by Vaseem Khan
‘I’m sorry, boy,’ said Chopra. He suspected the little elephant was suffering from cabin fever. Back home Ganesha lived in a compound at the rear of the restaurant, free to run around all day before sinking back into his mud wallow. Chopra’s plan had been to take him for a walk along the platform when the train stopped at Delhi, but that was clearly no longer an option. He cursed himself for allowing Homi to convince him to bring his young ward along.
A train carriage was no place for a baby elephant.
He knelt and rubbed the top of Ganesha’s skull with his knuckles.
‘I bet they haven’t even fed you yet.’
He walked back to the galley and asked one of the dining staff to send down a tub of fruit and vegetables together with a bucket of creamy milk. The man apologised for neglecting the elephant calf – in all the drama of the morning they had simply forgotten.
As Ganesha ate, Chopra took out the metallic object Homi had recovered from the dead man’s throat. The killer had placed it there, that was all but certain. As to why – the answer was equally obvious to him.
Because the killer wished it to be found.
Bannerjee’s murderer was delivering a message through this object and the single word on the paper wound around it: Aparigraha.
He took out his phone and googled it.
Aparigraha was of Sanskrit origin. It meant self-restraint from avarice, the type of avarice whereby a man gained materially by hurting others. The fact that the word came from a Hindu language troubled him. Did it imply that the killer was from the Indian contingent, or was this a deliberately false clue aimed at deflecting blame away from the Pakistanis?
He considered the tone of the word, what the killer was seeking to convey. It seemed to him that there was an accusation here. Bannerjee’s murderer saw him as a man whose success had been built on the misery of others. Could that be the reason for his death? It didn’t exactly sit with the hagiographic descriptions of Bannerjee that some of his colleagues had provided.
What exactly had he done to incur his killer’s wrath? And how did it tie in with the metallic object in his throat?
He took a magnifying glass from his pocket, and examined it.
Inside the upper disc, he discovered a series of engraved characters – a serial number – all but invisible to the naked eye.
US5281162X.
There was something familiar about the object. He was suddenly gripped by an image of his wife, Poppy, holding something like this in her hand . . .
He dialled her number. Poppy answered in a breathless rush. ‘Hello!’ she said. ‘How’s it going on the happiness train? Have you saved the world yet?’
‘I’m working on it,’ he said. ‘Poppy, I need your help. I’m going to send you a photograph of something. Can you tell me what it is?’
Quickly, he sent her a text message with the image.
‘Easy,’ she said, moments later. ‘That’s a bobbin.’
‘A bobbin?’
‘Yes. It goes inside a sewing machine. You remember I used to have one years ago?’
That’s where he remembered it from. Poppy fiddling around trying to insert one into that sewing machine of hers, thread wound around the bobbin’s spindle. Not that she had ever been much good at it. It was a fad, like many of his wife’s infatuations, one that had passed all too quickly.
‘I need to find out everything I can about it. There’s a serial number on it: US5281162X. Does that mean anything to you?’
Poppy considered this. ‘I think the US must stand for Usha. It’s the most widely sold sewing machine brand in the country.’
A train steward entered the carriage. ‘Your next interviewee is waiting for you, sir.’
Chopra thanked his wife, then returned to the dining car.
The next passenger to sit down before him was Justice Kadir Khan.
A shrewd judge of men
Khan had an air of dignity and old-school gravitas that immediately impressed Chopra. He could easily imagine this severe-looking man, with his helmet of peppery hair, presiding over Pakistan’s most important judicial matters. The black suit and white shirt, with its neat grey tie, furthered the impression of a man who lived and breathed the law.
‘Did you know Bannerjee?’ Chopra asked once he had explained the situation.
‘No,’ replied Khan.
‘When was the last time you saw him yesterday?’
Khan hesitated. ‘We shared a drink in the lounge.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Various matters. Indo-Pak relations. Our respective chances in the next cricket world cup.’
‘What time did you leave the lounge?’
‘At about eight. I am an early sleeper and I had some work to attend to in my cabin.’
‘And you did not see or hear anything else later that night?’
Khan blinked rapidly, then signalled to a waiter hovering at the rear of the carriage. He ordered a whisky. ‘No,’ he said as they waited for it to arrive. ‘I saw nothing. I heard nothing.’
The whisky arrived and Khan took a quick gulp before setting down the tumbler. ‘Besides, it had been a tiring day and I slept deeply.’
Something in the man’s manner bothered Chopra. ‘Is there any reason you can think of that anyone aboard this train might want Bannerjee dead?’
It was as if a switch had been flicked behind the judge’s eyes. The lights went out and for a second he just stared blindly ahead. He recovered himself quickly, seemingly noticing Chopra’s scrutiny. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I cannot think of any reason.’
He reached for his whisky, drained it, then stood up. ‘I am afraid I must get back to my work.’
As he turned away, Chopra said: ‘Why did you ask to come aboard this train?’
Khan turned back. ‘Because I have seen first-hand the consequences of Indian and Pakistani aggression. It is a hatred fanned by the flames of political expediency, a hatred that is baseless. Ordinary citizens bear the brunt of that enmity, a price paid in blood.’ He turned and walked away, leaving behind a surprised detective. For a moment, the former Supreme Court judge had let down his guard. He had become impassioned and the fire in his eyes had seemed all too personal.
A waiter appeared and reached for the whisky tumbler. A small ping sounded at the back of Chopra’s brain.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Which whisky did the judge order?’
‘Sir, it was a Highland Park single malt Scotch.’
Chopra flicked through his notebook, looked at his scribbled observations of Bannerjee’s cabin. He had made a note of the whisky bottle on Bannerjee’s coffee table: a Highland Park single malt Scotch.
‘Last night, did the judge order a bottle of this whisky?’
‘I will have to check, sir.’
The waiter returned within minutes. ‘No, sir,’ he said.
Chopra hid his disappointment.
‘Someone else did, though,’ supplied the waiter.
‘Who?’
‘Mr Bannerjee ordered a bottle late in the evening.’
A woman to watch
Chopra was still mulling over the matter of the whisky when the next passenger arrived and sat down before him.
Mary Ribeiro was as impeccably dressed this morning as she had been the night before. She was not a conventionally attractive woman but there was something about the way she carried herself, a sense of confidence and refinement – enhanced by a meticulous attention to detail in her grooming – that gave Chopra pause. Here was a woman who would have no trouble attracting male attention, perhaps not for her beauty but for her accomplishments and sense of self-worth.
‘Well, isn’t this all perfectly delicious?’ she said, smiling as she slid into her seat. She wore a sleeveless mustard dress with black buttons, an expensive choker and glittery earrings. Her hair was pulled back into a stylish beehive.
‘Hardly how I would describe the murder of an Indian diplomat,’ said Chopra sternly.
‘I suppose i
t all depends on your point of view, doesn’t it?’ countered Ribeiro, not in the least bit fazed ‘I mean, here we all are, trapped on a speeding train with a murderer loose among us. Agatha Christie would have a field day, no?’
Chopra declined to comment. The woman’s insouciance had taken him by surprise. He had assumed that everyone aboard would recognise the gravity of the situation and would behave in an accordingly subdued manner.
Clearly, Mary Ribeiro had no such intentions.
In a way, it was refreshing. At the least, he might expect candidness from the young businesswoman. He supposed that Ribeiro was the face of the new India. The country was changing at an alarming rate; the influx of wealth and Westernisation over the past two decades had transformed the nation, particularly the urban centres. A generation of Indians had been born with MTV piped into their homes, instilling pop-culture attitudes that mirrored those of their Western counterparts.
And yet India remained a country of deeply entrenched historical problems.
Whilst skyscrapers and shopping malls proliferated in cities such as Mumbai and Delhi, the slums alongside continued to creep ever outwards. Caste prejudice, religious intolerance, inequality and a backward attitude to female rights in vast swathes of the country continued to dog ‘India Shining’, as the new nation was often called. In that context, a woman like Mary Ribeiro was a beacon of everything that India’s current generation aspired to.
He recalled what little he had learned from Ellen Howe about the woman – the American had handled Ribeiro’s request to join the passenger list of the Monsoon Express. ‘She graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology. During her bachelor’s, she spent a year at MIT, studying biological engineering. A stellar student by all accounts. The MIT Journal published an early paper by her, describing her as a “woman to watch”. She set up her biotech business, Ribeiro BioChem, as a twenty-five-year-old. A decade later the company is worth in excess of two hundred million dollars.’
‘Did you know Bannerjee prior to this journey?’ Chopra now asked the woman before him.
‘I’d never heard of the man.’
‘Did you interact with him yesterday evening?’
‘I’m not sure what you mean by interact,’ she said, smiling mischievously.
‘Did you speak with him?’ replied Chopra sternly.
‘I chatted to him in the lounge after dinner,’ she said. ‘Though it was more a case of him talking and me listening. Some men do so love the sound of their own voice, don’t they? My suspicion is that he was attempting to impress me.’
‘Impress you?’
‘Yes. I believe one calls it seduction, Chopra. Surely a man as handsome as yourself is not oblivious to the art?’
Chopra pressed down on his irritation. He had expected candidness from the woman; what he did not need was the flirting that appeared to go with it.
‘Are you suggesting that Neil Bannerjee asked you to come to his cabin?’
‘Of course,’ said Ribeiro. ‘We could hardly do it in the lounge, could we?’
He felt himself colour.
‘What I meant was—’
She waved in dismissal. ‘I know what you meant. My God, for a grown man you seem painfully unwilling to call a spade a spade. Let me put this in the simplest terms. Neil Bannerjee and I chatted. He flirted with me. He asked me to sleep with him. I declined. He asked again. I declined again. He pointed out that no doesn’t really mean no. I replied that, in actual fact, if you look up the definition, no does indeed mean no. Who knew?’
‘Did you know that his wife was aboard?’
‘Of course. It didn’t seem to matter to him.’
‘How did he take your refusal?’
‘Like most men of his type. Firstly, disbelief at the idea that any woman on the planet could possibly be immune to his rather modest charms, quickly followed by anger. He leaned over and whispered a few not-so-sweet nothings into my ear that I would rather not repeat. And finally he gave me the cold shoulder. I could have laughed, I could have thrown a glass of champagne in his face. I did neither. I just walked away.’
‘And you did not see him again that night?’
‘Most assuredly not.’ She smiled again. ‘It’s not that I was against the idea of a midnight tryst. And on a journey like this, I might well have succumbed to a less boorish approach. I mean, what a memory that would make! I simply happen to have certain standards. Now, if someone like you had made a pass . . .’
Chopra coughed to cover his embarrassment. He was suddenly very glad that Poppy had not been invited onto the train.
The remaining interviews passed without anything further catching his attention. Certainly no one admitted to having been in Bannerjee’s cabin – the whisky glasses found in the dead man’s suite, together with the interrupted game of chess, remained a mystery. The staff, too, had little to add. None had any links to Bannerjee and no one had heard or seen anything during the night.
This was unsurprising.
Only a skeleton crew remained awake once the passengers had retired. On the night of Bannerjee’s death there had been no call-outs.
It wasn’t until the very last interview, with a cabin steward named Gopal Gadgil, that something broke.
Gadgil initially gave the same answers as his colleagues. Then, as he got up to leave, he hesitated.
‘Is there something you wish to add?’ asked Chopra.
Gadgil’s brow furrowed. ‘I’m not sure, sir. I . . . I don’t know if it is relevant.’
‘Perhaps I could be the judge of that?’
‘Well, I did not see or hear anything in Mr Bannerjee’s suite. But at around ten o’clock I was passing another of the cabins and—’ He stopped.
‘And?’
Gadgil looked troubled. ‘Perhaps it is not my place to say anything, sir.’
Chopra gave him a sympathetic look. ‘I understand. Discretion is part of your job. But this is no time to hold anything back. If there is anything you know, I ask you to tell me now.’
‘Very well. I heard an argument. A man and a woman fighting.’
‘Whose cabin was it?’
Gadgil hesitated, then told him.
The lowest form of life
‘Is there something you wish to tell me?’
James Fairbrother looked up from the desk in his cabin. Chopra advanced until he stood directly before the Englishman, radiating disapproval.
Fairbrother leaned back in his chair and slipped off his spectacles.
‘You seem to have something on your mind, Chopra.’
‘I should have guessed when I saw you with Ellen Howe at dinner yesterday. In a way I did, but there was no reason for me to pry further.’
‘And there is no reason for you to pry now,’ said Fairbrother sharply.
‘How long have you both . . .?’ There was no need to complete the sentence.
Fairbrother stood and faced him. ‘I’m not sure I like the direction of your questioning.’
‘You were heard fighting. In your cabin, yesterday evening. What were you fighting about?’
‘I say again, this is a private matter. No concern of yours.’
‘Everything that happens aboard this train is now my concern,’ said Chopra, allowing a trace of sharpness to enter his own voice. ‘I took the liberty of checking your background. You’re married, aren’t you? As is Ms Howe.’
‘What of it?’
‘You were overheard by a cabin steward cursing Neil Bannerjee. He heard you use the word “blackmail”.’
Fairbrother froze. A muscle twitched in his jaw. In the silence, the door opened behind them and Ellen Howe entered the room. She looked from one to the other and then moved to stand beside Fairbrother. ‘Gopal just knocked on my cabin. He was quite distressed. It took a while to understand exactly what he was apologising for.’
‘Don’t say another word, Ellen.’
‘It’s OK, James. We’re not children.’ She faced Chopra. ‘It’s true, we are having an af
fair. Neither of us planned it or went looking for it. It just happened. We’ve been working together for two years, far from home. We share many of the same tastes, the same way of looking at the world. It was almost inevitable. Bannerjee found out about it a few months ago. He decided that he would exploit the situation.’
‘In what way?’
‘He tried to blackmail us. He threatened to tell my husband and James’ wife. Perhaps we might have weathered that, under different circumstances. But the revelation would have engulfed our families, our children, and most importantly this project. That we could not accept.’
‘What exactly did he want from you?’
‘He wanted to lead the delegation.’
Chopra’s brow crinkled. ‘He wasn’t chosen to lead?’
‘No,’ said Howe. ‘We originally recommended Pravin Sharma to head up the Indian delegation. Bannerjee was the bigger name but Sharma is the more accomplished politician. He is intelligent, articulate and has a far cooler temperament. But Bannerjee couldn’t stomach the thought of a junior man stealing his place in history. It wasn’t until he found out about us that he gained the leverage to do something about it.’
Chopra considered this. ‘How did Sharma react to the decision?’
‘He’s here, isn’t he?’ said Fairbrother testily.
‘That is not an answer to my question.’
‘As I said,’ replied Howe, ‘Sharma is a man of even temperament. He took it in his stride.’
Over the course of three decades as a policeman Chopra had seen many men – and women – take things in their stride. More than one murder had been carried out by someone who had, at first glance, ‘taken things in their stride’.
‘What were you fighting about?’
Howe and Fairbrother exchanged glances.
‘James had had enough,’ said Howe. ‘He wished to confront Bannerjee. I argued against it.’
‘Why confront him now?’
Fairbrother scowled. ‘Bannerjee decided to rewrite the speeches he was due to give at the various stops along our route. Every word of those speeches has been carefully crafted and vetted over a process of months. It is difficult to overstate the sensitivities at play here. A single wrong sentence could derail the initiative. But Bannerjee didn’t give a damn about any of that. He was on the Monsoon Express for one reason and one reason only – to promote Brand Bannerjee. He had convinced himself that it was his destiny to become prime minister. This mission was a stepping stone on that road. If this reconciliation journey achieved its goal he intended to take the credit. But if it failed he planned to blame Pakistan, to promote himself as the defender of Indian national pride. Either way he was seeking to shift the focus to himself and away from the essence of our mission.’