It was nearly 10 p.m. when the young man in the red T-shirt parked a motorbike in the deserted parking lot. He whistled as he grabbed a bag and walked briskly to the entrance. The security guard recognised him and opened the gate.
“Gagan, you have become the moon of Eid,” the guard said in Hindi, his round face breaking into a gap-toothed smile.
“What can I do? You guys should order more often.”
“I wish I could order pizza on my meagre salary.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Gagan said. “I promise I’ll get some extra slices next time.”
The guard perked up and the gapped smile reappeared.
The pizza delivery boy ran up the steps to the front desk. A short woman in a starched blue uniform was manning the counter. Gagan hated it when she was on the late shift. The woman was preoccupied on the telephone as usual, and barely acknowledged his presence. She lowered the receiver, clamping her hand over the mouthpiece, and hissed “Cottage 5”.
Gagan turned and walked down the garden path to the cottages. The crickets had started their rhythmic night song and the unexpected sound brought a smile to his lips. He was still smiling when he reached the porch steps of the cottage and knocked on the door.
The door opened a crack and a young woman poked her head round. “What do you want?” she asked.
“Pizza”
The woman glanced at the pizza bag in his hands and opened the door fully. The glare from the room’s ceiling light revealed a slender woman in patterned pyjamas and a stick in her right hand. She followed his gaze and dropped the stick with a clatter.
“Please keep the pizza on the table. I’ll just get the money.”
Gagan glanced around him - a yellow wall-papered room with two white beds, a cupboard, a small couch and a writing desk next to the door. He placed the pizza box on the desk. The woman, who seemed to be fiddling with her purse, handed him a 2,000-rupee note.
“Madam, I don’t have that much change”
“Keep it,” she said in a high-strung voice.
“Madam, is something wrong?”
“What’s your name?” the woman asked.
“Gagan”
“Gagan, will you help me? Can I trust you?”
“Yes, of course, madam. What happened?”
The woman didn’t say anything, but took his hand and ushered him to the en-suite bathroom.
Gagan blinked as the woman switched on the light. The body of a man lay contorted on the bathroom floor. His eyes were open, bulging and red. There was no blood, but Gagan knew instinctively that the man was dead.
“We have to call the police,” he said.
“No,” the woman said.
“But …”
“I killed him. In self-defence. He was beating me. I killed him. I hit him on the head with the stick. They will arrest me.”
She started sobbing and went to the main room. Gagan followed, his mind in turmoil as he wondered what to do.
She was curled up on the couch, cradling her head in her arms. Gagan looked at his watch: 10.10 p.m.
“We’ll have to get rid of the body,” he said.
She looked at him and stopped crying.
“You’ll help me?”
“Yes, madam …”
“Shivika. Call me Shivika.”
“You seem like a nice person and I don’t believe you meant to kill that person. Don’t worry, you won’t be arrested.”
“Thank you, Gagan. I can’t believe I am trusting a stranger, but right now you seem like an angel to me.”
“Madam, we have to act now. What does the hotel staff know?”
“After I saw Roshan - that man is my husband Roshan - when I saw he was dead, I didn’t know what to do. I sat here stunned, maybe for an hour. I called the reception at 9 p.m.”
“What did you say?”
“I said my husband left in the afternoon for Delhi for some urgent work. I said I didn’t want to go out to a local restaurant and could they please order a pizza - any vegetarian pizza - for me.”
“Do you think she believed you?”
“I think so. I think she was quite impatient and eager to finish the call.”
“That’s good. She’s horrible and doesn’t care about guests, even when it’s peak season. She is always on the phone with her boyfriend.”
Gagan thought for a minute. Was there anything they had overlooked?
“Did she ask you how your husband left the hotel?” he asked.
“No, we came by bus from Delhi and walked here from the bus-stand. That was going to be my answer, if she asked, that he walked to the bus-stand.”
“Good. Brijmohan the guard is usually asleep on the chair, and certainly can’t vouch for when your husband left.”
“Gagan, will all this be over soon and I won’t have to go to jail?”
“First things first. We’ll wrap the body in the spare bedsheet from the cupboard. Good thing there is no blood we have to get rid of. We have to destroy all of his things.”
“There’s not much. Everything is in that small travel bag,” she said.
“Another good thing is this particular cottage is adjacent to the boundary wall. We just have to throw the body over the wall. It’s not very high and there’s no barbed wire.”
“Won’t someone notice?”
“You are in luck. This is a hill station and everyone goes to sleep before 10. If the receptionist hadn’t called me, I would have locked the pizza outlet and left an hour earlier. There’s no one in the streets.”
“How can we leave the body on the side of the road?”
“We won’t. There’s a narrow gully a few metres from the road. It’s impossible to spot anything that falls down it. We’ll dump the body there - it will never be found.”
“Look at me, Gagan. I killed my husband and I am smiling - because you seem to have thought of everything.”
“I promise you won’t be arrested. Stay here for a day or two - and then contact your relatives saying you haven’t heard from your husband since he left for Delhi. And have at least two slices of that pizza now - you must be hungry.”
“Have some pizza. I can’t finish this by myself.”
“I can’t. I need to leave soon, the guard recognizes me. He must be wondering why I was here for so long.”
------------------------
It was past 10.30 when Gagan reached the front desk. A soap opera was showing on the television, but the woman was still talking on the phone. Gagan slipped out when her back was turned.
The gap-toothed guard was awake and grinned when he spotted Gagan.
“What were you doing inside for so long,” he asked.
“I was watching ‘Kasautii Zindagii Kay’, the new series.”
“Don’t shit me. The madam doesn’t allow people like us to sit inside.”
“She was busy on the phone, she’s madly in love. I think her sweet nothings lulled me to sleep in the lobby.”
“Lucky bastard,” said the guard, “while I swat mosquitos here. Some people have all the luck.”
When Gagan turned into the street behind the hotel, the revving of his motorbike was the only sound in the still of the night. As he neared the spot near the boundary wall, he saw at the glance that the sheet-wrapped body was undisturbed, just as he had expected it to be. A stray dog was lurking nearby and Gagan drove it away with a well-aimed stone.
The woman peeped up from behind the boundary wall to confirm that Gagan had arrived. She hoisted herself up and swung herself over the top, landing on her feet and brushing off her hands.
“Wow!” Gagan smiled. “Now I am not so sure you even needed my help.”
“Don’t be stupid. The body is heavy. There’s no way I could have thrown it over the wall without your help.”
They dragged the body into the bushes on the other side of the road. Gagan pointed to the gully partly hidden underneath the foliage. In the distance, they could see the winding roads leading to the Himalayan town under the night sky.
“Are you sure no one will discover the body?” she asked.
“Last year, a cyclist swerved, lost control and fell into the bushes to the side. But his cycle fell into the gully and was never recovered, even when the rains came. It’s too narrow for people to go looking.”
“In that case - 1, 2, 3, and here goes.”
Gagan threw the man’s travel bag after the body and looked up to see the woman pushing his motorbike into the gully.
“Are you crazy? Why did you do that?”
“It’s OK, I will buy you a new one. I couldn’t risk somebody finding it parked on the road.”
“I don’t understand. I was going to drive it away and go home directly. No one would have suspected a thing.”
“I couldn’t take that risk,” the woman said. “I had to get rid of all the loose ends.”
The full import of her words struck Gagan just as she flung herself at him. He skidded backward and lost his footing. His hands clutched in the air at nothing, and as he hurtled to his death, he heard the crickets singing again.
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Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
