Tarquin Hall

by The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

  Mrs. Shrivastav

  Sanjay Sala—Bollywood “actor”

  Mrs. Sanjay Sala—known as “Bubbles”

  Kamran Khan—son of murder victim

  Ram Dogra—industrialist, known as the “Prince of Polyester”

  Mrs. Megha Dogra—elderly wife of above

  Gunjan Bhangu—construction

  Mrs. Anita Bhangu—elderly wife of above, sat on right side of Faheem Khan, victim

  Gunny returned as Puri finished copying the list. “Tell me. You were serving that table, is it?” asked the detective.

  “Yes, sir. Filling glasses and all.”

  “Everyone was seated exactly and according to the plan?”

  “Yes, sir. Name cards were provided.”

  “Some guests were getting up and down, no? Like the murdered gentleman. He left the hall for some time before eating.”

  “Yes, sir. He left for ten minutes.”

  “Anyone sat in his seat meanwhile?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Sure?”

  “His food was sitting there getting cold and I was wondering should I cover it.”

  The waiter was obviously telling the truth, yet Puri was certain he would never share anything incriminating about the guests. Not consciously, at least. They were powerful people and he was but an aam admi.

  “Anyone else approach the table—while Mr. Khan’s food was sitting idle?” asked Puri.

  “By then all the other guests had taken their seats and were eating. The photographers had been sent away.”

  Puri paid for the water and then took two one-thousand-rupee notes from his wallet.

  “Anything further you wish to tell me?” he asked, fingering the bills.

  Gunny glanced nervously round the restaurant to ensure his manager wasn’t watching. “One thing, sir,” he said, keeping his voice down. “That model, Dippy: she lost one earring during dinner. Said it was worth two lakhs. She was crying and all.”

  “It was found?”

  “One of the cleaners picked it up on the emergency stairs, handed it in.”

  “Emergency stairs? How it got there?”

  Gunny gave a shrug. “No idea, sir. They’re at the back of the hotel.”

  Puri left the notes under his napkin.

  • • •

  His next stop was Defence Colony, C Block, home of his parents-in-law. Theirs was a large detached house, three floors in all, built in the early 1970s with the intention of leaving an equal portion to each of their children. The architectural antithesis of the Taj Mahal, the Mattu residence, with its chunky bungalows and concrete-slab window awnings, looked as if it had been designed by the same architect as Hitler’s bunker.

  Every effort had been made to soften its harsh appearance. Lovingly tended flower beds ran along the outside wall, and the old peelu tree that burst out of the pavement shrouded half the façade with its umbrella canopy. Beyond the wrought-iron gates, marigolds and snapdragons in little terra-cotta pots lined the marble forecourt, and rosewood planter’s chairs graced the edge of a small lawn.

  The bell summoned the Christian maidservant, Alice, to the front door, and Puri greeted her, as he always did, with the words “Namaste! How is Wonderland?” This elicited a shy giggle (as it always did) and Puri stepped inside.

  The living room had changed little from the first time he had visited the house in 1981. The rattan couch and armchairs remained in the same position around the Rajasthani cart-style coffee table. The British railway station clock up on the wall was still keeping good time, despite being a replica. The collection of curios the Mattus had picked up on their travels in various parts of India (an Assamese japi hat; a pair of clay ornamental horses from Gorakhpur) and on the two holidays they had taken to Europe (Eiffel Tower and Swiss cowbell) remained on the sideboard along with the family photos. Everything wore a faded look, like an old sepia print. But then—by God!—it had been some twenty-five years or more.

  Puri had been in his midtwenties at the time—pencil-thin and somewhat nervous. He and his parents had sat in a row on the couch, and Brigadier—then Captain—Mattu and his wife had sat directly opposite them. Although the two mothers had met on three occasions in the weeks preceding the meeting and laid out their plans, they were careful to let their husbands take the lead.

  Formal introductions were made, tea and savory biscuits were served, and the prospective groom’s credentials and prospects were discussed. Mattu addressed him as “young man,” wanting to know details about his army career and where he saw himself in ten years. Puri answered confidently, explaining that he had recently been recruited into army intelligence and saw it as a lifetime career.

  This was a truthful answer. It had never been Puri’s ambition to become a jasoos, private detectives being little thought of in Indian society (down there with midwives). It was the Shimla Affair that changed all that, forcing him to resign in the early 1980s.

  However, Puri did tell a lie that day—“Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir. No doubt about it at all, sir,” he’d stated when asked whether he was ready to marry.

  And then Meena walked into the room.

  She was wearing a simple cotton sari and a string of fragrant jasmine in her hair.

  Puri was rendered completely inarticulate.

  Two months later, they were married.

  The detective returned to the present, pausing by the sideboard to pick up the framed black-and-white photograph taken of him and Rumpi on their wedding day. They were seated in front of the holy fire—he in a three-piece suit and a sehra. Through the curtain of flowers that hung in front of his face, you could make out his young moustache and thin features. Rumpi’s eyes were cast down, a silk chunni draped over her head and a large nose-ring chain encircling her right cheek. They both looked apprehensive; quite miserable, in fact.

  Funny. That had been one of the happiest days of his life. He’d loved Rumpi from the first. Proof that arranged marriages made for the strongest unions—for individuals and their extended families.

  He put the frame back and knocked on Brigadier Mattu’s study door.

  “Enter!”

  Being a creature of habit and given that it was now exactly six o’clock, the Brigadier sat behind his desk sipping a cup of packaged tomato soup and listening to the news headlines in English on All India Radio.

  “Come, young man,” he said with a welcoming smile, motioning Puri into a cane armchair.

  The lady announcer, her dulcet voice a reminder of the more civilized days before the advent of hysterical twenty-four-hour TV news presentation, spoke calmly about a massacre of police recruits by Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh State. A politician from Uttar Pradesh had been accused of rape and of trying to cover up his crime, she went on to explain. And in the ICT league, the Hyderabad Hyenas had beaten the Bangalore Bears.

  “Those are the headlines. And now we continue with our Hindi drama Life Gulmohar Style. In today’s episode, Aruna and Chanchal have a chat about marriage and expectations of life after marriage. Why is it that some women seem to think that marriage is the ultimate aim of life?”

  Brigadier Mattu looked as if he might like to carry on listening but reached over and turned off his radio nonetheless. “How is Mummy?” he asked. “She’s not well, I’m told.”

  “Some fever is there, actually,” replied Puri, who’d only come to know she was ill an hour or two ago. “The doctor has given medicine and she’s taking rest. I’ll be paying her a visit later, only.”

  “Must have been the shock of last night,” commented Brigadier Mattu.

  “Must be,” agreed Puri. “It’s not every day one sees a murder right before one’s very eyes. And at her age—”

  “At any age,” interrupted Brigadier Mattu, who was only three years younger than Mummy. “Believe me when I tell you, Puri, I did not sleep one single wink last night.”

  The Brigadier sipped his soup. A smidgen of tomato soup clung to his gray moustache.

  “Sir, t
here is something I would want you to look at,” said the detective, coming straight to the point.

  “What are you mixed up in this time?” asked Brigadier Mattu with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

  “I’ve been asked to put the murder of this Pakistani fellow under the scanner,” said Puri. “Seems he and his son are in the dock for match fixing.”

  He reached into an outer pocket of his safari suit and took out one of the sealable sandwich bags that he always kept about him, mostly for collecting and preserving evidence at crime scenes. They also came in useful for storing emergency samosas.

  This one contained a crumpled piece of paper.

  He handed it to the Brigadier and explained how he’d “found” it in Faheem Khan’s pocket.

  “This is evidence stolen from the scene of a crime,” pointed out his father-in-law, looking alarmed.

  “Not stolen, exactly, sir,” replied the detective. “Liberated is more like it.”

  Mattu cocked an eyebrow in his direction.

  “Sir, let me assure you the paper was sticking out of his pocket,” insisted Puri. “What is more, such evidence would be one hundred percent wasted on our chief of police. Doubtless, he would imagine those numbers written there were Faheem Khan’s suit measurements. Probably start rounding up all Delhi tailors.”

  But Brigadier Mattu wasn’t listening; he was already studying the piece of paper.

  Written on it was a series of numbers:

  12, 11, 6

  15, 9, 12

  22, 14, 7

  “Perhaps they correspond to overs and balls?” he wondered out loud.

  “That would certainly make sense, sir,” replied Puri. “The suspicion is there that Khan has been bowling no balls and wides and offering up easy deliveries. Thus a bookie can place bets on individual balls and overs and make a fortune. They call it spot betting.”

  The Brigadier opened his desk drawer. “I have the scorecard here,” he said. “Let’s see if the numbers correspond.”

  He ran his fingers over the rows of meticulously recorded figures. “Khan’s first no ball came in the fourth over. Second delivery. Does that correspond with the number on the paper you stole?” he asked.

  It did not.

  He got the same negative result when he tried to match Kamran Khan’s first wide ball.

  “Perhaps they’ve reversed the numbers, balls then overs,” he suggested next.

  Again the numbers didn’t correspond.

  “Could be these are instructions for the next match,” said Puri. “Delhi is playing again day after.”

  “In which case, we must watch the match carefully. Meantime I will keep trying different permutations.” The Brigadier’s gaze remained fixed on the numbers.

  “Most kind of you, sir,” said Puri.

  He made his way out of the study, not entirely convinced that his father-in-law had noticed him leave.

  • • •

  En route to the Gymkhana Club, Puri made a quick stop at his usual chemist. He found six customers crowded around the counter, all of them simultaneously reeling off long lists of drugs with names that ended in “nox” or “ozil.” Behind the counter, eight shop assistants fetched and carried their orders from shelves stocked to the ceiling with hundreds of white cartons containing every conceivable type of drug—a testament to the cavalier manner in which medicine was prescribed and eagerly guzzled down in India.

  Mr. Joti, the chief pharmacist, was sitting in his usual place behind the till. Puri elbowed his way past the other customers to reach him.

  “Someone has overdosed again, sir?” asked Mr. Joti, who had helped the detective with medical-related expertise in the past.

  “Nothing like that, actually. My wife is after me to get my weight down.” Puri showed him the ZeroCal flyer. “You’ve this product?” he asked.

  Mr. Joti immediately called out to nobody in particular, “One box ZeroCal!”

  A carton was placed on the counter by one of the shop assistants. It was already open. There were about twenty blister strips inside.

  “How many pieces you want?” asked the pharmacist.

  “Four only,” replied the detective.

  Four strips were promptly extracted and slipped into a little brown paper bag.

  “Take one with every meal, sir,” instructed Mr. Joti. “Anything else?”

  “Buss.”

  • • •

  There was a party being held at the Gymkhana Club, the diamond wedding anniversary of a Parsi couple called Mr. and Mrs. Gaariwala. Delhi’s elite were arriving in their chauffeur-driven sedans. The dress code was “sober,” a word that had come to mean “tasteful” in a country that increasingly delighted in bling. The women wore heavy silk saris and expensive but discreet jewelry, the men blazers and cravats. There was an air of self-satisfied urbanity about them.

  Puri spotted the club secretary, Colonel P. V. S. Gill (Ret’d), and his harridan of a wife standing under the portico in front of the main entrance and ordered Handbrake to drive on.

  “Go round back!” he shouted in English as he ducked down in his seat.

  Gill had been on at him to run background checks on some of the latest applicants for club membership and Puri couldn’t spare the time. As for that terrible woman, she had been gunning for him again recently. This time it was his Sandown that was at issue: hats and caps, according to Mrs. Colonel P. V. S. Gill (Ret’d), were not to be worn inside the Gym. One evening last month, she’d ordered the detective to remove his “offending headgear,” and when he’d refused, a disciplinary committee had been assembled. The spirit of the code of conduct laid down by the “founding fathers” was being violated, the old crow had claimed. But Puri had argued—successfully for now—that she was talking “total nonsense only.” Members were at liberty to wear turbans or topis. Why couldn’t he don a cap?

  Only a naïve fool would have considered the war won, however. Mrs. Colonel P. V. S. Gill (Ret’d) was like a Rottweiler. Her long-suffering husband had the tooth marks to prove it.

  Puri took the back way into the club and reached the terrace bar without incident. “Hearties apologies, inspector sahib!” said Puri as he joined Inspector Jagat Prakash Singh, who had already claimed them a table.

  They ordered a couple of Patiala pegs.

  “So you mind telling me what all the Chief has been up to?” asked the detective as he settled into a comfortable armchair.

  Singh looked uneasy. He leaned forward. “Sir, if he knew I was sitting here with you discussing his case he’d have my badge.”

  “Who is going to tell him, Inspector? Not you. Not I. And the barman is a mute. So why worry?”

  “And what if I share some piece of evidence with you to which only he’s also privy, some salient detail, and it helps you solve the case? What then? He’ll know it was me for sure.”

  “Put it this way, inspector sahib: no one is aware it was I who solved the tantric fraud case. Correct?” Puri didn’t like to bring up past cases in which he had anonymously assisted Singh, but sometimes it was necessary to remind the inspector of what the detective called their “mutual back-scratching” arrangement. “Point is,” continued the detective, “many of the witnesses present were VVIPs and all. Such types won’t speak with yours truly.”

  Singh stared down into his glass. “I printed off copies of the interviews and statements,” he said with a quiet reluctance. “They’re in the bag under the table.”

  “Most kind of you, inspector sahib.”

  “Chief’s taken statements from everyone who sat at the victim’s table,” added the inspector.

  “He’s interviewed each and every one of them personally?”

  “Some statements were submitted in written form—from the likes of the cabinet secretary obviously. As for the Bollywood types, Chief talked to them by phone. All very cozy.”

  “And the hotel staff?”

  “They’ve been Bhatt’s remit.”

  Inspector Ravindra Bhatt w
as the Chief’s lackey.

  “One of the waiters is a charge-sheeter. Credit card fraud.”

  “He’s charging him, is it?”

  “I would not be surprised,” replied Singh, who had nothing but contempt for his fellow officer.

  Puri asked about Kamran Khan and was told he’d accompanied his father’s body back to Pakistan in the afternoon.

  “After he gave his statement, he was cleared to leave the country.”

  The detective gave him a look of despair.

  “You think he was involved?” asked Singh.

  “Till date every person in that room is a suspect—even my dear Mummy-ji. So how can the son of the victim be allowed to leave the country, I ask you?”

  “It’s not that straightforward, sir. There’s politics involved here—pressure from Islamabad.”

  “Is there, by God? Pressure from Islamabad? Then challo, never mind! No matter Pakistan is a terrorist-supporting state, occupying half Kashmir, wreaking havoc with Afghanistan, sharing nuclear secrets with likes of North Korea. Main thing is we should keep them happy. No boats should be rocked.”

  “Sir, you’ve no argument with me. The fault lies with our politicians.” Singh drained his drink. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I should be getting home.”

  Puri could see he was upset. “Apologies, inspector sahib!” he said. “Didn’t mean to get hot under the collar and all. Stay for another, haa. Have something to eat at least. I ordered one plate chilli cheese toast.”

  “Didn’t you tell me just last week that you had been put on a diet, sir?” asked Singh.

  “Thank you for reminding me, inspector sahib,” answered Puri, taking out the medicine he’d purchased earlier. “Just I am planning to start it now, in fact.”

  Seven

  Mummy needed a cover story. And a suitable traveling companion. Someone with whom she could make the journey to the holy city of Haridwar, where she planned to continue her own investigation of the murder of Faheem Khan without raising the suspicion of her three sons. Someone who wasn’t suspicious by nature and could be easily distracted.

  Only one name fit the bill: Ritu Bawar, better known to everyone as Ritu Auntie.

  Not the best traveler in the world, it had to be said—what with her bad hips, strict dietary requirements and highly superstitious nature. But she of all people had time on her hands. Her husband was no more (clogged arteries), her eldest son had emigrated (UAE) and her second son had someone else to cook for him (married off). She passed her days gossiping on the phone and from the balcony of her apartment, playing teen patti at the Punjabi Bagh Club and badgering her young daughter-in-law for a grandson.