‘New Market thana area.’
New Market? Didn’t Chakravarty say something about Agarwal’s family having a business there once upon a time? ‘Santosh da, wait for me, please. I’ll set out for your office right away.’
Santosh da’s minuscule chamber was in a garage off a crowded street a couple of blocks away from the high court, not far from where my office had once been. It was deserted now, long past court hours; cars had left their parking spots, making the roads passable for a change. I went by the tea shop that must be open this late only to keep Santosh da fortified and opened the rickety old wooden door.
Santosh da had his back to me and was rummaging through his cabinet.
‘Good evening,’ I said.
He turned around. ‘Hello, hello,’ he said with a shy smile. If he were about twenty-five years younger, I don’t think I would have been able to resist that expression; his kindness would have made me his willing slave. Luckily, his well-greased grey hair and obliviousness to the ways of the world were constant reminders to me not to even joke about it.
Santosh da handed me a thick file filled with yellowing A4 sheets, opened to the document that had brought me here. Looking over the solitary sheet, I felt my little balloon of hope deflate. It contained little to go by—only a brief outline of the account from unnamed sources two-and-a-half decades ago. A teenaged girl had been molested in a store in New Market, in the makeshift trial room. A complaint had been filed against the shop owner and a case lodged. Shortly after, the matter was dropped as the family had been convinced the charge was not worth the trouble. But that too sounded like speculation on the part of someone at ActNow. Significantly, the girl had not been named, probably in the interests of protecting her.
‘Is this all?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid so. I called ActNow to find out if there was any further information, but I am afraid there isn’t.’
‘It’s not surprising. Three decades is a long time for information to get lost.’
‘That is exactly the problem! If this happened now there would be so many media reports— but then you wouldn’t know what to believe, would you?’
‘Santosh da, do you think you could call Prashant Ojha and ask him if he could check the national crime database for any further information?’
‘On this case? But it is so old!’
‘It is worth a try, no?’
Santosh da saw the dismay on my face and relented. ‘Okay, let me see.’
He picked up his phone, but I knew that this was one of those times a missed call would be a waste of time. ‘Here, use this,’ I said, handing him my phone. ‘But call his landline. It’s better if he doesn’t know that I am here.’
Santosh da made the call. So far, when it came to the CCC’s ‘investigations’, Ojha preferred to take his orders from DDG. I wondered whether he would give either of us any time at all. I hadn’t heard back from him with the input he was supposed to gather about why the police had dropped the Agarwal case.
‘You haven’t heard anything new about Agarwal’s death?’ asked Santosh da. ‘No? But I think I may have something. This man, Agarwal, may have been the accused in a sexual harassment case some time ago.’
There was a pause as Ojha spoke.
‘It was twenty-five years ago. And, yes, it might still be relevant,’ continued Santosh da. ‘Could you please just run a search in the database?’
Another pause.
‘But Mr Ojha, we have nothing to lose, isn’t it so?’
Santosh da hung up.
‘He said he’ll call back.’
After a couple of minutes of waiting, Ojha had an update for Santosh da. It wasn’t good news. ‘I am sorry, Reema, it appears that the case is too old. The electronic records go back only till 1995.’
Though I had no real expectation of success, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. ‘That’s okay, Santosh da. It was a long shot anyway.’
I reached home and found that Amit was out. For the moment I was in no mood to face him after last night’s debacle and couldn’t care that he was potentially at risk.
I tried to get through to Mallika Mitra again. Still no answer.
I sat down on the sofa to think. It had become clear what I needed to do, what perhaps I should have done in the first place. I picked up the phone and called Uncle Kumar.
‘Good evening, dear,’ he said. ‘I was just about to call. It would appear that Amit is right about one thing at least: he is being treated as the prime suspect in his wife’s kidnapping.’
‘I feared as much.’
‘And there is more. The ransom deadline was allegedly yesterday. It didn’t happen and Sharma is advising the family against paying.’
‘Has there been any contact by the kidnappers?’
‘E-mail, apparently.’
‘So much easier to fake an e-mail than a phone call,’ I said, exasperated.
‘True. They are trying to trace it.’
‘Is Sharma coming after Amit now?’
‘I don’t know. And you know how things are between us. I could speak to the commissioner, but—’
‘No, not yet. Maybe if this thing escalates to the next level.’
‘If Amit is right and Aloka is in no real danger, it might be wise to wait for them to make their next move. This charade can’t continue indefinitely.’
‘I agree. And Uncle Kumar, would you hate me if I asked you for another favour?’
‘Try me.’
‘Would it be possible to run a check on a man? He is recently deceased, under suspicious circumstances. I have just learned that he may have been accused of assaulting a young girl some years ago.’
I gave him a sketch of what I knew, and then hesitated. ‘The death was being looked into by the police—by Ravi Sharma’s team, in fact—but they dropped it, claiming there wasn’t enough evidence of foul play.’
‘And you think they are wrong?’
‘I think they might be.’
‘Do you have this man’s last known address?’
‘Yes,’ I said, giving it to him. ‘And I do happen to know where he lived twenty-five years ago.’ Luckily that was a conversation we had during our solitary meeting. ‘Lake Road, near the Best Rolls stall.’
‘Oh, those are tasty devils.’
‘Yes,’ I said. It was the one point I had bonded over with Agarwal. ‘And I also believe that his family owned a cloth store in New Market.’
‘That should help,’ said Uncle Kumar. ‘I will do this on condition that you promise me you are not going to use the information to get into any mischief.’
‘On the contrary, I will use it only to get to the bottom of mischief perpetrated by others.’
‘That sounds like trouble.’ Uncle Kumar’s words were only partly in jest.
‘Trust me. I am not going to do anything dangerous.’
‘Never have any words sounded less deserving of trust.’
‘And Uncle Kumar?
‘Yes, dear.’
‘There is another name. Mallika Mitra.’
‘Also dead?’
‘No, but unreachable and possibly associated with the case somehow.’ I bit my lip at the fib. Well, she could be, right? I gave her Mallika’s current address. ‘She used to live in China for a while and before that, she was in Jadavpur, till about ten years ago. Next to Sharma Sweets.’
‘Trust Reema to give addresses according to her favourite foods nearby. How is it that you aren’t obese, my child?’
‘Uncle Kumar, sometimes I feel I am.’
‘Nonsense. You are as bewitchingly beautiful as your mother. And a fair bit less unhinged in the upper quarter.’
‘Enough,’ I laughed.
‘Give me a few days.’
I found some leftovers of questionable provenance in the fridge and as I scoffed them down in front on my laptop, I hit Google once again. I was certain that some more information must be available about Agarwal and his business.
I began by t
rawling through pages of references to Prakash Agarwal, thinking I may have missed something the first time around. Nothing relevant. I went back to the company website but found little more there.
Then I decided to key in a new query: Mayank Gupta.
Up popped the same social-networking links. I ignored most of them, opening a few here and there to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. It wasn’t till I opened the second page of results that I spotted something promising. I clicked.
It was a news story regarding an awards ceremony held in Hong Kong, organized by the Indian chamber of commerce there. It named a number of local businessmen of Indian origin who were being honoured; amongst them was Mayank Gupta. ‘Gupta has for over a decade been the ambassador of Indian food in China and beyond, bringing the full gamut of South Asian flavours to the Far East. But this is not why he is being recognized today—it is his new business ventures, including the introduction of the highest grade of Indian jewellery and lifestyle products, that has earned him this award from our association.’
On the right side of the page was a picture of the consul general of India in Hong Kong giving an address. I followed the link to the picture gallery, scrolling through them as fast as my Internet connection would let me. The captions popped up before the images. ‘Mayank Gupta accepting his citation from the CG,’ it said. I waited for the picture to open.
It did. And if I wasn’t completely mistaken, it was Shayak Gupta!
I took in every detail. Could my eyes be lying? The man in the picture had greying hair and the man I met at the bar—and thought I had just seen today again—had predominantly black hair. It hadn’t looked dyed to me, but it was always possible. This picture had been taken from an awkward angle, as the two men shook hands. The man called Mayank here seemed to have a bit of a belly, which had been notably absent from the lithe frame of the man I met at Ginger. But once again, nothing a couple of months at the gym couldn’t fix.
Yet why would a random stranger give me a fake name? If he was married and looking to get lucky? I wracked my brains for a mention of Mayank Gupta’s family in the bio I had read earlier that day but came up blank.
If the man I met was Agarwal’s business partner and had been in Calcutta for the past few days, why hadn’t he visited Mrs Agarwal yet?
There was another possibility, of course: that Shayak and Mayank Gupta were related. Perhaps the picture made too much of a strong family resemblance. Shayak may even be involved in the company for all I knew and might have been sent here to follow up on the Agarwal business—or worse, take care of it.
fourteen
In the bustle of the previous day, I hadn’t had the time to review the evidence I had collected from Amit’s house, and I finally got down to that the next morning. I had taken Amit’s fingerprints to exclude them from the lot and had lifted a couple from Aloka’s hairbrush in the hope of doing the same with hers. It didn’t take me long to realize that the only prints I had collected belonged to the two inhabitants of the house.
I turned my attention to the photographs, examining each one for anything that might seem out of place or unusual. At the end of it all, I was still as confused about the break-in as when I began.
I decided that I would have to return to try and learn more. After all, it was the only lead we had at the moment. It had happened in the afternoon, and it was possible that someone had seen something.
The night before, after Amit had returned, we had gone over all the places Aloka might be. The company guesthouses and factories were all out, as was anything else that Aloka would be able to identify as her father’s property. But I was getting the feeling that there was something staring me in the face that I wasn’t quite seeing.
I found Amit awake and on my battered blue sofa. He had folded his blanket neatly and placed the pillow on top of it. He was reading the paper and sipping a cup of coffee, which he took, like me, strong, black and sugarless.
‘There’s a cup for you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, walking over to the counter I called the kitchen to retrieve it.
‘Have you heard anything from Mr Kumar?’
‘He’s working on it,’ I said. ‘I need to get back into your flat.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Amit, folding the newspaper.
‘I don’t think that is a good idea.’
‘Reema, don’t be silly.’
‘There is nothing silly about it. Why go back and put yourself at possible risk?’
He brooded over this for a while.
‘Have you heard anything new from your friends?’
‘Only that there has been no news from the kidnappers, and the family is beginning to get restless. Aloka’s mother is inconsolable.’
‘Do you think she knows?’
‘I am not sure. Even if she does, I doubt she has much say in the matter.’
‘I don’t see what we can really do either. Without any evidence, your theory is just a theory.’
‘Can’t we try to find her?’
‘Based on what? Do you have any idea where they might be holding her?’
He shook his head.
‘Then till they make some sort of contact again; our best hope is that your intruder did something stupid.’
At Amit’s flat, I looked for anything that might give away what the trespassers were after. Amit believed that Aloka’s family was looking for evidence to plant in order to frame him. If he was right, it could be even the smallest thing—a sock, a dirty tissue, a book.
I looked around the small area which passed for a bedroom. Beside the double bed was a small rickety table with teacup stains and dust embedded in the peeling paint. On it was a simply framed photograph of Amit and Aloka. I hadn’t seen her in years, but she looked exactly how I remembered her.
There was no way to say when the photograph had been taken; it could have easily been when Amit had been seeing Aloka while I was studying in the US. In fact, it was the probable explanation, for they had the glow of new love, and Amit lacked the gaunt look that seemed to stick to him now like a hungry leech. They stood in front of a one-storey white-and-green house, fringed by palm trees. It might have been the old beach house I had been to in Digha.
I forced myself to put the photograph down and move onto the little chest of drawers on which a mirror had been propped up. Face cream, deodorant and perfume. A lipstick. But where was the hairbrush I had left there the last time? The one I had taken the prints from?
I checked the bathroom, and I didn’t find it there either. I opened the cupboard. No hairbrush, of course, but surely there had been three pairs of jeans, not two, hanging there amongst Aloka’s clothes?
I surveyed the rest of the house carefully, but it did not seem as though anything else was out of place. I turned off the lights and slipped out quietly. I bent down and picked up a corner of the floor mat. Nothing there, apart from a thick layer of muck.
I straightened up, dusted off my hands and turned in the direction of the stairs. But who I saw as I did so made me stop dead in my tracks.
‘Uncle Sharma,’ I said shakily.
His face was decidedly humourless. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I had come to meet my friend,’ I said, ignoring for the moment that he had caught me elbow deep under the doormat.
‘She is not at home. Haven’t you heard? She’s been kidnapped,’ said Sharma, face taut.
‘Yes, I know that! I meant her husband, Amit.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘He’s not at home. I’ve been looking for him for some days. You wouldn’t know where he is, would you?’
‘Me?’ I asked. ‘No.’
I tried to move past him, but Sharma blocked my way quite comprehensively. ‘What were you looking for?’
‘I told you—Amit.’
‘Under the doormat?’
‘No, of course not!’ I said with a laugh. ‘I thought I had dropped something.’
‘What?’
‘An earring,’ I said. T
here were quite a lot of those being dropped nowadays, which may have been why it was the first thing to come to mind.
‘You aren’t wearing any.’
Oh. But it wouldn’t do to back down. ‘Precisely, but I thought I had been, you see,’ I said.
I must have managed to confuse him just enough, for he didn’t stop me as I slipped past him. I had made it as far as the staircase when he caught up with me.
‘I don’t know what you are doing here, but if I find you hanging around here again, I will take action. These premises are now part of an ongoing investigation into a kidnapping.’
I was about to protest that I had every right to be there, but I decided it was wiser to cut my losses and make a dash for it.
As I left the complex, I saw Prashant Ojha about to walk into the building.
‘You! What are you doing here?’ he said.
I looked at him rather triumphantly. ‘I am working a case.’
‘This kidnapping?’ He looked incredulous. ‘Why didn’t you mention it when we met?’
‘It, er, came up after that. But why are you here?’
‘They are closing in on the kidnapper.’
‘The husband?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’ And then he seemed puzzled. ‘Who are you working for? How many private investigators do they have on this thing?’
‘What do you mean, how many? Who else is there?’
‘Never mind. I just assumed ... I must be wrong.’
I heard footsteps and turned around to see Sharma exiting the building. ‘Listen, Mr Ojha, I have to go now. I’ll call you later and explain everything.’
He nodded.
It wasn’t for another fifteen minutes, when I had made it as far away from the apartment building as possible, that I felt safe. I had walked as fast as I could and found myself in the neighbourhood of New Market. I was parched, so I stopped to buy a cup of bubble tea from a stall. I stood there sipping my drink, the globes of tapioca popping into my mouth, each as unexpected as the next.
The din of traffic—both two-legged and four-wheeled—shut out everything else blissfully for the moment. The white noise was interrupted by a distant rumble of thunder. A flash of electricity ripped through the sky. I walked slowly towards the Metro, and it was within sight when a man in a black trench coat stepped out from a shop between it and me.
The Masala Murder: Reema Ray Mysteries Page 13