by UD Yasha
Until now.
Previously, there had been two attempts to break into different safes, but they had been thwarted because of an alarm that went off. That was an impressive record. Just two attempts, all failures, in thirty years. But that had changed.
The Safe Zone office was in an area called Deccan in Pune. It was a fifteen-minute drive from my house. The safes were located in the office in a basement.
‘I’ve asked my SWAT team to be ready in thirty minutes,’ Rathod said. ‘If we’re going against someone like Motilal Ahuja, we need all the backup we can get.’
At seven fifty in the evening, Rathod pulled over outside the Safe Zone office. A man stepped out from the office premises and beckoned us to park inside. Once we were inside, I realized how big the entire space was. I wondered how I had never heard of Safe Zone before.
The same man ushered us into a fancy-looking lobby that had high ceilings. A woman in a suit walked up to us and called us into her office.
‘I’m Vibha Mishra, the Head of Operations of Safe Zone, India,’ she said. ‘The robbery was unfortunate. It’s the first time someone broke into one of our safes.’
‘Whose safe was broken into?’ I said.
The woman pursed her lips.
‘Look, we can play games here,’ I said. ‘Or we can cooperate. This guy here is with the police. I am not. I am only a consultant and a lawyer. I know these are tough times for you. I’m sure your clients wouldn’t like to read about Safe Zone’s failure all over the newspapers. Within days, you would have no business left. I have no intention of telling anyone as long as we help each other out.’
Vibha smiled. She was trying to be cocky but I could tell she was nervous. ‘Alright, what do you want to know?’
‘The name of the person whose safe was broken into and robbed,’ Rathod said.
‘He’s a man called Mr. Roark Coutinho,’ Vibha said. ‘We’ve been trying to contact him but haven’t had any luck yet. We also sent a representative to his house but he isn’t answering the door either.’
‘Do you have a picture of him?’ I asked.
Vibha stood up and crossed to the other side of the room. She opened a cupboard and pulled out a file. She returned to her desk and said, ‘Here’s the file he gave us when he opened an account with us.’
‘When was that?’ I said,
‘Seventeen years ago, in 2003,’ Vibha said and handed the file. ‘It’s all in there.’
That’s when dad disappeared.
I opened the file and saw Coutinho’s picture. He was a young man eighteen years ago. The way he looked would have changed, but I was still sure that I had not seen him anywhere. Rathod also shook his head when I shot him a questioning glance.
From the file, we gathered that Roark Coutinho was a lawyer by profession. He specialized in contracts. Back then he was forty-two years old, making him sixty now. He had wavy white and grey hair and was wearing a suit in the picture he had submitted to Safe Zone. There was an address as well. He lived in an apartment on Fergusson College Road, which was very close to Deccan.
I was not sure if Roark Coutinho was this person’s real name. I had no idea how powerful Coutinho was, but I wondered if he was somehow connected to the Viper. Maybe he was the Viper’s lawyer.
I looked up from the file. ‘Do you know who broke into the safe?’ I said, realizing that knowing that could be helpful.
‘We’re investigating that,’ Vibha said.
‘How are you going about it?’ Rathod said.
‘A camera has recorded the face of one of the two people who broke into the safe. At least half of it.’
‘We need to see it,’ Rathod said.
I could make out that Vibha was not again very comfortable with the idea of sharing the video with us, but she got up and went to the cupboard once again to get the tapes.
‘Do you know what was in the safe?’ I said.
‘Even we don’t know,’ Vibha said, and I believed her.
‘How did the camera not alert any of the guards or trigger any of the systems?’ Rathod said.
‘We don’t employ a lot of people,’ Vibha said. ‘It’s all artificial intelligence based. The people who broke in hacked into our system and trained the AI to ignore them as it classified them as friendly objects. We never thought that was possible, but well,’ Vibha said, walking back to the desk.
She had brought a pen drive with her. She plugged it in her laptop and turned the screen around to face us. ‘Here you go,’ she said and pressed play. ‘Look closely at the twenty second mark.’
We waited and watched. The video was clear and well lit. It was fascinating to know that the robbers had just walked in and stolen by having trained the AI. At the eighteenth second, my hands started trembling.
Nineteen.
I felt my stomach quiver.
Twenty.
I grabbed Rathod’s hand and froze on seeing the face on screen. It was the last person I was expecting to see.
‘No way,’ I said, my voice barely coming out. ‘Dad?’ I whispered.
I checked the date of the recording again and again. It was from nine days ago.
Dad’s alive.
Chapter Forty-Two
Who said miracles don’t happen? My head felt light with relief and happiness. There was no way I had got it wrong. I was sure that the man I saw in the video was my father. The quality of the video was good and his face was clear. The other person had the same physique as Vivek Saxena. Vivek and my father had robbed the safe that belonged to Roark Coutinho.
We watched the rest of the tape. My dad and Vivek were inside the room-sized safe for about five minutes. They had walked out of it just as casually as they had walked in. They knew that the cameras wouldn’t detect them.
Dad was alive.
I stepped out of the office, pulled out my phone and called Radha.
‘Dad’s alive,’ I said, barely able to believe the words coming out of my mouth.
I knew Radha was stunned. She wasn’t able to say anything. I told her the longer version to give her time.
‘I can’t wait for him to hug me, Siya. I simply cannot,’ Radha said and started crying across the line and I teared up as well. I bid her goodbye and returned to the office.
Speaking to Radha made it seem more real. I felt giddy. Everything around me seemed to fade away. All voices got shut out. I held Rathod’s hand firmly. Or at least I thought I did. To see dad move, walk and breathe was the thing I wanted the most. It was too good to be true. I realized then that our job was only half done. We still had to get him back safely.
As Rathod and I walked out of the Safe Zone office, he said, ‘Siya, we’re going to get him back. But we also need to consider that he stole from the safe. We don’t know why or for whom.’
Just as we got into the car, my phone started buzzing. It was Jay Parikh. I answered the call and switched to speaker.
‘Siya, I managed to break into Kabir Ahuja’s World of Titans’ account. Your suspicion was right. He was using the game to talk to someone.’
‘Who was he communicating with?’ I said, still dazed from happiness.
‘I hacked that person’s account too. It’s someone named Roark Coutinho.’
‘What?’ I said
Jay mentioning his name just after we had found out about Coutinho brought me back to my senses. I said, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. I even have an address,’ he said and read out the same one that Coutinho had given Safe Zone.’
‘What were they talking about?’
‘Yeah, I was coming to it. It’s about the pictures you sent me where the floppy disk was missing in all but one photo. I think they were talking about the floppy disk. Coutinho told Kabir the evidence is in a tape labelled “381”. I cleaned up the image you sent me and I could make out the 3 and 8. The last digit was not visible.’
‘I am asking you once again, Jay. Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely, especially 3 and 8.’
‘Coutinho reached out to Kabir and told him he was representing a man named Shikhar Kunte. Kunte had some big evidence against someone Kabir knew well. Kabir still promised to look at it objectively. It seems like Coutinho was not very comfortable sharing the evidence with Kabir. But then Kabir convinced him to give him a copy. They decided on a date and time. It was decided that Coutinho would give a copy of the evidence to Kabir on the 20th November at two in the afternoon.’
‘The same day that Kabir and Kunte were killed,’ I said. ‘Did Coutinho say he would give it?’
‘Yes, he said that his client is scared and he’s going to slip under the radar, especially after Kabir got the evidence.’
‘What was the evidence?’
‘They didn’t say what it was except for what I told you. Coutinho said the evidence was labelled 381 and that was somehow important. But Coutinho and his client, Kunte, didn’t want money or anything else. They just wanted Kabir to go public with the information,’ Jay said.
‘This was super helpful,’ Rathod said. ‘Anything else?’
Jay let out a sigh of relief. ‘No, that was it,’ he said and we hung up.
‘I’m very confused. I thought Vivek and dad stole what I think is the evidence from Coutinho’s safe. But then why was Coutinho giving that evidence to Kabir Ahuja? I don’t get whose side Coutinho is on.’
‘We’ll find out soon,’ Rathod said as he drove closer to Coutinho’s house. ‘I’m also wondering why that tape was present at the crime scene where Kabir was killed.’
‘I think the Viper’s men killed Kunte and thought that was the end of it. They believed that he was going to hand Kabir the evidence. So, when they went in to kill him, they didn’t even bother to look for the evidence. I don’t think they knew about Coutinho,’ I said.
‘Then the corrupt cops might have stolen the floppy disk from the crime scene. They would have seen what it was and then blackmailed the Viper, not knowing how nasty he was.’
‘But all this while, Coutinho had the original evidence. That’s the evidence that Mukund Dhar was talking about. An insurance against protecting the people involved.’
‘But how did your father get into this?’ Rathod said.
‘We’ll ask him when we see him,’ I said.
Rathod slowed the car to a stop outside an apartment building called ‘Gulmohar’.
‘Have you called your SWAT team?’ I said, seeing an SUV in the distance.
‘We’re breathing down the Viper’s back so I thought some reinforcement wasn’t a bad idea.’
With that thought, at almost nine thirty at night, we stepped out into the cool night air, eager to know what Coutinho’s house had to tell us.
Chapter Forty-Three
One man from Rathod’s SWAT team would stay outside the building near our car. Ready to drive us at a moment’s notice. Another was going to be outside Coutinho’s apartment. The third, a guy named Kuldeep Shankar, was going to be with us inside.
Roark Coutinho lived on the first floor of a standalone apartment building. Rathod and Kuldeep went ahead and made sure the staircase was clear. The third SWAT team guy was behind me to ensure we wouldn’t be taken by surprise from the back. Rathod had told them that the same procedure they had used for Vivek Saxena’s house had to be followed. First, to make sure there was no danger inside and then start searching.
The door of the apartment was locked. It had Roark Coutinho’s name on it.
‘Stay put. We’ll tell you when to come in,’ Rathod said after picking the lock.
He pushed open the door and went inside with Kuldeep. I heard their footsteps die out as they went further inside the apartment. The third SWAT team guy stood at the door.
Three minutes ticked by and Rathod came out.
‘It’s clear. Let’s go in,’ he said. ‘Even Coutinho’s apartment has been searched.’
‘They must be looking for the floppy disk 381. I wonder what the number’s significance was,’ I said.
All the lights in the apartment had been turned on. The living room had all the things you’d find in the average living room, except that Coutinho’s house had been flipped over completely. There were newspapers everywhere and various drawers had been thrown out of their sockets. The cushion of the couch had been slashed. Whoever was searching was desperate.
The apartment had only one room whose entrance was right down a narrow corridor. The queen-sized bed in the room had been lifted and hoiked up against the wall. Its bed sheet and mattress were on the floor. There was a small balcony to its left.
‘I don’t think they found anything here,’ Rathod said. ‘Otherwise they would have stopped looking. At least one part of the house would have been left undisturbed.’
A cool breeze lifted the curtains and entered the house.
‘There’s something on the balcony floor,’ I said, pointing at it.
We walked to it. In the corner, there were at least three to four sheets of paper. All of them had been set on fire, but had burnt only partially.
‘Someone was trying to burn those papers I think, but weren’t successful,’ I said.
I lifted the biggest piece. My hands went cold when I saw my father’s name on it. It was hand written and inside a large box that had dimensions like in the floor plan of a place.
‘What is it?’ Rathod said, reading the expressions on my face.
I showed the paper to him and put a knee to the ground to look for other pieces of the same one.
‘It looks like the layout of some place,’ Rathod said.
I found more pieces that were probably a part of the same paper. We sat on the ground and started sifting through them, trying to find and match the right pieces. Amongst the burnt papers, there was a handwritten letter as well.
‘That’s my father’s handwriting,’ I said, recognizing it from his notes and diary.
‘I’ll take the layout pieces and you try to put the letter together,’ Rathod said.
I quickly realized that the letter’s right-hand side had gotten burnt. There was enough there to give me an idea of what it was about. I almost had it together.
It read something like:
Mr. Coutinho,
Sorry, I broke into your saf...after seeing the affidavit…hanks for protecting the families …miss them… I have the tape…the Viper down together…have the people…have a plan….you at 11 pm.
Best,
Aniruddha Rajput
‘Coutino is not the bad guy here,’ I said, trying to make sense of the letter that dad had written.
‘The letter is kind of a mystery. Your father apologized to Coutinho for breaking into his safe. And then thanked him later. Just like we thought that he was hiding the evidence for the Viper, maybe your father thought so too.’ Rathod said.
‘Yeah, it looks like it. He was expecting to find just the evidence in the safe. But he also found an affidavit along with the tape.;
Rathod said, ‘I’m guessing it was something to do with protecting the families involved. I don’t know whose.’
I remembered what Mukund Dhar had told me about the evidence being used as an insurance. ‘Coutinho had the evidence. Maybe he had brokered a deal with the Viper to keep us out of it. But if Coutinho had the evidence, why would he not expose the Viper himself?’
‘It may not have been easy. Something would have stopped him. That’s why he did the next best thing by making sure the families were safe.’
‘Dad must have gotten in touch with him after finding the affidavit.’
‘Clearly whoever searched Coutinho’s place didn’t bother to clean up these papers. They weren’t here for the papers. They would have been looking for the evidence…the tape.’
I turned to Rathod’s side of the floor. Even the layout was half burnt. But that was enough for us as it gave us the name of
the building and even the floor. Paradise Heights, Camp Area – Penthouse. We had the address and name of the place. My eyes kept moving to the room with dad’s name on it. Was he there?
Rathod put a hand on my back. ‘We’ll do everything we can to get him back, Siya,’ he said.
Silence.
My phone began ringing. It was Radha.
‘I just found out Jane Doe’s identity,’ Radha said. ‘Her real name is Namita Dhingre. And guess who she worked for earlier? Motilal Ahuja. She was his secretary at the time of Kabir Ahuja’s murder. Then, she was suspected to have died in a fire that broke out at her house a few days later. She was never found after that and it was believed that she died.’
‘How did you find out about Namita?’ I said.
‘Kedar Sathe told me that two of three surgeries whose details I had sent him had been conducted on the same person. Namita used a fake name each time—Namita Ashwin and Madhu Dhingre. Her real name is a combination of the two. Niyati Jathar might have been in on the entire bit. Maybe Namita told Niyati that she was in danger, or she told her a part of what had been happening.’
‘Top-notch work once again, Radha,’ I said.
‘What’s the update on dad?’
‘We’re going to get him back. We just found a clue and we might be close to locating him,’ I said before hanging up.
I said, ‘First, the clerk who worked for Motilal Ahuja died, and then his secretary disappeared. All around the same time Kabir and Sheena Ahuja were killed.’
‘Talk about coincidences that are far too convenient,’ Rathod said.
‘Do you think Motilal Ahuja is the Viper?’
‘To think that a man killed his own son…’ Rathod’s voice trailed off.
‘If someone can kill their own son, then they will have no mercy to kill anyone else.’
‘We need to find that evidence, Siya. Our biggest lead is Roark Coutinho and this place in the layout. Let’s go.’