A Curious Indian Cadaver

by Shamini Flint

  Tanvir had been quiet and still, listening to the unfolding conversation. Now he said, “Tara Baba, I respect your decisions in all things, but I do not think this is a good idea.”

  Sycophantic little tosser, thought Singh, protecting his inheritance with a bit of brown-nosing. He looked at Tara Singh. Weren’t these big-time industrialists supposed to be good judges of character? Surely he could see through the boy? And why was the brother reluctant to have Singh involved anyway? Didn’t he want to find his sister?

  Out of the corner of his eye, Singh noticed that his wife was nodding in agreement with Tanvir. Typical. There seemed to be a general disbelief that the short inspector with the pot belly and holed socks was the man for the job.

  “Let me search for my sister,” continued Tanvir. “It is my responsibility.”

  “More trips to the coffee place?” asked Singh. These people needed to understand that it wasn’t amateur hour.

  “Maybe, she will just come back…” whispered Jesvinder.

  “She must have just been confused or worried. It is not easy for a young girl to leave her home to be married.”

  Singh caught the sudden memory, throbbing through her faint words, of a bride’s first journey into the married state with a man she barely knew.

  “What about the husband-to-be?”

  “He, must not in any way be informed of this situation,” stated Tanvir.

  The inspector looked across at Tara and saw a firm nod of agreement.

  “He will not be expecting to see her – she should not be leaving the house,” pointed out Aunty Harjeet. Singh nodded his approval at her words. Unlike the rest of them with their testosterone-fuelled assertions, this woman was thinking.

  It was certainly a plus that tradition dictated that Ashu be secluded prior to the wedding. It meant that her absence from her usual haunts would not be thought of as out of the ordinary.

  Singh remembered that he was on enforced medical leave. It might be ages before he had a juicy murder to deal with if Superintendent Chen had his way. This case – a missing person, a secretive family, a powerful scion, a city of contrasts and a wedding deadline – was certainly not for the fainthearted. But wasn’t he Inspector Singh, leading criminal investigator in Singapore, at least in his own estimation? He looked around at the family members of the missing girl. Two brothers, the mother, grandfather and an aunt all staring at him with different degrees of hostility and hope. The older brother was the angriest, the mother, the most hopeful. That fitted in with his assessment of their characters.

  “I’ll do it!” he said, slapping his thigh with an open palm for emphasis and was rewarded with matching horrified expressions on the faces of Tanvir Singh and his own dear wife.

  ♦

  Tanvir Singh hurried to his bedroom. It was clean and functional. Plain white sheets, a cream bedspread, bare walls and a small television with a DVD player attached – but without an untidy stack of movies to hint at his tastes. Only the bookshelf provided some insights – a few histories, Indian and Sikh, and a stack of biographies ranging from Gandhi to Malcolm X. Yellow ‘Post-it’ notes stuck up from the pages like gelled blonde hair.

  He reached for his mobile phone and quickly stabbed the green key. He needed his ‘last dialled’ number and he needed it quick. He tapped his foot, keeping time with the rings.

  “What is it?” asked the man at the other end. “I thought we were going to limit calls? I still have a lot of preparation to do.”

  “This is important,” said Tanvir, succinct and bitter.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My sister – Ashu Kaur…”

  “The one who is to be married? I heard about that. You gonna get me an invite? Sounds like it’s going to be a great party. I’ll be able to show you my bhangra. Some people say I’m the best dancer in Canada!” The tone was jocular, not yet worried by Tanvir’s ominous tone.

  “Well, there’s not much chance of that right now. She’s…disappeared.”

  “What?”

  “Yes – and there’s talk of calling the police.”

  “That would not be helpful.”

  “I realise that, Jaswant.” Tanvir’s tone was cold. He hadn’t called so that they could repeat the obvious to each other. The call was a warning about a developing problem. A potential deal-breaker. He felt a surge of anger and had to take a few deep, calming breaths, focus on the process, not the outcome. He knew his own temperament best although there were family members – like his foolish brother, Ranjit – who would argue that only those at the receiving end could truly know a temper.

  In any event, this was not the time to let anger cloud his judgment. They had worked too hard to get to this point.

  “What do you think has happened to her?” asked Jaswant.

  “That’s the least of our concerns right now.”

  There was silence at the other end. Shock perhaps at a brother’s callousness. More likely an acknowledgement that the time for small talk was over.

  “What should we do? We have to keep the police out of it. There’s only a few days to go to judgment! We might have to wait years for another such opportunity.” Jaswant, although the older, was turning to the natural leader between the two of them, looking for guidance.

  “Leave it to me,” said Tanvir. “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Jesus, Tanvir! Your sister isn’t a nobody – she’s the granddaughter of Tara Singh. If she’s disappeared there’s going to be a huge manhunt. Police, press, politicians – the whole shebang.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “Most likely she’s been in an accident or something like that…”

  “Or got cold feet about the wedding and headed for the hills.” Tanvir made the suggestion tentatively.

  “You’re right,” agreed Jaswant. “But she couldn’t have picked a worse time, that’s for sure.”

  Tanvir fell silent, turning options around in his mind. Nothing seemed viable. Jaswant was right when he said that a girl like Ashu could not disappear without creating a city-wide stir. He felt his anger begin to boil over again. Trust his idiotic family to create yet more trouble for him. There were times when he would gladly have admitted to being adopted, a genetic stranger to his do-gooder sister, Ashu, and poet brother, Ranjit. How was it that he was the only one who had inherited Tara Baba’s drive and purpose? The rest of them were weak – like his father had been.

  “If we have to postpone, it is better than outright failure,” warned Jaswant.

  “That’s coward’s talk,” was the response. “I haven’t come this far to let some family crisis get in the way.”

  “Talk is easy, thai, and talk is free,” said Jaswant, “but you’re going to have to make this problem go away and I don’t know how you’re going to do it.”

  “Leave it to me – I’ll buy us some time until judgment,” snapped Tanvir. “After that they can turn Mumbai upside down looking for my sister, I don’t care. I’ll find a way to keep the police at bay – and anyone else with a long nose for sticking into other people’s affairs.” An image of the fat policeman from Singapore was front and centre in his thoughts as he uttered the last line.

  ♦

  Tara Singh nodded his head now to acknowledge the inspector’s willingness to investigate but he’d not expected him to do anything else. He was used to other men doing his bidding. Wasn’t that the advantage of power and money? He wielded them with a light touch for the most part, but he knew how to get his own way. He eyed the policeman sitting pensively like the Buddha with his hands folded over his ample stomach. He looked ridiculous but he’d asked the right questions so far. Tara sniffed the air and then wrinkled his nose fastidiously. Did he smell tobacco on the inspector from Singapore?

  That was the problem with the Sikh diaspora – they maintained those practices of the faith and culture that were convenient and dumped anything that wa
s mildly inconsistent with their inclinations. The old man sighed and felt a twinge of arthritis in his fingers, especially the hand gripping the ivory handle of his cane. He was not in a position to choose his tools. The fat policeman from Singapore would have to do.

  Tanvir might have been able to handle the job; he had a good head on his shoulders. But he would not be sufficiently discreet. In his personal and often expressed opinion, the younger brother Ranjit was a waste of time, a skinny bookworm tied to his mother’s apron springs. That’s what happened sometimes when boys did not have a father figure. Not that the boy’s father had been an exemplar of a warrior race. Tara Singh reminded himself that his son had faced death bravely. What was the quote – nothing became him so much in life as the leaving of it? That summed up his son. All in all, Ashu was the best of them and now she was gone.

  His attention was drawn to the policeman who had straightened up with difficulty on the soft sofa and then hauled himself to his feet, his efforts reminiscent of a bug on its back trying desperately, with flailing limbs, to right itself.

  “I will need a free hand,” said Singh.

  “Of course,” he replied.

  “I will need to question each of you individually. You might not enjoy the experience.”

  “My granddaughter is more important to me than my pride, Inspector.”

  The policeman nodded but a faintly raised eyebrow conveyed his scepticism.

  “I need access to her workplace.”

  “It will be as you wish.”

  There was silence.

  “Is there anything else, Inspector Singh? The hours are passing and time is not on our side.”

  Inspector Singh cracked his knuckles and looked uncomfortable. “There is one thing…”

  “Well, spit it out, man.”

  “She left the house for some reason or another but if the clothes and handbag left behind are any indicator, she did not intend to be out for long.”

  “Yes.”

  “She might have met with some mishap. She wasn’t carrying any identification…”

  The inspector trailed off and Tara Singh nodded his head, ignoring the quiet weeping of his daughter-in-law. It was out in the open now, the possibility that Ashu had been the victim of some sort of accident.

  “I realise that. I have a few friends in high places and I have already asked them to make discreet inquiries.”

  “With the police and the hospitals,” suggested Singh carefully, not looking at the girl’s mother.

  “Yes. They will call me if there are any…possibilities. It might take some time. In India, Inspector Singh, life is sometimes very cheap.” He could have added that many bodies went unclaimed because relatives could not afford a funeral. Men and women left their villages to find work in the cities and were far from loved ones when some accident carried them away. And of course, there were those who were killed in the sudden outbreaks of communal violence – it was difficult to find the family of these victims, many of whom might have died at the same time, escaped to their villages or be too traumatised to search for the missing.

  His own son might have been one of the uncountable if the violence visited upon him had happened somewhere other than his own front gate. Tara had been the one to visit the morgue to identify his son. It had been a futile effort. The size and shape of the corpse had been similar but the creature he looked at had been burnt beyond recognition from the neck up, melted rubber from the tyre forming a thick layer, like an oil slick, around his neck and shoulders. He had finally been convinced – been forced to believe the horror story that Jesvinder had narrated – that the corpse was his only son when he’d seen the crescent shaped scar on his knee.

  He looked up and saw that the Sikh inspector was looking at him quizzically.

  “Well, what is your first step to find my granddaughter?” he asked, a nip in his tone suggesting impatience.

  The policeman had opened his mouth to answer when Tara Singh’s mobile rang. The old man raised the phone to his ear with a shaking hand.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. There was a silence while he listened to the answer carefully. “I will come now.”

  He would not meet the eyes of his family members when he turned to speak to them. “That was the minister. A…a body of a young woman has been brought in to the police. He thinks I should have a look.”

  “I will go, Tara Baba. It is not fitting that you should have to do this – again.” Tanvir Singh’s beard was coal black against his light skin.

  “No, this is something I must do.”

  He used his cane as a support and rose to his feet. He swayed there for a moment and Singh was the first to see his eyes lose focus. “He’s going to faint,” he shouted and, moving quickly for a fat man, was just in time to catch Tara Singh before he fell to the ground.

  ♦

  The two men sat in the back of the limousine as far away from each other as possible. Tara Singh had been left behind. He’d recovered consciousness but his appearance was of someone who’d been subject to the ageing process in fast forward. He’d ordered the inspector to go along with Tanvir and to take his car. Singh, feeling sorry for the old man, bit his lip at being ordered about like a servant and fell in with his wishes.

  “Where are we going?” asked Singh, glancing over at Tanvir.

  “Worli – a police station,” replied the other man.

  Singh stared out of the window and noted that Mumbai vehicle number plates contained enough letters to write a novel. Was that an indication of the number of cars on the road or the bureaucratic nature of the car registration department?

  The silence was broken by Tanvir. “I don’t know why Tara Baba has asked you to help us.”

  “I don’t know either. Maybe because I’m a policeman.”

  “Why should that matter? This is not a criminal case!”

  “We don’t know what sort of case it is.”

  The macabre nature of their errand might go some way towards clearing up that particular question but he couldn’t help but hope that the body was not that of Ashu. He liked the look of the girl in the photograph – the bright eyes and strong chin, cleft like a man’s. Singh scratched his beard under his chin. It always itched when he was troubled. The fact of the matter was that a young woman lay dead. Was it right to wish away the trauma from his own family? If it was not Ashu, it meant that someone else would suffer the pain of sudden loss.

  He reverted to staring out of the window. At night, Mumbai looked like every other big city. Skyscrapers reached upwards, lit from within like a Christmas tree. Shopping complexes and small hole-in-the-wall tea shops competed for business. Modern apartment buildings housed the affluent. Billboards lined the roads advertising the latest Bollywood films. Traffic ebbed and flowed around them but Singh was cocooned in the luxurious interior of his limousine. Was this how the rich insulated themselves from the reality of Mumbai? The road snaked forward, puddles of visibility from street lights appearing at regular intervals. In each puddle of light, like a morality play, the homeless lay on carefully laid out bits of cardboard or blanket. The ‘new middle class’ of Mumbai, spoken of in hushed tones by economists, stepped over the sleeping forms or skirted around them without breaking stride as they headed for the nearest Starbucks to fulfil their destiny as the engine of Indian economic growth.

  The car drew up outside an old building. Red-brick arches invited visitors within and there were flowering plants in the compound. It was less sterile by a long way than Singh’s Singapore station. Tanvir led the way, his firm stride belying any nervousness or hesitation. Was he confident that this unfortunate creature was not his sister? Quite likely, he was merely trying to show up the inspector from Singapore. Look at me, his stride proclaimed, I am man enough to do my duty, however unpalatable. My grandfather doesn’t need you prancing all over our personal affairs in your silly shoes.

  The officer who came out to meet them was deferential to the point of obsequious. “The minister called,” he
explained quickly. “You are the brother of Ashu Kaur – grandson of Tara Singh?”

  Tanvir nodded once.

  “I am Assistant Commissioner of Police, Patel, at your good service.”

  Singh did not bother to mention that he too was a policeman although not one who took as much pride in his uniform as ACP Patel. The Indian’s khaki uniform was starched stiff and the crease lines had been created by an expert. His belt was pulled in tight and created a mass of flesh on either side although in this respect, at least, Singh had the edge. Patel had bags under his eyes that sagged in concert with his jowls as if his face suffered an exaggerated gravitational pull compared with the rest of humanity. He wore a peaked hat and had shoulder flashes with three stars and the letters ‘IPS’ on them. Indian Police Service, surmised Singh.

  “And you are also relative of missing girl?”

  “Yes,” agreed Singh amicably.

  “A very senior policeman from Singapore,” said Tanvir. “My grandfather has asked for his help.”

  The inspector was interested to note that Tanvir was willing to use his position to garner some advantage even if he personally objected to Singh’s role.

  The effect of the statement on the Indian policeman was electric. He clasped Singh’s hand in both of his and shook it vigorously. “Such a pleasure and an honour to be meeting you.”

  “Perhaps we can view the girl?” demanded Tanvir.

  “I’m afraid you will not be finding this easy. Body is not at all in good shape,” explained Patel.

  “Cause of death?” asked Singh.

  “Body is very burnt. Our first understanding was that this incident was related to riots last night in Haji Ali mosque area.”

  “That’s nonsense!” said Tanvir, incredulous at the idea that his sister might have been caught up in such an unsavoury incident.

  “Cadaver was found in vicinity.”

  “And now?” demanded Singh. “You said that was your ‘first understanding’?”

  “Now we are not so sure.”