A Killer Among Us

Chapter 3 

Thursday, 6^th September 2014

In a fully occupied, urban residential complex like Panorama Apartments, 2 am was the witching hour, the sweet spot if mischief was to be done.

Now, the apartment complex housed all sorts―there were night owls who worked late, came home late, took their toddlers for walks at midnight, and retired only around 1 am with muted whispers, shuffles, and creaks of furniture. This class of people resumed their lives the next day well after the sun had risen. Within a few hours of that, there were the people who took early rising as an extreme sport and rose before the sun. Pressure cooker whistles tooted merrily, pots and pans clanged with impunity by 4.30 am―because there is no virtue shinier than that of an early riser.

Nestled right between these two kinds of people, who lived their lives almost in parallel dimensions with very little intersection, were several hours of darkness and silence. By unwritten law and mutual consent this was a time when the building was completely asleep. When all its inhabitants took the rest that was required to motor them through yet another day of hating their jobs and their lives, and dreaming of miracles.

In those few hours, especially because Panorama Apartments was blessed with a bunch of unusually inept and lazy night guards, anything could happen. Someone had taken on the challenge and done exactly that.

*****

Ira walked homewards through the gates of Panorama Apartments and past the sleeping guards in the inky blackness of 2 am. She was feeling buoyant. It had been a good day in the office. After many a rotten job in poky holes, this was a role she had really taken to. Ira passed under the ugly and redundant archway that led to the complex, wondering with half a mind what was different. It was true that she was later than usual. A fire had broken out in Lake Market late that night and Ira had had to wait for the reporter to file a story and the photographer to send spot photos before she could sub it and leave for the day. A further ten-minute wait for an office cab to take her home had compounded matters, and now here she was, nearly an hour late.

She strolled towards her building, Wing 1, and stumbled on a broken paving stone. Now she knew what was off, it was much darker than usual. The complex was plunged in darkness with only the emergency lights shining in the distance. A power cut! Quite unusual in Kolkata. The back-up diesel generator hadn’t fired up yet, she saw. It probably had fallen into disuse, and wouldn’t work, even if the guards bestirred themselves enough to try. Argh, going up two floors at 2 am―in the dark, after a long day’s work!

Ira began to mount the steps. She thought of her boss who was a sweet, harassed, middle-aged man with a liking for pompous inspirational quotes. He would probably say something like ‘A journey of twenty steps starts with the er…first step’ before hiking up his perennially slipping trousers and beginning to climb. She smiled at the thought and hefted her backpack to a more comfortable position as she mounted the steps. On the landing that led to the second floor, she stopped short.

Mrs Something Roy, the occupant of 401, stood at the top of the stairs looking decidedly odd in the fluctuating light cast by the emergency lamp overhead. Her acne marks, usually not-so-artfully concealed under makeup a shade too light for her skin, stood out against a face that was as bloodless as anything Ira had seen in real life. She looked at Ira and opened her mouth as if to scream, then reconsidered. She closed it again. Her eyes looked fit to pop out of their sockets.

‘What is the matter, Mrs Roy?’ Ira hurried up the flight of stairs separating them and offered an arm to the older woman, ‘Are you ill?’

Again, Mrs Roy opened her mouth wide, reminding Ira sharply of Edvard Munch’s painting. Nothing came out.

Ira pulled her gently away from the stairs, ‘Don’t stand so close to the edge if you’re dizzy, you could hurt yourself.’

The woman just looked at her blankly and made no reply.

Ira took a stronger grip on Mrs Roy and tried to propel her towards the lift. The power would be back soon and she could see the lady to her own door two floors above. Whatever was ailing her, she couldn’t be left teetering at the top of the stairs like this. Ira used a combination of pushing and a steady stream of talk to corral her towards the lift. ‘Don’t worry, once you’re home, you’ll feel better… We’ll just hop into the lift right here, shall we?’

‘NO!’ The words echoed in the stairwell. Mrs Roy pointed at the lift and shouted, ‘He’s in there!’

Ira simply thought, Who? Her thumb, however, was already on the elevator button.

The metal doors clanged open so suddenly they both jumped. In the flickering light of the blue elevator lamp, she saw a man sitting slumped on the floor facing them. His eyes were wide open and the mirror showed the reflection of the back of his lolling head―a mass of blood and hair and bone.

Ira did what Mrs Roy couldn’t. Her scream rang up and down all six floors of Wing 1, Panorama Apartments.

The elevator doors slid shut as if in response. Ira stared at the metal expanse, while she caught her breath and marshalled her thoughts. Mrs Roy seemed to have given way completely; she had slid down to the floor and gibbered quietly at Ira’s feet.

‘Alright,’ Ira said. ‘Get up, Mrs Roy, we should alert security.’

Just as she was helping the older woman up by the elbow, they heard the latch draw back on the door nearest to the elevator―flat 202. Mrs Roy and Ira both tensed, united in the primal instinct to flee the scene of the crime.

Mr Talukdar emerged with a frown, scratching his enormous pot belly through his undershirt. ‘What the hell is all this shouting at this time of the night?’

He caught sight of Ira and his features shifted into an I-should-have-guessed-it indignation. ‘You…women,’ he spat, ‘partying and raising hell.’

He filled his lungs for a further tirade but stopped short when he recognised Mrs Roy hanging off Ira’s arm, like she’d had a few drinks too many. Always quick to think less of his neighbours in general and women in particular, he screwed up his bushy eyebrows. ‘Madam, you?’ He looked deeply disappointed.

Ira clicked her tongue in irritation, ‘Never mind all that…someone is in the lift…er…badly hurt!’

Another door opened further down the corridor, and the entire Sinha family spilled out in frilly night clothes (the women) and various states of hairy undress (the men). Oh, my eyes, Ira thought, irrelevantly. First the dead body, then this.

The regular white lights came back on.

Mrs Roy gasped when the lift jerked and travelled upwards with a hum. The display button showed 5.

Ira waited mutely along with the others in morbid curiosity…what would happen next? There was a long moment of silence. Then a man’s strangled cry echoed down the stairs, ‘Hai bhogobaan!’

Everyone started to talk at the same time. Their voices almost drowned the slap of naked feet running down the stairs, making towards the sound of other people.

It was Kedarnath from the sixth floor, old Mrs Ghoshal’s son.

He stopped in mid-bound down the stairs at the sight of them. ‘The lift, the lift!’ He gasped for breath. He bent to rest his hands on his knees. Ira noted that his seemingly unbreakable composure was in disarray tonight.

She stepped forward. ‘I know,’ she mustered her best matter-of-fact tone. ‘Can someone please call security? One would have thought they would have come hearing so much hoi-choi.’

Talukdar harrumphed and said, ‘Can everyone calm down and tell me what the matter is with the lift?’ He ran an exasperated eye over Ira, the nearly insensible Mrs Roy, and the panting Kedarnath and decided upon the last as the least of three evils. ‘Yes, Kedarnath?’

Ira decided she’d had enough of incoherent talking. She found her phone while Kedarnath talked to Talukdar and dialled the number of security at the main gate of the apartment complex.

‘Yes, hello! There’s a, um, dead person in the lift.’ It sounded so absurd she nearly laughed. She shook herself and continued, ‘Call the police! And…come quickly!’

Mrs Sinha, in a purple and pink celebration of frilly synthetic fabric, unfroze and came forward to help with Mrs Roy, who had begun to subside onto the floor again. Ira relinquished her burden gratefully.

‘Yes,’ the frilled Mrs Sinha said. ‘You just come in to our house, sit down and drink a glass of water. You’re shaking like a leaf!’

The lift hummed to life. ‘Not again!’ Ira cried.

Kedarnath ran to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up the stairwell. ‘Shunchhen? Keep away from the lift!’

Number 6 glowed on the lift display. There was a grating sound, then deathly silence. Everybody started talking in unison.

The podgy night security guard puffed up the stairs looking sleepy and annoyed. ‘Someone is fooling with the lift, sirs! I was waiting for the lift because of my dodgy knee, otherwise I would have been here earlier.’

‘Gopal, there is a dead body in the lift,’ declared Talukdar. With such authority, Ira thought unkindly, that one would think Talukdar had put it there. 

‘Yes, a madam said as much on the phone but I didn’t really believe it until now…what did you see, sir?’ Gopal’s posture was at once attentive and deferential.

‘Uff, just see for yourself, it’s a dead man, just sitting up against the mirror, someone call the police. 1-0-0!’ Ira barked.

Mr Sinha disappeared through his front door, surprisingly quick for such a bearish man, presumably to fetch his phone. Ira reached out and hit the lift button again.

The lift jerked and hummed for what seemed like an eternity. Ira looked away; once had been enough to burn the sight into her brain. When everyone gasped, she couldn’t help but glance in the lift’s direction. She saw a curious expression on Kedarnath’s face and she saw why.

The corpse now lay flat on his back, his legs bent at an unnatural angle to fit the small, boxy lift.

The security guard took one look and went haring down the stairs. ‘I’ll get the boss!’ his bobbing head announced as the rest of his body disappeared from sight.

Ira stared, riveted, until the doors clanged shut again. The loud noise broke the spell, and both Mr Talukdar and she jumped. Mr Talukdar raised his finger to reopen the lift, but thought better of it. Cowardice trumps curiosity, Ira smiled in her head. Aloud she said, ‘Okay, since everything’s under control I’ll go home!’ to no one in particular and began to walk towards her door at the end of the corridor.

A cracked voice floated down from a floor or two above. ‘Kedaaar’ it called. ‘Where are you, Kedar, what’s all this hoi-choi?’

Kedar looked up and yelled, ‘Ma, go in immediately!’ He scampered back up the stairs, all the while shouting, ‘I’m coming up, go in!’

Kedar was really losing his cool over this business, but one had to give it to him, he was super fit for his age. Ira was surprised at the irrelevance of her thoughts at a time like this.

‘Mrs Ghoshal, it’s not safe, go in! In fact, everyone should go back home, it’s not safe!’ added Mr Talukdar in an officious bellow, pleased to be seen taking charge. There was no sign that anyone heard. Everyone stayed put, in fact Ira noticed that more people with excited expressions had begun to gather near the stairs. The whole building seemed to hum like a hive.

Ira was tired, she wanted to shut all the horridness out and retreat to her sanctuary. Tomorrow it would be in the hands of the police, and soon it would be a mere anecdote she could tell her more morbid friends.