Sea of Innocence

by Desai, Kishwar

Dennis and I were not only impressed with Vishnu’s quiet execution of an almost foolproof plan, but also with the nuggets of information he communicated to us, hesitatingly and in his broken English, painting a far more authentic picture of life on the beach than we had known thus far.

  I learnt from him, this boy whom we had all dismissed as being ignorant, that as the law had caught up with older methods of drug smuggling, someone designed a new and rather frightening, almost foolproof plan. It was a procedure made possible only with the complicity of the police, the forensics department and the technicians in the morgue, as well as the customs officials. And Liza, through her ‘accidental death’, was an ideal candidate for it, which could explain why almost her entire body had been cut open and then stitched again.

  As I described later, in a note to Amarjit:

  Most of her organs were removed for the so-called post mortem, in any case, and in their place, plastic bags of cocaine and heroin were packed. When her corpse reached London the apparently devastated fiancé, along with some other members of Fernando’s gang, ensured that the packets were quickly removed. After that, Vira Jennings – alias Liza Kay – was buried somewhere, very quietly.

  Her family might not even have been involved. Vira Jennings, a young girl who bore a fleeting resemblance to Liza, had her passport and her identity conveniently transferred to Liza’s corpse, because they had been surrendered a long time back to the drug cartel in lieu of money. Or it might have been ‘impounded’ as Marian’s had been.

  Dennis wondered if the Jennings family (if there was one) was even aware of what had happened to her body. And if they knew that the wrong girl had been buried in her place?

  We had no answers, and so, on Amarjit’s advice, we shared the information with Robert Gonsalves, who had been so helpful in retrieving the photographs of Liza from the files.

  He was understandably nervous when he learnt that a future Home Minister could be involved, but despite his fears of being sacked or demoted he tried to find out more about the case from his colleagues, as quietly as he could.

  One evening, not wearing his uniform (I was reminded of Amarjit’s similarly cautious approach), he invited us to a shack where we could have a private conversation. His news was not good either.

  Robert poured out some tea – he had given up drinking alcohol long ago, upset by allegations that most Goan cops liked their feni a little too much. I had begun to admire Robert; he was a man of principle, and it would only be due to people like him that the police force in Goa would, one day, retrieve its reputation.

  ‘Yes, it seems this might have happened, and still goes on, though very rarely. Since the money involved is huge, sometimes even blood relatives agree to take delivery of the body, getting a percentage of the drug sale for their silence.’

  Dennis and I tried to sip our beer, but it all tasted foul. Were people really so desperate for money that they would not only kill innocent young boys and girls but then continue to exploit them after their death? It seemed like the worst form of violation.

  ‘But surely the families raise objections. Some kind of post mortem would be conducted to find out how the person died, and they would also want to know about the state of the body. Wouldn’t traces of the drugs be left behind?’ I asked, astonished that such a complicated means of transporting drugs could have been conducted (if it were true) without anyone being caught. I still thought it was too macabre and fantastical.

  Robert shook his head regretfully. ‘I am afraid, Miss Simran, that you have a very naive view of the world. Who will bother to say anything when the stakes are so high? And remember, often these are bodies of young boys and girls who had become addicts over the years, while living in Goa. Their families usually would have lost contact with them over time or have little to do with them.’

  ‘So you mean no one has ever asked any uncomfortable questions when these incidents have taken place, either here or in the country to whom the person belongs?’ Dennis was equally taken aback. It sounded like the dead made perfect drug mules.

  ‘Well, sir, what I have found is that in some cases there would be no demand for a post-mortem examination when the corpse was delivered back, whether in Europe or Russia or Israel, or wherever the bodies were sent. But if the family wanted one, care was taken to strike a deal with them before the body was shipped out. Sometimes the speed with which a case was forgotten was indicative of how fast a deal had been struck. It is a dangerous procedure, but with the complicity of the police and the politicians, the international drug smugglers who operate from Goa have perfected each aspect of sending these corpses back, right down to the death certificate.’

  ‘Which is why “accidental deaths” are rarely discussed here,’ I said gloomily remembering the difficulty I had faced in trying to get statistics and information about those foreigners who had died. ‘Most of the time there is so much fabrication going on. I mean, here too, they had passed off Liza’s body as “unidentified female”, and that is completely incorrect. Her sister and father lived here. Everyone knew her at Fernando’s, Vinay Gupta knew her, as did Curtis and Vishnu. But they didn’t get a single witness to identify her.’

  ‘No,’ said Robert, sipping his tea delicately, as though it were the best Earl Grey from Sri Lanka, instead of a milky brew drowned in sugary hot water. ‘That is because speed is of the essence. Often a shipment of cocaine is smuggled in and needs to leave urgently. Perhaps Liza was supposed to carry it, and she was now unreliable because of her increasing addiction to drugs. It is difficult to say whether it was an accidental death or a planned murder. But once they had her body, it would have been easy for them to make the arrangements.’

  One word caught my attention.

  ‘Accident. While she was being raped they killed her accidentally. I don’t think Gupta really cared one way or the other what they did with her. He just handed her over to them for disposal. She was shop soiled, unwanted. Remember what Vicky had said?’ I turned to Dennis. ‘She said it was an accident and they had to get rid of her.’

  ‘They got rid of her and made millions in the process. Only poor Liza, who aspired to the good life, got nothing out of it,’ Dennis said. I remembered with a shiver Stanley telling me that she had gone back to London. Perhaps he knew too about the drugs.

  Shaken up, I realized from Robert’s stoic demeanour that there was little he could do, apart from sharing his information with us. He knew it was unlikely any action could be taken on such an old case, especially when both the girls involved had vanished.

  We had no idea what had happened with Marian’s body.

  Plagued by suspicion, I asked Robert to go through all the latest files to see if any recent unidentified body matched Marian’s description. He even did a round of the hospitals, but found nothing. Perhaps her body had floated out to sea, after all. I just hoped that she hadn’t been used in the same fashion as her sister.

  Saying a silent prayer for her, I went through the video clips once more with Vishnu, with renewed vigour, hoping to find something that could nail Vinay Gupta. It was unbearable to think that, after all these ghastly misdeeds, nothing could be pinned on him or his men.

  Vishnu understood my anger, and put together all the videos on a memory stick so we could view them repeatedly, trying to find anything to connect the case to Vinay Gupta.

  Thankfully, he had shot many more videos than he had sent us. But despite my desire to hasten things, it would still take a long time to piece everything together. None of us noticed when the New Year was ushered in, as we didn’t have the heart to participate in any of the celebrations. Apart from the rape and murders I was dealing with, even in Delhi my family had cancelled their celebrations due to the death of the young woman who had been cruelly gang-raped in a bus. She had fought valiantly to live but ultimately succumbed to her terrible injuries. The protests for justice for her carried on in Delhi. But no one had ever protested in the same way for either Scarlett Keeling or now Lisa Kay. Along with thousan
ds– perhaps millions – of women who had been raped and molested in this country, they were dead and buried. And forgotten.

  My ticket to Delhi was booked and cancelled at least four times.

  We had no idea if or when we would find anything to nail the real culprits. It was a hugely depressing thought, and only the company of Dennis made it a little better for me, as we spent our spare time together, walking on the beach and dining at shacks where our conversation would not be overheard.

  As we painstakingly discussed what should be presented to Amarjit, I think Vishnu finally began to trust us both. It was after a long evening of watching the videos that he finally told us the final truth about Marian.

  He proved my suspicions wrong, again.

  And before that he also handed me the clip which would provide the clinching evidence.

  Unlike the other videos, this one had a date flashing in one corner, showing that it had been filmed on the night that Liza and Marian had been given the spiked drinks. After which Liza vanished forever.

  The familiar jerky camera lens was at a safe distance as Liza walked out of Fernando’s. One could hear the sound of the waves as she strolled along the beach. She was in the same clothes that she had worn in the video when she was raped. But she was not as dishevelled.

  I noticed that her hair had been nicely styled and she even had a handbag on her shoulder. But her steps were a little unsteady, and she stopped to take her shoes off. As she paused, a man I could not identify came up to her and said something, pointing towards the road which was barely visible in the distance. From her lack of surprise and compliant nod, it was obvious this was a pre-planned assignation.

  The camera followed her and the man up to the road, where a car was waiting. The headlights were switched off, and one of the windows was rolled down. Even from afar one could make out the familiar features of Vinay Gupta, and that trademark moustache. So while she had been instructed to go out from the front of the shack, Vinay Gupta had taken the back exit. No one would connect the two.

  The video ended when the car drove away.

  The second clip which followed immediately had been shot a few hours later, early in the morning, around 2 a.m., at the same spot. Vishnu told us that he had shivered through most of the night, waiting for Gupta’s car to come back. He knew it would return, because this was not the first time this had happened. He had seen it before. Both with Liza and with other girls that Gupta fancied.

  So the second part of the video began when Liza almost fell out of the same car, stumbling towards the beach. Gupta was not around. The beach was deserted and according to the recorded time it was early in the morning.

  Vishnu told us that she had never been in such a bad state before, and though he was fairly near to her, she had no idea of his presence. Her pupils were completely dilated, and her dress was torn, though that was not clearly visible in the clip. He also saw large bruises on her arms, while blood was trickling down one leg. She stumbled and swayed as she walked, singing to herself, apparently unaware of her pain or her condition.

  She seemed to have been given so much cocaine that she didn’t know what was happening to her any more. He followed her for a while, keeping away in the dark, uncertain of what she was doing. After the police complaint the last time, he had been filming her with as much stealth as possible, because he did not want her or anyone else to accuse him of molesting her again.

  ‘I want to go near her, but I step back when I see that Raman come up to her and talk to her, and then drag her towards a shack.’ His voice trailed off.

  But he didn’t have to say anything more. Because I had already seen this part of the video far too many times.

  It was too deeply embedded in my memory. Liza’s screams and then the point at which Joseph came around to put his hand on her mouth and pull her arms over her head, while Raman pushed himself between her legs.

  Vishnu tried to describe how difficult it was for him to film this part, and how he had wanted to shout for them to stop. He wanted to thrash the two men. But he was kept back by the thought that they would simply kill him and then no one would know what they had done to Liza. In any case, the entire episode lasted only a few minutes, before Liza suddenly went limp. It did not stop the two men from attacking her, but if one carefully watched the video, there was a specific point at which she stopped struggling.

  He did not know at that time, he said, but he suspected that she might have died in the midst of that second attack. By that time she probably had internal injuries, or she might have suffocated.

  ‘Or,’ Dennis pointed out sadly, ‘the cocaine overdose coupled with the stress of the rape simply caused her body to shut down.’

  Vishnu also felt that even if her death was accidental, it was possible that Gupta thought she had become a liability. He might have also realized he would be accused of raping a minor, and wanted someone else to carry the can.

  Since Vishnu was present earlier the same night at Fernando’s, shooting his video, he said he noticed Marian’s discomfort when Gupta kissed Liza. He said she tried to censure Liza, and warned her about associating with an older man but without success. Liza might have also said something to Gupta that night which could have led to this tragic chain of events. Had either Marian or Liza threatened him with exposure for raping an underage girl?

  Of course, now we could only speculate.

  Even the botched post-mortem report showed that there were many more injuries on her body than could have been inflicted upon her by Raman and Joseph that night.

  Liza’s death, however, was probably not part of the script.

  But filming it all from a safe distance, Vishnu had been confused. ‘I thought she fainted. So I wait. They finish, then see her totally still. They try to shake her up, she no wake up. Then they call someone and have long conversation. They pick her up and take her to a car that comes. That all I see that evening.’

  He waited till daybreak but no one came back. Finally he went home and hid the phone on which he had been shooting the videos – a fortunate decision, because, though he did not know it then, these were his last few hours of freedom.

  By the next morning Liza had disappeared.

  At last we had most of the information about Liza’s short life and painfully long death.

  But one mystery remained to be cleared up.

  ‘And what about Marian?’ I asked him. ‘Somehow I don’t quite believe that Gupta would risk another disappearance or murder at this time, when there has been so much focus on Liza.’

  Vishnu was intriguingly silent for a few minutes and then sighing, spoke up, still gently.

  ‘You right. They nothing to do with it,’ he replied slowly, still looking evasive.

  Dennis patted his hand sympathetically.

  ‘You have to tell us, Vishnu, otherwise the whole story will not pull together.’

  He looked down at the floor with that smile again. Perhaps he delighted in the fact that he could fool us over and over again. We, the slick city folk, were being constantly hoaxed by an apparent village simpleton! We had felt sorry for him – and now he no doubt felt sorry for us. He took a deep breath.

  ‘Marian getting worried all the time. Life not safe for her, after we start sending videos. People angry. Though I am very careful and sending the video from my home, they begin to think she doing it. Then you meet Marian and they get more worried in case Marian tell you something about Liza. So she got threat from Vinay Gupta’s men not to search for Liza.

  ‘Then one day, people calling from Delhi, asking about Liza’s connection with Vinay Gupta. Once the party video come out, too many people are questioning. They call her home. She worried Vinay Gupta will find out. And so she do a deal with police, and say if no complaint for Liza, she get passport back.’

  That was the day she met me at the hotel.

  I was puzzled about where this could be leading.

  There was a tiny pause, as even Vishnu had learnt that the punch line was
the most important part of the story.

  ‘Then she was killed by Gupta’s henchmen?’ I asked with trepidation, half sure that this was not the correct answer.

  He smiled, unable to resist the temptation of looking a little bit triumphant. ‘No. Then we buy her ticket for London.’

  ‘But too late,’ I said. ‘She died that night.’ I wondered why Vishnu was still smiling and shaking his head, as though I was being obtuse.

  The irony of Marian’s death, coming so close to her planned escape, was sad beyond belief.

  But to my surprise, Vishnu gave another smile, and now he patted my hand. Just as Dennis had patted his a short while back.

  ‘No, no. You don’t understand. She not dead. She hide. To confuse Vinay Gupta’s gang she stage her own death. That was only fake video; I film her lying on the rock, put red paint on her, and upload.’

  My jaw nearly dropped out of my head.

  Vishnu had that familiar uncomfortable look he seemed to get every time he spoke of Marian. Only now I had found out the real reason!

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t tell earlier, we worry she not safe, but we waiting till she reach London. She now reach there. Send email, she safe. So now I give final video to you to nail the bastard.’ He looked particularly pleased saying ‘bastard’.

  But after a pause he added, ‘But I no tell where she is.’

  Underneath that misleading demeanour, Vishnu was as protective of Marian as he had been of Liza. But sometime in the future I hoped he would let me contact Marian – if for no other reason than just to apologize for what I had thought about her and how much I had misunderstood her.

  Hearing his words, the burden of grief and guilt that had engulfed me ever since I had learnt about Marian’s ‘death’ rolled away. I literally felt lighter, and perhaps even a little happier.

  So that explained why she had answered the phone so promptly and met me on time on the morning of her ‘death’. She was flying back that night, and that’s why getting her passport back had been so important.