Chain of Custody (6 page)

He resumed writing the boys' details on a pink slip. I watched him as I planned my move.

‘What did you come here for?' he asked.

‘To w—' Ikshu began but Jogan pressed his hand down on his knee to silence him.

‘To see the place,' my smart little Jogan said.

‘Which class do you study in?'

‘They don't go to school,' I said. ‘There are no schools where they live.'

The man stared hard at me. The earth mother asked, ‘They don't go to school … what do they do?'

‘They work.' I won't be content slapping her, I thought. I would like to bite down on the fleshy underside of her arm.

‘Aren't they too young to be sent out to work?' she demanded.

‘If they don't work, they won't eat,' I said quietly.

That shut them up.

‘We are going to move the children to a shelter. Why don't you ask the parents to come there and fetch them?' the man said. His phone rang again. He answered it and looked at me.

I nodded. We set out towards the entrance where the car would be waiting. Down platform 2 and down the staircase towards the lift.

The man had his arm firmly around Ikshu. Earth mother had Jogan and Barun.

As we descended the steps, I pushed against her. She stumbled and let go.

‘Run,' I hollered and scrammed away from the lift. Jogan and Barun stood transfixed for a moment and then they followed me with a speed that surprised me. Who would have thought these little fellows had it in them?

There was pandemonium. Loud voices and scrambling feet. I knew that the police post in the station was on platform 6, but I also knew that there were as many ways to exit the station as there were to exit this world.

We made it to the end of platform 4 and the end of the station. We paused, catching our breath.

I smiled at them. Two out of three isn't bad, I thought.

‘What about Ikshu?' Jogan asked.

I shrugged. ‘They'll put him in a boys' home if they don't send him back.'

The boys' faces fell. ‘You said you would take care of us,' Jogan said almost mutinously.

I touched his elbow and said in the sternest voice I could muster, ‘You have to think about yourself first. If you put others first, the world will trample all over you.' They were way too young to understand. So I told them what I knew would make a difference. ‘We'll spring Ikshu out of the boys' home. I promise you I will get him out.'

As the jeep turned into Greenview Residency, Gowda felt a sense of relief. He would be home soon. There was nothing to match the comfort of familiarity: the angle of the showerhead in one's bathroom, the dip in the pillow, a favourite chair, the chime of the clock, the tree outside the window.

The jeep drove past empty plots with knee-high grass and eucalyptus trees.

‘It must be lonely without any neighbours,' David ventured to say.

Gowda was too exhausted to snarl a retort. The thought of neighbours and having to say and do neighbourly things made
his skin crawl, but it seemed the whole world and Mamtha saw neighbours as vital to existence. In fact, Mamtha had fled to Hassan so she could live on a busy street complete with neighbours and their chit-chat.

Gowda grunted noncommitally. David could take it any which way he chose.

As the jeep drove away, Gowda knew a moment of disquiet, even as he opened the gate to his house.

There was a fine patina of dust on his Bullet. Gowda frowned as he ran a finger along the curve of its petrol tank and onto the seat. Shanthi was supposed to have wiped his bike every day. The car was dusty too, and dried leaves were wedged on the windscreen between the bonnet and the wipers.

She didn't seem to have watered the garden either. The jasmine creeper that wound its way up the pillar at the corner of the verandah looked thirsty, and the potted plants had wilted. Dried leaves lay all over the driveway.

On the doormat were two days' worth of newspapers. Gowda opened the door, perplexed. Where was Shanthi? It was unlike her to not turn up without letting him know. There was a faint musty smell. Of a room shut before the mopped-up floors had time to dry. He opened the windows one by one.

Then he went into the kitchen and turned the tap on. A trickle of water emerged and stopped. ‘What the fuck!' Gowda said aloud, slamming his fist on the granite counter. For a moment, he stood there stumped, wondering what to do next.

He dragged himself to the work area behind the kitchen. The switch for the water pump was somewhere in here. He had been one of the lucky ones to strike water when they sank a borewell in his plot of land. At four hundred feet he had wondered if he should ask the borewell operator to stop. ‘At this rate, we'll be
digging a hole into the White House on the other side of the planet,' he had joked.

The man had stared at him with a blank face. What was the policeman implying? Whatever, it was best to pretend he didn't understand. There was no trusting a man in uniform. But at four hundred and twenty feet, the bore had struck a water table. Water had gushed out with a force that had almost thrown Gowda off his feet. His spirits had soared; it had felt like a personal triumph.

Gowda found the switch and put it on. Fortunately, there was power. Powercuts were part of this new Bangalore. Most homes including his had back-up power but a water pump wouldn't work on it. The humming began. He hoped water was running up the pipes. He opened the door and stepped into the desolate-looking backyard. He found the pipe running up the well to the overhead tank and laid his ear against it. It was a hot afternoon in March and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky but the GI pipe felt cool against his skin and he could hear the reassuring surge of water.

There was nothing for him to do but wait. Roshan had WhatsApped him a word card some days ago. Exhaustipated – too tired to give a shit. That was precisely how he felt now. He pulled out a chair from the dining table. He was hot and weary. He had lain awake through the night on the train and had fallen into a troubled sleep that had left him more exhausted than refreshed. The last five days had been gruelling and it had brought him no closer to tracing the absconding Chikka.

He looked at his phone thoughtfully. He should be calling Mamtha. Urmila would be expecting his call, he knew. However, it was Shanthi he called. There was no response. He looked at the food parcel on the table. But he was loath to eat until he had washed the grime and filth off himself.

Soon he heard the splash of water as the tank overflowed. He switched off the water pump and headed to the bathroom, taking his clothes off as he walked.

Gowda turned the shower on and stood below it, letting the cold jets of water inject life into his weary body. He soaped himself using a daub of shower gel. Urmila had insisted he switch to shower gel.

‘Less incriminating when I am here and we need to shower,' she had said. They had stood under the shower, soaping each other, still flushed from having made love. She had sniffed at the cake of soap. Mysore sandalwood. She had put it back on the dish carefully.

He had frowned and appraised her face. Then, unable to help himself, he said, ‘You sound like you've done this before.'

She had glared back at him. Then, controlling herself, she said in a voice so cold that it almost made his balls shrivel, ‘What are you implying, Borei? I have friends. We talk. Every experience I refer to needn't necessarily be mine.'

Gowda had pulled her to him and held her as a silent apology. How we love is indicative of who we are, he thought. I am that awful cliché that I thought I would never be. A middle-aged man, slack of jaw and spirit, clutching at a straw of hope in the guise of a woman who knew me as I once was. I doubt myself and all that I am, and so I doubt her too. For that is who I have become. A man who doesn't know.

‘Say it, Borei,' she had murmured against his chest. ‘Tell me what you are thinking, whatever it is.'

He had shaken his head and kissed her on the forehead, feeling a great surge of warmth for her. Love was a word he didn't even use in his head any more. ‘I get insecure,' he said. ‘I wonder what you are doing with me and then …'

She touched the tattoo on his forearm and traced her finger along the wings on the wheel. It had been an impulse decision to get a tattoo, and he had chosen one that suggested the open road, the song of the wind, the thump of a Bullet engine, the dream of a lifetime to keep going without pausing. He had had to hide it from Mamtha at first, afraid she would sneer or, worse, prophesize all the diseases he could catch from a tattoo parlour.

‘I always wanted to sleep with a man with a tattoo,' Urmila said, straightfaced. ‘So you are just part of my bucket list of men.'

He stared at her for a moment. Then he grinned and gathered her to him.

She nuzzled her face into his chest and wrapped her arms around him. ‘You give me what no one else ever has,' she said. He noticed that she didn't use the word love either. The shower jet rinsed the soap off their bodies.

A bell rang. Gowda snapped out of his reverie. It rang again. A persistent annoying note that wouldn't allow Gowda to ignore it. He turned off the shower wearily. Who would come calling on him at this hour? He wrapped a towel around his waist and went to the door, dripping water as he walked. He peered through the eyelet in the door. Santosh stood framed in the doorway. Gowda opened the door.

‘You have lost weight,' Santosh said by way of greeting.

Gowda touched his chest almost unconsciously. His chest hair had begun to grey.

‘And you have been working out?'

Was that a note of approval he heard in the boy's voice, Gowda wondered with some annoyance.

‘If you have finished admiring me, may I go finish my bath?' Gowda didn't bother hiding his displeasure.

‘Did I disturb your bath?' Santosh said, without a trace of embarrassment.

‘What happened to your voice therapy session?'

Santosh shrugged. ‘It can wait. I shifted the appointment to later this evening.'

‘Sit down,' Gowda said as he padded back to the bathroom.

When Gowda came back to the living room dressed in his habitual track pants and a collared t-shirt, Santosh was looking through a case diary that sat on the table. He put it down.

The beaming Santosh had been replaced by a man whose features were set with the rigidity of a mask. ‘He is still out there.' Santosh's fierce whisper filled the silence.

Gowda nodded.

‘But why, sir?' Santosh's whisper rose. ‘Why is he not behind bars? Why was he given bail in the first place? Section 302 IPC is a non-bailable offence, I thought. Whoever commits murder shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life and shall also be liable to fine.'

Gowda slumped into a chair. He looked at his fingers as he tried to process his thoughts and form the words.

‘When we rushed you to the hospital, all I thought of was how I was going to ensure you survived. Chikka was taken into custody. He had confessed to having shot the corporator to save you. Bail, which is never given in 302 cases, was allowed. He had confessed; he was a hero who had saved you, one of our own, from certain death. And he knew which strings to pull. Besides, all of the corporator's property was in Chikka's name. He produced the documents as surety and, given his brother's criminal past, his lawyers claimed that his life would be under threat if we sent him to the undertrial jail in Parappagrahara. And just my bloody bad timing!'

‘What do you mean?' Santosh asked.

‘It was a Thursday night, if you remember. By the time they had patched you up and moved you to the ICU, it was Friday noon. I hadn't had the time to check your phone. I finally did that evening and went to the PP with fresh evidence. Chikka, however, was out on bail and absconding,' Gowda said. ‘The public prosecutor said he had never seen anyone move this fast. It was almost like clockwork.'

‘I'll hunt him down, sir.' Santosh's voice rose into a squeak.

Gowda looked at the boy's face. It bespoke a need to exact revenge as much as catch a criminal who thought he had got the better of them.

‘You know that I am with you, don't you?' Gowda said. ‘We'll hunt him down.'

Gowda's mobile rang. The old-fashioned trilling of a black bakelite phone you dialled with a finger. ‘You changed your ringtone.' Santosh grinned.

Gowda shrugged. Then he frowned as he picked up the phone. ‘Shanthi,' he barked into the phone, ‘where are you? What? I'll come there. Give me a few minutes.' Gowda picked up the Bullet keys.