Doosra: The Other One

by Vish Dhamija

  'Thank you ma'am.'

  'So, in effect, we are no better or worse with access into Mr Raja's computer?'

  'No ma'am.'

  'Could our IT gurus not check what kind of malware this Mandrake, the magician uses?'

  'They're at it, but it would be difficult to check without connecting it to online diagnostics.'

  'OK. Ask them not to make that mistake again please. I am pretty sure that if we log in from another location, the change in Mr Raja's IP or whatever might send some kind of early warning sign to Mr Raja's client. They should do as much as they can without connecting it. Then return the PC A-Sap, preferably today itself. We want Mr Raja to keep communicating with his mysterious client as usual.'

  'Roger that, ma'am.'

  Vikram noted Jatin's task, too, on his pad.

  'At least we are clear on one thing,' Rita exhaled loudly to emphasise the effect. 'The guy who killed Ron Jogani's computer and Mr Raja's mystery client are both computer-savvy. I can bet it's the same set of people. It's too much of a coincidence to swallow that two sets of computer geeks running two separate operations just happened to overlap, wouldn't you say?'

  Sure. No one could argue with that.

  'And I can't believe why someone would do that unless they were to get the share of the diamonds? They might be in tandem or they might be the same set of people.'

  'How can we know that?'

  'That's what we'll find out.'

  'Should we approach Honey Singh for help? He can assist us with tracing if he is any good?' Vikram floated a new idea.

  Rita let that idea hang. It was like the proverbial Catch 22. If Honey Singh knew — or could guess or conclude from what they told him — why someone would be following him around, then there was a high probability he would also know who that person was or might be? And if Honey Singh didn't have the faintest indication that he was being tailed wouldn't he want to help the police to discover who it could be and why? Wouldn't anyone in that predicament? Conversely, if Honey Singh was even remotely involved in this entire Jogani case, the police would blow away any cover they thought they had by approaching him.

  'No, let's exhaust all other possibilities before we approach Honey Singh. All we have until now are three ambiguous links between Sishir Singh and Honey Singh: they both live in Mumbai, they share a common family name and both are well versed with computers — hardly any proof that they are the same guy. There can be another five thousand men in this city with these three common attributes—'

  'But they are carbon copies of each other. You've seen both pictures, ma'am,' Nene exclaimed.

  'Yes, I have. You're the one who's done the entire search into his family. Any chance of an identical twin separated in Kumbh-ka-Mela?'

  Nene smiled. 'Like some old Bollywood film, you mean?'

  'Identical twin is a biological phenomenon, which we cannot ignore or deny, can we?'

  'We can check with his mother, she would certainly know.' Nene concurred.

  'But she might not certainly tell you the truth. Why should she if there is a tragic story behind? In any event, she is under no obligation to tell us the truth unless we subpoena her into court, and we can't do any of that till we have a case against her or her son. How about we avoid the family and find out where Honey Singh was born? We dig into hospital and municipal records and find it ourselves.'

  Vikram jotted that down too. He was meticulous about every case.

  Their tasks handed out, Nene and Jatin left for action.

  'And Vikram, I want you to concentrate entirely on Honey Singh. I need all records of Honey Singh's travels — business or pleasure — from the beginning of the year. I doubt if they keep video recordings of passengers at airports for three months, but they should have printed records of travel from in and out of the country. Ask them to check if Honey Singh went abroad at all, not only to Belgium or Europe but also anywhere outside India. All the phones he owns or those listed as his company phones, their call records — especially in the week of Jogani's murder. And GPS co-ordinates, if any, of these mobiles; if any the phones travelled abroad we should know. He runs a legitimate business so there should be no reason at this point for us to suppose he has any clandestine pay-as-you-go telephone connections. Any capture of his car on any police camera in the city during the week of Jogani's murder in Belgium. Anything that can alibi him.'

  Vikram scribbled on.

  'Same for Kitty.'

  'Who?' He looked up.

  'Miss Kitty Varghese, his girlfriend who's a model — get her phone records too, and her whereabouts at the time.'

  'Yes ma'am.'

  'If we find anything that places him near Belgium we have a case against him. If nothing comes up, we go see him. For all we know he might be in danger from whoever this Sishir Singh is or from Mr Raja's unidentified client, if they are not one and the same... but that's for after.'

  Vikram left and Rita went back and prepared another cup of hot coffee — demitasse as she called it. It was nearing lunchtime now and Mr Hotness had not called yet. She checked her mobile, but there were no missed calls, no text either. She sat in her chair, reclined and ran her hand through her hair, only to realise again that it was shorter now than a year back. She smiled. What a case that had been, chasing a serial killer through Bhendi Bazaar and being taken captive herself. She still came out a winner. However, in this case she was working on hand-me-down information, which peeved her. But she knew well that when the world including Sexy and Joshi put you at the top you don't have a moral right to make excuses of any kind. She couldn't just go back now to Sexy and say she couldn't crack the case because... that would be nonsense.

  They say if you want to know about someone's private life you should ask their driver. The driver is the one who took them somewhere and brought them back. The driver overheard a lot of conversation since the invention of mobile phones. In some cases the driver also picked up and dropped their guests to local Mumbai stations or taxi stands. In some other cases the drivers in Mumbai also did miscellaneous shopping on their behalf. In short, the driver had access to information that some retail companies' CRM departments would be willing to pay to see add-ons and complementary products they could bolt on to the original purchases. Not that Rita had any inhibitions or anything to conceal but there seemed little point in her police driver's knowledge augmentation by exposing him to the fact that Rita was to pick up Mr Ash Mattel after dinner and take him to her place. Worse still, that DCP Ferreira stayed the night at The Oberoi.

  Rita called Kuldeep and told him to come up and hand over the car keys to her as she might get back late tonight.

  'No problems madam, I'll wait.'

  'No, I will get back very late and there's no point in holding you back. You can carry on, you're relieved for the day.'

  'It's OK, madam.'

  Why don't you understand my dilemma, you loyal soldier, she wanted to call out in frustration. It's not about you; it's about me.

  'Please send the keys up. I'll call you tomorrow morning. No more discussion.' She told him to hand over the keys to someone below rather than come up to her office and reopen the same discussion.

  'OK,' Kuldeep reluctantly agreed like his best toy had been snatched from him. Rita had barely concluded her conversation when her mobile rang: Ash Mattel.

  'Apologies, I got held up in some overheated discussion on one of the topics.'

  'It's OK. And hello.'

  'Hello, really tied up this afternoon, but I'll be free by seven as it's an early dinner.'

  'Where's the dinner?'

  'I haven't really checked, why? You want to join me?'

  'As your…'

  'As my college friend, Hun-bun.'

  'Will other people be bringing their college buddies too?'

  'Why do you care?'

  'Who said I do?' Rita laughed out.

  'What's the plan? You said you wanted to discuss some case with me?' Ash suddenly sounded formal. 'Has someone just walked in
your hearing distance then?'

  'Kind of, yes.'

  There was no way Rita was going to let the opportunity go.

  'How about discussing the numerous techniques of sex?'

  'Uh-huh, uh-hmm! Yes certainly, we could do that.'

  'Ha! You suddenly got a sore throat now?'

  Ash didn't respond. He still seemed to be in in someone's earshot.

  'OK, I'll let you go now. I'll be in my office. Let me know when you leave for dinner so I'll time it such that I can pick you up after that.'

  'That will be great.' Ash still sounded formal.

  'I have a “Bad case of loving you, Doctor, Doctor”,' Rita recited Robert Palmer's lines before she cut the call.

  ***

  Jatin and the IT team spent the full day on Handlebar's PC, but came up with nothing. If they could not connect the web based diagnostics there was not a chance in hell of tracing any latent malware on the machine. Perhaps it was hidden behind some files ingrained into the hard disk or perhaps it wasn't there on Raja's machine in its entirety. One line of thought was that just a bit must have been dropped, which, if and when activated, would be enough to scrape the data of the PC. Whatever it was, it was untraceable, and hence irremovable. You can't fight what you can't see.

  A follow up idea from the IT group was to replace Mr Raja's computer — like for like — with another machine without giving admin rights to Mr Raja so he couldn't download anything new sent from his mysterious client. However, after consulting Rita, Jatin vetoed it. The idea, when evaluated, had more holes than a colander. If the furtive client was smart enough to erase Jogani's computer remotely, wouldn't he somehow tell that the machine that's been communicating with him for the past few months had changed? Plus they couldn't think of any upside of doing that. They had attempted discovering and unmasking the IP address of the client and failed; they had scanned Mr Raja's PC and found nothing that was of any import to the police, so changing the PC was saving exactly what? And the downside was that if the client discerned that the computer was changed he might break all contact with Mr Raja or worse still, go after Handlebar.

  ***

  As agreed, Rita was still at work at seven when Ash Mattel called. Except for a few random humans in the office, most of the others had left, as this wasn't one of the ninety plus uniformed police stations; this was Mumbai Police Headquarters. The whole top brass were housed in Royal Alfred Sailors' Home, which was built in 1876. However, everything in the vicinity was dominated by one of the marvels of architecture called Crawford Market and all surrounding areas, too, were referred to as Crawford Market. Mumbai Police Commissioner and Additional Director General of Police for the state of Maharashtra, Mr Sanjay Saxena aka Sexy sat here, as did the several senior police officers that reported to him, and the Crime Squad of which DCP Rita Ferreira was a part.

  'We're going for dinner now, so my guess is I should be able to slip out by eight, eight-thirty,' Ash explained.

  'I can pick you up, where is it?'

  'There's a Japanese restaurant in this hotel that's been booked for us, so I don't think it makes any sense for you to pick me up and drive me all the way back to Bandra in Mumbai traffic. What do you think?

  'You can always cab it after dinner—'

  'Or you can sleep over at the hotel. I've got an ocean view room.'

  'Ocean view that looks over the Arabian Sea?'

  'Well that's what they call it in the brochure.'

  There was a silence for a few seconds, as both of them mentally digested the repercussions, if any, of Rita staying over at the hotel, in Ash's room.

  'You still there?'

  'Yes.'

  'Rita, if you're not comfortable it's OK, I understand. I can always cab it to your place.'

  'Do I look like someone who cares what anyone thinks?' You know what Winston Churchill said?'

  'He said a lot. What did he say about staying the night at a hotel?'

  'Don't remember the exact words but it was something like “if you stopped and threw stones at every dog that barked you'd never get anywhere”, something like that.'

  'I only said that as you gave me the silent treatment when I mentioned staying over…'

  'Oh that? I was only contemplating how it would feel making love with an ocean view.' Did he think she was some ingénue who couldn't render one-liners like him? She could almost picture Ash blushing at her retort. 'Okay, I'll see you around eight-thirty then?'

  'Yep.'

  Rita had an hour before she left. She always kept a spare set of clothing. One in police force never knew what emergency could land at your desk and how long one had to stay away without visiting their residence to change. She closed her office door, lowered the blinds and quickly changed into a clean shirt and lingerie and put on the same jeans again. With her light cotton jacket on top to conceal the Smith & Wesson — she contemplated leaving the weapon behind, but decided against that. Who knew where she would be headed next if some new emergency surfaced in the middle of the night? — she was ready for the evening. It was still seven-thirty and there was no rush to leave, she only had to drive a little over three kilometres. Maybe fifteen minutes.

  ***

  Mr Handlebar Raja was livid; he was worried and he was scared.

  His PC had been returned to him the same evening, but he was still furious. He collected all the papers scattered on his desk, tamped them and shoved them into one of the drawers below and kicked it shut. He had told his wife a million times not to leave her papers dispersed but she never listened. Wonder what women of today thought of themselves? This would not have been tolerated in his father's time indeed. That fucking DSP. DCP, whatever, the bloody police woman. What did she think of herself? He hated her guts, coming up to his place and rapping him like he was some spoilt schoolboy. He finally switched on his computer and logged in.

  He was worried. If his client — and at this point in time he only had the one — discovered that he had been collaborating with the police, the client might take the business away. Handlebar didn't want to lose a client who paid in advance, didn't fuss too much on what information was passed on, no unnecessary face-to-face meetings, no nonsense, none whatsoever. All he had to do was write up Honey Singh's movements throughout the day and submit.

  He logged in to the email account and it showed that there was an unopened message in the DRAFTS folder, which was odd because he hadn't put anything there and his client hardly ever left messages for him; in fact after the initial exchange of contract, there had never been any message from the client. Only he left messages for the client and never heard back. Had some wiseass in the police put a message for his client? Oh God, no. He clicked on the message and his distress went up several notches.

  “Who was following you around when you followed Honey Singh on Saturday? And why was that not mentioned in your weekly report? Remember, I am not a fan of substandard work. As this is your first mistake I'm tolerating this, which is against my credo. Do not, I repeat, do not serve me any more lemons. And if I ever find out that you are being cute with me in any way — do not forget I know where you and your wife live, I also know where your sons and their wives and your grandchildren live — the consequences will be dire, to say the least. Let this be your first and last warning.”

  Handlebar felt sick to his stomach, his oesophagus pumped a gallon of acid upward, his heart burned, his mouth went dry like someone had soaked out the last drop of his saliva with a blotter. Involuntarily, his eyes welled with fright, and he could feel icy sweat racing down his thick spine. He was convinced he'd have a heart attack. He couldn't decide whether he should or should not respond to the note. There was no doubt in his mind that his client would know that he had read the note; there was little point in marking it as unread as he knew his client might have some way of finding out, and that might only further antagonise the enigmatic Mr Singh. And going by the terse warning he had just been served that was the last thing Handlebar wanted to do. Suddenly, everything
he had so far deemed noble about his only client began to appear terrible. The guy's words expressed menace. He picked up his phone to dial DCP Ferreira, but stopped. What could she do? As a matter of fact, if he called her it was colluding with the police after he had been warned. What fucking mess had he got himself into? More importantly, what bothered him this minute was how could he get out of it?

  Fifteen minutes passed, and when he was positive that the feeling of heart attack had also passed he de novo pondered what choices he had going forward. Supposing he made an excuse on medical grounds? But his client, he knew, was too sharp to let that go — he'd smell the sham straightaway. This wasn't some school where his truancy could be corroborated with a medical certificate from a general practitioner. And if the client didn't buy his poor-health excuse it was his family's life at risk. No, he couldn't get rid of the client, that much he was sure of. He also didn't dare make a police complaint regarding this threat despite it being explicit. The police wouldn't — and couldn't even if they wanted to — provide twenty-four/seven security to him and his extended family; his sons and their wives lived in different cities, both had children that went to school. It wasn't possible. And what would they be guarding them against? The enemy here was unidentified.

  If he had to explain the incident — though his client hadn't asked for any explanation, but if it ever occurred again — he had no choice but to admit to his client that he had completely missed the goons following him follow Honey Singh, and eat humble pie made of unadulterated dung; he was still sceptical if he would mention that the goons were policemen and that the police had paid him a visit too.

  But how could he, the best private investigator in Mumbai, have failed to spot a car that was tailing him? Handlebar had often preened at his genius, an effete self-professed best in business — and if he missed this how did his client find that out? Was it a random check that his client had conducted or was there another team that followed him around when he was on the job? Nah, one sole incident of him missing the police car following him was only just about acceptable to his pride, missing another person or people every day for three months? No way. So the smartass police tailing him had also failed to notice that there was someone else stalking them? Well police, in his mind, weren't immune to failures. It must have been a fucking convoy on Saturday then, he smiled for the first time since he had seen the email from his client.