'And then she put out her hands,' said Sonali, 'and touched the body that was lying in front of the fire and called him Laakhan. Just before I passed out I managed to see who it was.'

She choked.

'Who was it?' said Urmila.

'It was Romen.' Sonali began to sob.

'And the woman,' Murugan broke in, 'who was she? Did you know her?'

Sonali shook her head, from side to side, wiping her tear. streaked face on her blouse.

'I'm not sure,' she said. 'She looked so familiar, but I couldn't remember.'

Then Urmila took her hand, elbowing Murugan out of the way. 'Try, Sonali-di,' she said. 'Try and remember. Who was it?'

Sonali's eyes widened as she looked into Urmila's face. 'It was someone you know, Urmila,' she said. 'I'm sure of that: that's why she seemed familiar – someone I've heard you talk about, someone I haven't seen in years.'

Suddenly, Urmila rocked back on her heels, dropping Sonali's hand. 'No,' she whimpered, her hands flying to her mouth. 'No, not Mrs… '

'Yes,' said Sonali. 'That's who it was – Mrs Aratounian.'

Chapter 42

ANTAR WOKE UP to find his bedclothes drenched in sweat and his throat burning. He stumbled to the door, and looked down the corridor: the kitchen seemed to slide away from him, receding into the distance. He felt his knees weakening and had to lean against the wall to keep himself upright. He turned his head to look at the palm of his hand, and saw that it was trembling, shimmering against the flat whiteness of the wall. In rising panic he clapped his hands against his cheeks, his chest, his sides, only to discover that he was shaking all over.

He took one step towards the kitchen, still leaning against the wall. It seemed a little easier now, he was just a couple of feet from the open doorway of his living room, halfway down the corridor, between the kitchen and the bedroom. Leaning forward, he reached for the edge of the doorway, trying to pull himself along.

His fingers found the doorway and took a grip on it. Then a shiver ran through his outstretched arm and he snatched his hand back, recoiling, as though from an unexpected touch. He could feel the hairs bristling on his face as he stood leaning on the wall, biting his knuckles: it was as though something were in that room, a presence that his body had sensed before he knew it was there.

He edged forward, slowly, pushed himself away from the wall and stepped through the door. He stood there transfixed, disbelieving. His knees buckled and he fell to the floor.

Sitting gnomelike in the middle of the living room was a naked man. A blanket of matted, ropy hair hung halfway down a swollen, distended belly; his upper body was encrusted with dead leaves and straw, and his thighs were caked with mud and excrement. His hands were resting in his lap, bound together by a pair of steel handcuffs.

He was staring at Antar with bloodshot, grime-caked eyes; his lips drawn back in a grin, baring yellow, decaying teeth.

'What's the matter?' a voice cried out suddenly, filling the room through Ava's concealed sound outlets. 'You wanted to see me, didn't you? I'm just a little early, that's all.'

Antar picked himself up and made his way slowly towards Ava's control panel. He found himself skirting around the edges of the room, with his back to the walls, keeping as far away from the figure as possible, as though it were a real presence.

'Where have you been?' the figure shouted after him. 'Why have you kept me waiting so long?'

Antar's eyes fell on the mud-caked thighs and he turned away, with an involuntary shudder. Reaching for Ava's keyboard, he rewrote the vectors of the image.

There was a tremor in the image and the man's torso vanished. Now only his head remained, vastly enlarged, much larger than lifesize, blown up to the scale of a piece of monumental statuary.

'Guess you couldn't bear to look at my body any more,' said the man, laughing again.

Now Antar could see the maggots in his hair; the sight was so grotesque that he reached for the control panel and tilted the head away. But then, as the flat cross-section of the neck hove slowly into view, he discovered that Ava had done such a realistic job of severing the head that every artery and vein was clearly visible. He could see the throbbing capillaries; even the directional flow of the blood was reproduced, in motion, so that the neck looked as though it were spouting gore.

Antar choked: the head was startlingly like a vision that often recurred in his worst nightmares; an image from a medieval painting he had once seen in a European museum, a picture of a beheaded saint, holding his own dripping head nonchalantly under his arm, as though it were a fresh-picked cabbage.

The man began to shout as his head tilted further and further back.

'Put me down, you bastard,' he shouted. 'Look me in the eye.'

Antar tilted the image again, with a signal, and the red glaring eyes fastened upon him. 'So you want to know what happened to Murugan?' he said.

'Yes,' said Antar.

The man erupted into another burst of manic laughter. 'Let me ask you again,' he said. 'Are you quite sure?'

Chapter 43

IT WAS RAINING HARD when they got down to the pillared portico of the tumbledown old mansion. The neon lamps on Robinson Street were glowing fuzzily greenish, like aquarium lights. Urmila and Sonali drew their saris over their heads as they stood under the portico, looking into the pouring rain. Murugan started down the gravelled driveway at a run. At the gate he stopped to look back at the two women, who were still waiting uncertainly under the portico.

'Come on,' he shouted, at the top of his voice, urging them on. 'Let's move it, let's go.'

His voice came back to the portico disembodied, buffeted by the wind, and softened by the rain. Urmila gave Sonali's arm a tug and they began to run, hesitantly at first, and then faster, following Murugan as he sprinted down the road, towards the entrance of number eight.

Turning blindly through the gate of Mrs Aratounian's building Murugan ran straight into something that was standing in the narrow driveway. He picked himself up and saw that two bamboo pushcarts were standing in the driveway, blocking the entrance. Tents of translucent tarpaulin rose out of them, stretched tight over jumbled heaps of objects.

He was rubbing his knees, swearing, when Sonali and Urmila caught up. Urmila edged quickly past the carts, made her way to the entrance and started towards the lift. Halfway through the dimly lit hall she noticed two men in lungis and vests, squatting by the staircase, smoking biris. Standing beside them was a large piece of furniture, a heavy mahogany sideboard.

Urmila stopped dead, shifting her gaze from the two men to the sideboard and back again. The men stared back in unruffled calm, the biri-smoke rising above them in widening spirals.

Sonali came to a halt beside her: 'What's the matter?'

'That's Mrs Aratounian's,' said Urmila, pointing at the sideboard. 'She used to have it in her dining room. I remember it.'

'You're right,' said Murugan. 'I saw it there last night.'

Speaking to the two men in Hindi, Urmila said: 'Where did you get that?'

One of the men flicked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing up the staircase. A moment later they heard a loud clatter, followed by shouts and grunts. Three barebodied men came around the bend in the stairs carrying a huge chintz-printed sofa.

'Hey!' said Murugan. 'That's Mrs Aratounian's too; I was sitting on it last night, watching TV.'

Raising her voice, Urmila said: 'What's happening?'

One of the men took aim with the butt of his biri and flicked it away, into a corner. Then he rose unhurriedly to his feet, and stretched. 'Someone's leaving,' he said with a yawn, putting his shoulder to the sideboard. 'And we're carrying away the furniture.'