The Case of the Missing Servant

by Tarquin Hall

  On the other side, Handbrake found himself in unknown territory; he had never been to NOIDA before. He had hoped there might be “signage” to point the way to the golf course, but none appeared. Risking a telling-off, he told Puri he didn’t know the way.

  “Sir, any directions for me?”

  Such honesty did not come naturally to Handbrake. His instinct as a former Delhi taxi driver was never to admit ignorance of an address. Partly, this was an issue of pride. Behind the wheel was the one place in the world where he felt like a king. And what king likes to show weakness?

  But mostly it was because his former boss, Randy Singh, owner of the Regal B Hinde Taxi Service, and Handbrake’s mentor, had always insisted that if a passenger didn’t know the way to their chosen destination, then it was a driver’s God-given right to fleece them royally.

  This philosophy had been instilled in Randy Singh by his father, old Baba Singh, who’d made his fortune rustling water buffalo. Thus the Singh family credo ran: “They have it; why should we not take it?” Indeed, Randy Singh believed that it was the duty of every taxi driver to find ways and means of ripping off all his customers. In his office, he kept an up-to-date map of the current roadworks and diversions across Delhi. Every morning, he briefed his boys on the hot spots where they were sure to run into long delays. He also bribed the men from the Department of Transport whose duty it was to install the government-issued fare meters, which were meant to protect passengers from fraud, to charge an extra three paisa for every mile. This extra profit he split with them seventy-thirty in his favor.

  Not surprisingly, Regal B Hinde Taxi Service received a good many complaints from its customers. But Randy Singh never showed remorse. And he prepped his drivers on how to react to disgruntled passengers. Play the dumb villager newly arrived in the big city, he instructed. “Sorry, sir! No education, sir! Getting confusion, sir!”

  Handbrake’s new employer saw things very differently. If you weren’t completely honest and tried to bluff your way around; if you set off in any old direction hoping for the best and then stopped to ask the way from ignorant bystanders only to find yourself performing half a dozen U-turns, the detective was liable to get extremely hot under the collar.

  “Oolu ke pathay! Son of an owl!” he’d shouted recently when Handbrake had pretended to know his way around Mustafabad and they’d ended up going round and round in circles in Bhajanpura instead.

  Given the respect Handbrake was developing for Boss, such cutting insults hurt. But for all his great deductive powers, Puri was just as lost in many areas of New Delhi’s newest suburbs. His map, which was the most up-to-date available in the market, had been printed two years earlier and did not include many of the roads and developments that had “come up.”

  It didn’t help that, throughout Delhi, “signages” were rare. Or that the many “sectors”—which sounded like planetary systems in a Hollywood science fiction film—were just as mysterious as new galactic frontiers. A driver might reach Sector 15 expecting to find Sector 16 nearby, but to his frustration turn a corner and find himself in Sector 28 instead.

  Recently, when Handbrake had been sent to Apartment 3P, Block C, Street D, Phase 14, Sector 17 in Gurgaon, it had taken him well over an hour to find it.

  As for the Golden Greens Golf Course, Puri had never been there either. So when Handbrake came clean about not knowing the way, the detective told him to ask someone for directions. But not just anyone.

  Migrant laborers were a no-no. According to Puri, they weren’t used to giving directions because they came from villages where everyone knew everyone else and roads didn’t have names.

  “Ask them where anything is and they will tell you ‘over there.’”

  As for fellow drivers, they were not to be relied on, because half of them were probably lost themselves.

  Puri sought out real estate brokers and bicycle-rickshaw-wallahs as good sources because they had to be familiar with the areas in which they worked. Pizza delivery boys could also be trusted.

  Soon after turning off the NOIDA expressway, Handbrake spotted a Vespa moped with a Domino’s box on the back and pulled up next to it at a red light.

  “Brother, where is Galden Geens Galfing?” he shouted in Hindi to the delivery boy over the sound of a noisy, diesel-belching Bedford truck.

  His question was met with an abrupt upward motion of the hand and a questioning squint of the eyes.

  “Galden Geens Galfing, Galden Geens Galfing,” repeated Handbrake.

  The delivery boy’s puzzlement suddenly gave way to comprehension. “Aaah! Golden Greens Galf Carse!”

  “Ji!”

  “Sectorrr forty-tooo!”

  “Brother! Where is forty-tooo sectorrr?”

  “Near Tulip High School!”

  “Where is Tulip High School?”

  “Near Om Garden!”

  “Brother, where is Om Garden?”

  The delivery boy scowled and shouted in an amalgam of English and Hindi, “Past Eros Cinema, sectorrr nineteen! Turn right at traffic light to BPO Phase three! Enter farty-too through backside!”

  Some time later, Handbrake delivered Boss to the front door of the clubhouse and drove to the parking lot. He expected a long wait. But for once, he wasn’t bothered and sat back in his seat to enjoy the view.

  It occurred to him to take a few photographs of the manicured landscape with the new mobile phone Puri had given him. How else would he be able to prove to the people in his village that such an empty, beautiful place existed?

  Puri was not a member of the Golden Greens Golf Course, although he would have liked to be. Not for the sake of playing (secretly he couldn’t stand the game—the ball was always ending up in those bloody ponds), but for making contacts among India’s new money, the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)-cum-MNC (Multi-National Corporation) crowd.

  Such types—as well as many politicians, senior babus and Supreme Court judges—were often to be found on these new fairways to the south and east of the capital. In Delhi, all big deals were now being done on the putting greens. Playing golf had become as vital a skill for an Indian detective as picking a lock. In the past few years, Puri had had to invest in private lessons, a set of Titleist clubs and appropriate apparel, including argyle socks.

  But the fees for the clubs were beyond his means and he often had to rely on others to sign him in as a guest.

  Rinku, his closest childhood friend, had recently joined the Golden Greens.

  He was standing in reception wearing alligator cowboy boots, jeans and a white shirt embroidered with an American eagle.

  “Good to see you, buddy! Looks like you’ve put on a few more pounds, yaar!”

  “You’re one to talk, you bugger,” said the detective as they embraced. “Sab changa?”

  Rinku’s family had been neighbors of the Puris in Punjabi Bagh and they had grown up playing in the street together. All through their teenage years they had been inseparable. But in their adult lives, they had drifted apart.

  Puri’s military career had exposed him to many new people, places and experiences, and he’d become less parochial in his outlook. By contrast, Rinku had married the nineteen-year-old girl next door, whose main aspiration in life had been to wear four hundred grams of gold jewelery at her wedding. He had followed his father into the building business and, during the boom of the past ten years, made a fortune putting up low-cost multistory apartment blocks in Gurgaon and Dwarka.

  Few industries are as dirty as the Delhi construction business, and Rinku had broken every rule and then some. There was hardly a politician in north India he had not done a shady deal with; not a district collector or senior police-wallah to whom he hadn’t passed a plastic bag full of cash.

  At home in Punjabi Bagh, where he still lived in his father’s house with his mother, wife and four children, Rinku was the devoted father and larger-than-life character who gave generously to the community, intervened in disputes and held the biggest Diwali party in
the neighborhood. But he also owned a secret second home, bought in his son’s name, a ten-acre “farmhouse” in Mehrauli. It was here that he entertained politicians and bureaucrats with gori prostitutes.

  It greatly saddened Puri to see how Rinku had become part of what he referred to as “the Nexus,” the syndicate of politicians, senior bureaucrats, businessmen and crime dons (a good many of whom doubled as politicians) who more or less ran the country. Rinku stood for everything that Puri saw as wrong with India. The disease of corruption was slowly eating away at his friend. You could see it in his eyes. They were paranoid and steely.

  And yet Puri could never bring himself to break the bond between them. Rumpi said it was because he had spent his childhood trying to keep Rinku out of trouble.

  “So, saale, when did you get membership, huh?” asked Puri.

  They had gone to the bar and sat down at a table that provided a panoramic view of the Greg Norman–designed course.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret, buddy,” answered Rinku. “I’m a silent partner in this place.”

  He put a finger to his lips, the gold chains around his wrist shifting with a tinkle.

  “Is it?” said Puri.

  “Yah! And as a gift to you, I’m going to make you a member. No need to pay a farthing. No bloody joining fee. Nothing! You just come and go as you like.”

  “Rinku, I—”

  “No argument, Chubby! This is final! On the house!”

  “It’s very kind of you, Rinku. But really, I can’t accept,” said Puri.

  “‘Very kind of you, Rinku, I can’t,’” echoed Rinku mockingly. “What the hell’s with all this formal bullshit, Chubby, huh? How long have we known each other? Can’t a friend gift something to another friend anymore, huh?”

  “Look, Rinku, try to understand, I can’t accept that kind of favor.”

  “It’s not a favor, yaar, it’s a gift!”

  Puri knew he could never make Rinku see sense; his friend couldn’t accept that he did not live by his so-called code. He would have to accept the offer and then, in a few weeks, after Rinku had forgotten about the whole thing, renounce his membership.

  “You’re right,” said the detective. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Thank you.”

  “Bloody right, yaar. Sometimes I don’t recognize you any more, Chubby. Have you forgotten where you’re from or what?”

  “Not at all,” replied the detective. “I just forgot who I was talking to. It’s been a long day. Now, why don’t you buy me a drink, you bugger, and tell me about this man I’m interested in.”

  “Mahinder Gupta?”

  Puri nodded.

  “He’s a Diet Coke,” said Rinku dismissively.

  “A what?”

  “Bloody BPO type, yaar. Got a big American dick up his ass but thinks he’s bloody master of the universe. Just like this lot.”

  Rinku scowled at the young men in suits standing around the bar. With their degrees in business management and BlackBerries, they were a different breed from Puri and Rinku.

  “You know what’s wrong with them, Chubby? None of them drink!”

  The suits all turned and stared and then looked away quickly, exchanging nervous comments.

  Their reaction pleased Rinku.

  “Look at them!” He laughed. “They’re like scared sheep because there’s a wolf around! You know, Chubby, they go in for women’s drinks: wine and that funny colored shit in fancy bottles. I swear they wear bloody bangles, the lot of them. The worst are the bankers. They’ll take every last penny from you and they’ll do it with a smile.”

  The waiter finally arrived at their table.

  “Why the hell have you kept us waiting so long?” Rinku demanded.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t give me sorry! Give me a drink! For this gentleman one extra-large Patiala peg with soda. For me the same. Bring a plate of seekh kebab and chicken tikka as well. Extra chutney. Got it? Make it fast!”

  The waiter bowed and backed away from the table like a courtier at the throne of a Mughal conqueror.

  “So what’s this Diet Coke been up to, huh? Giving it to his best friend’s sister or what?”

  Puri tried to answer but he only got out a few words before Rinku interrupted.

  “Chubby, tell me one thing,” he said. “Why do you bother with these nothing people? After all these years, you’re still chasing housewives. What’s your fee—a few thousand a day, maximum? I’m making that every minute. Round the clock. Even sitting here now my cash till is registering. Ching!”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing. This is my dharma.”

  “Dharma!” scoffed Rinku. “Dharma’s for sadhus and sanyasis! This is the modern world, Chubby. Don’t give me that spiritual shit, OK?”

  Puri felt a flash of anger and shot back, “Not everyone is a…”

  But he stopped himself speaking his mind, suddenly afraid that if he did, it would bring an end to their relationship once and for all.

  “Not everyone is what? A bloody crook like me? Is that what you were going to say?”

  They sat in silence for nearly a minute.

  “Listen, I didn’t come here to argue,” said Puri eventually. “I’m not one to tell friends how to live or what to do. You’ve made your choices; I’ve made mine. Let’s leave it at that.”

  The Patiala pegs arrived, both tumblers filled to the brim.

  Puri picked up his and held it above the small round table that separated them. After a moment’s hesitation, his friend did the same and they clinked glasses together.

  Rinku downed half his Scotch and let out a loud, satisfied gasp, followed by a belch.

  “That’s a proper drink,” he said.

  “On that, we agree.” Puri smiled.

  “So this Sardaar-ji gets married and on his first night he has his way with his new wife. But the next morning he gets divorced. Why? Because he notices a tag on her underwear that says: Tested by Calvin Klein!”

  Puri roared with laughter at the punch line to Rinku’s latest Sikh joke.

  The two men were on their second drink.

  “I heard another one the other day,” said the detective when he had wiped the tears from his cheeks.

  “Santa Singh asked Banta Singh, ‘why dogs don’t marry?’”

  “Why?” asked Rinku gamely.

  “Because they’re already leading a dog’s life!”

  Only a slick of grease and some green chutney remained on their snack plates by the time Puri broached the subject of Mahinder Gupta again.

  “Your Diet Coke comes here most nights after work—around eight thirty, usually,” Rinku told him. “Sometimes his fiancée joins him. She’s as bloody nuts about golf as he is. I played a round with him just one time. He wouldn’t take my bet. Said gambling was against the club rules! I tell you, Puri, these guys are as stiff as—”

  “Anything else?” interrupted the detective.

  Rinku drained his glass, eyeing his friend over the brim.

  “He’s got a place in a posh new block near here, Celestial Tower. All bought with white.* Can you believe it, Chubby? The guy’s got a mortgage from the bank! What kind of bloody fool does that, I ask you? So you want to meet him—your Diet Coke?”

  “Where is he?”

  “In the corner.”

  There were three men sitting at the table Rinku indicated. They had arrived a few minutes earlier.

  “A thousand bucks says you can’t guess which one,” said Rinku.

  “Make it three thousand.”

  “You’re on.”

  It took Puri less than thirty seconds to make his choice.

  “He’s the one in the middle.”

  “Shit yaar! How did you know?” said Rinku, fishing out the money and slapping it down on the table.

  “Simple yaar!” He pronounced it “simm-pull.” “The man on the right is wearing a wedding ring. So it shouldn’t be him. His friend on the left is a
Brahmin; I can see the thread through his vest. Guptas are banias, so it’s not him. That leaves the gentleman in the middle.”

  Puri looked more searchingly at Mahinder Gupta. He was of average height, well built and especially hairy. His arms looked as if they had been carpeted in a shaggy black rug, his afternoon shadow was as swarthy as the dark side of the moon, and the many sprigs poking out from the neck of his golfer’s smock indicated that even the tops of his shoulders were heavily forested. But Gupta did not strike Puri, who always made a point of sizing up a prospective bride or groom for himself, as the macho type. If anything, he seemed shy. When he spoke on his BlackBerry—he was using it most of the time—his voice was quiet. Gupta’s reserved body language was also suggestive of someone who was guarded, who didn’t want to let go for fear of showing some hidden part of his character.

  Perhaps that was why he didn’t drink.

  “What did I tell you?” said Rinku. “Guy doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol! Saala idiot!”

  “What time will he play?”

  “Should be any time.”

  A few minutes later, Gupta’s golf partner arrived and the two of them headed off to the first tee.

  “Chubby, you want to play a round?” asked Rinku.

  “Not especially,” said the detective.

  “Thank God! I hate this bloody game, yaar! Give me cricket any day! So you want to come to the farmhouse? I’ve got some friends coming later for a party. They’re from Ukraine. They’ve got legs as long as eucalyptus trees!”

  “Rumpi is expecting me,” said Puri, standing up.

  “Oh, come on, Chubby, don’t be so bloody boring, yaar! I’ll make sure you don’t get into trouble!”

  “You’ve been getting me into trouble ever since we were four, you bugger!”

  “Fine! Have it your way. But you don’t know what you’re missing!”

  “I know exactly what I’m missing! That’s why I’m going home.”