Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘What interest does the Sanjay Company have in this girl?’

‘This isn’t Sanjay Company business. This is personal. She’s a friend.’

Still holding my hand against the desk, he glanced at the girl, looking her up and down.

‘Ah, of course,’ he said, his lips twitching around an oily grin.

‘Wait a minute -’ Vinson began, but I cut him off, pulling my hand free.

‘Mister Vinson would like to thank you, Lightning- ji , for your kind and compassionate understanding.’

‘Always happy to help,’ Dilip snarled. ‘The girl must be back here in two days, to sign the papers.’

‘What papers?’ Vinson demanded.

Dilip looked at him. I knew the look: he was thinking about which part of Vinson’s body he would start kicking, after he had his men chain him to a gate.

‘She’ll be here, Sergeant- ji ,’ I said. ‘And exactly what papers will she be required to sign?’

‘The transfer of the body,’ Dilip replied, picking up a file from his desk. ‘The body of the unfortunate young man goes back to Norway, in three days. But she must sign the forms in two days. Now get out of here, before I start adding more conditions to her release.’

I held my hand out to the girl. She took it, stood up, and walked a few steps. She was unsteady on her feet. As she neared Vinson she stumbled, and he reached out to put an arm around her shoulder.

Vinson walked her to the street, helped her into the back seat of his car, and climbed in beside her. The driver started the engine, but I leaned against the open window.

‘What happened, Rannveig, like the thing at the airport?’ I asked her.

‘What?’

‘Your boyfriend. What happened?’

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ she said abstractedly. ‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’

‘Right now, I’m worried about him ,’ I said, nodding toward Vinson. ‘And if I’m gonna go back in there and deal with that cop, I need to know what happened.’

‘I… I wasn’t,’ she began, staring at the cloth bag cradled in her lap.

I guessed that it held everything she owned.

‘Tell me.’

‘He… he couldn’t stop. And things got crazier and crazier. Then, just yesterday, just last night, I told him I was leaving him, and going back to Oslo. But he begged me to stay one more night. Just one more night. And… and then… He did it on purpose. I saw it in his face. He did it on purpose. I can’t go back home. I can’t see anyone from there.’

The fierce, electric blue of her eyes glazed over, and she slithered into an exhausted silence. I knew the look: staring at the dead. She was staring at the face of her dead boyfriend.

‘Have you got anyone in Bombay?’ I asked.

She shook her head slowly.

‘Do you want your consulate involved?’

She shook her head more quickly.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘I told you. I can’t face anyone now.’

‘She’s beat,’ Vinson said softly. ‘I’ll take her home. She’ll be safe with me, until she decides what she wants to do.’

‘Okay. Okay. I’ll talk to Lightning Dilip.’

‘You have to do more ?’ Vinson asked. ‘I thought that was it.’

‘He didn’t give back her passport. He’s holding out for more money, but he didn’t want to go into that. Not with you in the office. I’ll handle it.’

‘Thanks, man,’ Vinson nodded. ‘I’ll make sure she gets back to sign the forms. Hey, let me give you that money!’

‘It’s only cool to hand over money inside a police station, Vinson, not outside. We’ll settle it later. If I get the passport back, I’ll leave it with Didier, at Leo’s.’

Vinson turned to the girl, speaking to her softly.

‘You’ll be okay. My maid will look after you. She’s tough, but she’s all bark and no bite. A hot bath, some fresh, clean clothes, something to eat, and some sleep. You’ll be fine. I promise.’

He gave instructions to his driver, and the car moved off. The girl turned quickly, found me on the street, and mouthed something at me. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. I watched the car until it disappeared, and then went back to talk with Lightning Dilip.

There wasn’t a lot to learn. The girl’s story was that she’d woken to find her boyfriend dead in the bed beside her. There was a syringe stuck in his arm. She’d called the manager for help, and he’d called the police and an ambulance.

Lightning Dilip was satisfied that it was a simple overdose. The kid had track marks on the veins in his arms, hands and feet, and the hotel manager testified that no-one had entered Rannveig’s room but the couple.

It cost me five thousand rupees to buy back the girl’s passport, and another ten thousand to have the name Rannveig Larsen removed from the account of the boy’s death.

In the revised version of the official record, it was the hotel manager who’d found the body, and Rannveig vanished from the narrative.

It was a lot of money in those days, and I planned to recover it from Vinson soon. As I was leaving Lightning Dilip’s office, slipping the Norwegian passport into my pocket, the duty sergeant stopped me.

‘Tell the Sanjay Company that this case raises the stakes.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘DaSilva,’ he said, almost spitting the word at me. ‘Andrew DaSilva. It was his heroin that killed this boy. It’s the third heroin death this week. The Sanjay Company is selling some very strong, very bad shit on the street. I’m getting trouble for it.’

‘How can you be sure of that?’

It wasn’t a polite question, and he didn’t have a polite answer.

‘Fuck you, and fuck dead junkies. I don’t give a shit. The two local kids are a minor problem. But when a foreigner dies in my zone, it leaves a big stain on my desk. I like a clean desk. I told DaSilva he would have to pay me double this month, for the two deaths. Now that it’s three deaths, the price is triple.’

‘Tell Sanjay yourself, Lightning. You see him more often than I do.’

I left the station house, moved through the traffic, and walked to the narrow cement-block and metal rail divider that separated the lanes moving south and north along the busy causeway.

Standing in a gap in the steel fence, I felt the traffic swirl around me: densely packed red commuter buses, scooters carrying five-member families, handcarts, motorcycles and bicycles, black-and-yellow taxis, fish-market trucks, private cars and military transports moving to and from the large naval base at the spear-tip of the Island City’s peninsula.

Words cut through the jungle of thoughts.

Our dope. Sanjay Company dope. The girl in the locket, Rannveig, like the thing at the airport. Her boyfriend. The girl in the locket. Our dope.

Horns, bicycle bells, music from radios, the cries of stallholders and beggars rose up everywhere, echoing from covered walkways and the elegantly sagging stones of buildings that supported them.

Our dope. Sanjay Company dope. The girl. The locket. Her boyfriend. Our dope.

The smells of the street punished me, making me dizzy: fresh catches of fish and prawns from Sassoon Dock, diesel and petrol fumes, and the heavy wet-linen smell of monsoon mould, creeping across the brow of every building in the city.

Our dope. Our dope.

I stood on the road divider. Traffic rivers ran in front of me, heading north, and behind me, heading south, along the arm of the peninsula.

Khaderbhai had refused to allow anyone in the Company to deal heroin in South Bombay, or to profit from prostitution. Since his death, more than half of the new Sanjay Company’s funds came from both sources, and Sanjay sanctioned more dealers and brothels every month.