Shadow Play (7 page)

For the first time in those two months, I knew terror. I had put my foot in the water counting on being bitten, and yet without expecting it. I had still believed no one could mount anything that large: after all, I'd called the world's bluff so many times before. No one ever imagined it was the cat that killed its uncle, even after they'd seen and heard everything – that had become the lesson of a lifetime. The world was so messy, so multiple, immersed in itself, entangled at so many points. Everybody had friends and enemies, debts and indiscretions, secrets – and whatever the police might suspect, they were always obliged to investigate everything. I'd kept a clear head and let nothing ever stick to me; I had thought that was all the protection I needed. Because the world was so full of the unbelievable, yet the sheer scale of the mundane helped disguise everything, or so I had believed.

I picked up speed on the empty pavement. I knew I would have to keep turning because I couldn't leave the area; I would be ‘captured' again the moment I emerged on a main street. My only chance was to tire out my pursuer before I myself had to halt, and gain a lead large enough so I could hide, maybe jump into a garden. There I would stay still until nightfall. I turned around to check the distance between us, and that's when he made his error. He never stopped running but he pulled his phone out from his pocket. I made one last effort and turned. He was just approaching the corner when I turned again. Up ahead was another street. When I reached it a few seconds later, he was a street and a turn behind me. This was my moment. I crossed, jumped a wall, ran across a garden, another wall, and crouched behind a shed.

Instantly I switched off. There were streets I could have taken in front of me but I knew he would call for reinforcements.
I didn't care how long they searched – I would remain here and outwait them. I wouldn't even listen out for them, because I might give myself away. I might take an unnecessary precaution, or they might hear my heartbeat. So I stretched out on the grass on my side, my right arm acting as a pillow. And I deliberated these things for a few minutes, in the course of which I must have dozed off.

It was already dark when I awoke, but I stayed for another hour. When I was sure I could hear nothing I crawled towards the wall, glanced around and jumped over. I had already begun striding away when I realized the street wasn't quite empty. About twenty yards from me, there was a little boy behind a lamp post on the other pavement. I turned around to look at him, but he remained where he was. When I continued walking, I could feel that he was following me. I made my first turn and waited. Sure enough, he reached the street and kept staring. It would only create trouble if I went nearer or said something, I argued to myself. He's a kid and he's seen me jump out of a garden. He's just playing cops and robbers.

But he continued all the way to the main street without ever closing the twenty-yard distance. It struck me that I hadn't really seen his face, that he might be a full-grown man, a midget or a dwarf. He might be the night-watchman they'd left behind. At the same time I realized I was on an unfamiliar road, that I had emerged the wrong way. But retracing my steps meant facing him: suddenly I didn't want to be on those dark side streets again, and I couldn't be certain of his reaction if I started walking towards him.

I broke into a light jog, believing it would be enough to lose him. But when I looked, there he was, still twenty yards
behind me. I kept this up for a few more blocks and then had another idea: how would a child dare follow someone who ran down the middle of a four-lane artery? So I speeded up and crossed – there were still a few cars in either direction. Though I was going much faster and we were far away already from where we'd started, the midget – for now I was sure that's what he was, their most deceptive yet tenacious tactic – never for a minute let the distance increase between us. I was running out of options. There were no empty cabs I could hail, and turning around to face him had become an alternative I wouldn't even consider.

Nearly killing myself by not noticing a car, I crossed over to what seemed a huge open space to our right. There ran a row of street lamps in the middle but surely the darkness all around offered an opportunity for me to disappear. At first I kept to the lamps, trying to fathom where I was and to gain an impression of what the darkness concealed. It was a dirt road I was crunching on, and the spaces on both sides were immense. It seemed to be a road-widening programme but then I could discern the ruins of buildings; the rubble formed small hills going up and down in the darkness. The entire area was being redeveloped as far as I could tell, except for a complex of lights straight ahead. But there was no other horizon: there was no point except the street behind us where the city appeared to resume itself. I had no wish to continue further or even to stray from the middle, but when I looked around, there he was, a steady dot still no nearer or further away than before.

A curious déjà vu now stole over me. I had never seen, imagined or heard of such an area existing within walking distance of my home, where everything had been torn down so
thoroughly, but suddenly the landscape felt familiar. Another twenty yards and I recalled where I had seen it – from the top of a high building with a spaceship towering overhead, standing alone in the middle of an already destroyed city. Without any further reflection I swerved off into the darkness, making for the lights ahead. From that point onwards I could not turn around again, and anyway, the further I went, the further the road was lost to me. Now all I cared for were the lights: I lost count of how many holes my feet fell through, how many times I scraped or knocked myself going over those hills of wreckage, how often I was on all fours.

It seemed an entire hour before I finally reached close enough to make out what the lights were. It was a huge plant of some sort – with pipes, chimneys, tanks and platforms, like an abandoned oil rig or a nuclear city. The fence around it had been torn down; I climbed over and headed for some steps. When I reached the first level, I found a space under a tank and squeezed in, and only then did I look behind me. Nothing was visible in the darkness, and nothing seemed to be moving in the lighted area beneath. I could feel myself bleeding in several places, yet I lay there vigilant because I had no doubt it would only be a few minutes before I heard him cross the fence and arrive at the bottom of the stairway. Then – I knew – I would have no idea what to try next. But when I awoke at daybreak, there was no one around, only the darkest grey of a smothered morning. By the time I'd stumbled over the ruins and started walking in the direction of the main road, a fine rain had begun to spray me.

 

Lifting one recollection out of obscurity invariably reveals another. Why was I in a car with my father as we drove to pick up a friend of his one night when I was nine? I had finished my dinner and was reading
The Ring O' Bells Mystery
by Enid Blyton when he asked if I wanted to go on a drive. Of course Ma was against it and said so in loudly hushed tones (‘What do you think you're doing, have you gone completely crazy?'), but by then she was against most things my father suggested, big or little. ‘It'll be fine, ' Baba insisted, ‘don't worry. It'll be nice to have him with us. We'll be home long before his bedtime. Anyway, isn't tomorrow a holiday?'

No matter how exasperated she was, Ma never went into hysterics. Perhaps it came from years of living in a room with hostile relatives on either side of us, always maliciously eavesdropping in our imagination. And even today her objection seems thoroughly sane and reasonable, just as Baba's reasons remain obscure. The only motive I can imagine for taking me along is that he meant to throw off anyone spying through a window as he left the house: he was setting off for an evening stroll with his son. There is a shrewdness in that kind of
thinking that would normally be out of character for my father, but given the wider context of what he was planning, it seems exactly the sort of muddle-headed calculation that would have appeared clever to him. Or perhaps it didn't emerge as a result of any profound deliberation, but out of an irrationality even deeper – my father simply wanted me beside him. And within some unknowable inner balance of instincts, he had decided the benefits outweighed the costs.

‘Why aren't we using our own car' was my first question as we drove away. ‘Who does this belong to, and why was it waiting for us near the park rather than outside our door?' My father answered nothing clearly; he kept looking over at me and smiling. ‘I hope you are not feeling cold. Are you wearing a sweater inside? Look how empty the roads get by ten-thirty in winter. Look at this fog, how beautiful the trees are. If we were in the village just now, walking home through the fields, I would say it's the ideal weather to be tapped on the shoulder by a ghost.'

After about fifteen minutes, we squeezed through some very narrow roads and stopped at a corner. I knew the area because my school bus passed through it to pick up Abhilash and Vinay. I mentioned this fact to Baba while we waited. Then, just to impress him, I traced the rest of the bus route with all its diversions from here right until our doorstep, not forgetting to specify who disembarked at exactly which point. For his further edification, I had begun individual character analyses of each of these renowned personages, making sure to inform him of their status as friend or foe within the ever shifting patterns of alliance in the Machiavellian nether-zone that was our school bus, when the person we were waiting for knocked on my
window. I was consigned to the back after Baba introduced me, and as we set off, he put the gentleman's surprised questions to rest with a simple reversal of the truth. The official version was that I heard he was going on a late-night spin and insisted on coming along.

Suddenly I was excited, my listlessness vanished; there seemed a point to the evening. I had no conception of what it might be – all I could tell was that Baba and I were on a mission which involved elaborate layers of deception. This strange car instead of our own, parked away from the house; the need to lie to this man whom I had no basis for trusting yet. It was obvious Baba needed me, and it was obvious there would be danger, otherwise why would Ma have been so worried? My soul rose to the challenge: the only thing I wished was that Baba had clarified my role just a little, because if this newcomer wasn't a friend, how was he going to pass me my instructions?

I kept trying to decipher clues in the movements of Baba's head as he drove, even shifting over to his side of the car so that I could catch his eye in the rear-view mirror for some coded sign of what he was planning. But both of them remained silent, which impressed me all the more. There could be no more certain indicator of secrecy or gravity. I would just have to wait and watch, and in the meantime begin adjusting rapidly to the fact that my father was nothing like he seemed.

It was in this state of mind that I found we'd arrived in Dalhousie, which I had visited only once before but recognized immediately as Baba's office area. There was no one about besides the very occasional taxi and a few people covered up and fast asleep on some of the pavements. This then was the nature of our business – three men, an empty city, a strange car under
cover of fog and darkness. For just a fleeting second, I wondered if one of them was carrying a gun. By now the fog had covered the bottom of every lamppost and most of what was around us. We halted outside a doorway that I knew from my earlier visit.

Completely against what I would have predicted, it was Baba who announced he wouldn't be more than a few minutes, unlocked the front door and disappeared into his office. I was baffled, and scared for the first time that evening. Who was I being left alone with, and what should I look out for? What if he drove off with me – where would that leave Baba and where would he take me? Baba had given me no directions, no clue whose side we were on, nothing with which to protect us.

I sat there very quietly, and to occupy myself, started counting to sixty over and over. I had gone through eleven such cycles despite realizing that my time-keeping was faulty, when the man said Baba should be back any time now. He asked me if I was warm, and how my mother was, but never once did he turn around to face me.

‘What is Baba doing?' I asked.

The man took a while to answer. ‘Nothing. There was a paper he forgot to pick up earlier today, but he really needs it for the weekend. All he has to do is find it.'

‘He should have taken a torch,' I reasoned.

‘Ah, don't worry. He knows exactly where it is. It's right on his desk. He asked me to come just for company. That's why you are here too, I suppose. Who feels like going out alone on such a cold night? Tell me something, do you know the score? Is Dexter still batting?'

My heart eased its beating: everything had been restored to the realm of the mundane, and there was Baba himself now
pulling open one of the giant front doors of the building. He held up a paper towards us and smiled, stepped into the car and passed it to his friend. I was just about to lose all interest in this massively anti-climactic outcome when a car drew up on our right. The driver pressed his horn and slid down his window.