“Yes, well, I decided to ignore his advice for the simple reason that my wife and I have nothing to hide,” he stated.
“Most admirable of you, sir.”
Dogra checked his watch. “Now, I can give you ten minutes,” he said.
“Ten minutes will be more than enough, sir,” responded Puri as if it was all a matter of mere routine. He took out notebook and pen. “I wanted to ask you about the seating arrangement at the dinner, actually. Your good wife sat three places from the victim and you yourself to her right. Tell me: that was by choice, sir?”
“Not at all,” answered Dogra. “We had no say in the matter.”
“You’re part owner of the Delhi team, is it not so?”
“I’m the majority shareholder. I own fifty-one percent. But I don’t get involved with the catering arrangements.”
Puri made a note of this. Then he said, “Please be good enough to tell me what all happened from the time you entered the banquet hall.”
Dogra described how he and his wife had spent fifteen, maybe twenty minutes talking with his “old friend” Cabinet Secretary J. K. Shrivastav and then sat down at the table. One by one, the other guests had joined them. The food had been served straightaway.
“You remember Faheem Khan leaving the table, sir?” asked Puri.
“Yes, I do. I remember thinking his food was getting cold.”
“You saw any person standing there—behind his chair, that is?”
“I don’t believe so, but then a few of us did get up from the table. I remember Kamran Khan excusing himself for a while. At one point, Mrs. Talwar came and stood behind Mrs. Bhangu and they talked. My wife paid a visit to the ladies’ room after she’d finished eating. I went to the WC myself. I believe Satish Bhatia was gone for a short while as well.”
“During Faheem Khan’s absence, sir?”
“Afterward, I believe,” said Dogra, but he didn’t sound sure and looked up at the ceiling again as if, somehow, the molded plaster might hold the answer. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Puri, I can’t remember.”
“Anyone else approached the table—aside from the waiters, that is?”
“Not while we were eating, no.”
“It is my understanding you spilled your drink, sir?”
“That’s right. I knocked it over.”
“When exactly?”
“Oh, that’s hard to say.”
“When Faheem Khan was absent?”
“Yes, I suppose it was.”
“Must have distracted everyone.”
“I suppose so. Some of it spilled on Gunjan Bhangu, I’m embarrassed to say. But most got onto my trousers. That was when I visited the WC. To dry it off.”
The detective made a note of this and then followed up with, “You’d been at the function the preceding evening, sir?”
“For the championship inauguration drinks? Yes, I was there for an hour or so.”
“And madam?”
“She accompanied me, of course.”
“You met Faheem Khan, is it?”
“Briefly.”
“What did you talk about?”
“We welcomed him to India. Asked him if he’d had a good journey.” Dogra checked his Rolex. “You’ve got another few minutes, Mr. Puri.”
“Just I wanted to ask you about your business dealings with Pakistan.”
Dogra gave a gesture that suggested he’d anticipated the question. “My company imports various commodities from there,” he answered.
“And you’ve visited Pakistan on no less than seven occasions.”
“You would not have found that information on my company’s website,” answered the multimillionaire with a touch of pique.
“No, sir, I’ve other sources, actually.”
“Well, your other sources are correct, Mr. Puri. But before you ask, I’ve no connection whatsoever with the Khans.”
“It is my understanding madam was born in Pakistan, sir.”
Before Dogra could answer, the door opened and his wife appeared. She was petite and elegant. Her gray silk sari was immaculately tied, a diamond brooch pinned to one shoulder. Her hair, though white and thin enough to show the scalp beneath, was professionally coiffed.
“Aah, there you are.” Dogra sent her a sympathetic smile. “How’s your head?”
“Much better, thank you. The maid gave me maalish.”
She came and sat next to her husband, arranging the folds of her sari about her.
“Mr. Puri here was just asking me where you were born,” explained Dogra as she sized him up.
“Oh, that’s easy,” she said, her tone almost festive. “My birthplace was Lahore. More years ago than I care to remember.”
“You came to India in 1947, is it, madam?” asked Puri.
“Along with my mother, yes. I’m afraid my other relatives were lost to us along the way.”
“There is any connection between your family and the Khans?”
“None. I believe they hail from Rawalpindi.”
The detective went back over much of the same ground he had covered with Ram Dogra and found her recollection of events tallied. There was one detail Mrs. Dogra was able to add, however. Ten minutes before Faheem Khan died, she’d seen Kamran Khan heading toward the hotel’s emergency exit. “Why you didn’t inform the police, madam?” asked Puri, sure that this detail had not appeared in the transcript of her police interview.
“It must have slipped my mind,” she answered.
Ten
There was no mistaking the change that had come over Puri’s childhood neighborhood of Punjabi Bagh in West Delhi since the late 1990s when the effects of “liberalization”—the loosening of the noose that had been strangling the Indian economy—had started to take effect.
In the “good old, bad old days,” as Puri referred to them, you had to wait years to get a telephone connection. And when, at long last, the engineers turned up and you could make a call from the luxury of your own living room (as opposed to a grubby PCO/STD booth), there was always a crossed line, or rather several crossed lines, and quite often a delayed echo too, so it sounded as if you were speaking into a wishing well along with a group of strangers.
Once, when Puri was thirteen, he’d overheard Asha Singh’s mum at number twenty-five oblique three telling Mrs. Bhullar about how her husband was having “erection issues.” Believing that she might have been referring to some kind of DIY problem, he had asked his mother for clarification. On another occasion, Puri’s father, Om Chander Puri, then still on the force, had overheard a known thief discussing plans with an accomplice to knock over Ambar Jewelry Emporium and, consequently, caught them in the act.
Buying a car had been a similarly laborious process. The waiting list was as long as the Ramayana. The choice of models had been limited—either an Ambassador or an Indian Fiat—and they came in any color as long as it was white. Air-conditioning was almost unheard of and most models came with fans fixed to the dashboard. Side mirrors were considered additional extras.
As for luxury goods, they were smuggled into the country in the bulging suitcases of Non-Resident Indian relatives from the U.S. and the UK. Their arrival was always accompanied by a ritual unpacking. French makeup, diabetes medicine and the odd laptop computer would be shared out like rations during a time of war. The younger generation would then go and try on their blue jeans; their elders, meanwhile, would criticize Western cultural values while tucking into rare delicacies like Kit Kat bars.
How things had changed and in such a short period of time, reflected Puri as he walked along NW Avenue, feeling somewhat bewildered by it all. Now even the aunties had BlackBerrys, you couldn’t throw a mango stone without hitting a BMW with a cool Punjabi dude in designer shades behind the wheel and the black-and-white TVs that had stood in people’s living rooms covered in knitted woolen cozies had been replaced by HD flat-screens.
There was no mistaking the new enthusiasm in the air, either. For the educated, English-speaking middl
e classes, there were well-paid jobs in the private sector. “India Inc.,” as it was often referred to in the press, had bought British Steel and Jaguar. A guy from Chandigarh had coinvented Hotmail. PepsiCo was now run by a Tamil woman called Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi.
The detective paused outside a café–cum–video hall filled with teenagers dressed like the cast of an American high school movie. They were eating plates of nachos coated in processed cheese, blasting aliens with laser pistols, addressing one another as “dude” and “bro” while catching up on Facebook on their Androids. Indipop spilled out onto the pavement. “Just chill, chill. Just chill . . .”
This was the stuff of Mahatma Gandhi’s nightmares. “Waste of human mind space,” Puri muttered as he turned away. Was he witnessing a passing fad or the future? With half of India’s population now under twenty-five, where was society headed? Did this bindaas brigade know anything of their own culture?
The thing that worried Puri most was the idea that the old extended family structure might break down. It was the glue that held Indian society together. And there were cracks showing in the system. Only last week, he’d come across a widower, a former engineer no less, living on his own at the age of seventy because his three children had taken up in other cities. Had they no shame?
He turned the corner and made his way into the Old Slum Quarters area, finding himself back in the tamasha. For all the tangles of wires hanging overhead and the treacherous uncovered manholes lying in wait like animal snares, he felt more comfortable here. There had always been many Indias coexisting side by side—or perhaps one on top of the other—and there always would be, he reassured himself. Layer upon layer upon layer, like the very earth itself.
Puri found the door he was looking for and opened it. He was about to descend deep into the nether regions.
• • •
Concrete stairs and paan-stained walls led down into a faintly damp-smelling basement. Puri came to a heavy door. Behind it, he could hear voices, the sound of TV cricket commentary, male laughter. Its raucous nature caused him to hesitate.
Puri’s relationship with his childhood friend Rinku was a complicated one. From the age of six or seven, they had roamed the streets of Punjabi Bagh together and gotten into every kind of trouble—spied on Swati Dhatarwal and seen her boobies, stolen the guavas off old Bunty’s prized tree, even nailed old Titoo Lathwal with their water balloons on Holi. But as adults they’d chosen very different paths. Puri had gone into the army and then in the late 1980s set himself up as a private investigator. Rinku, on the other hand, had never been out of trouble.
The detective preferred not to know what his friend got up to. He was one of them, a part of the Nexus, the loose alliance of politicians, judges, bureaucrats, businessmen and mafiosí who were only getting richer and more powerful in the “new” India. In the good old, bad old days, the likes of Rinku stuffed their black money under the mattress. Now he parked crores in remote rural branches of state banks and invested in agricultural land forcibly appropriated by the government at knockdown prices.
In truth, they were enemies, the two old friends, although neither of them had really faced up to the fact. On major holidays, they still dropped in on each other. Last year, Puri, Rumpi and Mummy had attended Rinku’s son’s wedding, a wildly extravagant affair at Pisces Garden. And now, against his better judgment, the detective was going to ask Rinku for help. He had no choice. Puri didn’t know the world of illegal cricket gambling and he needed to get close to Full Moon. If anyone would know how to get into his satta party tomorrow night, it was Puri’s childhood friend.
The door opened a crack and a man’s grizzled face appeared, half-hidden in shadow. He squinted and gave an upward, perfunctory nod. “Kaun?”
“I want to see Pappu.” Pappu was Rinku’s nickname. “Tell him it’s Chubby.”
The door was banged shut. A minute later it was opened wide.
“Shit, yaar!” Rinku was moderately drunk, his eyes bloodshot. He put his arms around the detective. “Long time, buddy,” he exclaimed, giving him a hug. “What brings you round?”
Puri stared at Rinku’s hair. He had dyed it: black with streaks of henna.
“What the hell you went and did, you bugger?” asked the detective, his tone suddenly different, almost loutish. It would not have gone down well in the hallowed corridors of the Gymkhana Club. “What do you call this? Midlife crisis?”
“Crisis, bollocks!” bawled Rinku. “Fifty’s the new twenty, Chubby! I tell you, my dick is getting more workout than ever. From Russia with love! I tell you these gori girls really know how to—”
“I need to talk,” interrupted Puri.
Rinku’s face showed startled dismay. “Wow, buddy. Forget the foreplay, haa. Just get straight down to business! OK, fine, have it your way. You’d better come in, Chubby. I’ll introduce you.”
He turned and addressed the other five men in the room. They were sitting in a haze of cigarette smoke watching the cricket on TV.
“Gentlemen, this is the great Vishwas Puri. Best private detective in all India and chaser of housewives.”
The others acknowledged him with somber (but definitely not sober) nods before returning their attention to the game.
“Those bloody Jaipur jokers are forty-eight for four, yaar,” said Rinku as he led the way to the back of the room past stacks of cartons of unopened Japanese cigarettes. “Can you believe, Chubby? Worse than use-less. I’ve lost a bundle of moola.”
His office was nothing fancy: bare concrete walls, a couch, a desk and a gigantic fridge. On the desk sat a pile of cash. Wads of old notes, five hundreds mostly—more than Puri made in a year.
“Chubby, watch this,” he said. “You’re not going to believe.” He took a glass and inserted it into the fridge’s ice dispenser. Cubes started dropping out, clink, clink, clink. Rinku beamed. “Bloody mind-blowing!” he bawled. “It does crushed ice, also. Can you believe? Used to be only in America. Now everything’s available in India!”
He poured Puri a large Royal Challenge with soda and topped up his own.
“How’s Mummy? I heard she’s ailing,” said Rinku, who still knew about everything that went on in the neighborhood.
“You know her, yaar. Fit as a horse. Yesterday a temperature. Today morning, only, she went gallivanting off to Haridwar with that Ritu Auntie.” Puri rolled his eyes.
Rinku did the same and muttered, “Bloody pain in the nuts, that woman.”
They spent a few more minutes catching up on family news and local gossip.
“We should do this more often, you bugger!” exclaimed Rinku when they had exhausted their stock. His words engendered an uncomfortable silence, the reality of their situation suddenly forced upon them.
“I’m investigating the murder of Faheem Khan,” said Puri eventually.
“Why bother, yaar? Who cares? His butter chicken didn’t agree with him. Let it go.”
“‘Let it go’ is not in my vocabulary.”
“And getting yourself killed is?”
“What are you talking?”
Rinku let out a sharp, irritated sigh. “I’ve got to teach you bloody ABC or what?”
“Not ABC. X, Y and Z, only.”
“Fine. X is for ‘ex.’ As in former, used to be, dearly departed—as in buss! Want that before your name in the newspaper? Take my advice. Go back to assisting virgins. Didn’t I read in the newspaper recently you rescued some doggie? Looked like a rat, no?”
Puri bristled. “It was a Chihuahua—a very rare breed, actually.”
“Is that what it’s come to, Chubby?”
Puri donned an expressionless mask. “Faheem Khan was up to his neck in it—match fixing and all,” he stated.
The smile faded from Rinku’s face. “What? I have to spell it out for you, Chubby? Just like old times, haa?”
“Stop doing riddles, yaar. Tell me straight.”
“Look, Chubby, there’s no prizes for guessing who killed the Paki. Ever
yone knows who controls the Syndicate. He might be a special guest of our neighbors’, but every bookie, from the guy on the street corner to the khoka punter, answers to him. Step out of line and you’re khatam, history.”
“What’s a khoka punter?” asked Puri.
“Where’ve you been, yaar? In some cave? Means a guy who deals directly with Dubai—twenty-five-lakh spots and over. And before you ask, Chubby, a spot is a bet.”
Rinku picked up Puri’s empty glass. “Make it a single only,” said the detective.
“Don’t talk shit, yaar,” he said, filling the glass to the brim.
“So tell me: how can I become a punter?”
“You? Mister Chihuahua?” Rinku guffawed again.
• • •
Puri had read recently that an economist called Galbraith had once called India a “functioning anarchy.” He thought of this as Rinku outlined how the underground betting system operated. The Syndicate didn’t maintain offices; the vast majority of the betting public never met their bookie in person; and 90 percent of the bookies themselves had no direct contact with the chief bookmakers, who were believed to be based in Dubai. On a big match day, bets amounting to an estimated 10,000-crore rupees were placed across the city. In Mumbai it was double that.
“The whole thing runs on trust, Chubby,” explained Rinku. “Someone agrees to vouch for you, makes the introduction, you make a deposit and place your bet. All accounts are settled by day end—latest. Win and the boy makes delivery right to my door. Just like pizza.”
“What if you lose?”
“He collects.”
“And if you don’t do payment?”
“Another guy comes round and gives you big kisses.”
“Doesn’t sound like trust to me.”
Rinku pulled an exasperated face. “What is it with you, Chubby? Always making judgment. Fact is, the whole thing works. No need for any bloody oversight committee or regulatory board.”
“Or tax to pay. Most convenient.”
“Bloody right, yaar. And it should stay that way. Gambling’s in our blood, Chubby. We Indians love to bet like no one else. It’s in the Mahabharata, for God’s sake. Pandava loses his kingdom and to gain his family’s freedom has to play a game of dice, remember?”
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