by Anita Nair
There was a sound from the living room. Gowda stiffened. He rose and pulled out the sturdy Maglite flashlight he had got a friend from Dubai to bring him. He picked up the hockey stick he kept in his bedroom.
He padded quietly towards the living room. He hadn’t forgotten how he had been ambushed and beaten up a few months ago while working on the Bhuvana case, and he wasn’t going to be caught unawares again.
When Gowda’s flashlight swung towards the face of the intruder, he heard a yelp. It was Roshan walking on tiptoe, trying not to walk into a wall or furniture. He put his hand up to cover his eyes from the bright light. Gowda reached for the light switch. The boy shrank into himself. Gowda looked at him for a moment. ‘Go to bed,’ Gowda said.
‘Appa …’ the boy began, seeing his father’s grim expression.
‘Roshan, we’ll talk in the morning. Go to bed now.’
He watched his son kick off his sneakers and drop into his bed fully clothed.
A few minutes later, he heard a retching sound.
Gowda ran into his son’s bedroom.
He sighed. He fetched the plastic bucket from the bathroom and placed it on the floor. Then he found a face towel, dampened it and wiped his son’s brow and face. He pulled the covers over Roshan and then lay down beside him. He didn’t want Roshan choking on his own vomit.
What made one an exemplary father? One who hectored his son and forbade him from experimenting or excess? Or one who let his son be and cleaned his vomit and hoped the boy would learn from each experiment? Gowda stared at the ceiling, wide awake. From the trees around, he could hear birdsong and the rolling notes of the crow pheasant.
He would let Roshan sleep it out, Gowda decided when the clock struck six. He would go as early as he could to the station.
9.00 a.m.
‘What have you got for me?’ Gowda asked when he had settled at his desk with a cup of tea.
Gajendra and Santosh sat across him. Santosh pushed a file towards him. ‘We have the vehicle details, sir.’
‘And PC Byrappa talked to the pig farm people. The watchman said they don’t bother about the quarry side because “what idiot would risk it at night?” But he did say that he had heard the dogs bark at nine in the night and then again around eleven.’
‘What do the fingerprints reveal?’ Gowda asked, taking a long sip of the tea.
‘That’s the curious thing, sir. Various fingerprints in the house. But nothing in the living room or on the weapon used.’
‘It’s been wiped down.’ Gowda’s mouth turned into a grim line. It was early in the day but already the heat was pressing down and causing the particular brand of summer warmth that was distinctly Bangalore – still and stifling, like being trapped between two sheets of glass in the sun.
‘What time did the vehicle return?’ he asked.
‘It came in at about 9.00 and left at 9.40,’ Santosh said, referring to his notes.
Gowda opened the file and looked at the sheet of paper. ‘In which case, let’s go pay Mr Sharad Pujary, whoever he is, a visit,’ he said, rising.
‘Why don’t we ask him to come here?’ Gajendra frowned.
‘Look at the address. RMV Extension. Those sorts of people won’t come to the station without a lawyer and anticipatory bail. Apart from which a minister or at least an MP will be brought into the picture,’ Gowda said quietly. ‘It’s best we go there as if it’s part of the investigation routine.’
Ratna rode in on her Scooty as they left. She waved at them and David braked abruptly.
‘I’ve got a lead about the two boys who worked at the lawyer’s house,’ she said, peering into the vehicle.
Gowda nodded. ‘Keep me informed,’ he said.
He didn’t think there would be much to it. But in a murder investigation, every lead had to be pursued. It could take them to another lead even if the first one was of little significance.
None of them spoke much as they drove towards RMV Extension. Gowda wondered how Roshan was. He was going to have to confront his son. Before he became an exemplary father, he was going to have to a be father.
Increasingly it occurred to him that in trying not to be his father, he had gone to the other extreme. Where did one draw the line between being involved and intrusive; concerned and overbearing?
Gowda’s phone rang. It was Urmila. She didn’t call him often during working hours.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Borei,’ she said. ‘I just needed to hear your voice for a moment. The children are back here with the portrait artist.’
‘Are you all right?’ he asked again.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I would like to see you. Please.’
He heard the forlorn note in her voice. ‘I am heading out to meet someone. I’ll come over when I am done,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘You take care,’ he murmured softly.
Gajendra and Santosh stared ahead, pretending not to have heard Gowda’s side of the conversation.
Gowda knew that they knew he had been talking to Urmila. So he didn’t speak either.
It was a bungalow which, on that road of well-appointed homes, looked no different. It wasn’t conspicuously new, nor was it a crumbling old house. When the jeep pulled up, the watchman came out of his sentry box.
‘Is the owner at home?’ Gajendra asked.
The watchman nodded and asked, ‘Who should I say has come?’
‘What do you think we look like?’ Gajendra growled. ‘Circus clowns?’
‘Open the gates,’ Gowda said quietly.
The watchman opened the gates. As the jeep drove up, Gowda saw there was a rectangular lawn in front, onto which a tarmac pathway had been laid. There were a few trees close to the perimeter of the wall. Edging the lawn was a low wall on which were potted plants. Roses, mostly, and an occasional hibiscus.
There wasn’t the gazebo or barbecue pit that was de rigueur in this part of town, no overweight Labrador lolling in the grass. Quiet money, Gowda decided, looking at the car parked in the portico. A spotless black BMW.
A tall elderly man came to the door. He had a long, austere-looking face with a high forehead, and wore a cream linen shirt over beige trousers. There was that same squeaky clean aura around him, just like his car, Gowda thought, taking in the discreet Rolex, the white star of the Mont Blanc pen in his pocket and the narrow gold band on his ring finger.
‘Yes, Inspector,’ he said, peering at Gowda’s breast pocket. ‘What can I do for you?’
His smile was cordial, but not welcoming.
Gowda said in the most pleasant voice he could muster, ‘Good morning, Mr Pujary.’
The man lowered his chin and touched his chest with the tips of his fingers. It was the gesture of the supplicant. Ask of me what you need and I will do my best.
Gowda could smell incense from within the house. ‘This is regarding the lawyer Sanjay Rathore’s murder.’
‘I heard. What a terrible thing to happen!’ Pujary said softly. ‘I saw him just that evening.’
‘So you know why we are here.’ Gowda’s voice was even.
‘Yes. I was quite sure you would be reaching out to me sooner or later, though if you had let me know, I would have come to the station myself. Please come inside,’ Pujary said, leading them into the house.
‘This is my colleague, Sub-inspector Santosh,’ Gowda said, gesturing to him.
Pujary smiled, but there was no sign of deference, Gowda noticed.
The living room was filled with straight-backed wooden sofas, low tables with little artifacts on them, and a giant Nataraja in bronze.
Across them was a wall made of giant plate glass. On the other side of it was an exquisite enclosed garden. ‘You have a beautiful home,’ Gowda said.
‘It’s my wife. She is the one with the taste. I am just a boring businessman; a real estate wallah.’
‘Is there a dancer in your family?’ Santosh asked, pointing to the dancing god.
Santosh shook his head. Gowda stepped in. Any reference to his voice upset Santosh. ‘Have you been living here long?’ Gowda asked, sitting down. He waved to Santosh to seat himself.
A buzzer echoed through the house. Pujary stood up. ‘If you will excuse me,’ he said, going up the stairs that curved gently onto the top floor from the end of the living room. It reminded Gowda of the movie sets used to portray the rich in the Bollywood movies of the eighties.
A few minutes later, Pujary appeared at the head of the staircase with a woman cradled in his arms. He descended the stairs carefully and sat her down in one of the sofas. Then he smiled at her as if there was no one else in the room.
‘This is my wife, Gita,’ he said.
Gowda and Santosh rose to their feet. She smiled at them. A quiet little smile that only emphasized the grey pallor of her skin and the black circles beneath her eyes. Once she must have been an exquisite-looking woman.
‘Yes, Inspector, you were saying …’ Pujary he gestured for them to sit.
Gowda took a deep breath. ‘The CCTV at the gated community showed us that you had visited the lawyer just before he was murdered.’
‘Yes,’ Pujary said and clasped his hands. ‘Dreadful business that.’
He paused for a moment. ‘My wife and I had gone to MLA Papanna’s shelter for girls at about seven. We are family friends. My wife wanted to give the girls a new set of clothes each. We don’t have children of our own. So my wife sees all destitute children as our children to cherish. Right, Gita?’ He smiled at her. ‘And then, since we were in the neighbourhood, we went to Sanjay’s house. He is a family friend too. We didn’t stay long. The next morning, it was my wife who saw the news on TV9.’
The wife sat with her head bent. Gowda noticed that she hadn’t spoken a word.
‘Was there anything unusual that you noticed, ma’am?’ Gowda turned towards her.
‘No,’ she said softly. Her gaze darted towards Pujary. ‘I’d like my chair,’ she said.
Pujary rose and walked to an anteroom. He pushed out a wheelchair and moved his wife into it. She pressed a switch and steered it towards an inner room.
‘Were you business associates?’ Santosh asked.
Pujary frowned. ‘Not really. I told you, we were family friends, but there was a piece of land he was interested in that I was trying to negotiate for him.’
Santosh went to the plate glass window. ‘This is a very beautiful garden,’ he said.
‘Gita’s garden. That’s what I call it,’ Pujary said. Gowda saw the softening in the man’s gaze. ‘She does everything. From choosing the plants to potting to watering and pruning.’
Gowda saw the woman’s pinched face in his mind. He wondered what it was like to be trapped in a wheelchair.
The whirring sound of the battery-operated chair made him turn. She came in with a tray on her lap on which were three coffee mugs and a plate of biscuits. She placed them on the table and went back to fetch the coffee jug.
None of them spoke as she poured the coffee into the mugs. ‘Please have some coffee,’ she said.
Gowda and Santosh accepted the mugs and sipped slowly.
‘Have you found any leads, Inspector?’ Pujary’s voice cut through the silence.
‘Yes, we are working on a few leads, but …’ Gowda said. He set the mug down abruptly and rose. ‘Thank you, sir and madam,’ he added, turning to the woman who sat quietly. Her fingers, Gowda saw, were restless as they clasped and unclasped each other.
Pujary followed Gowda’s gaze. ‘Gita,’ he said. Her fingers stilled.
‘The coffee was delicious,’ Gowda said into the uneasy pause. She smiled at him.
As they left, Gowda turned for one last glance at the couple. There was a combination of relief and fear on her face, and intense concentration on his.
‘Yes, Inspector,’ Pujary said.
‘We will need to take a statement. We’ll have someone come by,’ Gowda said.
‘We can come to the station,’ Pujary said, walking towards them.
‘I wouldn’t want to trouble madam,’ Gowda said.
‘No trouble at all, Inspector. She is very mobile thanks to the wheelchair. Just tell us when and we’ll come by.’
Gowda nodded. The woman in the wheelchair had a strange expression.
‘Nice couple,’ Santosh said as they went to the jeep.
‘So, what did he say?’ Gajendra asked.
Santosh explained.
Gajendra frowned. ‘Either he is lying or the watchman is. According to him, they left that night at eight and were back by ten.’
‘Why would they lie?’ Santosh asked.
Gowda looked ahead. A snarl of thoughts – observations, evidence, findings, conjectures and a hunch that told him the jigsaw would fall into place if he found that one last piece.
‘Drop me off at the children’s home,’ he said.
12.00 p.m.
At the Sunshine Home, all was grey and bleak. Tina and Abdul had arrived, and so had Shenoy. But Tina wasn’t talking. When Abdul opened his mouth, Tina clamped her palm over his lips. ‘Shut up, shut up,’ she snarled.
Gowda saw the little girl huddled in her chair. There was a manic gleam in her eyes and her nostrils were pinched with rage. She was clutching the edges of the chair with her hands, and rocking steadily, back and forth.
Michael sighed.
‘What’s wrong?’ Shenoy asked.
He shrugged. Gowda watched the simmering rage in the child for a while. ‘She’s probably been bullied at the shelter,’ he said. ‘And she sees us as being responsible for it. We sent her to the shelter.’
Ratna looked at him in surprise. ‘How did you know?’
‘I know how these places function. She is a newcomer. She needs to be taught a lesson. And she’s getting a lot of attention. What did they do?’ Gowda said, leaving the room and gesturing for the others also to do the same.
‘They tried to cut her hair off,’ Ratna said. ‘So she smashed her fist into the girl’s face. The rest of them fell on her and beat her up. Some of them are just hooligans in skirts.’ Ratna’s face bespoke her confusion and disgust.
Gowda took a deep breath. ‘None of us know what these children went through, so let’s not judge them …’
Shenoy cleared his throat. ‘Should I come back another time?’
‘No,’ Gowda said. ‘Where’s Urmila?’
Michael gestured to a room. ‘She’s helping with some correspondence,’ he said.
‘Shenoy,’ Gowda said, ‘will you go back to the room and start sketching? Try and turn it into a class like the kind you conduct at the club. Meanwhile, let me see what we can do to bring Tina back to us.’
‘Hi,’ said Gowda, walking into the room where Urmila sat working on a desktop.
She looked up and smiled. ‘Borei,’ she said. It was a greeting and an endearment.
He went to her and caressed her cheek with a finger. How could one word say so much? ‘Urmila,’ Gowda said, ‘I have a favour to ask of you.’
Her eyes widened.
‘Can we bring your Mr Right here for a bit?’
‘Who?’
‘That ridiculous dog of yours. Tina … she’s clamped up again, and I need her to describe to Shenoy the man she called thekedar.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, rising.
‘I’ll go with you,’ he said.
She smiled at him. What was it about Borei, she wondered. A new gentleness had crept into him.
Mr Right insisted on sitting on Gowda’s lap. Urmila looked at the two of them in amusement. ‘He adores you,’ she said, giggling, as she drove up the ramp of the basement.
Gowda snorted, but his finger found the scratching spot near Mr Right’s left ear.
The Audi inched along. Gowda glanced at his watch. ‘Step on it, U,’ he said softly.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘What if I get pulled up?’
‘I’ll handle it, I don’t know why, but I think this portrait is the key to so many things.’
Urmila smiled, pressed down on the accelerator and changed gears. They jumped red lights, went down the wrong way on a one-way street, and narrowly escaped being mangled by a giant truck.
Gowda exhaled when they pulled up outside Sunshine Home. ‘Remind me to never say step on it,’ he said, trying to shift the frozen grin on his face.
Mr Right walked ahead and, as if he had been briefed, danced at Tina’s knees. Her face lit up. She bent to pick him up and he hurled himself into her arms, craning his neck to lick her face. Tina turned her face this way and that. Her hairband came undone and Gowda heard Urmila gasp at the sight of her butchered hair.
Gowda’s phone rang. It was Gajendra. ‘Sir,’ Gajendra said, the agitation in his voice buzzing in Gowda’s ear.
‘Yes, what happened?’ The last time he had heard Gajendra so agitated was when they were rushing Santosh to the hospital.
‘You have to come back, sir. A man has confessed.’
4.00 p.m.
When Gowda walked into the station, it was abuzz with excitement. OB vans and press vehicles were drawing up and there was a palpable air of expectation.
‘The murderer has come forward and surrendered,’ Gajendra said.
‘And he chose to do it here?’ Gowda asked curiously.
Gajendra shook his head. ‘He went to the MLA’s house saying he needed to confess. As the MLA and the ACP are buddies, he called the ACP, who came as quickly as he could. It’s exactly what he must have been praying for. Ah, here’s the hero,’ Gajendra mumbled.
The ACP strode out from the direction of the cells. An impromptu press conference was going to be held shortly. His uniform was crisp and his chin newly shaved. The moustache gleamed and his cologne could be smelt a mile away.
The ACP saw Gowda and frowned. ‘I say, Gowda, you heard the news, didn’t you?’
Gowda nodded. ‘Sir, but are you sure?’
Vidyaprasad shook his head in dismay. ‘What’s wrong with you? A man has come forward and his story corroborates with the findings, all of which have been kept confidential. So what’s your problem, Gowda? When you hear hooves, you don’t have to think zebras.’