Vikas Swarup - Six Suspects

'Page.'

'What?'

'The name's not Watson. It is Larry Page.'

'Oh yes, of course.' He took another puff on his pipe. 'Well, who is this person you want me to find, Mr Larry?'

'Are you moving from here?' I pointed at the stack of boxes.

'Well, this place isn't exactly Baker Street. And the idiots here don't know enough English even to write the name of my agency correctly. But don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. We are merely redecorating. Why don't you take a seat?'

I sat down on a stringy chair which looked so weak I was worried it might collapse at any minute.

'I was wondering if you could find the girl who sent me these pictures,' I said and handed him the brown folder.

He did a quick scan and frowned. 'But this is our famous actress Shabnam Saxena. Why do you need to find her?'

So I explained the whole story of my friendship with Sapna Singh and the reason for my trip to India.

'Tch-tch,' he said, shaking his head. 'This girl Sapna has really duped you, Mr Larry. What do you want me to do?'

'I want you to find her. Before returning to the States I want to meet her just once. Can you locate her for me?'

'Of course. I can even locate Osama bin Laden if the government asks me. Do you have any letters written by this girl?'

'Yes.' I took out a fat bunch of letters from my bag. 'I can give you her address, but I'm afraid I cannot show the letters to you. They are kind of private.'

'And I am a private investigator.' He grinned and snatched them from my hand. 'Hmmm,' he said as he read the first few letters. 'A Delhi PO box has been used. Very clever. But not cleverer than me. Mr Larry, consider your work done. Within a few days I shall have the full details of this girl. Of course, it will cost you.'

'How much?'

'My normal rate is ten thousand rupees, but given that you are a guest in our country, I'll give you a fifty per cent discount. So let's say five thousand rupees. I need half in advance and half when I finish the investigation.'

I took out my wallet and counted out 2,500 rupees.

'Good,' he nodded, and sent another cloud of smoke out of his mouth. 'Come back on Monday 8 October.'

I returned to the guesthouse, first checking to see if that nasty cow was around. Today she was sitting in the middle of the road like a traffic island, with a garland of fresh marigolds draped around her neck. Cars and scooters honked at her, cyclists cursed her, but she sat there like a queen, chewing a plastic bag. I shook my head in despair at this country where cows were treated like goddesses. Back home she'd already have become steak.

Once inside the guesthouse, I headed for the TV lounge. There was only one other guy in the room, sitting in an armchair, with a cushion in his lap. He was fair, with brown eyes and a wispy beard.

The TV set was tuned to CNN. The screen showed rubble in some street and then people lying in hospital all covered in blood and bandages.

'What happened?' I asked the guy.

'Another suicide bombing in Baghdad. Seventy people killed,' he replied tersely. 'You are Larry Page from America, aren't you?'

'Yeah,' I nodded. 'How did you know?'

'I saw your name in the hotel register.'

'And who might you be?'

'I am Bilal Beg, from Kashmir.'

I had no idea where Kashmir was, but I nodded my head again.

'Tell me, Mr Page, why doesn't your country just quit Iraq?' Bilal demanded suddenly.

'I dunno. Isn't it because we need to get that guy Saddam or something?'

'But Saddam has already been hanged!'

'Oh really? Sorry, I haven't watched CNN for, like, a year.'

He looked at me as if I had stolen his wallet and walked out of the room.

That evening I made the mistake of eating out at a roadside restaurant. The food was mind-blowingly hot, some kind of flatbread filled with potatoes and pickle that went to work on my stomach straight away. As soon as I returned to the guesthouse, I had to rush to the john.

The whole of Friday and Saturday I spent in my room, with the worst stomach ache of my life. I felt like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. The only person who came to look me up was Bilal. He even gave me some kind of green syrup which helped me recover. By Sunday morning, I was raring to go out, having been cooped up with the runs for the last two days.

The streets of Paharganj were quieter on Sunday. Even the rickshaw-wallahs who normally started plying their glorified cycles by seven a.m. seemed to be taking a break. Two of them were sleeping with their feet propped up on the handlebars. The girls were out again, busy filling their plastic bottles and buckets from the municipal tap.

Most of the shops were closed today, but the little roadside restaurants were open. One sold fried omelettes wrapped in two slices of bread. Another was making pretzel-shaped Indian sweets which were fried in a vast vat of boiling oil, then dumped into another pot containing a sugary syrup. People huddled around stoves which were furiously boiling tea.

For some reason, Indians preferred doing things out in the open. I saw open-air hair-cutting saloons, where barbers lathered and scraped customers in full public view, and tailoring shops, consisting of a tailor sitting on the pavement busy working his sewing machine. There were even people who cleaned your ears on the side of the road. I saw an old man in dirty clothes busy poking inside a customer's ear with a long, pointy thing. It was enough to give me an earache.

There was a man selling DVDs on a cart. I picked up some fabulous bargains from him – Spiderman 3, Batman 4 and Rocky 5 for the equivalent of fifty cents a piece!

Wandering further south, I reached a busy fruit market. Women sat on tattered burlap mats with mounds of tomatoes and onions, lemons and ladies' fingers, and tried to out-shout each other. 'Tomatoes twenty rupees a kilo!… Lemons five for two!… My potatoes are the best!' They weighed the vegetables in deformed copper scales with black iron kilogram weights and put the money under the burlap mats. Suddenly, something flicked my face. I turned around and saw that nasty cow staring at me. Before she could make her move, I began to run. Ten minutes later, I found myself near New Delhi railway station.

The station was another world. The poverty of India hit me like a hammer. I saw entire families living on pavements inside makeshift tents made of plastic sheeting. And there were some who didn't even have that. One man lay stretched out in the middle of the road, like a drunk outside a bar. Another sat on the pavement, naked as a jay bird, his body caked in mud, scratching his chest with his nails.

A haggard-looking woman approached me, wearing a green sari with a yellow blouse. She was as thin as a bar of soap after a hard day's washing and her hair looked like she had combed it with an egg beater. She held up a skinny little boy who looked like he hadn't eaten in a year, all bones and hollow eyes. The woman didn't say anything, just cupped her hands and made a motion from her stomach to her mouth. It was enough for me to take out my wallet and give her five hundred rupees.

No sooner had I done this than I was surrounded by an army of beggars. They zeroed in on me like those dead guys in Night of the Zombies. There were limbless beggars and eyeless ones, beggars who pushed themselves on skateboards and those who walked on their hands. Like the fruit vendors displaying oranges and apples, they showed me their open wounds and pus-filled sores, their mangled limbs and deformed backs, and held out tin begging bowls as crooked as their bodies. It was impossible to proceed any further. I ran back to the hotel, locked myself in my room and buried my face in the pillow.

In just three days, Delhi had broken my heart, blown my mind, and blasted my intestines.