Club You to Death by Anuja Chauhan (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📗

‘Good thinking,’ he says.

There is an awkward silence.

Yesterday was easier than today, Kashi thinks, vexed. Today is weird because we can’t talk about how nice it is to see each other after three whole years. Shit!

‘So how come you’re here again today?’ she asks finally. ‘Rediscovered your fondness for the Club?’

He rolls his eyes slightly. ‘They called me because now everybody thinks I’m Leo’s lawyer.’

‘Oh!’ She giggles, then looks guilty.

‘Bee, d’you think … we can be … umm … friends again?’

It is now her turn to take longer than logically required to reply.

‘Bambi?’

She covers the distance between them in two quick steps and wraps her arms around his waist. Her head rests on his chest.

Her breath comes in jagged little gasps as she says, ‘I missed you … so … much after Anshul died.’

And so – finally – the name is out there, between them. Anshul Poddar. Anshul the glorious. Anshul the hyphenated. Entrepreneur–mountaineer. The wealthy arranged-marriage catch from the right community and class, who had wrested Bambi from Kashi’s arms only to perish with a bus full of others in a freak landslide accident in Garhwal the day after their glitzy engagement.

Kashi sighs, closes his eyes and hugs her back. Looking down at the top of her head, he feels sick with shame as he recalls the moment when he’d heard the news of Anshul’s bus plummeting into a Himalayan abyss. Because his one simple, savage thought had been serves her right.

Decency and sanity had prevailed later though. He had tried to call her. Even though all the Doscos had said it was a highly avoidable thing to do. But she hadn’t answered his calls anyway, or replied to the text in which he’d asked her to call anytime, they could pull one of their ten-to-six all-nighters if she needed to get stuff off her chest …

Three years of radio silence.

Over, just like that, with one simple hug.

Kashi sighs happily, then frowns. ‘Fuck, Bambi, are you wiping snot on my sweater?’

‘I din do anythin.’

The trainer protesting his innocence is a short, fair, muscular Manipuri dressed in tight, all-black clothes with blonde-streaked hair, bulging muscles and a paradoxically gentle face.

Padam Kumar looms above him, smiling a sinister cherubic smile. ‘I didn’t say you did, Tiger Shroff.’

‘My name’s Thinsuk,’ he replies sullenly.

But Padam Kumar has already turned to the other trainer – a macho, moustachioed young Malayali with bright eyes and a military haircut.

‘What about you, Rana Duggabuti? Your boss is dead – did you also not do anything?’

‘It’s Daggubati,’ the Malayali, whose name is Thampi, retorts instantly. ‘And he wasn’t my boss.’

Padam Kumar chuckles. ‘Lorrd of atty-tyoode! I like that!’

They’re in the sunny exercise room above the gym. It has a wooden floor, one mirrored wall and huge windows which overlook the main lawns of the club. The trainers are sitting on a pair of rather trendy beanbags and Padam Kumar is standing over them.

He lets the silence lengthen, sneering down with tough, Singham-ish machismo at the cowering duo. This is how he’d imagined a career in the police force would feel. But then footsteps sound on the stairs and the pleasantly plain features of ACP Bhavani Singh appear at the landing.

‘Hullo hullo,’ he says amiably.

The tension eases out of the trainers at once, much to Padam Kumar’s disgust.

Bhavani sits down, and sizes up the pair in silence for a while, smiling genially, drumming his fingers idly on the arms of his chair.

They’re hiding something, he concludes. Outsiders to this city, one from the north and one from the south, they’re radiating the classic mix of belligerence and fear that outsiders exude when faced with city cops. But there’s also something more.

The question is, is this something more relevant? If they’ve been eating beef in their strictly Hindu rented flats, or peddling illegal steroids to Club members, then it may have nothing to do with the incident he’s investigating.

He raises his voice, upping his jovialness a notch.

‘So, you two and Leo … you were … friendly with each other, hain?’ He looks attentively from one to the other.

There is a small, strangled silence. Then –

‘I never got to see him,’ Thampi says finally. ‘He used to come very early in the morning and I never have the morning shift. Ask Thinsuk.’

Bhavani turns his patient, questioning gaze on Thinsuk.

The Manipuri shrugs. ‘He was kind. A’ways busy, and in a hurry, but kind. I used to ask him for tips, because he was famous in the fitness community, and because his lifting technique was so good – an’ even though he said, “People pay me good money for what I’m teaching you for free, Thinsuki,” he a’ways helped me.’

Bhavani Singh tips his chair back into a more relaxed position.

‘Money-minded, was he?’

Thinsuk looks sullen. ‘We all have to be – living in this city! Leo was earning so much money – but spendin’ a lot also. He paid big bucks to stay on top of all the lates’ moves and trends. He had the bes’ qualifications. He had heavy fuel consumption too – a’ways driving here and there for his classes on that Hayabusa.’

‘O yes!’ Bhavani Singh massages the lobe of his ear for a while. ‘You say his technique was good – but it could nat have been too good if he ended up dead.’

Thinsuk looks just a little smug. ‘That’s true.’

‘In the video, we saw that the bench press bar was already loaded for Leo when he walked into the gym at five. Who did that?’

‘I did,’ Thampi says sullenly. ‘It was one of my “closing up” duties. Stack the bar with plates – a hundred and twenty kgs – for Leo the great. He was too busy and too important to load his bar himself. I even had to mix his pre-workout shake and leave it in there’ – he nods at the clear-glass doored fridge – ‘for him to drink during his workout.’

‘And I put away everything