She chose her words with care. “If Indra was murdered I want to find out why. I’ve come here from England to investigate. My mother has gone missing and the trail points in this direction.”
“You’ve got courage and determination… just like your mother.”
Kal jerked her cup, sloshing dark tea into the saucer. “I - I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I recognised you in the yard. You look like her.”
Her heart started hammering. “My mother came here? You met her?”
“Your mother met Indra in this room. It was a private conversation and Indra only told us she needed your mother’s help. I don’t even know how the two of them got in contact. What I do know is that Indra was scared.”
“This is a dreadful thing to ask I know, but… was Indra’s body identified?”
The old woman shook her head. “Two witnesses said they’d seen Indra entering the garage shortly before the blaze and the police didn’t look for any other evidence. She was doused in fuel and there was nothing left.”
Kal swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”
“What was your mother doing here?”
“She’s a journalist, acutally a very well-known one, and she works for a newspaper in London. She must have been working on an investigation.”
The old woman sipped her tea. Kal lost all desire for her own drink and placed it to the side.
“I believe in my heart that my daughter-in-law is dead,” said the old woman, “and I don’t need science to tell me the remains were hers. Someone killed her and those witnesses were paid to lie because for Indra to be in that garage she could only have been dragged there by villains. Someone else doused her in fuel and set her alight.” The woman leant her bony elbows on her knees. “I wish I could help you more. The only thing I can do is answer the question I see written all over your face. I can see you’re frightened for your mother and I tell you, the body they found wasn’t her.”
Kal realised she was shaking. She never cried in front of other people but right now, tears ran down her cheeks.
“The last time I saw her, I didn’t even say a proper goodbye. She phoned me for help and I put her off, like I didn’t even care.”
“My dear girl, your mother knows you love her without you having to tell her.” The old woman laid a hand on Kal’s knee. “You have a path to follow and it’s brought you here. Trust in yourself and I believe you’ll find the truth.”
Chapter Thirty
As Kal crossed the ScottBioTec compound, the sun shone mercilessly down, pounding the baked earth. The children were in school and no noise came from anywhere. Even the cicadas were silent, over powered by the heat.
At the hospital entrance, Kal pressed the pass against a metal pad and the glass doors slid open. A welcome draught swept down from the air conditioning. The hospital smelled of cleaning fluids and disinfectant. A white man waited in the foyer. In his thirties, with curly brown hair, he wore a blue, nurse’s tunic.
“You must be Kavita. Hello, my name's Tommy and I'll be taking you on a visit of the facility.”
“Pleased to meet you, Tommy,” she said, “you sound American.”
“Can't hide the accent. I'm from Illinois.”
“So how did you find your way to India?”
“By chance,” he said, giving her a mischievous smile.
Tommy was attractive, in good shape, full of personality, and on first glance, most probably gay.
“I’m pretty good at puzzling people out, give me a few seconds, hmmm, let me see… was it by chance anything to do with love?” she asked.
Tommy laughed. “You're a good guesser. I was chasing after a nurse who came to work here. That was two years ago and I'm still here.”
“And the nurse, where's she?”
“Actually it was a ‘he’. He left. I'm a mental health nurse myself so I stayed on and what d'ya know, I fell in love with the people. I can't get enough of their honesty and spirituality, not to mention the dahl and curry.” Tommy patted his stomach and laughed again. “Come on, we’ll start at the top and I’ll explain as we go.”
They took the stairs to the top floor.
“This is a whistle-stop tour, so you understand the basics. There are five separate departments – the research institute, specialised surgery unit, intensive care, therapy and technical department. First of all, if children are selected at the clinic, they're put straight on a physical therapy and nutrition programme to prepare them for surgery. Most of the children have been under-nourished since birth, so you can't just wheel them into the operating theatre. It can take up to a year for them to be fit to withstand the procedures.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Sure, and it’s what’s required. When a child is ready, a tiny micro-electrode array is implanted in the brain. As you can imagine, the brain surgery is a delicate procedure and the children remain in intensive care until they've been stabilised. After that’s successful, the child’s limb stems are prepared to be ready to accept the artificial replacements. “
“Does the brain surgery always go well?”
“Mostly, yes. In occasional cases, the children can react badly. It's a highly specialised field and Dr Mark, our senior surgeon, has pioneered the work. In fact, he's become a world expert. Before we started at ScottBioTec, implantation of electrodes in the brain had only been attempted on animals.”
They peered in the window of a ward. Four children lay surrounded by machines.
“These four have already completed the brain surgery procedures and they’ve recently had their lower limbs prepared. That means their deformed limbs have been removed ready for the artificial replacements.”
“As I understand it, the new limbs can be controlled by the way the children think?”
“That's right. The children learn to think in a way that makes the limbs work how they want. The array communicates with chip technology in the limb. The idea grew from the intensive therapy patients undertake after they've suffered a stroke. I guess you’ve heard of that? When you lose the function of part of the brain, intensive physical therapy can re-train a patient to use new, un-used areas of the brain. At first it's deliberate and difficult, but the more you do it, the more natural it becomes. The brain pathways actually change. Now if you give someone an artificial limb, the brain can learn to use it too, via the electrode array that’s been implanted. Everyone’s brain communicates with the body by electrical impulses and the array picks those impulses up. The trick is for the person to learn how that translates into motor action in the limb. What we’re talking about is translating thought into action. And, of course, the more refined the mechanics of the artificial limb, the greater the possibility for achieving natural movement.”
More wards contained children in bed. Then they came to a number of empty wards.
“These children are either in physiotherapy or they're taking part in research.”
“You like working here, don't you?”
“It's a great place, though I realise I can't stay here forever, even though I might like to. I'll have to pick up my life at home again some time.”
“No boyfriends here, then?”
“Not at the moment and they don't know what they're missing.” Tommy spread his hands and smiled.
They took the stairs down to the first floor.
“What happens in the research centre?”
“They’ve their own team of scientists. That's where they make all the advances in chip technology and nerve pathway control. Children have a remarkable ability to learn to move the artificial limbs and accustom themselves to the brain implants many times faster than adults. How the brain learns to interact with the chip is still a mystery. Rumour has it they're working on identifying specific cocktails of neurotransmitters manufactured by the brain – it’s those cocktails which actually enhance the communication in some way. If those molecules can be identified and then artificially produced, it could help adults to adapt more fully.”<
br />
Kal watched through the window of a therapy area decked out much like a gymnasium. Children with artificial limbs practised walking on balance beams and skipped with ropes and bounced on trampolines.
“They make all the physiotherapy fun, you know how kids love to play. In separate rooms there's also work on fine motor-control where kids can see a scan of their own brain real-time and learn to direct the colours in the image. It helps them connect thoughts to fine movement.”
“I'd like to see that.”
“Sure, we can pass by.”
“I’m really curious about the work here, I think it’s fascinating, and I read up about ScottBioTec's third generation limb. They say it's top of the range.”
“Absolutely, but it's the quality of the communication with the limb which makes any limb special. What's the point of having a top-performing artificial limb if you can't make it work for you?”
Tommy knocked at one of the individual rooms and entered. “Mind if we observe for a few minutes?” he asked, “You won't even know we're here.”
A little girl was in the process of threading beads to create a necklace. She had an artificial leg and an artificial arm. Her scalp was wired up to a machine. In front of the child, a screen displayed an image of the two hemispheres of her brain.
“That's a real-time image of her brain. You can see the implanted mini-array right there and all the colours around represent the associated brain activity. She's being trained to control her finger movements. You see how the colours in different zones are changing? The hotter the colour, the more that part of the brain is active. So that small orange area is the most active and it tells us it’s the part of the brain she's using for this task and it’s that which is affecting the electrode and being picked up by the chip,” said Tommy.
“Good Amita,” said the therapist, “the hotter you make that spot, the easier it will be to get the thread through the hole in the bead. Let's try to make it turn from orange to red.”
“She's around eight years old and probably had her set of operations a few months ago,” Tommy said, “she'll have worked hard to get this far. As she progresses, they make the beads smaller and smaller.”
“Wow, she’s really concentrating,” Kal said.
“When they first come in here the colours are all purples and blues and the brain activity is dispersed,” Tommy said, “the children target the coloured area with their own will and the brain itself has worked out how that translates into action in the fingers. Isn't it incredible?”
Kal had to agree it was.
“Next stop is the technical department,” Tommy said.
“Seems like it all works well, although one little girl told me children occasionally run away.”
“There can be problems, for instance when the limbs are attached there's a need for pain control which can be prolonged. Some of it's what we call 'ghost pain' generated by the brain and not associated to a specific part of the body. That’s the team I work in. We think ghost pain is triggered by the area of the brain they implant to. There are several remedies and the most drastic is to adjust, or even remove, the electrode implantation. That only happens as a last resort, there are plenty of methods we employ before we get to that stage.”
“That doesn't sound good.”
“It's a complex problem because not all the children exhibit it. Apart from that, there's always new technology to be trialled. The research programme takes a lot of time and the children agree to take part until they're sixteen. It's a big under-taking.”
“You mean that's why some of them run away?”
“Maybe one or two run off, I’ve heard of it. You’ve got to understand there's a massive amount of procedures and technology for them to deal with. The children are adaptable but it spooks some of them. For some, running away would be a natural response and, of course, sometimes they come back.”
Tommy pushed through a set of doors. “This is the technical area. The limbs are manufactured in the USA and the final adjustments are made on-site to custom fit to each patient. The equipment here is worth millions of dollars in itself.”
“I read about some controversy too, I mean, doesn't the child’s agreement to take part in the research programme strike you as odd? They’re far too young to know what they're signing up to.”
“The ethics did bother me, except I've seen too many miracles and let's face it, most of the children who come here have no adult to vouch for them, so who would we ask permission from? This isn't the United States or England, they're not wards of the court, they're street kids, and since the children are growing, the limbs need to be regularly up-dated so they need regular appointments anyway. Don’t forget, here they get good food, a bed and education.”
A range of artificial limbs stretched along a shelf. Leg units from small to large. Arm and hand units too.
“Don’t touch any of them,” Tommy said, “or the technicians will go berserk.”
“Doesn’t it bother you there are people comparing ScottBioTec to a concentration camp and the horrors perpetrated by sadists during the Holocaust? When I read that it made me feel very uncomfortable.”
“Medical research always attracts strong views, and a lot of crank protestors too. Well, it isn't like that or I wouldn't be here. Mark and Christina are professionals and their teams are run impeccably. There's no Dr Mengele at ScottBioTec, Kavita, I promise you that.”
Tommy handed her an object that looked like a mobile phone. “Now this you can touch.”
It was the size of her palm. Slim and black and substantially heavier than a phone.
“It’s Christina's brain-child. It’s a mobile control unit that allows communication to the chip to be deactivated from the outside. So, for instance, if ghost pain is a problem the children can be given total rest without the need for drugs and without the need for unattaching the limb. The idea is that in real life, the limb remains permanently attached, it’s not taken on and off like the old-style prosthetics. This control unit is marvellous. The children start with a few minutes’ interaction with their new limbs per day and gradually build it up. As they get more experienced, the children take over the use of the control and decide for themselves how much time they spend interacting with the limb. Those experiencing ghost pain often overcome it by their own motivation to succeed.”
The tour was coming to an end and they left the laboratory and looped back round to the entrance.
“Is there any surgery that takes place outside the hospital? For instance, in the office building?”
Tommy laughed. “Of course not, it's only administration over there. Like I said, it all happens right here.”
And she could see from Tommy’s eyes that he believed it.
***
Kal headed back to her room. She'd have liked to chat with Marty though, of course, for the sake of security she'd left her mobile and true identification at the hotel.
It struck her as soon as she closed the door. Someone had been inside.
Kal stopped, half-closing her eyes and taking in a deep breath like a blood hound. She could sense the foreignness, the disturbance.
She'd only partly emptied the contents of her backpack - half her clothing she'd placed onto shelves and the rest she'd left in her bag. Kal rested her hand on the pile of folded T-shirts, and then bent to examine her pack. The evidence stood out immediately. The clasp on a side compartment had been hastily closed. Too hastily. The third prong of the clasp had broken off years ago, so that only two remained, meaning it was trickier to fully close than it should be. It tended to get stuck halfway. Whoever had last closed it hadn't taken the time to push it all the way in, and that wasn't her.
The most likely suspect? Mr Singh. Checking the rest of her belongings, she found nothing missing, nor out of place. He'd left no other traces, which meant Mr Singh was better at snooping than she'd have imagined.
Kal lay on the bed and for the next hour or so, stared up at the ceiling, making plans.
&n
bsp; Chapter Thirty-one
Several hours before Scott's arrival, the matron's migraine peaked. From the steps of her dormitory block, Kal watched the administrative assistant sprint across the playground.
She’d briefed Padma the night before. So that morning in the school room, Padma fell from her chair, claiming she felt dizzy, which meant Padma had been lying in sick bay since then, situated right next to the office. Kal had discovered the matron liked to keep an eye on poorly children and had the habit of keeping the sick bay door open, making it the perfect place for Padma to spy on the arrangements for Scott's visit.
On Kal's instructions, Ashok kept going in to see his sister, feigning fear Padma had malaria and pretending his mother died from it. He turned out to be such a good actor Kal wondered if that might be true. Ashok kept Kal up-to-date - she knew the time Scott's private jet would land, when Scott should arrive at ScottBioTec and the checklist of instructions the Matron was following to the letter to prepare for his visit and, of course, she knew the Matron's migraine had been getting worse and worse.
Little spurts of dust flew from the heels of the administrative assistant as she ran across the oval play area. Certainly, the assistant had come to summon Jasodra, who, as deputy-in-charge, would be the one to take over.
“Where's Jasodra? Matron wants to see her urgently.” Tendrils of hair fell across the assistant’s face and dust clung to her ankles.
“Jasodra's in the dormitory. Why, is there something wrong?”
“Matron's migraine’s become unbearable. There’s no way she’ll last until Dr Scott arrives. Jasodra will have to take over.”
Kal waited while the assistant went inside. She heard a kerfuffle, followed by a silence indicating Jasodra's momentary panic. Then the assistant and Jasodra appeared at the top of the steps. From the expression on Jasodra's face, Kal could see her contemplating the enormity of welcoming Dr Scott alone. Somewhere out in the dirt plane, a lone cicada chirruped. Kal stood up and was careful to remain on the planking one step below the other two - she knew it was important to let Jasodra take the lead, then she could step in to be her right hand.
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