Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'Good work, Deva,' Sartaj said. Katekar nodded benevolently. Sartaj put two five-hundred-rupee notes on the desk next to Deva. They were old friends, but it was better in the long run that they conduct their business professionally. You could only do favours for each other for so long before resentment set in on both sides. Cash for information assured a future flow.

Sartaj and Katekar left Deva and walked over towards the Bengali Bura. Sartaj looked over his shoulder as they came up the slope, and the endless mud-brown and white roofs of Navnagar made a vast serried crescent, horizon to horizon, under the falling sun. The tableau impressed Sartaj as always with its gory reddish gigantism and melodrama, with the pressing energy of its very being, it was incomprehensible that such a thing should exist, this Navnagar. And yet here it was, astride Sartaj and towering, crimson-mouthed and real. He turned away. He noticed now that Katekar was carrying a large paper bag full of fresh pavs, to eat with his family over the next few days. Much of what Katekar and everyone else ate came from or through Navnagar, and other nagars like it. Navnagar made clothes and plastic and paper and shoes, it was the engine that pumped the city into life.

Wasim Zafar Ali Ahmad was waiting near Shamsul Shah's kholi, surrounded by a thick cluster of supplicants. His mobile phone glinted in his hand as he waved to Sartaj and Katekar. A woman tugged at his elbow, and he spoke to her in rapid Bengali, and extracted himself with many gestures of assurance.

'Saab,' he said. 'Sorry, these people, once they get hold of me, they don't let me go.'

'You speak Bengali?'

'A little, a little. Their Bengali has quite a lot of Urdu in it, you know.'

'And what other languages do you speak?'

'Gujarati, saab. Marathi, some Sindhi. You grow up in this Mumbai, you pick up a little of everything. I am trying to improve my English.' He held up a copy of Filmfare . 'I try to read one English magazine every day.'

'Very impressive, Ahmad Saab.'

'Arre, sir, I am younger than you. Please call me Wasim. Please.'

'All right, Wasim. Have you talked to Shamsul Shah's family already?'

'No, no, sir. I thought you would want to do that yourself. But one of these people said the father is not at home, he is working. The mother is here.'

'Inside?'

'Yes.'

'Keep these people away while I talk to her.'

The dead boy had purchased a better home for his family, you could tell that just from the substantial frontage of the property on the lane. Sartaj knocked. Standing at the door, he could see four rooms, a separate kitchen and cupboards finished with Formica. The dead boy's mother sent his sisters into the back rooms, and stood very straight and waited.

'You are Moina Khatun?' Sartaj said. 'Shamsul Shah's mother?'

'Yes.'

Moina Khatun's daughters were kept in strict purdah, but her own regime had been relaxed a little by old age, at least while she stood in the doorway of her own house. Sartaj thought she looked to be about sixty, although her real age could have been at least a decade less. She wore a blue salwar-kameez and a white dupatta over her head.

'This is a good kholi that your son got for you.' Sartaj couldn't tell if Moina Khatun's inscrutability was a tactic or a trait. He couldn't read her at all. 'He was a good boy. How did he get mixed up with those other two?'

She tipped her head to one side. She didn't know.

'Did you know this Bihari friend of theirs, this Reyaz Bhai?'

Moina Khatun slowly moved her head again.

There was a hush in the lane, and under that silence a vast chasm of loss. Sartaj felt like he had stumbled over an edge, and he didn't quite know what to do next, where to press, or whether pressing was a good idea. Into this quiet, Katekar spoke.

'It is against nature, that a son should die before his parents. It is impossible to accept. But He' – and here Katekar pointed upwards – 'gives and takes for his own reasons, he writes our destinies.'

Moina Khatun began to weep. She dabbed at her eyes, and her shoulders rounded. 'We must accept,' she said hoarsely. 'We must accept.'

Katekar had his hands clasped in front of him, and he tilted forward slightly from the waist, completely solicitous and not in the least bit threatening. 'Yes. How old was Shamsul?'

'Only eighteen. Next month he would have been nineteen.'

'He was a fine-looking boy. Did he want to get married soon?'

'There were already proposals for him.' Moina Khatun was animated now, brightened under her tears by the memory of past arguments. 'But he said he wanted to get all his sisters married first. I told him, the youngest is nine, you will be an old man by the time she has her mala badol. But Shammu, he said, getting married too young is a stupid thing we do. Let me get settled first, have a nice house. What is the use of getting married and lying at your parents' house, having fights between the wife and the mother-in-law? He wouldn't listen to us. First them, then me, he always said.'

'He was a good boy. He set up a good kholi for you.'

'Yes. He worked very hard.'

'Did you know what work your son was doing?'

'He worked for that company, taking parcels.'

'Yes. But he was doing some work with Bazil and Faraj also, no?'

'I don't know anything about that.'

Sartaj could see that Moina Khatun wasn't trying to hide anything, she really didn't know anything about her son's dealings with the murderers. This made sense, there was no reason for the boy to talk to his mother about his criminal activities. But Katekar didn't want to give up yet.

'They were good friends, the three of them. They grew up together, in this basti?'

'Yes.'

'Why did they fight?'

'That Faraj was always jealous of my son. He didn't have a job, he did no work. Even when they were young he was always fighting with Shammu.' Her face flushed dark, and she shook her fist, and spoke Bengali. The angry stabbing gestures she was making slipped the dupatta from her head, her voice cracked and rose, and now she was shouting. Her grief cut across Sartaj's throat, and he stepped back and looked for Wasim.

'She is cursing Faraj and his family, saab,' Wasim said. 'She is saying they are devils. Just everything like that.'

Moina Khatun's face had dissolved from its angular rigidity into something that Sartaj found difficult to look at directly. He cleared his throat. 'Nothing useful?'

'Nothing,' Wasim said.

'All right. Let's go.'

He walked away. Katekar raised a hand at the woman, and followed. They were almost around a corner when she called after them in Hindi. 'Don't let them escape,' she said. 'Get them. Don't leave them.'

Sartaj looked back at her, and went on. The lane widened as they came near the main road, and he could feel Katekar behind him. Sartaj slowed, let Katekar catch up and gave him a nod. They came down to the main road, towards the Gypsy.

'Wasim,' Sartaj said.

'Yes, saab.' Wasim scudded up beside them, unruffled and slick and brimming with sincerity.

'Okay, listen to me, bastard,' Sartaj said. 'About this Birendra Prasad…'

'Saab, truly, he will be no problem. Like I told you, the two sons make him the problem.'

On their left there was a wall covered with painted advertisements for cement and face powder. Sartaj stepped up to it and unzipped his pants. 'Listen, you said I was older than you. So let me give you a bit of advice. Don't think you are smarter than the people you want to work with. Don't hide things that they need to know.' Sartaj's stream spattered loudly against the bottom of the wall, and he only now realized how pent-up he had been. 'Don't surprise me. I don't like surprises. I like information. If you know anything, tell me. Tell me even if you don't think it's important. More information is better than less information. Understood?'