Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'That's not enough. They must have something else.'

She was flinching now, from what she had to say. 'Videos.'

'Of what?'

'Of us. Outside our room.' It looked as if the videos had been taken with a hidden camera at a guest house in Khandala. The lovers had used this guest house often, on a regular basis, and the staff had thought they were a married couple fond of quick hill-station vacations. The videos had them going into their room, and leaving it. And also holding hands and kissing and embracing as they walked to and fro, across the hotel courtyard. The blackmailers had left the video tape on the seat of Kamala Pandey's car, in a brown envelope. Then they had called her.

'How much did you pay them?' Sartaj said.

A small shimmer of puzzlement hovered over her taut cheeks. Sartaj laughed. 'It's not so unusual, madam. Everyone pays them first. The blackmailers send over the video or photographs or whatever. Then a month later they come back with new material. So what was the amount?'

'A lakh and fifty thousand. They wanted two lakhs, but Umesh negotiated with them. Now they sent a new tape.'

'How much do they want now?'

'Two lakhs.'

'And where is the tape?'

'I burnt it.'

'Both videos? Everything they had sent?'

'Yes.'

'Madam, that is not so good. We could have learnt something from the tapes. Even from the envelope.'

She nodded. The videos would have been too frightening to keep. The mention of them had made her a little watery, a little tremulous under the sheen. But now she showed some steel. She reached into her silver handbag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She opened it out on the table, smoothed it down. 'I kept a list of their numbers,' she said. 'Each time they called, I wrote it down. With the times.'

'That is good,' Sartaj said. 'That is very good. And now if they send you anything, keep it. Try not to touch it too much.'

'Fingerprints.'

'Yes, fingerprints. You have to help us to help you. Where is Umesh today?'

'He's flying. He would have come with me, but you didn't return my calls till today.'

'I want to talk to him.'

'I'll give you his numbers.' She wrote on the paper. 'He wanted to go to the police the first time they called. I only didn't want to come.'

'You wanted it to stop.'

'Yes.'

'They never stop. Until we stop them.'

'That's what Umesh said. But I didn't want to tell anyone then.'

'Why did you break it off with Umesh?'

'Because I realized that he wasn't interested in me really. He is a nice man, but he has too many girlfriends. He just wanted fun, and I was giving it to him. But then it wasn't fun for me any more.'

'So he's very handsome, like a hero?'

'Very.' His handsomeness still evoked a fervour in her, tinged with an aftertaste of sadness. 'Very.'

'When did the blackmailers call you last?'

'Yesterday.'

'They will call today. Start listening to them carefully. I want to know exactly what they say. Take notes. Listen for sounds from near by. Anything at all. You have to start thinking like a police-wallah. A police-walli.'

That amused her just a little, that she could ever be a lowly policewoman. 'Police-walli,' she said. 'I will try.'

'Tell them you need time to collect the money, that you're getting it together. How was it delivered last time?'

'I had to put it in a bag, a shopping bag, and drive to Apsara cinema in Goregaon in the evening, at six o'clock. The afternoon show was just letting out, and there were lots of crowds. I was told to wait on the road across from the gate. Then they called me. They told me that a chokra in a red T-shirt was going to come up to me, and a second later he was knocking on my window. I rolled the window down, he asked for a package, and he took the money and ran off into the crowd. That was it.'

A crowded area, a street kid sent to collect the money – just standard operating procedure for the average blackmailer. 'Umesh didn't come with you for the delivery?'

'No, they don't know that he knows. They told me not to tell anyone, not a single soul. They told me that they would hurt me.'

That was unusual, that blackmailers would threaten violence. There was no need for hurt if you had photographs. 'And the chokra, what did he look like?'

Kamala Pandey was confused. 'The kid? I don't know. He was just some urchin.' A barefoot boy was just exactly like any other street savage, despite his red T-shirt. You could find a dozen at any street corner in Mumbai.

'Try, madam. Can you remember anything at all about him? It's very important.'

'Yes. Yes…' She paused. 'His T-shirt. It was a DKNY round-neck T-shirt. It had the logo on it.'

'Deekay NY jeans?' Sartaj wrote in his notebook.

'No,' she said with the amused patience of somebody dealing with the lower classes. 'The letters D, K, N, Y and then "jeans". All capitals, one word. Like this.' She reached for his pen, and wrote in large letters: DKNY JEANS. 'The letters were very faded.'

Witnesses had to be praised for the slightest achievement, and cajoled into further discoveries. 'That is very good, madam,' Sartaj said. 'It will help us a lot. Anything else? Please try to remember. The smallest item can solve the case.'

She made a disgusted little pout, and touched a tooth, two behind her elegant, perfect right canine. 'His tooth, this one. It was all dirty-looking. Black, grey, instead of white.'

'Excellent. On that side?'

'Yes.'

'All right,' Sartaj said. 'It's good that you wrote down the numbers of the men who called. These are probably PCOs. Once you sign a complaint we'll put a watch on some of them.'

'I can't.'

'You can't what?'

'I can't sign a complaint.'

'Madam, without a complaint, without an FIR, how can I proceed?'

'Please understand. If any of this goes into writing, people will find out. People will know.'

'Madam, I understand that you are afraid that your husband will come to know. But will you please understand that without a complaint the police have no jurisdiction. We have no reason to interfere, no grounds to act on.'

'Please.'

She was leaning into the table, both hands up by her cheeks. A practised actress, this one. 'Madam, I can't do anything,' Sartaj said. He straightened his neck, loosened his tight shoulders. He was angry at her, had been angry for a while now. It burned through his chest. He didn't know why.

'Please,' she said. 'Think about it. I'll lose everything.'

'You should have thought about that a long time ago, yes?'

'Yes.' That stopped her, cut her off in mid-flow. 'Yes.'

She covered her eyes, and when she brought away her hands she was teary. A minute passed, then two. She dabbed away the tears. Sartaj was sure that an expert application of small pressure on her eyelids had helped start the tears, but now she seemed genuinely sad. There was a weariness that he recognized, an exhaustion from losing something built over long years. You had something that you valued very little, that you maybe had slighted and abused out of familiarity. Yet you then discovered that this thing itself, this connection, this very flimsy construction had spread its roots deep under your skin, and into the bone.

Kamala Pandey gathered herself again. In preparation for a direct attack, she levelled her shoulders and straightened up a bit. Sartaj remembered the walking stick she had broken on her husband's back, and he wondered if Mr Pandey had learned to recognize her cues and guard himself.

'Look,' she said. 'I will pay you.'

Sartaj said nothing. She reached into her bag, reached deep, and brought out a long white envelope. She paused, and waited for him to react. Sartaj said nothing. She slid the envelope across the table, left it next to his water, close to his hand.