N
ot very far from the commissioner’s residence, in one of Golf Links’ most ostentatious bungalows, a young man sat quietly at the breakfast table after a sleepless night. His parents, Brigadier Devinder Mahajan and his wife Radha, were early risers and were already immersed in files and paperwork, oblivious to his presence.
Since their arrival from the US, the couple had started to leave the house early in the morning and return late. Amit had learnt from the newspapers that his parents spent the long days being grilled by the CBI at its Lodhi Road offices.
His father refused to speak to him about it. His mother tearfully confided that things would soon be set right and that Daddy was a victim of political conspiracy. Amit had no opinion in the matter, nor did he feel strongly about it. That his father was crooked he was certain about, but it caused him no outrage. His friends didn’t seem to mind and his only worry had been what Monika might think. His fears had been assuaged by her gentle, measured response.
She had been away for more than a month. Her father had suffered a heart attack and she had been forced to stay back in Chandigarh to look after the family. They had spoken on the phone almost every night she was gone.
‘What your father might have done doesn’t affect how I feel for you, Amit. Not in any way,’ Monika had told him softly.
He was certain that they had become much closer after his confession. Their conversations had improved when her fiancé had to go on an extended business tour to the US. She brightened considerably and they spent long hours chatting late into the night. Sometimes Amit felt he could barely control the physical urge to hold her, kiss her, touch her skin.
Monika had arrived in Delhi last night and he was finally going to see her – she was coming over that afternoon. Till then, it would be hard to get through the day. He asked, and his parents confirmed again, that they would not be back before six.
A
rchana smiled and shuddered as a slow, pleasurable tremor spread through her body. She gripped the steering wheel tightly. The telephonic exchanges had become increasingly arousing, and Imran had found himself at the receiving end of her lust on several nights.
Archana turned her thoughts to the plans for the afternoon. She would meet the boy at his residence after 2 p.m.. That gave her four hours before the parents returned. The last hour would be the most difficult, but she had devised an audacious plan.
At 2.15 p.m., Archana rang the bell at the gates of the Mahajan residence. There were two security guards who, apparently forewarned of her arrival, let her in without question. She did not expect to meet anyone in the house besides Amit. The boy had said he would send away the domestic help, and Babloo had double-checked that there was no sudden cancellation of the parents’ CBI session.
Archana parked her car and waved at Amit, who rushed towards her from the house.
J
ust after 4 p.m., Amit started to feel tense. He looked at the sleeping woman by his side. How long could he wait before waking her? Oh, he didn’t want her to ever leave, but his parents would be home at 6 p.m. and the house staff was due back soon.
Maybe another ten minutes, Amit thought as he closed his eyes. He wanted to re-enact in his head all that had happened in the past hour, savour it, understand its delights. He was in love with this woman, in love with her beautiful body and what it could do to him. She had come to him like a storm, a dark whirlpool of energy and emotion and he had been swept away by her.
Amit woke up with a start. It was 4.30 p.m. Outside, the sky was already preparing for night, and he could see the golden rays in which their bodies had basked in the afternoon, retreating through the windowpanes. He looked at her face again and smiled, gently nudging her.
Monika awoke immediately and sat up, pulling the sheet to her chest. ‘What time is it? Am I late?’
‘No, no,’ he said hastily, not wanting to hurry or offend her. ‘Just that my parents will be back soon.’
‘Yes, okay. I should get ready to go,’ Monika said, leaning forward for a brief hug. ‘Will you make me a coffee, darling?’
Amit didn’t remember anyone calling him darling before. How sweet it sounded. There was so much he wanted to tell her. He knew that he wanted to be with her for ever, protect her, rescue her from that boor of a fiancé, but now was not the time. Now, she needed to leave.
She picked up her clothes from the floor and went into the bathroom.
Monika liked fresh coffee, Amit knew, and he was just about to start the grinder when he heard a scream and a terrible crash. He froze for a moment and then rushed back to his room.
Monika was face down on the bathroom floor. There was a small, steady trickle of blood on the white marble by her head. The mirror was cracked and there was glass everywhere.
Amit’s knees gave away and he had to support himself against the wall. He took a few deep breaths. She must have slipped and crashed into the mirror.
He crouched down and gently turned her over. She seemed to be coming around and was moaning softly. He splashed some water on her face. Then, taking a towel, he wiped her forehead. There was a lot of blood and glass. Amit’s stomach churned.
B
rigadier Mahajan was in a foul mood. On the short drive from Lodhi Road to his house, he berated his wife for her indiscretions. ‘That officer is not your friend. He doesn’t think you are sexy. What were you thinking flirting with him?’
The usually domineering Radha Mahajan kept quiet. She knew when not to push her husband. It was true that she had taken a bit of comfort in the smiling face of the young man. His boss had been so harsh and cruel. Her husband, she realized, was right. Her brother-in-law should not have been mentioned.
‘Did anyone come?’ Brig. Mahajan asked the security guard at the gates.
‘Yes, sir. One madam. She is inside.’
The Brigadier looked at his wife, who shrugged; she was not expecting anyone.
The woman was lying on the sofa, her forehead bandaged, a dark patch of blood congealing on her cheekbones.
Seeing his parents, Amit nervously stood up and spoke in a rush: ‘Daddy, she’s my friend Karan’s cousin. She had come to drop off something Karan sent me from Mumbai. She fell down in the bathroom.’
The woman, Brigadier Mahajan noticed, had opened her eyes and was looking at him. He decided to take charge. ‘Please don’t get up,’ he said. ‘Amit, have you called the doctor?’
‘Please don’t bother, sir. I’ve called my driver and he’ll be here soon. I feel fine. It’s just a cut, really,’ the woman said gently.
‘Are you sure?’ the Brigadier asked, concern lining his face.
She nodded.
The painkillers she’d popped before crashing her head against the mirror were taking effect and except for a dull throbbing ache, Archana felt fine. She quickly assessed Brig. Mahajan: overbearingly male, protective and leery. It was amazing how similar rich middle-aged Indian men were. All of them seemed to originate from one single gene pool of sleaziness. In many years of a remarkably singular profession, she had never met one who refused to return her gaze. This was going to be simple. She was already bored.
Half an hour later, Archana was trying to keep her eyes averted from Amit to stop herself from laughing. She could feel his astonishment as she flirted with his father. There had been times in the past when she wondered at this unnecessary and unprofessional cruel streak in her. It surfaced now as the Monika that Amit knew and adored climbed into a different skin.
It was 7 p.m. and the four of them were having tea when the intercom rang. Her driver had arrived and she requested that he be called in to escort her to the car.
She then reached into her handbag and took out a piece of paper that she smoothed onto the table and placed in front of Brig. Mahajan. He looked at her enquiringly, and she smiled. ‘Read it.’
Archana focused a steady, unblinking gaze on the Brigadier as he put on his glasses and read the note, the initial astonishment quickly turning into ter
ror. Amit saw her leaning close to his father. ‘Tell them to be calm,’ she said.
Brig. Mahajan tried to speak but no words came out.
Amit finally asked, ‘Monika, what’s going on?’
She turned to look at him and his mother. ‘I have a gun pointing at your father’s balls, Amit, and if you so much as make a sound, I’m going to plug a little bullet into him. Now listen very carefully.’
By the time the man supposed to be Monika Mathur’s driver came into the large living room, Amit was crying in mute terror. Radha stared helplessly at her husband who, after the initial moment of shock, was trying to maintain a brave face. The driver, they saw, had a huge mop of hair and was wearing absurdly large glasses on his prominent nose. He approached them in rapid strides.
‘All okay?’ he asked Archana.
She nodded.
The family looked on, astonished, as the man took off his wig, glasses and false nose and handed them to Brig. Mahajan. ‘Put them on. Quickly.’
Archana got up and stood behind the Brigadier. ‘My friend here will now tie up your wife and son,’ she said, letting him feel the pistol against his neck. ‘Then we’ll go out and get into my car. You’ll drive it to the front gate for my friend. And we’ll leave without any fuss.’
Archana turned towards Radha, whose hands were being tied to the chair. ‘Your servants will be here soon and will untie you. You can then call the police and the fire brigade and whoever else you want. Just remember this: Your husband is with us and this pretty face could be his worst nightmare.’
Ten minutes later, the security guards at the gate let out the steel-grey Maruti Zen. Both of them laughed again at the driver’s hairstyle and strange face. The sexy madam, they saw, was in the backseat, leaning forward and chatting with him as they drove out. They wondered for a moment at the third person in the car. ‘Must have come with sahab and madam earlier,’ one of them said disinterestedly.
Shortly after, the gardener and the cook were knocking on the gate, dishevelled and frightened. They narrated a harrowing story of having been detained in the back of a van for two hours.
‘Bastards – making excuses because they are late,’ one of the guards said, as the duo proceeded towards the house. ‘Spicy story though, better than his bloody cooking.’
They went back to the tiny outpost by the gate and settled into their chairs. Soon after, the intercom started ringing. It was a call from the main house.
H
earing of the invitation to the police commissioner’s annual dinner, Samir had graciously offered Abhishek the night off. The evening would receive a lot of press attention, but News Today could send someone else to join the crowd of journalists and cameramen who would gather outside the house, catching shots of the dignitaries and reporting on proceedings just out of their reach.
Abhishek had refused. He would go to the dinner, but would come out and give hourly updates from the OB van. ‘I’ll have more insider details.’
He was on his way to the party in a News Today – sponsored suit, when his phone rang. It was from a private number.
‘Abhishek Dutta?’ the voice asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Who is this?’
‘This is Babloo Shankar.’
There was a touch of mirth in the voice, as if the speaker knew the incredulous reaction this might provoke. Yet it did not seem that the caller was joking.
‘What?’
‘You heard me, Abhishek-ji. Why are you surprised? You said I was in town, did you not?’
Abhishek’s journalistic instincts snapped into motion. ‘Yes sir, I did. Can we meet?’
‘We’ll meet soon, tonight in fact. For now, I have kidnapped that corrupt wheeler-dealer son of a bitch, Brigadier Devinder Mahajan. You can go on air with this information. Go to 107, Golf Links. You’ll know I am speaking the truth. I’ll call in an hour.’ The line went dead.
Samir was at the input desk and could barely hear amid the noise of the several television sets and chattering journalists. ‘One second, Abhishek,’ he said to the nearly incoherent boy at the end of the line. He put his hand across the mouthpiece and screamed, ‘Shut the fuck up everyone.’ The newsroom immediately fell silent. ‘Yes, go on, Abhishek.’
Rajiv grimaced and nudged his producer, who rolled her eyes. ‘The golden boy again.’ Rajiv watched Samir as he strode to a corner, listening intently, and then suddenly rushed to his cabin. Through the glass partition, they could see him bending over his table and noting something. Moments later he emerged and the look on his face told Rajiv that they were in for a long night ahead, and Abhishek would be its protagonist.
‘Dilip,’ Samir yelled to the input editor, ‘who is in charge of output tonight? Bring him to production control right now. Hurry.’
Samir had already redirected the OB van from the police commissioner’s party to the Golf Links address Babloo had given. As he put on a tie and prepared to go on air, he briefly explained to the editors what Abhishek had told him. ‘This might be the biggest thing we have done,’ Samir said, then more to himself than the other two, ‘Fuck me, I hope to God it’s true.’
A
bhishek found 107, Golf Links without any difficulty, and the four police cabs parked outside immediately confirmed what he’d been told. He gripped the cameraman, Ankur Bhasin, in excitement.
‘Boss, the OB van is behind us. Look,’ Ankur told him.
‘Stop the car.’ Abhishek put his hand on the driver’s shoulder. ‘Ankur, keep the OB van at a distance for now. I’ll go to the house, figure this out and be back. Get ready to upload.’
He almost ran the hundred yards to the gate where Inspector Tiwary from the Crime Branch was standing with four other policemen. As Abhishek walked up, he looked around, surprised.
‘Boss, is Uday sir here?’
The inspector shook his head, looking unsure. ‘No, sahab is on his way.’
‘What time was the incident?’ Abhishek asked. Seeing the policeman hesitate, he prodded, ‘Arre, what time did the kidnapping take place? Has it been an hour?’
‘Around six thirty, they are saying. I haven’t gone in. Our assistant commissioner is inside.’
‘Yes, Mayank told me.’ Abhishek was guessing that his friend would be working on the case if the Crime Branch was involved.
‘Oh.’ The inspector looked relieved. ‘Sir told you?’
‘Yes. Okay, I will be back in a minute.’ Abhishek walked back rapidly towards the OB van.
At the prime-time hour of 8 p.m., just as the home minister was shaking hands with the police commissioner at his residence, News Today broke the story: Brigadier Devinder Mahajan, an accused in the Commonwealth Games corruption scandal, had been kidnapped. The perpetrator was the infamous Babloo Shankar, on the run from the police for the last fifteen years. His recent and secret return to India had been revealed by this very television channel.
The journalists were the first to flee the party. Golf Links was close by and even senior editors were instructed to get to the spot as fast as humanly possible. Commissioner Pratap, his party decimated, retreated to the back of his residence with the home minister. The rest, Delhi’s elite and those waiting on them, gathered around a large-screen television in the living room. The prime minister and the lieutenant governor, minutes from the commissioner’s residence, turned their convoys around.
As news channel after screaming news channel began to pick up the story, crowds formed outside television showrooms. Waiters, forgetting their hungry customers, clustered around portable TV screens in smoky kitchens. Returning commuters received calls from hyper wives. Auto-rickshaw drivers heard the story from their passengers and shared it at the traffic lights. Wire agencies, Twitter and Facebook joined in: The ransacker of public coffers had been kidnapped by a public enemy.
19
‘C
ome to Chhatarpur temple. Bring your cameraman,’ Babloo instructed Abhishek in the midst of the prime-time pandemonium they had caused.
The two young men drove south, excited but saying little to one another.
At the temple gates, a man approached their car and knocked on the passenger door. ‘Abhishek Dutta?’
The reporter nodded, and the man got into the front seat. He did not speak another word, except to direct the driver along an unlit lane which snaked its way off the main road for several kilometres.
They pulled up by a tall wooden gate where another man was waiting with what looked like a large rifle. There were few lights and it took Abhishek a while to get used to the darkness. As they shook hands, the man muttered an introduction. ‘Imran,’ he said, and led them across a neatly kept front lawn to a two-storey wooden house.
They trooped up some stairs, Imran lending a hand with the camera equipment, to a large living room in which sat two older men: one in a wheelchair, and the other tied securely to his seat.
Babloo Shankar greeted the young reporter with a firm handshake and asked him to pull up a chair. ‘Thank you for coming, Abhishek-ji. I have heard about you. Tonight will be busy, but I hope we will get to talk later. Perhaps you’ll come and see me in jail.’ He smiled and then asked Ankur to switch on the camera and focus it on the Brigadier.
Once the equipment was positioned, Babloo asked both journalists to leave the room. Imran accompanied them downstairs where they stood silently in a slightly damp kitchen, drinking warm Coca Cola until Babloo summoned them back.
‘Brigadier Mahajan has told us a story better than the Mahabharata. The high and the mighty will lose a few hours of sleep tonight.’ Babloo grinned at Abhishek.
The reporter tried to make eye contact with the retired army man, but he stared at the floor miserably.
Babloo instructed Ankur to edit a tape on their OB van’s editing machine.
How did he know so much? Abhishek wondered.
‘Just keep his words and cut the rest. Show it to me when you are done,’ Babloo said.
Abhishek nodded to his colleague to go ahead.
After Ankur and Imran left for the van, Babloo explained to Abhishek how he wanted the evening to play out. During their conversation, Brig. Mahajan spoke only once. ‘Sir, why me? There were others too.’
The Price You Pay Page 24