Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Sartaj hadn't driven the car for a couple of months, so that afternoon he gave it a quick going-over, and encouraged it with praise, and it rumbled into motion. He drove around the locality for half an hour, until he was satisfied that the old khatara was still able to rattle on. He cleaned the car out, had the oil and battery checked and by next morning felt quite prepared. They set off at seven-thirty. Mary wore black jeans and a white shirt. Sartaj was very aware of her hand on the seat beside him, not so far away, and the waft of her shampoo. They drove through Sion, relatively uncrowded that early. At Deonar, the dense press of buildings finally parted, and the sky suddenly appeared, vast and grey, and across the spreading panorama ahead Sartaj could see the mountains. He felt that childhood tingle in his stomach, and wanted to chant, we're going on a holiday, we're going on a holiday. But no, Mary would think he was crazy. He was smiling anyway, and Mary saw him and smiled too. They sped across the muddy water of the sea, arcing high above on the bridge, and then through clusters of apartment buildings, and then Sartaj saw the bright pastel buildings ahead, tall and very new, and knew they were almost at the expressway.

'They look like cakes,' Mary said. 'A building should look like someone lives in it, not like a cake.'

'It is the modern style,' Sartaj said. 'Are you hungry? Do you want to get something at the McDonald's?'

'No, no. I'm fine. Let's go.'

She made a soaring gesture, up and away into the Ghats, and Sartaj knew that she wanted to be on the hills as much as he. 'All right.' He paid the toll, and then they were away.

Traffic on the expressway was light, and it was good to be on the wide road, skimming against the wind. The khatara seemed to like it too, this unexpected, foreign-seeming sweep of smooth, wide road dropped on to the rough Ghati landscape. The car surged ahead, vibrating violently as Sartaj let it have its head.

'How old is this thing?' Mary said.

'Years and years. But she keeps on going.' He slowed, and changed a lane. Even changing lanes here was a pleasure, the drivers seemed to get a bit more civilized when they came on to the expressway. And there were so many lanes, all comfortably wide and perfectly arranged.

But further on, when they had reached the lower slopes, cars backed up behind a behemoth of a truck sprawled on its side, across the lanes. Traffic was still moving, and as they came past the blockage they saw that the rear end of the truck was buckled and ripped, and a sea of oranges had spilled out on to the tar. The car's wheels squished for a moment, and then they were past.

'Last time I came on the expressway,' Mary said, 'I saw five accidents.'

'These idiots have never seen an expressway in their lives, they've driven only in Indian conditions. So they see a big perfect road, they get excited, go too fast, don't know how to handle their vehicles. Bas, finish.'

'At least this one didn't close the entire road.'

There was that. Mary Mascarenas was an optimist, or at least she wasn't a pessimist. Sartaj felt a flush of well-being himself, sitting next to her. Yes, the road was still open. Now they didn't speak much, he was content to point out to her an inexplicable string of camels plodding down a side road, a fat girl walking on a bund between fields. They went through the tunnels and out into the sun, and there was the smooth drumming of the engine, the hiss of passing cars.

They reached the Cozy Nook at nine-thirty. The Nook was five cottages clustered together at the edge of a housing development, with a front office that was of brand-new concrete coloured an alarming pink. There were new houses on the slope on both sides of the Cozy Nook, so it wasn't really so cosy any more. No doubt they offered the hazy prospect beyond, dissected by electrical wire, as a fine river view. Khandala had filled up with new construction, and was no longer the leafy haven that Sartaj had made trips to with college girlfriends. But at least the hairy-eared, balding receptionist was reassuringly familiar in his jaded boredom and his rudeness.

'Write name,' he barked, spinning a register across the counter.

Sartaj grinned at Mary, and explained that he was a policeman, that he didn't want a room, that he wanted to ask some questions. Hairy-eared baldy was confused by Mary. 'She's my assistant,' Sartaj said. 'Now take out your registers.'

The investigation took half an hour. Sartaj found Umesh Bindal's name easily enough, he signed it with a flourish and two dots under the large curve. The other names on those dates were often illegible and, Sartaj was sure, mostly made up. 'S. Khan' gave his address as 'Bandra, Mumbai', and left no other information. If he had been the man with the camera, watching Umesh and Kamala in their satiated lover's walk down the pathway, there was no way to trace him. Sartaj had Baldy put away the registers and walk them around the cottages. Mary followed quietly.

She spoke when they were outside, back in the car and heading up the hill. 'Did you find what you wanted?' she said, her arm bumping against his as he took a sharp turn.

He shook his head, and waited until they were seated at a table in a restaurant, on the edge of a cliff. There was a breeze lifting up from the stepped floor of the valley, and Sartaj felt wonderfully relaxed and hungry. 'I wasn't expecting to find anything,' he said. And then he told her about investigations, about feeling your way along, groping your way along and coming up with half-understood clues, with evidence that wouldn't work as evidence but you knew was the truth. 'It's not like in films,' he said. 'Really, half of detection is accident. Like us missing the pictures of Zoya, and you knowing exactly what they were.'

'So you depend on random women to help you find gangsters by accident? That's not very comforting for the poor public.' Her eyes were prickling with amusement.

'Aaaah, but I have to be open to random women, you see. You have to be able to listen, to really see.'

'I can see you spend a lot of time listening to women.'

He knew she was teasing, but he couldn't stop himself from protesting, 'No, no, not like that at all.'

She began to giggle, and he laughed along with her. They ate oversized neer dosas with a fiery sambhar. Sartaj wiped his plate clean and sat back. He was feeling quite content, at peace with the world. Gaitonde was dead and far away, and if there was a bomb it was unsubstantial, it was merely a horror-story device. Sartaj ran his eyes up, over the scrubby green slopes and into the distance beyond the mountain tops, and said, 'It's so relaxing to be out of that city. It would be nice to live in a village, you know. Be close to the soil, the clean air. The stress would be so much less.'

Mary was leaning to one side, her chin propped on one hand. 'You in a village. That would be something to see.'

'Why, why? I might make a good farmer.'

She shook her head gently. 'I'm not saying it is just you. I grew up in a village, and I couldn't go back. Do you know what it's really like?' Then she told him about waking up in a red brick house with a tiled roof, to the dawning chatter of parrots, and stumbling out crumbly-eyed to the cowshed behind the house. The bathroom was a doorless enclosure attached to the cowshed, with water in a big copper pan embedded in the wall, over a fire. There were no toilets, just the fields of usal. Back behind the cowshed was also a well, and beyond that, a row of coconut trees and the paddy fields. A river edging down to the sea, glinting, and the smell of jasmine flowers. Coffee and appams at eight, paes at ten. The day at school, the chatter of Konkani and Kannada and Tulu on the winding dirt road. Lunch, and the eternity of the afternoon, skipping with Jojo on the red floor of the platform in front of the house. The rosary slipping through their mother's fingers, the hour-long evening prayer, the blessings from the elders. Dinner sitting on the polished floor, Mother on her monai bending low over her plate. The complete, stunning darkness when the lanterns were blown out. In bed by nine. And sleep.