Azhar stood outside the room and softly cleared his throat before entering. The lowing of the heavy door caused many women inside to look up. They sat on sheets spread over the floor; it was possible to tell from the faces distorted by interrupted sleep which of them had been in the house since dawn. They covered their heads as Azhar entered.
The body was laid out on a cot in the centre of the room. A length of white cloth covered it; part of one heel had remained exposed and its tough cracked skin seemed to impart a pink hue to the edges of the sheet. Flanked on either side by her two eldest daughters Asgri Anwar sat cross-legged at the head of the cot. Azhar uncovered Judge Anwar’s face. The fabric resisted separation at the wound — the shot had obliterated the throat.
Dr Sharif entered the room. He had been sent for because one of the daughters had fainted earlier in the morning. As he advanced, the physician had to bend down several times and ask to be allowed through. The women shifted grudgingly. Because he insisted once a year on immunising children against cholera and typhoid the physician was barred from many homes. Many mothers did not want the limbs of their children ‘turned into sieves’. Undeterred, Dr Sharif would drag inside any child that passed by the surgery and, pinning the kicking and screaming girl or boy to the floor with his knee, inject the dose.
‘I sleep in the next room,’ Asgri was telling Azhar. ‘I heard nothing but the shot.’
Azhar looked about him uncomfortably. There was no air in the room. ‘We’ll get them, apa,’ he said quietly. ‘Whoever they were.’
Asgri lowered her head and made a dismissive wave with her hand. Suddenly one of the girls let out a scream and began hitting her head against the leg of the cot. At the same time she beat her breast with both hands. Her mother and sister and some of the other women tried to restrain her; the corpse shook gently on the cot. Judge Anwar was a large man, who had had the bearing of a Sikh. But the fierce constitution of his younger days had suffered in recent years from diabetes. The condition became more besetting when, on learning that the imported insulin he injected into his veins daily was extracted from the pancreas of pigs, he stopped the injections, turning instead to a local remedy — drinking boiled loquat leaves.
Dr Sharif approached. ‘I’ve given her something,’ he said to Asgri. ‘She’ll sleep for a few hours.’ Then he turned to speak to Azhar but his words were completely drowned out: two men had come in to collect the body for washing and the women had begun their wailing. The youngest daughter — a girl as beautiful as a seventh consecutive daughter had to be — slept peacefully in the arms of an elderly neighbour. One of the men carefully lifted the sheet off the corpse’s face to allow Asgri to see her husband for the last time. During the washing rituals the body was said to sever all ties made on earth; afterwards, therefore, a woman could not look at the man who had married her, it being a sin to lay eyes on a stranger.
‘Has Maulana Hafeez arrived yet?’ Asgri asked.
The man shook his head.
‘I want Maulana Hafeez to supervise everything,’ Asgri said curtly. ‘Everything is to be done according to the Sunnat.’ She nodded towards the man’s hands.
The man’s fingers let drop the corner of the sheet. ‘Everything will be done according to the strictures of the Sunnat.’
‘I hear you’ve added neem leaves to the water,’ Asgri said; and turning to the woman sitting beside her she said, ‘Is that allowed?’
Dr Sharif half-knelt towards the window and said above the din, ‘Neem leaves serve as disinfectant. It’s advisable to add a few to the water. It’s common practice.’
Asgri gripped the edge of the cot firmly. ‘Call Maulana Hafeez.’ And, as though responding to the call, the loudspeaker mounted on the mosque’s minaret came on with a hoarse growl and Maulana Hafeez proceeded to announce the death and the time set for the funeral prayers.
People in the street listened intently to the announcement. Each relayed word carried a tiny echo which in turn was accompanied by another echo, fainter still. The whole effect was that of a reflection on gently disturbed water. A sewer-worker, a Christian, went along the street, dragging behind him the long flexible bamboo pole used for unblocking the underground sewage channels. As he turned the corner the trailing end of the pole — more than fifteen yards separated the two ends — shot across the width of the street. The police inspector, a short man with a round stomach and a balding head, managed to step out of the way just in time to avoid a blow on the ankles. ‘Christian bastard,’ he murmured, shaking his head. Azhar was coming out on to the courtyard when the inspector entered the house.
‘The chief inspector, the superintendent of police and the chief superintendent have been informed,’ the inspector told Azhar. Azhar nodded. Elsewhere, as deputy commissioner, Azhar’s rank would have been too high for him to involve himself in such matters. As it was, he lived in the town — two streets away from Judge Anwar’s house — and the dead man had also been a friend.
Together the two men walked through the labyrinthine house room by room — each one high-ceilinged and excessively decorated — and tried to work out a possible sequence of events following the break-in, Azhar listening patiently to the theories that the inspector had had time to formulate since dawn. They asked the servants to open up the locked rooms. They peered under the beds and behind the cupboards and armoires. They unbolted several windows, all of them set in deep recesses and many of them never opened by the family, and looked out — without consequence — on to the back lane. They stood on the elaborate balconies that kept the edges of the street in shade at midday, and considered the drop on to the street below. ‘One of them probably climbed on to the roof’ — the police inspector pointed at the displaced cover of the water-tank at the top of the staircase — ‘and came down to let the others in.’
‘The servants will have to be questioned,’ Azhar said.
Outside in the street Gul-kalam, the nightwatchman, was talking excitedly to a group assembled around him. He moved his shoulders and hands boisterously. On seeing Azhar and the police inspector appear at the front door he became suddenly grim and, abandoning his audience, crossed the street hurriedly.
‘I was two streets away when I heard the shot,’ he said in his clipped north-western accent. ‘I couldn’t have done anything.’ He had pale blue eyes which he kept rimmed with antimony; his great bushy moustache curved into his mouth, obscuring the upper lip.
‘You’ve already made your statement, Gul-kalam.’ Azhar placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.
But Gul-kalam shook his head miserably. ‘I’m worthless. I couldn’t save him.’
‘Later, Gul-kalam,’ the police inspector said impatiently. ‘First, get these people to clear the street.’ And turning to Azhar he said, ‘We had better erect a shamiana out here. Soon there won’t be enough room inside.’
Gul-kalam had walked away from them. The brass whistle, which he would blow at the ends of each street on his rounds, dangled from his neck. On his feet he wore brown leather sandals whose thick soles held his feet inches above the mud. They watched him in silence for a few moments.
‘So,’ the inspector turned to Azhar and said, through a half-smile, ‘what’s this I hear about you, deputy-sahib?’
Azhar looked at him in incomprehension. A man carrying on his head an enormous basket as wide and flat as a stork’s nest, heaped with flowers, sidled past him and went into the house. ‘What?’ said Azhar, at the same time expelling the heavy fragrance of marigolds from his lungs.