Pretty Vile Girl

by Rickie Khosla

  Manjrekar’s investigations around the crime scene had thrown up interesting clues. For one, he was almost certain where Mohile had been before he returned to his Honda City near Dadar Station. It had to be The Great Traveller guest house about fifty metres away. It was a shady hotel where rooms could be rented by the hour, a fact that made record-keeping impractical (and therefore, non-existent). That had to be the place where Mohile had indulged in sexual activity, the traces of which had been found on his body.

  ‘He looks familiar, Sir, but how can I be sure?’ the manager of the guest house had explained to Manjrekar when the cop had shown him Mohile’s file photo. ‘Every man who comes here comes either with his “brother” or his “wife”. Sometimes, the “wives” are in burqa. Whether they offer namaaz in their room or play gilli-danda, that is their business, na, Sir!’

  It was this kind of vagueness that made The Great Traveller guest house an ideal location for the kind of sordid sexual activity that Mohile seemed to have been involved in just before his death.

  Manjrekar had been investigating the dead man’s history for the past couple of weeks and had managed to piece together a fairly detailed picture of a shady crook who had his fingers in all kinds of nefarious activities. Mohile was a divorcee who had been married—very briefly—some fifteen years ago. ‘The sensible woman must have discovered that her husband was a homosexual quite early on and walked out of the marriage,’ Manjrekar surmised. Since then, Mohile had probably managed to survive on occasional encounters with rent boys and other willing and unwilling gay partners.

  ‘Like the one who finally did him in.’

  Professionally, the deceased’s mainstay was the bar he ran in Lower Parel. Damdaar Bar was hardly a quality establishment, but not only did it pay the bills, it was also the place from where Mohile managed his dealings with the underworld. The connection with drugs, gold and girls could not be missed if one simply looked at the bar’s clientele.

  Doing risky business certainly yielded great returns though. Mohile was reasonably well off, owning a couple of properties in Navi Mumbai and Thane, with a considerable amount of change left over to dabble in hobbies and other interests. One of those interests was Bollywood, into which he had ventured recently as a producer and, from the looks of it, burned his fingers badly. Manjrekar’s investigations had revealed that Mohile had decided to make a low-budget Hindi film, the kind that is usually meant for release only in small towns and villages, but which assure quick and substantial profits. From all accounts, the film’s shooting, which had begun some three months ago, appeared to have gone off well for a few weeks, but had stalled suddenly when the hero of the film, a fellow called Panjak Kumar, ran away to his hometown. Mohile had tried to get Pankaj to return, but no amount of coaxing, cajoling and threatening seemed to have helped. In fact, Mohile’s threats had only made the boy go underground—Pankaj had eloped with a girl in his town, and vanished into thin air.

  ‘Quite interesting that Mohile did not even file a police complaint to force Pankaj back to the sets,’ Manjrekar thought. ‘Was Mohile himself responsible for making the young actor run away? Maybe an indecent proposal to the boy, who simply decided to scoot rather than give in?’ These were questions that didn’t have a definitive answer because no one Manjrekar had questioned wanted to talk about it. Questions related to the casting couch always made Bollywood clam up!

  Meanwhile, Mohile appeared to have absorbed the loss of around twenty lakhs on his shelved film, and had already moved on to a new project. And that was precisely where the Mohile murder case became more interesting. That was where it appeared to directly intersect with another unsolved case lying on Manjrekar’s desk.

  The murder of Brijesh Jha.

  It was evident from Mohile’s business records that he had recently bought the ownership of the Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing. The school had lain shuttered since Brijesh Jha’s death some months ago. That, however, was only the second intriguing connection between the two deaths. The first had been discovered by Manjrekar’s assistant, Suresh, during his investigations of murder case files—the nearly identical state in which the two bodies had been discovered.

  Both were bald, their heads tonsured during or after they had been killed.

  Intriguing?

  Most definitely.

  A pattern?

  That remained to be seen.

  Manjrekar yawned despite his excitement. He had to find a way to explore this connection further. But he was acutely aware of his department’s burgeoning case load. And the rising exasperation of his superiors who wanted him to file away the old cases and make room for new ones.

  Manjrekar closed the files he was staring at, switched off the table lamp and got up from his chair. It was past 2 AM. Time to go home. There was nothing he could do now but wait until tomorrow morning anyway. That was when the Central Forensics Lab in Mumbai had promised to send him the results of his request. The results of the identity of the man whose semen has been found in Ankit Mohile’s anus, and also on his back and torso.

  ‘The imprints of the killer of Ankit Mohile lie on the dead man’s body.’ The unmarked, anonymous note may have sounded cryptic, but its message couldn’t be any clearer to Manjrekar. Mohile’s postmortem had pointed to the remnants of sex just before his death. The only external ‘imprints’ on his body was the semen of another man.

  It was logical to assume that Mohile’s killer and lover were the same man. The last man who had seen him alive.

  Never in a thousand years had Jazmeen imagined that she would be standing outside the doors of the Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing again. Yet, here she was, staring at the newly spruced up sign of her alma mater.

  It was painful enough for anyone to have their dreams snatched from them in the way that Mohile had crushed hers with his predatory intentions on Pankaj. But then to see the perpetrator trudge merrily along in life, as if it made no difference to him, was nothing short of enraging. Jazmeen needed answers, and she was going to confront her ex-producer until she had some. It was the only way she was going to get respite from her unresolved anger that had been plaguing her for days.

  With a deep breath, she pushed the doors open and walked in.

  It had been close to a month since the shooting of ‘Gaon ki Lady-Doctor’ had stalled so unceremoniously. The unit had been surprised at Pankaj Kumar’s unexpected disappearance from the sets. The initial whispers about the young actor’s absence would begin with ‘Must be exhaustion’ or ‘girl problems’, and would end on a hopeful note of ‘I’m sure he will return soon’. However, as the days of inactivity stretched on, it had started to look obvious that their hero was never coming back to Filmistan Studios. The impatient rumblings of the unit-folk soon turned into nasty epithets about the deserter. Consequently, even the producer was blamed for not being able to get ‘that selfish bastard’ back to work. By the third week, practically all hope of work ever resuming the film had evaporated. The unit hands stopped showing up altogether. As things stand in the unorganised sectors of Bollywood, when a film gets shelved, there is no hope that anyone would see even a penny in remuneration from the producer. Since it was looking quite certain that ‘Gaon ki Lady-Doctor’ herself had had a fatal heart attack, it was time for everyone associated with it to say their final bye-byes and go look for new work.

  Eventually, even Jazmeen stopped reporting to the empty sets. Seeing his girl’s anguish, Arty offered to help with the film, but really, what could even he have done to salvage the situation?

  ‘I’m sure the bastard raped the boy. Why else would he run away? Can you un-rape Pankaj and bring him back to work?’

  No, some solutions were beyond the reach of even Arty Rathore’s influence.

  With her dream now dead, Jazmeen concluded that it was time to go back to the old life that she had put on a hiatus for the past few months, in spite of Arty’s protests of her not needing work in his care. Katy Katrak was only too happy to have Jazmeen back at Mis
s India Elegance Centre. Sareen even made for her his brand of special tea on her first day back. Jazmeen found it almost therapeutic to be among familiar faces again. Despite the turmoil in her mind, she smiled when she heard the loud slurping sounds made by Sareen with his teacup. It had been too long since she had heard them – those simple, original joys of her life.

  ‘So what if this one didn’t work out, dikri? There will be others, not to worry!’ Mamma said consolingly. Sareen nodded in agreement.

  ‘Yes, of course, Mamma,’ Jazmeen replied. ‘No, there won’t be any others. It’s my karma. And karma and I have never been friends. I am quite cursed when it comes to good things happening to me.’

  ‘But tell that kutra producer of yours to pay you for all the slog you did, OK?’

  ‘She’s right! This is all Mohile’s fault! Like hell, I am going to allow him to get away with not paying me my full fee!’

  The next day, Jazmeen managed to get Mohile to pick up his phone on her tenth try. That the fellow took her call was surprising enough, but it was nothing compared to her shock when she heard what he had to say. No, it wasn’t because the man had immediately agreed to pay her full dues, it was because of the location where he had asked her to come to collect the cash.

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you?’ Mohile said on the phone. ‘I have bought Master Brandy’s dance school! Come over, check out the place that almost made you a film star!’

  The setting was eerily similar to that evening six months ago. Similar, but not the same. After all, how could it ever be the same without the purple velvet sofa on which Master Brandy’s life had slowly dripped away, one bloody drop at a time?

  The new couch was cream coloured. She sat on it with a glass of soft drink that the man sitting beside her had just poured her. She had an illusion of a swelling red mess on the new cream sofa. With Mohile lying dead on it.

  The man was spouting some nonsense about ‘crores I have lost’ and ‘that haraamzaada Pankaj’ who was responsible for ‘killing’ their dream, and of his own attempts to salvage some of the money from the doomed project. Jazmeen was having trouble concentrating on Mohile’s words over the sounds of the bubbling lava in her mind. ‘I don’t even know what I am angrier about. That this bastard raped Pankaj? Or that this bastard is going to replace Brandy at this prostitution adda? God knows how many young girls’ lives this new fucker is going to destroy!’

  ‘He will not stop just at young girls, he will destroy young boys too!’

  ‘I saw what you did to him,’ she rudely cut off Mohile mid-sentence. He stopped abruptly, not quite sure what she had meant. He looked at her quizzically.

  ‘You raped Pankaj.’ It was not a question.

  Mohile’s jaw dropped instantly. His face, until now wheatish like the colour of whisky in his hand, lost all pallor and became untinged like the Sprite in hers. It took a few seconds for the man to recover his poise and pigmentation.

  ‘What did you see?’ he asked.

  ‘I saw enough.’

  ‘So he told you… chutiya saala.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. I think he was too ashamed to even tell himself. Why else would he run away?’ she said.

  Mohile took a sip from his glass. His cover was blown. But he was not sure if the bitch next to him had divulged his secret to anyone else.

  ‘Who else have you told this to?’

  ‘About your love for young boys? Or about you raping Pankaj Kumar?’

  The words were cruel and sharp. He nodded, acknowledging both her questions.

  ‘No one’, Jazmeen said. Then, adding, ‘Yet.’

  Mohile was relieved but unsure of how long the relief was going to last. He stared at his tormentor. ‘Pretty girl. Pretty, vile girl!’ he thought. Jazmeen’s eyebrows were knotted, as if in thought. Her eyes were fixed and focused on the floor. ‘But she is not here to give me morality lessons. She is here because she wants something from me.’

  Mohile was not a fool when it came to matters of deal-making.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked point-blank.

  ‘I want you to die, that’s what I want. But not before you take care of some other business for me.’

  Jazmeen said nothing. Instead, she put down her unfinished drink on the side table, got up, and left the Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing, this time never to return.

  Toby James was unravelling dangerously. Every day, he shed a fresh layer of sanity. The hinges that kept the door closed on his and Jazmeen’s secrets had started to weaken, and, pretty soon, threatened to fall off completely. Jazmeen knew that she needed to do something before the skeletons came tumbling out.

  That day, when Toby had shown up at Filmistan Studios in the middle of her shoot, Jazmeen had felt the kind of panic she hadn’t experienced in many years.

  ‘Jazmeen Madam, you have a visitor,’ the guard on duty at the gate had announced.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A Shailesh Bhimrao Gokhale, Madam.’

  Jazmeen had frozen with fear. Gokhale had long died in the same funeral pyre as Leena Bindra. This was a resurrection she did not want to see.

  ‘Is this a joke to you, Toby?’ she had hissed at him once they were in private. That had made the man laugh. His eyes were bloodshot. Beneath his strong deodorant, he still reeked of booze.

  ‘If it’s a joke, then the joke’s on me, isn’t it?’ the miserable man had said. ‘I whore you out to another man, and you destroy me as punishment!’

  ‘Shut the hell up, you fool!’ she had screeched. ‘You’re drunk. Go home, and don’t you dare come back to this place, you understand?’

  ‘Where do you want me to come then?’

  Jazmeen shook her head in anger.

  ‘Oh wait! I could come to Bandra, can’t I? Yes, yes, to your brand new house in posh Bandra!’

  ‘You won’t dare, you miserable runt!’

  The man had sniggered again. ‘You know me so well, don’t you? You’re right. Why would I want to come to Bandra and get killed by your mighty Arty…?’

  ‘Shut up! Don’t utter that man’s name from your fucking mouth! You have no right to bring him up.’

  ‘But I was only saying that I don’t want to come to Bandra. Not at all!’ he had paused for dramatic effect. ‘The only place I really want to come is… inside you, meri Mukherji!’

  ‘You bastard!’

  ‘Just one time! Just think of it as a guru-dakshina… for all that I taught you to do to Leena Bindra. To Brandy.’ Then, adding bitterly, ‘And to Rubina.’

  ‘I did not do anything to Rubina, you lunatic!’ Jazmeen almost screamed, but Toby didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘And for whatever you are planning to do to Arty next!’

  Jazmeen recoiled.

  ‘Don’t you see, Jazmeen? You destroy people! You build them up, and then you destroy them. In fact, you build… only so you can destroy! Like some kind of twisted, hellish serpent!’

  Jazmeen had Toby thrown out of the studio, with explicit instructions at the studio gate to bar his future entry.

  By the time the shoot of Gaon ki Lady-Doctor stalled abruptly a few days after Toby’s chilling visit to Filmistan Studios, there had been forty-seven missed calls from him on Jazmeen’s phone. And then, one evening, she had seen his shadowy figure outside the gates of Naveli Apartments. She couldn’t know for sure from her eighth floor perch if it was indeed him, but she was quite certain that it was. He had just stood there doing nothing. A couple of hours later, she noticed that he was gone.

  Despite her efforts to disengage herself from her previous life, Jazmeen realised that the past was not ready to let go of her that easily. Toby’s dark shadow still loomed over her as large as ever. The fool was precariously close to self-destruction. She had no sympathy left for him anymore—if anything, she couldn’t wait for him to self-destruct. Perhaps she could even lend a helping hand to the process.

  ‘I have to meet him one last time. Maybe even do as he says, if that is what it takes for this to e
nd. Forever.’

  That night, Jazmeen clutched Arty harder than usual.

  ‘I think I love you,’ she said.

  ‘Do you merely think that, or are you a 100% certain?’ he joshed.

  ‘I’ll know for sure soon,’ she said, but only half-jokingly.

  ‘Look, make sure you have the answer by the time I’m back next Tuesday, OK?’ he said feigning seriousness, making her giggle. Arty was going to Dubai for a four-day trip. The only reason why Jazmeen was not accompanying him was because she didn’t possess a passport.

  Then, as if suddenly realising that she hadn’t heard a satisfactory response from him to the admission she had just made, she asked, ‘What about you, you bastard?’

  ‘About loving you? Oh, let’s just say that I am a 100% certain about what I think!’ he said, as his eyes crinkled along with his sunshine smile in the dark bedroom.

  ‘You really are a bastard, you know that?’ Jazmeen said, as she rose from the bed and straddled him. They both laughed and got down to the business of the night.

  Two days later, Jazmeen made two important phone calls. They were to two men who had never met, but who were going to be inexplicably linked in death.

  On that Sunday evening, Toby knocked on the door of Room No. 103 on the first floor of The Great Traveller guest house. Jazmeen opened the door and quickly pulled the man inside.

  ‘Why here? We could have just met at home!’ Toby began without bothering with perfunctory greetings. He didn’t look especially pleased to see her.

  ‘I will never go back to that flat again, Toby. It smells of…her,’ she snapped.

  Toby stared at Jazmeen for a few seconds, and then went and sat on the limp-looking bed. The room seemed dark despite plenty of lights on the peeling false ceiling. It was as if the place was designed for one and only one purpose. Toby heaved up and down on the sunken mattress a few times, trying to assess the kind of action it could withstand. The bed squeaked. The sound made him laugh.