Maya was slightly confused.
“You are saying there are people outside who could help me get dead bodies but those are not from the morgue.
“That is correct. People roam around outside in the compound looking for young doctors and students who need bodies. But now that I say that I am not sure if you would still find them. I hear the Peacocks have started driving these men to gaols lately, become very strict on the sad business. But you can try your luck.”
Maya thanked the lady and turned around. A man who had been standing just behind her became unusually startled as she turned and started moving hurriedly in the other direction.
Was this man eavesdropping on her?
“Wait, sir” she called after him but he did not stop.
Maya followed the man through the crowd of people and past the door of the building. She caught a glimpse of him near the gate of the compound and ran towards him. There was certainly something that he knew about the case.
Maya reached the gate panting, the man was now moving hastily towards a carriage across the road. She pressed ahead to cross the road but in her hurry barged into a couple.
“I am really sorry,” she said looking up to find herself staring at the face of Maisie, her room partner. She was dressed in a shiny red dress with frills at her arms and shoulders and was accompanied by a tall man in a white coat.
Maisie was as surprised as Maya to see her here.
“Maya!” she exclaimed, “What are you doing here?”
Maya looked over Maisie’s shoulder to find the man she was chasing. He was still moving swiftly towards a couple of hansoms parked under a mango tree on the square.
“I had some work,” said Maya almost gruffly.
“Johnny, this is my roommate Maya,” she introduced her to a tall man, who was accompanying her, “Maya, this is Johnny, he is a manager at the Cardim Shipping Bank,” she said the last part as if it was the most important aspect of the man’s personality.
“Nice to meet you,” said the man to Maya who managed a tired smile.
“Nice to meet you too,” said Maya, “I am sorry, but I’ll have to hurry, I have some very important business.”
She hurried past the two and ran towards the square. But the man had already boarded a cab and before she could reach there, the hansom had taken flight. She leaned on a parked cab panting. She was sure the man had heard her conversation with the old lady and knew something about the case. Maya cursed Maisie and her wretched boyfriend. They had cost her a vital lead today. She turned away, disappointed, and her eyes fell on a beggar who was occupying a quilt on the pavement, a tin bowl in front of him. Maya had worked with Banwari the beggar before, and he, she realized happily, was just the man she needed right now.
12
Karim Khan's House
Maya heard the door of the apartment click. Finally. She didn’t know the time but reasoned it must be well past midnight, she had been waiting for more than 4 hours now. Maya straightened herself, controlled her breathing, and stood ready to pounce. She was hiding behind a wooden cupboard in a small windowless room. Maya shuffled her feet in position and clutched her small pocket knife tightly as footsteps rung in the other room of the two-room apartment. There was more than one man in the house. Banwari hadn’t told her this.
The beggars of Cardim, Maya had realized soon after joining the Bombay Detective Agency, were the single most efficient source of information. There were more than a quarter-million beggars spread all over the metropolis. Since they were present almost everywhere in the city, like cracks on a decaying building, nobody noticed them or mind their presence. This made it easy for them to do much more than just begging. They observed people, sometimes followed them on order, the more skillful ones even broke into homes and could easily provide information that was otherwise really tricky to access.
Many Greycoats used their services, so did the investigators in the Bombay Detective Agency. In fact, the agency officially employed a man called Ramdin who claimed to be the king of all the beggars of Cardim, which meant that he had access to all the information that the army of beggars in Cardim scrounged together.
Maya had faced no trouble to find out the man who had run away from her in the Morgue. She gave Banwari, a beggar she had regular dealings with, a description of the man she was after, told him that he was either an employee of the morgue or worked as an agent outside the building and that he had taken a carriage to the west, where his house ought to be. The beggar, after charging her 10 Cowries, had opened a weather-beaten notebook, flipped through its loose pages for an eternity before telling her that the man in question was called Karim Khan, he worked in the morgue as an attendant to the director, lived in an apartment in Vasco, was unmarried and an alcoholic who often caused trouble in his apartment building.
Maya was not sure how the beggar had so much information readily available about the man. She suspected that someone had paid him earlier to investigate about him. But there was no reason to complain, she had the information she wanted.
Maya then made her way to the address that the beggar had given her but had found Karim Khan’s house locked. She had broken into his house, searched it thoroughly to find nothing of value, then taken up a position behind a large cupboard to wait for him.
But she had not expected him to have company.
Karim Khan’s drunk slurring speech rung about the house. It was followed by a female voice. He was with a woman. Maya clutched the knife tightly, she could handle a drunk man and a woman.
“Come, darling,” Karim Khan was saying, “let me show you my bed, it’s grander than you can imagine.”
“I’ll have the money first,” the woman said
“Don’t you trust me, darling? Nobody in this city is more generous than me. Let me light a candle so you see my honest face.”
Maya heard a match being lit. The sound of steps grew closer to the room and there were sounds of struggle. Promptly the door of the room flew open and Karim Khan stumbled in with a small candle in hand.
He set the candle on the bedside table and settled on the bed holding his arms open.
“I’ll name you the heir to my empire, don’t make me wait now.”
Maya stepped in from the shadows and jumped upon the man. Drunk and out of his senses, Karim Khan initially thought that it was the prostitute who had fallen into his arms and he tried to embrace Maya. Then he felt the cold tip of Maya’s knife upon his throat and froze in shock.
“Do not move,” breathed Maya, “or I’ll slice your throat.”
She heard some movement at the door of the room. The woman who had accompanied Karim had heard the commotion and was peeking in apprehensively.
“You, woman,” barked Maya, “leave the house before I count to ten.”
The woman had turned and fled even before Maya had finished the sentence. She waited for the front door to shut close then focused her attention on Karim Khan.
“Please don’t kill me,” he cried.
Maya raised her knife an inch from Karim Khan’s throat, a thin rivulet of blood gushed from where the tip had been. It flowed down upon the bed and disappeared.
“Don’t make a sound,” she said, “or I’ll be forced to hurt you. I don’t intend to harm you, I only need answers to a few questions.”
“Please don’t kill me,” said that man again. Though he still reeked of alcohol he had grown reasonably sober with the shock of having a knife at his throat.
“What is your name,” Maya asked.
“Karim Khan,” said the man.
“Why did you run away when you saw me in the Sophia morgue in the evening today.”
Karim Khan glared at her. In the dim glow of the candle, he hadn’t yet realized that the woman holding the knife upon his throat was the same one he had seen in the morgue.
“No,” he said panting, “I did not run. I did not see you. I am looking at you for the first time. You must be mistaken.”
Maya pushed the knife back
upon Karim Khan’s throat who grimaced in pain. “I don’t have time for this,” she said, “don’t force my hand.”
“No please,” he cried, visibly terrified, “I’ll tell you.”
Maya raised the knife again but only just.
“Speak,” she said.
“I heard you talk about Bernard Knowles, so I ran away.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing much. I helped him get a few documents forged more than a year ago. You see I work as an attendant to the Deputy Director of the Morgue and I earn a few extra bucks occasionally by helping people forge their own death certificates. But Bernard did not want a death certificate, he wanted me to forge a license for him that said he was an official supplier of cadavers as well as an affidavit which mentioned that he was granted permission to work on the behalf of the morgue. I didn’t think it was anything much and he didn’t tell me why he needed them. But he paid me well for a simple job and so I did not complain. I did not hear from him since then but in the evening today when I heard you talk to Isabel about him, my interest was piqued and I tried to hear more. But then you turned and I was scared that you might drag me in this business, so I ran away.”
“That’s all? Don’t tell me you know nothing more about him.”
“I swear I don’t know anything more about him,” said Karim Khan, “He came to meet me in the morgue and we did all the correspondence there. Though, I did run across him in a pub in Old Cardim a few months ago.”
“Which pub?”
“I don’t remember clearly,” the man scratched his head, “Not its name, but it was smelly, it smelled of piss and it served very bad ale. It was just outside the tram station of Mustapha lane. I happened to have some business there and just went in for a quick beer. I saw him at a table with a few rouges creating a ruckus. He seemed to know a lot of people in the pub, must have been a regular there.”
Maya raised her knife a bit more.
“You really don’t know anything else about him?”
“I swear on my unborn child.”
Maya reasoned that she had all the information she could get from the man. She swiftly clambered down the bed and kept the knife in her pocket.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” said Karim Khan, “or I’ll lose my job.”
Maya thought for a second, “If you run away from me once more be sure that I’ll tell them.”
“You have my word, I will not.”
Maya turned to leave.
“Wait,” called the man from behind her, “Why do you want to know about Bernard. Are you a Greycoat?”
Maya smiled, “Yes I am,” she said and scampered out.
13
Maisie's Question
“Where have you been?” Maisie’s voice rung in the dark room and Maya, who had been trying to slyly tiptoe into her bed, jumped up in fright.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “you are still awake?”
“Yes I am, I have been waiting for you all night.”
Maisie turned the knob of the lantern at her bedside so that the room was drenched in a faint yellow light. The large clock that hung in the room said it was 2 in the morning. Maya was near the door, her hair was disheveled and there were spots on her blouse. Red spots. Was that Blood?
Maisie had been practicing to put the question to Maya in as tactful a manner as possible but when Maya finally entered the room, she could not help but blurt out what was on her mind. She had been waiting all night just to pose this question. She wanted to finally tackle her roommate, have a proper conversation with her.
Though Maya had been her room partner for over two years, Maisie did not remember if she had ever talked to her for more than a minute. Maya was utterly incapable of being a part of an amiable chat, the sort of talk that Maisie always imagined an ideal room partner should indulge in. Conversations about the weather, about irritating bosses, about funny customers and handsome men and about marriage. But Maya had nothing to say on any of these things and even when Maisie tried to force a conversation just to break the curtain of silence (having been bred in a large family, Maisie could not bear reticence for too long), Maya would disturb the flow with monosyllable answers and awkward pauses between sentences. Maisie had the impression that her room partner thought too much before speaking, she weighed her words and gave thought to each sentence and syllable like a politician. Perhaps this was because she feared that talking too much would give out something about herself and about her past.
That was the one thing Maisie disliked about her room partner even more than her silence. Maya was reclusive to the point of snobbishness. She liked to keep her affairs and life extremely secretive, as if she was one of those clandestine spies that worked for the East India Company. Maisie had no clue about her background, her family – if she had any, where she was from, and, in general, what was wrong with her. Maya had mentioned once in passing that she worked for Messrs. Grington and Basse as a clerk. This was the only personal detail that Maya had parted to her, apart from that she was a blank book. It often became irritating when her relatives asked about the person she shared her room with. They held the opinion that in a city as big and ugly as Cardim one ought to know the in and out of the person they were sharing rooms with, it wasn’t safe to cohabitate with anyone who kept secrets. Their concern was legitimate, but even upon regular prodding, Maya had refused to endow her with other personal details. This had forced Maisie to take a more proactive approach in investigating about Maya. Maisie never let go of any opportunity to gather any tidbits about her. As soon as Maya left for work, she would scrounge around her belongings, which consisted of a large wooden trunk, a tattered leather bag, and a small iron money safe which she kept in the almirah. But her extensive investigations had borne no fruit. She was able to gather absolutely nothing about Maya apart from the fact that her name indeed was Maya Mitchell and that she did work for Grington and Basse. There was no clue about her family, relatives, and place of birth. It seemed like her room partner had rubbed off her past with an eraser. When her rudimentary investigation had failed, Maisie decided to change her lodgings but there was no other room in the vicinity that she could afford. She worked as a salesman at a garment store in Old Cardim and the owner of the store would disown his son if he asked him for a raise.
The two had now been living together for two years and Maisie had, with great effort, managed to cultivate a working relationship with Maya. They talked formally, like colleagues at work, divided the chores weekly, and split the bills in half. And though the lack of details about Maya was disconcerting, Maisie had made peace with it. At least as much as was humanly possible. But there were moments when Maya acted so strangely and mysteriously that it became hard to ignore. Often, she would vanish without a trace to emerge scruffy and with scratches at the end of a couple of days and offer absolutely no explanation for her disappearance. Maisie had tried to solve these strange incidents but she had very little talent in detective work.
Today, Maisie had stumbled upon her room partner on the Morgue road when she had gone to watch a show in the Apollo Theatre nearby. Why was Maya there? She had also seen her conversing intimately with a person she could safely assume to be a beggar. Maisie had decided to pose these questions to Maya when she returned home, but it had taken her roommate the whole night to come back.
Maya kept her leather bag upon her bed and sat down to remove her sandals. She had pretended to not hear Maisie’s question. This was one of the many techniques she used to evade her questions. But not today.
“It is quite late you know, I was worried for you,” Maisie ventured again.
Maya looked up towards her room partner almost innocently.
“I was with a friend, we were doing some work.”
Maya with a friend till 2 in the night. That would have been hard to believe even if Maisie did not know that Maya had no friends.
“Which friend? You never introduced him to me.”
“It was a girlfriend from o
ffice,” she said
Maisie nodded. Though she knew that this was a lie, she could not disprove it. She had to take some other route.
“And what were you doing on the Morgue Road today,” she asked.
Maya placed her sandals under her bed and unclasped her hair.
“Oh, I was just passing by,” she said.
“But your office is not even close.”
“Yes, it is not” Maya agreed, shuffling her feet. Maisie grinned, she had Maya in a corner now.
“What were you doing there?” Maya asked in turn, unable to answer herself.
“Well, I was there to watch a play,” Maisie said.
“Oh yes! A play,” Maya stuttered, “That’s what I was there for as well. With this same friend that I was talking about. After the play, we went to her house. ”
It was clearly not the truth. Maisie was sure that her roommate was utterly incapable of enjoying a drama.
“How wonderful,” said Maisie, “I was there as well, which play were you watching?”
Maya took off the scarf upon her neck and took her time to fold it carefully. Maisie had never seen her show even a little interest in the state of her garments. They lay stuffed inside the almirah like a washerman’s heap. It was clear that Maya was avoiding her questions, but Maisie was in no mood to let her off the hook.
“I never thought you had much interest in dramatics,” she prodded, “we could have gone together if you had told me. Which play did you say you were there for?”
“Um... It was a romance, an act from Shakespeare. I forget the name, it was nothing remarkable, you see.”
“Oh! I didn’t know there was a romantic play going on in the theatre as well.”
“Well there was,” said Maya picking up her folded scarf and rushing towards the water closet, “I am feeling very hot and would like a bath.”
“Well, in that case, you should take your towel and not your scarf,” said Maisie grinning.
Maya looked at the garment in her hand, returned it to the cupboard, took up a towel, and went into the water closet.
The Anatomist (Maya Mystery Book 2) Page 7
