by Vish Dhamija
Another phlegmy morning in the life of a homicide detective, Rita smiled, knowing her opposite number in the uniformed wing got the same pay and, possibly allowances, but was hardly ever woken up at this hour. Who would wake up a DCP at this unearthly hour if a bicycle was stolen in Mumbai? Then again, what would be the excitement or satisfaction in catching a bicycle thief and, thereby, applying only a fraction of the brain? To be fair to providence, she'd recently been asked to head a private detective agency, offering gold, in New Delhi, but it wasn't something her conscience — which hardly ever stopped her from other minor vices — would have ever permitted. A private-eye gathering evidence on adulterous spouses to assist divorce payouts? A bounty hunter? Not in this life. Not for any amount of money. No way. Not her. Not Rita Ferreira, she told herself. She'd be disgruntled in a day. There was little point in playing a game if the thought of winning it wasn't exhilarating. As for the money, her parents had made plenty and bequeathed it to their only child. She had leased one of the large inherited properties to a hotel chain in Goa, sold off a couple and kept the beach-front family home locked in anticipation of vacation.
Her wandering thoughts returned to Karan. They had been together for two years, cohabiting for almost a year before he got an offer from one of the Big Four in NY. He had insisted Rita quit her job or take a sabbatical and join him, but she was equally insistent on staying back.
“You can't leave India, that's brain drain,” she had argued.
“It's better than brain in the drain, Rita.”
Their two-year relationship culminated in the next three months; the time it took for his visa to be stamped. Nothing acrimonious, it ended without any emotional outbursts.
Saturday. There were no signs of the day coming to life and the sun, it seemed, wouldn’t even make an attempt to be visible for the next four to five hours, perhaps not till noon. This was Mumbai monsoon, not some random showers. The rain had only taken a break; it didn't seem to suggest it was finishing off any time soon.
It was surprising to see, at this hour — four in the morning — a few hardcore club patrons returning from their wanton endeavours in Juhu or Bandra, but the red flashing lights on the hoods of police vehicles, visible in the distance through the windscreen of the patrol jeep, were there to pull down curtains on the just-finished noir; their sirens had been silenced to let the neighbours enjoy a few more hours of sleep, which no one on duty would have minded either. Rita got down from the car the moment it stopped to a welcome of, at least, half-a-dozen salutes by uniformed officers who were always the first to arrive at the scene of crime. Rita responded with a series of nods, her ponytail moving like it was really attached at the back of a working horse. She may not have been beautiful but was incredibly feminine, nevertheless. A woman in what had traditionally, worldwide, been a man's role in this male chauvinist society where men still expected women to give up their day jobs and accompany them to far-off places. Come to New York? She was well aware of the stares she received, comments caught in the men's throats, but which never found a voice. Men would always be men, education could sophisticate them, but the natural instincts always crawled back. Her juniors, however, acknowledged that Rita was a sharp, equable officer with a voice that never betrayed her emotions; her coffee-brown eyes were known to be as quick to capture as a high- speed camera shutter. With a wide-angled lens.
Wearing a camel-coloured trench coat she had wrapped around to fight the light rheumy chill, she stood there for a few minutes taking in the details.
Versova. Mangal Nagar. There had been wide spaces left between the concrete apartment blocks by the builder when the complex had been built, and only a handful of people owned cars, bought with their savings. But since the banks had mindlessly started disbursing loans for vehicles in the mid-Nineties, like a drug peddler distributing free samples, the haphazardly parked overabundance of cars everywhere left only a narrow part in between to walk through. The apartments, only a few shipshape, others derelict — depending on the current owner’s prosperity — en bloc stood in the dark like blind spectators watching a mime artist. Rita's mind returned to the murder she had been pulled out of bed to investigate this morning. Shaking her head pejoratively, she walked up to the second block of apartments and took the stairs up to the third floor. 30X.
'Anyone from the crime branch?' Rita asked an inspector in uniform who met her at the door.
The house, with police and medics, conveyed that death had been in the vicinity earlier. The immutable police procedures had started. Women and men in paper-suits were collecting everything that they could, from the body and the house, to take it to the lab. There was some lingering smell of cordite in the house, but not enough to sweep over the foul odour of death. Nothing could ever annihilate the strange smell of death; it wasn't rancid, and it wasn't something you smelt, it was the quietness in the air that you felt.
There was another faint scent in the air, Rita discerned. Unmistakably floral, unmistakably feminine.
'Inspector Vikram arrived twenty minutes ago.'
'Good.' She took the white gloves offered by the uniformed officer.
Vikram must have heard his boss. He turned around to acknowledge her presence. 'Good morning ma'am.'
Senior Inspector Vikram Patil, in his mid-thirties, was Rita's next in command.
Coming from the state cadre of police, he had put in a greater number of years in the force than her. If all went well — and he looked promising — he would soon be Assistant Superintendent. He was a good seven inches taller than Rita, and having lost a whopping thirty kilos from his globe-shaped torso, he was fit as the proverbial fiddle. A medium-oak coloured man, who definitely had his eyes set to take over when Rita got transferred, he believed his active grey cells were capable enough to lead crime investigations. Earlier, his weight had been a problem, but he was now agile too.
'Good morning. Were you here before anything was touched or removed?’ ‘Yes, ma'am’
‘Fill me on it.' Rita did a quick ocular inspection of the place. A compact 600 square feet, two-bedroom apartment. Neat and clean. Basic furniture. Unassuming lifestyle.
'Au naturel, male stiff. Approximate age forty-five to fifty. Dead for at least six hours. Life clipped by a shot between the eyes. Close range. The skin is singed but there are several knife wounds in the groin, like a butcher’s been in. No signs of knife or gun. No burglary, no plunder, no combing. The killer, decidedly, had no larcenous intentions.'
'Knife wounds?' Rita had a closer look. The man’s genitalia had been razed; his flaccid member was dangling, attached to the body with a fine thread of skin. 'Anything else?’
‘There is that crystal tumbler by his bedside. Only one…he was possibly drinking alone—’
‘Or the perpetrator was smart enough to remove the other one.' She bent down to smell the empty tumbler. Alcohol. Scotch?
Vikram smiled in acquiescence.
‘Any idea about the time of death?'
'Given the light curing of the body, between four to six hours.’
Rita nodded. Not even the greatest pathologist in the world could nail the precise time of death: not in situ, not on the dissection table. The Crime Scene photographer had done his shooting and was packing up. The forensic team was scouting every square inch of the room, and other parts of the house for any prints, hairs, fluids, anything.
Adit Lele lay peacefully now; his dark slate grey eyes, from which all life had escaped a while ago, were open. To say he was dead was like saying the sky was blue. The blank look suggested that his veins had been dry for a few hours at least. A faint smile remaining on his lifeless mouth indicated he had been happy when death came. Or happy seconds before it came calling, which didn't require waking up the grey cells to detect. A guy in his mid-forties — maybe even older as Vikram had mentioned — naked in bed with, presumably, a female had happiness written all over his face. Was he expecting a shag and death came calling instead? Why else would he be naked? Then, maybe, some
parley between man and woman that did not conclude well. Tryst gone wrong? Such things happened. More than one was disposed to, or would have liked to believe. Unlikely, unusual demand declined. Accusation. Fracas. Threats. And it ended in one dead. Someone carried a gun. You were dead if you argued with a gun; you died if you didn't argue with a gun. Anything was possible.
Possibilities might be a start, a rung on the investigation ladder, but not a landing simply because not many things are impossible. The girl or the man — too early and awfully sparse information to make that call — with no better morality than a dog or this horny middle-aged man himself, had shot Lele point blank. The bullet was, apparently, fired at such close range it needn't have required a qualified pathologist to confirm the trajectory. Entry from the forehead, but they hadn't yet turned him around to see if the bullet had exited or it was still lodged somewhere in the brain. Lele’s head lay in a pool of congealed blood, the corpuscles having been dead for quite a while; the pillow newly dyed with red, dark metallic red. The bed resembled a miniature makeshift abattoir. Rita could imagine the back of the man's head would have been blown off with the impact of the slug. Surprisingly, though, the face hadn't taken much of a wallop.
I'd rather die in bed from a stroke, prayed Rita. Then again, if people could decide when and how they died, everyone would want to live forever. That, therefore, wasn't a perquisite of humans. Rita could see rigor mortis had started. Four to five hours minimum, she estimated, which indicated that death might have happened between 10 p.m. and midnight.
'Your view, ma'am?' Vikram's words brought Rita's brooding mind back into the room.
'Let’s see what prints the forensics have dusted.' All views, she knew, based merely on the tableau they witnessed would be premature. 'Can you smell something floral, Vikram?'
'It's some female perfume.'
‘Yes.'
'With him naked in bed, the killer might well be a woman. However, if that was the case, why didn't this large man defend himself? He doesn't appear to be incapacitated in any way. He seemed to have taken the stabs and gunshot willingly.'
'Exactly what I was thinking, Vikram. There are no signs of a struggle. The pathologist should tell us if the stab wounds were ante or post-mortem.'
The gobbledygook of the morbid pathology wasn't going to give any clue as to who the murderer was, but it would certainly explicate how the victim died. How important was that in reaching to the hands that killed?
'You mean did he suffer before his death?'
'Yes. The gun, unquestionably, had a silencer. There is another apartment on this floor.
The shot should have been heard by neighbours even if they were asleep. Please ensure the team asks everyone on this floor, in this block, and the entire complex when they wake up.' Rita glanced at her watch: 5 a.m. 'Someone must have seen or heard something.'
'Anything else?'
'Ask the uniformed division to take charge of the street. If this happened between ten and midnight, a lot of shops, street vendors, restaurants should have been thronged with last- minute shoppers on the main street, which the killer would have passed on the way in or out. Someone might have noticed something unusual. Someone must know Lele, might have seen him entering the premises. There was at least one watchman at the building gate when I came in. He might have seen someone leave. Also, the council should collect no refuse bins till the team checks all contents. Maybe the killer disposed of the weapon or something else before leaving the street. Any sign of forced entry?'
'No, ma'am.'
'How many doors?
'One front door, which was left ajar.'
'Any open windows?' It was a vain question. Who in Mumbai had windows without metal grills? It was an invitation to burglars.
'None.'
'Who discovered the corpse?'
'A group of teenagers returning from a party saw the front door open; one of them lives on this floor. They rang the bell and when no one responded, one of them came in and found Mr Lele. He ran out to the rest of his group and they made the call at around 2:45. The four of them — two girls and two boys — stood at the entrance of the block till the uniformed police arrived. The group was forthcoming with a statement and provided their addresses in case we need to speak to them again. All of them live in this complex.'
‘Did either girl come inside the apartment?’ Rita was thinking of the floral scent.
‘No. Only one guy entered the apartment.'
‘No break-in then? So Adit Lele knew his killer and let him…or her in.'
‘It's the only explanation, as of now.'
‘Lele, did he live alone?'
‘Yes. Divorced five years back, ran a successful accounting firm somewhere near Dadar station.' Vikram was already into the case.
'I want his movements from the time he was last seen alive by someone.'
As soon the evidence recovery team was through, the body was tagged, shifted to a stretcher, velcro’ed and wheeled out to the ambulance that had been futilely waiting for a few hours now. Deliveries to the Mumbai morgue were no less frequent than supplies to any large grocery store; this would just be another parcel. A police constable — bless him — got Rita a strong coffee from the roadside in a kullad — a terracotta tumbler — as she, unblinkingly, looked at the body being moved into the vehicle. She was already gestated with the case before the stiff was driven away.
Who killed Adit Lele?
Was the gun there for self-defence and some dustup led to manslaughter? Or was it carried in with the premeditated purpose of murder? Whose gun was it? Merely because Lele was dead did not necessarily mean the gun belonged to the murderer. So many people in Mumbai owned unlicensed firearms. It could well be the victim's gun turned on him. If that was the case, the murderer might have disposed of the weapon on his or her way out.
Moreover, what about the knife wounds in the groin? Was someone avenging some past grudge? Lele might have been lewd towards another guy's girl who repaid with due interest, or maybe some girl delivered just desserts? Or was it symbolic for something Rita was missing? It might not be hunky-dory to surmise it was a female killer based on the floral female perfume and Lele being found bare-ass in bed, as it patently wasn't in the female psyche to butcher a man or his genitalia. Could that be, then, a shenanigan? If the scent was sprayed to mislead, it must evidently be a planned murder by a male; if the perpetrator intended to misguide, wouldn't he attempt to lead the cops astray with the widest margin? Or could it be — it was a flash of a new conjecture to Rita — there was a team where one distracted, the other killed? Or, maybe, a female, followed by a male, had visited Lele?
Possibly the male found him naked in bed after the female had left and shot him in that state? Perhaps the male, with an intention to seek revenge, found the stiff, but wanted to, nevertheless, mutilate? Conjectures, Rita reasoned, they were all conjectures at this moment and they needed to be kiboshed. The pathologist and forensics would give their reports, which should eliminate some speculations and explain the state of affairs. Patience, Rita, patience, you’re counting too early; let the eggs hatch.
6:30 a.m. Versova was lazily waking up to face the tragedy in their suburb. This place, despite a history of being a smugglers’ haven till the late-Seventies, was now a posh residential address for corporate executives, businessmen, telly stars. Mangal Nagar, of course, was a sore thumb amidst the rich and the glitterati. It wasn't exactly Dharavi, but not something one would like to associate with either. Respectable middle class people who couldn’t afford anything better lived here, and murder wasn't an everyday thing for them.
Therefore, deplorably, it had the strange power of captivation; people were drawn in like flies to a lidless pot of honey. Some ghoulish bystanders, interested in the event solely because it wasn't them on the stage, petered out only when the police camped on the street and visibility got impeded. Either that or morbid curiosity ceased to interest the covey for long.
It hadn't started raining yet.
It was still. Still like the air, in some yogic stance, had held its breath. The temperature was touching 30?C, and the humidity doing its fair bit. Rita had given her trench coat to a constable to drop it in her vehicle. She could feel sweat exuding through body pores, droplets running between her shoulder blades down her spine, and travelling further down.
Mumbai had started stirring as the Gypsy drove Rita to Crawford Market — Mumbai Police HQ. Interesting buildings passed her by; some were new even for Rita. She had read about Mumbai once being an archipelago of seven islands. Owned by the very first colonisers, the Portuguese, for over 150 years till mid-Seventeenth century when they gave it as dowry to the English, at the wedding of King Charles II to some princess of Portugal whose name slipped her mind. It peeved her because she had been a history student. No wonder the city had an amalgam of Portuguese and Victorian architecture. Intensely engrossed in the imposing edifices, her otherwise keen nose had missed the highly appetising aroma of masala chai emanating from a few Iranian cafés along the way; originally opened by Persian immigrants to India in the 19th century, their tea, she had heard, was highly addictive.
“Oh, a visit to Mumbai isn't complete without an Irani masala-chai. You don't go to London and not have fish and chips.” Rita could almost hear Karan whisper in her ears.
Something else, Rita reckoned, without being able to put a finger on, was controlling her brain. The murder, of course. Too neatly done to be unplanned, to be manslaughter, she knew. She just knew it. As she entered the office building, a familiar saraband of the usual office telephones, photocopiers, facsimiles, clacking keyboards and office chatter greeted her. She took the elevator to her office, picked up a disgusting coffee from the nearest vending machine and walked into her cabin. A small sepulchre of an office housed a characterless workstation stacked with typical office paraphernalia. Bumf — thicker than War and Peace — more than she could read in a week had gathered at her desk overnight. Papers of this case, other investigations around the city and, business-as-usual vacation requests, stationery order forms, fuel bills, food bills, which she, without any feeling of remiss, signed without bothering to suss. Her officers worked arduously and sincerely, and she believed everyone appreciated their responsibility towards the state. Why, then, did they increase officialdom for her? To push her blood pressure above the Everest? Only bureaucracy knew how to complicate simplicity. Picking up the phone at her desk, she called for Jatin.