Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

* * *

Three days of work brought no breakthroughs, no revelations, no arrests. The alert had gone out, but there was too little substance. There was not enough to ask informants, only this: have you seen a group of three, maybe four men? One blond foreigner, one guru in a wheelchair, maybe, maybe? Leads had come in, hundreds of them, but they led inevitably to innocent old men in creaky wheelchairs, and to outraged foreign executives with hair just a shade lighter than brown. There was no progress. And life went on. On Tuesday evening, Sartaj visited Rohit and Mohit and Shalini. He gave Shalini an envelope, ten thousand rupees, and sat in their doorway and drank a cup of chai.

'You look very tired,' Shalini said. She was sitting inside the house, near the stove, starting dinner for the boys.

'Yes,' Rohit said. He was leaning against the wall, next to Sartaj. 'You do.'

'I have not been sleeping well,' Sartaj said. 'Too much work.'

Rohit brushed at the collar of his sparkling white T-shirt. 'But you are very thin, also.'

'I still haven't found a good cook.'

Shalini smiled. She was wearing a glossy green sari, and she looked well. She gave Sartaj a sly, knowing look. 'What, that Christian girl doesn't cook for you? Or you don't like her food?'

Sartaj started, splashed his chai all over his chest. 'What girl?' he sputtered, brushing at his shirt.

Rohit clapped his hands and laughed. 'Don't bother, don't try,' he said. 'Her spies are on all four sides, really. She knows everything.'

Shalini's shoulders shook. Sartaj couldn't remember when he had seen her laugh like this, even back when her husband had been alive. 'Yes,' she said. 'You don't even know how I know.' She waved a powdery belan at him, looking supremely satisfied. 'And don't think it was the easiest way. No policeman told me.'

Shalini was not about to entertain any denials of the Christian girl. Sartaj gave in, with what he hoped was a modicum of grace. He ducked his head and asked, 'So who told you?'

'I can't give away my khabaris. No, no.'

Sartaj tried to think who it could be, who would know about Mary, who would have talked. Kamble knew about her, and he may have told somebody at the station, who may have told a civilian. Or maybe Shalini had a friend who worked near Mary's house, who would have seen Sartaj coming and staying and going. Or maybe it was somebody at Mary's salon. There were a thousand and one ways that Shalini could have heard the story of Sartaj and Mary, countless connections that slipped through the city and bound each person to everyone else. Sartaj had used this inescapable network many times himself, and now he was found out. 'Your mother is really a pucca professional,' he said to Rohit. 'The department should hire her.'

Shalini laughed and flung a handful of some brown spice into a pot, and there was a great hissing and fizzing. 'So tell us about this girl.'

'But you already know everything,' Sartaj said. He was about to say more, something general about how men could never hope to escape the vigilance of women, when he saw Mohit come stumbling down the end of the lane. There was blood on his shirt.

'What happened?' Rohit said, and knelt to take his brother by the shoulders. 'Who did this?'

There were rings of crimson around Mohit's nostrils, and a blackish smear across his chin. In a swirl of sari, Shalini came past Sartaj. 'Beta,' she said, 'what happened?'

But Mohit was grinning. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'We did much more to them. It was those bastards from Nehru Nagar.' He was triumphant, satisfied. 'We showed them, they ran away.'

Shalini was holding Mohit's shirt at the shoulder, where it had been ripped at the seam and into the back. 'You fought with those boys again?' She grabbed his face, tugged it up towards hers. 'I told you not to go near them. I told you not to go even near that side.' Her anger forced her teeth back, and Sartaj could see her nails digging into the boy's cheeks. But Mohit was not afraid. 'I'll tell Saab to take you to the remand home,' she said, turning him towards Sartaj. 'He'll beat you.'

Sartaj stood up. 'Mohit, you shouldn't –'

'Maderchod sardar,' Mohit said, and his hatred squeezed past his mother's fingers. 'I'll kill you. I'll cut you.'

Shalini gasped, and then slapped Mohit on the back of the head, hard. She dragged him into the house, past the already gathering audience of neighbours and slammed the door. But Sartaj could still hear Mohit's low growl, grim and unrelenting.

'I need to go,' Sartaj said to Rohit, and took him by the elbow and walked away. 'I have an appointment.'

'Sorry,' Rohit said. He fingered, nervously, the key that hung from his neck. 'Mohit is getting spoilt, in spite of everything we do. He is keeping bad company. He has a gang of four, five boys. They keep fighting with these other, older taporis from Nehru Nagar. I have even beaten him myself, but he keeps getting worse. His marks in school are terrible.'

'He is young,' Sartaj said. 'It's just a bad time. He'll come out of it when he gets older.'

Rohit nodded. 'Yes, I think so also. But very sorry.'

Sartaj thumped Rohit on the chest, said, 'Don't worry, there is plenty of time, he'll realize sooner or later,' and kicked the motorcycle into heaving life. As he edged up the pitted slope, it came to him that perhaps Mohit would never come out of this blood-flecked spiral, even if there was plenty of time. Maybe he was lost already, lost to his brother and his mother and to himself. Sartaj had played his part in pushing Mohit towards this hard path, into this pit from which there was no return. Every action flew down the tangled net of links, reverberating and amplifying itself and disappearing only to reappear again. You tried to arrest some apradhis, and a policeman's son went bad. There was no escaping the reactions to your actions, and no respite from the responsibility. That's how it happened. That was life.

* * *

Rachel Mathias was waiting at the station for Sartaj. She was sitting in the corridor outside his office, squeezed up at one corner of a bench next to a row of impassive Koli women. She was hot and unhappy, but when she rose he was impressed by the elegant fall of her blue sari and the simple silver bracelet on her right wrist. She was not at all crumpled by the squalor of the station, and now she stood very straight and looked him directly in the eye.

'How long have you been waiting?' he said.

'Not very long at all. This is my son Thomas.'

Judging from how sullen Thomas was, they had been at the station at least a couple of hours. 'Come,' Sartaj said, and led them into the office and sat them down. Thomas sprawled back in the chair, and then straightened up after a cutting glance from his mother. He was fifteen or so, good-looking and confident and muscled. All the boys were lifting nowadays, and Sartaj was sure that Thomas had been an early starter.

'About what we talked about the other day,' Rachel said.

'Yes?' Sartaj said. He knew now that she was not guilty of blackmailing Kamala, but everyone was guilty of something. It had happened before in his career, that the threat of a policeman's pressure had made people confess to something that he wasn't looking for.

'Thomas has something to tell you.'

Thomas didn't want to say anything, he had his eyes down and his fists clenched, but his mother was implacable. 'Thomas?' she said.

Thomas worked his jaw, cleared his throat. 'What happened was –' he began, and then was unable to go on. He wiped his hands on his jeans, and flushed, and Sartaj felt a surge of sympathy. Thomas had built his biceps and gelled his hair, but he was a child still.

'Maybe,' Sartaj said, 'Thomas can talk to me alone.'

Rachel nodded. 'I will wait outside.'

She swung the doors shut behind her, and Sartaj tapped the table. Thomas managed to look up now. 'Tell me,' Sartaj said.