The Mountain Shadow

Chapter Forty-Six

I didn’t throw in with Karla, Naveen and Didier in the Lost Love Bureau. Call me stubborn. Naveen did. Call me crazy. Didier did. Call me a free spirit. Karla didn’t. She didn’t speak to me at all. She didn’t even respond to my messages, but sent a message of her own, through Naveen, to stay away until she cooled off. I got hotter, instead, and bought Didier’s black market crime portfolio. He’d become a legitimate businessman, a partner in the Lost Love Bureau, two doors down from my own, and decided to turn his back on black business. I let his drug and callgirl rackets slide, and focused on his money changing operations. It took me a while to sort out the details. I was buying white money that had become black money, making it white again through a black bank, and figuring small weekly margins on a high daily turnover: make or break. It was like the stock market, without the lies and corruption.

When Karla finally responded, late in the second afternoon after coming down from the mountain, I raced to meet her at the sea wall in Juhu where we’d talked of Lisa, our own lost love, weeks before.

And as evening strollers passed us, smiling happily, and the sun began to fall, Karla wept and told me she wasn’t angry with me: she was troubled by Ranjit and Lisa.

‘What was Ranjit doing there with Lisa that night? What was she doing with him? Since I came back to Bombay, I can’t stop thinking about it.’

She cried into my chest, and then stopped crying, as I held her.

‘Why don’t I understand it, Shantaram?’

Karla was two beats ahead of every mind she met. The mystery tormented her, where it was just a slow burn in me; sand in the wind, for her, and sand in an hourglass with Ranjit’s name on it for me. I had to tell her to let it go, just as she’d once told me.

‘We’ll find him,’ I said. ‘And when we do, we’ll find out what happened. Until then we’ll have to stop thinking about it, or we’ll both go nuts. I mean, more nuts than we already are.’

She smiled.

‘There’s something not right,’ she said. ‘Something I should know, but don’t know. Something right there in front of me. But you’re right – if I don’t let it go, it’ll drive me crazy.’

Vermilion sunset, the last grace of the sun, washed flaws and faults from every face and form on the promenade: an ocean of evening light showing only the beautiful things we are inside.

Gentle breezes chased one another along the sea wall, playing through skirts and shirts of walkers on the way. The first few car headlights began to pass.

Pale shadows of palm leaves drifted across her face, tracing the exact curve of her neck to her lips, every time a car passed. Karla.

‘Is it your pride that won’t let you join Didier and Naveen and me?’ she asked, a harder eye turned toward me.

‘No.’

‘Pride is the only sin we can’t see in ourselves, you know.’

‘I’m not proud.’

‘The hell you’re not. But that’s okay. I like pride in a man. I like it in a woman, too. But don’t let it stop you now. We can make this work.’

‘How, Karla?’

‘We might be here a week, okay, but we might still be here three years from now. This can start to build in three months. Security is the big thing in India in the next fifty years. I’m telling you. I’ve had two years to study this, with Ranjit’s best advisors.’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘I’m always serious, when it comes to love.’

‘Love?’ I grinned, like an idiot.

‘Pay attention,’ she jabbed at me. ‘I’m talking business.’

‘Okay, I’m attentive.’

‘Money isn’t gonna flow from the rich to the poor. It’s gonna flow from the poor to the rich, faster than ever, and it’s gonna stay there. That’s so outrageously unfair that personal security can’t lose as an investment. See?’

‘In a strange way. And the detective agency?’

‘We’re a bureau, not an agency. We only take on one kind of case. Lost loves. We don’t snoop or peep or shadow. We investigate missing loved ones. That’s our way into the wider security business. We’re gonna grow, and fast.’

‘How?’

‘If we want to grow, we need to know all the main players as friends. If we find missing loved ones for them along the way, they can’t roll on us later. Plus, we get to know where all the skeletons dance.’

‘You really thought this through.’

‘Will you stop stating the obvious?’

‘Look, I follow your logic, and I see the point -’

‘Do you? This is something clean, and right. I don’t see the right on your side of the playpen.’

‘Right? We’re talking about what’s right, now?’

‘You know, whatever else happens on the ride, interesting stuff like success and failure and fun, the bottom line for me, now, is that it’s gotta be right, and it’s gotta make a difference, or I’m an hour yesterday.’

‘Finding lost loves?’

‘Would you prefer losing found loves?’

She snapped the words at me, because she thought I hadn’t taken her seriously, but I was stung.

‘Is that at me? At us?’

‘I’m not the one who’s walking away from this, Shantaram.’

‘Karla, I’m yours. But you know I can’t work with the cops.’

‘You can stay out of that part.’

‘The handing people over to the police part, or the giving evidence in court part? I can stay out of that?’

‘Didier will handle police liaison. He said he’s looking forward to an interview with the cops where he isn’t on the floor.’

‘It’s not just that. I’ve got too much at stake, Karla. I’m wanted everywhere but here, and that’s because I know who to pay. I stay on my side of the line. The cops leave me alone because I don’t sell drugs or girls, I don’t cheat anyone, I don’t beat anyone who hasn’t got it coming, I keep my mouth shut when they give me a kicking, and I pay them regularly, and well.’

‘Paradise,’ Karla said, an eyebrow perched like a mockingbird on a branch.

‘They tolerate me. But that could change, and then I’d have to run, and fast. You know that. I can’t get into anything serious, and you shouldn’t, either. I thought we understood that.’

‘I told you, I’m a silent partner,’ she said, the queens flashing at me for an instant. ‘But I can always find my voice, if you’re not in this with me.’

There was a little silence. She was daring me to say the wrong thing, I guess, and maybe I did.

‘Have you heard anything new about Ranjit?’

She looked away. I thought I’d hurt her, and I tried to change the subject.

‘How about this?’ I suggested. ‘You check out of the Taj, and move into the rooms next to mine.’

‘Next to you?’

‘I mean it, Karla. There are three rooms, with a balcony that looks out on a good street, and you said you like security.’

She thought about it, offering me two queens from the corner of her eye.

‘Are you talking sleepovers?’ she asked, knowing I’m no good at that game.

‘I’m gonna leave the sleepovers to another conversation. But I bought new locks for your doors, and installed them.’

‘My doors?’

‘Ah… yeah. If you take the rooms.’

‘You must’ve been pretty sure I was gonna say yes.’

‘Ah… ’

‘How many locks did you put on?’

‘You mean, on the front door?’

‘How many doors are we talking about?’

‘All of them. Bathroom, bedroom, balcony, all of them.’

‘O… kay,’ she smiled. ‘Any other surprises?’

‘I put a first aid box with a surgical suture kit in the bathroom. You can sew up a sizeable wound, if you have to.’

‘And they say romance is dead,’ she laughed.

‘And I got some other stuff.’

‘Other stuff, huh?’

‘Yeah, the neighbourhood has some great shops. I had the manager put a small refrigerator in your room, and stocked it with vodka, soda, lemons and the nastiest cheese I could find.’

‘Nice.’

‘And I taped a knife under the desk drawer. If you open it right, someone standing in the room wouldn’t see you slip it out.’

‘Won’t see me slipping it out, huh?’

‘And your bed has painted iron tubes.’

‘My bed has tubes,’ she laughed.

‘Yeah. I checked the end caps. They came unscrewed on the head-end of the bed. I put a roll of money in one, and a skinny knife in the other. Just in case.’

‘Handy.’

‘And I bought you a sitar.’

‘A sitar. What’s that for?’

‘I’m not sure. It was in the music shop downstairs, and I couldn’t resist it.’

‘You know -’

‘There’s no room service,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘But there’s a sitar store downstairs, and the manager upstairs is crazier than I am, and all in all I think it’s a good idea for you to move in with us, Karla. Are you game?’

‘Honey, for the rest of your life, I am the game.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘I mean it.’

‘Good, let’s get you settled, neighbour.’

She rode back with me. We followed Randall, as he returned to the hotel. I resisted the impulse to swing the bike out and pass. It wasn’t hard. She had her left arm over my shoulder, her right arm in my lap, and her head resting on my back. I wanted to keep on riding until the bike said enough.

‘You know,’ I said, as I walked with her to a quiet corner on the steps of the Taj hotel. ‘We could just keep on riding until we’re far enough away, or the bike says enough.’

‘I have things that I have to do, Shantaram,’ she smiled. ‘And anyway, lost love is the trump card, at least for now. Our first official bureau case is Ranjit, and we’re gonna find that rodent, wherever he is.’

‘Official case?’

‘I registered us with the police, as a bureau. I fast-tracked it, using Ranjit’s man. He’s a corporator, and he was glad to see me. Since Ranjit’s disappearance, the juice has stopped flowing. When I went to see him I had all the right American fruit. He’s a nice guy, except that sometimes his face is greedier than his mind.’

It was my turn to laugh.

‘Let’s talk about it later,’ she said, pulling me to her and holding me close, shell-within-a-shell perfect.

‘Get a good night’s sleep,’ she said, beginning to pull away from me.

‘Okay… what?’

‘You’re gonna need all the sleep you can get,’ she said. ‘If you’re turning me down at the bureau, and going out as a freelancer.’

‘Wait a minute. I can’t come back and see you, later tonight?’

‘Certainly not,’ she said, pushing free and walking the last steps to the door. ‘And anyway, it’ll still be there, in the morning.’

‘What’ll still be there in the morning?’

‘Lust,’ she said, pausing at the door. ‘You remember Lust, don’t you, Shantaram? Pretty girl, lotta fun, no scruples?’

The door closed. I was confused again. Then I smiled again. Dammit, Karla.

I rode back to the Amritsar hotel in a predicament, and found the manager in a quandary: his face was in a large box, labelled Quandary Inc.

‘What’s the dilemma, Jaswant?’

‘There’s supposed to be a phaser pistol in this box,’ he said, looking up at me absently, his hands still searching through foam packaging. ‘Ah, here it is!’

He pulled the toy pistol from the box, but his triumph faded quickly.

‘This is all wrong! The photon emitter is in the wrong place. And the deflector shield is missing. You can’t trust anyone, these days.’

‘It’s a toy, Jaswant,’ I said.

‘A replica,’ he corrected. ‘And not an accurate one.’

‘It’s a replica of a toy, Jaswant.’

‘You don’t understand. I’ve got a Parsi friend who said he could make a real one for me, if I have a perfect replica of the original. He won’t work with this crap. He’s a Parsi.’

He stared at me, sorrow burning him, as sorrow always does, even when it shouldn’t.

‘Please, Jaswant,’ I said sincerely. ‘Don’t make a laser pistol.’

‘A phaser pistol,’ he corrected. ‘And you could use one. People walk in and out of your rooms all day and night, like it’s Buckingham Station.’

‘Only people with a key.’

‘Well, there are two key holders in there now.’

I found Naveen in the chair, near a desk I’d bought from the trophy store downstairs. He was playing my guitar, and better than I played it, but that put him on a list of anybody.

I looked into my bedroom and saw Didier on the bed, his elegant, Italian shoes on the floor, laces inside. He waved hello.

‘Nice playing, Naveen,’ I said, throwing myself into a chair.

‘Nice guitar,’ Naveen replied, playing a popular Goan ballad.

‘I found her loitering with intent, in a music store downstairs.’

‘No place for a guitar like her,’ he said, switching to Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’. ‘She’s a high-maintenance crazy love guitar, like Diva.’

‘What’s the Diva situation?’ I asked.

‘Not good,’ he said, still playing. ‘That’s why I’m doing guitar therapy.’

‘I cleared it with Johnny Cigar, this morning. A Bihari clan moved out, leaving six empty houses. There are two huts reserved, a few steps from Johnny’s house. One for her, and one for you.’

‘Can’t come a minute too soon for me,’ Naveen said, putting the guitar aside.

‘I think you’re right. I asked around today in the Fort area. Her dad’s in big trouble. The bookies have him at fifty-to-one. People are talking about him like he’s already dead. And people are talking about Diva, and what she might know about her dad’s bad deals, or where the money is.’

‘Indeed,’ Didier agreed, springing off the bed with surprising agility and tiptoeing to the small, chest-high refrigerator.

He’d bought the refrigerator as a housewarming present, stocked it with beer, and put a bottle of brandy on my night table for himself. He threw a beer to me, and one to Naveen, and settled himself again comfortably on my bed.

‘I have made some enquiries of my own,’ he said. ‘There are at least two dangerous and merciless groups after Diva’s father, and both of them have deep ties to the police.’

‘You’re right,’ Naveen said.

‘One of them, in fact, is the police,’ Didier continued. ‘Something about the police pension fund, I think. This business mogul has amassed a Mongol horde of enemies. He should evaporate from Bombay, and relocate to an anonymous island. Certainly, he can afford to buy one.’

‘He’s the most stubborn man I’ve ever met,’ Naveen growled. ‘He wants to ride it out. He thinks his security is rock solid. And, okay, it’s true enough that he’s surrounded by guns, day and night, but… ’

‘But what?’

‘But there are two separate security outfits working in that mansion, cops and private. Neither of them, far as I can tell, is willing to take a bullet for the richest and crookedest man in Bombay. Some of those guys live in slums, hoping that they can move their family into a one-room apartment the size of his toilet. If the cops are ordered away, I think the private army will run away. I’ve tried to warn him, but he won’t listen.’

‘He did listen to you,’ Didier said. ‘He left his daughter in your care.’

‘He called me son, yesterday,’ Naveen said. ‘It was the weirdest thing. I hardly know him.’

He walked to the shuttered windows. When he opened a shutter, the neon lights of the Metro theatre blushed his face.

‘He said, Keep my daughter close to your heart, and safe with you, away from me, my son.’

‘That is a significant responsibility,’ Didier mused.

‘And a significant job,’ I added. ‘Diva’s a handful. She should leave the city, man.’

‘I agree,’ Didier said. ‘And soon.’

‘She won’t go. And I know her. If I try to take her to the airport, she’ll scream the place down.’

‘If you can’t get her to leave Bombay,’ I said, ‘and if the people who want to kill her father might kidnap her, then you’ll have to hide her until it blows over. And the slum is the only place I can think of, where no-one will look for the richest girl in town. But I hope you have a better idea.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Neither do I,’ Didier said.

‘Where is she now?’ I asked.

‘At her weekly meeting. She gets together with some friends every week at the President.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Didier asked.

‘It’s called the Diva Girl Gossip Club,’ Naveen explained.

‘Fascinating!’ Didier said.

‘Once a week they swarm like piranhas, and rip to pieces any girl they know who isn’t in their clique.’

‘Will you get me an invitation?’ Didier pleaded, joining us. ‘I would love to go.’

‘She should be finished by ten,’ Naveen said. ‘You guys wanna go with me, and pick her up?’

‘I will certainly come,’ Didier said, slipping on his shoes and tying them.

‘I’m going to need both of you,’ Naveen said, ‘if I’m going to convince Diva to dump her suite at the Mahesh, and come live in a slum for a week. I might need the two of you to restrain her while I just explain the idea.’

‘You sure you wanna do this now?’ I asked.

‘No present like the time,’ the young detective smiled, but his eyes were serious. ‘It’s late enough to get her to the slum and settle her in before too many people know about it. What do you think?’

‘Didier is ready. To the gossip club, at once!’

Chapter Forty-Seven

We found Diva in a shriek of Divas, in the lobby of the President hotel. The three of them stopped, staring at us with well-practised aghast.

Didier was in a rumpled, white linen jacket and faded blue corduroys. I was in boots, black jeans, T-shirt and sleeveless vest. Naveen was in grey fatigues and a thin, brown-suede shirt. He carried a heavy backpack.

The pretty girls made it clear that we didn’t present a pretty picture.

‘Is that him?’ one of the Diva girls asked, pointing an accusing false nail at Naveen.

‘In the flesh,’ Diva sneered, making no introductions.

‘Motorcycle maniac,’ the other Diva girl said, crossing me off the list.

‘Debauched womaniser,’ the first said, crossing Didier off.

‘Pardon me, mademoiselle,’ Didier said. ‘But, I am a maniser.’

‘Debauched maniser,’ the girl said.

‘And the horse,’ Diva said, crossing Naveen off, ‘without Prince Charming.’

The Diva girls giggled.

‘What’s with the backpack?’ Diva demanded. ‘Setting off for the Himalayas, I hope?’

‘I’m not a climber,’ Naveen said, staring at her.

‘Ooooooh!’ the Diva girls said. ‘The tomcat has claws.’

‘We have to go, Diva,’ Naveen said.

‘How about you climb a tree,’ Diva said defiantly. ‘And don’t come down.’

The girls giggled.

Naveen was angry, because he was genuinely afraid. Given the threat to her, he thought they were foolishly exposed in the well-lit lobby. He expected a carload of thugs to burst in at any moment and kidnap her.

And strong, confident young Naveen knew he’d be powerless to stop it. I knew him well enough to know that he was unaccustomed to the feeling, and that he didn’t like it.

Didier stepped into the awkward silence, bowing elegantly to the girls.

‘Allow me to introduce myself, dear ladies,’ he said, handing out business cards. ‘My name is Didier Levy. I am a native of France, but a guest in your great city for some years. With my associate, the well-known detective Mr Naveen Adair, we are the Lost Love Bureau, and we are at your service, if there is a mystery to be solved.’

‘Wow!’ one of the girls said, reading the card he’d given her.

‘No matter is too trivial,’ Didier pitched, ‘and no piece of gossip too insignificant for the Lost Love Bureau.’

‘We’ve gotta go,’ Naveen repeated, gesturing toward the door.

Diva cheeked goodbye to her friends, and went with us to the doors. We walked out past the entry portico to the beginning of the main street.

Naveen stopped, and looked at me. I glanced around, and realised that Didier wasn’t with us. I trotted back into the hotel to snatch him from the girls.

‘See you next Tuesday!’ he called out, as I dragged him away. ‘I assure you, I have gossip about well-known people that you will enjoy more than orgasm!’

The Diva girls shrieked.

We rejoined Naveen and Diva.

‘Business cards?’ I said.

‘I… thought it best to be prepared,’ Didier replied.

‘Show me one.’

‘I’d like to see one of those, too,’ Naveen said.

‘Me, too,’ Diva agreed. ‘Hand ’em over, Frenchy.’

Reluctantly, he passed out the business cards, and we studied them by the light of a streetlamp.

LOST LOVE BUREAU

Didier Levy, Master of Love

Naveen Adair, Master of the Lost

The back of the card showed a picture of what I assumed to be a listening ear, with the words:

Loose Lips Make The World Go Round

Suite 7, The Amritsar Hotel, Metro, Bombay

‘Do you think it too… subdued?’ Didier asked earnestly.

‘Master of the Lost?’ Naveen said. ‘It’s a bit Tolkien, man.’

‘And what’s with the ear?’ I asked innocently, and should’ve kept my mouth shut.

‘But, Lin! You only object, because you ripped a man’s ear off a few months ago,’ Didier protested.

‘Not all the way off,’ I protested back. ‘And anyway, Didier, so now it’s Suite 7, and not Room 7?’

‘Wait a minute,’ Diva said, planting a hand like a tiny garden fork on my chest. ‘You ripped some guy’s ear off?’

‘Naveen,’ I said, ‘you can take over any time now.’

‘Diva -’ Naveen began.

‘Nothing doing from either of you,’ Diva said. ‘Not until I sit down. Where’s the limo?’

We stared at her.

‘You don’t have a limo,’ Naveen said. ‘Not any more. I sent the car and driver back to be reassigned at the estate.’

She laughed, but we weren’t laughing, so she grabbed Naveen’s shirt, yanking it up and down in her fists until she tore it.

‘You… fucking… did… what?’

‘Diva, will you please trust me on this,’ Naveen said, tucking strands of his shirt into his pants.

‘Trust you? I did trust you, and you lost my fucking car! Do you know how far a girl can walk or run in these shoes? That’s what limousines were designed for, idiot, the fucking shoes! Where’s my four-wheeled shoebox, Naveen?’

‘Can we have this conversation off the main street? There’s a corner just ahead, with a laneway.’

‘You must be -’

‘Please, Miss Diva,’ Didier said. ‘You can surely understand that we three men would not be here, appealing to you in this way, if we did not care about you, and if we did not judge it prudent.’

She looked from face to face and then stormed off. She turned into the lane and stopped halfway, her back against the wall.

One foot was raised behind her, resting on the wall. She was wearing an elegant yellow skirt, a white high-necked blouse and ankle-strap heels. Her skirt was split at the side, and her short, fine legs were revealed by the pose. She was a girl who knew how to pose: she’d posed for every magazine in the country.

I glanced at Naveen. He was studying her with the eyes of love: desire, stripped of hunger. We tough guys fall fast, and we fall hard, Didier had said. And there was no doubt that Naveen Adair, the Indian-Irishman, was a tough guy falling somewhere.

Naveen let her have it. She was stubborn, and proud. He knew that he had to be brutally honest to have a chance of convincing her of the dangers she faced.

Every twisted deal that untangled itself at the feet of a gangster, a crooked politician or a cop, gunning for him, spooled out in front of her. Her foot slid down the wall, and she straightened up, bracing herself.

‘The threat is very real, Miss Diva,’ Didier said gently. ‘We have all examined this matter, and we have all concluded that your safety is in peril.’

‘They’re bad guys,’ Naveen said. ‘And your dad’s surrounded by good guys he doesn’t trust. I think that’s why he gave me the job of making sure you’re safe, and told me not to bring you back to the mansion.’

‘Mummy,’ she moaned very softly, calling out to a ghost.

‘I recommend leaving, Miss Diva,’ Didier advised. ‘Fast, and far away. I would be honoured to arrange it. Lin can provide the false papers. There is sufficient money. You would be safe, until this matter is resolved.’

‘I won’t leave while my dad’s still here,’ she pouted. ‘What if he goes to jail? He’ll need me. No matter what else I have to do, I won’t leave Bombay while he’s here.’

‘The alternative is hiding here, in the slum nearby,’ Naveen said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

‘The slum? First, you tell me that my dad is a crook, and that other crooks are trying to kill him, so they might kidnap me or kill me, which I’ve been dealing with all my life, and now -’

‘It’s… it’s really bad,’ Naveen said. ‘I mean, I told you, Diva. I’m scared myself. Please, listen to us.’

‘I lived there, Diva,’ I said. ‘You’ll be safe in the slum, and it shouldn’t be for long.’

‘The slum?’ she repeated, trying again, but there wasn’t much fight left in her.

‘Do you have someone close enough to you, to trust with your life?’ Didier asked.

The slim socialite flinched as if he’d shocked her: more than her father’s misdeeds, or the threat to her own safety. She backed away half a step, and then regained her composure.

‘I’ve got a lot of distant relatives, but no-one close. My Mother was an only child, like me, and my father’s brother passed away two years ago. Since my Mother died, there’s only my dad and me. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Hiding in this place, Miss Diva, will not be pleasant,’ Didier advised. ‘The people are civilised, but the circumstances are primitive. Do you not wish to reconsider?’

‘I’m not leaving.’

‘I told you so,’ Naveen said, adjusting the backpack.

I left them talking, and went to check the end of the laneway.

The street at the end of the alley led to the white arches and porthole windows of the World Trade Centre, and then to the slum beyond.

It was quiet. The pavement dwellers had settled down for the night on footpaths. Frisky dogs, hungry for their own hour of power, jerked, jumped and barked. An almost empty bus swept around the corner in front of me. Movie posters adorned the sides like heralds, draped over a war elephant.

Streetlamps showed the entrance to the slum, near the end of the street. I knew how hard the life was in that slum. I knew how rich the rewards were. The slum was a jellyfish, an empathic dome of common cause: filaments of love and common suffering touched every life.

Diva walked toward me slowly, with Naveen and Didier. Naveen put his arm around her. She didn’t push it away.

Maybe he’d told her that the backpack she’d been teasing him about was filled with her things, which he’d hastily gathered for her from the suite at the Mahesh. Maybe, as other loves closed for her, she was finally opening to him.

She came into the light, and I saw that she was afraid.

‘It’s gonna be okay, kid,’ I said, making her look me in the eye. ‘You’ve got a pretty cool ride ahead of you, with pretty cool neighbours.’

‘I heard the neighbourhood improved a lot when you moved out,’ she said, but there was only a candle-fire in it. ‘So, tell me, slum dweller, is there anything I should know?’

‘The more you go with it,’ I said, as we neared the wide path beside the open latrine, leading to the slum, ‘the better it gets.’

‘That’s what my therapist said,’ she muttered, ‘before I sued him for harassment.’

‘You won’t be harassed by anything but love in the slum,’ I said. ‘But that takes some getting used to, as well.’

‘Bring it on,’ the brave, scared socialite said. ‘Tonight, I’ll take all the love I can get.’

Chapter Forty-Eight

The path was rough: dusty earth and stones. To the right, a long wire fence cordoned off the gleaming windows of showcased goods in the World Trade Centre. To the left was a wide field where women and children found a place to relieve themselves among the weeds, and shrubs, and piles of other people’s relief.

A woman was squatting in the darkness, obscured by scrubby plants. Some kids were squatting in the stony grass beside the path. As Diva passed, the kids smiled, and said, Hello! What is your name?

When the path began to descend toward the sea we caught our first glimpse of the slum: a tattered cloak, thrown over a fragment of coast beside the gleaming towers of the rich, across the little bay.

‘Holy fuck,’ Diva said.

The slum, at night, was its own dark age. The light in the houses came from kerosene wick-lamps. There was no electricity, and no running water. Rats swept through the lanes in black waves every night, devouring piles of garbage left like dark offerings.

That smell of kerosene, and mustard oil almost-burnt, and incense, and salt-wind from the sea close by, and the soap of desperate cleanliness, and honest sweat, and the scent of horses, goats, dogs, cats, monkeys and snakes: all those aromas assaulted Diva as we wound our way by torchlight to Johnny Cigar’s house.

Her eyes were wide, but her lips were pressed into a determined frown. She held Naveen’s arm, but her high-heeled shoes staked out a sure path on the uneven ground.

Johnny Cigar was waiting for us, dressed in his temple best.

‘Welcome, Aanu,’ he said, pressing his palms together, and bowing to Diva. ‘My name is Johnny Cigar. I hope you don’t mind it, that I’m calling you Aanu. I have told everyone that you are my cousin Aanu, visiting from London.’

‘Okay,’ Diva said uncertainly.

‘To help you settle in peacefully here,’ Johnny added, ‘I told them that you are a little bit mad. That should explain your angry temperament.’

‘My angry temperament?’

‘Well, Shantaram said… ’

‘Shantaram, huh?’

‘I have also told everyone that some people are searching for you, because you stole something from them, so we must keep your stay with us a secret.’

‘Okay… I guess.’

‘Oh, yes. This is the safest place for thieves outside the parliament building.’

‘That’s reassuring,’ Diva replied, smiling. ‘I think.’

‘You may be surprised how many famous people hide in the slum with us. We had a cricket player hiding here, once. I can’t tell you his name, but when we played together, he told me -’

‘Shut up, Johnny!’

Johnny’s wife, Sita, emerged from the house, her red and gold sari whirling sails around her slim figure.

‘You don’t even know what I was talking about,’ Johnny said, his feelings hurt.

‘Shut up anyway,’ Sita snapped. ‘And leave the poor girl alone.’

Two other women joined her, and they led Diva to the hut reserved for her, a few paces away. Naveen and Didier followed. I looked at Johnny.

‘Coming along, Johnny?’

‘I’m… I’m going to give Sita a minute,’ he said.

‘Trouble in paradise?’ I asked, opening my big mouth.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said, wiping a hand through his thick, brown hair. ‘Sita is driving me nuts.’

‘Listen, I’m gonna roll some joints. For Diva. I think she’ll need them more than blankets, if she sleeps here tonight. Why don’t we sit inside, and I’ll get to work, while you talk.’

He talked. I learned more about Sita, in half an hour, than any man should know about another man’s wife. I tried to take her side, once, in fairness, but he cried, so I had to stop.

It was all Johnny, after that. His suffering was measured in Stations of the Cross Wife, each one with a scolding image. In the end, it came down to one thing.

‘Contraception,’ I said, rolling joints for Diva’s slum orientation.

‘What are you saying?’

‘She wants another kid, and you don’t. Contraception.’

‘I’m practising contraception, at the moment,’ he pleaded, shifting uncomfortably on his seat. ‘We haven’t had sex in six months.’

‘That’s not contraception, Johnny, that’s disconception. No wonder she’s cranky.’

‘Sita believes that sex is for making children. I think sex is for making children, and for making love, sometimes. She won’t accept any birth control. When I tried to talk to her about condoms, she called me a pervert.’

‘That’s a little harsh.’

‘What am I going to do? You see how beautiful she is, na?’

Sita was named after a kindly, self-sacrificing Goddess, and for the most part she lived up to the name. But she also had a temper, and a tongue that whipped it into shape. We thought about it, for a while, as Diva’s joints accumulated.

‘You could do the girl thing,’ I suggested, ‘and talk it out.’

‘Not… safe,’ he said. ‘Or?’

‘Or you could do the guy thing.’

‘The guy thing?’ he asked, his eyes squinting suspiciously.

‘The guy thing is to ignore it, and hope she gives in before you do.’

‘I’m going with the guy thing,’ Johnny said, punching his palm. ‘It’s so much safer than the truth.’

‘Don’t be too sure,’ I said, gathering up the rolled joints. ‘Women have a psychic witchy spooky talking-to-the-dead way of knowing everything you think. So, sooner or later, you’ve gotta do it their way anyway.’

‘Of course,’ he hissed. ‘That’s how women get back at men.’

‘How’s that?’

‘By making men become women, for a while. It’s cruel, what they do, making us talk to them, Lin. It’s scary, and men have difficulty with scary. It makes them want to fight.’

‘Speaking of scary, let’s go find out how Diva’s doing.’

Diva was surrounded by young girls up past their bedtimes, asking her about everything she wore, and everything that spilled from Naveen’s pack.

Johnny and Sita had covered the earthen floor with a blue plastic sheet, and they’d covered that with patchwork quilts. There was a clay matka water pot in the corner, with an aluminium plate on top, and an upturned glass.

That pot was all of Diva’s water for a day: all she had for drinking, cooking and doing the dishes. There was a kerosene pressure cooker in a corner, with two burners. A metal cabinet on high legs held two metal saucepans, some foodstuffs and a carton of milk. Another metal cabinet with three shelves was for her clothes.

A kerosene lantern rested on that cabinet. The low light seemed to hover on faces and in corners. Apart from a decorative swirl of artificial flowers, hanging from one of the bamboo support poles, there was nothing else in the hut.

The walls were made from woven reed matting, the gaps and chinks stuffed with sheets of newspaper. The roof was a bare plastic sheet, draped over the bamboo framework of the hut.

The black plastic roof was so low that I had to stoop a little. I’d spent a lot of time in the humid swelter of a hut just like hers. I knew that an unpleasantly hot day on the city’s streets became an inferno in a small hut, each breath a struggle, and sweat dripping like rain from drooping leaves.

I looked at her, the Bombay Diva, sitting on the patchwork blankets and talking with the girls.

I hadn’t lied: it did get better, when I lived in the slum, but only after it got so bad that I thought I couldn’t stand another minute of teeming crowds, constant noise, lack of water, roaming cohorts of rats, and the constant background hum of hunger and fatally wounded hope.

I couldn’t tell her that the better days only ever began after the worst day. And I couldn’t know that the worst day, for Diva, was only twenty-four hours away.

‘I brought you some supplies,’ I said, leaning over to hand her the little pile of rolled joints, and a quarter-bottle of local rum.

‘A man of taste and distinction,’ she smiled, accepting the gifts. ‘Sit down, Shantaram, and join us. The girls were just about to explain whose ass you have to kiss, just to take a shit around here.’

‘I’ll take a raincheck, Diva,’ I smiled, ‘but I’m gonna stick around for a bit with Naveen and Didier, until you sleep, so I won’t be far. Is there anything else I can get you?’

‘No, man,’ she said. ‘Not unless you can bring my dad here.’

‘That would be kinda defeating the purpose,’ I smiled again. ‘But as soon as this situation with your dad settles down, I’m sure Naveen will put you together again.’

‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘When I first looked at these skinny girls, I thought they could sell their slimming diet for millions, to my friends alone. But then I realised that they’re hungry. What the hell is going on here?’

‘Welcome to the other side.’

‘Well, if I stay here for a week, that’s more than enough time to change all that,’ Diva said.

One of the girls translated her English words into Hindi, as she spoke. The girls all applauded and cheered. Diva was triumphant.

‘You see? The revolution has already started.’

The impish rebel fire was still in her eyes, but her face couldn’t hide the fear that crouched in her heart.

She was an intelligent girl. She knew that Naveen, Didier and I wouldn’t insist on something as drastic as a week in the slum, if we didn’t fear something more drastic on the open street.

I was sure she missed the cosseting luxury of the family mansion, the only home she’d ever known. Naveen said it was always well stocked with friends, food, drink, entertainment and servants. And maybe, in part, she felt that her father had deserted her, by banishing her to Naveen’s care.

I watched her smiling that stiff, unflinching smile, and talking with the girls. She was afraid for her father, that much was clear: perhaps more than for herself. And she was alone, and in a different world: a foreign tourist in the city where she was born.

I went to the hut next door, and settled down on a well-worn blue carpet beside Didier and Naveen. They were playing poker.

‘Will you play a hand, Lin?’ Didier asked.

‘I don’t think so, Didier. I’m kind of scattered tonight. Can’t think straight enough to play in your class.’

‘Very well,’ Didier smiled good-naturedly. ‘Then I shall continue the lesson. I am teaching Naveen how to cheat with honour.’

‘Honourable cheating?’

‘Cheating honourably,’ Didier corrected.

‘How to spot a cheat, as well,’ Naveen added. ‘Did you know there’s exactly one hundred and four ways to cheat? Two for every card in the deck. It’s fascinating stuff. Didier could teach a university course in this.’

‘Cheating at cards is simply magic,’ Didier said modestly. ‘And magic is simply cheating at cards.’

I let them play, sitting beside them and sipping one of Didier’s emergency flasks. It was a difficult night for me, too, although not the mind-shock that it was for Diva.

I felt the dome of the slum community beginning to close over me with sounds, smells and a swirl of defiant memories. I was back in the womb of mankind. I heard a cough nearby, a man crying out in sleep, a child waking, and a husband talking softly to his wife about their debts in Marathi. I could smell incense, burning in a dozen houses around us.

My heartbeat was trying to find its synchrony with twenty-five thousand others, fireflies, uneven until they learn to flash and fade in the same waves of light. But I couldn’t connect. Something in my life or my heart had changed. The part of me that had settled so willingly in the lake of consciousness that was the slum, years before, was missing.

When I escaped from prison I searched for a home, wandering from country to city, hoping that I’d recognise it when I found it. When I met Karla, I found love, instead. I didn’t know then that the search for one always leads to the other.

I said goodnight to Didier and Naveen, checked on Diva, already asleep in the arms of new Diva girls, and walked those lanes feeling sadder than I could understand.

A small pariah dog joined me, skipping ahead and then running back to collide with my legs. When I left the slum and started my bike, she joined a pack of street dogs, howling provocatively.

I headed to the Amritsar hotel to do some writing. As I cruised along the empty causeway I noticed Arshan, Farzad’s father, the nominal head of the three families that were looking for treasure.

Arshan wasn’t treasure hunting: he was staring fixedly at the Colaba police station, across the road from where he stood. I wheeled the bike around in a circle, and pulled up beside him.

‘Hi, Arshan. How’s it going?’

‘Oh, fine, fine,’ he said absently.

‘It’s kinda late,’ I observed. ‘And this is a rough neighbourhood. There’s a bank, a police station and a fashion brand store, all within twenty metres.’

He smiled softly, but his eyes never wavered from the police station.

‘I’m… I’m waiting for someone,’ he said vaguely.

‘Maybe he isn’t coming. Can I offer you a lift home?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said again. ‘I’m fine, Lin. You go on.’

He was so distracted that his hands were twitching, reflexes driven by violent thoughts, and his expression had unconsciously settled into a grimace of pain.

‘I’m gonna have to insist, Arshan,’ I said. ‘You don’t look good, man.’

He gradually brought himself back to the moment, shook his head, blinked the stare from his eyes, and accepted the ride.

He didn’t say a word on the way home, and only muttered thanks and farewell abstractedly, as he walked toward the door of his home.

Farzad opened for us, gasping in concern for his dad.

‘What is it, Pop? Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine, boy,’ he replied, resting on his son’s shoulder.

‘Lin, will you come in?’ Farzad asked.

It was a brave offer, because the kid was still in the Company, and we both knew Sanjay wouldn’t approve of him hosting me.

‘I’m good, Farzad,’ I said. ‘Let’s catch up, one of these days.’

At the Amritsar I threw everything off and took a long shower. Diva, who must’ve enjoyed baths foaming with scented oils in her father’s mansion, would have to wash in a small dish of water in the slum, and like the other girls, she’d have to wash fully clothed.

Poor kid, I thought, as I dressed again, but reminded myself that Naveen was never more than a call for help away. And I wondered how long it would take the Indian-Irish detective to admit that he was in love with her.

I made a no-bread sandwich of tuna fish, tomato and onion between slices of Parmesan cheese, drank two beers, and looked over Didier’s black market scams for a while.

He’d made pages of notes, with profiles on the key players, profit margins per month, salaries, and bribery payoffs. When I’d read them, I shoved the papers to the end of the bed, and picked up my journal.

There was that new short story I’d been trying to write, about happy, loving people doing happy, loving things. A love story. A fable. I tried to put a few more lines into the stream of words I’d already composed. I reread the first paragraph.

When it comes to the truth, there are two kinds of lovers: those who find truth in love, and those who find love in truth. Cleon Winters never sought the truth in anything, or anyone, because he didn’t believe in truth. But then, when he fell in love with Shanassa, truth found him, and all the lies he’d told himself became locusts, feeding on fields of doubt. When Shanassa kissed him, he fell into a coma, and was unconscious for six months, submerged in a lake of pure truth.

I persisted with the story for a while, but the characters began to change, following their own morphology, and became people I knew: Karla, Concannon, Diva.

The faces blurred, my eyes drooped, and every return to a line was another wave of will. I began to float on the sea of them, real faces and imagined.

The journal fell beside the bed. Loose pages from the notebook swirled free. The overhead fan scattered pages of my happy, loving story into Didier’s crime synopses. His pages settled on mine and mine joined his, and the wind wrote crime as love, and love as crime, as I slept.

Chapter Forty-Nine

There will be constant affirmations, Idriss had said, again and again. If they were there, I didn’t see them, even in dreams. Idriss talked of spiritual things, but the only thing that came to mind for me, in the word spiritual, was nature. I hadn’t found my connection to his tendency field, and out there on that fringe of the world, I didn’t feel that I belonged to anything but Karla.

I’d searched the faiths I could find. I learned prayers in languages I couldn’t speak, and prayed with believers whenever they invited me to join them. But I always connected to the people and the purity of their faith, rather than the religious code they followed. I often had everything in common with them, in fact, but their God.

Idriss spoke of the Divine in the language of science, and spoke of science in the language of faith. It made a strange kind of sense to me, where Khaderbhai’s lectures on cosmology only ever left me with good questions. Idriss was a journey, like every teacher, and I wanted to learn on the way, but the spiritual path I could see always led to forests, where talking stopped long enough for birds to find trees, and to oceans and rivers and deserts. And each woken beautiful day, each lived and written night, carried inside it a small, ineffaceable emptiness of questions.

I showered, drank coffee, tidied my rooms and went down to my bike, parked in the alleyway under the building. I had a breakfast meeting with Abdullah. I wanted to see him, and I was afraid to see him: afraid that friendship had faded in his eyes. So I rode and thought of Diva Devnani, the rich girl in a very poor slum, whose father was watching the sand run through his fingers. I made a note to buy her some Kerala grass and a bottle of coconut rum for when I checked on her.

When I parked my bike beside Abdullah’s, across the street from the Saurabh restaurant, I looked up slowly and reluctantly, but the eyes that met mine were as true as they’d always been. He hugged me, and we squeezed onto a small bench behind a table that gave us both a view of the door.

‘You are the subject of discussion,’ he said, as we worked our way through masala dosas and dumplings in mango sauce. ‘DaSilva made a bet that you would not live to see the end of the month.’

‘Anyone take the bet?’

‘Of course not,’ Abdullah said, between mouthfuls. ‘I beat DaSilva with a bamboo rod. He withdrew the wager.’

‘Solid.’

‘The talk from Sanjay is what counts, for now, and Sanjay wants you to live.’

‘In the way a cat wants a mouse to live?’

‘More like a tiger and a mouse,’ he replied. ‘He thinks the Scorpions are cats, and that they hate you more than DaSilva does.’

‘So, am I a target or a useful distraction, for Sanjay?’

‘The last. He does not expect that you will survive outside the Company for a long time. But you are useful, in a unique way.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘While you live, you are irritating.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention. In fact, I think you will probably be irritating, even after you are dead. It is a rare quality.’

‘Thanks again.’

‘Don’t mention.’

‘Where do I stand with business?’

‘He does not think you will survive long enough, to establish a business.’

‘I got that. But if I do survive, say, until the day after tomorrow, when I’d like to get started, how do I stand?’

‘Sanjay assured me that he would license you, like everyone else, but at a higher percentage.’

‘And they say mafia dons have no heart. Can I do my own passports?’

‘He does not think you will -’

‘- survive long enough. But if I do?’

‘Sanjay has said that you are banned from the passport factory. Your young man there, Farzad, came to see Sanjay personally, asking that he be permitted to learn from you privately. Sanjay said that he did not think -’

‘- I’d survive long enough, right, but he didn’t rule it out?’

‘No. He ordered Farzad not to contact you, or speak to you.’

‘And if I bought my own kit, and started modifying books?’

‘He does not think -’

‘Abdullah,’ I sighed, ‘I don’t care if Sanjay thinks I won’t last the winter. The only opinion I respect on that subject is my own. Just tell Sanjay, when you get a minute, that one of these days he might need a good passport from me himself. If he’s cool with it, I’d like to start making books. I’m good at it, and it’s an anarchist crime. See if you can get him to agree, okay?’

‘Jarur, brother.’

It was good to hear him call me brother, but I didn’t know if he was accepting my defection from the Company, or if his disaffection was driving him closer to my renegade side of the line.

‘You will be taking over all of Didier’s enterprises?’ he asked.

‘Not all of them. I’m letting the drugs go. The Company can pick it up, if they want. Amir can have it. And the escorts, too. They can have all of Didier’s escort strings in South Bombay. I wrote off the debts, and let everyone run free. They’re out there, doing their own things. But the Company can probably negotiate them back again, I guess.’

‘It will be done before nightfall,’ he intoned, his deep voice rumbling the syllables. ‘So, without the girls and the drugs, you will have what, exactly?’

‘All Didier’s currency touts are with me. I’ve got enough to float about fifteen of the black money traders from Flora Fountain to Colaba Market, for a month. If it ticks over, I’ll do okay. On the side, I’m specialising in watches and technology. Every street guy on the strip will bring stuff to me first, before any other buyer. I think I can make that work.’

‘Watches?’ he asked, frowning sternly.

‘There’s a lot of money in collector watches.’

‘But watches, Lin?’ he said, suddenly almost angry. ‘You were a soldier, with Khaderbhai.’

‘I’m not a soldier, Abdullah. I’m a gangster, and so are you.’

‘You were one of his sons. How can you sit here, and talk to me of watches?’

‘Okay,’ I said, trying to make it light. ‘How about we ride our bikes to Nariman Point, and I’ll sit there, and talk of watches?’

He rose from the table, left the restaurant, and strode to his motorcycle. He didn’t pay a bill in any restaurant in South Bombay. No gangster ever did. I paid, left a tip for the waiters, and caught up to him.

‘A ride is necessary,’ he said.

I followed him to Bombay University, where we parked the bikes, walked through the colonnades and leafy laneways, and entered the open playing fields called Azad Maidan, behind the campus and other buildings.

There was a fence of iron spears between the vast expanse of the playing fields and the street outside, with only one other entry point, served by a long path across the lawns to the university. The sun’s invisible lake of light reflected gold off every surface and feature.

Abdullah and I walked the fence line, side by side, just away from the shaggy weeds that gathered at the base.

It was almost exactly like the walks I’d made with other men every day, in prison, walking and talking, walking and talking in circles of years.

‘How bad has it been?’ I asked him. ‘I heard some stuff on the mountain. What’s the deal with the fire, at the Scorpion house?’

He pursed his lips. He’d anticipated that I’d ask him about the fighting in Colaba, and the fire that killed a nurse in Vishnu’s house. I knew why that nurse was in the house. I wondered if Abdullah or anyone in the Company knew that civilians were in the house. I hadn’t known, when I rang the bell, and I hadn’t told Abdullah or anyone else about it.

He let a deep breath escape through his nose, his lips pressed firmly in a rumpled frown.

‘Lin, I am going to trust you, as if you are still in the family. It is not what I should do, but it is what I must do.’

‘Abdullah, I’m a broad strokes guy, you know that. I don’t want intimate details about anything except intimacy, if I can help it. And don’t go breaking your oath for me, although I love you for it, man. Just let me know the big picture details, so I know who’s shooting at who.’

‘It was Farid,’ Abdullah said. ‘I counselled against it. Fire is indiscriminate. I wanted to discriminate, and kill them personally. All of them, once and for all. Sanjay decided to use fire. Farid set it, and the Scorpions escaped, but a nurse, who was not supposed to be there, she died in the flames.’

‘Where’s Farid now?’

‘He is still here, at Sanjay’s side. He refuses to leave the city, when it would be far wiser if he did.’

‘There’s a lot of that going around at the moment.’

‘What is going around?’

‘Nothing. Just a stray thought in the wind. The Scorpions will hit back hard, Abdullah. I’ve met this guy, Vishnu. He’s no lightweight. He’s smart, and he’s got a political agenda. That gives him allies in unlikely places. Don’t underestimate his revenge.’

‘What does he want?’

‘He wants what you want, up to a point. He wants Sanjay dead. But he wants the whole Company dead with him. And he’s got a thing about Pakistan.’

‘Pakistan?’

‘Pakistan,’ I repeated. ‘Neighbour country, kind people, nice language, great music, secret police. Pakistan.’

‘That is not a good thing,’ Abdullah frowned. ‘Sanjay has made many friends in Pakistan. It was those friends who sent the Afghan guards to protect him.’

We were approaching a curve in the fence. A young couple sat on a blanket in the warm, plush grass. They had several books open in front of them. A message of crows was hopping around them, basking in the morning sun and searching for worms.

Abdullah began to turn away to avoid the couple.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I know those guys.’

Vinson and Rannveig looked up, smiling, as we approached. I introduced Abdullah, and stooped to pick up one of the books. It was Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

‘How did you get into Campbell?’

‘We studied him at university,’ Rannveig said. ‘I’m teaching a crash course to Stuart.’

‘It’s over my head,’ Vinson grinned, waving a hand over the blonde waves of his hair.

‘Carlos Castaneda,’ I said, reading the covers of other books. ‘Robert Pirsig, Emmett Grogan, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Buddha. Nice bunch. You could throw Socrates and Howard Zinn onto that list. I didn’t know you’re a student here.’

‘I’m not,’ Rannveig said quickly.

‘Technically, I’m the student,’ Vinson said. ‘I enrolled here nearly two years ago, but I’ve bunked all my classes. Still have the library card, though.’

‘Well, happy reading, guys,’ I said, turning away.

‘It worked,’ Rannveig said. ‘That thing, with the plate of food.’

I turned back.

‘It did?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sweet Tooth was happy, I guess. He’s gone. Thank you.’

‘What are you guys talking about?’ Vinson asked, his face as perplexed as a ten-year-old kid’s.

One of the things I liked most about Vinson was that his face was so wide open that it gave nowhere for his feelings to hide. Whatever he thought or felt started in his face. He was his own straight man.

‘Tell you later,’ Rannveig said, waving goodbye.

‘Do those people also buy and sell watches?’ Abdullah asked, as we continued the loop of the playing fields back toward the campus entrance.

‘Are we back to that again?’

Abdullah harrumphed. There actually are people who harrumph. I know quite a few, as it turns out. My theory is that harrumphers have a tiny pinch of extra bear DNA than the rest of us, in their setup.

‘I have your guns for you,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Tell me where you want me to deliver them.’

‘I know a guy who’ll keep them safe, for ten per cent. I’ll give you the details. Thanks, Abdullah. Let me know what I owe you.’

‘The weapons are a gift,’ he said, stung.

‘I’m sorry, brother, of course. Damn nice. And speaking of weapons, I’ve got a meeting with Vikrant, my knife guy, in Sassoon Dock. Is there anything I can do for you?’

We approached the archway leading back through the campus to the street, but he stopped me before I could join the mill of students passing through the arch.

‘There is something,’ Abdullah began, but he closed his mouth firmly again, breathing hard through his nose. ‘Sanjay has forbidden us from befriending you, or contacting you, for any reason other than Company business.’

‘I see.’

‘You understand what this means?’

‘I… guess so.’

‘It means that the next time we meet openly, Sanjay will be dead.’

‘What?’

‘Be confident and unafraid,’ he said, hugging me fiercely, and then holding me in his outstretched arms, as solid as a doorjamb. ‘You have eyes watching you.’

‘You got that right.’

‘No. I mean that I have paid some eyes to watch you, for some time,’ he said patiently.

‘You have? Who?’

‘The Cycle Killers.’

‘You paid homicidal maniacs to watch out for me?’

‘I did.’

‘That’s very thoughtful. And expensive. Maniacs don’t come cheap.’

‘You are right. I took some money from Khaled’s treasure, to pay for it.’

‘How did Khaled feel about that?’

‘He agreed. My feeling is that the only way I can lure him back to Bombay, and his true destiny, is to bring his treasure from the mountain to the city, one piece at a time.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

He looked me up and down, profoundly offended.

‘I never make jokes.’

‘You do, too,’ I laughed. ‘You just don’t know you do. You’re a funny guy, Abdullah.’

‘I am?’ he asked, grimacing.

‘You hired homicidal maniacs to protect me. You’re a funny guy, Abdullah. Lisa always laughed when she was with you, remember?’

Lisa.

He looked across the fields, the muscles in his jaw rippling, although his eyes were perfectly still. University students were playing cricket, kicking footballs, sitting in groups, doing cartwheels, and dancing for no reason.

Lisa.

‘You were her Rakhi brother,’ I said. ‘She never told me.’

‘Big changes are coming,’ Abdullah said, finding my eyes. ‘The next time you see me, perhaps it will be at my funeral. Kiss me as a brother, and pray that Allah forgives my sins.’

He kissed my cheek, whispered goodbye, and slipped gracefully into the stream of students flowing through the arch.

The fields, surrounded by the long, speared fence, seemed like a vast green net, cast by the sun to catch brilliant young minds. My eyes searched for Vinson and Rannveig, in the far corner of the park, but I couldn’t find them.

Abdullah was already gone when I reached my bike. It was high noon, and he didn’t want to explain being seen with me. I wondered when, and how, I’d ever see him again.

I rode back to the Sassoon Dock area, and Vikrant’s metal shop. I presented the renowned knife-maker with the two halves of the sword willed to me by Khaderbhai.

Vikrant’s bargaining system was to begin with the cheapest solution, sell you on it, and then expose the fatal flaw in the cheapest option. That, of course, led to the next cheapest option, the next hard sell, the next fatal flaw, and the next option, and the next fatal flaw.

I’d tried over the years to get Vikrant to cut straight to the very-expensive-option-with-zero-fatal-flaws, but unfortunately that wasn’t an option.

‘Do we have to do the option thing again, Vikrant? Can’t you just gimme the deluxe deal now? I really don’t give a shit how much it costs. And it’s really irritating, man.’

‘As in everything else in life,’ the knife-maker said, ‘there’s a right way, and a wrong way, to be irritating.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Indeed. Me, for example, I’m professionally irritating. My irritating goes with the territory. But you, you’re irritating without any reason at all.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘You’re irritating me now, even as we speak.’

‘Fuck you, Vikrant. Are you gonna fix the sword, or not?’

He studied the weapon for some time, trying not to smile.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘But only if I can fix it my own way. The hilt has a fatal flaw. A third-rate option.’

‘Great. Go ahead.’

‘No,’ he said, holding the sword in his upturned palms. ‘You must understand. If I fix it my way, it will never break, and it will be a partner with Time, but it will not be the same sword that Khaderbhai’s ancestors carried into battle. It will look different, and it will feel different. The soul of it will be different.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you want to preserve history,’ the knife-maker asked, allowing himself a smile, ‘or do you want history to preserve you?’

‘Funny guy, Vikrant. I want the sword to last. It’s like a trust, and I can’t be sure that the next guy will have it repaired if it breaks again. Do the deluxe, Vikrant. Make her last forever, and give her a makeover, but keep her under wraps until you’re finished, okay? It makes me sad.’

‘The sword, or the trust?’

‘Both.’

‘Thik, Shantaram.’

‘Okay. And thanks for the message you sent through Didier, about Lisa. Meant a lot.’

‘She was a nice girl,’ he sighed, waving goodbye. ‘Gone to a better place, man.’

‘A better place,’ I smiled, thinking it strange that we can think of any life as better than the life we’re living.

I avoided better places, and spent the long day and evening doing the rounds of currency dealers and touts, from the Fountain to the Point to the mangroves in Colaba Back Bay.

I listened to Chinese-whispered gangster gossip up and down the strip, made notes on all the money changers’ tallies and estimates, checked them against Didier’s notes, found out who the principal predators were, which restaurants favoured us and which banned us, how often the cops demanded money, which men could be trusted, which girls couldn’t be trusted, which shops were fronts for other businesses, and how much each square foot of black market footpath in Colaba cost.

Crime does pay, of course, otherwise nobody would do it. Crime usually pays faster, if not better, than Wall Street. But Wall Street has the cops. And the cops were my last stop before visiting the slum, to check on Diva and Naveen.

Lightning Dilip gestured toward a chair, when I walked into his office.

‘Don’t sit in the fucking chair,’ he said. ‘What the fuck do you want?’

He was looking me over, remembering the last beating he’d given me, hoping for a limp.

‘Lightning-ji,’ I began politely. ‘I just want to know if I can still bribe you, now that I’m freelancing, or if I have to go to Sub-Inspector Patil. I’m hoping for you, because the sub-inspector can be a real pain in the ass. But if you tell him that, I’ll deny it.’

The constables laughed. Lightning Dilip glared at them.

‘Throw this motherfucker in the under barrack,’ he said to the cops, lounging in the doorway. ‘And kick his head sideways.’

They stopped laughing, and moved toward me.

‘Just kidding,’ Lightning laughed, holding up a hand to stop his men. ‘Just kidding.’

The cops laughed. I laughed, too. It was pretty funny, in its own way.

‘Five per cent,’ I said.

‘Seven and a half,’ Lightning shot back. ‘And I’ll give you a chair to sit in, next time you visit the under barrack.’

The cops laughed. I laughed, too, because I would’ve given him ten per cent.

‘Done. You drive a hard bargain, Lightning-ji. You didn’t marry a Marwari wife for nothing.’

The Marwaris are trading people from Rajasthan, in northern India. They have a reputation for shrewd business, and sharp deal making. Lightning Dilip’s Marwari wife had a reputation for spending money faster than Lightning could beat it from his victims.

He looked at me, tasting the mention of his wife without pleasure. His lip curled. Every sadist has a sadist in the shadows. When you know who it is, just the mention of the name is enough.

‘Get out of here!’

‘Thank you, Sergeant-ji,’ I said.

I walked past the cops who’d chained and kicked me, weeks before. They smiled, and nodded good-naturedly. That was pretty funny too, in its own way.

Chapter Fifty

I parked outside the slum and made my way to Johnny’s house. He wasn’t there, so I went to the adjoining huts being used by Naveen and Diva. I heard them, as usual, before I saw them.

‘Do you know what a woman has to do to take a shit around here?’ Diva demanded, as I walked into the little clear space in front of their huts.

‘Wow, that was a long conversation,’ I said. ‘Weren’t you on that last time?’

‘Do you know, Mr Kharab Dhandha Shantaram?’ she demanded, using the term for dirty business.

‘I do. I used to live here. And it ain’t right.’

‘Damn right, it’s not right,’ Diva said, turning from me to poke Naveen in the chest. ‘A woman can’t shit in the daytime, for example.’

There were several people in the group. Naveen and Didier were standing in front of Naveen’s hut. Diva was with Johnny’s wife, Sita, and three girls from surrounding houses.

‘I -’ Naveen tried.

‘Imagine if someone told you that you can’t take a shit, all day, because you’re a man, and somebody might see you taking a shit. You’d totally freak out, right?’

‘I -’

‘Well, that’s what we get told, because we’re women. And when we are allowed to take a shit, when the sun goes down, we have to clamber around the rocks, and do it in some miserable fucking place in the total dark, because if we carry a torch, someone might see that we’re taking a shit!’

‘I -’

‘And women get molested, out there in the dark. There’s crazy guys hanging around. Guys who don’t mind that the place is full of shit. Guys who actually prefer it that way. I’m not kidding, and I’m not putting up with it. I waited till dark to take a shit, and I’m not doing that again. I’m the fuck out of here, and that means tonight! I’m leaving.’

Naveen was considering whether to say I again. He looked at Didier. Didier looked at me. I looked at the fascinating knot on the edge of a bamboo support pole.

There was a commotion, and Johnny rushed in from one of the narrower lanes we used for short cuts.

He saw us, and stopped. His mouth was open. His hands were out in front of him, as if he was holding a branch.

‘What is it, Johnny?’ Sita asked, in Marathi.

‘I… I can’t… ’

‘Johnny, what’s up?’ I asked.

He was stiff, as if he was ready to run somewhere. His face struggled. Sita went to him, and led him away. After a minute she returned, and called Naveen and me to her.

Didier and the girls remained with Diva.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ Diva said. ‘I’m leaving! Hello? Did everybody forget that part?’

Johnny was sitting in a plastic armchair, drinking from a bottle of chilled water.

‘They are all dead,’ he said.

‘Who’s dead?’ Naveen asked.

‘Aanu’s father, I mean Diva’s father, and everyone at his house. Everyone. Even the gardeners. Even the pets. It was a horrible massacre.’

‘When?’

‘Just now,’ Johnny said breathlessly. ‘Lin, how can we tell that girl? I can’t do it. I can’t.’

‘Did you check the story?’

‘Yes, Naveen, of course I did. The police and press are going mad. It will be on the news, very soon, and then she will know anyway. Should we just wait? What are we going to do?’

‘Turn on the radio, Johnny,’ I said.

Sita clicked on the local news channel.

Bad words like slaughter and massacre poured from the mouth of the radio. Mukesh Devnani and seven of his household had been killed. The household pets had been killed. Nothing, and no-one, was spared.

Divya Devnani, the words said, again and again, the sole heir to the Devnani fortune, might also have been killed in the slaughter, the massacre, the slaughter.

‘We can’t let her find out by hearing that,’ I said. ‘She’s gotta be told.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ Naveen said, soft light in his eyes.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘It’s tough on you, but it should be you. But not here. Let’s go down to the rocks, and the sea. There’s a quiet place I know.’

She didn’t protest, when we walked through the slum, but as we stepped among the black stones on the shoreline, she tried to walk back into the slum. I think she sensed that bad news had found a place to drown itself.

Naveen held her in his arms, and told her. She broke the hug, walked a few uncertain steps on the rocky shore, and began to stagger away.

Naveen followed her closely, catching her a few times when her bare feet slipped between the rocks.

She stumbled on in a daze, her eyes blind, her legs moving in an instinct to flee suffering and fear.

I’d seen it before, during a prison riot: a man so scared that he walked into a stone wall, again and again, always hoping for a door. Her mind was somewhere else, searching for the vanished world.

Without her realising it, Naveen led her in a wide arc, and back to me. She sat placidly, then, on a boulder, and very slowly came back to herself. When she did, she started crying uncontrollably.

I left her with Naveen, who loved her, and returned to the huts to bring Sita and the girls to help. Sita was gone, but I found Karla and the Zodiac Georges instead.

I looked at Didier. Diva’s hiding place in the slum was a secret.

‘I thought it wise, that she have some support,’ Didier said. ‘Especially since we shall all be spending the night here to support her, in this… community facility, is it not so?’

Karla kissed me hello.

‘How is she?’

‘It hit her like an axe handle,’ I said, ‘but she came around okay. She’s a tough girl. Good that you’re here. She’s with Naveen, down by the sea. I’d give them a while yet. She’s pretty cut up, and Naveen knew her father.’

‘Didier is too much of a gentleman to keep a secret,’ Didier said, ‘and leave Diva without friends, on a night of such terrible disaster as this.’

‘And Didier is too scared of ghosts,’ Karla added, ‘to stay here alone.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘Clearly,’ Didier said, ‘the place is haunted. I am sensing presences.’

‘Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here.’

‘It’s been a while,’ she said, looking around at the slum huts. ‘Any special attractions this time? Cholera, typhoid?’

There’d been a cholera outbreak years before, while I was living in the slum. Karla had come to help me fight it. She’d accepted the local rats, nursed helpless people, and cleaned diarrhoea from earthen floors on her hands and knees.

‘It sounds crazy, I guess, but that time with you, back then, it’s one of my happiest memories.’

‘Mine, too,’ she said, glancing around. ‘And you’re right. It’s crazy. What are the girls doing to Diva’s place?’

‘They’re sprucing it up. Hoping to raise her spirits, I think.’

‘There are spirits being raised from the dead in this wild city tonight,’ she said. ‘That’s for sure.’

‘Terrible business,’ Scorpio added, joining us.

‘Poor little thing,’ Gemini said. ‘We’ve kept her suite open, at the Mahesh. It’s always there, if she wants it.’

‘Just keep this place to yourselves,’ I said. ‘Johnny and the others are taking a risk. Don’t let anyone know about Diva. Are we good?’

‘Good as gold, mate,’ Gemini replied.

‘Yes… ’ Scorpio hedged. ‘Unless… ’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless someone is forcing me to tell.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, suppose somebody started hitting me, to get me to tell, then I would tell. So, I can only promise confidentiality up to the point of physical harm.’

I looked at Gemini.

‘It’s one of Scorpio’s rules,’ he shrugged.

‘And a good one,’ Scorpio added. ‘If everyone in the world spilled their guts at the first sign of violence, there’d be no torture any more.’

‘SnitchWorld,’ Karla said. ‘I think you’re on to something, Scorp.’

A man came through the lanes toward us, wheeling a bicycle laden with parcels.

‘Ah!’ Didier cried. ‘The relief supplies!’

The man unloaded a sponge mattress, a suitcase, a folding card table, four folding canvas stools and two sacks of booze from the bicycle. I looked at the booze.

‘It is for Diva,’ Didier said, catching my eye as he was counting the bottles. ‘The girl will need to get very drunk tonight, if on no other night in her life.’

‘Alcohol isn’t the answer to everything, Didier.’

Diva came out of the shadows suddenly.

‘I need to get very drunk,’ she said.

Didier stared his Told you so at me.

‘Will you… ’ Diva said, ‘my strange new friends, because none of you are my actual friends, and my actual friends aren’t here, and I may never see them again, like my father, will you help me to get very drunk, and clean me up when I get sick, and put me to bed safely, when I don’t know what’s going on any more?’

There was a pause.

‘Of course!’ Didier said. ‘Come here, sweet injured child. Come here to Didier, and we shall cry into everybody’s beer together, and spit into the eyes of Fate.’

She did cry, of course. She ranted, waved her arms, shouted, paced the little hut, tripped on the patchwork blankets, and called the girls in to dance with her.

When the ululating voices and handclap music reached a peak, she began to fall. Naveen caught her quickly and carried her to the bed of blankets, her arms falling at her sides like broken wings. She slowly curled her knees into her heart, and slept.

Sitting vigil in the next hut, Didier played poker with Naveen and the Zodiac Georges. It wasn’t a pretty game to watch: Scorpio never saw a crooked card, Didier and Gemini never played him a straight one, and Naveen couldn’t take his mind from the sleeping girl in the hut next door.

I looked in on Diva. Several of the neighbour girls were sleeping in the hut to keep Diva company. One girl of eighteen, named Anju, was cuddling the socialite’s shoulders in sleep. Another girl had her arm over Diva’s belly. Three girls snuggled in close to them. Somebody’s little brother was sleeping against their feet.

I trimmed the wick on the kerosene lantern to keep it alight, and lit a mosquito coil and a sandalwood incense stick from the flame. I set the coil and incense on a stand on top of the metal cabinet, and pulled the light plywood door shut on its rope hinges.

Through narrow lanes of sleeping trust I walked back to the rocks and the sea, as black as the sky. I stood watching and listening. In that spot Diva had heard, and realised, that she’d lost everything.

When I stood on the front wall of a prison, between the gun towers, I felt calm. All the terror drained from me, because I knew that if the guards shot me, I’d fall on the right side of the wall.

When I slid down my electric-cord rope to freedom and started running, the calm left me, and the realisation of what I’d lost hit me so hard that I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking for weeks.

But I’d chosen my exile, and Diva had hers forced on her. And it was too cruel: her father killed, and everyone else. It was the kind of too-cruel that makes a survivor fall. I hoped that the young socialite, hiding in the real world, had friends who wouldn’t let that happen, when she returned to the unreal world.

I heard a sound and turned to see Karla, standing on a rocky outcrop at the edge of the slum. She’d come to find me.

She waved to me, and a stray wave broke high against the rocks nearby. White rivulets of water streamed over black boulders to the shore. A second wave garlanded the rocks with surf as I climbed back toward the light, and love, one wet black stone at a time.

I paused with her at the top, and for a while we watched the sea spilling on the shore of Diva’s grief.

We walked back past huts humming and murmuring sleep: fathers sleeping outside to leave more room for the family inside, the silver moon bathing them in soft light.

And we talked softly with Didier, the Georges and Naveen in the hut beside Diva’s, all of us wanting to be close, in case she woke.

Diva’s Bombay would never be the same again: some of the people she’d known before the tragedy would become true friends, and some would become strangers in press paradise. Either way, when she returned to her destiny, everything would be changed. Naveen was a Bombay boy, and maybe he understood that in ways we couldn’t. But in our exile hearts, the Island City was home for all of us. And we waited together, that vigilant night, until the scarlet dawn helped a new exile wake, and struggle to the shore.