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

to leave town before the police found out about my ganja-dealing. I had started selling other drugs also, and it was all starting to get

too dangerous.

On the night of the engagement, I told Aryaman to give me all the money he owed me, which was quite a lot. That is what our fight was about.

Finally, he gave me his watch. I sold my list of contacts to a cousin-brother and left Delhi.

I don’t know anything else.

END OF INTERVIEW.

Bhavani and Shalini have a quiet Sunday. Bhavani does his 5BX workout, then showers, cooks fluffy French toast for his wife and himself, and settles down on the living room sofa in front of the big TV to watch the complete and unedited recording of the Bambi Todi–Anshul Poddar engagement party with single-minded concentration.

Shalini prepares a big flask of coffee, and corrects her mock-exam papers in front of the TV too, taking small breaks now and then to watch with him, oohing and aahing over the decorations, which feature masses and masses of her favourite pink Oriental lilies, and asking questions which he often ignores.

‘We feel like a midwife in a labour ward,’ she remarks after a few hours. ‘You are clearly pregnant and about to pop. We would say about … one finger dilated?’

‘Two,’ he replies, his eyes still glued to the TV screen. ‘Definitely two.’

Shalini chuckles. ‘So, is it a girl or is it a boy?’

‘Shush.’ He frowns. ‘Pre-natal sex determination is an offence and anybody seeking it will be prosecuted.’

She sticks out her tongue at him. ‘You still don’t know, do you?’

He deigns to look away from the screen long enough to say, gravely, ‘We are waiting for some final information that will confirm everything.’

But as the day advances, and he slowly, deliberately pieces the puzzle together, Bhavani’s serene mood slowly turns restless. Something, surely, must be brewing? The twisted, elegant mind that sent the gas balloons floating up to obstruct the gym camera must be at work again … Somewhere, the disarming charm that gave old Guppie Ram a feeling of love ... and dosti – and equal-equal trust must be in action! The murderer must have panicked when Ajay Kumar showed up, and the general was exonerated, that too on national television. Surely he or she could sense the net closing in, the noose tightening? Would he or she sit tight? Or lash out again? If yes, then where? At whom?

Each of his several calls to Dr Krishnan at Forensics is met with the same response: ‘need more time’. And so he continues to watch footage of Bambi Todi in her gold-and-yellow lehenga, dancing with the dashingly handsome Anshul while Kashi sulks in the background, and the DTCs Zumba ladies air-kiss each other and cheat on their diets.

It is a slow day for everybody. At the DTC the growing heat has thinned the Club lawns of patrons, and the bearers have an easy day. Across the road, at the Todi residence, Pankaj Todi hosts Gen. Mehra and Gagan Ruia for a small celebratory lunch in honour of the general’s exoneration. Gagan is all effusiveness, and presents a huge bouquet of exotic flowers to Behra Mehra, ‘with dad’s best wishes and congratulations’, a statement which would have caused Bhavani Singh to roll his eyes like a Kathakali dancer. The phrases ‘we knew you weren’t a double-murderer’ and ‘now the Club election is in the bag’ and ‘conspiracy of the Opposition, anti-national elements and Pakistan’ are repeated so many times that Bambi gets a headache and decides to walk over to the Club and chill in the Rose Garden.

Urvashi and Mukesh Khurana spend a quiet day, mostly in their bedroom, Zoom-calling their daughters and talking to each other about many, many things.

Kashi Dogra plays carrom with his grandmother, croquet with his mother, then drives up to Delhi to get some papers for the case he’s starting on Monday. His three weeks of leave are almost up, and it’s time to shift gears.

Cookie Katoch, dressed in an aggressively bohemian-looking smock, spends the day finishing a brand-new lingam. It is a mixed media piece, with glass, malachite and lapis lazuli and she is very pleased with it, humming ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ to herself as she glues glittering bit of Swarovski crystal onto the piece in her garden ‘studio’.

Ganga passes the day alone, and very happy. Bambi didi has had a tough talk with Ajay Kumar, who has agreed to sign divorce papers on Monday.

And Roshni Aggarwal heads out to her favourite spa for a deep-tissue massage and a micro-dermabrasion treatment. When she finally returns home, a good four hours later, she finds her son passed out cold on the living room couch in front of a loudly playing Xbox.

Something about the extreme stillness of his body makes Roshni’s heart give the most horrid thud. The sight is too reminiscent of the state in which she and Cookie had discovered the dead body of Leo Matthew three weeks ago.

As she walks slowly towards him, telling herself not to be foolish, Roshni has a sudden, sickening premonition that the same dread, malevolent presence that had been hovering in the wood-floor gym three weeks ago is crouched here, just now, in her darkened living room, over her troubled son.

Giving a frightened little gulp, she drops her bags, rushes forward and touches Arya’s forehead. It is clammy and much too cold. She scrabbles about the couch for his wrist, tears stinging her eyes. The pulse is thin, a mere thread, beating unsteadily. When she pulls back his eyelids, all she can see are the whites of his eyes. Breathing slowly to calm the panic fluttering inside her chest, Roshni Aggarwal gets to her feet, finds her phone and dials the all-too familiar number of her son’s specialist …

Dear ACP Sa’ab,

This man is my very trusted assistant. He has travelled on my private jet to deliver this parcel to you. It has not been