Bhendi Bazaar

by Vish Dhamija

  Lele's mobile phone, a Nokia Communicator, was sent back after the Forensics had sucked the last drop of data from the instrument. The call log showed there was a missed call from the same Dubai number at 9:51 p.m. So the caller tried the mobile before calling up Lele's residence line. There was no outbound call from Lele's mobile phone to the Dubai number. The other calls — inbound, outbound and missed — were to acquaintances, which Vikram already had on file. The mobile call summary received from AirMobile, obviously, corresponded to the log on the phone. Lele had deleted no calls. Moreover, Lele didn't call or receive many calls from numbers which weren't on his contact list.

  'We need to find this Dubai caller. He or she was the last person who, on record, appears to have had any contact with Lele, except for the murderer.' Rita's words sounded like someone, invisible in the room, had pressed the mute button off. The three had been engrossed in the telephone companies' records for a while pondering how to advance the investigation.

  'I'll keep trying the Dubai number. Maybe he or she is travelling and the phone's switched off.'

  Perchance.

  The reconstruction of the prior evening was now evident: Adit Lele left his office, in Dadar, sometime after 8 p.m. the previous night. He drove to his residence, which in Mumbai's hostile traffic at that time of the day would have taken him over an hour to get to. The watchman at the building gate remembered seeing Lele’s car drive into the apartment complex after 9:30. He received a call at his landline from a Dubai number, which he answered, at 9:53 p.m. He died between then and midnight. His maidservant had told the local police that she had come in the afternoon as every day, cooked his dinner and left. She had also enlightened them that it wasn't the first time he had not eaten the food she had prepared for him. Some evenings he ate out, and other times he just drank himself to sleep. Which implied either Lele had broken his journey at some place to pick up some food, or snacked on roadside bhajia on his way home or he died before dinner. How significant was that? The food, surely, wasn’t crucial. The content of his stomach would be reported in the autopsy report. But supposing he had stopped to pick up a hooker? What about the call he answered at 9:53? Well, he would still take a call at home in her presence.

  Time is the greatest mathematician, they say. Only time would tell if Vikram's phone, that began ringing this minute, was a divine or diabolic intervention. Vikram looked at the screen. 'It's from Dadar police station,' he said and moved out of the room, while the other two paused the already recessed conversation.

  'That was a Station House Officer from Dadar Police Station. One of his constables who had gone to see a close friend of Lele has given some useful info. Adit Lele laundered money. He was a hawala broker.’ Vikram returned to update.

  Hawala infested Mumbai like pigeon shit. Pathetic, undesired, but ubiquitous. And after 9/11, with governments around the world tightening the clutches around money laundering, and many brokers having been caught, it had become an even more lucrative business for those who were willing to take the risk. Simple demand and supply.

  ‘There were couriers at Lele's place, at least, three, four times a week. Large amounts. The friend knew about couriers from his office. Didn't know if Lele accepted couriers at his residence, but he said he wouldn't be surprised if that was the case,’ Vikram carried on.

  The call from Dubai suddenly made more sense. If the courier came for a pick up or drop at his residence, Lele would have let the person in willingly.

  'Could the courier be a female?'

  'Not normally, but no reason why not. Women are in every profession these days…'

  'Like the crime squad?' Rita, in the absence of any breakthrough, attempted at alleviating the mood.

  Faint smiles.

  'Get this friend of Lele to disclose all hawala connections Lele worked with. Ask all local police stations, especially in Dadar and Versova, to comb the area. I need names of all hawala brokers who have any female couriers. But tell him to be very discreet. I don't want this info — that we're looking for a female in this case — to go beyond these walls. Guys, it's getting to nine, I think we should call it a day. There's not much we can do now. Let's wait till tomorrow. We'll have some more info to work with.'

  'Something that I totally forgot to mention. Newspapers have been calling up for an update on the murder, and what we've done so far. A story.' Jatin looked at Rita, then Vikram.

  A story. Anything that could sell and make money was a story. Life, death, rape, looting. Editors that laboured to provide the most informative news to the public did not head newspapers around the world; businessmen who wanted to sell the lurid stories to the masses that loved gossip did. At heart, they were all fucking rags, whatever the façade.

  'Let's handle that tomorrow. I'll mention it to Mr Joshi in my meeting. We should organise a small press conference. We'll give them their story rather than letting them make one up. Anything else?’

  ‘The autopsy is tomorrow morning, ma’am.’

  ‘I am attending it. Don’t worry.’

  FOUR

  2007

  Adit Lele lay on a gurney — naked as the day he was born, naked as he was found in his bedroom — fomented and prepared for the procedures.

  Rita entered the autopsy suite draped in the trademark white paper suit. The air- conditioning was powerful enough to freeze blood in the veins of a breathing person and the disinfectant was so potent even the stiff would bolt away if it could, but she endured the acridity of disinfectant, and the morbidity around — the rotting corpse, the cold steel, the pile of surgical instruments. Every time she was in the autopsy suite she got reminded of her own transience: didn't death always have the last laugh? Wasn't it invariably the winner? Hindus believe in reincarnation; death is only a transitory cessation of physical body, the soul is recycled. Gita describes two paths along which souls could travel after death. One was the path of the sun — the bright path; the other, the path of the moon, was the dark path. When a soul travelled along the path of the sun, it never returned, while those who went down the dark path had to return. The next life depended on how one lived the just passed one. Where would Adit Lele be, what path had he taken?

  The bright light focussing on the gurney spotlighted Lele's cadaver, like he was about to give the performance of a lifetime. Perhaps, he was. Every corpse had a story, which, unfortunately, it couldn't tell. At least, not by itself. Dr Syed Khan, director of morbid pathology for the state government, came into the theatre with his assistant, acknowledged Rita with a smile and went straight for his gloves. Attaching his Dictaphone, covering his mouth with a surgical mask, he carefully selected a scalpel, like an artist picking out a brush for the right stroke. Like a faithful caddy, his assistant followed him to the gurney pushing a trolley that carried enough tools to dissect the whole human race. The duo exchanged a silent dialogue with their eyes. Dr Khan examined the corpse, pressed his fingers into the chest of his subject to check for ribcage. The scalpel came down next, and in one fine line made an incision from the neck down to the pelvis impinging on the slit the murderer had started. The desiccated body lay open displaying the innards. Lungs, liver, heart, kidneys, stomach, intestines — one of them would divulge how Lele died. Dr Khan dictated every cut, every dissection into his microphone, as Rita observed and waited for words to flow out of the doctor’s mouth. Medical jargon.

  ‘He seems to have died of Class IV Haemorrhaging — excessive bleeding, and not from the bullet wound,’ Dr Khan finally spoke to Rita after forty minutes. ‘The victim was vivisected, Miss Ferreira — stabbed ante-mortem. The wounds were inflicted while he was still alive.’

  Of course, Lele couldn't have bled so much if he was already dead, she should have known. Rita's expression changed — the goose bumps were beginning to stand up on her bare arms under the borrowed paper coat. She looked at the corpse, then at the doctor, fully realising the baleful implications the doctor's words carried: the murderer had made Lele suffer, mutilated his body to make an ex
ample. Like someone was trying to convey a message. But to whom? He could have killed Lele with the gun, but he had not. He killed Lele in a dreadfully insensate manner. Why?

  'The gashes are shallow, four inches deep,’ the doctor continued detachedly, ‘but made with a serrated knife that had broad teeth like a saw. In my calculation, it should be a sharp, but small knife. Perhaps even a folding one that could easily be concealed in a pocket or handbag.’

  ‘But doctor, if he was stabbed while he was alive, how come he didn’t scream or make any noise?’

  ‘We shall soon know that too.’

  The doctor's assistant picked up an electric saw and, like Hannibal, cut open the top of the head and removed it like it was a cereal bowl. The room was suddenly silent again, except for the rhythmic ballad being hummed by the air-conditioning unit. Dr Khan went through the brain carefully and extracted the bullet, which was still lodged in Lele’s brain.

  ‘9 x19 calibre,’ Rita softly told herself when she saw the slug. The ballistics could work out the gun from it.

  ‘The bullet was fired from very close range, the skin on his forehead is singed,’ Dr Khan spoke after twenty minutes. ‘I was correct; the bullet was fired into an already dead brain. And the reason he didn’t make noises was because he was drugged.’

  ‘Drugged?’

  ‘Yes, he was given some kind of a sedative. I apologise I cannot tell you any more at this stage till we have tested for the drug in the lab.’

  Thanking Dr Khan and signing the relevant papers, Rita left the autopsy suite. The smell of disinfectant accompanied her to the waiting car.

  Vinay Joshi, Joint Commissioner, Mumbai Police, and the Head of Crime Branch was as henpecked as they came. Women who took every minor and major decision in his life besieged him. Starting with his mother who had decreed that he join the police, his wife decided what he ate, and how much, his teenage daughter influenced what he wore and DCP Rita Ferreira told him what to do next. Humble, gangling, balding. They often say Hergé took inspiration from real people for characters that he illustrated in his comics. One wondered if the Belgian had, perhaps, met Joshi's grandfather when drawing Professor Calculus. The resemblance was striking.

  'Murder?' Joshi asked as though he had never heard about a crime as grave before.

  'Yes sir, in Versova. We were called in by the local police station for assistance right away and have taken charge of the case.'

  Joshi nearly asked why, when it could well have been the local constabulary's sole responsibility. The crime squad did not have to intervene till it was convinced the crime merited their time and resources. What had happened to the old order? Why was Rita Ferreira proactively seeking to take a plunge in such undesirable waters? But he reckoned withdrawal was neither advisable nor feasible now. On the other hand, Sexy, too, would certainly probe why. And then the goddamn media. Unwarranted work, unnecessary stress.

  'Do we really need a press conference?' he questioned for the sake of it. He knew dogged Rita had already decided.

  'Yes sir. We owe it to the public.'

  'Carry on. I don't think I need to attend, unless you feel otherwise. Keep me updated though.'

  Joshi abhorred the press, press conferences, and any spotlight whatsoever, on him.

  'When are you meeting… the boss?' Rita almost said Sexy.

  'Tomorrow. Is this something he should know?'

  'Not really. I'm very sure he must have picked up the news from the uniformed wing. In case he wants details, I'll keep the Chronology folder up-to-date for you sir. It's saved as M_June_19 on the shared drive.'

  'Thanks.'

  By 11 a.m., the Ops Room had transformed from the previous day. Two of the walls had got a facelift with new wallpapers: one had the map of Mumbai on the wall with red pins on Versova and Dadar, the other had an enlarged blueprint of Mangal Nagar apartment block that showed there was a pedestrian gate at the rear of the complex, of which, of course, the watchman at the main gate had no sight. The assailant might have known of this exit and could have comfortably walked out without arousing any suspicion.

  The third wall in the Ops Room was scrappy; a picture of Lele, and numerous A4- sized papers with phone numbers and other contact details of various police stations, and the officers responsible for them, in large fonts blemished it. Vikram and Jatin must have triaged through countless paper files and online data since early in the morning to come up with all the important info. They sat reading some reports and sipping coffee when Rita joined them in the room. She narrated what Dr Khan had discovered in the post-mortem. 'Of course, we'll get the detailed reports later in the day,' she concluded.

  They looked at the scene of crime photographs for some time. No clue. Nothing. The perpetrator had been extremely careful.

  Dr Khan sent in his report after lunch.

  'Trichloroacetaldehyde,’ Vikram read out the name of the drug that had been used to sedate Lele.

  ‘What?

  'Tri-chloro-acetal-de-hyde,' he enunciated.

  'Got that. Now, could you say that in English please?’ Rita’s voice exhibited her hopelessness to comprehend.

  ‘It was a mis-prescribed sedative and hypnotic drug in the nineteenth century.' Like a tutor, Vikram carried on reading the notes. 'It's called Chloral Hydrate when mixed with H2O. It’s soluble in water, fruit juice or alcohol without altering the taste of the drink. Reacts very quickly. If administered in larger than the prescribed quantity, it can lead to unconsciousness and the person can stay knocked out up to an hour, or more in some cases. Chloral, by the way, is also one of the main compounds that form Chloroform. Colloquially, it’s called liquid chloroform. It's used in cough syrups and sleeping-aids, which are available at most pharmacies in Mumbai.'

  'Available? On prescription or OTC?'

  'Yes, but it would be in a highly diluted state in some cough syrups, impossible to knock out someone unless you emptied more than a litre into someone's throat.'

  'That couldn't have been possible. Why would Lele have allowed someone to feed him cough syrup? Carry on.’

  'Its other uses are in industries like agriculture and petroleum. Interestingly, it is also used in manufacturing of cheap alcohol, and as such a lot of it is traded illegally.'

  'So Adit Lele was, most probably, administered the drug in his drink.'

  'That is correct, ma'am.'

  ‘I am not surprised. I didn’t envisage a person of his build taking a knife in his groin lying down.' Rita slumped into a chair. 'Any retail traders who supply small quantities of this chemical...I can't imagine our suspect could have stolen from the bigger players, you'd expect they'd have enough security for such toxic chemicals. The killer could, of course, have bribed or persuaded some employee though.'

  'Not one would admit to it.'

  'I know.'

  'What about asking the local police stations across the city to raid all bootleggers and seize their stuff?' asked Jatin, who had been quiet for a while.

  'This is Mumbai. We don't know if we're looking at a dozen or a thousand such operations, Jatin,' Vikram elucidated.

  And that was the truth.

  There was an ever-increasing demand for the cheapest intoxicant, which in certain cases contained upwards of 50 per cent alcohol. You could get a quarter bottle of alcohol and a street-side whore for half a dollar each, in Mumbai. How could a police force of just forty thousand reach everywhere, control the whole enchilada?

  Vikram took a breath before disclosing the trivia. 'The report also states that Lele hadn't had dinner that night, and had had no sexual intercourse immediately preceding his death.'

  'The ballistic fingerprinting matched the bullet recovered from Lele's brain to a Glock 26 — a subcompact. 'Fired from a close range, which we already know,' Jatin commented, reciting the ballistics report that came in after 3 p.m.

  'Glock,' Rita repeated faintly. 'Carry on.' There was an empty chair in the room, but she perched herself on the desk.

  'The report also states
there could have been one more person in the room just before or after the murder. A male.'

  'No signs of any female?'

  'Nothing recent. There were a few stray hairs in one of the hair brushes at Lele's dressing table, but the forensics think that the hairs, although a female's, weren't plucked in the last seventy-two hours.'

  'We should anyway get them analysed to see if we find a match in the database.'

  Vikram scribbled the boss' instructions.

  'They also confirm Lele was slaughtered in his bed. The cadaver wasn't shipped, from elsewhere, post-mortem.’

  ‘It would be ridiculous to even think the murderer created a tableau of arranging a corpse naked. Why would anyone do that? What else?’

  'The serology department has verified the blood was only Lele's.’

  The silence in the room prompted Jatin to continue.

  ‘They found the assailant had washed with soap in the sink before he left. Looking at the crime scene photographs, it's hardly surprising that he would have bloodied his hands the way he butchered Lele. There were some fragments of dead skin on the bed, which couldn’t be matched to Lele. The experts analysed that to confirm the gender of the person as male.

  However, it could be from a couple days before the incident. And it could well be totally unrelated to the murder.'

  ‘So we’re looking for a possible male suspect.’ Rita was concerned. It had been over 24 hours since the murder and all they had established was that the assailant was a male.

  ‘If it was a male, why was Lele naked?’ Jatin was naïve.

  ‘That’s hardly any clue. A lot of people sleep naked.’ Words had flown out of her mouth before her mind had processed, like a wrong hit on the keyboard sending a file to the printer. Too late. Did it sounded like an insight into her sleeping habits? Rita looked at both the men who — oh no, were they imagining her naked now? ‘First impressions might be overrated,’ she carried on regardless. ‘Merely being unclothed in bed, at the time of the attack, doesn’t conclusively ascertain there was a woman around. In fact, it does not give away anything.’