A Killer Among Us Page 15

  Mrs Ghoshal hadn’t minded. It seemed like a neat solution to all their problems. But life wasn’t neat, it was messy, messy as sin, and all of them had now got into another mess again.

  She sighed at the natural conclusion of this thread of thought . Her eyes focused on the TV and she realised she hadn’t switched it on. It was a sign of how distracted she was that it was ten minutes past two and she had failed to watch Amrita-r Shongshaar.

  Well, time to turn real life off again. There was nothing else to do, was there? And frankly, for a change, Amrita’s life was more peaceful than hers.

  *****

  The kids and Kushal were out of the house, and the sun had come out with some measure of confidence for the first time in days. Nandana sat on her haunches in the balcony digging at the soil of her tomato plant like she had a score to settle with it. She might as well not have talked to Ira for all the good it did. Two days and nothing! Obviously, the girl had not taken it seriously either.

  Well, it was not her problem anymore. She’d told the police, she’d confronted the person’s wife (the next best thing to the suspect himself), and she’d told the local Nancy Drew. It had all come to nought. There was no earthly reason she should spend even a single more moment thinking about it when others couldn’t be bothered.

  That was actually what it boiled down to. No one was bothered. Initially, the Panorama Apartments people had got a little excited because the dead man had been laid at their doorstep, but unknown as he was, he had begun to matter less and less, even to the police who obviously had bigger fish to fry. All the while he could have been someone’s spouse and parent, and being looked for frantically in the world beyond the building gates.

  The thought made her sad. What if she died tomorrow, perhaps while crossing the road, an ever-present possibility in her city; her bag and identity papers stolen by onlookers who gather at every accident site? Would she be eventually forgotten like this man? Would her husband and children never find out? Tears pricked her eyes at the thought of her children weeping as they stood at the window, hoping she’ll come home, and Kushal wiping his own cheeks discreetly, wishing he’d been a more attentive husband.

  Her own eyes filled at the gratifying thought.

  There was a diffident knock and the sound of the door opening. ‘Aunty!’ a broken voice called.

  ‘Yes, Arun! I’m in the balcony! Not gone to school today? Are you unwell?’ Nandana craned her neck towards the door.

  ‘Aunty,’ his disembodied voice said again from the door, ‘Ma was asking if you could lend her the step ladder.’

  ‘Sure! You know where it is,’ she called out and turned back to her plants.

  ‘Thank you, Aunty,’ his retreating voice called out after a few minutes, followed by the sound of the door closing.

  Nandana smiled and shook her head. So gangly and awkward at eleven. So painfully shy. She supposed it would be Prithwish’s turn in a few years. Piya was already acting bizarre. She sniffed at the thought of her recalcitrant thirteen-year-old daughter. Piya wasn’t shy. She was argumentative and sulky. Nandana guessed the onset of teenage hormones manifested themselves in different ways for different kids. She sniffed and jabbed her trowel into a pot of morning glories. She didn’t remember being given any leeway when she was a teenager. Neither could she recall being quite so lippy with her parents because of these mysterious ‘hormones’.

  ‘New-fangled excuses for bad behaviour,’ she muttered and dropped her implement down on the floor with a clang full of pique.

  Nandana clapped her hands over her mouth as a guffaw bubbled out of her. Oh my God, I sound just like Mr Talukdar! She began to shake with uncontrollable laughter.

  She collapsed cross-legged on the red-tiled floor of the balcony and let the waves of laughter wash over her. It felt good. Do I really sound like this all the time? Grousing about ‘young people’ and the ‘decline of values’? Mrs Crankypants! She giggled again and made a mental note to share this with Deepa. She’d have something funny―albeit sarcastic―to say about it, no doubt. She’d just give her some time to finish with whatever spring cleaning she was doing. Deepa was cleaning round the year, so she used the term loosely; and then she’d go over for a long-pending chat.

  Nandana got up, still in high good humour, and stretched. Her back hurt from all the gardening. She’d take a break with her phone for a while―see how her friends and family were pretending to be happy, interesting and successful this week.

  There was a WhatsApp message from Kushal. I don’t want to fight any more. I miss you. I miss how we used to be even a few years ago.

  Nandana smiled and scrolled to the next message, sent a few minutes after the first one. This weekly review meeting is so boring. How about I buy tickets to a movie this Friday? We’ll tell the kids we’ll fine them 10 rupees every time they sulk. How’s that for a plan?

  She smiled. Yes. And we can use the money we collect to have a pasta dinner after?

  He wrote back immediately. Absolutely. Got to go. The boss just asked everyone a question and I have no idea what it is.

  Nandana guffawed again. She put her phone down and looked outside. Her plants nodded and beckoned in the sunshine. Nandana picked up the tiny trowel and began to work through the soil of her prized jade plant with a gentle hand.

  *****

  17

  Wednesday, 19th September 2014

  ‘Crazy old bat,’ Ira shuddered, as she remembered her last conversation with Mrs Ghoshal. In fact, she now realised Mrs Ghoshal did rather resemble a bat. All bones and membrane, protruding, magnified eyes and toothy grins….

  Get a grip! Mrs Ghoshal was a perfectly normal old lady, just growing senile and fanciful in her old age. Poison―a likely story! Her account didn’t at all add up, if Ira thought about it. Nandana’s Dilip seemed a much better bet.

  Then again, the lift stopped at floor 6, she thought. No, no just a coincidence. If she had actually groped through her nephew’s pockets while Kedar was downstairs with the others, wouldn’t she have included it in her exhaustive confession at Ira’s flat? A different part of her brain wondered at the perfect alibi for Kedar. A few minutes earlier, he had seen the dead body in the lift on a different floor from his. Why go down one floor and then press the lift button? An attempt to throw us off? But then why advertise yourself and shout and run down the stairs?

  Thoughts swarmed in her head like angry fire ants, arguing first one side, then the other.

  She took a deep breath. It was decided. Ira felt bad for Mrs Ghoshal. It was always tragic when the brain went.

  Mrs Ghoshal’s avid expression as she talked of poisoning her enemies yesterday swam up in her mind’s eye. The hair on her arms stood briskly to attention.

  A week or two might help efface the memory, and then Ira would genuinely feel bad for Mrs Ghoshal.

  Just then, the door exploded with the sound of knocking.

  Ira started spectacularly before she walked over and put her eye to the peephole. That lady again! Mrs Ghoshal’s maid. She opened her door a crack and stuck her face through it.

  ‘Yes, what is the matter?’

  The woman looked mutinous. Employing a maid with such anger management issues, it was almost explainable why Mrs Ghoshal thought all of the staff were waiting to slaughter the residents in their beds. In this lady’s case, Ira had to agree with Mrs Ghoshal―she could see murder in her eyes.

  An entirely unusual thing though―her own maid Ratna, was quite amiable, especially on days there were no dishes to wash, an increasingly common scenario, now that she ate lunch out with Ayan on a regular basis.

  ‘Dada is asking you to visit.’

  ‘Who “dada”?’

  The woman clicked her tongue in irritation, ‘Arre, the dada in 603!’

  ‘Oh, he’s back from the hospital? Excellent news.’ Ira’s shoulders sagged with relief.

  The woman made a non-committal face and shrugged, ‘Well, I was asked to deliver the message. Please give t
hem your phone number so I don’t have to keep doing this. It doesn’t fall under my list of duties.’

  ‘Well, I don’t recall ever asking you to do it,’ Ira retorted. ‘You can tell them so yourself.’

  The woman made a face and stalked off. Phew! I wouldn’t cross a woman like that!

  Nor her employer, Ira thought. But she was curious in spite of herself. She went to bathe and dress with alacrity and was seated within the hour at Kedar-da’s bedside.

  Mrs Ghoshal had fussed over both of them and laid a steaming cup of tea and a delicate plateful of keemar bora on a table at her elbow.

  Ira cast a sideways glance at the offering. No way in hell I’m eating that! She swallowed hard. The aroma was making her mouth water.

  Kedar lay in bed, looking exhausted and diminished. They spent a few moments in companionable silence, during which time Ira darted a few more glances at the meatballs (steaming hot with little discs of green chilli embedded in it, just how she liked it!) until she turned away resolutely. Better hungry than dead.

  Kedar seemed to notice her internal battle and smiled. ‘They took the bottle away,’ he croaked.

  Ira felt her cheeks flame. ‘Oh, that’s not…not it.’

  ‘Okay.’ Kedar cleared his throat and closed his eyes.

  He opened them suddenly and said, ‘These are her famous meatballs. I could eat twenty of those with the green chutney she made back in the day. Now she doesn’t, on my request―it’s too much work.’

  He looked a little pale and closed his eyes again, as if the thought of food turned his stomach.

  ‘But she provides a tomato ketchup out of the bottle nowadays. Go to the kitchen…and ask her; she’s become very forgetful….’

  ‘Um…no need, no need to trouble her.’ None of this would pass Ira’s lips; her momentary temptation had been overcome as she watched Kedar still struggle with the aftermath of eating his mother’s cooking.

  Kedar subsided onto his pillow again. He cleared his throat and it echoed in the bedroom.

  More out of having something to say, Ira blurted out, ‘You said she’s forgetful… Is she…a little delusio-…does she imagine things, too?’

  Kedar opened his eyes and stared at her. His face, wreathed earlier in naked pain, had acquired its customary deadpan, guarded look.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I think she must have been devastated by what had happened to you. She blamed herself. Gave me a long history of her…um, career as a serial poisoner.’ Ira smiled to take the sting out of her words. ‘And you’re not going to believe this! Mrs Ghoshal (she brought her voice down to a whisper) even claimed to have murdered the man in the lift! “Manoj” she called him. Says he was a cousin of yours!’

  She realised her jokey tone had done nothing to improve the content of what she said. Throughout her speech Kedar’s face had got progressively stonier.

  Ira stopped.

  ‘Yes,’ Kedar spoke up abruptly. ‘She imagines things as well.’

  ‘I hope I didn’t upset you….’

  ‘I don’t like her being disrespected; she is my mother.’

  ‘I do understand, it was not my intention to be disrespectful. I was just telling you what she told me.’

  ‘Yes, well, telling this story to everyone and making her ridiculous in other people’s eyes…that is disrespect, isn’t it?’

  ‘You are the only person I told.’ Ira’s temper started to rise. Just released from hospital or not, she wasn’t going to take this tone from anyone! She opened her mouth to say that Mrs Ghoshal kept seeking her out to tell her these things when Kedar’s voice cut across, ‘Well, good. Let’s keep it that way.

  ‘Right,’ she rose without any further delay. ‘Get well soon, and please do convey to Mrs Ghoshal my regret at not eating the snacks she prepared; I’m in a hurry.’

  Ira left without a backward glance, flustered and angry, her customary composure broken by Kedar’s unwarranted behaviour. And she didn’t even get to ask why he had called the lift at the fifth floor instead of his own. Useless.

  Later at lunch, she caught Ayan up on her conversation with Kedar. He was offended on her behalf in the most gratifying way. ‘If I were there, I would have had a thing or two to say to him. He can’t talk to you like that! You practically saved his life!’

  Ira was touched. She entwined her fingers through his across the table and smiled. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. Let’s not dwell on it, anyhow. Kedar has been through a bit. Can’t be fun to be nearly murdered by your own mother. Takes a toll on one’s manners.’ She winked. ‘Talk about something else na.’

  Ayan fell silent but he still looked preoccupied.

  Both of them lapsed into their own reveries until their thaalis came.

  ‘Hey, I completely forgot to tell you.’ Ayan tore into his roti. ‘I investigated our ghost story. I had never heard any suspicious bumps in the night, as I told you that day. But my roommate, Ravi, told me that he did hear muffled thumping and hammering noises on occasion, usually before I return. It’s not loud enough to disturb him, and anyway he’s too tired to care since it starts around the time he turns in. He never thought much about it, because he assumed there was just a noisy family downstairs.’

  ‘Downstairs? But that lady Aditi and Jayashree told me about―what was the woman’s name, I forget―claimed the noises came from your flat! The flat above hers.’ Ira leaned forward.

  ‘And all the while Ravi has been thinking the noises are from this woman’s family. Not that he knew their names or anything.’

  ‘What could it be then?’

  ‘Haha, you wouldn’t believe how simple the answer actually is. I was disappointed, to be honest. I rather fancied being able to tell people I lived in a flat haunted by a woman and her little ghostie daughter.’

  ‘What was it actually?’

  ‘Last night, I came home early, around eleven, to see Ravi sitting bolt upright in our sitting area. He’s usually fast asleep behind his door when I let myself in, so I got a bit of a shock myself.

  The first thing he says to me, eyes popping, as I walked through the door is. “Damn you for telling me that bloody ghost story! All those effing thumps all night, I can’t get a wink of sleep now imagining a woman with a baby standing at the window.”

  As he said this, we heard a muffled thump, but pretty loud, very close to us. It sounded like it came from his room.

  I think we were emboldened by each other’s presence, because we ran to his room. To our relief, no woman with a baby on her hip turned to face us. It was as empty and smelly as usual. Ravi really should clean his room more often, it’s a sanitation risk I tell you. I believe in seizing an opportunity whenever it presents itself. I told him, right there. “No way a ghost can survive in that room. She would have deemed it unhealthy for her child. Even spirits have standards!”’

  ‘Get back to the story!’ Ira drummed her left fist on the table in mock frustration.

  Ayan grinned. ‘This is part of the story! Patience, my heart. Anyway, Ravi seemed in no mood for jokes. He told me the thumping had started at 9 pm, and still continued in fits and starts.

  We stood in his doorway, waiting for another thump. And I began to wonder if Nandana’s sleepwalking man had something to do with it. So there we were standing, our nerves all aquiver, when the bell jangled, and shattered the calm.

  I can’t tell you who jumped higher. We stood there, scared silly, and the bell pealed again, then again.

  I picked up the basketball in the corner. God knows what I thought, that I would bounce it off a ghost or a sleepwalking man’s head? Ravi grabbed my arm and we went to the door together. I put my eye to the door, and you would never believe what I saw in the gloom.’

  ‘What?’ Ira was in an agony of impatience.

  ‘A woman with a sleeping child, its head rested on her shoulder.’

  ‘Noooo. You are having me on.’

  Ayan pinched the skin of his neck with his fingers, ‘I swear it’s the
truth.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘We snapped the outside light on before Ravi put his eye to the peep-hole too. Then he began to laugh. Huge, big belly laughs. He opened the door before I could stop him.

  The woman looked quite corporeal, and wearing far trendier pajamas than one would expect from our ghost. She was spitting mad.

  “You men are standing there laughing at me! What in God’s name is the meaning of making such a big ruckus, when people are trying to sleep? My boy started crying and crying. I couldn’t stand it anymore, I had to come upstairs. What the hell do you think you are up to?”

  “Madam,” Ravi was wiping away tears of laughter. “Madam….”

  The lady filled her lungs for another tirade no doubt. But I stepped in and forestalled her. “Ma’am, which flat are you from?”

  “The one underneath you, 304.”

  “We’re not making any sound at all, in fact we were wondering where it’s coming from.”

  “A likely story,” the woman grumbled, but had she deflated a little.

  “If I’m not mistaken, these noises happened even before we moved in, didn’t they? We are as startled by these noises as you.”

  The woman nodded at that. “That is true. What could it be then?”

  A muffled thud sounded, almost as if someone dropped a brick somewhere.

  “There,” we cried out, almost in unison.

  The woman came in and dumped her sleeping child quite unceremoniously on our bean bag and swept down our corridor. “Tell me where the sound is the loudest.”

  Thinking Ravi will be embarrassed by the state of his room, I didn’t answer, but he bounded into it and said, “Here!”

  “That’s funny,” she said, looking in distaste at the unwashed plates in the corner. “This is our bedroom too, and it’s the loudest there. But far louder, absolutely tremendous crashes sometimes. This sounded muted in comparison.”

  I went to the window, puzzling it out. Another building rose, right next to us, Wing 2. The shuttered window of the next flat was a bare 10 feet away.