The Dead Don't Confess

by Monabi Mitra

  The smell of onions being fried invaded the room. Two children sidled in wearing grubby shorts and shirts. The room had been divided by a nylon washing line into two halves and an assortment of lungis, towels, burkhas and dresses trailed from it. Beyond, Bikram could see another bed, an iron cupboard, dolls, buckets, mats, dhurries, bags and more clothes strewn on the floor. Moyna smiled lightly at the old man and proceeded to sit down on the bed beside him, waving Raja towards a broken cane stool. Hoping it would not cave in under his weight, Raja gingerly sat down. Bikram looked around and found nowhere else to sit, so he squatted on the floor. Raja quivered and darted up, then seeing a muscle twitch on Bikram’s face, sat down again on the stool with ill-disguised embarrassment.

  ‘This is Raja, from Sonarpur. He worked for Bacchu and Kolay. Remember Bacchu, the one who had a shop near Cheenabazar? Of course you remember, Abbu. It was Emru bhai’s first job.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Vicky, from Bangladesh. You won’t know him, he’d been away for some time in jail. Emru would have known him, however. They had common, er, friends.’

  ‘What do you want?’ The old man clenched and unclenched his hands on the knobby walking stick he was holding.

  ‘We were discussing things at the Cheenabazar hangout and realized that Emru has been framed. He is too wily to get caught by policewallahs like that. We talked to Raja here, who has contacts in court and at other places too, and decided we’d do something for Emru bhai. He was a good bhai and undeserving of being put out like this. Perhaps Amma or you could help us?’

  The two children stared at Raja who had, as usual, tucked his sunglasses stylishly into the buttonhole near his throat. They stood there, digging their noses and gaping all the while. Raja smiled at them and winked. The children blinked and looked back unsmilingly.

  ‘Help you in what?’ Emru’s father looked unconvinced.

  Raja cleared his throat and prepared to take over. ‘I have thana people on my side. If you can tell us what exactly happened we can try and get Emru out on bail quickly so that he can go back to his dhanda. Moyna told me he’s your only son. With four daughters and so many grandchildren it will be difficult to make ends meet. We can pitch in with money as well. In fact we’ve got some now. Ei Vicky, where’s the stuff?’

  Bikram extracted something from the pouch he was carrying and, leaning over, laid down a thin bundle of notes on the bed. ‘There’s five thousand here. We can get more next time.’ He spoke in an unfamiliar guttural accent, emphasizing the ‘s’ and ‘ai’ sounds and hoping he sounded like a Bangladeshi goon.

  ‘We don’t need your charity. Go away!’ Emru’s father was now shouting and trying hard not to look at the bundle on the bed. The door leading to the inner room moved a little and Raja was conscious of eyes peering at them from a gap in the hinge. The old man raised his stick and shook it at the two children who were staring at the money with unabashed greed. ‘Go away from here!’ One child backed out of the room while the second one slipped out of the front door.

  ‘And I don’t talk to police squeakers!’ Emru’s father coughed noisily and spat into an earthen bowl lying near his feet. Raja shifted a little on the stool but Bikram stared stupidly ahead.

  ‘Have the police been here?’ Moyna changed tack. ‘Was there a lot of trouble?’

  ‘Not as much as you are. Why don’t you just go away? Emru was in for this for a long while, so why not let him be?’

  ‘But I’ve been watching the news on television. You haven’t been protesting about Emru’s innocence too much. Was this a set-up? Is Emru being blackmailed by someone? Give us the name and we’ll finish him off by sundown.’ Moyna leaned forward and whispered loudly. ‘Tell us, Abbu. You have nothing to fear.’

  Raja leaned forward from his stool and brought his face close to the old man’s. ‘Besides, what if Emru bhai gets the death sentence? Remember how a man was hanged a few years ago for doing things to a schoolgirl and then strangling her? How would you feel if your only son flapped from a beam in Alipore jail?’

  There was a muffled cry from the inner room and even the old man faltered for a moment.

  Somewhere inside a child started crying.

  Moyna ran his fingers over the money sensuously and pressed his advantage. ‘Tell us, Abbu. What happened?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Emru’s father in a smothered voice.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the inner room and sounds of a scuffle. A woman of indeterminate age, wearing a sari and carrying a rolling pin, stumbled into the room.

  ‘You son of a swine!’ she screeched and shook her fists at the old man. ‘Selling my son to the police for a capful of money. Did you hear what they said just now? They’ll kill him! They’ll hang him, my only son, and all because you and that whore of a daughter- in-law whom you finger all night, wanted some fun. I wore my bones out every day trying to bring him up to be a gentleman and this is how he’ll die! I’ll kill you, you bastard, you . . .’

  The woman threw her rolling pin at the old man who dodged it by an inch. She sat down on the floor, sobbing and beating her breast.

  Moyna and Raja rose swiftly and knelt down beside her. Bikram remained where he was, shifting only a little as if something needed a better view.

  ‘Did someone come to meet your son?’

  The woman nodded and rubbed her eyes. ‘I was making rotis in the next room. Men come and go all the time in this wretched house of mine, and I don’t understand half of what they say. Two men called on him the day he turned himself in. There was a lot of arguing and bickering and they called Emru’s father in too. After they left Emru came in and spoke on the phone for a long time. He went out and came back with packets of biryani and kebab. I asked him what to do with the rotis I had made, but he laughed and hugged me. “There will only be dal and rotis for me now, Amma,” he said. “I have killed a man on someone else’s orders and have been paid well. They picked up another chokra this morning who might spill the beans, so we’ve struck a deal. I’ll confess to my crime and go to jail for some time. In return they’ll pay us ten thousand a month and take over Munna’s school fees and give him a job in an office when he grows up.” My heart grew cold as I heard him and I pressed him to my breast. Leave all this, Emru, and run away, I begged him. No deal with the dirty rich will ever work out. But Emru laughed and held me tight and said he would be out in no time and would leave for Bihar then. “I’ll get my freedom as well as a steady supply of money,” he said. “Maybe I’ll leave all this and set up a shop somewhere.” His greedy wife joined him in trying to convince me and they all sat around laughing and joking over the biryani. Emru went out once and brought me my eye medicine. Then he went away forever . . .’ The mother’s voice broke and she pulled the end of her sari over her head and began crying again, softly this time.

  ‘What have you done, Abba?’ There was a fiery gleam in Moyna’s eyes. ‘How could you have been so stupid? This man will stop payments after a month and your only son will rot in jail for the rest of his life, if he’s lucky. If not, you’ll get a corpse in this room to carry to the burial ground. Shame on you!’

  Bikram touched Moyna lightly on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Moyna nodded and turned round for the door. As they were leaving something flew through the air and landed on the floor in front of Raja.

  ‘Take your money!’ said Emru’s father in a cracked voice.

  ‘You should have done this to the men who came here to bind your son forever.’ Moyna’s voice rang out harshly. Raja picked up the bundle and opened the door.

  The veranda was noisy and full of an assortment of household articles that could not fit into the cramped rooms. Scantily clad babies sucked thumbs and played with bits of paper and other rubbish. Raja dodged dogs and chickens and wondered why Emru lived in such squalor. He was a good worker and carried off assignments well. Perhaps he had a large family and had to additionally make remittances to his wife’s relations in her village.
<
br />   A child blocked their way in the courtyard. It was the one who had stared at Raja inside the room, possibly Emru’s precious Munna for whom he had bartered his life. For the first time Raja looked at him closely. He had a large funny-shaped head and looked puny and underfed but when he spoke his voice was the hard bitter voice of the street survivor.

  ‘Psst. Come here, where we can’t be seen.’

  ‘Be off, you cheeky thing.’ Moyna raised his hand.

  The child skipped out of the way and winked at Raja. ‘Give me the money. I can get you something exciting.’

  ‘You’re learning early, my man. How old are you?’ Raja smiled and his boyish face looked warm and engaging.

  ‘Old enough to know what to do with five thousand rupees.’

  ‘And what is this hot tip you will give us?’ This time it was Bikram.

  ‘I can show you something which my father packed in an envelope and hid amongst the odds and ends on the terrace the day he left. Of course, he didn’t know I was looking. After he went off I prised it out of the hiding place and kept it somewhere far more secure.’ The child sniffed. ‘Abba was sweet but stupid. Had it been where he had left it, the police would have picked it up easily the day they came to raid the house.’

  Bikram’s heart beat painfully as he pretended nonchalance. Moyna said, ‘I’ll give you two hundred. You’ll get killed here if you carry around more than that.’

  The child turned away disinterestedly.

  ‘Here’s the money.’ Bikram slipped the thin bundle out of the pouch and cradled it in the palm of his hand. ‘Give me the envelope first.’

  ‘Give me the money first.’

  Bikram meekly handed over the bundle. The child disappeared behind a urinal and Moyna stared at Bikram rancorously. ‘Saab, what did you do that for?’

  ‘Shh.’ Bikram frowned.

  But Moyna felt the pain of losing the ill-spent money so keenly that he went on mumbling under his breath. ‘The father was bad enough but the son seems worse. That’s the end of your five thousand rupees.’

  ‘I had to take a chance. Let us see . . .’

  The child returned with a shabby brown envelope. Wondering if they could all hear the thudding of his heart, Bikram opened it with trembling fingers.

  Inside were a small red diary and two mobile phones. Bikram could feel Moyna’s hot breath near his ear and smell Raja’s KS Cologne as he leaned close.

  The diary seemed well thumbed. There were paan and turmeric stains on some of the pages and a crucified mosquito lay pressed between two of the sheets. On the front page were a name and an address written in capital letters. Raja stared at the P-I-L-O-O scripted in a shaky hand and a well-known Broad Street address underneath. He looked up and met Bikram’s amazed eyes.

  ‘It’s the diary of the murdered man in the Broad Street case,’ Bikram’s voice was hushed. ‘Emru must have picked it up on his way out. One of the phones must be Piloo’s own.’

  ‘And the other one?’ Even Moyna was whispering.

  ‘The other phone belonged to my father. He threw it into the rubbish dump before he was leaving but I fished it out.’ It was Munna, looking grave.

  Bikram bent down and placed his hand on the child’s head. ‘May God bless you and make you a CID officer one day, you wonderful little thing.’

  ‘I want to be like Salman Khan,’ said Munna solemnly. He

  turned to Raja. ‘Will you give me your sunglasses?’

  * * *

  There was a grim air in Prem Gupta’s room. Bikram had laid out the diary and the telephones on the gleaming glass top. Prem Gupta’s laptop was on and a recorded video was playing on it. The picture was grainy and at times fuzzy but still managed to communicate with surprising clarity the sweat and filth and sadness of Emru’s family. Here were Moyna and Raja, and here was the old man looking away while Emru’s mother wept and swayed and stuttered out the story of her son’s capture.

  The video ended and there was silence in the room. Then Bikram began speaking slowly and emphatically. In the anteroom sat Raja, relaxed against the cushions, surreptitiously taking photographs on his mobile phone and marvelling at the fortune which had lifted him out of a dim airless room in suburbia to the sleek little private visitor’s room in the inspector general’s office.

  ‘Some of it is there in the diary and bits of it have been told to us by Emru’s mother. The rest is conjecture, but I’ll risk it. Piloo Adhikary was Gaur Mohan’s chief henchman-cum-lieutenant, scouting out factories to be taken over, trade union leaders to be bribed, politicians to be placated—the chief field marshal, in fact, of a filthy army. Hindi films would call him the organizer of a “supari”. Perhaps he was getting too powerful for Gaur Mohan’s liking, or perhaps he was beginning to blackmail him. There’s a chance that if we show him this tape, Emru might talk. He certainly knows more than he’s letting on now. Emru was also part of the gang, having been hired by Piloo to carry out contract killings. Emru coveted Piloo’s position and Gaur Mohan, sensing this, goaded him on. Later there would be a deal by which Emru would admit his part and go to jail, in return for Gaur Mohan’s offer of money, security and a chance of a better life for his family. Emru was in debt and getting unpopular with his friends in the underworld. In jail he could make fresh contacts and lie low, at the same time hoping that Gaur Mohan would secure his bail. Many of them are often like that, a peculiar mixture of cunning and naiveté.’

  Prem Gupta observed Bikram. Never had he seen Bikram so agitated. There was anger in his body and a deadly look of rage on his face.

  ‘What other proof do we have?’ Prem Gupta’s voice was soft.

  The door opened and Ghosh entered carrying a sheaf of papers. He saluted Prem Gupta, cast a quick look at Bikram and placed the sheets before the inspector general.

  ‘We went through the numbers on Emru’s phone, sir. Apart from what you would expect, there was a single call made to an unlisted number the evening of the Broad Street murder, around eight o’clock. It was hard work getting the number out of the telephone company but they finally relented. It has been traced to Gaur Lal Mohan.’

  Ghosh made his speech and left. He wasn’t sure if the two in the room had even noticed his exit.

  ‘What about the wife of the dead man? Who murdered her?’

  Bikram shook his head. ‘Emru says he doesn’t know who killed her and maybe he is right. If a man could confess to one killing, he would have confessed to another. Perhaps Monica Sarkar knew all about Piloo’s dealings and was afraid of being murdered herself. Someone alerted her to get out of the way that evening and she invited herself over to Leena’s Kali puja very suddenly. In which case she was an accomplice too, not acting herself, but having full knowledge of the act. She then waited for a suitable interval and went away, knowing that if she fled earlier the murder would be fresh in people’s minds and the police more alive to the scent. Perhaps she needed to tidy up her own business too. She was last seen with a man who fits the description of another thug called Murari Koyal, linked occasionally with Piloo Adhikary. I think Murari Koyal killed her, because he was scared she would turn him in to save herself if needed. He knew about the projected murder and had alerted her the first time. Also, both Murari Koyal and Monica Sarkar disappeared around the same time, which suggests that they probably warned each other off. Somewhere in another town in India, Monica Sarkar was getting ready to start a new life with a new name and Piloo’s ill- gotten wealth. Then Murari Koyal, the only one who knew she would be taking flight, follows her and finishes her off. Piloo’s wealth goes to him now. He’s sanctified because he’s a police informer and he knows it. Find out what information he gave to the police, if ever, and you will probably find it runs round and round till it hits Piloo and the Gaur Mohan gang.’

  Prem Gupta raised his eyebrows and looked at Bikram. ‘There are too many ifs and probablys and perhapses in this story. I grant you that with the call details of Gaur Mohan’s unlisted number and this recording of Emru’s
mother, we can make a feeble attempt to set up a case for Piloo’s murder. But for Monica’s— well, that needs more finish. We need witnesses who can swear that Murari Koyal alias Amir Ali was in the dhaba and was last seen following Monica Sarkar.’

  Bikram said nothing but the expression on his face showed that he was prepared to hold his ground. It was as if he knew that it was folly to plunge into such a sticky investigation, but that it would be worth the while, whatever it led to in the end. Even if the end was a transfer to the most downgraded posting in Bengal’s policing, he would go out in a blaze of righteousness.

  ‘I take it you want to prosecute Gaur Mohan under Section 120B? Criminal conspiracy?’ Prem Gupta’s spectacles glinted severely.

  Bikram nodded.

  ‘You are aware that we might never really get him. He will feign illness and get admitted to a hospital, then find the best lawyers in town and move for bail. He will account for the phone call claiming that Emru was a petty criminal who was harassing him. Somewhere along the way he will put in a dark word here and there and your career will be in a shambles.’

  Bikram shrugged. ‘Of course I know that. Gaur Mohan will be arrested in the morning, if at all we can, that is, and be out by evening. But for seven hours I will have the satisfaction of seeing him in the lock-up with petty thieves and pickpockets groping at his well-tailored suit. It’s only a tiny crumb of comfort, but what better can a foolish hummingbird expect!’

  ‘The Bench is now closed for Christmas and the vacation bench might not agree to do this. Also, I have to talk to Toofan. It was a bit irregular of you to come tearing in to see me without telling your immediate superior of all that transpired.’

  Was Prem Gupta being intentionally curt in order to put him in his place, or was he worried at the rashness of the undertaking? Certainly it had been a long time since the IG had reprimanded him so openly.

  ‘I will never ever do anything you wouldn’t want me to, sir.’ Bikram hoped he was sounding muted enough to suit Prem Gupta’s mood.