Bankerupt (Ravi Subramanian) (27 page)

‘According to this report, Richard’s death happened around the same time that his iMac was wiped clean. Hence the presumption that he cleared it or timed the wipe on his iMac.’ And then she paused and said, ‘Unless someone who was aware of what Richard was planning to do quickly cleared it out. Who could it be?’ She answered the question herself, ‘Could it be James?’

‘Rubbish! You are hallucinating. Do you mean to say that James knew that Richard was going to die?’

‘Probably.’

‘Unlikely.’

51

3rd June 2008, evening

Boston

Cirisha reached the duPont Center well in time. Like the previous evening, she was there to pick up Aditya. One look at the clock on the dashboard told her that she was half an hour ahead of time. Thirty minutes was too long a time to wait in the car. She locked the car, entered the building and walked up to the second floor. Maybe it was time to test Aditya’s claim of being nimble-footed. When Cirisha saw him practise, she was quite surprised by his agility and the speed at which he moved. When Aditya turned and looked at her, she gave him a thumbs up. ‘You look handsome in this gear, Mr Raisinghania.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t have become an investment banker. You should have become a fencer. Maybe India would have won a few medals at the Olympics.’

‘Thanks for the compliment. Give me a couple of minutes. I will change and come,’ he said and disappeared into the washroom.

Five minutes later, he emerged in his regular jeans and T-shirt. ‘What’s for dinner?’ The workout had made him hungry.

‘Let’s stop at the International House of Pancakes again. I am in no mood to cook. For Dad I will make some parathas. There are two frozen ones left in the freezer. What do you say?’

Aditya made a face. ‘Again?’ But then realizing that Cirisha was also getting back home after a long day at work, he agreed. ‘Come, let’s go,’ he said and smiled at her.

They reached the parking lot, got into the Honda and drove to the closest International House of Pancakes. ‘You wait here. I will get it.’ Aditya got off the car and ran inside. He ordered banana caramel pancakes for Cirisha and a plate of crunchy battered shrimps for himself. It was their standard order.

‘Twenty-four dollars, please.’ The girl at the counter had keyed in the order.

‘Sure.’ Aditya felt the back pocket of his jeans. His wallet was missing. ‘Oh shit! I think I dropped my wallet. Can you wait for a minute? I will check in my car and be back. I am so sorry.’ And he turned and ran.

‘Next, please,’ the girl called out to the next person in the queue as Aditya ran out of the door. He ran straight to the parking lot. The car was missing. He looked around. Cirisha was nowhere to be seen. He panicked. He ran to the other end of the parking lot. He still couldn’t see the car. He felt his pockets. He had left the phone in the car. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Morbid thoughts crossed his mind. He did not know what to do. He decided to call the cops and turned when a car drove into the parking lot.

‘Where the hell did you go?’

‘Chill, Aditya. What happened? I needed some stuff for the house, so I picked it up from 7-Eleven there.’ She pointed in the direction of a 7-Eleven departmental store. Aditya turned and saw the logo glowing brightly. ‘Couldn’t you have waited for me? I was worried sick.’

‘I am fine, Adi. I am fine. Nothing can happen to me.’ And she smiled. He bent down and hugged her through the window. ‘Come, let’s go,’ she said, but noticed that the food was missing. ‘Where is the food?’

‘Oh, yes. I need cash to pay. Hand me my wallet.’

‘Where is it?’

‘It would have slipped from my back pocket and fallen on my seat.’

Cirisha switched on the light inside the car and looked around. In ten seconds she turned back towards Aditya. ‘Not here.’

‘Oh shit!’ After a moment’s pause he added, ‘I think I didn’t pull it out from my locker. Completely forgot.’

‘Locker?’

‘At duPont. I left in a hurry because you were waiting. So I might have left it there. It’s OK. Give me some cash and I’ll get the food. I’ll collect the wallet tomorrow.’

‘Hold on. You left the wallet in the locker?’

‘Yes. Not to worry, though. It’s my other wallet. Would at best have about a hundred dollars in it. I don’t take the one with my credit cards when I go fencing. I play it safe.’ He said it with a great deal of pride, as if his decision of not taking his regular wallet had been vindicated.

‘How many lockers are there?’

‘Quite a few, in fact. Almost everyone has one.’

‘Really?’ And then her eyebrows shot up. She looked up at the sky as if she was thinking about something. Almost instantly, she looked back at him and whispered, ‘Get in. Quick.’

‘What happened?’ He looked at her and pointed towards the pancake outlet just a few metres away. ‘Food?’

‘Just get in. Now!’ she whispered a scream.

Aditya got in. ‘I am hungry.’ But Cirisha was not listening. She reversed the car like a maniac. It made a screeching noise as she left the parking lot. A few passers-by were stunned at the way she drove. Aditya hurriedly put on the seat belt trying his best not to slam into the windscreen. ‘Cirisha!’ he screamed. ‘Are you OK?’ No response.

Cirisha was driving at over 100 mph on a road with a speed limit of 65 mph. ‘Cirisha, will you please tell me what the hell is wrong with you? Why are you driving like this?’ He could barely hear himself over the noise of the revving car. Cirisha did not speak a word. She was completely focused on the road ahead. The traffic on the Cambridge Turnpike was thin. She took the 94th exit and turned towards MIT. About half an hour ago they had driven on the same stretch, albeit in the reverse direction. In another five minutes, she was back in the parking lot of the duPont Center.

‘Why are we back here?’

‘Your wallet. Where is it?’

‘It could have waited till tomorrow. I was not in any hurry. And it’s safe there. It’s my personal locker.’

‘I know, I know. Come, let’s go.’ Aditya just followed her as she rushed into the building. It was late in the evening and the place was deserted. Aditya’s practice session was the last one for the day, and that had ended over an hour ago.

‘Where is the locker room?’ she asked him as they got off the lift on the second floor. ‘There,’ Aditya said, pointing to the right-hand corner. She made a dash for the locker room and entered. ‘It’s a men’s room, Cirisha.’

‘I know. But there will be no one here at this time.’ It was a room full of lockers. ‘Richard had a locker here. Which one is that?’

‘What? How would I know? And for God’s sake, why do we need to look for Richard’s locker?’

‘Help me look for it. It has to be here somewhere!’ Cirisha was in a world of her own.

‘There are hundreds of them here. How will we know which one is Richard’s?’

‘Do you guys tag your names on lockers?’

‘No. There is no place for that.’

‘Shit! How do we find his locker?’ She looked around. There were hundreds of them. All tiny 1-foot by 2-foot lockers. There were a few big ones towards the bottom. Aditya counted them. He was good with mental math. Six blocks of lockers, each having seven rows of eight lockers each. Close to three hundred and fifty of them.

‘Three hundred and thirty-six, to be precise.’

Cirisha completely ignored Aditya’s calculation. ‘Adi, if you were to choose your locker, how would you? Which one would you prefer?’

‘It would depend on which ones were available. One may not always get the locker one wants.’

‘Yes. But Richard is the faculty support.’

‘Was.’

‘OK, OK. Richard was the faculty support. He had been here since the time this facility opened. He would have had the first go at selecting the locker he wanted. So availability would not have been a problem.’

‘Good point.’

‘So tell me, which lockers would you have preferred?’

‘Either the big ones at the bottom …’ Cirisha looked at them. Unlike the others which were a foot high, the ones at the bottom were two feet each. ‘Or this row.’ He touched the fifth row from the bottom. ‘This is at eye level. Easy to operate.’

‘Great. Richard was about six inches shorter than you. He would probably have taken the fourth row. Worst case, the fifth row. That brings our search down to the fourth or fifth row in six blocks, or ninety-six lockers to be precise. Down from three hundred and fifty.’

‘If you ignore the bigger ones at the bottom,’ Aditya confirmed her calculation.

‘Correct. We will look at the big ones if the fourth and fifth rows don’t work. And normally no one prefers the ones in front. You would rather choose the ones at the back. It gives you privacy.’

‘Absolutely right,’ Aditya agreed.

Cirisha walked to the last block of lockers. ‘Let’s see if his locker was one of these.’ She pointed to the fourth and fifth rows in the last block. ‘Sixteen lockers. It has to be one of these.’

‘How will you open them? Unless of course …’

‘Yes.’ And she took out her mobile phone and flipped through a few screens. She memorized the code on her phone and keyed it in to open the locker.

‘Incorrect code.’ The message flashed with a beep. She tried again. Same result. She moved on to the second locker. Same result. She keyed in the number on the keypad of the third locker.

‘Are you sure we are in the right place?’ Aditya asked.

‘We will find out,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you begin from the other end? That will be faster.’

‘Code?’

‘Messaging it to you right now,’ and she sent the image of Richard’s email to Aditya’s phone. Aditya was a bit worried that they were breaking trespassing laws. He started from the opposite end with the fourth row from the bottom.

By that time Cirisha was already keying in the code in the fifth locker. Nothing happened. She moved on to the sixth one. Silence. She waited for a beep that just wasn’t coming. Aditya held back whatever he was planning to say and looked at the locker. For a second there was pin-drop silence. And then there was a sound of something moving. As if some levers were shifting into place.

The word ‘OPEN’ appeared on the locker screen.

‘Yes!’ she shouted jubilantly.

She reached up to the locker and opened the door. It was dark inside. Her hand holding the mobile phone automatically came up. Faint light from the phone screen filled up the dark abyss.

‘There is something here,’ she whispered.

‘Careful. Let me pull it out for you.’ Aditya reached into the locker. He had to stretch to his fullest to reach something which was safely tucked away right at the back. It was heavy and bulky. Cirisha looked on in wonder as he dragged out a pile of papers in a yellow envelope.

Cirisha opened it and was about to take the papers out, when Aditya advised, ‘Let’s get out of here. It might not be safe.’

Cirisha turned to walk out of the room, envelope in hand. ‘Wait!’ cried Aditya. He came up to her, hugged her tightly and began kissing her on the lips. ‘Are you out of your mind, Aditya? You just said that we must get out of here.’

‘Shut up, you idiot.’ And he kissed her again. Holding her close to him, his arms around her, his lips seeking hers, he turned and walked out of the locker room towards the lift. It was a distance of about fifty feet. Throughout the stretch, he held her firmly in his grasp. Even for a moment he did not let go of her. Once they were in the lift, he released her from his clasp and pressed the button for the ground floor. Cirisha was wondering what was going on. He repeated the same thing the moment they got out of the lift on the ground floor and held her close to himself till they reached the car.

‘What has got into you?’ she yelled. Aditya smiled. ‘Now drive. I did this because there are many security cameras in the lobby and on the ground floor. I didn’t want any of them to capture images of the envelope that we were carrying outside. We should have brought a bag and dumped the envelope into it. But we didn’t know that we would be carrying back something like this. So I didn’t have any option but to hide the envelope between you and me. And for that I had to kiss you and hug you.’

Cirisha didn’t know what to say. ‘And by the way,’ continued Aditya, ‘that’s the longest you have kissed me in a long time.’

‘Shut up.’ Cirisha smiled as she shifted the Honda into drive mode and drove out of the parking lot towards home. She couldn’t wait to get home. In the car, Aditya opened the envelope. There were several papers on which something had been scribbled. He could not make head or tail of it. Cirisha was driving. The papers had to wait till they got home.

‘Is this what Richard wanted us to find?’

‘You are assuming he wanted us to. Maybe he left this the night before he killed himself. Or maybe earlier. And forgot about it. We just happened to stumble on it.’

‘Unlikely. How many times do I have to tell you about Richard? I have known him for seven years now. If he left it there, it ought to have a meaning.’

‘And that’s for us to figure out.’

‘That’s correct, sweetheart,’ said Cirisha with such a confident undertone that Aditya couldn’t say anything. He was getting increasingly worried about the repercussions.