Valley of Death Read online

  “Dear me, I can’t be ‘that’ bad,” Rudolf said humorously. Then in a different voice, he added, “I very much contest that accusation Payal: whatever I am I am not a liar! You have to give me that, if not anything else.”

  “And your point being?”

  “That I am neither a coward nor so weak that I have to resort to petty lies. I am evil and proud of it, but certainly, am not a two-bit con-man who fools people with words he himself does not believe in.”

  “Why are we even discussing this?”

  “Because I don’t like my integrity to be questioned; I can live with the reputation of an evil man but not that of being a fake, sham, liar, a man who himself does not believe in what he says about himself. Or the one who is a hypocrite, pretending to be someone else than what he really is,” vociferated Rudolf in one breath.

  “One cannot make out the baby’s face from the photo and besides people, even babies die in this vast city every single day. Tragic as it maybe that is how life is.”

  You never cease to amaze me Payal; I thought that you would be beside yourself, jumping up and down when you have read this paper.”

  “I am really sorry to disappoint you,” Payal said cynically, “but I am only as much distressed as any decent person would be on reading this news and no more.”

  “You are unmoved, even when there is a very real possibility that it maybe your own daughter, lying dead in the arms of a fireman?”

  “If you are not a liar then you have the disease of making fancy and weird claims, that’s for sure.”

  “You confuse me; are you pretending to be unworried?” He asked looking at her with narrowed eyes. “Did you not read that the baby was two months old, in that newspaper report?”

  “So what? Anshul is not the only two months old in this city,” said Payal calmly.

  “But she is missing, isn’t she?” Questioned Rudolf.

  “That does not mean that she’s the one in that news story; it maybe just a coincidence, nothing more,” she again said calmly.

  “Isn’t it a too much of a coincidence that the baby of that newspaper was murdered about the same time as your own baby went missing? That she was killed on the same night when your baby was taken out of her cradle?”

  “What do you mean by that? The paper did not say anything about the killing of the baby at night,” Payal said with an unhidden note of urgency in her voice.

  “I don’t need a bloody paper to tell me what I myself was a witness to, my darling. I bought the paper along only to convince you of the reality of it.”

  “Then you failed to achieve your objective,” Payal said regaining her confidence and composure.

  “So, you do not believe that it was Anshul who was murdered gruesomely last night? That it was your daughter who was thrown down in that drain filled with black rotting filth?” Asked Rudolf.

  “No, I do not,” said Payal disbelieving Rudolf.

  “Is this the love of a mother speaking, who cannot bring herself to accept the death of her baby?

  “Go on, you convince me?” Payal asked in a challenging voice.

  “I saw Anshul’s body falling through the air before it hit the filth down below in that drain. I heard her crying before the cruel and ugly waters swallowed her mercilessly; only the cloth covering her body could remain afloat.”

  Something in his voice and manner made Payal’s heartbeat uncontrollably; for the first time, her confidence and faith were shaken. “It could not have been Anshul,” she said in an empty voice, which she found unable to recognize as her own.

  “But Payal, it was Anshul. You must recognize this,” he said throwing something on the floor beside her.

  Payal picked it up; it was the gold chain with a pendant of Goddess Kali, which her mother had bought for her granddaughter Anshul on her last visit to Delhi. It hardly took more than two seconds for Payal to recognize the gold chain in her hand; she looked up emptily at Rudolf who had a smile of ultimate satisfaction on his lips.

  “I thought this would convince you; I am glad to see that I was right after all.”

  “You …you are the Devil himself!”

  “Not quite; but close enough. But you surprise me by not crying or looking devastated that I thought you would. But wait, it gets better; you haven’t asked me yet as to who killed your daughter?”

  “What do you mean? It was you,” she said in a choked voice.”

  “No Payal, that’s where you are again wrong. It was your darling husband Abhay who killed your daughter.”

  Payal felt Rudolf’s voice coming from far away as he continued, “…it was Abhay who killed Anshul, threw her in that drain filled with filth. Could you have foreseen that? I made yourhusband kill your and his daughter! Am I not good at this, what do you say?”

  “Abhay! Abhay killed Anshul!” Payal was visibly shocked. “No, you are lying; you definitely are. What is this? Another one of your tricks, psychological games, you want to create a rift between me and my husband?”

  “Why would I want to do that? When you yourself have conceded that I am here to kill you; then what difference would it make to me, whether you are emotionally attached to your husband or not at the time of your death?”

  “I don’t know…Maybe you are trying to break my resistance and spirit. I know that you like to weaken and break your victims in mind and spirit before you kill them. Abhay is a good man and a devoted husband and father. We may have had a few problems, but so what, every marriage, every relationship has its moments of difficulties, but we have always got over them.” Turning to Rudolf’s face she added, “And after all, it was you and Harry who caused these problems and disturbances in our life, it was certainly not because of either me or Abhay. Our bond is too strong, and neither you nor anyone else can break it,” said Payal confidently.

  “Your faith and trust in your husband are really quite commendable, even if it is misplaced. As for killing your daughter goes, he has done it, just last night; he had to, I made him do it. Do you think that the emotional and dumb boy who you found as your husband, you think that he had any chance before the ruthless and evil Warlock like me? I know these emotional people rather too well Payal; they are basically good, in your sense of goodness, but they are essentially weak. It’s all too easy to break them – unlike an unemotional and unsentimental person like you; all it is needed is to put pressure on them at the right spots and they fall flat like a heap of cards. Their psyche is essentially weak in spirit and structure and Abhay is one example of such a clan of fools.”

  “That’s what you would like to think,” Payal said in an unimpressed voice.

  “You know, I believe, about my attempt to scare your husband Abhay with my chief of staff, Harry?”

  “Yes, I have tried to tell that to Abhay,” came out of Payal’s mouth.

  “But he did not listen to you, did he? Remember that lemon and bones tied in a red cloth, which Abhay found under the bed, the other day? I myself had ordered it to be planted there; Harry did it on my command. But the story gets even more interesting…” Rudolf then went on to narrate his meetings with Abhay and how he poisoned his mind and pushed him to sacrifice his daughter to save his own life.

  “I can’t believe that Abhay could have been so foolish,” Payal said after hearing his narrative.

  “Don’t blame that poor man; he was only a puppet. He may not have realized it though, but it was I who was pulling the strings all along. He became hypnotized and acted as I wanted him.”

  “And Abhay killed Anshul, our daughter with his own hands,” Payal was at last unable to contain her grief as she spoke in a heavy voice. The news of her baby’s gruesome murder by her husband slowly began to sink in on her.

  “Yes, he did. That’s the price you have to pay Payal when you mess around with an evil man like me.”

  By that time Payal had enough of his venomous words; without any prelude, she jumped on him. Rudolf had a hard time keeping the pointed nails of her hand away from his eyes. He u
sed his superior strength to throw her back on the floor and got over her, slapping her again and again. He then pulled her up cruelly by her hair and taking her face close to his own he said, “Does it brings back memories Payal; of the lonely nights at my estate? Only this time there will be no rescue; you are in the jaws of death and no one can save you, no one.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “That’s one thing I have always admired about you Payal; even now there is not a single drop of tear in your eyes.”

  “You can kill me Rudolf but cannot get the satisfaction of having made me surrender before you.”

  “Never mind, I am not a particularly greedy man; I will suffice myself with all that I can achieve. Your little baby is calling you Payal; prepare to meet her in the next world. This is it a girl; the story of your life ends here; by the way any last wishes?” he added humorously.

  “I hope that you rot in hell!” Payal said as she hit with her full force the middle of Rudolf’s thighs with her knee.

  Once he lost his hold on Payal, she immediately got up and ran towards the door. But he was surprisingly fast; he leapt behind her and got hold of her again in the lobby. “Not today, Payal,” he spoke in an acid voice,” there is no escape for you today.”

  He dragged her holding her by her hair and took her in front of the mirror, which was fixed above the washbasin in the lobby. With utter brutality he hit Payal’s face on the mirror; the mirror broke and was shattered in pieces and injured her face at many places. Standing behind her, holding her long hair in the fist of his right hand, he violently hit Payal’s face on the broken mirror repeatedly, until the mirror was thrashed into tiny pieces and her face was bleeding profusely all over. Ignoring her loud screams Rudolf then smashed her face and head against the white marble tiles, which covered the wall of the lobby.

  He kept on looking at Payal’s smashed face, filled with wounds and covered with blood. Finally, Rudolf got up from the floor and washing his hands in the washbasin that was filled with the broken and bloodstained pieces of the shattered mirror, he went out of the lobby without looking again at Payal.

  As the Land Cruiser with tinted glasses came out of Connaught place, where Rudolf had taken dinner in a restaurant in the innercircle, he remembered Harry, who instantaneously appeared on the seat near to him. “He is at the nursery, is not he?” Rudolf asked.

  “Yes master, Twinkle is there.”

  “Good,” Rudolf said as he drove away his station wagon to the desolate nursery in Dhaula Kuan, where his next victim lived.

  By the time he reached the nursery, it was late in the night; he got out of his Prado and walked the distance from the gate of the nursery to the small makeshiftcottage to the left of the unmade path. He boldly went inside, came out with fearful Tahir Sheikh a.k.a. Twinkle in his grab and threw him on the unmade path. Rudolf then proceeded to beat the hell out of the spastic man to his heart’s content. Twinkle’s screams or his pleading gestures made not the slightest impression on the cruel man. He was angry since the time Twinkle had beaten him, using his superior Herculean strength. After he had taken out the pent-up anger of his defeat at Twinkle’s hands on the night of invocation by Bharoo, Rudolf called Harry. He rejected the heavy axe and demanded a long sharp dagger, stabbing it in the neck of Twinkle, before tossing it away in the grass.

  Leaving the gory and gothic testimony of his anger and revenge, Rudolf went out of the nursery and got into his car. He started the engine and drove away from the nursery; his destination was his bungalow in Vasant Vihar. He planned to change his bloodstained clothes and call Leena; asking her to come to his place to spend the night with him.

  Just as the Prado Land Cruiser was going away, an old woman reached the gate of the nursery. She looked confusingly at the car’s red taillights, which were becoming distant; what was that car doing there? Maybe it was a mother’s instinct and intuition which made Ruhee Sheikh run her way to the makeshift cottage inside the nursery.

  She stopped dead in her way, seeing the bleeding body of her only son Twinkle lying outside the cottage. All the groceries and vegetables fell out of her hands as she ran towards the body. She sat on the unmade path and put the head of her son in her lap; screaming and wailing for her lost child. She frantically tried to clean his face of the blood and dirt with her sari, calling out his name again and again. She was unable to believe the tragedy that had struck her sweetheart, the only hope for her survival.

  “Tahir, Tahir!” she cried out,” open your eyes Babba, its mummy.”

  Tears were ceaselessly rolling down her cheeks as she kissed her dead son’s forehead repeatedly. “You can’t go, Tahir, you cannot leave mamma like this,” she said amidst her hiccups, “you promised me that you would get married, and I will have grandchildren of mine to play with…”

  Kissing all over his wounded face she said, “Wake up Babba, if someone has to go, I’ll go, not you. You can’t leave me like this; how can any son leave his old mother like this?” She cried out with the pain which only a mother can ever experience in this cruel, merciless and selfish world. “You said that you will take care of me now that I had become old; is this how you take care of your mother, leaving her like this?” she wept with the head of the adult man of 28 years with the mind of a small boy, in her lap.

  The man who she had nurtured and looked after every single day, since the day he was born as a little baby. That baby now lay dead in her lap, not answering any of her pleadings. It was a heart-wrenching and painful sight - a mother who had her very succour of existence taken away from her with such brutality, such utter cruelty, Alas! The cruel hands of deathspare no one and show no mercy.

  It almost seemed that the dead son was trying to hide in his mother’s lap, as if a part of him – still alive – had sensed the presence of dark shadows, the servants of Yama (the messenger of death) who had arrived to snatch him from his loving and dependable mother – to take him away cruelly to the unforgiving valley of Death. Alas! Life was so cruel, so mean; the poor mother and son were perhaps always misfits who simply had to face such a fate in a world gone insane. A world of selfishness, corruptness, and meanness, which breeds, harbours only evil Warlocks.

  It was around half past ten in the night when Abhay drove back to his house in Rajouri Garden. He had reached his house on the previous night without any significant incident; after he had thrown Anshul in the filthy drain. He had found Payal soundly asleep when he had reached his bedroom; after days of the tormentedsituation, he was finally able to get a sound sleep. He had woken up surprisingly refreshed in the morning and had decided to go to his office.

  All through the day, he had been expecting Payal’s call about Anshul being missing and had constantly rehearsed mentally as to how he would respond to it. He had decided not to reveal to her, that he knew all about her evil plans; instead, he was to play the role of an ignorant father. He could pretend that he did not know anything about Anshul or how and when she had gone missing? He could claim that when he had left for office in the morning, Anshul was safely asleep in her cradle.

  No one saw him murdering Anshul on the previous night or even that he had taken her out of the house. And since Payal had been asleep in the morning, she could not counteract his statement that Anshul was in the house in the morning. He had decided to remain firm on that story, no matter what happened. The last thing he needed was a court trial for the murder of Anshul. After all, what could he say in his defencein a court? If the court had not accepted Payal’s story of black magic and Warlock vis-à-vis Rudolf – even if it were untrue – what chance he, Abhay, had of convincing the court about Payal and Bharoo’s tricks and that he had killed Anshul only in self-defence?

  Abhay’s anxiety had grown even further when a copy of the afternoon newspaper Midday had reached his desk. He had read the entire news story about his own deed in a single breath; he had found some reassurance in the facts that the police as yet knew nothing about the identity of Anshul or the reason behind her murder. Nor h
ad anyone claimed to have seen Abhay, or for that matter any man throwing the baby in the drain.

  Things were looking up once again, Abhay had thought to himself, in his office. All he needed was to stick to his story and no one would be able to connect him to the murder of Anshul. After all, who could think that a father would murder his own child? But the same could not be said about Payal, she knew about her magical charm and the fact that it had failed to work, and that her daughter was missing; it would be like putting two and two together. It would not take her long to figure out, of what had happened and who was responsible for it?

  But the important question here was would she dare to go to the police with her story? Could she hide her own plot to kill Abhay, but then what would she claim as her husband’s motive behind killing his own daughter? That he was suspicious about her character and thought that Anshul was not his child? Abhay had felt great difficulty in breathing; the thought simply had not occurred to him earlier. He at least knew if others did not, of how good an actress was his wife; which cop would listen to his true yet unbelievable story, before that beautiful woman who would narrate her tragic story with tearful eyes?

  He tried to imagine himself behind bars, waiting for the death sentence to be executed upon him. The imagination itself shook his entire being; damn that woman! She would succeed in her plan to get rid of Abhay and inherit all his assets nevertheless. Even Rudolf had not thought of this; what an invincible position Payal was in, while Abhay was in a losing situation.

  Even after the office was over, Abhay was not able, to sum up, the courage to go back to his house, which in his peculiar state of mind had started to appear to be a strange and unknown place to him. As strange and unknown as the woman whom he had once loved and cherished as his wife. He wondered was she up to? Had she called her secret lover which Rudolf had told him about? Maybe that man was waiting for him, hiding in Abhay’s own house, to get rid of him forever when he reached his house. He began to feel like a man without any place to go, to call as his own in that whole wide city. At one time he could not wait for the office to be over and to get back to his home and his wife; while on that day he felt in no hurry to leave his office. After all what was there to go for, to go to? His home, his wife, and the life he believed as his own had shattered, slipped out of his fist like sand. Expecting to be caught by Police at any given moment, he spent the next few hours wandering aimlessly in the markets of Connaught Place, Palika Bazar and Khan Market.