by Tarquin Hall
Briefcase in hand, Gupta took the elevator up to his office on the executive floor.
He stayed inside the building all day.
For lunch, he ate a dosa at his desk.
At precisely 8:15 in the evening, he left work, having already changed into his golf kit-green mock turtleneck, long Greg Norman plaid trousers and a Tiger Woods cap.
Gupta reached the Golden Greens Golf Course at 8:30 and teed off with a senior futures manager, Pramod Patel.
He scored an eagle on the fifth, a birdie on the eighth and finished seven under par.
Back in the clubhouse, he had a Diet Coke at the bar and, shortly after ten o'clock, returned home.
There he changed out of his golf clothes, took another shower and spent an hour talking on the phone, first with his parents and then his fiancee.
He fell asleep watching the second day of the Vallarta Golf Cup in Mexico.
"I bet all he dreams are about little white balls," Flush muttered to himself as he sat in his white van, which was parked near Celestial Tower, listening to his mark snoring.
A week of surveillance had thrown up nothing incriminating. Gupta's bank and phone records were clean. He had not visited any porn sites. He was not in touch with illegal bookies. He had not made any big unaccounted-for cash withdrawals.
When he wasn't working, playing golf or sitting on his automatic toilet, Gupta went to the Great Place Mall, where he liked to watch sappy Bollywood love stories in the super luxury Gold Class Lounge cinema and buy organic handmade lavender soap at Lush.
Flush was growing increasingly frustrated with his failure to dish up the dirt. Seeing middle-class Indians living such ostentatious lives while the vast majority of the population survived on next to nothing riled him. He wanted badly to put a dent in Mahinder Gupta's perfect life.
The only glimmer of hope was the unmarked bottle of yellow liquid Mrs. Duggal had discovered in the medicine cabinet.
But what could it be? Was he HIV positive, perhaps?
One thing was for sure: he was not taking recreational drugs. Gupta had not had contact with any of the hundreds of dealers now operating in Delhi.
"He's not even had pizza delivered, Boss," Flush had reported to Puri at the end of another fruitless day.
Twenty-Four
After returning from Jharkhand and leaving Mary and her father with Rumpi, Puri drove to his office.
Sitting behind his desk and feeling especially pleased with himself, he sent Door Stop, the office boy, to fetch him a couple of mutton kathi rolls with extra chutney. These he devoured in a matter of minutes, ever vigilant about getting incriminating grease spots on his safari suit, and then got back to work.
His first call was to Tubelight, whom he informed about his success in Jharkhand-"A master stroke" was how he described his triumph. He also shared his plan, which did not involve breaking the good news to the Kasliwals just yet.
"I've something else in mind," he said. "What's Bobby been up to?"
"Doing timepass," said Tubelight. "He's hardly come out of his room. Facecream says he's depressed. Had a big argument with his mother."
"What about?"
"She couldn't tell, but there was a good deal of shouting. That apart, he's gone to the Central Jail to visit his Papa every day."
Next, Puri talked to Brigadier Kapoor to assure him that that the investigation was "very much ongoing." He promptly received a harangue on how he wasn't doing enough and should try harder.
Finally, Puri turned his attention to the small matter of the attempt on his life and put in a few more calls to some of the informers and contacts to find out if they'd heard anything useful.
One, a senior officer at the CBI whom the detective had helped on a couple of cases in the past, ruled out Puri's top suspect, Swami Nag. There had been a confirmed sighting of the fraudster at a Dubai racetrack on the very day of the shooting, so he had not been in Delhi as previously thought.
"Unless of course His Holiness can bilocate and be in two places at once," joked the officer.
No one else had any leads.
Exhausted from the overnight train journey from Ranchi, Puri tilted back in his comfortable executive chair, put his feet up on the desk and closed his eyes.
In seconds, he was fast asleep and dreaming.
He found himself standing before the legendary walls of Patliputra, the ancient capital of the Maurya Empire, with its 64 gates and 570 towers. Nearby, under an ancient peepul tree sat a sagely figure with a shaven head, ponytail and an earring in one ear. Across his forehead were drawn three parallel white lines denoting his detachment from the material world.
Puri recognized him as his guru, Chanakya, and went and knelt before him.
"Guru-ji," he said, touching his feet. "Such an honor it is. Please give me your blessings."
"Who are you?" asked Chanakya, busy writing his great treatise.
"I'm Vish Puri, founder and director of Most Private Investigators Ltd. and the best detective in India," he answered, a little hurt that the sage had never heard of him.
"How do you know you are the best?" asked Chanakya.
"Guru-ji, I am the winner of the Super Sleuth World Federation of Detectives award for 1999. Also, I was on the cover of India Today magazine. It's a distinction no other Indian detective has achieved to date."
"I see," said Chanakya with an enigmatic smile. "So why have you come to me for help? What can I, a simple man, do for you?"
"Guru-ji, someone tried to kill me and I need help in finding whoever it was," explained Puri.
Chanakya closed his eyes and gave the detective's request some thought. It seemed like an age before he opened them again and said, "Do not fear, Vish Puri. You will receive the help you need. But you must accept you don't have power over all things. All of us require a helping hand from time to time."
"Thank you, Guru-ji! Thank you! I'm most grateful to you. But please, tell me, how will I be helped?"
Before Chanakya could answer, Elizabeth Rani's voice broke in. She was calling him over the intercom. Puri woke with a start.
"Sir, I've the test back from the laboratory. Should I bring it?"
The detective looked at his watch; he'd been asleep for more than half an hour.
"Yes, by all means," he said drowsily, buzzing in his secretary.
The test Elizabeth Rani was referring to was the analysis of the mystery liquid Mrs. Duggal had retrieved from Mahinder Gupta's bathroom.
After looking over the results, and drinking a cup of chai, Puri called Flush on his mobile phone to tell him the news.
"It's testosterone," he said.
"Is that all, Boss?"
"You sound disappointed."
"It's very common for guys to take that stuff these days, Boss," Flush explained. "Everyone who goes to gyms is taking it. They all want Salman Khan muscles, so they're pumping themselves full of dope. It's readily available on the black market. Most chemists will sell it to you."
"I don't doubt Gupta wants big muscles," said Puri. "But from everything we've learned about this man and his habits, I have a feeling his motives are different."
"HIV, Boss? Maybe that's why so much of his hair is falling out."
"No, something else. Find out his doctor's name. Has he seen him lately?"
Puri had given Rumpi and the servants strict instructions to make Mary feel welcome and asked them to put away the Hindu idols for a few days (he had to keep up the pretense that he was Jonathan Abraham, after all). He'd also sent Sweetu to his cousin's house for a few days because he couldn't be trusted not to blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Mary's father only stayed at the house for a couple of hours and then headed back to the train station. His wife and younger daughter needed him at home, he explained to Rumpi.
A tearful Mary saw him off and then joined Monica and Malika in the kitchen, where she helped them prepare lunch.
When asked where she had worked before, she told them that this was
her first job.
After lunch, Monica and Malika showed Mary the laundry room and taught her how to use the top-loading washing machine, which had to be filled with buckets of water because there was rarely any in the taps after eight o'clock in the morning.
Rumpi then took her shopping at a nearby market for new clothes. Mary picked out a few bright new kurtas, salwars and chunnis, some underwear and two pairs of chappals. Puri's wife also bought the new maidservant a hairbrush and various bathroom necessities.
The next stop was a small private health clinic run by Dr. (Mrs.) Chitrangada Suri, MD, who gave Mary an examination. The doctor found that she was suffering from dehydration, malnourishment, worms and lice, and immediately wrote out prescriptions for a couple of different medicines, vitamins, minerals and oral rehydration salts.
Talking in English so Mary would not understand, Dr. Suri also told Rumpi that the girl had tried cutting her wrists within the past few months and although the blood loss had probably been significant, she was young and seemed to have bounced back.
That evening, after Malika returned home to her family, Mary and Monica made the evening meal, did the washing up, took down the laundry from the roof, ate their dinner and then went for a walk in the neighborhood.
They passed many other servants working for other households out enjoying the cool evening. Monica stopped to chat and gossip and bought them both ice creams from a vendor with money that Rumpi had given them specifically for the purpose.
At 8:30, they sat down with Madam in the sitting room to watch Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki , one of India's most popular soaps. Set in the home of a respectable industrialist family, the serial nonetheless featured shocking twists and turns with extramarital affairs, murders, conspiracies and kidnappings.
In the latest development, the main daughter-in-law had had a face-change operation and turned up as the wife of another man. But Monica said this was because the actress playing her had been fired after demanding a salary increase.
At nine o'clock, Rumpi said that Sahib was expected home and that it was time to sleep. A second mattress had been arranged on the floor in Monica's small room and lying on it was a new Bagha-Chall set. Mary's eyes lit up at the sight of the pitted wooden board and the bagful of pretty, polished stones, and she eagerly accepted Monica's challenge to a game.
Mary proved a demon player, easily beating her opponent.
"I'm village champion!" she said. "I could beat all the men if they would play me!"
The two of them then settled down for the night and Mary was soon fast asleep. But Monica lay awake for a while, wondering why her new roommate was so sad and why she wore her bangles to bed.
Around midnight, she awoke in a fright. Mary was sitting up, screaming.
Monica jumped up and turned on the light and then put her arms around her new roommate, telling her that it had only been a bad dream. Now awake, Mary fell back on her pillow and started crying.
"I lost him!" she sobbed. "I lost him!"
"Lost who?" asked Monica.
But she didn't answer and cried herself back to sleep.
Twenty-Five
Flush called Puri the next morning to give him the name of Gupta's doctor.
"How did you find it so quickly?" he asked him.
"He went to see him before reaching office," answered the operative.
"What's the doctor's name?"
"Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh."
"Six-B Hauz Khas village," said Puri.
"You know him, Boss?"
"Indeed I know him," said the detective with a chuckle.
"Well, Boss, it's definitely Dr. Ghosh who prescribed Diet Coke testosterone. Afterward he went and bought more supplies."
"Good. Well done. Now pack up and get out of there."
"The operation is finished, Boss?"
"I'll be taking over," said Puri. "If Gupta is seeing Dr. Ghosh, there is only one meaning."
Puri drove to the leafy area of Hauz Khas in south Delhi, built amid the ruins of the ancient Delhi Sultanate.
Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh practiced in the basement of the same two-story house that his father had built and in which he had grown up.
It had been more than six months since Puri had been there, but he knew the place well. He and the doctor had met during one of his first cases. The erudite Dr. Ghosh had been recommended to him as an expert on a medical matter. In the years since then, Puri had turned to him on many occasions for advice and the two had spent many a pleasant evening sitting in the Gymkhana playing chess and talking politics.
Puri opened the gate and, instead of knocking on the front door, which led to where the family lived, he made his way down the side of the building to the clinic entrance.
After letting him in, Dr. Ghosh's assistant asked Puri to wait in reception. He sat down on the cane couch and picked up a copy of the Indian edition of Hello! The cover featured a leading Bollywood actress who had cropped up during one of Puri's more sensational matrimonial investigations a few years earlier-the Case of the Absconding Accountant. She had been an unknown then and in the process of bedding half the producers, directors and leading men in Mumbai.
The spread pictured her sitting on a white couch with her parents and her pet poodles. "Putting Family First" read the headline.
With a disdainful chortle, Puri tossed the magazine back onto the table just as the door to the doctor's office opened.
"Hello, old pal, this is a surprise!" said Dr. Ghosh with open arms. "Long time no hear, eh, Chubby? How long has it been?"
"Too long, actually," answered the detective, embracing his friend.
"Well, come in. You'll take some chai?"
"And some of those chocolate biscuits you keep hidden in your drawer."
Puri stepped into the office and sat down in one of the two chairs in front of Dr. Ghosh's desk.
"Extra sugar for my dear friend," Dr. Ghosh told his assistant before closing the door behind him and sitting down in the chair next to Puri.
"My God, it's good to see you, Chubby!" he said, giving him a friendly pat on the knee. "How are you?"
"World class," answered Puri. "You?"
"All fine. But you've been neglecting me for too long."
"I know, Shubho-dada." Shubho was short for Subhrojit; dada meant older brother in Ghosh's native Bengali. "But I'm nonstop these days. The city is going mental, I tell you. There's a crime wave like you wouldn't believe. Not a day goes by without some girl getting raped or a businessman getting kidnapped. You read about the shootings in CP[3]? Can you imagine? Goondas running around knocking off businessmen in daylight hours! Someone even took a pop at me just the other day."
"I heard. Rumpi called me. Said you're working too hard and your blood pressure's up. She asked me to have a word with you, Chubby. Frankly speaking, you do look tired."
"Oh, please, the woman is keeping me half starved. How am I meant to live on daal and rice?"
"You're off the chicken frankies, I take it?" said Dr. Ghosh, looking skeptical.
"Well, not entirely," admitted Puri with a roguish grin.
"Hmm, I thought as much. And when's the last time you had a holiday?"
"You're doing an examination, is it, Doctor?"
"Tell me, Chubby. When was the last time you had even one day off?"
"I've no time for meter down, Shubho-dada," he said. "People look to me for help. Who else they can turn to? The cops? When the director general, Central Reserve Force, is getting his journalist lover stabbed and throttled to death? Do you know in NOIDA, where gangsters are nightly holding up commuters with country-made weapons, the constabulary's phones are cut off through nonpayment of bills? They're not even having petrol for their vehicles!"
"I know how bad it is, Chubby. Believe me. Only yesterday, Rajesh Uncle's house was broken into and they gagged and bound Sarita Auntie."
"By God," intoned Puri.
"Point is, it's not your responsibility. You're no caped crusader. This isn't Gotham City. It's Delhi
. You can't clean it up single-handed."
"Someone's got to bloody well do something," said Puri, raising his voice. "Papa worked every day of his life to build a better India. I owe it to him to-"
"Your papa was a good man, we all know that," interrupted Dr. Ghosh. "No one with a shred of decency could ever doubt it. Never mind the whispers. Let them be damned! But it's not your responsibility to make amends for what happened. You've got to think of your own health and well-being. Let's face it, you're not getting any younger. Or slimmer! Think of Rumpi. She needs you, too."
The doctor's assistant brought in their tea on a tray and left it on the desk. Puri took his cup while Dr. Ghosh went behind his desk, opened the drawer and took out an already open packet of milk chocolate McVities digestives imported from the UK.
"I shouldn't give you these, but you'll only accuse me of being tight," he said, handing Puri the packet. "There's only a few left anyway."
"I'm sure you're having more stashed away there somewhere," chided the detective.
"Could be," said Dr. Ghosh with a wink.
They both bit into their biscuits and sipped their tea. By now the doctor was sitting behind his desk. On the wall hung his medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and his certificate from Harvard.
"So, Chubby, I take it this is one of your professional visits. What is it this time? You need to consult me on some poison? Or you've got another crushed skull to show me?"
"Actually it's about one of your patients," said Puri.
"Oh?"
"Don't worry, Shubho-dada, I know all about your doctor confidentiality and all. No one's asking you to betray any secrets. Without naming names, I want to tell you what I know about a certain individual. If my theory is wrong, just say the word."
"Sounds fair enough, Chubby," said Dr. Ghosh.
"Your patient is male, thirty-one, a senior BPO-wallah. He's living in NOIDA in quite a fancy apartment. Has his own gym and talking toilet and all. Currently he is engaged and due to be married shortly. Quite the golfing fanatic, he is. He is worryingly obsessed with golf, in fact."