Page 23

Jay rises and goes to the sheep. He smiles at Rekha. “Can I pet her, too?” he asks.

She whispers in the way small children do—loud enough for all of us to hear. “Her name is Neela.”

Gently, Jay lifts the sheep’s woolly pelt and inspects the wound. “Hello, Neela,” he says. He turns to look at Nimmi. “You did a good job. The wound will heal and she’ll be fine. I’m thinking maybe we could use a veterinarian in Shimla.”

The look of puzzlement on Nimmi’s face makes him smile.

“Animal doctor,” he says. “We need one.”

But in the morning, Nimmi does not show up for work. I go directly to her lodging. No one’s there. The children, the sheep, the bolster and the bedroll—gone.

9

MALIK

Jaipur

I’m at my desk just outside Hakeem’s office, admiring the new red Ford Maverick in the latest issue ofLIFEmagazine (“The first car of the ’70s at 1960 prices!”), when a ledger lands on top of it, barely missing the glass of chai on my desk.

“Arré!”I yell. When I look up, I see Hakeem standing on the other side of my desk. He’s glowering.

He taps his stubby index finger on the ledger several times. “You made a mistake. Yes!” He is triumphant.

I turn the ledger around so I can read the spine:Purchasing 1969.

Hakeem strokes both sides of his mustache with his finger. “Tell me, Abbas. C-M-T. What does it stand for?”

“Cement,” I say.

“And B-R-K?”

“Brick.”

Hakeem clears his throat. “Correct. So why would you have switched those two figures in the ledger?”

I’m still taking this in when he opens the ledger, then flips back a few pages. “See here? C-M-T? Yes? And here? B-R-K? Yes?”

I nod.

“The sum for bricks and the sum for cement used for the Royal Jewel Cinema is the opposite of what it should be. You have transposed the two.”

I look again at the columns. “But, Hakeem Sahib, I double-checked the bills against the ledger.”

He flicks his mustache with his finger. “Check them again. Sloppy accounting will not be tolerated here.”

“Yes,” I say, with a straight face, eliciting another cold glance from the little man.

When he goes back to his office, I look at the numbers in the ledger. I can see his point. There should have been a lot of cement used and very little brick for a project of this size. I’ve learned that much from the engineers who work for Manu. Manu himself has taken me to different building sites (ignoring the disapproving glare of Hakeem) to teach me about materials and methods employed for different parts of a building.

I’m aware Hakeem resents my presence in his little kingdom. He might think I’ve been hired to take his place. For all that, I can’t believe that he would stoop to jiggering the books to get me into trouble.

I turn the pages of the ledger slowly to see how much has been spent on the cinema house project since the beginning of the year. I add the totals up; the sums surprise me. The amount Singh-Sharma Construction has spent on cement is three times the sum the firm has spent on bricks. So why would the latest invoices show the opposite?

I’m puzzling over this when Hakeem comes out of his office, locks the door behind him and leaves for his lunch hour, dangling his tiffin in one hand, an Agatha Christie novel in the other. Hakeem is passionate about his murder mysteries.

I don’t need my watch to tell me that it’s one o’clock. As always, he will head to Jaipur’s Central Park and claim his favorite bench (Bhagwan forbid that someone else arrives to claim the bench before Hakeem!).

He will return at two o’clock. Not a minute earlier, and not a minute later.