The Mountain Shadow

Chapter Fourteen

‘Are you awake?’

‘No.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘If you’re not awake, how come you’re answering me?’

‘I’m having a nightmare.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What kinda nightmare?’

‘It’s horrible. There’s this persistent voice, destroying the first good sleep I’ve had in weeks.’

‘That’s your nightmare?’ Lisa mocked from behind my back. ‘You should try a year in the art business, baby.’

‘It’s getting scarier. I can’t make the voice stop.’

She was silent. I knew from her breathing, as you do when you like a woman enough, that her eyes were open. The overhead fan turned slowly, stirring liquid monsoon air. Street light slivers penetrated the wooden shutters on the windows, dissecting the paintings on the wall beside the bed.

Morning was still half an hour away, but the false dawn flattened all the shadows in the room. Surreal grey settled on every surface, even on the skin of my hand, beside my face on the pillow.

The Peyote Effect, Karla called it once. And she was right, of course. The drug’s tendency to paint the universe in the same shade was like a false dawn of the imagination. Karla, always so clever, always so funny…

My eyes closed. I was almost gone; holding a peyote button in the palm of my dreaming hand, and almost gone.

‘How often do you think about Karla?’ Lisa asked.

Damn, I thought, waking up, how do women do that?

‘A lot, lately. That’s the third time I’ve heard her name in as many days.’

‘Who else talked about her?’

‘Naveen, the young private detective, and Ranjit.’

‘What did Ranjit say?’

‘Lisa, why don’t we not talk about Karla and Ranjit, okay?’

‘Are you jealous of Ranjit?’

‘What?’

‘Well, you know, I’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately, late at night.’

‘I haven’t been here lately, Lisa, so I didn’t know. How much time have you been spending with Ranjit?’

‘He’s been damn helpful with the publicity for the shows. We’ve had lots more people coming through the doors since he got on board. But there’s absolutely nothing going on between us.’

‘O… kay. What?’

‘So, how often do you really think about Karla?’

‘Are we doing this now?’ I asked, turning over to face her.

She raised herself on an elbow, her head tilted to her shoulder.

‘I saw her yesterday,’ she said, watching me closely, her blue eyes innocent as flowers.

I frowned silence at her.

‘I ran into her at my dress shop. The one on Brady’s Lane. I thought it was a secret, my secret, and then I turned around and saw Karla, standing right beside me.’

‘What did she say?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, what did she say to you?’

‘That’s… kinda bizarre,’ she said, frowning at me.

‘Whaddaya mean, bizarre?’

‘You didn’t ask how she looks, or how she’s feeling – you asked what she said.’

‘And?’

‘So… you haven’t seen her for almost two years, and the first thing you ask me about is what she said. I don’t know what’s more freaky, that you said that, or that I kinda understand it, because it’s about Karla.’

‘So… you do understand.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘So… it’s not bizarre.’

‘The bizarre part is what it tells me about you and her.’

‘What are we talking about, again?’

‘Karla. Do you want to know what she said, or not?’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘No.’

‘Of course you do. First, let me say she looked great. Really great. And she seems fine. We had a coffee at Madras Café, and I laughed myself silly. She’s on a thing about religion at the moment. She said – no, wait, let me get it right – oh yeah, she said Religion is just a long competition to see who can design the silliest hat. She’s so funny. It must be damn hard.’

‘Being funny?’

‘No, always being the smartest person in the room.’

‘You’re smart,’ I said, turning onto my back, and putting my hands behind my head. ‘You’re one of the smartest people I know.’

‘Me?’ she laughed.

‘Damn right.’

She kissed my chest, and then nestled in beside me.

‘I’ve offered Karla a place with me in the art studio,’ she declared, her feet wriggling in time to the words.

‘That’s not the best idea I’ve heard this week.’

‘You just said I was smart.’

‘I said you were smart,’ I teased her. ‘I didn’t say you were wise.’

She punched me in the side.

‘I’m serious,’ I laughed. ‘I… I don’t… I mean, I’m not sure I want Karla walking back into the apartment of my life. The rooms where she used to live are boarded up now. I’d kinda like to keep it that way, for a while longer.’

‘She’s a ghost in my mansion, too,’ she said wistfully.

‘Oh, I see. I’ve got an imaginary apartment, and you’ve got an imaginary mansion?’

‘Of course. Everybody’s got a mansion inside. Everyone except people with self-esteem issues, like you.’

‘I don’t have self-esteem issues. I’m a realist.’

She laughed. She laughed for quite a while: long enough to make me wonder what it was that I’d said.

‘Be serious,’ she said when she settled down. ‘That was the first time I’ve seen Karla in almost ten months, and I… I looked at her… and… I realised how much I love her. It’s a funny thing, don’t you think, to remember how much you love somebody?’

‘I’m just saying -’

‘I know,’ she murmured, leaning across to kiss me. ‘I know.’

‘What do you know?’

‘I know it’s not forever,’ she whispered, her face close, her lips still touching mine, and those blue eyes challenging the morning sky.

‘Every time you answer a question, Lisa, I get more confused.’

‘I don’t even believe in forever,’ she said, tossing eternity away with a flash of blonde curls. ‘I never did.’

‘Am I going to like what we’re talking about, Leese, when I know what it is?’

‘I’m kind of a now fanatic, if you know what I mean. Kind of a now fundamentalist, you could say.’

She began to kiss me, but she began speaking again, her lips bubbling the words into my mouth.

‘You’re never gonna tell me about that fight you had, are you?’

‘It wasn’t much of a fight. It wasn’t really a fight at all, if you wanna get technical.’

‘I do wanna get technical. What happened?’

‘Happened?’ I said, still kissing her.

She pulled herself away from me, and sat up on the bed, her legs crossed.

‘You’ve gotta stop doing this,’ she said.

‘Okay,’ I sighed, sitting up and resting my back against a stack of pillows. ‘Let’s have it.’

‘The Company,’ she said flatly. ‘The passport factory. The Sanjay Company.’

‘Come on, Lisa. We’ve been through this before.’

‘Not for a while.’

‘Seems like yesterday to me. Lisa -’

‘You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to be that.’

‘Yes, I do, for a little while longer.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Sure. And I’ll make money, as a fugitive, with a price on my head, working in a bank.’

‘We don’t live big. We’ll be okay on what I’ll make. The art market is starting to take off here.’

‘I was doing this before we got together -’

‘I know, I know -’

‘And you accepted it. You -’

‘I’ve got a bad feeling,’ she said bluntly.

I smiled, and put the palm of my hand against her face.

‘I can’t shake it off,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve… I’ve got this really bad feeling.’

I took her hands in mine. Our feet were touching, and her toes closed around mine, grasping with surprising force. Dawn began to burn gaps in the wooden shutters.

‘We’ve been through this before,’ I repeated slowly. ‘The government of my country put a price on my head. And if they don’t kill me, trying to catch me, they’ll take me back to the same prison I escaped from, and they’ll chain me to the same wall, and go to work on me. I’m not going back, Lisa. I’m safe here, for now. That’s something. For me, if not for you.’

‘I’m not saying give yourself up. I’m saying don’t give up on yourself.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘You could write.’

‘I do write, every day.’

‘I know, but we could really focus on it, you know?’

‘We?’ I laughed.

I wasn’t mocking her: it was simply the first time she’d mentioned my writing, and we’d lived together for almost two years.

‘Forget it,’ she said.

She was silent again. Her eyes drifted slowly downwards, and her toes released their fierce grip on mine. I brushed a stray curl from her eye, and ran my hand through the sea-foam of her blonde hair.

‘I owe them a promise,’ I said flatly.

‘You don’t,’ she said, but there was no force in her protest, as she lifted her eyes to meet mine. ‘You don’t owe them anything.’

‘Yes, I owe them. Everyone who knows them, owes them. That’s how it works. That’s why I don’t let you meet any of them.’

‘You’re free, Lin. You climbed the wall, and you don’t even know you’re free.’

I stared back into her eyes, a sky-reflected lake. The phone rang.

‘I’m free enough to let that phone ring,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

‘You never answer the phone,’ she snapped. ‘That doesn’t count.’

She got out of bed. Staring at me, she listened to the voice on the other end of the line. I watched sadness settle like a shawl across her shoulders as she handed me the phone.

It was one of Sanjay’s lieutenants, passing on a message.

‘I’ll get on it,’ I said. ‘Yeah. What? I told you. I’ll get on it. Twenty minutes.’

I hung up the phone, went back to the bed, and knelt beside her.

‘One of my men has been arrested. He’s at the Colaba lock-up. I gotta bribe him out.’

‘He’s not one of your men,’ she said, pushing me away. ‘And you’re not their man.’

‘I’m sorry, Lisa.’

‘It doesn’t matter what you did, or what you were. It doesn’t even matter what you are. It’s what you try to be that counts.’

I smiled.

‘It’s not that easy. We’re all what we were.’

‘No we’re not. We’re what we want ourselves to be. Don’t you get that yet?’

‘I’m not free, Lisa.’

She kissed me, but the summer wind had passed, and clouds fell across a grey field of flowers in her eyes.

‘I’ll start the shower for you,’ she said, jumping from the bed and running toward the bathroom.

‘Look, this is no big deal, getting this guy outta the lock-up,’ I said, passing her on my way into the bathroom.

‘I know,’ she said flatly.

‘You still want to meet up? Later today?’

‘Of course.’

I stepped into the bathroom and stood under the cold shower.

‘Are you gonna tell me what it’s all about?’ I called out to her. ‘Or is it still a big secret?’

‘It’s not a secret, it’s a surprise,’ she said softly, standing in the doorway.

‘Fair enough,’ I laughed. ‘Where do you want me for this surprise, and when?’

‘Be outside the Mahesh, on Nariman Point, at five thirty. You’re always late, so make four thirty the time in your head, and you’ll be on time at five thirty.’

‘Got it.’

‘You’ll be there, right?’

‘Don’t worry. It’s all under control.’

‘No,’ she said, her smile falling like rain from leaves. ‘It’s not. Nothing is under control.’

She was right, of course. I didn’t understand it then, as I walked beneath the high arch of the Colaba police station, but I could still see her sorrowful smile, falling like snow into a river.

I climbed the few steps leading to the wooden veranda that covered the side and rear of the administration building. The cop on duty outside the sergeant’s office knew me. He wagged his head, smiling, as he allowed me to pass. He was glad to see me. I was a good payer.

I gave a mock salute to Lightning Dilip, the daytime duty sergeant. His bloated drinker’s face was swollen with smothered outrage: he was on a double shift of bad temper. Not a good start.

Lightning Dilip was a sadist. I knew that, because I’d been his prisoner, a few years before. He’d beaten me then, feeding his sad hunger with my helplessness. And he wanted to do it again as he stared at the bruises on my face, his lips tremors of anticipation.

But things had changed in my world, if not in his. I worked for the Sanjay Company, and the group poured a lot of liquid assets into the police station. It was too much money to risk on his defective desires.

Allowing himself the semblance of a smile, he tilted his head in a little upward nod: What’s up?

‘Is the boss in?’ I asked.

The smile showed teeth. Dilip knew that if I dealt with his boss, the sub-inspector, the trickle-down of any bribe I’d pay would barely dry his sweaty palm.

‘The sub-inspector is a very busy man. Is there something that I can do for you?’

‘Well… ’ I replied, glancing around at the cops in the office.

They were doing an unconvincing job of pretending not to listen. To be fair to them, pretending not to listen isn’t something we get a lot of practice at in India.

‘Santosh! Get us some chai!’ Dilip grunted in Marathi. ‘Make fresh, yaar! You lot! Go and check the under barrack!’

The under barrack was a ground-floor facility at the rear of the police compound. It was used to house violent prisoners, and prisoners who violently resisted being tortured. The young cops looked at one another, and then one of them spoke.

‘But, sir, under barrack is empty, sir.’

‘Did I ask you if there was anyone in the under barrack?’ Dilip demanded.

‘N-no, sir.’

‘Then do as I say, all of you, and check it out thoroughly! Now!’

‘Yes, sir!’ the constables shouted, grabbing their soft caps and stumbling from the room.

‘You guys should have a code or something,’ I suggested, when they’d gone. ‘Must get tedious, having to shout them out of here, every hour or so.’

‘Very funny,’ Dilip replied. ‘Get to the point, or get the fuck out. I’ve got a headache, and I want to give it to someone.’

Straight cops are all alike; every crooked cop is corrupt in his own way. They all take the money, but some accept it reluctantly, others hungrily; some angrily, others genially; some joke and some sweat as if they’re running uphill; some make it a contest, while others want to be your new best friend.

Dilip was the kind who took the money resentfully, and tried to make you bleed for giving it to him. Fortunately, like all bullies, he was susceptible to flattery.

‘I’m glad you can deal with this personally,’ I said. ‘Dealing with Patil can take all day. He doesn’t have your finesse for getting things done decisively and quickly, fatafat, like lightning. They don’t call you Lightning Dilip for nothing.’

They called him Lightning Dilip, in fact, because his shiny boots, lashing out from the darkness of his rage, always struck a chained man when he least expected it, and never twice in exactly the same place.

‘That is very true,’ Dilip preened, relaxing in his chair. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘There’s a guy in your lock-up, Farzad Daruwalla by name, I’d like to pay his fine.’

‘Fines are imposed by the court, not by the police,’ Dilip observed, a sly grin wet on his lips.

‘Of course, you’re completely right,’ I smiled, ‘but a man of your vision can see how dealing with this matter in a forceful fashion, right here and now, will save the valuable time of the court, and the public purse.’

‘Why do you want this fellow?’

‘Oh, I can think of five thousand reasons why,’ I replied, pulling a prepared wad of rupee notes from my pocket, and beginning to count them.

‘A man of vision could think of many more reasons than that,’ Dilip frowned.

It was too late. He was already looking at the money.

‘Lightning-ji,’ I said softly, folding the notes over double and sliding them across the desk beneath the cover of my hand. ‘We’ve been doing this dance for almost two years now, and we both know that five thousand reasons is all I’d have to give the sub-inspector to make a full… explanation… of my interest. I’d be grateful if you’d save me that trouble, and accept the explanation personally.’

Santosh approached with the tea, his footsteps thumping on the floorboards of the wooden veranda. Lightning Dilip flashed his hand out to cover mine. I let my hand slide back across the desk. Dilip’s hand slithered the notes to his side of the desk, and into his pocket.

‘The college man,’ Dilip said to Santosh, as the young constable placed the tea in front of us. ‘The one we brought in from the nightclub, late last night. Bring him here.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Santosh replied, hurrying from the room.

The young cops returned to the office, but Dilip stopped them with an upturned hand.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘We… we checked the under barrack, sir, just as you said. All is in order. And we saw that you ordered chai, so we thought we might… ’

‘Check it again!’ Lightning Dilip snapped, turning his attention back to me.

The young cops stared at me, then shrugged and slouched out of the office again.

‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ Dilip asked sarcastically.

‘Matter of fact, there is. Have you heard anything about a man with snow-white hair, and wearing a dark blue suit, asking questions on the street here in Colaba during the last two weeks?’

I was thinking of the Zodiac Georges and their mysterious stalker. If Dilip had any information on the man who was asking about them, it’d be worth buying.

‘A blue suit, and white hair?’ he mused. ‘And if I did see such a man?’

‘I can think of a thousand reasons why I’d like to know about him.’

He smiled. I took the money from my pocket and slid it halfway across the desk, as before, under the cover of my hand.

‘And I think those reasons,’ he smiled, ‘should lead you to see Mr Wilson, at the Mahesh hotel.’

He reached out to cover my hand with his. I hesitated.

‘Who is he? What did he want?’

‘He’s looking for someone. More than that, he would not tell me.’

I let my hand slide backwards. He took the money.

‘Did you help him find someone?’

‘He wouldn’t provide me with a sufficient explanation, so I threw him out of here.’

‘If he -’ I began, but just then Santosh entered the office with Farzad.

The young Parsi forger was unbloodied but significantly bowed. His eyes were wide with fear, and his chest was rising and falling quickly in shuddering little breaths. I’ve seen the look many times: the look of a man who thinks he’s about to get a beating. Then he saw me, his face brightened, and he rushed toward me.

‘Hey, man, am I glad to see you! I -’

I stood, cutting him off, my hand on his chest.

‘Take it easy,’ I said quickly, worried that he might say something I didn’t want Lightning Dilip to hear. ‘Give your respect to the sergeant, and let’s get outta here.’

‘Sergeant-ji,’ Farzad said, his palms pressed together, ‘thank you so very, very much for your kindness and generosity.’

Dilip leaned back in his chair.

‘Fuck off!’ he said. ‘And don’t come back!’

I pulled Farzad by the sleeve, dragging him with me out of the office and through the wide gate to the street.

On the footpath, a few steps from the entrance arch, I lit two cigarettes, and gave one to the young forger.

‘What happened?’

‘I was a little, well, actually, I was a lot drunk last night. There was this great party at the Drum Beat. It was deadly, man. You should’ve seen me. I danced like a motherfucker. Count on it.’

‘I’m counting on an explanation for why I had to get out of a comfortable bed, at six o’clock in the morning, to hear about you dancing like a motherfucker.’

‘Yeah, of course. Sorry. Well, see, the cops came to close the place down, at about one, as usual. Somebody objected, and made a fuss. I guess I got caught up in all the tamasha, and started giving the cops some cheeky remarks.’

‘Cheeky?’

‘Oh, yeah. I’m known for my cheeky remarks.’

‘That’s not something a grown man boasts about, Farzad.’

‘No, really! I’m known for my -’

‘How cheeky are we talking?’

‘There was this very fat cop. I called him Constable Three-Pigs-Fucking. And another one, I said he was stupider than a monkey’s pet coconut. And I said -’

‘I got it. Get on with it.’

‘Well, the next thing I knew I was on the ground. I tripped, or somebody pushed me. And while I was down, bam, somebody kicks me in the back of the head. One shot, but it was enough to put me out.’

‘Lightning Dilip, working double duty.’

‘Yes, it was. That sergeant motherfucker. Anyway, I woke up in the back of the police jeep with Lightning Dilip’s foot on my chest, and then they threw me in the cells. They wouldn’t let me make a phone call, because of all those -’

‘Cheeky remarks.’

‘Yeah. Can you believe that? I thought I was gonna be in there the whole day, and with a couple of rough-and-ready pastings to go along. How did you find out I was there?’

‘The Company pays all the guys who clean the cells. That’s how we keep our guys supplied when they’re locked up here. One of them got a look at you, and called his contact. They called me.’

‘I’m so fucking glad you came, man. That was my first time in the slammer. Another night in there would’ve been the end of me. Count on it.’

‘Sanjay’s not gonna be happy about this. He spends a lot of money keeping a lid on this ward. You’re gonna have to buy him a new hat.’

‘I… I… but, do you know… what size is his head?’ he asked, desperately worried. ‘I’ve only seen him the one time, and, by my recollection, his head looked, no disrespect, a little on the big side.’

‘He doesn’t wear a hat.’

‘But… you said -’

‘I was kidding. But only about the hat.’

‘I… I’m so sorry. I really fucked up badly. It… it won’t happen again. Can you, maybe, put in a good word for me with Sanjay?’

I was still laughing when a taxi pulled up beside us. Naveen Adair got out of the taxi and reached back through the window to pay the driver. Opening the back door, he helped a beautiful young woman out of the cab. He turned and saw me.

‘Lin! Damn good to see you, man. What brings you here?’

‘Six thousand reasons,’ I replied, staring at the girl.

Her face was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

‘Oh,’ Naveen said, ‘this is Divya. Divya Devnani.’

Divya Devnani, daughter of one of Bombay’s richest men. Photographs of her short, athletically fit body, draped in expensive designer dresses, claimed eye-line positions in the coverage of every A-list event in the city.

And that’s what had thrown me: the unglamorous clothes she wore on that morning. The simple blue T-shirt, lapis bead necklace and jeans weren’t from that other world, in which she was born to rule. It was the girl in the woman standing in front of me, not the woman on the page.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.

‘Got any hash?’ she demanded.

I flicked a glance at Naveen.

‘It’s a long story,’ he sighed.

‘No, it’s not,’ she contradicted him. ‘My dad, Mukesh Devnani – you’ve heard of Mukesh Devnani, I take it?’

‘He’s that guy with the crazy daughter who solicits drugs outside police stations, isn’t he?’

‘Funny,’ she said. ‘Careful now, I’m going to pee in my pants.’

‘You were gonna tell me why it’s not a long story,’ I prompted.

‘I don’t want to tell you, now,’ she sulked.

‘Her father hired a lawyer I know -’ Naveen began.

‘Who then hired this guy,’ she quickly cut in, ‘to be my bodyguard, for a couple of weeks.’

‘I’d say you’re in very good hands.’

‘Thank you,’ Naveen said.

‘Fuck you,’ she said.

‘Nice meeting you,’ I said. ‘So long, Naveen.’

‘And all because I get mixed up with this Bollywood wannabe movie star,’ Divya continued, ignoring me, ‘I mean, not even a real movie star, just a wannabe, for fuck’s sake. And he’s such a fucking jerk, he starts to threaten me when I refuse to go out with him. Can you believe that?’

‘It’s a jungle out there,’ I smiled.

‘You’re telling me,’ she said. ‘Have you got any hash, or not?’

‘I have!’ Farzad said quickly. ‘Count on it!’

We turned to stare at him.

He reached down into the front of his pants, fiddled there for a while, and pulled his hand out to reveal a ten-gram block of Kashmiri hashish, wrapped in clear plastic.

‘There,’ he said, offering it to Divya. ‘It’s all yours. Please accept it as… as a gift, like.’

Divya’s lips peeled a lemon of horror.

‘Did you just pull that thing… out of your underpants?’ she asked, gagging a little.

‘Er… yes… but… I changed my underpants only yesterday night. Count on it!’

‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ Divya demanded of Naveen.

‘He’s with me,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry!’ Farzad said, beginning to put the hash in his pocket. ‘I didn’t mean to -’

‘Stop! What are you doing?’

‘But… I thought you -’

‘Peel the plastic off it,’ she commanded. ‘And then don’t touch it. Just leave it in your hand, on the open plastic. Don’t touch it with your fingers. And don’t touch me. Don’t even think about touching me. Believe me, I’ll know it, if you do. A mind like yours, it’s a toy to me. It’s a toy to any woman. So, don’t think about me. And gimme the fuckin’ hash already, you chudh.’

Farzad began to unwrap the block of hashish, his fingers trembling. He glanced at the petite socialite.

‘You’re thinking!’ Divya warned.

‘No!’ Farzad protested. ‘I’m not!’

‘You’re disgusting.’

Farzad finally succeeded in unwrapping the parcel, leaving the hashish exposed on his palm. Divya picked it up between forefinger and thumb, broke off a little piece, and dropped the rest of it into the silver fish-mouth of her purse.

She took out a cigarette, squeezed some tobacco out of the end of it, and placed the little piece of hash into the blank end. She put the cigarette between her lips, and turned to Naveen for a light. He hesitated.

‘You think this is a good idea?’

‘I’m not going in there to talk to the cops unless I have a smoke,’ she said. ‘I don’t even talk to the downstairs maid until the upstairs maid has given me a smoke.’

Naveen lit the cigarette. She puffed at it, held the smoke in her lungs for a few moments, and then let out a solid stream of smoke. Naveen turned to me.

‘Her father filed a complaint against the wannabe actor, before I came along,’ Naveen said. ‘The actor acted heavy. I paid the actor a visit. We talked. He agreed to back off, and to stay backed off. Now we need to lift the complaint, but she has to do it in person. I want to get it done early, before any reporters get onto it, and -’

‘Let’s fucking go, already!’ Divya snapped, grinding out the cigarette under the sole of her shoe.

Naveen shook my hand. I held it firmly for a moment.

‘The guy following the Zodiac Georges,’ I said. ‘His name’s Wilson, registered at -’

‘The Mahesh,’ Naveen finished for me. ‘I know. In all this, I forgot to tell you. I tracked him down last night. How did you find out?’

‘He came here, looking for information.’

‘Did he get any?’

‘Dilip, the duty sergeant – do you know him?’

‘Yeah. Lightning Dilip. We’ve got a little history.’

‘He says Mr Wilson wouldn’t pay, so he threw him out.’

‘You believe him?’

‘Not usually.’

‘You want me to go see this Wilson?’

‘Not yet. Not without me. Check him out. Find out what you can about him. Get back to me, okay?’

‘Thik,’ Naveen smiled. ‘I’ll get on it, and -’

‘This is the fucking longest I’ve ever stood up,’ Divya interrupted angrily, ‘on my legs, for God’s sake, in the same fucking place, for God’s sake, in my whole fucking life! Do you think we can get on with it now?’

Naveen smiled a goodbye, and escorted the poor little rich girl through the arched gate.

‘It’s Farzad!’ Farzad called after her. ‘My name’s Farzad!’

When he lost sight of her, the young Parsi turned to me, grinning widely.

‘Damn it all to hell, yaar! What a beautiful girl! And such a nice nature! Some of those super-mega-rich girls, they can be very stuck-up and all, so I’ve heard. But she’s so natural, and she’s -’

‘Will you cut it out!’

He opened his mouth to protest, but the words withered when he saw my expression.

‘Sorry,’ he said bashfully. ‘But… did you see the colour of her eyes! Oh, my God! Like bits of shining stuff, you know, dipped in something… really, really full of… really lovely stuff, like a bucket of… loveliness… honey.’

‘Please, Farzad. I haven’t had my breakfast.’

‘Sorry, Lin. Hey, that’s it! Have breakfast! Can you come to my place? Can you come home with me, now? You promised to come this week!’

‘That’s gonna be a no, Farzad.’

‘Please come! I have to see my Mom and Pop, take my bath and change my clothes before I go to work. Come with me. They’ll still be having breakfast at home, some of them, and they’d love to meet you. Especially after you saved my life, and all.’

‘I didn’t save your -’

‘Please, baba! Trust me, believe me, they’re waiting to meet you, and it’s very important that you come, and you’ll find it damn interesting at my house!’

‘Look, I -’

‘Please! Please, Lin!’

Four motorcycles pulled up hard beside us. They were Sanjay Company men. The leader of the group was Ravi, a young soldier in Abdullah’s enforcement group.

‘Hey, Lin,’ Ravi said, his eyes behind mercury lens mirrors. ‘We heard some Scorpions are having breakfast at one of our places in the Fort. We’re all heading there to kick the shit out of them. Wanna come along?’

I glanced at Farzad.

‘I’ve already got a breakfast date,’ I said.

‘Really?’ Farzad said.

‘Okay, Lin,’ Ravi said, putting his bike in gear. ‘I’ll bring you back a souvenir.’

‘Please don’t,’ I said, but he was already riding away.

The Fort area was only a thirty-minute walk from where we were standing, and roughly the same distance from Sanjay’s mansion. If the Scorpions were really provoking a fight so close to home, the war that Sanjay had tried to deal away was already on his doorstep.

‘Do you think they might take me with them, one of these days?’ Farzad asked, watching the four motorcycles vanish in the traffic. ‘It would be so cool, to kick some ass with them.’

I looked at the young forger, who’d been kicked unconscious the night before but was already thinking of kicking someone else. It wasn’t cruelty or callousness: Farzad’s violent fantasy of brotherhood and blood was a boy’s bravado. He was no gangster. After just a few hours in the cells, he was already breaking down. He was a good kid, in a bad Company.

‘If you ever go with them, and I come to hear about it,’ I said, ‘I’ll kick your ass myself.’

He thought about it for a moment.

‘Are you still coming to breakfast, please?’

‘Count on it,’ I said, putting an arm around his shoulder, and leading him to my bike.

Chapter Fifteen

Bombay, even now, is a city of words. Everyone talks, everywhere, and all the time. Drivers ask other drivers for directions, strangers talk to strangers, cops talk to criminals, Left talks to Right, and if you want a letter or parcel delivered, you have to include a few words about a landmark in the address: opposite the Heera Panna, or nearby to Copper Chimney. And words in Bombay, even little words like please, please come, still have adventures attached, like sails.

Farzad rode pillion with me for the short trip to the Colaba Back Bay, near Cuffe Parade, pointing out his favourite places. He liked to talk, that kid, and started three stories inspired by places we passed, but didn’t finish any of them.

When we parked outside his parents’ home I looked up at a huge house, at least three storeys high, with gabled attics. The impressive, triple-fronted house was one of three between streets on either side, forming a small inner-city block.

Joined to the similar homes on either side, the Daruwalla mansion presented a façade that we South Bombay partisans love: the architectural flourishes inherited from the British Raj, cast in local granite and sandstone by Indian artists.

The windows boasted stained-glass embellishments, decorative stone arches, and wrought-iron security spirals, sprouting elegant metal vine leaf traceries. A flowering hedge gave privacy and shaded the morning sun.

The wide, wooden door, flanked by Rajasthan pillars and adorned with complex geometric carvings, swung open silently as Farzad used his key and led me into the vestibule.

The high, marble-walled entry hall was decorated with garlands of flowers trailing from urns set into scalloped alcoves. Incense filled the air with the scent of sandalwood. Directly ahead of us, opposite the main door, was a ceiling-high curtain made of red velvet.

‘Are you ready?’ Farzad asked theatrically, his hand on the partition of the curtains.

‘I’m armed,’ I smiled. ‘If that’s what you mean.’

Farzad pulled one half of the curtains aside, holding it back for me to pass. We walked on through a dark passageway and arrived at a set of folding doors. Farzad slid the panels back. I stepped through.

The vast space beyond the corridor was so high that I could only vaguely make out the detail of its sunlit uppermost reaches, and the width clearly encompassed a far greater space than Farzad’s home alone.

At ground level, two long tables had been set for breakfast, with perhaps fifteen place settings at each table. Several men, women and children were sitting there.

What appeared to be two fully equipped kitchens, open to view, formed the left and right boundaries of the ground floor. Beyond them, doors at the back and sides of the vast chamber led to other closed rooms.

My eyes roved to the upper floors. Ladders led to head-height walkways. Ladders from those wooden pathways led to still higher boardwalks, supported on bamboo scaffolding. Several men and women chipped or scraped at the walls serenely, here and there on the walkways.

A parting in the monsoon cloud sent sunlight spilling from high turret windows. The whole space was suddenly a topaz-yellow lucency. It was like a cathedral, without the fear.

‘Farzad!’ a woman screamed, and every head turned.

‘Hi, Mom!’ Farzad said, his hand on my shoulder.

‘Hi, Mom?’ she yelled. ‘I’ll take your Hi, Mom, and beat you black and blue with it. Where have you been?’

Others came to join us.

‘I’ve brought Lin,’ Farzad said, hoping it might help his cause.

‘Oh, Farzad, my son,’ she sobbed, pulling him to her in a suffocating embrace.

Just as swiftly she pushed him away and slapped his face.

‘Ow! Mom!’ Farzad pleaded, rubbing his face.

Farzad’s Mother was in her fifties. She was short, with a shapely figure and a neat, gamine haircut that suited her soft features. She wore a floral apron over her striped dress, and a string of well-matched pearls at her neck.

‘What are you doing, you wicked boy?’ she demanded. ‘Are you working for the hospitals now, drumming up trade for those doctors by giving everybody a this-thing?’

‘Heart attack,’ a grey-haired man I guessed to be her husband helped her.

‘Yes, giving everybody a this-thing,’ she said.

‘Mom, it wasn’t my -’

‘So, you’re Lin!’ she said, cutting him off and turning to face me. ‘Keki Uncle, may his spirit shine in our eyes, used to talk about you a lot. Did he mention me? Anahita? His niece? Farzad’s mom? Arshan’s wife? He said you were quite the one for talking philosophy. Tell me, what is your take on the free will versus determination dilemma?’

‘Give the boy a chance to relax, Mother,’ Farzad’s father said as he shook my hand. ‘My name is Arshan. I’m very pleased to meet you, Lin.’

He turned to Farzad then, fixing him with a stern but loving frown.

‘And as for you, young man -’

‘I can explain, Pop! I -’

‘You can explain my hand across your backside!’ Anahita growled. ‘You can explain how we worried so much we didn’t get a wink’s worth of sleep the whole night? You can explain how your poor father was roaming on the road at two o’clock in the morning, looking for you, because maybe a water truck ran over you and left you crunched up like scrambled eggs in a ditch?’

‘Mom -’

‘Do you know how many ditches there are in this area? This is the peak area for ditches. And your father searched through every one of them, looking for your scrambled eggs corpse. And you have the shamelessness to stand here, in front of us, without a scratch on your miserable hide?’

‘You might at least be limping,’ a young man said as he approached us to shake hands with Farzad. ‘Or slightly disfigured, na?’

‘This is my friend Ali,’ Farzad said, exchanging a penitent smile with the young man, who was his twin in height and weight, and seemed to be roughly the same age.

‘Salaam aleikum,’ I said.

‘Wa aleikum salaam, Lin,’ Ali said, shaking hands. ‘Welcome to the dream factory.’

‘Lin got me out of jail this morning,’ Farzad announced.

‘Jail!’ Anahita shrieked. ‘Better you should have been in one of those ditches, with your poor father.’

‘Well, he’s home now, Mother,’ Arshan said, gently pushing us toward the tables on the left side of the huge room. ‘And I’ll bet these boys are both very hungry.’

‘Starving, Pop!’ Farzad said, moving to take a place at the table.

‘No you don’t!’ a woman countered, tugging at Farzad’s sleeve.

She was wearing a colourful salwar kameez of pale green tapered trousers and a flowing yellow-orange tunic. ‘Not with those hands full of jail germs! Who knows what diseases you’re infesting us with, even as we speak. Wash your hands!’

‘You heard her!’ Anahita said. ‘Wash your hands! And you, too, Lin. He might have infected you with his jail germs.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I have to warn you in advance, though,’ she cautioned. ‘I lean towards determinism, and I’m ready to roll my sleeves up, if you’re a free will man.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And I don’t pull my punches,’ she added. ‘Not when it comes to philosophy.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

We washed our hands at a sink in the open kitchen, and then sat down at the long table on the left-hand side of the huge room. The woman in the salwar kameez immediately served us with bowls of meat in fragrant gravy.

‘Have some mutton now, you young fellows,’ she said, seizing the moment to pinch Farzad’s cheek between her fingers. ‘You’re a naughty, naughty boy!’

‘You don’t even know what I’ve done!’ Farzad protested.

‘I don’t need to know any such thing,’ the woman averred, giving his cheek another mutilating twist. ‘You are always a naughty, naughty boy, no matter what you’re doing. Even when you’re doing good things, you’re naughty also, isn’t it so?’

‘And cheeky,’ I added.

‘Oh, don’t get me started on cheeky,’ Anahita agreed.

‘Thanks, Lin,’ Farzad muttered.

‘Don’t mention it.’

The woman in the salwar tunic twisted one more bruise into Farzad’s cheek.

‘You’re a cheeky, cheeky, cheeky boy.’

‘This is Zaheera Auntie,’ Farzad said, rubbing his face. ‘Ali’s mom.’

‘If you have a taste for pure vegetarian,’ another woman, wearing a pale blue sari, suggested brightly, ‘you might like to try this daal roti. It’s fresh. Made from just now.’

She placed two small bowls of the saffron-coloured daal on the table, and unwrapped a napkin of freshly cooked rotis.

‘Eat! Eat!’ she commanded. ‘Don’t be shy.’

‘This is Jaya Auntie,’ Farzad stage-whispered. ‘It’s kind of a competition between Zaheera Auntie and Jaya Auntie as to who’s the best cook, and my Mom stays out of it. We’d better be diplomatic. I’ll start with the mutton, and you start with the daal, okay?’

We pulled the bowls of food closer, and began to eat. It was delicious, and I ate hungrily. The two women exchanged knowing glances, happy with the drawn result, and sat down beside us.

A few adults and children joined us at the long table. Some came from the ground-floor apartments, while others climbed down from the interconnected catwalks to stand near us, or sit further along at the table.

As Farzad took a hungry bite of his mutton in masala gravy, Anahita approached from behind and smacked him on the back of the head, as swiftly and unexpectedly as Lightning Dilip might’ve done. All the children near us laughed and giggled.

‘Ow! Mom! What did you do that for?’

‘You should be eating stones!’ she declared, waving the side of her hand at him. ‘Stones from those ditches your poor father was searching, instead of tasty mutton chunkies.’

‘The daal is also tasty, isn’t it?’ Jaya Auntie asked me.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said quickly.

‘Your poor father, out the whole night in those bloody ditches.’

‘Enough about the ditches, Mother dear,’ Farzad’s father said gently. ‘Let the boy tell us what happened.’

‘I was at the Drum Beat last night,’ Farzad began.

‘Oh! What music did they play?’ a pretty girl of perhaps seventeen asked.

She was sitting a little way along the table, and she leaned in to catch Farzad’s eye.

‘This is Kareena Cousin, Jaya Auntie’s daughter,’ Farzad said, without looking at her. ‘Kareena, this is Lin.’

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling shyly.

‘Hi,’ I answered her.

Having finished the bowl of vegetables, I gently pushed it away. Zaheera Auntie immediately shoved the spare bowl of mutton in front of me, so close that it almost fell into my lap. I grasped the bowl with both hands.

‘Thanks.’

‘Good mutton,’ Zaheera Auntie confided, with a wink. ‘Good for all of your angers and such.’

‘My angers. Yes, ma’am. Thanks.’

‘So, you were at the Drum Beat nightclub,’ Arshan said quietly, ‘which I warned you against, many a time, son.’

‘What warnings?’ Anahita asked, slapping Farzad on the back of the head.

‘Ow! Mom! Cut it out, yaar!’

‘Your warnings are delicious to him! He eats them up like sweeties. Yum, yum, yum! I’ve told you, operant conditioning is the only thing that works on this boy, but you’re such a Steiner fan. I’d say your son got fairly Steinered last night, wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t think you can blame the Steiner School,’ Jaya cut in.

‘Indeed,’ Zaheera agreed. ‘The methodology is pretty sound, na? My Suleiman was saying only last night -’

‘And, while you were at the nightclub… ’ Arshan prompted patiently.

‘Well,’ Farzad said, casting a wary eye about for his Mother’s hand. ‘There was this party and all, and we -’

‘Were they doing any new dances?’ Kareena asked. ‘Did they play the music from the new Mithun picture?’

‘I can get you that music this afternoon,’ Ali answered her casually, taking a piece of Farzad’s bread and biting off a chunk. ‘Whatever you want. Even stuff from movies that haven’t come out yet.’

‘Wow!’ the girl sighed.

‘And while you were at this club,’ Arshan persisted resolutely.

‘And while you were at this Steiner School nightclub,’ Anahita interrupted, raising her hand, ‘free as a bird, your father was in the ditches!’

‘No,’ Arshan said, his patience a sympathetic string. ‘I’m pretty sure the ditches came later, sweetheart. So, what happened at the club, that put you in jail?’

‘I’m… I’m not sure,’ Farzad said, frowning. ‘I drank too much. That I’ll freely admit. And there was this argument, when the cops came to close the place down. Next thing I know, I was lying on the ground. I fell, I think. And then this cop kicked me in the back of the head, right where you keep hitting me, Mom, and I passed out. I woke up in the police jeep, and they locked me up, without a phone call or a by your leave. Somebody there called the Company, and they called Lin, and he came and got me out. He saved my hide. Count on it.’

‘That’s it?’ Farzad’s Mother asked, contempt drawing down the corners of her mouth. ‘That’s your big adventure?’

‘I didn’t say it was a big adventure!’ Farzad protested, but his Mother was already gone, headed for the open kitchen.

‘Thank you, Lin, for bringing our boy home to us,’ Arshan said, his hand resting on my forearm for a moment.

He turned his attention back to Farzad once more.

‘Let me get this straight. A policeman kicked you in the head, while you were on the ground. Kicked you so hard that you lost consciousness?’

‘That’s right, Pop. I wasn’t doing anything. I was too drunk to do anything. I was just lying there, where I fell over.’

‘Do you know this policeman’s name?’ Arshan asked thoughtfully.

‘Lightning Dilip, they call him. He’s a duty sergeant at the Colaba lock-up. Why?’

‘My dad’s gonna go nuts about this!’ Ali said. ‘He’ll have this Lightning Dilip’s badge. He’ll bring the entire law faculty with him.’

‘And my dad will bring the medical fraternity on board,’ Kareena added, her eyes fierce. ‘We’ll have this cop kicked off the force.’

‘Absolutely!’ Jaya agreed. ‘Let’s get started!’

‘Can I say something here?’

Everyone turned toward me.

‘I know this Lightning Dilip pretty well. He doesn’t bear grudges easily. He doesn’t even bear bribes easily.’

I paused, feeling the attention in the group.

‘Go on,’ Arshan said softly.

‘You can’t badge this cop. You can make his life very unpleasant for a while, and get him moved somewhere for a while, maybe, but you can’t badge him. He knows too much about too many people. No-one’s saying he doesn’t deserve it, but if you make his life unpleasant, sooner or later he’ll come back. And when he comes back, he’ll disturb your happiness again. Probably forever.’

‘Are you saying we shouldn’t do anything about this?’ Ali asked.

‘I’m saying that if you go up against this guy, be prepared for a war. Don’t underestimate him.’

‘I agree,’ Arshan said quietly.

‘What?’ Ali and Jaya asked together.

‘Farzad is lucky. Lin’s right. It could’ve been much worse. And the last thing we need, right now, is a sociopathic policeman on our doorstep.’

‘And operant conditioning takes another beating,’ Anahita said, returning from the kitchen. ‘What is it with you Steiners, and running away?’

‘Don’t go to that nightclub again, Farzad,’ Arshan said, ignoring her. ‘Do you hear me? I forbid you.’

‘Yes, Pop,’ Farzad said, hanging his head.

‘Okay,’ Arshan said, standing to clear the dishes. ‘Are you finished with these?’

He and Anahita took the dishes to the near kitchen, and returned bearing two fresh bowls and two bottles of soft drink.

‘Nice custard,’ Anahita said, dropping bowls of sweet custard in front of us. ‘To fill your blood with sugar.’

‘And Rogers Raspberry,’ Arshan said, placing the crimson-coloured soft drink bottles beside our bowls. ‘There’s not many problems in life that a long, cold glass of Rogers Raspberry can’t make look much rosier. Drink up!’

‘I like what you’ve done with the place,’ I remarked. ‘Who’s your decorator? Harlan Ellison?’

Farzad turned to face his father.

‘He saved my life, Pop. The families voted. I think this is the time. What do you say?’

‘It seems that it is,’ Arshan murmured, glancing around at the Escheresque web of ladders, handmade stairs and catwalks scaling upwards around him in the vast, half-bell chamber.

‘Is that a yes?’ Farzad asked.

Arshan swung his leg across the bench seat we were sitting on, and faced me directly.

‘What’s your guess that we’re doing here?’ he asked.

‘Taking a wild stab in the step-ladder, I’d say you’re looking for something.’

‘Precisely,’ Arshan grinned, showing a row of neat, small, perfectly white teeth. ‘I see why Keki Uncle liked you. That’s exactly what we’re doing. All of this, everything you see here, is one great big treasure hunt, for a very valuable treasure chest.’

‘As in… a pirate’s treasure chest?’

‘In a way, yes,’ he replied. ‘But a merchant’s treasure – smaller, and much more valuable.’

‘It must be, for all this remodelling.’

‘Farzad,’ Arshan said. ‘Get the list.’

When Farzad left us, his father began to explain.

‘My great-grandfather was a very successful man. He amassed a considerable fortune. Even after putting much of his money into charities and public works, in the Parsi tradition, his wealth was still equal to that of any industrialist or merchant of his age.’

Farzad rejoined us, sitting beside me on the long bench seat. He passed a folded parchment document to his father. Arshan’s hand rested on the document while he finished his explanation.

‘When the British could see the writing on the wall, and they knew their rule here was coming to an end, they began to leave Bombay, some of them in great haste. Many of the most successful British businessmen and their wives feared that after independence there would be a violent backlash against them. There was something of a mad scramble, in the last weeks and days.’

‘And your great-grandfather was in the right place, at the right time.’

‘It was pretty well known that my great-grandpa had loads of undeclared cash that he didn’t keep in bank accounts,’ Farzad said.

‘Money that was never adequately accounted for,’ Arshan added.

‘And that missing cash,’ I said, ‘bought stuff from the departing British.’

‘Exactly. Fearing that the Indian authorities might think they’d stolen or looted the jewels they had, and who knows, maybe some of them did, many of the British sold off their jewellery in advance, for cash. My great-grandfather bought a very large quantity of those jewels in the last months before independence, and he hid them -’

‘Somewhere in this house,’ I concluded for him.

Arshan sighed, and allowed his gaze to roam along the catwalks and conduits that wound their way around the woven basket of the chamber.

‘But there was no clue where the treasure was hidden?’

‘Not a word,’ Arshan sighed, opening the parchment letter, and holding it between us. ‘The document we found in an old book is very specific about the number and type of gems, and the fact that they were hidden somewhere, even to describing the chest they were hidden in, but there was no hint about exactly where. My great-grandfather owned all three of the houses in this block, and in his time he lived and worked in them all.’

‘So you started looking.’

‘We searched the rooms, and all the furniture. We turned everything over, looking for secret drawers. Then we searched the walls for secret panels, or hidden sliding doors, or suchlike. When we found nothing, we knew we had to start breaking into the walls.’

‘We started here, on the joining walls in our own house,’ Anahita said, as Kareena placed a bone china cup of chai in front of me. ‘But then, when we started on the this-thing -’

‘The common wall,’ Arshan helped her.

‘Yes, when we started breaking into the this-thing, a lot of stuff started falling down inside the house of our neighbours, the Khans.’

‘My favourite illuminated clock, for one thing,’ Zaheera said ruefully. ‘It had a waterfall, you know, so it looked like water was falling down all the time. Then the whole clock fell down, and it smashed into a million pieces. I haven’t found one as good since.’

‘And when things started falling down in their house, the Khans came here, asking us what we were doing.’

‘Which is where my dad came in,’ Farzad’s young friend, Ali, said.

‘Literally,’ Farzad joked.

‘Our two families have been close for ever,’ Ali said. ‘Arshan Uncle and Anahita Auntie decided to tell my dad exactly what they were doing, and to invite him to join in the hunt for the treasure.’

‘We thought that my great-grandfather might have hidden the box of jewels inside the common wall,’ Arshan added. ‘There were a lot of renovations and changes made to these houses, in his time, and there was no way into the walls without involving the Khans.’

‘My Suleiman came home that night, after visiting here,’ Zaheera Auntie said, ‘and sat the whole family down for a meeting. He told us about the treasure, and the invitation to join in the hunt, even if it meant breaking down the wall between our two houses. We were all talking at once, like crazy people!’

‘It was damn cool,’ Ali added.

‘And arguing also,’ Zaheera said. ‘But after a lot of heart-to-heart, we decided to join in the hunt for the treasure, and we started breaking down the wall the very next day.’

‘But the treasure wasn’t in there,’ the pretty girl, Kareena, said. ‘Not that we’ve found so far. And that brought my dad into the mela.’

‘Arshan and Anahita invited us in for a talk,’ Jaya explained, smiling at the recollection. ‘When we got here, we found all the Daruwallas and all the Khans, and all the breaking-down inside. Then they invited us to join in with them, because they thought maybe the treasure was inside the wall between our two houses, on the other side. And to search through the upper floors, they needed cooperation from us. My husband, Rahul, agreed right there, on the spot. He’s mad for adventure.’

‘He skis,’ Kareena said. ‘In the snow.’

People shook their heads in wonder.

‘And you’re completely sure this treasure is really here?’

‘Count on it,’ Farzad said. ‘When we didn’t find the treasure in that wall, we started working on the ceilings and floors between us and the roof. It’s here, and we’ll find it.’

‘It’s a kind of madhouse, for sane people,’ Kareena finished for him. ‘With three happy families, one Hindu, one Muslim and one Parsi, all living together in it.’

The people around me, members of three extended families from three faiths, shrugged and smiled.

‘There’s no first and last here,’ Arshan said softly. ‘We’re in this together. We all agreed to split the treasure three ways, with equal shares to each family.’

‘If you find it,’ I said.

‘When we find it,’ a few voices corrected me.

‘And this has been going on for how long?’

‘Nearly five years now,’ Farzad answered. ‘We started right after we found the parchment. The Khans came in a year after that, and the Malhotras came in about six months later. I went to college and Wall Street and back again, in the time we’ve been searching.’

‘But this isn’t our real job, or anything,’ Kareena Malhotra said. ‘My dad’s a doctor. Ali’s pop, Suleiman Uncle, teaches law at Bombay University. Arshan Uncle is an architect, which is how we can do all this renovation, without the whole thing falling down. And we’re all studying, those of us who don’t work full time outside, or with the kids here at home.’

‘The treasure hunt is what we do at night and holidays, mostly,’ Ali added. ‘Or if we get a free day, like this one, where everybody was so worried about Farzad being missing all night. Thanks for the holiday, cuz.’

‘Any time,’ Farzad smiled.

‘And we have two kitchens,’ Anahita declared triumphantly. ‘Veg and non-veg, so there’s no problem.’

‘Indeed,’ Jaya Auntie said. ‘Really, you know, a lot of differences between communities come down to ghobi and gosht, cauliflowers and kebabs. If there are two kitchens, everybody eats the food they like, and everything is hunky and this-thing -’

‘Dory,’ Anahita said, and the two women exchanged smiles.

‘And we’re all in this together, make or break,’ Ali added, ‘so we don’t have a reason to argue.’

‘Except for philosophy,’ Anahita contradicted him.

‘As interesting as this mystery is -’ I said, but Farzad cut me off.

‘I told you it would be interesting, didn’t I?’

‘Ah… yeah. But we still didn’t get to the part where I know why you’re telling me about all this.’

‘We have a problem,’ Arshan said simply, staring his earnest frown directly into my eyes. ‘And we were hoping you would help us with it.’

‘Okay. Tell me.’

‘An inspector from the City Council came here a few weeks ago,’ Ali said, ‘and he got a look inside at some of the work.’

‘He doesn’t know what we’re doing, of course,’ Farzad added. ‘We told him we’re renovating the houses to make apartments.’

‘What brought him here in the first place?’ I asked.

‘We think it was a neighbour down the street,’ Arshan explained. ‘He saw us taking delivery of some heavy steel girders a few months ago. We use them to support the arches, when we take out sections of the walls.’

‘He tried to buy our house a few years back,’ Anahita said. ‘The rascally fellow tried every trick in the book to make us sell. When we refused, he was angrier than a scalded cat.’

‘It’s bad luck to hurt a cat,’ Zaheera said, nodding sagely.

‘You mean, even in similes?’ Anahita asked earnestly.

‘I’m just saying, one must be prudent, where cats are concerned. Probably even in similes.’

The whole group nodded.

After a few moments of silence, I spoke again.

‘So… cats aside, you need what, from me?’

‘Planning permits,’ Arshan said, coming back to the moment. ‘The City Council official agreed, after a lot of negotiation, to accept a bribe to let us get on with the… renovations. But he insists that we get the proper planning permit certificates, or damn good copies.’

‘To cover his arse,’ Ali said.

‘He can’t fake the permits, and he can’t steal them,’ Farzad added. ‘But if we can fake them, he promised that the investigation will end with him.’

‘If you can fake them for us, Lin,’ Arshan corrected him.

‘Yeah, if you can fake them, the inspector will sign off on them, and leave us alone to search for the treasure, like always. No problem. Count on it.’

‘So, that’s it,’ Arshan sighed, resting his elbows on the long table. ‘If you can’t help us, we’ll have to stop. If you can help us, we can go on until we find the treasure.’

‘You can make those documents yourself,’ I said to Farzad. ‘You’re pretty good. You don’t need me.’

‘Thanks for the compliment,’ he grinned, ‘but there’s a couple of problems. First, I don’t have any contacts at the City Council. And second, the boys in the factory won’t take orders from me on a job like this, and they’ll probably tell Sanjay about it. But you, on the other hand… ’

‘Why am I always on the other hand?’

‘You can do it discreetly, or let me do it, because you’re the boss at the factory,’ Farzad said, pushing on. ‘With your help, it could be done without anyone coming to know about it.’

‘You might think this is a strange question,’ I said, glancing around at the expectant faces staring at me, ‘but it’s probably a lot stranger not to ask it. What makes you think I won’t help you out, and then tell Sanjay anyway?’

‘It’s a fair question,’ Arshan allowed, ‘and I hope you won’t be offended if I tell you it’s not the first time it has been raised in this room. The bottom line is that we need your help, and we believe we can trust you. Keki Uncle thought very highly of you. He told us, many times, how you were with Khaderbhai at the end, and that you are a man of honour.’

The use of the word honour struck at my chest, especially when they were asking me to conceal something from my boss, Sanjay. But I liked them. I already liked them more than I liked Sanjay. And Sanjay was rich enough. He didn’t need a piece of their treasure, if they ever found it.

‘I’ll have your paperwork this week,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell Sanjay it’s a favour to a friend, which it is. I’ve done off-the-books jobs before. But I want it to end here. I don’t want this coming back to me from Sanjay, Farzad. Are we clear?’

The group of people around me burst into applause and cheering. Several of them rushed forward to pat me on the back, hug me, and shake my hand.

‘Thank you so much!’ Arshan said, smiling happily. ‘We’ve been so worried about this City Council thing. It’s the first real challenge to what we’ve been doing here. We… we’ve come to enjoy this treasure hunting of ours, and we… well… I think we’d be as lost as the treasure is, if the council shut us down.’

‘And we’re not expecting you to do this for nothing,’ Farzad added. ‘Tell him, Pop!’

‘If you’ll accept it, we want to give you one per cent of the treasure,’ Arshan said.

‘If you find it,’ I smiled.

‘When we find it,’ several voices corrected me.

‘When you find it,’ I agreed.

‘Now, how about some more daal roti?’ Jaya asked.

‘And some chicken pieces,’ Zaheera suggested.

‘And a nice egg and curry sandwich,’ Anahita offered, ‘with a long glass of raspberry.’

‘No, no, thank you,’ I said quickly, stepping up and away from the table. ‘I’m still completely full. Maybe next time.’

‘Definitely next time,’ Anahita said.

‘Sure, definitely.’

‘I’ll see you out,’ Farzad said, as I made my way to the long curtain closing off the front of the house. The whole group walked with us to the door.

I said my goodbyes, shaking hands and exchanging hugs, and stepped through the vestibule to the street beyond with Farzad.

A monsoon shower had soaked the street, but the heavy clouds had passed, and bright sunshine steamed the moisture from every mirrored surface.

Somehow, that first glimpse of the street seemed strange and unfamiliar, as if the weird megacosm of catwalks and crawlspaces in the gigantic bell-chamber of Farzad’s house was the real world, and the gleaming, steaming street beyond was the illusion.

‘I… ah… I hope my mixed-up family didn’t freak you out,’ Farzad muttered.

‘Not at all.’

‘You don’t think, you know, it’s a bit… crazy, na? What we’re doing?’

‘Everybody’s searching for something. And from what I can see, you’re all happy.’

‘We are,’ he agreed quickly.

‘What kind of crazy person doesn’t like happy?’

Impulsively, the young Parsi reached out and hugged me stiffly.

‘You know, Lin,’ he said, as we parted from the hug, ‘there is actually something else I wanted to ask you.’

‘Something else, yet?’

‘Yes. You know, if you ever get the phone number of that girl, that beautiful girl with the loveliness in her eyes, that Divya, the one we met outside the police station this morning, I -’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Really no?’

‘No.’

‘But -’

‘No,’ I said gently, smiling at his puzzled frown.

He shook his head, turned, and walked back inside the building, the hive, the home. I faced the sun and stood for a while on the rain-scented street.

Money’s a drug too, of course, but I wasn’t worried for Farzad’s extended family. They weren’t hooked. Not yet. They’d torn their homes apart, true enough, but they’d replaced them with a common space of sharing. They’d turned their lives upside down, but it was an adventure: a voyage within themselves. They made sense of the dream they lived. It was still fun, for them, and I liked them very much for it.

I was standing, with my face in the sunlight, looking calm, very calm, and crying, somewhere inside. Sometimes the sight of what you lost, reflected in another love, is too much: too much of what was, and isn’t any more.

Family, home: little words that rise like atolls in earthquakes of the heart. Loss, loneliness: little words that flood the valleys of alone.

In the island of the present, Lisa was slipping away, and a spell had been cast by the mention of a name: Karla. Karla.

It’s a foolish thing to try to love, when the one you really love, the one you’re born to love, is lost somewhere in the same square circle of a city. It’s a desperate, foolish thing to try to love someone at all. Love doesn’t try: love is immediate, and inescapable. The mention of Karla’s name was fire, inside, and my heart wouldn’t stop reminding me.

We were castaways, Karla and I, because we were cast out, both of us. Lisa and all the other bright people we loved, or tried to love, were volunteers, sailing to the Island City on dreams. Karla and I crawled onto the sand from ships we’d sunk ourselves.

I was a broken thing. I was a lonely, broken thing. Maybe Karla was, too, in her own way.

I looked at the domed house: separate entrances on the outside, joined lives on the inside. Whether they found the treasure or not, it was already that marvel, that miracle, an answered prayer.

I turned to the storm-faded sunlight again, and rejoined the world of exiles that was my home.

Chapter Sixteen

I swung the bike away from Farzad’s house and into the wide, divided boulevard that followed the Island City coast north. Densely packed, sodden rainclouds closed in overhead, darkening the street.

I began to pass a wide, sheltered inlet, and slowed down.

Long wooden fishing boats painted vivid blue, red and green had been dragged onto the shore for maintenance work. The fishermen’s simple huts leaned into one another, their plastic sheet coverings secured to the corrugated roofs against storm winds by bricks and pieces of broken concrete.

Nets were strung between wooden poles. Men worked on them, threading spools of nylon through holes and woven loops. Children played on the sand, defying the gathering rainstorm, and chased one another between the boats and webs of netting.

From dawn, the little bay was a small but important part of the local fishing community. After midnight it was a small but important part of the local smuggling community, who used fast boats to bring in cigarettes, whiskey, currencies and drugs.

Every time I passed the sandy beach I scanned it, looking for faces I knew, and signs of illicit trade. I had no personal interest: Farid the Fixer administered the bay, and the profits and opportunities were his. It was professional curiosity that drew my eye.

All of us in the black market knew every place in South Bombay where crime flourished, and all of us sent a discreet, searching eye into them, every time we passed. We began in caves and dark places, Didier once said, and we criminals still miss them terribly.

I let my eyes glance back to the wide divided road, and saw three motorcycles pass me on the other side. They were Scorpions. The man riding in the centre was Danda. I recognised one other as Hanuman, the big man who’d given me a professional beating in the warehouse.

I stopped my bike, shifted into neutral gear, and adjusted the rear-view mirror until I could see them. They’d stopped at a traffic signal, some way in the distance behind me. As I watched in the mirror, they talked, argued, but then swung their bikes around and came after me. I sighed, and hung my head for a moment.

I didn’t want to fight them, but I was in my own area, and I didn’t want to lead them into any of the Company operations. And too proud to run, I didn’t want to let them chase me into the arms of my Company friends, only a few streets away.

Kicking the bike into gear, I let out the clutch, rapped the throttle, and spun the bike around in a tight circle. Gunning the engine, I accelerated toward the oncoming Scorpions, on the wrong side of the divided road.

I had nothing to lose. There were three of them, and if the charge didn’t go well for me, I was in trouble anyway. I’d come off motorcycles before, and preferred to take my chances with an accident than a massacre. And my bike was in everything with me, all the way, as I was with her.

They must’ve had something to lose, or less loyal motorcycles: at the last moment they turned their bikes aside.

Two of them rattled away into spiralling arcs, as they tried to keep their bikes under control. The third bike spun out, crashing into a slide against a wall at the side of the road.

I braked hard, whirling through a half-turn, one boot sliding on the wet road, and threw my bike onto the side-stand, cutting the engine with the kill-switch.

The fallen rider struggled to his feet. It was Danda, and me with no aftershave. I met him with left and right punches that threw him backwards onto the ground.

The other Scorpions let their bikes fall, and ran at me. I felt bad for their bikes.

Ducking, weaving and throwing punches where I could, I battled the two Scorpions on the side of the road, beside the tumbled scatter of their motorcycles. Cars slowed on the road as they passed, but none stopped.

Recovering from the blows, Danda ran at us. He stumbled past his friends and into me, grasping at my vest to steady himself.

I lost my footing on the wet road and fell backwards. Danda landed on top of me, growling like an animal.

He was burrowing his head in next to mine, trying to bite me. I felt his mouth against my neck, the wetness of his tongue, and the blunt nub of his head, as he strained to get close enough to put his teeth on my throat.

His fingers were locked in a clutch of my vest. I couldn’t throw him off. The other two Scorpions kicked at me, trying to land blows in the gaps between Danda’s body and mine. They missed, and kicked Danda a couple of times. He didn’t seem to notice.

I hadn’t been hurt, or even properly hit by anyone. I could feel my two knives pressing against my back on the ground. I had a policy. I never drew the knives unless the other man was armed, or if it became a question of life or death.

I managed to roll over, wrestled away Danda’s grip on my vest, and stood up quickly. I should’ve stayed down. Hanuman was behind me. He wrapped an arm around my throat from behind. His powerful arm began to choke off my air.

Danda rushed at me again, trying to burrow his head in close. He was a biter. I knew one in prison: a man whose anger suddenly became biting, until pieces were missing from anyone he attacked. A victim knocked his teeth out, leaving the rest of us in peace, and I was thinking of doing the same to Danda.

He was pressed up close against me, his head tucked in under Hanuman’s arm, his teeth against my arm. I couldn’t hit him in any place that might make him let go.

I reached up, closed my fingers around Danda’s ear, and ripped at it hard. I felt the whole flap of his ear give way, tearing itself from the side of his head. When he stopped biting, I stopped ripping.

He screamed, hurling himself backwards, clutching at the bloody wound.

Shifting my hand around, I tried to shove it between Hanuman’s body and mine. I wanted to reach one of my knives, or one of his balls; either one would do.

The third man rushed at me. In his fury, he began to slap at my head, standing too close. I kicked him in the balls. He fell as if he’d been shot.

I closed my hand around the hilt of my knife, as darkness closed a hand around my throat. The knife was free. I tried to stab the big man in the leg. I missed. The knife slid away to the side.

I tried again. I missed. Then the blade found flesh, a small cut on the outer edge of Hanuman’s thigh. He flinched.

It was enough to get a bearing. I struck again and rammed the blade into the meat of his thigh. The big man lurched suddenly, and I lost my grip on the knife.

The arm didn’t weaken. I’d followed my training, turning my chin into the crook of his elbow to lessen the choking effect. It was no use. I was going under.

A voice, blurred and rumbling, seemed to be calling my name. I twisted my head against the locked muscle and bone of Hanuman’s arm. I heard a voice.

‘Look away, now, boyo,’ it said.

I saw something, a fist, coming at me from the sky. It was huge, that fist, as big as the world. But just when it should’ve smashed into my face it struck somewhere else, somewhere so close that I felt the shudder of it. And again it struck, and again.

And the arm around my neck released its grip, as Hanuman fell to his knees and flopped forward, his head made of lead.

I rolled and stood, shaping up, my fists close to my face, coughing and breathing hard. I turned to look around me. Concannon was standing near the fallen Hanuman, his arms folded.

He smiled at me, and then nodded his head in a little warning.

I turned quickly. It was Danda, all blood-streaked teeth, blood-streaked eyes, and blood-streaked ear. And me with no aftershave.

He swung a wild punch trying to knock me out. He missed. I snapped a fist at the gash where the ragged flap of his ear was hanging by a tongue-tip of skin. He screamed, and it rained. Sudden rain spilled and splashed on us.

Danda ran, clutching at the side of his head, rain running red into his shirt. I turned to see Concannon swinging a kick at the other departing Scorpion. The man yelped, and joined Danda, stumbling toward a stand of taxis.

Hanuman groaned, wakened by the rain. He crawled to his knees, stood unsteadily, and realised that he was alone. He hesitated for a moment.

I turned to look at Concannon quickly. The Irishman was grinning widely, all clenched teeth.

‘Oh, Lord,’ he said softly. ‘Please make this man too stupid to run away.’

Hanuman lurched away, limping after his friends.

My knife was lying in the rain, still bleeding into the bitumen. Some way down the wide road, the Scorpions tumbled into a taxi as it sped away from the rank. I picked up the knife, cleaned it, closed it and slid it into the scabbard.

‘Fuckin’ grand fight!’ Concannon said, slapping me on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get stoned.’

I didn’t want to, but I owed him that, and more.

‘Okay.’

There was a chai shop beneath a very large tree, close to where we stood. I pushed my bike under the shelter of the tree. Accepting a rag from the chai stall owner, I dried the bike off. When the job was done, I began to walk back to the road.

‘Where the fuck are you goin’?’

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘We’re havin’ a civilised cup of fuckin’ tea here, you Australian barbarian.’

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

The abandoned Scorpion motorcycles were still lying in the rain by the side of the road, leaking petrol and oil. I picked them up, stood them on their stands in the cover of the stone wall, and returned to Concannon as the tea arrived.

‘Lucky for you I came along,’ he said, sipping at a glass of chai.

‘I was doin’ okay.’

‘The fuck you were,’ he laughed.

I looked at him. When a man’s right, he’s right.

‘The fuck I was,’ I laughed. ‘You really are one mad Irish motherfucker. What are you doing here, anyway?’

‘My favourite hash shop used to be near here,’ he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Cuffe Parade. ‘But somebody threw a fella off a building next door, and he landed right on top of the shop. And on top of Shining Patel, the owner.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘The upside is that a notorious singer was also hit, which saved me quite a bit. I used to pay him, regularly. It was the only way I could get him to stop singin’. Where was I?’

‘You were telling me what you’re doing here.’

‘Oh, so ya think I was followin’ ya? Is that it?’ Concannon asked. ‘You must have a mighty high opinion of yourself, boyo. I’m just here buyin’ hash.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Some time passed. It was a strangely brooding silence between men, brooding in strangely different directions.

‘Why did you help me?’

He looked at me with an expression that seemed genuinely hurt.

‘And why the fuck would one white man not help another white man, in a fuckin’ heathen place like this?’

‘There you go again.’

‘Alright, alright,’ he said quickly, putting a hand on my knee to calm me down. ‘I know you’ve got a soft heart. I know you’re a compassionate sort. That’s the beauty of ya, and there it is. You’ve even got compassion for motorcycles, may God have pity on you. But you don’t like my plain talk. You don’t like it when a man calls a spade a heathen, or a faggot a mincer.’

‘I think we’re done here, Concannon.’

‘Hear me out, man. I know it offends your sensibilities. I understand that. I truly do. I don’t like that about you, and I don’t respect it. I’ll be straight up about that. You can’t respect kindness. Not really. You know what I’m talkin’ about. You’ve done time behind the wall, on the other side of things, as I have. But you’re a compassionate man, even though you’re more like me than you think.’

‘Concannon -’

‘Wait. I’m not finished. Compassion’s a very strange thing. It comes from deep inside. People know it when they see it, because you can’t fake it. I know. I’ve tried. I was terrible at it. I got sick, when I tried. I had to go back to being a genuine, uncaring cunt, just to get well again. It’s genuine, see, even being an uncaring cunt, and I’m drawn to genuine things, even if I don’t like them. Do you see what I mean?’

‘You don’t know me at all,’ I said, meeting his eye.

‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve been in Bombay for a while, you know. A few days after I got here, I heard your name in a conversation of unsavoury types at an opium den. Then I heard it again, twice in quick succession. At first, I thought it was two foreign fellas they were talkin’ about, until I figured out that Lin and Shantaram were one and the same bad-mannered miscreant. You.’

‘So you were following me.’

‘I didn’t say that. What I said was that I got intrigued. I started asking about you. I made it my business to get to know people you know, and people you do business with. I even know your girlfriend.’

‘What?’

‘She didn’t tell ya that she met me?’

He grinned. I was beginning not to like that grin.

‘I wonder why she didn’t tell you? Maybe she likes me.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘It’s no big deal,’ he said. ‘I met her at an art exhibition.’

My raised eyebrow provoked him.

‘Oh, what? Because I’m a big lump of a Northern Irish potato-muncher, I can’t be interested in art? Is that it?’

‘Get to the point.’

‘There is no point, boyo. I met Lisa – that’s her name, right? – at an exhibition. We talked, that’s all.’

‘Why?’

‘Look, I didn’t even know she was your girlfriend, until one of her friends mentioned your name, then I put two-and-you together, so to speak. I swear.’

‘Keep away from her, Concannon.’

‘Why? She seemed to like me. I think we hit it off, a little bit. I certainly liked her. You’ll have to let her go, one of these days, but I’m sure you already know that, don’t you?’

‘That’s it,’ I said, standing.

‘Wait a minute!’ he implored, standing with me and putting a hand gently on my arm. ‘Please. I don’t want to fight you, man. I didn’t… I mean… I’m not tryin’ to upset you. It’s just my way. I know it’s fucked up. I really do. But I don’t know any other way to be. It’s like I said before, about you. Even if you don’t like it, you have to see that it’s genuine. This is what me being genuine looks like. I truly don’t mean to hurt your feelings. And I truly would like to talk.’

I resisted, staring back at him and trying to read his eyes. The pupils were tiny: pinpoints vanishing in an ice-blue tide. I looked away.

On the road nearby, a traffic warden’s truck pulled up beside the Scorpion gang motorcycles. Leaping from the back, the team of lifters dragged the motorcycles to the side of the truck, then hoisted them onto the back, cramming them up against others that had been seized for parking illegally.

Concannon followed my gaze as I watched the operation.

‘If I hadn’t come along when I did,’ he said softly, ‘it might’ve been your dead body bein’ thrown onto the back of a truck.’

He was right. I didn’t like him, and I was pretty sure that he was crazy. But he’d stepped in at exactly the right time, and he’d saved me.

I sat down again. Concannon called for two more glasses of chai. Working quickly, his thick fingers made a small joint.

‘Will you smoke with me?’

I took it and puffed it alight as he held the match in the lantern of his cupped hands. After a time, I passed the joint back to him.

‘Seein’ as how you’re always gettin’ so offended, and jumpin’ up, and wantin’ to fight with me or run off somewhere, I’ll come straight to the point,’ he said, exhaling a stream of grey-blue smoke.

‘The point of what?’

‘I’m startin’ a new gang, and I want you to join me.’

It was my turn to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘How about… why?’

‘Why a gang?’ he asked, passing back the joint. ‘The usual. So we can buy guns, do a little menace and mayhem, scare people into giving us truckloads of money, spend the truckloads of money, and die in the effort.’

‘Dying in the effort? That’s your sales pitch?’

Just then a man named Jibril, a horse-breeder from the stables in the nearby slum, approached me. I stood to greet him.

He was a gentle man, shy and a little uncomfortable speaking with human beings, but talkative and loving when dealing with his horses.

His eldest daughter had developed a fever a few weeks before that day, and had become desperately ill. Jibril called me, and agreed to have the girl screened via wide-spectrum viral toxicity.

I’d paid for the testing at a private clinic, and the tests had revealed that the girl was suffering from leptospirosis, a sometimes fatal disease carried in the urine of rats. Because it had been detected early, the girl was responding well to treatment.

Holding my hand between his, Jibril assured me that his daughter was feeling much better, and invited me to take tea with him and his family in their home.

I thanked him in return, and invited him to join us for a glass of chai. He declined, apologising for the refusal, and hurried off to an appointment with a grain merchant who supplied feed for his horses.

‘You see what I mean?’ Concannon said, when I sat down again. ‘These people like you. They don’t like me. And I don’t want them to. I don’t want to eat their food. I hate their bloody food. I don’t want to watch their movies. I don’t want to speak their fuckin’ language. But you do. You understand them. You communicate with them, and they respect you for it. Think about it. We’ll be unbeatable. We could take over this part of the city, you and me.’

‘Why would we want to do that?’ I laughed.

‘Because we can,’ he said, leaning in close to me.

Because We Can: the motto of power, since the idea of power over others was born in our kind.

‘That’s not a reason, that’s an excuse.’

‘Look around you! Ninety-nine per cent of people are just doin’ what they’re told. But you and me, we’re in the one per cent. We take what we want, while the rest of them, they take what they’re given.’

‘People rise up.’

‘Aye, they do,’ he agreed, his pale blue eyes gleaming. ‘From time to time. And then the one per cent take all their privilege back from them, and usually their pride and dignity for good measure, and they go back to being the slaves they’re born to be.’

‘You know,’ I sighed, returning his stare. ‘It’s not just that I disagree with what you’re saying, it’s that I actually despise it.’

‘That’s the beauty of it!’ he cried, slapping his thighs with both palms.

He read my mystified frown for a moment, and then continued in a softer tone.

‘Look… me Ma, she died when I was just a baby. Dad tried his best, but he couldn’t manage. There was five of us kids, all under ten years old, and he was a sick man. He sent us to these orphanages. We were Protestants. The girls went to Protestant places, but me little brother and me, there was no place for us, and we ended up with the Catholics.’

He paused for a while, allowing his gaze to fall to his feet. The rain squalled again, striking the plastic awning of the chai shop with the sound of drummers at a wedding.

His foot began to scrape away at the earth slowly, his running shoe leaving a pattern of scrolls and whorls in the muddy ground.

‘There was this priest, you see.’

He looked up. Fractal patterns in the irises of his ice-blue eyes glittered around the pinpoint pupils. The whites of his eyes were suddenly red, as if burned by the sea.

‘I don’t talk about this,’ he said, lapsing into a leaden silence again.

His eyes filled with tears. He clenched his jaw, swallowing hard, and willing the tears away. But they fell, and he turned his head.

‘You’re a fuckin’ cunt, you are!’ Concannon snapped, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

‘Me?’

‘Yeah, fuckin’ you! This is what all your nice reasonableness does to people. You turn ’em into weak cunts. That’s the first time I’ve let a tear fall in many a long year, and it’s the first time I’ve talked about that fuckin’ priest in longer still. And that’s… that’s why we’d be so good together, don’t you see?’

‘Not… really.’

‘I got out of that orphanage when I was sixteen. By my eighteenth birthday I’d killed six men. One of them was that fuckin’ priest. Shoulda seen how he begged for his life, the miserable sick thing.’

He paused again, his mouth pressed into a bitter wrinkle. I was hoping that he’d stop talking. He didn’t.

‘I forgave him, you know, before I killed him.’

‘Concannon, I -’

‘Will you not hear me out, man?’

He seemed desperate.

‘Alright.’

‘I never forgave anyone, after that,’ he began, brightening with violent recollection. ‘I was a full ranked volunteer with the UVF. And I went on breakin’ heads, shootin’ Catholics in the knees, sendin’ pieces of the IRA cunts we captured to their widows, and a lot more. We worked together with the cops and the army. Unofficial like, of course, but we had a fuckin’ green light. Hit squads, killin’ and maimin’ on demand, no questions asked.’

‘Concannon -’

‘Then it all fell apart. It got too hot. I got too hot. Too violent, they said. It was a fuckin’ war. How can you be too violent for a war? But they sent me out. Scotland first, then London. I fuckin’ hated the place. Then I went on the road, and ended up here.’

‘Look, Concannon -’

‘I know,’ he said quickly. ‘I know what you’re thinkin’ and I know what you’re gonna say. And it’s true. I can’t deny it. I like hurtin’ people who deserve it. I’m a twisted cunt. Lucky for me, there’s a lot of twisted girls out there, so I’m happy bein’ twisted. But you’re not like that. You have your principles. Don’t you get it? You’re the talk softly, and I’m the big stick. You look ’em in the eyes, do business with ’em, and shake their hands. I chop their hands off, if they disobey.’

‘Chopping people’s hands off. There’s a leap forward.’

‘I’ve given it a lotta thought,’ he said alarmingly. ‘That’s why I’ve been tryin’ to pull you away from that French mincer.’

‘You just don’t know when to quit, do you?’

‘No, wait, hear me out. It’s… it’s like… if you strip a religion down to its most basic parts, the parts that make it work so well and last for hundreds and hundreds of years, it boils down to this – nice words and the fear of horrible punishments that never end. You and me. You can’t beat a combination like that. Popes and heathen mullahs have got fat on it for centuries.’

I let out a long sigh, and put my palms on my knees, preparing to stand. He reached out to put a hand on my wrist. The grip of his hard fingers was fierce, and there was enormous strength in it.

‘That’s not advised,’ I said.

He released his grip on my arm.

‘Sorry, I… just… think about it,’ he said, the grin leaning in through the doorway of his eyes again. ‘I’ll talk to you in a few days. We won’t be alone in this, if you throw in with me. I’m already talkin’ with others, and there’s plenty of them that’s interested, make no mistake. Think about it. That’s not too much to ask for savin’ your talk softly arse today, is it? I’d like to have you in this with me. I’ll need someone to talk to. Someone I trust. Just think about it, that’s all I ask.’

I rode away, leaving him standing there under the blue plastic awning. I didn’t think about his offer, but I did think about him, that afternoon, as I made the rounds of cafés and bars we used as passport drops.

I talked with my contacts. I listened to gangster street music: gossip, slander, lies and denunciation. Always funny. But in every idle moment my thoughts returned to Concannon, and to those tears he resented so bitterly, but failed to stop.

What dream, what hope, what despair drives us to the things we do, just to desert us when the deed is done? What hollow things are they, motive and reason, born at night to fade so quickly in the sunlight of consequence? What we do in life lives on inside us, long after ambition and fear lie frosted and opaqued on forgotten shores. What we do in life, more than what we think or say, is what we are.

Concannon was running into crime, and I was already running away from it. For too long I’d done things because the fear of capture became a mirror, a face in the water, not really me, and I absolved myself of my own sins. But the waters were stirred, and the face I’d always put on the things that I did was blurred, and vanishing.

Chapter Seventeen

I waited for Lisa outside the Mahesh hotel, enjoying the city. It had rained intermittently but heavily through the afternoon, yet the early evening air was hot and dry beneath the brooding sky.

Occasional waves struck at the low sea wall, crashing up and over to splash across half the wide street. Children courted the waves, running from spray to spray, while couples skipped away.

Hopeful carriage drivers slowed beside the strollers, trying to entice them into their rickety, high-wheeled carts. Peanut sellers wandered among the walkers, fanning the glowing coals they carried in baskets around their necks. Smoke from the little fires, filled with the flavour of roasted peanuts, drifted among the strollers, temptation turning their heads.

The whole city, washed clean by the heavy rains, was more fragrant than usual. The cloud-soaked sky locked in scents of food cooking on hundreds of small street stalls, bhel puri, pav bhaji, pakodas, and sweet pungencies from paan sellers, incense traders, and the frangipani garlands being sold at every traffic signal.

I counted thoughts on perfumed strands, and then I heard her voice.

‘A penny,’ Lisa said.

I turned.

‘They don’t make pennies any more,’ I said, pulling her close to me and kissing her.

‘Are you forgetting this is Bombay?’ she asked, not resisting me. ‘People get arrested for kissing in public.’

‘Maybe they’ll put us in the same prison cell,’ I suggested, holding her close.

‘I… don’t think so,’ she laughed.

‘Then I’ll escape, and come bust you out.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then I’ll bring you back here, on an evening just like this, and kiss you again, just like this.’

‘Wait a minute,’ she said, studying my face. ‘You’ve been fighting again.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘Come off it. You’re trying to distract me! That’s a dirty trick, buster.’

‘What?’

‘Jesus, Lin! Fighting again? What the fuck?’

‘Lisa, it’s cool. I’m fine. And I’m right here, with you.’

I kissed her face.

‘We better go,’ she said, as she frowned out of the kiss, ‘or we’ll miss him.’

‘Miss who?’

‘Miss whom, writer,’ she said. ‘You’ll find out, soon enough.’

She led me on the short walk from the seafront to the promenade that surrounded the nearby Air India building. The offices were closed, but the dim night-lights in the ground-floor reception area revealed the desks and doorways within.

When we reached a locked glass door, close to the back of the building, Lisa signalled me to wait. She glanced around nervously at the wedge of street we could see from the rear door, but there was no-one in sight.

‘So… what are we -’

‘We’re waiting,’ she interrupted me.

‘Waiting… for?’

‘For him.’

There was a flicker of light within the building. A security guard carrying a torch approached the door. He opened it with a key on a heavy chain, and held the door open for us. He urged us to enter quickly, and then locked the door again behind us.

‘This way,’ he said. ‘Follow me closely.’

Weaving his way along a series of corridors and between rows of silent desks, he brought us to a service elevator at the rear of the building.

‘Emergency lift,’ he said, smiling happily. ‘After stop at top, walk two floors to roof. My bonus, please.’

Lisa handed him a roll of notes. The guard saluted us, pressed the button to open the doors of the elevator, and waved us inside.

‘So, we’re gonna rob the Air India company,’ I said as we ascended in the lift. ‘And ten minutes ago, you were worried about a public kiss.’

‘I wasn’t worried,’ she laughed. ‘And we’re not here to rob the place. We’re here for a private party.’

The doors opened on a storage floor, with walls of filing cabinets and open shelves stacked with dusty folders.

‘Ah, the Kafka Room. Can’t wait to see the menu.’

‘Come on!’ Lisa said, rushing to the stairwell. ‘We have to hurry.’

Taking the steps two at a time, she led me up the stairs. At the top she hesitated, with her hand on the emergency release bar of the closed door.

‘I hope he remembered to leave this door unlocked,’ she said breathlessly, and then pushed on the bar.

We stepped through onto the roof of the building. It was a vast area, with several small metal huts on the periphery.

A huge structure towered ten metres over us, braced by heavy steel girders. It was the illuminated logo of the Air India company: a stylised archer, with a drawn bow, circled by a great disc.

The gigantic figure rose from a central support pylon, fixed to a rotating steel table, which was in turn supported by an array of girders and cables.

Like every other Mumbaikar, I’d seen the huge sign rotating above the Air India building hundreds of times, but standing so close to it, so high above the rolling sea, was a different truth.

‘Damn!’

‘We made it in time,’ Lisa grinned.

‘There’s a bad time for this? What a view!’

‘Wait,’ she said, staring up at the archer. ‘Wait.’

There was a whirring, grinding sound, as if a generator had started up nearby. The throb of an electric turbine began, building from a soft purr to a persistent whine. Then the click and stutter of a condenser, or several of them, chattered from somewhere very close, at the base of the immense sign.

Suddenly, in one burst of flickering crimson colour, the great circular logo lit up, bathing the whole space in blood-red light. Moments later, the crimson archer began to rotate on its pylon axis.

Lisa was dancing little excited steps, her arms wide.

‘Isn’t it great?’

She was laughing happily.

‘It’s brilliant. I love it.’

We watched the huge wheel of scarlet light turn for some time, and then shifted to face the open sea. The clouds had swollen together to fill the whole of heaven with black brooding. Distant lightning strikes forked through the darkness: ribs of cloud, rolling and shifting on the bed of night.

‘You like it?’ she asked, leaning in beside me as we watched the sky and sea.

‘I love it. How’d you come up with it?’

‘I was here a couple weeks ago with Rish, from the gallery. He was thinking about making a full-size copy of the Air India archer for a new Bombay exhibition, and he invited me to come take a look. When we got here, he changed his mind. But I liked it so much up here that I cultivated the guard, and bribed him to let us come up here, you and me.’

‘You cultivated the guard, huh?’

‘I’m a cultivated girl.’

For a time we gazed at the rejoicing sea, far below. It was a dangerous view, irresistible, but my thoughts slithered back to that afternoon, and Concannon.

‘Did you meet a tall Irishman named Concannon, a while back?’

She thought for a moment, one of my favourite frowns curling her upper lip.

‘Fergus? Is that his name?’

‘I only know him as Concannon,’ I said. ‘But you can’t miss this guy. Tall, heavyset, but athletic, kinda rangy, a boxer, with sandy hair and a hard eye. He said he met you, at an exhibition.’

‘Yeah, Fergus, that’s his name. I only spoke to him for a while. Why?’

‘Nothing. I was just wondering why he was at the exhibition. I don’t figure him for an art lover.’

‘We had lots of men at that show,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It was our most successful show so far. The kind of show that brings people who don’t normally go to galleries.’

‘What kind of a show?’

‘It was all about the broken lives that spin out from bad or troubled relationships between fathers and sons. It was called Sons of the Fathers. There was a big piece about it in the paper. Ranjit gave us great coverage. It pulled in a crowd. I told you all about it. Don’t you remember?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been in Goa, Lisa, and you didn’t tell me about it.’

‘Really? I was sure I did. Funny, huh?’

‘Not really.’

Sons of the Fathers. Was it that phrase, those words, Sons, Fathers, glimpsed on a poster that had drawn Concannon to the exhibition? Or had he followed me, and then followed Lisa to the gallery, using the show as a pretext to meet her and talk to her?

Acid memories had burned his eyes, when he spoke to me. I had memories of my own. I woke too often still chained to a wall of the past, being tortured by the ghosts of men whose faces I’d already begun to forget.

I turned my head to look at Lisa’s gentle profile: the deep-set, hooded eyes; the fine, small nose; the sculpted flow of her long, graceful chin; the half-smile that almost always played in the stream of her lips. The wind was picking up, lifting the blonde curls of her hair into a feathered halo.

She was wearing a loose, knee-length black dress with a high, stiff collar, but no sleeves or shoulders. She’d kicked off her sandals, and her feet were bare. The only jewellery she wore was a thin necklace of irregular turquoise beads.

She read my face, frowning a little, as she made her way back into my mind.

‘Do you know what today is?’ she asked, laughing as my eyes widened with alarm. ‘It’s our anniversary.’

‘But, we got together in -’

‘I’m talking about the day I let myself love you,’ she said, her smile showing how much she was enjoying my confusion. ‘This is exactly the day, two years ago, that you stopped your bike beside me on the causeway, a week after Karla got married, when I was waiting for the rain to stop.’

‘I was hoping you forgot that. I was pretty high, that day.’

‘You were,’ she agreed, the smile filling her eyes. ‘You saw me standing with a bunch of people under the shelter of a shop. You pulled up, and asked me if I wanted a ride. But the rain was pouring down like mad -’

‘It was the start of a flood, a big one. I was worried that you might not make it home.’

‘Pouring in buckets, it was. And there’s you, sitting on your bike in the rain, soaked through to your bones, offering me, dry and comfortable, a ride home. I laughed so hard.’

‘Okay, okay -’

‘Then you got off your bike and started to dance, right there in front of the whole crowd.’

‘So stupid.’

‘Don’t say that! I loved it!’

‘So stupid,’ I repeated, shaking my head.

‘I think you should make a promise to the universe that you’ll always dance in the rain, at least once, if you’re in Bombay during monsoon.’

‘I don’t know about the universe, but I’ll make a pact with you. I hereby promise that I’ll always dance in the rain at least once, in every one of my monsoons.’

The storm was coming in fast. Lightning shocked the theatre of the sea. Heartbeats later, the first thunder smashed the clouds.

‘That’s a big storm coming in.’

‘Come here,’ she said, taking my hand.

She led me to an open space beneath the slowly turning wheel of the crimson archer. Ducking into an alcove, she fetched a basket and brought it out.

‘I paid the watchman to leave it up here for us,’ she explained, opening the basket to reveal a large blanket, a bottle of champagne, and a few glasses.

She handed me the bottle.

‘Open us up, Lin.’

While I peeled away the foil wrapper and twisted the wire tether, she spread out the blanket, holding it in place against the gathering wind with spare tiles she found on the roof.

‘You really thought this out,’ I said, popping the cork on the champagne.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ she laughed. ‘But this is a special place. When I came up here with Rish, I took a damn good look around. This is one of the only open spaces in Bombay, maybe the only space, where nobody can see you from any window, anywhere.’

She pulled her dress up over her head, and tossed it aside. She was naked. She picked up the glasses and held them out. I filled them. I put the bottle aside, and held my glass close to hers for a toast.

‘What shall we drink to?’

‘How ’bout getting your goddamn clothes off?’

‘Lisa,’ I said, as serious as the storm. ‘We’ve gotta talk.’

‘Yeah, we do,’ she said. ‘After we drink. I’ll make the toast.’

‘Okay.’

‘To fools in love.’

‘To fools in love.’

She drank her glass down quickly, and then threw it over her shoulder. It shattered against a stone buttress.

‘I’ve always wanted to do that,’ she said happily.

‘You know, we should talk about -’

‘No,’ she said.

She unfastened my clothes and pulled them off. When we were both naked she picked up another glass and refilled it.

‘One more toast,’ she said, ‘then we talk.’

‘Okay. To the rain,’ I suggested. ‘Inside and out.’

‘To the rain,’ she agreed. ‘Inside and out.’

We drank.

‘Lisa -’

‘No. One more drink.’

‘You said -’

‘The last one didn’t do it.’

‘Didn’t do what?’

‘Didn’t wake the Dutchman.’

She filled the glasses again.

‘No toast this time,’ she said, drinking half her glass. ‘Bottoms up.’

We drank. A second glass shattered in the shadows. She pushed me back onto the tethered blanket, but slipped away again, her body on the sky.

‘Do you mind if I dance while we talk,’ she said, beginning to sway, the wind happy in her hair.

‘I’ll try not to object,’ I said, lying back to watch her, my hands clasped behind my head.

‘This is another anniversary, of sorts,’ she said dreamily.

‘You know, there’s a special place in hell for people who never forget birthdays or anniversaries.’

‘This is one that starts tonight, two years after the other one started.’

‘The other one?’

‘Us,’ she danced, twirling in a circle, her arms woven in the wind. ‘The other us, that we used to be.’

‘That we used to be?’

‘That we used to be.’

‘And when did we change?’

‘Tonight.’

‘We did?’

‘Yes.’

‘In the elevator, or on the stairs?’

She laughed and danced, her head moving to a beat only her arms and hips and legs could hear.

‘I’m doing a rain dance,’ she said, her hands already swimming through water. ‘It has to rain tonight.’

I glanced up at the immense disc of the archer, rotating slowly, chained to the rock of the city with steel cables. Rain. Rain means lightning. The red archer looked like a very tempting lightning rod.

‘It has to rain?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, flopping at my feet and staring at me, her body supported on one arm. ‘And it will now, soon.’

She picked up the champagne bottle, took a mouthful and kissed me, trickling the wine into my mouth in the bruised blossom of a kiss. Our lips parted.

‘I want to have an open relationship,’ she said.

‘It can’t get much more open than this,’ I smiled.

‘I want to be with other people.’

‘Oh, that kind of open.’

‘I think you should be with other people, too. Not all the time, of course. Not if we stay together. I don’t think I’d like to see you in a permanent thing. But definitely sometimes. I could actually hook you up. I’ve got a friend who’s really hot for you. She’s so cute that I wouldn’t mind doing a threesome.’

‘What?’

‘It would only take a word,’ she said, staring into my eyes.

The storm was close. The wind smelled of the sea. I lifted my eyes to the sky. Pride has most of the anger, and humility most of the right. I didn’t have the right to tell her what to do, or what not to do. I didn’t even have the right to ask her. We didn’t have that kind of love.

‘I don’t have the right -’

‘I want to be with you, if you want to love me,’ she said, lying beside me, her hand on my chest. ‘But I want us to be with other people as well.’

‘You know, Lisa, you picked a pretty weird way to tell me this.’

‘Is there a way that isn’t weird?’

‘Still… ’

‘I didn’t know how you’d react,’ she pouted. ‘I still don’t know. I thought, if you don’t like it, this’ll be the last time we make love. And if you do like it, this’ll be the first time we make love as the new us, free to be what we want. Either way, it’s a memorable anniversary.’

We looked at one another. Our eyes began to smile.

‘You knew I’d completely love this stunt, didn’t you?’

‘Totally.’

‘The whole Air India archer thing.’

‘Totally.’

I leaned over her, smoothing the wind-strewn hair from her face.

‘You’re an amazing girl, Lisa. And I’m constantly amazed.’

She kissed me, her fingers vines around my neck.

‘You know,’ she murmured, ‘I did some research.’

‘You did?’

‘Yeah, on how often this place gets hit by lightning. Do you want to know?’

I didn’t care. I knew what was happening to us, but I didn’t know where we were going.

The storm was on us. The sky connected. Rain filled our mouths with silver. She pulled me onto her, into her, locked her feet in the small of my back, and held me inside, tight, loose, and tight again, daring me to follow.

A waterfall of wind and rain drummed on my back. I put my forehead to hers, sheltering her face with mine, our eyes only lashes apart. The monsoon, flesh-warm, poured from my head and splashed up from the ground. We pressed our mouths together, breathing into one another, sharing air.

She rolled me over onto my back, holding me inside her, flattening her long fingers across my chest, her arms stiff.

A roar of thunder smashed new rain from sodden clouds. Water poured in rivulets from her hair and her breasts, running into my open mouth. Water began to fill the roof of the building, ebbing around us in a secret sea, high above the Island City.

Her fingers clawed. Her back arched, cat-fierce. She slid her hands from my chest, down along my body. Sitting upright, she locked me inside, and turned her face to the sky, her arms out wide.

A drum began to beat: a heavy footstep in a hall of memory, my heart. We were breaking apart. In that instant it was clear: what we had was all we ever were, or could be.

Lightning painted the water around us on the roof. They turned above my head, Lisa and the storm and the wheel of Fate, and the whole world was red, blood red, even to that sea the sky, that sea the sky.