by Vish Dhamija
'Like?' Rita turned to look at Jatin.
'You know, something like committing suicide...?'
'What makes you think she'd do something so drastic?'
'I don't know ma'am, I guess I'm worried.'
'I have a plan.'
'What?'
'When we get back, remind me to call her boss Narang and invite him for a late evening meeting at our office along with Anita. Once they are at Crawford Market, we'll keep Anita back for some briefing.'
'You're a genius ma'am. Thank you.' Jatin looked cheerful already.
The traffic was heavy till Antop Hill. To avoid the crowded Chembur area, Jatin took a slightly longer route along the Bharat Petroleum Refinery.
'Never been to this part of town,' Rita commented.
Bridge.
'We bypassed Chembur.' Jatin pointed towards the left and turned right for Vashi
'The Chembur murder was impulsive, it happened unplanned. Al Khan had to die as the killer was cleaning up loose ends. Poor guy, he was killed even when he was not on the hit list.' The mental pictures of Khan's ransacked photo-studio, his corpse, and his congealed blood filled in one of the engraved letters of Viviane's tomb hopscotched in Rita's brain. 'Then, why was his blood used to colour an alphabet on the grave?'
Jatin, eyes on the road, shook his head in a no-idea manner. 'Do you remember what letter was it?'
Another no-idea kind of shake of the head reoccurred. 'I bet it was C.'
The pattern she had been looking for was suddenly glaring at Rita, like cat's eyes in the dark, difficult to miss. She didn't. However foursquare the emerged pattern was in her mind, she needed substantiation. She pulled out her mobile and called Vikram. 'Good afternoon Vikram, it's Rita...we are almost near Vashi Bridge…OK, I want you to pull out the forensic report that came in the morning to check whose blood was in letter C on Viviane's grave…yes, I'll hold.' She glanced at Jatin, then without a warning pulled out his pen from his shirt pocket. Turning around, she picked up a writing pad and turned to a new page, ready in case she needed to note down something.
'Khan's blood was in letter C, ma'am,' Vikram came back on the line. 'Thanks for confirming Vikram. My gut feel told me the same.'
'How?'
'You'll have to help me with the order here Vikram. The first murder happened in Versova, check if the first V in Viviane is filled with the Versova victim's blood?'
'Yes. It's Adit Lele's blood.'
'You can work out the others and give me a call back.'
'How did you guess that?' Jatin quizzed when Rita disconnected the line.
'It's called syllogism — you need to deduce by putting together two assumptions. If Al Khan's wasn't a planned murder why, then, was his blood on the grave? And if blood was put on the grave in six letters why was N — the next alphabet in Viviane — swapped for C, the first letter of her surname? Why not follow the order? In that case Khan's blood should have been found on the fourth letter because he was the fourth victim. No, because C stands for the location where Khan was killed: Chembur. That, precisely, is the pattern he has been following: location. And hence, the time between the murders varied, till the killer found a target in the area he wanted. This makes me ponder that Khan, after all, might have been on the hit list, but was pulled forward due to reasons we know.'
Vikram called back to confirm her syllogism as the Gypsy crossed the Vashi Bridge and zipped through Palm Beach Road.
‘So the next victim would be in a location that starts with N?’
‘In theory, yes…if Margaret was around to let him know, there would have been a higher probability. With her gone, he might not have access to tricks looking for girls. Or maybe there is more than one Margaret, whom we do not yet know about.
There was a police jeep waiting for them a little way after Sector 44A to guide them through the unpaved road that led to the target.
The dweller of the hut had been ingenious enough to siphon electricity off a high- voltage overhead transmission line that was located a couple of hundred metres away. The hut also drew in an illegal telephone line from a pole on the other side. Someone had planned this, seemingly, ad hoc place.
‘Look,’ Jatin pointed. It took a keen eye to spot a pole ten metres away from the cottage that had a camera mounted on. If the occupant had been in the hut, he would know about the police outside.
‘So he even ensured he was alarmed in case we get to this place. Stay back everyone.
If he is inside, he’ll be warned if we go near the place.’
‘But in that case he must have already seen the constable who checked the car.’
‘One policeman scouting around might not have bothered him, I am sure.’ Rita looked around. ‘Ask someone to go around and cut off the electric supply. That way if he’s inside he might walk out to check. And the camera should also disconnect.’
‘Yes ma’am.’
‘If Jay Desai drove here in this car, how did he leave?’
‘It’s only a short walk to the main road madam,’ the local police inspector responded. ‘He could have taken the bus from there…’
They waited ten minutes till a constable could find an instrument in one of the Scene of Crime van’s toolboxes that could hack the wire. A total of seventeen officers were in attendance, plus the other teams who were instructed to stay back till they got clearance from Rita.
The team waited another five minutes to see if the hermit stepped out of the hut. Nada.
Rita looked at Jatin. He was sharp enough to catch the instructions. He gestured to the four others who instantly comprehended his tacit signal and, with them following him, flaked off from the rest of the team to go behind the shed. If Jay Desai was inside, it was sensible to surround the hut. There was a large wooden window at the back of the hut, which was sizeable enough to escape, but it was shut. Jatin, crouching, silently closed in to check for any sound. None. Stationing the four uniforms at the rear, he gingerly walked around to the front.
The shut window in the front was tiny. Rita looked at the wooden door. Rusted iron latch, a Godrej padlock; primitive security compared to what Jay Desai demonstrated by using ultra gadgets like multiplicative voice scramblers and sophisticated phone bugs.
Should they commit an offence by breaking in, or should they wait to get a search warrant? Rita looked at her watch. 5.40 p.m. If Jay Desai's telephone warning was to be trusted, it was merely a few hours away from the next murder. ‘Ask them to break the lock,’ Rita told Jatin as she pulled out her Smith & Wesson.
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TWENTY-EIGHT
2007
Friday: 4:10 p.m.
Anita Raizada switched off her computer, packed her bag and left the office of NEWS of the DAY earlier than usual. Not many colleagues noticed her leave. A few, who saw, thought she was leaving to cover some news; others did not bother to give it a thought. No one knew, though, that she was to return to the office later that night for a rendezvous with the CEO. Except Narang, of course. However, what even Narang wasn’t acquainted with was that Anita had stealthily dropped into his office before the office hours that very day.
Friday: 5:20 a.m.
Anita had set the wake-up alarm for five, which she put on snooze a couple of times before she left her warm bed. She put on her jeans and rumpled T-shirt, and rushed out of her apartment, which was actually four blocks away from where Jatin had dropped her a few times after dinner. Unknown to most, she owned an old Vespa. She put on a full-mask helmet, kicked-started the scooter and rocketed towards her office.
Parking her scooter in the building next to the one that housed her own offices, she walked without removing her helmet to hide herself from the prying building cameras. She rushed into the building of NEWS of the DAY inconspicuously. Taking the elevator up to the seventeenth floor, she swiped the card to gain entry into the office and headed for Narang’s cabin. It was locked. She combed through the drawer of his secretary. No keys.
Pick
ing up a large paper clip, she straightened it. Then carefully bending its head to an angle she considered adequate for the task, she inserted the pin and gave it a forceful shake.
She pulled out the pin and read the impressions. Digging into her bag she drew out her nail file and chiselled the stretched-out paper clip to make abrasions on it. She tucked the pin back into the lock again and repeated the process. The lock gave way in the fifth insertion.
Anita walked in swiftly, opened the drawer where Narang stored his alcohol. She removed an unopened bottled of Absolut and replaced it with the bottle she pulled out of her bag.
Anita walked out of the office, locking it as though it had never been opened. The lights switched off automatically by the time she took the elevator to the ground floor.
The only way anyone could have known of someone's visit was if they checked the computerised record of entries and exit to the office. Even then, they couldn't have established who had dropped in out of hours — Anita had nicked a guest swipe card weeks ago so it couldn't be tracked back to her. No one checked records on a regular basis anyway. That fallback was required only if there had been some embezzlement or break-in.
At 6:30 a.m. Anita was back in her bed for a powernap. What was the rush, she smirked. She had to be in office at nine.
Thursday: 6:40 p.m.
Raaj was on the ninth hole at the Dubai Creek Golf Course when his mobile buzzed. He excused himself because the call was from India. 'Must be urgent business,' he told his partners. It must have been past 8 p.m. in India, he calculated looking at his watch.
‘Bhai, I needed to consult on something.’ The call was from one of the guys responsible for his illicit alcohol distribution back in Mumbai.’
‘What is it?’
‘Remember the female contact of your friend, Jay Desai? She called to ask for a sealed bottle of foreign liquor.’
‘So what is the problem? I told you to give her anything she wants, anytime. Why do you need to call me to check, you moron?'
‘Bhai, she wants us to open the bottle, drain almost half the content, fill it back with Chloral Hydrate and reseal it like it were a new bottle.’
‘So?’
‘It can be fatal bhai.’
‘You don’t think you work for the Pope by any chance, do you?’ ‘Should I supply?’
‘My instructions have always been clear. If this friend of Jay Desai turns up at your hideout and sets it alight…don’t fucking question, don’t stop her, just walk away. What part of my instruction wasn't clear?’ Raaj almost barked.
‘It will be done bhai.’
The bottle — fifty per cent of which was Chloral Hydrate — was shipped out at 9:20 p.m. the same night.
TWENTY-NINE
2007
Rita pointed out to the uniformed officers and constables where they should take up positions. Albeit remote, there was a possibility that Jay Desai was inside — he could have locked the front door and climbed in from the rear window — and they couldn’t afford to take the risk.
Her trusted S&W in hand, Rita leaned against the wall next to the doorframe on the right; Jatin positioned himself on the left. If Jay Desai were armed he'd have two detectives, loaded to fusillade behind him when he stepped out, and if he tried to flee there was enough manpower to hold him back. Two additional patrol vehicles had been stationed on the outskirts of mangrove to keep an eye out for anyone who wandered towards the hut.
There was no bolt cutter around. One of the constables put a real heavy-duty screwdriver between the lock and the loop and gave it a hard knock with a hammer. The jangling sound made would have certainly announced to the occupier — if he was inside — that someone was at the door, but there was no reaction. Two more strikes and the lock bust open. The constable unlatched the bolt and rushed out of the line of battle.
Rita kicked the door open. She slithered in, Jatin covering her in case of a side attack. A little sunlight pervaded the room through the door, but it was enough for them to see that the place was uninhabited. Rita gestured to the uniformed inspector to open the windows.
'I think you should leave the room...' Rita raised her hands to show the latex gloves she had carried to ensure they wouldn't tamper any evidence. 'Jatin and I shall scour the place for any clues before we hand it over to the evidence teams. In the meantime, please take control of the car — which we know is stolen property — and ask the scene of crime officers to start their investigations. I'd like to see any material you pack before you give it to the forensic laboratories or fingerprint bureau for analysis.'
The room — a twelve by ten space — had a single unmade bed, a small writing desk with a desktop computer that was connected to the telephone line that had been illegally pulled in, a printer, and some papers scattered around. There were signs that someone visited the place recently; it didn't seem like it had been uninhabited for a long time. There wasn't any dampness or smell of staleness. The owner must have aired it regularly.
'We need some light.' Rita looked at Jatin.
The operation perforce halted for another fifteen minutes till the police disconnected the security camera and joined the cables they had, themselves, unplugged before getting in. The electricity and telephone lines were restored.
What if it was being monitored elsewhere? Rita contemplated for a moment, but let the thought pass.
Every prediction that Ash Mattel had made was eerily coming true. Jay Desai was in love with his art. Newspaper clippings of his barbarities adorned the walls, along with photographs of all his victims that only he could have clicked after killing them. Macabre. The victims, their severed bodies, the blood-splattered surroundings, all pinned on the walls. The tableau might be quenching Jay Desai's morbid lust, but it elicited disgust, anger in the detectives. It was evident that the guy was deranged and positively dangerous. Someone who wouldn't blink before killing, his lethality would make no allowances for detectives. There was a map of Mumbai pasted on one of the walls near the bed. The six murder locations were flagged with pins; they would most certainly have been put in to embellish the map after the act — trophies he bestowed on himself — as there were no signs of where the next murder would occur.
'Switch on the computer Jatin,' Rita said looking hither and yon, and finding nothing of any consequence. Jay Desai wasn't prone to leaving clues. There was not even as much as a shred of paper with a written word on it. What help would handwriting be in any event? Jay Desai had always only communicated through computer prints or telephone.
'It requires a password,' Jatin said
Of course, what were they thinking?
'Try Viviane — all small, no caps; people generally don’t use caps in passwords unless forced to.’ For someone to be a crusader against injustice to his mother and her profession, it was illogical to think in any other direction.
'Incorrect ma'am.'
'vivianecasey?'
'Incorrect. We have only one more chance.'
'What if we go wrong this time? Can no one break into this machine after that?'
'Oh yes, it can be done, but not here, not now, not by me. We'd have to take it to the experts. They have ways to extract info from hard drives.'
It sounded like an acceptable risk. Rita started to say something but lost the thread. Her mind was somewhere else. 'What was Viviane's real name…the Russian name when she came into this country?'
Jatin offered his usual I-have-no-idea shrug.
'It was a Russian name beginning with 'V' I remember that much. Call Vikram, ask him to look it in the file labelled Viviane, it's in the Ops Room.'
'v-a-r-i-n-k-a.' Rita's wandering mind hurried back in the room when she heard Jatin repeat and note it down. He kept the phone down and looked at Rita.
They had, but one chance left.
'No caps,' Rita uttered and closed her eyes. She didn't need to think. She knew it. 'Bingo,' cried Jatin.
The computer accepted the password.
They waited for the machine to
load. The desktop had a picture of a young Viviane taken, probably, before she left the former USSR. Perhaps Margaret had a photograph that she gave to her friend's son?
Jatin clicked on the Documents folder. There were a few files. The most important one — titled letter — was the first message that Narang at NEWS of the DAY had received asking him to cover the news.
A sense of relief pervaded the two. They now had more than circumstantial evidence that the person who used this hut had typed the first note to confess the murders and provide evidence in shape of the SIM card. That person — if he wasn't Jay Desai — was someone else close to Viviane, close enough to keep her photograph on the desktop, knew her real name to use as password. Jay Desai fitted the description; he had the motive, he had the opportunity to kill. Moreover, in his last call, he even had the audacity to announce he was Jay Desai, though a telephone recording of an admission of guilt through a voice scrambler could hardly stand as evidence in any court.
There was a lot in the room that could be dusted for prints and fibres, but Rita recognised that could wait. They already knew who the killer was now; trace evidence would only confirm that if they ever found Jay Desai. Finding him before he struck again was the pressing need. She slumped into the chair to explore the computer further. The machine wasn't off-the-shelf, it was significantly ungraded: a lot of additional software, drivers and receivers had been uploaded to wield incoming messages from transmitters that had been used to bug telephone lines. Of course they were defunct now, after the police had successfully tracked them down and disabled them, but the software attested that sound signals had been received from two separate sources.
'Have a look outside Jatin, check if they’ve found anything in the car. Any dry- cleaning slips, receipts, any recurring car park tokens, petrol station bills, anything that can lead us to another address.'
Rita ran an advanced search on "Rita" and an eponymous folder sprung up. She could feel her hand tremble over the mouse — did she want to see it? Want, no but she needed to. The folder contained photographs of her, taken through her bedroom window by a telephoto lens on various days, not just once. There was one photo that had Ash Mattel at her apartment. Nauseating. Sick fuck, you will rot in hell, she almost spat out.