I thought of Susanne, of how she’d taken such pleasure in what would end up being her final cigarette, drawing in long drags and making smoke rings with her mouth as she exhaled. Where Jocelyn had smoked with an addict’s passion, Susanne had managed to avoid that pitfall, had only smoked around me maybe five times overall.
Each cigarette had been a slow display of pleasure.
That night, she’d been wearing the glittering red cocktail dress she’d chosen for our date to a bar as sophisticated as she was, her lipstick perfect and not a strand out of place in the elegant twist in which she’d put her hair.
I had loved her so much. Enough to kill her.
Nothing else could’ve made me do what I’d done. Only love of the kind that was a vine around the heart that couldn’t be removed. Susanne had been inside me. Where Diya now lived.
“Thanks.” I took a sip of the drink in an effort to push away the memory of what I’d done, sighed at the tart sweetness. “Tastes fresh.”
“She uses those. Good girl. Knows how to make it right.” He pointed at a tree on the other side of the porch, heavy with tiny yellow citrus fruits. “So, why’re you here? Shouldn’t you be with Diya and Shumi?”
The fact that he’d added Shumi’s name to the list told me that he was well up on the news.
I gave him the same excuse I’d given Ravi, but he didn’t buy it. “You could’ve done that later. I don’t know how the police in New Zealand do things, but I know they’ll be looking at the forensic evidence—and that includes any remains. No funerals anytime soon.”
“No.” I drank a little more. “The thing is, Diya said something about Ani when I found her after the fire. I didn’t know if it was important and there was no one there who’d tell me—Shumi’s parents said they didn’t know anything, and her brother didn’t have much information.”
Kamal snorted. “Those two. Of course they know. But Ajay wasn’t even two when it happened.” He tapped the ash from his cigarette into a dented metal ashtray on the little table between us. “It’s old history. Nothing to do with now.”
“It was on Diya’s mind after she was hurt,” I insisted. “And, honestly, she’s not doing well. She’s still in the ICU. If there’s something she needs me to do so she’ll be at peace, I want to.” It was a stab in the dark, the latter, but I’d spotted the yellow string tied around his wrist, caught the scent of incense coming off him—Kamal was religious, and for the scent of incense to be strong enough to cut through the acrid puff of nicotine, he had to have prayed that morning.
It would matter to him that Diya not pass on in distress.
Another puff before he crushed out the butt in the ashtray. “They were just children. No point in making anything of it.”
My heart thundered, and though I wanted to push, I stayed silent, both of us watching the tractor.
“My son, Yash,” Kamal said at last. “I wanted him to become a police officer like me, but this is what he wants to do. Stupid. How’s he going to emigrate overseas driving a tractor and growing beans and whatnot?” A shrug. “His wife works in a bank, so maybe she’ll talk sense into him.”
Leaning back in his chair, he began to rock again. “They were playing outside, Bobby and Shumi and Diya and Ani. Nobody much watching over them—we didn’t, not back then. They knew not to go into the water alone, and usually just climbed trees or ran through the fields trying to find gooseberries.”
The images were the stuff of hazy, happy childhood memories, but Kamal’s face was grim.
“No Ajay,” the older man added. “He was a little too young, but even if he hadn’t been, that mother of his wouldn’t have allowed it. She had all the control, with her husband off in Suva for work most of the year. I always said he’d grow up weak with a mother like that—woman had him tied to her apron strings from the day he was born.” A glance at me, a silent question.
“I’ve only just met him,” I said, thinking of how Mrs.Kumar had called him back to the motel room. “He seems okay on the surface.”
Kamal’s lip curled. “I pity the woman who becomes his wife. Ajay will always do what mummy says—she made him that way.” The rocking increased. “I wasn’t home that day, was at the station house by the koro. You would’ve passed it on the way here.”
I remembered the small blue-and-white building across from the village where I’d seen the boy running for his ball, nodded.
“It was Sarita who called me. She was at home after a night shift at the little clinic they used to run, having a sleep while her mother- and father-in-law looked after the children. Rajesh was on day shift.”
“They all lived together?”
“Yes.” Picking up the cigarette packet on the table, he slid out another slender tube, put it to his lips, but didn’t light it. “Shumi came running home, said Ani was hurt, so of course Sarita’s in-laws woke her. She was a doctor. But there was nothing anyone could do—baby Ani was dead.”
Diya must’ve been so scared and confused, I thought. “What happened?”
“In the report, I wrote that she fell against a rock while playing, smashed her head.” He lit the cigarette now, cupping his hands around it with the ease of a longtime smoker. “Big crack in the head.” A shake of the hand to douse the match, the first puff of new smoke. “Her lips were blue by the time I got there.”
The visceral sensory memory of backroom poker games pushed aside the echo of Susanne enjoying her last cigarette. The nicotine had been so thick in the air at some of those games that it had been a visible cloud—but I’d never indulged. One self-destructive addiction was more than enough. “But you don’t think it was an accident.”
“It wasn’t.” Flat words. “There was another rock nearby. Blood and hair on it. The Prasads were a good family, Sarita a dedicated young mother. And what use was there in punishing a child for being angry for a moment?” Another puff, while my mind tumbled. “The Prasads did good thing after good thing for the locals. And they’d suffered so much already. No reason to ruin their name.”
So this small-town cop had covered up the murder of a child. Even knowing the consequences of his choice, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have done exactly the same. “How did you…”
