How many times did he have to reiterate that he was the only detective in the family? Mummy-ji, as he’d put it to Rumpi recently, should “stick to what she is best at: making gulab jamuns and all.”
Puri stepped into the corridor of his carriage and dialed his wife’s number.
“Chubby, that’s you? Hello? You’re on another train, is it?”
“Mummy-ji, why are you answering Rumpi’s phone?”
“Just she’s currently indisposed. Something is the matter? Some tension is there?”
“No tension, Mummy-ji,” Puri lied, feeling his stress levels steadily rising. “Just I—”
“One moment hold. She’s reverted.”
He heard Mummy say, “It’s Chubby. Something urgent sounds like.”
Hands fumbled with the phone before Rumpi’s voice came on the line.
“Anything the matter?”
“I would require a private word if at all possible.”
“You’ll have to speak up. I can hardly hear you.”
The reception was indeed terrible. It didn’t help that Puri’s train was still trundling through Delhi’s moribund outskirts and the driver was blowing his horn to clear the people walking along the tracks ahead.
“I would need a private word, my dear!” repeated the detective, his voice raised and distinctly edgy.
Rumpi made her way to the section of the train between her carriage and the next.
“All that is required is for you to locate the said individual and make a note of where exactly he’s seated,” said Puri after explaining what had happened.
“Yes, I suppose I can do that,” said Rumpi, although she couldn’t have sounded less confident or enthusiastic.
“Tip-top. Once you reach Jammu, Inspector Malhotra will do the needful. Your help could be required in pointing out the guilty party, also.”
“What if he’s dangerous, Chubby?”
“Not to worry, my dear—a common chain snatcher, only.”
She thought it over for a moment and then sighed. “I just don’t understand why you can’t ask Mummy.”
The question provoked a predictable diatribe about how mummies aren’t detectives. She held the phone away from her ear for a moment or two and then said, “OK, Chubby, have it your way. I’ll do my best. What was in your wallet by the way?”
Puri ran through the contents in his head: a couple of bank cards, a few thousand rupees in cash, various counterfeit IDs, multiple fake business cards and two SIM cards for untraceable mobile numbers.
“This and that,” he answered.
* * *
Even if Rumpi had wanted to—and she didn’t—it would have been impossible to keep the theft of Chubby’s wallet from coming to her mother-in-law’s notice. Mummy-ji had radar like a bat and their berths were all of three feet apart.
Besides, Rumpi didn’t like all this cloak-and-dagger sneaking around. She was a housewife, content to attend to her home and family, volunteer two days a week with a charity helping street children, and make her mango achaar, which was generally regarded as being in a class of its own.
If Puri wanted his wallet back, he’d just have to put up with Mummy getting involved. She was the most capable person by far. Only recently, she’d managed to entrap a con man posing as an electrical meter reader by letting him into her Punjabi Bagh home, showing him the cupboard under the stairs and then locking him inside.
The said con man had robbed numerous elderly citizens prior to meeting his match in the form of this diminutive, gray-haired lady and Mummy had been heralded as a local hero. There was even talk of an award.
Why Chubby would never acknowledge her obvious talents and allow her to put them to use in an open and free manner was beyond Rumpi. He loved and respected his mother, of that there was no doubt, but when it came to work, he was intensely possessive. Or was it competitive? Either way, he behaved totally irrationally whenever he got wind of his mother “playing” detective and Rumpi could never make him see sense.
* * *
“Just I knew something was going on!” said Mummy five minutes later as they stood conferring in the section of the train between the carriages. “Chubby said earlier, na, some life-and-death situation is there.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but it’s not all that serious,” said Rumpi.
She went on to explain about the wallet and the fat pick-pocket.
Mummy responded with a dismissive tut. “Probably left it at home, na,” she said. “So forgetful men are.”
“Chubby’s usually careful with his things. If he says it was taken then it probably was.”
“He’s certain it was this concerned individual?” “That’s what he said. And he’s not one to point fingers either.”
“That is true, also.”
Encouraged, Rumpi repeated Chubby’s description of the pickpocket.
“Achcha,” said Mummy once she had taken it all in. “This thing is obvious. After identification we’ll alert the train inspector. He can do personal searching of his possessions.”
“No, no, that’s not what Chubby asked me—sorry, I mean us—to do.”
Rumpi made a face, immediately regretting her faux pas, which she could see had not been lost on her mother-in-law.
Mummy crossed her arms in front of her chest and made a face of her own. “Let me guess. Chubby said to keep me in the dark—Mummies are not detectives and all,” she said.
“You know what he’s like.”
“Exactly. So why I should do assistance, you tell me?”
“Because I need your help. I’m useless at this kind of thing.”
Mummy sulked for a moment or two longer before saying, “Fine. But the proper and right way is to alert the inspector. Robbery was done on the train, na?”
“But Chubby said he’s going to have the police waiting in Jammu.”
The doors to the next carriage opened and a shifty-looking male passenger with a large stomach emerged. He eyed the two women with what appeared to be suspicion and entered the next carriage.
Mummy gave Rumpi a knowing look. “Could be that one.”
“Chubby said he was wearing a suit.”
Mummy went thoughtfully quiet for a moment and then suggested a plan. “Here’s what to do: just I’ll take one photo to send to Chubby via my portable.”
“Your portable?”
“Naturally. It is having eight megapixels.”
“But then Chubby will know you’re involved, Mummy, and I’ll be the one who has to put up with all his cribbing.”
“Fine. I’ll take photos and do Bluetooth to your phone. Then you can do forwarding.”
“How are you going to take a picture without him noticing?” she asked.
“Never forget I am old,” she said.
“And what does that mean, Mummy-ji?”
“Didn’t you know? Old is gold, na.”
* * *
Puri had hung his trousers to dry, changed into his pajamas, called his bank to cancel his debit and credit cards, and was now lying on his bunk (still wearing his cap, which he never took off in public), staring up at the ceiling and feeling in something of a funk.
All did not seem right with the universe. First, he’d failed to solve the Jain Jewelry Heist case. And now he—Vish Puri, best detective in all India—had been pickpocketed.
He glanced over at his fellow passenger on the opposite bunk. He could tell that the young man was Bengali (his “Z”s came out “J”s), he worked for a call center or a BPO (his headset had left a distinctive red mark on his temple) and it was highly likely that he was allergic to dairy (the white spots on his fingernails indicated severe calcium deficiency). So why couldn’t he figure out what the gang had done with the loot? And how could he have been so easily duped by a common pickpocket?
There was surely only one answer: “nazar lag gayi”—the evil eye was upon him. No doubt this had come about because of his success, which had fostered envy. The evil eye was known to fix itself on th
ose who enjoyed well-being and happiness yet failed to disguise their good fortune. Bad luck would now plague him unless he could shake the gaze free. To do this, he would need to make an offering to Rudra, an avatar of Shiva, the destroyer of evil.
Crucially, Puri would also need to play down his accomplishments from now on. He’d start by telling Elizabeth Rani to take down his framed India Today cover and all his awards and hide them away. Just as a mother blemishes an infant’s features with kohl to disguise its beauty, he would have to strive to appear flawed, no matter how hard this might prove.
His phone vibrated—an SMS from Rumpi with a photo attached.
Part of the image was obscured by a curtain. The rest showed a fat man in an undershirt lying on a bunk with his eyes closed.
It wasn’t the pickpocket: his moustache was Hitler-like.
Puri sent back an appreciative message saying that this wasn’t the man.
He got a reply from Rumpi assuring him that she had another candidate in her sights.
* * *
In her own carriage, Mummy found a number of men with large bellies. Only two matched Puri’s description, however, and she managed to snap pictures of them both. The first was asleep, which made the task easy; the second she caught unawares while he was brushing his teeth and clearing his nasal passages at the communal faucet outside the toilet.
Neither of them was the pickpocket, however, and so Mummy moved on to the next carriage. It was identical to the one in which she was traveling: six berths per section, each separated by flimsy curtains. In those sections where the lights were still on, Mummy was able to get a good look at all the occupants without having to intrude upon their privacy. But where necessary, she didn’t shy from intruding. And although she provoked some cold or inquisitive stares, no one raised any objection, privacy being something of a tenuous concept in anything other than first class.
Methodically and with a certain natural discretion, she passed through five more carriages, doubling back where necessary, and loitering here and there to make sure that every passenger was accounted for. She came across four more males with ample bellies, many of them already snoring loudly, but only one with a moustache.
Finally Mummy came to the first-class carriage, which boasted six self-contained compartments with sliding doors. Lights burned inside four of them and she began to knock on their doors in turn. To whomsoever answered, she explained, somewhat absentmindedly, that she was looking for her berth and then apologized when told that she was in the wrong carriage altogether.
A knock on the fourth compartment, however, engendered a hostile response. “What do you want?” a woman’s voice screeched.
“Apologies, I’m looking for my berth,” called out Mummy, to which the response was, “Are you blind and stupid? Check your ticket!”
Mummy couldn’t believe her ears. “That is not the proper way, na!” she said.
But the woman upbraided her again, bawling, “Oh, just get lost, you pain!”
Deciding that she must be some kind of demon, and remembering the old axiom that the only answer to a fool is silence, Mummy moved on to the last compartment. Through a gap in the curtains hanging in the window, she could see inside. Two men were sitting opposite one another studying what appeared to be a diagram. One of them was short and thin with a pinched, weasel face. The other, who had his back to Mummy, was a man of large proportions. He was wearing a suit. Mummy also spied the curl of a moustache.
The Fat Man was doing the talking and kept pointing at the diagram and running his finger along certain portions of it. At one point, he made a movement with one hand as if he was giving something a hard push. Then he folded up the map and pulled out a thick envelope from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. This he handed to Weasel Face, who promptly opened it, running his fingertips over a thick wad of thousand-rupee notes. The two then stood up and shook hands.
Mummy retreated halfway down the corridor, where she stopped and turned, mobile phone at the ready.
When the fat man appeared, she got two quick snaps of him without being noticed and then watched as he knocked three times on the compartment occupied by the demon woman.
“Where’ve you been?” she demanded after opening the door to him.
“Taking care of business,” he answered.
“I’m hungry. Where the hell’s my dinner?”
“Patience, patience, my rose. I’ll serve you momentarily.”
The fat man was about to step inside the compartment when a voice called out, “Mummy-ji! There you are. What are you doing up here? We’ve been worried.”
It was Chetan.
Mummy motioned for him to keep quiet.
“Why? What’s going on? Why are you taking pictures?”
She glanced back down the corridor. Chetan had got the fat man’s attention. He was coming toward them, his forehead crumpled into a quizzical frown.
“Go! Phat-a-phat!” she told her nephew, and gave him a push.
They hurried back through the train, only stopping once they’d reached their berths.
Mummy turned off all the lights and told Chetan to get under his sheet and keep quiet.
After fifteen minutes, when she was sure they hadn’t been followed, she checked her phone. The pictures weren’t the best quality but good enough.
Within a couple of minutes they’d been forwarded to Chubby from Rumpi’s device.
His reply read, “Bingo!”
© TOM PIETRASIKNEW DELHI, INDIA
Tarquin Hall, a writer and journalist, has lived and worked throughout South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In addition to the Vish Puri mystery novels, he is the author of three works of non- fiction, including the highly acclaimed Salaam Brick Lane. He and his family live in Delhi. For more, visit www.vishpuri.com.
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COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER
Also by Tarquin Hall
From the Files of Vish Puri,
India’s Most Private Investigator
The Case of the Missing Servant
The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing
Nonfiction
Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits:
Adventures of an Under-age Journalist
To the Elephant Graveyard: A True Story of the Hunt
for a Man-Killing Indian Elephant
Salaam Brick Lane: A Year in the New East End
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition July 2012
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/> Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hall, Tarquin.
The case of the deadly butter chicken : from the files of Vish Puri, India’s most private investigator / Tarquin Hall.
p. cm.
1. Private investigators—India—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Poisoning—Fiction. 4. India—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6108.A495C34 2012
823'.92—dc23
2011052702
ISBN 978-1-4516-1315-5
ISBN 978-1-4516-1318-6 (ebook)
Tarquin Hall Page 33