by Monabi Mitra
‘Your father, now dead, had told . . . someone. You had asked him for money and a job. He gave you some money but nothing more.’
‘But you have no actual evidence?’
Bikram shook his head. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I have no proof. Besides, I have another witness who claims to have seen Monica with someone who looks very different from you, one of the last persons she may have been seen alive with. We will be looking for him. If you talk, it will help us tie up some loose ends. Why you told Inspector Ghosh to look into the past, for instance. I think the past concerns you.’
‘Your father, now dead . . .’ Heera looked at the teddy bear musingly. ‘Is your father dead?’
Bikram sneezed and began to hunt in his pocket for a handkerchief. He sneezed again, found a crumpled but good quality one with ‘Bikram’ embossed in a corner and began to use it. Then he put it away and said, ‘Yes.’
‘Did he love you?’
Bikram considered. A procession of memories brought back the elder Mr Chatterjee: grim and serious, never known for public or private demonstrations of affection. But perhaps he did and Bikram had never really understood him—if, that is, worrying was a sign of love. He too stared at the teddy bear, brows furrowed, and said, ‘Now, I realize he must have. When I was younger I thought he fussed too much. And had unnatural expectations.’
Heera sighed. ‘At least he did something. Mine abandoned me when I was a year old. Twenty-nine years later, when I sought him out and told him who I was, he looked at me as if I was another of those strays he sheltered. A mixture of pity and revulsion.’
‘Go on.’ Bikram’s mobile, which had been vibrating steadily in the phone pouch near his belt, started buzzing again and there was a faint whirring on the sofa.
‘He told me flatly that he would have nothing to do with me. I told him how my mother had been run over by a lorry near our village, and how I had been lucky to have been picked up by an NGO and sent to an orphanage. That I had learned a smattering of English, knew how to look smart and could drive a car. I begged him to take me in. If he didn’t want to introduce me as his son, that was OK by me. I had drifted since I dropped out of school at fourteen and had a hard time coming to the big city. That I needed a break. And that I was his only legal heir. Do you know what he did?’
Bikram kept quiet.
‘He called me a bastard. Apparently there was some mistake and he had never married my mother. So I was to have no delusions.’
There was a sound at the door. The girl had returned with the tiffin-carrier. She rattled the lock, went into the kitchen and returned with a scrap of paper and some money. She held it out for Heera and stared at Bikram.
Heera reached out for the money and clumsily dropped some of the change which jingled in a picturesque curve on the floor. Bikram bent down to pick the coins up as Heera watched him from the sofa. Bikram placed the coins on the topmost girlie magazine.
‘You’re a funny policeman,’ said Heera. ‘Picking coins off the floor near my feet, like some damned maidservant, and sitting with me on this broken sofa like an old chum.’
Since this was precisely the kind of effect he had hoped to produce to draw Heera out, Bikram said nothing.
‘Get us some tea,’ Heera ordered the maid roughly. The girl reluctantly trudged back to the kitchen.
Heera drew heavily on his third cigarette. Bikram began to sneeze as the smoke wreathed towards him.
‘Allergy,’ he said apologetically. ‘Don’t bother, go ahead.’
Heera threw back his head and guffawed theatrically. ‘A policeman with dust allergy. This is incredible.’
‘It’s not always been so,’ said Bikram loftily. ‘I had malaria two weeks ago. Immunity’s gone down since. What happened next?’
Heera stared at his cigarette. ‘You should have lots of boiled papaya. That’s what my mother used to say. Papaya and fresh river fish.’
‘How old were you when she died?’
‘Fifteen. I had drifted to urban living by then and had been employed as a driver in a convent run by a bunch ofwoolly nuns. The convent was actually an orphanage-cum-girl’s hostel, and the durwans and I were the only males on campus. The girls almost ate me up every night. They would slip into my room and act out everything that they had been dreaming of all day. Sometimes the bruising I got was painful.’
‘And then you came to Calcutta?’
‘Yes. I didn’t know where he was or what he did. All I knew was that he had kept his old name. I remembered hearing this name in connection with a movie, so I went from studio to studio, tracking him down, till I finally got an address. I went to his house thinking it was going to be the concluding scene of a seventies-style Hindi movie. It was an eighties’ art film instead. Brief and sad. I grew up, emotionally, in those fifteen minutes.’
‘And yet he produced two movies which you directed.’
‘Yeah, of course. Why not? He needed to give Mala a chance and also try his hand at movie-making as a new line of business. One morning, when I was washing the convent car, he rang me up and asked me if I knew anyone who had directed television serials and would make a movie for him, but not with too much of money. He must have asked the regulars and realized that movie production is not as easy as it sounds, so he decided to get it done cheap with the help of some greenhorns.’ Heera sounded bitter.
‘It may also be that your father repented his rude behaviour and wanted to put you into some kind of business?’ Bikram, remembering the dogs and the remnants of Piloo’s locker, hazarded an opinion.
‘Perhaps,’ said Heera. ‘With the help of a guy who ran a canteen during movie shoots, I arranged for him to meet a failed D-grade director who would keep costs down. The director died midway and I offered to take over for I had learned enough by then. All of us were happy, Piloo doing Mala and all the movie extras he could get, my friend and I trying our hand at filmmaking and collecting some of the loot in the process. Piloo fancied himself to be meant for the movies, a kind of hidden talent which he needed to work out. That was his only blind spot—the film world.’
The words seemed to echo in the room and Bikram felt a little embarrassed. Were Heera’s comments loaded? Was Shona a blind spot? Tiffs, arguments, quarrels and yet he couldn’t live without her! The great Bikram Chatterjee, laid low by a movie star, like a silly hero in a schoolgirl novel. Feeling rather ashamed of his uncomfortable thoughts, Bikram hurried on to his next question.
‘Did you have arguments over money? Did he accuse you of stealing some?’
‘All the time. And every time he did, I would curse him back. Then Mala would intercede on my behalf and there would be a hell of a scene, and she would work on him all night and calm him down. She’s almost broke, you see, and needed the money too.’
Bikram heaved himself out of the sofa and Heera looked up.
‘Going? What about the tea?’
Bikram shook his head.
‘Are you going to take me in for questioning, then? I was at a booze party on Diwali night. About thirty other guys and girls can answer for me.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Bikram absently. ‘The DIG might want to talk to you. He might want to go over it again. Was Mala at the party too?’
‘She was, at the beginning at least. Later on, you can imagine what happened. She made a good deal that night.’
‘Did Monica know you were Piloo’s son?’
‘I think not. She would have murdered me if she knew, I guess.’
‘Does Mala know?’
‘No,’ said Heera shortly. ‘Don’t tell her if you can help it. She’ll never leave me in peace till I’ve dug out an inheritance.’
‘And now you may be a rich man. If you can prove you’re his son, legally. And if you can escape criminal detention and hope that someone else gets arrested for his murder. You’re not entirely without hope.’
Heera frowned, trying to work out what Bikram meant, and Bikram left it at that.
At home, while he was s
howering, Bikram suddenly remembered something.
He rang up Ghosh.
‘Did they find the woman’s mobile phone?’
‘Funny you asked, because I too thought of that ten minutes ago. I rang up Murshidabad PS and spoke to an addled investigating officer. He doesn’t recall seeing it on the seizure list and is pretty sure that there isn’t any phone now, but can’t remember anything about it at the dhaba. Said that the man who found the body doesn’t remember seeing it either but isn’t sure, though I’m sure he hadn’t asked. Too slovenly for the finer points.’
‘Do we have a witness for the fact that she took the Calcutta— Siliguri bus? She might have hired a car and the killer may have accompanied her in it.’
‘As a matter of fact we do. The only intelligent thing which Murshidabad PS did was to take the conductor of the bus in for questioning on his return trip. He remembers Monica Sarkar because he said she was an unlikely kind of woman to travel to Siliguri by bus. Apparently a woman travelling alone in these contraptions, unaccompanied even by children, is still a novelty. She sat alone and kept her bag between her feet rather than on the overhead luggage rack. Everyone got down at the dhaba to eat and pee and generally refresh themselves, and so did Monica.’
‘Didn’t he find it odd that she never returned?’
‘He thought Murshidabad was her final destination. Apparently a lot of passengers treat the bus as a hop-on, hop-off service. She had paid for her ticket at the Calcutta kiosk so the conductor wasn’t sure where she was headed. The last he saw of her was when she was dragging her bag along and buying a pack of cigarettes. That interested him briefly. He didn’t see her after that. Do you have any ideas?’
‘Some. She was travelling to Siliguri in a hurry. She may have divulged her plans to someone else without realizing that it would be her undoing, of course. Someone she implicitly trusted. This someone followed her in some other vehicle—’
‘Not a truck,’ grunted Ghosh. ‘No lorry can keep up with a Rocket. They’re devilish things, charging down the highway at 80 kilometres per hour.’
‘A car, then. I thought the Rocket service takes off early in the morning or late at night. Why late afternoon, Ghosh? That’s a funny timing for a long-distance bus!’
‘There’s been a spate of robberies near Malda in the last month. The bus changed the schedule so that it could cross the danger zone before midnight.’
‘And so, whoever followed her, drove into the dhaba behind her bus unobserved, or travelled on the same bus or put someone else on the job, waited till she had finished her tea—’
‘And cigarettes,’ said Ghosh. ‘Don’t forget the details.’
‘Tailed her to the loo, which, incidentally is nothing but a tin shed at the back, near the pond—’
‘And biffed her with a, well, let’s say a wrench, which is heavy and blunt and can be wondrous when handled correctly, dragged the body to the pond and threw it in,’ finished Ghosh. ‘I suppose it was too dark by then for anyone to notice. He or she didn’t want to take the risk of rummaging through her bag, so the murderer simply grabbed her phone and bank papers and left the rest behind. Why?’
‘Because the phone contains incriminating evidence,’ said Bikram. ‘Which means it’s someone with whom she was in touch, enough for his or her number to be traced.’
‘Someone from her immediate circle. You’re sure Heera has an alibi?’ asked Ghosh hopefully.
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ said Bikram sulkily and went to bed.
16
‘Democracy’s strongest reliance is the police.’
At five-thirty the next morning Raja was back on the phone. This time it was Bikram who was half asleep as he fuzzily answered the call.
‘I have news,’ Raja announced, ‘but it’s all very puzzling. If what you say is true, there seem to be two Murari Koyals, one who does fraudulent deals and another who fishes. Which one do you want?’
‘Does what?’ The line was echoing, as if in a long distance call, and Bikram was sure he had heard him wrong.
‘He fishes.’
‘Stop your twaddle, Raja. And how come you got your information so soon?’ Bikram sounded both suspicious and annoyed.
‘I have my sources,’ said Raja evasively. ‘And what I say is true. There are two of them, apparently, and one of them owns a fishing trawler. Come down here and take a look for yourself, if you don’t believe me.’ This time he sounded offended.
‘Where are you?’
‘At Ten Miles Village, near the sea.’
‘And who told you about this man, or perhaps you don’t want to name him.’
‘Why not? You can talk to him if you want.’ Raja sounded sullen.
Bikram, sensing injury, began a tedious process of peacemaking. ‘If you want to keep informers to yourself, you can. I trust you completely, Raja,’ he finished.
Raja brightened, ‘Of course not. You must meet him! He’s known as Anglo Roderick and he’s a good friend. We had done a few deals in the past, chit funds and so on, so I thought of him the minute you asked me for stuff on a man who ran a fake investment company. Anglo Roderick came back quickly with the news. He’s never heard of a Murari Koyal who deals in forgery and cheating, but he knows of one in his native village who owns a deep-sea trawler. This man divides his time between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour and is probably here at his village now.’
Bikram, thinking of all the quibbling and wrangling he would need to do with Virendra Singh to rustle up a raid now, sighed.
‘How far is Ten Miles Village from Calcutta?’
* * *
Ten Miles Village was a hundred kilometres away from the headquarters. The road that led to it had once been a National Highway; it was now no more than a narrow strip under the pressure of teastalls, fruit-stands, vegetable vendors, dour-looking bulls, cages of droopy chickens, cycle repair shops, pharmacies and two ‘May I Help You Police at Your Service’ kiosks. It took them three hours to battle through lumbering lorries, packed buses, belligerent two-wheelers and emaciated villagers dragging goats behind them. Midway into the journey, Ashu Das began to nod and Bikram let him slip into gentle snores before engaging in a whispered consultation with Ghosh. Murari Koyal was Ashu Das’s case, thus necessitating his presence in this raid, but Ghosh was especially chagrined at this inclusion.
‘We could have left him behind. There could really be two Murari Koyals and Ashu Das could be left in Calcutta to hunt for the racketeering one.’
‘Never! They are one and the same. They must be, have to be. We’ll need to solve the Ganeshaa Investment bother if we want more insights into the Piloo Adhikary one. Toofan Kumar won’t be on leave indefinitely.’
Ghosh coughed hollowly and extracted phlegm from his lungs noisily. He would have spat it out of the window but Bikram’s presence required something more refined; accordingly he produced a roll of tissues and began a delicate operation. Bikram remembered his sore-throat medicine and felt for it in his pocket. He had left it behind, as usual.
‘Still, we’re progressing,’ said Bikram brightly. ‘It’s obvious that Monica was murdered for her money. The bank tells me that a sum of two lakh rupees was withdrawn on the day after her murder by someone called Amir Ali. Sounds like the thug who killed her. If we can get Koyal, a lot of questions will be answered. He might know who Amir Ali is.’
‘The thing that gets me is that one man can be doing things so differently,’ said Ghosh. ‘Ganeshaa Investment and realty, yes, Ganeshaa Investment and shares, yes, but Ganeshaa Investment and fish! Koyal seems to be multi-tasking like mad.’
‘And what’s more, he’s been multi-tasking in a seasoned manner. Anglo Roderick convinced Raja there were two different Koyals.’
A dog missed Mistry’s wheels by inches and yelped in shock. Bikram frowned. ‘Calm down, Mistry. We don’t want an accident to complicate matters.’
‘If Heera has admitted to being Piloo’s son, I don’t see why we can’t arrest him.’ Ghosh was bac
k to his favourite topic. They had argued about it in the morning while setting up the Ten Miles Village raid and Bikram had begged him to keep quiet about the matter before Virendra Singh.
‘He has a strong alibi.’
‘Most seasoned murderers do. Besides, you’re doing the dog handler a disservice by keeping him in custody.’
‘He’s a decoy,’ said Bikram impatiently.
‘That’s unfair. For whom?’
‘Virendra Singh, of course. Someone’s always got to be in custody for a murder case, to show the press.’
‘So why not substitute the dog handler with the film director? The police will look more energetic and the reporters will be ecstatic.’
‘I need some time to think,’ said Bikram a shade crossly. ‘First we thought that Monica had murdered Piloo—’
‘Not “we” but Ashu,’ Ghosh interrupted.
‘Then we decided that Bishu was the man—’
‘Not “we” but Sheena,’ Ghosh cut in again.
‘Now you say it’s Heera,’ said Bikram ignoring him. ‘Next you’ll clamour for Leena Mukherjee’s arrest, and end up with her husband Chand Mukherjee.’
‘Why not?’ said Ghosh protesting. ‘They all seemed to be one big, happy, shifty gang. What’s to stop husband and wife from conspiring to kill off the other couple and rake in the cash?’
‘How? Rake in the cash, I mean.’
‘Many ways. Leena pinches a Piloo chequebook, or Chand pinches details of Monica’s secret accounts, and husband and wife pool resources and make a million.’
‘How to Steal a Million, Bonnie and Clyde style,’ said Bikram thoughtfully.
‘What’s that?’
‘A new movie title for Heera.’
Ghosh knew when he was beaten and fell silent. Bikram seemed lost in thought. Since this was his customary pre-raid pensiveness, Ghosh stared out of the window. They travelled for about ten minutes thus—Ashu Das snoring and Ghosh tiredly beginning to feel the effects of the codeine syrup he had swallowed before setting out—when Bikram suddenly spoke.
‘Is it sheer coincidence, or can there be something to the fact that this Koyal guy had dealings with Piloo Adhikary’s Laser?’