The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(56)

“He asked me to dance on a bed.”

“A bed?”

“Yes, but quite firm. There were silk sheets. My feet slipped on them sometimes.”

She described the dark room, and as she spoke about the showers of dried rose petals, the light, sickly sweet scent came back to her.

“Did he ever touch or threaten you?” Arnav’s tone was flat when he said it, but she noticed his bruised hand tremble on hers.

“He kept his distance, but the way he spoke, asking if I was tired, or thirsty, as if he was laughing at me—was scary. Like a jackal. That’s what I call him in my head. The jackal.”

“What about the men? Do you recall any of them? Were they the same each time?”

“I don’t know. The man who came to pick me up and drove the car to the halfway point, I saw his face. He blindfolded me.”

“Describe the smells. What did the car smell like? The corridor? The room?”

“The car reeked of cigarettes, and sometimes of alcohol. I could smell perfumes in the corridor. The room, I’m not sure. Roses. A strong cologne. And charas.”

“You’re certain?”

“Some of the girls in my apartment smoked it. I remember the smell.”

“How much money did Shetty pay you?”

If her mother had been around, she would have said, Is this what I taught you? She had seen only a piece of luck, a painless way to get out of the hole she was in, to reach for her dreams. It sounded so shameful and foolish now. She’d gone, despite the risk, because of the money. As she spoke, she imagined Arnav’s gaze that she didn’t meet. The pity in it. Maybe anger. Disgust.

A sob escaped her.

Arnav placed his hand on her shoulder. “You grabbed an opportunity. It took guts. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“They gave me sixty thousand rupees for each night.” Best to reduce it to numbers.

Her ignominy was complete—Arnav was trying to make her feel better.

She’d lied to him about her age, adding two years. She’d been seventeen, four years older than Pia was now. A baby. No wonder Zoya had called her naive.

Tara described her last evening in Mumbai, when she’d run like a thief in the night, despite the cash offered.

“Come here,” Arnav said, his voice low and deep.

For a while, she let him hold her. Tell him now, the voice within her screamed. Tell him you carried his daughter with you.

They sat close, Arnav stroking her hair, kissing her temple, her forehead. When the nurse came in, Tara sprang away and made to rush out.

“Wait, Tara.”

She paused, and walked to the window overlooking another part of the hospital, gray walls of concrete within which fervent hopes and much prayer waged war against illness and death. She’d seldom prayed, but now she sent up an appeal to whoever was in charge, maybe her mother’s Ma Kaali: Give me the courage to tell him about Pia.

The nurse gave Arnav an injection, checked the drips, and left. Tara went back and stood beside his bed, her face flaming. She’d been weak just now. She’d never wanted anyone to see her like that, especially not Arnav.

“Tara . . .” Arnav said.

“I can’t talk about this anymore.”

“I know. Do you remember anything else at all?”

She mentioned the police cap she’d seen, and watched as her words registered.

“Could the jackal be a police officer?” he said.

“He sounded commanding. Like he owned half of Mumbai, and expected to be obeyed.”

Arnav clenched his jaw, and seemed to go far away in his mind. After a while, he turned to her again and, scrolling through his phone, showed her pictures of police caps.

“Any of these?”

Tara pointed to a peaked khaki cap with a gold-embroidered black band. “Like this one, but I can’t be sure. It was dark.” All of the caps—the khaki, the gold embroidery, the brown bands and black—blurred the faded image in her memory.

Arnav paused before asking the next question.

“What train station was this?” he said. “Did you go to different ones each time?”

“No. It was Borivali, earlier, and now. And I wore the same set of clothes.”

“Same clothes?”

“Yes. Shetty gave them to me, and I returned them, along with the phone.”

“What sort of clothes?”

Silver blouse and the blue-sequined saree, the silver heels. She wished she had never set eyes on them.

Arnav dragged himself up. “A blue saree with sequins?”

“Yes.”

“Would you recognize the saree or the sequins?”

Tara remembered the brush of the saree’s silk lining on her skin. The scratch of sequins when they touched her arms.

When she said yes, Arnav opened his phone and showed her photos. Blue sequins in a small plastic bag.

She’d done one thing right in all her career with Shetty. Wordlessly, she stood up and headed to her handbag on the table. Returning to Arnav, she placed the tissue with the blue sequins on his bandaged palm.





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN


ARNAV

A police officer, Tara had said. That terrified Arnav. A senior officer, if Tara was right. He could have moved up the ranks by now. His cap may have changed.