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

wife looks up from her book to tell him when he emerges from their bathroom later that night in his half-sleeved vest and striped pyjamas. ‘It curdled.’

‘So give us paneer bhurji for breakfast tomorrow,’ he replies as he pulls on his warm ‘sleeping’ sweater. ‘Shalu, do you know what is Zumba?’

She shuts her book, amused. ‘Why? Who’s doing Zumba in Chanakyapuri?’

He stands by the dresser and just looks at her for a while. The sight of her soft, bright face, loose, brown hair and familiar red-and-purple batik kaftan is so restful to the eyes after a long, hard day.

‘All of us,’ he informs her as he clambers into the bed. ‘From the constables to the commissioners. We are all real hip-cats in the Crime Branch.’

Shalini gurgles with laughter. ‘Bhavani, nobody says hip-cats any more!’

‘Oho, Shalini ma’am thinks she’s so up-to-date because she teaches teenagers!’ he says teasingly, as he eases his pillow out from behind her. ‘But let us tell you, Shalu, that retro is cool now! You remember that old Cheeky Peaches song – “Secrets”?’

‘Cheeky Peaches!’ she exclaims. ‘We used to like that band!’

‘Well, we had a dead body today.’ Bhavani sighs as he sinks back against the pillows. ‘He died because of the Cheeky Peaches.’

‘What? What?’ Shalini puts away her book and turns to her husband attentively. ‘Tell!’

The Crime Branch would frown upon their cases being discussed so freely in the marital bed, but Bhavani and Shalini have always shared everything. Food, fears, colds, chores, sweaters, socks, dreams and information. It had made them a formidable combination as parents, always united before their two strong-willed little girls, and now that the girls are settled and they themselves are much older, it is the glue that binds their marriage.

Shalini listens, absorbed, her chin resting on her fisted hand, as he fills her in on the main points, ending with the call he has just received from Kashi while in the bathroom, confirming that Bambi was indeed being blackmailed by Leo.

‘Kleptomania isn’t that bad,’ she says finally.

He nods. ‘But the others probably had worse secrets. He was playing a dangerous game.’

‘But the murderer played it safe,’ she says. ‘We’ve heard of Pinko Hathni. The kids are popping it at all the parties – a really tiny, white pill, like a homeopathy ki goli, which acts two minutes after you’ve consumed it. Which is why another nickname for it is Maggi.’

‘That school is a den of vice.’ Bhavani shakes his head.

‘We love our school,’ she says at once.

‘And they love you!’ He snorts. ‘That’s why you get so many flowers from those horny boys on Teacher’s Day!’

She laughs. ‘We don’t care for flowers, Bhavani. Except pink Oriental lilies. Now, they are something special!’

‘At a hundred and fifty rupees per stick!’ he replies ruefully. ‘We agree, they are indeed something special!’

‘Not stick, Bhavani, stalk,’ she corrects him laughingly. ‘Accha, wait, we’ll get you a glass of cold milk.’

Bhavani always has trouble sleeping the night after a corpse-sighting. Plain, iced milk, with a little cardamom, helps.

‘No need to get out of bed now.’ He puts a hand on her arm. ‘It is too much trouble for you.’

But Shalini is already on her feet. ‘It’ll be more trouble for us if you toss and turn all night,’ she says plainly. ‘You shake the whole mattress! We won’t get a wink of sleep – and even if we do, we’ll dream we’re on some sinking ship, being tossed about on the high seas, and about to end up in a whale’s belly.’

When she returns with the milk, she finds him scrolling through a sleek iPhone 11 and raises her brows. ‘That’s his phone? An expensive toy!’

‘Not just a toy if he was using it to record people doing shady things and then blackmailing them! More like an … investment, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Drink your milk,’ she replies.

He chugs down the milk, then picks up the iPhone again.

‘But there’s nothing on it,’ he says grumpily as he hunches over the device, scrolling this way and that. ‘Our technical people have checked it out thoroughly. Maybe he had another phone.’

‘So get his house searched tomorrow.’ Shalini wipes the milk moustache off his square, homely face. ‘And put that thing away. Sleeping with a corpse’s phone will only give you nightmares.’

‘Aren’t those gauraiyas, sir? We thought they were extinct!’

Thus, Bhavani Singh, with determined cheerfulness, to Devendar Bhatti the next morning, in what appears to be a large vegetable garden at the rear of the club. Padam Kumar and he have tracked the Club president down with a certain amount of difficulty to this pretty, enclosed space, full of neatly laid-out vegetable rows. Bhavani identifies carrots, potatoes, several sweetly scented herbs and, under a huge, spreading jacaranda tree, a wide bed of beetroot, easily identifiable by the deep red stems from which their light green leaves spurt. Bang in the centre of the beds is a rocky, dappled birdbath, in which tiny house sparrows hop and splash gaily, entirely oblivious to the documented fact of their extinction.

The entire garden is ringed by a rustic wooden fence abloom with bright yellow zucchini flowers, and rises, at one point into a gated arch. Framed within this gateway stands the ex-home secretary of India, clutching a red plastic basket half-full of muddy, reddish-orange carrots in one hand and a humble iron khurpi in the other. Bhavani notices that he looks less like an indignant hen today and more like a slightly guilty hen. Maybe he isn’t supposed to be purloining the DTC’s veggies …

‘Well, they were certainly almost extinct,’ Bhatti responds stiffly, waving his khurpi in the vague direction of the gaily hopping sparrows. ‘But we built all these nests, and put out water and seed, and made them feel welcome, so they came back.’ There is a pause and then adds, tetchily, ‘As did you.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Bhavani says brightly. ‘Enquiries are going well, sir.’ He has decided that the less he shares with the Club president, the better.

Bhatti