that he go to Colombo and search for Ruwan Kumara’s name in a list of government undesirables; he claimed he could get hold of such a thing. It would take two days and then he would be back. He would leave her his cell phone, though she would probably not be able to contact him. So he would call her.
But after five days Sarath had not returned.
All her fears about him rose again—the relative who was a minister, his views on the danger of truth. She moved around the walawwa furiously alone. Then it was six days. She got Sarath’s cell phone working and called Ratnapura Hospital but it seemed that Ananda had left, had gone home. There was no one to talk to. She was alone with Sailor.
She took the phone and went out to the edge of the paddy field.
‘Who is this?’
‘Anil Tissera, sir.’
‘Ah, the missing one.’
‘Yes sir, the swimmer.’
‘You never came to see me.’
‘I need to talk to you, sir.’
‘What about.’
‘I have to make a report and I need help.’
‘Why me?’
‘You knew my father. You worked with him. I need someone I can trust. There is maybe a political murder.’
‘You are speaking on a cell phone. Don’t say my name.’
‘I’m stranded here. I need to get to Colombo. Can you help?’
‘I can try to arrange something. Where are you?’
It was the same question he had asked once before. She paused a moment.
‘In Ekneligoda, sir. The walawwa.’
‘I know it.’
He was off the phone.
A day later Anil was in Colombo, in the Armoury Auditorium that was a part of the anti-terrorist unit building in Gregory’s Road. She no longer had possession of Sailor’s skeleton. A car had picked her up at the walawwa but Dr. Perera had not been in it. When she arrived at the hospital in Colombo he had met her, put his arm around her. Then they’d eaten a meal in the cafeteria and he had listened to what she had done. He advised her to take it no further. He thought her work good, but it was unsafe. ‘You made a speech about political responsibility,’ she said. ‘I heard a different opinion then.’ ‘That was a speech,’ he replied. When they returned to the lab, there was confusion as to where the skeleton was.
Now, standing in the small auditorium that was half filled with various officials, among them military and police personnel trained in counter-insurgency methods, she felt stranded. She was supposed to give her report with no real evidence. It had been a way to discredit her whole investigation. Anil stood by an old skeleton laid out on a table, probably Tinker, and began delineating the various methods of bone analysis and skeletal identification relating to occupation and region of origin, although this was not the skeleton she needed.
Sarath in the back row, unseen by her, listened to her quiet explanations, her surefootedness, her absolute calm and refusal to be emotional or angry. It was a lawyer’s argument and, more important, a citizen’s evidence; she was no longer just a foreign authority. Then he heard her say, ‘I think you murdered hundreds of us.’ Hundreds of us. Sarath thought to himself. Fifteen years away and she is finally us.
But now they were in danger. He sensed the hostility in the room. Only he was not against her. Now he had to somehow protect himself.
Between Anil and the skeleton, discreetly out of sight, was her tape recorder, imprinting every word and opinion and question from officials, which she, till now, responded to courteously and unforgivingly. But he could see what Anil couldn’t—the half-glances around the hot room (they must have turned off the air-conditioning thirty minutes into the evidence, an old device to distract thought); there were conversations beginning around him. He shrugged himself off the wall and moved forward.
‘Excuse me, please.’
Everyone turned to him. She looked up, her face amazed at his presence and this interruption.
‘This skeleton was also located at the Bandarawela site?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And how much earth was found over it?’
‘Three feet approximately.’
‘Can you be more precise?’
‘We cannot. I really don’t see its relevance.’
‘Because sections of the hill outside the cave, where this one was found, had been worn down by cattle, trade, rains . . . isn’t that correct? Can someone turn on the damn air-conditioning in here, it’s difficult for us all to think clearly in this heat. Isn’t it true that in the old nineteenth-century burial grounds, murder sites as well as graves were often—in fact in nearly every