by UD Yasha
She was unmoved.
‘Do you want to see a doctor?’
She broke down. She had been alright a second before. I crossed to her and held her in my arms. ‘I won’t, I won’t call a doctor. I promise,’ I said.
But she kept crying. I patted her back while holding her. She calmed down almost a minute later. Maa walked over to us.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘In this house, we will only do what you want. Nothing else. I wouldn’t call anyone.’
Natasha tapped her leg again. I kept her down. Shadow licked her slowly. Within the next minute, she was playing with him again. Maa sat next to them on the couch and stroked Natasha’s head once.
‘Beta, we’re here for you if you want anything,’ maa said. ‘I don’t know why you aren’t speaking, but that’s okay. We’ll take care of you.’
Natasha did not react but her eyes were curious.
As we walked out, I realized that Natasha was doing fine until I mentioned a doctor. Why was she so afraid of a doctor? Rahul veered the car out on the road. I called Radha while getting inside the car and told her about the incident downstairs.
‘I’ll be thorough when I speak to Rucha and Natasha’s doctors,’ Radha said.
We began driving to Koregaon Park. I wondered where Sumeira Gill could be, if Natasha would ever feel safe, if Rucha was alright, and if we could crack the mystery of how Manohar came to trust Sitaram Mule.
Chapter Forty
We reached Secure Point's office at one in the afternoon. It was in Lane Number 3 on North Main Road in a tall commercial complex. We parked in an underground parking lot and rode up to the elevator to Secure Point’s office that occupied the entire fifteenth floor.
We passed through a metal detector and a full body scanner outside the main door. A guard waved us in and guided us to the reception. A young man in a white shirt greeted us. The metal clip on his breast pocket told us his name was Abhay. I looked around. The main area was behind another door that could only be opened by authorized personnel.
‘We are here to meet Sitaram Mule,’ I said to Abhay, lying but not knowing how else to get inside.
‘Let me check. Please have a seat in the meantime,’ Abhay said and pointed us to a couch behind us. ‘May I know why you want to meet him?’
I had two options. Make up a story or tell the truth. I lied.
I said, ‘We go back a long way with Sitaram Mule. We wanted to seek his services.’
Abhay nodded and made a phone call. He stayed on the line for about half a minute. He replaced the receiver and said, ‘Mr. Mule hasn’t yet come to the office but you can wait for him in the lobby. I’ll make two temporary ID cards for you. Can you please provide me with some government identification?’
In less than two minutes, Abhay had signed us into the main area of the office. It was a massive space. There were about fifty open cubicles to my left while a string of glass cabins lay to my right. There was a large corridor between the two. All the cubicles were occupied. The people working in them did not even lift up their heads when we entered.
A young woman walked towards us and asked us to take a seat on another couch. She disappeared somewhere for two minutes and returned with two glasses of watermelon juice for us. We thanked her and took the glasses.
She said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for a while. Someone will be with you soon as Mr. Mule isn’t here.’
We waited and waited, wondering if anyone ever took a break at Secure Point.
We did not see the man who was wearing a suit as he walked up to us because he came from behind us. ‘You’re here for Sitaram Mule right?’ he said.
The name tag clipped to his blazer told me his name was Sashi Kolte. I shook hands with him. He had a slight stubble and must have weighed about a hundred kilograms.
‘That’s right,’ I said.
Kolte referred to his watch. ‘He should’ve come by now. I can help you out if you wanted to hire him.’
‘Sure, I said,’ I said.
‘Give me a moment. I’ll check which conference room is free,’ Kolte said and broke away from us.
‘Mr Kolte?’ I said loudly in the dead silent office.
A man in one of the cubicles looked up at me.
Kolte walked back towards us. ‘Yeah?’ he said.
‘Do you know Mr. Mule well?’ I asked.
‘Yes, we head different departments and work closely together. We grab a drink every now and then as well.’
‘Can we please have a word with you in private?’
Kolte narrowed his eyes. ‘What's the matter?'
‘Something’s wrong. We need to speak to you about Mule.’
‘About Mule? What do you mean?’
‘It’s difficult to explain all of this. But we can’t. We need to be careful.’
Kolte looked around and rubbed his nose once. ‘Alright, come with me,’ he said.
We followed Kolte down the big corridor. The roof was high and as shiny as the tiles on the floor. We passed several conference rooms and even more cubicles. We eventually reached Sashi Kolte’s office after a minute. It had wall length glass windows and shiny marble flooring. I looked out the window and marvelled at the colour of the sky. It was past noon but it seemed like early evening. Light grey clouds had gathered in the distance.
Kolte held the door open for us as we got in. The office itself had several shelves, various books on law and technology and four certificates highlighting different achievements.
Kolte took a seat on the other side of a glass top desk and said, ‘Tell me now. What’s the matter?’
‘I am Siya Rajput and this my colleague Rahul. I'm a lawyer and a private detective. I'm working on a case that involves Sitaram Mule.'
Kolte’s eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘I thought you were seeking Mule’s services.’
‘My client was working with Mule,’ I said.
Kolte was confused. And alarmed. ‘Can you tell me what’s happening here?’
‘I request you to please bear with us for a few minutes. We’ll tell you everything you want to know. This is a serious matter.’
‘All matters concerning Secure Point are serious because of the kind of work we do,’ Kolte said.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, what is it that Secure Point does exactly?’
‘First tell me what work you have with Mule,’ Kolte said.
Silence. Rahul and I exchanged glances.
‘Alright, I’ll go first,’ Kolte said. ‘Secure Point is a security analytics company. We help organisations and governments stay secure online. We do active threat detection and elimination for several large organisations across the world.'
‘Computer and network security?’
‘Not just that. We go deeper. There's always a human mind behind every threat, whether it be a hack, a virus, a case of surveillance or anything else that you can think of. The human is pulling the strings. We try to get the human. Because that reduces the chances of the same threat coming back with the same strength right away. It's a never-ending process. Like in various organisations, most people can be replaced with relative ease. But there's always a gestation period before the new person takes over completely. In our world of cybersecurity, even a five-second delay can result in a loss of millions of dollars. We also work with various governments. For them, a five-second advantage can result in a massive strategic advantage—that again will result in saving a lot of money and gaining invaluable tactical advantage. When we take out the mastermind, we save much more than five seconds.’
‘What do you mean when you said we take out the mastermind?'
Kolte laughed. ‘I’m not talking about executing the person. Sorry if it came out that way. What I mean by that is we get evidence against the person and hand it over to the police. Because we are thorough at every step, the police are able to nab the criminal. In the meantime, we track the criminal closely and make sure he doesn’t flee. Our expertise, as I said, lies in closing out the th
reat.’ Kolte gauged us after he finished speaking. ‘What are you here for exactly?’ he said.
‘We were investigating a clue that led us to Sitaram Mule’s house. We found him dead in the bathroom of his house,’ I said.
Kolte’s face turned pale in a jiffy. ‘What? When?’
‘We suspect he was killed around midnight yesterday.’
‘What’s this case?’
‘Before we say anything more, we need your word that you will not tell anyone what we discuss.’
‘That’s going to be hard. Our man has gone down. Can you please tell me what happened?’
We did not know if we could trust Kolte. So, we told Kolte about what was there in the public domain from the four murders and Rucha’s disappearance to the murder of Sitaram Mule. It was good enough information to get him interested without revealing our cards.
‘We want to know why and how Manohar, who was so afraid to trust anyone, teamed up with Mule. Can you please tell us about him?’ I said.
‘Mule was a quirky man. He had his way of going about everything but you could never hate him. He was an oddball. You should have seen him. He could light up any room he walked into. I'm not kidding but he could make people laugh at a funeral if he wanted to. He lifted everyone’s spirits. Apart from that, he was excellent at his job. He was a man of great reputation,' Kolte said.
‘Was something wrong at work?’ Rahul said.
‘I don’t think so but I’ll verify. At Secure Point, we strive to be transparent and corruption free. So, all the department heads can access each other's every keystroke. It screws with privacy but what the hell, we hack people for a living.'
‘What department did Mule head?’ Rahul asked.
‘Active Threat Detection.’
‘What does that include?’
‘Hold on to that thought. Just give me a moment,’ Kolte said.
A minute later, Kolte looked back at us. He had turned white. ‘This can’t be right. You wouldn’t believe what I just found,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said, knowing something was wrong.
Chapter Forty-One
Across the city, Radha and Atharva were going through their respective tasks. Radha realized very quickly that the desktop and laptops that they had found at Mule’s house were secured by extremely advanced encryption. It would take days to crack it.
Radha texted Siya, giving her the update.
She wanted to send a working copy of the data to Salim Khan. But she could not even copy the data because of the encryption. Mule knew what he was doing when he secured his laptops.
Finding the exact location of the massive warehouse like building based on just its blueprint was also going to be tough. But the outdated government database made it next to impossible. Radha sighed.
She looked at the blueprint again. She kept thinking about how massive the place was. She wondered if there was a clue in the amount of space allotted to the backup generator. It meant that the operation taking place at the building needed large amounts of uninterrupted power supply.
She knew she was not going to get much with the blueprint on its own. She updated Siya with her lack of progress again. She needed a change of scene after hitting roadblocks for more than forty minutes. She decided to take a stroll around the house. She went to maa’s room. Atharva was inside, sitting on a chair, reading the account statements that Rathod had shared with Siya.
‘Any luck?’ Radha asked him.
‘The secretaries of both the doctors have asked me to call them two hours later. The doctors are busy conducting different surgeries,’ he said. ‘I just started going through the account statements.’
‘Can I have a look at them as well?' Radha said. ‘I've hit a dead end with my tasks.'
Radha had always felt a high looking at numbers. Her life had changed at the age of nineteen when she had realized the power of numbers backed data. It gave her hope and certainty in a world where she had always been confused after her parents’ disappearance. In numbers, she found comfort. She felt in control looking at them. Within the next few months, as she read hundreds of books on data science and algorithms, her love for the field only increased. Her passion for it had led her trade stocks and currencies.
Atharva handed her transaction summaries of the account that Daksh and Malini Sinha jointly held. The moment she looked at it, she wondered if either of them had an individual bank account. She got her answer soon when she saw a large amount of money being transferred from two other accounts into the joint account every two weeks. She suspected that those would be the individual accounts where their salaries or business earnings would be credited.
She called Rathod and asked him to check if she was right. He replied to her message right away.
My team found the same. I’ve the summaries of their individual accounts. Emailing them both to you and Siya.
Radha got back to reading the joint account statement. It had the usual expenses. The biggest debits went towards the instalments of car and home loans. They amounted to almost a lakh and a half per month.
Radha’s mobile phone buzzed. Rathod had sent her the statements of the individual accounts. She forwarded them to Atharva as well.
The individual accounts together drew in more than six lakh rupees every month. Different asset management and life insurance companies paid Daksh a commission while Healing Hands gave Malini her a consultation fee. Despite working for just one day a week, she was earning a neat six-figure amount per month from it. Different companies also paid Malini for her workshops. Those amounts were comparatively smaller, and Radha guessed a part of her payment was always made in cash so that she could avoid paying tax on it.
Daksh Sinha’s account had a higher number of transactions as he was a business owner. Six people worked at his investment consulting firm. Some of its expenses and overheads were funnelled through Daksh’s personal account, making the task of inspecting his finances more tedious. There were hundreds of credits and debits, ranging from a few thousand rupees to several lakhs. Radha realized she would need court warrants to follow the money to its source in such transactions.
Sumeira’s account had inflows ranging from eighty thousand to one lakh fifty thousand rupees every month. Most of the money came from the café where she worked. She probably got a fixed salary along with a share of the profit. She also got a hefty dividend from her investment. The outflow from her account was mainly to pay chemists and hospitals for Natasha’s treatment and carry some expenses for the café for which she would later get reimbursed.
Radha moved to Manohar’s account statements. He got money from only one source—Ad Astra International School. An astounding two lakh rupees per month. But from what Siya had told her, Radha knew that Ad Astra was a school for the elite.
Looking at numbers is plain hard work. Still, there was a certain charm to it. Radha bit her nails as she leaned forward. Her face was just a few inches away from the laptop screen. She tried to find similarities between the accounts of the three people. She took her laptop downstairs and worked at the dining table. She opened all three statements on her laptop. Her eyes moved up and down and sideways to spot a pattern. The best way was to find credits or debits of the same value or similar frequencies. She searched for them. That was the most difficult part when it came to analyzing account statements. That both Daksh Sinha and Sumeira Gill were some sort of business owners was the only common thread that Radha had found. But nothing apart from that. She wondered if there was anything else. How can something be the same but still appear differently?
She punched the air when she realized it.
How did I not think of it before?
She had a new theory.
The value of money keeps changing. She knew that just yesterday, sixty-nine Indian Rupees was worth one American Dollar. Less than twenty-four hours before that, the same rupee was twenty paise or the fourth of a cent less valuable. As a trader, it was her job to know the moveme
nt of currencies and stocks.
And now, she had a new perspective to look at the accounts because of the ever-changing value of money. She began looking at the account summaries with more vigour, trying to see if any credit or debit in any of the accounts was of the same value but a different number, as it could be in a different currency.
At the same time, Malini Sinha was staring out of her room’s window. She was not looking at anything in particular. Her mind was somewhere else.
It had just hit her that she would not see her husband, her son and her in-laws ever again. She had been preoccupied in thinking about Rucha. What kind of a mother and wife am I to not have realized this earlier? She gripped the grill of the window tightly. She wanted to cry and let out all her pain and frustration. She was disgusted with herself. How could I be like this? She pressed the grill even harder; to the point that her hand began to hurt. Do I deserve to even get Rucha back?
Tears flowed down her cheeks. She did not bother to wipe them away. She knew more were going to come. She stayed that way for a while. Somewhere along her mind drifted and she began thinking about Rucha once again.
She looked skywards and prayed to Lord Ram. Please let her come back to me. I miss her so much. I promise I would never let her out of my sight. The crying eventually stopped but only because her eyes were sore. She could not breathe through her blocked nose so she took loud and heavy breaths with her mouth.
One image from her memory made her feel better. Rucha was running towards her with a smile that lit up her entire world. How she hoped she would see it once again!
Chapter Forty-Two
A quiver crawled up my skin as I wondered what Sashi Kolte had found. He had still not come back after having excused himself ten minutes back. The air conditioner hummed softly in his office as we waited.
I said to Rahul, ‘This place and the kind of work they do is ripe for criminal activity. I don’t know whether Kolte was exaggerating, but even if half of what he claims is true about Secure Point, their work can trigger bloodshed. Where there is power there is crime.’