His lips twitch. I’ve made the little accountant almost smile! He narrows his eyes, shakes his head. He reaches for his Rolodex and flips through the cards. He stops at one. “Let’s see...this one’s new. Yes. We added Chandigarh Ironworks thirteen months ago. They beat out our former supplier by twenty percent.”
I whistle. “Twenty percent is a steep discount.”
He raises his brows, taps the card. “Hmm. It is.”
“They supply iron rebar?”
He shakes his head. “Used to. These days they supply us with bricks and cement.”
* * *
I don’t ask to see the contract with Chandigarh Ironworks. Hakeem wouldn’t show them to me; he’s already wary of my questions. Naturally, I wait until he leaves for the day and then I slip inside his office. I don’t have to collect Auntie-Boss from the train station for another hour and a half.
It’s fortunate for me that Hakeem is an organized accountant: everything is neatly labeled, all receipts are kept. I find the contracts cabinet and open the top drawer. Each contract is filed under the vendor name, which is listed in alphabetical order. I find the folder labeled Chandigarh Ironworks and pull it out. Inside I find an invoice that indicates they are indeed located in Chandigarh, in the state directly north of Rajasthan.
Hakeem told me this was a new contract, so I want to compare the terms with the previous supplier, but I don’t know the name of the previous supplier. One way to find the company name is to look at paid invoices from thirteen months ago or beyond. But invoices don’t always list the name of the project, and there are so many overlapping projects in which the palace is involved. Until I started working for Manu, I didn’t know about the various renovations to the Rambagh Hotel, the Jaipur Palace and the Maharanis’ Palace or that the royal family was buying smaller estates (from Rajputs who could no longer afford to keep up their properties) and turning them into boutique hotels. And, of course, the design and build of the Royal Jewel Cinema was an extensive construction project three years in the making.
The better option, I decide, is to look through the individual folders of suppliers. I sigh and get busy. I start by looking for suppliers whose names indicate they might sell bricks instead of electrical or plumbing or interior furnishings. There are many names ending in “building supply” or “materials,” so I review the contracts in each folder to see whether they’re still an active source for one of the palace’s projects.
An hour later, I run across the folder for Shree Building Materials in Jaipur. The contract, which was for supplying class 1 bricks, ended the day the Chandigarh Ironworks contract went into effect. I understand why the palace would insist on top-of-the-line materials free from cracks, chips, stones and other flaws. The Chandigarh Ironworks contract likewise promised to supply class 1 bricks.
I lean back in Hakeem’s chair and think about this. I don’t understand how Chandigarh Ironworks could deliver the same quality as the previous supplier for less cost when they would have to add in transportation fees. Chandigarh is, after all, five hundred miles away!
And something else that’s puzzling: the bricks from the cinema house—the ones I picked up and examined—weren’t construction quality. They can’t support load-bearing structures like the balcony. So who authorized their use?
I examine the signatures on both contracts—Shree Building, and Chandigarh. Manu Agarwal and Samir Singh on the previous contract; Manu Agarwal and Ravi Singh on the current contract. It is palace policy to sign off on all contracts for their building projects and keep the original for auditing purposes. Singh-Sharma would have a copy in their files also.
But the bigger question is why brick was even being used. From the palace engineers I’d learned that cement concrete reinforced with rebar—a far stronger material—is preferred for load-bearing columns. Bricks are used only in conjunction with cement concrete. Was inferior cement the problem? If I asked Ravi, would he just manufacture false invoices—like he did before? I dare not ask Samir, who would be quick to cover Ravi’s tracks if he thought his son had done anything untoward. Now I remember that Samir made no comment about the bricks when he and I talked at the cinema house last night.
I realize I need to find and take another look at those receipts for the bricks and cement—the ones Hakeem thought I’d entered incorrectly earlier. The same ones I’d then taken to Ravi, who merely crossed out one figure and inserted another. I get up from the desk and go to the ledger where I recorded the invoices weeks ago. Then I look around for the cabinet where paid invoices are kept in chronological order. I spot it and search by date, grateful for once to Hakeem for his annoying meticulousness. For there, attached to the invoice for that time period, are the receipts in question, the ones I need. Here is the receipt from Chandigarh Ironworks for the purchase of bricks and cement. Except...these receipts are clean, unmarked. These aren’t the ones on which Ravi had transposed the quantities with his fountain pen.
Quantities... I double-check them. They’ve been switched! These receipts show more cement being purchased than bricks, the opposite of what I’d noted previously. That should mean the ledger won’t agree. But am I right? I run to Hakeem’s desk and check the open ledger. The amounts there match those on the receipts in my hand. How could that be?
I lower Hakeem’s gooseneck desk lamp to take a closer look at the ledger. Hakeem’s penmanship is so precise the numbers look like they were typewritten instead of formed in ink (Hakeem, of course, has a special fountain pen specifically for this purpose, which he forbids anyone else to use—yes!). Someone has carefully scraped off the old entry with a fine razor blade and inserted the new figures. I recognize this old trick from my time at Bishop Cotton. It’s how certain boys changed their test scores when the masters weren’t looking.
But why in the world have the entries and the receipts been changed? And who changed them?
I can think of only two explanations: the original receipts were incorrect and had to be updated. Or—and this one makes the hair on my arm stand up—someone has doctored the information to match what should have happened—that more cement concrete should have been used to shore up the balcony. If the right amount had been used, there would have been no collapse.
I drum my fingers on Hakeem’s desk. Manu said Mr. Reddy had admitted that he sold too many tickets, and the balcony was overcapacity. There had been more weight on the balcony than it could support.
So, was the theater manager telling the truth or had the receipts been in error?
I’m so lost in thought I don’t hear his footsteps.
“Abbas?”
I look up, startled, from the ledger. Hakeem is standing in the open doorway to his office.
“Yes, Sahib?” I keep my voice calm, as if what I’m doing is entirely normal.
“What are you doing here?”