The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘I know who’s first and last in line, if you’re handing out money.’

  ‘That’s it! That’s great! Can you come with me? Right now?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Please, Lin. There’s this girl. She’s in a lotta trouble.’

  He read my frown.

  ‘What? No! She hasn’t done anything wrong. Fact is, far as I can figure it, it’s just that her boyfriend’s dead. He OD’d, like, just last night, and –’

  ‘Wait a minute. Slow down. Who’s this girl?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know her name.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I mean, I haven’t heard it yet. I haven’t seen her passport, either. I don’t even know where she comes from. But I know I’ve got to save her, and maybe I’m the only one who can, you know? She’s got these eyes, like, it’s too weird, man. I mean, it’s like the universe is tellin’ me to save her. It’s mystical. It’s magical. It’s fated, or something. But every time I ask the cops about her, they tell me to shut up.’

  ‘Shut up, Vinson, or talk sense.’

  ‘Wait! Let me explain. I was in the police station, paying a fine for my driver, you know, because he got in this fight with another driver, on Kemps Corner, near the Breach Candy turnoff, and he –’

  ‘Vinson. The girl.’

  ‘Yeah, man, I finished up with the cops, and I saw this girl sitting there. You gotta see her, man. Those eyes. Her eyes . . . they’re . . . they’re fire and ice at the same time. You’ve gotta see it to believe it. What is it about the eyes that gets you so fucked up, man?’

  ‘Connection. Back to the girl.’

  ‘Like I said, her boyfriend died of an overdose some time, like, last night or early this morning. Best as I can make out, she woke up and found him like that, stiff as a two-by-four, and long gone. She was stayin’ at the Frantic.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Those Frantic guys run a tight ship, and they know how to keep their mouths shut. I’ve done some deals there. But, like, dead bodies? They draw the line, you know?’

  ‘I know the Frantic. They held the girl, called the cops, and handed her over.’

  ‘Yeah, the fuckers.’

  ‘They were just trying to stay outta jail, like you should be, Vinson. It’s not safe to play Good Samaritan in a police station, when you’re a drug dealer. It’s not ever safe in a police station.’

  ‘I . . . I know. I know. But this girl, man, it’s mystical, I tell ya. I tried to get the cops to open up about her. The only thing they told me was that she did the identification of the body at the morgue, like they wanted. That must’ve been hell for her, man. And she made a statement, like they asked her. But she didn’t do anything, and they won’t let her go.’

  ‘It’s about money.’

  ‘I figured. But they won’t talk to me. That’s why I need you.’

  ‘Who’s on duty?’

  ‘Dilip. The duty sergeant. He’s on top of it all. She’s sitting in his office.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I can pay him, to let the girl go?’

  ‘He’d sell his gun and badge, if you offered enough.’

  ‘That’s great!’

  ‘But then he’d find you, and beat you up to get them back.’

  ‘That’s not great.’

  ‘He likes fear. Fill your eyes with just enough simulated fear to make him smile, then give him money.’

  ‘Is that what you do?’

  ‘Lightning Dilip and I are past simulated fear.’

  ‘If you go in there with me, will he let us pay, and get the girl out of there?’

  ‘Sure. I think so. But . . . ’

  ‘But what?’

  I exhaled a long, exhausted breath, and frowned my reservations into his worried eyes.

  I liked Stuart Vinson. His lean, handsome face, tanned by six years of Asian sunlight, always carried the kind of brave, earnest, determined expression that might’ve graced a polar explorer, leading others on a noble adventure, even though he was in fact a wily, lucky drug dealer, who lived lavish in a city where hunger was a constituency. I couldn’t read his motive.

  ‘Are you sure you wanna get involved? You don’t know this girl. You don’t even know her name.’

  ‘Please don’t, like, say anything bad about this girl,’ he said softly, but with surprising force. ‘It will make me not like you. If you don’t want to help me, that’s cool. But me, I already know everything I need to know about her.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, hanging his head for an instant.

  Just as quickly he raised his pleading eyes again.

  ‘I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been there in Dilip’s office for the last two hours, trying to help her. She didn’t say anything. Not a word. But this one time she looked up at me, and she gave me this, like, little smile. I felt it in my heart, Lin. I can’t explain it. And I . . . I smiled back at her. And she felt it, too. I know it. I’m sure of it. Sure as anything I’ve ever known in my life. I don’t know if you know what it’s like to love someone for no reason you can understand, but all I’m asking is that you help me.’

  I knew what it was like: everybody in love does. We walked across the street to the Colaba police station, and into Lightning Dilip’s office.

  The duty sergeant looked me up and down, looked at the girl sitting across the desk from him, and then looked back to me.

  ‘A friend of yours?’ Lightning asked, nodding at the girl.

  I looked at her, and something curled inside me, like ferns closing. It was the girl whose photograph was in the locket, the girl who’d sold the locket, the girl I’d tried to warn, when I returned the locket to her.

  Fate, I thought, get off my back.

  Her greasy hair was tangled and clinging to the sweat on her neck. She wore a royal blue T-shirt, faded from over-washing, and tight enough to reveal her small, frail physique. Her jeans seemed too large for her: a thin belt gathered them in bunches around her narrow waist.

  She was wearing the locket. She recognised me.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘A friend. Please, Sergeant-ji, turn on the fan.’

  Lightning Dilip glanced at the unmoving fan over her head, and almost imperceptibly lifted his eyes to the fan over his own head, rotating swiftly to banish the monsoon smother.

  He shifted his eyes to me again, the irises set in honey-coloured hatred.

  ‘Punkah!’ he bellowed at a subordinate.

  The constable hastily switched on the fan over the girl’s head, and cooling air streamed onto the sweat bathing her slender neck.

  ‘So, she is your friend, Shantaram?’ Dilip asked cunningly.

  ‘Yes, Lightning-ji.’

  ‘Very well then, what is her name?’

  ‘What name did she give you?’

  Dilip laughed. I turned to the girl.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Rannveig,’ she replied flatly, her hand drifting to the locket around her neck, as her eyes met mine. ‘Rannveig Larsen.’

  ‘Her name’s Rannveig,’ I said. ‘Rannveig Larsen.’

  Dilip laughed again.

  ‘That’s not the name I have written in front of me,’ he said, still smiling.

  ‘It’s Norwegian,’ the girl said. ‘You write it like R-a-n-n-v-e-i-g, but you pronounce it Runway – like the thing at the airport.’

  ‘Her name’s Rannveig,’ I said. ‘Like the thing at the airport.’

  ‘What do you want, Shantaram?’ Dilip asked.

  ‘I’d like to escort Miss Larsen home. She’s had a pretty rough day.’

  ‘Miss Larsen tells me that she has no home,’ Dilip retorted. ‘She was thrown out of the Frantic hotel this morning.’

  ‘She can stay at my place,’ Vinson said
quickly.

  Everyone looked at Vinson.

  ‘It’s . . . it’s a big place, my place,’ Vinson stammered, looking from one to another of us. ‘There’s plenty of room. And I have a live-in servant. She’ll take good care of her. That is . . . if . . . if she wants to come to my place.’

  Lightning Dilip turned to me.

  ‘Who the fuck is this idiot?’ he asked in Hindi.

  ‘This is Mr Vinson,’ I said.

  ‘I’m Stuart Vinson,’ he said. ‘I was here, like, ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Lightning said.

  ‘We’d like to escort Miss Larsen home, Lightning-ji,’ I said. ‘That is, if she’s free to leave.’

  ‘Free,’ Dilip repeated, drawing out the word. ‘It’s such a little word, but with so many conditions attached to it.’

  ‘I’d be happy to meet those conditions,’ I said, ‘depending, of course, on just how many conditions there are, and how firmly they’re attached.’

  ‘I can think of at least ten conditions,’ Lightning said, a sly grin sliding off the edge of his irritability.

  I counted out ten thousand rupees, and put the money on the desk. As I slid it across, he reached out to cover my hand in both of his.

  ‘What interest does the Sanjay Company have in this girl?’

  ‘This isn’t Sanjay Company business. This is personal. She’s a friend.’

  Still holding my hand against the desk, he glanced at the girl, looking her up and down.

  ‘Ah, of course,’ he said, his lips twitching around an oily grin.

  ‘Wait a minute –’ Vinson began, but I cut him off, pulling my hand free.

  ‘Mister Vinson would like to thank you, Lightning-ji, for your kind and compassionate understanding.’

  ‘Always happy to help,’ Dilip snarled. ‘The girl must be back here in two days, to sign the papers.’

  ‘What papers?’ Vinson demanded.

  Dilip looked at him. I knew the look: he was thinking about which part of Vinson’s body he would start kicking, after he had his men chain him to a gate.

  ‘She’ll be here, Sergeant-ji,’ I said. ‘And exactly what papers will she be required to sign?’

  ‘The transfer of the body,’ Dilip replied, picking up a file from his desk. ‘The body of the unfortunate young man goes back to Norway, in three days. But she must sign the forms in two days. Now get out of here, before I start adding more conditions to her release.’

  I held my hand out to the girl. She took it, stood up, and walked a few steps. She was unsteady on her feet. As she neared Vinson she stumbled, and he reached out to put an arm around her shoulder.

  Vinson walked her to the street, helped her into the back seat of his car, and climbed in beside her. The driver started the engine, but I leaned against the open window.

  ‘What happened, Rannveig, like the thing at the airport?’ I asked her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your boyfriend. What happened?’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ she said abstractedly. ‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’

  ‘Right now, I’m worried about him,’ I said, nodding toward Vinson. ‘And if I’m gonna go back in there and deal with that cop, I need to know what happened.’

  ‘I . . . I wasn’t,’ she began, staring at the cloth bag cradled in her lap.

  I guessed that it held everything she owned.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He . . . he couldn’t stop. And things got crazier and crazier. Then, just yesterday, just last night, I told him I was leaving him, and going back to Oslo. But he begged me to stay one more night. Just one more night. And . . . and then . . . He did it on purpose. I saw it in his face. He did it on purpose. I can’t go back home. I can’t see anyone from there.’

  The fierce, electric blue of her eyes glazed over, and she slithered into an exhausted silence. I knew the look: staring at the dead. She was staring at the face of her dead boyfriend.

  ‘Have you got anyone in Bombay?’ I asked.

  She shook her head slowly.

  ‘Do you want your consulate involved?’

  She shook her head more quickly.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘I told you. I can’t face anyone now.’

  ‘She’s beat,’ Vinson said softly. ‘I’ll take her home. She’ll be safe with me, until she decides what she wants to do.’

  ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll talk to Lightning Dilip.’

  ‘You have to do more?’ Vinson asked. ‘I thought that was it.’

  ‘He didn’t give back her passport. He’s holding out for more money, but he didn’t want to go into that. Not with you in the office. I’ll handle it.’

  ‘Thanks, man,’ Vinson nodded. ‘I’ll make sure she gets back to sign the forms. Hey, let me give you that money!’

  ‘It’s only cool to hand over money inside a police station, Vinson, not outside. We’ll settle it later. If I get the passport back, I’ll leave it with Didier, at Leo’s.’

  Vinson turned to the girl, speaking to her softly.

  ‘You’ll be okay. My maid will look after you. She’s tough, but she’s all bark and no bite. A hot bath, some fresh, clean clothes, something to eat, and some sleep. You’ll be fine. I promise.’

  He gave instructions to his driver, and the car moved off. The girl turned quickly, found me on the street, and mouthed something at me. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. I watched the car until it disappeared, and then went back to talk with Lightning Dilip.

  There wasn’t a lot to learn. The girl’s story was that she’d woken to find her boyfriend dead in the bed beside her. There was a syringe stuck in his arm. She’d called the manager for help, and he’d called the police and an ambulance.

  Lightning Dilip was satisfied that it was a simple overdose. The kid had track marks on the veins in his arms, hands and feet, and the hotel manager testified that no-one had entered Rannveig’s room but the couple.

  It cost me five thousand rupees to buy back the girl’s passport, and another ten thousand to have the name Rannveig Larsen removed from the account of the boy’s death.

  In the revised version of the official record, it was the hotel manager who’d found the body, and Rannveig vanished from the narrative.

  It was a lot of money in those days, and I planned to recover it from Vinson soon. As I was leaving Lightning Dilip’s office, slipping the Norwegian passport into my pocket, the duty sergeant stopped me.

  ‘Tell the Sanjay Company that this case raises the stakes.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘DaSilva,’ he said, almost spitting the word at me. ‘Andrew DaSilva. It was his heroin that killed this boy. It’s the third heroin death this week. The Sanjay Company is selling some very strong, very bad shit on the street. I’m getting trouble for it.’

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’

  It wasn’t a polite question, and he didn’t have a polite answer.

  ‘Fuck you, and fuck dead junkies. I don’t give a shit. The two local kids are a minor problem. But when a foreigner dies in my zone, it leaves a big stain on my desk. I like a clean desk. I told DaSilva he would have to pay me double this month, for the two deaths. Now that it’s three deaths, the price is triple.’

  ‘Tell Sanjay yourself, Lightning. You see him more often than I do.’

  I left the station house, moved through the traffic, and walked to the narrow cement-block and metal rail divider that separated the lanes moving south and north along the busy causeway.

  Standing in a gap in the steel fence, I felt the traffic swirl around me: densely packed red commuter buses, scooters carrying five-member families, handcarts, motorcycles and bicycles, black-and-yellow taxis, fish-market trucks, private cars and military transports moving to and from the large naval base a
t the spear-tip of the Island City’s peninsula.

  Words cut through the jungle of thoughts.

  Our dope. Sanjay Company dope. The girl in the locket, Rannveig, like the thing at the airport. Her boyfriend. The girl in the locket. Our dope.

  Horns, bicycle bells, music from radios, the cries of stallholders and beggars rose up everywhere, echoing from covered walkways and the elegantly sagging stones of buildings that supported them.

  Our dope. Sanjay Company dope. The girl. The locket. Her boyfriend. Our dope.

  The smells of the street punished me, making me dizzy: fresh catches of fish and prawns from Sassoon Dock, diesel and petrol fumes, and the heavy wet-linen smell of monsoon mould, creeping across the brow of every building in the city.

  Our dope. Our dope.

  I stood on the road divider. Traffic rivers ran in front of me, heading north, and behind me, heading south, along the arm of the peninsula.

  Khaderbhai had refused to allow anyone in the Company to deal heroin in South Bombay, or to profit from prostitution. Since his death, more than half of the new Sanjay Company’s funds came from both sources, and Sanjay sanctioned more dealers and brothels every month.

  It was a new world, not braver but much richer than the one I’d discovered, when Khaderbhai saved me from prison and recruited me. And it was no use telling myself that I didn’t sell the drugs or the girls: that I worked in counterfeiting and passports. I was up to the thin silver chain around my neck in it.

  As a soldier with the Sanjay Company I’d fought other gangs, and could be called to protect Andrew, Amir, Faisal and their operations at any time, and with no explanation for the blood to be spilled, and no right to refuse.

  Our dope.

  I felt a touch in the centre of my back, and as I began to turn there was another touch, and another. Three of the Cycle Killers raced away into the flow of traffic on their chrome bicycles.

  I looked back quickly to greet Pankaj, second in charge of the Cycle Killers, as he skidded his bicycle to a stop beside me. He rested against the metal rail of the road divider. Traffic eddied around him, and he looked mischief at me, his eyes bright.

  ‘That’s how easy it is, brother!’ he grinned, wagging his head energetically. ‘Not counting me, you are three times dead already, if my boys were using their knives, instead of their fingers.’