Patang (3 page)

‘No,’ said Reena, biting her lips, ‘I know a better place.’ She turned and Karan was surprised to see her hit the button for the twelfth floor.

‘No, no…you don’t get it…the auditorium will be locked right now,’ Karan protested.

Reena giggled. What was with girls and giggling? Karan hated girls who giggled meaninglessly. He let go of her waist and made no effort to hide the irritation on his face.

‘Aww,’ Reena purred like a cat demanding attention. ‘Is Mr Grover angry?’ She pouted and looked at him, trying hard to suppress her laughter. He was just one of those stupid alpha-male guys with a square jaw, a sharp Adam’s apple and absolutely no brains. It was so,
so
easy for her to make them fall for her. It was quite funny actually, come to think of it.

Reena looped her arm through Karan’s and placed her head softly on his strong biceps. She could immediately sense his tense muscles relaxing. Men like Karan Grover liked to think that women couldn’t survive without their protection. Playing the helpless damsel always worked with them.

‘You’re ghanna lykhe whachiyu see, I phramise,’ she faked a tacky American accent, mastered through her training at work.

Karan’s heart skipped several beats in anticipation.

The twelfth floor of the swanky building housed the sprawling auditorium and media room of McArthur & Co. This
building was their BPO wing, with more than 7,000 employees working across multiple shifts. The auditorium itself could seat more than 4,000, and was equipped with state-of-the-art facilities. All of McArthur’s conferences and townhall meetings were held here, and it could also relay live an event happening in any of the 196 McArthur offices all over the world. McArthur’s business was growing and they were always running out of office space. A second building was under construction less than a kilometre away.

Karan had joined McArthur two years ago. He handled the Paramax account and lent voice support to customers from the US East Coast. Reena had joined the same team less than four months ago. She was extremely attractive and she didn’t hesitate to dress accordingly. At first, Karan had been disheartened to know she was married, but when she had flirted back with him, his excitement had doubled.

‘This way.’Reena led him towards the far end of the corridor, which was pitch-dark. The low light from the flashlight apps on their cellphones barely lit the way and Karan had to strain his eyes to see where they were going. Reena finally turned to a door on her left at the end of the corridor and pushed it open.

‘Watch your step,’ she whispered.

Karan was surprised to see that they were at the foot of a staircase. Slowly, he pulled up his phone to illuminate the steps all the way to a large door with a notice painted on it that said: ‘DO NOT ENTER’.

The terrace!

Oh, boy!
This woman was even more exciting than he had imagined. He knew he was in for a wild night. Tonight, Reena Sharma would be his score.

‘Come, hold my hand,’ Reena said.

Karan liked determination in women. His own pulse was racing. But…

As they reached the door, Karan pushed the handle. It didn’t budge. Locked!

Dammit. He knew it.
His heart became heavy and he shut his eyes in frustration. Blasted security!

In the mysterious half-lit environment, he heard Reena giggle again. ‘You give up too easily, Mr Grover! Is this how you intend to impress me?’

A sharp beep suddenly echoed through the dark stairwell and scared the hell out of him. He held up his phone to find Reena’s beautiful face smiling at him, as she held up her access card.

‘Ta-da!’

‘But…how?’

‘Don’t ask how,’ she brought her face very close to Karan’s and whispered, ‘but I bet you’ve never been happier to discover a glitch before now, have you?’ She pushed the handle and threw the door open.

The terrace was out of bounds for employees, Karan knew. A few years ago, everyone would come up here to smoke, but then the management decided to revoke access to the terrace after a security audit. Karan had no idea how Reena’s card opened the door, but he didn’t care, because by now, Reena had run on to the terrace and was getting drenched in the rain. In the golden light of a solitary halogen lamp, she looked like a goddess as she held up her hands in the air, embracing the rain, her lime-yellow shirt and jet black business skirt clinging to her shapely body.

‘Come on, don’t be afraid!’ she shouted over the sound of the rain.

This woman is really something,
thought Karan to himself. He hesitated for a moment. Was this all right? Had they covered
their tracks? Was anyone around? He realized that they would get drenched to their bones, and they didn’t have a change of clothes. What would everyone say when they went back to their desks?

Reena swayed and turned in a circle. The yellow light fell on one of the most beautiful asses Karan had seen in his life.

‘Fuck it! Fuck it all!’ he muttered under his breath and dashed towards her.

They kissed. A lingering, passionate, burning kiss. Karan was almost passing out with excitement. Reena tore away from him and stood at a distance, panting. Her breasts heaved up and down under her shirt and, for the first time since he had laid eyes on her four months ago, Karan took all his time to appreciate them.

He was not ready for what happened next. Reena undid her shirt one button at a time, before dropping it on the floor. His heart was beating so loudly that he was afraid people several stories below would hear it. As Reena took off her bra and flung it into the air, a sense of wonder enveloped him.

‘Didn’t I tell you you’d like what you’d see?’ Reena’s voice had never sounded so delicate, so fragile – as if the strong woman Karan had seen minutes ago had disappeared and a soft little flower had taken her place, waiting to be touched. A million hormones were tugging at him from a billion different directions. He felt his temple throbbing. His shoulders were so tense that they ached. He lurched forward, and in the middle of the stormy night, a man and a woman found one another. They began exploring each other hungrily, throwing all caution to the damp air. They swayed around awkwardly, each going wherever the other wanted to go, all around the terrace, until they fell on the ground, clawing at each other’s bodies, hissing, moaning and panting.

In this frenzied state, Karan vaguely realized that the rain wasn’t falling on them anymore. Had it suddenly stopped? But…he could still hear the rain pounding on the terrace tiles. What had happened?

Karan looked up to realize they were now below a large overhead water tank.

A canopy! Perfect
, he thought. Reena didn’t seem to notice anything other than the man who was about to have her. She ran her nimble fingers through his wet hair, clutched at it and brought his face down on to her heaving breasts.

‘I want you
now
!’ It seemed like someone had set her voice on fire.

Karan looked up at her wet face and marvelled at his luck.

‘I want you!’ she hissed again.

He had only dreamt of this moment under his sheets back home. He couldn’t believe that his dreams were about to come true. He extended his hands and pulled down her panties. Then, with a trembling yet determined hand, he touched her.

Reena’s back arched like a rainbow as she sunk her nails into Karan’s shoulders. Karan stared at her as a soft moan escaped her lips. He couldn’t take it anymore. Lifting himself up to undo his jeans, he knew that this would not be, by any means, their only time together. There was no fucking way he…

What was that? Karan looked at his stomach as he undid his jeans. Was that…blood?

Shit, yes! Was he bleeding? Had Reena unknowingly hurt him in her passion? He didn’t feel hurt, though. Karan looked harder. Was it Reena’s blood? But…he hadn’t even…

At first, he was scared and confused. Then, gradually, nausea overcame him, ruthlessly stomping on the desire he had been in the throes of over the last few minutes.

‘You’re having your period?’ he asked Reena, whose eyes were shut, her back still arched.

‘What? No!’ She looked confused as she opened her eyes and struggled to sit upright.

The gall of the bitch
! Karan thought. He realized he was about to puke at any moment.

‘No! What are you talking about?’ Reena cried as she tried to get her bearings. Then she looked down at the floor of the terrace and said, ‘This is not my blood. Are
you
bleeding?’

‘Are you asking me if
I
am having my fucking period?’ Karan felt sick, frustrated, fooled.

‘No, you fuck-nut, I’m asking you – are you hurt? And do not take that tone with me.’ Reena suddenly didn’t seem anything like she had before – not a goddess, not a flower, not a fairy.

Karan growled, but somehow managed to keep his calm, because he had quickly taken cognizance of the situation. This bitch could easily give a different twist to the tango-on-the-terrace story. He needed to get out of here. Yuck!

As a few drops of rain fell on him, he got up hurriedly. Where was his shirt? Damn it! Where did his fucking shirt go? He flicked out his phone and turned on the flashlight, shining the thin ray it emitted below the tank to look for it. A short gasp of horror escaped his lips.

The floor was soaked in blood. They had been lying in virtually a pool of blood all along – in the middle of their passion and the rain, they simply hadn’t noticed. Where had all that blood come from?

Karan turned to Reena to ask her if she had a clue about what was going on. But as he shone the light on Reena’s face, he saw that she looked ashen. Her lips had parted and they were quivering. Her eyes looked like they would pop out of
their sockets at any moment. Her naked, trembling body made her look even more vulnerable. What was truly strange was that she seemed to be staring directly at him! Did she think
he
had something to do with the blood? Dumb broad!

A few more drops of rain fell on Karan and, suddenly, he realized how strange this was, because he was standing directly below the tank. How could rain be falling on him? As he turned the light towards himself, he heard a croaking groan come from the naked woman in front of him – his broad shoulders, his face and his neck were all covered in blood. It hadn’t been rain that was dripping on him. It was blood! With trembling hands, he extended his phone’s flashlight towards the overhead tank, and Reena and he looked up together.

Almost like a wind-chime, a rope held different parts of a human body as it hung from the base of the tank. Most parts were missing – a leg, an arm, a good part of the torso – but the head and the face were intact, showing such a fiendishly horrific expression of shock and fear that, for several moments, neither could speak. Then, just as lightning struck the top of a nearby building, Reena opened her mouth to scream even as the 22-year-old playboy collapsed in a dead faint at the feet of his ‘score’.

5

Amidst a constellation of blinding flashes and a galaxy of journalists, a VIP vehicle glided to a halt in front of the Mumbai Police headquarters. DCP Singh emerged from the back seat and was immediately surrounded by the barrage of journalists, microphones and cameras. Several officers systematically dispersed the crowd and created a human barricade as DCP
Singh waited patiently. Finally, when a walkway to the building was cordoned off, the DCP walked in and made his way through several meandering corridors to a specific door. He halted and gave himself a moment before entering. For a fleeting second, he felt a little nervous. He breathed in and out exactly thrice, smoothed down his uniform, straightened his back, knocked on the door and walked inside.

Shashank Mule, commissioner of Mumbai Police and DCP Singh’s boss, was a distinguished IPS officer with several laurels to his name. His hold on the bureaucratic machinery and the government (or whoever made that government) was the stuff of legend. No government had been able to keep him away from Mumbai for long. They were always forced, no one knows by what or whom, to eventually bring him back. If DCP Singh came across as suave, Commissioner Mule came across as scholarly. Three of the four walls in his office were covered with bookshelves. Mule read on a variety of topics – from Spanish culinary arts and the dialogues of Plato and Cicero to the anthropological aspects of the aboriginal tribes of the Terai. He had a thorough understanding of India’s extradition treaties with virtually all countries of the world, and knew the Indian Penal Code like the back of his hand. He had also been an ace sharpshooter in his youth.

As DCP Singh entered Mule’s office, the Commissioner placed a bookmark in the book on chess that he was reading, shut it with care and showed him the chair in front of his desk. Neither of them spoke for several seconds. The heavy silence in the room reminded DCP Singh of the strange shroud of lull that used to descend on the open fields in his village just before a storm swept everything away. He swallowed hard, making sure to not expose the movement of his Adam’s apple.

‘This rain,’ Mule finally said, as he looked out of the glass window and on to the garden, ‘it’s been going on and on.Today is…what has it been…the…?’

‘Eighth day, sir,’ DCP Singh replied briefly. He was well aware that Mule was in a foul mood. He also knew Mule would never let it show.

‘The eighth day! Fancy that!’

DCP Singh waited patiently for his boss to continue. Mule rose from his high-back chair and stood by the window, his hands folded behind him. He intently watched the stream of water trickle down the glass pane. After several minutes of silence, he said, ‘There is a room in my house that always remains locked.’

On his way to HQ, DCP Singh had tried to imagine exactly what his superior was going to tell him, but he hadn’t anticipated this.

‘After Shalini left for England, her mother said, “We’ll keep this room just the way it is now.” Even now, after she has married and decided to settle down in London, her mother insists the room be kept as it is.’

DCP Singh didn’t comment.

Mule walked away from the window and strolled down the large room. He picked up a book from a shelf and placed it in its correct position, three slots to the right.