The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(51)

Through a sliver of light he saw hazy white shapes. They resolved themselves into women in uniform. Nurses. He struggled to call to them, but managed only a groan. They turned. The older and bulkier of the two asked the other to run and fetch the doctor, then approached the bed.

Arnav remembered now—he’d been in an accident. Only it couldn’t have been an accident—that truck had targeted him, driven him off the road into the slope and blinding agony.

“Can you hear me?” The nurse took his pulse.

He couldn’t form a word in response. A woman in a white coat opened the door and rushed in. He was at a hospital, a private room with blinds and a painting on the wall. The police department paid only for government hospitals. Who had brought him here? He tried to ask the doctor, but his throat remained clogged. The nurse injected him with medication, and the world dropped away again.

When he woke next, the room was dark. He strained to sit up.

“Avi.” Nandini rose from the shadows and walked to his bed. “I’ll call the nurse.”

“How long have I been here?”

“A few hours.” Nandini looked pale and haggard, dark circles under her eyes. “The doctor says you’re lucky to escape with no lasting injuries.”

After a nurse checked him and left, Nandini told him that passersby had called the police and driven him to the nearest hospital. Shinde had visited, along with some of the other inspectors and sub-inspectors.

Did Tara know? Arnav wanted his phone. If she didn’t hear from him, she might worry.

“You gave us quite the fright.” Nandini reached out to stroke his hair. “Shinde should return soon.”

The man in question turned the handle and entered, but Nandini didn’t move away. Arnav waited out the discussion between the two about medications, doctor’s reports, and handovers.

“Ring this bell if you need anything.” Nandini put a switch within reach of Arnav’s right hand. “It will alert the nurses.”

Nandini had never made any public display of affection, but this time she bent to kiss his forehead. Arnav expected a few swear words from Shinde the minute Nandini walked out of the room, but his friend didn’t speak.

“Abbay narangi pandu, why that face?” Arnav asked, provoking his friend. “Aren’t you happy I have broken bones, too?”

Instead of a return volley for being called a drunk policeman, Arnav received silence. Pain clawed through his left shoulder and all the way down his arm. Typical of Shinde. Wouldn’t shut up when Arnav willed him to, but now that he craved answers, distraction, maybe even an argument, Shinde turned away to the window without offering a word.

“What’s with you?” Arnav let his annoyance show.

“Avi.” Shinde stared outside. “I need a promise.”

Shinde looked even worse than this morning—the sweatshirt draped over his shoulders was askew, his jeans stained.

“Are your painkillers making you high?” The throb at Arnav’s shoulder picked up as he spoke. He itched to fling a tray at Shinde and hear a satisfying crash.

“You love my children, right?” Shinde’s voice was pitched so low, Arnav barely heard him.

“This morning you were barking all over the place. I’m not dead, you know. Of course I love them.”

“You’ll hear me out for their sake?”

The pounding agony now extended to his neck and head. Arnav pressed the switch to call the nurse for more painkillers.

“You don’t make any sense,” he gasped.

Shinde started, checked his phone. His entire stance hardened, and he wheeled around to meet Arnav’s eyes. “I must take this call. I’ll be back.”





CHAPTER FORTY-TWO


He sat up and looked out the window. Dad had inherited this place and a fair bit of money. He spent most of it on the Item Number, but left this farmhouse bungalow to him. The one good deed in his entire cursed life.

An hour’s drive from downtown Mumbai, the farmhouse was an eerie place at night. The sounds of the mangrove jungle filtered up to him: the chirping of crickets, the hoot of owls, the howling of hungry stray dogs. The bungalow held all his memories, the best and the worst. On some evenings, he didn’t know one from the other.

Wandering over to his study, he locked the door and pulled open his cabinet. His diaries. Who was Bilal to ask him to end it all? He’d paid that man lakhs of rupees in salary over the years. He spotted Bilal’s name in a diary entry.

Today Bilal isn’t around, and I don’t know why Dad’s home early. On his good days, Dad and I play cricket in the overgrown backyard, but sometimes the air changes. When I hear the swish of his belt, I try my best to hide. I often succeed, like today, curling up in the basement under a large table where we butcher the meat Dad brings in after a hunt. Wild boar. Deer. One side of the basement opens up to skylight windows that show the green outside. We rarely open those unless the place gets stinky after a night of chopping meat and Bilal ends up using too much bleach.

He’s left them open today, and while I write these words, I want to curl up and disappear, or fly out of those windows and never return.

He flung the notebook across the room, and picked another.

I don’t like Dad’s green camouflage fatigues, but he made me wear one today. I hid my laugh—we were wearing the uniform of the protectors while going on a hunting safari.