CHAPTER 19 Vik
Arthur Road jail, four o'clock on Tuesday afternoon.
The visiting room smelled of wet stone and disinfectant and, under that, of too many men kept too long in the heat.
It was a corridor cut in half by a wall of wire mesh.
The mesh was old, and where hands had gripped it over the years the metal had worn bright.
Raghav sat on a stool bolted to the floor, at a shelf bolted to the wall, and waited.
A fan turned somewhere he couldn't see. None of the air reached him.
Then a door opened on the other side of the mesh and a constable brought Vik Rane in.
A week had done more to him than Raghav was ready for.
In twelve years Vik had never been anything but too much — too loud, too broad, too much cologne, filling doorways on purpose.
He came through this one thinner, with grey stubble along his jaw, in a shirt that had once been expensive and had given up.
He saw Raghav and stopped. Then he grinned, and the grin was the worst part, because it was still exactly his.
"They let you in." He dropped onto the stool on his side. "Should've known. They let anyone in who's dressed like a conviction." He looked at the suit. "Still buying them a size too hopeful, I see. You come to see the exhibit?"
"Vik."
"That's what they call it. Well — that's what I call it.
They don't call it anything, they call me by a number.
Very calming, actually. You should try it.
Malhotra, you've been a number for a week, how do you feel.
" He cracked his knuckles. The sound came back flat off the concrete.
"Sit up straight. There's a fellow who watches the tapes and he likes good posture. "
"How are you."
"Oh, bindthe — no. See, that's the thing.
They took my — I keep reaching for words that used to be free.
" He laughed. The laugh turned into a cough and he thumped his own chest with a fist. "I'm in a cell with a man who ran a chit fund and a man who did something to his brother-in-law nobody will say out loud, and they both think I'm famous, so that's nice.
I'm the murderer off the TV. I get respect.
I never got respect at Trinity and here I'm practically a brand. "
"You didn't do it."
The grin stayed a second longer out of habit. Then it came off, and what was under it was not funny at all.
"No," Vik said. "I didn't do it. Say it again. Say it slower. I haven't heard anyone say it in a week who didn't want money."
"You didn't do it."
"There. Now we've both said it. Doesn't matter.
You know that, right? You in your good suit — you know it doesn't matter that I didn't." He rubbed his face with both hands.
"Yes, I threatened him. Go on, ask. Everybody asks.
Diwali. Last year. I'd been passed over — first time, before you — and I'd had four drinks, five, and Deshpande was doing his rounds being the great man, and I said it in front of the whole sales floor.
'I'll kill him if he blocks me again.'" He spread his hands.
"About the promotion. Everyone laughed. He laughed.
He put his arm round me and said something in my ear I don't even remember and I felt like a king until I sobered up.
That's the sentence. That's the whole sentence they've built a coffin out of. "
"I know. I was there."
"You were there." Vik pointed at him through the mesh.
"You were there. You know what it was. You could — no.
Don't. Don't tell me what you could do. I've had a week of what people could do.
" He looked at his hands. "The tools are mine.
I'll save you asking that too. And the thing in my jacket at the board, the pocket you all stared at — hip flask, Malhotra.
Old Monk. I'm a cliché, not a murderer. The crowbar's from IIT.
I nicked it from the workshop in second year and it's followed me house to house for twenty years because I'm sentimental and my mother won't let me throw anything out.
The magnets, the wire cutters — that's the prank kit. You remember the prank kit."
"The chair."
"The chair." For a second his whole face lit up.
The old Vik, delighted. "The collapsing chair.
Industrial safety pins through the joints so it holds through the handshake and goes down when the fat gets comfortable.
I bought the pins in 2013 to do it to Dsouza at the Lonavla offsite and I've carried them to every offsite for ten years and never done it, because every year I look at Dsouza and he looks so happy to be there and I can't. That's me.
That's the killer. A man who couldn't even pull a chair prank because the victim looked too pleased to be invited.
" He stopped. "And now a bag of those pins is exhibit whatever, next to a photo of a lift, and one of them's the same gauge as the thing in the — I know.
I've heard it. My own lawyer told me like it was weather. "
Raghav said nothing. The fan turned somewhere.
"You know how they found the locker?" Vik leaned in.
His voice dropped, and there was no performance left in it.
"Somebody told them the combination. My gym locker.
I've had that lock since 2011. Four digits.
My mother's — never mind what it is. Four people alive know that number and three of them are related to me.
" He held Raghav's eyes. "Somebody knew where to look and knew how to open it and put a new bag of old pins inside and made a phone call.
That's not police work. That's housekeeping. "
"I said the same to Solanki."
"Oh, Solanki." Vik snorted. "Solanki came to see me.
Sat where you're sitting. Ate paan the whole time, told me about his nephew, asked me nothing.
I said, Inspector, are you here to charge me, and he said no, saab, I am here to look at you, and he looked at me for twenty minutes and left.
I think he knows. I think he knows and it makes no difference, which is worse than if he didn't."
◆
A constable came and stood by the door on Vik's side. Vik glanced at him, lowered his voice further, put both forearms on the shelf and hunched close to the mesh.
"I have to tell you a thing, and I don't understand it, and I've had a week to understand it, so probably you will, because you understand things.
That's your — you're the man who understands things.
" He wasn't joking. "Six weeks ago. Before any of this.
Deshpande. He'd had three whiskies, maybe four.
We were in his office late, just us. He did that sometimes, kept me back to make me feel senior.
" A breath. "And he said — out of nothing, we weren't even talking about it — he said, 'Singapore wants a name for Mauritius.
' Just like that. And I said what's Mauritius, and he waved it off, and he said, 'I know whose.
' And then he looked at me and laughed, not nice, and said, 'Not yours. Don't look so pleased.'"
Raghav went very still.
"I thought he meant they wanted to blame someone for something.
Some tax thing, some structure. And that he was telling me he was going to throw you to them.
You. The golden boy. I went home happy, Malhotra, I want you to know that.
I went home thinking, they're going to hang the merger's dirty laundry on Raghav, and Deshpande knows, and he told me, which means I'm back in.
" He shook his head slowly. "And then he was dead in a lift and I stopped thinking about it because I had my own problems. But it's been going round and round in here.
'Singapore wants a name for Mauritius. I know whose.
Not yours.'" He looked up. "You know what it means.
I can see you know. You've gone the colour you go. "
The disclosure draft. A legacy structure established by the finance function without board authorization.
Two signature lines, unsigned. A sentence written so that a single desk, a single function, a single man who had done what he was told in 2016 would be all that Singapore was handed.
Deshpande had had a name ready. He'd said it wasn't Vik.
He had not said it was Raghav either — Raghav had assumed that, the way you assume the story is about you.
It had never been about either of them. Somewhere in that building the finance function had a chair. He didn't let himself put anyone in it.
"Well?" Vik said. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know," Raghav said.
Vik looked at him for a long moment through the worn wire.
"You're a bad liar in a nice suit," he said, without heat. "You always were. It's why they made you COO. A good liar, people can smell. You just look constipated and they think you're being careful." He sat back. "Fine. Keep it. Everyone's keeping things. It's the company hobby."
◆
"She came to see me too," Vik said, after a while. He said it to the shelf.
"Who."
"Verma. Your consultant." He turned the name over.
"Twice. Before all this. Once by the lifts — you saw that one, I know you saw it, you walk very slowly when you're pretending not to look.
And once at that bar in Colaba, the jazz place.
She was just there one night, and she sat with me, and she let me talk.
" He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the shelf.
"Do you know how long it had been since a woman sat and listened to me?
Not waited for me to finish. Listened. I told her everything.
The promotion, Deshpande, the whisky night, all of it.
The Mauritius thing, the 'I know whose' — I told her that.
I told it like a funny story about the old man.
" He laughed, and there was a crack in it.
"And then it was in the papers. Not that part.
The other part. 'I'll kill him.' Diwali.
My face mid-shout." He looked up. "I keep trying to work out if those two things are connected and I can't get the shape of it.
She was so — she was kind, Malhotra. That's the part I can't. She was kind to me. "
"Vik—"
"Don't." He held up a hand. "Don't explain it to me.
If you explain it, I'll have to have understood it in a cell, and I can't do that.
I don't have the — I'll keep it for outside.
When I'm out I'll work it out over a drink and it'll be a great story.
" His voice wobbled and he covered it by cracking his knuckles again.
"She listened. That's all I've got. In twelve years the only person who ever really listened to me turned out to be the last one I should've talked to.
Put that on the gravestone. Under the promotion. "
The fan turned. Down the corridor a metal door closed and echoed.
"Meera called," he added. "Once. You know what she wanted?
She wanted to ask if I'd like to give — she used the word — a statement of contrition.
Contrition, Malhotra. So they could 'manage the narrative around my cooperation.
' I told her to manage herself somewhere anatomical.
She said she understood I was under strain.
" He smiled at the memory, briefly and for real.
"God, she's good. She un-personed me in a phone call and I nearly thanked her for her time. "
◆
The constable tapped his watch. Two minutes.
"Vik. Listen." Raghav leaned in. "Wednesday. The merger closes Wednesday. After Wednesday—"
"After Wednesday what."
"After Wednesday I can — there'll be room.
To move. Things get signed, the pressure comes off the timeline, and then a man with the right receipts can get a bad arrest looked at again, and I have—" He stopped.
He had almost said it. I have a switch. I have a burner in my pocket that ends all of them.
I have a policeman with a receipt he hasn't shown me yet.
"There are things I can do after Wednesday that I can't do before it. I need you to hold on until Wednesday."
Vik looked at him. The funny was gone now, completely, and the fear was right there on his face. A man who had run out of jokes.
"After Wednesday I'm a footnote," he said.
"That's the thing you don't get, in your good suit, on your side of the wire.
You think Wednesday's when it gets better.
Wednesday's when they file me. Your Kapoor's word — 'file this matter promptly.
' I heard it went through the board. Suspension, then arrest, all correct, all documented.
" He put one hand flat on the mesh, fingers through it, not reaching.
Just resting there. "By Wednesday I'm resolved. And you'll be at a party."
"I'm going to get you out."
"You know I didn't." Vik's voice cracked all the way through this time and he let it.
"Say it to someone who can hear you, Malhotra.
Say it in a room with the door open. That's all I want.
I don't want you sad on a stool. I want you loud, once, in your life.
Just once. Be Vik for one afternoon and say the loud true thing in front of people who matter, and see how it feels, and then you'll know why I did it for twelve years even though it got me here.
" He took his hand off the mesh. "But you won't. You'll go back and be careful.
Careful's your religion. Go on. Go be careful at your party. "
Raghav stood. His stool scraped on the concrete, loud in the corridor.
"Wednesday," he said. It was all he had.
"Sure." Vik was already turning to the constable, the grin coming back up over the fear like a shutter over a shop. "Wednesday. Bring cake."
◆
At the desk where they gave back his phone and his belt, a constable held out a folded chit. Station paper, one line in ballpoint, no envelope.
"Solanki saab said give it to you when you come out. Not before."
Raghav unfolded it in the corridor, with the traffic already loud through the gate.
Merger tomorrow. Bring me something from outside the building or don't bring me anything.