Murder with Bengali Characteristics Read online

  ‘What kind of campaign?’ asked Li.

  ‘It reveals forbidden things.’

  Wang dealt in broad hints and general guidelines. Providing specific information was against his principles.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ asked Li.

  ‘A few months. It’s been increasing.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Li.

  ‘I won’t forget this,’ said Wang, ‘and you forget about this thug case. And for God’s sake, stop harassing senior Politburo members!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Li.

  He checked the time on his way out. It was three in the afternoon. The Maoist commander Debu-da lived in the jungle near Jhargram. He was Barin Mondol’s former chess partner. If he left immediately, he could interview him, and be back from the jungle before dark.

  He walked faster.

  His phone beeped as he left Writer’s Building, a red-brick relic of British rule. All subsequent rulers had elected to stay there. It was Gao Yu.

  ‘You should be careful with the women out there,’ she said. ‘They don’t bathe much. They could have diseases.’

  ‘I don’t have time for women,’ said Li.

  ‘Ha!’ said Gao Yu. ‘Like I don’t remember you checking me out in front of the police station!’

  He couldn’t deny it. Whenever corruption bubbled over, and the public was restless, the government cracked down on prostitutes, to show that they were tough on crime. It never worked. The police were rough, and few people liked it. Most of them knew they were just poor girls trying to earn a living. Li had always hated it, and never took part, but, as usual, it had been hard to ignore her. He was returning to the station and they were lined up in front of it, Gao Yu and three other working girls, on their knees. The police liked to display them in public, to show people justice in action. A small crowd had gathered to leer. Others walked past the station faster than usual, repulsed. The girls had their heads down and their faces turned away, hoping to avoid the cameras. Except for Gao Yu. She was in a flimsy nightie and Hello Kitty panties, staring up at them defiantly. Her chin was set and her eyes were flashing. Li had known instantly that he would always want to protect her. One of his colleagues had leaned down and whispered something. ‘You don’t have the money, you loser!’ she said, and spat in his face. Li had stepped in when he raised his hand.

  Gao Yu watched him remembering.

  ‘Good times, no?’ she said, grinning. ‘I think you broke his jaw. But don’t change the subject. You have to be careful with those women.’

  ‘I told you I don’t have the time’

  ‘Whatever. Just remember to have lots of antibiotics,’ she said. ‘I have to go now. My helicopter’s waiting. I got a pink one. I’m going on a skiing holiday to Wusan. Not that you care, but I could make as much as 50,000 dollars from this trip.’

  Li felt a pang of sympathy for her new man. He was desperate to marry her, and bleeding cash. ‘Why don’t you marry him?’ he asked.

  ‘And let him do it for free? Are you kidding?’

  Li couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘I have to go to the jungle now,’ he said.

  ‘You should stay there,’ said Gao Yu, ‘it would suit you.’

  16

  ‘There was a time when people used to drop dead from cholera here like leaves from the mahua tree.’

  ‘We no longer lurk amongst you. You can sleep without fear.’

  The guide was sullen, and prone to disgruntled silences. He stomped grumpily down the narrow forest trail, never looking back. Inspector Li followed him cautiously, trying not to touch the greenery. Concrete was his natural environment. Nature made him nervous.

  ‘It’s not like he has to live in the jungle, you know,’ said the guide. ‘All villages are under him. He could live in any one of them. It’s all theatre. When those giant foreign women come to photograph him in the jungle, it looks good. It’s all about setting, that’s what it is. He never admits it, though. He says the revolution is not over, he must not forget about hardship. He should live with my mother-in-law. That’ll teach him about hardship.’

  Inspector Li assumed that he was now in Junglemahal, an independent state within the liberated zone, covering parts of what used to be the states of West Bengal and Jharkhand. Borders here were fluid. It was hard to tell where Junglemahal began, and the Protectorate ended. For most people, it meant paying both the local police, respectfully referred to as uncles, and the Maoists, represented by local area commander Debu-da. This made it a high tax area, like Sweden. Emigration levels were high.

  ‘Of course, it’s only natural he’ll do theatre. Theatre is very important to them. When they’re not shooting people, they’re doing theatre. Some of them even prefer theatre to shooting people. It must be because of their artistic mentality. I saw one of their plays once, about this boy Eklavya. He was one of us, a tribal. Naturally he was very good with bow and arrow. This was before the AK47 had been invented. It was the main method of killing people. He was a threat to all the young rajas, who were practising-practising all the time, but not improving sufficiently. The guru-ji of the young rajas could see that he was a very suitable candidate, and one day he would challenge the young rajas. So he asked Eklavya for his thumb and, like a fool, Eklavya gave it to him. In this play, they changed the ending, and added a twist to the story. Here he shows good sense, and refuses to give his thumb to his guru. Instead he shoots him full of arrows and chops off his head. This ending was much better. Performance was good. There was plenty of dancing, and the girls were nice. Here also, when Eklavya protects the villagers, they give him food and drink, just like we do. But the quantity was much less. Nowadays there are so many of these people, and none of them produce food. They only consume it. Sir, what can I tell you? In trying to feed them, our backside is exploding.’

  They walked on in silence. Inspector Li tried hard not to think about the insects in his boots as the sweat trickled down his spine. He slapped a mosquito on his arm. They were bigger here, and sucked more blood, like high-level party members. He tripped over a root, and found himself in the middle of a clearing. ‘Debu-da’s office,’ announced his guide, and departed in search of food.

  It was a full-fledged military camp, with regulation tents in neat little rows, a small brick generator room, and a mobile rig. Not a bow or arrow in sight. A couple of sentries in olive green sauntered up and looked him over, unimpressed by his uniform but staying sharp. He was not the boss of them. They were citizens of an allied nation. Most of their gear was Chinese, Inspector Li noted, with satisfaction. Manufactured in the jungle, under licence. They were getting quite good at it. They were giving the Indian Army a hard time, a few hundred miles away in Bihar. Geography on the Western Front was a living thing, rippling and slithering, leaving little puddles of blood in its wake. Things were much more relaxed for the Maoists here in the East, with the friendly Chinese next door. In theory, cross-border relations ought to have been marked by thigh-slapping and merriment, as they celebrated the spirit of revolutionary brotherhood together, but in practice, Inspector Li couldn’t recall ever seeing much of this happening.

  ‘I suppose Swapan-da won’t do, only Debu-da,’ said one of the troops.

  ‘I’d prefer that,’ said Li, ‘I’m investigating the murder of a government officer who lived nearby.’

  ‘He means Mondol-da,’ explained one guard to the other. ‘He was strangled last week. Mondol-da was OK. He ate very little, and never stole anything.’

  They walked him to the command tent. As they approached, they could hear the funky beats of A. R. Rahman. Inspector Li was intrigued. This was an unlikely place to find a classical music fan. He raised the flap and stepped into the tent.

  It was a large tent, dominated by an active-surface table with touch panels. There was a low, narrow cot on the side. On it sat Debu-da, a pleasant, open-faced man in spectacles and green fatigues. A copy of Stardust magazine lay next to him, featuring two identical women
on the cover, striking martial arts poses. ‘I’M IN LOVE WITH MY CLONE!’ SAYS SHEILA, the cover blared. Sensing his interest, the magazine began to speak. ‘It was a romance that began during the shooting of Kung Fu Twins…’ said the magazine. Its voice was warm and thrilling. Debu-da hit it with the butt of his rifle, and it subsided. ‘It’s amazing how my clone is hotter than me, Sheila was quoted as saying…’ it ventured tentatively, but Debu-da glared, and it fell silent. Its cover went blank, just the Stardust logo gleaming eerily in the dim light of the tent. There seemed to be a book underneath it. Was that a pig on the cover?

  At first glance, Debu-da seemed surprisingly young to be such a pillar of society, until Inspector Li noticed the touch of grey at his temples. He had the easy confidence of a veteran, and an air of amiable menace.

  ‘This is just like Agatha Christie,’ said Debu-da. ‘Big city cop visits innocent villagers. Do they read Agatha Christie in China?’

  ‘We adore her,’ said Inspector Li. This was true. They were mad about A-Granny back home. The Mousetrap had been running forever. ‘And your boys outside don’t look like villagers,’

  ‘I keep them in shape,’ said Debu-da, modestly. ‘They say the fire inside me is gone. That’s why I’m here, instead of at the Front. But I keep the boys tight. Otherwise they might get up to mischief. You know how it is. Around here, there’s not much to do. I’m extremely strict. Discipline is my middle name.’

  A dreamy-eyed soldier popped his head into the tent.

  ‘Guru-ji, come join us outside, the jungle smells heavenly!’

  Debu-da waved him away, smiling. ‘He’s in love,’ he explained.

  Inspector Li was happy to see romance flowering in the jungle. He hadn’t been getting much himself, although one of the waitresses at the Serve The People in Chowringhee had been giving him the glad eye lately, so maybe there was hope. It was hard to concentrate, with Gao Yu calling all the time.

  ‘What happened to the fire inside you?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, it just went out one day,’ said Debu-da, looking quite undisturbed. ‘We’ve been doing this for years, and nothing much changes. Patna was a bloodbath. The army boys are tougher than the poor constables we used to blow up. I was good at killing, but how much can you kill? Patna’s a great prize. I understand the value of Patna. Emperors have ruled from Patna. But how much blood is it worth? “Why don’t we just divide it up and settle down?” I said to my comrades one day. They disagreed. They want everything. They locked me up for a few days while they figured out what to do. For a while it looked like the People’s Court, which has a 100 per cent conviction rate, but my boys were getting restless, so I was let off with some Medium to Heavy Public Criticism, along with thirteen hours of revolutionary poetry.’

  Inspector Li was sympathetic. ‘Reading or writing?’ he asked.

  ‘Reading,’ said Debu-da. ‘At least it wasn’t singing. I hate those songs. I prefer Clapton.’

  He was a long way from Presidency College, where the walls were steeped in history and all the girls were clever. He had been full of revolution back then. His original plan was to become a leading intellectual, but mounting injustice had transformed him from light pink to deep crimson. Later, it turned out he had a talent for jungle warfare. So here he was, in a spacious tent, a slightly exhausted leader of men.

  ‘Tell me about Barin Mondol,’ said Inspector Li.

  ‘He was one of the few we didn’t kick out,’ said Debu-da. ‘Usually, we drive out the babus when we take over. They go and hide in the district town, and pretend they’re still on duty. That way they still get their budgets every year. No one ever comes to check. We take our share once a month, so everyone’s happy. We’re government servants too, in a way. A few of the stubborn ones we have to kill. Barin-babu refused to leave, but we didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Everyone in the village said he was steady. A few even asked us to leave him alone, which takes plenty of guts these days. He never bothered us. He lived alone, did his job, helped some kids. I first met him when we took over the village from the CPM, just before Reunion. Those were the bad old days. Now we’re all brothers, of course. Bangla-Chini Bhai Bhai!’

  ‘Bangla-Chini Bhai Bhai!’ responded Inspector Li, not really meaning it. As a rule, he preferred brothers who were less heavily armed. ‘What kind of person was he?’

  ‘His theoretical knowledge was very sound,’ said Debu-da. ‘He spent a lot of time analyzing our missteps, and demonstrating the inherent fallacies behind our ideological assumptions. He was a solid chessplayer. We played once a week. He was a risk-taker, but also a long-term planner, which I always found fascinating. Nothing reveals character better than chess. He was very well-read. He did a lot of his reading in the old days, before you people came and banned whatever the Indian government had missed out, leaving us with romance, cricket and astrology. But he remembered a lot. He could quote entire passages from memory. I had an uncle like that, a judge of the Calcutta High Court. Complete asshole. Collector of property. He would hand out his card to anyone who owned some. “I’ll get you a very good rate,” he would say, “you won’t have to work anymore.” He was more of a pimp than a judge. Well, now that we’re done, do you fancy a drink? I have Old Monk, the best alcoholic beverage on the Indian subcontinent. Our Nepalese comrades liberated the factory.’

  ‘The last time you played chess together,’ said Li, ‘did he discuss anything in particular?’

  Debu-da eyed him with interest. ‘Trying to discover the truth, are we? You must not get promoted much.’

  ‘Not much,’ admitted Li. He waited.

  ‘Well, he was depressed, but no more than usual. Said we were all turning into money-grubbing chimpanzees, without knowledge or culture. I said that started happening years ago, but he said that the pace was accelerating. “I’ve tried to be patient,” he said, “but sometimes I think all of you should be destroyed.” You Chinese worry a lot about angry youth, but I’m not so sure about that. It’s the angry old men. Those are the ones you have to keep an eye on.’

  ‘Has there been any thug activity around here lately?’

  ‘I’ve never seen a thug. No one has. Apparently they mix in with the rest of society, pretending to be our friends. Anyone could be a thug.’

  ‘Like the Maoists hiding in the city?’

  ‘There are no Maoists hiding in the city. It’s true that there was a time when we had infiltrated urban society at every level. We were all around you. Babloo’s uncle, Chinmoy’s brother-in-law, Boobli’s cousin, your driver’s nephew, the little boy who brings you bread every morning, the Deputy Director of the Archaeological Survey of India, the construction worker who looks too smart to be a construction worker, the Assistant General Manager (Purchase) at Mother Dairy, that nice professor who introduced you to Hemingway, the girl sitting next to you in the food court, the bearded man on the bus, even some of the younger members of Calcutta Club. But that was when the feudal reactionaries were in charge. Now that progressive forces control Calcutta, this is no longer the case. We no longer lurk amongst you. You can sleep without fear. Once in a while you can let your security guards take a holiday. No one is going to come in the middle of the night to line you up in front of a wall and shoot you.’

  ‘That’s a great relief,’ said Inspector Li.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about us, truly,’ said Debu-da. ‘The war is over in Junglemahal, and we want to keep it that way. I love my boys. They’ve done enough. They want to live life now. And things have improved. There was a time when people used to drop dead from cholera here like leaves from the mahua tree. Things have improved. About the thugs, I’m not so sure. They’re the upper-class Hindu type. Their work is never finished. Driving backwards always takes more time. We want to go forward, inch by inch, and maybe kill fewer people while we do it. ’

  ‘That’s why you have more time for reading,’ said Li, pointing to the book under the Stardust. ‘May I borrow that? It looks i
nteresting.’

  Debu-da hesitated. Then he shrugged. ‘Why not?’ he said, grinning.

  The book had a picture of a pig smoking a cigar. Animal Farm, said the cover.

  17

  ‘Morning-evening I’m serving the public, stopping only for meals.’

  Geju-da’s home was opulent, with drones buzzing in every room. Apart from several chandeliers and an auto-remould sofa set, the living room was dominated by two gigantic portraits, in intricately carved golden frames. One was of Governor Wen, in a dark blue suit, looking depressed, while the other was of renowned cine star Mithun Chakravorty, in a flowing robe of crimson. He had one hand raised in blessing. His smile was heavenly.

  ‘These are remote-controlled paintings,’ said Geju-da, ‘in order to preserve flexibility.’ He pointed at the portrait of Governor Wen. The painting floated off the wall, performed a quick horizontal flip, and reattached itself once more. It was now a portrait of a wild-haired elderly woman with accusing eyes. ‘That’s Pishi,’ explained Geju-da. ‘Time to time she also comes to power. She’s not easy to suppress. You kept her in a mental hospital, but recently she escaped. Or perhaps they were too scared to keep her, and simply allowed her to leave. That’s very possible. Chinese may be strict, but Pishi is Pishi. My house can adjust, depending on current administration. All latest technology.’

  Geju-da was a wiry little man in a simple white bush-shirt and tight black trousers. He was in his thirties. The top three buttons of his shirt were open, displaying a thin, smooth chest covered in gold chains. He was sitting on a medium-sized throne. His guests were on the sofa, which was massaging them discreetly.

  ‘What about Mithun-da?’ asked Phoni-babu. ‘Who does he turn into?’

  ‘There’s something called loyalty in this world,’ said Geju-da. ‘Where is the question of replacing him? He is in our hearts forever! Don’t mind, but what kind of third-class person are you to suggest such a thing?’