Club You to Death Anuja Chauhan (best ebook reader for ubuntu .TXT) 📖

‘I … I don’t quite know. But … Well, like I mentioned earlier – he was vain. He talked a lot about how good-looking our children would be. If he got … burnt … or scarred very badly, or crippled in some way that he couldn’t climb mountains any more, or do any physical activity, it could have destroyed his mind.’

Bhavani sits back in his chair. ‘You think he has maybe lost his memory, or his reason, turned into a crackpot stalker and murdered Leo out of jealousy.’

It is a statement, not a question. Bambi gives a hysterical little giggle. ‘Well, when you say it as baldly as that it sounds utterly idiotic.’

‘But that is why you have come to us, is it nat? That is what you suspect?’

She colours, bite her lip and nods. ‘Yes.’

‘And now you think, don’t you, that because you have been socializing with your er … childhood friend Kashi Dogra again … that the vakeel sa’ab is in danger too?’

‘You understood!’ Bambi’s face lights up with relief. ‘You’re so smart! Yes! I’m worried sick for Kashi!’

‘What about you yourself?’ he asks. ‘Do you feel like you are being followed, sometimes?’

She looks startled. ‘Why?’ she asks worriedly.

He shrugs. ‘When you go here and there, shopping or to the beauty parlour, or partying—’

‘I do have a job, you know,’ she says wryly.

He nods placatingly. ‘Or, indeed, to the office, do you feel that somebody is trailing you? Is watching your every move?’

She hesitates. ‘It sounds so silly … but somebody was spying on me in the bathroom at the DTC. I saw an eye through the wall. Quite clearly.’

‘When?’

She tells him about the whole incident, adding at the end, ‘But that could be entirely unrelated to all this, no?’

He nods. ‘Yes, it could. By the way, how did this latest letter arrive?’

‘It was stuck to the windshield of my car, as usual.’

‘We see.’ He lapses into silence. ‘Bambi ji, you did the right thing by coming to us.’ His face looks uncharacteristically grim.

Bambi looks at him apprehensively. ‘What … what are you going to do?’

‘You have given us a lot to think about,’ he says. ‘So we will … think about it.’

Inspector Padam Kumar is thoroughly disgruntled. The DTC case is causing havoc with his search for a bride. Just look at today only! It is a sunny Saturday morning, a perfect day for seeing girls – for visiting some nice family, drinking tea, savouring homemade snacks, being respectfully charming to the older folks, and teasingly big-brother-ish with the younger brigade. All the while stealing thrilling little glances at the prospective bride, assessing her beauty and her health, the jolliness of her nature, the competence of her cooking, and comparing them with the other finalists he already has in his kitty, smug in the knowledge that there is no way she could possibly reject him, an only son, six-foota, fair, with a full head of hair and a secure police job!

Instead, he’s standing ankle-deep in the marshy, Chyawanprash-y mire of the DTC’s wretched kitchen garden, sifting through every square inch of mud from the hole in the ground where the accursed body was found, because Bhavani sir has some notion that there may be a clue in there.

Clearly, the colourful chart on Bhavani sir’s softboard which says ‘Work hard, but not too hard’ applies to him only. Everybody else on his team is expected to strain till they get haemorrhoids everywhere, not just in the brain!

Sifting through the mud is messy, back-breaking work. The men are using long spade-like tools that end in a heavy iron mesh. They scoop up the squelchy mud in it, dredge it through the mesh and then look at what’s left. All they’ve found so far are vegetable tubers. Their initial enthusiasm, and the hope finding some vital clue – a key, a button, a watch, a cell phone, anything that could have survived the worms and the germs – has long since dissipated.

It’s a fool’s task, Padam Kumar thinks bitterly, and I’m the fool who’s been delegated to do it!

What makes things even worse is that this place has become some sort of tourist spot. In spite of all the yellow police tape they’ve put up, somebody or the other keeps wandering up to the site, eager to gawk at the place where the laash was found. Some claim to have lost a golf/tennis/cricket ball, some come from the kitchen with tea and snacks, and some just want to scavenge free vegetables unperturbed by the fact that everything growing in the garden has been fertilized by a laash. It doesn’t help that there’s a big parking lot just opposite. People keep walking past, messing with the sanctity of the crime scene.

Padam Kumar sighs and sips his tea. The DTC’s tea is supposed to be very good and all, but frankly, he’s had better. He should really have done what his mummy had suggested. Carried a thermos of sweet, strong, milky tea from home.

Overall, this place is hyped, Padam decides, looking about the sprawling property with dissatisfaction. Haan theek hai, the location is very good, but it seems to primarily be full of skinny old people, chubby children and noisily squawking birds. And you can get better food in the food court of almost any mall. And the décor reminds him of those haunted inspection bungalows they’re always showing in scary movies. Stuffed tigers and moose heads and mouldering fireplaces!

He dips a biscuit into his tea and chews on it sullenly.

A little child comes skipping happily along the path accompanied by that Ganga girl who had been so withering to him the other day. She is holding her sari pleats fastidiously high in one hand to avoid the mud that has scattered all over the path. Padam Kumar, feeling his cherubic cheeks grow hot, turns away hastily and harangues his men.

‘Speed it up! Speed it up! Is this a picnic, or what?’

‘He’s having biskut-chai and accusing them of