handsome – the bushy black beard only half covered pitted cheeks, and his nose was large and crooked – but somehow this added to his powerful presence – a raw sexual energy.
Facecream stepped into the room with her hands clasped. The doors closed behind her and she stood still, not sure what to do next. The soft sigh of the air-conditioning was the only sound. There was no one else in the room.
And then his voice – a deep baritone, commanding yet somehow welcoming – broke the silence.
“Join me, Mukti,” he said without opening his eyes.
She bent down to touch his feet and then knelt on the mat in front of him.
She waited. Seconds passed. And then, without warning, he opened his eyes and Facecream found herself held in his gaze. She flinched ever so slightly, then looked down. She could feel his eyes appraising her.
He said, “I know how deeply you’ve been hurt.”
Facecream knew immediately that he was referring to her scars – that he had been told about them by the lady doctor who had examined her yesterday.
“Men never understand how deeply they are capable of hurting women,” he continued. “Often it is the people closest to us who betray us. The ones in which we place our greatest trust. Tell me, my child, who did this to you?”
Facecream held her silence. She never, ever spoke of her scars – not to herself, not to anyone. And certainly not to a man who would exploit her pain for his own advantage.
She felt cornered. But this sense of vulnerability quickly gave way to anger – mostly at herself for not having seen this coming.
Nonetheless, she managed to stay calm and maintain her composure. She was there to get a look inside his inner sanctum, she reminded herself. And no matter how hard this guru, this fraud, tried to get inside her head, he would never succeed because, unlike the others, she didn’t believe in him.
“Don’t be afraid. I will keep your secret… but if you want to be free of the sadness and fear, you must tell me who did this to you.”
Facecream looked up at him with sad, mournful eyes and told him that she was scared.
“Come, my child,” said Maharaj Swami. He reached for her hands, and when he took them into his own, she made a mock attempt to pull them away. “Let me soothe your pain.”
Girding herself, she shuffled forward, mumbling, “I’m sorry, Swami-ji.”
“It is I who am sorry for you, my child, for you are starved of trust and love. You are strong yet carry so much pain inside you. It’s going to destroy you one day. Your silence has bought you more time, but eventually you must allow yourself to reveal this pain to me so that I can heal it once and for all.”
She met his gaze again for a moment, wondering if he had really understood something about her or if they were just words, and said, “Yes, Swami-ji.”
“In the meantime you should wear this.” He made a fist with his right hand and then opened it to reveal a smooth purple crystal.
Facecream gawped in astonishment. “That’s amazing!” she exclaimed.
“Keep it on your person at all times. After waking up, press it to your forehead. It will help cleanse your ajna chakra. Return to me when you are ready.”
“Thank you, Swami-ji! But how will I know when to return?”
“You will know,” he said. “You must learn to listen to your intuition and not your mind.”
Maharaj Swami closed his eyes again. The audience was over.
Facecream backed out of the chamber with her hands pressed together. In the hall, she found Damayanti waiting with her parents. The mother and father both wanted to hear about her audience. What wisdom had Swami-ji imparted? Did he perform any miracles?
But their daughter was sullen. And when the senior devotee informed them that Swami-ji had asked to see her on her own, she avoided eye contact with Facecream.
“You’re not joining her?” Puri’s operative asked the parents.
“If Swami-ji calls us, then we will go to him with open hearts. Today Damayanti has been blessed with a private audience.”
Blankly the young woman walked toward the open doors.
Sixteen
Puri arrived early at the Gymkhana Club – on Sunday mornings there was less traffic on the road – and sat in the bar waiting for his old friend, Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh. Sometimes it was important to get away from work for purely social pleasure. And the weekend all-you-can-eat brunch buffet, a bargain at 295 rupees, was always a welcome respite.
But the Jha case was impossible to avoid. The TV was showing one of India’s Oprah-style talk shows. Dr. Jha’s murder had been grist to such programs for four days now. Debate over belief and superstition, a topic that stoked nothing short of hysteria in some quarters, was rife.
“Our poll says eighty-five percent of us
Puri asked the barman to ‘reduce’ the volume as his thoughts turned to the latest developments in the case.
After Pandey’s liaison with Mrs. Jha last night, Puri had ordered their telephones to be bugged. A couple of Tube-light’s boys had taken up position outside the Jha residence as well.
Puri had also called his researchers into the office to start picking through the two suspects’ financial records.
The next step was to search Pandey’s house.
Puri had ruled out doing this legally. Calling Inspector Singh and asking him to get a warrant could jeopardize the case: inevitably the chief would come to know and start demanding arrests be made. Once the lawyers and the media were involved, Puri would never see justice served.
He had decided to break in tomorrow afternoon when the professor would be teaching at the university. And if he came across any incriminating evidence… well, he would call in Singh when the time was right.
What else?
He opened his notebook and read through his witness interview notes.
Now that there was no doubt in his mind that Pandey was, at the very least, an accomplice to the murder, two details that had seemed unimportant during the preliminary stages of the investigation struck him as significant.
1. Pandey had told the knock-knock joke that had caused everyone to laugh hysterically before Dr. Jha had been killed.
2. Pandey had been the first to declare his inability to move his feet.
As for the professor’s statement that he had seen the murder weapon turn to ash… Puri had doubted its veracity from the start. Pandey might well have removed the sword himself and then deposited the ground charcoal next to the body.
Something else also occurred to the detective while he was ruminating over the clues.
In the past couple of days, he had watched three magicians perform: Akbar the Great, Manish the Magnificent and, of course, Maharaj Swami. All three had performed in environments where they could make use of concealed props. Prior to putting on their acts, they could set the stage, so to speak. In Puri’s book, it was called cheating, but that was an argument for another time.
What had made Dr. Jha’s murder seem so baffling was that it had been done out in the open.
What if the setting for the murder, the spot where the Laughing Club always met, had been rigged long
