‘Is her name on any list?’
‘No, sir.
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Dilan! Take her to our house. Don’t open the door for anyone.’ Stanley looks at Cassim. ‘You go with them. Stay at my house until I get back.’
DD looks confused, but helps haul Jaki onto the back seat, where she slumps down and begins to sob. Long sobs with long pauses in between.
‘Take her now.’
‘Where are you going?’
Stanley lowers his voice and questions the Detective. ‘Who is in the office?’
‘Sir, the Minister and the Major are having a meeting.’
‘The other building, top floor, yes?’
‘I think so.’
‘You go with these two,’ says Stanley. ‘Get them home safe. And you tell no one. Anything about this. Do I have your word?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Stanley stuffs whatever notes the Crow Man didn’t get into Cassim’s hand.
‘If you talk. I will have your badge.’
‘No, no, sir. I don’t want money. Please, sir.’
‘Take this and go,’ snaps Stanley.
‘Sir, about the transfer.’
‘What?’
‘The madam said… Doesn’t matter. We can talk later.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
Stanley stomps off towards the four-storeyed house, two lanes away, with a state-sponsored Benz in its state-sponsored car park.
Detective Cassim gets in the passenger seat, much to the horror of DD.
‘What the hell’s this? Where’s Appa going?’
Jaki wipes her eyes with her sleeve and shakes her head.
‘I had a creepy dream. Then I woke up with a bag on my head,’ says Jaki. ‘Is the exhibition happening?’
‘I don’t care,’ says DD.
‘He has a meeting,’ says Detective Cassim. ‘Drive now. Forget you ever saw this place. Or me.’
DD does a U-turn at the end of the cul-de-sac and drives back towards roads with traffic lights, where screams are less easily ignored. He takes Jaki and the policeman back to his father’s house, away from the flat at Galle Face Court where you shared your dreams, your fears and your shorts, away from this dungeon that hides on a dead-end road. The BMW takes the bend and vanishes down the lane and you wish DD and Jaki and Cassim Aces and Hearts and Sixes.
‘Go safely, my dears,’ you whisper. ‘May every roulette wheel be kind.’
And then the trees freeze and the breezes cease. The voice creeps between your ears and the stench of rotting souls blocks your nose. The universe breathes through you and appears to have forgotten to brush its teeth.
‘Are you done, Mr Photographer?’
You look back at the Mahakali and the faces pulsing through its skin like infected veins. It motions for you to climb its back and you realise that disobedience is no longer an option, civil or otherwise. You nod. ‘I think so.’
‘Then your service has begun. Come. Serve.’
You climb the spine of the beast and watch Stanley tread up the road, like a marathon runner who forgot to pace himself.
* * *
You watch from the sky as Stanley passes the curl in the road and heads towards an office building behind tall walls.
It is four floors high and unremarkable in its architecture. Concrete boxes, painted grey and stacked skyward. The windows that aren’t tinted are veiled in venetian blinds.
When the Mahakali comes to a stop, you leap off its back and watch it melt into shadows cast by this ugly building.
At the base is the face of a polecat. It gives you the same disgusted look that all dead animals give you. ‘What are you looking at, ugly?’
‘I get it. Animals have souls. You dream, you do things for pleasure, you feel happy and sad. You understand pain and grief and love and family and friendship. Humans don’t acknowledge this, because it makes it easier to carve up the ones we find tasty. Which isn’t you, but that’s neither here nor there. I am profoundly sorry.’
The polecat looks surprised or hungry or annoyed or, you don’t know, it’s a polecat.
‘Screw your apology,’ it says before vanishing into the Mahakali’s flesh.
There are good reasons humans can’t converse with animals, except after death. Because animals wouldn’t stop complaining. And that would make them harder to slaughter. The same may be said for dissidents and insurgents and separatists and photographers of wars. The less they are heard, the easier they are forgotten.
The sun is descending over Colombo and there is not a cloud in sight.
Soon your final moon will be reaching for the sky.
Balal and Kottu look at you from the Mahakali’s leg.
‘Forgive us for what we did,’ says Kottu.
‘What did you do?’
‘Unholy things,’ says Kottu.
‘But only because we had to,’ adds Balal.
‘Great apology,’ you say, as the Mahakali slides off the wind and perches on a mara tree.
‘We are garbage men,’ says Balal. ‘We don’t make the garbage. We just clean it up.’
‘What’s it like in there?’ you ask.
‘In where?’ says Kottu.
‘You will find out soon,’ says Balal.
‘Do you want your money back?’ asks Kottu.
‘What money?’ you ask.
The security detail is not as extensive as the Palace around the corner, and of course none of the guards see the Mahakali and the souls it carries as it leaps through the doors and bounds up the stairs. You are taken along with it, as powerless as most humans are in the face of catastrophe. There is no one to stop the Mahakali, as it glides across these corridors of power in the direction of a bomb. Mission Kuveni
The beast seems to know its way around this building. It walks up to the first floor, then glides out the window, up the side of the building to the third floor and then takes the stairs to the fourth, where a secretary sits outside a large room. She is a full-figured lady with photos of three full-figured teenagers on her desk who each bear her face.
The sign in the lobby reads ‘Department of Justice Administrative Branch’. The first floor is cubicles of women in saris, pecking at typewriters, and the fourth has men in ties carrying files. The legend outside the lift allocates a floor to Accounting, Finance, Records and Personnel.
There are buildings like this around the island, though most centre around the capital. Buildings that make losses while they report profits. This must be where they allocate budgets for torturers, organise pension plans for abductors and approve home loans for assassins. You remember one thing your Dada said that didn’t make you cringe, though it is unclear why it was shared with a ten-year-old.
‘You know why the battle of good vs evil is so one-sided, Malin? Because evil is better organised, better equipped and better paid. It is not monsters or yakas or demons we should fear. Organised collectives of evil doers who think they are performing the work of the righteous. That is what should make us shudder.’
In the waiting room stands Drivermalli, perched on his prosthetic, leaning on a column. He is sweating and breathing unevenly. You think of the people pushing paper in the floors below, of Stanley trying to push past security at the entrance, and wonder if one day they will invent a bomb that knew whom to spare. The one good thing you can say about a bomb is that it isn’t racist or sexist or concerned about class.
You follow Drivermalli down a hallway with misted glass doors, into a large room with a huge windows. What you see in there is both impressive and terrifying.
The events that led to the loss of twenty-three lives on the fouth and fifth floors of the Department of Justice Administrative Branch is later attributed to bad luck and evil charms, with the Crow Man claiming partial credit. It was actually the work of Sena’s crew of the dead, playing with winds and altering fates. Though you yourself could claim a hand in saving at least one life on this, your final moon.
Humans believe they make their own thoughts and possess their own will. This is yet another placebo that we swallow after birth. Thoughts are whispers that come from without as well as within. They can no more be controlled than the wind. Whispers will blow across your mind at all times and you will succumb to more of them than you think.