The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan

Author:Vaseem Khan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / International Mystery & Crime, Fiction / Urban
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2015-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

NO PLACE FOR AN ELEPHANT

The next morning Poppy awoke to find an elephant had taken up residence in her home.

‘But this is too ridiculous!’ she admonished her husband. It was all very well fighting to keep the elephant in the complex, but to see a wild animal parked in the centre of her living room on her best rug, like some sort of living sculpture, was quite another matter.

‘Madness,’ muttered her mother, who had been rudely surprised that morning when she had wandered into the living room and tripped over the creature. ‘Cracked, cracked in the head.’ This last was directed at her son-in-law, against whom she had always held a grudge for not being Jagirdar Mohan Vishwanath Deshmukh, landowner and erstwhile suitor of her daughter.

The source of all this consternation lay folded up on the floor, wrapped in Poppy’s warmest winter quilts, looking none the worse for wear after the excitement of the previous night. Occasionally, the little elephant would shudder and, with a preparatory sniff of his trunk, unleash a sneeze into the room. A drift of Dairy Milk chocolate-bar wrappers lay strewn around him, as if a children’s party had just taken place.

Chopra frowned at his wife and mother-in-law. ‘This elephant is my responsibility, just as you both are. If his welfare requires that he stay in my home for a day or two then so be it. I do not wish to hear another word on the matter,’ he added crossly as he headed towards the door of his office.

Earlier that morning, Chopra had sent Bahadur to the hole-in-the-wall grocery shop across the road to buy the chocolate. Bahadur had returned not only with the chocolate but also a breathless report of what was happening in the city.

The intense rain had flooded many parts of Mumbai. Such had been the delinquent monsoon’s ferocity that flash floods had claimed more than one hundred lives. Bloated bodies lay in the streets, like the fallen dead from some forgotten war. Vehicles had been abandoned at junctions and in the middle of the roads. In some cars, dead bodies sat in the seats, staring glassily out into the afterlife; so fast had the water risen that their occupants had not had time even to undo their seatbelts before they were engulfed. There was an air of shock around the city; a strange silence hung over the malls and call centres, the glassy offices and fancy restaurants, the slums and the high-rise towers. For the first time in living memory, Mumbai had been brought to a standstill.

The authorities were slow in responding, and would later be accused of gross incompetence, charges that they would dismiss as uncharitable. After all, it was not every day that Mumbai was struck by such severe flooding.

In the courtyard below, the high sun had already dried the concrete. Bahadur had hauled his charpoy out into the centre of the courtyard to allow it to dry. It gave off great curls of steam, a potent symbol of the tempest of the night before.

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