He gets the feeling that she’s just making conversation.
‘What is on your mind, Bambi ji?’
‘Nothing,’ she says quickly. Too quickly. ‘Tell me, am I also on your list of suspected murderers?’
‘Of course,’ he replies steadily. ‘You were being blackmailed – and your blackmailer’s dead.’
‘Oooh!’ Bambi shivers excitedly. ‘So thrilling!’
‘Yes,’ he agrees gravely. ‘But unfortunately, your motive is not very strong. We don’t think your mother’s kleptomania is such a shameful secret that you would commit murder for it.’
She cocks her head to one side, eyes dancing. ‘And so we come to the reason of my visit to you today. I’m really sorry for not telling you this earlier – and please don’t get mad at me – but I was dating Leo for a while. Before he started blackmailing me.’
This is brand-new information for Bhavani. He studies the impishly lovely face before him – the sparkle in the soft, brown eyes (is that why her parents named her Bambi? His daughters used to love Bambi the deer when they were young, but that Bambi had been a sweet, peaceable creature) is somehow brighter and almost dangerous today. Bambi Todi, he decides, is on some sort of mission.
‘We won’t get mad at you,’ he says. ‘And yes, that certainly changes things. Because now your motive is …?’
She gives a little gurgle of laughter. ‘Unrequited love, the fury of a woman scorned, and perhaps a sex tape or two.’
‘Ah. Yes, that would put you right on top of the heap of suspects.’
She chuckles. ‘Knocking Mehra uncle from the top spot?’
He smiles. ‘We never said he was at the top spot.’
There is a small pause.
Then she looks up, and something about her face makes him think that now, finally, they are coming to the real purpose of her visit.
‘There is one more thing I wanted to tell you,’ she says. ‘It’s all tied up with me dating Leo, and it’s … well, it’s these.’
She pushes a sheaf of A4-sized sheets across the table. The paper is thin and crumpled and the thick letters are printed in black ink. They are all variations of the same theme.
Bee, be patient. We put rings on each other’s fingers and promised to marry and one day, we shall. Mehendi laga ke rakhna, doli saja ke rakhna, and all that jazz.
Wait for me. The A to your B.
Stay faithful to me … The A to your B
Save all your kisses for me … The A to your B
He shuffles through them for a long time, then quirks an eyebrow. ‘What is all this, Bambi ji?’
She hesitates. ‘It’s a longish story, ACP. I don’t want to distract you from your work.’
‘Nat at all!’ he says cosily. ‘Please! Begin your Satyanarayan ki katha!’
‘Okay.’ She takes a deep breath, then pulls up her legs to sit cross-legged on the chair comfortably. In a voice that is light, almost frivolous in tone, perhaps to distance herself from the story she is telling, she begins –
‘I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a fun, fearless, handsome, young mountaineer–tycoon called Anshul Poddar. His family was from Kolkata and he was living and working in Delhi. My parents and his got in touch with each other through a network of Marwari friends and they decided that Anshul and I would make a wonderful couple. A meeting was organized, and it turned out that they were absolutely right. Anshul and I got along like a house on fire! Our engagement was announced literally a week after we first met. We would talk on the phone all day, go for long walks in Lodhi Garden, then come back to the DTC for drinks, dinner and dancing. We were blissfully happy.’
‘How many years ago was this?’ Bhavani asks.
‘Three years – almost exactly.’ The light, frivolous tone is fading fast. There is wistfulness in her voice now. ‘My parents wanted an elaborate engagement party, and would have liked a little time to plan it, but Anshul was leaving soon on a mountaineering expedition. His team was going to travel by bus, then cable car, then helicopter, to reach the Nanda Devi base camp. The whole expedition – preparation, ascent and descent – would be about a month long. His mother said they’d rather have the engagement before he left – “Because, beta, whenever he comes back from these expeditions, he is burnt black by the sun and snow and looks like a purple bhoot. Your photos will be ruined and all your friends will think your parents have married you to a yeti.”’
Bhavani chuckles. ‘Good advice by the mummy ji.’
‘Yes.’ Bambi looks sad. ‘I really didn’t mind either way, but Anshul agreed with his mother – he was definitely a little vain. But I don’t mind a slightly vain man – they understand good grooming and fitness, don’t you think?’
Bhavani, not sure where he stands on this one, murmurs a non-committal response.
Bambi continues, ‘My parents pulled out all the stops for the last-minute engagement. It was held at the DTC, we booked all the guest cottages. It was a brilliant party. Anshul and I had rehearsed a dance – it was a big hit. Everybody said we were the perfect couple.’ Her eyes grow pensive. ‘Even Kashi came – he’s my childhood friend, you know?’ She looks up at him inquiringly.
‘We know,’ Bhavani replies gently.
‘Even he said that Anshul and I were meant to be!’
‘How nice.’
‘My lehenga was bright yellow and gold. The colour of mustard fields at dawn.’
This seems to be the high point of the narrative. She falls silent, her eyes very far away. Bhavani stares down at his knuckles, radiating respectful sympathy. Finally, she draws a long shuddering breath.
‘Anshul didn’t want to leave me that night. He kept insisting that I come with him on the expedition – that he could climb Nanda Devi with me strapped to his back.’ She laughs shakily. ‘He could have done it too – he was tremendously strong. And so tall – much taller than Kashi!’
She stares down at her fingers. ‘Finally, he left. I was so tired, and had drunk so much wine that I went to sleep as soon as my head touched my pillow. When I woke up … ten hours later …’
Her eyes rise to meet his, stunned, bewildered, blind eyes. ‘He … was gone! Forever. It was sleeting, the road was slippery, the fog as thick as soup. Perhaps their driver had been drinking to stay warm, nobody really knows. Their bus went off the road, and plummeted into a ravine. Everybody died.’
She stops. Tears fill her eyes and spill onto her hands.
‘We’re so sorry,’ Bhavani says gruffly.
She nods, wordlessly.
There is a longish silence.
Then Bambi looks up, resolute. Her lips twist into a wry little smile.
‘I’ll spare you the grim details. Let’s just cut straight ahead to two years later, when I finally felt healed enough to meet new men. The first time I went out on a date, I found this’ – she places her finger on one of the letters lying between them on the table – ‘stuck to the windshield of my car the next morning.’
Bee, stay faithful to me … The A to your B.
‘I can’t tell you what I went through, Bhavani ji. I couldn’t decide if it was somebody playing a sick joke, or something else … I called Anshul’s parents to confirm if they had indeed retrieved his body from the wreckage of the bus. It had plunged into a river … Anshul was so strong, and such a good swimmer, perhaps …’ Her voice breaks, she wipes her nose with the back of her hand, look heartbreakingly like a small child. ‘Perhaps … he had survived?’
Bhavani’s voice is deep and soft with genuine sympathy. ‘And what did they say, Bambi ji?’
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. ‘They said that he was definitely gone.’
‘We see …’ Bhavani clicks his tongue sympathetically. ‘You have truly suffered, Bambi ji.’
She sighs, and sits forward, resting her elbows on his desk and cupping her chin in her hands.
‘I decided
it was all a silly prank. I know some pretty silly people – they don’t like me very much because I don’t fall neatly into their definition of what a pretty, rich Delhi girl should be – this could be their idea of fun … So the next time a letter came, I ignored it, and the time after that.’
‘You never went to the police?’
‘No.’ Her face grows inscrutable. ‘I thought … I mean, I know it’s silly and melodramatic … but—’
‘You think they are really from Anshul and that is he is alive,’ he says calmly.
She looks troubled. ‘I … I don’t quite know. But … Well, like I mentioned earlier – he was vain. He talked a lot about how good-looking our children would be. If he got … burnt … or scarred very badly, or crippled in some way that he couldn’t climb mountains any more, or do any physical activity, it could have destroyed his mind.’
Bhavani sits back in his chair. ‘You think he has maybe lost his memory, or his reason, turned into a crackpot stalker and murdered Leo out of jealousy.’
It is a statement, not a question. Bambi gives a hysterical little giggle. ‘Well, when you say it as baldly as that it sounds utterly idiotic.’
‘But that is why you have come to us, is it nat? That is what you suspect?’
She colours, bite her lip and nods. ‘Yes.’
‘And now you think, don’t you, that because you have been socializing with your er … childhood friend Kashi Dogra again … that the vakeel sa’ab is in danger too?’
‘You understood!’ Bambi’s face lights up with relief. ‘You’re so smart! Yes! I’m worried sick for Kashi!’
‘What about you yourself?’ he asks. ‘Do you feel like you are being followed, sometimes?’
She looks startled. ‘Why?’ she asks worriedly.
He shrugs. ‘When you go here and there, shopping or to the beauty parlour, or partying—’
‘I do have a job, you know,’ she says wryly.
He nods placatingly. ‘Or, indeed, to the office, do you feel that somebody is trailing you? Is watching your every move?’
She hesitates. ‘It sounds so silly … but somebody was spying on me in the bathroom at the DTC. I saw an eye through the wall. Quite clearly.’
‘When?’
She tells him about the whole incident, adding at the end, ‘But that could be entirely unrelated to all this, no?’
He nods. ‘Yes, it could. By the way, how did this latest letter arrive?’
‘It was stuck to the windshield of my car, as usual.’
‘We see.’ He lapses into silence. ‘Bambi ji, you did the right thing by coming to us.’ His face looks uncharacteristically grim.
Bambi looks at him apprehensively. ‘What … what are you going to do?’
‘You have given us a lot to think about,’ he says. ‘So we will … think about it.’
Inspector Padam Kumar is thoroughly disgruntled. The DTC case is causing havoc with his search for a bride. Just look at today only! It is a sunny Saturday morning, a perfect day for seeing girls – for visiting some nice family, drinking tea, savouring homemade snacks, being respectfully charming to the older folks, and teasingly big-brother-ish with the younger brigade. All the while stealing thrilling little glances at the prospective bride, assessing her beauty and her health, the jolliness of her nature, the competence of her cooking, and comparing them with the other finalists he already has in his kitty, smug in the knowledge that there is no way she could possibly reject him, an only son, six-foota, fair, with a full head of hair and a secure police job!
Instead, he’s standing ankle-deep in the marshy, Chyawanprash-y mire of the DTC’s wretched kitchen garden, sifting through every square inch of mud from the hole in the ground where the accursed body was found, because Bhavani sir has some notion that there may be a clue in there.
Clearly, the colourful chart on Bhavani sir’s softboard which says ‘Work hard, but not too hard’ applies to him only. Everybody else on his team is expected to strain till they get haemorrhoids everywhere, not just in the brain!
Sifting through the mud is messy, back-breaking work. The men are using long spade-like tools that end in a heavy iron mesh. They scoop up the squelchy mud in it, dredge it through the mesh and then look at what’s left. All they’ve found so far are vegetable tubers. Their initial enthusiasm, and the hope finding some vital clue – a key, a button, a watch, a cell phone, anything that could have survived the worms and the germs – has long since dissipated.
It’s a fool’s task, Padam Kumar thinks bitterly, and I’m the fool who’s been delegated to do it!
What makes things even worse is that this place has become some sort of tourist spot. In spite of all the yellow police tape they’ve put up, somebody or the other keeps wandering up to the site, eager to gawk at the place where the laash was found. Some claim to have lost a golf/tennis/cricket ball, some come from the kitchen with tea and snacks, and some just want to scavenge free vegetables unperturbed by the fact that everything growing in the garden has been fertilized by a laash. It doesn’t help that there’s a big parking lot just opposite. People keep walking past, messing with the sanctity of the crime scene.
Padam Kumar sighs and sips his tea. The DTC’s tea is supposed to be very good and all, but frankly, he’s had better. He should really have done what his mummy had suggested. Carried a thermos of sweet, strong, milky tea from home.
Overall, this place is hyped, Padam decides, looking about the sprawling property with dissatisfaction. Haan theek hai, the location is very good, but it seems to primarily be full of skinny old people, chubby children and noisily squawking birds. And you can get better food in the food court of almost any mall. And the décor reminds him of those haunted inspection bungalows they’re always showing in scary movies. Stuffed tigers and moose heads and mouldering fireplaces!
He dips a biscuit into his tea and chews on it sullenly.
A little child comes skipping happily along the path accompanied by that Ganga girl who had been so withering to him the other day. She is holding her sari pleats fastidiously high in one hand to avoid the mud that has scattered all over the path. Padam Kumar, feeling his cherubic cheeks grow hot, turns away hastily and harangues his men.
‘Speed it up! Speed it up! Is this a picnic, or what?’
‘He’s having biskut-chai and accusing them of picnicking!’ Ganga says to the child quite audibly as she passes. The child chuckles.
Padam goes even redder. Much to his humiliation, he hears his men laughing behind him. He opens his mouth to utter a hasty retort, but realizes that they’re not laughing, just talking excitedly, bent over one of the meshes.
Another false alarm, Padam thinks irately. They’ve probably found a ballpoint pen cap, or a Kurkure packet or a stick that’s shaped like a knife or something.
He glowers down at them, disproportionately angry with Ganga, with himself and the world at large.
Then a constable straightens up. He beckons excitedly with both hands. ‘PK sa’ab! PK sa’ab! Come and look!’
They’re going to make me walk, Padam thinks bitterly. I can’t just stand here in this sunny spot and drink my tea. No! I have to pick my way through the filth and descend into that accursed hole again …
Shaking his head, he picks his way over the uneven muddy ground to the lip of the hole.
‘What?’
But then the excitement in the eyes of the squatting men causes his own heartbeat to quicken. As a thrill pierces his heart, Padam Kumar thinks – could this be it? Could Bhavani sir’s hunch be right after all?
‘What is it?’ he asks, and his tone is quite altered from the surly one he’d used moments before.
‘Sa’ab, look.’
Triumphantly, they hold up a mesh trowel for him to inspect.
Padam drops to his knees, suddenly unmindful of the dirt and squelch. ‘Clean karo,’ he says crisply.
With slightly
trembling fingers, the men brush aside the mud and loose grit around the object till it is easily identifiable.
‘Ohhh teri!’
Their gazes lock in a moment of shared triumph then drop down again to feast on their trophy.
It is rusted, partly decomposed and covered in a greenish mould, but every man present can identify it for what it is.
A standard-issue army revolver.
LOVE’S SURGICAL STRIKE
NEW DELHI
In a shocking development, the nation’s much-loved hero, Lt General Mehra, PVSM AVSM Yudh Sewa Medal, the mastermind of the 2016 surgical strike into Pakistan was revealed to have a less than exemplary personal life today, when he was apprehended and taken in for questioning for the murder of Leo Matthew, a celebrity personal trainer who was found poisoned and crushed to death beneath a loaded bar at the gym of the posh Delhi Turf Club.
Shortly after Matthew’s death, the Crime Branch team that was investigating the incident made some discoveries that lead them to dig up the organic kitchen garden on the club premises – which is, interestingly, dedicated to Gen. Mehra’s late wife – where they unearthed a second corpse.
ACP Bhavani Singh of the Chanakya Puri Crime Branch remained tight-lipped, but our sources speculate that the body is that of one Ajay Kumar, the estranged husband of young DTC employee Ganga Kumar who is allegedly in a romantic relationship with the widower general.
It is further alleged that three years ago, the General fatally shot Ganga Kumar’s husband post a heated argument, and buried the body in a shallow grave in the kitchen garden. Leo Matthew somehow got wind of this and began blackmailing him.
It is being speculated that this is what drove Gen. Mehra, who was anxious to be elected president of the Delhi Turf Club, and is very low on funds, to take the extreme step of poisoning Matthew.
The police identified the General by his licensed, standard-issue service revolver, which had been wiped clean of prints and thrown into the grave along with the body.
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