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

conveniently vanished! That’s the kind of low life that fellow is! Urvashi Khurana is worth thirty of him!’

Bhavani is wondering how to compute this new angle, when an angry female voice pierces the barrier of the rustic wooden fence, making them all jump.

‘Helllllooo … bhaisaab! You can’t just waltz in here and dig up beets for free! You need permis—’

Bambi Todi appears in the arched gateway, her small frame rigid with outrage, glaring accusingly at Padam Kumar in his muddied pink jersey. Then she spots the two old men sitting under the jacaranda tree and relaxes, smiling.

‘Oh hi, Bhatti uncle. ACP Singh! I didn’t realize you guys were hanging here.’

‘So Kashi filled you in on my … uh … dealings with Leo, huh,’ Bambi says hesitantly to Bhavani a little later, as they walk back under the shade of the neem trees to Guest Cottage No. 5 together.

He nods solemnly. ‘You’ve been through a tough time, Bambi ji.’

She shrugs her slender shoulders. ‘That’s okay …’ Then she turns to him impulsively. ‘But I hear I wasn’t the only one? He was squeezing other people too?’

Bhavani’s homely face grows inscrutable. ‘That’s classified information.’

She pulls a face. ‘You told Kashi – but not me.’

‘Vakeel sa’ab is partnering us unofficially in this investigation in his capacity as Leo’s lawyer.’

‘Ghanta.’ She snorts. ‘I was there when he decided to be Leo’s lawyer and there was nothing legal about it!’

He looks down at her smilingly. ‘Even so.’

‘I’ll worm it out of him.’ She grins outrageously. ‘He tells me everything.’

O really, thinks Bhavani wryly. We wonder if he’s told you that his roof-builder girlfriend and he have perfect tuning and they complete each other’s sentences.

Aloud he says, ‘Thank you for being so frank. The information you shared with him last night has put us on the right track really fast.’

‘And yet you don’t trust me,’ she complains.

‘Actually,’ he says, his expression growing thoughtful, ‘we would like to enlist your help today.’

Bambi’s eyes widen with excitement. ‘Oooh, tell!’

‘Are you aware of a young lady who works at the Daily Needs store?’

Her face closes down a little. ‘Ganga? Of course. I only got her the job.’

‘Bhatti sa’ab alleges the general is obsessed with her,’ Bhavani says. ‘He hinted at some sort of a chakkar between them. What do you think?’

She says, rather curtly, ‘I think the general’s name was on Leo’s list of blackmail victims.’

Bhavani smiles. ‘You’re a smart woman, Bambi ji. But please answer the question.’

Bambi pulls to a halt. ‘Look, ACP, I’m very protective of Ganga. She’s had a crap life with an abusive husband and she’s finally finding a little peace now that he’s deserted her. She’s single, Mehra uncle’s single, and in life I just try to stay as non-judgemental as possible! God knows I can’t afford to point fingers, what with my klepto mum and all!’

So the general and this girl probably do have an arrangement, thinks Bhavani. But if everybody knows about it already, and they’re both single, then how is that even a motive for blackmail and murder?

‘Fair enough,’ he tells Bambi. ‘Also, we want to interview the Khuranas separately. One at a time. But we want to make it look like it happened casually. Could you help?’

Bambi’s face grows troubled. ‘So Urvashi auntie was being blackmailed too? Ugh! I don’t know why I thought this would be fun … You’re just going to keep poking and prying and digging with a blunt stick into people’s lives, aren’t you? Just like Leo!’

‘Yes,’ he says gently. ‘But we’re not doing it for cheap thrills or to hurt people or to make money. We’re hunting down a murderer, Bambi ji. Surely, that makes it worthwhile?’

She shakes her head violently. ‘No! Don’t you see? It means that somebody I know, somebody who is part of this club – which, unlike the shitty house next door, is my safe place, my strong place, the closest thing I have to a home – is a killer! And that makes it much much worse!’

Tears stream down her cheeks. The tears she had been so embarrassed about not being able to shed yesterday.

Bhavani puts a fatherly arm about her small shoulders.

‘Bambi ji, we have not been privileged enough to go inside, but from outside your home looks like a palace! If that is a shitty house, then our home in Police Colony is a bear cave!’

She sniffs loudly and unselfconsciously. ‘Don’t patronize me, ACP. I’m sure you’re very happy in your bear cave in Police Colony.’

‘But that is because we are a bear,’ he says whimsically. ‘And you are a princess.’

She gurgles. ‘You’re sweet.’

‘Mrs Cookie Katoch says we are a walnut brownie,’ he says. ‘If we keep coming to the DTC, we will get an inflated head soon.’

‘So the fellow’s been poisoned to death, I heard?’ Mukesh Khurana’s nasal voice holds a distinctly gloating tone. ‘Well well, I won’t pretend to be heartbroken about it!’

Nobody prepared Bhavani for the unloveliness of the accountant and he is recoiling slightly. For reasons best known to himself, Khurana has chosen to wear a brown tweed cap pulled low over the forehead, which makes him look rather unintelligent. He is also sporting his favourite suspenders, today over a fearsomely cabled sweater, and has tied a shiny, navy-blue cravat around his pudgy neck. It doesn’t improve matters that his eye is blackened and swollen. The whole effect is unaesthetic in the extreme.

None of this visual overload seems to be affecting Bhavani on the surface.

‘So nice of you to not be a hypocrite,’ he says warmly. ‘So, matlab, frank and refreshing!’ He throws his hands into the air in a gesture of speechless admiration.

Khurana glows purply under this praise. ‘O, I am ekdum frank!’ he says airily. ‘Ask anybody!’

Bhavani smiles and tries out a little frankness of his own. ‘Khurana sa’ab, humne suna ki there was some kind of khat-pat between you and the deceased in the East Lawn on Tambola Sunday?’

Mukki laughs thinly and points