Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Ajwani rubbed his hands together.

‘You’re a genius at this, Mr Shanmugham.’

‘It can’t always be brains, though. Sometimes, you just have to…’

Picking up the curved black knife that lay on the coconuts, Shanmugham stuck it into a green nut. Ajwani shivered.

‘Tell me. Please. What have you done? Broken a leg?’ He dropped his voice. ‘ Killed a man?’

Shanmugham looked at the black knife.

‘Just a year ago. A project in Sion. One old man kept saying no, no. We kept offering money, and it was always no, no. Boss was getting angry.’

‘So?’ Ajwani came as close as he could.

So, in a bolt of rage and calculation, six-foot-two-inch-tall Shanmugham ran up the stairs of the building, kicked open a door, grabbed something that was playing backgammon with its grandson, shoved its head out of a window, saying: Sign, mother-fucker .

‘You really did that?’ Ajwani stared at the black knife.

Shanmugham nodded. He took the knife out of the coconut. ‘The old man signed on the spot. I was scared, I tell you that. I thought I might go to jail. But… the truth is, even if they say no, deep down ’ — he pointed the knife at Ajwani — ‘they want money. Once you make them sign, they’re grateful to you. Never go to the police. So all I’m doing is making them aware of their own inner intentions.’

He threw the knife back into the pile of coconuts.

Ajwani gazed in admiration at Shanmugham’s hands. ‘What else have you done for Mr Shah?’

‘Anything he wants. The call can come any time, day or night. You have to be ready.’

He told Ajwani of the time a famous politician had phoned the Confidence office, and quoted a figure, in cash, that would have to be transported that evening to his election headquarters. Shah and Shanmugham had driven to a warehouse in Parel where five-hundred-rupee notes were counted by machines, tied into bricks and loaded into an SUV — the cash, filling the vehicle’s front and back seats, was covered with a white bedsheet. Shanmugham, with no more than a hundred and seventy-five rupees for food and drink, drove the SUV across the state border, to the politician’s henchmen. Safely delivered. The politician won the election.

‘I could have been like you. An action man.’ Ajwani gouged out his lower lip and shook his head. ‘If I had met a man like Mr Shah in time. Instead, I’m…

‘But tell me.’ He tapped the Tamilian’s forearm. ‘There must be girls in your business. Pretty girls. Dance bar girls?’

‘I’m a married man,’ Shanmugham said. ‘My wife would cut my throat.’

Which made them both laugh.

The broker got up from the cot. ‘Let’s finish this phone call business now.’

‘Not from your phone—’ Shanmugham produced a small red mobile phone. ‘This one has a SIM card that they can’t trace.’

He threw it to the broker.

‘Old man,’ Ajwani said into the phone. ‘Old man, are you there? Pick up the phone, old man…’ He shook his head and gave the mobile back.

Shanmugham got up from the cot, smacking dust off his trousers.

‘That’s it for phone calls.’

‘What happens next?’ the broker asked, as they left the office through a back door. ‘Are you going to send boys to break wood outside the Society?’

Shanmugham tied the straps of his helmet. ‘Some things,’ he said, ‘you don’t tell even your first cousins.’

Kicking the Hero Honda to life, he drove off into the night.

The banging noise on the door woke Masterji. Seizing the Illustrated History of Science , he got up from the sofa, and checked the safety catch. He stood by the door with the book raised in both hands.

The Pintos waited at the threshold of their dark bedroom.

‘Not here,’ Mrs Pinto whispered. ‘Upstairs. They’re banging on your door.’

Mr Pinto reached for the light switch.

‘Wait,’ Masterji said.

Now they heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

‘Let’s call the police. Someone please call the…’

‘Yes,’ Masterji said from the door. ‘Call them.’

‘But Masterji pulled the phone cord out of the wall. You have to put it back in, Mr Pinto.’

The footsteps grew louder. Mr Pinto got down on his knees and slapped at the wall. ‘I can’t find the plug…’

‘Quickly, Mr Pinto, quickly.’

‘Keep quiet, Shelley.’

‘Don’t fight!’ — Masterji from the door. ‘And both of you keep quiet.’

The banging started on the Pintos’ door.

‘Stop that at once, or I’ll call the police!’ Masterji shouted.

There was a jangling of bangles from outside, and then:

‘Ramu, tell your Masterji who it is.’

‘Oh, God. Sangeeta.’ Masterji lowered the Illustrated History of Science . He turned on the light. ‘Why are you here at this hour?’

‘Ramu, tell your Masterji we are all walking to SiddhiVinayak temple. We’ll pray for his heart to soften. Now come, Ramu,’ she said, ‘and no noise: we don’t want to wake up the good people.’

The Puris were taking that boy on foot to SiddhiVinayak? How would Ramu walk such a distance?

He almost opened the door to plead with Mrs Puri not to do this to Ramu.

It was three in the morning. Another three and a half hours before it was light and they could go to the police station. With the Illustrated History of Science lying on his ribs, he closed his eyes and stretched out on the sofa.

Six and a half hours later, he was walking with Mr Pinto down the main road.

‘I know we’re late. Don’t blame me. If you still had your scooter we could have gone to the station in five minutes.’

Masterji said nothing. Walking was good on a day like this. With each step he took, the threat of violence receded. He had lived in Vakola for thirty years, his bones had become arthritic on these very pavements. Who could threaten him here?

‘It’s the fortunate men of Vishram!’

Bare-chested Trivedi, the Gold Coin priest, came towards them with embracing arms. He had just performed a little cleansing ritual at the police station, he explained. Someone had died in the station years ago, and they called him in once a year to purge the ghost.

‘Let me buy you a coffee or tea. A coconut?’

‘Tea,’ Mr Pinto said.

‘We have to go,’ Masterji whispered. ‘We’re late already.’

‘Just a few minutes,’ Mr Pinto said.

He followed the priest to a roadside tea shop, beside which a burly man in a banian stood pressing clothes with a coal-fired iron. A metal trough full of spent coals rested by the side of his ironing board.

With a glass of chai in his hand, Pinto motioned for Masterji to join him and Trivedi at the tea shop.

It had been a morning full of delays, Mr Pinto at every stage misplacing something — his glasses, umbrella. Now, watching the trembling tea glass in his old friend’s hand, Masterji understood.

‘I’ll go into the station and file the complaint. You can go home alone, Mr Pinto. It’s perfectly safe in daylight.’

The police station of Vakola stands right at the traffic signal leading in from the highway, giving the impression you are coming into a suburb where the law is securely in charge.

From the chastening aromas of coal and laundry outside the station, Masterji walked into an atmosphere of burning incense and marigold flowers.

It was his first visit to the station in nearly a decade; in the mid-1990s Purnima’s handbag had been snatched just outside the school on a Saturday afternoon — such an unusual event that it had led to neighbourhood talk of a ‘crime wave’; he and Purnima had come here, and spoken to sympathetic officers; a First Information Report (FIR) with the details of the crime had been filled out by a policeman over carbon paper, and that appeared to have been the bulk of the investigative work done. The bag was never recovered; nor did the crime wave materialize.