Chain of Custody

by Anita Nair

  That was the other thing, he thought, as he heated the bisi bele bath. Who else had keys to the lawyer’s home? They needed to get a list.

  He opened the small container of mixture. There was also a bowl of kachumber. If Gowda’s mother had been around, this was exactly what he would have demanded of her. Comfort food, he told himself as he served the heated rice and vegetables onto a plate.

  Somewhere out there was that child, Nandita. They had a whole set of leads but were nowhere close to knowing where it would take them and if it would end in Nandita. Meanwhile, this was what they called a high-profile murder and everyone’s attention would be diverted towards it.

  Gowda stood under the shower after he had eaten. His mother used to say, you mustn’t bathe after a meal. But he had no more time to lose and Amma would have to be content with the fact that he didn’t soap his belly as he stood under the cold water. As he dressed, he was glad that neither Mamtha nor Urmila was around to distract him. He would call Roshan in a bit to check if he was fine and then he would go to work.

  Gowda walked into his room to see a distinctly harassed-looking Santosh, a vexed Ratna and a very smug ACP Vidyaprasad.

  Gowda saluted, wondering what the ACP was doing in the police station on a Saturday afternoon.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ Gowda said.

  Vidyaprasad looked at his watch pointedly. ‘I say, Gowda, this is highly irresponsible. Where were you?’

  ‘I had a migraine, sir, and needed to rest,’ Gowda said quietly.

  ‘Migraine or hangover?’

  The smirk made Gowda want to reach out and sink his fist into the man’s face.

  The ACP’s gaze lingered on Ratna. Gowda saw Santosh bristle. Then his phone buzzed. He picked it up. ‘Take this,’ he said, offering his phone to Santosh. ‘Put it on speaker so Ratna can join in too. It’s from the shelter.’

  ACP frowned. He didn’t like the idea of his audience dissipating. There was no point in tearing Gowda apart if there was no one to witness his humiliation.

  ‘This is a high-profile murder case and you go off for your siesta. Highly irresponsible,’ he said again.

  ‘I wouldn’t have been able to function, sir,’ Gowda said. ‘Migraines are very debilitating.’

  ‘The TV crews are on their way and I need to make a statement,’ the ACP said, turning his chair this way and that. ‘You don’t mind my using your chair, do you?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Gowda shook his head. And then, unable to resist it, he added what Urmila said to him on and off, ‘Mi casa es su casa!’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘That’s Spanish for my house is your house.’

  ACP Vidyaprasad pretended not to hear him. Instead, he asked him, ‘So, what am I going to tell them?’

  ‘The usual.’ Gowda didn’t bother hiding the disdain in his voice. ‘We are investigating. We have some very strong leads. We expect to close the case and apprehend the murderer shortly.’

  ‘Are you mocking me, Gowda?’ Vidyaprasad said, sitting up straight.

  ‘Why would I?’ Gowda said in his most artless voice.

  The ACP went back to swivelling the chair from left to right, right to left. The creaking began.

  ‘And what is this Nandita case? Your maid’s daughter, I hear …’

  A missing girl wasn’t something that came under an ACP’s purview. Who was the mole in the station, Gowda wondered. Someone who thought it necessary to inform both Mamtha and ACP Vidyaprasad about the goings-on his life. Someone who tipped off Mary before an arrest could be made.

  ‘A twelve-year old girl has gone missing,’ Gowda began. ‘She has been missing since 4 March.’

  ‘Ten days! What are you doing here? Anyway, if you haven’t traced her by now, she’s probably in some brothel or dead.’

  ‘We are doing our best.’

  ‘Save your best for the lawyer murder case. One of the SIs can follow up on the missing girl. If you ask me, it’s best that she stays missing. Easier on the family and us,’ the ACP said. He paused his swivelling and leaned forward. ‘The commissioner is taking a personal interest in this. So …’ The ACP resumed his swivelling and Gowda waited.

  At the next turn of the chair, the extendable stem of the single leg sank into the groove and the ACP felt himself sinking. A hand shot up, groping for something to hold on to – table edge, in-tray, paperweight.

  Gowda stepped forward to extricate the man from beneath the desk he was wedged under. He dragged the table away to ease the ACP out.

  ‘What nonsense!’ the ACP fumed, trying to wriggle out. Gowda offered him a hand. The ACP took it reluctantly and hoisted himself up. ‘This place is a mess.’

  ‘I sent a request for some office furniture months ago,’ Gowda said, pretending he didn’t understand.

  ‘Humph …’ the ACP said as he strode away. At the door, he turned. ‘I want results. Soon.’ He didn’t bother hiding the implied threat – or you are going to be in serious trouble.

  5.30 p.m.

  Rekha gnawed at a nail. She didn’t know what to do. She looked at her phone screen. Her friends had said she must block Sid. But she was too afraid to do that either. As long as he knew she was reachable, he wouldn’t do what he threatened to: tell her parents about her or put up pictures of her on social media, But something told her that if she made herself unreachable, he would.

  She looked at the messages again. He had called her just about every foul word he knew in English and Kannada. Even reading it made her flinch. She looked at the last message and shuddered.

  Sanjay was right. She was messing with fire. He had said that she was to go to his home that afternoon. They would watch a movie in his home theatre, hang out together and he would call her a cab to drop her back.

  ‘You will be home by half past six, latest,’ he had added. ‘Like a good college girl!’ He had touched her cheek with the tip of his index finger.

  She felt safe with Sanjay. She thought of the narrow escape she’d had from Sid. He was nothing more than a pimp. And he was frightening her.

  Sanjay would know what to do, she thought.

  Except when she got there, she discovered there had been some kerfuffle in the gated community with the police coming and going. She sent Sanjay a message saying she was going back. Why hadn’t he texted her back? Was he angry with her?

  Her mother was surprised to see her back early but she was pleased as well. She thought all nefarious things happened in the cover of darkness. If her daughter was back home before dusk, all would be well.

  ‘I thought you had an extra class,’ her mother said.

  ‘It got cancelled,’ she said.

  Rekha wanted to weep and confide in her mother. But she was afraid of the consequences. Her phone would be confiscated and she wouldn’t be allowed outside without a chaperone. Worse, they would send her away.

  ‘What’s wrong, Rex?’ her brother asked. He had come into the room without her even realizing it.

  Suddenly she knew what she must do.

  6.00 p.m.

  Nandita sat on the bed. All day she did nothing but sit and wait. She wished Krishna would come. But the day before, there had been a scuffle when he wanted to see her. Daulat Ali had said no. The thekedar had said no one was allowed to be near her.

  ‘The thekedar didn’t mean me,’ Krishna had insisted loudly.

  But the man wouldn’t let him. She had heard sounds of slapping, groans and a door slamming. Moina had sauntered into her cubicle. ‘Are you satisfied now that you have got the two of them slapping each other?’

  Nandita had blinked. ‘What did I do?’

  Moina had snorted and walked away.

  Nandita buried her head in her hands. What was happening? Krishna had said he would take her away from here.

  From one of the other cubicles, where she knew there were more girls, though she hadn’t been allowed to see any of them, she heard the sounds that seemed to fill the space periodically. A rhythmic splat-splat on the plywood
of the beds; the grunting and then the muffled groan. It scared her, that sound. Everything scared her here. She had thought Moina was her friend but now Moina seemed to hate her.

  She heard a scream. Again. There was a frantic drumming of heels against the partition. What was going on?

  She cried softly.

  ‘Stop your sniffling … What are you weeping for? Who died?’ The big man glowered from the doorway.

  She bit her sobs down and began reciting the multiplication tables. One sixteen is sixteen, two sixteens are thirty-two …

  7.00 p.m.

  Gowda, Gajendra and Santosh sat together, watching the footage on Santosh’s laptop. Suddenly Gowda stood up. ‘Let’s take this to my house,’ he said. ‘Will you be able to connect it to my TV?’

  Santosh thought of the ancient TV in Gowda’s home. ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ he said, not knowing how to keep the embarrassment out of his voice.

  ‘Oh,’ Gowda said.

  Head Constable Gajendra cleared his throat. ‘I have a 32-inch LED TV at home.’

  ‘That will be fine,’ Santosh said.

  Gajendra’s home took Gowda’s breath away. He had a 32-inch LED TV, a double-door fridge, a showcase full of assorted brassware and stuffed toys – a cross-eyed teddy, an inebriated dog and a constipated cat, rotund distended belly and all.

  Gowda made a note to himself in his head: CHANGE TV.

  There was also a row of interlinked steel chairs. Like the ones dentists seemed to have a proclivity for. And a sofa that would have been more appropriate in the Mysore palace. How did he manage to pay for all of this? Was the man on the take?

  Gajendra looked at him, waiting for the compliment that first-time guests festooned him with. Gowda cleared his throat. ‘What an amazing house,’ he said.

  Gajendra beamed and dusted the already spotless sofa for Gowda to sit on.

  ‘When did you shift here?’ Gowda asked curiously.

  Gajenrda’s previous house, he remembered, had been smaller and sparsely furnished.

  ‘I sold some land, sir, and decided to buy this house. It was a distress sale. That tailor’s …’ he said.

  Gowda nodded. There had been a case of a tailor and his wife killing themselves. The tailor’s brother had sold the house at a throwaway price, he had heard.

  Santosh had meanwhile started looking for the USB port to plug in the hard disk.

  Gowda felt breathless. The room was stuffy and in honour of their arrival, Gajendra’s missus, as he referred to her, had lit a handful of incense sticks. ‘Please come in for coffee and tiffin,’ Gajendra said, beckoning them to the dining room where a chrome and glass table stood laden with covered dishes.

  How had Gajendra’s wife managed to put all of this together in half an hour? Gowda hoped they were not eating the family’s dinner.

  Kara bath and kesari bath; salt and sweet; piping-hot filter coffee. Gowda would have fallen on his knees and wept in gratitude another time. This evening though, he was in a strange mood. A butterfly kept fluttering on one of his eyelids for no specific reason.

  Santosh had the CCTV footage running by the time Gowda had eaten. ‘Do you want to watch the whole thing or should I fast-forward the footage?’ he asked.

  Gowda took a deep breath. ‘Let’s start from two hours before the lawyer returned home and tally the register entries. Do we know if each of the visitor entry passes carries the plot owner’s signature?’

  Gajendra nodded. ‘I had PC Byrappa verify that first. He has started talking to the security and staff as well.’

  ‘Something very curious happened this afternoon, sir,’ Santosh said. He had stepped into the dining room and filled a plate with enough food to feed a cricket team, Gowda thought. In a strange way, he envied the younger man’s ability to make himself at home no matter where he was. Everywhere Gowda went, he stood out like a sore thumb, separate and mostly left alone.

  Gowda turned to look at Santosh. ‘Like what?’

  ‘I was talking to the guard at the gated community when this young woman turned up in an auto. I think she left when she saw the commotion at the gate. One of the guards said he had seen her with the lawyer earlier in the week.’

  Gowda frowned. ‘Did you get her details?’

  Santosh shook his head. ‘She didn’t enter and went back in the same autorickshaw she came in. But the camera got a frame of her face and I took a picture of that.’

  ‘Get a printout. What about the lawyer’s phone?’ Gowda asked. ‘We’ll find something in it surely.’

  ‘It’s password-protected and has a fingerprint sensor,’ Gajendra said. ‘I have requested the mobile phone company for call, text and WhatsApp records …’

  Gowda nodded and turned his attention to the footage.

  ‘Did he have just one phone?’ Gowda asked suddenly.

  ‘We didn’t find any others in the house,’ Gajendra said. ‘I’ll check with his office and the security at the layout.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Gowda had enough of watching the guava vendor outside the gate scratching his testicles. Another mental note: if you buy guavas, leave them in water for at least half an hour.

  ‘Speed it up,’ he said.

  A pizza delivery man and two service men from Samsung came on motorbikes. A dog came running, and stood thoughtfully at the gate. Two young girls came on bicycles. A line of maids left and then a group of construction workers. Soon the pizza man and the service men left. At half past seven, a dusty Mercedes honked at the gate.

  ‘That’s the lawyer,’ Santosh said.

  The lawyer’s car window was down and he took delivery of a few letters. ‘He lived alone?’ Gowda said.

  ‘Yes, there were two boys for two or three days last week, but they left. One of the security men said the boys ran away. They’d had enough.’

  Santosh butted in. ‘That’s the thing, sir. Apparently the boys left on Friday morning …’

  Gowda frowned. ‘You realize we need to explore that angle too.’

  Santosh nodded. ‘I’ve already started on that. The boys had work passes which they left back at the house. I have them at the station, sir. I checked the CCTV. They left with a young man. I am getting a printout of his face as well.’

  Gowda grunted. Santosh was shaping up better than he had expected. He had seemed lost when he first returned to work but he seemed to have got a grip on himself.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Santosh said, careful to hide the glee in his voice.

  Gajendra hid his smile. Gowda and his acolytes – it was like watching a reality show. The young SI would go places or stay in the rut Gowda and he had dug up together. You didn’t know which way it would end till it happened.

  9.00 p.m.

  Daulat Ali called. I let the phone ring till it stopped. He called again. This time, I picked it up on the very last ring.

  I listened to what he had to say.

  ‘So, will you?’ he asked me.

  ‘What about my girl?’ I retorted.

  ‘Krishna, be reasonable ….’ he said. ‘I cannot go against the thekedar.’ I stayed silent. ‘It’s not in my hands.’ He sighed. ‘I am just another employee like you. Even the thekedar, he is just a few rungs up the ladder.’

  ‘I thought he is the boss!’ I was astounded.

  ‘He has bosses too!’ Daulat Ali’s voice was low. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said.

  So I went to the godown. Daulat Ali was waiting for me by the steps. ‘Bhai, I am glad you are here,’ he said.

  Was the deference in his voice real or put on for the occasion? I gave him a brief nod.

  I climbed the stairs. He followed me quietly. ‘Where is she?’ I asked.

  Daulat Ali led me to one of the cubicles. I looked at the dead girl. Moina.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Daulat Ali said. He didn’t look at my face.

  Every death is an accident. Yours, or someone else’s. Moina looked like she had been strangled.

 
; ‘I only meant to frighten her. But she kicked out at me and I lost my temper,’ Daulat Ali said.

  ‘Put her into the auto.’ I turned away, not wanting him to see my face. She didn’t deserve to die like this. And yet, it was probably better than dying of disease.

  I drove the auto to a secluded stretch alongside a railway line. I heard the train. ‘Now,’ I told Daulat Ali.

  We took Moina’s body and left it on the railway line. The speeding train would do the rest.

  There would be a newspaper report, an enquiry, and then the file would gather dust somewhere.

  I got off once we entered a road with streetlights. I was a man with a plan.

  I tried the woman’s number from the phone I had stolen last night. She didn’t pick up. I tried again. I didn’t know what else to do.

  Eventually, after eleven attempts, a man picked up the phone.

  ‘Sir,’ I said.

  ‘Who is this?’ he asked. ‘Do you realize what time it is?’

  ‘I know it’s after midnight but listen to me …’ I didn’t hide my vexation. That shut him up. ‘There is a brothel where minor girls are being forced into prostitution.’

  There was silence for a moment. ‘Who is this?’ he asked. ‘And how did you get this number?’

  ‘I am Krishna,’ I said. ‘Urmila madam gave me the number.’

  ‘What? When? And why should I believe you?’ he asked. ‘How do I know you are not playing a prank? If this is true, why don’t you call the child helpline? It’s 10924 and it’s 24/7.’

  ‘I am the man from the railway station. With the three boys,’ I said. ‘I ran away with two of them.’

  ‘You have some cheek calling us then,’ he snarled.

  ‘Which is why you should listen to what I have to say.’ I gave him the brothel whereabouts. ‘Sir, if you wait too long, the girls won’t be there.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ he demanded. ‘And where are the two boys?’

  I cut the call.

  I wiped the phone and tossed it into an overgrown plot of land.

  15 MARCH, SUNDAY

  9.00 a.m.

  Gowda raised his eyes from the newspaper as Roshan came into the living room, bleary-eyed.