Before leaving the house over the past few days, Shamas has been hoping he would not run into the vicar. He doesn’t want to risk hearing the man speak of the matter lest some phrase or reasoning of the holy man may apply to Chanda and Jugnu, lest he, Shamas, be given a new insight into the motivation of the two killers, a disturbing piece of knowledge he would later wish to expel from his consciousness.
The bodies of the two lovers could be anywhere — here in England, in Europe, in Pakistan. Illegal immigrants come into the country in lorries and trucks and planes and boats without anyone knowing anything about it. If the living can be brought in, why can’t the dead be taken out?
The summer’s ending and soon it would be like being surrounded by wounds, the leaves of autumn. The van the two brothers owned is still there outside the shop, used by the father to bring in supplies from the cash-and-carry, though it is hard to know how the couple manages to keep the shop going on their own. Kaukab says she has heard that a new boy is at the premises these days; walking by she has caught a glimpse of him amid all the sacks and boxes — it is someone they have taken on as help, no doubt.
Behind him someone clears his throat, bringing him hurtling forward from the summer to the present moment — the summer’s almost-end. “Brother-ji.”
He turns and is face to face with a stranger. “Yes?”
The man is smiling under that moustache as fine as mink, the hair spreading out a little because the lips are stretched, and he places a hand on his shoulder in a good-natured Pakistani manner. “Allow me to introduce myself. .”
Shamas doesn’t catch the name or the beginning of the cascade of pleasantries that follows it because he is alarmed by the fact that the hand on his shoulder is holding a burning cigarette, an inch away from his cheek, his eyes. And in the second or two that it takes for it to become clear that what he has mistaken for a cigarette is in fact a pale-apricot Band-Aid wrapped around the man’s index finger, the name has been spoken; the ripple of panic on his face has also caused the man to remove his hand and take a step backwards, embarrassed at his over-eagerness, or perhaps offended by being rebuffed.
Shamas gives his name and, transferring the bundle of newspapers to the other side of his body, frees his right hand for a handshake. The man’s aftershave or cologne has a citrusy note, like raindrops flavoured by falling on lemon trees, like a room in which someone has recently eaten an orange. Didn’t he smell it earlier — was this man walking behind him, without him being aware of it? “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, brother-ji. I saw you just now and decided to come over to say salaam-a-lekum, a little hello. I am well aware, Shamas-ji, of the kind help you have provided for us Pakistanis through your office and am a great admirer of yours. I just wondered if I could be of any help to you in this difficult time.”
For the briefest of moments but comprehended perfectly during it — as when a summer insect flies across a lit television screen in a room that is otherwise dark, the components of the insect’s flight seen in a sequence of perfect silhouettes — Shamas wonders absurdly whether this man is an apparition seen only by him, sent to bestow benevolence. But the moment passes and the insect disappears into the darkness it had come out of. “Difficult time?”
“I meant the difficulty you are having with your daughter and your younger son. They have left home, yes?”
Shamas takes a step back, in shock and incomprehension. “Forgive me but I have to leave.”
“We know these are delicate matters but we feel we have to offer you our services. We are aware that the girl and the boy have left home. The girl has cut off her hair and wears Western clothing now.”
These things are known to everyone, of course; there is nothing sinister in that. Such knowledge comes into the neighbourhood’s eyes innocently: it’s no different than Kaukab’s comment about a woman she doesn’t know but who walks by the house daily that she’s stooping more and more these days. No, everyone knows that Ujala and Mah-Jabin have left the parents’ house; but what “services” is this man referring to? Shamas wonders if this man has mistaken him for someone else. And who is this “we”?
The man has noticed his puzzled look and clarifies: “What I mean to say is that we can bring your children back. We run a small discreet operation: no one official will ever know about us — we have been so quiet even you hadn’t heard of us until now. We have ways of infiltrating women’s refuges where the girls go to hide, and by using the National Insurance numbers we can find which city the runaway boys are living in. Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, London: no place is far enough. We charge a small fee, to cover expenses, but we won’t ask you to pay anything, as a sign of our respect for you. We know you have helped people all your life; even back in the early days here in England you were helping the immigrant factory workers with jobs, housing, pay, unions, and learning English. It’s all well known.”
“It was nothing.”
“You are too modest, jannab-sahb. But now the Almighty Allah, fate, and our good fortune has arranged it so that we can be of some use to you. It’s our duty and your right. It doesn’t matter where the children are, we’ll find them discreetly: we could bring a chick out of its egg without breaking the shell. We made a few mistakes at the beginning, like the time we gave the address of the women’s refuge that a man’s wife had run off to, claiming he was violent towards her, forgetting that a woman should choose the poison being offered by her husband over the milk and honey of strangers — and then he broke in and put a bullet into her head. But now we are more careful.”
“I don’t need my children brought back from anywhere. They are not runaways,” Shamas states firmly, understanding everything now. The news of this gang of bounty hunters had come to him at the office last week and he had initiated enquiries, asking the office to gather information which could be presented to the police. This man has obviously found out that questions are being asked and is here to try and dissuade Shamas. Would he try to bribe him, believing that a dog with a bone in its mouth cannot bark?
Shamas looks him square in the eye. “I don’t need anyone to kidnap my children. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to be somewhere urgently.”
The man opens his heavy arms — the bones in them must be the size of monkey wrenches — with a glint of a gold chain at the wrist and, as though through a barrier of pain, says: “Kidnap? Shamas-ji, that is how white people would see it. They of course don’t understand our culture. The children and runaway wives have to be brought back.”
Standing here face to face, Shamas doesn’t wish to counter him or explain anything to him: he’ll dismiss everything Shamas says and soon it will be as though when the two of them opened their mouths they revealed not tongues but index fingers pointing and jabbing in the other’s direction.