4.Little Victim (4 page)

4

The Bone Collector

Thousands of miles away, in Goa, Sarla Songhera was roasting a whole chicken in her oven. She kept opening the oven door and poking at the chicken with a fork. She was impatient. The chicken was neither too big, nor too small but of moderate size – exactly as the
kala iilam
had instructed. She had got up at dawn and wrung its neck herself. Eventually the chicken was ready and, putting it on a plate, she carried it across her fully modernized kitchen to the table beside the window.

She proceeded to eat. She needed to consume every piece, every scrap of flesh, very fast. Her eyes remained dull but her teeth chomped away in an energetic manner and she tore at the chicken with her bare hands. Her fingers with their long red-painted nails – not unlike Kali’s lolling tongue in the black statuette on her shelf – glistened in the sun. It looked as though she ate greedily but in fact she hardly noticed what the chicken tasted like; that was not the point of it. She tried not to think of anything, that had been the other instruction. Following the instructions was of paramount importance. She did her best to ‘empty’ her mind, she tried to think of a blank wall, but she found it difficult. Thoughts and images kept intruding. Those two – entwined. She was a seething cauldron of resentment, of jealousy and of frustration. She was filled with a sense of hurt, so deep she couldn’t breathe. When she finished eating, she broke up the chicken’s skeleton, again with her bare hands. That was easy
. Snap, snap
. For some reason she laughed.

She then put the bones on a platter (a silver one, with ‘Harrods’ engraved on the bottom), which she placed outside, on a small table on her balcony. Three days in the sun, she had been instructed, but she had no patience. She didn’t think that part of it really mattered. What mattered was her belief in what she was doing, in the results she would be able to witness soon – and her belief was strong.

Sarla sat down in a peacock chair made of rattan and waited, gazing at the bones fixedly all the while. Every now and then she reached out and touched them with the tips of her fingers. She kept waving the flies away. The heat was intense, but her brow was cold with sweat. Her raven-black hair soon felt as though someone had set it on fire, but she decided not to put on a scarf or a hat. That slut, with her long golden-brown hair and enticing ways – a
professional
slut, Sarla had heard it whispered – an English girl called Ria, whom Roman desired more than anything in the world.

Sarla had had a wig made, exactly the same style and colour as Ria’s hair. She had gone all the way to Delhi for it. The wig had cost a fortune. Sometimes Sarla put it on, covered her face with peach-coloured liquid foundation, applied bright red lipstick to her mouth and plenty of mascara to her eyelashes and imagined she was Ria. Well, unless her mirror was a liar, the resemblance was uncanny.

Perhaps one day she should go to Ria’s bungalow, get into the bedroom and put on the gossamer-like silk dress she had seen Ria wear once – it was slashed to the navel. She would make her face up. She would then lie in the bed and wait for Roman. Her thighs were too dark, she hated her thighs, but perhaps she could cover them in peachy make-up too? Now, if she made herself up properly and wore the wig the
whole time
, Roman would never know it was her. Roman would think it was Ria! He would kiss her tenderly – passionately – fold her in his arms – make love to her. But first she must make sure Ria was not coming back.
Yes
. They wouldn’t want Ria barging into the bedroom and disturbing them, would they?

It took the bones less than half an hour to become really dry – as dry as, well, as a bone – wasn’t that what the English said? A funny way of putting it. The English – they had a lot to answer for, Sarla thought grimly. Roman was in love with the English. Carrying the platter back inside the flat, she tipped its contents on the highly polished floor. She had pushed all the chairs (imitation Sheraton) out of the way and rolled up the carpet (an original Axminster). She had a beautiful house. What she didn’t have was love.

She was ready and eager to start. High time! She felt excited, full of hope. She kicked the ornate slippers off her feet, pulled up her sari and put on the wellington boots. They were brand new and reflected the sun. She had never worn them before. They had been a present from her husband. Roman had bestowed on her a number of useless presents before they had parted. English things – a porcelain cow creamer, which had been insensitive of him, given their religion, but then he’d never had any respect for their religion – a pair of big shining garden cutters, what the English called ‘secateurs’ – a set of silver fish knives – a set of silver fruit knives. As though she’d have any use for a fruit knife! She had pretended to like them; she’d gasped in admiration; she had wanted to please him. She had been hungry for his kisses. The boots were olive-green, with black rubber soles, and looked incongruous next to her red-and-gold sari.

She remained still for about a minute, concentrating on what she was about to do next. She thought of the instructions the
kala iilam
had given her.

Whip yourself up into a frenzy of anger and the vilest of
detestations. Allow all the hatred of the world to penetrate your
body and spread fast, like the poison of a krait.
She pushed back her long black hair and shut her eyes. A krait, she’d nearly stepped on a krait once, in the back garden. She had flattened its head with a stone. That was what she’d like to do to that slut. She might still do it if this thing didn’t work . . .
Concentrate
. . . She groaned. She had seen them . . . those two . . . entwined . . . rolling in bed . . . whispering dirty words into each other’s ears . . . lovey-dovey . . . Tears started rolling down Sarla’s fat sallow face and her lips quivered, then her monstrously bloated body shook.

She saw terrible things happening to Ria: it was as though a film was being played before her eyes. (
Not
the kind of film she normally watched; it was highly doubtful whether the Bollywood dream factory would ever produce such a film.) She saw Ria engulfed by flames – torn to pieces by two tigers – stung by a krait, her body swelling and turning black – strangled by a woman who looked like the Queen of England – poisoned by gas as she lay in her bed – drowning in the ocean while swimming, her corpse washed up on the beach, covered in seaweed – caught in a wood-cutting machine, her body mangled, mutilated beyond recognition . . . Envisioning her wishes, the witch doctor had told Sarla, would add great potency to the hex.

Be thinking of all this while doing this hex and when it says,
‘With these bones I now do crush,’ take a hammer or use feet and
crush the chicken’s bones to powder. Feet is better.

Sarla spoke.

‘
Bones of anger, bones to dust,

Full of fury, revenge is just.

I scatter these bones, these bones of rage.

Capture my enemy – into the cage!

I see my enemy before me now,

I bind her, crush her, bring her low.’

It was at that point that she stepped across the chicken’s bones with her booted feet.

‘With these bones I now do crush,

Make her turn to dust!

Torment, fire, out of control,

With this hex I curse her soul!’

Sarla was gratified to hear the crunching sounds from under her feet. She went on stomping – faster and faster –
faster
– as fast her weight allowed. Soon she was breathing stertorously. Sweat poured down her face.

Her eyes had glazed over. ‘You scarcely know my name, let alone what it stands for,’ she said in English in a voice that did not sound like hers. ‘It stands for Despair, Bewilderment, Futility, Degradation and Premeditated Murder.’

Then it was all over. She was done. The bones had been transformed to powder, almost. She was not aware that she had spoken at all. She swept them up and placed them in a bag. She was going to sprinkle them later around Ria’s bungalow first, that was where Roman and Ria met, then around Coconut Grove, in case Ria moved in with Roman. I hate him too, Sarla said, her eyes filling with tears. I want him dead.

The procedure, she had been told, might have to be repeated if it didn’t work the first time. And if it didn’t work the second time or the third time, well, she would have to think of some other way of getting rid of Ria. Actually, she didn’t want Roman to die. She wanted him – back.

‘Only her!’ Sarla raised her voice. She shook the bag with the powdered bones. And once more she addressed the spirits, which, she felt sure, were all around her, ‘Do you hear?
Only her.
’

She felt a sudden sharp pain, just above the collarbone. So sharp, it made her gasp. She had the funny feeling that one of the shadowy figures she had seen earlier on, the ‘Queen of England’, had plunged a fruit knife into her throat.

5

Another Country

‘
Miss Darcy has that priceless gift, part Ancient Mariner, part
Scheherazade, that keeps the reader turning the pages
,’ Major Payne read out. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? They do love your stuff.’

‘I don’t know. They seem to,’ Antonia said over her cup of coffee. Her new book had come out the week before.

‘What do you mean, “seem to”? They love your stuff. Listen to this.
The plot is subtly pitched between unfathomable
and coherent: at first there are only questions without answers,
and then gradually information is given away – but only by
minute degrees
. That’s praise of the most undiluted kind.’

‘Look at the bottom – they call the denouement “somewhat outlandish”.’

‘Most readers love outlandish denouements.’

‘Do they?’

‘Aunt Nellie loves outlandish denouements, don’t you, darling?’

‘I adore outlandish denouements,’ Lady Grylls said absently. ‘So what do you think, Hughie?’

He went on reading. ‘
Miss Darcy deals with the familiar
country house set-up in a refreshing and exhilarating way
.’

‘So what do you think, Hughie? Good idea, eh?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Payne looked up. ‘We can’t just up and go, darling. You don’t really expect us to make a snap decision about that sort of thing.’ Over the last five minutes Payne had been dividing his attention between his wife and his aunt. ‘You make it sound as though Goa is Hampstead Heath.’

‘Planes, you seem to be forgetting, are the magic carpets
de nos jours
. Besides, Charlotte is my oldest friend. I wouldn’t say my dearest friend, she was never that, but she is one of the very few still round. She was the mistress of somebody I knew quite well, who’s dead now. She writes most persuasively. See for yourself.’ Lady Grylls tossed the letter across the breakfast table.

Major Payne felt obliged to put
The Times
to one side. There was a pause. ‘She says foreign travel broadens the mind. She says she’ll take care of our travel expenses and we’ll get the second best bedroom at the house. She says we won’t have to spend a penny. A freebie, eh? Does she mean that?’

‘Of course she means it. Charlotte’s got pots of money, doesn’t know what to do with it. Guy left her well provided for, beyond the dreams of avarice. At one time Guy’s family owned most of Northumberland.’

‘Mrs Depleche. I believe I remember her. Face like a hawk?’

‘More like a vulture now.’ Lady Grylls guffawed. ‘She’s got all her marbles, mind, so you don’t have to worry on that count.’

Antonia asked Lady Grylls whether she wanted any more toast.

‘Yes, one more slice, my dear. I’ll have it with your excellent strawberry jam. Fancy you making your own jam. I thought no one living in London did these days. One doesn’t expect it of writers in particular.’

It was an extremely cold day in early February. Although the central heating couldn’t be turned up any higher, the dining room felt chilly. Lady Grylls had two shawls around her shoulders, a blanket across her knees and mittens on her hands, but she had never once complained. She had been staying at their house in Hampstead since December. Although the cataract operation had been a success, she still wore the piratical purple patch across her left eye and read with the aid of an enormous tortoiseshell-rimmed magnifying glass. Both patch and glass were used for effect, rather than out of any actual necessity, Antonia suspected. Chalfont Park was undergoing major repair work and they had pressed her to stay until things were back to normal once more.

‘She says the view from the house is stupendous. She says it’s going to be hot in Goa, but only tolerably so,’ Payne went on. ‘It’s still the tourist season. In March it starts getting really hot and that goes on until June. After that comes the rainy season, which lasts three months.’

‘That’s one of the few things that worry Charlotte – the rainy season. Three months without stopping. What would she do when it rains for three months? Stanbury says she can watch old Cagney films on DVD. She has a thing about gangsters. She’s buying this house. She’s thinking of – what’s that horrid word they use? –
relocating
to Goa.’

‘Place called Coconut Grove. Built in the hacienda style. Beautiful terraces overlooking the sea. Golden beaches. Sapphire skies.’ Payne’s eyes remained on the letter. ‘She’s buying it from someone called . . . Roman Songhera. Who, it turns out, is the grandson of her late husband’s Indian orderly. She says Roman’s come up in the world and is now the uncrowned king of Goa. Golly. She’s been to India before, hasn’t she?’

‘She has. Guy Depleche was one of Dickie Mount-batten’s aides-de-camp in the last days of the Raj. When was it? Ages ago. 1946?’ Lady Grylls paused reminiscently.

‘D’you realize I remember the time when almost every nation of the world seemed to be governed by a Grand Old Man? There was Churchill in Britain, Eisenhower in the United States, Adenauer in West Germany, Nehru in India and so on. Isn’t that extraordinary?’

‘I wonder what happened to that race of larger-than-life statesmen . . . Nine o’clock. Shall we listen to the news?’

‘No,’ Lady Grylls said emphatically.

Major Payne helped himself to more coffee. ‘
I remember,
I remember
. This can be made into a game, you know. Shall we play it?’

‘No, Hugh, please. We can’t play games at breakfast,’ Antonia said.

‘Why not? Organized games are fun at any time of day. It would also give you time to make up your minds.’ Lady Grylls turned towards her nephew. ‘What are the rules?’

‘No rules.’

‘Every game has rules.’

‘This one hasn’t, darling. No, no prizes either. It’s all very simple. You just throw your mind as far back as you can and tell us what you remember. The more random the memory, the better. Would you like me to go first?’ Payne fixed his eyes on the ceiling. ‘I remember the yeti. I remember when alien abductions were all the rage. I remember feeling particularly disturbed by Betty and Barney Hill who drew pictures of aliens under hypnosis.’

‘I am not playing.’

‘I wish you weren’t such a spoilsport.’

‘I remember hating organized games when I was a child,’ Antonia said. ‘I remember being given codeine cough syrup when I was about six or seven,’ Payne said. ‘I remember spending days submerged in a pretty powerfully altered state of consciousness.’

‘I remember snorting cocaine,’ Lady Grylls said.

‘I remember Sonya Dufrette’s doll in the river,’ Antonia said.

‘
That’s
the spirit, my dear. I remember my father-in-law employing a boy to loosen the collars of his intoxicated gentlemen guests.’

‘I remember when not a year passed without some dance craze,’ Payne said.

‘I remember a joke.’ Lady Grylls took a sip of coffee. ‘
Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

’

Despite herself, Antonia laughed.

‘I remember getting stuck in the middle of a singularly tedious passage of Cicero’s
De Senectute
at school. I remember hearing, at various times of my early life, the reputedly authentic story of a lorry transporting strips of corrugated iron, one of which slips off behind and decapitates a motorcyclist.’

Lady Grylls stared back at her nephew. ‘I expect he fell off the bike?’

‘As a matter of fact he didn’t. The motorcycle was travelling at great speed and it continued to keep pace with the lorry. The lorry driver, paralysed by the sight of a headless rider, not to mention the stream of blood, lost control of the driving wheel and collided with another vehicle. He was instantly killed himself.’

Antonia expressed the opinion that that was nothing more than an urban legend.

‘Odd things
do
happen, my dear. I remember Charlotte telling me about her first party at Government House in Delhi when all the memsahibs were given pillow-slips and instructed to put their feet in. Charlotte got it into her head it was some sort of Hindu ritual, but it turned out it was for protection against mosquitoes since it was the mosquito season. Too Somerset Maugham for words.’

‘How long did she stay in India?’

‘A year or two. Guy was considerably older than Charlotte. She was eighteen when she married him and terribly innocent to begin with. He was at least fifty. Edwina took her in hand and introduced her to some high-caste Indian men. That was at the height of Edwina’s affair with Nehru, you know. Well, Dickie was most certainly queer. Guy wasn’t, but he was getting on, men did age fast in those days, and anyhow all his energies went into playing polo and collecting butterflies. Charlotte hinted at an “ice-box honeymoon”, though they did manage to produce a son.’

‘Whatever made Mrs Depleche think of us?’ Antonia asked.

‘I did. Charlotte wrote to me over Christmas and said how she dreaded the idea of travelling on her own, or with Stanbury, and how she couldn’t get anyone decent to go with her, so I told her how clever the two of you are and how splendid to be with when one is abroad.’

‘I don’t think we’ve been abroad together, have we?’ Payne frowned.

‘Charlotte was awfully impressed. She’d rather have you than Stanbury, of whom she takes a fearfully dim view . . . Stanbury’s her grandson, yes, didn’t I say? He’s something in advertising and seems terribly keen on Charlotte buying this property in Goa. It will be his holiday home one day. He’s married to a weather girl, Charlotte says – a platinum blonde – apparently she’s often on the box. Charlotte takes a fearfully dim view of her too.’

There was a pause.

‘She’s thinking of leaving on the twelfth of February. Twelve days from now.’ Payne shot a quizzical glance at Antonia.

Antonia’s feet felt as cold as ice and, at the moment at least, the prospect of a flight to a hot climate wasn’t too repellent. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘It’s all settled then. Charlotte would be terribly pleased. I’ll write to her at once.’ Lady Grylls nodded. ‘The plane journey lasts for ever, apparently, but all you need to do is sit next to Charlotte and keep her amused. Chat to her, play a game or two. Anything to do with gangsters or sex will do as a topic. Don’t let her drink too much or flirt with the stewards –
that
could be tedious. She can be a malignant old cat where women are concerned, so she may not really take to you, my dear,’ Lady Grylls turned to Antonia, ‘but don’t let that bother you. She’ll adore Hugh.’

‘Lucky Hugh.’

‘It won’t be anything personal, you must understand, it’s just that Charlotte prefers men to women. She told me once – Charlotte’s
histoires
are endless – that she’d had affairs with a married man, with a ladies’ man, with a man’s man, with a bad lot, with a good shot, with someone who was queer but was terribly drunk, with a lovable shit – and with a gentleman jockey.’

‘There were probably only three men. The good shot could easily have been a bad lot, a man’s man and also a married man,’ Payne mused. ‘The gentleman jockey could have been a ladies’ man
and
a lovable shit.’

‘Ladies’ men are almost invariably lovable shits,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘You’ll need to get your jabs as soon as possible. Malaria, cholera, snakebite and so on. Once you get to Goa, you won’t have to lift a finger.’

Payne gave the letter another glance. ‘The house apparently has every
confort moderne
. Each marble bathroom features three basins labelled “Teeth”, “Hands” and “Face”. The most advanced sewage system.’

‘Plumbing nowadays costs the earth.’ Lady Grylls heaved a heavy sigh. ‘We are talking the kind of money that’d buy me a nice little house in St John’s Wood. I’d have come with you like a shot, Charlotte did invite me, but I’ll have to be getting back, isn’t that a bore? I can just see you – sitting on the terrace under striped awnings with scalloped frills, knocking down gin and bitters. It isn’t,’ Lady Grylls went on, ‘as though you are about to get involved in some mysterious death, is it?’

‘How do you know?’ Antonia said. ‘We might.’ I shouldn’t provoke Fate, she thought.