The Masala Murder: Reema Ray Mysteries Read online

  ‘This is Mrs Khanna, my neighbour,’ he said.

  I noted the formal mode of address and the lack of embarrassment on his face. No, not a girlfriend then.

  I stood up to shake her hand and ask them both to sit down. Too late I noticed the layer of dust that covered the visitors’ chairs across from my neat, paper-free basic wooden desk. (In those days, I was still keeping up appearances.)

  ‘I think Mrs Khanna might need your help,’ my father started, looking encouragingly towards his companion.

  Mrs Khanna lifted her uncomfortable gaze from the desk to my face. ‘It’s my daughter, you see,’ she said abruptly, leaning forward. ‘She’s … she’s found the most inappropriate young man, and she has got it into her head that she is in love.’ She stopped, overcome.

  My father quickly stepped in. ‘The man is a musician with no steady income. Mrs Khanna is afraid that he is after their money.

  They live in the lovely house next to my building, you know, the one with the lawn and the beautiful dogs?’

  If I remembered correctly, Mr Khanna had passed away a couple of years ago. Now it was just the two women, and twin milk-chocolate labradors. But surely Miss Khanna was old enough to render this conversation redundant?

  ‘Mrs Khanna,’ I said, ‘may I ask how old your daughter is?’

  ‘I know what you are thinking,’ Mrs Khanna cried, her voice cracking. ‘She may be thirty years old, but she has no experience with men and is very, very innocent and easy to take advantage of!’

  My father shot me an alarmed look—this was obviously a potential minefield. I hid my surprise, I hoped, tolerably well. The last time I remembered seeing the young lady in question was at a New Year’s Eve party around four years ago, where she had been draped all over a young man who may well have considered himself the party taken advantage of.

  ‘And you would like me to check out this man?’

  Mrs Khanna nodded, wiping her tears with the corner of her dupatta. ‘Since she won’t listen to me, maybe some proof will help change her mind. But you must charge me what you would any other client. Don’t think of me as your father’s friend. And you can’t ever mention it to anybody.’

  I nodded solemnly. I needn’t tell her that I hadn’t had any other client and that I was in no position to offer my services for free. ‘Of course,’ I said earnestly, picking up my pen. ‘Could I ask you a few details about this man?’

  The case of Miss Khanna’s main squeeze was resolved favourably for me and Miss Khanna, though not so much for Mrs Khanna. It turned out that the young musician had a more regular income than had previously been suspected—he had a pub gig, composed ad jingles and even had a few students on the side. He had the predictable string of groupie girlfriends behind him but since he seemed to treat them well enough, I deemed fit to keep the full details of this from Mrs Khanna, just as I chose to conceal the dalliances of her daughter.

  It was hardly rewarding work, but it paid at least part of the bills. And at last I had lost my detective virginity!

  The next month, another paranoid mother, a friend of Mrs Khanna’s, came calling. That case too was speedily resolved, only this time it turned out that the man was concealing a former—and still valid—marriage and child. I couldn’t help but think my client was a little too happy to learn that her daughter had indeed been duped in the worst possible way. But with two cases in two months, I had been saved the ignominy of declaring my practice stillborn.

  My website was ready by this time, and I invested a little on Internet advertising and through the classifieds, calling myself Calcutta’s ‘most discreet investigator’. And after a couple of inquiries that went nowhere, I got another pre-marital check, this one from the prospective bride herself. She had met the guy on a matchmaking site and wanted him vetted before moving past the first meeting. I soon established that though the prospective groom was criminally boring, he was otherwise deceit-free.

  Over the next quarter, I made enough money to cover the rent for both home and office, and I could even afford a few meals instead of mooching off my parents. Once I had worked my way into the network, the stream of souls looking for love in people they could not trust never seemed to dry up. Sometimes it was the woman, sometimes the man, sometimes the parents. When it wasn’t pre-marital check, it was jealous lovers and spouses.

  The flow of cases intensified after I came to the notice of a couple of professional matchmakers, and my online ads started getting placed on matrimonial sites. It seemed to be a marriage made in heaven—for a while.

  Year one as a detective rolled on. My efforts at finding other kinds of work seemed to never quite take off. Identity verification for companies was something I believed was a natural extension of my existing services, and a couple of cold calls went well till they asked about my set-up, and I had to confess that it was only me. I don’t know if that was what did it, but nothing quite materialized after that.

  In retrospect, perhaps I had gone about it all wrong. Perhaps I should have approached Uncle Kumar and my parents’ other friends for help, for references, for a foot in the door. But I didn’t, partly because I was reluctant to seek help from those who didn’t approve of the choice I had made. And I suppose partly because the idealist in me—yes, she was still hanging on to the edge of a life raft rapidly losing air—believed that the big case that would propel me into the limelight and thus win me a never-ending parade of exciting mysteries was just around the corner.

  It was on a slow day about a year and half after I started my business that I got a call from Shweta at Face, whom I had gone to school with. ‘I have an offer which you may find too exciting to resist,’ she said conspiratorially. Her editor, explained Shweta, was looking for a policewoman who could review the latest big-budget catch-the-serial-killer film releasing the following Friday. ‘The problem with these cop types is that they are soooo stuffy. Who’d even agree to do something like this? So I thought of you, and Devika just flipped for the idea!’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked, thoroughly confused.

  ‘We want you to write the film review! It adds some masala, no, to say that a private eye—that too, a female—is writing a review for a thriller.’

  I didn’t see how it could make a difference to anyone, but I was intrigued. I loved writing when I was in school. And reading, particularly detective novels, which is what got me into this mess in the first place.

  I wrote my first film review—I can’t remember which one it was, but I vaguely remember Morgan Freeman being in it—and loved writing it. And the magazine was happy too, apparently. Face soon had me writing reviews for just about every film that featured a person being followed, a punch thrown, or a baddie nabbed.

  Fridays became busy for me. And though the pay wasn’t great, the extra cash didn’t hurt, and I enjoyed the excuse to watch films all first day, first show (and expense the tickets).

  Then, about six months later, Shweta called with another message from her editor. ‘They want to meet you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘They are hiring, and they want you!’

  It made no sense. ‘But I am not a writer. I am a detective,’ I said at last, as though that settled the subject.

  But Shweta dismissed this with an uncharitable snort. ‘You are at least as much of a writer as you are a detective. In the past six months, I’d bet you’ve written more reviews than you have solved cases.’

  Point. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Fine. Just as long as you’ve worked it out by tomorrow morning. Your interview is at 9 am, and you’d better be there.’

  I went, but only because I didn’t want Shweta to lose face. I was sure Devika would realize I was highly inappropriate as a recruit for what was primarily a fashion magazine. I hadn’t read one of those in my life, and it showed.

  It wasn’t that I was badly turned out so much as that I stuck to my uniform. Black T-shirt and black trousers to a formal meeting. Black top and jeans to the
pub. When pushed to the limit, black dress for a serious night on the town. But I couldn’t remember my last real date, so the solitary LBD hadn’t been aired in what must be six months, the matching heels mildewing in the back of my cupboard.

  But it didn’t go quite as expected.

  ‘You’re perfect for the job,’ declared Devika about thirty-five seconds after I walked into her office. We had never met before, but she had engulfed me in a hug surprisingly wholesome coming from super-toned arms and a breakably thin frame.

  ‘I’m a detective,’ I repeated for the third time.

  Finally, Devika seemed to hear me. ‘I don’t want to sound rude, but Shweta mentioned that your practice isn’t going so well. So why not give this a shot? You have a flair for it, you know. We barely have to change a word you write. Do you know how rare that is?’

  I could honestly say I did not. And though I knew Shweta adored her boss, I hadn’t realized she had shared so much information about me with her.

  Devika sensed my discomfort. ‘She only mentioned it because I was driving her crazy to find me someone I could hire. And, you have to admit, it makes perfect sense.’

  ‘Far from it,’ I whispered under my breath. ‘What would I do at a fashion magazine?’ I asked aloud.

  ‘We aren’t just fashion. Face, as you know, stands for “Fashion, Accessories, Cosmetics and Entertainment”. Film reviews you already do. We are going through a mini makeover, one which will involve significantly more space devoted to the non-fashion lifestyle space. You could increase the scope of your writing and get involved with other aspects of the magazine as well.’

  I was sceptical.

  ‘Isn’t there something that interests you as much as … detecting?’

  My mind had been pushing away a piece of information I knew was critical—the very thing that made me suspect I may not be such a misfit at Face after all. ‘There is one other thing.’

  Devika was watching me hopefully.

  ‘Food,’ I said. ‘If I hadn’t become a detective, I would have loved to be a pastry chef.’

  Devika’s full-bodied laugh filled the room. ‘Why didn’t you say so before? Don’t you know food is the new fashion?’

  I left Devika’s office with an offer that day, but even before I walked out the door, I began to formulate a way to have my cake and eat it too. What if I could freelance for Face for film reviews as well as food, and keep my private practice?

  five

  I owe my love for food to my father. In the evenings we’d be in the kitchen, mucking around with whatever was at hand, while Ma would be off on a shoot, or a rehearsal, or one of those ghastly parties that would invariably end with her coming home well past my bedtime and well past sobriety—or so it seemed from my torn eavesdropping. But even so, her thirst for alcohol had never matched his. Her true poison had been attention, from as many sources as possible at the same time. My father and I alone would never do.

  The fights always began in strangled tones—with me straining to hear—escalating into a nocturnal brawl I struggled to shut out. It may have been easier if I hadn’t been able to see the storm darkening the sky long before they could. I had become an expert in reading the signs, their patterns of destruction, and expecting it had been worse agony than actually riding it out.

  I had devices guaranteed to deliver numbness. I would lie there under my blanket, earphones plugged in, and music turned up as loud as I dared, a flashlight trained on the pages of my book, my eyes devouring the words. On those nights any book would do, but the best kind was a detective novel, in which every problem came with a solution. All it needed was an analytical mind to put it together, to turn every wrong into a right, to answer every question.

  My parents, on the other hand, kept asking me questions to which I had no answers—some spoken out loud, others not. Is your father drunk; was your mother with that man at last night’s party; will we ever be whole again?

  Crime—the solving of, never the committing—seemed infinitely easier.

  ‘Ma, he’s a dog,’ I said.

  ‘I know, isn’t he?’

  ‘Not Baba! The dog! I am talking about the dog! Of course he jumped on you. Because that is what he does! In fact, that is all he does!’

  I had finally dragged myself home, hung over after Devika’s tequila fest, to get ready for an interview, and I was going to be late, but I would rather risk that than send my mother into a sulk. She was back with her familiar complaint: my father was mistreating—on the verge of murdering—the family dog. Wrong choice of words, perhaps, for the family that had once claimed Batul as its most precious member had since parted ways. Batul now lived in a state of perennial confusion as to who his true master was, spending time at both the abodes of my warring parents. For years, as I shuttled from one home to another, I had taken up the honorary post of doggy deliverer. When I had jumped ship to my now unaffordable flat, I left my parents to their own disastrous devices and Batul in shared-custody hell.

  My father had taken off for a month-long trip around Europe, so Batul was currently in my mother’s sole care. And her specific complaint was something like this. ‘As soon as I walked in through the door to get him before your father left—and the place is such a pigsty! —he leapt at me. It’s like he hadn’t been fed in weeks, the poor, poor Snoopy darling.’ I could almost hear my mother scratching behind Batul’s long retriever ears that looked more copper than they did gold. The drool would have begun to puddle at her feet.

  ‘Have you ever known Batul not to jump on you? Or on anybody else? That’s how he would greet a gang of armed robbers.’

  My words had zero effect. My mother simply continued in her tirade against my father’s negligent overindulgence of poor Batul. It was as though my refusal to become a pawn in their endless battle had caused them to enlist their other, more helpless child for the purpose. It had a heartbreaking effect on the poor pooch, who was already guaranteed to evince sympathy on account of his short stature, looking as though his mother, a fine specimen, had messed about with a dachshund. It was a time-consuming effort to keep the diminutive retriever from packing on the pounds, and the past few years had taken a heavy toll, for in shuttling back and forth from master’s house to mistress’s house, he had been caught in the crossfire of constant gastronomic warfare. In the doggy world, my parents seemed to have concluded, the master of the year award went to the one who supplied the best and the most food. As a result, Batul, who knew no self-control, would polish off whatever he found in his dish and then, in a fit of eater’s remorse, retreat into a corner to sulk.

  Batul and I had much in common.

  ‘Ma, have you at least started to do your bit? Have you stopped over feeding him? And started taking him out for real walks?’

  ‘What is the point? Dr Mukherjee says the damage is done. He is now officially depressed. How can I take his treats away now?’

  I shook my head, my frustration lost on all but myself. ‘And what about you? How are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, I am fine,’ said my mother, instantly perking up. ‘Busy with a play for the Calcutta Theatre Club.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great. Which one?’ At my mother’s age, interesting roles were hard to find, and she was tired to tears of playing the desolate/avenging mother in small-time Bengali films. So, she had withdrawn from the world of cinema all but completely. But I knew she still waited for that call to come.

  ‘Hamlet. I’d much rather be a beastly mother than a moaning and complaining one.’

  Didn’t I know it. ‘And what about your plans with Hema Masi?’

  ‘I can’t believe she is finally coming to Calcutta! Just the two of us, after all these years!’ Hema Masi was my mother’s oldest friend who had moved to the US decades ago. A reunion was slated for next week.

  She chirped on for ten minutes, her despair over Batul forgotten.

  I finally made it to my interview with Mallika Mitra. She was a striking woman—40-something, tall, slender frame draped i
n an elegant pale blue silk dress, feet in tan pumps, hair cropped short. Perfect ivory skin that seemed only to be growing more luminous with age, that same distinction in speech, the elegance a certain kind of Bengali woman of that generation seemed to be born with. You could hear the convent education in their voices. These were the women who, on the surface, held up well in matrimonial columns. Thankfully I had eschewed such ambitions for myself early on.

  I was seated in Middle Kingdom, Mallika’s cosy restaurant on Southern Avenue overlooking the Lakes. ‘This is a beautiful spot,’ I said. The fifty-seater eatery was high above the bustle, giving it a stellar view.

  ‘Yes, it was quite a find. I grabbed it when the old owners were giving it up before real-estate prices soared. I doubt I could afford a place like this now,’ said Mallika. There was something about the warm smile she shot me that reminded me of my mother, and I was instantly sorry I hadn’t been more patient with Ma that morning.

  ‘How long have you been running this place?’ I asked, taking a sip of perfectly brewed Darjeeling tea from the pristine white china cup.

  ‘Going on six years now. I never thought I would get this far.’

  Middle Kingdom had opened while I had been away at college, so it wasn’t till more recently that I had discovered how exceptional it really was. Now I was doing a feature on the restaurant and its elegant owner for a series on Calcutta’s best eats.

  ‘Do you still enjoy it?’

  ‘Oh yes, as much as the day we opened. Or rather more, for that was a singularly stressful dinner if my memory serves me right.’

  ‘How did you conceive of such a place?’

  ‘I started without really knowing what I was getting into, to tell you the truth. My husband and I had lived in China for a number of years and when we returned, I had a lot of time on my hands. I started looking for something to do and toyed with a few other ideas, but eventually I settled on a restaurant. My family had been in the catering business in Calcutta years ago, and I felt comfortable with the logistics. And in those days, there really wasn’t any place in town serving authentic Chinese food.’