Bhendi Bazaar

by Vish Dhamija

  ‘You think I am guilty? I find it a relief. Heads and tails — aren’t they just different sides of the same coin, DCP?’

  ‘What are you trying to prove?’ Rita carried on, hoping the call could be traced. But she knew the truth: the voice would have ensured it couldn’t be traced. The killer was much sharper than that.

  'You've missed the essence, DCP.' The voice didn’t wait for a response. 'Men fuck these girls because they choose to. The girls fuck because they have no choice. Stupid laws in the country, and the world over — the whore's the one charged by police, not the fucking tricks, not the pimps, not the men who lure or force women into this ugly profession. Do you really believe a girl cheerfully walks into this scum to become a whore? Men run this business for men, a woman’s body is just a cheap commodity.’

  ‘But you aren’t going to cure the world of prostitution?’ ‘I’ll do as much as I can.’

  ‘How does it help you? Are you one of the unfortunate girls —‘ ‘Maybe. But I am tired. Do you think I want to do this forever?’ ‘Then why are you doing it? Is someone forcing you?’

  ‘Not any more. They forced me when they could, not any more.’ The malevolence in the voice was unambiguous.

  Rita could feel the rage of someone reminded of past hurt. ‘I feel like killing someone today,’ the voice continued.

  ‘Please…’

  ‘Tonight. See if you or your entire police force can save this fucker.’

  ‘Listen —‘

  The line went dead.

  Rita called Vikram. He had relayed the message to the control room and was waiting for them to come back to him.

  Vikram called back after five minutes. The call was traced to an unsubscribed mobile number; the location had been traced to Andheri West.

  ‘Let Jatin know too.’

  When Mr Lokhandwala had purchased the marshland for this complex in the late Seventies, every single property broker had thought the builder had lost his marbles. No one would want to live so far away from downtown Mumbai, they had argued. Every single one of those property brokers was proved wrong. Today, it was one of the biggest housing complexes in Mumbai with even some of the Bollywood glitterati living here. The vastness of this concrete monstrosity was a challenge for Rita. Even if the murderer was in Andheri West, and in Lokhandwala, how were the police supposed to guard each and every door?

  Vikram got there soon after Rita, as she sipped tea in the Andheri Police Station. The SHO had sent out uniformed troops to patrol the area. Everyone recognised this was meant to be a mere preventive act. If the killer was already in someone’s apartment, it was a futile exercise. And how could they apprehend him or her when they didn’t even know the gender of the killer. They couldn’t stop every single person on the road.

  Their presumption wasn’t wrong.

  The killer had shot the victim by 10 p.m.

  Rita was still with Vikram and Jatin when her mobile rang at a few minutes past eleven. Blocked caller.

  It was the killer’s voice through the scrambler. ‘You did well DCP, your crony traced my call to Andheri, but you couldn’t stop me, could you? Touché.’

  The line went dead. The killer obviously had no intentions of talking long enough for the location to be traced this time.

  The body was recovered at three, after a neighbour in Tarapore Towers — coming home after night shift — found the front door of Mr Dina Patel ajar. The rest was merely an encore.

  Naked stiff, drugged, butchered, shot once. Despite the fact that the killer knew police was all around Andheri, he hadn’t slipped; he had been cautious not to make any errors. The only sign, incontestably, was the perfume, the womanly scent Rita and Vikram had smelt at the site of Adit Lele’s murder. Rita had a recollection she had had a whiff of that same smell somewhere else, besides the first murder at Versova. Where? She had tried focussing on it earlier, but couldn’t. And she couldn’t put a finger on it now either. ‘Vikram, how did she know…?’ Rita was part thinking, part talking, her mind racing all over the place.

  ‘What ma’am?’

  ‘How did he know we had…or rather you had traced the call to Andheri?’

  There was silence. Silence was good. Rita let it hang in the air long enough for her to put her floating thoughts together. There was something uncharacteristic, something aberrant there. There was a fleeting hint of something she had failed to catch. Something eluded her. How did he know? How did the killer know?

  Then it struck, like lightning on a dark night. Sometimes, things aren't immediately apparent for quite a while, but Rita realised, now, that she had missed the obvious. The killer was listening…that’s how he knew about Hegde, he pre-empted the arrest of Al Khan, and he knew everything. One thing, as they say, leads to another; you only see certain things when something else makes you think of it. The scent — Rita had had a trace in her own apartment soon after the first murder when she had returned, when the killer had, unintentionally, left the lights on. Why didn’t she think of it before? Her phone had been wired. The floodgates of revelations flowed through. Wasn’t this the same time when the phone in the Ops Room had gone dead? That had been wired up too then?

  ‘Vikram…get to the Ops Room, that phone is bugged. Get the whole place searched.’

  Rita was in the driving seat already. Her wheels screeched as she took a ‘U’ turn and sped away.

  It was a frightening reminder of her own mortality, and the unrestricted ambit of her challenger. The evil genius had established his ingenuity by the act. If he — the killer — could get into the apartment of a detective and fit microphones, how vulnerable were his victims? Rita was unnerved at the discovery of bugs, but more at her own negligence: how had she not considered it?

  How and when did someone wire her flat? The media would have a field day, not to mention the jokes that would propagate like a viral infection.

  Rita suddenly felt suffocated in the bugged house. It was like she wasn't alone anymore in her own home. She rushed to her personal telephone, but stopped. Ten to one it was bugged too. Upset at being blindsided, she upended Jim and stormed out of the flat, slamming the door behind her. As she walked out of the building, she felt a million eyes following her. Every stranger intrigued her, made her anxious; she had been, for the first time in her career, challenged on her own turf. Egregious. Livid as she was, she couldn't help admiring the shrewdness and the damnable nerve of the murderer. The killer’s morbid need to kill that had compelled him to bug Rita’s apartment.

  She went back to her apartment to check her files, though nothing about the case was at home and her computer had an encryption; the data could not have been accessed. Rita felt humiliated by the appalling discovery. The idea, she reckoned, wasn't to stop her; it was to know her plan to be ahead of the game. And the animal had succeeded so far.

  She had two choices: to either get her apartment swept of the wires or use this opportunity to mislead. "Wires found in the DCP’s apartment," she reckoned, would dominate television and newspaper for the next twenty-four hours if not more. But, she couldn’t let the bugs remain in the Ops Room, and that would be a giveaway in any case. The bugs, therefore, needed to be removed without fanfare, and in the meantime, maybe, the team could work on the location of the receivers for them.

  Bugging Rita’s phones wasn't a novel practice. Ash had warned that most serial killers had, in the past, tried getting close to the investigating body either to overcome the guilt or out of fear of being caught: some even came forward to help, others befriended police officers for info, and still others stalked sleuths. Hence, tapping Rita’s phone should have been no surprise, especially when the killer had started playing games.

  The Operation Room phone had been bugged too.

  The bugs were made in China. The wireless microphones discovered could transmit voice data over two thousand feet. The team had to switch off mobiles, computers, television, and all other electronics to kibosh all radio-frequency interferences to search for more mike
s. There weren’t any besides two in Rita’s apartment, and one in the Ops Room telephone. As to where these microphones relayed, it was a near impossible task to unearth. A two thousand feet diametre around Rita’s apartment or Crawford Market could mean several thousand households. That explained the cunningness of the killer. Rita knew that though they would keep the discovery of the bugs within the police circle and not let it out to the media, the killer would have known the moment they had unplugged the microphones.

  -----------------------------------

  ...

  TWENTY-THREE

  2007

  The breakthrough couldn't have come from a more unlikely source.

  Recycling had been a custom in India long before the word was coined or the need to reuse everyday stuff was felt around the world. Every household collected bric-a-brac like empty glass bottles, plastic jars, daily newspapers and whatnots to convert them into cash.

  There were hawkers who visited localities and residents’ houses and shops to buy them and take them for recycling. Old newspapers went into making paper bags for small-time vendors or for wrapping street side food.

  Elvis Pinto, the taxi driver — the one who had dropped Bhim Yadav at ITC Grand Maratha hotel almost a month earlier — had stopped to pick up his lunch from a street side vendor who had packed his on-the-go vada-pau in a month-old newspaper. It was there, as he wolfed on his eats, that Elvis saw the picture of Yadav. The police had urged everyone to come forward if they saw or remembered anything that could help the police close in on the murderer. At the outset, Elvis wasn't keen to walk into a police station — the reputation of local police wasn't any better than an occupying army; they'd ask him all sorts of unnecessary questions, hassle him, he'd be called several times to various police stations to repeat his story, maybe even be asked to go to court. He squashed the stale newspaper into a ball, but didn't throw it out of the window of his car, like he normally did.

  Later, after dropping a passenger at the airport, he got into the taxi queue. Bored, he lit up a cigarette and unfolded the paper he had thrown in the trash in his car.

  Rita Ferreira sounded another fellow Goan to him. He had decided. If he were to divulge that he was the driver who dropped Bhim Yadav to ITC Grand Maratha on the latter's last night, it would only be to Rita. Ignoring the blaring horns of other taxis in the queue, he turned the car around and drove towards Crawford Market.

  Even with the best intentions, it took Elvis forty minutes to convince the constable at the desk that he needed to see DCP Rita Ferreira, but he kept at it relentlessly. When Rita was messaged that some eccentric taxi driver called Elvis wanted to see her regarding the murder of Bhim Yadav, Vikram was dispatched to bring him to her office pronto.

  Elvis came in, raised his hand to his temples and gave a salute. 'Madam.' ‘Sit down Elvis. This better be good.’ Rita was polite but assertive.

  Elvis looked at Vikram, who sat down next to him. 'Don't worry, he works in the same team.'

  'You from Goa, madam?' ‘Yes.’

  ‘Great, madam.’

  'Yes, but surely that wasn’t what you came all the way to ask me, is it?'

  'No, no, madam. I know you busy. But we both from Goa so I ask.'

  'What do you know about Bhim Yadav?'

  'I drop him to hotel.' ‘When?’

  ‘That night…’

  Rita pressed the buzzer; the office boy appeared out of nowhere, like a genie. She gestured three with her fingers. Three teas.

  Elvis slurped the tea and narrated the events of the night as he drove Yadav to the hotel. He also gave Rita the much-needed Malti's mobile number.

  'Do you, by any chance, have a number for Julie?'

  'Same same, different names, different number, same woman.'

  No wonder Hegde got the payment from a single source. The two numbers couldn't have been set up for tax reasons, Rita thought. To misguide punters? 'Thank you Elvis. Could we do anything for you?' Rita asked.

  'Madam, my landlord big bully. Please ask Inspector sahib to visit me in uniform once.'

  'Vikram, please take down Elvis' address and ask local police to help him.'

  'Thank you madam.'

  Elvis left the building, happy. He had done a good deed, and secured a favour too. His wife, he knew, would be proud of him.

  Chirag tale andhera: "The utmost darkness is under the oil-lamp." Malti's number was traced to just south of Crawford Market. In Bhendi Bazaar. The police had looked for her everywhere only to find her behind the bazaar.

  An emergency briefing session was called for in the Operations Room at 7 p.m. Rita solicited views from all the inspectors. One school of thought was to storm the place and make the arrest. The other, the more practical one, was to glean more info without letting any slip outside the eight of them. The latter view, though contested by Nene and the two Mathurs, was to negate the effect in case their entire intelligence had been erroneous. That being the case, the killer might come down heavily that the police had targeted prostitutes again.

  "Stupid laws in the country, and the world over — the whore's the one charged by police, not the fucking tricks, not the pimps, not the men who lure or force women into this ugly profession." The killer's words rang in Rita's ears.

  In any case, what could the police arrest Malti for? They had no evidence. If the police started arresting every prostitute in Mumbai for soliciting, there wouldn’t be a vacant cell in any prison.

  'Only I shall visit Malti,' Rita said amongst simultaneous rising of eyebrows so high, a puppeteer may have pulled them up with an invisible string. Her caucus of inspectors was surprised that she wanted to go alone. The disbelief was contagious; eyebrows rose and fell like sounds in a choir.

  'Are you sure?'

  'Is it safe?'

  'Take one of us along.'

  But Rita was adamant. She explained that she was only going for a chat with Malti. 'I want you guys to dig up every bit of information on Malti. Use your snitches. I'll tell you what I get to know after I return.'

  The bazaar was more than alive at 8 p.m. when Rita negotiated the narrow, congested streets of Bhendi Bazaar in her Gypsy. No driver either, she had insisted. Quintessential small shops lined the street on both sides selling junk jewellery, gemstones, trinkets, bangles. The businesses here had been passed down as inheritance and so had been the spaces on the pavement for their vending carts, and for living — marriage, birth, sickness and death, all took place on the pavement. It had been like this since 1947, and there was little chance it would ever change. Women were still washing clothes at the communal tap; families that resided under the bridge were getting ready for al fresco dinner. Generations have lived the dream of making it one day, woken up to the reality, and carried on determinedly while their elected politicians, having betrayed their trust for sixty years since Independence, slept in air- conditioned homes. A group of men sat around a table playing cards, another group sat smoking hookah, drinking rotgut.

  Most did honest business. A tarot card reader sat with his clients, a chai-wallah served tea in the corner. Some didn't: pickpockets, drug addicts, drunkards, pimps swarmed the area too. Hindi songs blared on someone's radio in one of the shops. Eunuchs in saris begged at every traffic light, blessed you if you gave them something, cursed if you didn't. Every eye, at least once, looked at Rita's unmarked Gypsy. Each one recognised a police vehicle. But everyone carried on with his or her chore seemingly unaffected by the presence of police.

  A policewoman in an area… where no policeman dared to visit?

  Malti's terraced house in Bhendi Bazaar was derelict; it seemed like the occupier or landlord had abandoned the building since Pandit Nehru ceased to be the Prime Minister. At least, from the outside. Rita got down from the Gypsy to an audience of a thousand eyes.

  Without returning any stares, Rita confidently walked to the door and rang the bell. 'Yes?' A young girl, her décolleté neckline showing ample silicon unabashedly, opened the door. Hardened with time and h
ard experience, she had long learnt to manage emotions and expressions. No smile. Lips shut tight like a vault. She looked at Rita like the latter was some kind of an artefact she didn't like, but she kept any surprise out of her voice. Rita felt sorry for the girl; she, like Rita, was doing a job. It wasn't exactly her fault if the gentry didn't like her profession. Many in the city didn't like Rita’s profession either. The girl looked straight at Rita, then suddenly, her eyeballs darted from left to right and back a few times, like a well-controlled yo-yo, checking if Rita was alone. ‘Who are you?’

  'I am looking for Malti.' Rita flashed her ID card.

  Trepidation appeared on her face and faded, but the girl didn’t say anything, only beckoned Rita to step in. She bolted the door and led Rita into the lavish living room and asked her to wait. When the girl disappeared into the house, Rita’s eyes absorbed the place, the decor of which was in congruence with the outdoors; it, too, must have been last updated in the Sixties, albeit it was much better maintained. The paint had faded, and in places peeled off. The furniture was well used, but it wasn't broken or torn. The dark curtains were pulled down to stop prying eyes from looking in. There was no chance of this place getting sunlight in the day either. The room felt as if it hadn't been aired for years, maybe decades.

  Iridescent lighting gave away that it wasn’t a home, or perhaps sought to express that deliberately. After all, those visiting this place weren’t desirous of being at home. Isn’t the proscribed always more pleasurable?

  'How may I help you?' someone asked in the background. A graceful middle-aged woman dressed in a sari walked in. Margaret Flynn had been waiting for this day — the day she could see the police — for a quarter of a century. Sure, she had seen lots of off-duty policemen who came for free fucks, but not someone who came on duty. Her misadventure had cost her two younger friends their lives. She, being the one who had planned everything and having failed the two, found her conscience burdened with Deborah's and, then, Viviane's suicide. After the death of Pathak, the Cuffe Parade bordello had shut down in the mid- Nineties. Margaret, working her way through the prostitution hierarchy, had eventually retired from being a hooker herself and become a Madame. What other options did she have? There was no way back to a free Russia, she didn't even have a passport. The London dream the trio had had when they had set out in 1982 had replaced her sleep with a million waking nights, staring at the ceiling while tricks rode her.