Doosra: The Other One

by Vish Dhamija

  'And he carried a Blackberry.'

  'I must compliment you on your sharp eyes, Rita. Yes, that is a Blackberry he has in his hand.'

  'Thanks Victor. However, looking at this footage alone, there is no certainty this man is an Indian. I mean… he could be anyone from Southern Europe, Northern Africa or even from the Middle-East.'

  Recognition across races is known to be pretty appalling. Ask an Indian witness about a Caucasian or an African or a South-East Asian and they'll be at a loss. Wouldn't it be the same for a Caucasian in identifying an Indian? Didn't Ash Mattel tell her that every Indian girl looked like Shilpa Shetty to the Brits after she had won some Celebrity Big Brother in the UK?

  'You have a point there Rita but, after we got this footage, the hotel front desk personnel confirmed they had seen the guy, spoken to him and he was positively identified as an Indian. After all, they had checked him in. He couldn't have eluded that. He checked-in with the name…' Victor scrambled through the pages… 'Sishir Singh.' He passed the papers to Rita.

  Rita looked at them for a few minutes, and then passed them to Vikram.

  Vikram looked at the papers. 'I can appreciate why you're here now.'

  'I'm glad you both agree with me. Now, how do we find this guy?'

  'Hold on a minute. Even if we concur that he is of Indian origin, that is no harbinger that the guy lives in India?'

  'Well, the airport authorities gave us their surveillance tapes too. Let's look at them first.'

  The guy who could possibly be Sishir Singh was on camera for a fraction of a second and then, poof, vanished. No other surveillance camera anywhere at the airport picked him up again. In the only spotting, the guy was of the same height and body proportions as Sishir Singh, and hence the possibility. The guy wore a baseball cap with the shade guardedly pulled down till it almost covered his nose. The airport cameras worked 360 degrees. They rotated such that each one covered the same spot every fifteen seconds. There was only a brief time when one camera arrested Sishir Singh when he went to the check-in desk. It was evident that the guy knew the location of airport cameras too. You had to know the camera locations and their movements in entirety before you could outfox it. Sishir Singh certainly knew the CCTV blind spots. There was no other way. He should be given full marks for the research.

  'The image was dark and hazy, as you can imagine, but our experts after enhancing and enlarging it, have compared and confirmed with statistical confidence that the image was of the same person that was in the elevator,' Victor began after the short video ended. 'Moreover, our airport authorities confirmed that a guy named Sishir Singh flew from Brussels to Mumbai on the morning after the murder. That was the same flight Mr Jogani was booked on. Perhaps, if he had failed to get the diamonds at the hotel he had planned to take them someplace else. Who knows?'

  'OK, that's too much of a coincidence to accept. That settles it, if Sishir Singh flew to Mumbai...'

  'They hadn't thought the plan through. How do you steal diamonds from the merchants and sell them back to them in India?' Vikram questioned.

  Rita could explain it but she let Victor explicate.

  'In our experience, art, antiques, collectibles or merchandise, like precious stones over a certain value are stolen only after they are sold. The buyer is already there. The diamonds would have changed hands before our police got Mr Jogani's body bagged and tagged and got it out of the hotel. The buyer, of course, hadn't ordered blood diamonds, but who would have known about the murder when the deal was sealed?'

  The hypothesis made sense.

  'And in any event, selling the diamonds — I guess that worry would pale before the reward,' Rita explained more logically. 'And I know it's only an assumption but in my opinion it's a calculated hypothesis.'

  'It's more than a hypothesis actually, as one of the diamonds stolen from that heist turned up in Antwerp again, and the origin of that stone was given as Mumbai. So, some of them have already changed hands once, at least.'

  'And is there no way to track the last sale and then work on the chain backwards to its origin in Mumbai?' Vikram asked.

  'No.' Victor wagged his head. 'The diamond trade is more guarded than you imagine: almost the same secrecy is awarded to it as to the drugs trade for some reason. Nevertheless, that aside we did try, but got nowhere. The search was futile.'

  'How do you want us to proceed?' Rita asked.

  'As I mentioned before, first of all we need to contact Mr Jogani's office, house, friends, and track down Sishir Singh before we can even begin. As the murder happened in a hotel, a public place, you can well imagine we have picked up more fingerprints — latent, impressed and patent — than in any other case that I've been involved in. We've ruled out all the hotel staff, and whoever we had on the file, but unless we find a match all that remains is unusable.'

  Victor was correct. Finding prints in a hotel room was always a bitch, considering the number of people who'd have lived in the room before and touched the articles, equipment, walls, fittings and whatnot. And then, be it prints, hair, blood, skin residue, evidence per se was impotent. It had little value till it could be found. Once found — like Victor's team had — it should have been recovered from the crime scene and examined to establish its legitimacy, which Rita couldn't imagine could be the case in a hotel room. Nevertheless, even if there were, there should be something or someone that it could be compared to. Only then could it give any direction to the investigators. Otherwise, a drop of blood is only a drop of blood. Nonetheless, Rita was convinced the intruder — Sishir Singh or whoever — wouldn't have left any such evidence behind that could lead back to him. The whole incident was indeed a well-planned operation. And whoever masterminded it had enough IQ to recognise that was the first thing the police would look for: murder or burglary.

  'Witnesses? Not a one,' Victor concluded.

  'If Sishir Singh is in Mumbai, we will find him — it won't be easy, but it can't be impossible either.'

  Reasonable assurance without a promise but what other surety could Rita offer at this stage?

  'Thank you for the confidence exhibited. What do you need from us?'

  'Could we have a copy of this surveillance camera footage and the pictures please?' Vikram asked.

  Since Rita had known Vikram he had been a meticulous officer who was conscientious and focussed. He sounded like he was already imbibed into the case.

  'Of course… we made a copy of everything, you can keep them.' Victor opened his case again and took out a red box file — in the manner he lifted the heavy file Rita could assess that it weighed a ton — and placed it on the table. Neither Rita nor Vikram rushed for it. It lay between them like an orphan. What was the rush? The file would be with them now and they could sink their fangs into it at their earliest convenience. 'I'm cognisant that you will have questions when you read the file,' Victor carried on, '…and watch the footage and picture a few times, so if you want to ask or discuss anything I'm in Mumbai until Thursday, then I need to return. However, I'll be contactable twenty-four/seven on phone and email should you need me.'

  With a few other sundry details and a plan to meet the next day, giving the Indian contingent time to swallow the details and work on a blueprint, the briefing finished around 2 PM. A police driver from the pool had been allocated to Victor for his stay in Mumbai and he left for the hotel. He had only flown in the night before, ergo he was well past his bedtime according to his body clock.

  ***

  Vikram sat on the visitor's seat in Rita's office when Jatin came in. Inspector Jatin Singh had moved into Rita's team only since the last case that had brought the three of them together. He was just proving to be a prized asset when the misfortune of getting involved with some wrong people almost destroyed his career. But he was back. Rita appreciated his high levels of energy and his sharp intellect; he was much younger than Vikram and herself though. The fact that he succumbed to something stupid once did not alter Rita's attitude towards him. Hadn't they
all been taken for a ride by the crafty murderer in the infamous Bhendi Bazaar case? Why, then, isolate poor Jatin for his recklessness? He had, after all, been her other Man Friday. Taller than Rita, but shorter than Vikram, Jatin was five-feet-eleven, and he was always well dressed. In her mind, Rita thought of him as eye candy: an innocuous pleasure of life.

  He seemed irked. 'I'm very sorry ma'am. The flight was delayed.' he started.

  'It's OK, Jatin. As per usual protocol we've allocated the most horrible tasks to the absent member.'

  'Welcome back, ma'am.'

  'Thanks. You too. How was the vacation?'

  'Fantastic.'

  'Vikram will brief you on the case. And then we have this huge file to go through. I think we should get copies made for all of us, as we can't lose any more time reading it sequentially.'

  Vikram nodded, and in his usual manner jotted it down. He wrote down everything that Rita said. Sometimes she wondered if Vikram was as meticulous at home as he was here? Did he note down every task his wife asked him to carry out too?

  'Is there anything you want to discuss about the case?' She got up to indicate the meeting was over. 'Please give the original file back to me after you make the copies. I'll try to read the case file tonight. We should come in and discuss our summaries and strategy tomorrow afternoon. Depending on the task at hand I'll see how many people we need in the team to manage this investigation. Have a good evening, you two.'

  As she walked out and waited for the lift she observed that the phones rang more than they did before she went on medical leave or so it seemed. Maybe it was simple mathematics: there had been some redundancies in her absence and perhaps there weren't enough people to attend all the calls. She smiled at the irony. Not enough people to man phones in a police headquarters and here they were looking at a case that didn't even happen in their jurisdiction. Welcome to shit extraordinaire, she murmured.

  She had paged the driver and he brought the car around. A constable had carried the heavy file for her and was putting it in the boot as she stood there mulling over the day.

  Sishir Singh. Not a common name.

  It had been a long day. More than the case — though the case, Rita could tell, would turn out to be a real pig very soon — the routine of being in the office for long hours once again had drained her. Chugalugging a generous sip of Jim Beam from the bottle she went up for a shower.

  As she changed after the shower the images of blurry film footage that Victor had shown ran thought her mind. She had an eidetic memory. Nothing escaped her mind. Image. Sound. Names. Scent. She was born to be a detective. Something bothered her. Had she missed anything that could provide a clue to the person in the elevator? Sishir Singh was definitely an alias. One didn't need to be a Sherlock to tell her that. But that was logic, not evidence. No one would have given their real name at the hotel where they were about to steal diamonds. Which also meant that the perpetrator had access to fake documents. Not an impossibility either.

  Catching a criminal is like one side playing the game with ever changing rules. The police have to adhere to the guidelines, the criminal can change course any time: name, identity, MO...

  Jim was beginning to take the weariness of the long day away. It was only seven and the day was still bright. She thought of going out for a bite, but dropped the idea. She didn't know anyone close by to go out to dinner with, and sitting in a restaurant alone was not something she was in the mood for.

  She knew Jim, her best friend, was always there for her but she also understood that a few more intimate kisses from the bottle and he could easily become her worst enemy. She had seen her own dad — an alcoholic, though he never admitted it. Who does? — kissing the enemy to death. History, it is often quoted, had a penchant of repeating itself by calling itself genetic and Rita knew when to stop. Good night Jim. She had three drinks and went into the kitchen to raid the refrigerator.

  She thought about reading some material that Victor had given, but she was exhausted and it was the weekend.

  Tomorrow, she promised herself and switched off the lights.

  ***

  Birds sang. The sun rose. The leaves were still green. The ground was wet from the overnight showers. Rita was savouring the breakfast of eggs, toast and baked beans when her mobile rang. She finished the large morsel in her mouth as the caller ID showed up: Commissioner Saxena. She looked up at the clock: 6:30. Wow, impressive Sexy!

  'Good morning, sir.'

  'A very good morning to you too, DCP Ferreira. I was wondering if you had some time to update me on the Belgian case.'

  There was hardly any update. All they had had was the briefing from Victor less than twenty-four hours ago.

  'We've just got the files now, sir. Give us a day or two please.'

  'No worries. When you're in office please come by to see me.'

  The line was dead before Rita could respond.

  ***

  No one was in office when she arrived at work; it was still only 7:30. Coffee in hand, she settled in her office and took out the video footage DVD and put it in the computer.

  After so thoroughly planning the operation how had the murderer missed this lone camera in the elevator car?

  Next she slid the red box file towards her. It was indeed bulky. But unlike body weight, in a murder investigation it was better to have more than not enough. As always, Rita's next step was to discern what fat to cut when she didn't know what could be rewarding and what was unavailing. But because there weren't enough hours in the day ever, every detective had to make a choice based on the preponderance or imbalance of evidence. Oh yes, of course everything could go wrong with that choice. She sifted through the papers for over an hour. Reports. Memos. Tips. Witnesses consulted and cross-referenced; alibis corroborated by friends, associates and acquaintances. Most of the documents were what Victor had narrated, the documents were detailed, analysed and evaluated. Everything hinted it was a big case for Belgium where homicide rates were low and they took them seriously.

  Subsequently, she focussed on photographs and maps of the crime scene. Jogani lay in a pool of congealed blood. The hotel personnel only became aware of the murder when Jogani didn't respond to the early morning alarm he had requested to catch the flight to Mumbai that he was booked on. The hotel employees obviously got worried when the cabbie arrived and Jogani had neither responded to the alarm nor come down to settle his bill. They called the police.

  The night porter who had attended to Jogani when he had come down for a fake call from reception had given his account to police. He explained to the police that Jogani appeared stressed and that he had raced back once he found out that no one from the reception had actually called him down.

  That was unquestionably a ploy to get the quarry out of his room.

  Adding up his evidence and the postmortem report, the Belgian police had narrowed down the time window of death. Then the time stamp on the concealed camera in the elevator confirmed the lone murderer leaving.

  The time of death was thus further contracted down to a precise period between those fifteen and twenty minutes. There was nothing in the crime scene photos that gave anything away. The police had summed up that the bag was missing. Two things fascinated Rita in the documents. One that the lock on the entrance door to Jogani's hotel room had been tampered with, and second — even more bizarre — the safe in Jogani's room had been replaced with another one. The police had discovered the original safe from the room in the adjacent room, which was one of the three rooms booked by Mr Sishir Singh. Victor had forgotten to mention that Sishir had booked three rooms, but no one in the hotel had seen any other guests but him the whole time.

  How was that possible? Did they manage to give a slip to the receptionist? Surely, they should have been caught on the solitary camera in the elevator at some point or did they never use the elevators at all?

  The floor plan of the hotel strongly suggested that whoever was along with Sishir Singh in accomplishing the caper had u
sed the fire escape, the stairs that were at the opposite end of the lifts and they had — for health and safety reasons — an unlocked exit directly leading to the street.

  Even transcripts of the interviews carried out by Belgian police had been included in the box file, which Rita decided to delve into later. She wanted to mull over the info she had consumed so far. Bite sized processing.

  Sadly in an investigation, she knew, questions and answers did not come in a sequence. Sometimes you got some answers first that you had no use of. Later came in the questions that bridged the gap. It was like putting the scrabble tiles in the box again and juggling them. You never knew when the winning word would pop out. You had to keep looking at all that you've found before, whenever you got some new material. Put together it might make sense. Conscious of all that, she made mental notes as she processed the gen she captured from the file. Jogani must certainly have friends and business associates in Mumbai. And what about his home, his company, his employees? Did he operate alone? Shouldn't someone in Mumbai be the first point of contact? Perhaps someone knew Sishir Singh or someone who looked like the guy who called himself by that name. That the burglary was the principal plan and unfortunately culminated in murder was one theory — most palpable one too, possibly — but there could be numerous other motives for murder. Finding diamonds in the room might have been like winning a lottery without buying the ticket though it didn't appear so: the murder might have been an improvised plan, the break-in was indeed thought-out. Well thought-out. Eliminating Jogani with a gun didn't require changing the safe in the room or tampering the lock of the hotel room; it could have been accomplished by whacking Jogani in the street.