by Vaseem Khan
He would miss the chef’s straightforward opinions, not to mention his incredible butter chicken special.
He walked out of the kitchen and into his office, where he found his associate private investigator—and former sub-Inspector at the local police station where they had both worked—Abbas Rangwalla, face-down in a fragrant mutton biriyani.
Rangwalla leapt to his feet as Chopra entered, his dark, pitted cheeks flushing, grains of rice lodged in his short beard.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure what time you were getting back, and I missed my lunch—”
Chopra waved Rangwalla’s concerns away. “Sit. Finish your meal.”
He watched as the junior man folded uneasily back into the seat on the far side of his desk and resumed eating, somewhat mechanically now that his boss was seated before him.
After almost twenty years of working together Rangwalla was still something of a mystery to him. The man was plugged into the streets of Mumbai in a way that Chopra never had been—this was what had made him such an invaluable deputy at the Sahar station, and now made him such an able associate at the agency. And yet the man himself remained stubbornly inscrutable. He had two children, and a terrible smoking habit. Beyond that he had never revealed much about what went on in his life, or inside his bearded head.
“How are you getting on with the Persimmon case?” asked Chopra.
Rangwalla shrugged. “The man is mentally unstable.”
Harish Persimmon, a seventy-year-old local resident, had approached the agency with what he had described as “a case of the highest importance.” This highly important case had been to follow Persimmon’s cat around, a cat that the old fool was convinced was the reincarnation of his father. Chopra had politely declined the work, but the man had kicked up such a fuss that finally he had tasked Rangwalla to handle the matter.
“He’s convinced that the cat—or Papa as he insists on calling him—will lead him to a hidden treasure trove. Undeclared wealth that his father accumulated before his untimely death.”
“And did it?” said Chopra, with the ghost of a smile.
“Did it what?”
“Lead you to a hidden treasure trove?”
Rangwalla gave him a sour look. “No. It wandered around aimlessly, went up a tree, rooted around in a garbage heap, soiled the streets, then attacked me when I got too close.”
Chopra stifled his laughter. Rangwalla pushed back his plate. “So, while I was wasting my time on a wild cat chase, what were you doing?”
Quickly, Chopra filled his deputy in on the day’s events at the Grand Raj Palace Hotel.
Rangwalla scratched his beard. “Sounds like you are going to have your hands full. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Yes. I want to know more about Hollis Burbank. I want you to see what you can find out.”
Rangwalla looked mystified. “How?”
“Talk to Kishore Dubey at the Mid Day. This sort of thing is precisely what he excels at.”
Dubey was an old newspaper contact of Chopra’s. He excelled in writing profiles of the many celebrities who lived in or passed through Mumbai.
Rangwalla nodded unhappily. “Okay. Anything to get away from that damned cat.”
Chopra ignored him. “The trouble is that for almost everyone concerned it would be much better if I find nothing. A verdict of suicide would spare a great deal of embarrassment all round.”
“Well, you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs,” said Rangwalla, philosophically.
“What?” Chopra frowned. “Who’s talking about making an omelette? What’s an omelette got to do with anything? I didn’t ask you to make an omelette, I asked you to do some investigating.”
“It’s just a saying,” said Rangwalla hastily. “My daughter said it to me the other day. To be frank, it confused me too.”
The pair of them stared at each other, on opposite banks of a river of misunderstanding, and then the door swung open.
Chopra blanched.
Poppy was standing in the doorway, her slender figure rigidly erect, hands planted firmly on hips.
She did not look happy.
Over the long years of their marriage Chopra had developed a deep appreciation for his wife’s generous nature, her eternal optimism, her willingness to believe the best of the world, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. These qualities balanced out her sometimes volatile temperament, which would erupt in lightning bursts of anger whenever something got under her skin.
Such as now.
“So,” said Poppy, acidly. “The big hero returns.”
“I was just on my way home, Poppy,” said Chopra. He felt a sudden tightening around his chest, and wondered if it was his traitorous heart fleeing for the hills.
“Were you?” said Poppy. “Because it seems to me that what you were actually doing was sitting in your little office in your restaurant with your associate detective discussing your oh-so-important investigation.”
Rangwalla looked from Poppy to his boss, and back again. He made as if to stand. “Perhaps I should be getting along—”
“SIT!” thundered Poppy.
Rangwalla’s knees buckled and he fell back into his chair. He hunkered down into it like a man in a foxhole.
“Perhaps this isn’t the time or place—” Chopra began before being unceremoniously cut off.
“But it is never the time or place!” growled Poppy. “Not when it comes to discussing something that is important to me.”
“I can explain—” began Chopra again.
“Oh, can you?” said his wife, advancing into the room.
He saw that red spots of anger floated on her cheeks; the black bun of her hair quivered atop her head and her gold bangles jangled on her wrists.
She turned to Rangwalla. “Tell me, Abbas, do you think he can explain why I am having to chase him all over town for the occasion of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary? Can he explain why, having agreed to visit the temple with me this morning so that we might discuss arrangements for our anniversary with the priest, and having reminded him every single day for the past week not to forget, he failed to show up? Can he explain why there is always some case that is more important, some appointment that is more pressing, some work that is more essential than his own marriage?”
The sudden silence quivered in the room, balanced precariously on the edge of the cliff to which Poppy’s rage had ascended.
“Um, no?” ventured Rangwalla. He felt beads of sweat popping out on his forehead. Poppy had always managed to discomfit him. For one, she was the only person in the world who insisted on calling him by his first name.
Chopra flashed his deputy a grim look. Rangwalla subsided, deciding that it was in his best interests to keep any further input to himself.
The door suddenly opened again and Irfan tracked in, closely followed by Ganesha.
The boy, still in his shocking pink waiter’s uniform, waved a small gift-wrapped parcel around. “I’m so glad you’re both here,” he said. “Ganesha and I have got you a present. For your anninanniversary.” In spite of the situation, Chopra found himself suppressing a smile. Irfan’s command of English was coming along in leaps and bounds. But “anniversary” was a word he found easy to begin, yet exceedingly difficult to end.
Poppy turned to the boy and the elephant.
As she looked down at them, standing side by side, their big round eyes overflowing with affection, she found her anger evaporating.
She knelt down and wrapped an arm around each one. Ganesha’s trunk curled around her shoulders. “My boys,” she sighed, burying her face between them. Silently she began to weep.
“Why are you crying?” asked Irfan. “You haven’t even seen it yet. You might like it.”
“I am sure I will love it,” snuffled Poppy. “I am crying because I am happy. I love you both very much.”
“We love you too,” said Irfan, brightening. Ganesha gave a soft bugle, and patted away the tears on
her cheek.
Chopra rose from his desk and made his way to the trio.
Poppy got to her feet and examined his face gloomily as he approached.
Chopra felt terrible.
He realised that there was some truth to Poppy’s accusations. Throughout their marriage he had rarely felt that he had neglected her needs—nor would he ever wish to. He had married his wife for love, and had never regretted his choice. They had weathered all that life had thrown at them. She remained his closest companion, his fiercest and most loyal friend.
And yet, looking at the present situation through her eyes, he realised that perhaps, on this occasion, he had been unfair to her.
“I will find the time,” he said softly.
Poppy waved him away. “Don’t make promises you cannot keep. I would rather you just did what you had to.”
“This case… it could have political repercussions, Poppy. I must devote time to it. But I promise you I will clear it up as soon as I can, and then you and I shall go on a holiday.”
“A holiday?” Poppy’s ears perked up. “You mean an actual trip? Out of the city?”
“Yes. Anywhere you wish.”
She eyed him doubtfully, then her attractive face flowered into a smile. “I will hold you to that. I have witnesses.”
“It’s a promise,” said Chopra.
A FIRST LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE
The next morning Chopra drove south again, this time to the Colaba Police Station, just minutes from the Grand Raj Palace Hotel.
He parked his van on Shahid Bhagat Singh Road, let Ganesha out of the back, then walked past the Wesley Church with its pointed arches and uplifting white signboard proclaiming: Peace Be Unto You! He passed through the police station’s blue and yellow gates, and into the building proper.
He paused in the doorway, early-morning sunlight backlighting his tall frame, as he took in the scene. The hustle and bustle of a police station at work brought a gladness to his heart, one that was tinged with a sense of loss, like a violin note sounding from deep within the undergrowth of his emotions.
After all, this had been his life for almost thirty years.
In his own station, back in Sahar—over which he had presided as the officer-in-charge—he had found the peace that only comes to a man when he discovers his allotted role in the grand scheme of things. His days had been filled with routine, order, purpose.
And then: the heart attack that had derailed the dependable train of his existence, hurling him into the mangrove swamp of the unknown.
Yet, with Poppy’s help, he had weathered the storm, and emerged on the other side, stronger and, possibly, wiser. A man in his position had few reasons to complain. In comparison to so many of his fellow citizens—those who eked out a living on the margins of society, not knowing where their next meal was coming from—he was a man blessed by good fortune. He loved and was loved in return. His life had stability, and now, thanks to the detective agency, he had a renewed sense of purpose, one that fitted him like an old glove.
Chopra made his way through the chaotic tumult to the office of Inspector Rohan Tripathi.
He knocked on the door, waited for Tripathi’s familiar voice to bellow “Come!” then entered, leaving Ganesha behind in the main station area.
It had been years since Chopra had last seen his old colleague, but Tripathi had changed little. A thin man with a streamlined head like a bullet, the dark hair swept back as if he had been exposed to a fierce wind. A rakish moustache, the moustache of an aristocratic polo player or a freedom fighter, the type of historical hero that Tripathi had always professed admiration for.
“Chopra,” said Tripathi, by way of greeting, holding his hand over the receiver of the phone plugged to his ear. He waved at a chair on the far side of his neatly ordered desk.
Chopra chose to stand, waiting until the call had ended.
When Tripathi finally put it down, his shoulders sagged with relief. “That was Gunaji,” he said. “Wants to know why I’m holding up the press release. He’s desperate to tell the world how he has ‘solved’ Burbank’s suicide.” Tripathi shook his head, picked up a file from the top of a teetering tower of manila folders and threw it at Chopra. “Here’s everything I have so far. Forensics, interviews, autopsy report, the lot.”
Chopra recalled that Tripathi was a man who wasted little time on trivialities. Small talk was alien territory for the intense policeman.
“How are you, Rohan?” he asked anyway.
“How am I? I am a man hanging from the edge of a cliff by his fingernails. At the bottom, splattered on the rocks, I can see the corpse of my career. That’s how I am.”
“You could just go along with Gunaji,” said Chopra mildly.
Tripathi snorted. “Gunaji is a CBI goon. He loves to throw his weight around. Luckily for him he has plenty of it to throw. The word is he wants to run for the chief ministership when he retires.”
Chopra had come across officers from the Central Bureau of Investigation before.
The CBI was tasked to investigate corruption in the police force and other branches of the civil service. The only problem was that, in Chopra’s personal experience, CBI officers sometimes succumbed to the very same rotten habits they were attempting to eradicate.
The CBI was also responsible for investigating cases of a political or sensitive nature. Hence Gunaji’s involvement in the Burbank affair.
“The man would sell his own mother to get in front of a TV camera,” continued Tripathi sourly. “Luckily, I still have some say in this investigation. Just not enough to deploy the full strength of resources that I would like to. Hence my call to you. It’s a grim day, Chopra, when politics ties the hands of the police service.”
Chopra sat down, opened the file and began to read.
Hollis Burbank’s body had been discovered in the master bedroom of his suite, a knife embedded in his chest. Burbank’s fingerprints had been found on the handle of the knife—and no one else’s.
A half-empty glass of vintage Glencoyne single malt whisky had been discovered on the bedside table—the price of the bottle, which Burbank had ordered the same evening from the hotel’s bar, was four thousand dollars. A small brown tablet bottle of Valium was found beside the glass. A toxicology report showed that Burbank had taken a large dose, dissolved in the whisky.
Burbank’s fingerprints were on the glass, and the Valium bottle.
Chopra looked up. “Why would Burbank take Valium? I mean, if he was about to kill himself with a knife anyway?”
“I wondered that myself,” said Tripathi. “Gunaji thinks he was calming his nerves. That he was anxious about stabbing himself.”
“Then why not just take an overdose? And why stab himself anyway? Why not sit in the bathtub and slit his wrists?”
“Like those old Roman senators, eh?” said Tripathi. “The answer is: we don’t know. Maybe he was making a statement. I mean, you saw what he wrote in the bathroom, right?”
Chopra nodded.
I am sorry.
“Is there a last known movements timeline in here?” he asked.
“Of course. He was at the auction, then an after-party till late in the evening. He went from that straight back to his room—alone as far as we can tell. He entered his suite at 11:53 p.m. Ordered room service, and after that… nothing.”
“I understand he ordered caviar and champagne. An extravagant meal for someone planning to kill himself.”
Tripathi grimaced. “Gunaji says that if he was planning to end it all, he’d order a lavish last meal too. A shame he isn’t,” he added. “Planning to end it all, I mean.”
Another thought occurred to Chopra. “Where did Burbank get the knife?”
Tripathi waved at the folder. “There’s a report about it in there somewhere. The knife was taken from the suite’s kitchen area. It’s Japanese, the best that money can buy, hand-forged from Damascus steel, with a nine-inch blade and an edge so sharp it could shave off your moustache from a ya
rd away. By the way, it wasn’t blood.”
Chopra frowned. “What wasn’t blood?”
“The statement on the bathroom wall. ‘I am sorry.’ It wasn’t written in blood. But I expect you gathered that already. That was why you called to ask me about any other wounds on the body, wasn’t it?”
Chopra’s moustache lifted in a smile, but he said nothing. There was no need. “So if it wasn’t blood, what was it?”
“Paint. Red paint. We found a small pot of it in the bathroom. Together with a flat-headed artist’s paintbrush. His fingerprints were on them both. And before you ask what they were doing there, we found an easel in the suite. Turns out Burbank was a closet artist himself. Liked to dabble. He’d been painting. A picture of sunflowers. Between you and me, it was pretty terrible.”
Chopra considered how this revelation cast a different light on the victim, a man so far described only as a ruthless businessman. The fact that Burbank painted revealed something more about him, he felt, something hidden, and intimate.
“Was there anything missing from the room? Valuables?”
“Nothing,” said Tripathi, emphatically. “The suite has a wall safe. Burbank hadn’t bothered to lock it. It was stuffed with cash, designer watches, diamond cufflinks. Nothing to a man of Burbank’s wealth, but a tidy haul by anyone else’s standards. Yet none of it was touched. If this was murder, then it wasn’t about robbery. It was personal.”
Chopra turned his attention to the autopsy report, which had been prepared by his old friend Homi Contractor.
“How did you get Homi to do the autopsy?”
“Not easily,” admitted Tripathi.
Chopra could sympathise. Homi was notoriously busy and even more notoriously difficult.
“But he’s the best pathologist in the city. I didn’t want anything left to chance, not for this.”