Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'He'll bore you with some American racing movie,' Kamala said. 'Cars going around and round for two hours.'

'No, no.' Umesh dismissed her with a manly chopping motion of his right hand. 'We can watch a police film. I told you, I like detective stories.'

Sartaj was still trying to imagine a fourteen-foot screen and a projector in a Bombay apartment. 'You have a special room for this screen?'

'No, yaar, in my bedroom only. You don't need a lot of space, the projector is only this big, like this. You just come and see.'

'Maybe some time,' Sartaj said. He stood up. 'Too much work right now. How much does a thing like that cost, projector and sound and everything?'

'Oh, not so much,' Umesh said. 'Of course it's all specially imported, so you have to be prepared for some cost. But not as much as you think.' He patted at his face with the tips of his fingers.

'What?' Sartaj said.

Umesh said affectionately, 'My friend, you have foam on your moustache.' He held up a paper napkin in one hand, and the brown envelope in the other. 'Take.'

Sartaj took both. 'Don't worry,' he said to Kamala, wiping at his face. 'We are on the case.' Kamala tried to look reassured, but her doubts swam just under the lovely lustre of her cheeks. Sartaj hesitated, then added, 'And yes, some of the progress has been with Rachel. As I said, don't worry.'

Kamala's back straightened, and she smiled and nodded. Umesh was gratifyingly pleased as well. Maybe he loved Kamala in his own way, Sartaj thought. A pretty fellow, but likeable. 'Okay,' Kamala said. 'Thanks.'

Sartaj left her with Umesh murmuring into her ear. Endearments, maybe, or whispered memories of their shared past. No, Sartaj was sure that Umesh was talking about the uncertain competence of the investigator she had acquired. Sartaj got a fragmented glimpse of himself in the glass door of the coffee shop as he slung a leg over the motorcycle. It was a stylish move, but the man doing it was out of shape, dressed in a sadly out-of-date checked shirt and blue jeans. The turban was still tight and just so, but the face under it had been broken down by time. The detectives in Umesh's foreign movies were no doubt better-looking, better-dressed, better men altogether. That much was undoubtedly true.

On the road north, past the Santa Cruz airport, Sartaj thought about other truths. He was, in fact, Kamala's employee. He was paid by the great Government of India, at skimpy GOI rates, but it was nevertheless true that his salary cheques came in part from Kamala Pandey, citizen in good standing. Her cash payments in brown envelopes made him doubly her subordinate, and yet he had stood up, and had proclaimed that he was not her worker, her peon, her coolie. A light plane took off to the left, and Sartaj watched it soar past him, into the blue. The traffic was moving quickly now, and for a few seconds Sartaj had the illusion that he could keep up with the plane. Then it was away. He had thought he was past competing with people like Umesh and Kamala, that he had stumbled away from the siren call of success and victory, but apparently his pride was still alive. He could still get angry over being reminded of what he really was, a civil servant, a servant, no more, no less. Bloody sardar, Sartaj thought. Bloody policeman.

* * *

Kamble was enjoying being a policeman this afternoon. He had solved a burglary case – it was the building watchman and his two friends – and he had made money from an embezzlement case, from the defendant. He was writing up a report in the detection room when Sartaj found him. 'Saab, come, come,' he said. 'Please sit.' Then he wrote with one hand, drank noisy slurps of chaas with the other and told Sartaj all about his triumphs. After he had finished and filed his report, they walked to the back of the station, and took a stroll around the interior of the compound wall, around the temple. They stood under a droopy sapling and talked.

'The phone number that Taklu called is registered in the name of –,' Kamble said. 'But wait – you won't believe it. Tell me who you think it is.'

Kamble had contacts in the mobile phone company. He had made much noise about how difficult it was going to be to get any help and information, this being an unofficial investigation, and how he was going to need more cash to move things along. Now he was very satisfied with himself, with the quickness of his sources and their reliability. 'Come on, Kamble,' Sartaj said. 'It's hot out here.'

The saplings that Parulkar had planted had grown, they had got taller but they were sadly shredded-looking, stripped of leaves and branches. They gave no shade. There was a splattering of sunlight across Kamble's shoulders, and he was sweating. 'Boss, really you won't be able to tell,' he said. He ceremoniously took out a wad of folded paper from his pocket, computer forms with the holey strips still attached. He shook out the sheets. 'Try once.'

Sartaj shrugged. 'Minister Bipin Bhonsle?'

Kamble bent forward and hacked out a laugh. 'Yes, he'd want to lock up all the loose women in India. But no, it's not him. Listen. The address is a made-up one in Colaba, it doesn't exist. But the name is…Kamala Pandey.'

'No.'

'Yes. That's what it says here. Kamala Sloot Pandey.'

'Let me see.' Sartaj took the top printout. 'That's not "sloot",' he said. 'That's "slut".'

'Which is?'

'An English word. It means like a randi.'

'A raand?' Kamble ran a hand over his head, backwards over the clipped hair. 'Taklu is calling his boss, that kutiya Rachel, and that saali is laughing at us.'

'At Kamala, I think,' Sartaj said. 'I don't think that Rachel expected anyone to get to the number, really. She thinks she's real smart. This is all a joke to her.'

'Bhenchod. Now I want to catch her,' Kamble said. 'Not even for the money.'

Sartaj handed Kamble the brown envelope, which was now lighter by half. 'We'll catch her. What else did you get?'

'One month of calls to this phone, incoming and outgoing. They're all from the same mobile, and all to this same mobile. That's got to be Taklu's handy, the one he used at the cinema.'

So Taklu and his partner had a mobile phone, and they used it only to call this number, to reach their boss. And their boss – who, judging by this extra bitchery of 'slut', was Rachel Mathias – used her mobile phone only to call them. Very efficient, very careful. 'The other phone, Taklu's phone, is in what name?'

'Same name, also hers. Same to same, sloot and everything.'

So Kamala was a slut twice over. Now Sartaj wanted to catch Rachel too, and not for the money. But the two mobile phones calling each other presented a problem. The addresses they were registered to would be fake, and the payments would be made in cash to add phoning minutes to the SIM cards. It was a closed system.

But Kamble had a feral stretch in his jaw, like a wolf that had just eaten a gulp of fresh flesh. 'Don't look so worried, my friend. Someone made a mistake. There is one call from Taklu's phone, to a land line. This was three weeks ago, just one call one and a half minutes long. It is a residential line. I have the name, and the address. And it's all real.'

* * *

They went out to the real address that evening. It was a long drive, with rush-hour traffic all the way to Bhandup. Kamble rode behind Sartaj, and Sartaj felt his weight and his impatience. Every now and then Kamble pointed out openings between the jammed vehicles, and urged him on, faster. Sartaj kept up his usual steady pace, refusing short-cuts that he knew would finally slow them down. They stopped behind a long line of brilliantly coloured trucks at a crossroads, and Sartaj turned his face from the steady heated flow of foul exhaust. There was an orange bubble of light that hovered over the road, from the streetlamps, and above it the hard black of the sky. To the right, across and above the moving cars, Sartaj could see the low sprawl of lights, spreading densely to the east and north. Beyond the lights, barely there, the rise of hills. Out here, you could see the city spreading, working itself out into the soil and through the earth. Maybe there were still some tribals in those hills, hanging on to their little patches of land and quaint customs. These trucks would bring out cement and machines and money, and long legal documents, and the tribals would sign and sell, or be moved out. That's how it worked.