‘What is his goal?’ asked DCP Singh.
‘Do you remember his words from the first letter?’ Rathod stared at the ceiling, as if he was visualizing what Tony Matthew was doing right at that moment. ‘His goal is the successful completion of the task he has set for himself. And there’s only one thing that remains to be done to complete that task – the fourth murder.’
‘Hmm,’ Mule said gravely. ‘Consider the situation carefully gentlemen: if we launch this manhunt, and if, despite the manhunt, he commits the fourth murder, you do realize what will happen, don’t you? We will be shown in very poor light. The media will tear us apart. The man on the street will make him a hero…in fact, a God! Such is always the case with serial killers. So we need to tread very cautiously. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the situation is quite tricky.’
‘I agree, sir,’ said DCP Singh. ‘Nothing sells better on TV than police failure! But what else can we do, given the circumstances? The previous three murders have all happened in intervals of…what, Rathod?’
‘Three days,’ Rathod said.
‘Yes, precisely three days. He is a methodical man; he will, in all probability, commit his fourth murder three days from the third one. And that leaves us…what?’
‘Twenty-four hours,’ Rathod said.
‘Exactly! Twenty-four hours to catch him. Who knows where he will disappear after that.’
Mule considered the situation. ‘So what you’re saying is that we simply have to take the risk? That we don’t have any other choice?’
‘No, sir,’ DCP Singh wiped the sweat off his forehead.
‘Unless…’ said Mule, and looked at Rathod, who was still lost in his thoughts.
‘Unless…what…sir?’ the DCP enquired hesitatingly.
Mule didn’t respond at once. He looked at Rathod intently. Finally, he said, ‘Unless our friend Chandrakant Rathod is really as good as I think he is, and unless he has not lost the shine on that brain of his over the years.’
Rathod looked up at the commissioner. He had not minced his words – not one bit. Rathod had never failed the department. But now, his brain was not working. He had this nagging itch at the back of his head that told him he was missing something – a key piece of the puzzle that was right there before his eyes, but he just couldn’t see it.To make matters worse, time was a luxury he didn’t have. He knew Mule expected much more from him, but his mind was completely exhausted.
Rathod sighed and said, ‘Sir, given the circumstances, I have no other option but to agree with whatever Singh Sir is saying. Yes, we do risk losing our face in the media, but not launching the manhunt has a greater risk – that of losing a human life. I suggest we do whatever Singh Sir is recommending.’
Although Mule didn’t let it show, Rathod noticed he seemed a little crestfallen. He cast a loaded glance at Rathod, who hung his head. The DCP, on the other hand, was quite happy. He had finally been able to make a contribution to the case.
16
Weary, defeated, confused, Chandrakant Rathod entered his small one-bedroom apartment and stood at the doorway for a few seconds. As he switched on the lights, his apartment came into view. It wasn’t very posh; in fact, it was pretty average. But it was neat and looked barely used, which was true. Rathod spent four out of five days on the streets hunting petty thieves and criminals. His life now centred around them and the crimes they committed, although he was never satisfied with the challenges he was offered. But this…this was different.
Rathod emptied his pockets on his desk that stood at the far end of his bedroom. Then he walked up to his wardrobe, drew his pistol from its holster and kept it inside, before undressing and changing his clothes. He had been wearing the same clothes for almost a week now. He hadn’t got an opportunity to come home. The same clothes had got drenched and then dried on his person, and then got drenched again, over and over in a cycle. What he needed in-between was a nice cold shower and a few solid hours of sleep. In all these days, all he had managed were a few hours of shut-eye in his car stake-outs.
After the bath, as Rathod sat down in front of his television with a bowl of noodles and a cup of coffee, he saw Tony Matthew’s photo being flashed across all news channels. DCP Singh had rallied his forces and used his contacts in the media already. He seemed a little too keen to spearhead the manhunt, Rathod thought, although he grudgingly admitted that, at the moment, it was perhaps the best thing to do. Perhaps not the wisest, but they simply had no other choice. Tony Matthew had outwitted them.
The scale of the manhunt could be gauged from the fact that prominent journalists, politicians, expert panels, the common man, students and even the police were being interviewed by the various channels. Rathod saw an interview of DCP Singh as well, who assured the public that there was nothing to worry about and the killer would be caught soon.
How? How? How?
Rathod knew Tony was too sharp to make the same mistake twice. He would go into hiding, emerging only briefly for his fourth and final act, and that too in disguise, in all probability. Not a lot of effort is required to change the way one looks, after all. No…Rathod knew the manhunt wouldn’t help. Tony was destined to be caught by him, and Rathod knew that he would catch him.
But how?
Rathod switched off the television and went to his desk. He opened his notebook and picked up a green pen. He started scribbling his thoughts, putting down everything that went through his mind – names, facts, theories, hypotheses, connections – everything.
After some time, he threw away the pen in frustration. He wasn’t getting anywhere. He himself barely realized that his tired eyes were fighting to stay open. Hundreds of thoughts and images were crawling around in his mind like worms – the dismembered body on top of the McArthur building; Ananya’s lovely smile, and her sweet voice as she said ‘You’ll catch him soon’; the kites on the wall in Tony Matthew’s room; Nihari’s concerned voice saying, ‘Are you all right, sir?’; the horrific look on Rudolph’s face, with the funnel sticking out of his mouth; a lone kite flying in the rainy sky; Francis Miller’s voice intoning, ‘Don’t you get it my friend?’; the lone kite once again, being flown by DCP Singh, who said in a mocking tone, ‘Euclidean geometry, eh? Very impressive!’; the boy with the deformed lip at the Millers’ residence screaming, ‘You have to leave now!’; Dolly holding up her phone and saying coyly yet scarily, ‘Selfie!’; and Rathod looking at the screen and seeing, to his utter horror, the image of a cobra.
Rathod woke up with a violent jerk. He was perspiring profusely. He realized that he had dozed off on the desk. But why was it so dark in here? Rathod wiped the sweat off his forehead and rose. He tried to find his way across the room as he gasped. He needed a glass of water. He tried the switch on the wall and realized there was a power cut. He wasn’t surprised, given that it had been raining continuously for almost two weeks now. He went to the other end of the room and opened a small drawer in his cupboard to find his flashlight. He switched it on, but it wouldn’t work. With a frustrated grunt, Rathod slapped the back of the flashlight two or three times till finally the light came on. And it was then that Rathod found a sliver of light in the dark, for the beam had fallen on a map of Mumbai that was hanging on the wall above his desk. As his eyes fixed on the map, a train of thought crossed his mind, and a few chosen facts emerged out of the hundreds that were at his disposal – the Central Network Tower, the McArthur BPO building, Sukhdeo Saran’s construction site. Three different locations…three different spots on the map of Mumbai…and a fourth image, something he had seen earlier, something that had always been in front of his eyes, in plain view, but he had failed to see its significance. Until now. What a fool, what a bumbling fool he had been all this while! It was right there, in front of his eyes, and he hadn’t seen it!
An image flashed in his mind and disappeared in an instant – the beautiful red kite on Tony’s wall. At that time, among the hundreds of other kites, he had noticed only the red kite. He had failed
to notice what was underneath it – a map! A map of Mumbai that Tony had hung on his wall! And the kite, pointing to four specific locations on the map at its four corners. The method to the man’s madness was finally starting to become clear to him.
Very slowly, he walked towards the map, picked up a board pin from his desk and pinned it to Maroshipada, where the Central Network Tower was located. Taking out a piece of string from his desk drawer, he pulled it all the way down towards the east, his fingers stopped over Vikhroli, the location of the McArthur building. As his trembling fingers travelled all the way down towards the south, he stopped the string at a specific spot where he stuck the third pin – Chembur, the location of the construction site and the deadly Zoomlion crane.
Three murders, three different locations, connected by one common thread – and the pattern of a kite began to emerge. He had only to extrapolate the fourth location. Hastily, he looked for a ruler in the dark, and found it, throwing several things from his desk on to the floor in the process. His pulse was racing, and there was a pronounced frown on his forehead. He held the flashlight in his mouth and made some quick measurements. Then he pulled the strings from the Maroshipada pin and the Chembur pin simultaneously, in a specific direction and at specific angles, and as they converged at a point on the map, he stuck the fourth and final pin. The flashlight fell from between his parted lips as he whispered a single word in the darkness: ‘Juhu!’
Rathod took a couple of steps back, looking at the map and muttering to himself, ‘Juhu…Juhu…but where in Juhu? How will I find you in Juhu? How? How? How?’
Suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning had struck him, he seemed to remember something. A flash, just a flash of something he had seen earlier. He needed to look through the photos he had taken during his investigation into this bizarre case.
Picking up his flashlight, still rolling gently on the floor, Rathod began frantically searching for his phone in the dark. He looked for it on his desk, on the bedside table, on the sofa in the other room, but it was nowhere to be seen. After several frustrating seconds, he finally found it under a pile of clothes on his bed. Swiping through the gallery impatiently while muttering, ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ under his breath, he began his search for a specific photo.
Finally, he found it: it was a photo of Tony’s wall. There didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the picture at first glance, but as Rathod’s trembling fingers zoomed in, several small pink pieces of paper came into view, all of them identical. As Rathod zoomed in further on one of them, the crease on his forehead disappeared. The pink pieces of paper were ticket stubs! At least a dozen of them!
Rathod immediately looked up a number and placed a call. As the sleepy and irritated voice of Commissioner Mule responded from the other side, Rathod said in an excited voice, ‘Sir…this is Rathod…yes, I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, sir…but I know where Tony Matthew is going to strike next… yes, sir, that’s right…I know!’
17
The giant Ferris wheel stood like a massive mythological monster against the overcast night sky that was getting illuminated every now and then, thanks to the barrage of lightning bolts. The horizon had disappeared into the heavy rains and the raging sea. Like all other businesses at the beach, the fair had been badly hit by the downpour, and there was not a soul to be seen as the sea rose and fell in turbulent fury.
Parallel to the beach stood several bungalows belonging to the high and mighty of the city, most of whose sources of income could not, in strict terms, be called legitimate. Kneeling behind the railing of the terrace on top of one of these bungalows were several combat officers, snipers and plain-clothes police personnel.
A hundred metres from the base of the wheel and under a makeshift shelter made from thatch, palm leaves and bamboo, lay a dark-skinned homeless man with dirty, unkempt hair and a beard that hadn’t seen a comb or trim in at least two years. The vagrant was making a futile attempt at protecting himself from the rain, because the low roof of his shelter was failing to keep the water out. As the droplets fell on him, he covered himself in a torn and dirty blanket from head to toe and lay in the foetal position, trembling as the cold sea breeze rushed over his wet body. As the man shivered within his puny shelter, a small green light lit up in the darkness, and a crackling voice was heard over low-volume static, ‘Alpha team in position.’ Very carefully, the homeless man raised his hand and lowered the volume on the walkie-talkie hidden near his head.
Rathod had pleaded with Commissioner Mule to issue strict instructions to the officers on this operation that he, and he alone, be allowed within a mile of the wheel. No other officer was to accompany him. As expected, Uday Singh had not agreed and, finally, a compromise was reached. Rathod would take up position near the base of the wheel, and all other officers would be positioned on the terrace of an adjoining building to provide support and would move only on his command.
The hours passed by, and everyone waited patiently. Rathod had once read a book by Jim Corbett in which he had described how a hunter finds his senses in a heightened state when stalking his prey – and he had been right. Rathod could hear the faintest of sounds and see the tiniest of objects near him in the dark. Tonight was the big night, and his entire body was prepared for it.
Almost like a murmur from a faraway place, the walkie-talkie crackled again. Rathod held it very close to his ears and listened carefully as Harish’s voice was heard again over the sound of the waves: ‘Sir, movement to your north.’
Rathod’s breathing became faster. Very carefully, he peeped out of the blanket. Just then, a bolt of lightning shot through the sky, lending an eerie shine to his eyes. At first, he couldn’t see anything. But very gradually, Rathod could make out a faint outline of the raging waves. Rathod knew that sea water contained phosphorous, which rendered the waves visible even in pitch darkness. He could make out a shadowy figure moving against the waves to his far right, at a distance of around 100 metres. He held his breath as the figure moved rapidly towards the Ferris wheel. Just as the shadow was about to emerge into the open from behind a line of handcarts, it stopped, as if it had sensed something. Rathod waited with bated breath and, after almost a minute, the shadow moved again. As it came out into the open, a pencil-thin sliver of light fell on it from a low-power electric bulb burning timidly near the ticket office of the Ferris wheel. The partially illuminated figure ceased to be a shadow anymore, and Rathod heaved a quiet sigh of disappointment just as Harish’s relieved voice was heard over the walkie-talkie: ‘False alarm, sir. It’s just a dog.’
The stray dog looked here and there and then disappeared into the darkness towards the south.
Rathod prepared himself again for the wait. It could be a long night. He was sure that this was where Tony would strike next. The map had indicated as much. Moreover, the top of the Ferris wheel was a perfect place to satiate his love for heights. But, most importantly, he had been scoping the place out, as was evident from the several stubs of tickets pinned on his wall. Rathod could visualize Tony entering the fair on a bright sunny Sunday morning, watching everything closely, making his calculations, taking mental notes. Had he taken a ride on the Ferris wheel himself? Rathod believed he must have, just to get a feel of what his victim would experience up there. How exactly would he kill his fourth and final victim? Rathod had no idea. He only hoped and prayed that Tony brought his victim to the place alive, and that he could stop Tony from completing his mission before the killer struck his final blow. Rathod had a strong inkling of who the final victim would be, but only time would tell whether or not his guess was right.
After a long wait, something inexplicable and completely unexpected began to happen. Not even in his wildest nightmares had Rathod ever thought that he would begin to fall asleep under such tense circumstances. He had read somewhere that an individual’s ability to sustain pressure was limited and that once the threshold was breached, no matter how tense the situation, no matter how much agility and alertness the mom
ent demanded, the nerves begin to give way. Rathod realized his eyelids were drooping, and he rubbed them and knocked himself on the back of his head several times to keep himself awake… and alert. But as several minutes passed, his eyelids began to close on themselves again. Rathod knew he was in trouble. He shoved his wrist into his mouth and bit as hard as he could, and it was exactly at that moment that lightning flashed and he saw the man.
What surprised Rathod the most was that he had not even realized when the man had quietly appeared. But there was no mistaking who he was. Even though it was just for a split-second, Rathod had seen enough of him to realize it was the man he had seen in the picture on Dolly’s phone.Tony Matthew scanned the place from behind an abandoned Bhelpuri stall; his eyes seemed alert, as if they were piercing through the darkness, looking for anyone who could hinder what he was about to do.
Clearly, the tactical team on the terrace hadn’t seen him yet. Rathod thought it was best to keep it that way. He waited.
For an unusually long period of time,Tony simply scoped the area around the base of the Ferris wheel. Rathod matched his own patience to that of his prey and waited with bated breath. Finally, Tony moved swiftly, pushing something towards the ticket office of the Ferris wheel. Rathod had a very good guess as to what Tony was pushing, but he waited to get a visual confirmation. As another bolt of lightning struck beyond the tumultuous waves, Rathod’s hunch got confirmed – it was a wheelchair. And on the wheelchair, fully drenched and half-dead, sat Tony’s old Scouts master Mr Francis Miller!
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