Murder with Bengali Characteristics Page 13

  ‘Who let this uncle in, Debu-da?’ asked Toobloo. ‘Can we give him some treatment? I’ll call the others.’

  Debu-da folded his hands. ‘Please take a seat, dada, I’ll ask for a cup of tea. Don’t mind the boy. We teach these young boys to be strong. Sometimes they become too strong. Don’t mind. We all respect your Inspector very much. He’s not just handsome, he’s highly intelligent. Possibly honest also.’ Phoni-babu subsided, mollified by his charm.

  ‘I don’t do settlements,’ said Li. ‘If Amalendu Lahiri of the Thug Society is the culprit, I’ll take him in. I’m just not sure yet. You’re a smart boy. You know it’s not always that simple. Are you sure it was the thugs? And if they did it, then why?’

  The boy’s face crumpled. He was a bold little monkey, like most of them. But he was still a child. ‘I don’t think about it,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to think about it. What’s the point? He’s gone.’

  ‘Well, there’s always revenge,’ said Li, ‘it’s one of the things I’m looking for. Vengeance, love, silence, money. That’s why most crimes happen. I just don’t know which one’s the cause of this crime.’

  The little boy wiped his eyes. ‘I hope you find out. If you need any help, let me know. Debu-da will give me off.’ Debu-da put his arm round the boy’s shoulder. ‘Of course I will,’ he said. ‘Come on, Inspector. You’ve harassed enough children for one day.’

  ‘I’m not the one teaching them to kill people,’ said Li, ‘but I have to thank you for the book. It was interesting. Felt just like home.’ He reached into his jacket and handed back his copy of Animal Farm. Debu-da snatched it from him quickly and shoved it under a pile of clothes on his cot. His smile seemed a little forced. ‘Why, thank you, inspector! I completely forgot. I thought you would keep it. It’s a rare and precious thing. You really are an honest man.’

  Before leaving, Li turned to his young suspect, who had abruptly stopped crying. ‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Li.

  ‘Think,’ said Toobloo.

  Just as they reached their car, parked on the edge of the jungle, Phoni-babu received a phone call. His mouth fell open as he listened. ‘What are you saying, sisterfucker!’ he cried. ‘How is that even possible? Which mother’s son would dare to do such a thing?’ The phone dropped from his nerveless fingers. He fell at Inspector Li’s feet. He wrapped his arms around his knees. To Li’s amazement, there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Sir, please save us! Please do something!’ he said. ‘You’re a brave officer!’

  ‘Save you from what?’ asked Li, trying to pull him back to his feet.

  ‘Maa Kali have mercy on us all! They’re destroying the Kalighat Temple!’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘You, Inspector-sahib, you! Soldiers have come, with tanks. They’re blowing up our temple and shooting the priests! How could you do this? We look upon you as our elder brothers. We serve you with maximum loyalty. Big Chen refuses, but every penny of my collection, I share with Sexy!’

  ‘Crying won’t help your mother. Get off your feet and get in the car,’ said Li. ‘I’m dropping you off at the station on the way.’

  23

  ‘All it requires is a systematic approach, and enough ammunition.’

  Inspector Li watched the Kalighat Temple burn. A black tank with the insignia of the People’s Armed Police was parked horizontally across the tram tracks. It fired off a round, obliterating three small shops and a legless beggar, who was unarmed, unless you counted his small tin bowl, which flew up in the air, miraculously intact. One of the soldiers fired from the hip, and hit the bowl, earning a cheer from some of his comrades. Joy was not universal. Some of the others were looking away, their rifles pointed at the ground. General Zhou watched, feet planted wide apart, hands on his hips, smiling.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said Inspector Li.

  The hysterical crowd pressed against the barricade, maddened by grief. General Zhou gave the sign and his boys opened fire. ‘Try not to shoot any children,’ he shouted, out of deference to his guest. He liked Inspector Li, even though he was from the Ministry of Internal Security. He could hold his drink, and he knew when to hold his tongue, priceless qualities, both.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Inspector Li.

  General Zhou slapped him on the back. He belonged to the whistle-while-you-work school of soldiering. He was fat, cheerful, and thick as a plank. His men loved him to bits.

  ‘First, let me tell you, little brother, this has nothing to do with quotas. It’s true we were slightly behind. The Governor’s been very busy, and he won’t let us use his lawn. He seems a little depressed. We need to keep an eye on the fellow. This has nothing to do with him. This is a patriotic forward movement, to help save the Motherland.’

  A wizened old priest emerged from the smoke, clasping a small idol to his breast, followed by an impossibly burdened flower boy, wearing most of his merchandise round his neck. The guns had stopped firing now. The crowd was creeping in, to remove the dead and the dying. Some still stood at the barricades, watching the temple burn, their faces lit by the fire.

  ‘Once the ashes cool, we’ll go in and check how many thugs we got,’ said General Zhou.

  ‘Thugs?’ echoed Inspector Li, hollowly.

  ‘Yes, thugs,’ said General Chen, eyeing his troops keenly for signs of battle fatigue. ‘I heard about your meeting with Wang. Apparently, he thinks the thugs are no threat. His brain is the size of his penis. Of course they’re a threat! They’ve killed four of us in the last six weeks. That’s the problem with you Internal Security people, you spend too much time stuck to computers. The People’s Armed Police believes in action. Spend more time on the streets, meet lots of people, shoot them. That’s the way to do it.’

  ‘But I thought Propagandist Wang specifically ordered us to focus on the telepaths, who are crossing the border as we speak,’ said Inspector Li.

  ‘I don’t report to that dog turd,’ said General Zhou, frostily, ‘I report directly to Beijing. Once I explained the situation, their orders were very precise. There’s this ancient cult or brotherhood, I said, who are going around killing Chinese officials with handkerchiefs. I explained how they were deadly secret, and masters of disguise, and worshipped a goddess named Kali. As I had anticipated, the news of a secret religious cult terrified them. They asked for my advice. They know I’m an expert on local conditions.’

  General Zhou was a war veteran, and proud of it. He’d seen action during the Ranchi Incident, which had mostly involved retreating from Ranchi. The Maoists had warned them about Indians advancing in overwhelming numbers. The rumours had turned out to be false, but the Maoists had promised to hold the ground for them, and to keep them posted about future threats.

  ‘If the roots are not removed during weeding, the weeds will return when the spring wind blows,’ said General Zhou. ‘We need simple logic, and an iron hand. The thugs worship Kali. No Kali, no thugs. We’ve made a list of all Kali temples in the Protectorate. We will destroy each and every one of them. Left with no goddess to pray to, the New Thug Society will wither away, like capitalism. All it requires is a systematic approach, and enough ammunition.’

  Inspector Li sat down on a nearby sandbag. ‘What did they say about your plan?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, they agreed. Of course, things are different in the Motherland. Society has evolved. No one shoots cult members now. We adjust them instead. But in the New Territories, the old rules still apply. Once the GDP reaches a certain level, more freedom will be allowed. I’m not sure what the required GDP level is exactly, but it will be revealed once we reach it. Until then, we run over them with tanks, as and when required. That’s the essence of our philosophy.’

  I could do with some adjustment myself, thought Li. Maybe then my head won’t hurt so much.

  ‘If we can finish the job in four weeks, all my boys get free holidays in Macau, and luxury flats in Celestial Heights. Celestial Heights! Can you imagine? For a new man, no pl
ace is better than the New Territories!’

  Inspector Li knew the score. Almost everything boiled down to real estate in the end. He looked curiously at the soldiers. Not all of them were as excited by the prospect of flats as General Zhou. Several were muttering. As he watched, one of them threw down his rifle. The others tried to make him pick it up, but he refused, shaking his head. Finally an officer scooped it up and handed it back to him. He took no further action, and walked away.

  Darkness had fallen. The burning temple lit up the night. The crowds were bigger now. The air was filled with the sound of crying, and something else. Young men, whispering to each other. There was more than just mourning in the whispers. A new chapter was about to be written in the history of imperialism with Chinese characteristics.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up. It was Big Chen. His face was set like stone. ‘We need to move, boss,’ he said. ‘There’s been an incident at Bijli Bose’s house.’

  Li bounced to his feet. ‘What do you mean by incident?’

  ‘Assassination attempt. Thug. Been arrested. Also an old man attacked him with a signboard.’

  ‘What, two people tried to murder him at the same time?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s very popular,’ said Big Chen.

  ‘Or one of them wasn’t trying to kill him,’ said Li. ‘Let’s go find out.’

  They walked back to the car in the gathering dark, as the whispers grew, and the flames flickered over the temple.

  24

  ‘See what sign I’m making now, you evil old dead body!’

  ‘Pass the tobacco,’ said the thug, smiling a private smile.

  Inspector Li lit a cigarette from his own and passed it on. He was in an interrogation room in the heart of Lal Bazaar. Generations of suspects had sweated it out in these rooms, cowering at the sight of chillies. The atmosphere was discouraging. The lights were dim. The air was oppressive. The walls were laced with grime and fear. The contrast with home was striking. Everything in Beijing police stations was shiny and new. The instruments were sharp, and the lighting was fabulous. Money was never a constraint. Here it was different. The government spent very little, and lawmen were expected to live off the land. The public was their primary source of income. Apart from selecting the officers, which was done for a modest fee, the government had little role to play. There was no incentive for capital investment, which was why most of their facilities were horrible. Inspector Li had read about the Black Hole of Calcutta, a case involving the suffocation of white people. In 1857, rebellious natives had put a large number of Britons into a small cell. Not used to being so close to each other, many had expired. Enraged by this atrocity, the British had soundly thrashed the natives, and proceeded to siphon money out of India even faster than before. It all seemed like a perfectly simple misunderstanding to Li. He could imagine the jailors looking down the next morning and shaking their heads in wonder. ‘Just one night,’ they would have said to each other, ‘that’s all they had to spend in it. Such weaklings they are. We can beat these people.’

  The thug was dressed in an ordinary white shirt and blue jeans. He was in his mid-thirties, with neatly cut hair. He could have been a front office man at Hong Kong Bank. Perhaps he was. The thugs were tricksy, and never visibly thug-like. It was the secret of their success. Their clothes might have changed, but the approach was the same. His complexion was fair, which meant he was most probably upper caste. Inspector Li was yet to figure out what exactly this implied, although he had a hunch that it was far more complex than some people thought. He had met some fat cats from the sweeper caste, and if they were groaning under millennia of oppression, they were hiding it very well.

  ‘Why aren’t you afraid?’ he asked.

  ‘I take strength from your courage.’

  ‘How much courage can it take to strangle a man in his sleep?’ asked Inspector Li, who disliked receiving compliments from murderers.

  ‘It’s not such an easy thing,’ said the thug, not in the least bit offended. It was a common misconception amongst laymen, one for which he did not blame them. ‘It requires courage, skill, and devotion. Above all it requires the touch of the goddess. The goddess has put me on this earth for a purpose. I am the hunter, and you are the prey. If a tiger performs its duty with a deer, will you call it a murderer?’

  ‘His name was Barin Mondol,’ said Inspector Li, ‘the woman next door was in love with him. He was trying to help the village children learn something so that they could get ahead in life. He liked reading Tolstoy. He worked in a government office and he never took any money from anyone. You crept up on him in the middle of the night and you strangled him like a chicken. That makes you a murderer. You’re no tiger. No one’s going to put you in a zoo. They’re going to put you on a badly constructed wooden stand, and then they’re going to put a rope around your neck and hang you, which is the perfect way to go for a little shit like you. Alternatively, you can give us some names and details, instead of all these guidelines from the goddess, and you might just spend the rest of your life in jail, using your courage and skill to prevent your bum from being taken.’

  Inspector Li had never believed in the good cop-bad cop system. It was just another way in which Americans complicated simple things. Set them up and knock them down, that was how you did it. Just like his dad used to say. Hard and fast, without warning. Sometimes they went down. Sometimes they swung back wildly, revealing themselves. The trick was to keep them off balance.

  ‘I like you,’ said the thug, taking a deep drag on his cigarette and gagging slightly. He had never smoked Long March before. ‘I will be leaving soon. You will not see me coming or going. I think you are a gentleman, although you are pretending not to be, so we will leave you for the last.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Inspector Li, reaching across the grubby plastic table to pat him on the back. ‘Just before you leave, why don’t you tell me about this Japanese-Bengali phrasebook you’ve been carrying. Planning a holiday in Tokyo are we?’

  The thug said nothing. His air of calm superiority was beginning to get to Li. He was an upper-class twit, just like his mentor, Amalendu Lahiri, who talked big and starved his servants. Inspector Li looked at the items laid out on the table. The phrasebook, a huge wad of cash, a yellow silk handkerchief, a Japanese business card, and a small coin. The cash was all local. The amount was astonishing. It was one of the things that had put him in a foul mood. Purity of purpose he could understand, even admire a little. But it looked like they were in it for the money. And there was definitely something fishy going on. All you had to do was smell the man.

  ‘Why Bijli Bose?’ he asked.

  He had been apprehended while trying to assassinate the venerable elder. The thug was not the only criminal they had picked up. The star of the evening had undoubtedly been a demented sixty-year-old signboard-maker with wild white hair, who had slipped into Bijli Bose’s home and attempted to beat him to death with a signboard which said ‘Learn English in 60 Days!’ ‘I never learnt English because of you!’ he had roared, leaping into the living room, where Bijli Bose was having a small Scotch and soda. ‘In the end I had to make signboards! See what sign I’m making now, you evil old dead body!’

  Bijli Bose had evaded his attacker with a surprising burst of speed. The man’s rage was a direct consequence of the old man’s decree, implemented across Bengal during his disturbingly long rule, that everyone else’s children should study only in Bengali in order to properly preserve their innate Bengali-ness, towards the dilution of which imperialist forces were constantly striving. Meanwhile, he had ensured that his own children all went to English medium schools, so that they could infiltrate the enemy from within. He had maintained this policy strictly until he was surgically removed from the chief minister’s chair. The chair had in fact fused partially with his backside, something that was not widely publicized at the time.

  Along with the agitated signboard maker, the security forces had appreh
ended the thug, who had also crept into the sitting room around the same time, and had been sitting in an armchair just across from Bijli Bose. He had no doubt been lulling Bijli Bose into a false sense of security, the security chief had said, waiting for the right moment to strike. It was what they did. No one knew how he had got in, which was quite natural, given that he was a thug. The signboard maker had gotten past security by pretending to be a representative of the Better English Company, come to seek blessings from the mummified ex-chief minister. No one had asked him why he was carrying a signboard instead of a leaflet. The thug had been caught because of bad luck, pure and simple. Who could have predicted simultaneous attempts at murder?

  But why would they want to kill Bijli Bose? And how was this connected to the death of Barin Mondol? He couldn’t see the connection. Unless, of course, there was no connection.

  ‘Why does the New Thug Society want to kill Bijli Bose?’

  The thug burst out laughing. He was genuinely amused.

  The confidence of criminals in Indian jails never ceased to astonish him. At least in China they felt fear. This man was behaving like a guest at a cocktail party. Inspector Li took deep breaths.

  ‘Why indeed?’ said the thug, ‘since he can come back from the dead? Clearly, the goddess has no use for him.’

  Inspector Li looked at the smiling thug. He stubbed out his cigarette with a certain precision and force. Some things were clear. Others were grey. For example, what was Bijli Bose up to? He knew he’d had meetings with Agarwal and Verma, an unholy two-reed opera from which nothing good was likely to emerge. Inspector Li knew Agarwal to be a man who delighted in the company of large sums of money. Wherever a river of money flowed, he would be there, an ardent devotee, knees knocking in the early morning chill. How would Agarwal use this situation to make money? Their slave mines were in the Chhatisgarh Free Zone, in between the potential combatants. When dragons fought, ducks were roasted, which was why they were trying to stop a war. But even in distress, Agarwal was not the kind of man to miss an opportunity.