Her Nightly Embrace Page 8

  I swallowed one and washed it down.

  As I waited for it to kick in, I glanced in the mirror and saw Lord Vishnu behind my reflection, tapping away on his phone. I had the feeling he was tweeting about me. Probably under the hashtag “#ourownpersonalholyfool.”

  “Just leave me alone,” I said.

  I shut my eyes and took a breath.

  When I opened my eyes, he was gone.

  That was how the gods came back to me in a big way again since my breakdown. I would have to be careful from now on.

  Lunch was pleasant enough for the first fifteen minutes or so, mainly because Dad kept silent.

  “So, Ravi, how’s life as a private eye, then?” asked Vivek Ghosh, my sister Sanjita’s fiancé.

  “Most of it is just Dumpster diving,” I said. “I once followed a bloke to New York to photograph him cheating on his wife.”

  “No femme fatale coming to the office? No murders?” Vivek asked with a mildly salacious tone.

  “That’s just books and telly. If we end up with dead bodies, that’s a big deal. Becomes a police matter.”

  “But the pay’s good, yeah?” Sanji said. “I haven’t heard you complain about your bills for months now.”

  “It’s not bad. Paying off my overdraft and . . . the other thing.”

  Slight awkward silence. The “other thing” was Sanjita and Vivek’s upcoming wedding. The two of them were suitably embarrassed about this. His parents and ours were annoyingly not.

  “That’s good of you, man,” Vivek said. “You know Sanji and I would if we could—”

  “Nonsense!” declared Mum. “Your parents aren’t paying for your wedding. We can’t have that!”

  “But we didn’t ask for such a big fucking epic wedding!” cried Sanjita.

  “Language,” Mum chided

  “Vivek and I would be happy with a small reception with just the immediate family—”

  “But the family wants to come!” Mum said. “All the way from Mumbai! We can’t not have a big reception!”

  We were in the cycle now. They’d had this argument for months without any change.

  “Listen to your mother,” Dad said.

  “Is it worth it? Now Ravi is the one to pay off those bills!” Sanjita cried.

  “Sanj, it’s okay. Really,” I said.

  “It’s not fair on him! After the other stuff he had to go through!”

  “He’s happy to shoulder the burden,” Mum said, perhaps a bit too grandly.

  Vivek and I exchanged looks. Here we go again.

  “Always with the ‘burden’ and ‘duty’!” said Sanji. “Vivek’s parents were going to pay for the wedding but you had to just one-up them!”

  “We’re still on this?” I muttered. “Honestly?”

  The inside of my mind was one long sigh and would remain so until I left the house.

  “The fish is really good today, Mum,” Vivek said, still valiantly playing the peacemaker, trying to defuse and deflect.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  Dad, whom I kept in the corner of my eye, took a sip of water and sighed.

  “Oh, Ravi, Ravi, Ravi . . .”

  “Dad, Dad, Dad. What is it now?”

  “To have fallen so far . . .”

  I exchanged a look with Mum.

  Here we go.

  “So we’re on that again, are we?” I said, trying to keep it light.

  “Spying on adulterers. Looking at their dirty laundry. At the beck and call of the rich and powerful who can afford you.”

  “I’m making more money than when I was teaching.”

  “I raised my children to be good people. I had dreams my son would be a great soul, a mahatma. A holy man. Or at least gotten a professorship with tenure.”

  “That wasn’t for me,” I said. “Or teaching.”

  “And this job is?”

  “What if this is all part of my journey? Have you thought about that? What if it’s the part where I experience the pleasures and pains of the material life before I attain any spiritual insight?”

  “A journey fraught with terrible deeds and terrible people.”

  I had to be careful not to raise my voice or get heated. The trick to talking to my father was to sound as reasoned and rational as possible, no matter what you were saying. Anger and aggression would have clouded any intent. And we didn’t—couldn’t bear to—talk about his cancer diagnosis.

  “Doesn’t understanding the core of these terrible people become part of treating them with compassion?”

  “You’re becoming like your uncle,” muttered Dad.

  “I’m not Uncle Pradeep. I’m not going to go crazy, lose all my money gambling and die of alcoholism.”

  Poor Uncle Pradeep. Never got over the woman who didn’t love him back. I had to resist, again, the temptation to tell them that what I got up to in the job was a whole different brand of crazy than his.

  “Dad and Mum are worried what their friends will think,” Sanjita said, rolling her eyes.

  “You and Mum tell your friends what I do?”

  “They ask after you,” said Mum, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “You’re embarrassed about my job, but not so embarrassed that you tell everyone in the neighborhood.”

  “They like to gossip. All those fishwives and harridans,” Dad said.

  “They all like to gossip,” Sanjita said. “And judge.”

  “They’re my friends!” protested Mum.

  “A failed holy man turned private eye. Who would believe it?” Sanjita cracked, laughing.

  Not helping, sis.

  “You dig through people’s rubbish bins,” Dad said. “Listen in on their phone calls.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Sanjita said.

  Dad had learned by now never to rise to Sanji’s bait.

  “Actually, a lot of what we do is search for people on the Internet,” I said. “A lot easier that way.”

  “Forget what you see on the telly, Vivek,” Dad said. “Private detectives are seedy people doing seedy things.”

  Just what was up with him this weekend? It must have been too quiet and peaceful for his taste. Perhaps all this was just to deflect from having to think about cancer. Of course, I hadn’t told him about Mum blowing five hundred quid on cards. That would have given him something real to get narked off about. But no, I kept my promise to Mum. And probably continued to enable her next Bad Impulsive Move.

  “Oh, are you and Mum so embarrassed about having to tell your friends now?” Sanjita said, voice rising. “That’s the thanks he gets for everything.”

  “Sanji,” I muttered. “Really not helping.”

  “He’s God’s Suffering Man, and you won’t even give him a break!”

  “Everyone has to choose what to do once they’ve fallen, and he had to choose this,” Dad said.

  Oh, God, was he going to cry?

  Wait for it . . .

  No. Thank fuck. He was just moody today. Nothing had topped his meltdown the day I had announced that I was giving up Religious Studies. I hoped nothing would.

  “So stop giving him shit about it!” shouted Sanjita.

  “Sanji, dear,” Mum said. “Can you please not swear so much? We don’t need so much cursing at the dinner table.”

  “Your mother’s right, young lady,” Dad said.

  “I’m not a fucking teenager!”

  “So stop acting like one,” Dad said.

  My phone rang. Saved.

  It was Marcie Holder.

  “Sorry. It’s work,” I said, and got up from the table.

  I went into the garden to take the call, really just an excuse to get away from the mayhem of the dinner table.

  “Did I rescue you just in time?” asked Marcie.

  “Do you know me that well already?”

  “You’re an open book, Ravi. You’re also an unfinished book. That’s what makes you interesting.”

  “Don’t tell me you want to
be the one who finishes writing it.”

  “Jeez, you make me sound all stalker-y!” Marcie laughed. “The only one who’s going to write your story is you.”

  I hoped so, if the gods didn’t show up and try to rewrite it on the fly.

  “So what’s up?”

  “You said you’d help me with my stalking case. Well, while we were all enjoying our Sunday, it just kicked off. Another flash mob attacked the promotional display and standee of my client at a Waterstones in Picadilly this afternoon. Beat for beat a rerun of the last attack on Charing Cross Road.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Nope, but a lot of frightened tourists, shocked customers, and mutilated books.”

  “Did the police catch any of the mob?”

  “By the time the cops showed up, they had all vanished into Picadilly Circus and Regent Street.”

  “Surveillance cameras catch them?”

  “You know how useful those are. Their faces were hidden and they just scattered all over the West End from Regent Street to Shaftesbury. If the cops are asking the public for help, it means they have no clue.”

  “So they already knew how to scatter,” I said. “They planned it all the way to their getaway.”

  “Has this gotten interesting enough for you yet?” Marcie asked.

  “I promised I’d help, Marcie. Let’s talk first thing Monday.”

  “Have fun with the folks.”

  She hung up.

  When I first joined the agency, I often wondered if Marcie fancied me for all the easy flirting. Eventually I realized that she just liked flirting with everyone.

  “You are so full of shit,” said Sanjita, joining me in the garden so she could light a cigarette.

  “Why, I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “Oh, private eye work is really boring,” she said, imitating my breezy voice. “Just following cheating spouses and looking them up on the Internet.”

  “Hey, if I told Mum and Dad the really crazy shit I really got up to with my coworkers, they would freak the fuck out.”

  “Ooo-er.”

  “May they never find out,” I said.

  “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  We glanced at Mum and Dad chatting with Vivek, Mum doting on him, Dad expounding something about being a good husband. Poor guy.

  “He actually enjoys that,” Sanji said.

  “You know, you and Vivek could just elope. Get married at the Registry, then fuck off for the honeymoon before anyone knows it.”

  “Believe me, we thought about it, but once we get back, Mum and Dad will just insist on throwing a big fuck-off ceremony again. Back to Square One,” she said. “Besides, you see Vivek’s face whenever mum talks about the wedding preparations? He’s actually well into it.”

  She took another drag on her ciggie.

  “Hey, how bad is work now?” she asked.

  “It’s never dull, I’ll tell you that,” I said.

  “You still seeing the gods?”

  “Not so much, and I don’t even need medication.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Money’s mad good, so I’m pretty much sorted, but I have to keep closing cases to pay off everything.”

  “No need to move back in with Mum and Dad, then?”

  “Oh, God, don’t even joke about that!”

  TWO

  First thing Monday morning, Marcie showed me all her notes and the security cam footage of the flash mob rampage at the Waterstones. Sure enough, someone had filmed the whole thing on their phone and had uploaded it to YouTube, so we looked at that footage, too. “Bookshop Flash Mob Attack” had gone viral. It also made the TV news and the papers.

  “Vandalism, property damage,” Ken mused as he glanced over at the video. “Runs the gamut of public order offenses if they’re ever nicked.”

  “Don’t these arseholes have anything better to do with their time?” Clive asked.

  “And it’s not as if any of them was going to go home and brag about it so their mums will turn them in,” said Mark, emerging from his haze for a few seconds.

  “An act of literary terrorism,” Marcie said. “Coupled with some misogynist character assassination against my client.”

  “I just don’t get all the hate,” I said. “Why go batshit over a fluffy celebrity memoir?”

  The book in question was Delia McCarthy’s Confessions of a Bunny Boiler, which was a chick-lit mega-seller last year. Benjamin glanced at a few pages and thought it was a bunch of arse. Olivia thought it was amusing, which was as close to a compliment you were ever to going to get from her. Mark actually read the book from cover to over, but then it was probably easy, since he was stoned that weekend. Nobody asked Ken and Clive if they had read it.

  Since she was Marcie’s client, I didn’t actually have to meet her. Marcie was the one to take point on any face-to-face and had already gathered all the information I needed. Sometimes it was a relief to just get on with the legwork without having to talk to the clients and hold their hand.

  Delia McCarthy herself was far from the worst person who ever lived, contrary to what her attackers would have you believe. She wasn’t some frothing right-winger spouting racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. She hadn’t gotten her start on a reality show. She started out writing for the NME, a no-nonsense music fan from Wolverhampton with a snarky sense of humor. From there she became a tongue-in-cheek agony aunt for the people, got on the radio, got more and more gigs on Radio 1, then continued on to TV, hosting Top of the Pops in its last years, then a women’s lifestyle show, then a talent show, and now a talk show, the TV personality’s version of hard work and paying dues. She managed not to be tabloid fodder, being one of the early adopters of social media to galvanize and centralize her fan following, a mix of young women and young men who liked a funny, no-nonsense female voice. As an avowed feminist, she was well aware of the haters who had always been around since her music paper days. Delia, to her credit, was someone who owned up to her flaws. She admitted to anorexia in her teens, went through a few years of tabloid wildness that were mild by today’s standards—a few drunken pictures from nights out in Soho, photos of the actors and football players she dated briefly—but overall didn’t do anything too damaging that her enemies could use against her. “You just need to be a woman in public for misogynists to want to come after you,” she wrote in a column for the Sunday Times.

  And, of course, she was one of Marcie’s clients in her PR days.

  “It’s not the book,” Marcie said. “It’s her whole social media presence. Her whole public persona that the trolls are attacking.”

  Ah, yes. I’d read through the printouts of Delia’s tweets and Facebook posts. They were all perfectly innocuous ruminations about feminism and empowerment to her million-plus fans, most of them women and teenagers. I wouldn’t exactly call her a proper role model, considering she wrote mostly about dating and finding the right bloke, but they offered mostly sensible advice about not losing their identities to some bloke. Ever since she started using her social media accounts as part of her agreement with the TV company and her publishers to promote her books and image, Delia had often received tweets and posts from men and the odd women calling her names. Looked like envy, since she was a TV personality with a glamorous life that made her and every celebrity a lightning rod for the envious, unstable, resentful, and unhappy. Then three months ago, the tone changed. The trolling became outright harassment, rape threats, death threats, attacking her books, her shows, her looks, her body parts.

  “I’m gonna kick you in the womb!” . . . “fukkin kill yrself” . . . “feminists are a waste of air” . . . “Raped first or killed first?” . . . “I’m going to piss up your cunt” . . . “kill yourself” . . . and on and on for over a hundred pages.

  At first she didn’t take them seriously. She toiled long enough in TV to grow a tough shell. She certainly wasn’t going to kill herself at the request of a bunch of saddos on the Internet. It was
easy enough to just block them as they popped out of the woodwork. Even she had to admit that the people tweeting her photos of their cocks, of executions and animal cruelty, of her photos sliced up was a bit much. She reported it all and sent them to the police, of course.

  Then she got doxxed.

  One of the trolls managed to find out Delia’s home address and posted it online. Three months ago, a man showed up on her doorstep and rang the bell. Her Filipino housekeeper answered the door but didn’t take the chain off because he looked dodgy. He looked like a sad sack in faded denim and trainers and demanded to see Delia. Fortunately, she happened to be out at brunch. The housekeeper wouldn’t let him in and shut the door. Delia came home late in the afternoon to find the cops waiting for her. They explained that the man had stood outside for the next two hours before her housekeeper called the police. When they showed up and arrested him, they found a kitchen knife in his jacket. He said he just wanted to see Delia. He pointed them to a tweet that posted her address, calling on everyone to show up and “get the bitch.” That tweet had been taken down within an hour of its posting but it had already been screencapped and posted to a website devoted to hating Delia McCarthy. That was when Delia got herself some bodyguards and moved out of her house. That was also when she called up her old PR agent, Marcie Holder, for advice, only to find out that Marcie was now working for Golden Sentinels. Delia hired Marcie straightaway.

  “Delia thinks there’s a mastermind behind all this,” Marcie said. “She wants us to track him down.”

  THREE

  I was still being tested. The subtext here was still “Don’t fuck this up.” I was still the new boy around here, even after eight months.

  So far, there was no need for me to interview Delia McCarthy. Marcie had transcripts of her interviews already on file, as well as all the printouts of her articles, her books, and the offending posts and emails from her harassers. Marcie was the primary on this case, so it was her call. I was fine doing the grunt work.

  “Hello, stranger.”

  I looked up—“Julia? What brings you here?”