Free Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga

the window and slammed into it, before another current lifted them, as if at a cliff face, vertically up.
    ‘Bloody nuisance,’ Doctor Nayak said. ‘Leave shit on the windows, fight all day long. Someone should…’ He pulled an imaginary trigger. ‘… and knock them off. One by one.’
    *
    Punching the buttons on his mobile phone, Shah walked through the basement car park until a spectral voice began echoing under the low ceiling.
    ‘Mr Secretary, members of Vishram Society…’
    Shah slipped the mobile phone into his pocket and walked with stealth.
    A tall dark man in a white shirt and black trousers stood at the open door of the basement lift. Facing its half-mirror, he raised his left hand towards it.
    ‘Mr Secretary, members of Vishram Society, Towers A and B, all your dreams are about to come true.’
    The man shifted the angle of his jaw: a broken upper tooth now showed prominently in the mirror.
    ‘Mr Secretary, members of…’
    A boy in dirty khaki, a tea tray in his hand, poked the man from behind, asking to be allowed into the lift.
    The man spun around with a raised hand. ‘Sister-fucker, don’t touch me.’
    The tea boy stepped back, shifting the tray with its leaping glasses to his left hand.
    Shah cleared his throat.
    ‘Shanmugham,’ he said, ‘let the boy use the lift.’
    With a ‘yes, sir’, the tall man hurried to a grey Mercedes-Benz, whose door he opened for his coughing employer.
    On Marine Drive.
    Coconut palms bent by the ocean breeze and pigeons in sudden flight added to the sensation of speed on the long straight dash down the avenue. A satin patch of sun gleamed on Back Bay.
    ‘Has everything but the deadline in it,’ Shanmugham said, turning from the front passenger seat of the Mercedes-Benz to show his boss a printed page. The driver changed gears as a red light finally snared them.
    ‘I went over it word for word last night, sir. Made sure every comma was right.’
    Ignoring the letter, Mr Shah opened a little blue metal box, and flicked what was inside with a plastic spoonlet into his bright red mouth. Small black teeth chewed the gutka : he had lost a few.
    ‘Don’t worry about words, Shanmugham. Tell me about the people.’
    ‘You saw them, sir.’
    ‘Only once.’
    ‘Solid people. Tower B is modern. Finance, high-tech, computers. Tower A is old. Teachers, accountants, brokers. Both are solid.’
    ‘Teachers?’ The fat man winced. ‘What else about this Society? Has anything bad happened there?’
    ‘One suicide, sir. Many years ago. A boy jumped from the roof. They didn’t tell me, but I found out from the neighbours.’
    ‘Just one suicide?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘I’ll manage.’
    At the traffic lights before Malabar Hill, a headless cat lay on the road; from the neck up, it was just a smear of pink pulp imprinted with a tyre tread, an exclamation mark of blood. The builder’s heart went out to it. In a world of trucks and heavy traffic, the little cat had not been given a fair chance. But what about you, Dharmen , the pulverized animal asked. You’re next, aren’t you?
    He lowered the window and spat at the corpse.
    He dreamed of breakfast. Eight pieces of toast, sliced diagonally, piled into a porcelain dish; a jar of Kissan’s Mixed-Fruit Jam; a jar of Kissan’s Marmalade; a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup; and, suspended in a lobed bowl of water to keep it soft, an iceberg of homemade butter.
    The Mercedes drove up Malabar Hill; the ocean glinted to Shanmugham’s left.
    As the driver adjusted his gears, they stalled outside an old ruined mansion. Fresh saplings had broken through the exquisitely carved stone leaves and flowers on the nineteenth-century cornice, and a sign hammered into the front wall said:
    M UMBAI M UNICIPAL C ORPORATION T HIS BUILDING IS DANGEROUS, DILAPIDATED, AND UNFIT FOR HUMANS TO BE AROUND . N O ONE SHOULD ENTER IT .
    As the car accelerated past, light from the ocean echoed through the ruined mansion.
    Shanmugham saw four