Different Senses

by Ann Somerville

  She agreed, and named a time where she would meet me away from the laboratory. That meant I’d need my auto, so I walked back to the house to collect it, wondering what a quiet, respectable banis girl like Jyoti could want with an ex-cop.

  She looked as lovely as I remembered her, though sadder, with white ribbons instead of purple woven into her red braids.

  “How’s work?” I asked as I drove to my regular chai house.

  “Very good. I recently received a pay rise. Sri Nel is very happy with me, he says.”

  “Excellent. So this isn’t about work?”

  “Not at all, and I don’t want them to know about it. It concerns my family. A very great sorrow.”

  “I understand. Let’s talk while we eat.”

  Most of the customers in the chai house at this time of day were there only to collect orders and lunchboxes left in the morning, so we found a table easily. I ordered a vegetable dish for both of us, and then asked her to tell me what was happening, in her own time.

  “My aunt and uncle live on the Demultan Flats. They’re farmers, not wealthy people. Six weeks ago, their only daughter hanged herself.”

  Ouch. “I’m sorry. That’s why you’re wearing white ribbons?” White for mourning, same for Nihan and Kelon alike.

  “Yes. Though we believe in reincarnation, a life cut short in this way is still a great sorrow. She had lost her first child at birth two months before, and that’s why she killed herself, we believe.”

  “It’s very sad, but I don’t understand why you need my help.”

  She sipped her chai, discomfort and sadness colouring her actions. “My aunt and uncle refuse to accept it was suicide because there was no note. The police have closed the case, there is no evidence of foul play, but yet they find no peace or acceptance. My parents and I have visited three times to try to help, but....”

  “Sometimes people channel their anger at the dead person into a supposed attacker, because they feel that’s more acceptable. What do you want me to do, Jyoti? I’m not a police officer.”

  Her pale cheeks coloured slightly. “No, but you are Kelon and you know how the police work. I thought...perhaps you could ask them to re-examine it? Or ask questions to see if there’s anything in what my aunt and uncle believe? I want to help them so much. Their pain is so great, and they are such good people.”

  “I can talk to them but I can’t promise I can help. Sounds more like they need counselling than anything else.”

  “I agree, but if we try this, then perhaps they won’t be able to deny the truth any longer.”

  “You believe your cousin killed herself?”

  She gave me a sad look. “I saw Sapna two weeks before she died. She was a very unhappy person, and grieved so much for her dead child. I believe suicide is the most likely answer.”

  “Yeah. So when do you want me to go see them?”

  “When is convenient? Ah, and you would charge...?”

  “Nothing. I told you, I owe you. And who wants to profit from misery?”

  She smiled a little. “This is how I feel too. Thank you, Sri Ythen. Tomorrow? I’m not working, and I will need to come with you as they speak little Kelon.”

  “I thought all your people spoke it.”

  “We learn it, yes, but among those who avoid dealing with the chuma, they become rusty. Where they live, the police are the only ones of your kind they ever see.”

  “So we’re always bad news. Great. Tomorrow’s fine. Let them know and I’ll pick you up. But no promises to you or them, okay? They might not like chuma cops, but no police officer would overlook a murder. If they say it’s suicide, then they have reason to think that.”

  “I understand.”

  “We might have to stay overnight. It’s a long way to the Flats. Would that be a problem?” I had no knowledge of that part of the north and no idea what kind of accommodation was on offer.

  “My family will offer you hospitality, Sri Ythen. I can spare three days, if you can.”

  “I hope it won’t take that long, and please—call me Javen.”

  “Very well, Javen.”

  We ate our meal in silence, and I drove her back to work. Not the kind of case I would have chosen for my first, but I’d told Jyoti she could ask me to help her out, and I always kept my word.

  ~~~~~~~~

  I barely had a chance to speak to Yashi and Tara before they went out for their anniversary meal, but felt reluctant to tell them what I’d been asked to do. The ill-feeling between various parts of my family and me over my empathy and what that meant for various assumptions regarding our ancestry, still rumbled on eight months after my shooting. While Yashi and Tara had wisely kept out of the arguments, bringing up the banis might cause tensions in the house I’d rather avoid. Besides, it was, as Jyoti said, a very private matter, and in the nature of an act of charity rather than any investigation.

  So when I left the next morning with an overnight pack, I only said I had arranged to visit a friend of a friend with a view to possible employment. Yashi, busy with the kids, wished me good luck and Tara told me to drive carefully.

  Jyoti had asked me to meet her at the downtown bus depot—I got the impression she didn’t want me to come to her home—and when I arrived, she was waiting with another, older woman. “Javen, this is my mother, Tejal Priti Sunil. She will come with us to assist with my aunt and uncle.”

  And act as chaperone, I had no doubt. “Good morning, Shrimati Sunil.”

  She bowed her head. “Good morning, Sri Ythen. Thank you for agreeing to help my brother and his wife. It has been such a sad time.”

  “No problem. Okay, everyone hop in.”

  The trip to the Demultan Flats would take five hours by road, but we could save an hour and a half by switching onto maglev transport for part of the way. My urban auto wasn’t all that suitable for rural roads and I hoped to make the journey without major damage to the vehicle.

  I’d never been in close proximity to banis women on my own before and the first hour of the trip felt strained, conversations dying almost as soon as they started. The fact I’d been a cop didn’t help, since the Nihan regarded Kelon police with suspicion and Kelon cops didn’t deal with the indigenous population any more than they had to. That my passengers were intensely religious, and my people atheist by political and personal inclination, didn’t do a lot to make things easier either. Two of us being empaths and knowing exactly how wary the other was, only made it more painful.

  But Shrimati Sunil finally asked me about my family, and I said I lived with my twin brother and his wife who was a teacher. That gave us an opening, because banis twins were rare and of great fascination. Shrimati Sunil had been a primary school teacher for a number of years, though she had retired through ill health a while ago. She and Jyoti quizzed me enthusiastically about being an identical twin, and how my brother and Tara managed raising twins themselves. I heard a surprising amount about the different attitudes to child rearing among the banis. Only of theoretical interest to me, sure, but it helped the time pass.

  While we talked, I learned a little more about the suicide. Sapna’s husband was Kelon, something I gathered had caused a stir at the time, and the family had never accepted him. Sapna had been married for two years, and had been looking forward to her first child, her parents’ first grandchild, but she’d gone into labour prematurely while out on a farm visit.

  “She was all alone, and the baby arrived too fast,” Shrimati Sunil said. “The cord was wrapped around its neck, and the child choked.”

  I winced at the image.

  “Very bad luck, that was all, but she blamed herself. Why, I’m not sure, but grieving people sometimes aren’t rational. She hanged herself at the place where she gave birth, and where her baby died.”

  Sainted reason. “Which tends to support the idea that she committed suicide, don’t you think?” I said.

  “To my mind, yes. My brother won’t accept it. If only the girl had left them a note. She must ha
ve been too distressed to think of it.”

  In my experience, a suicide without a note was rare, but so far as I could tell, this was the only remotely suspicious aspect of the case. The note could have been mislaid or simply blown away if she killed herself outdoors. The local cops would have looked. I would have looked.

  When we drove off the maglev, the difference from urban Hegal and its wealth was immediately obvious in the poor condition of the roads, the rundown signs, the lack of lighting, and the lousy signal on my phone.

  “It’s something our people have complained of many times,” Jyoti told me. “But upgrading the signal is apparently too costly for such a sparse population. Many farmers rely on radio communication instead.”

  “Radio? That’s primitive.”

  “Yes, but at least we can keep in touch. Everyone carries phones but half the time, we can’t use them.”

  City folk lived on their phones and comms and datalinks. How did anyone do business out here? I wouldn’t be surprised to find they still used tangible money too.

  The lousy roads weren’t the only striking difference from the city. As I saw my first dwellings raised high on stilts and connected by walkways, I gaped in amazement, and Jyoti laughed at me. “It’s called the Flats because the river floods every wet season. The water passes under the houses, and then people move around by boat. There’s raised storage for autos and farm equipment dotted between every few farms.”

  “What a way to live.”

  “Your people acquired the best land,” Shrimati Sunil said, with only the barest emphasis on ‘acquired’. “But they didn’t want flood plains. The land is very fertile but those who farm must put up with three months of inconvenience.”

  I’d better hurry up with my investigation, I thought, or all the evidence would be underwater in a month.

  The ugly brown houses looked liked ungainly water birds, picking their way through the flat landscape. But the land’s fertility could be seen everywhere I looked, with lush vegetation along every fence, and the fields themselves head high with crops, being harvested by hand and elderly-looking mechanical machinery in the field. Don’t ask me what they were growing. Plants are plants. I know people, not green things.

  I’d never been to this part of the country before. I never left Hegal except to visit my grandfather up in the Tudon Hills, but why would anyone who didn’t live in these Flats, want to visit? There was nothing here but farms. The mines were west of us, while my ancestors had ‘acquired’ the pretty land to the south of Hegal and other prime property elsewhere in the region and to a lesser extent, right across Medele. Our people tended to spend their leisure time where they could enjoy nice scenery without being troubled by red-haired locals.

  Jyoti’s family lived in a commune of ten or so houses on stilts—more a village than a farm. We pulled up under one of the houses and then climbed the tall narrow steps up to the walkway. “How do people manage who aren’t mobile?” I muttered, half to myself.

  “There is a mechanical elevator at each end of the settlement,” Jyoti said. “We look after everyone, not just the fit.”

  I smiled and accepted the rebuke, but I still couldn’t imagine living like this, halfway between land and sky on rickety poles. “What about the farms with animals?”

  “Those are built on embankments. They’re the oldest structures in the region, the work of many people, over generations. There. You can see one.” She pointed to what I’d first thought was a small natural hill in the distance. “My cousin owns that farm. In the wet season, he gathers the herds into the barn and pens. He has to feed them from his stores, of course, until the water goes away. We all hope for a short wet season.”

  She was right about these people being poor. Though everything was clean and carefully mended, nothing that was new. The people who stood in doorways to watch the stranger’s arrival wore worn, patched lungis, shirts and shawls. Impeccably laundered and pressed clothes though. Strolling into the settlement in my tailored Kelon kurta pajama and with my family’s money behind me, I wondered if Jyoti found my sense of guilt ironic. Even the poorest relative I could claim lived in better housing than this.

  Jyoti’s aunt and uncle, both dressed in pure white, bowed as we approached their home. I imitated them, and Jyoti did the introductions. “Javen, my aunt, Aditi Varija Kartik, and my uncle Janak Priti Sunil. Aunt, uncle, this is Javen Ythen.”

  “Welcome to our home,” Sri Sunil said, through Jyoti’s translation. “Please come in.”

  The house was small, and the living area cramped enough with the five of us. There were two other people, young, solemn-faced men, standing against the wall, watching and not speaking. “My sons, Sri Ythen,” Sri Sunil said. “They have come to listen to what you can do for us.”

  “Let me bring you some chai,” his wife said, while we sat. I was directed to what looked like the best chair. A pretty young woman’s portrait, draped in white with flowers in a vase before it, held pride of place on a table at the side. Sapna, I guessed. Her brothers stood like an honour guard on either side of the picture.

  The atmosphere in this room was no less strained than that on the journey, the family’s grief overlain with suspicion of me and anxiety about what I could or would do. I welcomed Jyoti’s calmness among the dark emotions, but she had to be suffering same as me from the press of them on her mind.

  We waited for the chai to be served, and then I asked Sri Sunil, Jyoti translating, why he thought his daughter hadn’t killed herself. He covered his face, unable to speak, my question triggering waves of crippling grief in parents and sons.

  No one spoke while I surreptitiously rubbed the pain between my eyebrows, the spot that sorrow always hit. His wife finally answered for him. “Our daughter would not have done this without saying goodbye. No matter how much pain she was in. She would have left a message. She loved us....” Her trembling voice broke, and Jyoti’s mother took her hand.

  “I’m sure she did, Shrimati Kartik. Sometimes notes go missing.”

  “We searched everywhere,” one of her brothers said, startling me. “Her room, around where...where she did it. Nothing.”

  “Okay. Let’s leave that aside for now. Who would have a motive for killing her?”

  A spike of raw hate and anger from the uncle, who glared at me. “That worthless piece of offal she married, that’s who.” Jyoti’s tone was calm as she conveyed his words, but I could almost translate without her, such was the force of his emotions.

  “And why would your son-in-law kill his wife?”

  “For money,” he spat. “Insurance, taken out the month before she died.”

  “Ah. The police...?”

  “Did nothing. They said there was no evidence of foul play. But that man was in debt and killed my child for profit!”

  Both aunt and uncle collapsed into tears again. I let Jyoti and her mother comfort them, while Sapna’s brothers watched me with dark suspicion. Insurance was a powerful motive, no doubt about it. But motive didn’t make murder. I needed to see the forensic report on the body, but if there had been defensive wounds or bruises, surely the local police would have investigated.

  When things were a little calmer, I asked the mother, “Tell me about the baby. What happened?”

  She wiped her eyes. “Sapna worked at Ranjit’s Equipment and Seeds. She was due to finish within the week, since she was but a month from giving birth. She was to come and stay with us until then....” She said something to Jyoti and bowed her head.

  “My aunt asked me to explain,” Jyoti said. “Sapna was making a routine call on a customer, delivering drenches for the man’s kolija herds. She stopped her vehicle when she felt contractions, thinking to walk them off. But it was labour starting. Her water broke and the baby came too fast. Another farmer who was walking on the road found the two of them and took her to the doctor but nothing could be done.”

  “Did she call for help?”

  “No phone signal.”

  “Kina devale,
” I said to the aunt. I’m so sorry. I knew very few phrases of Nihani but that one, all Medele cops learned. I turned back to Jyoti. “So nothing could have saved the child?”

  “Not out there. Even if the phone had worked, the chances of the doctor getting there in time to save the child were small. So he told us, anyway.”

  “And she killed herself at the same spot?”

  “Yes. A rope over a tree branch. She was not found until the evening, when her husband went looking.”

  Forcing someone to hang herself would be bloody difficult, and leaving no trace, impossible, unless the killer forced the victim by threatening someone they loved. It was possible, but not very probable. I kept my thoughts to myself. “I’ll need to investigate for myself. Speak to the police, look at medical reports. Some of the questions will be quite personal. Do you permit this?”

  Jyoti asked the aunt and uncle, and they nodded. “We want justice for our child,” the aunt said.

  I’d brought a printed authorisation pro forma, which I asked them to sign. I couldn’t force anyone to answer my questions but the police would have to give me what they had, thanks to my shiny new investigator’s license.

  “Okay. So I’ll ask around, see what I can find out, and return for supper. Jyoti, will I need you to speak to Sapna’s employer and friends?”

  “No, they speak Kelon well.”

  Good, because I didn’t think she’d really like to hear what I might have to ask. I sure wasn’t going to tell the girl’s parents either.

  ~~~~~~~~

  The local police station had been built on one of the few areas of naturally raised land in the area, augmented by earthworks to raise it even higher. I couldn’t imagine what policing was like during the wet season. Criminals might stay indoors but rural police had so many other duties.

  A middle-aged police officer greeted me politely and with some surprise as I walked into the little foyer. “Good morning, constable. I’m Javen Ythen, formerly Sergeant Ythen of the Hegal force. Medically retired.”

  He shook my hand. “Nice to meet you, sergeant. Constable Girilal. Can’t imagine what brings you out to the Flats. We don’t get many visitors.”