The Mountain Shadow

And when the brandy and the food arrived, with Tito, we drank a toast, with Lisa, to the loved.

Tito helped me shove the heavy chest away from the wall again.

‘Nice,’ he said, when he saw the guns, passports and money. ‘Ten per cent.’

‘Done.’

He began to stuff the bundles into a sack.

It was my safety net in the Island City, the stake I was bringing to the table as a partner with Didier: everything I owned that wasn’t in my pockets, or my pack.

Tito was about to tie the sack closed, but I stopped him.

‘Wait a minute.’

There was a place I hadn’t looked, and that the police might’ve overlooked. There was a gas-fired hot water heater in a closet. Lisa had made a shelf on top of the heater to dry out some tripping mushrooms, which a friend had brought from Germany.

I opened the door and searched on top of the panel. There was a shoebox in the back. I saw the words REASONS WHY written on the end panel.

I pulled it toward me, feeling around inside, and my hand shivered through keepsakes and pictures as if through reeds in a pond.

They were simple things: a thin, silver scarf she’d worn, the first time we met, a wind-up child’s toy, a brass Zippo lighter that Didier had given to us as a housewarming present, and that she couldn’t bear to let me use, for fear that I might lose it, which I would’ve done, a dog whistle that she used whenever we walked on Marine Drive, so she could get the attention of every dog she passed, a paperweight I’d made for her from silver rings, and a scatter of stones, shells, pictures, amulets and coins.

It was a box of nothings, bits of stuff that had no value or meaning for anyone else in the world. And isn’t that love, Lisa, I thought, looking at the box of charms. When it means nothing to anybody else, and it means everything to us, isn’t that love? Didn’t we love, Lisa? Didn’t we love?

I put the box in Tito’s sack along with the pieces of Khaderbhai’s sword and the pair of Lisa’s hemp sandals. He tied it tightly, and slung it over his shoulder.

‘What’s your family name?’ I asked him.

I was studying his face. It was an important face. He had all my worldly goods in his hands, and we’d known each other fourteen minutes. I wanted to recognise that face, no matter how it changed.

‘Deshpande,’ he said.

‘Take care of our percentages, Mr Deshpande.’

‘No tension,’ he laughed.

We shook hands. He nodded to Didier, and trotted down the stairs.

‘So, how do we kill him?’ Didier asked, pouring a measure of brandy, after Tito left.

‘Kill who?’

‘Concannon, of course.’

‘I don’t want to kill Concannon. I want to find him, and make him tell me who bought that dope off him, and gave it to Lisa.’

‘I would recommend that we do both,’ he mused.

‘I need to talk to Naveen,’ I said. ‘Can you call him, and set it up? I have to report to Sanjay, early in the afternoon. Tell Naveen I’ll meet him at five, at Afghan Church, if he can make it.’

‘Certainly. Do you know when Abdullah returns?’

‘No.’

‘You need him now, inside the Company.’

‘I know.’

I looked around the room, and into the bedroom beyond.

‘I’m gonna sleep here, tonight.’

‘Surely not?’ Didier protested. ‘It is not secure. I know a place, near Metro. The manager has a splendid collection of manias and obsessions. You will love him. Let me take you there, now.’

‘I’m gonna sleep here.’

‘You, my friend, are –’ he began, but then laughed. ‘Well, if there is no persuading you, then Didier will sleep in this place of such sadness and sorrow with you.’

‘You don’t have to –’

‘Didier insists! But on the couch, of course. And thank my foresight, in asking Tito to bring two bottles.’

I slept on the floor, beside Lisa’s bed, with the pillow that was hers. Didier slept like a child, his arms and legs flung wide, on the couch.

Morning stumbled into a cold breakfast of the food I couldn’t eat the night before, and brandy with a dash of coffee in it.

We cleaned the kitchen, and Didier joined me at the door of the apartment that he’d visited so often: that place where love had laughed for the last time.

‘I’m ashamed,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so ashamed, Lin.’

‘Shame is the past. If it isn’t now, it soon will be.’

He thought for a moment.

‘That’s one of Karla’s, isn’t it?’

‘Of course.’

We both thought, for a while.

‘When you see her –’

‘Didier.’

‘No, I was going to say, when you see Karla, be gentle with her.’

‘I’ll talk nice to Karla. I always talk nice to Karla. I want to ask her how come she was the one who found Lisa’s body. You just get all those eyes and ears of yours on Concannon, Didier. And set it up for me with Naveen. Are we good?’

I was trying to move, trying to escape from the cage of sorrow, and Didier knew it. We stood in silence for a while, staring at the empty rooms, before he spoke.

‘I am not-good-okay, my friend. Shall we . . . I mean, if you will permit it, I would like to say some words, for Lisa, here at this door that we will never open again.’

‘Nice idea. Go ahead.’