by Tarquin Hall
“The shrine’s been looted exactly as Mummy predicted!” Rumpi gave her mother-in-law another shake. “You’ve got to wake up. I’m sorry! I should have listened to you.”
Her mother-in-law’s eyes flickered open. “What is that you said?”
Rumpi repeated her news and this time Mummy sat up. “But the whole night long Dughal was very much present in his room,” she said.
“It can’t be a coincidence, it just can’t,” said Rumpi.
Mummy stepped into the bathroom to change into her clothes. “What time it is?” she asked when she emerged, now fully alert to the crisis.
“Quarter to eight.”
“Must be he is planning to abscond by helicopter!”
She and Rumpi hurried out of the guesthouse and made their way up the hill. It took them ten minutes to reach the helipad. They found the Dughals, together with their porters and baggage, waiting on the far side of the landing area.
Mummy and Rumpi attempted to reach them but were prevented from doing so by two security guards, who pointed up at the sky at a helicopter that was preparing to land.
The downward thrust of its blades forced the ladies to turn away and put their backs to the wind, their chunnis beating against their shoulders like flags caught in a gale. Shielding their eyes, they watched over their shoulders as the helicopter touched down, the door opened—and out stepped none other than Inspector Malhotra of the Jammu force.
Much to Mummy and Rumpi’s delight, he, together with three jawans, made a beeline for the Dughals. He interrogated them for a few minutes and their bags were searched. Even the contents of Mrs. Dughal’s handbag were given a thorough inspection. Nothing untoward was discovered, however. No bundles of notes, coins or gold. Just packets of diet candy bars (the jawans ripped open each and every one) and dozens of blister strips of weight-loss pills.
By the time the helicopter blades had come to a stop and Mummy and Rumpi were able to circumnavigate the helipad, Inspector Malhotra had excused the couple.
“But, Inspector, I’m telling you he’s the one,” protested Mummy. “He was working with one pandit. The other one on the train. I witnessed them doing discussion of the robbery plan and such.”
Before Malhotra could reply, Pranap Dughal himself objected.
“Inspector, I’ve had enough of this woman’s accusations,” he said. “First she accuses me of stealing her son’s wallet. Now of robbing the temple.”
“She’s out of her mind!” screeched Mrs. Dughal. “She’s been following us wherever we go!”
“That’s right—even watching us through the gap in her door. I want to make an official complaint!”
“Is this true, madam?” asked Malhotra.
Mummy held her head a little straighter. “Responsibility is on my shoulders, na,” she said in a defiant tone.
The inspector placed his hand on the back of her arm and gently led her away. “Madam, I will not tolerate interference with police business,” he said once they were out of earshot of the Dughals. “I request you to return to your guesthouse.”
“But Dughal did hiring of one helicopter. Just he’ll be getting away.”
“Rest assured, madam, I have closed all airspace. Like everyone else, including your good self, the Dughals will have to leave on foot.”
Malhotra signaled to his jawans and they all marched off in the direction of the shrine.
The porters repacked the Dughals’ belongings and the couples’ caravan started down the mountain path.
Rumpi watched them leave with a puzzled frown.
“I told you this Dughal is a clever one,” said Mummy.
“But if he didn’t leave his room all night and he doesn’t have the loot, then surely he wasn’t involved.”
“Definitely he is involved.”
“Then where’s the money?”
“Just we must find out, na—and the clock is doing tick-tock.”
Eighteen
After their success in tracing Kamlesh’s last steps, Facecream and Deep had spent Tuesday night in a cheap hotel in Lucknow.
They returned to the school at seven A.M. and found the gates wide open.
Papers and activity books were scattered across the compound. Facecream’s clothes, bedding and suitcase lay in a blackened, smoldering pile beneath the banyan tree. In the classroom, they found all the chairs upended. The packets of chalk had been crushed, the pieces of slate snapped in two.
The kitchen had fared no better, with all the pots and utensils pulled off their shelves and the clay water-storage vessel smashed to pieces. The food Facecream had bought—rice, oil, ghee, pulses—was all gone.
“They’ll be back,” said Deep. “And if they find you here, they’ll kill you.”
Facecream knew he was right, that the smart thing to do was to gather up any belongings that had survived and turn right around and flee. Puri wanted her back in Lucknow, where there was still a killer to track down. But she couldn’t bring herself to go without at least saying good-bye. She’d raised the expectations of the children, and even some of their parents.
Keeping Deep here, however, was far too risky.
“I want you to take your bike, go up the lane and wait for me next to that little bridge over the irrigation channel,” she told him. “You know the one? Good. Keep out of sight. If I don’t join you in two hours, you’re to take my phone and call this number here.” She showed him Puri’s entry on her mobile. “That’s my boss. Explain to him what’s happened and he’ll send help. Here’s some money.”
“I want to stay—you might need me,” said Deep.
“You’ve helped enough. Now do as I say.”
The boy shifted his weight from one leg to the other and pouted.
“I said go!” she ordered.
He gave a slow, heavy nod and walked over to where his bike lay on its side. It had escaped any serious damage at the hands of the Yadav goons. After straightening out the handlebars, he strapped on his blocks.
“Please hurry,” he said, addressing her for the first time as “didi”—“sister.”
“Keep yourself hidden,” she said. “I’ll join you soon.”
Facecream watched him go and then set to work. Having dowsed her smoldering belongings with a bucket of water, she set about collecting up all the pieces of paper. It took twenty minutes to straighten out the classroom and make a tidy pile of the broken slates and chalk.
By eight o’clock, she was ready to greet her students and sat waiting beneath the banyan tree. But not a single child appeared—nor any women seeking her advice or help. Rakesh Yadav had warned them off.
She’d been beaten; it was time to face it. The odds were insurmountable. Facecream tied up her few remaining belongings in a bundle and left the compound, her eyes brimming with tears. Without looking back, she started up the lane to find Deep. But after less than a hundred yards, she stopped suddenly. To the right, a path led through the fields. She hesitated for a moment, struggling with her convictions. Then she turned off the lane and hid her bundle beneath some straw. With her khukuri sticking out of the front of her belt, she searched for a way down to the river. She was going to skirt around the village to reach the Dalit ghetto. She’d have her say. Then it was up to them.
Delhi’s arbitrary zoning laws prevented businesses from operating in residential areas, yet the authorities turned a blind eye to doctors, architects and lawyers operating out of basements. Some of the city’s top advocates were to be found working underground, a phenomenon that had always struck Puri as ironic and, in many cases, appropriate.
Ramesh Jindal’s address was in B Block, Nizamuddin East, which boasted well-tended gardens used exclusively by the residents. Bordered on the north by the magnificent sixteenth-century tomb of the Mughal emperor Humayun, and the Nizamuddin railway station to the east, it was termed a “posh” or “upscale” colony with the odd foreign correspondent sprinkled amidst a predominantly aging Punjabi population.
Puri found a house number on the outside o
f the building but no sign indicating that Jindal’s chambers lay within. Through a letterbox window at the foot of the building, however, he spied shelves lined with bound leather tomes and a couple of young men in black trousers and white shirts who looked a bit like human penguins.
Passing through a dirty ground-level parking area and stepping over a mangy cur that lay curled up on a doormat, the detective descended a narrow stairwell. The door at the bottom opened into a small, brightly lit reception that was conventionally furnished. A pretty young receptionist’s eyes appeared over a marble countertop.
Puri didn’t have an appointment, he explained, but wished to speak with Jindal on a “most important and pressing matter, actually.”
“It is regarding the death of Dr. Anju Basu,” he added.
The receptionist promptly picked up a phone and, reading the detective’s name from his card, communicated his request.
“Sir asked you please wait” was the verdict.
The fact that she’d provided no indication whether the wait would be ten minutes or until nightfall neither surprised nor fazed him. Information was never a commodity readily shared in India, least of all by receptionists. Puri was just grateful that she hadn’t sent him packing and, having settled himself into one of the comfortable chairs in front of her desk, set his mind to figuring out how best to tackle Jindal. He’d learned from a couple of contacts that he was a top criminal lawyer and had defended some especially unsavory characters in his time, including the son of a cabinet minister charged with shooting dead a young socialite woman at a function. In recent years he’d also had some success with public litigation cases. He was currently arguing before the Supreme Court on behalf of a village of tribals in Odisha who claimed a steel plant had poisoned the local water supply.
Was it this expertise that had brought Dr. Basu to his door—that is, assuming their meeting had gone ahead? Puri knew now that she’d been planning to leave ICMB. Had she also been planning on blowing the whistle on their practices? Was that what had got her killed? And Ram abducted?
“Mere speculation, Vish Puri, saar!” the detective admonished himself.
Still, he needed to tread carefully. Jindal might have sold Dr. Basu out. The idea of a criminal lawyer being duplicitous was hardly beyond the realm of imagination, or indeed experience.
“Casting nets into unfamiliar waters runs the risk of catching hungry piranhas,” he reminded himself.
Jindal’s office was no bigger than five meters across but the split air conditioner unit was working full blast. Puri, who’d waited just forty-five minutes before being shown inside, felt as if he’d stepped into a freezer. The lawyer himself looked like he’d been frozen solid behind his desk. His hands, which resembled claws, were resting on their backs, the fingers curled inward. Shocks of white ran along the tops of his moustache and eyebrows like dustings of snow. When he turned his head to appraise his visitor, his shoulders barely moved. The detective could have sworn he heard the man’s neck give a creak.
“Forgive me if I don’t stand up,” said Jindal, who looked to be Puri’s senior by some twenty years, which put him in his early seventies. “I suffer from acute arthritis.”
The detective felt like saying, “Hardly surprising given how bloody thanda it is in here.” But instead he thanked Jindal for making time to see him, placed his business card on the desk and, having pulled up a chair, wrapped his safari jacket tight around him.
“ ‘Most Private Investigators, confidentiality is our watchword,’ ” read the lawyer from Puri’s card in a stultified monotone.
Ordinarily before getting down to business, it was customary in Delhi to try to establish social or work-related links between the two parties. Typically Jindal, being the host, might ask where his visitor had grown up and what school he’d attended. Puri might then make reference to his membership in the Gymkhana Club and, by and by, some link would be found that would help break the ice and possibly establish some measure of trust.
The lawyer, however, dispensed with the preliminaries and simply asked, “And you are here because of …?”
Puri suspected that he had little regard for private detectives, but the man’s demeanor was abstruse.
“I’m investigating the death of Dr. Anju Basu, sir,” he answered.
“On whose behalf?”
Puri skirted the question, adding, “Sir, I believe she was murdered.”
Jindal’s features displayed as much surprise as they appeared capable of, his left eyebrow arching upward a couple of millimeters before settling back down again. “I see,” he said. “And why are you telling me?”
Puri took out the copy of Jindal’s business card and pushed it across the desk. “I found this in her apartment,” he said. “Last Monday’s date is written on the back in fountain pen—one with a fine nib like the Montblanc lying there on your blotting pad. The writing is somewhat spidery in nature. Now that I see your arthritic hands it explains exactly and precisely why.”
A subtle change came over Jindal’s expression. The detective couldn’t tell whether it was derived from admiration or unease.
“It would appear you are swimming in dangerous waters, Mr. Puri—if, as you say, Dr. Basu was murdered,” said the lawyer.
“That is something to which I am well accustomed. Danger is my ally.”
“You neglected to name your client.”
“In this case I am simply a concerned citizen of India. My time is being given freely.”
“In my experience, nothing is ever given entirely freely, Mr. Puri. You will surely be looking to derive some gain from this affair.”
“Sir, no financial gain will come my way, let me assure you.”
Jindal brought the tips of his twisted fingers together. He looked like an ancient chess master contemplating his next move. “If it’s information you want, Mr. Puri, I’m likely to disappoint you,” he said.
“Dr. Basu was your client, sir?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“But you met with her, is it?”
Jindal’s answer was preceded by a nod of the head. “I did. On two occasions.”
Progress. “You mind telling me what all you discussed?” asked the detective.
“Again, I’m not at liberty to say.”
Puri felt like he was playing twenty questions. “She required help?” he asked.
“Advice.”
“Regarding the nature of her research?”
“Mr. Puri, I am not empowered to divulge the details of our conversation.”
The detective frowned. Something didn’t make sense here. If Dr. Basu was deceased, then there was no reason for Jindal to be so secretive. Unless …
“Sir, was Dr. Basu by chance accompanied by a young man by the name of Ram Sunder?”
Jindal looked the detective directly in the eye. “She was.”
Ram Sunder had sat here in this very office. He was Jindal’s client.
“You’ve heard from him since, sir?”
“I have not.”
“You were expecting to hear from him, is it?”
“I was.”
“When exactly?”
The lawyer considered the question for a moment. “Towards the end of last week,” he said.
Dr. Basu had been killed in the early hours of Thursday. Ram had been abducted on Saturday. In between, he hadn’t been in touch with Jindal. That suggested that the young Dalit didn’t trust his lawyer—suspected him of betraying their confidence.
Puri tried a different tack. “Some question is there you wish to put to me, sir?” he asked.
Jindal’s enigmatic eyes dwelled on Puri. “I do have one question to put to you,” he said. “You said you believe Dr. Basu was murdered. Do you have evidence to corroborate your assertion?”
“Circumstantial evidence, only,” admitted Puri before going on to explain why he believed the “accident” had been nothing of the sort.
“Her apartment was ransacked also,” he added.
“I take it you mean broken into and searched?”
“Correct.”
“Did you report this crime to the police?”
“The building manager did so.”
“This was when?”
“Yesterday morning, only.”
Jindal reached for an untouched glass of water that sat on a coaster on his desk. He wrapped one hand around it, brought it to his lips and took a sip.
“Another question has occurred to me, if you will allow me,” he said as he replaced the glass.
“Pleasure, sir.”
“Were you followed on your way here, Mr. Puri?”
“I took certain precautions, sir.”
“Very sensible. I believe it would be in both our interests to keep this conversation between ourselves. Are we in agreement?”
“Most certainly, sir.”
“Good.” Jindal looked at the clock on the wall. “And now I must wish you a good day, Mr. Puri. I have another appointment.”
The detective stood from his chair but lingered before Jindal’s desk. The lawyer didn’t strike him as the type to betray a client’s trust. He was scrupulous in his dealings and evidently concerned for his own safety.
Puri decided to take a chance.
“One more question is there,” he said. “You are doubtless aware Ram Sunder is missing?”
“Yes, I believe I read as much in today’s newspaper,” answered Jindal.
“Sir, it is imperative that I locate him without delay. Other parties are searching for him, also. It is no exaggeration to say that he is facing the gravest of dangers. His mother was murdered on Saturday, only. Therefore, should you be in possession of any means of contacting him, I respectfully request you to do so on my behalf.”
“If Mr. Sunder contacts me, I will relay your message. But as I indicated earlier, he hasn’t tried to reach me these past few days.”
This seemed as much cooperation as he could expect and Puri thanked him for his time and left.
He reached the top of the stairs, emerging into the warm outside air. He stopped, suddenly struck by an alarming thought: Could Hari be working for the lawyer? Had he inadvertently shown him his hand?