Sea of Innocence

by Desai, Kishwar

  After she left, Dennis and I stared at each other. Had this rape video really been deliberately filmed? Or had someone managed to shoot the video surreptitiously, without the knowledge of the rapists?

  At every stage in this case, the probabilities were all evenly balanced.

  Just when we were wondering if we would ever be able to find out what happened that night, and if Liza was still alive, a new set of photographs arrived on my phone.

  Again, the screen flashed ‘number withheld’.

  I’d had to shut my eyes to block the rape scene; but these new pictures were impossible to view without feeling sick.

  Each photograph was a close-up taken in a morgue. The little placard next to the body in the photographs read ‘female, identity unknown’.

  The first one was of a girl’s face, in profile, blue eyes slightly open even in death. Her cheek had been cut and roughly stitched up. The cruel black thread ran like a barbed wire across her face. The soft blonde hair lay in contrast on her cheek. They had obviously sliced through her skin to take an imprint of her teeth for identification. There was no need to be kind to a corpse, was there? Especially if it was being treated as unidentified.

  The second photograph was of her pubic area, a close-up which showed an inflamed labia and bruised vaginal area. The young smooth thighs were heartbreaking. The redness of the entire area clearly indicated that she had been raped or molested very cruelly.

  The third was of her shoulders, and the fragile area of her neck, where large bruises were visible, as though she had been beaten and pushed.

  The fourth was of a jagged line running across her body, in between her two child-like breasts; again black stitches pulled the skin together roughly. Her body had been slashed from neck to abdomen, possibly to take samples from her organs for forensic processing, to find out the cause of death. But this surgery looked excessive even to me.

  The fifth was of her hands twisted at impossible angles. The fingers were stiff and open, as though she were resisting attack.

  And the sixth was of her back. There was a visible soreness there and on her upper thighs, with angry black and red streams of congealed blood. There was little doubt that she had been sodomized, as well.

  Now we knew what had happened to Liza.

  And everyone on the beach must have known, as well. Near her lower abdomen was a tattoo – Veeramma’s favourite. Broken hearts in a tiny daisy chain.

  I called Vishnu, the only person I knew who had genuinely cared about her, to tell him that we now had the sad evidence of her death. But the phone just kept ringing.

  Dennis and I decided we would have to go to the local police station and ask to look at the case files of unidentified bodies. Obviously someone had copied these photographs from somewhere.

  We got up when my phone rang and my blood ran cold.

  On the screen once more were the same dreaded words that had appeared a few minutes earlier: ‘number withheld’.

  Why was this anonymous source calling me?

  Expecting another blow, I answered slowly, though my voice seemed to be coming from very far away, even to my own ears. ‘Who is this?’

  The soft voice at the other end was familiar. Why hadn’t I guessed earlier?

  Chapter 15

  It was Vishnu.

  The answer had been in front of me all along. But because of his appearance, his distrust of us and his fear, I had not linked him with the videos and photographs. How could such a frightened and helpless man possess this radical and subversive – and almost pornographic – material?

  It seemed we were more deluded than he ever was.

  With the discovery of his identity, things began to move really fast. Especially when it became clear that not only had Vishnu sent the films to us, it was he who had assiduously shot the videos of the girl he had been infatuated with. He had perfected the art of filming with a mobile phone without anyone realizing what he was up to.

  But it also became obvious that, having inadvertently revealed himself by calling me back without unblocking his number, Vishnu was not entirely reluctant to share his role in this complicated mystery. In fact it did not take long to persuade him to come over to meet us. Perhaps he too realized that once his secret was out it would have been too big a risk not to tell us exactly how he had got involved in this case and why he had planned this remarkable exposure.

  It seems that because he had been arrested a year ago, all of those clips detailing Liza’s abuse and eventual death had lain buried under the debris of electronic gadgets in his shop, only to be taken out when he came back from jail. He had been filming Liza randomly and obsessively – not quite sure what he would do with the eventual material. Even, according to him, the rape on the beach, was shot in the same accidental fashion.

  After his brutal treatment at the hands of the police and the threats from Vinay Gupta and Curtis, he wanted to at last tell the truth. But initially he dared not speak up, except anonymously.

  It had taken exceptional courage from him, because if anyone had found out about the material in his possession, who knows what might have happened? Looking at the injuries already inflicted upon him I doubted if he would have been allowed to survive.

  Vishnu’s best cover was our dismissal of him as semi-literate and frankly, a little foolish – a view shared by his friends on the beach. No one suspected that he had planned the entire sequence of revenge while he had been in jail.

  And even at this stage, when it appeared he had decided to tell us everything, he still did not reveal the truth about one person who had helping him throughout. Indeed that nugget of information came right at the very end. He surprised us once again with his resourcefulness and ingenuity and loyalty.

  Meanwhile I told Vishnu how my hopes had risen seeing the computer in Marian’s home with a live email address purporting to be Liza’s.

  ‘It was so eerie to see that. And that made me think, for just a fleeting moment, that perhaps Liza had not been killed. But,’ I turned to Vishnu, ‘you are a good actor; you must have known that it was a fake account. It was an excellent way to scare everyone, though, to send those videos in her name.’

  Vishnu nodded, looking sheepish, as he usually did when anyone praised him.

  ‘But who maintained the account? Was it you or Marian?’

  For some reason thus far Vishnu had been very hesitant on the question of Marian.

  I had always related his reluctance to the fact that he had thought Marian had got him jailed.

  But he proved me wrong again.

  ‘Madam, don’t be angry, okay? I tell you something because now it is safe to tell,’ he said in his usual quiet fashion.

  ‘Out of two of us, Marian the better actor.’ He gazed at us in turn, waiting for a reaction, as a smile spread over his face for the first time. Did I see a slightly self-satisfied look? Surely not!

  Dennis and I stared back at him. Why was he so pleased?

  ‘My idea, madam. They lock me up after Liza vanish. They do it once before when Curtis molest Liza. And this time she raped, they say I do it, just like before. They beat me, hit me, but I don’t tell them about the video. I don’t tell anything because then they will destroy it all. No one find out. When I come out from jail just one month ago I go to Marian. I share my idea with her. I show her films about Liza. She angry, want to give them to police. But I say, slowly, slowly. We need to scare Gupta and his men, make them think Liza is still alive.’

  It was a brilliantly simple idea. Once he came out of jail, with Marian on board, they decided to send out the first lot of videos to everyone, including Vinay Gupta. With his Internet skills and ability to hack into computers, he could get hold of all the required email IDs. It was he who created the email identity of victoryatlast@gmail.com, putting firewalls that no one in the police had traced so far. And it was he who re-set Liza’s password and started operating her account, hoping to rekindle interest in her disappearance and focus attention on those who had killed
the girl he loved.

  But when I asked him if he were sorry Marian had died, he said nothing, and instead handed us, almost victoriously, a clip which would probably lead the police to Gupta’s doorstep. It was his way of telling us that it was time to wrap up our investigation.

  But more of that later.

  In our series of surreptitious conversations with Vishnu in Dennis’s hotel we learnt that the first video he had sent out had created havoc for Vinay Gupta, and doubts about him grew within the government. The ripples of this were felt in Goa, as there were also a series of sightings of Liza around the beach that worried Gupta even more. He even began to wonder, just as Vishnu had wanted, if the morgue pictures were fake. When and how had Liza come back? And who had resurrected her from the dead? Had his own men been treacherous? He did not know quite what to believe.

  But now we learnt that all of this was disinformation carefully placed by Marian, who also passed it to Amarjit and me. All of this together led to panic in Gupta’s ranks. Not trusting the local police, he contacted Amarjit – and eventually Amarjit had asked me to make discreet inquiries. Was Liza still alive? And who was the real source of these damning videos?

  Nobody knew, at that time, less than a fortnight ago, that my ‘inquiries’ could lead to such astonishing results. Or that I would find out that so many people could be involved in the planned disappearance of one girl, and how intricately they had worked together.

  Nor, I remembered, had I known for certain at any stage that any of my suspicions were correct, until many of the missing links were provided by Vicky’s information – though piecing it all together took a few days. Days of talking to Vishnu to find out about Liza’s last moments, and where her mutilated body had gone.

  Throughout, I was conscious of a sense of urgency as my fear was that Vicky would lose her nerve and tell Vinay Gupta about my investigation. Or rather, ‘our investigation’, as Dennis had got more and more involved in it.

  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was nothing I could do to keep Vicky on our side. If she got nervous and spoke to Gupta I would simply have to find some way of dealing with it. But I worried that she might not be safe, either way. Which was another reason for working quickly.

  Meanwhile, despite my misgivings that he had left us in the lurch, and that he might be obstructive, I called Amarjit. At this point there was no one else I could turn to. I realized that I would not be able to trust the local police because, after all, they would be very upset (to put it mildly) at some of my allegations of their acts of ommission. If they got angry with Vishnu again, I dreaded the outcome. We needed to quietly work through the evidence and protect both Vicky and Vishnu.

  So when I spoke to Amarjit, let me just say that he wasn’t pleased that I was still in Goa looking into the activities of a man who could well be his future boss in the next cabinet reshuffle. And especially when he, Amarjit, had specifically apologized for having dragged me into this case and asked me to forget about it and come home.

  But fortunately, despite all his other flaws, Amarjit still maintained some of the idealism with which he had entered the police service. And after he had made all his sarcastic and scathing remarks, I knew that ultimately he would do the right thing, and get justice for the two missing girls.

  I also hoped that he was a little nervous about the fact that our relationship (for whatever it was worth) and our friendship would definitely be over if he showed himself to be anything less than brave this time. I had forgiven him in the past, but was unlikely to do so again.

  Yet I could be shameless if I wanted something and so, even in the face of his initial reluctance and his anger, I begged him for one last favour, flattering him recklessly. I spoke in my most emollient tones: ‘Please, Amarjit, this is an impossible task without your intervention.’

  He was quiet at the other end of the phone line but I ploughed on. ‘All we need is access to the files which catalogue the unidentified bodies at the local police station for the past year. I promise we’ll be careful with all information given to us.’

  He warned me that it would be a shambolic process, but I stuck to my request, bombarding him with emails till he succumbed and arranged for me to meet the local superintendent of police, Robert Gonsalves.

  Thankfully, Gonsalves turned out to be quite a helpful and enthusiastic young man, equally tired of the corruption and the drug trade that Goa was becoming notorious for.

  Yet even with his patient help, it took us two days of going through musty files. And that’s how I found the photographs that Vishnu had messaged to me. I needed to make sure we had not been misled once more. And that Liza was really dead.

  This set of photographs proved it, sadly.

  Undoubtedly we would be forever grateful for Vishnu’s expertise as an Internet and computer genius, which gave him legitimate and illegitimate access to all kinds of places. Even the police station, and my own laptop.

  ‘But why did you hack into my computer?’ I had finally asked him, when the penny dropped about what he had been doing that day when Durga and I stumbled upon him in our room.

  He had looked contrite and said, ‘Needed to check what information you send Amarjit and he send you. Also take phone number to send you videos.’ It seemed the inquisitive Maggie was his cousin, who had helped him in keeping an eye on me throughout.

  It also became clear that, like Marian, Vishnu sometimes had to agree to do things for the opposite camp. And thus, I now realized that, ironically, it was he who had wiped out the videos from my phone and computer on instructions from Curtis, the day I had been ‘drugged’. It was a strange double game that he had to play to survive on the beach. Something that needed very steady nerves. Vishnu was obviously braver than I was; he could bear more pain than anyone I knew.

  And he was also loyal to an extreme degree.

  Now in the police station we saw evidence of that, no matter how painful, he had faithfully copied all the photographs taken in the morgue of Liza’s dissected and stitched body. These were photographs no one had ever seen before. And we realized that they were saved only because the body had been given another name.

  In the official file it was noted that, within a few days of the discovery of an unidentified female body in a guest house off the Vagator beach, the deceased was found to be Vira Jennings, a UK resident. Her passport had been conveniently found lying in her room the next day. How it reached there no one knew, or even asked.

  According to the accompanying forensic report, the cause of Vira’s death was ‘accidental’, coupled with ‘drug overdose’. The bruises on various parts of the body, and possible rape, were not mentioned. The corpse had been shipped to London twelve months ago, almost as soon it was found, and buried there by a bereaved and shocked ‘fiancé’, who was of Goan and Portuguese origin.

  He had accompanied the corpse from Goa. That was before a missing report for Liza had been filed and there was any chance of investigating if the body might be hers.

  Both Dennis and I had our suspicions who the fiancé would turn out to be.

  ‘Curtis D’Silva. How neatly it all fits into place!’ Dennis shook his head, part in anger and part in amazement.

  No wonder he had wanted me out of the way as fast as possible. I had come to claim the resurrection of Liza Kay, when he had already engineered her burial.

  The swift disposal of Liza’s body could not have been better planned. By that time, Vishnu had been thrown in jail, falsely accused once more of molesting Liza, and a missing-person case was registered a few days later.

  ‘No one connect with Curtis,’ said Vishnu softly, as though he were telling us a children’s story. ‘He left very fast for London. I hear all detail in jail. The constable in charge of the morgue laughed and told his colleague he had money enough to buy villa in Paris.’

  Without a body that could be examined, and no evidence of her murder, Liza’s case remained that of a missing girl, and became a convenient scapegoa
t.

  Even before Vishnu came out of jail, Marian might have been able to raise her voice about the mystery surrounding Liza, but she was facing the wrath of the police over the drugs found in her room. It had been an exhausting and humiliating run-in with the narcotics department and the police, as she had told me, after which not only was she sexually assaulted and her passport taken away, but the concocted case made it difficult for her to complain to anyone about her sister’s disappearance.

  Perhaps she only understood why she had been framed when it was far too late, and whatever proof might have existed about Liza’s tragic rape and murder had been destroyed.

  Marian’s alleged drug abuse had been a masterful ploy, cooked up by her tormentors. Who would believe her now? Her reputation was in shreds.

  She probably kept quiet about it all, too ashamed to even tell her mother about her own troubles and Liza’s disappearance, posting emails instead about the wonderful time she was having in Goa, her career in astrology and Liza’s mythical travels. Like many other women, over time, she learnt to deal with her sexual exploitation, knowing she would get very little sympathy or justice. In her case she also covered it all up by inventing another persona, ‘Astrologer Anne’.

  It didn’t help, as she told me, that they had Stanley as a father. And the truth about Liza’s disappearance was never mentioned till Vishnu returned.

  Because, as Marian herself had hinted to me, to continue living on the beach, having accused or suspected someone so powerful of Liza’s murder, was impossible. They simply did not have the protection or clout. Gupta was known for his wily cunning; he was, after all, someone who could eat other cabinet ministers for breakfast. What chance did Marian and Stanley have against him, or indeed of survival, when they were so dependent on local support? It was the final tragedy for Stanley – something he could never confess openly. That despite having lived his entire life in this part of Goa, when the vultures gathered and stole his daughter – he found he was still an alien.