“Kavita, can you manage here for me?” Jasodra said. “There's the dormitories and the lounge areas to put in order and a mountain of clothes to sort. Everything has to be in top shape for the Founder's visit, not a shoe out of place.”
“I've been up since six this morning and it's all done.” She gave a reassuring smile. “Matron spoke to me yesterday about Dr Scott's visit and I offered to help out, I'm sure I can be more use to you over in the office than here.”
Jasodra hesitated. So Kal pushed open the door of the lounge to display the chairs neatly in place, the spotless surfaces of the tables, the crayons and brightly-coloured exercise books stacked on the shelves. In the adjacent room, she'd already emptied the laundry baskets.
“Matron will be out for the count soon; she can hardly stand. You might need someone you can rely on.”
“Okay, Kavita, that makes sense and I'd be grateful, I’m not sure how I’m going to cope. Please come with me.”
***
Over at the office, the drone of a ceiling fan filled the room. Drained and barely able to talk, the Matron clung on. She gripped the arm-rests of her chair, her magenta-coloured nails giving her fingers the appearance of claws.
“I'm sorry… Jasodra, you'll have to manage… on your own.” The matron could barely get the words out. “Scott's very… picky about arrangements for his… visits. My predecessor left… full instructions. There's a… detailed checklist and you must go through it… item by item.”
A fat bead of sweat rolled down the woman's temple. Matron clenched her teeth.
“You must go to bed.” Jasodra said. “I can manage and Kavita has offered to help. We shall be all right.”
Matron's eyes flicked to Kal. The woman was about to object. Kal could see the words battling their way up the matron’s throat, so she grabbed the woman’s arm and instructed the administrative assistant to take the other side.
“There's no arguing matron, you're not well enough.” Kal spoke loudly, heaving the woman out of her chair.
Her voice drowned out matron's feeble words. They hoisted her to her feet and the woman made another valiant effort to speak before grabbing the side of her head. Kal ignored her own feelings of guilt. Early that morning, she’d hunted for monosodium glutamate in the kitchen and added it to matron’s mug. It had certainly had the desired effect, being known to trigger migraines, and in the matron’s case it had speeded it up nicely.
“Please help poor matron back to her room,” Kal said to the administrative assistant, and she practically propelled them to the door and closed it behind them.
“Yes, poor matron,” said Jasodra, “it must be the stress of the Founder's visit that brought it on. I've no idea how I'm going to welcome him, I've never met anyone so important in my life.”
Kal squeezed Jasodra’s arm. “There’s nothing to worry about. We can write out a welcoming speech together and after that, I’m sure you'll be fine.”
Several typed sheets lay beside the keyboard - the checklist. She sensed Jasodra's hesitation and took the opportunity to sweep it up. It consisted of three pages in all and matron had struck through each task as she'd completed them. In the few seconds before Kal politely handed the list to Jasodra, she scanned the pages. One item had recently been scored through, it read, 'Mr Singh to prepare The Suite.' Kal noted too that Scott planned to tour the hospital and, despite his time of arrival being seven o'clock at night, he wished to see a display of physical therapies performed by the children.
Kal passed over the list. The ceiling fan whirred, ruffling the sheets in Jasodra's hand.
“Let's carry on working our way down,” Jasodra said, “the next is, ‘meet with Head of Physiotherapy to confirm order of events this evening.’”
Kal read the next item over Jasodra's shoulder.
“‘Confirm menu arrangements with the kitchen are being acted on.’ I could deal with that. The planned menu is attached at the back. I can easily make sure it's on track.”
She waited for Jasodra to agree and head off for the hospital, leaving her free.
“Good idea, Kavita. Let me know if there are any problems. At this stage, it’s mostly checking the final arrangements and making sure everyone's doing what they were already asked to do.”
From the window, Kal watched Jasodra walk briskly across the compound. When Jasodra disappeared inside the hospital, Kal went straight to sick bay.
“The matron's gone, Padma. You did really well and now I’d like you to go back to the dormitory and lie low.”
“I can help you.”
“You've helped me enough and this could get dangerous.”
Padma sat up. “Something tells me I won’t be seeing you again.”
The girl's pre-sentiment gave Kal goosebumps. She rubbed her arms. It was going to be a big night that was certain and no telling how it would turn out.
“Like we said before, the missing children are my priority, Padma, and if I don’t see you again will you promise me something?”
“What's that?”
“That you'll continue studying hard and if you’re ever in trouble, there's an American nurse called Tommy at the hospital. You can ask him for help, he's a friend.”
Padma gave the briefest of nods and slipped away.
Beyond the office and sick bay, Kal pushed through a set of double doors and found herself in the long, gloomy corridor stretching to Scott’s private suite. Underfoot was the same rough, grass matting as in the dormitories. She ran swiftly, covering the distance in a few seconds. As she passed the door to the stationery store, she pulled up, and then ahead she saw her luck was in, because Mr Singh had been careless. He'd left the steel door ajar.
She leaned close and listened. Silence. With her fingertips she gave the door a little push. It swung open to reveal a hallway. The hall had expensive, wooden flooring and a single, decorative floor lamp that gave out a muted, orange glow. A faint scent of floor polish hung in the air. The private suite seemed to be a luxury apartment.
A door sat at the end and Kal could hear faint sounds coming from behind it - an electrical, rhythmic noise that came closer then moved away, came closer then moved away and with each iteration, the noise progressed nearer the door. Whatever made the noise sounded like it might be coming out soon.
The only other door lay on the right-hand side of the hallway. In a couple of paces, she reached it and took an in-breath, then breathed out long and slow and flexed her shoulders. Her heart rate accelerated. The gold handle was cold to the touch. She pushed it down, then swiftly pushed the door open and stepped boldly inside, keeping low, ready for whatever she might encounter.
An automatic ceiling light flicked on and adrenalin pumped round Kal’s system but the room was empty. She’d entered a top-of-the-range bathroom suite, with an expansive mirror and huge, corner tub and shining, double hand-basins. Her muscles relaxed an iota. A luxury shower area lay in the corner with a huge, curved, glass door. Something caught her attention.
Grey slate tiling covered the two walls backing the shower and the tiles were large, slightly uneven slates such as you'd find in an ultra-fashionable, Nordic hotel - so characteristically irregular, you'd not notice any imperfections except up close. Kal ran her hand over the vertical surfaces until her hand located a consistent vertical flaw. This was a panel, not a wall.
She gave the edge a smart push. Despite its weight, the wall began moving and slid back into a hidden recess, rolling soundlessly on runners concealed in the floor and ceiling. The partition hid a dim, concealed cubicle. The hairs on Kal’s arms stood on end.
She took a step into the cubicle. It had a large, smoky window which looked out on a lit bedroom. Through the window, suddenly she found herself almost face to face with Mr Singh. She dropped to the ground, preparing for his reaction, although astonishingly he passed on oblivious to her presence. She crept up onto her knees. He was in the process of hoovering a large, Persian rug and she could hear nothing from the machine. Mr Singh turned to
go back the other way, again passing right in front of the window. Slowly, she straightened her legs to standing and placed her hand on the surface in front of her - of course, it wasn’t a window, she was on the rear side of a two-way mirror. Mr Singh didn’t even know she was there.
A light sweat prickled her top lip. Mr Singh was in an open-plan area which was half-lounge, half-bedroom. Directly opposite Kal, beyond the Persian rug, lay a king-sized bed. As she examined the scene, her blood went cold. Next to the bed stood a low cabinet of shining stainless steel. Its doors were open, and a tray had been pulled out. On the tray were arrayed a set of instruments - a scalpel, handcuffs, unmistakable rubber and metal dildos and ligatures, all neatly one beside the other.
Worse than that, mid-way up the wall, a metal shutter had been opened to reveal four, large metal rings set into the concrete, much as you'd see in a medieval dungeon. Kal stared at the height of the rings and took an involuntary step backwards. An adult attached to those would be on their knees not hanging - the rings were positioned for someone much shorter. For a moment, her vision spun and she lost her balance.
Clutching at the edge of the console in front of her, Kal fought the urge to vomit, digging her fingers into the rigid plastic until they hurt. What she had discovered wasn’t a room for consenting adults.
The wave of nausea passed and she forced herself to look again and re-scanned the area - Mr Singh, the iron rings, the bed, the equipment on the tray. She’d missed something. Partly concealed on the bottom shelf of the stainless steel cabinet lay a slim, black unit. Insert the correct chip into that and, like Tommy said, you could deactivate the limbs of a child. Render them helpless with the press of a button.
Though Kal had guessed those on her mother’s list were involved in paedophilia, she’d hoped to be proved wrong. Now, the evidence in front of her was like a match to fuel. Her rage ignited - flaring to a white hot inferno, forcing its way into her veins like boiling magma, urging her to kick and smash and destroy the place with her bare hands. She imagined jamming her arm across Mr Singh's windpipe and squeezing all the way and enjoying doing it.
Keeping a grip on the console, Kal forced herself to breathe in and out, making each successive breath longer. Using all her discipline, she brought herself under control. The exertion made her shake.
It wasn’t the first time she’d felt a rage forceful enough to commit murder. On assignment, colleagues dealt with facing hopeless destruction and crisis in their own ways - depression, drinking, becoming a workaholic, whereas Kal picked out her targets, be it politicians, big businessmen or local despots and she walked around imagining the vulnerable areas on her targets’ bodies, which with one shot would bring instant death. It never got beyond imagining, and she’d sworn there would never be an exception. As she well knew, Singh was a puppet. The sick controller behind this place was the one she wanted.
With cold precision, Kal re-examined the room quadrant by quadrant - two Persian rugs, a couch, arms-chairs, table, door to the hallway, door leading to an unseen room, a bar, the king-sized bed, stainless steel cabinet. She noted the dimensions and the lay out, storing it all in her memory.
Meanwhile, Mr Singh finished his cleaning routine and wheeled the machine away. Kal wiped her sweating palms down her trousers and turned her attention to the cubicle.
It housed a console and a vertical bank of electronic equipment and was clearly designed for covert surveillance. Rows of switches and little lights on the console reminded her of the equipment in a recording studio. Everything was channelled through a main computer. Bending on one knee, Kal traced the wiring. Ports for a portable hard-drive were evident at the side of the computer where a black lead trailed to the ground, its end hanging empty. Whatever atrocities happened in this room, somebody kept a record.
Mr Singh came back and selected a bottle of whiskey from the generously stocked bar. Then he slouched on the couch and poured a shot, indicating to Kal he was unaware of the existence of the spy cubicle. Even with the cubicle supposedly empty, she was certain knowing it was there would make Mr Singh too nervous to act like that. No, the cubicle was a secret.
Mr Singh finished off his glass and carried it into the unseen room, which was presumably a kitchen. Whilst Mr Singh was gone, Kal left the cubicle and rolled back the panel to its concealed position, careful to leave everything exactly as she'd found it. With her camera in town it would be difficult to capture concrete evidence of the suite. She’d have to work out another way. She tweaked open the bathroom door and in a few steps she was out in the corridor and running along the matting back in the direction of the office.
***
The two of them spent the rest of the afternoon working their way down the checklist until, half an hour before Scott’s scheduled arrival, Kal typed up a speech for Jasodra. Amongst all the running backwards and forwards, she’d found a gap to sneak over to the hospital to speak with Tommy, and even though she'd only had a few minutes with him, it had been enough.
As scheduled, at half past seven, a black sedan drove up the track to the compound. Temporary floodlights had been rigged over the parking area and they highlighted a cloud of dust as the car engine died. The children had been assembled and they watched wide-eyed, nervously shuffling their feet. Jasodra wore a lime green sari and the gorgeous silk cascaded over her shoulder as she stepped forward to greet their Patron.
The children had been waiting for some twenty-five minutes, stretching in two long rows all the way from the parking area to the hospital. Like greeting royalty, they formed a corridor and stood with hands clasped palm to palm in front of them. Kal had objected to that prayer position, but the instructions were clear on matron's checklist.
“We must have the children standing like that,” Jasodra had said, “it’s what Dr Scott will expect and it's not for us to question his wishes.”
Kal had bitten back a retort, frothing like a reined-in stallion. Now she hung back in the shadows as Richard Scott stepped from the car. A second person emerged after Scott and Kal recognised the tall silhouette of Boris from the Gala. From the front of the car, stepped the chauffeur and a fourth man - both of whom Kal assessed to be bodyguards, and not locals either - they were both white and must have flown over with Scott from London.
Jasodra shook Scott's hand and stood to read the passage Kal had prepared. On cue, the children began reciting a Buddhist chant, the rising and falling intonation of their clear voices filling the warm, night air with a message of welcome and greeting. Kal felt like spitting in the dust, and, as Scott and Boris walked down the corridor, she watched Scott smile, his perfect teeth over-white in the floodlights. Smile on, you bastard, she thought. She flexed her hands by her sides. Her time would come, she must be patient.
Chapter Thirty-two
Kal knew it would be a long wait. The display of physical therapy was scheduled for one hour, followed by a two-hour dinner. She wondered how Jasodra was coping. At least Mark and Christina were joining the group, so that would help Jasodra with social conversation.
The time threatened to crawl by, so she returned to her room and spent a good forty-five minutes stretching every single muscle in her body. She considered going for a run around the outskirts of the compound but even though it was long after nightfall, the insects would be voracious, it just wouldn’t be possible even if she covered herself in repellents. So instead, in the tiny space beside her bed, Kal executed a highly-modified version of the Form. With precision and fine control. Holding each movement to its maximum. One stance flowing to the next. Mind and body as one. The memories of her father's coaching and all her disciplined, self-talk quieted. The planning for what was to come and the envisioned scenarios fell away. Her mind stilled.
***
Three hours later, Kal was ready. She crouched at the corner of the office block. Grit had collected at the base of the wall and the slightest movement of the soles of her trainers would grate like sandpaper, so she kept her body perfectly still and waited, let
ting her body relax. The trick with surveillance was to not do or think anything. You must hang there, conserving your energy, alert but not over alert, saving your energy for what was to come. She felt detached, almost clinical. Go in clean and swift, get evidence, get out. This must be a precision operation.
The dinner took place in the long dining hall. Kal lost track of time when finally, Mark and Christina exited and called goodnight to Scott. She watched Mark and Christina return to the hospital together, the two chatting in low voices all the way. Meanwhile, Jasodra headed back to the dormitory alone. A few minutes later, Scott and Boris exited, followed by the two bodyguards. Both guards were in excellent physical shape though they trod heavily, their bellies full of Indian food.
Kal squeezed into the shadows. There was no moon tonight which was to her advantage. In contrast to the bodyguards, tall Boris had a swing in his step and a rhythmic gait which suggested an eagerness. She had a good view as Mr Singh appeared and intercepted Scott and Boris. After a brief exchange, Mr Singh scuttled off in the direction of the hospital. Kal waited for the four to head towards the private suite then went after Mr Singh, maintaining a low, stealthy profile, keeping her footsteps light and Mr Singh in her sights.
Mr Singh didn't go to the main hospital entrance. Instead, he headed for the side where a fire exit door stood open. A young woman from the hospital staff waited in a pool of light. She was clearly over-impressed by Mr Singh, and bobbed her head in deference as Mr Singh approached. Stopping with her back pressed against a eucalyptus tree, Kal strained to hear their conversation.
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