Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'This is my friend, Jana,' Mary said.

Sartaj had not expected friend Jana, but it certainly made sense that Mary would bring a friend. 'Namaskar, Jana-ji,' he said.

Jana took in the muted sarcasm, and grew more amused. 'Namaskar, Sartaj-ji,' she said.

Sartaj grinned, and quite unexpectedly Mary smiled. Her jaw thrust forward a little, and her eyes narrowed, and her face quite transformed. The dragging seriousness went from her, vanished. Sartaj wasn't quite sure exactly what she found funny, but it was a relief and a revelation to see that she could be diverted. 'Shall we go?' he said, pointing towards the lift.

'Yes, yes,' Mary said. 'Jana has come to look after me.'

Standing close to the two of them in the lift, Sartaj could see that Jana was very competent indeed. She wore a smear of sindoor in her carefully parted hair, and a dull red kurta over black salwars. Her shoes were sensible, and she carried a large, square shoulder-bag with wide shoulder straps. Inside it she carried a plastic bottle, no doubt full of boiled water. That was a mother's bag, nice-looking but capacious and hardy. It would carry lunch, chocolates, medicine, vegetables and school books. It was a trustworthy bag.

The lock to Jojo's apartment was tightly bandaged with coarse canvas that took in the latch as well, and the layers were secured by a drippy seal of red wax marked by the Mumbai Police. Sartaj handed Mary the key, and reached inside his gym bag for a pair of large black scissors. He had come prepared. The seal came off with a rip, and then Sartaj watched as Mary struggled with the key against the jammed lock. 'Let me,' he said, and Mary shook her head briskly and set her shoulders to the task. Jana gave Sartaj a rueful look over Mary's head: this is what she's like, let her be. They waited. Then the lock came open with a screech, and they were in.

Jana rushed around opening windows, revealing the drawing room in sections. Mary was still near the door. Sartaj reached behind her and ran his hand down the row of switches. No lights, no electricity. 'Yaar, this is a nice place,' Jana called from the kitchen, mingling surprise and a fat dollop of outrage.

Women were always outraged when officially bad women made money, had taste, enjoyed a little happiness, Sartaj thought. But Mary was unreadable. She walked through the apartment, paused in each room and took it in, and was very silent. Jana's commentary rolled on: in the bedroom, Jojo's lavish collection of footwear called up a moment of stunned silence, then two minutes of affronted references to Jayalalitha and Imelda Marcos, and then a long painstaking inventory. Mary was standing in the doorway, her hands by her sides.

Sartaj pushed a window open. 'There were some photo albums here,' he said. 'They must be somewhere in here.' The room was a mess, and the scattering of shoes and clothes and magazines lay under a thick slough of dust. 'Ah, there,' Sartaj said, and came around the bed to the dresser. He picked up the top album, and thumped it. A fine ash ballooned off the cover, and Sartaj was suddenly aware of how loud his voice had been, how triumphant. The direct light from the window didn't quite reach Mary, and he couldn't see her face. 'You should go to the BSES office, and have the electricity switched back on.' He put the album back on the dresser. 'There must be some outstanding bills. Okay, then, I must go.' He nodded, took a step and stopped.

Mary backed into the corridor to let him pass. Sartaj raised a hand at Jana, and she nodded, but she was watching Mary. Sartaj was all the way down the corridor when Mary spoke. 'Thank you,' she said.

'Yes, yes,' Sartaj said. 'Don't mention.'

'I haven't forgotten.'

'What?'

'About your investigation of Ganesh Gaitonde. I tried to think about Jojo, if I could remember anything.'

'Thank you.'

She smiled again, and again this time it came suddenly, without warning. She raised her left hand and did a curious little wave, holding out her hand towards him and turning it only from the wrist. Sartaj nodded, and shut the door.

* * *

An hour and a half of shifting and coiling had left Sartaj exhausted, but more awake than when he had got into bed. He had settled in just after midnight, feeling virtuous about the earliness of the hour, and clean from a long shower. But now a small and relentless agitation was working under his skin. He had drunk three whisky-and-waters. And still there was no sleep. He sat up. Shadows of wires swayed across the window-pane. He couldn't remember the name of the dog. There had been that small white dog that Kamala Pandey's husband had thrown out of the window. Sartaj remembered its stiff-legged sprawl in the car park, but he couldn't remember the name of the gaandu thing. He still had her number. He could call Kamala Pandey and ask her, what was the name of the dog your husband killed, that the two of you killed together, as you played your dirty games?

Sartaj swung his feet to the floor, rubbed at his eyes. He couldn't do that, it would be police harassment, persecution, something. But he knew who would be awake at two in the morning. He dialled, pressing at the lighted keys with a shaky finger. He listened to the ring and waited, holding up his hand. He was very tense. I need to get a blood-pressure test, he thought. There was a history in the family: Sartaj's father had struggled against hypertension and high cholesterol all his life. He had survived one heart attack, and died quietly in his sleep nine years later, of causes that the doctors said were natural.

'Peri pauna, Ma,' Sartaj said.

'Jite raho, beta,' she said. 'Did you just get home?'

'Yes. Casework.' Work was an acceptable reason for calling this late. Admitting to insomnia would occasion an enquiry into his eating habits, his consumption of alcohol and his health. He would be pre-emptive. 'Ma, you sound hoarse. Are you getting a cold?'

'A cold, me? I never get colds. Your father was the one who always got colds. He had that thin Bombay blood. We grew up in a good clean climate, we were used to good cold winters.' This was an old theme, that the north-western sardar was tougher than the Bombay sardar. The sisters were the toughest of all, and Navneet-bhenji was the eldest and the hardiest of the sisters. Here it came, the story of the stalwart and long-lost aunt. 'Navneet-bhenji used to bathe in cold water even on January mornings. At six-thirty in the morning because she had to get to early class at college. Even Papa-ji would tell her to put in a little hot water, but she never listened. And if you looked at her, you would think what a delicate, beautiful thing! She was a literature student, she looked like she should be counting pearls in a palace, but she was strong as some peasant. She used to paint really well also, you know. These scenes of the village fields, and houses, and cows. There was one she did of our new house that was wonderful, it was so exact.'

Now there was a pause. This halt was also a familiar one, as Ma mourned the dead sister. Navneet-mausi had been killed during Partition, but Ma had been talking about her for as long as Sartaj could remember. She was dead, but she had always been in Sartaj's life. All the children and grandchildren in the family knew her well, this absent mausi. They had lived with her, with the stories and the rigidity that would come over the faces of the elders as they spoke of her. Sartaj had tried now and then to press past that constriction of muscle and nerve, that freezing of emotion, to what exactly had happened during those bloodstained days. But all that Ma had ever said was, 'Those were bad days, very bad days,' and that was all. And that was what they all said, all the uncles and aunts and grandparents. That, and an occasional curse against Muslims: beta, you don't know, they are bad people, very bad people.