A Killer Among Us Read online

  To all those who read and supported my first book,

  this second one is for you.

  Cast of Characters

  Panorama Apartments

  Wing 1

  Second floor: Ira (Flat 201), Mr and Mrs Talukdar (Flat 202), the Sinhas (Flat 203)

  Fourth floor: Nandana and family (Flat 401), Deepa and Arun (Flat 402), Pallabi and Dilip (Flat 403)

  Sixth floor: Mrs Ghoshal and Kedarnath (Flat 603)

  Wing 2

  Second floor: Aditi (Flat 204)

  Fourth floor: Mitali (Flat 401)

  Wing 3

  Second floor: Mili Bhattacharjee (Flat 202), Neel Roy (Flat 203)

  Third floor: Vedika (Flat 304)

  Fourth floor: Payal (Flat 402), Ayan and Ravi (Flat 404)

  Neel Roy (Flat 203)

  Wing 4

  Fifth floor: Mr Banik (Flat 504)

  Others

  Inspectors Lodh and Bose

  Security guards Gopal and Ranjit

  Kobita, the lady who helps with the dishes

  Shiben (Kedarnath's colleague and friend)

  Part 1

  1

  Tuesday, 4th September 2014

  Nandana sat on a low stone surface of indeterminate purpose that projected from the boundary wall of her building. She was waiting for her children’s school bus to arrive. The other mothers stood in tight little circles everywhere. Their striped, paisley-ed and kalamkari-ed backs might as well have sported ‘keep out’ signs; breaking into those circles could be as hard as infiltrating Fort William sometimes, she knew. Nandana was comforted at the thought that she belonged to one or two of those clusters, though she had made her excuses about being tired and come to sit down here.

  She wasn’t actually tired, just not much in the mood for talking. Nandana was thirty-five and in the throes of some Indian housewife variant of a midlife crisis, she suspected. On the arrival of her first child thirteen years ago, she had quit her job as an admin employee in a small-time NGO (that talked big but did little, in her opinion), and then at the appearance of her second, her plans to return to work got postponed a further five years. Now, both her kids were quite self-sufficient and would perhaps thrive if allowed more independence but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, somehow.

  Nandana understood it would be a healthy move given her frustrations and the perennial feelings of being undervalued. On the other hand, it had been over a decade that Nandana had stopped working, and she honestly didn’t know what lay out there anymore. ‘Stopped working.’ Hah, she had stopped ‘working’ but had never worked as hard as she had these past ten years. And been paid nought for it. Of course, of course, she loved her children and they loved her, and that was reward enough. Or was it?

  Nandana looked around guiltily, like she was afraid people would hear the disloyal, unmaternal thought. She only saw the same backs and the occasional friendly glances in her direction from her friends and neighbours. Her eyes stopped and lingered on a man who sauntered up to the trees that stood in a line across the street from them. There was nothing remarkable about him, except for how he seemed to eye the crowd and walk off the way he came. Jobless people, doing a spot of bird-watching, no doubt.

  Nandana patted down her curly, fly-away hair in an absent-minded gesture as her gaze turned inwards again.

  She had given up her career, such as it was, because she had wanted her children to have a parent around full time, and of course it was a ‘no-brainer’ who it would be. She had given up her career, since she was being honest, because her career had left much to be desired.

  But Nandana had never anticipated how utterly taken for granted she would be, though love was there, yes, of course. She was far from the perfect mother and wife; but the children were fed and clean and healthy, weren’t they?

  Nandana sensed she was on the cusp of a conversation with her husband where she would, finally, speak out against being taken for granted. She did protest, but usually in a passive-aggressive way, which only cemented in his mind the assumptions he had about her and women in general, as ‘moody’, or ‘hormonal’ or ‘unpredictable’. Take your pick, there were so many words for the ‘mysterious’ ways of women. Yet, she dearly wished that she could say it just once, and be less mysterious. There was so much that could be said, but they both knew the solution was right there for the taking.

  It was a frightening ‘solution’ though. Nandana couldn’t decide. For a decade she had fallen out of the habit of taking major decisions, and now her decision-making brain cells had atrophied. All her anecdotes were of trivial things, of scraped knees and offences taken; none of the grand accounts that her husband sometimes came home with. Yet, yet, yet. Nandana didn’t mind this life, she rather liked it. Should that be something to be ashamed of? She enjoyed watching her kids grow sturdy and determined under her nearly exclusive ministrations. She took fierce pride in that.

  Still, of late, she had begun to feel that something needed to change before she disappeared completely.

  Her husband, to his defence, was a good guy. Sometimes, she wished he was less so. The easier to blame him and use that anger to propel herself towards a decision.

  So, there Nandana remained; as she had been for the last year while the feeling just grew and ripened; stuck in the mud of low self-esteem and inertia.

  Nandana sighed. She followed this cycle of thought and came to the same conclusion every day.

  The yellow school bus came careening down the road and skidded to a halt in front of the gate, narrowly missing some of the more enthusiastic mothers. The rumble of disapproval at this ‘shocking driving’ was quickly forgiven as the centres of all their universes came pouring out the narrow door; a gush of kicking-shoving-laughing-crying offspring with an eye out for the smiling faces of their mothers. Nandana spotted her own children and her heart lifted. She felt ungrateful for her gloomy thoughts. Her life would have been nothing without them, and she was grateful. She needed nothing else.

  Nandana smiled and waved at her grinning children and elbowed her way through the mothers, and the smattering of grandparents and childminders, who stood in the way despite their wards being clearly at the end of the queue inside the bus. They parted reluctantly under the onslaught of her elbows and Nandana surged towards her children―a thirteen-year-old daughter, who was the spitting image of her husband, and a seven-year-old son who looked just like her, down to the curly hair and crooked teeth.

  Her daughter, Piya, quirked her lips in a blink-and-miss smile and lapsed back into her morose expression. Her son Prithwish yelled and jumped into her arms, almost like he had guessed what had been going through his mother’s mind.

  Truly, Nandana needed nothing else.

  *******

  Ira was having herself a one-woman party. It was her day off, and she had bought a small bottle of Sula red wine, while the classic rock YouTube playlist filled the small flat with music and swelled her heart from the shrivelled-up, homesick thing it sometimes became.

  She had left her small home in Anikapur that she shared with her parents and an itinerant cousin or two to pursue her journalism dream in Kolkata. Though it had been two and a half years now, and it was the best decision she’d taken, she still felt the occasional pang of loneliness lance through her when she least expected it. Her schoolteacher parents didn’t make it easy either, asking her at least once a month whether she was done living the high life and ready to come back to Anikapur and find a job (and perhaps a boy?) there. Still, it was surprising they didn’t press her harder. Ira and guessed they secretly took pride in her striking out on her own like this, and asked half-heartedly only as a matter of form.

  Ira sang along to the refrain of ‘High Hopes’. Out of tune, she cleared
her throat and tried again, with little success. She contemplated playing the air guitar once Gilmour’s lead kicked in, but dropped her hands with regret. She wasn’t drunk enough to do so, at least without feeling like a grade-A ass. When the song finished and Eric Clapton began to play, her thoughts turned to food.

  What she needed was chicken. Hmm…maybe she could order some Lazeez biryani. Finish off her personal party with a good meal. Tandoori chicken! Some tandoori would hit the spot perfectly. Ira reached for her mobile phone, but stopped midway when the bell rang. Who had come at this hour? It was a little unusual for anyone to visit her unannounced, let alone past 8 pm.

  She switched off the music, pulled on her track pants and ran to the door as the strident bell clanged again, then once more.

  It was Mr Talukdar, who stood very close to the door, looking mutinous.

  He looked her up and down, deliberately. ‘You do understand that this is not a disco, right?’

  This guy again! Ira would try being civil to begin with. ‘Um, I’m sorry, was it loud? I didn’t think the music would be loud enough to disturb.’

  ‘Disgusting degenerate music…of course it disturbs!’ He leaned further in, his eyes on her chest.

  Ira crossed her arms over her chest, thinking longingly of the bra that lay on the bedroom floor.

  He brightened, ‘You’ve been drinking too, haven’t you?’

  Ira’s cheeks grew hot with indignation. So much for being civil.

  ‘As I’ve said before, Mr Talukdar, what I do in my home is my business! Besides, it’s only 8.30 in the evening and your TV volume is higher than this at all hours of the day!’

  ‘How dare you! I’m not surprised that you don’t know how to speak to elders. Upbringing, I suppose,’ he sniffed.

  ‘I can do what I like, as long as it’s legal and if it’s not late enough to disturb anyone’s sleep. I know my rights.’ Ira clenched her teeth in an effort not to shout.

  ‘Rights, let me tell you about rights. I have the right to turf out women like you from my society. I’ve given you too many chances. Let me hear even the smallest noise from here again and you’ll see about rights.’

  He walked away and into his flat diagonally opposite hers, his masculinity satisfied.

  Ira slammed her door shut, all the joy she had felt from her solitary tandoori-chicken-and-wine party evaporating into the muggy evening air.

  *****

  Old Mrs Ghoshal peered at the TV with interest. Uff, that ungrateful son of Amrita’s! Saying this, that and the other…disrespecting her. Now they were having a most satisfying, tear-sodden argument, with the son and daughter-in-law looking increasingly shamefaced. The family stood ranged in a semi-circle in the middle of the mansion’s living room with the winding marble staircase in the background. This was their usual position when dealing with family affairs, it added a certain gravitas to the proceedings. Mrs Ghoshal nodded in approval. The family always did look a trifle dressed up for an evening indoors, she granted―overdressing was just not ‘done’ when she was growing up, but it could well be how the rich in palatial houses dressed nowadays. Mrs Ghoshal dismissed these unworthy doubts and concentrated again on what Amrita was saying. It was such a satisfying echo to all her thoughts on what had gone wrong with the ‘modern’ generation.

  Advertisement break! Excellent, she would go and quickly make herself that cup of evening tea she’d been craving for the last fifteen minutes. Mrs Ghoshal hadn’t been able to tear herself away lest she missed even a single of Amrita’s choice words that lashed her son and his wife with guilt. If only people stood around and took such whippings in real life.

  Mrs Ghoshal walked with a bit of a hobble to the kitchen and realised with a start that she had already put the water on the stove to boil. It had all but evaporated over the flame. Now she remembered, it must have been the last ad break, or probably the one before it. She added two teacups full of water to the saucepan and resolved to stand there and watch over it this time.

  Music from the TV indicated that her soap had resumed after the commercial break.

  She hurried off. The water steamed and began to bubble, forgotten.

  2

  Wednesday, 5th September 2014

  Ira Dutta walked briskly, purposefully―quite unlike the luxuriantly languid stagger affected by some women she’d seen here. She had heard that ladies who were proud possessors of this walk were called gajagamini and wondered why walking like an elephant was a selling point. There was no accounting for tastes, really.

  She squinted in the hot afternoon sun as she got to the main gate. Some of her colleagues who luckily also lived in the neighbourhood had proposed a carpool idea last month, and so far, it had worked well for her. A senior officemate picked three of them up on the way, and they on their end, contributed to the cost of petrol and kept her company on the way to work. Ira was several minutes late today, her pick-up time was 4 pm, and it was well past that now. The car, a modest little Maruti Alto, was invariably late as well, so Ira was confident she could get to the gate and pretend to have been waiting, patient and magnanimous about her colleague’s tardiness.

  As expected, she reached the gate and there were no waiting Marutis. Ira checked her phone to assure herself that she had not been left behind. She turned her back to the road and scanned the apartment complex from which she had emerged. She inspected the windows that looked on to the street. There was no one in sight, except for one of the guards at the gate―but that was only expected.

  Panorama Apartments was your average middle-class block of apartments in your average middle-class, tier-1 Indian city. It had four wings, each building sprouting up to six floors from the four corners of a balding ‘lawn’ in the middle. Shabby, with dark stains from water damage that any building older than a decade sported in this rainy city, it reeked of middle-class status quo, Ira thought with a shudder. Grow up, get married, work, and then complain about your life till you die. Ira felt like she didn’t belong. She stuck out like a sore thumb. At least she hoped she did. No playing it safe and dying with regret and boredom for her! She cringed at the desperate bravado even in the privacy of her head.

  But seriously. Desperate bravado or not…she’d come from small-town Anikapur, to bad ol’ Kolkata, to make a difference. She’d like to see who stopped her.

  *****

  Nandana was with Deepa, her closest friend in the building, enjoying tea and shingaras in the latter’s spartan flat. This was their customary Wednesday afternoon chaa-and-taa tradition. Wednesday was the one day Deepa didn’t give tuitions that filled the house to the rafters with children seeking a better understanding of the mysteries of Mathematics. There was always tea and shingara with tamarind chutney from the neighbouring sweet shop; and it was always at 5 pm. Deepa was a stickler about such matters.

  She was being particularly uncommunicative today, so Nandana let her thoughts and eyes wander.

  Another friend and neighbour of theirs, Pallabi, was a hectic decorator, with every bare surface bristling with knick-knacks and souvenirs. To Pallabi’s defence, her precious ‘showpieces’ were always kept scrupulously dusted and in heavy rotation with the ‘back-ups’ in the cabinet.

  In contrast to hers, Deepa’s home looked like its occupants had only recently moved in and hadn’t started decorating yet. This, despite her being one of the oldest residents of Panorama Apartments, going back to the very first year of the building’s existence a decade and a half ago. Nandana had heard anecdotes of when only Deepa’s and old Mrs Ghoshal’s families dwelt two floors apart, alone in this wing, while the other buildings were still being constructed around them.

  On any other day, one would scarcely believe Deepa had an eleven-year-old boy, with nary a superhero action figure or book lying around. Today, however, seemed to be the exception, Nandana noted with relief. Arun had left all his colouring things bang in the middle of the living room floor. His drawing book lay open at their feet, pristinely white, with just an artistic drop o
f paint in the middle. That would sell for a million dollars in any New York art gallery, Nandana smiled to herself. A box of poster colours lay open beside it, a set that her own son had told her Arun was very proud of. Deepa, being how she was, had tried to clear away some of it before Nandana arrived.

  The paint brushes had already been put away somewhere. The kitchen wash cloth, however, still lay, sodden on the floor next to a nearly obliterated and rapidly drying paint stain. This was more par for the course for Nandana’s own children, who thought nothing of leaving spills to drip and dry all over the place, in the expectation they would magically disappear the next time they saw it. She realised it was her fault for cleaning up after them most of the time―Nandana intended to give them a few hard lessons in responsibility soon, especially if she thought of going back to work in the near future.

  Deepa was a stricter mother―as a single parent she had to be. Though the ‘official version’ was that her husband worked in Australia and came home only once in two years, Deepa had confided to Nandana in a rare unguarded moment several years ago that her husband actually lived with his parents in another part of town. It wasn’t something Deepa seemed particularly cut up about, though one wondered if she had been a more light-hearted, smiling woman once.

  Still, Nandana felt closest to her. For all her severity Deepa was a fierce friend, with a warm heart and a sharp brain that she admired.

  Nandana glanced up from the shingara she had been enthusiastically dunking in tamarind chutney to find Deepa looking out of the window, absorbed in her own thoughts.

  ‘Arun home?’ Nandana sometimes had to make conversation to draw Deepa out. ‘Prithwish was asking if he could come over as well, show him his precious Iron Man doll… I mean, action figure,’ she amended with a wink. ‘I told him Arun usually goes for his tuitions at this time but promised I’d let him know if he’s home.’

  ‘Arun hasn’t been home all day. I mean, he came back from school, of course, then went back out a little while ago.’