The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra

by Vaseem Khan

  Before going to see Homi, Chopra checked on the little elephant again. He was encouraged to see that Ganesha had relieved himself during the night. Admittedly, it was a very small pile of dung, but it was a sign of progress at least.

  However, when he checked with Bahadur, he discovered that the elephant had still not eaten anything.

  Chopra bent down next to the pile of dung. He shooed away the flies, got onto his knees and brought his face closer, taking a deep sniff, as had been advised by Dr Harpal Singh’s book.

  Bahadur looked on with keen interest.

  Of all the Colony’s residents, Inspector Chopra was the one he most admired.

  Sometimes, as he sat idly on his little chair by the compound gates, he would dream of being a police officer himself. A heroic one like Shashi Kapoor in Deewaar or Amitabh Bachchan in Shahenshah, beating up dozens of villains with his bare hands, and rescuing the heroine, with whom he would then do a romantic dance number.

  Chopra straightened. What in God’s name was he doing! How ridiculous he must look, a grown man sniffing at a pile of elephant dung! What was that old saying? Leave the expertise to the experts.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his notebook. In it he found the phone number he had obtained from Mahi at the Byculla Zoo. He took out his mobile phone and dialled the number.

  ‘Yes?’ said a gruff voice.

  ‘Am I speaking to Dr Rohit Lala?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Dr Lala, my name is Inspector Chopra and I have a very sick elephant that needs your help.’

  Chopra arrived at the hospital in a rickshaw, just as an ambulance raced up to the main entrance. Two men leaped out from the back, carrying a gurney on which lay a bloodied and hastily bandaged body. The body appeared to have lost both legs from the knees downwards. ‘Poor fool fell under the train,’ said one of the orderlies, as they jogged past. Chopra did not ask how it had happened. After all, falling under a train was an everyday occurrence in Mumbai.

  He found Homi sitting in his office, his face hidden beneath a dampened handkerchief. ‘Forty-two degrees centigrade and the AC decides to pack up!’ he complained. ‘It’s going to be the hottest summer on record. But you mark my words: when the rains come, they’re going to be terrible.’

  Chopra noted that Homi’s eyes were bloodshot. He knew that his old friend had a taste for fine whisky, and often awoke feeling the worse for wear. But he was a thorough professional, and Chopra had never heard of any complaints about his work.

  Over the years they had worked together on a number of high-profile cases. Early in their friendship, they had collaborated on the case of the Cricket Bat Killer, one of their most famous cases, which had led to hysterical headlines in the local papers.

  The Cricket Bat Killer had murdered four people in the Sahar area, all of them bludgeoned to death with what turned out to be a cricket bat. The investigation had been led by Chopra, at the time a sub-inspector. Chopra had examined the wood splinters recovered by Homi from the body of one of the victims, and the profile of the blunt-force trauma marks inflicted by the murder weapon, and had been able to identify both that the injuries had been inflicted by a cricket bat, and also narrow down the make of bat. Being an avid cricket enthusiast himself, he had realised that this particular type of bat was rare, and only sold at one shop in the area. From there it had been a relatively simple task to locate the handful of locals who had purchased such a bat. Only one of those men could not produce the bat for inspection, and he quickly buckled under police questioning and confessed his crimes.

  The killer’s motive for carrying out the gruesome murders had once again convinced Chopra that simple explanations of good and evil did not fit the facts of human behaviour.

  The Cricket Bat Killer had been angry, angry at the small suffocations of his life, his marriage, his dead-end job, his unruly, uninspiring children. Chopra, who was an avid reader of criminological textbooks, did not believe in evil as a measurable human concept, certainly not in any moral or religious sense. Men like the Cricket Bat Killer were, to his mind, sociological freaks. Something had gone wrong with the way they processed the world around them. It was not exactly madness, but not sanity either.

  Chopra followed Homi to the hospital morgue. They entered the cold unit, where Homi pulled out the body of Santosh Achrekar, lying on its metal tray.

  Once again, Chopra found himself strangely moved as he looked at the boy’s once handsome face, now a ghastly waxen mask.

  ‘First things first,’ began Homi. ‘Technically, the boy died of suffocation leading to cerebral hypoxia–or drowning, if you prefer–as indicated by water in the airways, stomach and lungs. Diatom analysis shows that he was alive when he entered the water. We also found blood in his lungs, which indicates he struggled mightily for breath. That is curious, because if the water was only a few inches deep and he had enough wherewithal to struggle, then I would expect him to have lifted himself clear.

  ‘I also had the boy’s blood, stomach contents and fluids analysed. There was indeed a high quantity of alcohol in his system. There is no doubt that he would have been drunk at the time of his death.

  ‘Secondly, we also found drugs in his bloodstream. A cocktail of benzodiazepines, in fact. Now, this is not the drug of choice for even desperate users; benzodiazepines have sedative and hypnotic–that is, sleep-inducing–effects. There are no other indications that the boy was a regular drug user.’

  Chopra looked thoughtfully down at Santosh’s face. ‘So,’ continued Homi, ‘he was drunk and possibly on drugs… and yet, in my opinion, this was no accidental death.’

  Chopra looked up.

  ‘Here, help me turn him over.’ They turned the body onto its stomach. ‘Look here,’ said Homi, pointing at the upper part of the boy’s neck, just below the hairline. On the greying flesh Chopra could make out a line of discolouration. ‘Bruising. A heavy hand around the neck, held there for some time. A strong, right-handed male, I would say… and here, another bruise, near the base of the spine. My guess is a knee, a heavy knee.’

  Chopra had an image of the boy, face down in the water, a big man holding him there while he struggled, thrashed about until finally his legs stopped moving, and he was still.

  ‘I found something else too, under his fingernails. Some skin–not the boy’s–a little blood, and some microscopic fibres.’

  ‘What kind of fibres?’

  ‘Velvet. Red.’ They turned the body over again and Homi pulled the sheet back into place, before sliding the body back into its vault.

  ‘Let me paint you a picture. The boy and his friend are out drinking. Maybe they’re high, too. They’re out on the road when one of them–let’s say the friend–says that he needs to relieve himself. The boy is reluctant to take him to his home; he does not want his parents to meet a friend like this. So he takes him to a place close by, a quiet place that he knows will be deserted at this time of night. In that place, they quarrel; there is a struggle. The boy scratches the friend, tears his shirt, a red velvet shirt. But the friend is too powerful. He pushes the boy down into the water. He holds him there until he stops moving. Then he leaves.’

  ‘Why?’ whispered Chopra.

  ‘Yes, that is the real question. Why? Was it two friends who had a fight over a girl, a fight that got out of hand? Or work colleagues falling out over some minor slight at the office? Or just two drunks who fought over a drop of piss one sprayed on the other’s shoe? I have no idea. I’m afraid that’s where my work stops and yours begins. Or would have begun were it not for the fact that you are now retired.’

  Chopra realised that Homi was staring at him. ‘I can’t just drop it, old friend.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ said Homi sternly. ‘That is exactly what you must do. I will notify your successor at the station of my findings. He will have to conduct an investigation.’

  ‘He will not. And even if he does, the investigation will fail,’ said Chopra.

  ‘You don’t th
ink much of the new man, do you?’

  Chopra was silent a moment. ‘Do you know what Achrekar’s mother told me, on the day I left? She said there would be no justice for her. No justice for her son. They are poor. They are unimportant.’

  ‘Come, now, you don’t believe that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I believe any more. As you said, I am retired.’

  POPPY HAS AN IDEA

  The greatest disappointment of Poppy Chopra’s life was that she had never had children. After twenty-four years of marriage she and Inspector Chopra were still childless, and, ostensibly at least, had long since given up the idea of raising a family.

  In the beginning they had consulted doctors, some of them even reasonably good at their jobs. To Poppy’s horror they had discovered that the problem lay coiled deep within the mysterious and unfathomable workings of her own body. Those same doctors had suggested potential cures, this and that and whatnot. They had shown her complicated diagrams and described important-sounding technical procedures. They had given her hope.

  It had turned out to be false hope, after all.

  And when the medical men had failed, Poppy had turned to tradition. She had consulted swamis, and sadhus and vedjis. She had made pilgrimages to the tombs of numerous saints. She had followed the advice of her mother, preparing meals heavy with cottage cheese and alfalfa sprouts. She had tried strange potions from glass bottles sold by mysterious women who came highly recommended by those who were said to know about such things. And nothing had worked.

  To his credit Chopra himself had never once hinted at any disappointment at the fact that Poppy had not borne him a child, let alone a son. He had never once blamed her or suggested that he had made a mistake in asking for her hand all those years ago. Poppy knew of many men who would have cast her aside in favour of another more fertile wife. But Chopra was not one of those men. It was the reason that she loved him, loved him more deeply than he would ever allow her to express. And it vindicated her belief, formed on the night of their wedding, when Chopra had behaved towards her with such gentle consideration, knowing that in spite of her bravado she was really just a frightened eighteen-year-old girl on the verge of becoming a woman, that she had married a good man.

  In a country where thieves and crooks were becoming ever more commonplace, particularly in the highest offices in the land, where people openly applauded those who managed to hoodwink millions and get away with it, Chopra was a man who stood for everything that was right and good about India. It was this unwavering integrity that Poppy admired most. She had heard it said that every man had a price. Not her husband.

  In time Poppy had accepted her fate. ‘Why do I need children of my own?’ she told her friends. ‘India is blessed with children. Everywhere you look there are children. Why, in my own building there are so many children that I cannot even remember all their names!’

  Briefly they had discussed adoption, but Poppy had sensed that Chopra’s heart was not in it. It was the only time that she had become upset with his attitude, but he had never really explained what it was that he found so objectionable about taking in an orphan. She had pursued the matter for a while, but in the end had given up. That had been a decade into their marriage. By then she was no longer a naïve eighteen-year-old girl. She had learned that the easiest way to lose a man was to push him to a place he did not wish to go.

  And so Poppy had resigned herself to a life in which no sweet-faced little angel would ever call her ‘Mummy’; no little tyke would ever come home with his clothes all dirty from splashing around in the monsoon mud with his friends; no fine young man would bring tears of pride to her eyes by passing his HSC exams as the class topper.

  Sometimes, when Chopra was at work, and she was alone at home on a day when she had nothing else to do, she would dream about her unborn children, and she would feel an ache deep inside her, perhaps in the very place the doctors said had been the cause of her childlessness, and tears would roll down her cheeks. She would sit there for hours, just crying, until there were no more tears inside. And then she would get up, wash her face, admonish herself for her silliness, recount her many blessings, and prepare the evening meal in time for Chopra’s return from the station.

  This was how it had been for more years that she cared to remember. And just as Chopra had refused to condemn her for the lack of children, so she had refused to permit that lack to cast a shadow over their lives.

  And then, on the morning that Chopra had set off to learn about elephants, Poppy had received a call from her cousin Kiran Malhotra, who lived nearby in the affluent suburb of Bandra.

  Kiran and Poppy had always been close, and their lives had been mirrors of one another.

  Both had been marked out in their extended family by their beauty; both had been transplanted from their village to the big city by their husbands. In Kiran’s case, her husband had been an enterprising young Panvel man who had received a bank loan to set up a factory in Pune to manufacture ball bearings. As India’s industrial sector had taken off in the late eighties and nineties, his business had prospered. Eventually, he had expanded his product line to heavy machinery, opened a swanky new sales office in Mumbai, and purchased a grand bungalow in Khar Danda in Bandra to go with it.

  For a while Kiran had been insufferable, putting on airs and crowing about her husband’s success and their fancy new home. But Poppy had put up with her cousin because she knew that at heart Kiran was a good soul, and would soon realise what a bore she was becoming.

  As the rickshaw puttered along Carter Road, Poppy looked out interestedly at the grand bungalows lining the seafront. The grandest one, she had always thought, had once been the home of her favourite movie star, Shah Rukh Khan, but he had relocated to an even fancier place on the nearby Bandra Bandstand.

  Crowds of people moved down the promenade, taking in the salty air. Carter Road was a place where everyone came–obese joggers in sweaty headbands, shy couples romancing under the stars, shanty children playing tag on the giant stone tetrapods piled up under the promenade to blunt the sea’s occasional fury. The smell of drying fish was thick in the air and broken coconuts littered the pavement, fallen from the swathe of palm trees that ran along the side of the road. In the tangle of mangrove below the promenade monkeys yawned, while litter pickers examined the rubbish careless people had thrown into the sea, only for it to be washed back into the waiting thickets.

  When Poppy arrived at Kiran’s bungalow, she found her cousin in a state of some distress. Kiran’s face gave away the fact that she had been crying–her usually impeccable make-up was messy and smudged. She was a natural beauty, and her oval face, graceful neck and porcelain skin had long aroused feelings of wistfulness in Poppy. Her cousin could have been a movie star, and with her height and svelte figure, choosing the right outfit for an important function was an irrelevance. Kiran looked good in anything, even the casual slacks and last night’s crumpled T-shirt that she presently wore.

  Poppy realised that this was an occasion that called for a pot of her famous tamarind tea. She shooed away the bhai, who gave her a hurt look, and made the tea herself, serving it in Kiran’s imported china tea set, the one she had shown off at the kitty party she had held just a few weeks ago, when she had been at her insufferable worst.

  ‘Tell me what the trouble is,’ said Poppy, briskly.

  ‘Prarthana!’ Kiran blubbed. ‘It’s Prarthana!’

  Prarthana Malhotra was sixteen years old and had recently moved to one of the fancy international baccalaureate schools that had opened in Bandra. Kiran had high hopes that her daughter would become a surgeon or, failing that, a fashion model. She was certainly beautiful, having inherited her mother’s looks.

  ‘I thought this school would be the best thing for her. All the teachers are foreigners–you know, English and Swiss and French and whatall. It is costing Anand ten lakhs per annum! All the kids there are sons and daughters of big shots. You know, I heard Ambani’s son might be enrolled
there next year.’ For a moment Kiran brightened, as if the prospect of the scion of India’s richest dynasty joining her daughter’s school was enough to solve all her problems. But then her face darkened again. ‘The trouble started a few months ago. Prarthana started requesting to have sleepovers at her friends’ houses. I wasn’t in favour of it myself, you know, but Prarthana complained to her father. She said she was being ostracised by her classfellows because she wasn’t allowed to do the things all the other cool kids did. Well, you know Anand; he won’t hear of his kid being second best. And after that, she started going out in the evenings. This week it was Renoo’s birthday, and next week it is Esha’s this thing… I tell you, it’s impossible to keep up with them!

  ‘I suppose that was my mistake. I should have never given her so much freedom, no matter what Anand said. I should have put my foot down.’ Kiran stopped, as tears began to roll down her face. ‘Oh, Poppy!’

  Poppy put an arm around her cousin’s shoulder and waited until she had sobbed herself to a standstill. Then Kiran began again: ‘A couple of weeks ago, I began to notice a change in her personality. She started to become evasive, and wouldn’t meet my eyes. I actually caught her out telling me a direct lie. And then, one morning, I heard her vomiting behind the bathroom door. Her mood began to swing wildly.’ Kiran stopped. On the mantelpiece, a fancy Swiss carriage clock ticked away the agonising seconds.

  ‘Perhaps you’re wrong,’ said Poppy gently.

  ‘A mother knows, Poppy, a mother knows.’

  Well! thought Poppy. For once, Kiran had not been making a fuss over nothing.

  She felt a surge of sympathy for her cousin… What a horrible, terrible situation! India was changing, India was shining, India was now a very modern place–but there were still some things that were sacred and some things that were taboo. And an unmarried, pregnant teenage daughter was the very worst thing that could happen to any respectable Indian family.