by Anita Nair
‘And so the girls will be home soon.’
‘No.’ Gowda shook his head. ‘It might take anything from six months to a year. These things have a way of stretching out.’
Santosh’s face fell. ‘What about the Bangladeshi girl?’
‘She will be sent to prison,’ Gowda said quietly. ‘They usually have no papers and that’s what happens to illegal immigrants.’
16 MARCH, MONDAY
6.30 a.m.
Gowda could hear murmurings from the kitchen. Shanthi came into the living room when she heard the bedroom door open. Gowda blinked. He saw a shadowy form behind her. He had thought she wouldn’t come in to work that morning.
‘Namaste,’ he said.
‘Namaste, sir.’ She smiled. ‘Would you like some coffee? I have put the hot water on for your bath.’
Gowda smiled. She had probably polished his shoes as well and laid out a freshly laundered and ironed handkerchief.
He walked to the front door and saw it was locked. ‘Shanthi, why have you locked the door?’
‘Nandita is with me.’
‘How is she?’ Gowda asked.
‘She won’t let me out of sight. She held my hand all through the night and wouldn’t stop crying. I don’t know what to do, sir.’ Shanthi’s eyes filled.
‘At dawn, she demanded I bring her here. She feels safe here,’ Shanthi said. ‘But even here she is afraid someone will come and grab her. She wanted me to lock the door so that if anyone comes here, they’ll think there’s no one at home.’
Gowda nodded. He moved towards the shadowy form. ‘Don’t be afraid, Nandita. Nothing will happen to you,’ he said gently.
He hoped that the many million gods in the Hindu pantheon and Jesus and Mary would ensure that Nandita survived her ordeal. The scar tissue, he hoped, would form thick and soon.
‘Shanthi,’ Gowda called out from the living room as he sipped his filter coffee.
She came to the door with a worried expression.
‘There are formalities to be followed. I’ll ask Ratna madam to come here. It may not be easy for Nandita to answer the questions, but it needs to be done,’ he said, as he walked into his bedroom.
The previous night, Ratna had gone with Tessa and the girls, while Urmila, Santosh and he had taken Nandita to her home in Gospelnagar. Shanthi had opened the door. When she saw Gowda, she had blinked in surprise. When Gowda moved aside and she saw who was with him, she had burst into tears. She had stumbled over the threshold to gather her daughter in a tight embrace even as she pressed kisses on the girl’s face. The younger children came out at the commotion and so did some neighbours. From within the house, Gowda heard Ranganna snoring loudly in a drunken stupor. Gowda had glared at the man in disgust. ‘Shall I go prod him awake?’ Santosh asked.
‘Don’t,’ Gowda said. ‘He will beat his daughter, wife and children and create a scene. It will be all about him and I don’t have the stomach for it after the day we have had. I may end up breaking his nose …’
Santosh had smiled and the two men waited while Urmila reassured Shanthi that Nandita was unharmed.
‘I’ll drop you both home and go back to mine,’ she said as they got back into the car.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you back and return with my bike.’
‘I’ll go with you, sir,’ Santosh said.
It had been almost half past two when Gowda entered his bathroom for a quick shower before crawling into bed.
8.00 a.m.
‘Something has come up,’ Gowda said when the team were all assembled. He looked at their curious faces – Santosh, Ratna, Gajendra and Byrappa. Between the five of them they would have to untangle the knotted mess of this case.
Gowda opened his phone and showed them the photograph Suraj had sent him.
‘This is the second visitor,’ Santosh said.
They listened as Gowda explained to them about Rekha, Siddharth and their connection with the deceased.
Ratna kept shaking her head. ‘What’s wrong?’ Santosh asked.
‘At the NGO I was first with, there were cases of many such girls. Some who get into it because of their boyfriends … and some’ – Ratna looked embarrassed that there could be women who valued their bodies so little – ‘who do it for the spending money. The ones who came to us didn’t know what to do. The boyfriends had probably disappeared and there wasn’t anyone else they could turn to. And you know what, most of them wouldn’t even remember what happened. Or even what the person who had been with them looked like.’
‘Rohypnol?’ Santosh asked.
Ratna nodded. ‘Is he the one?’ Ratna asked, pointing at Sid’s photo.
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ Gowda said, looking at Gajendra’s face. The head constable had been silent. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘Is it that simple? I am not sure,’ the head constable said thoughtfully.
‘Exactly. But we will know only when we bring the boy in,’ Gowda said, reaching for his phone as it beeped.
Last night, as they had driven back, Gowda had asked about the call that had come for Urmila at the rescue unit. ‘Could you get the number?’ he had asked.
Urmila had promised to send it to him first thing in the morning. And so she had.
Gowda dialled the number. It was switched off.
He wrote the number on a piece of paper and gave it to Gajendra. ‘It’s switched off. We need to trace it to see who it belongs to.’
10.00 a.m.
Santosh and Byrappa stood outside the house in Shanthi Nagar. The boy’s address had been easy to locate. Except that there was a lock on the door.
‘Where do you think he’s gone?’ Byrappa said, staring down the lane.
From the corner of his eye, Santosh saw a tiny movement at a window. ‘I think he’s here,’ Santosh said.
Byrappa frowned. Then he walked to the door and thumped on it loudly. ‘You can either come out or I can drag you out. Which do you prefer?’
They heard a side door open. Byrappa hurried towards it while Santosh stood by the front door.
‘I didn’t do it,’ the boy mumbled. ‘I didn’t do it.’
Santosh walked up to the boy, who seemed to have shrunk. He was all bones, eyes and an unshaven chin. He had a massive bruise on his face and his arm was in a sling.
‘Why are you hiding then?’ Byrappa asked.
‘I am afraid they’ll come for me,’ the boy said, his eyes darting beyond Byrappa and Santosh to see if anyone else had followed them.
‘Who?’ Santosh asked.
‘Can I go with you, please?’ the boy pleaded. ‘Please take me away from here, please.’
Santosh and Byrappa exchanged a look. What was he so frightened of?
12.00 p.m.
Just another boy like Roshan and Suraj, Gowda thought, looking at the boy huddled in the interrogation room.
‘How do you know Dr Rathore?’ Gajendra asked.
‘I didn’t kill him, sir.’ The boy turned towards Gowda. ‘He was already dead when I got there.’ He rubbed his eyes.
‘Answer my question,’ Gajendra growled.
The boy sunk his head in his hands. Then the words emerged; a sordid torrent of events. Rekha. The cucumber seller. The easy money. ‘It was just once, but she began having this fling with the lawyer.’
‘And so you decided to kill him?’ Gajendra demanded.
The boy raised his head from his hands for a brief moment. ‘If I did kill him, why would I come here, sir?’
Gowda looked at Gajendra. It was time to move onto the next phase now that phase one of the interrogation had been accomplished.
He tilted his chin at Gajendra to indicate he was taking over. Gowda dragged the chair to the other side of the table so the boy would have to raise his head to look at him.
‘Sid,’ Gowda said.
The boy’s eyes widened.
‘Siddharth,’ Gowda said again. ‘What did you do when you discovered Rekha – Rex, that�
��s what you called her, right – was involved with the lawyer?’
‘I was angry, sir. I was furious that she was cheating on me. So I decided to set up another escort evening, get my money and fuck off …’
Santosh growled, ‘Watch your language!’
‘I am sorry,’ the boy said. He took a deep breath. Gowda and the others listened: the call; the date that didn’t happen; the beating.
‘You knew what that evening was going to be like …’ Gowda said softly.
The boy nodded.
‘She was your girlfriend and you still went ahead. Are you a pimp?’ Santosh said, placing his palms down on the table and glaring.
‘But she didn’t go. And the man who set it up said it was all right. Except he didn’t mean it. He had me beaten up.’
Gowda leaned forward. ‘And …’
‘So I called her and said I was going to upload our chats and pictures on Facebook and WhatsApp.’ The boy’s voice was defiant. ‘But she said she would go to the police. Everyone knows the police only listen to the woman’s side.’
Gajendra boxed his ears at that. ‘It’s usually because they are the victims …’
Gowda glared at him. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘I thought I would go to the lawyer and show him what his baby girl had been up to with me. I wasn’t thinking straight, sir. I was angry at what she had done; and I was angrier that I had been beaten up because of her. She treated me like dirt. She …’
Gowda touched his arm to interrupt the boy’s diatribe. ‘What did you see when you got there?’
‘The door was closed, but there was a glass panel by the door. I peered in and saw a man lying on the floor. When I saw blood, I fled.’ Sid shivered.
‘You didn’t think of alerting the neighbours or the security or calling the police?’ Santosh asked from the shadows.
The boy shook his head. ‘I was sure that if I got involved, I would get into a deeper mess. I had mentioned to the man who beat me up that the lawyer was responsible for Rekha not going on that date. I thought they had got to him as well. Except that I didn’t know they had killed him. I saw it on TV later that night. That’s when I locked my front door and stayed inside.’
Gowda stood up. ‘Take his statement and keep him here since he is happy to be remanded.’
Gowda sat at his table with his hands laced beneath his chin.
‘Do you think he is speaking the truth?’ Santosh asked.
‘We’ll know when we do a fingerprint match,’ Gowda said. ‘But I don’t think he is lying. He is petrified of what will happen to him.’
The station was abuzz with activity. Mondays were always busy, but Ugadi was drawing close and pre-festival times saw a strange spurt of petty crime.
‘Have you got the postmortem report?’ Gowda asked.
‘It’s on your table, sir,’ Santosh said. He had been afraid that he would need to go to the morgue again and witness a postmortem. The first one was still fresh in his mind and the taste of bile that flooded his mouth after. But Gajendra had gone in his place.
Gowda glanced at his watch. ‘Why don’t you and Ratna finish taking Nandita’s statement? She and Shanthi are at my place.’
And for once I can file an A-report – case solved and closed, Gowda thought ruefully.
Ratna and Santosh walked towards the police jeep. PC David was standing under a tree, rubbing his forehead furiously.
‘What’s wrong?’ Santosh asked, taking in the man’s wan face.
‘Sinus headache. And not getting better. I think I have a fever too.’
‘But we need to go out.’ Santosh’s bike was at the service station. He didn’t think Gowda would take kindly to him asking if he could borrow the Bullet.
‘I’ll drive,’ Ratna said.
‘You can drive a jeep?’ Santosh queried in surprise.
‘I can drive anything except a train, tank and plane,’ she said airily.
‘I don’t think I can let you drive the jeep,’ David said unhappily.
‘C’mon, PC David.’ Ratna opened her palm to him. ‘It’s just to Inspector Gowda’s house. And you can sit in the jeep.’
David dropped the keys into her palm.
Santosh wondered if he should offer to drive instead. But he was curious to see how good a driver she was.
Ratna got into the jeep. Santosh followed and stopped himself from telling her to check if the handbrake was on. David got into the back seat and closed his eyes.
Ratna reversed defty and drove out of the gates with a fluidity that made David sigh in relief and Santosh look at her in admiration.
‘May I ask you a question?’ He glanced at her face.
She met his gaze with a swift look. ‘Ask away!’
‘You chose to be an assistant sub-inspector. Why?’ His voice was low. ‘You have a postgraduate degree. You could have joined at the sub-inspector level or even written the civil services exam.’
‘And do what? Push a few papers this way and that?’ She smiled at him. ‘I wanted to be hands-on; haven’t you seen how it is with women and children?’ She spoke quietly. ‘I didn’t want to be stuck with administrative work which any fool sub-inspector can do. I didn’t mean you,’ she added hastily.
He smiled. ‘I know what you mean, ASI Ratna. And what do you think now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ratna said, turning into Green Fields. ‘It feels like we are at the visible end of the garbage dump; the rest of it is cloaked in darkness and deceit.’
Santosh placed his hand gently on hers. That was all he dared. ‘For what it’s worth, you can count on me,’ he said.
2.00 p.m.
The postmortem report said what Gowda had already deduced. The lawyer’s skull had been smashed in, Dr Khan had written. There was nothing in the contents of the viscera to suggest he had been poisoned or drugged. In fact, it seemed the lawyer’s last meal had been several hours earlier.
Meanwhile, there was the other visitor to check on.
‘Do we have an address for him?’ Gowda asked Gajendra.
‘It’s incomplete,’ Gajendra said. ‘These security guys are perfectly useless fellows.’
‘They may be, but not the security camera. Get the vehicle number and we can track the owner’s name and address,’ Gowda said, his eyes pausing on a line in the description of the injury.
A typical signature fracture. A localized depressed fracture where the outer table had been driven into the diploe. The inner table was fractured irregularly and to a greater extent comminuted. A spider’s web with no displacement of fragments of the skull. The roughly triangular depression indicated that it was possibly caused by an uneven object made of stone or metal. There was bleeding from the ear, suggesting the transverse sigmoid sinus had torn and there was a posterior fossa haematoma. However, he hadn’t been dead yet. The sudden nature of the attack had caused him to fall so heavily on his face that he had broken his nose and drowned in his own blood. The fracture line suggested that the assailant had been a little taller than the victim and left-handed. Gowda thought of Sid. The boy was at least 6″2′ and the angle of the blow would have been different.
He thought of the weapon. The stone Buddha they had found on the floor? Could a child have done it on his own? He thought of the two boys who had run away. Had they returned? But how had they entered the gated community without the guards spotting them?
‘In the rains we had three weeks ago, a section of the wall fell. But there is a quarry on the other side of the wall. Quite a deep one,’ Byrappa said. ‘So the security must have been lax there.’
‘Let’s take a look,’ Gowda said, rising. The three men drove into the gated community. There was a group of people near the broken wall. Gowda groaned. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘Laurel and Hardy.’ Gajendra hid his smile.
‘We were getting a quote from the contractor,’ Laurel said, and Hardy nodded his head.
‘How long has this wall been down?’ Gowda asked, climbing the rubble to see what lay beyo
nd.
‘Three weeks,’ Hardy mumbled.
‘It should have been built the next day, but the association is filled with retired bureaucrats,’ Laurel said, following Gowda up the rubble.
Beyond lay an abandoned quarry, deep and dangerous, with its sides jagged at some points. There was a pool of green water at the bottom. ‘Only a fool would attempt to climb the wall this way,’ Laurel said.
Or a very desperate person, thought Gowda. There was a narrow lip of land abutting the wall and edging the quarry. It was possible to walk by holding on to the wall and enter through the broken section. But who knew about the breach in the wall? Beyond the quarry was a barbed-wire fence, behind which were a few low-slung tile-roofed buildings. ‘What’s there?’ Gowda asked.
‘A pig farm. Bloody nuisance. They slaughter every few days and the residents complain of the squealing,’ Laurel said.
Suddenly the case was acquiring dimensions that even Gowda hadn’t anticipated. Could someone who worked on the pig farm have come in?
‘We need to check on the farm employees,’ Gowda told Byrappa as they entered.
He glanced at his watch. Michael had messaged asking him to come by late afternoon. He would have to leave as soon as Ratna and Santosh returned.
Gajendra’s phone beeped. He stared at the message and looked at Gowda with a dumbfounded expression. ‘You are not going to believe this. The number you asked me to trace? It was the lawyer’s.’
‘What?’ Gowda sat up.
What did Nandita’s disappearance have to do with the murdered lawyer? What was he not seeing?
4.00 p.m.
At the Sunshine Home, Gowda was greeted by the sight of Mr Right, Urmila’s ridiculous dog, on Tina’s lap. She was murmuring into the dog’s ears and he was licking her face. Urmila stood alongside, smiling and talking to the girl.
Michael stepped out of his room. ‘Urmila dropped in on her way to the vet and when the girl saw the dog, her eyes lit up. Over the last three days, I haven’t seen her react or show a single flicker of emotion. Usually she won’t even look at any of us.’