Waiting to get the death certificate from the hospital superintendent, Neethu felt dizzy. She had not eaten the previous night. The superintendent wanted to know why they needed a certificate to transport a dead body. Wouldn’t people know that it was a dead body by looking at it?

‘But they won’t know if it had been murdered, would they?’ Bineesh asked.

‘We need another person,’ the man who stood by the mortuary door said. He held the five hundred rupee note that Bineesh gave him to dress the body against the light and examined it carefully.

‘Remember our neighbour Ayyappan?’ Bineesh asked, holding his lips way too close to Neethu’s ears. ‘This was his job at the Medical College. Even now, if he is one of the servers at a feast, some people refuse to eat.’

In the surge of happiness in being able to arrange a mobile mortuary, he had indulged in a couple of drinks.

‘It is in fact like you said to the superintendent,’ Neethu said as the van waited in a traffic jam on Goodshed Road. ‘I did in fact kill Papa. I forced him to move here, and as soon as he arrived, he began to suffer from breathing problems.’

Bineesh stopped the vehicle at the railway station and tried to persuade Neethu to take the Intercity home. It would reach Ernakulam in the morning, and she could take a taxi from there the rest of the way. He would be right behind her with the van, he promised.

Neethu refused. ‘I want to sit here talking to you,’ she said. ‘Otherwise you’ll fall asleep and two dead bodies will reach Kaipuzha tomorrow.’

‘You know what could happen when you travel alone with a strapping young man. The whole journey is through deserted areas and forests. And he is in a box, helpless,’ Bineesh said, pointing to the back of the van.

‘But I know that you’re a wimp,’ Neethu retorted. ‘I have nothing to worry about.’

‘There’s a quicker route once we get to Hosur, just about right for this vehicle,’ Bineesh said, enthusiastically turning the van. ‘We’ll get some food there—some chapatti and chicken kebabs perhaps.’

The van raced along, leaving behind high-rises, and bit by bit they fell silent. Like an ancient spacecraft that had travelled across all the stars, it moved into a deserted landscape, through scrub, woods and rock formations. Every now and then, an animal stood, for a split second, dazed in the middle of the road like a sinner in front of God, before scrambling out of the way into the darkness. Realizing that she was feeling sad not for the dead man but for herself, Neethu began weeping again.

‘Let’s tell some salacious stories,’ Bineesh said. ‘Tell me about the Christian nurses you work with.’

‘Shh . . . Papa is right there,’ Neethu said. She observed with interest the movement of Bineesh’s mouth as he chewed on something.

Farther ahead, the condition of the road deteriorated, and the vehicle rocked as it rolled noisily over stone after stone.