There was new irritation in his voice. An employee who was not merely of irregular habits, but rich enough to be independent, was a hard cross for a manager to bear.
“Do you think we could visit his house?” I asked. As I spoke, my stomach seemed to seethe and rise inside me. I thought for a moment that I would be sick on the spot. What was Leo trying to tell me now?
Srinivasa did not notice. He was too busy registering disdain at my request. “If you really want to, I do not see why not. It would of course take a little time to get there” — wasted time, his manner implied — “and I am afraid we are too busy here to arrange transportation.”
“We have our own driver,” said Ameera. She was much more successful than I at squelching objections. “If you could tell us how to get there…”
It was easy to see why Rustum Belur might have taken a short cut to his home. The road went around the hill in a long, winding spiral, so that half a mile on the ground, under the power cable, was stretched to more than five. As we drove steadily around the hillside, Ameera shook her head firmly.
“Very bad man. I did not like his smell.”
“You think he is evil?”
“Not evil. Stupid. He had plenty of time to come with us if he wanted to. And he could show us Belur’s workplace.”
But not, I suspected, tell us anything useful about it. Belur’s work was beyond Srinivasa’s comprehension. And beyond mine. What had he been doing?
“What are intro-so-mat-ic chips?” Ameera’s words echoed my thoughts. “He said Belur was making them.”
“I never heard of them. But ‘chips’ are what they put into computers, to control their programs.”
And I’ll bet my last penny that Leo could tell me more about them, if only we could find a way to tap his memories. I thought that, but I didn’t mention that to Ameera.
Belur’s wealth was obvious as soon as we came into sight of his house. Most of the buildings that we had passed were no more than shacks. This one was a thirty-room monstrosity, a wood and cement structure that must have been there long before the industrial park grew up around it. We drove towards it along a road of hard-packed dirt — probably impassable in the rainy season, but now as firm as concrete.
“Wait here for us.” The man nodded. Indian taxi drivers were very good at patient waiting.
We were on the eastern side of the hill, towards the town of Cuttack , and the bulk of the house stood high between us and the setting sun. I saw Ameera shiver a little as we moved into the deep shadow.
“What is the house like, Lee-yo-nel?”
I suppressed my own gut urge to go back to the car. The house wasn’t inviting, but I had come too far to back off because of some vague uneasiness. Anyway, I felt that I already knew the layout of this house.
“It’s big — very big. The place that Belur worked is near the back of the building. We have to go down a long corridor, then up a staircase.” The words came out instinctively, yet I was convinced that the description was correct.
We moved to the open front door, Ameera clutching hard on my arm. “Slowly, Lee-yo. Let me know where we are going.”
She felt the door to her left, then ran her hand slowly along the wooden panels inside the house.
While she studied that, I took another look around us. According to Srinivasa, the house was being looked after by two housekeepers until Belur’s family decided what to do with it. But there had been no sign of people, inside the house or out. That was less surprising to me here than it would have been in Europe . I had already learned the tendency of Indian staff to disappear from their duties for long periods on mysterious errands of their own.
“Anyone at home?”
The wooden walls and floor echoed back my voice and made me feel slightly ridiculous. With Ameera following methodically behind me, touching and listening, I led the way along the uncarpeted corridor. The whole house was unnaturally silent, and with the sun already low in the sky the windows off to our left threw long, enigmatic shadows over the scanty furniture. The house had not been sold, but someone had done a good job of helping themselves to the fixtures. Marks in the deep carpets told of chairs and tables that had been moved recently from the main rooms.
We had reached the end of the corridor. Ahead lay a long staircase, curving around one hundred and eighty degrees to the upper floor. I started up hesitantly, Ameera still one step behind and holding to my sleeve. But there was no doubt at all in my mind: Belur’s lab was straight ahead, past the first bedroom, just before the room with all the musical instruments. That knowledge was built-in, a legacy from Leo’s past.
Halfway up the stairs I paused. Ameera, right behind me, bumped her breasts softly into my back.
“Why do you stop here, Lee-yo-nel? This is not the end of the staircase — the sounds tell me that.”
“I don’t know.” My uneasiness was increasing. “Ameera, it’s getting dark. Maybe we should come back here and look around tomorrow, when there is more light.”
“You cannot see here? Is there not the electricity, for lighting?”
There was a switch on the wall, at the turn in the staircase. I moved forward and pressed it down. Unshaded electric bulbs in wall brackets threw a shadowy illumination along the stairs. Instead of easing, my sensation of discomfort increased. I stood, half a dozen steps from the upper landing, and looked around us.
“Lee-yo-nel, what is that?”
My ears were less sensitive than Ameera’s. It took me a couple of seconds to register what I was hearing. From somewhere ahead of us, on the upper landing, came faint musical sounds. It was the playing of a piano, just a little out of tune.
I glanced around at the deserted staircase and lower floor, then moved silently to the top of the stairs. Ameera, always graceful and light-footed, was half a pace behind.
“Lee-yo-nel, who is playing?” Her words were a soft breath, just audible in my ear.
I didn’t answer. My hands were trembling, and the sound of my own breathing was loud inside my head. Twenty-five years of piano playing had given me at least one talent. Different pianists each have their own stylistic foibles, as unique and recognizable as a signature. I could recognize the masters, old or new, from a few seconds of their playing. Gieseking or Gould, Horowitz or Hellman, Schnabel or Serkin — every one put a personal imprint on the music, unmistakable and undisguisable.
And the sounds that came from the next room along the landing? I was on the brink of certainty long before I looked in through the half-open door. The glittering runs and trills in the right hand and the bravura octaves and tremolos — they carried me back a month in time.
The pianist was playing in the evening gloom, his massive back towards us. As I was already moving away to seek an escape along the landing and down the stairs, he swivelled on the piano stool and looked directly at the door.
“Well, it’s about time you got here,” he said. “Where’ve you been the past few weeks? We’ve been sitting around in this place too bleedin’ long.” It was Pudd’n. The familiar voice merely confirmed my earlier recognition of a distinctive piano style.
I spun around, pushing Ameera ahead of me, wondering how fast we could tackle the stairs together without falling. But before we had taken one step, a loud slamming noise came from downstairs.
“Hear that?” called Pudd’n from behind us. He had moved from piano stool to doorway. “Don’t go running off now, it won’t do no good an’ you might get hurt. You know old Dixie . He gets excited real easy.”
Ameera and I had reached the top of the stairs. I looked down along the smooth spiral of the banisters. The front door of the house had been closed. On the lowest step, with his head tilted up towards us and a broad grin on his face, stood Dixie .