Truth Lake (18 page)

'Hah, more like a g-goat!' the boy sputtered and started to laugh then stopped abruptly when he saw Karmel's expression. 'What's the matter, sir? Are you ill?'

Karmel grimaced; pain ricocheted around inside his head and across his shoulder blades. 'Have you got any food?'

'Milk?' The boy removed a small bowl from inside the bundle he always carried.

              'Yes, yes anything!'

              'Will you get it, sir, or shall I?'

              'Oh you do it. You do it! I have to do some other work.' Karmel held up the dripping bag of clothes and stepped into the cabin. He removed his bedding from the string cot and moved its frame closer to the square pit where the fire had been the previous night. Piling on wood from a corner, he spent an annoying few minutes trying to kindle the damp scraps.

When Chand appeared with a bowl of milk he drank it greedily and allowed the boy to blow and chide the wispy flames. At last they had a blaze going and squatted beside each other warming their hands. The clothes started to give off steam and the room smelt like a laundry; it was an oddly comforting odour.

'Where's your brother today?'

'Oh', the boy's face tensed, 'he's got fever. I told you.' He hadn't actually said so, but Karmel let it pass.

'And your cousins?'

'Maya was here with me. Now she's gone to the lake. The others … are wandering somewhere – the last of the wood has to be collected … see. The rain.' He stopped, apparently perturbed.

'What's the matter?'

              'Are you going to stay here long?'

              'A few more days, maybe, why?'

              'But look! You have no wood! Only those pathetic bits and they will finish by this evening. Come on', he jumped up. 'Let's go and collect some for you.' Karmel felt nauseous and exhausted, but he acquiesced and followed Chand out of the cabin.

They gathered fallen branches, Karmel's heavy breathing the only sound above the breaking crunch of sodden wood and the plip-plop of rain. Once they were hefting their bundles of branches back towards the cabin, Karmel decided that he had to speak. It would be too late if he waited any longer. Others might join them and he might never have a chance to question the boy without his brother's inhibiting presence. But in order to gain his trust, he realised, he was going to have to give him trust in return, to hope for his allegiance in a village where kinship and community formed a claustrophobic bubble around every individual.

'Son, I really appreciate your help! How would a stranger like me have found these twigs otherwise?'

'Oh that's good! Then you will call me to Delhi to work for you?'  Karmel was nonplussed by the boy's candid reply. He chose his words with care.

'Is that what you want?'

'Oh yes! I do! Above everything. My father may be there, they say.'

              'Who says that?'

'My mother says. My aunt says.'

‘But could you bear to leave your family?'

              'Everyone leaves their family sometime.'

'Could you bear to leave your brother?'

The boy was silent for a moment and replied, rather sadly, 'It is for my brother that I want to go. He's very ill I think. He sees things. He spits a lot like this.' Chand grimaced and froth gathered on his lips. 'He needs much more help than he can get around here. Maybe if I go to Delhi and earn some money, then I can . . . ' His voice trailed off.

Karmel had an idea. 'What if I could help your brother – would you be prepared to help me?'

'Oh Sir! Oh Sir! I'd do
anything
. Will you take him down with you?' The boy stopped climbing, almost blinding Karmel with his bundle of twigs.

              'I can't take him away from your family, but I could find a doctor and pay him to visit Bhukta. Maybe you could bring your brother down there. Would your mother agree?'

'You, sir? You'd pay for it?' Feeling guilty about the implicit bribe, Karmel nodded.

'Then you can ask me to do whatever you want. Do you need an assistant for your soil-work? I'll do it!' Was there nothing the boy wouldn't agree to for love of his brother?

'What I need Chand, is an assistant, yes. But not for my "soil-work".'

They were approaching his cabin and he could see village women ahead of them, carrying similar bundles on their heads, hips swaying gently. Goats were meandering along the muddy pathway and making progress difficult. Chand clutched at Karmel's arm. 'Then sir, then what is it? Tell me!'

Their breath was coming in gasps; the rain was icy cold and Karmel noted with concern that the boy's feet were bare. He spoke before he had time to reconsider.

'I need you to help me catch a murderer.'

              What if he had been murdered? What if he was lying dead somewhere with no one to bury him? Nearly three full weeks had passed and there was no sign of him. No sign of the gorgeous young man who made her empty life feel full and exciting. Karmel's landlady had picked the bones of her curiosity and found nothing more to chew. Idly watching passers-by from her window, she decided that it was time she did something about her lodger's disappearance.

She let herself into his room for another look, her grey hair plaited loosely over a pale cotton sari. 

It was too many years since her husband had died. Too many to remember. And she had fought with all her children. Who was there left in her life but this man, whom she watched over like a lover and guarded like a son? If he had had an accident and was lying in a hospital somewhere without his memory then the flat was going to waste for nothing. Alternatively, if he had decided to get married and move out without telling her she was going to be mad as hell. Besides, rent day was coming up.

              It was clear that he'd have no time for her, even though he had offered to cut the hedge at the bottom of her garden and never brought females home. So she had not spoken to him much. Had been rude, in fact. But her lack of interest was only a pose.  The moment he turned his back on the apartment and mounted that shiny grey machine of his she'd tiptoe to her window and watch him leave. She'd gently ascend the stairs and move around his domain, amazed at his tidiness, at the scarcity of pictures, at his distinctive boyish perfume. 

Frequently she perused the files he left on his table. The sin and cruelty detailed in his fine script was enough to keep her entertained. In her youth she had been head-girl at a beautiful Catholic school. She could still read English better than Punjabi. 

              She decided that if he'd left of his own accord, she would have to go about finding him and if something bad had happened to him she would be the first to know.  She had plenty of money – the son who never visited made sure of that. Trailing her finger along the dusty counter in his tiny kitchen, she decided what to do. Back in her own apartment, she picked up a scrap of newspaper and the telephone. 

In the three weeks since his unexpected departure – she didn't know he'd gone on a trip, hadn't seen his larger than normal bag as he slipped out in the dusk – her appetite for company and life had not been assuaged by the mundane happenings in her neighbourhood. She wanted him back. Desperately.

Tanya was sucking coconut juice through a straw and thinking about the Saahitaal case when her mother called her. She had dribbled her previous day's discoveries through her mind and come up with something that looked like a plan. A single lucky break had given her the lead she needed; Mrs Pillai, Sinbari's own secretary, had provided it.

Tanya had phoned the Randhor-Sinbari head-office with some trepidation, wondering if she would have her cover blown.

'Antonio Sinbari's office. Mrs Annie Pillai speaking. How may we help you?' Mrs Pillai had sounded harried.

Tanya told her she was a friend of Adam and Sara's, supposed to meet up with them a few weeks before but delayed due to family commitments. 'I missed them in Delhi and I'm a girl. Now I'll have to travel all by myself unless you can tell me where they are.'

Deciding the matter was too inconsequential to trouble the boss with, Mrs Pillai responded, 'I booked them on a flight to our Aguada resort in Goa only a couple of weeks back.' As she replaced the phone, Tanya blew a silent kiss to her unseen informant.

The fact that Sinbari had sent the young foreigners away from Delhi, ostensibly for pleasure but effectively isolating them from the police after they'd made their initial statements, made her doubt his motives even more. He was hiding something himself – or he was protecting them. Either way her father was being made into a scapegoat.

Hàrélal was preparing to leave for an official meeting; he was knotting his tie and hadn't spoken to his wife that morning.

The previous night they'd argued for hours about their daughter. Mrs Hàrélal wanted to place a discreet ad in a matrimonial column at once, before the baby showed any further; Hàrélal wouldn't countenance any such thing. With his position in the office as shaky as it was he wanted to make sure of his job before he exposed his only daughter to the scorn of the world. Besides, now that the girl was safe back home, even with the thing inside her stomach, he was loathe to let her go again.

'Tanya béti, come and look at this!'

'What is it ma?' Swinging herself up from the couch, Tanya moved awkwardly towards her mother. She had an inkling of what she was going to be shown and only hoped that the advertisement her mother had circled wasn't one they had put in for her.  If it was for a guy, she hoped that there'd be something about him she could object to – his height, or his educational qualifications. But when she got close enough to read the tiny lettering under the picture, she gave a startled howl: what she was looking at was not a matrimonial request but a photograph of her one-time friend and childhood flame, Kailash Karmel. Underneath his name was a single word, printed in bold black print.  Snatching the paper she almost ripped it in her haste to stop her father before he left for his meeting.

'Missing? How can Kailash be missing?' Hàrélal was as puzzled as his daughter.  'Who has placed this advertisement?' There was a post office box number for responses to all the advertisements but no personalised message or address. Surely Kailash didn't have any living relatives? One of the good things about Kailash's life-style – God forgive the selfishness of such a feeling – was that he was never called upon by tearful mother or whinging wife and never had to take a day off. Now that he was in the hills doing his boss's bidding, why had this bizarre piece of paper suddenly appeared? Had the boy some secret admirer keeping tabs on him? Or was this yet another dastardly plot by that evil Antonio Sinbari to wrong-foot Hàrélal at the last minute? Yet that seemed absurd! He had not revealed his intentions to anyone and it was only at this morning's meeting that he was planning to unveil his perspicacity and forethought in sending Kailash into the hills to a deputation made up of foreign journalists and tour reps. He handed the newspaper back to Tanya with a thoughtful expression on his face and called morosely to his chauffeur. If Sinbari had somehow acquired the picture and was plotting to make him seem like a fool then he wasn't going to take it lying down!

Still in bed, Antonio Sinbari noted the gloomy skies with a disgruntled frown.  Whatever the weather was like here in town it was probably twice as bad up in the hills. He couldn't afford to wait much longer for information about the village. What he had from Croft was good but it needed fleshing out. He was counting on Sadrettin and the team to get the job done quickly. Also, he was beginning to miss the boy's company. There was a certain charm about Sadrettin, he had to admit: all that sleek black hair, the perfectly muscled chest. And there was something irresistible about the kid's adoring eyes; Sinbari had enjoyed the adulation but used it for his own purposes. He wasn't here for fun and games. Throwing back his covers, he leapt up.

He filtered images of his handsome assistant out of his mind as he drew on a finely embroidered Indian suit. Today he was meeting a whole panel of excited investors. He had drip-fed them with reports of his enormous project in the hills and with any luck they would be waiting like a tank of underfed Piranhas to hear the rest of his plan. They'd probably be even more enthusiastic than the government had been to offer him what he wanted. He thought with satisfaction of all the money he was going to make.

His wife hadn't called in over a week with news of Vincent. Sulking, probably, because he hadn’t congratulated her on the engagement of her youngest sister to a well-known TV personality. He rang her and left an affectionate message, adding that she should call him in the evening. His son's cell phone was switched off.

On impulse he rang Sadrettin's mobile phone number from his own cell phone but the message he received was the same as before:
the number you have dialled is unavailable: your message will be forwarded to the voicemail service
. . ..
Sweating slightly, he rang off. What the fuck was going on up in the mountains? 

Having recorded his previous day's exploits in detail and noted down the contents of his conversation with Gauri, Karmel decided that he wouldn't be any use to anyone until he got some sleep. His temples were pounding and, after Chand left he felt at every movement as if he was going to be sick again. Perhaps he had caught the fever that Sonu had; or possibly he had concussion from the night's vicious attack: either way, he dreaded being incapacitated for more than a few hours in the middle of this miserable village.

It wasn't yet dark but he decided not to wait for food but to sleep at once. He propped his bed against the door, stripped off all his clothes and climbed beneath the sleeping bag. Instead of being awakened by panic, lust or nostalgia as he had been for the preceding nights, he slept without awareness of himself or his surroundings. 

When he woke the next afternoon he felt ravenous but completely refreshed.  Lacing his boots he felt a modicum of optimism return. 

His plan was to interview the remaining villagers as fast as possible and then to depart. With all the rain, the foreigner's corpse was probably beginning to lose its covering of mud and leaves; it would decompose further. He would have to leave it as it was until a team could be sent to fetch it. He felt in his bones that his investigation was reaching a climax.

He hoped he wouldn't meet Gauri or anyone from Thahéra's family as he left the cabin.

              His luck held and the first person that greeted him was Sahusingh, the old man he'd met the previous week on his walk with Thahéra. 

              'The mud collector! Ha ha! How are you, son?' This time the old fellow was hobbling along with his arm in a sling.

              'Very well, uncle. You don't seem to be doing so good? Is it the weather that causes your pain?'

'The gods, the gods decide. I used to be a weaver, for many years. Can't even hold onto the loom shaft now. I've not long perhaps and this is a sign.' They fell into step in the direction of the lake.

'Have you ever thought of getting the elbow seen to?'

'Who would look at it? Not you? You are a science man and will say that I need a doctor – like the others said – but I need rest. Rest.' He was panting and swotted at the branches of passing trees with his free right arm.

'Where are you going today?'

'Ah, I've heard that an old friend of mine is on his way to Malundi from the pastures.  I go to intercept his journey and have a smoke with him. Who knows if I will see him this time next year?' It was the opening Karmel had been looking for.

'Aren't you lonely here in the village with all the women? Don't you miss the company of men?'

'Son, by the time you get to my age it matters no longer whether there are men or women as long as there is food and tobacco. But since you ask, the answer is no. I see my friends when I can and the boys come to me for instructions about things – and then – what am I saying, there are men who visit here from time to time.'

'You must know everyone who comes to the village?'

'Not always. See, I've been here for so many years, but now new people come from all over the place.' He gave Karmel a sly look. 'I hear that aeroplanes bring people through the sky that's how they visit here. We had visitors only a short while back.'

              'Yes?'

              'They were from out there –' He waved his free hand towards the sky. 'And they had found us, all the way here. Just like you have, son. So you see, men do come.  I don't miss their company.'

              Karmel matched his stride to that of the old man. 'But surely those who come from so far away . . . how do you speak to them? Can they understand what you say?'

              'One of them could. Yes. Now I recollect he was a very clever young man and he had learnt some Pahadi and we taught him more.' 

In the distance the lake came into view. Karmel didn't want to move too far from the village. He felt an urgency about the case now that brooked no delay. Yet he didn't wish to jolt the old weaver from his gossipy mood.

              'Will you have a smoke with me and chat for a while before I return to my work in the forest?' The old man looked uncertainly up at the threatening sky and then acceded to his request. Karmel watched him take out his pipe and offered to light it for him as his arm clearly restricted movement. When the old man had had time to take a few puffs, Karmel continued his questioning.

              'So. You were telling me about all the strange people who visit you here in this isolated spot. What was the name of the one you spoke of last, the young man from far away who learnt your language so fast?'

              'His name? Now that would be a hard question for a young person and I am old!  Do not ask me names and dates and such stuff. I can tell you about him though: he stayed a long while and so did his friend.' He took another puff and looked again at the sky. Karmel nodded in encouragement.

              'Um?'

'Yes, he was from another country and he wanted to bring more of his people here to see us. He talked to me once about how much he liked Saahitaal. He was like a poet with his talk and his pictures. Yes, he drew many pictures while he was here, sitting by the lake when it was so cold that we all didn't go out. The boys often saw him drawing houses. Yes. But there was something strange about him. Something unusual.'

Karmel held his breath. 'Didn't you like him?'

'Oh
I
liked him well enough!' There was a knowing smile on the creased face. He put his pipe back in his mouth and began to puff.

'Then what was it?' Karmel felt the urgency in his own voice and tried to control it. 'Didn't the women-folk like him? The other men?' This time the old man threw back his head and laughed out loud, thumping his hand against a tree-root in mirth.

'No son, no. Nothing like that. Quite the contrary, you could say. Everyone liked him too much. The boys listened to him; some of our lasses were quite smitten! Yes, I can say it because all their men are away down the plains and God knows how they wait for them. Are you shocked? I'm too old to think of formalities with you now.'

'I understand.'

'He was a beautiful youth, quite different in looks and temperament from yourself, if you don't mind my speaking plainly. He smiled and laughed with us all the time, and removed his shirt to show his golden skin. Even I could not truly say that in my life I had seen eyes the same green as his, though I was young when those foreigners ruled India.'

'So what was it that was strange about him, uncle?'

'He would ask us questions about ourselves, in very awkward language sometimes it is true, but he never really seemed to listen to the answers, but would gaze at us, for long minutes, like he had never seen anything so wonderful in his life! He took photographs all the time – it was like this click, click, click. But even that is not it ….Let me tell you a story.'

Karmel suppressed a sigh and gently rubbed his ankle. If the story wasn't relevant he would have to make some excuse to move on. 'I'm listening, uncle.'

The old man started to tap out his pipe. 'One day when I was walking I saw the young fellow out ahead of me on the track. It had snowed that day, I remember, and all around was white, pure ice. The young ones were running and sliding and screaming and laughing; their elders too were sliding about that day because it was so hard on the ground. I heard them all calling to our youth to join them. As I told you, he was very popular with all the pretty girls. They knew he was to be married, of course and that made them try all the harder to charm him.'

'Married?' Karmel was curious. One might have supposed that if a man was to be married he would wish to be by the side of his beloved rather than in a mountain village alone. However, Karmel thought, he might have been one of those men who intended to cling to what he considered freedom until the very last moment. And in Saahitaal there were certainly plenty of women to enchant him. 'Married.' He repeated thoughtfully. Could Sara have been his intended bride?

'Ah yes! He told us that right at the beginning, he would bring his bride soon, he told us. Everyone felt happy with that. So, as I was saying, I was slow, I'm old and I couldn't catch up with him but I heard them call him and he started towards them. One woman who has many problems – her youngest son is possessed by demons, ill in the head you would say – she came out of her door and stood, just looking at him and he stood there on the path, looking at her, I thought, and there I was, looking at them both
.  They were speaking to each other without speaking!
She had this look on her face, stern, like she was warning him or something. He was moving towards her but at the last minute she shook her head violently and he turned away from the steps and went into the forest at the back of her house. Then her father came out – God knows, he's almost as old as I am, but not mellowed by time – and he beckoned to her. She went inside and as I passed them I could hear – Ah well, not for me to say.'

              'What did you hear?' Karmel's tone was gentle.

'It is not a happy story, son; better not to speak of such things. Yes. That would be like digging up the dead.' He paused, breathing in deeply. 'Now, young fellow, can we go on?' The question was brusque after the lulling tale that Karmel wondered if the old man regretted anything he'd told him.

'One last question, uncle. Where did this young foreigner go when he left your village? He's not here now.'

Sahusingh shook his head. 'Young people come and go all the time at their own will. You should know that. One day I heard that he and his friend simply left. They were seen walking out of the village. They haven't been seen since. And before you ask me, I cannot recollect who told me they had gone.'

They rose to continue their journey, Karmel puzzling all the while over the identity of the foreigner's fiancée: if Sara McMeckan had been engaged to Cameron Croft then perhaps the two foreign men had quarrelled over her. She and Adam had never explicitly said they were dating; he had assumed it from their body language – and because they were foreign. Now that he considered it, in fact, that had been a misguided assumption. Each of them had been more concerned to explain their presence in the hills
in relation
to their friend Cameron than in relation to each other. How could he not have noticed that their nonchalance about their failure to meet the one person whom they had expressly travelled into the hills to see was incongruous with the rest of their tale? So. Adam at least had been with Cameron in the days before he died. And Sara . . .. He still wasn't sure about her.

*

Sara was in the bath when the hotel phone trilled. She was planning her escape from this place and promising herself that she would work incredibly hard at the hospital  after-hours drop-in surgery to make up for everything she had done wrong in the past few weeks. Reluctantly dragging her body out of the water and her mind back from the innocence of the world of work, she wrapped herself in a huge fluffy towel and wondered who could be calling before seven am. Only her mother and Antonio Sinbari knew the number of their hotel suite. And Antonio had not called once since he jetted them off to Goa.

Sara didn't recognise the voice speaking her name. Still edgy and weak from her long fever, she became increasingly perturbed. Her night out with Adam in a local bar hadn't restored her strength. He'd become argumentative and, when other patrons began looking at them curiously, she'd left him there and trudged back to their suite. She'd intended to have it out with him when he got in, but he hadn't returned all night and she'd tossed and turned in bed till past three am. After that she'd risen several times to switch the air conditioning off and on, fearful that she'd miss the noises of his arrival amidst its greedy purr but uncomfortably warm when it wasn't on. Waiting to hear his card in the electronic slot outside their door had made her even more paranoid. Perhaps he'd picked up a date. But it was unlikely. He wasn't the predatory type and wouldn't have made a pass unless someone encouraged him, especially in a foreign country.

'Ms McMeckan? Sara?' the voice sounded Indian. Official. Dread ballooned in Sara's stomach.

'Aye, that's me. Can I help you?' Her suburban politeness forbade any outpouring of terror.

'Good-morning. Tanya Hàrélal here. This is rather a delicate issue. I was wondering if you'd mind meeting me. I'm an investigator . . . with the New Delhi police. I'm pursuing an enquiry on a matter which closely concerns yourself and your friends.'

'Hàrélal? Oh!' The balloon burst and flooded Sara's mouth with bitter fluid. 'Excuse me a moment, would you.' She rushed back to the marble sink in the bathroom and retched tea-coloured droplets. A wave of dizziness swept through her body. Good God
! It was the chief of police!
Antonio Sinbari's enduring lackey – or so they'd been led to believe. But this person was female. She was polished. There was no escaping.

'Sorry to keep you waiting, Ms. Hàrélal. Where are you calling from?' Her voice faltered.

'I flew in last night from New Delhi. I'm at your hotel, down by the painting of the shipwreck … you know the one? In the foyer.' She paused. 'I'm only here for a few hours.'

'I'm going to the hospital today –' Sara began with relief, but Tanya cut her off.