The Case of the Love Commandos

by Tarquin Hall

Zia rolled his eyes. “It’s a country, you idiot.”

  “Where?”

  “Find out yourself.”

  “Ha, I knew it, you don’t know!”

  “I know that it’s a country, which is more than you.”

  The two didn’t speak for a minute or so. Through the scope, Zia watched the guards standing around, chatting and laughing. He noted that there were five in all.

  “So what do you call a Swi-dan person?” asked Shashi.

  “Listen, yaar, we’ve been here only one hour and already I’m getting sick of your questions,” complained Zia.

  “Please, oh Baba, share with me your wisdom!”

  Zia sighed. “Someone from Swi-dan is a Swi-dan-i. Like those from Pakistan are Pakistan-i, those from Kashmir are Kashmir-i,” he said with confidence.

  “Like Angrez are Angrezi?”

  “Right.”

  “So these Swi-dan-i, they’re goras?”

  “Pure Aryan.”

  “They play cricket?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do they eat?”

  “What do all goras eat, yaar? Bland things—ham-bugg-ar, boiled subzi.”

  A vehicle was leaving the ICMB compound. Its headlights pierced the gap between the gates like sun through a forest canopy. A sedan appeared. Zia read the number plate and checked it with the one listed on Most Private Investigators’ copy of the national car owners’ database. It was a Skoda belonging to Dr. Sengupta, the head of research.

  “That’s the Bong scientist,” he said. “I’ll take him. Watch for the Swi-dan-i—and don’t forget to write down the number plates of other vehicles coming and going. Note the time, too. It’s ten thirty.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “No, ten thirty, idiot!” cursed Zia.

  He jumped onto one of the two Vespa scooters they’d parked out of sight and sped off in pursuit. When the geneticist stopped at a red light, the operative pulled up behind his car and attached a homemade magnetic GPS tracking device to the bottom of the rear bumper. The operative was then able to follow from a safe distance and, twenty minutes later, stopped unnoticed outside Dr. Sengupta’s house.

  The door was opened by a frail, gray-haired lady in a sari.

  “Sorry I’m late, Maa. I got caught up at work,” Zia heard the Bong say as he removed his shoes and stooped down to touch her feet.

  Mummy couldn’t have hoped for a better room. It was on the ground floor of the guesthouse five doors down from the Dughals. The corridor running between them provided the only way of reaching the reception and entrance beyond. There was no other exit.

  While the rest of the family slept, Mummy kept vigil, watching for any movement in the corridor through a gap in the door. The Vaishno Devi shrine was open to worshippers around the clock and a number of guests came and went in the middle of the night. An elderly couple set off around eleven thirty and returned an hour and a half later. At one A.M. a young woman wearing a backpack made her way down the corridor and was gone approximately two hours. And at five o’clock a bleary-eyed family of six emerged from the adjacent room and staggered past the Puris’ door, yawning and rubbing their eyes.

  Mummy had to wait all night, until six thirty in fact, for a glimpse of Pranap Dughal. And then all he did was walk the short distance to reception.

  By turning up her hearing aid full volume, Mummy overheard him telling the clerk on duty that he and his wife would be checking out at seven and that they’d need a few porters. After that, he stepped into the street to smoke a cigarette and, five minutes later, returned to his room.

  Mummy caught a snatch of Mrs. Dughal’s scolding voice before the door closed.

  A few minutes later, Rumpi awoke. “Mummy-ji, don’t tell me you’ve been sitting there all night,” she said.

  Her mother-in-law gave a sheepish nod. It was beginning to look as if she’d got the wrong end of the stick again.

  “Perhaps he met that priest on the train by chance and was just getting some friendly advice on how to carry out the pilgrimage,” suggested Rumpi.

  “Could be,” conceded Mummy.

  “It’s also entirely possible that he bought those sleeping tablets to make sure that his wife sleeps soundly. I wouldn’t want to be woken by her in the middle of the night.”

  “Also true.”

  “Then why don’t you come and lie down? You look exhausted.”

  The thought of sleep felt suddenly irresistible. “You are right,” said Mummy-ji. “Bed rest is required. Just I’ll sleep for one hour or so. What is the harm?”

  She started to unpack her nightie but was distracted by the sound of porters in the lane and looked out the window. The Dughals’ bags were already being loaded onto a pack mule.

  “Must be getting senile, na,” Mummy commented as she lay down and closed her eyes.

  Mummy wasn’t the only Puri to have gone without sleep. Facecream’s disturbing revelation about Kamlesh going to see Baba Dhobi had kept her boss up all night.

  Puri had tried everything to put himself under: a few Patiala pegs, counting the stars, even reading a mind-numbingly tedious account by a senior journalist about his experiences covering Indian politics over the past forty years.

  Finally, at first light, he gave up, woke the servant girl and got her to make him a cup of chai, and then took it up onto the flat roof of his house.

  Standing there watching the sun break over Delhi’s southern suburbs, he met the dawn with a grim countenance. It was true that nothing was proven yet. For all he knew, Kamlesh had entered Baba Dhobi’s party headquarters, failed to meet with him and then been sent on her way. Some time later, she could have been picked up off the street and murdered by someone else who’d sought to put the blame on Vishnu Mishra. But the expression on her dead face said otherwise.

  Puri could read it clearly now. It had been engendered by betrayal. A Dalit who’d been oppressed all her life, treated worse than the stray dogs in the village, had gone to see the one person in the world she believed she could trust. She’d asked Baba Dhobi, the self-proclaimed messiah of the Dalits, for help. Yet within a few hours Kamlesh Sunder, an innocent midwife, had been brutally murdered. How had Chanakya put it?

  “There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it.”

  Had the yet-to-be-identified item buried behind her house sealed her fate? If so, what was it? And why would she have taken it to Baba Dhobi?

  Puri stopped himself from speculating any further and turned his attention to his chilli plants. The squall four days earlier had deposited a layer of sand and grime on the leaves, and he went about cleaning them with a spray bottle of water. He found the process soothing. Indeed, by the time he got round to affixing tiny bamboo splints to the stems that had been damaged in the high winds, he found that the despondency he’d struggled with all night had begun to dissipate.

  Something else, though, was gnawing at him: that conversation with Dr. Sengupta at ICMB. It seemed simply incredible that from a single drop of blood scientists could tell you more about yourself than you had ever known. It was almost as if they could look into your soul.

  Puri understood why such genetic scrutiny would put many Indians off. He himself was immensely proud of being from the Kshatriya warrior caste, a pedigree that was an intrinsic part of his identity. What if he found out there was nothing to it? That far from bravely fighting for their way of life, once upon a time his ancestors had been simple buffalo herders? Puri certainly wouldn’t want other people knowing such a thing.

  He could think of others for whom caste was sacred. Take a Brahmin politician like Dr. Pandey, for example. His entire persona was founded on the exploitation of caste, of pitting himself and his supporters against the lower castes whom, if his rhetoric was to be believed, were out to steal their jobs. What if it emerged that he was actually one of them, his own blood tainted by, say, lowly Jat genes?

  Were caste se
crets the key? Was someone trying to cover up a genetic revelation that Dr. Basu had stumbled across?

  Puri picked a couple of ripe Scotch bonnets for his breakfast and made his way back downstairs. Sleep would come easily to him now, but it was fast approaching seven o’clock and he needed to head into central Delhi. He took a quick bucket bath and donned a gray safari suit and matching cap, then set off in his Ambassador.

  Following behind were the Volkswagen van that had been parked outside Khan Market last night and a black sedan with tinted windows and Uttar Pradesh plates. Puri suspected this belonged to Vishnu Mishra’s goon Naga. Evidently he’d managed to get hold of the detective’s residential address and now seemed to be taking a nonviolent approach, presumably hoping that Puri would lead him to either Ram or Tulsi.

  “How do you want me to drive, Boss?” asked Handbrake.

  “Normal driving,” said the detective, who was acting under the assumption that Hari’s people were keeping tabs on him as well.

  Normal driving meant driving like everyone else—in other words, winding through traffic without signaling, straddling two lanes at once, flashing “dippers” at any car that dared to get in the way, honking incessantly, jumping queues at red lights and wherever possible blocking everyone behind trying to go straight ahead.

  Anything that varied from this—like responsible “lane driving”—might raise the suspicions of those tailing him, Puri reasoned. And for now at least, he was happy to play Pied Piper.

  His first stop was the R. K. Puram government administrative complex, where he found Lakshman in his usual spot under the banyan tree making paranthas in his makeshift kitchen. He ordered two of the aloo variety, which he quickly devoured with a goodly helping of garlic pickle.

  Tubelight called while he was eating to tell him about a breakthrough in Agra. His boys had spotted a black SUV with tinted windows leaving the compound.

  “Same number plate as the one that followed you, Boss.”

  Puri didn’t sound in the least surprised. “Seems I went and shook the right tree for sure,” he said. “How about Dr. Pandey? Any dirty linen?”

  Tubelight gave a sigh. “Boss, where to begin?” he said. “Pandey’s into everything. He’s got companies registered even in the names of his drivers and maids. They say the mattresses in his home are all stuffed with cash.”

  “Any person in his company fits the profile of the killer?”

  “There’s no one so tall, Boss. Plus, Pandey is smart. He’d use a professional.”

  “A contractor?”

  “Probably an Afridi. Those people are tall. But, Boss, no one in that community will talk.”

  Puri lapsed into prolonged thought. In light of Facecream’s revelation about Ram’s mother having gone to see Chief Minister Baba Dhobi, any further investigation into Dr. Pandey seemed unwarranted. There could surely be no connection between the two. One Dalit, the other Brahmin, they were sworn political enemies.

  Tubelight’s time would be better spent in Agra.

  “Let us focus on this ICMB,” said Puri. “I want to know how many sugars that gora director has in his coffee. Same goes for the head of research, Dr. Sengupta. Something was there in his eyes—something … wrong.”

  Twenty minutes later, with the white Volkswagen and the black sedan still tailing him, Puri’s Ambassador pulled up outside the toilet complex at Sarojini Nagar bus depot. It was operated by Sulabh, a charity, and unlike the pitiful public toilets “maintained” by the Delhi civic authorities, the place was clean.

  Inside, the detective found one of the two cubicles free. Sitting down on the toilet, he began to hum one of his favorite old Raj Kapoor songs, “Mera Joota Hai Japani.”

  A man’s voice responded. “All OK?”

  It was Pappi. He was sitting in the other cubicle.

  “World-class. Your good self?”

  “Thirsty. You owe me a drink, you bugger.”

  “Definitely. Once the case is gotten over. Best of luck, haan.”

  The man who stepped out of the toilet complex could have been Puri’s identical twin. Their faces were uncannily similar, they were the same height and build, and it would have taken a sharp-eyed observer indeed to notice the minor difference in the curl of Pappi’s moustache, the paler dye of his safari suit or the fact that his aviator shades were replicas rather than genuine Ray-Bans.

  As he crossed the pavement and approached the Ambassador, Pappi mimicked the detective’s walk, pitching slightly to his right each time his left foot made contact with the ground. He waited for Handbrake to open the door for him, glanced up and down the street and then sat on the left-hand side of the backseat.

  In order to leave his audience in absolutely no doubt that it was Vish Puri whom they were pursuing, Pappi then drove to the nearest Tibb’s and ordered a chicken frankie. From there, he planned to lead Puri’s tails on a merry dance around South Delhi.

  The real detective remained in his cubicle for a few minutes out of necessity. Once he’d washed his hands and paid the janitor, he stepped onto the street and hailed an auto. His destination was Nizamuddin East, a so-called colony of South Delhi. But just in case one of Hari’s people had got wise to the switch, he told the driver to take him to INA Market. There, he wove a path through the labyrinth of ramshackle stalls, stepping over live chickens and open drains and ignoring touts offering everything from cans of imported baked beans and Iranian pistachios to cheap bras. He then headed down into the Delhi metro and took the train one stop to Jor Bagh. From there, he hired a taxi from the nearby stand.

  He was about halfway to his destination when his phone rang. It was an Agra number.

  “This is Satyajit Dasgupta. I got a message from Shaadiwaadi saying I should call you—regarding Anju?”

  He was referring to Dr. Basu.

  “You two were going the marriage way, I understand?” asked Puri.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “How long you had known her, might I ask?”

  “A few weeks.”

  Nothing untypical about two people getting married so quickly even amongst the educated elite, reflected Puri. “It is my understanding you were with her the night she met her death,” he said.

  “Do you mind telling me what this is about? The man at Shaadiwaadi said you believe it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I do not believe—I know for certain.”

  “You’re saying Anju was murdered?”

  “Correct.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Puri explained his reasoning and asked whether Dasgupta knew of anyone who would want to murder her.

  “I can’t think of anyone,” he said. “She was such a warm, caring person.”

  “Dr. Basu was content with her working situation, is it?”

  “Well, no, not entirely. She was leaving her job, in fact. I think there were personal issues.”

  “She mentioned any one individual?”

  “She wouldn’t have discussed that sort of thing. We’d only met a few times.”

  “A marriage of convenience, so to speak?”

  “I don’t see the relevance of that question.”

  Puri felt like pointing out that it was entirely relevant. Dasgupta might well have killed Dr. Basu himself, and that made the nature of their relationship relevant. But he let it go for now.

  “What all were your movements the night she died?”

  “We had dinner at Silk Route.”

  “What time exactly?”

  “I got there at nine.”

  “And Dr. Basu?”

  “She was already at the table.”

  “What time you left?”

  “Almost eleven, I think.”

  “She drove herself, is it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She had some drink?”

  “Drink? Anju was strictly teetotal.”

  Puri thanked him for his time and was about to hang up when Dasgupta suddenly remembered something.

&
nbsp; “When I arrived at the restaurant, she was sitting with someone—a young man,” he said. “He got up and left after I arrived.”

  “You saw what he looked like, what all he was wearing?”

  Dasgupta proceeded to provide an exact description of Ram Sunder. He then asked Puri whether he thought the young man could be the murderer.

  “In point of fact, no. But it is entirely possible he knows the identity of the killer,” answered the detective.

  “You mean you haven’t spoken with him?”

  “He’s missing, in fact.”

  “Since when?”

  “Saturday.”

  “But I saw him last night.”

  “Pardon?” Puri felt stunned.

  “I went to see a movie and he was outside hanging around. He was wearing a baseball cap, but it was definitely the same guy.”

  The detective didn’t know whether to celebrate or scold himself for being a damn fool.

  “Which theater exactly?” he asked.

  “Sanjay Cinema.”

  “Sanjay Cinema! Of course! Tulsi said they were regulars!” Puri almost howled.

  He thanked Dasgupta profusely, hung up the phone and gave himself a light slap on the forehead. How could he have been so slow on the uptake? Ram had escaped his abductors and gone to ground. Everyone else—Hari, ICMB, no doubt Vishnu Mishra, too—had figured it out. No doubt they all imagined that Ram was his client and were hoping he’d lead them to him.

  Puri felt the lack of sleep suddenly catching up with him and made an unscheduled stop at one of the posh, overpriced coffee shops that had sprung up all over Delhi in the past few years. He downed two double “expressos” and felt the caffeine revitalize his system as assuredly as the magic potion in Asterix. It was then that he realized his advantage. He was holding a trump card—the Queen of Hearts. And that might—just might—give him the edge.

  Rumpi burst into the room.

  “Mummy-ji, wake up! You were right!”

  She knelt down next to her mother-in-law and took her by the arms. “Can you hear me? I said you were right. And he’s getting away!”

  The rest of the family stirred from their slumber.

  “Who’s getting away?” Chetan yawned from his pillow.