Dead in a Mumbai Minute

by Madhumita Bhattacharyya

  ‘Not that it is any of my business,’ said Ajay, ‘but is something going on between the two of you?’

  ‘No! He’s my boss, and I have great respect for his abilities.’ I couldn’t tell if he believed me – when I didn’t know if I believed myself.

  There seemed to be nothing left to say on the subject and for the rest of the evening I tried to enjoy myself: I was entertaining, I asked questions, I made Ajay laugh. And I told myself I did. Ajay was a good, smart, attractive man.

  But with everything I heard, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Ajay insisted on dropping me home and, when I finally got to the flat, I fumbled with my phone as I dialled Archana’s number. It was engaged, but I kept calling till I got through. ‘Why didn’t you tell me what’s been going on?’ I said to her.

  ‘You’ve heard? How?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘It’s not on the news or anything, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank god. It’s only just happened! A police team just left and I’m in office trying to sort it out.’

  ‘Who had the gun, Archana?’

  ‘I’ve been going through the records, but nothing makes sense. I don’t know what is happening anymore, Reema.’

  ‘It was Shayak, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Archana, please. This is my case. I need to know.’

  She let out a ragged sigh. ‘According to the paperwork, yes. But it just can’t be true. He has his own gun and never takes one from office even if he is working on a case.’

  ‘How are these things recorded?’

  ‘It is all part of the requisition system. Forms are filled in on the Intranet.’

  ‘How many people are allowed to use company firearms and ammunition?’

  ‘Anyone who is licensed and passes the internal test. Formal notification also needs to come in from the section head.’

  ‘Which would be redundant in this case.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll let me know if I can be of any help?’ I asked.

  ‘That is what I should be saying to you.’

  ‘Actually, whenever you get the time, could you go over all the paperwork that has reached you that is in any way connected with this business? Let me know if anything is out of place, however small.’

  ‘Sure. I think I’ll be here all night anyhow.’

  ‘Do you want me to come in?’

  ‘No, Reema. I can’t let you help me, even if I wanted to. Shayak’s orders.’

  As I hung up, I realized Shayak had seen this coming, and he had wanted me out of the way when it did. Why?

  THIRTEEN

  It was time to consider that we were dealing with a professional. Someone who knew what the investigators would be looking for, and was careful to cover his tracks. Someone who knew his way in and around a system – even one as sophisticated as Titanium’s.

  Obviously Shayak had had an inkling of what was going on when he told me to go solo on this business. Assuming that he had nothing to do with the gun requisition, there were enough protections within the system to make this sort of infiltration quite difficult. Even if this was someone within Titanium.

  But by the next morning, I knew we were running out of time as the business had already made the news.

  Police are searching for Shayak Gupta in connection with the murders of Ashutosh Dhingre and Afreen. It is a move that comes close on the heels of revelations that Gupta was once married to Bollywood star Kimaaya Kapoor and that they are still on intimate terms. It was on Kimaaya’s private island that Dhingre’s body was found, leading to speculation of a connection between the actress and the death of her one-time agent. Afreen, a starlet who had also been on the island at the time of Dhingre’s murder, was found shot dead shortly after.

  Gupta, whose company Titanium is in charge of Kimaaya’s security, was present at the crime scene in the days following the murder and, according to sources, was even working towards solving it. Why he is now missing is not known, and whether he is being sought out as a witness or a potential suspect has also not been revealed.

  ‘The police are working to bring the culprits to book, whoever they may be, to the fullest extent of the law. We cannot currently reveal more than this,’ said DCP (Detection) Ajay Shankaran.

  To law enforcement insiders, the search for Shayak Gupta indeed comes as a surprise, for he is the very man who protects many of the country’s celebrities and VVIPs. He is also a close collaborator with the police in a number of other investigations. But in this high-profile case, it seems as though no one is above scrutiny.

  I called Archana again. ‘How were the details kept out of the press?’

  ‘In part, because it happened late in the evening. And the police have agreed to play it close to the hip till necessary.’

  ‘We don’t have much time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any information for me?’

  ‘I did as you asked – I went through every piece of documentation that has been logged into the system since the first murder, and I noticed something odd in the paperwork regarding the construction crew evacuation from Maaya Island. I called the supervisor of the project, and I think he might have some information that may be pertinent.’

  I remembered meeting Kaustav Arora on the island. ‘Regarding?’

  ‘I’ll let him explain it to you.’

  In a moment, I received a call from the exceedingly nervous Mr Arora. ‘Archana tells me you are the person to report to about the murder?’ he said.

  ‘In Mr Gupta’s absence.’

  ‘I went through all of the records on the island, and asked everyone about whether they had heard or seen anything as Mr Gupta had asked. We could find nothing earlier. But yesterday, I was going through some other papers and noticed something unusual. Strange, you may call it.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We had interviewed only eighteen people after the murder, and then they were all transported back to Mumbai city by boat. But I just saw the ship’s manifest and found that a nineteenth name had been penned in, which the captain had signed off on. The captain remembers there was an extra man on board, whose name wasn’t on the list, but he didn’t think anything of it at the time, and added him on.’

  ‘Where were you when the men boarded?’

  ‘I was readying the roster for the men helping out with security, to stop the media persons from coming to the island.’

  Which Shayak had requested on a priority basis. ‘So there was no one to supervise?’ I asked.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘Do any of the other men remember seeing someone on board who shouldn’t have been there?’

  ‘That is the problem – there were a few new labourers who had been brought in to work on the jetty, so there were a number of people whom even the senior workers did not know.’

  ‘Any description of the man?’

  ‘I asked, but no one seemed to remember.’

  I took down what details I could – the captain’s name and contact information, the ship’s name and where I could find it.

  ‘What was the extra man’s name?’ I asked.

  ‘Lalu Prasad,’ Mr Arora replied.

  I felt a chill. That was our man, and he had a sense of humour too. Lucky for me, his cockiness made him conspicuous.

  ‘Could you please check the records going back a few days and see whether you spot any similar anomalies in manifests for trips made from the city to the island?’

  ‘If you can wait a moment, I can tell you just now.’

  I held on to the phone, tapping my pen impatiently on the notepad before me.

  ‘Here it is.’ Mr Arora said after a few minutes. ‘The name Lalu Prasad appears on the manifest of the crew going to the island the day before the murder.’

  ‘How are these lists transmitted to the captain?’

  ‘By e-mail, from my office.’

  ‘Who send
s them out?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How do the names reach you?’

  ‘The foreman gives them to me on paper, then I type them out and send them. I don’t remember putting this name in. It’s a name you don’t forget easily, na?’

  ‘Can you check your sent mail for that day’s list?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Give me a moment.’

  I waited with growing certainty and dread.

  ‘The list is here but, as I said, the name Lalu Prasad is not on it.’

  So we had a hacker on our hands. He or she had had the time to insert the name on the manifest for the trip out to the island – or had an accomplice who could do so. After the murder it was either a question of time, access or nerve: one of them had run out on our perpetrator and he had to risk getting on board and convincing the captain to allow him passage.

  ‘Can you have the mail the captain received sent to me, as well as the original you sent?’ I said.

  I hung up and considered the significance of this new information. It confirmed that the victim and his killer had not arrived together on the island, for purposes nefarious or otherwise. The killer had come to the island a day in advance, disguised as a construction worker, and had lain in wait. Ashutosh Dhingre, in all probability, had made his way to the island by some desperate measures and had been waylaid.

  Which left me with two questions. One: How had the killer known Dhingre was approaching Kimaaya with what he knew? Two: If Dhingre had to fend for himself on the way to the island, what had happened to the vessel by which he arrived; and how could a man in desperate financial straits afford to charter a boat capable of taking him to Maaya Island in the middle of the night?

  I called Mrs Dhingre to address the second question, but she seemed as clueless as before.

  ‘No, Reema ji, there is no one we know in Mumbai with a boat. No fishermen here.’

  ‘Are you absolutely certain? It might not be a fisherman.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It could be someone whose office has a boat for some reason, a rich friend?’

  ‘If we had such a helpful rich friend, would we be in the situation we are in now?’

  ‘What about a tour operator?’

  ‘Tour operator?’ she asked, befuddled. ‘We don’t – what is that you are saying?’ she suddenly screamed into the phone.

  I heard a faint female voice in the background, and guessed one of her daughters was home.

  ‘Jitin isn’t a tour operator, beti. He is a driver. His mother just explained it to me.’

  The daughter interrupted again.

  ‘If I don’t understand anything, then why don’t you speak to Reema ji yourself,’ Mrs Dhingre shouted.

  I heard the sound of rubber chappals hitting the mosaic as rushed footsteps approached at the other end. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, I’m Reema. I’m with– ’

  ‘I know who you are. My mother told me about your visit the other day. I’m Lasika.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I mumbled.

  ‘What information are you looking for, exactly?’

  ‘I need to know if your father had access to a boat of some kind. It could be a speedboat or a yacht – something he wouldn’t have to pay for.’

  ‘As I just told my mother, my cousin Jitin has a boat – or at least the people he works for do.’

  ‘He’s not a driver?’

  ‘Uff. My mother is stone-deaf in one ear. He’s not a driver, he’s a diver. He operates a tour agency for diving enthusiasts, organizing trips around Mumbai.’

  I closed my eyes. How much time had been wasted on this case because of the pesky letter ‘r’? Had I only known Dhingre had a nephew with a boat, it would have been the first place I stopped. ‘Do you have his contact information?’

  She gave me his phone number and the name of his firm.

  ‘Thank you,’I said. ‘Have any of you spoken to your cousin since your father’s death?’

  ‘His parents. But I don’t think he called.’

  ‘Is that unusual? Are you close?’

  ‘He’s always been a little aloof. But we are close enough that he should have at least called once, now that you mention it.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled again.

  ‘Why don’t you take my number,’ added Lasika. ‘It might be better to speak to me rather than Mummy if you have any more questions.’

  I took it gratefully.

  I didn’t want to alert Jitin about the purpose of our visit beforehand, so I Googled his tour agency to find out where it was, and then called Terrence.

  ‘Want to come along for an interview?’

  ‘At your service,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.’

  Once we were on our way, I filled him in. ‘You sure this guy hasn’t skipped town yet? If I were him, I’d be pretty freaked,’ said Terrence.

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough.’

  We entered Mumbai Mariners Dive Shop in Colaba. Its blue walls were covered with tourists’ photos, certificates and posters advertising popular packages. There were two men, one at work on the computer, the other with his feet up, staring into space. They both looked up as the door swung closed in a peal of bells.

  ‘Jitin?’ I asked.

  The man behind the computer looked at his colleague, who wore cut-off jeans and a black singlet, his shoulder-length hair tied back with a bandana.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said.

  ‘We are here about Ashutosh Dhingre.’

  His face was a flipbook of feeling. Fear, disbelief and, finally, determination.

  ‘What about him,’ he said.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Oh? I wasn’t sure, since you hadn’t been in touch with the family since the murder,’ I said.

  He was taken aback by this line of attack. ‘Yeah, so?’ he finally spat out.

  ‘You took him out to Maaya Island.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ he shrugged. ‘And why should I tell you anything, anyway?’

  ‘Either you tell me, or DCP Ajay Shankaran will be knocking on your door very soon. Which would you prefer?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, finally cracking that cool, ‘I may have taken him there, but I don’t know anything else about it.’

  ‘You expect us to believe that when he died there that night?’

  ‘I was waiting in the boat. I waited for hours and hours, till daybreak in fact, and then I left.’

  ‘Without trying to find him? You were the only one who knew he was there in the first place!’

  ‘He had told me that under no circumstances was I to get off the boat. He said if I did, the deal was off.’

  ‘And what was the deal?’

  ‘I owed him some money; he was going to write off half my debt.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Not much. Like twenty grand.’

  ‘You owed twenty grand or that was the amount he was going to write off?’

  ‘I owed forty.’

  Terrence stepped in. ‘So let me get this straight: if he lived, you got 20,000. If he died, you got 40,000?’

  ‘Wait, you think I killed my uncle? For 20,000? That’s nuts, dude!’

  ‘I think we just established that it was for 40,000. That’s a fortune when you don’t have it.’

  ‘That’s not how it happened. You guys are sick!’

  ‘So is your story, in which you abandoned your uncle for dead.’

  ‘Hey, how was I supposed to know he was dead?’ he said, growing increasingly shrill. ‘I didn’t see or hear anything. I was just following instructions. I tried calling him like a million times but he didn’t answer and I had to get to work in the morning.’

  ‘Dude,’ said Jitin’s colleague from the side. ‘You could have come in late. Not like I set the watch by you or anything.’

  Jitin rolled his eyes. ‘You guys can believe whatever you want, but I’m telling the truth. My u
ncle called me up earlier in the day, saying he needed a boat. I told him how much we charge for normal tours and that I was out all day anyway, and all of the next. He said I should let him know when I got in, that he had some urgent business that couldn’t wait. Then he said where he wanted to go and I was like no way, ’cause I’d lose my job for taking him out there. But when he told me what was in it for me, I thought it was an easy way to get him off my back about paying him the money I owed.’

  ‘Did he say why you shouldn’t set foot on the island?’

  ‘No, but I just assumed it would get him in hot water with Kimaaya. She seems so stuck up. All those years they worked together, she never came to his house or to any of the events he invited her to. Every time he’d be waiting, telling us all that she’d make it. Every time he’d make some excuse for her in the end.’

  It seemed as though Jitin had suffered his share of disappointments at Kimaaya’s hands.

  ‘You weren’t worried?’

  ‘Of course I was! But what choice did I have? Even if I had wanted to play the hero, it would have been a bad idea. The jetty was a mess. I had to hoist my uncle – who’s scared shitless of water, by the way – onto it and, with no one to help me, it would have been a bad scene on and off the boat, man. And I had to get back before the boat was missed the next day.’

  I knew that Dhingre had used the old jetty – we had the footprints to prove it. ‘You didn’t think you should come forward with what you knew when you heard the news?’

  ‘I was scared. Wouldn’t you be, in my position? It wasn’t like I knew who did it or anything. So what was the point?’

  ‘And the boss would have fired your sorry ass,’ Jitin’s colleague mumbled.

  ‘Has your boat been used for fishing of late?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. All the time.’

  That would explain the fish scales found on Dhingre’s clothes. I asked a few routine questions to confirm the timelines, and then we left. ‘Do you believe him?’ asked Terrence.

  ‘A story like that? He’d have to be pretty stupid to make it up.’

  ‘He does look pretty stupid.’

  ‘True. But I believe him.’

  ‘So do I.’

  At long last, a picture of what happened was beginning to emerge in my mind – the how of Ashutosh Dhingre’s murder was being established. Unable to reach Kimaaya over the phone, he had arrived at Maaya Island by boat in the dead of the night to warn Kimaaya of the impending storm likely to be caused by the leaked documents. His nephew helped him onto land, after which he was intercepted by a man – Lalu Prasad – masquerading as a construction worker. It came to blows, and Lalu found the bottle by the gazebo and hit Dhingre over the head with it, and slashed his throat for good measure with a shard of glass. The murderer slunk back to wherever he was hiding on the island – probably in the workers’ quarters – and then snuck onto the boat and got back to the mainland.