Vish Puri 02; The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

by Tarquin Hall

  “I called this principal fellow and made the situation perfectly clear – that we are having all evidence to take to authorities and he is in possession of so much funny money. Forthwith, I gave him instructions where to return it – that is, two lakhs total. He was most accommodating.” Puri paused. “Sir, I am pleased to say he has also kindly assured me your two darling children have confirmed places in Ultra Modern School.”

  “You mean they’re in?” exclaimed Rathinasabapathy. He was half out of his chair again.

  “They may start Monday, only.”

  Relief swept over Puri’s client. “That’s fantastic news, Mr. Puri!” he said. “I don’t know how to thank you. I was so worried. I had tried so many schools and they all wanted kickbacks. The thought of the kids not getting into a good institution… well, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  Rathinasabapathy sighed, relaxing his shoulders, and leaned back in his chair. But then a thought occurred to him and he frowned. “Hang on a minute… what about Mr. Ten Percent? He’s going to be pretty upset!” he said.

  “That one will keep quiet. He would not wish to be on tonight’s news.”

  “But won’t he come after me?”

  Puri shook his head.

  “Won’t he come after you?”

  “Not to worry about me,” said the detective with a chuckle. “I have my connections, also. Besides, my identity remains top secret. Vish Puri is a voice on the phone, only.”

  Rathinasabapathy’s forehead was still creased with anxiety.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Puri,” he said at length, shifting in his chair. “I’m not sure how I feel about all this. It all seems… well, risky as hell.”

  The detective held up both his hands and shook them, a gesture that communicated ‘Why worry?’

  “Trust me, sir,” he said smugly. “I have taken care of everything.”

  Rathinasabapathy stared at the floor for a while, weighing it all up in his mind, and then said, “Well, if you say so. But I still can’t believe how much people in this city go through to get their kids into schools.”

  “I told you when we met few days back, no, schools in India are a huge racket. Any business is about supply and demand. In this case there is excess of demand and nowhere near the supply. Thus schools can charge a premium for admittance. I tell you parents in Delhi go to hell getting their children into good schools.

  “What all my niece Chiki went through you wouldn’t believe,” continued the detective. “She made applications to six schools total. All demanded a registration fee of four hundred to seven hundred rupees. Naturally there were countless forms to complete. Each and every time, the boy had to sit a test and do the interview. And each and every time, his parents were interviewed, also.”

  “The parents?” exclaimed Rathinasabapathy.

  “Most certainly. They were interviewed separately in order to cross-reference their answers. What all were their aspirations? Their views on discipline? Chiki joked she and her husband had to cram for the test themselves. Made University look like ABC.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Thank the God, Ragev got a place at Sunny Dale. But only after his father made a donation toward the new school bus.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Sir, I tell you, that is nothing. I know one family – they run a dry-cleaning business. In return for admittance to Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai School, they agreed to do the head teacher’s family’s laundry! Six years now they’ve been washing their shirts and undergarments.”

  “Why don’t people send their kids to state schools?”

  Puri clicked his tongue dismissively.

  “Sir, my maid’s son goes to our local school. As it is, I had to intervene to get him in, such is the demand. Standards are quite frankly shocking. Teachers don’t turn up. Food is substandard. Her boy often complains of bugs in his daal. For females, there are not even toilet facilities. Nowadays standards are only getting worse. What with the liberalization of the economy, government is withdrawing from its responsibilities more day by day.”

  Rathinasabapathy shook his head in disbelief. “Can’t something be done?” he asked. “What about this evidence you have against the principal of Ultra Modern School? We should go public with it!”

  “Most certainly we can,” said Puri. “TV channels love such footage. But then your children won’t get admittance. And you will be back at square number one dealing with Mr. Ten Percent – or one of his many competitors.”

  The nuclear physicist paused for thought and then said: “Yeah, well, I guess maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie, right? I mean the main thing is we didn’t have to pay a bribe and the kids are going to go to a good school.”

  “Sir, I can see you’re getting a hang of how things work here in India,” said Puri with a smile, rising from his chair and handing Rathinasabapathy his money. “And now if there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leaves. I have a most puzzling murder to look into.”

  ∨ The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing ∧

  Four

  As soon as Rathinasabapathy had left, Elizabeth Rani called Puri over the intercom and suggested he turn on his TV.

  “Apparently there’s some amazing video of the murder,” she said.

  Action News! was indeed running exclusive footage taken by a French tourist that morning.

  At exactly 6:37 AM, Edouard Lecomte had been riding in a tour bus toward the Presidential Palace. While filming out the window, his attention had been drawn to what looked like some kind of ‘exotic Hindu ritual’ being enacted by a small group of people on one of the lawns. Only later did he realize what he had captured: Dr. Jha’s murder.

  The footage was unsteady and hazy thanks to the smog and the distance at which it had been shot. But it showed the goddess Kali, complete with four writhing arms and a hideous red tongue, floating three feet above the ground. She could be seen driving her sword through Dr. Jha and cackling wildly. Then came a bright flash. Evidently, this had startled the Frenchman, who had lowered his camera and could be heard muttering, “Putain de merde!”

  The channel was playing the thirty or so seconds over and over again, slowing it down, enlarging key frames and drawing little circles around certain details. It proved beyond doubt that whoever or whatever had killed the Guru Buster had not hung from wires suspended from overhanging branches. The graceful manner in which ‘the apparition’ glided through the air suggested it was standing on neither stilts nor a box.

  “Could it be someone wearing a jet pack?” postulated one of the Action News! TV anchors.

  “You’d see evidence of that,” a science commentator answered. “There’d be an exhaust and the movement would be jerky. Those things are hard to control. I can’t explain what we’re seeing here.”

  Puri, who watched the footage numerous times on the small set he kept in his office, agreed with this last assessment.

  “Absolutely mind-blowing,” he kept muttering to himself.

  A part of him wanted to believe that it was a genuine supernatural occurrence – that the goddess Kali really had materialized on earth. Believing in something fantastic, something inexplicable, was always easier than accepting the mundane truth. But Puri was certain that his eyes were being deceived, that a mere mortal had killed Dr. Jha, and he felt roused to the challenge of hunting down the murderer.

  The video convinced him of one other thing: the general public would believe there had been a miracle.

  The authorities had evidently come to the same conclusion.

  Riot police armed with lathis, tear gas and water cannons had sealed off all the approach roads to Rajpath. And as Puri soon discovered, setting off in his Ambassador complete with new windscreen, this had brought gridlock to the British bungalow-lined streets of New Delhi. The many roundabouts, congested and chaotic at the best of times, were a logjam of cars and auto rickshaws playing a discordant symphony for horns.

  After ninety minutes, the detective had only reache
d Safdarjung Road, and it was here that he decided to abandon his car. Having made arrangements with the incharge at the front desk of the Gymkhana Club to leave the Ambassador unattended in the car park (and passed up the opportunity to have some lunch – the special was kadi chaaval followed by moong daal halwa), he and Handbrake continued on foot.

  Puri found the going hard. By now it was blisteringly hot and muggy and it was not long before he felt as if he were swimming in his safari suit. The unusually high curbs built by the Angrezi along their fastidiously laid-out avenues – presumably to deter bicyclists and motorcyclists from using the pavements – presented Puri with a formidable challenge thanks to the shortness of his left leg. Every time he had to cross the road or the entrance to one of the many bungalows, he needed a hand up.

  For Handbrake the going was hardly easy either. While exposed to the full force of the midday sun, he had to walk alongside Boss, shielding him with a black umbrella. But of the two men, the driver reached the corner of Janpath and Maulana Azad Road (where police barriers prevented them from going any farther) in better shape and without complaint. Puri, on the other hand, looked close to fainting and had to rest in the shade of a tree for ten minutes in order to recover. Glugging down a bottle of chilled water purchased from a passing ice cream wallah, he bemoaned the fact that he could go no farther and thanked the heavens when Inspector Jagat Prakash Singh came to the rescue in his air-conditioned jeep.

  “What took you so much of time?” asked the detective as he climbed inside the vehicle, leaving Handbrake outside, and sat panting in the cool air like an overheated dog. “It is hotter than hell out there.”

  “Press conference, sir,” answered the inspector in his deep baritone.

  Inspector Singh was a stern bear of a man, six foot two inches tall with enormous hands and size 14 feet. He was sitting on the backseat of his jeep (his driver was behind the wheel) with the top of his head touching the roof, his neck and spine bent like a bow and his knees pressed into the back of the seat in front of him. Although a Sikh, he kept his black beard trimmed. His hair, too, was short and he didn’t wear a turban.

  But while Singh’s religious identity was liberal, his investigative style was conventional. A graduate of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy and the son and grandson of former officers, he had a good track record when it came to solving bank robberies, rapes, kidnappings, burglaries and crimes of passion where the clues were staring him in the face and the choice of suspects was few. But when dealing with more sophisticated crimes, like cunningly orchestrated, premeditated murders for example, the inspector often found himself stumped.

  In such circumstances, he turned to Puri.

  The detective had solved a number of Singh’s cases, and pointed him in the right direction on various others, but never taken credit for his work. This rankled him; Puri relished the glare of the cameras and the opportunity to impress everyone with his acumen and skills. And yet the currency he received in return for his anonymous assistance was invaluable. He could count on information and cooperation with his own cases. And it often helped having an ally in the department to keep the chief, who reviled him as a ‘filthy jasoos’, off his back.

  There was not another man on the Delhi force with whom Puri would have entered into such an arrangement. Singh was incorruptible. It didn’t hurt that, being only thirty-four, he was suitably deferential as well. Nor that he was Punjabi and enjoyed a couple of stiff pegs at the end of a hard day’s work.

  “So, Inspector, what progress you’ve made till date?” asked the detective, wiping his face with his handkerchief and drinking more water.

  The Sikh splayed his enormous fingers across his knees, studying his hairy knuckles and wedding ring.

  “Honestly? I can’t make head or tail of it,” he admitted. “I’m starting to believe something supernatural did occur. I mean that. People don’t just vanish into thin air, sir. Furthermore, no one saw anyone coming or going. Plus I’ve got four witnesses who swear they saw the goddess murder Dr. Jha. And then there’s that video. You’ve seen it?”

  Puri nodded.

  “It looks so… well, so real, sir. That face, the arms – the fact that she’s levitating. The murder occurred close to a tree and some of the branches overhang the spot. But I examined those branches myself and there’s no sign of any rope marks. The only thing I found was some holes drilled into the side of the tree trunk.”

  “Inspector, believe me, I am one man who believes in miracles. Unlike Dr. Jha, I know such things can and do occur. But because gold exists, it does not mean there is not fool’s gold, also.”

  Singh made a face. “Sorry, sir?”

  “Not every strange occurrence is automatically a miracle,” the detective clarified. “Take that incident few years back when Ganesh statues started drinking milk. Millions believed something miraculous occurred. A kind of pandemonium there was nationwide. But it was all a total nonsense. Just some unscrupulous individuals took advantage of people’s beliefs and superstitions. Got them believing something had happened which had not. Word spread like wildfires. Same is true now. I guarantee you no miracle has taken place.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, sir, but I’ve never come across anything like this.”

  “What all does Delhi’s ‘top cop’ have to say on the matter?” As ever when Puri referred to the chief, his voice was loaded with sarcasm.

  “You know him, sir. If it can’t be solved, don’t bother solving it. Concentrate on cases where we can get quick, easy results. That’s his credo. Had the victim been the twelve-year-old daughter of a doctor or engineer it would be different. But none of his superiors are pressuring him on this one.”

  Puri drained his bottle of water; he was beginning to cool off.

  “Swami-ji’s whereabouts early this morning are known, is it?” he asked.

  “He was in Delhi, a guest of the health minister, Vikram Bhatt. The minister himself called the chief first thing this morning to let him know.”

  “By God,” muttered Puri.

  “Do you think Swami-ji could be behind all this?” asked Singh.

  “Too early to tell, no? But certainly he claims miraculous powers, levitation being one only. It is said he can be in two places at once. He had motive, also, after making one promise on national TV of some kind of miracle in Delhi to prove his power.”

  Singh looked worried.

  “Something is wrong?” asked Puri, although he could guess what it was.

  “The chief wants Maharaj Swami left alone. Hands off. He’s not to be investigated.”

  The detective sighed.

  “No surprise there, Inspector,” he said. “But if you are asking for my help – and seems you are – I can hardly be expected to do a proper and thorough investigation while ignoring the main suspect?”

  “Sir, all I’m saying is that we have to tread carefully.”

  “That much goes without saying, Inspector. Now let us not waste more of time sitting idle. Take me to the spot.”

  ♦

  The crime scene had been cordoned off with metal barricades. But from even the most cursory examination, Puri could tell they had been put in place far too late to serve any useful purpose. Dozens of discarded bidi and cigarette butts, gobs of paan spit and fresh piss stains on the nearby jamun tree, which stood approximately eight feet to the north of the spot where Dr. Jha had been slain, indicated the size of the crowd that had gathered at the scene before the police had taken charge.

  Plenty of traces also pointed to the earlier presence of opportunistic vendors as well. They had set up pitches selling cold drinks (bottle tops littered the entire area), peanuts (there were shells as well) and Hindi newspapers (flyers for a 50 percent mid-season sale at Jessy’s Shoe Palace in Pahar Ganj lay everywhere). Someone had also been doing a roaring trade in incense sticks: dozens had been stuck into the ground and lit on the spot where the goddess was believed to have appeared.

  “Quite a carnival scen
e it must have been, isn’t it?” said Puri as he stood inside the cordon wearing his tinted aviator sunglasses with Handbrake by his side, umbrella aloft.

  Singh was the only other person in the immediate vicinity. He had sent away his subordinates on some pretext (in case one of them reported Puri’s visit to the chief) and the media had been penned into a position in front of India Gate. Between there and the crime scene, Rajpath dissolved into a rippling, liquid mirage. Cars along the road melted as if made of chocolate. Figures took on alien dimensions.

  “Constables patrolling the area reached first, is it?” asked Puri.

  “Yes, sir. Constable R.V. Dubey arrived ten minutes after the murder occurred.”

  Puri made a note of his name as Singh continued: “By then there was already a crowd of one hundred plus – passing auto rickshaw drivers, schoolkids, some women who’d been doing yoga. Their numbers quickly grew.”

  The inspector himself had not reached Rajpath until eight thirty. By that time, hundreds of people, including the entire Delhi media pack, had trampled the crime scene.

  “Could be the murderer left his business card, but we’ll never know,” commented the detective drily.

  Singh did not respond to this gibe. He knew all too well that the response time of the Delhi police force was abysmal. There was no point trying to defend it.

  “You know where the members of this Laughing Club were standing?” asked Puri.

  Singh took out his notebook and read out the names one by one, indicating where each man had been at the time of the murder. Puri plotted their positions on a page in his own notebook. He marked the spot where Dr. Jha had stood with an X; in the middle of the circle he drew a question mark.

  “These other fellows: they were all present when you arrived?”

  “No, sir, they’d been taken to the station to give statements. But I interviewed each of them personally. I’ll have the transcripts brought to your office. One of them, Shiv-raj Sharma, an archaeologist, says he didn’t see what happened because he dropped his glasses. But the others are all convinced they witnessed a paranormal event – although of course their descriptions vary. Mr. Ved Karat, a political speechwriter, described the goddess as being twenty feet high. Mr. Gupta, a High Court advocate, says her eyes ‘burned like coals’.”