Venom, page 1
VENOM
Colin Falconer
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance of fictional characters to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Revised edition copyright © 2011 by Colin Falconer
eBook Edition copyright © 2012 by Colin Falconer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author and publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
PROLOGUE
August 1973
Delhi
René Budjinski did not hear a word of the public prosecutor's opening speech. He was reliving those last climactic hours in Varanasi, and asking himself, as he asked himself so many times, if it had all been worth it. The past year had seemed endless, waiting for this day when perhaps the sacrifice could be justified.
He stared at the back of the man’s head sitting in front of him, watched a bead of sweat squeeze from under the man's turban and find a wrinkled channel down the brown and creased neck.
Was it enough that they had him in chains, that the killing had stopped? What would they do to him? Would any punishment be enough?
He raised his head and searched the mass of faces. Michel was slouched in his chair, his wrists manacled in his lap. He wondered what he was feeling. Confusion? Fear? Panic? His face betrayed nothing.
Michel caught Budjinski's stare and a mocking half-smile formed on his lips.
But Budjinski did not see it. He was lost once more in his reverie; a skein of smoke rose over the grey river, he heard the sounds of his own screams. Over a year ago but the horror of it was still fresh in his memory.
He realized that the man next to him was staring. His hands had tightened into fists on the wooden bench and his body was shaking with the force of his rage.
If the Indians did not convict him he would kill this bastard himself.
♦ ♦ ♦
A few minutes before, standing at the window of his office in the heart of old Delhi, Judge Chandra Misra had watched the deluge of monsoon rain that had assaulted the city all that morning. Overhead, the storm beat on the roof like a hail of copper nails.
‘Five minutes, Judge,’ a face at the half-open door informed him.
He nodded absently and continued to stare across the street. He was fascinated by the rain. There were times during the monsoon when it seemed that it would go on forever, relentless, until everything disappeared beneath the rising waters. But he reminded himself that all seasons, like all life, must pass.
Five minutes before noon; five minutes before a trial that had become the most eagerly awaited in Indian history. Judge Misra was unused to such publicity. Ordinarily, his little courtroom in the Tis Hizari complex would be almost empty.
But today was different.
First, the man accused was not an Indian citizen. Indeed, his true nationality had yet to be established. It was possible he did not have one. He had been born in post-war Saigon, the illegitimate son of a French mother and an Indian father. Of the many passports he was said to have used, none had been his own.
Second, although he was standing trial for just one rather bizarre attempted murder, police in five other Asian countries were collecting evidence linking him to unsolved murders within their own borders. Interpol had collected an inventory of corpses from the mean streets of Manila to the lake boats in Kashmir. Most were strangled. Some had had their throats cut.
All were linked to this one man.
Such a sensational case was enough on its own to attract the attentions of the Press, but then there was the girl; young, and very beautiful. A French model whose face had appeared on the covers of magazines such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan.
Now another heady ingredient had been added to this cocktail; the man who had been chosen to defend the accused was the Nawab of Pashan, India's most celebrated trial lawyer, a man accustomed to having flashbulbs pop wherever he went.
Yes, it would be a good day for the papers.
Even so Judge Misra could not suppress a feeling of utter bewilderment as he entered his courtroom on the stroke of noon. His wife had tried to impress upon him what to expect, but as he looked around at the press of eager, curious faces he was surprised to discover that his hands were shaking.
The court itself was small, just thirty paces between the walls, with an elevated section at one end where he now sat and surveyed his packed chambers. The heat in the room was almost a tangible thing. The ceiling fans moved slowly, as if trying to stir some thick, heavy liquid.
The authorities were taking no chances with their celebrated prisoner. Everyone in the court had been body-searched before being allowed past the gauntlet of soldiers that ringed the court, bayonets fixed. The accused man was almost invisible among the phalanx of armed soldiers that surrounded him.
Many of the seats were occupied by newspaper and magazine reporters. There were representatives from the Bangkok Post, the Straits Times, Paris Match, Le Figaro, even the New York Times. Judge Misra wondered how they would react to seeing Indian justice in action.
He found it incredible that life had chosen him from amongst all the judges in Delhi to preside over such a public spectacle. He knew he would not be remembered by future generations of legal minds for his incisive intellect or his eloquence; he was aware of his own limitations, even comfortable with them. Until now.
The air of expectation caused a sudden dramatic silence in the room. Even the rains that had pounded the roof of the Tis Hizari all morning stopped abruptly.
All things must pass. Even seasons, even life.
There was no rapping of a gavel, as in the west, no bringing the courtroom to order. He just peered through his thick, horn-rimmed glasses at the public prosecutor and nodded his head.
The trial of Michel Christian had begun.
Bombay
Joginder Krisnan choked back another wave of pain. From the bed where he had lain for the past five years he could tell from the passage of the shadows on the wall that it was time.
There was a mirror on the dressing table by the bed and in it he could see his own reflection, distorted by the convex shape of the glass. It had become his pleasure to gaze into it, and to empty his rage and contempt upon himself. For there was no pity left in him now, not even for himself.
What he saw in the mirror filled him with revulsion; an emaciated figure, the legs truncated at the thighs, the hairless body as thin as a girl's under the soiled white vest. Once he had been tall with the body of an athlete and the pigmentation of his skin so slight that he had been proud that many times he had been mistaken for a European. It had helped him with business and with women.
In later years his body had run to fat, but he had felt a perverse vanity about that, too, his extra pounds evidence to his burgeoning wealth. He had established profitable tailoring businesses in Saigon and Bombay, and he had been anticipating an indolent retirement in a villa somewhere in the shaded hills above the heat and dust and squalor of Maha Amma.
But for the last five years he had lain crippled in this shabby room, the best that his now modest means would allow.
That day in Saigon he lost everything: his legs, his money, his livelihood. He had not worked at his sewing table again. That little bastard. May he rot in hell.
He heard footsteps on the stairs. His youngest son, Ranchi, slouched into the room, carrying an enamel plate with rice and a watery curry. Joginder struggled to sit up. The boy watched him, unable or unwilling to conceal the disgust on his face.
‘I have brought your lunch, Father.’
‘Yes, yes. Put it down.’
The boy dropped the plate on the bedside table, spilling some of the meaty stew on to the floor.
‘Be careful, you idiot!’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Get out of here!’
The boy shrugged his shoulders and left.
Children! Joginder thought. A burden and a curse. They were idle, his sons. Once he would have put them out on the street. Now he had no choice but to keep them. Who else would run his errands and cook his food now that his wife was dead?
As he reached for the food he felt a stab of pain in his legs. He gasped, clutching at the iron frame of the bed, a sudden greasy sweat erupting on his forehead. Even after all these years those two bullets ripped into his flesh anew every day. He had found himself wishing more and more often that he could die. He could not remember the last time he had woken in the morning without a feeling of disappointment.
But before he could rest in his grave he anticipated that last, slow satisfaction of knowing he was dead too. Since the arrest Joginder had thought of nothing else. He had read everything that had been written in the papers. It sickened him that some of them made him out to be some sort of hero.
His one regret was that he was unable to go to Delhi himself, but his crippled legs made the journey impossible. He promised himself one last pleasure. On the day they hanged him he would afford himself the extravagance of a bottle of imported French champagne, and he would make a toast at the moment of his son’s execution.
He would savor the moment on his palate so that he could taste it again whenever the pain got too bad, and it would help him endure the long minutes and hours until the veil was finally drawn across the fragments of his life.
Delhi
As the public prosecutor began his opening address, the Nawab of Pashan arrived at the Tis Hizari in all his sartorial splendor, trailing a string of assistants and news reporters, like a comet’s tail.
He feigned an air of indifference to the heads that were craned in his direction as he made his way towards a hastily vacated chair on the right of the judge's bench. Flustered, the public prosecutor faltered over his speech. The case had barely begun and already he had drawn first blood.
The Nawab was slim, silver and articulate, with a luxuriant mane of hair combed straight back from his forehead. He was exceptionally fair for an Indian, the kind of man to whom most Indians instinctively deferred. He was one of the founding fathers of the new India, an author of the Constitution, an intimate of Nehru. He had known Gandhi; Gandhi had not liked him.
His face twisted to a frown as he surveyed the courtroom, the expression of a nobleman confronted with the smell of ordure while passing the hovels of his serfs. He rarely sullied his hands with a case as gross as attempted murder.
He had not troubled himself with the pre-trial hearings and was only scantily familiar with the details of the case. But in India such negligence was unimportant. He might look like an aristocrat, but the Nawab was a playground bully, who specialized in the sort of savage cross- examination that could make sound evidence look faintly ridiculous.
‘Why are you in this case?’ one foreign reporter had asked him as he arrived outside.
‘Because the police have behaved disgracefully,’ he had said. Most of their evidence consists of letters and reports from foreign police forces. What does this have to do with the matter in question? The state has tried to make its flimsy case against my client more substantial by weighing it down with unsubstantiated accusations from abroad. I felt it was my duty to defend this man in order to protect the sanctity of justice in this country.’
In truth his motives were not as pure. He had been drawn to the case like a fly to droppings because he knew it would attract the full glare of public attention. He was hoping Indira Gandhi would appoint him to the High Court. As he settled himself into the cane-backed chair a few feet from Michel Christian, he did not afford his client a single glance. For, in truth, he didn't give a damn about him.
This was his show now.
Paris
Roland Fourget was one of the best plastic surgeons in France, if not Europe. He was attached to the burns unit at the St Jerome Hôpital and during his short career he had pioneered a number of techniques that were considered breakthroughs in the reconstruction of facial tissue.
The tragedy of a disfigurement was never less for any patient. But he privately experienced a unique poignancy in working with patients who had been beautiful before their injuries. For all his expertise, he knew he could never come close to reproducing what Nature had once created.
He steeled himself before entering the room. Unlike many of his colleagues, he found it difficult to be dispassionate about his work. It was the reason he had chosen to work with burns victims; cosmetic surgery for its own sake did not interest him. He was not interested in vanity, only in healing.
His patient lay quite still, her head swathed in bandages. It was early afternoon and the blinds were drawn to keep out the bright sunlight, but he knew she was awake by the nervous sparrow-like movements of her right hand on the bed sheet.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. After all the operations he had performed, he still felt a nervous chill when he approached this moment of truth. He had done the best he could with what was left of her face but he had warned her not to expect too much. At this stage functionality was probably the best they could hope for.
He had seen a photograph of the girl, torn from the front cover of the French edition of Vogue and had been overcome by unspeakable sadness. How fragile such beauty was!
He carefully removed the dressings and examined the results and declared himself satisfied. He doubted that she would concur. If you looked at her from her right side, she was still beautiful, for one half of her face had not been exposed to the heat. Look at her from the left, though, and she looked like a wax effigy left too close to a flame. The raw and swollen flesh would lose its redness but she would always attract stares whenever she went; nothing like the looks she had no doubt been accustomed to before.
If only he had had more to work with.
He thought she would ask for a mirror and was grateful when she did not.
‘Thank you, Roland.’ The words were slurred, the scarring on one side of her mouth blurring her speech.
‘Another six months perhaps. We could attempt more surgery ...’
‘Yes, perhaps.’ She looked away. ‘The trial begins today. It's time you discharged me, I think.’
Delhi
In the Tis Hizari courtroom, Public Prosecutor Mohinder Singh glared with undisguised resentment as the Nawab of Pashan made his entrance, like a maharajah sweeping into his throne room. He was aware that every head had turned in the Great One’s direction; and no one was listening to his address.
He had anticipated as much.
Mohinder Singh was young, intense and painfully thin. His most spectacular feature was the thick magenta-hued glasses which lent him an owl-like intensity. He wore a pair of baggy black trousers, and a black cotton coat thread-bare at the cuff. Perspiration marks already seeped into the cloth between his shoulders. His blue turban was askew and mottled with damp.
By contrast, the Nawab was immaculately tailored in grey striped trousers and a tailored blue serge jacket. What was even more galling, his adversary appeared comfortable in the steamy atmosphere of the courtroom, as if his high caste would not tolerate the appearance of sweat in public.
The Nawab was in no hurry to get to his seat. Mohinder Singh forced himself to look away and continued with his opening address, even though he knew that he was, in effect, speaking to himself.
PART ONE
Adrienne 1946-52
Chapter 1
Saigon
June 1946
It was a sultry afternoon in June, the rainy season. The rains beat on the roof of the arcade, flooding the street drains and spilling on to the cracked pavements. Adrienne Christian's blue frock was stained with mud. She hurried past the iron-shuttered shophouses along the Rue Le Loi, the umbrella clutched to her side.
Adrienne was classically beautiful. She had elegantly chiseled features, and her was long and blue-black, and encapsulated her vanity. She would toss it back over her shoulder with a casual movement of her head, like a young filly. Although she was very tall, there was a grace and fluidity in her movements that allowed her to fully capitalize on nature's gift. Her skin was pale as marble but her eyes were startling green, set in her face like emeralds on cream silk.
The nuns at the convent school prayed for her constantly.
She turned into an alleyway and stopped outside the tiny shop that belonged to the Sikh spice merchant, her senses assaulted by a miasma of cardamom, turmeric, and anise. She looked up. Above the narrow wooden stairs that led up from the street hung a small hand-painted sign:
J.K.S. Krisnan, Tailor
She pulled a scrap of paper from her purse, a note written in her father's precise hand. ‘This is the one,’ she murmured to herself. She shook the water from the umbrella and went up the stairs.
When she walked into his tiny workroom that steamy afternoon, Joginder Krisnan was bent over an ancient foot-pedal sewing machine, sewing a cotton blouse that a French captain had commissioned for his wife. He looked up and stared at her with frank admiration. His face creased into a lazy smile that he would never have attempted in the presence of Monsieur Christian.
‘Can I help you. Mademoiselle?’ His voice was velvet soft, and he spoke French with a strong accent.
‘I've come to pick up a dress jacket,’ Adrienne said. ‘For Monsieur Emmanuel Christian.’
Joginder picked up a small leather-bound notebook from the workbench and flicked through the pages, pretending to search for the name. In fact, he remembered Emmanuel Christian very well. A grey-haired Frenchman who barked his instructions at him as if he were one of les jaunes. Arrogant bastard.
