It was almost midnight by the time Abbas dropped him off outside his hotel and bid him a tipsy farewell. They had had a few more drinks and then some fried rice for dinner, talking about the old times, but even though Arjun had tried to forget Colonel Khanna, the name had hung like a dark cloud over the conversation. The main shutter of the hotel was down, and he had to enter through a small gate in the side wall. Back in his room he poured himself a stiff drink from the bottle, sat down in the chair and lit another cigarette. He had started drinking again, but that didn’t worry him at the moment. Why had Abbas brought it up? Just hearing the bastard’s name had sobered him up. But his friend was right—he needed to be careful as long as he was in Dimapur.
Arjun switched on the television and put on a movie. He didn’t want to fall asleep, scared of what dreams might come visiting.
30
IT WAS PAST 8 A.M. when he woke up with a hangover. After waking up early and fresh for so long, it was a rude reminder of what happened when he touched alcohol. He switched on the geyser in the bathroom and called for a cup of tea. Steam clouded up the narrow bathroom as he had his bath. For breakfast he had a few slices of toast with two boiled eggs and another cup of oversweet tea, followed by two Saridon tablets. He went to the window at the end of the corridor and lit a cigarette. The sun wasn’t out, and everything seemed to be in shades of grey and brown. Outside one of the brick hovels a tall young woman cracked open a can of beer.
He knew now why that feeling of unease, of some sort of danger, had come to him the previous day. It must have something to do with Colonel Khanna being in this wretched city. Arjun didn’t think Khanna had the information that he was in Dimapur, but one never knew in this place where intelligence personnel were always on the prowl. He decided to spend the day trying to get whatever information on Tony Haokip he could, and then leave the next morning for Imphal. The sooner he was out of this place the better.
At 10 a.m. he called Ujjwal Negi. The junior detective was in the office, and said things were fine there. Sitting in the grimy hotel room, the wet bathroom just in front of him, Arjun suddenly missed his orderly office on that shaded street.
‘How are things going with Rohit Chaudhry?’ he asked Negi.
‘I’ve been talking to Bhure Lal, the accounts person. He said that Rohit was in some sort of trouble with the police about two years back.’
‘What trouble?’ Arjun asked sharply.
‘He doesn’t know exactly. Seems it was hushed up.’
‘Well, try and find out.’
‘I’m trying through someone I know in the Delhi Police. Don’t worry, we should have something soon.’
‘All right. Keep me informed.’
He hung up, and for a moment considered going to the Dimapur airport and getting a ticket for Delhi. It was significant information: that Rohit had been in trouble with the police. Why hadn’t that been mentioned in the case diary? Unless it was something which, as Negi said, had been hushed up. Was that what Poppy had meant when she said there had been something strange about the case? Anyway, if he had come this far, he might as well try and talk to Tony Haokip before heading back.
Next he called Colonel Khrienuo. The senior NPG leader seemed to be expecting his call.
‘Major Arjun,’ he bellowed on the phone, ‘you are in Dimapur and you didn’t tell me? You’ve forgotten me or what?’
‘Nothing like that, Colonel. I didn’t have your number.’
‘Abbas called me and told me you are here. Where are you staying?’
‘Hotel Kingfisher.’
‘Aiya, such a lousy hotel. Why you’re staying there? You come stay with me.’
‘We’ll see about that. I just wanted to catch up with you if you’re free.’
‘Of course, Arora. I’ll come and pick you up in a while.’
It was almost midday when Colonel Khrienuo called Arjun from outside the hotel. By that time he had managed to take a nap and was feeling better. He walked out into the dusty street to find the sun shining hazily, and the colonel waiting for him at the wheel of a brand new white Gypsy.
‘Welcome back to Nagaland!’ he exclaimed as Arjun got in beside him.
‘Good to see you, Colonel,’ Arjun said, shaking his hand.
The colonel was losing his hair, and his broad face looked haggard, but the body was still heavyset and muscular, the physique of a fighter. He was wearing a half-jacket with plenty of pockets over an expensive-looking polo shirt, and there was a telltale bulge in one of the pockets.
‘Okay,’ he said, putting on a pair of mirrored Ray Bans and starting the car, ‘let’s move! So what plans, Aroraji?’
‘No plans. So it’s up to you.’
‘Good, good,’ the colonel said as he drove fast down Golaghat Road, ‘you come along with me then.’
It seemed he was staying alone at his place as his wife and children had gone back to their village for a few days. Now he was going to a friend’s place and wanted to take Arjun along. Colonel Khrienuo took several turns through the town, where there were Christmas stars and lights already hanging outside shops.
‘So what brings you to Dimapur?’ Khrienuo asked Arjun as he overtook a Bolero.
‘I’m looking for a person called Tony Haokip. Do you know where I can find him?’
The colonel had heard of him, but couldn’t say where he was now.
‘But don’t worry, I’ll tell my boys to find out, okay?’
They passed motorparts shops, beef and pork stalls out in the open, teenage schoolgirls in short grey skirts. Then they crossed the bridge over the shallow Dhansiri river and headed out of the city. There were piles of sand and stone chips by the road, and miya workers weaving walls out of split bamboo.
‘Our camp is this way,’ Khrienuo said, pointing ahead, ‘about another half an hour from here through the jungle.’
An Assam Rifles camp came up on the right, and he turned on to the road that ran below the camp. It soon turned into a gravel-and-dirt track. They passed common wood-plank houses, as well as palatial villas in large plots with SUVs parked outside, then came to a football field with broken goalposts and cows grazing on the overgrown grass. A signboard prohibited ‘drinking, dating, grazing, etc.’ A part of Arjun felt at home in this dusty and shabby city.
A little distance ahead the road dipped and a brick wall topped with barbed wire came into view. They went in through the open gate at which two NAP personnel were smoking, past a large, muddy pond and up to a big two-storey house with four large cars outside.
‘Whose place is this?’ Arjun asked as the Gypsy came to a halt.
‘Ritsa, one Chakhesang fellow; he’s a contractor,’ the colonel said as he got down.
Arjun followed him into the house, past large marble-floored rooms with open windows where people sat talking and drinking tea, and through the vast kitchen where several women of different ages were busy preparing food, out to an open area with stacks of firewood and a tin roof on bamboo poles, under which an elderly man in a blue and white tracksuit was watching two young men dismembering something on a plastic sheet. Then he saw the brown skin stretched out between two trees further away: it looked like a deer.
The colonel drew out two moorahs dressed in cow skin and the two of them sat down. He introduced Arjun to the man in the tracksuit, his friend Ritsa Sangtam. Arjun listened to the two men converse rapidly in Nagamese as to where and how the deer had been shot. He could follow most of the exchange, including that it had been shot over the border in Assam, but he didn’t show it; old habits died hard. Ritsa walked towards the kitchen calling out to someone, and the colonel turned to Arjun.
‘Female barking deer; Ritsa’s brother-in-law shot it last night. I’m taking some.’
‘Where was it shot?’ Arjun asked.
The colonel hesitated a moment. ‘Just across the Assam border. But those places were our lands once upon a time.’
Arjun smiled. ‘That’s what you always say.’
They wat
ched the young men expertly dismember the carcass with their daos. The head had been kept on a sack placed on a moorah, and it looked at them placidly. From the kitchen came the usual aroma of bamboo shoot, along with that of roasting meat. Iron, blood, family—there was something about living close to the old ways. A young girl in a wrap-around shawl and a sweater brought them two cups of tea on a crooked steel plate. The colonel took a sip of tea, kept the cup on the floor and took out his phone.
‘Tony Haokip, you said. Let me ask my people to find out.’
Arjun drank his tea, listening as Khrienuo barked out instructions to his men. There followed a discussion about some miya person. It struck Arjun that in the old days the colonel would have had a bottle out by now; well, they were all getting on in years. The call over, he put away his phone and picked up the chipped white cup from the floor.
‘Don’t worry, your work will be done. And tonight you’ll stay at my house. But this fellow Tony might be in Manipur.’
‘I’m planning to go to Imphal tomorrow,’ Arjun said.
The colonel nodded. ‘Not my area, but I’ll see what I can do for you.’
It seemed Arjun had come to his conclusion hastily, for Ritsa now returned with a full bottle of scotch.
‘We’re meeting after so long,’ the colonel said, ‘we must have a drink.’
‘Duty-free,’ Ritsa informed Arjun, ‘bought it in Bangkok.’
‘Ritsa, do you know where I first met Major Arjun?’ the colonel asked in English. ‘He took me into custody once when I was returning from Jorhat to Mokokchung. Many phone calls were made, but he refused to let me go until he had interrogated me. But I could make out then that he was a gentleman.’
Arjun waved off the compliment. ‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Are you still in the army?’ Ritsa asked.
‘No, he’s retired now,’ Khrienuo replied. ‘He’s a businessman in Delhi.’
‘Oh, what business?’ Ritsa wanted to know.
‘Security and surveillance,’ Arjun said, feeling that ‘detective’ might sound slightly ridiculous in the present surroundings.
Ritsa nodded, and the colonel continued, ‘Some weeks later I called him for a meeting. And he came—on his own, in his Gypsy. I knew then he was a brave man, unlike many other officers. I think I served you Bagpiper whisky that time, Major Arjun? We’ll have something better now, ha ha!’
The girl who had given them tea now brought glasses and a jug of water, and pieces of chicken cooked with bamboo shoot.
‘Christmas is coming,’ Ritsa informed Arjun as he poured out three large pegs. ‘It is our biggest festival here in Nagaland, and the feasting has already started. Cheers!’
They clinked their glasses and drank. Ritsa and Colonel Khrienuo talked about hunting for a while, lamenting that animals were becoming increasingly scarce these days. Their host went back to the house after a while saying people from his village had come to meet him. The sun had gone behind the clouds again, and a hazy afternoon light filtered down. The two young men had finished butchering the deer, and now folded up the plastic sheet and dragged it towards the kitchen.
Arjun felt himself relaxing. The night at the colonel’s house would be a welcome change after the hotel, and he might also be able to arrange a car to Imphal for Arjun. The word was out for Tony Haokip; he should be able to track him down once he got to Manipur.
In no time they had moved on to a third drink, the colonel regaling Arjun with stories of old operations in the jungles, as fresh helpings of chicken arrived from the kitchen. Then a well-dressed youth with gelled hair who seemed to be in his mid-to-late-twenties appeared, and drew up a moorah near them. He spoke softly to the colonel, who exclaimed in irritation.
‘Our boys have caught one miya fellow,’ he explained to Arjun, ‘he deals in second-hand cars. Has a Naga wife. He was trying to do some hanky-panky with another Naga girl and we got a complaint.’
‘What’ll you do to him?’ Arjun asked.
‘What to do? No point killing him, he helps us with vehicles from time to time. We’ll let him go after a warning and one or two nights in our jail. That’s why they want me to come to the camp. This young man is Penthunglo, he works in our finance wing.’
The youth got up to shake Arjun’s hand. His palm was soft, and physically he seemed to have none of the rural heaviness that Khrienuo or even Ritsa carried about them. Arjun thought about Bendangtoshi Longkumer, one of the original Naga army fighters. The colonel was of the generation which, while still being fighters, had started to come to terms with the Indian state and army. While this young finance worker might have got some arms training, Arjun could sense that he had never roamed the jungles or undertaken live operations. He left after having a cup of tea, the colonel telling him he would be at the camp soon.
‘Asss, too many miya fellows nowadays,’ Khrienuo complained, shaking his head. ‘It’s some of our people only encouraging them; they make them cultivate their land and allow them to stay. Now they’re marrying Naga girls as well.’
31
RITSA NOW CAME AND JOINED them, and the level of alcohol in the bottle dropped below the halfway mark. An easy jollity came over the two Naga men, a mood Arjun recognized and enjoyed. Ribald jokes were made, and the colonel confessed to an admiration for a particularly famous former porn star.
It was late afternoon by the time they left the contractor’s house with an empty cement sack filled with deer meat.
‘This fellow has made lot of money,’ Colonel Khrienuo told Arjun as they drove out of the gates. ‘There’s one stadium which exists on paper only, he made it, ha ha!’
Arjun didn’t ask the Colonel how much his group would have taken from Ritsa for that. Everyone got their cut, and in the end, it was the common man who got screwed. Abbas had told him over dinner the previous night of people getting subsidies from Delhi for non-existent fisheries and fruit-processing plants—after all, who would go to the interiors to check if they really existed?
They came to the overgrown field where the cows were still grazing leisurely. As they crossed it, Arjun noticed on a second dirt track by the field a run-down red Alto with what looked like four men inside it. Something from the previous night occurred to him, and he asked the colonel about the two NPG cadres who had been shot inside the city.
‘Yes, our boys did that,’ the Colonel conceded, and added that the other group was getting ‘too greedy’. ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe with me,’ he said, and patted the pistol in his jacket pocket.
Arjun explained that he had got the information from Abbas.
‘Abbas? Abbas is a good fellow. Do you know what I told him? I said Abbas, don’t do namaz and yoga together, your body will get confused, ha ha!’
They had crossed the Assam Rifles camp now and climbed up to the main road. The cloud of dust behind them had fallen away, and Arjun could look at the rear-view mirror on his side. Was the Alto following them? It was hard to tell in the dusk as the Gypsy moved from side to side. They were heading for the colonel’s camp now, and on the horizon a blood-red sun appeared over the trees and the buildings. Arjun lit a cigarette as Khrienuo spelt out the plan for the evening.
‘I won’t take much time in the camp. Then we’ll go to my place and have a barbeque!’
‘Sounds good,’ Arjun said with a smile.
Later, he would recognize the tinkling sound as having come from the windowpane of the Gypsy as it shattered. But just then all he realized was that the vehicle had started drifting towards the left, narrowly missing a motorcyclist who honked in alarm. He turned to see the colonel’s head slouched on his chest, his hands slack on the wheel. Instinctively he reached for the wheel, but the colonel’s elbows had jammed against his ample frame, thus restricting the wheel. Arjun noticed the red-coloured Alto, with its windows down and two faces looking out, moving ahead from the right side of the Gypsy. The bastards had shot the colonel! The realization flashed through his brain even as he tried to turn the stuck whe
el to the right. Too late. The Gypsy slid down the edge of the road and then there was a terrific bang that threw Arjun against the corner of the cabin.
He blacked out for a couple of seconds. When he came to, he found himself out of his seat and in the corner of the crooked vehicle. The colonel was slouched forward and to the left, his heavy bulk held back by the seat belt. A bullet appeared to have gone through his cheek and out the top of his head; there was a hole in the soft-top roof above. Arjun tried the door and it opened a little bit, allowing him to get out. His shoes touched grassy soil. Further ahead there rose up what looked like the smokestack of a brickworks, smoke billowing out of the top. He turned, and in the dying light of day saw the Alto come to a halt by the roadside. The doors opened and the men got out. He remembered the gun and went back inside the tilted Gypsy, but even as he fumbled to open Khrienuo’s jacket pocket, strong arms were hauling him out.
Arjun tried to break free but a fist exploded in his face and then something hard came down on the back of his head, returning him to the darkness. When he came to the second time, there was a blindfold across his eyes and his hands were tied. He was squeezed in between two men, in the back seat of a moving car, most probably the Alto. He slowly breathed in and out, trying to stay calm. From the corners of his eyes he could make out the headlights of other cars passing by—were they heading back into the city? There was a smell of dust, oil and sweat inside the car.
‘Why are we bringing this fellow with us?’ a rough voice asked in Nagamese from the front. ‘We should have finished him off back there.’
‘Lauda, don’t make so much noise,’ the man to Arjun’s right yelled back, and leant forward. ‘Here, look at this, he’s from Delhi. We can get some money out of him.’
His wallet and his licence, Arjun realized. They must have taken his phone too.
‘He might be an intelligence person,’ the driver said. ‘What do we do then?’
‘Kill him and bury him in the jungle,’ the other person in the back said.
More Bodies Will Fall Page 18
