Let the Dead Lie Read Free Page B

said.
    Emmanuel's
hands were pinned behind the chair and secured with a length of rough material.
The sack was whipped off and he sucked in a lungful of clean air. He was in a
one-room house. The bedroom was a single cot pushed into a corner; the kitchen,
a small gas burner balanced on a wooden crate stencilled with the words 'saris & all ' along the side. Two sharpened
butcher's knives hung from hooks hammered into the side of the crate. A third
hook was empty. A couple of chairs stood in the middle of the space. A
newspaper clipping of an Indian dancer with beguiling eyes stared down from the
bedroom wall.
    Parthiv
pulled up a chair and gave a dramatic sigh. The strong man stayed behind
Emmanuel and out of view.
    'We
got a problem,' Parthiv stated. 'You know what the problem is?'
    'I'm
guessing it's me,' Emmanuel said.
    'Correct.'
    'You
good at solving problems, Parthiv?'
    The
yellow light from the paraffin lanterns threw dark shadows across the Indian
gangster's face so it took on the menacing quality of a skull. It was an
illusion. Emmanuel knew bad men; evil men who killed for pleasure and without
hesitation. Parthiv was not in that league.
    'I'm
the best.' The Indian man leaned in and cracked his knuckles. 'You took a turn
into nightmare alley, white man. This room is where danger lives.'
    'What
does that mean?' Emmanuel asked.
    'I'm
the public enemy; born to kill. I walk alone and brute force is my best
friend.'
    Emmanuel
almost smiled. Where else did an Indian youth in subtropical South Africa learn
how to be a gangster but at the Bioscope?
    Emmanuel
said, 'That's quite a bunch of movies you've seen. James Cagney in The Public Enemy, Burt Lancaster in I Walk Alone and I can't remember who's in Brute Force. The question is: who are you in
real life, Parthiv? Robert Mitchum or Veronica Lake?'
    Parthiv
delivered a smack to the side of Emmanuel's head. 'You in big trouble,' he
said. 'My man can snap you like a chicken bone.'
    'If
you let me go now, Parthiv, you might get out of this without going to prison
and belly dancing for your cellmate.'
    'Giriraj.'
    The
strong man stepped forward and positioned himself in front of Emmanuel. He was
barely five foot five, but wide across the shoulders. His bald head was oiled
and a waxed moustache twirled out to sharp points over full lips.
    Parthiv
waved a hand and the man stripped off his cotton shirt and hung it neatly on a
hook at the foot of the bed. He returned to the centre of the room and stood in
front of Emmanuel. Green cobras waged war across his chest in a tattooed scene
that seemed to have been inked into his dark skin by a rusty nail; no doubt the
work of a prison artist with limited tools, unlimited time and a subject with
the capacity to absorb a lot of pain. Emmanuel noted recent scratch marks on
the man's right forearm. Possibly from fingernails? The strong man stepped
closer and stretched his biceps. Parthiv was all talk but Giriraj was all
muscle. Now was the time to confess all.
    Emmanuel
said, 'Okay, there is something I have to tell you ...'
    'Good,
because — '
    The
door scraped open before another overblown threat could be delivered. Parthiv
jumped up as if his chair had caught fire. A torrent of Hindi gushed from him.
He pointed to Emmanuel, then Giriraj, then back to himself in an effort to
explain the situation. A flash of hot pink sari crossed Emmanuel's eye line and
a dozen glass bracelets chimed. An Indian woman in her fifties with sinewy
greyhound limbs grabbed Parthiv's ear and twisted till his knees buckled. She
muttered insults under her breath and didn't let go even while Parthiv was
writhing on the ground.
    More
bodies squashed into the room. Emmanuel lost count at twelve. The Duttas
weren't just a family; they were a tribe in which females outnumbered males
three to one.
    The
number and volume of the women's voices shook the corrugated-iron walls of the kyaha.
    Amal
was shoehorned between a walnut-skinned lady and an old man with no teeth.