Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  Chopra had swiftly gone through the material.

  Kaabra had been born in a slum in Marol, near the Marol Pipeline. He had grown up in the Marol area and knew it well. His father had sold shaved ice drinks from a handcart, but had died during a stampede at the Elphinstone railway station that claimed thirty-eight lives. Kaabra’s mother had died in his teenage years of lung disease. She had worked for years on unregulated building sites. The boy had grown up wild, drifting into begging, then later into petty criminality. He had joined a gang of teenage pickpockets. His work had not gone unnoticed. Recruited into a larger operation, he made his mark in the underworld with thievery, violence, extortion. Over the next three decades he had enjoyed a number of stays at the government’s pleasure, for offences ranging from fraud to blackmail.

  And then he had dropped off the radar.

  This was the period when, according to Ajay Rangoon at the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, Kaabra had been building his property empire. He had been smart enough – smarter than many of his contemporaries, at any rate – to steer clear of those activities that might have seen him reincarcerated: guns, drugs, racketeering. He had also been smart enough to spread his new wealth around. It was now in many people’s interests to keep Om Kaabra out of the spotlight and out of jail.

  Yet the man had a ruthless streak.

  His hand was suspected in the deaths of dozens of individuals around the country, mainly those who did not fall into line with the expansion of his property business. Direct evidence against him was in short supply. Witnesses refused to cooperate or had a bad habit of vanishing.

  But perhaps Chopra had found a way to change that.

  Having gone through the folder he had asked Kelkar to get the commissioner on the line.

  Half an hour later, Chopra had the reassurances he needed.

  Now, standing outside Lokhani’s office, he turned once more to Kelkar, nodded, then walked towards the building.

  He entered the office – a large, open-plan space lit by swathes of light falling in from tall sash windows – to find a scrum of mainly young people furiously spinning about the room. There was a manic energy to the place, a sense of sleeves being rolled up in pursuit of a cause. A shadow clouded his features as he realised that he would soon bring all this crashing down; he would dash the aspirations not only of Geeta Lokhani, but of all those who had pinned their hopes to her ascendancy.

  And then he thought once more of Arushi Kadam’s burned and blackened corpse and steel returned to his resolve.

  A trumpet sounded by his ear, almost concussing him.

  As he reeled from the blast, the eager young thug who had delivered it lunged forward and slapped a round sticker on to his shirt. Chopra looked down. The badge said: ‘Vote for Geeta Lokhani!’ Below this, in smaller font: A woman who knows how to get things done in a city that needs things to be done.

  As a motto, it was somewhat of a mouthful, Chopra thought.

  ‘How many hours can you spare today, sir?’

  ‘What?’ Chopra stared at him. ‘Hours for what?’

  ‘For distributing leaflets, of course!’ The cadet gave a maniacally cheerful grin. If he had been a bottle of Coca-Cola, Chopra thought, the top of his head would have fizzed off, such was his unholy zeal for the job.

  ‘How about none?’ he growled. He ripped off the badge, then headed for the glass-walled office at the rear of the room, where he could see Geeta Lokhani speaking on the phone.

  He charged in and was immediately confronted by a short, grim-looking woman in a pair of baggy trousers and a Vote for Geeta Lokhani T-shirt. ‘Geeta is busy,’ she snapped, hands on hips. ‘And you cannot just barge in here. Next time make an appointment.’

  ‘There will not be a next time,’ said Chopra sternly. He took out his ID card. ‘I must speak with you,’ he said, facing Lokhani.

  ‘Now look here—’ interjected her PA, but Lokhani waved the woman away.

  She put down the phone, and stared up at him, her features suddenly drawn. The PA looked between them, then stomped out, banging the door behind her.

  Chopra set down the folder that Rangwalla had given him. ‘In there are BMC documents approving the seizure and subsequent sale of numerous properties in Mumbai to Karma Holdings and its associated companies. Nearly all are signed by you. Karma Holdings is run by a criminal by the name of Om Kaabra – but I suspect you already know that. Kaabra’s modus operandi is to extort the owners of these buildings into selling to him at below market rates. If they do not, they are threatened, assaulted, even killed. Thirteen people died in a building collapse in Marol that I am certain Kaabra was behind. More recently two employees of Karma Holdings were murdered – Arushi Kadam and Vijay Narlikar – on his orders. Before his death Cyrus Zorabian visited Karma Holdings numerous times. I believe that his murder is tied up with Kaabra’s property dealings. And I believe that you are also involved.’

  The muscles of Lokhani’s jaw twitched. She seemed stunned, yet not altogether surprised.

  ‘You knew I would come for you, didn’t you?’ said Chopra. ‘From that first moment at the opera house, when I came in asking about Cyrus?’

  She blinked. ‘You seemed the tenacious type.’

  ‘And today? Now? Did your friend Kaabra warn you that I was on the trail?’

  ‘He is not my friend!’ She said this with such vehemence that he was momentarily taken aback.

  ‘You have helped him build an empire, an empire built on the ashes of many hopes and dreams.’

  ‘You are mistaken. I was merely an employee of the BMC.’ She tilted her chin in defiance. ‘Whatever you may think I have done, you cannot prove it.’

  Chopra pointed at the folder. ‘These records are now with the Central Bureau of Investigation. The commissioner of police and the chief minister have been informed. They have unleashed their dogs. The paper trail will be followed. Interviews will be conducted with those whose properties were taken. There is no hiding from what you have done. It will all come out. All this’ – Chopra waved at the office – ‘is over. A CBI officer is waiting outside to take you into custody. The best you can hope for now is to avoid imprisonment by cooperating with the authorities. Help bring Kaabra in.’

  Lokhani seemed to collapse in on herself. A dark silence pulsed in the office. ‘It was never meant to be like this. All I wanted to do was help this broken city. When I was a girl, my father once said to me: “Whoever owns the land, owns the wealth of Mumbai.” Such power in the hands of a privileged few!’ Her eyes danced with anger. ‘Seven years ago, Kaabra came to me with a proposition. He told me that if I used my position at the BMC to help him gain a particular parcel of land, he would ensure it was developed into housing for the poor. I was younger then, naïve. I thought that, with a flourish of my pen, I could set right the legacy of inequality that our feudal system bequeathed us. So what if I had to bend the rules? The only people being hurt were wealthy elitists who had made that wealth off the backs of the disenfranchised.’ She looked at him finally, her face full of regret. ‘But it never worked out that way.’

  ‘It never does,’ murmured Chopra.

  ‘Kaabra betrayed me. Once he had the land, he sold it to a mall developer. Instead of homes for the poor, he gave the city another shopping centre. I tried to fight back, but his goons paid me a visit. I was threatened. I told them to get out; they broke my arm. And then he blackmailed me. If I made a fuss, he would expose my collusion. I would lose the post I had worked years to attain. I would be cast out, back to a life of nothing.’

  ‘And so you continued to help him.’

  ‘I had no choice. I was in so deep, there was no way out. I tried to rationalise it to myself. I told myself that these new developments created jobs for the poor, that one day Kaabra would see the light. But I was wrong.’

  ‘Kaabra built those places on the backs of other people’s misery. Extortion, blackmail, even murder.’

  She was silent. There was nothing to say.


  ‘Your only chance is to strike a deal. I have the commissioner’s reassurance that if you help convict Kaabra, you will go free. You will never work for the BMC again, and you will never run for office. But if you don’t take this deal I am sure there are others in the BMC or at Karma Holdings who will.’

  Chopra opened the folder to show her the map of Mumbai upon which he had marked the properties that Karma Holdings had recently acquired. He pointed at the concentration of purchases made in the past three years. They made a neat ring around Doongerwadi, home to the Parsee Towers of Silence.

  ‘There is only one reason that Kaabra would acquire these properties. It is because he anticipates their value rising dramatically. And that will only happen if something monumental is due to change in the immediate landscape.’ Chopra paused to allow his words to sink in. ‘At first I thought Cyrus Zorabian was embezzling funds from the Vashi slum redevelopment project under the guise of philanthropy. But I was wrong. My guess is that he had agreed to sell Doongerwadi to Om Kaabra, via Karma Holdings. That was how he intended to save his failing business empire.

  ‘But he knew he could never accomplish that without the BMC’s help. Doongerwadi is holy ground. If it is taken from the Parsees then something else must be given in return. That was where you came in. The Vashi slum redevelopment site – New Haven. The BMC, in other words you, secretly agreed to approve a “change of use” proposal for the Vashi development from a slum rehousing scheme to a new site for the Towers of Silence, out on the edge of the city. By doing so, Cyrus could sell Doongerwadi, and still have something to placate the Parsee community that he had betrayed. The storm would be terrible, but he was confident he could ride it out. Besides, what choice did he have? Doongerwadi is a prime property. Kaabra stands to make a fortune by developing it. No doubt he agreed to pay Cyrus handsomely for the site. I have already discovered what appears to be an initial fee – ten million in cash – in a bank locker Cyrus kept from his family.

  ‘Of course, where there are winners there are always losers. And the losers in all this are the slum dwellers that you had promised a new home. Their old homes will be demolished; but there will be no Eden waiting for them in Vashi. They will be homeless, at the mercy of your “broken city”.’

  Lokhani did not reply. The mask had shattered; silent tears leaked from her eyes.

  Chopra leaned over the desk again, and opened the folder to a photograph of Arushi Kadam and Vijay Narlikar’s burned corpses. ‘Tell me why they were killed.’

  Lokhani stared sightlessly at the wall behind him. A poster of Gandhi looked back down at her.

  ‘Arushi’s mother will never know peace until she knows why her daughter died.’

  Finally, she blinked. ‘Arushi and Cyrus met at the offices of Karma Holdings. He seduced her. Turned her head with talk of his wealth, hinted that he was on the lookout for a second wife. It began as harmless flirting, a lecherous older man and an impressionable younger woman. Yet somehow Arushi fell for his charms, such as they were.

  ‘She worked in the records section of Karma Holdings. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but somehow she found out that the Vashi redevelopment was just a front, and that Cyrus was going to sell Doongerwadi to Kaabra. Or perhaps Cyrus told her himself. Bedroom whispers. The vanity of an old man.

  ‘Of course, none of this would have mattered, except that Arushi already had a boyfriend. Vijay.

  ‘Vijay found out about the affair – and about Cyrus’s plans for Doongerwadi. He became enraged, bitter. He confronted Arushi in the office, threatened to expose Cyrus, as a way of getting back at her. He was overheard by the wrong person. He was just lashing out; he didn’t understand that he was signing his own death warrant.’

  ‘Kaabra had them both killed.’

  Her head jerked into a nod. ‘He couldn’t risk word of the Doongerwadi sale getting out before the formalities had been completed. He knew there would be a public backlash from the Parsee community; they are powerful and politically connected. Given a chance they would have buried the sale in red tape, perhaps for years.’

  ‘They were murdered in cold blood, then burned.’ Chopra’s voice was cold with fury. ‘Part of that responsibility rests on your shoulders.’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Her eyes were pinpricks into oblivion.

  ‘What about Cyrus?’ said Chopra. ‘Why was he killed? Did he get cold feet? Try to back out of the deal? Or did he just get greedy?’

  ‘Kaabra had nothing to do with Cyrus’s murder.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’

  ‘You said it yourself. Kaabra needed Cyrus. Cyrus’s death has ruined his plan. The power to sell Doongerwadi rests with the Zorabian family. Now his daughter, Perizaad, has that power. But she will never sell to him.’

  ‘He has approached her?’

  ‘Not yet. Cyrus’s death has thrown everything into confusion. Kaabra knows that Perizaad is unwilling to let her father’s murder go. He cannot approach her until the matter is settled. And Darius – he is out of the fold, disinherited.’

  ‘If Kaabra did not kill Cyrus, then who did?’

  ‘I do not know. That is the truth.’

  As Lokhani folded into the back of Kelkar’s jeep, Chopra pulled the man aside. ‘Have you arrested John Reddy at Karma Holdings?’

  ‘He is being taken to CBI headquarters as we speak.’

  ‘You must play them off against each other; offer them protection from Kaabra. They will give you everything you need to bring him to justice.’

  Kelkar smiled. ‘I have done this before, you know.’

  Chopra nodded. ‘Forgive me. I sometimes forget that I no longer wear a uniform.’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive. This will be the making of me. Frankly, I am amazed you are handing me Kaabra on a platter.’

  ‘There is nothing more I can do. I do not have the authority or the resources to bring him in. My only concern is Rao. How will he react to this?’

  ‘I went behind his back to the commissioner. When he finds out he will blow his top. But by then it won’t matter.’

  Chopra spent a few dreamy seconds picturing the moment ACP Rao would discover that he had been made a fool of. It was the sort of memory he wished he could press into a scrapbook, and then take out again when he was old and wizened, lodged by a winter fire with a glass of sherry in his hand, just so that he could gloat.

  He stuck out a hand. ‘I wish you the best of luck.’

  Kelkar shook his hand. ‘The day you retired was the force’s loss. Sir.’

  Chopra sat in the coffee shop next door to the campaign offices, ordered a fresh lime juice, and contemplated his next move.

  The facts of the case had worked their way into his mind like smoke; he was infused by them, choking on them, yet could not gain clarity. He was sure that Lokhani believed what she had told him, namely that Om Kaabra had played no part in the murder of Cyrus Zorabian. But that did not necessarily make it so. There was still a chance that Kaabra had had the Parsee industrialist killed.

  But why?

  Why kill him if he needed Cyrus’s cooperation? Unless . . . Cyrus had done something to incur his wrath.

  Had he reneged on the deal to sell Doongerwadi? That would explain much, including why the murder itself had the markings of a crime of passion. Perhaps Kaabra had sent one of his underlings to talk sense into Cyrus, and when the prickly Parsee had refused it had ended in disaster. A moment of madness. Might this also be why Cyrus had kept hold of the article about the burned bodies of Arushi Kadam and Vijay Narlikar? A reminder to himself of what Kaabra was capable of? Or perhaps he had kept the cutting out of a sense of guilt, guilt that had later fuelled a change of heart in his dealings with the gangster? It was impossible to know for sure, though what he had learned of Cyrus Zorabian did not inspire any confidence that the man had suddenly grown a conscience.

  Which left him back exactly where he had started.

  He took out his notebook.

&nbs
p; Over the course of the next hour he carefully went over everything he had learned. There was something here that he had missed, there had to be . . .

  His concentration was broken by the ringing of his phone. It was the vet Lala. ‘I couldn’t get that vulture of yours out of my head.’

  ‘At least she’s only in your head,’ muttered Chopra.

  ‘Yes. I’d heard you’d lodged her in your house.’ His mirth was apparent down the line.

  ‘I’m glad my discomfort amuses you.’

  ‘I should have warned you. They are very territorial. At any rate, you asked me to follow up for you—’

  ‘You volunteered to follow up.’

  ‘Semantics!’ said Lala. ‘Do you want to hear what I have to say or not? I have a buffalo in need of a colonic waiting for me.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ growled Chopra.

  ‘I decided to start by having a poke around Doongerwadi myself. I gave your client Perizaad a call to help arrange entry. I hope you don’t mind.’ Lala did not wait to hear if Chopra minded or not. ‘I spoke to a few of the corpse-bearers – fascinating people! Apparently, there’s been a spate of these poisonings in the past months.’

  ‘I already know this,’ said Chopra.

  ‘I am sure you do, being an all-powerful detective,’ said Lala breezily. ‘But I don’t suppose you managed to find out where the bodies of some of the others had been buried? And I don’t suppose you then dug up those decomposed remains and had them tested for toxins?’

  Chopra hesitated. ‘No. I did not.’

  ‘Ah. Well, not quite omnipotent then,’ said Lala. ‘At any rate, I now have the results back. I can confirm that all the vultures were poisoned. By the same toxin.’

  ‘I had already assumed the same.’

  ‘Well, yes, Mr Know-it-all, but did you trace all known supplies of diclofenac in the Mumbai Greater Metropolitan Region? Did you then contact the holders of those supplies, and threaten to send inspectors from the national Pesticide and Animal Medicines Regulatory Agency to their premises if they did not reveal any recent clandestine sales of their stock?’