‘No, it is not. It is standing in the junkyard of the police station. It never reached the police station.’
‘That inspector told us why he did not take it there.’
‘And what reason did he give? That he wanted to treat us kindly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Are we his close relatives?’
‘No, but …’
‘If he wanted to be kind to us, he could have got that simple lock of the briefcase forcefully opened in Johri Bazar itself, and freed us after confirming there was no bomb in it.’
‘But then he would have known there was money in the briefcase.’
‘So what? We would have greased his palm to shut him up. And then he would have gone his way, we would have gone our way.’
‘But what is the meaning of all this?’
‘You know very well what that means.’
‘Yes, I do. But still you tell me. My heart sinks at the sheer thought of it.’
‘It means what I said before. We have been taken for a ride.’
‘Jesus! Arre, why did you not say it before?’
‘Before when? In front of that inspector? Or when that constable took the briefcase?’
Gailo kept quiet.
‘You know what would that have meant? Both of us would have been lying dead here.’
‘We’d have been shot?’
‘Definitely.’
‘In a police station?’
‘The police station is far away. Either the sound of bullets would not have reached there, or even if it did, people there would have thought some truck had backfired.’
‘Oh!’
‘And above all, this thing did not strike me then. It occurred to me only when that inspector left us sitting here in the jeep.’
‘Jesus! What shall we do now?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Let’s scram.’
‘We are free to do that, but something is to be done first.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘We should go to the police station.’
‘What? Are you mad?’
‘If you have a problem with that then let me go alone.’
‘But why?’
‘You will see why.’
Jeet Singh took off the fake beard, moustache, turban and fifty, threw them in the bushes and rubbed his face with the handkerchief. He then stepped out of the jeep and moved towards the police station building with decisive steps.
Gailo hesitated for a moment but soon came close and started walking with him.
Both of them reached the building, walking the half-lit expanse of compound.
There in the station house was a room with a placard of duty officer hanging over it.
They found a half-asleep sub-inspector sitting behind a table inside the room.
He sat up alert at their arrival, and looked at them.
Jeet Singh greeted him and said politely, ‘I wanted to meet Inspector Apte.’
‘Who?’ the sub-inspector asked.
‘Inspector Govind Rao Apte.’
‘No inspector of this name is here.’
‘Sahib, how about Constable Ganpat Rao Tingre? May I see him?’
‘I have never heard this name before.’
‘Sahib, he came here about fifteen minutes back, to get a briefcase checked for explosives in the lab.’
‘Are you drunk? Such labs are not run from police stations. Such checks are done in the forensic science lab in Fort.’
‘Sahib, Inspector Apte and Constable Tingre brought us here in a police jeep just fifteen minutes back …’
‘In a police jeep you said?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where’s the jeep?’
‘It’s parked there in the yard, besides the scrap vehicles. Under that tree there …’
‘Now shut up for a while.’
Jeet Singh sealed his lips.
The sub-inspector called a constable.
‘Go with them,’ he told him, ‘and see what jeep is standing in the yard, that brought them here.’
‘Come,’ said the constable, ‘show me.’
Both of them accompanied him.
And reached the tree near the scrap vehicles.
There was no jeep there.
‘Where is it?’ asked the constable. ‘Where’s the jeep?’
‘It was standing right here,’ Jeet Singh insisted.
‘Then where did it go?’
None of them could say anything.
‘Did it fly up in the air, or burrow into the ground?’
‘What can we say now?’ Gailo said in a pitiable voice.
‘You won’t say anything now, you will do something.’
‘What?’
‘Open your mouth.’
An unwilling Gailo followed the orders.
The constable smelled his breath.
He gave the same treatment to Jeet Singh too.
‘You are not drunk,’ he said, ‘but are still bickering like a drunkard.’
‘The jeep was here,’ Jeet Singh said in agitation, ‘just some moments ago …’
‘Shut up!’ the constable roared. ‘Bloody idiots, you are lucky that sho sahib is not here, or he would have asked us to give both of you a thorough thrashing. Now get lost.’
‘We are going. We are going just this minute. But, yaar, please, tell us the truth—is there no Inspector Govind Rao Apte here?’
‘No, there are only two inspectors in the police station—one is the sho, Patil sahib, and the other one is Mahurkar sahib, who is asho.’
‘And Constable Ganpat Rao Tingre?’
‘No one of that name too. Never heard the bloody name before.’
‘And there is no lab to test explosives here?’ Gailo asked, mustering some courage.
‘No, why would there be a lab in the police station?’
‘ok, boss, we are leaving.’
The constable left them there.
A moment later, both of them started moving towards the gate with heavy steps.
Jeet Singh suddenly stopped midway.
‘What now?’ Gailo muttered.
Jeet Singh looked back and realized the constable was nowhere to be seen. He must have gone inside the building.
‘I want to take back that fake moustache, beard, turban, etc.’
‘Why?’
‘We may need those things again.’
‘ok, you go out to the road. I’ll bring them back.’
They moved in opposite directions.
Jeet Singh reached the road, stood aside, lit a cigarette and starting taking short drags from it, still upset about the recent incident.
Gailo returned in five minutes.
Jeet Singh gave him a questioning look.
Gailo nodded and showed him a flattened turban with beard, moustaches and fifty strip bundled inside.
Jeet Singh took a last drag and threw the cigarette.
‘So much effort,’ Gailo said in a sad voice, ‘everything went perfectly as planned. And still there’s bloody nothing in hand, don’t even know what would have been in hand. God knows what’s in the briefcase.’
‘You know the way to the place where your taxi is parked?’ Jeet Singh asked.
‘Yes, I do. It is this same road. Just keep going,’ he said.
‘ok.’
‘Bloody one chance in a lifetime and fate turns it into a total screw-up,’ Gailo said.
‘Not total.’
‘How come?’
‘You wanted revenge, you got it. You wanted to hit their special system, and that you have done perfectly. Isn’t it so?’
‘That is true, but, Jeete, when we succeeded in our great effort, was it justice that we could not bask in the glory of our success?’
‘No, it’s not justice, but what we can do? Except shed tears? Except mourn it?’
Gailo did not reply.
They walked silently for a while.
‘I had a bloody locker there,’ Gailo started again, as if mutt
ering to himself, ‘why did I take it?—To study the system of the vault. It slipped my bloody mind that it could also be used to serve another beautiful purpose.’
‘What beautiful purpose?’
‘We could have transferred the contents of the briefcase in it. Was there any problem in that?’
‘No.’
‘We could have taken it out at a later stage, in instalments if we wished so.’
‘We still don’t know what was in it.’
‘We would have, in that situation.’
Jeet Singh didn’t say anything.
‘And then those bastards, those fake cops would have got bloody nothing.’
‘What’s the point of whining like that now? Whatever be the case, our little game turned sour.’
‘We still can do something.’
‘What? It seems you have an idea.’
‘Yes, something of the sort.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Jeete, I repeat, those cops were fake. They were never police, they were only wearing police uniforms. They took hold of some jeep identical to the police vehicle, wrote police on it and became patrolling policemen.’
‘Yes, that is crystal-clear now.’
‘Why did they take us to the police station?’
‘It was a busy road. They could have run into some trouble. Real cops could have turned up. They knew the compound of the police station was very big and nobody stood guard at the iron gate or in the compound at night. So they took us there and conned us at leisure.’
‘But who were they?’
‘Who knows!’
‘Murli Cherat might know.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That Malayali clerk Murli Cherat must know for sure. It is certain that that lousy, two-bit son-of-a-bitch sounded off somebody the moment we left, otherwise how could those fake cops intercept my taxi at the right place, at the right moment?’
‘Where was this brain of yours before?’
‘It was not working earlier. Bloody shock of success had sent it into a coma. You too felt the same, right?’
‘Yes, you are right. As our brains have started functioning again, what shall we do now?’
‘Cherat must definitely know who those fellows who took our stuff were! His shift gets over at twelve o’clock. Jeete, we must catch hold of him and force him to tell us who those two persons whom he sounded off were.’
‘You sure it was he who did it?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. He is so bloody corrupt. If he did what I asked him to do for a fee, he could have done what the other party asked to do for a bigger fee.’
‘Right!’
‘We must get hold of him and forcefully extract the info about those two fellows. Say yes.’
‘Gailo,’ Jeet Singh said slowly, ‘my need of the money is far bigger than yours, so I ought to say yes.’
‘Good!’
Jeet Singh and Gailo were sitting in the taxi, across the road, keeping an eye on the vault service building, waiting silently for Cherat’s shift to end at twelve o’clock.
Both of them were silent, serious, and immersed in their own thoughts.
Gailo had locked the turban, beard, etc., in the taxi’s glove compartment.
‘We have fallen victim to a big conspiracy,’ Jeet Singh said suddenly.
Gailo lifted his head and looked at Jeet Singh.
‘Gailo, this is a big conspiracy and you were on the radar of someone since the very beginning; someone who wanted access to me and for this purpose who systematically made you the instrument.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘You thought that you accidently came to know about the “adjoining lockers” thing and then it was you who located the nuances of this system to rob it, but you were wrong. Someone had this idea in advance, someone who had hatched the plan but was unable to actualize it because he needed an expert vault-buster like me. He called me several times, passed this idea to me but I refused so he came up with this new idea to get the job done. Either he knew or he found out that I was a close friend of yours, so he tricked you to get me involved in this.’
‘That jolts me. Who could be the guy?’
‘I don’t know the name but I surely know what he looks like.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Gailo, somebody purposely slipped his idea of robbing the vault to you, at your favourite bewra adda; someone purposely sat beside you in the bar to let you listen to the account of this plan while pretending to be talking to his friend.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Did you ever see the face of that person?’
‘No, never.’
‘How come?’
‘Because—I well remember—he used to sit with his back towards me … always.’
‘So you only heard his voice, never saw his face?’
‘Yes, but I heard his voice loud and clear. That is how I came to know this much about the vault.’
‘You did not come to know about the vault, you were made to know about it.’
‘You mean to say I was fed this information?’
‘Yes, but first tell me about the voice. How was it?’
‘Well, it was a regular male voice.’
‘Oh no, not that. I wanted to know about the tone, the accent?’
He thought over it for some time.
‘Did that fellow speak in the peculiar, Mumbaikar accent?’
‘No.’
‘Did he speak in a up-ite accent?’
‘And what would that be?’
‘The dialect which is spoken in the Muslim majority areas of Uttar Pradesh, Urdu-like or loaded with Urdu words!’
‘Exactly!’ Gailo piped. ‘Jeete, something always appeared peculiar to me in his accent but till now I could not fathom what it was. But now it has struck me. You are right, that fellow spoke in an Urdu-like accent.’
‘The fellow who called me numerous times to feed me the idea of opening the vault also spoke in a similar accent, loaded with Urdu words.’
‘So? By this you know how he looked?’
‘Not by this alone. There is something else as well.’
‘What else?’
‘That constable—Ganpat Rao Tingre—who accompanied that fake inspector … now, try to remember, did he utter a single word throughout the whole episode?’
Gailo thought over it.
‘He did not.’ Jeet Singh said forcefully, ‘He did not say a thing. He only nodded or shook his head whenever the inspector gave him an order or said something.’
‘Oh my God! Jeete, you are right.’
‘Because had he said anything, I would have recognized him from his accent and the voice. Even you would have, Gailo, no?’
‘Yes.’
‘His name badge had a Maratha name, but he was not a Maratha. We would have noticed this if he had spoken.’
‘Correct!’
‘This is why the second fellow led the whole operation, who was not only a Maratha, but also spoke the Mumbaikar dialect.’
‘So he was not the mastermind?’
‘No, I am ready to bet that it was the second person, the constable who did not utter a single word, who was the mastermind. It was he who staged this grand set-up, from the bewra adda to the present fake police drama.’
‘But who was he?’
‘We will find it out. If we can make Murli Cherat talk, we will find out.’
‘He will have to talk if he wants to live.’
‘Gailo, you were not this fierce before!’
‘No, I was not. But the treatment I got from that conman Bada Batata, and that savage of an Inspector Govilkar have made me so.’
Jeet Singh laughed.
‘Tell me more, tell me more how was I made a complete fool?’
‘To begin with, that card game in Panvel was a mere drama, which was staged just to fool you. That card game was set up to fool you and you alone.’
‘What are you saying? I was not even aware of that thing. It was
D’Costa who took me there.’
‘He was fond of gambling, no! Maybe it was for a mere ten minutes, but he did take part in the game, no!’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he was fed the information about the game in Panvel by somebody and he passed it on to you—if not for any ulterior motive then as routine sharing of information with a friend, right?’
‘But, Jeete, I went ahead only because I had recently earned a big sum of money in a little time. I could afford to lose or risk it for some thrill or adventure. I would not have followed his advice had it not been so. How do you think would they have fed me motivated information in that case?’
‘They would have come up with a plan to make some money available to you.’
‘How?’
‘They would have found a way. You might have found a wallet stuffed with money at the bewra adda or your regular taxi stand. What do you think would you have done in that case—gone to the police station to deposit it?’
‘No way, had I stumbled upon such a wallet, I would have thought St. Francis had sent the money especially for me.’
‘So, in that case you would have been in a very cheerful mood, like that day when you earned twenty-five thousand rupees from that road trip, no?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, you could entertain the idea of visiting the gambling den—the way you did?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You said that you won in teen patti because you were dealt winning cards all the time. Now, try to remember and tell me, did you win all the rounds just because you got big cards all the time?’
He thought over it for some time, then started shaking his head like a robot.
‘No’, he finally said, ‘I won several hands because all the other players packed up sooner or later.’
‘Because they were instructed to do so!’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘They were instructed beforehand that they were to let you win.’
‘Jesus!’
‘When you left the place with your winnings, two guys got hold of you on the way and snatched the money—four lakh rupees from you. You thought you were very clever, very alert even at a moment like that which is why you identified one of the two as the organizer of the game, Mangesh Gable, despite the hat and the mask. But I can bet that that fellow purposely gave you a chance to let you identify him.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Had he handled the gun with his right hand, then his fingers would have been enveloping the butt. In that case you could not have seen his complete middle finger with its missing part.’ Jeet Singh demonstrated by shaping his right hand into a gun, ‘Then the three fingers encircling the butt would have been under the cover of his palm. Then neither would you have seen his chopped finger nor have noticed that he was a lefty. Second, he could have asked his partner to cover you with the gun had he intended to hide these things from you.’
The Colaba Conspiracy Page 14