by Anita Nair
Turning on his heel, he led the way into a room so hung with heavily embroidered drapes that Santosh felt all air escape his lungs. The floors gleamed. On the walls were giant paintings in gilded frames. A woman talking to a swan. A group of singers. Santosh felt his mouth fall open as a shiny black Labrador wearing what seemed like a gold dinner plate trotted over to sniff at them.
‘His father, Romeo, was an inspector in the dog squad,’ the corporator said in a bland voice. ‘Perhaps he senses a connection.’
Gowda smiled. ‘If he’s anything like his father, he can’t be very happy here. Romeo was at his best when it came to sniffing out criminals.’
Santosh looked at Gowda in admiration. Wasn’t the man scared of anybody?
The corporator flushed. ‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’
He sat down in a chair that looked like a throne and waved to Gowda and Santosh to perch on the black leather sofas.
A young man, slight and short, with curly hair and a hint of a squint in one eye, appeared. Diamonds glinted at his earlobes. Gowda felt an instant dislike for him. Thank god Roshan hadn’t got any piercings done yet. The sight of men wearing earrings made him want to gag. With the young man was the ape who had slipped in to inform the corporator of their arrival. A servant followed, carrying a tray. Santosh saw it was silver, on which were two silver glasses brimming with buttermilk.
‘The milk is from my dairy. So the buttermilk is exceptional,’ the corporator said, reverting to an affability that had disappeared for a brief while.
‘This is my brother Ramesh,’ the corporator said. He didn’t bother introducing the other man. But his role was obvious when he placed himself beside the corporator’s chair, arms folded and legs planted in a stance that suggested, ‘here is a being I will guard with my last breath’.
Gowda’s glance flicked over him with interest. But he didn’t speak. Instead, he took the glass of buttermilk and gestured for Santosh to do the same.
‘Yesterday afternoon your people went to Liaquat’s house in Obaidullah Street,’ Gowda said, ignoring all polite niceties.
The corporator stared at him uncomprehendingly.
‘It’s not Liaquat’s house. Chicken Razak lived there. Liaquat was his frooter,’ the corporator’s brother said.
‘Frooter?’ Santosh asked, unable to help himself.
‘His catamite,’ Gowda murmured.
‘What?’ Santosh asked again.
‘Never mind. I’ll explain it to you later.’ Gowda felt a great urge to pinch Santosh, like Mamtha used to pinch Roshan when he wouldn’t shut up and continued to ask embarrassing questions at important gatherings.
‘Your colleague’s new, I see.’ The corporator smiled.
‘Liaquat was murdered some weeks ago. His throat was slit; he was taken to the outskirts of the city and burnt. Probably to get rid of the body, but he was still alive when he was found,’ Gowda said.
The corporator and his brother exchanged glances. ‘What does that have to do with us?’
‘Exactly! What were your men doing in his house?’
The corporator took a deep breath. But it was the younger brother who spoke up. ‘Anna knows nothing about what happened.’
The corporator put his hand on his brother’s arm and said, ‘Inspector Gowda, I would have expected you to have done your homework before you came here. Chicken Razak only rented the house. It was sold to Shivappa, a PWD clerk. But Liaquat wouldn’t move out, no matter what. Shivappa even found him another place. I told Shivappa I would look into it, but I see that my brother has been hasty.’ The corporator paused and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I don’t even know what this Liaquat looks like.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Ramesh. ‘Sir, in fact, I went along to ensure there was no trouble. Didn’t your informer tell you that? All the men did was to break open the lock and empty the house out.’
Gowda nodded. ‘In a murder investigation, we can’t afford to not check on the smallest detail.’
‘This is the first I have heard of Liaquat’s murder. You realize, don’t you, that Liaquat was a male whore. With Razak in jail, he must have got desperate…’ With a slow smile, the corporator added, ‘Would you like me to make some enquiries? My reach far exceeds yours.’
Gowda frowned. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
The corporator rose. Gowda and Santosh followed. Gowda paused. ‘As a corporator, you should know that you cannot take the law in your hands. The man you mentioned should have gone to the police, who would have taken care of it.’
The corporator smiled. ‘Indeed, and I didn’t take the law into my hands. I will, of course, speak to my brother about this and make sure it doesn’t happen again. But both you and I know that Shivappa wouldn’t have been able to afford police intervention. I don’t ask for much, except loyalty. Most people can afford that. By the way, you don’t need to come all this way if you have any more queries. Just call me,’ he said.
‘Sir, but that was a criminal offence. To break into a locked house! We could have hauled up the brother for that,’ Santosh muttered as they walked to the jeep.
Gowda nodded. ‘Yes, we could have. But he would have been out on bail even before you and I got back to the station.’
Santosh turned to look at the house.
‘I don’t believe him. He knows a lot more than he is letting on,’ Gowda said, as they drove back.
‘He is rather strange. That house and the dog; and the bodyguard. Did you see he’s got a gaggle of eunuchs there? Did you see them? They went in by a separate entrance … it’s like something out of a movie,’ Santosh murmured as Gowda stared at him wordlessly.
‘And, sir,’ he added, slowly, ‘there was a Scorpio parked by the side of the house. It had Tamil Nadu number plates.’
WEDNESDAY, 17 AUGUST
Gowda made a gopuram of his hands. The wall on the left threw up shadows and, on an impulse, Gowda made a fist of one hand and stuck his thumb between his middle and ring fingers. Next, he laid his palms on top of each other and moved his thumbs and little fingers this way and that.
Santosh peered over the stable doors and wondered what Gowda was doing. The wall was alive with shadows. Was that a man’s face? Now it was a fish…
Gowda looked up and spotted Santosh.
‘What are you doing, lurking there?’ he called out.
Santosh opened the door and stepped in. ‘Er… what were you doing, sir?’
‘I was thinking,’ Gowda said, trying not to sound self-conscious. What must the fool have thought as his fingers formed shadows? ‘What did you think I was doing?’
Santosh flushed.
‘Here,’ Gowda said, pushing the coffee-table book of Ravi Varma paintings towards the younger man, ‘take a look at this. Something about it is very familiar to me but I can’t put my finger on it.’
Santosh leaned forward and gazed down at the cover. The juggling woman. He stared at it intently. Then, slowly, carefully, he flipped the cover to look at the inner colour plates.
‘Sir, some of these paintings… I’ve seen them too…’ he began as his fingers turned page after page. Suddenly he looked up and said, ‘I know. It was in the corporator’s house. In that rather grand room we sat in… some of these were hung there…’
Gowda’s eyes lit up. ‘Fantastic, Santosh! That’s where I thought I saw them too, but I wanted to make doubly sure…’
Santosh’s face glowed with pleasure. When he was being pleasant, there was no one quite like Borei Gowda.
‘There’s something else,’ Gowda said, his voice lowering. He took a set of keys from his top drawer and threw it at Santosh.
Santosh watched the bunch of keys fly towards his face, stepped back and caught it neatly.
‘Played cricket, did you?’ Gowda smiled.
‘I was in the college team.’ Santosh grinned.
‘Good. Now open the cupboard,’ he said, pointing to a regulation grey-painted steel cupboard in the corner. ‘On the top shelf
is a blue shoebox. You will find in it an earring in a ziploc bag.’
Santosh rifled through the contents of the shoebox. ‘This?’ he asked, holding up a pearl earring.
‘Now look at this painting again,’ Gowda said, turning the leaves of the book to one of a woman suckling a child.
Santosh’s eyes almost leapt out of their sockets. He didn’t know what to look at. The bare breasts or the earring, which was an exact replica of the one the woman wore in her ear. ‘But, how?’
‘Precisely. That’s what got my attention too. This was found on Liaquat’s body. Probably fell off in a tussle. We know that Liaquat was homosexual…’ Gowda saw Santosh’s mouth twist. ‘What? You don’t like the word?’ he asked.
‘It’s not just the word. The thought of those freaks…’
‘Sit down, Santosh,’ Gowda spoke quietly. He leaned back in his chair and peered at a corner of the wall.
Was he counting up to ten under his breath? Santosh asked himself in amazement. What did I say that riled him so?
‘A freak is someone who is a monster; an abnormally developed creature. A freak is someone with two heads or an extra limb. Do you understand? The sexual preference of a man or a woman doesn’t make them freaks! Do you hear me?’
‘Sir.’ Santosh felt a cold finger run down his spine.
‘When I was in college, I had a classmate. He was the nicest person I knew. But he was girlish in the way he walked, talked… His gestures were more female than male. Urmila, my friend, has a word for it. Camp. He was what you might call camp. He was teased mercilessly, but he had the gumption to put up with it. Until one day, a group who baited him all the time decided to teach the “freak”, as they called him, a lesson. They beat him up and beat the spirit out of him. I don’t think the physical abuse hurt him as much as what they did to his mind. He gave up. He probably thought this was how the rest of his life would be. He would be branded a freak and picked on by men who thought it was machismo to beat up someone who wasn’t like them. He jumped in front of a moving train somewhere between City Station and Kengeri.’
‘I am sorry, sir,’ Santosh said in a low voice.
‘You should be. I was like you. I was on the fringes of that group that hounded him to death. I haven’t forgiven myself in all these years for what I did. My brutish intolerance is something I am ashamed of. Don’t take on baggage you will never be rid of, Santosh.’
It was Gowda who broke the silence eventually.
‘The earring. Let’s get back to the earring. We can safely deduce Liaquat must have been in a scuffle that involved a woman. Right, now what kind of a person would someone like Liaquat be involved with? Thugs, prostitutes and their pimps … but how would such a person wear such an earring?’
‘Maybe it’s imitation jewellery?’ Santosh said. ‘It looks tarnished.’ He held the ziploc bag up to the light and gazed at it again.
‘I would have thought so too. But for some strange reason, call it a hunch, I took it to a jeweller I know. He said it was a replica of an antique and had been buffed to look like an old piece. It is expensive.’
Santosh peered at Gowda, trying to read his expression.
He had heard about Gowda’s instinct. Muni Reddy at Meenakshipalaya station had called it Gowda’s sakaath sense. He had made it sound like an extra arm that allowed Gowda to hold a phone, a cup of hot fluids and write a report, all at the same time.
When the sakaath sense nudges him, you know the case is coming to an end. ‘Deal time aagithe, sir,’ Muni Reddy had said.
Head Constable Gajendra had referred to it as well. Only, he called it Gowda’s super sakaath sense. ‘You and I, sir, have only five senses. We can see, smell, touch, hear and taste. But he has a king sense. That makes him think differently. When the super sakaath sense is working, you can see it on his face. His eyes become like daggers, his jaw is like granite … have you seen the Kudremukh hillside, that’s what it looks like then. And you can hear a clock ticking in his head. Do you remember that famous Bina case?’
Santosh frowned. ‘That airhostess?’
Gajendra nodded. ‘She was clever, that one. She made sure the scene was staged so correctly that no one would suspect a thing. I mean, why would anyone suspect her? They were just engaged and, like any engaged couple seeking to be on their own, had gone for a drive. They went towards Bagalur. It is a deserted stretch and while they were there, three men came on a bike, robbed him and her, and stabbed him.
‘She didn’t know how to drive, she said, though she had a licence. So she had to wait until she was able to flag down a vehicle. A taxi was what came that way first and he was rushed to the hospital. Precisely what you would expect a fiancée to do … so guess what got Gowda’s super sakaath sense into action?’
Santosh shook his head. Gajendra grinned.
‘She did it all right, except one thing. When she got into the car, she and the driver laid the fiancé down on the back seat. Now what would a fiancée do? She would sit in the back seat and place his head in her lap. She would cradle him to her … this was her would-be, after all. Instead, this woman got into the front with the driver. That set Gowda thinking. That absence of grief…’
‘It’s just experience.’ Santosh was dismissive.
‘Experience is what helps take the super sakaath sense forward. But you are either born with it or not. Look at Dravid, look at Kumble… none of these new fellows have it, which is why they are getting their chaddis taken in England now… what a disaster. I don’t even feel like switching the TV on to watch the cricket… One day soon, you’ll see Gowda sir’s super sakaath sense. Then you’ll understand.’ And then under his breath, he muttered, ‘Kathegenu gothu kasturi parimala.’
‘What did you say?’ Santosh demanded furiously. He had heard every syllable. He knew he had just been called a donkey who didn’t have it in him to appreciate the fragrance of musk.
‘Sir?’ Head Constable Gajendra put on an innocent face. ‘I didn’t say anything.’
Santosh opened his mouth to voice a reprimand when Gajendra mumbled something about having to go to a layout nearby for police verification of a passport. ‘Some friend of Gowda sir’s,’ he added quickly.
Santosh looked again to see if Gowda’s eyes were sharpened knives and if his jaw bore the countenance of the Kudremukh slopes.
‘What are you staring at my face for?’ Gowda snapped.
‘Nothing, sir.’ Santosh shook his head. ‘I was just suddenly struck by a thought.’
‘Well, don’t do your thinking staring at my face. I am not a chimpanzee in a zoo.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ Santosh mumbled. ‘You were telling me about the earring.’
‘Yes, you can see we have an expensive earring in the possession of a street element. The flames didn’t get to it, so the earring was pretty much intact and the hospital orderly must have been honest, so it didn’t get stolen. Which is how we have it with us.’ Gowda paused dramatically. ‘Remember that photo exhibition I was invited to inaugurate and the photo I was struck by…’
Santosh watched as Gowda laboriously moved the mouse to open his email account. Gowda, Santosh saw, wasn’t very computer savvy. He could handle the essentials, but he still treated it like a beast that he didn’t trust.
Gowda clicked the mouse impatiently. ‘I asked them to send me a photograph and they sent it by email. The whole damn art exhibition.’
‘Sir, may I?’ Santosh asked, rising.
He set the slide show on. One by one the images appeared on the screen.
‘That one,’ Gowda said, poking his finger at the screen. Santosh winced.
He paused the slide show and opened the image to cover the full screen.
‘See what I see?’ Gowda asked.
Amidst a group of eunuchs was one who wasn’t quite eunuch-like, but seemed more woman than many women he knew. Most of her face was in darkness, but he saw how the shadows accentuated her profile. In her ear was a replica of the earring that lay on the table.
‘But how, sir?’ Santosh stuttered.
‘Exactly. A misfit,’ Gowda said, peering at the screen again. ‘So, this is what I want you to do.’
THURSDAY, 18 AUGUST
ACP Vidyaprasad examined himself in the mirror that hung in the corridor between his office and the station house. The police constables on duty pretended not to notice as the senior officer preened, looking at himself from various angles.
Gowda walked in and saluted. Everything in his being cried out at having to show respect to this ass of a man. But protocol had to be observed and this morning, he needed the ACP’s acquiescence.
ACP Vidyaprasad saw Gowda reflected in the mirror. He frowned. Thanks to this idiot, his holiday had nearly been postponed. It irked him no end to see him here. ‘What brings you here, Gowda?’
Gowda saw the constables’ eyes glitter. ‘I need to talk to you in private,’ he murmured.
ACP Vidyaprasad frowned. ‘That sounds ominous.’
‘It may very well be, sir.’ Gowda decided to be cryptic. Hopefully, that would entice his fool of a superior officer into his office.
The ACP nodded and walked into his room. Gowda followed.
‘You know I am going on leave this evening, don’t you? So I hope you haven’t done anything that’s going to upset me,’ the ACP murmured, hoisting his foot onto the window sill. He flicked off with one finger an imaginary piece of lint that clung to the shiny brown leather. ‘A reporter from Bangalore Herald is coming to see me in a few minutes. So hurry up and tell me whatever it is that seems to be so important to you.’
Gowda’s eyes glazed for a moment. Just for a moment he imagined the ACP crouching in a corner while his boot made contact with that Gillette-smoothened, Fair and Lovely-ied, Cuticura-powdered face.
‘Sit down, Gowda,’ the ACP cut into his highly enjoyable reverie.
‘Sir, it’s these murders,’ Gowda began.
‘What murders?’ The ACP’s expression hardened. ‘The CCB’s taken that over. So how does it concern us?’