The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

by Tarquin Hall

  'You'll take some tea?' he asked.

  'I brought my passport. Forms and photographs, also,' answered the detective. He placed his documentation on the desk and gave them a push in Afridi's direction. The Pakistani picked up the passport and began to flick through the pages. Given that the detective hated to fly, was terrified of it, the pages contained few visas.

  'You were in Yemen, I see?' stated Afridi with faint interest.

  'Some years back.'

  'A holiday?'

  'Correct,' lied Puri, who'd gone there undercover in connection with an oil smuggling racket.

  The Pakistani turned another page, where he came across one of the detective's Bangladesh visas, and paused. Puri could almost read the man's mind: he didn't want to have to say the name of the country out loud. Bangladesh had been one half of Pakistan after Partition, albeit separated by India. A revolt against West Pakistan's dominance had resulted in civil war. In 1971, with the help of Indian forces, the territory had established itself as a sovereign state. For Islamabad, for the army in particular, it had been a humiliation they would never forget.

  Afridi closed the passport. 'You have the payment receipt?' he asked.

  'Payment?'

  'A payment of 4,000 rupees must be made at the Grimleys Bank.'

  'I was not aware,' said Puri.

  Afridi pursed his lips. 'Without payment I cannot process your visa. And the bank is closed this afternoon.'

  Puri felt a sudden swell of relief and struggled to contain a smile. They weren't going to give him his visa after all! Then he remembered the fax, the series of numbers and the questions he wanted to put to Kamran Khan (particularly about his whereabouts while his father was eating the butter chicken), and decided not to give up without a fight.

  'I would be travelling to Pakistan tomorrow. I suggest you check with your superiors,' he said.

  Puri was asked to wait and was shown into a waiting room where the sole reading material was the latest edition of Pakistan News, a government propaganda newsletter. The Prime Minister had inaugurated a new literacy programme. The Chinese premier had visited the country and praised Pakistan's progress. The President had planted a tree . . .

  An hour later Puri's passport was brought back to him. No explanation was given as to why the fee had been waived, but a single-entry 'business' visa valid as of tomorrow was stamped inside.

  The same young man led the detective back to the gatehouse, where he retrieved his phone.

  Outside, the same four men were sitting on the bench, waiting. Their eyes registered the passport in the detective's hand, the yellow sticky note protruding from one of the pages indicating that he had succeeded where they had so far failed. They knew as well as he did that someone had pulled strings on his behalf.

  Puri wondered who that someone was. Why was that someone so keen to let him into Pakistan?

  SEVENTEEN

  'A WONDERFUL SPECTACLE! Such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.'

  That was Kipling's description of the Grand Trunk Road, the 1,600-mile highway stretching across India and Pakistan into Afghanistan - or rather how Puri remembered it from English literature with Mrs Pawar.

  Not a bad book, Kim, despite being far too long. Kipling Sahib might have been an outsider but he'd captured the spirit and flavour of India. All the details about spies, undercover operatives and secret identities were more or less accurate, even today. The 'wonderful spectacle' bit, though, didn't hold up at four-thirty in the morning. All the detective could see through the windscreen of his Ambassador were the blinding 'dippers' of angry trucks hurtling towards him through the darkness and, along the side of the road, trees with fat white bands painted around their trunks.

  Puri could usually sleep through anything. Even the trucks' obnoxious klaxons, their three notes ascending and descending over and over again in a torturous key, were generally no match for the soporific motion of the Ambassador. But since eleven o'clock, when he and Handbrake had set off from Gurgaon, the silver sedan trailing them all the way, the detective had hardly slept a wink.

  Anxiety was keeping him awake. In just a few hours he would cross into Pakistan.

  Pakistan! It felt as if he was hurtling through the darkness towards a precipice.

  When they'd talked a few hours ago, however, Scott had assured Puri that the world did not end beyond the last Indian village of Atari. A car would be waiting for him on the Pakistan side and this would take him to Kamran Khan's house in Rawalpindi. The arrangements had been made by former Pakistan cricket captain and Clean Up Cricket member, Timur Baloch. A national hero who'd led his side to two World Cup victories, he was well connected and it was rumoured he was starting his own political party.

  'You'll have a police escort so don't worry,' Scott had said. 'Nothing's going to happen to you. Pakistan's not as bad as you think. I've always found the people very friendly.'

  Puri had managed to put down the phone before bawling, 'Not as bad as you think!'

  There were a whole slew of powerful characters in Pakistan who would still love to get their already bloodied hands on him - not least those within the country's intelligence service, ISI, whose plans he'd thwarted on a number of occasions. Major General Hamid Sharif for example, the man who'd masterminded the supply and training of insurgency groups in north-east India and sent agent Kashid Dar across the border straight into Puri's net (this during his time in Military Intelligence), would surely welcome the opportunity to even the score. Ditto the individual known in Indian intelligence circles as 'General Jihad'. A veteran of the Afghan and Kashmir conflicts, he'd planned and funded an operation to bomb a nightclub in Goa a few years back - except that a certain Vish Puri had unearthed the plot. Subsequently the terrorists had been captured and 'awarded' death by hanging (although the sentence was yet to be carried out).

  Such Pakistani officers woke every morning with the word 'Hindustan' on their lips, convinced that the kafirs were plotting the destruction of their Islamic republic. So, too, did the Beardy Weirdy Muslim fundamentalists - the Taliban and such. Who was to say that they wouldn't decide to nab a nice plump Indian for their internet video execution collection?

  And then there was Aga. He was probably sharpening his trademark ax as well.

  A green sign appeared on the side of the road, lit up by the Ambassador's high beams: AMRITSAR 125 KM.

  Assuming the road was good, they'd reach Atari in another couple of hours.

  Better call that two and a half. Handbrake was yawning. He needed a break and a cup of chai. They both did. And maybe some tandoori chicken. This was Punjab, after all. Divided Punjab.

  The road that skirted round Amritsar, home of the Golden Temple and now a city of some five million people, was lined with small 'resorts'. They offered water sliding, go-carting and paintballing, the weekend timepass of the new middle classes. Billboards appeared - one for package deals to Singapore; others encouraging voters to cast their ballot in upcoming state elections for grinning, fat-faced politicians, one barely distinguishable from another.

  Soon the suburbs with their Greek-temple-like Punjabi mansions gave way to wheat fields crisscrossed with the irrigation canal system that had turned Punjab into the bread-basket of India. Brick kiln chimneys dotted the landscape, trails of black smoke billowing upward, the earth around them powdered with red dust like spilled cheek blush. Turbaned farmers could be seen heading out to tend their crops, red tractors trundling along narrow, muddy lanes.

  The closer they came to the border, the greater the army presence grew. The road was soon busy with jeeps, fuel tankers and troop carriers filled with bored grunts staring out through open canopies. Puri passed a sprawling cantonment where some soldiers were exercising on a parade ground and others were hanging out their wet fatigues to dry on barbed-wire fences. There was no sign of heavy armaments - no artillery pieces or tanks. Still, the detective spotted a few concrete bunkers camouflaged by copses of trees. Ditches were etched across the land
scape, overgrown yet waiting to catch an invading tank unawares.

  A long queue of trucks loaded with bags of grain announced the final approach. Then suddenly there was a barrier, closed, blocking the way. A soldier held up a hand for Handbrake to stop. It was only a few minutes past eight o'clock. The border wouldn't open for an hour. Puri would have to wait. He ordered Handbrake back to Amritsar, watched the silver sedan follow after him and walked over to the dusty Bhale Bhale Dhaba on the side of the road. He ate a couple of paranthas and drank a cup of chai, harassed by flies and touts offering favourable rates for Pakistani rupees. Then he made some calls to Delhi.

  Mummy had turned up at home late last night, a relieved Bhuppi reported. Tubelight and the team were making progress in Surat. And there had been a major development in the moustache case: Gopal Ragi, the latest victim, had received a phone call demanding three lakhs in exchange for the return of his former appendage.

  'Looks like the motive's been money all along,' said Thakur as if moustache ransoming was a common crime in Delhi nowadays.

  The detective felt strangely detached from these developments, however. Delhi, Haridwar, Surat: suddenly they seemed to belong to a different world. His mind was completely preoccupied with the thought that less than a mile beyond the barrier he would come to the point of no return. For all the bits of litter lying about, stray dogs, truck drivers pissing against a nearby wall, the Bhale Bhale Dhaba suddenly felt like a familiar and secure place to be. He could think of worse places to see out his days. At least here he was among his fellow countrymen - the sleazy-looking dhaba owner who employed child labour, the drunk slumped over one of the tables, the tout who was selling pornographic CDs. They all seemed like old friends.

  Then he thought of Rumpi, secure and safe at home, and decided to call her.

  She wanted to know where he was. He told her that he was in Amritsar. She detected the apprehension in his voice.

  'Everything's all right, Chubby?'

  'Yes my dear. I'll be back in a few days - safe and sound. Not to worry.'

  'What's that noise?' she asked.

  An argument had broken out amongst some of the truck drivers. They were describing one another's mothers and sisters in less than complimentary terms.

  'Nothing, my dear, just some fellow blowing off some steam,' he said. 'I had better get a move on. I . . .' He put his hand over the receiver. 'I love you actually,' he said.

  His words were greeted with a moment's silence.

  'You're sure everything's all right, Chubby? You don't sound yourself at all.'

  Out of the corner of his eye, Puri saw the barrier go up. It was nine o'clock. The border was opening. 'Tell the girls I love them, my dear, and God bless, haa,' he said before hanging up.

  A porter in a blue tunic and orange turban, his face as coarse as elephant skin, picked up the detective's bag for him and balanced it on his head.

  Beyond the barrier stood the Plant Quarantine Station and the immigration and customs building. As he was the only person crossing the border that morning, Puri was through in a few minutes - 'Fast tracking,' joked one of the four officials who were sitting around with nothing to do - and emerged on the other side, where he found a small shrine to the goddess Durga. He stopped to say a prayer and then walked past India's only, and easily overlooked, memorial to Partition, a sculpture of two hands locked in a handshake, with an inscription chiselled into the black plinth beneath: Dedicated to ten lakh Punjabis who lost their lives unsung.

  The last few hundred yards of Indian territory were lined with spectator stands where visitors gathered in the evening to watch the dramatic Beating of the Retreat ceremony and shouted patriotic slogans at the Pakistani spectators in the corresponding stands across the border: 'Hindustan! Hindustan!' Now, however, they were empty save for a couple of crows of indistinguishable nationality.

  The detective's gaze was fixed on the set of double gates ahead. They were painted in the three colours of the Indian Republic, an Ashoka lion on each. Behind them stood the Pakistan gates emblazoned with a white crescent on a green background.

  Both sets of gates were opened and an Indian soldier checked his passport for the last time.

  A Pakistani Ranger stood only an arm's length away. He was tall, athletic. The butt of a Glock pistol protruded from his holster.

  Puri looked down at the thick white line painted on the tarmac between them. It ran in both directions through no-man's-land, off between fences topped with barbed wire. Puri found himself wondering how long the line was. And who maintained it? Did the two sides take turns?

  The passport was handed back to him, as was his bag. Puri watched the porter walk away, feeling as if he'd been abandoned. For the first time in his life, he was completely on his own.

  'Sir?' prompted the Indian soldier.

  Puri took one step forward. His back foot followed. He was in Pakistan.

  The Ranger put out his hand for his passport.

  Beyond the checkpoint stood a wall adorned with six-foot portraits of Pakistani generals dripping in medals.

  'By God,' murmured the detective, a lump in his throat, wondering if he had just made the biggest mistake of his life.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE POWER WAS off in Pakistan, at least on the border. 'A technical problem,' stated the immigration officer from behind his new but incapacitated computer. He looked embarrassed but added with optimism, 'The electricity should come on before long, insh'allah.'

  Puri was shown to a waiting area, the only arrival from India that morning. He sat down on one of the moulded plastic chairs, striking a pose of dissatisfaction: arms crossed over his bulging belly, the only form of protest he felt he could display as a guest from an enemy state.

  Seven officials all dressed in salwar kameez, which made it frustratingly impossible to tell their designation or seniority, sat nearby. They were smoking, apparently a pastime still permitted in public places in Pakistan, and chatting among themselves. The detective was able to eavesdrop on their conversation, hanging on every word as if they might start discussing some sinister ISI plot. But it was all pretty mundane stuff. A nephew was getting married . . . an uncle had been taken to hospital . . . sheep were being purchased and fattened for Ramadan . . .

  Somehow Puri hadn't expected to fully understand the language, despite the fact that spoken Urdu and Hindi are more or less the same. Perhaps this was because he'd grown so used to regarding Pakistan as a distant, disconnected entity shut off from the rest of the world. The common past the two countries shared - thousands of years of history in fact, their common language being a product of centuries of intermingling of cultures - had become an irrelevance. Mutual distrust, hatred even, defined the relationship between the two modern nations.

  And yet hearing some of the turns of phrase and enunciation took the detective back to his childhood, when he used to roam the streets of Delhi's walled city where, after Partition, Urdu survived among a few old Dilli wallahs. In those days the bazaar storytellers used to gather on the steps of the Jama Masjid on Thursday evenings and the young detective would sit and listen to them recount the great epic the Dastan-e Amir-Hamza. Tales of dashing princes, cloaks of invisibility and evil djinns had held him transfixed for hours.

  And the language!

  The language had been pure nectar - long phrases linked like carriages to create a train of thought fraught with multiple meanings. A phrase as simple as 'the moon rose' would be rendered as 'the sorcerer of this world changed his robes'.

  Modern Hindi, which had been systematically purged of most of its Persian and Arabic words since Partition, had lost this essence. Bollywood's lyrics were but a poor reflection of the genius of Mirza Ghalib and Mir Taqi Mir. On the rare occasion these days that Puri heard their prose, the richness sparked a longing in his heart. It was like recalling an early memory, something that stirred deep in his subconscious.

  He looked up, suddenly aware that he had been daydreaming. The immigration officer had come
and sat down near him.

  'Sorry, sir! It won't be long, insh'allah,' he said, and smiled, offering the detective a cigarette.

  'Not for me,' Puri replied, deliberately stand-offish.

  The immigration officer fidgeted, evidently keen to engage.

  'Sir, you're going where in Pakistan?' he asked.

  'Rawalpindi.'

  'You're on business?'

  'Business.'

  More silence, more fidgeting. Then, 'Where are you from in India?'

  'Delhi.'

  'That is where my family is from originally.'

  The detective nodded and checked his watch again. He had been sitting there for half an hour.

  'Sorry, sir,' repeated the immigration officer with an awkward smile, holding up his hands to heaven as if it was Allah who was responsible for running the electricity grid.