The Case of the Love Commandos

by Tarquin Hall

  In poker terms, this would be called a straight flush.

  By contrast, he felt like he was holding a pair of threes.

  Still, Puri came away from breakfast heartened by one bit of good news: Ram was of some value and with any luck that meant he was still alive.

  The bad news was that Hari’s involvement added operational complications. Certain security precautions were going to have to be put in place.

  From breakfast, he went straight to the nearest STD phone booth and called the office. Hari would be trying to eavesdrop on his phone conversations and he wanted to be sure that his line was secure and that no one else could access his call log.

  “Boss, your phone’s casing is constructed of nanomaterials to block all RF signals and wave radiation,” Flush assured him.

  “Translation?” said Puri.

  “Means your phone is secure, Boss.”

  “Tip-top.”

  “And, Boss—I’ve downloaded Ram’s phone records.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “Thanks, Boss. Only thing is, someone beat us to it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The numbers have been deleted.”

  “Arrey!”

  This smelled of Hari’s handiwork.

  “There’s any way of getting them back?” asked Puri.

  “I’ll check to see if they’re using a RAID-array multiple system, Boss.”

  “Speak proper English, yaar!”

  “Means the data might be replicated on another drive.”

  “Do it, by God.”

  Puri returned to his hotel. A search of his room with his RF detector netted two bugs, one in the hotel phone handset and the second in the light socket—both planted by Hari’s people during breakfast.

  Puri took a certain amount of pleasure in crushing them underfoot and then flushing them down the toilet for good measure.

  He made a second sweep and, when he was sure the room was clean, sat down to call Tulsi in Agra. She’d been moved again this morning to a new Love Commandos safe house and sounded worried, for not only Ram’s well-being but her father’s as well.

  “The news said he’s been taken to Lucknow jail,” she said. “I hope he’s OK. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  “Your father had nothing to do with the murder of Ram’s mother—of that I am certain,” said Puri.

  “Who could have done such a horrible thing?” asked Tulsi.

  “That is exactly and precisely what I am endeavoring to find out.”

  Ordinarily he would have added, “And Vish Puri never fails.” But remembering the evil eye, he stopped himself from doing so just in time.

  “Sir, I still don’t understand who took Ram. If it wasn’t Papa, then who?” she asked.

  “All efforts are being made to answer that question, also,” he said.

  “It’s our … our anniversary in a couple of days,” she said. “Anniversary?”

  “We went on our first date two years ago—to … to see the Taj during the full moon,” said Tulsi, promptly bursting into tears.

  Puri murmured, “Now, now, my dear, God willing you will be reunited,” but he sounded wooden and the sobs duly intensified, forcing him to hold the phone away from his ear and wait for her to calm down.

  Finally, he heard her clear her nose.

  “Beta, some questions are there,” said Puri, before going on to explain that Ram had given his parents a considerable amount of money in the past couple of months. Did she have any idea how he might have come by it?

  “What money?”

  He put it to her that Ram might have got involved in some kind of illegal activity. How else could he have come by so much cash?

  But she was adamant that he would never break the law.

  “He was desperate, no?” the detective said, pressing her. “His mind was turned to one thing only: starting a new life with his dear lady love. In such circumstances even the most honest of young men can go to the dogs so to speak.”

  “No, not Ram,” Tulsi insisted. “Ram doesn’t worry about money. He says that our love will conquer all obstacles. Nothing can stand in the way if we keep our faith in one another.”

  Quite the young Dev Anand, this Ram fellow, Puri reflected as he hung up. The girl, who sounded highly impressionable, had fallen for him hook, line and sinker. Had he pulled the wool over her eyes? Puri hoped not for all their sakes. But the detective still had his doubts. Impoverished Dalit students did not simply come by lakhs of rupees by chance.

  Tulsi provided a list of Ram’s closest friends and their phone numbers and Puri set about calling them one by one. He soon found that he was following a well-trodden path.

  “You’re the second person to call today,” said the first.

  “Stop hassling me,” said the next.

  Only one of Ram’s friends, whose name was Brijesh, cooperated.

  “I talked to Ram on Friday,” he said.

  “He sounded relaxed and all?”

  “More like worried.”

  “How he was making money?”

  “He used to work for a pizza joint called Yum Yum, but he got fired.”

  “When exactly?”

  “Two months back.”

  Puri asked Brijesh why he’d lost the job.

  “The owner found out he was a Dalit. Bastard said he’d go out of business if his customers knew their food was being delivered by one.”

  “Ram lied about his identity, is it?”

  “How else are you meant to get a job?”

  “So how he came by so much of money?”

  “What money?”

  “Ram built his parents a house. Got them a flat-screen TV, also. Must have cost some lakhs.”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Brijesh.

  “Could be he got into crime—selling drugs and all,” suggested the detective.

  “Ram? No way. You’ve ever met him? He’s Mr. Clean.”

  The rest of Facecream’s morning at the school went as well as could be expected. She taught rudimentary reading skills for the first hour and then basic geography, pinpointing the village on a map and familiarizing the children with their place in relation to the outside world. She also described some of the other places in India she’d visited, like Assam, where she’d seen one-horned rhinos, and the Brihadeeswara Temple in Tamil Nadu, India’s largest.

  Keeping the children’s attention proved a constant battle. None of them had been taught to sit and listen, let alone concentrate, and she faced frequent interruptions. An example had to be made of a few of the worst troublemakers and she escorted them to the gates and sent them home. This proved especially effective with the poorer kids, for whom lunch constituted the most substantial meal they would receive during their day. In one case, a mother marched her daughter back to the school, promising that she would behave in future. When Facecream expelled a Brahmin boy for bad language and he threatened his father’s retribution, she answered cheerily that she’d look forward to his visit.

  Once she’d stamped her authority on the group and they began to sense she cared, Facecream found that the majority responded positively. And by organizing group activities that encouraged them to interact with one another, she enjoyed some success in circumventing social divisions. Cricket proved the most effective tool. It was especially suitable given that only a bat and ball were required and that it wasn’t a contact sport. Indeed, no observer seeing the two teams competing against each other and hearing the enthusiastic choruses of “Four!” and “Howzat!” would have guessed these same children had arranged themselves by caste at roll call that morning.

  And yet, when it came to lunchtime, the old divisions reasserted themselves. The remaining Brahmin boy, who’d been sent to school with his own packed food, ate separately, while the Muslims were forced to use dishes and utensils brought from home.

  Jagdish Uncle had elected not to accompany Mummy and Co. on their ascent to the Vaishno Devi shrine—he suffered from diabetes, high blood pres
sure and gout. But he insisted on driving them to Katra, the small town at the base of the mountain from where pilgrims embark.

  With a pyramid of bags piled onto Sweetie’s roof, the entire clan stuffed themselves inside the Maruti, pushing the undercarriage perilously close to the ground. Observers would have been forgiven for imagining that the occupants were refugees fleeing a war zone. And the speed at which Jagdish Uncle took the turns on the winding road that led up into the hills—overtaking other vehicles on blind bends and weaving between the trucks crawling toward the Banihal Pass and the Kashmir Valley—suggested that they were indeed being pursued.

  Still, the jostling and spine-jarring bumps did nothing to dampen the family’s spirits. They thrilled to the fresh mountain air and the panoramas of pine forests, arid peaks set against a cobalt sky, and boulder-strewn riverbeds that sliced down through terraced paddy fields.

  When the Himalayas came into view, their snowcapped summits rising above the haze like a frozen fortress, Jagdish Uncle pulled over at a scenic spot. Everyone tumbled out, cameras at the ready, and posed for pictures. A soft drinks stand was assaulted, colas and cartons of Mango Frooti were quaffed, and Chetan raided the tiffin packed by Sonam Aunty, who had risen at four A.M. and, apparently concerned that they would all die of starvation during the two-hour journey, cooked them enough paranthas to last four days.

  Back behind the wheel, Jagdish Uncle kept the family entertained on the last leg of the journey with the well-worn story of his birth and how the goddess Durga had saved his mother’s life.

  “The doctor couldn’t stop the bleeding,” he said. “In those days there weren’t the kind of medical facilities we have today. No medicines. People were not so educated. The most the doctor could do was stuff some bandages inside her and hope that the bleeding would stop. My father didn’t put his trust in this man. He set off right away for Vaishno Devi to appeal for intervention from the mother goddess. It was the dead of winter. There was snow on the mountain. He climbed to the top, did darshan and came straight back down. He did not sleep or eat one thing. He was gone from the house for four days. There were no phones. Until he came back into the house he didn’t know whether Ma was alive or dead. Thankfully, the goddess granted his wish.”

  The car rounded the final bend and the Vaishno Devi shrine complex came into view, a zigzagging trail etched up the side of the Trikuta mountain.

  “Jai Mata Di!” (“Praise be to the Mother!”) The cry went up again and again as they descended into the valley, soon reaching the outskirts of Katra.

  Mummy had last been here as a young bride on her honeymoon and she remembered nothing more than a hamlet at the base of the mountain. She and Om Chander Puri, together with her in-laws, had slept in tents. They had prepared their meals on campfires and washed in the stream that ran along the bottom of the mountain. Afterward, they’d lain in meadows of wildflowers and soaked in the sunshine.

  Save for the rocky escarpments rising around the town, she hardly recognized the place. Vaishno Devi was now the second-most popular pilgrimage site in India with some five million visitors every year. Katra had burgeoned into a bustling town with countless eateries offering every north Indian vegetarian dish. Modern hotels had sprung up with spas, swimming pools and satellite TV. There were banks, hoardings advertising American soft drinks and touts carrying around bags of pink candy floss.

  A sign even advertised helicopter rides up to the summit.

  “What is this?” Mummy asked, her voice thick with incredulity. “Without pain, what is gain?”

  But Jagdish Uncle, despite the story of his mother’s miraculous survival, regarded the helicopters with a sense of wonderment.

  “In five minutes, only, they’re taking you right up to the top!” he enthused. “Can you imagine? No need for all that climbing! Such luxury!”

  “I agree with Mummy, taking a helicopter’s just cheating,” said Rumpi.

  “How you can expect blessing from the goddess without sacrifice?” added Mummy.

  “Sacrifice is there,” rejoined Jagdish Uncle with a chuckle. “The helicopter is costing a fortune!”

  “You mean we can’t take one?” whined Chetan.

  By the time they joined the back of the long queue outside the counter for pilgrim passes, it was already two o’clock and there were hundreds of people ahead of them. At the earliest, they would be able to start their ascent at three thirty, when the heat would be at its worst. The family was therefore left with two options: set off at dusk and reach the summit long after midnight (the trail was well lit) or wait until the crack of dawn.

  A debate ensued. Everyone presented their arguments for their preferred choice in loud voices, all talking at once.

  Mummy kept well out of it. The Dughals, she’d been reliably informed by her inside man at their guesthouse, had set off from Jammu an hour after the Jagdish Uncle Express. They were due in Katra any minute and were staying in the Regal Hotel.

  Tomorrow morning, when they started their ascent, Mummy planned to be right behind them.

  In the meantime, she seemed to be developing a nasty headache.

  “Just my eyes are paining,” she said.

  The rest of the family immediately crowded around her, fussing and diagnosing—“must be altitude sickness,” “change in weather.” All sorts of remedies were offered. Did she want to take an aspirin? An injection? One of Jagdish Uncle’s sedatives? Perhaps a head rub with mustard oil would do the trick?

  It was enough to give her a real headache, Mummy thought to herself as she suggested that perhaps it might be a good idea for her to check into a hotel and get some bed rest.

  This sparked fresh debate and a new consensus was soon reached: they would start at dawn.

  In the meantime, Jagdish Uncle would take Mummy to a hotel.

  “The Britannia is close by,” he said.

  “Regal Hotel is better, na,” said Mummy.

  Eleven

  Certain he was being watched, Puri decided against collecting Tubelight from the station and arranged to meet him for a late lunch in the depths of Lucknow’s Aminabad Bazaar. Famous for its chickan embroidery, the area’s labyrinthine alleyways provided the ideal environment in which to lose a tail—or indeed oneself. The detective was swept along with a tide of shoppers, past repositories of curly toed sequined slippers, paper kites, secondhand books and embroidered linen. And although the cries of the merchants and the competing horns of scooters and bicycles made for a jarring dissonance, Puri noticed a refinement in the local manner and language that bespoke the city’s courtly heritage. Spotting some grandees seated outside a café discussing the burning issues of the day over a leisurely hookah and looking suitably immune to the rush of life around them, he felt momentarily transported back in time to the courtly Lucknow of kathak performances and ghazals.

  Confident that he’d shaken off any would-be shadows, Puri entered Tunde Kebabs and found Tubelight already seated at a table toward the back of the restaurant.

  Most Private Investigators Ltd.’s senior operative had spent the night on a hard wooden bench in a third-class train carriage with the crook of his arm serving as a pillow. This had been by choice, air-conditioning being anathema to the former thief. Despite the hot, overcrowded conditions on board, the constant cries of “Chaaaaiiii!” and the numerous arguments that had broken out amongst his fellow passengers—one had led to a knife fight—he had enjoyed a fitful night’s sleep.

  Still Tubelight was hungry and nodded approvingly when Puri ordered one plate of galauti kebab, a mutton biryani and some sultani daal. This was followed by kulfi topped with rose-scented falooda.

  “Boss, nothing’s turned up—just dead ends,” said Tubelight, in reference to the Jain Jewelry Heist.

  “Anything from Tihar?” asked Puri, who’d sent his operative to consult with a notorious jewel thief currently serving time in India’s most infamous prison in the hope of finding a lead.

  “Nothing, Boss—he’s as mystified as the
rest of us,” said Tubelight. “Hate to admit it, but I’m out of ideas.”

  “Let us hope something turns up,” said the detective, although he didn’t sound convinced himself. “Meantime, you brought the file?”

  He was referring to the dossiers on Vishnu Mishra and Brahmin leader Dr. Bal Pandey that Elizabeth Rani had compiled yesterday after Puri had called her into the office. Along with various magazine and newspaper articles on the politics of Uttar Pradesh, it included a copy of a confidential report on Pandey compiled by the Intelligence Bureau, India’s secretive internal intelligence agency, whose computer system’s firewalls were not all they should have been.

  “Links him to numerous killings and several rapes,” said Tubelight as he laid the file on the table.

  “Anything on known criminal associates?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The killer is six foot one, left-handed and totally ruthless. Also, it is entirely possible he was known to the victim. You’ve anyone local you can work with?”

  Tubelight gave a nod.

  “Make sure he’s not on Hari’s payroll.”

  “Please, Boss. My boys have standards. Anything else?”

  Puri told him about the smiley stamp on Kamlesh’s hand and how since breakfast with Hari he’d visited a circus on the edge of Lucknow and found that paying customers were indeed branded with indelible ink when they paid their entry fee, but the symbol used was that of a tiger. He’d also visited a traveling theater and two of the city’s remaining single-screen cinemas—all without making the breakthrough he was hoping for.

  “Try the urinals, the malls also—anywhere a stamp would be required for entry purposes,” said Puri.

  After lunch, Puri picked up his wallet from the office of the courier company Rumpi had used, and returned to his hotel. He found the receptionist in an agitated state. There had been a visitor in sir’s absence.