The Misfortune Cycle: River Desert

Chapter 2

While Torun certainly didn't appreciate the knowledge that Ashraful smelled like old grass under a fading perfume, he did appreciate the convenience of the fact that the man owned a motorcycle. Not rickshaws nor Autos went to Gulaiguchi directly. Especially since it was seven thirty in the evening.

And as Ashraful's motorcycle jumped up and down prowling through the earthen roads, Torun understood why. Only a madman would want to get the equipment they depend on for a living shaking up and down so violently. And breaking down in the middle of this place, more or less out in nowhere was a problem all in its own accord. It was only evening, yet the night's chill had creeped out of the shadows, striking them as wind chill. The road was raised and on both sides were rice fields, new paddy green on it. The empty, dark vastness of the fields surrounding them, veiled by a fickle, milky mist made Torun feel an awful lot like they're on a stage, and some amused cosmic audience is leering at their jestful antics. Ashraful's bike ejected a cone of light forward onto the earthen road, throwing ghostly moving shades of every pebble and weed on the path.

Ashraful's bike jerked violently again and Torun felt eternally grateful for whatever divination that led him to reject the food offered in Kajol Haji's house. It wouldn't have lasted in his stomach for long.

Thinking was a bad idea. The tire hit a brick or something, and the bike leaped violently. Torun, suddenly pulled out of his thoughts, felt his waist slid backwards as his body was too dazed to balance himself. The panic led him to grab fast onto Ashraful's waist. There was something solid of irregular shape on Ashraful's hip when Torun's arm touched it.

"Uh," Ashraful said over the wind, "Sorry, the road is..."

"No, I'm sorry," Torun said, letting go, "You're carrying a gun?"

Ashraful nodded as he steered around small obstacles on the road, "Two of them, actually. They're used Magnums. I thought it was the protocol?"

"It is," Torun had bought his own pair of Rugers, "But you don't need it."

"I mean... Uhh," Ashraful let go of on handle of the steering to scratch his head, "I've been shot at during work before."

"You worked as a police detective," Torun was more than a little squeamish at the fact that Ashraful was riding the bike one handed, "Private investigators don't get on cases that serious."

"But we had private investigators assist in pretty serious cases before," Ashraful put his hand back on the handle and Torun let out a slow breath of relief, "Like, arms smuggling and human trafficking and that sort."

"Few get there. You and I probably won't."

Ashraful said nothing to that.

The big, orange disc of the moon had risen into the sky when the motorcycle pulled up next to the docks. Cheap tungsten bulbs illuminated the stalls and tents, periodically the wooden docks that stretched into the river. Gypsy Houseboats were tied near the grey sandy banks, in stasis for the winter. Half a dozen or so people sat on a tea stall, livid in argument. The stall keeper prepared tea without the barest hurry.

"Well, what now?" Ashraful killed the engine.

"We find the boat men," Torun slid off the bike, his arse hurting from the long and bumpy ride.

"How?" Ashraful followed Torun and got off his seat, "We didn't hear where they were quartering from our client."

"We ask that guy," Torun pointed at the Stall keeper.

"Why would that guy know anything?"

"He runs a tea stall," Torun checked his phone. Eight thirteen pm. He turned on the phone flashlight and began to walk down the uneven and slanted earthen road towards the tea stall. Ashraful, although perplexed, followed him.