Count to Ten

by James Patterson

  Unless the killer turned out to be Sharma. And…

  No. No, that was just ridiculous.

  Now the cell door opened to admit Sharma and his assistant Nanda. The pair of them looked at Thakkar, perched on the edge of the cot, then Sharma indicated for him to rise. A short time later they were installed in chairs in some kind of interrogation room. An interview suite, they called it, but Thakkar wasn’t fooled.

  “We have a lot of questions to ask you, Thakkar,” said Sharma, his customary toothpick wedged between his teeth, “things about your relationship with Jaswal, what you know about the Private detective agency and what they’re doing in Delhi, the role played by this Dr. Arora that I met at Cafe E. But first this racket that you and your friends are running. Let’s start with that.”

  “Racket?” said Thakkar disingenuously.

  “You’ve been running a racket that buys or steals organs and makes them available to your American insurance patients,” he said. “You may as well come clean. We know your entire modus operandi.”

  Thakkar remained quiet. He had asked to see his lawyer but Sharma denied him the privilege.

  Then, “You have nothing against me,” he said defiantly.

  “We have accessed your company’s bank statements and balance sheet,” said Sharma. “You have made hundreds of payments to an unregistered firm. We’ve done our investigations. That unregistered firm belongs to Iqbal Ibrahim, someone who is notorious for the thriving black market he runs in human organs.”

  “Then go get him,” replied Thakkar. “As CEO of a multinational company, you can’t seriously expect me to know every small payment that is made by my managers and staff!”

  Sharma ignored the interjection and continued, “At first we were confused. The Indian arm of ResQ buys human organs. American patients are charged insurance premiums that cover this service. The question in my mind was this: how would the Indian operation ever make a profit?”

  “So now you’re a chartered accountant?” asked Thakkar sarcastically.

  “And then we realized that you don’t care,” continued Sharma, refusing to rise to the jibe. “You have a web of companies and subsidiaries and so long as they make money in the aggregate, individual losses are irrelevant. I think we have an excellent case to prosecute you as well as your company under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994.”

  Thakkar was quiet.

  “In effect, you transfer profits to the American parent while bearing all the organ procurement expenses in India,” continued Sharma. “And since the money is a consequence of an illegal act, this is a perfect case for prosecution under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act too.”

  “You do know that the Chief Minister is my friend?” said Thakkar, his cockiness having disappeared.

  “I don’t report to fucking Jaswal,” snapped Sharma, the toothpick falling out of his mouth. “My boss is Chopra and he hates Jaswal. You also fall into the enemy camp by association. Hell, I’ll even get promoted if I make your life miserable. It’s only fair given that you fucked and then abandoned the boss’s daughter!”

  “Bastard!” shouted Thakkar as he stood up.

  He received a resounding slap from Sharma. “Sit down unless you are told that you can get up!” commanded Sharma.

  Thakkar was stunned. His cheek had turned red from the slap but his other cheek went pink from the embarrassment and shame. He had never been treated this way.

  “Now, here’s how this can play out,” said Sharma. “Either you cooperate with me or I will have to take you out of Tihar Jail.”

  “I get out of jail for not cooperating?” asked Thakkar, confused.

  “You are then taken to a place that is much worse,” explained Sharma. “There are a few interrogation rooms at the Red Fort. Usually they are only used by the intelligence agencies when they wish to break terror suspects. The big advantage of using these rooms is that anything goes. I can do whatever I want to make you squeal.”

  Sweat dripped down Thakkar’s face. His throat was parched.

  “My men will strip you naked and string you up spreadeagled,” whispered Sharma into Thakkar’s ear. “Then we will go to work on you with our interrogation tools. You will wish that you were dead by the time we are finished with you.”

  “Could I get some water please?” whined Thakkar.

  “Sure,” replied Sharma. “After we’re done. So, are you ready to cooperate or not?”

  Chapter 87

  ARORA HOPPED ABOARD the Blue Line train of the Delhi Metro at Indraprastha station and sat down. He waited for the next stop—Yamuna Bank. Apart from an elderly gentleman who sat reading a newspaper bearing the headline ‘WHEN WILL WE HAVE ANSWERS?’, he had the carriage to himself.

  The doors opened at Yamuna Bank and a familiar face appeared. Ibrahim. A mere nod was exchanged between them before the train took off.

  “I had told you to stop. Now Thakkar has been picked up by the cops!” said Arora, the urgency in his voice all too apparent.

  Ibrahim looked at him and smiled. “It bothers you that, inshallah, I’m able to get the same stuff at a fraction of the price, right? You’re worried that your tidy little business model is getting disrupted by me. You were happy to use me as a conduit to Thakkar in the early days, only to cut me off when it suited you. You were happy to use me to dispose of the bodies…” Ibrahim grinned, revealing brown, crooked teeth. “Tell me, what did happen at Greater Kailash?”

  With a curse, Arora looked left and right. “You know full well. You—that’s you, my friend—were supposed to destroy the…evidence in a safe, controlled space provided to you by myself, MGT, and Thakkar. We gave you the venue. All you had to do was concentrate on melting down the bodies.”

  Ibrahim spread his hands. “Well then, I fulfilled my part of the deal because the bodies were indeed melted.”

  “The operation was discovered.”

  “A technicality. Answer me this: were any of the victims named? Were any of the bodies identified as patients of Dr. Pankaj Arora—the famous Dr. Pankaj Arora? TV’s Dr. Pankaj Arora? Did the discovery of those bodies result in policemen knocking on your door in the middle of the night? No, none of that happened, did it?”

  Arora’s crimson face conceded the point.

  “Let me tell you something else,” continued Ibrahim, warming to his theme. “That particular—what was the word you used?—venue was provided for a reason, was it not? So that if the operation was discovered then suspicion would fall on Mr. Chopra.”

  “Well, that didn’t happen, did it?”

  “Presumably because you failed to take into account the strength of Chopra’s relationship with the police chief, Sharma. Again, that’s not something for which I can be held responsible. Now, listen to me, my friend: I’m the man who procured valuable stuff for you. I’m the man who took those bodies to Greater Kailash for you. And yes, you got me started, but now you’re simply getting in the way. Your ego is getting the better of you.”

  “I strongly suggest that we should let this activity be confined to what I do in my hospital,” said Arora menacingly. “If we have more deaths we’ll all be in trouble.”

  Ibrahim scoffed so loudly that the old gentleman reading the newspaper looked across at them. “Take a look at what’s going on around you. Hasn’t it occurred to you that we’re already in trouble?” he laughed.

  Chapter 88

  SANTOSH OPENED THE door of his hospital room and peered out. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The corridor lights had been dimmed to night mode. Santosh knew that he was on the tenth floor. Room 1016. It was the same floor on which the chief administrator’s office was located.

  He should have been discharged by 5 p.m. but he had complained of severe stomach cramps. The doctor on duty had been forced to extend his stay by a day. Santosh had then requested Nisha bring him a flashlight. His cell phone—which had an inbuilt flashlight option—had been shattered during his altercation with Ibrahim.

  He walked barefoot
ed toward the nurses’ station that was next to the elevator bank. The corridor ended there and a right turn from that point would take him toward the administrative wing. He wondered how many nurses would be on duty at that time.

  He reached the end of the corridor and stopped. He needed to know whether any of the night-duty nurses were looking out of the glass panel that separated the nurses’ station from the corridor. He peeped from the corner of the panel. Two of them were inside, both with their backs to him. They seemed to be helping themselves to coffee from a machine.

  Santosh quickly crossed the station and took a right turn toward the administrative wing. Another corridor. This one was entirely dark. Administrative staff had left for the day and no lighting was required. Santosh squinted his eyes to adjust to the darkness and felt his way along the corridor. He tried to recall how far along the chief administrator’s office had been. As far as he could remember, it was about halfway down the corridor.

  He tried one of the doors but it was locked. The second door opened with a gentle push but it opened into a storage closet. He was in luck with the third. He entered the room and shut the door behind him. Once he was sure there were no footsteps in the corridor, he felt for the light switch and turned it on.

  The harsh overhead lighting hurt his eyes. He quickly turned it off. The office had a window that overlooked the hospital’s entrance porch and it was possible that the security guards could become suspicious seeing a light in a supposedly closed area of the hospital. He switched on the flashlight instead and headed to MGT’s office, which connected to the outer office where his secretary sat.

  The inner office door was locked. Santosh walked back to the secretary’s desk, opened a drawer, and took out two ordinary paper clips. Putting down the flashlight on the desk, he straightened out both the clips. He converted one into a pressure pin by bending it at ninety degrees. The other clip he converted into a rake by creating a zigzag pattern using the secretary’s scissors.

  Santosh bent down and inserted the rake into the key slot and pulled down in an effort to push some of the lock levers down. He then inserted the pressure pin and rotated it left then right. Two minutes later the door was open.

  He picked up the flashlight and walked into the office, shutting the door behind him. The desk was untidy and several files and documents lay strewn across it. Santosh began looking through the papers on the desk. Most of it was mundane stuff. Uniform requisitions, staff attendance and overtime reports, equipment repair orders, and canteen instructions.

  Santosh tried the desk drawer. It was locked. He used his paper clips to open the simple lock and shone the flashlight inside. A single register with several slips of paper clipped together sat inside. Santosh took it out and began looking through it.

  What he found were names of patients and the date and time on which they had checked in. The register then outlined their ailments and the date of surgery. So far so good. After that came the details of organs that had been removed and whether the patient had survived or not.

  There were plenty who hadn’t. Eleven? Santosh counted. More than that. He had a feeling that if it were possible to match the names here with the bodies found at Greater Kailash then they would indeed correspond.

  What’s more, in all cases there was only one consulting doctor. Dr. Pankaj Arora. The register was being used by MGT to maintain a macabre record of surreptitious organ removals that were communicated to him through those ubiquitous slips.

  It was evident that he was fully supporting the activities of Arora. But why? He was from a very affluent family and certainly didn’t need the money. Wilson’s disease! MGT had lost his only son due to nonavailability of a liver. It would have been easy for Arora to emotionally blackmail MGT into allowing the racket to go on, almost convincing him that his son could have been saved if such a service had been available back then.

  Santosh examined the back of the drawer. There was a carton of cigarettes. It was in silver finish with an impressive crest at the front. It read “Treasurer.” That was the cigarette brand Nisha had found at the Greater Kailash house, the one by Chancellor Tobacco. Santosh remembered that MGT had lived in England as a young man. No doubt that was when he had acquired the taste for those expensive cigarettes.

  There was the sudden sound of a door opening. Someone was accessing the outer office. Santosh froze. He cursed himself for having switched on the lights initially.

  He quickly put the register back inside the drawer, closed it, switched off his flashlight, and crept under the desk, fervently praying it wasn’t MGT himself.

  He heard the door handle to the inner office turn and the door open. Footsteps headed toward the desk and a beam of light from a flashlight danced around the room. Santosh attempted to bundle himself tighter while restricting his breathing.

  The beam danced around some more. The man in the inner office called out to a colleague in the outer office, “It’s empty. I told you that you were imagining it. Let’s go back to that card game I was winning.” Santosh heard the door close.

  He sat crumpled like a paper ball under the desk until he was satisfied there was no one there but him. Then he gingerly began to make his way into the dark outer office, the door of which had been closed by the guards on their way out.

  He didn’t see who was waiting for him. Didn’t see the blow coming. Just pain as he hit the deck.

  Chapter 89

  SANTOSH FELL TO the floor, dazed by the severity of the blow. He tasted blood in his mouth. He quickly spat it out and forced himself to get up and face his attacker.

  “Bastard,” said the hoarse voice. It was unmistakable. MGT!

  He charged at Santosh, but this time Santosh was prepared. He deftly sidestepped the charge and kicked MGT between his legs.

  MGT grunted and doubled over. “Motherfucker,” he gasped. “I should have had you killed the day you walked into my office.”

  “That would be easy enough for you given the machinery you seem to have established for taking lives,” said Santosh warily, looking out for any moves by MGT.

  “I saved lives,” said MGT indignantly. “Hundreds of them. But it’s something that I cannot expect people like you to understand.”

  “Level with me,” reasoned Santosh. “Expose the network and we’ll call it quits…quits. I know about your son. I understand why you’re doing this.”

  The mention of his son only drove MGT to greater fury. He leaped up and grabbed Santosh by the ears, attempting to headbutt him. Santosh preempted it by headbutting MGT first. MGT staggered back, dazed by the shock. He picked up the slim vase on his secretary’s table, knocked it against the desk, and held the jagged neck like a weapon.

  “Don’t you dare ever mention my son!” he said, taking a few steps toward Santosh. “No one was there to help him and I had to watch him die. Now you want to prevent others from being saved.” MGT lunged at Santosh with the broken vase.

  Santosh parried the lunge and swung the flashlight that was in his left hand. It caught MGT’s right hand and the vase fell to the floor with a crash. “Fuck!” yelled MGT, his voice cracking.

  “Don’t fight me, MGT,” urged Santosh as he assumed a defensive posture once again. “Help me unravel the network instead.”

  “Fuck off,” said MGT. “You didn’t give a damn about me in college because I hung out with the druggies and drunks. So high and mighty, you were! And now you want me to help you?” His hands were desperately searching for something on his secretary’s table.

  “There is only one way…one way…that this will end,” said Santosh softly, holding the flashlight like a weapon.

  “Yes, there is,” said MGT as he found what he was looking for. A letter opener.

  MGT charged at Santosh, thrusting the metal letter opener.

  Santosh swung the flashlight in his hand to deflect the blow. The letter opener stabbed into his forearm. His flashlight fell to the ground.

  He then grabbed the hand in which MGT was holding the let
ter opener and simultaneously kicked MGT on the left side of his torso. It caused MGT to turn ever so slightly, just enough for Santosh to twist his arm behind his back. Santosh applied pressure until MGT yelled in agony and the letter opener clattered noisily to the floor.

  “I give up,” said MGT in pain, and Santosh let go of his arm. It wasn’t a good idea. MGT swung around and planted an uppercut on his chin.

  Santosh crumpled to the ground as MGT ran out the door.

  Chapter 90

  SHARMA ADJUSTED HIS belt, feeling exceedingly pleased with himself. His interrogation of Thakkar had gone very well indeed; the head of ResQ had given up the goods without Sharma needing to resort to some of the more tried and tested methods to be found in the Red Fort.

  He sucked his teeth distastefully. No doubt Thakkar imagined he was somehow immune from prosecution. Perhaps he thought Jaswal would put in a call and get him off the hook. It didn’t really matter now. Sharma had the names he needed. All the information he required was his.

  Installed in his office, he maneuvered himself behind his desk and dropped to his chair with a corpulent grunt. This was why he was the Police Commissioner, he reflected. Crisis management. That was what it was all about. Firefighting. Turning an awkward situation to your advantage.

  He reached for the phone and dialed.

  “Hello, Guha?” he said.

  “Commissioner. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I have something for you. Some more information regarding our little band of medical buccaneers. But first, how are the preparations for your story going?”

  Guha sighed. “Not especially well, truth be told.”

  “Oh, really? What’s the holdup?”

  “A group calling themselves the Coalition for Freedom of Speech have applied for an injunction. Somehow they got wind of our story and want to stop it.”