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Penguin Books Ltd - Kalpana Swaminathan

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140 pages

English

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Sita, detective Lalli s niece and occasional Watson runs into former classmate Anais at Mumbai airport. Even as the friends catch up, Anais hands over a cardboard box she is carrying to a waiting woman, nonchalantly informing the traumatized lady that the box contains her son s ashes. Some days later, Anais herself turns up dead in the slimy Mithi River, a pink nylon rope wrapped ritually around her neck. What does the cardboard box with human remains have to do with Anais s murder? And what significance do the peculiar knots round her neck have? Lalli must find answers, fast, if she is to prevent more deaths

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	09 mars 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184756197
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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KALPANA SWAMINATHAN
I Never Knew It Was You
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
2010
1986
2010
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
I NEVER KNEW IT WAS YOU
Kalpana Swaminathan lives in Mumbai, a few streets away from her detective. This is her fourth Lalli novel. Her earlier books include Bougainvillea House and Ambrosia for Afters . Venus Crossing , a collection of short stories, won the Vodafone Crossword Fiction Award in 2009.
Kalpana also writes with Ishrat Syed as Kalpish Ratna. Their most recent novel is The Quarantine Papers.
2010

Lalli tells it differently, but the story began at Delhi airport. I had darted into the restroom while waiting for my flight to be announced, when a woman brushing her long sleek hair spoke to me.
So, she said, meeting my eye in the mirror, how s life these days?
Did I know her?
She definitely didn t know me.
I m usually greeted with, How s death these days? or, All well at the morgue? Inevitable, when one lives with a woman who s the last resort in every baffling homicide. Still, it was nice when someone asked about life, my life.
Great! I lied, but she had her back to me now, stowing away her hairbrush in a charcoal suede bag I could have killed for.
You don t remember me, do you, Sita? she chuckled past the gleaming slide of gelled hair. Anais! From school!
Anais? The only Anais from school was contraband Nin.
I was Anisa then.
Anisa! The woman smiling at me couldn t possibly be the pale, fat kid I remembered. And while I was still blinking, she left.
I caught sight of her as we were boarding. She was intent on her cellphone and fortunately didn t look up. I had my hour and a half of solitude among the clouds and the last three days receded into deep time. I felt a surge of hope as we dropped out of the empyrean into the brown miasma that bundles Mumbai like a gunnysack. Home was safe inside that, waiting for me.
Our bags were slow in coming and an indignant crowd milled around the carousel. I spotted Anais across the lobby. She caught my eye and waved. I nodded absently, intent on the emerging rush of bags. Predictably, none of them was mine. I would have to wait for the next container to be unloaded.
There was just one shoebox on the carousel now, giddy on its extended joyride. The small cardboard box whirled past unclaimed, pathetically ludic in its persistence. It was too small, and looked too light, to be checked in as cargo. Yet, somebody had-and no longer wanted it. It outstayed the next consignment of luggage as well. Again, my battered red suitcase was nowhere to be seen.
That little cardboard box valiantly kept up its whirl for the next half hour. Then suitcases and bags erupted from the tunnel and I got busy extricating my suitcase past a loopy snarl of backpacks and totes.
Finally, I was through. As I wheeled my trolley away, I heard a voice say, Hey, there it is, at last! and I turned to see Anais pick the little cardboard box off the carousel.
It s been there for ever, I said. It came out with the first lot.
It did? Anais/Anisa shrugged ruefully. We walked towards the exit.
So! Till our next meeting then-perhaps at another airport! she laughed. She didn t have any luggage other than the cardboard box.
Pity you had to wait so long for that, I said. It s so small, you could have carried it as hand baggage.
You re telling me! She rolled her eyes in exasperation. A curious rejoinder, but I let it go, eager to be rid of her and find a ride home.
The great Indian circus of homecoming had spent itself. Friends and relations had melted away from the barrier. One elderly woman alone remained, peering hopelessly into the gloom of the arrival hall. Her eyes rejected us.
To my surprise Anais stepped up to her.
Mrs Katarkar? You re waiting for Ankush?
Yes, yes! I m his mother.
I know. Here, this is for you. She held out the cardboard box. Mrs Katarkar took it mechanically, her bewildered eyes focused beyond us.
But Ankush? Where is Ankush?
Anais had already walked past, but she turned, fanning out her sleek bell of hair.
Have you seen my son? Where is Ankush? Mrs Katarkar asked.
Anais leaned across and tapped the cardboard box with one elegant finger. He s right here, she said. Inside.
By the time I had propped Mrs Katarkar against the parapet, wedged her between my suitcase and handbag, and retrieved the shoebox that was sliding from her grasp-Anais had disappeared.
Mrs Katarkar s eyes glimmered.
There must be some mistake, I muttered. Stupidly, as it turned out.
Mrs Katarkar took the box from me and shook it. There was a faint but distinct rattle. No mistake, she said. Bones inside.
She had grey eyes, grey eyebrows and a dazzlingly white moustache. The shimmer in her gaze had nothing to do with tears. She held out the box to me and rummaged in her handbag for a crumpled paper. He sent this last night. See, it says, kindly meet at airport. She thrust the paper at me.
It was the printout of an email, addressed to Cableways, which sounded like an Internet caf .
For Mrs Shaila Katarkar, 46 C Sunnyside. Arriving Monday 1600 hrs Jet Airways Flight 126 from Delhi. Kindly meet at airport. Ankush.
It had been sent last night at 2200 hrs from another Internet caf . An unlikely stop en route to the crematorium.
A mad scramble for Ankush, after he d left the Internet caf at eleven. Self-combustion at midnight, raked and sifted by first light, packaged and ready for transportation by noon.
The moment grew even more surreal. Mrs Katarkar turned pettish. Taxi is waiting! I m wasting good money. I thought Ankush asked me to come because there would be luggage, and it s cheaper to take taxi from Santa Cruz. Airport taxis are so expensive, 250 flat rate. So I took taxi from Santa Cruz direct and he is waiting with meter running. So much unnecessary expense! One minute, please wait.
And she plunged into the phalanx of rickshaws behind us.
Five minutes passed, then ten.
I was distracted by a vision of her staggering blindly into the traffic and crumpling up in a bloodstained heap on the pavement. But nothing of that sort happened, there was no nerve-curling screech of brakes.
I glanced at my watch. It was later than I had thought.
She had been gone nearly half an hour, leaving me clutching what was left of her son.
I was darned if I was going to let her get away with it.
Let whom? Inspector Shukla asked ten minutes later.
Unable to locate either Lalli or Savio on the phone, I had hesitated before going to the Airport Chowki.
I was a little hazy about what I could tell the police without being locked up while they stuck the shoebox in a particle accelerator to check out my story. They ve gone so high-tech these days, a traffic offence can get you a brain scan for free. Ten minutes with that shoebox, and they d know for sure if the quark-gluon plasma inside really was Ankush Katarkar.
Luck-if you can call it that-was on my side. Inspector Shukla was in attendance, and he s never on my side.
Ah Sita, which friend in trouble this time?
I ignored this ham-fisted reference to the affair of the Monochrome Madonna.
It s this box. Somebody left it-
Put it down! Outside! In corridor! I will alert Bomb Squad. Everywhere is pasted Do Not Touch Suspicious Objects, and you don t know? How can you be writer when you cannot even read?
It s not a suspicious object. It s human remains.
I heard a chuckle behind me. After thirty years in the morgue, even I can t say that so glibly.
Our police surgeon, Dr Qureshi, emerged from the next room, immaculate as usual. Nothing about him suggested that he had been mucking about with the dead and decomposed since morning. The white shirt and trousers-his habitual disguise-were immaculate, if a little wilted. I say disguise advisedly. Dr Q should more properly dress in robes. The messier the subject on the slab, the more reverend is Dr Q s approach-he s not so much doctor as high priest to the dead.
Shoebox. This time, our Sita is finding designer shoes. Shukla patted the box. Jimmy Choochoo. In native places, dog comes running if you say Jimmy Choochoo. Here, with fifty thousand cash down, same word is pretty shoes. Designer item.
It s not designer shoes, it s human remains!
I was shouting by now, tears burning the back of my eyes, threatening the final humiliation in Shukla s presence.
I ll take that, Shukla, thank you. Come with me, Sita.
Whole place will blow up if it s a bomb, Shukla bellowed after us.
Everything s a bomb for Shukla, Dr Q muttered. Where did you find the box?
I told him everything, from the moment Anais accosted me at Delhi airport to the instant when Mrs Katarkar vanished, leaving me holding the box. I ll be darned if I let her get away, I concluded.
Let whom? Shukla countered. He d trailed us, as expected. Which one? A or B? Your friend Ananas or this Katarkar?
That s not the point. What s in the box? Is it human remains? Yes or no? I asked with some irritation.
Good answer. Wrong question.
Let s get this X-rayed first. Dr Q heaved himself out of the chair.
No need to go back into Cargo for that, Dr Q. We are having X-ray machine backside.
I wasn t wrong, then, about the Large Hadron Collider. If they could have an X-ray machine in this titivated cottage, who knows what else lurked in the cinderblock extension? Dr Q left. I stayed where I was and scowled at Shukla.
Dr Q said your book has come in paper. Become famous now?
Because my book is in the paper or because I wrote a book?
Wrong question again. If your book is in paper, it is news.
Yeah? What if the paper says it s bad news?
What? Impossible! Who said?
If!
He frowned over that monosyllable, temporarily gagged.
Dr Q returned, all aglow. Remains, it is! Nice little tricuspid in there, not to talk of other calcific fragments. Bones and teeth to you, Shukla.
You re dangerous lady, Sita.
Nonsense, Shukla. It s not Sita s fault this time. Products of cremation. Nothi