The Mountain Shadow

He raised his gaze to the street, eyes floating on the tide of colour and emotion, moving back and forth.

‘He had tuberculosis,’ the young detective said. ‘He made a will, naming my Mother, and it turned out that he’d made a lot of money, somehow, so we were suddenly rich, and . . . ’

‘Everything changed.’

He looked at me as if he’d told me too much.

The fan, only inches from my head, was giving me an ice-cream headache. I gestured to the waiter, and asked him to turn it down a notch.

‘You’re cold?’ he scoffed, his hand on the switch. ‘Let me show you cold.’

He turned the fan to blizzard five. I felt my cheeks beginning to freeze. We paid the bill and left, hearing his goodbye.

‘Table two, free again!’

‘I love that place,’ Naveen said as we left.

‘You do?’

‘Yeah. Great juice, nasty waiters. Perfect.’

‘You and I might get along, detective. We might just get along.’

Chapter Two

The past, beloved enemy, has bad timing. Those Bombay days come back to me so vividly and suddenly that sometimes I’m shaken from the hour I’m in, and lost to the task. A smile, a song, and I’m back there, sleeping sunny mornings away, riding a motorcycle on a mountain road, or tied and beaten and begging Fate for an even break. And I love every minute of it, every minute of friend or foe, of flight and forgiveness: every minute of life. But the past has a way of taking you to the right place at the wrong time, and that can be a storm inside.

I should be bitter, I guess, after some of the things I’ve done, and had done to me. People tell me I should be bitter. A con once said, You’d be a top bloke, if you just had a little spite in you. But I was born without it, and I’ve never known spite or bitterness. I got angry and I got desperate and did bad things too often, until I stopped, but I never hated anyone, or consciously wished anyone harm, not even men who tortured me. And while a small measure of bitterness might’ve protected me from time to time, as it sometimes does, I’ve learned that sweet memories don’t walk through cynical doors. And I love my memories, even when they have bad timing: remembered minutes of sunlight staking out patches on tree-lined Bombay streets, of fearless girls flashing through traffic on scooters, of handcart pullers straining under the load but smiling, and those first memories of a young Indian-Irish detective named Naveen Adair.

We walked on the road silently for a while, passing between cars and streams of people, swaying back and forth between the bicycles and handcarts in the dance of the street.

In the wide doorway of the Fire Brigade building, a group of men in heavy navy-blue uniforms chatted and laughed. Inside the firehouse there were two large fire trucks, shimmering sunlight from every polished red or chrome surface.

An extravagantly decorated Hanuman shrine was fixed to one wall, and beside it a sign said:

IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT,

GET OUT OF THE BURNING BUILDING.

Further along, we entered the shopping district, spilling out from the Colaba market. Glass merchants, picture framers, timber and hardware stores, electrical goods, and plumbers’ supplies gradually gave way to clothing, jewellery and food stores.

At the wide entrance to the market itself we had to stop, as several heavy trucks made their way out into the maul of traffic on the main road.

‘Listen,’ he said as we waited. ‘You were right, about Vikram talking too much. But it ends with me. I’ll never talk about it to anyone else but you. Never. And if you ever need me, hey, man, I’m there. That’s all I’m trying to say. For Aslan, and what you did that night, if you don’t want it to be for you.’

It wasn’t the first time that I looked out from the red exile my life had become, into eyes alight with fires, burning on cliff-tops of the word escape. In my fugitive years, I sometimes found fast friendship in the song of rebellion: in the loyalty others pledged to my escape from the system, as much as to me.

They wanted me to stay free, in part, because they wanted someone to escape and stay free. I smiled at Naveen. It wasn’t the first or last time I went with the river inside.

‘How do you do,’ I said, offering my hand. ‘I’m Lin. I’m not a doctor in the slum.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Naveen replied, shaking my hand. ‘I’m Naveen, and thank you. It’s always good to know who’s not the doctor.’

‘And who’s not the police,’ I added. ‘How about a drink?’

‘Don’t mind if we do,’ he replied graciously.

Just at that moment I had the sense of someone standing too close to my back. I turned hard.

‘Hang about!’ Gemini George protested. ‘Easy does it with the shirt, mate. That’s fifty per cent of my wardrobe, I’ll have you know!’

I could feel the bones of his thin body against my knuckles as I released my grip.

‘Sorry, man,’ I said, straightening the front of his shirt. ‘Creepin’ up on people like that. Should know better, Gemini. It’ll end in tears one day.’