Amballore House (36 page)

The mechanical man did this amazing maneuver with its right hand, while holding gasoline in a red container in his left hand. His right hand, now being freed from its baggage, was able to fetch a jug of toddy from Judas’s counter. It approached Vareed and poured some in his glass.

“Don’t get him drunk, you artificial brain,” a female voice coming from close to Rajan warned the robot.

The robot was close to the fallen members of the police force. The machine showed no emotions when it joined the melee created by the human beings. Rajan managed to kick the robot with his unshackled leg, even in his fallen state. The robot, a mechanical man with no nerve endings, did not feel pain and displayed no anger. It simply poured gasoline on Rajan and his partners. The impatiently waiting cigarette lighter, hovering over the policemen, sprang into action, flicked itself open, and ignited the law officers.

Judas Toddy Club’s patrons fled the scene en masse, praying loudly and crying wildly, careful not to get caught in the engulfing fire that started spreading.

Vareed continued to drink his white liquid and eat fried prawns, without a care and seemingly seeing nothing and hearing nothing around him. “See no evil, hear no evil,” seemed like his philosophy while drinking toddy. Suddenly Eli appeared by his side. She finished her drink that he offered her with love.

“I love you,” Vareed told his wife.

“I love you,” that was the only sentence that Vareed uttered during the whole commotion when hell was breaking loose all around him, and mass murders and arson were running amok! Eli admired the man.

“I love you too,” Eli told Vareed.

They finished their drinks, got up, and paid Judas, but this time they did not pay a tip. Eli sent a knowing look at him just before leaving. As they got out, the robot joined them, and the trio headed toward
the Midnight Express that was surrounded by police cruisers. When they got in, rockets fired, lifting the bus. The bus flew to Amballore House, flew over its perimeter wall, and disappeared.

The next day’s daily Amballore
Times
had a detailed report on the extraordinary happenings of the day. The report heavily relied on eyewitness accounts, because the reporters fled the scene as soon as the fire spread, leaving only a few brave, die-hard souls on the scene. The fire that killed the policemen engulfed the entire building and destroyed the legendary Judas Toddy Club, killing people trapped in the building. The entire police force was wiped out, being stranded inside or having been killed already. The report said that there was no sign of any human being having perpetrated any crime; there was no sign of any man or a woman executing an apparently cleverly planned scheme of eliminating the Amballore police department’s proud team. The report said,

If you really think about it, the only culprit that was involved in the crime was a cigarette lighter, which singlehandedly traveled to the crime scene in full view of a number of witnesses and set fire to the policemen. The cigarette lighter stood accused of premeditation to boot, adding to the seriousness of the crime. A charge of premeditation was slapped on the lighter because the lighter was seen hovering over the crime scene, waiting for robot to pour gasoline on the police chief before flicking itself open. Who would have thought that a brainless cigarette lighter could perpetrate crime? Premeditated murder and arson are serious crimes, and a simple cigarette lighter, of all things, stands accused of these crimes.

The paper continued jokingly, “A court of law will have hard time slapping charges on an inanimate object and arresting it and hanging it until dead.”

There was an arresting picture of a toddy jug traveling in midair all by itself in the newspaper. The picture also showed the wide-open mouths of the policemen watching the spectacle. Some upstanding citizens of Amballore were indignant after seeing this photo, blaming the police for salivating over toddy with open mouths,
instead of performing their sacred duty of law enforcement.

“It is important to note that police should not be distracted by the worldly pleasures of alcohol while in the middle of their civic duty, a duty they pledged to uphold and perform while taking the oath of office,” the editorial declared. “There are two perpetrators altogether, which caused the ruckus, if you can believe your eyes: one a robot and the other a cigarette lighter. The robot poured fuel on the policemen. Miraculously, a certain cigarette lighter traveled in midair all by itself and ignited the policemen and destroyed Judas Toddy Club,” the Amballore
Times
reported.

Eli showed this news to Vareed the next morning over a cup of coffee.

The reward that Judas got from the bureau for spy work was reported as not sufficient enough to restore Judas Toddy Club to its original shape and replenish the huge supply of alcohol it lost. Judas now knew the meaning of the knowing look that Eli sent his way on her way out.

By a stroke of luck, Judas’s house annexed to Judas Toddy Club narrowly escaped devastation, because firefighters were able to contain the fire and prevent it from spreading beyond the toddy club.

More importantly, Judas and Elsa were luckily alive.

6
THE TRIAL AND JUDGMENT

The Amballore Investigation Bureau was at its wit’s end. It was at the end of the road, as the expression goes. They ran out of ideas on how the online data could be retrieved after the failure of the kamikaze mission. They suspected that Vareed might be willing to prove that he was beyond reproof by coming forward and volunteering to show the online movie of what happened on those nights of homicides. He might not be interested in doing this unless he was forced. Their tactic turned into slapping charges of murder on him. This would force him to come out clean by volunteering to show the online records.

Since force or threat did not work with Vareed, as evidenced by the episode in Judas Toddy Club, the general consensus was to deal with him legally, and then he would be forced to come around. In such a process, it may so happen that Vareed could prove that he was innocent, leading to identifying the real culprit. Their strategy was to smoke out the criminal through the legal system, whether it was Vareed or someone else.

Accordingly, it so happened that Vareed faced a lawsuit initiated by the bureau on behalf of the people of Amballore. The case was called “People versus Amballore House.” The couple was asked to appear at the Amballore court to defend their case. The prosecution had already laid charge on the couple. A date was set.

Some legal experts in Vareed’s dynasty were immediately dispatched to Amballore from alien’s time-slowed planet.

The prosecution, unlike the defense, had all the support of the people and the government. It was easy for them to prepare their case because there was strong circumstantial evidence to lay charges on Vareed. It was a well-recognized fact that the supernatural creatures had created a colony of their empire in Amballore. Therefore, the judge couldn’t throw out the case, blaming its science-fiction aspects.

By all accounts, the onus was on the defense team to come up with
strong, convincing arguments to get off the hook. However, the prosecution needed to provide evidence beyond reasonable doubt, a requirement in a criminal case.

And so it came to pass that all parties of interest were assembled one day under the same roof in the Amballore court. The people were represented by the public prosecutor, Thomas Geevarghese, nicknamed TG.

The defense team was represented by an ancestor of Vareed, twelve generations removed from him. He looked seventy-five years old, just as he looked when he was abducted by his parents some three hundred years ago. He was a legal wizard at the time he was alive and was a natural choice to represent Vareed and Eli. His name, Pathrose, was abbreviated as “Pat” in court documents.

The prosecution team was represented by the bureau, which assembled a good number of witnesses. They consisted of members from the Amballore police force, patrons from Judas Toddy Club, and concerned citizens of Amballore.

The defense had Vareed and Eli as the accused. Their witness was Subashini the parrot. Joining the parrot was a robot who sat scribbling notes on a notepad. Subashini had earlier been instructed by Pat to keep quiet unless addressed by the judge or himself, and to cut down on her wisecracks. She sat quietly in her cage, tending to her feathers and pecking on the contents of a tray hosting nuts and fruits. She was yawning due to boredom.

His Excellency Pillai presided over the proceedings. He was the most senior of the Amballore judges. He was the chief justice.

The prosecution and defense teams sat facing each other on opposite sides of the judge. The witnesses sat in between them. The bailiff sat in close proximity to both parties.

The judge was a small man, four feet tall, occupying a large chair at the head of a huge oak desk placed on a raised platform. He looked like miniaturized King Mahabali, sitting in his throne. He banged the desk three times and called the court to order. Deep silence followed.

The bailiff called the prosecution to proceed with their case. TG, the prosecutor, rose and looked around. He was a prominent-looking man selected from a large cadre of prosecutors eager to represent the people in this sensational case. He was some sixty-plus years old, tall, bald, and with a bulging tummy. He took his own sweet time to get a clear view of the audience, never missing the minutest of the details. He had a captive audience at the end of his theatrical staring at them.

He stated, “It needs no introduction to state the people’s case, since this is a well-known case of mass murder. We are here to bring justice to the near and dear ones of those innocent lives taken away at Amballore House. We are here to formally charge Vareed and Eli on the mass murders they committed—”

“Shut up, you baldy,” Subashini suggested to the prosecutor.

The wild clamor of protest at this public humiliation of a public prosecutor made the respected courtroom noisy.

His Honor, the judge, ordered, “Order, order! Everyone keep quiet! This is an order.” He banged his oak desk three times with his gavel.

Most of the crowd in the court did not see who was giving the order. The dwarfish man was hidden, sitting at the far end of a gigantic desk placed on a raised platform. There was a stepladder attached to the platform that was four feet high. A prospective counsel was forced to climb up the ladder and walk a considerable number of steps in order to approach His Honor to get an audience. He deliberately discouraged the feuding factions of defense and prosecution from approaching him to court any favor.

People speculated that the court deliberately built this inaccessible and counterintuitive desk on an equally unapproachable platform to give privacy to the judge, who was easily bored with the long deliberations and proceedings and often fell asleep. Not many people knew this, but there was a sofa hidden under his gigantic desk, where he retired frequently during court sessions that induced immense boredom.

The prosecutor could not see the judge who was giving it a go with
his gavel and was shouting, even when the tall prosecutor was standing. He stared in the direction of the judge and resumed his address: “As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by a respected witness of the defense team”—chuckles throughout the courtroom followed this statement—“we are here to formally charge Vareed and Eli on the mass murders they committed at Amballore House. As sole occupants of the mansion, we see no one but them responsible for these heinous crimes.”

The courtroom was gripped by an uncomfortable silence at the blatant accusation delivered without any polishing, like raw meat itself with no glory of cooking, befitting the arrogant prosecutor. His announcement was followed by murmurs from the spectators, like a thousand bees buzzing all at once. The bailiff was taking notes. The judge scribbled something on his yellow notepad.

“Support your wild accusation with proof,” the honorable judge’s desk yelled at the prosecutor.

“With pleasure, your honor,” TG said to the invisible judge.

He then gave a detailed description of the homicides at the estate. He implied that the only beneficiaries of the crime were Vareed and Eli, who would have been threatened by the presence of the new owners if they were alive and continued to occupy the mansion. Their death gave freedom and privacy to Vareed and Eli, he opined.

The judge inquired about the bodies of people murdered. He demanded an explanation of why the bodies were not found. “What proof do you have that the home buyers were murdered? Their bodies were not found, nor were there witnesses to the crime.” His Honor referred to the honeymooners’ disappearance.

“This is something we have plans to prove as we go along, Your Honor,” TG lied.

Eli made herself invisible, left her chair, opened Subashini’s cage, appeared again, and settled down at her seat near Vareed. She was visible now.

Pat, the defense lawyer, could not swallow the raw argument from the prosecution. He stood up and stated, “Your Honor, the
prosecution is making reckless accusations unsupported by solid proof. I recommend the case be thrown out.”

The defense strategy was to make the case be declared of no substance and be dismissed. But the judge did not see it that way.

Subashini flew out of her cage, enjoying her freedom. She took a short hop to the big, fat bailiff, pecked on his wig, picked it up with her beak, flew to the prosecutor, and deposited the toupee on his bald head. She also pooped on his wig, to boot. She admonished the bald man for not taking care of his hair during the days he had hair.

“You should have listened to your mom and combed your hair daily,” Subashini publicly admonished the prosecutor. After the reprimand was issued, Subashini picked up the assistant prosecutor’s bifocals with her right claw. She quietly flew to her cage, deposited the glasses there, and got busy cleaning her feathers.

The assistant prosecutor, a stout, short man with wiry hair, was sitting close to the prosecutor and was unable to block the unexpected theft from the bird. His job was to make sure that the prosecutor got appropriate case notes in time, and this he did by a quick glance at his notes before handing them over to his boss. With his bifocals gone, his job risked getting compromised.