Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'She is my aatya. This is my aatya's house. I come and stay here sometimes. I drive an auto for a seth who has his garage near here. Sometimes I have to return the auto late at night, so I come and sleep here.'

'Your aatya is rich, eh?' Sartaj said. 'She's got a phone and everything.' He was squatting next to the stool. The phone had a guard-lock on the dial, and a box full of coins and small notes next to it. Veena Mane took money from her neighbours, to let them make calls and receive them. 'What's the number for this phone?'

'The number?'

'Yes, the number. You don't remember your own aatya's number? What is it, Kamble, the phone number?'

Kamble was in the back room now, and Sartaj could hear him tipping over trunks and flinging cupboards open. He called the number back, singing out the digits.

'Is that it, chutiya?' Kazimi said. He was standing very close to Anand Agavane now, nose to nose. 'Is that your aatya's number?'

'I haven't done anything.'

Kazimi slapped him. There was a moan from outside, from the row of faces that now crowded the lane. Anand Agavane hunched against the television, holding his face.

Sartaj thrust his head out of the door. 'Get away from here,' he snarled. 'Or I'll take you bastards in as well. You want a lathi up your gaand? This is not some cinema show.' Veena Mane's neighbours retreated, and then turned away. But Sartaj knew that they would be listening, that what went on in one kholi was loud in the next. He came back into the room, turned up the television. A model in a green sari sang about exquisite coffee.

'Look at this,' Kamble said as he came through the narrow passageway from the back room. He held up a cubical black plug and a dangling wire. 'This looks like it should plug into a mobile phone. How many phones does your aatya have, after all? What is she doing, calling the Ambanis every ten minutes?'

Sartaj took the plug from Kamble. He put a comforting hand on Anand Agavane's shoulder, close to the neck. 'Listen to me,' he said. 'We're not after you. We know about the calls to the woman, we know that you sent those chokras to pick up money at Apsara.' Sartaj could feel Anand Agavane's pulse under his fingers, as high and fast as a bird's. 'We just want you to tell us your boss's name yourself. Who do you call? Just tell me. It'll be all right, nothing will happen to you.'

But Anand Agavane was in a stupor, with knotted eyes and rigid jaw. Sartaj had seen it before, this cornered conjuring-up of courage. Anand Agavane was going to try to be honourable, he wanted to save his friends. He would break, but it would take some effort, questioning, a beating or two. They would have to take him somewhere, work on him.

Kazimi nodded at Sartaj, then slapped Anand Agavane again, a lazy backhand. It was only a punctuation mark, with not much force behind it. 'He asked you something,' Kazimi said. 'Answer.'

'I don't know anything about any money,' Anand Agavane said.

'What about the mobile?' Sartaj said. 'Where is it?'

Kamble took a white shirt from a hook, dropped it. Then he dug into a pair of white pants and came up with a wallet. 'An auto driver's packet, with so much money? And you don't even own the auto, bastard.' He flung the pants at Anand Agavane, bounced them off his face and on to the floor.

Sartaj tipped boxes from a kitchen shelf. On the far side of the stove, a black shelf held images of the Tuljapur Devi and Khandoba, and a framed black-and-white marriage picture, a man and a woman with a vague resemblance to Anand Agavane. That must be Veena Aatya, bejewelled and shy for her wedding. Sartaj swept the metal clean, and glass crunched on the floor. Kazimi planted a foot on Agavane's pants, and reached down and pulled the belt loose. He doubled it over, and slashed at Agavane's shoulders, his hips.

'If you make me angry,' he said, 'you'll have to spend the night with me, bhenchod. Not with your aatya. And I tell you, I will have a lot of fun, but you won't. Where is it, this maderchod mobile?'

Sartaj turned away from the shelves, back to the room. The kholi looked as if it had been suddenly destroyed, as if a hard wind had taken the bright calendars off the wall and gashed them in half, and spilt a canister of good rice across the floor. Sartaj tried to think across the thwacking of leather on skin, and Kamble's steady cursing. Anand Agavane had been sitting on the floor watching television, right there. He would not be far from his mistress's voice, the phone must be near the door. Somewhere over there. There was a shuttered window, but the scarred, twisted wood left only space enough on the sill for a packet of Wills and matches. Sartaj shook open the folded mattress that Agavane had been sitting on, and that yielded nothing but a musty smell and a faint sprinkling of fuzz. Sartaj stepped over the phone and its stool, and then there was nowhere to go. That was the room, this much was the kholi.

In the corner, at the height of Sartaj's head, a wire basket hung from a white rope. The basket was empty. Maybe Aatya was off buying atta, and potatoes, and mutton, which she would hang in the basket, away from the inescapable rats. She kept a neat house, even if her nephew was an apradhi. Anand Agavane was crouched over now, his head between his knees and arms wrapping around tight. His shoulders were flushed red now, and his head was bald and sweaty. Stubborn bastard. Sartaj knuckled the basket, and it swung gently against the wall. The rope went up to a hoop on a rafter. There was a picture on the wall, a recent studio portrait, all bright colours and dramatic lighting for a young couple. Aatya's daughter, maybe, in a red sari, with dark glasses pushed back on her head. Her husband stood next to her in a leather jacket, hands on hips, in a sleek model stance. The jacket was probably rented from the photographer, who had posed them as a modern young couple in front of a night-time city. The lights swept up and down, and sparkled on water. It could be Marine Drive, or New York. The black-framed photograph hung from a protruding brick. All down this front wall, a foot above Sartaj's head, there were paired bricks that angled out into the room. Aatya must have had them built in, every two feet or so. A practical woman. Sartaj reached up to the first one, and ran his hand over the top, and found only the rough surface and the twine that held up the photograph. He did the second one, and then kicked aside the mattress, took a step. He reached up, and felt the rush of confidence even as he did. Yes. He felt the smooth plastic at the tips of his fingers. It was the phone.

'I have it,' he said.

Kamble flung aside a tin biscuit box he had been investigating, and buttons and spools and needles rattled against the far wall. 'Show, show,' he said, holding out a hand.

But Sartaj held on to the phone, it was his, for the moment at least. This was that moment when a case opened up, when he felt he was ripping through a dark curtain, when there was that sharp rush of triumph and further appetite. He let it rush through him, and he could feel the grin on his face. He pressed keys on the phone, then held it up to Kamble. 'Last ten numbers dialled,' he said. 'All the same number, the other mobile.'

'Got you,' Kamble crooned. 'Caught you, bastard.' He took the phone, tapped the screen with his forefinger. He was as happy as a little boy with a softie cone.

But Kazimi was disgusted. He kicked Agavane, and then tottered away and sat on an upturned crate. 'Maderchod,' he said to Agavane. 'For this you made me work this much? You think we wouldn't have found the gaandu phone up there? You're sitting in a kholi as big as a mouse's hole, bhenchod. Stupid. Now we've got you.' He flapped out a big blue handkerchief, and wiped his face and the back of his neck. 'Finished now, hero? You ready to talk?'