Pretty Vile Girl
Page 15
That part was true. Manjrekar’s father had never visited Mumbai in his life, even though his village was a mere 350 kilometres from the metropolis. His world had revolved around the fifty-kilometre radius that took him to, at its farthest, Kolhapur—once even Belgaum, but no more. Now was not the time to start experimenting with the old man’s bearings.
That afternoon, when Archana took the Roadways bus back to the village, her mind prayed for the unthinkable. She wished for the surviving elders of her and her husband’s family to pass on to the other side, to be one with their departed wives. She pleaded the end to be swift and peaceful. ‘Dear God, all I want is to be with my daughter. Please take our fathers, maybe while they are asleep. Let this be over.’
Little did Archana know that her prayers were going to be answered in a few short years. Though not in the way she had hoped.
Around noon, Padma Tai assured Manjrekar over the phone that the child was sleeping peacefully. Roshni had woken once though, around 10 AM, and asked for an apple in her tired voice. ‘I fed her a banana,’ Padma Tai said.
‘I’ll make her some khichdi for the afternoon,’ she added.
Manjrekar was relieved. He didn’t need to rush home around lunch now. He looked at his desk phone and toyed with the idea of calling Archana and apprising her of the drama that had happened last night. He decided against troubling the already-beleaguered woman. Instead, he brought his gaze back to the file he was studying.
The garish photos within it belonged to one Ankit Mohile, a 42-year-old bar owner from Lower Parel, whose body had been discovered two days ago. The man had been fatally stabbed in his chest inside his Honda City, found very close to the Dadar train station. There was also a wound at the back of his head. No weapons were found inside the car or anywhere in its vicinity. The car itself was parked on a busy street so no one had noticed when it had been brought there. The crime had occurred in the final hours of the night, the forensic team’s guess being between 3–5 AM, and so, understandably, there had been no eyewitnesses either.
There are many kinds of bars in Mumbai. The scale spans the nefarious to the trendy, with innumerable other settings between the two. Mohile’s Dumdaar Bar was decidedly nefarious, masquerading as faux-trendy with its tacky glitter. The sign atop the entrance was neon-lit (trendy), but it was that shade of nefarious blue that usually keeps the honest family man away—unless of course, his wife and kids are out of town for a few days. The bar had its own regular visitors who frequented it as a place to conduct deals around dark suitcases, whispered conversations, Bollywood remixes, chakna and IMFL. Young girls in insufficient clothing provided sufficient attention to their patrons’ wallets, eyes, whims and glasses—in that order. Many of these girls would go the extra mile for even more personalised service (for a price, of course). That extra mile ended at a shady hotel a mile away, where rooms could be rented at an hourly rate.
All in all, it was clear to Inspector Manjrekar that Ankit Mohile was a bad lot, and his end under suspicious circumstances was hardly surprising. If the crime remained unsolved, it was hardly going to be seen as a calamity to have befallen the good citizens of Mumbai. The man was a childless divorcee, so it wasn’t as if his death was going to toss any destitutes onto the already brimming footpaths either. Senior Inspector Rajiv Ranade, technically Manjrekar’s immediate supervisor, had alluded to the same reality just yesterday.
‘This is a simple one, Manjrekar,’ Ranade had said over tea that the two men were enjoying at Manjrekar’s desk.
‘How so?’ Manjrekar had asked.
‘Simple re… because it cannot be solved!’
Manjrekar had shaken his head.
‘If you really want to, just take any behenchod pickpocket in lock-up right now and ask the dead man’s family to identify him in a line-up.’
‘He has no family. No wife. Or children.’
‘Oh, then toh it’s even simpler, re! Why are you wasting your time on this file? Clearly some prostitute did him in when he didn’t pay up, what else? Why is a single man like him alone in his car at 3 o’clock at night on a deserted road? Why, you tell me just why?’
Manjrekar had nodded at the obvious answer.
‘Precisely, re. Our tharki bewda picked up a roadside bitch, got blown, and then… well, must have pissed her off a whole lot. See, a man’s juice is full of protein. After taking it in, she must have gained superhuman strength to bash his head in and then finish him off with a knife!’
It sounded more like an idiot’s review of a C-grade masala film than a crime investigation. Who needed Forensics when the crime was so simple to figure out?
‘Close the file by saying “No witness or forensic material found. Criminal(s) unknown”. I say, apply the same logic to a whole bunch of these files lying around you,’ the man added, staring at the pile mounted on the side of the table. ‘Trust me, it will be good for your own health if you do as I say,’ Ranade said as he noisily sipped from the white cup.
Manjrekar had sensed that his superior had just given him an order. This had not sounded like a polite suggestion.
Luckily, Manjrekar had not followed his senior’s advice to close the Ankit Mohile file so hastily. That had allowed time for an assiduous Forensics chap in his team to go over the body and the Honda one more time this morning. Which had led to two new discoveries. One, that the dead man had been involved in sexual activity just prior to his death. That, by itself, may not have seemed very important, had it not been for the unusual sexual activity he had been indulging in. And secondly, the forensics investigator had discovered a couple of small clumps of hair lodged between the car seat bottom and back. There had also been some amount of fine hair found on the man’s clothing and on the car floor. ‘Could it be his own hair?’ Manjrekar wondered. Mohile was bald when his body was found, but his driving license showed he had a full head of hair. ‘Was his head shaved off after death?’ It was highly peculiar. ‘Why would the killer do such a bizarre thing?’
It still needed to be determined whether the hair belonged to Mohile. Only a DNA test could establish that. But Mohile was hardly a high profile case where a DNA test might be deemed important, and it was unlikely that Ranade would permit one.
‘I guess I will have to do some digging on my own,’ Manjrekar thought as he closed the file and put it away. Then, just as he was getting up from his chair, he paused. He stared at the closed file for a few moments. An idea—just a whim really—had flashed in his head. He bent forward and rang the call bell on the desk, which brought Suresh scurrying into the room.
‘Yes, Sir?’
‘Suresh, I want you to study all the murder cases in the past three months,’ Manjrekar said.
‘Sir.’
‘Try to see if Forensics discovered any hair at the crime scene.’
‘Hair?’
‘Yes, like clumps of hair. The kind that get left behind when someone has a haircut.’
‘OK, Sir.’
‘And see if any of those victims had shaved heads. Like this bar owner.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
Manjrekar nodded an acknowledgement to his assistant. Then he shuffled away from his table and reached for his motorcycle helmet sitting atop the filing cabinet.
‘Are you leaving, Sir? Going home?’
‘I will… but first I want to go to the area around Dadar station, where this fellow’s car was found…’ Manjrekar said, pointing to the file lying on top of the table. ‘I just want to have a look around, that’s all.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Oh, and Suresh, don’t tell anyone that I have asked you to do this, OK?’ Manjrekar added, his volume a shade lower than normal, as if his boss was at close range to hear the clandestine request that had just been transacted.
‘No, Sir,’ the ever-faithful assistant agreed promptly.
As Manjrekar was about to exit the room, he stopped momentarily and then turned around to look at Suresh again.
‘Anything else, Sir?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
Manjrekar left the room. Within a minute or so of his leaving, Suresh had seated himself on the visitor’s chair by his boss’ desk and was poring over the topmost file from the pile stacked on it.
It took several weeks of sustained—albeit part-time—research by Constable Suresh Joglekar before he stumbled upon a file that piqued his interest. It was the case of Brijesh Jha, a resident of Vile Parle, who had died around five months ago.
The file photo of the deceased showed a bloated fellow, thirty-nine years of age, with a charming smile, slightly crooked front teeth, very bushy eyebrows, shoulder-length hair and small earrings. One look at the man and you could tell that he was creative—a painter, perhaps? Then, as Suresh read the paperwork, he found out Jha’s real profession. ‘Ah, yes, that makes sense—these artist type,’ the junior cop mumbled. Jha had been found lying prostrate on a couch with his left wrist slashed. The report, filed by Manjrekar himself, indicated that the wound did not appear to be self-inflicted because no weapon had been found anywhere close to the body. The only other mark of injury was a wound at the back of his neck. A post-mortem had revealed that the man had been first incapacitated by a blunt instrument, and then left to languidly bleed to death via the puncture on his wrist.
Of course, none of that had interested Suresh, really. What had caught his attention were the crime scene photographs of the dead body.
The victim’s head had been crudely shaved.
8
The Futility of Remorse
Five years ago
It was not something she had planned to do. And yet, the very first time that Jazmeen had willingly allowed Toby to touch her, she had not been surprised at herself. It had been a furtive moment, stolen clandestinely while Rubina was taking a bath. Separated from her by the flimsy wooden bathroom door, these were the only fifteen minutes every day that Jazmeen and Toby would be alone in the tiny flat the three shared.
Jazmeen had been eyeing Toby’s palpable lust for her for weeks; their close proximity practically every waking hour of the day made it impossible for her to miss the signs. Desirable young women like her were genetically conditioned to pick up on that kind of male attention, and her first cues had come on the very first day Rubina had introduced her boyfriend to her.
Boyfriend.
Rubina’s boyfriend. That was what Toby had been to Jazmeen. And that is how it ought to have stayed. But something had shifted in the past couple of months, like a gentle stirring within Jazmeen’s heart, his genuine kindness towards her mingling with her gratefulness towards him for co-owning the Leena Bindra mission.
Despite herself, she had begun to notice Toby.
She had begun to get anxious if he got late showing up at Hair and There for his daily visits by even a couple of minutes. She had begun to be charmed by the soaring tales he would narrate to Leena Bindra even though she knew much, if not all, of it was lies. She had begun to enjoy the quietness inside the car when he would drive her home from the salon. She had begun to feel fulfilled when she saw him lick his fingers after a meal, a meal she cooked.
‘Do you still not like him?’ Leena Bindra had asked Jazmeen late one evening, in a quiet moment when the two women sat counting the till.
‘He is OK,’ Jazmeen had replied.
‘He is young and single, too, you know?’
‘Haye Rabba!’
‘No, I am serious. Think about it!’ Leena Bindra had said excitedly. And then prophesised, ‘Men like him go far in life.’
‘You are crazy, Leena Aunty!’ And the two women had laughed. Leena Bindra guffawed teasingly like a granny trying to matchmake for a young woman.
Earlier on, when she had just moved into Rubina and Tony’s flat, Jazmeen would tune out the sounds of their not-so-quiet sex reverberating from the next room. But now, she had begun to blush whenever she heard them go, not because it was raucous and the language was kinky.
It was because she had begun to imagine herself instead in Toby’s bed.
She had begun to wonder what making love to him would be like.
She had begun to stop seeing him as Rubina’s boyfriend.
Jazmeen had begun to fall in love with Toby.
After eyeing Jazmeen lustily for weeks, and despite the intense and unmistakable admonition from Rubina in bed just the night before when he had brought up the topic of a threesome with Jazmeen, Toby knew it was time to make his move on Jazmeen. It was getting impossible for him to contain his urges any longer. And was he seeing signs that Jazmeen may be interested too? He wasn’t sure. But he was certain that she had winked at him the other day. Surely that meant something!
There was only one way to find out.
So, as soon as he had heard Rubina bolt the bathroom door and the reassuring sound of water pouring into a bucket, his mouth had grabbed Jazmeen’s and his hands were atop her breasts. She had anticipated this action for days, and when it happened, had submitted willingly. The moment had been brief—not more than the time it takes to prepare Maggi noodles—but satisfying for both. After that daring day, Jazmeen and Toby had re-run the exact same episode several times.
It had been very useful for them that Rubina liked to take a bath two to three times a day.
It had taken almost a month before Jazmeen and Toby consummated their affair, given the rarity of occasion when Rubina was not in the flat. When they had finally made love, it was raw, awkward, educational and gratifying, all at the same time. This new, private intimacy with Toby had felt strangely different to Jazmeen, despite the fact that she was already familiar with his mouth and his hands, and even to some extent, his manhood.
Perhaps it was the freshness of taking it all the way for the first time with a lover. After all, it was only now, with Toby, that she had truly lost her virginity. Perhaps it was the thrill of their clandestine relationship, which was flourishing despite the hawkish presence of another. But Jazmeen sensed there was more to this strangeness, this uniqueness, than just that.
This experience had felt powerful.
This was not just about the freedom of being finally naked, alone, with Toby. It wasn’t even about being unmindful of Rubina’s presence when she climaxed. This had been powerful because it had felt instinctively right to command another human being to do things to her body that gave her nothing but guiltless ecstasy. It felt equally thrilling to know that her own physical being could be a device that brought another person a joy so euphoric that it made him grovel at her feet for more. During all her growing-up years at the orphanage, maturing far beyond her age, Jazmeen had been aware of the power of her body and the dominance of her breasts, even when under wraps; those same breasts, when exposed, had seemed capable of moving mountains.
Of course, this important life lesson about her sexuality and its astonishing power was something that Jazmeen had learned once before, too. It was during her final months at Innocent Dreams. It was just one of many that Jasmine Bhatia had unwittingly imparted to her nemesis. You are nothing more than the sum total of your life experiences, and Jazmeen was shaped directly by the experiences she had gained from the life and death of the person she hated most innately.
Yes, there was a lot to be thankful to Jasmine Bhatia for, despite everything. After all, it was she who had been responsible for the rootless and unsure Deepika Ahluwalia to mature into the bold and determined Jazmeen.
When Jasmine Bhatia’s battered body was being consigned to the flames, only Deepika and Radha, the maid, represented Innocent Dreams at the crematorium. Most in attendance were Jasmine’s society friends, wearing uncrumpled whites, sporting very large dark glasses and clutching designer handbags. Everyone stoic and in control of their emotions. There were no tears, mainly because expensive lunches, gin and rummy, and shopping were the kind of soil in which the seeds of friendship could, at best, grow only into stunted shrubbery—n
ot a thriving forest laden with the fruits of empathy, joy, and kinship. Or grief even.
There was silence when Jasmine’s pyre started to rage sky high, the only sounds being that of wood and bone crackling into shapeless ash. The guest-grievers continued to stand around the spectacle for several more minutes, some, though, casting hesitant side-glances wondering when it was OK to deem the show over and break file. A similar sight had amused Deepika once in the past too, several years ago, when she had seen two giant infernos blazing side by side, each one consuming the two most important people in her life. As a 15-year-old girl standing guard next to her parents’ pyres, while she was pondering over sombre questions of fate, death and future, her eyes had strayed past the molten, cellophane-like air around the flames, and towards the fidgety mourners. Some of the crowd at the edges had already started to chip away, taking short, noiseless steps towards the exit, their obeisance to the parting aatmas solemnly submitted. Restless people managing busy lives. Who had the time to wait around, especially since there wasn’t even a bereaved spouse to offer parting sympathy to? The sham of it all had first made Deepika sigh, and then smile, despite her best efforts at self-control. She hoped no one had noticed it. The brand new orphan-girl smiling at her own parents’ funeral? Imagine how that would have looked! That thought had, then, made her smile even more.
But Deepika had no such qualms at Jasmine’s funeral. In this one, she was an irrelevant mourner parked at the back of the white assembly, with only backs to contend with, not eyes. She had smiled readily.
Slowly, the crowd had started to loosen and disperse, making the pyre more visible from where she stood.
‘Look at Jollyji,’ remarked Radha in a whisper loud enough for only Deepika to hear. ‘He looks so calm.’
Deepika stared at the man standing sideways from them, about fifty feet away. Jolly did look calm. But Deepika knew that it was hardly the unflappable courage of a bereaved husband saying a silent goodbye to his loving wife. Far from it. This was the peaceful gratitude of a newly liberated man gazing at the clear expanse of his future, wondering what—if anything—lay beyond the distance that the eye could see.