Free BLOOD RED SARI by Ashok K Banker Page B

hell would she recover that cost? Forget that. How would she continue her business with these goons breathing down her neck? Assuming she didn’t give up the girls – which was a given – how the hell was she going to survive? Everything she had was invested in this place. She would lose it all.
    Yet she wasn’t able to think about that either.
    All she could think about was the contents of the manila envelope.
    And what they meant.
    She sat like that for several minutes, barely aware of the passing of time. The sound of someone calling out roused her. It was coming from the front of the building. She frowned and got to her feet and walked out of her office to the adjoining yoga room which was empty except for a pile of rubber mats neatly stacked in a corner. She had booked an up-and-coming power yoga instructor from the city to come down on alternate days for two sessions of fifty minutes each day. The classes were over-subscribed already and not, she assumed, because the instructor happened to be male and charismatic. Now she would have to call him to cancel and let him swallow the one month’s advance she had had to pay to book him.
    The yoga room had floor-to-ceiling glass and brushed-aluminium French windows running along its length. She slid them open and stepped out, leaning out to look down at the front of the building.
    A man was standing, peering up at the lit windows of her office, the only part of the building still illuminated.
    ‘Hello?’ she called out, waving to attract his attention.
    He turned and saw her, and held up a plastic bag in one hand. ‘Parcel?’
    Of course. The place was locked up. She had come in through the rear service entrance, but he must have been foxed by the locked front door and dark entranceway. She pointed to the rear of the building and said in Bengali: ‘Go around to the back. There’s a door there. I’m coming down.’
    He nodded and began walking in the direction she had pointed.
    She shut the French windows behind her and went through the gym room back to her office. Her handbag was on her desk. She unzipped it and pulled out her wallet and left the office.
    He was waiting outside the rear door when she came out. Little more than a kid, thin and gangly. ‘Sorry to confuse you,’ she said in Bengali, ‘I forgot that the front door was locked up.’
    He smiled at her awkwardly and she noticed his distinctly south-Indian features.
    ‘Bengali?’ she asked.
    He smiled again and shook his head. ‘Chennai,’ he said by way of answer.
    She nodded and paid him. This was the new Kolkata where nobody watched Bengali films anymore and Hindi movies ran to full houses, and your home delivery was more likely to be dropped off by a young man from Chennai than a native Bengali. After all, she was in Salt Lake City, the most modern township in the region, built entirely by Yugoslavians on contract. Anything was possible.
    The bill came to Rs 267 and she had given him three hundred-rupee notes. He was counting off the change when she saw the red light flashing, reflected in the glass window behind the delivery boy. It seemed to hover in mid-air, disconnected from any other object, floating steadily in an arc as it approached. It went down the bylane and then was hidden from her view by the building.
    She didn’t need to go to the front of the building to know that it was a police wireless van with the red light blinking on top, or that it had stopped outside her gym, or that it meant the police had come for her. She should have expected things to escalate quickly once she didn’t cooperate immediately with the municipal thugs. It was obvious that the big guns meant business this time. Their harassment, she might have endured stoically. But by sending in the cops, they had upped the ante, forcing her to fess up or get fucked. They knew her history; they knew she wouldn’t bear scrutiny by the authorities. They knew that Kolkata Police would love to take her in for questioning and