Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

As a senior cutter, Hasan had been able to afford that most extraordinary of luxuries, his own house. It sat at the far edge of Bhatiary, where the encroaching sprawl of shacks was still tentative, and open fields began. The paddies were worked by the very old and the very young — men in their prime went off to the factories, or the beach, or the city. Glancing at the fields of water, where people in straw hats waded and tended the new plantings entirely by hand, Mohit thought he might be looking back a thousand years.

Or at Ghorarchar. A wave of despair flowed over him.

A group of schoolgirls went past, blue-and-white uniforms under plastic umbrellas, faces concealed by black veils. Mohit counted alleys and waded up the rushing torrent that had replaced a pathway to the street. Closer, he could hear a high, keening wail, even over the rainfall’s din. The door to Hasan’s house hung slack.

“Maf korun,” he called. “Hasan bhabi? Are you home?”

Hasan’s widow sat in the room’s single chair, leaning on the table, sobbing. The sparse furnishings were in disorder. A shelf was pulled loose from the wall, with clay cups on the hardpack dirt floor below; a pack of Star cigarettes lay torn open on the table; and several photographs on the wall hung crooked, in broken frames.

“Who are you?” A teenaged boy held the woman, one protective arm around her shoulders. Two older men stood assertively on either side, glaring.

Mohit explained, with as much deference as he was capable. “Perhaps Hasan saheb mentioned me...”

“Your sympathy is welcome,” said one of the men brusquely. “One more tragedy granted us today.”

“I’m sorry?”

“As if it was not enough that Hasan—” he broke off. “Some gunda heard what happened, and decided to take advantage. He broke in here, so soon he must have run over straight from Hasan’s death.”

His widow raised her face to Mohit, and he saw a dark, swollen bruise from one cheekbone to her nose.

“Keno?” she cried. “Why?”

“He did not—” Mohit stuttered. “What did he do?”

“He took,” said the man bitterly, “everything Hasan had saved. His life and his livelihood, and all his money too.”

“You!” The woman shouted at Mohit. “It was your fault!”

Shocked, Mohit said nothing, standing with his mouth open. The boy turned his mother away. The men looked at each other, uncomfortable, and the talker beckoned Mohit to the next room. It was the kitchen, cramped under a low ceiling, with walls of woven bamboo darkened by smoke and soot.

“The money, she means,” the man said.

“I had just paid him,” said Mohit. “To become his apprentice. It was—”

“I know. So much... the thief came for the money, of course. She thinks, perhaps you told too many people, and he heard of it.”

“No.” But Mohit had talked, among his friends, in the streets. How could he not, after such an accomplishment?

“It is unbearable,” the man said. “The gunda burst in even before she had heard herself, only minutes before we arrived. But it was long enough for him to uncover Hasan’s lockbox and flee.” He hesitated. “She had to tell him.”

“Yes.”

“It is gone. All of it. Nothing remains.”

Mohit thought he might fall, dizzy and weak. He forced himself straight. “Who was it?”

“She does not know, and no one else saw him. But he surely worked at the beach.” The man eyed Mohit’s scars and ragged clothing. “She says his left hand was missing four fingers, only the thumb remaining. He used rough language.”

“Dukkhito,” Mohit whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“And I.” The man’s face sagged. “It is an awful day for us all.”

An hour before dusk Mohit returned to the room he shared with another laborer. In the afternoon, with no money and nothing else to do, he’d gone back to the beach to haul cable. Life went on. A government inspector had come by, picking an annoyed path through the mud, to frown at the blast debris and threaten the master. Mohit had watched them talk, too far away to hear, as they left together, an assistant following five steps behind with the inspector’s document case. The master seemed to be telling jokes; the inspector laughed. Money would be passed, the discreet transaction as natural as the rains bucketing down. Mohit had felt numb, glad he wasn’t carrying steel plates, where a missed step could mean death rather than a little more cable burn.

At the hostel he squatted outside with his roommate, beneath an overhang of corrugated roofing. Sohel shared out the khichari he’d prepared. Usually they were so hungry that the dish was a feast, even when reduced by necessity to nothing but rice, dal, chili and salt. Today Mohit let it go cold.

“An accident, yes, naturally, that is what they say.” Sohel talked more than anyone and still finished his food first. “Was not Hasan the best cutter from here to Patenga? Had he not opened the tanks of twenty-five ships with never even a flare? How likely that he would slip, this once?”

Mohit looked up slowly. “Cutters are well paid not just for their skill. The torches are dangerous.”