’s a lot like Burbank in that regard.”
Chopra considered this, recalling his meeting with the enigmatic artist. “Tell me more about him,” he said eventually.
“Well, that Laughing Indian series is what first got him noticed. After those paintings came out he was offered an internship with Zozé Rebello, who, at the time, was just about the most famous artist working in India. After that, the sky was the limit for Swarup, though personally, I’ve never much cared for his work. The truth is, I’ve seen dozens of artists who are better painters. But that stint with Rebello made him famous—or perhaps I should say notorious—and in this crazy business that’s all you need.”
“How do you mean ‘notorious’?”
“They had a huge bust-up. Rebello threw Swarup out on his ear. Banned him from his studio. Refused to say why. But the notoriety meant that Swarup’s next exhibition was a runaway success—the enfant terrible who even Indian art’s wild man Rebello couldn’t stomach. It cemented his reputation.”
“Where are the Laughing Indian paintings now?”
“At the National Gallery of Modern Art, in Delhi. Swarup donated them to the gallery years ago. I’ve always wondered why he never sold them at auction. They’re worth an absolute fortune.”
Chopra was silent once more.
A waiter arrived, and Taylor ordered a martini, but Chopra waved the man away. He rarely consumed alcohol, particularly not while on duty.
“We come back to the question of why Burbank had this sketch hidden in his possessions.”
“It’s a mystery,” agreed Taylor. “But then Burbank preferred to keep everything about himself shrouded in an air of intrigue. To be completely honest, I don’t think I ever knew the real Burbank. It was as if he deliberately hid himself from the world.”
Chopra pondered this. “You didn’t really care for him, did you?”
“He was my client, Chopra,” said Taylor. “Nothing more. Should I feel embarrassed for being good at my job? Should I feel bad because his death means a lost commission to me? And not just one commission, but all the future commissions I would have earned from him. He wasn’t a likeable man. I haven’t lost a good friend. I’ve lost a key component of my economic livelihood. And so, yes, I am angry. I am royally pissed off, in fact. And if you ever find out who did it, I would like five minutes with that person, just so I can show them how I feel.”
Chopra saw the fury roil across Taylor’s beautiful features.
“I will find out who did it,” he said. “It is what I do.”
He rose to his feet, picking up the sketch and tucking it back into his pocket. “I shall keep you informed of my progress.”
Taylor beamed at him. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay for a light supper? Or to come with me to my bash? Might be nice to walk in with a charming, intelligent man on my arm for a change.”
“I cannot,” said Chopra, flushing. “I have work to do.”
“Don’t you ever stop working?”
“I, ah…” He felt himself floundering. “It is what I do,” he repeated, feebly.
As he left the restaurant he failed to notice Poppy standing in the shadows, watching him leave, a thunderous look on her face.
A FLASH OF INSIGHT
Chopra spent the next hour in the hotel’s business suite, sitting at one of the computer terminals, trawling the Internet for background on Shiva Swarup. His earlier meeting with the artist now came sharply into focus.
What was the connection between the sketch in Burbank’s possession and Swarup’s Laughing Indian paintings? Burbank speaking to Swarup on the night of his death could no longer be dismissed as a casual conversation, as Swarup had led him to believe. But if there was a link between the two men, what was the nature of that link? And who was this mysterious K.K.? What did that individual have to do with Hollis Burbank, a man who had never even visited India? The Laughing Indian paintings were thirty years old. Did that mean Burbank’s sketch was similarly ancient? How had it ended up in his possession?
Questions, questions, and no answers.
Finally, tiring of his fruitless speculation, Chopra headed towards the hotel lobby, and home.
And then he stopped, remembering the suite Poppy had wangled—a suite now paid for by Gilbert and Locke—and that they were both due to spend the next few days there.
The thought bothered him.
In truth, he had no wish to stay at the Grand Raj Palace, to his mind a glorified crime scene. It felt somehow unprofessional, a wrong note in an otherwise familiar piece of music.
Nevertheless, he found his feet trudging their way up to the suite. It was the least he could do, having upset Poppy’s plans for their anniversary.
Contrary to his wife’s belief, the occasion meant a great deal to Chopra; it was simply the pageantry that Poppy had planned that gave him heartburn each time he thought about it. He had never been a man who believed in making a drama of life. He felt what he felt, and that was good enough for him.
The world did not need—and never had needed—histrionics from Inspec
tor Ashwin Chopra.
He found his wife tucked up in the four-poster Queen Anne bed, reading a book. It was Gitanjali, the famous book of spiritual poetry by Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal’s Nobel Prize-winning poet. This was a bad sign.
Poppy only retreated into the comforting embrace of Gitanjali when she was upset.
“Where are Irfan and Ganesha?” asked Chopra.
“Irfan has gone to settle Ganesha into one of the gardens,” said Poppy, without looking up. “He will be back soon.”
Chopra detected a stiffness in his wife’s tone. He hesitated, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “I am sorry about all of this, Poppy,” he said. “But you must understand that I have to follow this through.”
She set down the book, and looked at him with an expression that, for once, he found inscrutable. “Yes,” she said. “I understand. It is who you are.”
Chopra attempted a laugh, but it came out as the strangled death-cry of a hyena, and so he lapsed into silence again. A sense of acute discomfort had overcome him, something he rarely felt in his wife’s presence.
“I shall get ready for bed,” he mumbled, and stumbled his way to the bathroom.
Here he brushed his teeth, gargled and slipped out of his clothes. He discovered two bathrobes—his and hers—on the towel rack. The monogrammed robes instantly turned his thoughts to Hollis Burbank, the American’s body draped in a similar robe, on his bed, eyes staring at the ceiling. Something about that image, about Burbank’s robe, stirred uneasily in Chopra’s mind. A stray thought flashed a fin at him, then swam away…
When he returned to the bedroom, he saw that Poppy had turned off the lights, set her sleeping mask over her eyes and dropped into what appeared to be a deep slumber.
Somewhat put out, he wandered back out to the living area.
He switched on the TV, flicked through channels. An alabaster horse’s head—the Rani of Jhansi’s stallion—stared at him down its long nose with an expression of mild opprobrium. Unable to relax, he turned off the TV, got up, went back into the bedroom, dressed, then went downstairs.
He found Irfan in one of the smaller gardens, stretched out on the grass beside Ganesha, who had collapsed onto the ground in readiness for sleep. The night’s sticky heat was alive with distant voices and the buzzing of mosquitoes. An empty steel platter lay beside the little elephant. Ganesha appeared to have eaten the pachyderm equivalent of a king’s banquet, and seemed distinctly the worse for wear. Chopra knew that elephants could suffer from indigestion just as readily as humans—Ganesha’s appetite would soon become a matter for concern at this rate.
And to think, when the elephant had first arrived in his care he had been malnourished and off his feed!
“He is depressed,” the vet Lala had declared, only half-joking.
That was when Chopra had first begun to learn about elephants, about their extraordinary intelligence, their emotional range, their ability to feel pain, affection, grief. His appreciation of Elephas maximus—otherwise known as the Indian elephant—had increased exponentially in these past months.
And yet there was still so much about his young ward that he did not know.
The mystery of his origins, for one, and why his Uncle Bansi had sent Ganesha to him in the first place.
One day he would have to get to the bottom of it, but for now, he had no idea where to even begin. Bansi had been missing for years. And, in the vastness of the subcontinent, attempting to search for him would be akin to searching for a needle in the biggest, most unruly haystack in the cosmos.
He realised that Irfan was asleep.
On a sudden whim, Chopra lay down beside Ganesha, put his hands behind his head and looked up at the stars. The drowsy elephant reached out with his trunk and petted his face.
“Human beings are strange creatures, aren’t they, Ganesha?” he mumbled. “We can build a whole world, create societies, invent maths and philosophy, medicine and art. And yet, at heart, we remain no better than animals. Some might say worse. At least when an animal behaves savagely it is instinctive. But we humans are, supposedly, intelligent.” He sighed. “Everything is illusion, and no one is really who we believe they are—”
He stopped, then sat up.
An idea had just flared through his mind, leaving a trail as bright as a comet’s.
Illusion.
He recalled Lisa Taylor’s words from their earlier meeting: “I don’t think I ever knew the real Burbank. It was as if he deliberately hid himself from the world.” And Rangwalla’s enquiries that had confirmed how little was known about Burbank’s past.
A past shrouded in mystery.
Chopra’s eyes gleamed in the lamplit dark.
Could it be that simple?
He did not know.
But he knew how he might discover the truth.
Ronald Loomis opened the door to his room in a pair of boxer shorts and a Rolling Stones T-shirt. He stared blearily at Chopra. “Do you know what time it is?”
“I need your help.”
Loomis hesitated, then turned and led him inside. “I’d say excuse the mess, but frankly I don’t care what you think.”
Chopra glanced around. The room was as dishevelled as Loomis. A half-consumed bottle of whisky sat by the bed. Clearly, the young PA was still coming to grips with the death of his boss.
“Is it possible that Burbank had another identity?” said Chopra, getting straight down to it. “That, at some point in the past, he changed his name?”
Loomis stared at him. “What makes you say that?”
Chopra took out the copy of the photograph found in Burbank’s suitcase, the one marked with the names Faulkner, Murthi, Sen and Shastri. Loomis studied it. “The police showed me this. I don’t know these people.
“Yet there was a reason Burbank kept it with him. A thirty-year-old photograph taken in India. My instincts tell me that these people were important to him in some way. Why would that be? Unless, perhaps, he knew them? And the simplest way for him to have known them was if he had been here, with them, in India, thirty years ago.”
“That’s a big leap.”
“Perhaps. But Burbank’s past is shrouded in mystery.”
“He was an intensely private person,” Loomis conceded. “He never talked about his past.”
“Didn’t that ever strike you as strange?”
Loomis snorted. “Mr. Burbank didn’t tolerate anyone prying into his personal life. Not even his personal assistant.” He sat down on the bed. “They’re going to release his body tomorrow. I’ll be flying it back to the States. To give it a proper burial. I spoke to Burbank’s daughter today, on the phone. I tried to tell her what a great man her father was. That, in his own way, he loved her. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. Do you know what she said? ‘He’s just a stranger to me.’” He shook his head, a man without a rudder. “You ask me if Burbank could have been someone else, once upon a time? The answer is ‘yes.’ He could have been anyone he wanted to be. But for me he will always be the father I never had.”
THE FOREIGNERS REGIONAL REGISTRATION OFFICE
The next morning Poppy Chopra awoke to discover that her husband had already left, and that the feelings of existential anxiety that had infected her the evening before had settled in, like an unwanted visit from a mother-in-law, sniffing and opening cupboards, running a finger over her mental mantelpieces and generally being an unwelcome nuisance.
Poppy considered herself an optimist, by nature.
She rarely dwelt on problems for too long, preferring to “lance the emotional boil,” as she always put it. Sometimes those emotions got the better of her, and that was fine, for what were human beings if not the subtle equation of their thoughts and feelings?
Yet it was rare for her to feel so… so…subdued.
Seeing her husband in the restaurant with Lisa Taylor the night before had left her like a bullock caught in a swamp. She found herself unable to shake off the image; her emotions seemed suddenly heavy-fo
oted and gloopy.
And yet she knew, with an iron-clad certainty, that there was no fire to this smoke.
She trusted her husband implicitly. They had weathered too much together for her to begin doubting him now.
Nevertheless, little weevils of…disappointment gnawed away at the edges of her heart. Did her husband really need to spend so much time in the company of that woman while dashing around on his investigation?
That beautiful woman, the little demon sitting on her shoulder hissed into her ear.
Beautiful and exotic.
Last evening Poppy had been keen to get her husband alone so that she could tell him about her moment of inspiration, how she had worked out the mystery behind Anjali Tejwa’s vanishing act from a locked bathroom. It was something they might have shared.
She admonished herself for being so maudlin.
After all, she was staying in a suite in the grandest hotel in the country!
A picture of the Rani of Jhansi looked down on her from the wall of the bedroom, the Rani clutching a sword and damascened shield, her chin thrust forward at a poetic angle. She could practically hear the woman telling her to buck up, to get on with it and stop being such a… such a… Well, whatever it was she was being.
Poppy finished dressing, then helped Irfan get ready before the pair of them went down to the restaurant for breakfast, picking up Ganesha along the way.
In the restaurant, the little elephant was greeted lustily by the waiters and other patrons—he had become something of a celebrity around the hotel. Some of the foreign tourists insisted on taking pictures with him, which Ganesha did not mind in the least. He had a peculiar vanity when it came to being photographed, Poppy had discovered. If an elephant could take pictures she was certain he would be as obnoxious as any teenager armed with a mobile phone and a selfie stick.
Halfway through her meal, she looked up to find Lisa Taylor bearing down on her, in a figure-hugging dress that left little to the imagination.
