The Murder Suspect

by Rani Ramakrishnan

  My eyes glittered and my smile widened. ‘How convenient.’

  ‘Try keeping me away,’ he said, setting aside his glass. Kissing me deeply, he took away my glass too. As my body began to respond, I put out my cigarette and gave in.

  ◆◆◆

  If only matters had gone as per plan at the resort, I thought wistfully. If only I could go back in time and change one small detail—keep that door open. That aside, I also had to accept that somebody had murdered him, and, officially, I could be that someone.

  Chapter 11

  Everyone who had been on that trip with us—IndeGen’s champions—any of them could have killed him.

  When Piyush announced the winners’ names for the first time, I had nearly panicked. We had somehow managed to assemble the most potent bunch of people for the weekend. ‘What a deadly combination,’ he had joked, but who was laughing now? Did one or more of them have a hand in killing

  ◆◆◆

  I had vehemently opposed the appointment of Chirag Desai as an IndeGener. Piyush overruled me saying that his decision was final, and it was HR’s duty to accommodate him into our family. I had not spoken to him for weeks because of that. Saddled with the responsibility of finding something for Chirag to do that did not interfere with anyone else’s productivity had been virtually impossible.

  I hated him from the first moment I met him. He saw me as a mother and kept running to me with his problems and silly stories. I felt as though I had unknowingly adopted a child. The experience was exhausting at the very least. His notion of my age insulted me. I refused to believe that I looked old enough to be the mother of a schoolkid.

  Chirag was a child. Like all children, he completely missed the agony he was causing me and tagged along like an unwanted puppy, oblivious to my anger towards him.

  At first, we dumped him on the admin team, but when he almost fell off a ledge after insisting on cleaning a second-floor glass window, I had to agree with the department head that putting Chirag in admin exposed him and others to unacceptable danger.

  The maintenance guys could not complete a full day with him. When he found his way to the generator room and locked himself inside, I almost died of a heart attack thinking of all that could go wrong. The fifteen minutes he spent in there, all alone, were the most stressful fifteen minutes of my life—until then, of course. Since his association with us, we have endured many similar heart-stopping instances.

  Then I had a brainwave. I put him in the mail section. This department had a monotonous work routine: picking up, sorting, and delivering letters and packages. Chirag went along with the delivery staff and returned to pick up the evening dispatch. Things worked until he became bored. Then he wanted to open the packages before handing them over!

  Before we knew it, every department had rejected him, and I was out of options. Piyush was out of town that week. Unable to take a final call on him due to that, I let Chirag spend time in the recreation centre. He could do anything there, I told him, except leave the room. By then, having visited all the departments, he was known to most of the people who came in to rest, hit the gym, or play games.

  By the end of the week, he was keeping track of people’s weight loss regimes, reminding others when their rest times were up, telling the most absurd stories to stressed executives and making them laugh. He was being his usual self, and, in the process, he was making people around him forget their worries.

  This development surprised me, but I realised that children had that impact on adults. So he came to call the recreation centre his office, and we gradually defined his duties. He settled in and was now one of the best performers in the company.

  Of one thing I was sure, though. He could have had nothing to do with Piyush’s death. He did not have the intelligence to plot a murder, nor was he smart enough for anyone to make him an accomplice. He was a simpleton who bore no ill-will towards anyone. He was probably the only one in the whole group whom I could vouch for blindly.

  ◆◆◆

  Among the others, Sukhbir was by far the only normal person, if he could be considered that. Aside from being a loner, he was an ordinary man with nothing suspicious lurking in the closet, as far as I knew. When robots replaced humans in the world, Sukhbir would be a superstar crossover. Until then, he would remain a shy misfit. But was he an oddball who could kill? That was hard to imagine.

  ◆◆◆

  Devyani Shinde! The mere thought of her brought a smile to my face. I remembered the day we met for the first time. She had aced the technical rounds and won the opportunity of an interview with me by brute force. Before joining us, she had been a member of an obscure hacking community. Maybe she still was. They did harmless hacks, according to her résumé, which she had submitted along with a job application for a role in cyber security.

  Hers was a unique résumé that shouted out for attention. It landed as a virus on our cyber security chief’s desk. He spent a whole day cracking it. She had challenged his intelligence through her creative attack. The effort earned her résumé the attention she had desired. He scheduled consecutive technical rounds, which she cleared. Then he arranged for her to meet me.

  As part of our inclusiveness policy, we refrained from asking the name or gender of job applicants. At the stipulated time, a slender girl in formals was ushered into my cabin. Peering at me from behind her large glasses, she told me her name was Devyani.

  She had left out details about her qualifications and previous employment in her application. All I could spot were skill sets and projects undertaken. Was she a freelancer? We were ideally looking for a mid-level executive and both education and experience were important.

  From her appearance, she could have passed off as a schoolgirl. IndeGen had a policy against discrimination based on age. Therefore, we never asked an applicant’s date of birth. But we couldn’t employ minors!

  Caught in a bind because of her obvious youth, the very first question I asked was which year she had completed her tenth grade. I assumed that I could calculate her age from that information without breaking any company rules against discrimination. She threw me a curveball and told me she was yet to appear for her tenth-grade exams!

  The crux of the eye-popping conversation that followed was that she had quit school in the tenth grade due to bullying. I was stunned. Did these things happen in modern Indian schools? She claimed so.

  Thereafter, to kill time, she started coding and stumbled upon hacking. Of course she did, I thought sarcastically. Why would she take up an activity to tackle the bullying—like learning self-defence, martial arts, or boxing—when she could hack into innocent people’s online accounts and spread fear? One thing led to another, and she ended up handling cyber security for her dad’s firm. That information impressed me. It also met the experience criteria of the role we had in mind for her.

  Her father had sold his business and was now moving into a different domain. She had disagreements with the new business owners and was, therefore, seeking alternate employment. This reason for her job change didn’t bother me. We celebrated honesty at IndeGen. I was more worried if she was a minor.

  As proof of age, she handed me her driver’s licence, which showed an even younger tomboy resembling the Devyani sitting across from me. I stared at the document, confused. The name on the licence was ‘Devesh Shinde’.

  Now it was her turn to look uncomfortable. She explained that she was a cross-dresser. What did that mean? Was she gay? Or maybe she was a transgender person? How could I clarify without being insensitive?

  Being stumped like that in the middle of an interview I was conducting was a first. She understood my dilemma and explained matters herself. She told me that she enjoyed dressing as a woman. It gave her confidence and served as a mask behind which she loved to hide. She was neither gay nor transgender. She merely liked to wear women’s clothes.

  The children at school had poked fun at her for that. She had quit and refused to join any other school. She found refuge i
n work and that was how she had mastered her skills in that area. The new management was inflexible with the office dress code, and her preference to cross-dress was causing problems at work.

  I must admit her situation caught me unawares, but it was the most interesting interview I had ever conducted in my life.

  We had to hire her. She was excellent for the role. It also thrilled us to gauge that she would stay with us for a long time. She had no qualifications and her quirk made normal companies uncomfortable. At IndeGen, every IndeGener was just that, irrespective of gender.

  Having her on board took some getting used to though; seeing her in regular men’s clothes on some days and in women’s attire on others made heads turn and gossip churn. But soon everybody learnt to appreciate the person behind the clothes. Before we knew it, her clothing preferences stopped being a novelty on campus.

  I wondered if Devyani could kill. I supposed she could. She was a very stubborn person who rarely backed down from her viewpoint. Otherwise, she would have given up cross-dressing. Instead, she had given up everything else. Under most conditions, her firm will was a positive trait. Could she use the same grit for negative acts?

  The thought itself sent a shiver down my spine. Her hacking endeavours were common knowledge. What if she had another secret hobby—an evil one? I wondered about possible motivating factors, but I hadn’t really been paying enough attention to her at IndeGen to recall even one. Yet the notion caused an unshakable unease.

  ◆◆◆

  Next on the shortlist of possible murderers was Stanley Dubey. I had recruited him against Piyush’s wishes; his scathing objections were on record. Anyone could find his email asking if we were so desperate that we were now recruiting without concern for the welfare of other employees. In reality, I had been at my wit’s end but had dared not say as much in writing. Instead, I had replied that I would take responsibility and ensure that Stanley posed no threat to anyone at work.

  Stanley Dubey was a referral. Alisha Ali had referred him. Much like every other IndeGener, Stanley was the best man for the position. His expertise lay in artificial intelligence, a nascent field of study even today. Giants sucked up experts in this field before they even completed updating their résumés. Every recruiter realised that when he or she started scouting the market for AI experts.

  His technical prowess bowled over the AI team. The trouble was that he had a history—an unsavoury one—because of which most companies were reluctant to touch him even with a ten-foot pole.

  While doing his masters, he served time in a sexual assault case. A medical examination of the victim failed to establish rape. Several witnesses turned hostile during the trial, and the court ruled in Stanley’s favour. Thankfully for him, his thesis had been a hit, and he had made bail to attend the final exams.

  After his acquittal, he joined a bunch of friends in their venture. He fared well enough over there and became the chief technology officer. Then one of the firm’s female employees complained of sexual harassment to the HR department. That was the end of his career there. He was dismissed, and the woman chose not to pursue the matter further.

  I made enquiries about the incident. Nobody knew for sure if he had attacked the complainant. The company had not carried out any form of investigation before dismissing him. The complaint had become public, and the management panicked. They reacted in haste to save their reputation.

  Stanley insisted that he was the victim and that he was targeted due to office politics. The complainant’s name remained a closely guarded secret, and Stanley claimed to have no knowledge of who had made the allegations. After his dismissal, they buried the matter.

  My decision was that both scenarios were plausible. One of them, either the complainant or Stanley, was lying. I sided with Stanley on this one. Along with his offer letter, he received a stern warning about acceptable office behaviour.

  Piyush had been my most vocal opponent in this appointment. He was shocked at how, being a woman, I could employ a known sex offender. I could not explain myself, but I believed that not everything we knew about Stanley was his actual truth. He had been honest throughout the interview process. An IndeGener had recommended him, implying that at least one of our employees, a female one no less, trusted him. Due to all this, I ruled that he deserved a chance. Piyush and I agreed to disagree, and I offered Stanley the job.

  That was a few years ago. To date, his behaviour had been above board, but now with Piyush’s murder, old doubts resurfaced. What if I had been wrong? What if he was a hardened criminal? Piyush had warned me that I would regret my decision, and I was on the verge of regret now.

  ◆◆◆

  Hurriedly I shifted my focus to someone else. Anyone! Cyrus Daruwala, the man who first informed me of Chirag’s disappearance. Neither Piyush nor I had chosen him. Both of us disliked him from the moment we met him, but he found his way into our tight-knit family and became a successful IndeGener.

  Not one, not two—three members of the board had recommended his candidature.

  I hated it when board members acted as though IndeGen was their inheritance. Such behaviour was common, and, on most occasions, Piyush, Pandurang, or I, whoever dealt with the onslaught, flung the crap back at the person in the politest manner possible. Cy’s case should also have been dealt with in the same manner. I slipped, and the result was that we had all learnt to live with him being a part of our lives.

  He could be a good person in his own way, I supposed, but I abhorred his methods. He had to take a roundabout route to everything. If he were buying popcorn while watching a movie, he would call up ten of his contacts, find one who knew the popcorn vendor, get introduced, praise the man and make him feel like a celebrity, and then purchase popcorn. Only the most stubborn seller would accept money for anything he bought after that.

  Merely watching his process gave me a migraine. My displeasure at his tactics was well documented and known to him.

  He breezed his way past the walls I erected by keeping others who were in positions of leadership close to him. They were all hooked to his charm and bent over backwards to accommodate him. We called each other colleagues, but there was no love lost between us. I would just as soon see the last of him, and I was sure he felt the same about me.

  This did not mean that we were discourteous to each other. Far from it. According to Piyush, we were two of a kind, and that was the worst insult I had ever received. His logic was that we both used our charm to get our way with people.

  The bottom line was that Cy thrived on others believing that he liked them, irrespective of his true feelings for them. Such a person could hardly be inclined to murder, right? The more I considered the situation, the more confident I became that there was little possibility of his being involved in Piyush’s death.

  Then I remembered. He had woken me. He had been the first person in that room—at an ungodly 3:30 a.m. What had he been doing wandering about at that time of night? Could he have been involved in the murder somehow? He was an excellent actor, and faking horror would have been child’s play for him.

  Another thought struck me. What if he had been on his way to meet or had been returning after meeting someone else that night? Was there more than one employee from the group involved in the crime? Had I recruited multiple nonconformists capable of murder?

  Chapter 12

  I was on my second box of ice cream, and the TV was blaring out something about refugees and immigration, reminding me of my plight. I was alone in this world surrounded by potential killers. They were individuals whom I had handpicked to join my company, my only family in the entire world. I felt more alone than I had when the only other family I had known—my grandparents—left me.

  My thoughts drifted to Alisha Ali, our in-house murderer whom I had recruited from Pune’s famous Yerwada Central Jail. That was an experience I had no desire to relive. I had vowed never to visit a prison again, but the way things were unfolding I could be living in one soon. That should beat visiti
ng one, hands down!

  In the early days of the company, money was the biggest problem. Funds remained a critical pressure point, but our monies were better managed now. During those initial years when ten or fifteen of us worked out of the two-bedroom house we called ‘office’, things were different. The only expense that was met each month without fail was salary. Everything else, including electricity and internet bills, was left unpaid at least once. Piyush juggled the company finances and called in more favours than were owed to him to keep IndeGen afloat.

  That was when he first broached the idea. ‘It’s a gamble,’ he told me, but one that we needed to take. We had lost a few people to a competitor that month. Better pay by other companies was breaking us. We could not up the pay to retain our trained staff. Piyush read in the newspaper that jails were having campus interviews. That idea hit home, and he became consumed by the thought.

  The irresistible tax sops that accompanied these recruitments made matters worse. I asked him what skills he expected convicts to have that IndeGen could use—unless he was planning to cater to the underworld. My sarcasm was lost on him, and his enthusiasm prevailed. I promised to keep an open mind and meet a few prospective employees.

  I solicited résumés from convicts who were due for release within the next quarter. I must admit, their profiles were like nothing that Piyush had envisioned. In his utopian existence, he had imagined that potential hires from jails would largely comprise educated individuals serving time for minor offences. In reality, the group included no graduates and few who had committed petty crimes. Their skills were also too basic to be useful.

  I met everyone who had some computer literacy and shortlisted ten résumés out of a possible twenty-five. They had all done either a typewriting or a desktop publishing course. Keeping that as the common denominator and ignoring their crimes, I zeroed in on these ten. Alisha Ali was one of them—the only one serving time for murder.