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Read part 18 -here
Read part 19 -here
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‘It’s been over two hours now.’ Jumaid looked at his watch, noticing the uninterested Khar sitting at his desk, pouring over files and sipping tea. ‘I said it’s been more than..’
‘I heard what you said Mr Wasim’ Khar’s unapologetic voice rolled in low cold tones. ‘I’m aware you must be getting bored. Would you like some more tea?’
Jumaid wanted to write off that feeling as mere imagination, but a cold horror had begun seeping itself upward from his toes to his knees which near buckled on seeing Khar in his house, and now that he was sitting in the cold room opposite Khar, facing a large board with a flowchart and photographs his terror seemed to thrum against his breath.
His throat felt parched and the slowly building uneasiness had mingled with the restlessness in his stomach which he felt now grew to a bilious sickness.
‘Why am I here?’ Jumaid finally mustered the strength to ask this question he felt too afraid to get an answer for.
‘Just a few things I wanted to know.’ Khar looked up, almost carelessly, momentarily putting the anxious man at ease.
He was opening and closing a few files and staring at them, pulling papers and stapling what looked like documents. Some mundane tasks he had immersed himself, nothing too momentous which steadily eased Jumaid’s demeanour.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Just a few things, like why was your car parked in a garage for more than two weeks?’ Khar asked matter of factly, watching Jumaid suddenly shake like a leaf before steadying himself and paste a grin on his face that did little to hide the uneasiness.
‘It was..uh..a workshop.’ Jumaid cleared his throat.
‘Yes of course.’ Khar nodded. ‘Why was it in a workshop?’
‘Getting repairs.’ Jumaid said smiling weakly. ‘It is old and I just felt like it needed a bit of fixing.’
‘Not nearly as old.’ Khar said impassively ‘that you need a complete overhaul’
‘It’s my car to do as I please.’
‘Of course.’ Khar smiled. ‘It’s just that Mrs Wasim had the idea that your friends had borrowed it, in fact she thought it had disappeared.’
Jumaid gritted his teeth, the outline of his jaw slowly moving in silent gratings. ‘That woman is an idiot. She has the silliest ideas.’
‘Ah, so it didn’t disappear then?’
‘No, it was just getting some work done.’ Jumaid reiterated. ‘Meina isn’t the brightest person in the world. She has no idea what she’s saying and she talks more than she should. This incident’ Jumaid coughed a little ‘uh..my son.. it has made her mad.’
‘How so?’ Khar asked curiously.
‘She just..she doesn’t know when to shut up, moreover, she herself believes she’s going mad. She develops these funny fantasies..you know..like me and Nehar and so on.’
‘Ah’ Khar stood up from his chair and poured some tea into Jumaid’s cup. ‘I believe Mrs Wasim is under the notion that things have been disappearing from her house.’
Jumaid feigned an amused smile. He smacked his temples in a show of hilarious irony ‘see..that’s what I was talking about. Most of the things she thought that had disappeared were just misplaced. Her bedsheets which she thought were stolen were in the dryer, the clothes in the laundry and I’ve lost count of her idiotic hallucinations. That woman is delirious.’ Majid said cloaking the anxiety building inside him. He sounded stiff and his thin smile kept dying on his face.
‘Ah yes. Like the pruning saw she thought was lost only to be found again in the garden.’ Khar spoke remembering his conversation from the morning, glancing indifferently at Jumaid and watching his eyeballs twitch on a reddening face.
Jumaid to his best knowledge was sipping tea nonchalantly, but Khar knew that his fingertips were blocks of solid ice and his heart a scramble of palpitations.
He gulped noiselessly and avoided Khar’s gaze.
Jumaid wanted to kick his wife’s head at that moment. He’d been consoling himself with the thought of awful things he’d like to do to Meina. That woman who’d made his life miserable from the very moment they’d met, married and mated. God, why did she have to be in his life? this was a question he’d often asked himself, but today, right now at that very moment he was vehemently seeking an answer to it.
It’s most peculiar that in a moment of crisis when you mind rushes hunting for probable answers and quick reasonings that your emotions stop coping with the criticality of the situation. If this was a cartoon, Jumaid thought this would be the moment his heart would leap out and continue beating on Khar’s desk. Make a bloody mess of his files too, serves this bastard right.
Khar, to Jumaid’s annoyance, was still looking at him.
‘Uh..maybe..I don’t know about her gardening things. Like I said. She’s brainless in many ways.’ Jumaid stuttered.
‘hmm’ Khar contemplated ‘and you didn’t help her with finding anything?’
‘I didn’t even know about it. I’ve better things to do than look around the house for things that never got lost. That moron.’ Jumaid didn’t hide his irritation.
‘Well, seems like it has disappeared again.’ Khar’s smile viciously grated on Jumaid’s nerves. He pretended to look oblivious but the quick bloom of scarlet on his cheeks followed by drainage of all colours did little to aid his acting skills.
‘Hmm?’ Jumaid pretended to look puzzled.
‘The pruning saw’ Khar didn’t waver from his line of discussion, ‘It’s disappeared again.’ He spoke looking at his phone. ‘But I guess we will find it.’
Jumaid stood up almost knocking the chair and tripping over it in a haste to leave. ‘I must go now.’ he quickly said and leaped for the door, but Khar was already there, looking mountainous while blocking the exit.
‘It’s pointless Mr Wasim. There’s a search team already present there.’ Khar’s voice was as detached.
‘But..but, no. You can’t do this. You can’t stop me.’ Jumaid stammered.
‘But you see Mr Wasim, I can.’
‘You need a warrant.’
‘We do have one, or at least Pavil has one. It doesn’t take long to procure them, especially given the severity of this case, and the magistrate has been most efficient in his capacity of awarding one without any haste.’ Khar smiled. ‘Is there anything worrying you?’
Jumaid slowly walked back to his chair, holding the table for support. His life steadily leeching out of him, the ground beneath his feet dissolving into a swamp. He felt wet heat burning his cheeks, streaming into tidal pools on his chin. What on earth was he going to do now?
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