Murder at the Happy Home for the Aged Read online

  They could not forget how in 1510 their great hero Afonso de Albuquerque had had to retreat after nearly taking over Goa to his ships anchored in the harbour. There he lived in the cramped, wet and filthy space with his men for three months, surviving on rotten rice and meat as the monsoon rain lashed at his ships. Though the sultan of Bijapur’s army attacked them relentlessly, they remained safe since the enemy’s crude artillery could not harm them.

  For three months the furious rains poured down as their flour turned mouldy and fungus grew on their clothes and leather shoes. By the end of the siege, the men were forced to catch river rats to eat. But soon the sun came out again and their fortunes turned. Afonso de Albuquerque managed to take Goa once again. So massive forts facing the sea were built and guns placed on impressive-looking battlements to scare off anyone who thought of mounting another attack. ‘That should teach the native savages a lesson,’ Albuquerque must have said, feeling very satisfied for once again conquering the gold mine that was Goa. Unfortunately, he did not live long to enjoy his fame and fortune and died in 1515, a sad and lonely man, humiliated by his king and countrymen.

  Five hundred years later in one corner of the fort, hidden by the crowds of tourists, sat Alfonso. He was a tiny man, unlike his illustrious almost-namesake, but as agile as a baby monkey. Alfonso was a cat thief. From an early age he had learnt, or rather been taught by his father, to sneak into houses through narrow windows, air conditioner vents and coal holes.

  One sultry morning, he sat rubbing his legs with coconut oil to keep them nimble and agile as he looked at his haul from the previous night. Flies buzzed over an open bundle of dirty cloth in which gleamed five gold necklaces, eight bracelets and a few rings. ‘Not bad, and the season is yet to begin,’ he said and laughed. His assistant, a young boy who looked like an angel in rags, sat by him, looking at a picture book. Alfonso kicked him and said, ‘Tony, stop wasting time on that book. I told you not to pick up books from houses; just extra load for us to carry. Now go fetch us some food from the fish shop. Here, take this hundred-rupee note, and remember to bring the change back.’ He threw a crumpled note to the boy. Then he began stroking the jewellery with his grubby fingers and tried to slip on the rings but none of them fitted him. ‘Thin bastard. Rich beggars too thin these days,’ he spat.

  Yuri watched the young boy standing quietly in front of the fish shop, turning the pages of a picture book. He looks like a sepia-toned cherub from a classical painting, thought Yuri, and wondered who his parents were. He would ask them if he could paint a portrait of this boy. Russian tourists would love to buy a picture of this angelic-looking child in ragged clothes. Pretty images of poor, beautiful Indians always sold well.

  ‘Hey. Come here, boy,’ shouted Yuri from his table in the dark corner of the fish shop. This was where he sat every day, eating huge amounts of fried chilli fish, washed down with several glasses of home-brewed feni. The food at the Happy Home was very bland, and he needed these spices to remind himself that his taste buds were still alive.

  The boy ignored him and kept reading, his lips moving silently. Yuri lifted his hand and called again, louder this time, and everyone in the fish shop turned to stare at him. The boy picked up his bag of fried fish, the oil already dripping through the thin paper, grabbed a handful of extra onions and chillies from the steel bowl on the counter and ran off without a backward glance.

  ‘Funny boy. I would have given him some money if he had posed for me,’ Yuri said, looking at the owner of the fish shop, his old friend Babu.

  ‘He cannot speak or hear. Maybe he’s mute or he just does not want to speak to anyone. Not quite right in the head, poor boy,’ said Babu. ‘Anyway, do not try to speak to him otherwise his master, Alfie, the weasel, will attack you.’

  Yuri had often seen Alfie hanging around Morjim beach, trying to sell cheap trinkets to foreigners. He spoke a smattering of German, Russian and French and could tell jokes in each language as well as bargain like an expert but Yuri had never seen the boy before.

  He paid Babu for his plate of fish fry and came out of the shop. He stood on the crowded street, not sure where he should go now. The sunlight was so strong that it seemed to set the gulmohur flowers ablaze, though it was still early in the day. A cat ran out on the road, chasing a huge, sleek rat, and then they both ran into a hole in the ground. Yuri heard shrill screeching sounds and wondered which one would come out alive.

  A narrow lane led to the beach. Yuri could see the sun gleaming on the sand, turning it into a sheet of gold. The waves rose angrily and then lost their rage and gently fell. Though Yuri was quite far, he heard the soothing rolling sound in his head. A three-legged dog ran across the beach and stood watching the waves like an old sea dog. Every beach in Goa seemed to have its own three-legged resident dog and he was happy to see that this one looked quite well fed.

  He turned his eyes away from the sunlit beach, the waves and the dog. He wanted to go and meet Olga but she was not picking up her phone. Something about yesterday was bothering him and he needed to talk to her urgently. He just could not get the dead woman’s face out of his mind. He was sure he had seen her before but despite trying very hard he could not remember where. The policeman had covered her face so quickly. In any case her face was swollen and discoloured, as if she had been dead for hours. As Yuri stood by the road, a scooter whizzed past, splashing mud on his feet, and a stray dog came up to sniff his cloth bag filled with charcoal pencils. He desperately hoped Olga would see him today. She had not called him for three days now and there was no way he could find her. Why was she playing hide-and-seek with him?

  When he spoke to her last week, she had refused to come to the beach to meet him. ‘I will call you only after Rana leaves. He does not let me out of his sight even for a second. He gets up at night to check if I am there. He even waits outside the bathroom door to listen if I’m talking on my phone. He is a creepy swine. First, I have to hide in that gloomy apartment and wait for his stupid wife to leave Goa and now I have to wait for him to go away. It’s very boring.’

  ‘Why do you have to be with that toad? Tell him to get lost and come away with me,’ he had shouted in Russian.

  ‘Yuri, my little snowflake, Rana the creep lets me stay in this beautiful villa on the beach, he buys me expensive clothes and lovely, lovely diamond necklaces. Why should I tell him to get lost? He is my golden goose, laying big fat golden eggs for me every morning. I hate hiding when his wife is here but then I have to do it.’ Olga had laughed. ‘But not for long, my snowflake. Soon I will be a rich woman. You wait and see, my darling Yuri. One day soon.’

  Suddenly, Yuri remembered where he had seen the dead woman—in the villa on one of his earlier visits. She had been staring down at them from a framed picture on top of a bookshelf, her dark eyes as bleary and swollen as when she was dead. Yuri had turned his head away, thinking, Why would someone take a photograph of such an ugly woman? Better to have her blemishes painted over with oil paints. However, there was a kind of attractive quality in her ugly face; she looked like a wicked witch from a fairy tale, a powerful, evil woman who could destroy you.

  Yuri tried Olga’s number again but all he heard was a tune from a Bollywood film before the call was disconnected. Yuri knew Olga had seen his number and cut the phone dead. He rubbed his eyes and threw a piece of bread from his pocket to the dog still waiting patiently by his side and started on the way back to the Happy Home, his heart aching with sadness. ‘I am an old fool,’ he said to himself over and over again as he walked.

  * * *

  Deven spread out a large sheet of paper on the table as the others watched. They were sitting around the dining table, not eating for once but discussing the murder. Deven had declared he was in charge and when no one protested he appointed Rosie as his assistant. Prema was not pleased at all but after giving Rosie a dark look as if to say, ‘You wait and see what I do to you’, she kept quiet. Maria had agreed to help them, though she was not sure how. ‘You get in
formation from the inspector for us. He is so infatuated by you and will tell you every detail of the case,’ Rosie told her. Maria was surprised to see the sparkle in her faded eyes.

  Cyrilo had already been to the village and found out from the grocer that the dead woman was a stranger and no one knew where she had come from. A few people said they had seen her driving around in a big car but they hadn’t spoken to her. ‘Why should we? We have nothing to do with her kind of people,’ they said. ‘They come and go like summer flies. Why should we care?’

  ‘I asked everyone at the market too but they said they had never seen her in Trionim before this summer. The grocer said a rich woman had come last week to his shop to order a large quantity of bottled water and five family packs of ice cream but sat in the car the whole time so he didn’t get a good look at her face. The driver paid and he could hear her scolding him in Hindi for taking so long. She used some really good abuses which the grocer hadn’t heard before. He was quite impressed. She was the only stranger around here except for the foreign tourists hanging about near the beach,’ said Cyrilo. ‘Imagine buying five family packs of ice cream in one go.’

  ‘So at the moment we don’t have anything to start with except this.’ Deven wrote the following down in bold letters.

  Woman found dead in Happy Home (hanging from mango tree)

  Woman’s identity not known but could be from Delhi

  Seems to be very rich

  ‘Why Delhi? How can you be so sure?’ asked Yuri. He had not yet told them about the photograph. He wanted to see it once more and then reveal it but he could only do that if Olga called him to the villa. Maybe he would go and hang about there. If that Rana fellow came out, he could always pretend to be a Russian tourist looking for a hotel.

  ‘I know why you wrote that. You think she’s from Delhi because she spoke in Hindi and abused the driver. Only people from Delhi are so free with bad words,’ said Prema, giving them a gleeful smirk.

  ‘You should know, since you are from Delhi,’ muttered Rosie, keeping her voice low. She knew that Prema was hard of hearing and the barb would not reach her.

  ‘I heard what you said, Rosie. I may be from Delhi but I come from a very respectable family. My father was a senior officer in the railways,’ said Prema.

  ‘My father was also in the railways,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, I’m sure he was a railway guard. My father was the station manager in Saharanpur. We always travelled first class. Our cook travelled with us in second class,’ Prema retorted.

  Rosie kept quiet. Her father was indeed a railway guard and she wondered how Prema had known. He was a brave, honest guard and had been awarded a medal by the local mayor once. She wondered if she should tell Prema that and shut her up.

  ‘If you ladies have finished telling us your family history, may I continue?’ asked Deven, looking at them sternly like a schoolteacher. His glasses were perched on his nose and his eyes looked very bright.

  ‘Inspector Chand told me that the woman had been drugged and then killed. She was already dead when they brought her here. It was definitely murder. The body has been sent to Panjim to a forensic team,’ said Maria, looking at them. She thought it was very brave of them to help solve the crime but she felt uneasy. Should she allow them to get involved? What if they got hurt? What if the killer was still around? But she had never seen them look so happy and excited. They had huddled together all day talking to each other, planning things. It was sad that an unfortunate woman’s death had brought them together but that was what life was like when you got so old. At their age, anything—a broken-down car, a petty theft, a funeral and even a death—was exciting. It broke the monotony of their everyday lives. One day she too would become like them and get a thrill every time she heard of a death in the neighbourhood.

  ‘MURDER.’ Deven wrote this in big, bold letters and looked at them. ‘I knew that for sure. I knew it was murder the moment I saw the body. I noticed her fingers were badly bruised. She must have put up a fight,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Write that down too,’ said Yuri.

  ‘What for?’ asked Cyrilo.

  ‘Just like that. It’ll fill up the sheet a little bit. I hate seeing a blank sheet,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe you can draw a dead body hanging from a tree.’ Prema threw him a nasty look.

  ‘Good idea. Here, take my pen,’ said Cyrilo with a smile, sliding his pen towards Yuri, who quickly picked it up. He began to draw a long, wavering line.

  Deven snatched the pen away. ‘Don’t be idiotic, you two,’ he said angrily. ‘We must draw up a plan. Enough of this rubbish talk. I will give each of you a task and you must report back to me in the evening. You have to talk to people, find out every little detail. We must follow each clue and link them all together to reach a conclusion. The most important thing is to find a person with a motive. Who gained from this woman’s death? We also have to find the boy who saw the body first. He could lead us to other people. Someone must have seen the body being brought into the garden of the Happy Home at night. We have to do this very carefully. I don’t want any of you to make mistakes.’ He glared at them.

  ‘He thinks he’s back in his office and we are his employees,’ whispered Rosie to Cyrilo and giggled. Deven was suddenly looking taller and smarter, like a general in the army. Rosie smiled at him, twisting her curls with her fingers and thinking that marrying for the third time might not be a bad idea.

  * * *

  Inspector Chand wiped his hands on the small towel on his chair and burped. His mother had sent too much food as usual and he had to finish everything otherwise she would get into a bad mood. If he married Maria, he wondered what he would do with his mother. There was no way they could all live together, but that was a worry he would deal with later. At the moment he had to focus on this letter from Panjim. The inspector general was planning a visit to Trionim the following week. What a nightmare. He would have to get into a clean uniform and wear shoes in the hot weather instead of the comfortable rubber slippers he had picked up for fifty rupees at the beach. He looked around the office and called Constable Robert in.

  ‘Tell Eric to send his nephew. He must paint the walls outside, repair the toilet seat and get rid of the garden umbrella.’

  ‘Why, sir? It’s so comfortable to sit in the shade in the afternoon. We got it for free, too, from that Russian we arrested last month for drunken driving,’ said Robert. He had come to work in thin cotton shorts that day since he had a rash on his legs; he looked like a baby in a crumpled nappy: a big, fat baby with nappy rash.

  ‘And get your uniform out. The IG is coming tomorrow.’ Inspector Chand barked and burped once more. The rich, butter-laced tomato curry was sitting in his stomach like a stone. He reached for the bottle of Hajmola pills on his table.

  As he chewed thoughtfully on the salty, spicy pill, he wondered if he should visit the market. He had sent Constable Robert to check in the village about the dead woman but nobody seemed to know who she was. Or they knew and weren’t willing to tell him. Everyone was so suspicious of the police these days. In the olden days policemen were treated with so much respect. As a child in Punjab he had seen villagers touching the local daroga’s feet before giving him a tray of sweets on Diwali. Here, no one ever sent him sweets or even wished him on Diwali. Constable Robert had brought a large chocolate cake filled with cream the other day—sent by the old woman who lived next door after they had found her cat—but it wasn’t the same as a tray of sweets being laid at his feet.

  He hated going to the crowded market to deal with the sullen shopkeepers and belligerent village women who screamed at him for no reason at all. He hated the fact that he had to walk there because the jeep could not enter the narrow, winding lane. He swallowed the digestive pill, savouring its delicious, sour flavour, and took out one more. Then he rose with a loud clatter as his files and torch fell on the floor, and strode out of the police station like a warrior embarking on an epic journey. Constable Robert, who
was reading a comic book, jumped up to salute him and together they went out into the sunshine.

  Inspector Chand wished the murder had taken place in the winter when Goa was at its sparkling best and not so hot. That was the perfect time to go looking for a murderer, not this humid weather that gave him prickly heat and made his uniform smell of sweat. He always made sure he sprayed some aftershave lotion on his arms and neck whenever he went to meet Maria.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘TURN LEFT. LEFT. When I say left, I mean left,’ said Deven in a low voice.

  ‘Your left or mine?’ muttered Yuri as the car stalled.

  ‘Your left,’ said Deven, raising his eyes to the sky as if praying to the gods to grant him patience.

  ‘You should make that clear. There’s a lot of difference between your left and my left. I hope this path leads to the Vaddy village. That’s where the boy lives, according to Eric the undertaker,’ said Yuri, taking a sharp turn, throwing Cyrilo against Prema. She frowned and pushed him away. ‘Sit straight. Why are you trying to climb on my lap, you idiot? Stay on your side or I’ll clobber you with my handbag,’ she said.

  ‘Watch your tongue, madam,’ said Yuri, turning his head around to give her an angry look from the front seat. They heard the sudden screech of brakes and a scooter slam to a halt behind them. The driver raised his arm and shouted at Yuri.

  ‘Hey, watch where you’re going,’ he said and then added ‘sir’ reluctantly when Deven put his head out of the window to give him a stern look.

  ‘Don’t shout at us. You should not be going so fast on this narrow road,’ he said.

  ‘I was going so slowly. You stopped suddenly without giving a signal,’ replied the scooterist.