The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(76)
Arnav nodded his thanks. Nandini was on the line.
“I have information, but we can’t talk now.” Nandini didn’t bother with greetings.
“I can come down.”
“Sent a friend down with the info. She will be there soon.”
There was a pause. Nandini lowered her voice further. “This is not good.”
Being afraid was unlike Nandini—her job tended to ruffle feathers. She sounded terrified.
Downstairs, Arnav found a girl waiting for him. He accepted the sealed envelope, and she left without a word. Back upstairs, he opened the envelope to find notes in Nandini’s handwriting, and a thumb drive. Over the next few minutes, he found what he’d looked for all his life. Evidence that nailed Commissioner Neelesh Joshi.
On the thumb drive were calls recorded between Joshi and Shinde, Joshi and Shetty, Joshi and Taneja, Shetty and Vijayan—undeniable proof that Joshi had bent the law, accepted bribes, and risen in the ranks through support from his connections in high places.
Arnav had helped arrange Shinde’s wedding, been with Shinde outside maternity wards as his children were born. Shinde had listened to Arnav rant about his father, about the spineless judicial system. Helped carry the body of Arnav’s father to the funeral pyre. Sat beside his mother’s hospital bed when Arnav worked two jobs. Fed Arnav when he was hungry.
He was also the one who’d kept Arnav from fighting for justice for his sister. Arnav wanted to drag Shinde back from the dead to ask him a few questions.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Three minutes. You can’t even keep it up for three minutes? It was a goods train, for heaven’s sake! Want me to talk to your father, tell him you stole my earrings and sold them for pocket money?
He woke up with a start, a vicious cackle in his ears. Flinging aside clammy sheets, he padded across the plush carpet to the dark bathroom. At the basin he splashed water, cooling his heated face.
When they had come back from the railway tracks, she told his father. It was the truth, for once. Dad hadn’t said a word. A week later, when they returned to the farmhouse, Dad had tied him to a tree in the backyard, stripped off his pants, and used his belt. That will teach you to steal. He hadn’t been able to sit down for days afterward. He’d bitten into the pillow as Bilal tended to his wounds, gnashing his teeth to keep from making a noise in case she was listening.
He’d never failed her three-minute deadline again. She’d made it into her private little game. Three minutes to get her tea without spilling a drop, three minutes to finish his bath, three minutes to make her come.
Let’s see how good you are. Three minutes.
The words still taunted him, years after she’d spoken them. He would fix this. He brought one of his diaries to bed, a talisman. When he wrote or read an entry before bed, he slept better. Reading a little might help him. He switched on a light, flipped the journal open.
This one is gone, but I’ll make her last a while. One year, two years. Pictures last.
It is a shame I suffer and not the Item Number. That she gets on with her life—trips to the salon, girlie lunches—and here I am in this den, waiting for her to go away, because I can’t make her. I want her gone gone gone, and to stay gone. Disappear. To not have come to our childhood home, never smiled her siren smile.
I was better this time. I took away who she was for a while. Severed the hands that touched me, the feet that carried her to my room, that hateful face. I’ve robbed her of her power, and she won’t return. I can sleep for a few months. Who knows, maybe I fixed it for good.
Instead of emptiness today, my heart is full. I’m pure again, not dirty. I can be who I fancy, inside of me, because no matter how much I playact on the outside, it is the inside that matters, where the devil lurks, ready to strike with her red-lipped smile.
She moved her hands while she danced—each finger spoke in air the way they sang on my skin. No one is quite like the Item Number. And this is the agony and the humiliation. She disgusts me, but I seek her flyaway curls, her lithe body, her tinkling laughter, in each one of them.
This last one did well, she said what I wanted her to, did as I asked. Greed at first, then intrigue. Later, dare I say, love? Of course, love. I’m truly lovable when I choose, everyone knows that. Deep inside, I’m the boy I was before she came. But love does not last long. It must be replaced by fear. Three minutes.
That’s what would help, to instill fear into a woman. If he looked hard, he could see shadows moving about in the mangroves, like his memories, with a malicious sense of purpose. Those shadows would pause, at least for a spell, when the new one came. Maybe on Bhoot Chaturdashi again this year. Soon, now.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
TARA
Tara watched Arnav pace the small empty space in his room like a caged animal. Late-morning sun filtered through the cloudy window panes. He spoke Marathi into his phone too fast for her to catch, with someone called Tukaram. She waited for a lull, but when he didn’t pause, she walked up and placed her hand on his forearm. He clicked off the phone.
“Did they call again?” He looked wired and drained, dark circles under his eyes, his face shaven unevenly, his hair rumpled.
“You’ve told your office to stop? The next time they call, I’ll tell them you stopped, and they will—”
“I’m on leave. As far as anyone is concerned, I’m off the case already. To bring Pia home, we have to either solve the case, or find the kidnappers. Both will lead us back to the same culprit.”