by Piyush Jha
Inside the interrogation room, the young man—who had now gained a semblance of coherence—was telling Virkar about the sequence of events that had brought him to the Tank Bunder Police Station. His last memory of the previous night was of stopping for a quick drink at the Gokul Bar behind The Taj Mahal Hotel where he had bumped into a slim, young man called Nandu in the crowded urinal, and how the well-spoken and intelligent Nandu had later befriended him at the corner table in the air-conditioned section frequented by medical representatives. Nandu had then ordered half a bottle of Old Monk, and after a few drinks and a lot of talking, had got him totally drunk. The young man couldn’t remember anything after that. He had recovered from his drugged state sometime earlier this evening to find himself in the small jungle-like area in front of the Hindustan Lever Mill in Sewree.
Virkar let out an audible sigh. So that was how the killer got hold of Sandesh Jejurikar’s Kirti Pharmaceutical employee card.
‘I don’t know anything about the compass box, Inspector saheb,’ continued Sandesh, now close to tears. ‘It was only when I had slightly recovered from my daze that I noticed it stuffed into my trouser pocket. It was wrapped in brown paper with a message written on it.’ Virkar picked up the brown paper packet lying on the table next to the compass box. The small, neat block letters written on it said: GO TO THE NEAREST POLICE STATION.
Sandesh’s pleading eyes met Virkar’s. ‘I came here, saheb. It took a little time as I had to walk and keep asking people for directions,’ he said. Virkar now turned his attention to the compass box on the table. On opening it, he found another note written in blood. This one plainly said: Find Nigel Colasco.
This time, the name seemed vaguely familiar, but before Virkar could jog his memory, the on-duty sub-Inspector who was hovering nearby, spoke up. ‘Virkar saheb, Nigel Colasco is a lawyer and popular NGO activist who is well connected with the Mumbai police.’
Virkar turned towards him. ‘Where is he based?’ The sub-inspector, desperate to involve himself in the high-profile case, said eagerly, ‘His NGO office is situated on P. D’Mello Road near the Cotton Green station.’ As Virkar got up to go, the sub-inspector cleared his throat. He clearly did not want to miss his chance of ingratiating himself to an officer from the Crime Branch. ‘Inspector saheb, if you’re leaving to find Colasco, you don’t have to go far. He’s sitting with our senior inspector in his cabin,’ the man said in a meaningful tone. ‘Our senior inspector saw the note and immediately summoned him, long before you arrived.’ Virkar stopped in his tracks, realizing to his dismay that he was going to have to get involved in departmental and jurisdictional politics. The sub-inspector lowered his voice till it was barely audible. ‘Saheb, our senior inspector is a very…er…ambitious man.’ Virkar hated these opportunistic officers who tried to muscle their way into investigations in the hope of gaining some credit.
Virkar sighed. ‘Na jaal, na jhinga, pun dariya mein khas-khas.’
10
The forty-two-inch flatscreen television in ACP Wagh’s living room now came alive with the 9.00 p.m. news playing on the CrimeNews channel. ACP Wagh had had a rough day at the Crime Branch and had just poured himself his first peg of Old Monk. He had received an SMS from Raashi earlier in the day, requesting him to tune into Crime Update that evening. The overly made-up reporter appeared on the screen, the sky-blue contact lenses in her eyes flickering with determination as she stood outside Framjee House, a crowd of onlookers and policemen in the backdrop. She began by bringing viewers up-to-date with the gruesome murder of Dr Prabhat Bhandari and then continued, ‘Today, in Breaking News brought to you exclusively by Crime Update, we reveal the story behind the cover-up of a deadly serial killer.’ Wagh took a large swig of his Old Monk, riveted by the young woman’s dramatic delivery. ‘This heinous criminal is now known in police circles as the Compass Box Killer. Reliable sources have informed us that this serial killer leaves behind a student’s geometry box next to the body of his victim. Each compass box has a note written in blood, supposedly his own, telling us the name of his next victim.’ Raashi paused and smirked at the camera. ‘What are the police doing about this killer’s deadly rampage? We questioned the officer in charge of the investigation, Inspector Virkar, but he had only this to say…’ The image on the screen now cut to a sour-looking Virkar, who intoned, ‘Who are your sources?’ This was played in a loop with Virkar repeating, ‘Who are your sources?’ ad nauseum.
When all the comic potential of Virkar’s pithy line had been extracted to the hilt, Raashi came back on the screen, looking visibly bewildered.
‘Good acting, lady,’ Wagh smirked, draining the last of his Old Monk.
Raashi raised a quizzical eyebrow, slowly milking the moment. ‘We would like to advise Inspector Virkar that instead of asking such questions from us, he should concentrate on his investigation which is fast spinning out of control. The Compass Box Killer has already struck twice. We have learnt from reliable sources that he has delivered yet another compass box naming his next victim. Senior police officers remain unavailable for comment and we dare not ask Inspector Virkar for more information because all he will say is…’ The scene once again cut to Virkar mouthing, ‘Who are your sources? Who are your sources? Who are your sources?’
Raashi appeared on the screen once again, her voice now rising theatrically and her index finger jabbing the air. ‘The people want answers to these killings. We want to know who the next victim on the list is so we can put him under surveillance. The unfortunate episode of Dr Prabhat Bhandari’s death should not be repeated.’ Raashi took a deep breath and continued, ‘We, the people of Mumbai, are not afraid. But will the police listen to us—the citizens, the common man? Or will another person be sacrificed like Dr Bhandari?’
Raashi walked with the mike, unfazed by the thronging crowd collecting behind her. ‘Will the police take any action against Inspector Virkar for not being able to save the life of an honest, innocent doctor, despite having received a warning that he is the next victim?’ Raashi finished with the triumphant flourish of a rabble-rouser who has achieved her objective.
ACP Wagh reached for the remote and switched the television off. He had seen enough. He glanced at the three mobile phones neatly laid out on the white hand towel on the small glass side table next to the sofa he was sitting on. He picked them up one by one and turned them off. He sank back into his plush leather sofa, recalling Virkar’s plea to save Dr Bhandari by requesting he oversee the twenty-four-hour protection detail for all the potential victims. ACP Wagh shrugged off his guilt and coldly evaluated the facts. Self-preservation was his natural instinct and he had honed it to perfection over the years. He began formulating his course of action which, basically, involved doing nothing. He knew that the media would soon start hounding him. He was, after all, Virkar’s boss, the venerated ACP of the Crime Branch’s murder squad. Wagh steepled his fingers, an idea forming in his mind. He decided to remain unavailable for media comments and let the vultures make Virkar their scapegoat. Only when the media went hoarse blaming Virkar for the second killing by being lax about following the clues would he step in and make a sweeping statement that would appease the media hounds and smoothen out the ruffled feathers of his own superiors. He made a mental note to spend some time with this upstart Virkar someday and teach him a thing or two about being media-savvy—that is, if the poor fellow survived this case.
Having neatly worked out the plot in his head, ACP Wagh smiled to himself and glanced at his wristwatch, wondering whether he had enough time to catch the night show of any movie. It would have started by now, which suited him perfectly. Years of experience had taught him that night shows were the best possible excuse for not being available when all hell was breaking loose elsewhere in the city. After all, no one could begrudge a busy police officer his recreation time, his escape from the harshness of his daily grind. He quickly rose to his feet and called out an offer to his wife who was cooking in the kitchen—an offer he knew she wouldn�
�t refuse. ‘Lila, let’s go and watch the latest Aamir Khan film.’
11
Virkar rode his Bullet down the dark, empty streets of early-morning Mumbai. Under normal circumstances, Virkar always wore his helmet, but today he wanted to feel the cool air whip his hair at the roots. The heat generated in his system over the past few hours had bothered him enough to hop on to his Bullet for his occasional ‘dimaag ka dahi’ early-morning rides. He found these to be extremely therapeutic.
For the past few hours, the image of him foolishly repeating, ‘Who are your sources?’ had worn his patience to the bone. ‘Hunterwali’ had lived up to her name. To add fuel to the fire, the repressed mirth in the eyes of all the night-duty policemen at his office had ignited his already simmering temper. A sympathetic comment by an old constable had made him lash out at him, spewing vitriol on the poor soul. By the time Virkar managed to control himself, the mirth in everyone’s eyes had changed to sympathy. Virkar decided that he had better do something quickly, lest he lose everyone’s respect too. He had left his office in a huff, aching for the comfort offered by a bottle of Godfather but deciding that the situation called for more drastic action.
Virkar’s Bullet sped towards the address he had extracted from the scared mobile phone company executive (being in the police had its uses). The object of his anger, Raashi Hunerwal, aka ‘Hunterwali’, apparently had a flat in a cooperative housing society in Andheri West. In Virkar’s fuming mind, the only way he could seek retribution was by having it out, fair and square, with the perpetrator of the injustice that had been heaped on him. He was going to have a firm chat with her, knock some much-needed sense in that pouty, pretty head of hers and show her what her flippant and foolish insinuations could do to his career. In his mind, Virkar started building scenarios that all ended with Raashi falling at his feet and apologizing profusely, having been shown the error of her ways. Virkar could already taste the triumph of putting her in her place.
But as the wind swept over the contours of his hardened face, he began to calm down; gradually, the waves of self-righteous anger began to retract from his mind. He slowed down the Bullet, abandoning his ‘Mission Hunterwali’. It never paid to unleash your wrath on the female species, especially not on a pesky crime reporter. Nevertheless, Virkar still felt the sharp sting of having been the object of ridicule that had played out on television for all to watch. Raashi’s sly insinuation that he had been lax about his work and was indirectly responsible for Dr Bhandari’s death had hurt him to the very core. Virkar had always been known to stick to his guns as an officer and was considered honest and upright to a fault. He was used to investigating his cases with utmost sincerity, delivering the desired results and quickly moving on to the next case without resting on past laurels. And now Raashi had cast aspersions on his abilities.
Being hounded by media was new to Virkar and he grudgingly admitted to himself that he was out of his depth in this crisis. In the ten years he had been posted in Gadchiroli fighting Maoists, he had never encountered such backlash for not having shared information with the press. In fact, he was used to withholding information with full cooperation from the media so that the suspects didn’t know the police’ s next move and could be caught unawares. Virkar suddenly wished he were back in the jungles of Gadchiroli under the moonlit sky with nothing but a bullet to separate him from his enemy. At least then he could see and feel the danger as it came for him.
As he cruised along the empty Worli sea face, he glanced at the turn for the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, itching to turn the Bullet and drive down it full throttle. But he kept himself in check, reminding himself that he was an officer of the law and couldn’t afford to break rules. He suddenly wondered what had caused a young, intelligent man like Nandu to become a hardcore criminal. He thought of the few times he had flirted with the idea of indulging in petty crime in his youth and sighed with relief at having never crossed that dangerous line.
Virkar gunned the Bullet back into action; the soaring phut-phut-phut of the bike was music to his ears as he rode towards Prabhadevi onto Mahim Causeway and turned off to the Western Express Highway to the right. At that time of the morning, he cleared the twenty-four kilometre distance to the Dahisar check naka in fifteen minutes flat. Riding headlong against the wind invigorated Virkar’s troubled senses and he was ready for the refreshing jolt of the early-morning ‘Nescoffee’ sold at the small shacks by the check naka.
There, sitting amongst flatulent truck drivers and half-asleep transporters from every corner of India, Virkar finally felt the belligerence inside him melt away. As he let the final drop of the strong, sweet, dirt-brown liquid trickle down his throat, Virkar was ready to face the media backlash that the first rays of the sun would bring, wrapped in fresh newspapers.
12
Nigel Colasco had stepped out of his house after five days, but even after an hour on the streets, he was getting increasingly restless because of the constant police presence around him. However, he was still greeting everyone he met with his customary smile that stretched across a face that had been weathered by years of exposure to the sun. After all, he was a supremely genial man who had acquired the enviable reputation of being known as a patient and intrepid crusader for the rights of slum children.
Having grown up in a devout East-Indian Catholic family in Bandra, Colasco had developed a passion for charitable work at an early age. Under the tutelage of the priests of his parish, he had spent years in slums and nearby villages, giving hours and hours of his time and resources to every lost cause. As an adult, he had come into his own and established his NGO while continuing to dedicate his every waking hour to the upliftment of the deprived and weaker sections of society. But for the past five days, he and all his actions had become the subject of intense scrutiny and speculation in the media. Why was Nigel Colasco the Compass Box Killer’s next victim? Nosy, self-propelled media ‘investigators’ had sifted through each little sinew of his body of work in the courts and slums of Mumbai. Overzealous TV anchors were thrusting their mikes towards any mouth that was willing to let its tongue wag. Even the watchmen, car cleaners, dhobis and maids from Colasco’s neighbourhood near Mount Mary Steps in Bandra were not spared in the hope of any grain of ‘exclusive’ information that they might unearth about him. Unfortunately for the media, Colasco’s clean life and straightforward dealings did nothing to help spin the rumour mill that could feed the media frenzy. To the great disappointment of channel crusaders, Colasco, now in his mid-forties, had had a perfectly strait-laced career that had begun with an assistantship at a small labour law practice firm and thereafter moved towards him taking up the cudgels for the downtrodden as an extension of his charitable work. They had come flocking to him as he began spending his free hours by working in the myriad slums of Mumbai. Soon, what was an avocation had become a full-time vocation as Nigel opened the NGO, Slum Baalak Suraksha. The plaudits that his stellar work earned in helping slum children get educated and find employment had led to Nigel becoming a familiar face at government offices. The somnolent officials were only too happy to help someone who was doing their job for them. Awards and accolades swiftly began to adorn the cabinets in the reception area of his office while his simple home in Bandra became a pit stop for every visiting foreign dignitary who felt it was their moral duty to empathize with the wretched and poor in India.
After his name was discovered written in blood on a piece of paper, he had been questioned and re-questioned by the police for two straight days, first at the Tank Bunder Police Station, then at the Crime Branch headquarters and finally in the comfort of his small, two-bedroom, sparsely-furnished apartment in Julia Dream Cooperative Housing Society. After ensuring that he had a clean record and knew nothing of the killer’s motive, the police brass had placed him under twenty-four-hour police protection. To escape the shrill-voiced reporters clamouring outside his apartment building thirsting to know how he was feeling, Colasco had decided to stay home until their interest in him died
down. Whenever he wanted to step out of his house, he was escorted by a battery of policemen otherwise lined up outside his door. By the fifth day, though, he had had enough of the self-confinement and the crowd of reporters had thinned.
Colasco had been itching to venture out ever since the police investigation had started, not because he was anxious to step into danger, but because he felt that his absence from the slums would be construed as a sign of fear by the slum children who idolized him.
After spending an hour with the children, Colasco went back to his flat, flanked on both sides by a small police contingent led by the now infamous Inspector Virkar, the person who had become the media’s ‘whipping boy’ over the past five days. As he walked braving the mid-morning sun, Colasco read the agony written on Virkar’ s face. Like him, Virkar, too, had become the city’s favourite topic of dinner-table conversations.
Virkar wiped the sweat from his brow. It was an unbearably hot day and the sun beat down relentlessly from the clear sky. He had earlier been summoned to the Crime Branch headquarters to be severely reprimanded for his slip-up with the media and had been forbidden from making any more statements to the press. In fact, he had specifically been advised to avoid all eye contact with the bite-hungry mike-wielders. And though several people had called for Virkar’s resignation, transfer, or at least to have him taken off the case, he had been retained by his seniors.