Truth Lake (3 page)

Anticipation mounting, he scrambled downwards, then pressed on along the bank of the stream, stumbling sometimes when there seemed no place to tread and almost falling into the roaring water. All the pains of the journey, all the uncertainty of the search had become a goad to his newly born ambition: he would find the place, soon; he would uncover the whole rotten mess that had sent those two harmless tourists into such paroxysms of fear; he would return successful to his department and to his boss.

He did not speak about promotion because he was not that kind of man: to solve a puzzle was in itself a fulfilment that gave him satisfaction. He did not think about any other kind of reward because he never expected one: he was Hàrélal's ideal assistant.

It was nearly six o'clock. Soon the sun would be sinking somewhere behind all the foliage and he would have to stop for the night.

The sun had long disappeared amidst the Delhi smog; Antonio Sinbari was being briefed by his assistants before an informal dinner meeting with the Director of the Chamber of Commerce at which Mohanta Sen, a leading financier from Dhaka, would also be present. The evening was no cooler than any of the others in July and Sinbari thought longingly of home where his air conditioner purred discreetly; he had his own generator there and the repeated power failures did not touch him.

Sadrettin, alert to changes in his boss’s mood, finished his report abruptly. Sinbari cleared his throat.

'We are behind on three of the projects we started last January. I understand that there has been no break in the investigation at Bhugitala and that Ma Randhor is not releasing the certificate necessary for us to complete the project there. I'm also aware that we are now in need of a new site, prime but unused land. Preferably somewhere cool.'

He spoke sternly, dabbing at his neck. No one responded. Where would they find 'unused' land in a
prime location
unless they broke government directives? Rimi Charoot, a middle-aged woman with incredible kohl-defined eyes, broke the silence.

              'Could we not
create
a location as you were suggesting last year, Mr Sinbari? If we are aiming for a clientele that isn't Indian then we can afford to be a bit more daring.  What happened to that plan of yours to look into the foothills of Garhwal or Himachal or even higher up, near the meadows? Both desperately poor areas, as you put it, and in need of investment. Surely they'd be only too glad to invite us . . .?' She shut her mouth with a snap as Sadrettin caught her eye. His expression was not unpleasant but there was something about his stare that chilled her. Sinbari was looking down at his diary and missed the interchange of glances amongst his staff.

              'Rimi, a good idea. Put it in writing for us, will you, with relevant addresses and fax Taylor; tell him to join us next week. I expect Nelson Cornell to arrive any day now.  He will brief you on legal aspects. Right, that is all for the moment.' 

Sadrettin too issued quick instructions and motioned the rest of the group towards the door as Sinbari began to pour himself a Scotch. He had time for a quick drink before the meeting and he knew he could not afford to be late, but there was still one person he wished to speak to. He asked Sadrettin to make the connection for him and when Hàrélal came on the line he switched off the speaker, pressed record on his machine and lifted the receiver.

'Hàrélal, dear friend, any luck with that little case I sent you?' Sinbari listened for a few minutes as the man on the other end of the wires shuffled paper. His eyes crinkled and sparked with some hidden pleasure. He took a gulp of Scotch. There had obviously been no development except this fool being sent into the hills. He'd probably never find the place anyway, if the directions those two had given were as bad as he thought they were.

So far so good. Now to apply the pressure a little.

'I was speaking to the Home Minister on Monday. Yes, you know him too, Acting Chief Superintendent, very good. Anyhow, he assured me that crime in India is taken as seriously as it is in every civilised country. You are aware, are you not that I may well have to mention something to him if this little debacle isn't handled properly?'  When he replaced the receiver he raised his eyes towards the younger man who coughed but didn't smile. 

              'They've sent one of their best men, apparently; quite a Poirot, his boss was keen to assure us. He must be thinking what a wonderful excuse for a getaway … body in the hills, chances of foreign exposure . . .. So, our drama unfolds.' He spoke, mimicking Hàrélal's twangy drawl. Then, searching his assistant’s inscrutable face, in his own brusque accent: 'These people! Now what's on your mind?'

              'You may well be late, sir.'

He raised his eyebrows. Extraordinary how the young man never got straight to the point. Perhaps that was why he’d employed him. As a youth he’d heard enough pious drivel to last a life time. It wouldn’t do to have a vocal moraliser on his staff. But a secretly honourable assistant – especially one who owed him loyalty… that could be amusing!

As Sinbari left the office, Sadrettin set all the chairs to rights and tidied away the technology. He wondered if he should have spoken up, aired his doubts. For rather than worrying that his boss would be late, he was actually wondering what the detective up in the Himalayas might find and whether Antonio Sinbari would win whatever malicious game he was playing with the Acting Chief of Delhi's Police.

Made restless by the absence of his trusty agent Kailash Karmel, and the escalating cost of the clandestine surveillance operation he was mounting to protect his daughter's honour, Hàrélal tossed the dossier of information on the girl's whereabouts onto a settee in the drawing-room of his residence and called for tea. A gnarled little maid brought him a tray with four sugarless rice patties in a bowl; the tea had an acrid peppery tang and he sipped it without enjoyment.

The day's major newspapers yielded even less satisfaction: kidnappings and candlelit orchestras for his brethren, the rich, followed by train-crashes, Hindi film flops and price-rises for the poor: Hàrélal had called himself a communist when he was a young man, way back before daddy had died and mummy had bought him his first position in the police bureaucracy. Delhi news was all reassuringly familiar. When his eyes landed on an article detailing the rape and mutilation of two village men by some junior officers with the DPF, he decided that it was time to bin the papers.

For reasons that he could not fathom, he thought again of his deputy, sitting somewhere in the Himalayan mountains of Garhwal, and wondered why he had sent him away. Was he allowing himself to be influenced by the man's unpopularity with his fellow officers?  And why was it that Karmel was so ostracised by his peers? Could it be that his unorthodox intelligence and his complicated compassion for the poor of the city were resented by the other detectives? Or was their animal hostility more to do with Karmel's lack of wealth, his unknown but clearly backward caste origins, however masked and disguised by learning, good looks and the friendship of a man like himself? Detectives like Surinder Bokada openly accused Kailash of being an impostor, of having no claim other than the boss's liking, and maybe some
quota-shota bullshit
to the coveted post of senior investigative officer. Now, having dispatched Kailash to the mountains, Hàrélal had become prey to a kind of fawning speculation from the lower ranks that at once pleased and sickened him.

Bokada and his colleagues viewed Karmel's absence as a banishment and some were whispering that it should be made permanent. The rumour that Hàrélal was soon to be relieved of his title 'Acting' and confirmed as 'Chief Superintendent' of the Delhi Police-force added venom to Karmel's detractors. Everyone was eager to assist the new Chief.

Hàrélal shrank when he fathomed the depths of the hatred that Kailash's colleagues evinced towards him; he felt grateful that he himself was held in high esteem; but he dismissed any thoughts of demoting Kailash and concentrated on making a list of things for him to handle when he got back:
interview suspects Sushila and Sorhan in the Judge corruption case; finish report on the Dahimat bus-bomb for Ministersaheb; brief constables about new fingerprint database
. Sending Kailash away had been a tactical blunder brought about by the subtle bullying of Antonio Sinbari and his anxiety about the possibility of being made Chief: he had wanted the affair with the tourists handled smoothly and without gossip; now he wished that he had taken the tycoon less seriously and kept Kailash by his side, handing over the investigation to the local cops. He needed Kailash's advice more than he needed the name and history of some unidentified corpse up in the hills. The cynic inside him kept repeating that dozens of bodies turned up all over rural India and got buried or burnt without a second glance. Why was Sinbari's case worth such dedicated attention?

Hàrélal could hear his wife chanting religious songs from another room. He began to feel very discontented. Discontentment led him towards anger.

Kailash should have refused the assignment! In justice, he had tried to, but only feebly, showing little understanding of his boss's character. He should not have underestimated his own contribution to the work of the department. Such modesty was never productive; it always caused further trouble: where was the young man now? And why hadn't he been in touch?

Unaware of the anxieties churning in Hàrélal's breast, Karmel reached his lake early on the morning of his seventh day. Having followed a narrow path by the river until it was too dark to walk even with a flashlight, he had climbed upwards until he found land that was not too damp to sleep on, and proceeded to have his most restless night yet: on the verge of a destination that had seemed so straightforward back in the official heat of departmental headquarters and had cost him so much effort, he could not switch off his mind and pondered the story he had been told – or was it spun? – by the two young foreigners.

'We never intended to stay long.' Sara had said, while Adam had used different words but implied exactly that. Karmel remembered how they had both wet their lips before continuing and something about the gesture had struck him as dishonest, despite the fact that much of what they said, as well as their shock, clearly rang true.

'We started at a wee village … called
Dil
gum, because that's where Cameron had written us from last,' she'd said; 'That's where the Keshi-Dilgham bus dropped us' had been his version, and, despite such continuing and minor variations, the story they'd told him had been, for them, the same shocking one. Adam's voice had become more and more choked as he reached his conclusion.

'We'd walked for days, see, and we were really panicking about food because such a long time, no people, and I was all set to go on to Bookta or somewhere like that, where we knew there were some guys using the government cottages. It's not like it's a very populated area or anything and all the pilgrims were off on the glacier trail in the Northeast. So we came to this lake and we camped 'cause we hoped, um, wanted to see our friend somewhere there. Sara thought she'd seen someone in the dawn but we called and they weren't there when we got to the spot so I guess she was mistaken but we did know from Cam that he was living in a village called Saahitaal' – he pronounced it Sayheetell and it had taken four repetitions before they were clear about the name. Saahitaal. The Truth Lake.

'We stayed up there . . . a few hours. We were sure he'd written about it. This place. Trees all around the rim and the lake totally glassy and perfect skies. Did we see anyone in all that time? Well, we might have in the distance, you know, carrying things, but we didn't go barging into them.'

'Weren't you both eager to see your friend? Cameron Croft.'

Adam had paused, sweating, raised a hand to his chest as if breathing hurt him then allowed it to drop back onto his lap as if its weight were simply too great for his wrist to bear.

'Cam had been there several weeks ago so we weren't even sure he was still in that part of the country.’ A sudden blink and barely noticeable grimace of annoyance – at himself? At his the memory of his friend’s feckless wanderings? And then the narrative continued smoothly, as if rehearsed, ‘His father'd asked us to pop over and check on him 'cause he hadn't heard from him in a while,
like ages –
and his ma was sick. God, like
he
knew how far away it was … but I'm not blaming the old man, he's not to know how bloody BIG the Himalayas are, reckoned on a short walk from Delhi! So we guessed Cam had moved on, that's all, and didn't rush it.’ Througout this speech Adam had kept his bloodshot eyes steadily wide, staring at Karmel as if daring him to interrupt or call him a liar and Karmel had remained still, listening with his heart as well as his ears.

'Anyway, after that we were seriously short of food so we had to find the village and stock up at least for a couple of days. Well, we found it, no problem, just off to the right, below the lake, about a mile, maybe less, quite cut off with trees all over the place and not many houses – cabins really, a bit of a different atmosphere from other villages round that place actually, we thought, no men about and the women wouldn't speak to me 'n Sara at first. We got a bit of food out of one of them at last, then headed straight off thinking what was Cameron on about, it was a fucking spooky place – I apologise for the language – but no way were we waiting around there!'

In Karmel's head, Adam's narrative faded seamlessly into Sara's; the night sounds surrounding the tent – rustlings and patterings and occasionally the howl of an animal that he would rather not face – accompanied her version in a lower key; her voice had been higher pitched and more insistent, her command of herself less certain than Adam’s.

'We decided to camp some way below the village because it was getting dark and I
hate
climbing in the dark. I'd paid one of the women to make us some chapattis, that’s how you say it, yes? and spuds – potato curry – I think it was, and we had this pot of theirs so we didn't want to go far; guess they knew we had to go back the way we came so we'd return the pot or else they just wanted to be rid of us. Seemed like everywhere else we went we'd been greeted by these ultra friendly bodies, wanted to know how many bairns we had and that kinda stuff' – a frown – 'and then boom, we hadn't expected the red carpet but these ladies at Saahitaal were seriously not keen to have us around or maybe it was just Adam, because their men were up on the pastures, aye, but I didn't want to upset him by saying that; it would have been bliss to spend a night out a' the tent and in one a' their rooms.'

Karmel recollected how he had covertly watched every movement of her eyebrows, every jittery blink of her striking eyes. Had Adam been allowed in the room during the telling of her tale, Karmel had no doubt she would have glanced at him from time to time, seeking reassurance, a little girl wanting to be told she was doing okay. As it was, she’d spoken faster and faster, desperate to get the telling over. She was nervous way before she reached the climax of her tale.

              'We were washing the pot when we found him. I mean it. Down by the Saahi, near this big tree. I yelled out and Adam hugged me to make me shut up.' She had touched her face then, moistened her lips again and lowered her lashes as if seeking his pity. Karmel listened to her, memorising every detail of her response so that he could roll it out before his imagination again like a canvas, as he was doing now on this damp hillside, but did not offer any comment. She had been forced to resume her story.

              'A body, Mr Karmel. It smelt so, so repulsive, that was what made me look in the first place. I had dropped my bar of soap into the leaves and was scrabbling about to get it, brushed some earth away. . ..Then there it was under some squelchy leaves, half a face, a cheek, teeth, a hand, kind of bloated and lumpy – oh my lord, Jesus god.’ She bent her head to her knees as if overcome by sudden vertigo. He waited.

‘We knew we should search for identification, yeah, something with a name. But I couldn't, can you understand that? I just could not! You're not supposed to touch a body, are you, Mr. Karmel? It might interfere with evidence. I'm a junior doctor back home . . ..' A self-deprecating shrug, no smile, to which he had responded with a kind nod, helping her to continue. 'Adam was puking up and I was nearly the same; it was like some dreadful horror movie.’ She started to cough. ‘Excuse me. Water. Could I have a glass?' And that was about it. 

According to them they'd dumped the pan, abandoned the corpse and done what most other normal people would do – freaked out, run away, stumbled down the hillside until they were nearly blinded by trees and roots and falling darkness. 

It had taken them several days leisurely trekking to reach Saahitaal. They made the return journey in three, refusing invitations to stay in villages they passed, refusing smiles and food, barely sleeping, huddled together in their dark tent, ultimately merely wrapping themselves in it, too tired to put it up. They caught the mail-bus from some unnamed village to the plains and then another bus from there. And, when they reached Delhi, they decided to go see Antonio Sinbari.

Why him?

It made sense, see, as they along with their friend Cameron had once taken Vincent, Sinbari Junior, that is, around Edinburgh; and in the friendship that ensued had been given invitations to his tycoon father’s many global residences.

They had agreed between themselves not to speak to anyone about their experience before telling the police; but the first night of beer and heat had broken them down and they had sobbed it all out to Antonio in his fragrant drawing room. Antonio had been kindness personified. He had offered them advice and culinary solace and, when he discovered that Sara wished to call the police, it was he who had suggested that they go to his acquaintance, the Deputy Chief of Police. On one point both young foreigners were adamant: neither of them recognised the corpse they had unearthed. Why should they? They'd only just arrived in the area. And they were never returning to the Himalayas ever again. End of story. Of both their stories.

Except that Karmel didn't believe them.

On the seventh day of his quest, Karmel woke much later than on any of the previous mornings. His watch told him it was nearly six and he could hear noises that were both human and animal coming rapidly towards him. Before he had time even to step out of the tent, they were upon him; several butted their heads through the opening of his tent and trampled his ropes as he struggled to stay upright. When at last he managed to step out, he was greeted by two boys whose hilarity matched their raggedness.

'You chose the wrong place to sleep, stranger!' They chorused, as a second skinny goat charged through the open doorway of the tent and became entangled in Karmel's sleeping bag; their mirth exploded again and Karmel joined them, feeling foolish. He could see now why the ground had been so damp, for he was barely ten yards from the river and somehow had failed in the dark to notice the trampled mud around him.