Doosra: The Other One

by Vish Dhamija

  'Yes,' Rita replied. 'Would you know where could we find Veer Singh?'

  'As far as I am aware he moved to America years back.'

  'How well did you know him?'

  'What do you mean?'

  Something wasn't what it seemed at the surface.

  Kitty looked and sounded guilty, like a kitten caught with milk in her whiskers.

  'Well, weren't Veer Singh and you friends before he introduced you and Honey, am I right?'

  'You're correct. I got to know Veer through an advertising agency I was working with at the time. He was around for something about the website — he was extremely good, probably as good as Honey when it came to computers and software. Yes, Veer introduced me to Honey a few months later.'

  'And then the guys, Honey and Veer had a misunderstanding and for obvious reasons you sided with Honey, and in time all of your friends lost track of Veer after he moved abroad,' Rita filled in.

  'Precisely.'

  'So what are you not telling me, Kitty?' Rita was now getting frustrated with going around in circles with the same story she had, now, heard initially in the investigation by Vikram and then rephrased by Mrs Lucky Singh and Honey Singh before Kitty.

  'What does that mean?'

  'There is something more to it that you're not telling me. What's that?'

  'I had a short fling with Veer. Is that what you're after? But we quickly realised we weren't compatible and we agreed to stay friends. As I told you he was the one who introduced me to Honey…'

  So this wasn't purely a tangential relationship. Kitty Varghese had actually had a fling with a person who was supposedly missing.

  They certainly needed to speak to Veer Singh now, if only to clear him.

  'What was the incompatibility, if you don't mind telling me.'

  'He wasn't comfortable with my career choice. He didn't think modelling was a “decent” enough line with all the travel and skimpy outfits for audience and camera. And I didn't want to give up. Especially as I don't think I can do anything else.'

  Fair enough. Easy to infer why they broke up quickly. Though, with Veer Singh missing from the picture, there was no way of checking her story. And if they located him there seemed to be a pile of questions before asking him about his opinions on women's career choices. Typical chauvinist male. Bastions of women's moralities. No issues with seeing other girls flash skin but want to keep their women in covers. Veer's loss indeed. Kitty Varghese was an iPhone: there wasn't any dearth of admirers.

  'Did Honey Singh know you had a fling with Veer?'

  'No.'

  'Does he know that now?'

  'No. Will you be telling him?' Kitty asked with a straight face.

  'Where were you in the first week of April this year?' Rita ignored the question. She wasn't wont to promising anything to anyone and certainly not before she knew the whole truth.

  'That's easy. I was abroad, in Köln for a fashion show.

  Why?'

  'Just for our records.'

  'Now what are you not telling me?'

  'Lots. Kitty, you have to understand that I have no personal agenda to know about your life. I'm running an investigation into more than one offence at the moment and I cannot — even if I wanted to — tell you everything. So it's better if you answer my questions. I promise to answer yours to the extent I can. Do we have a deal?'

  'OK.'

  'Do you travel quite a bit for work?' Rita knew the answer to that.

  'Quite a bit.'

  'Is it always abroad to exotic locations?' Rita knew the answer to this one too.

  'No. Mostly within India actually.'

  'So, would you have travel records of all official travels in the last, say, one or two years?' Rita wanted the Delhi travel details from Kitty specifically, but she didn't want to ask for it.'

  'What's that for?'

  'As I said we are investigating more than one incident at the moment, so this is just for a routine enquiry.'

  'Should I be concerned?'

  'Not if you haven't done anything wrong.'

  'Are you... hold on a minute.' Kitty straightened up, became a bit animated. 'Are you trying to check if I'm still dating Veer Singh and travelling around only to see him and hiding my trysts with him?'

  'It's none of my concern who you date. I want to meet Veer Singh but your travel records aren't required to check on your love life.'

  'Do I need a lawyer?'

  'You've been watching too many American legal dramas on television, Kitty. If I want to question you I can come up here with lights and siren and no lawyer can help you. This is Mumbai and I'm not a constable. I'm a DCP in the crime branch.' Rita didn't raise her voice but it was menacing enough to deliver the message.

  'I have rights.'

  'This meeting is over. Vikram let's go.'

  Vikram closed his pad and got up immediately.

  'Wait. What do you mean?'

  'I'll send the police van to pick you up and we'll talk at the police station. Thanks for the coffee.'

  'You don't really mean that.'

  'Try me. I've been unusually patient and polite, but I want the truth without any further complications. You think you have rights, I'll show you what rights I have.'

  'OK, OK… I'm sorry I overreacted. Please calm down, Rita. I'll dig out and send all the travel records over to you as soon as I can.' Kitty looked palled by the sudden eruption of Rita who, at first, had been extremely polite but now she was nothing short of a raging tigress. Not many people had the fortitude to challenge that.

  'I want all the records on my desk on Monday morning. Please don't test my patience anymore.'

  'But you have to promise you won't tell Honey I once had a fling with Veer.'

  'As long as it isn't part of my investigation, and you don't know where Veer Singh is at present, then no, I'm not going to spill unnecessary beans.'

  'I swear I haven't seen him since Honey and Veer broke up.' Kitty was almost pleading now.

  'Don't tell me. I don't care. I only want to know where Veer Singh is now, and if you honestly don't know that you shouldn't be worried at all.'

  'You really think Veer could be responsible for murder?'

  'I didn't say that. As far as my suspect list goes, everyone is a suspect till this case isn't closed.'

  'Why would Veer do anything like that?'

  'To seek revenge? Or to implicate Honey to get back at him while pocketing millions on the way. Or maybe he doesn't care…'

  'He wouldn't do that.'

  'We'll exculpate him after we find him and speak to him. Much as I would like to take your word for it I'm not halting my search for Veer.'

  Kitty was part scared, part restless, but Rita knew, with what hard treatment she had meted out, that Kitty's travel records would be available by Monday. Not desirous of spending any more time than required, Rita and Vikram said their byes and left.

  Was Kitty complicit? How could she be involved? She might not be involved, at least not directly, but Rita's gut feel was she wasn't entirely innocent either.

  Not finding the whereabouts of Veer Singh was a concern.

  Maybe he went to the US and never looked back.

  Maybe he never even visited the US embassy.

  'We have approximate dates, Vikram,' Rita said as they drove to the HQ at Crawford Market. 'Could you ask the Commissioner's PA to make a call to the immigration officials please? There should be a record of Veer Singh flying out of the country.'

  'Yes ma'am.'

  Jatin tried his best, but could not unearth if anyone had followed Honey Singh before the previous two burglaries in Mumbai and Delhi. Handlebar certainly hadn't. How many private investigators could he contact? Asking around wasn't much help too; too much time had elapsed for any bystander to have any memory of anyone following someone. Honey Singh, of course, had denied it. There were no other avenues to check

  Anyway, at the very best, Rita and team had an extrinsic line connecting the three incidents; the
y didn't have any circumstantial evidence, not even an oblique one. It was well within the scope of possibility that they were three disparate, unrelated capers. Or any two were related while the third one stood on its own legs. They knew Kitty Varghese was in Delhi at the time of the Delhi theft, and in Mumbai at the time of the Mumbai theft, which would be corroborated by her travel records that she would send on Monday. And she was 200 plus kilometres from Brussels — not in Brussels — when Ron Jogani was murdered. So even if she was complicit in some way how did it incriminate Honey Singh? If she was an accomplice, who was the master of ceremonies then?

  'If Honey Singh has never been out of the country how did his picture get captured by the elevator in the hotel at Brussels?' Rita sounded frustrated.

  The four — Rita, Vikram, Jatin and Nene — had weaved and hashed theories since Rita and Vikram returned from the morning meeting with Kitty. Nene could always be trusted for provisions — he knew the best local street-side food places. The vada pau with the red garlic chutney that he had brought in for the team was such comfort food, and ounce for ounce it could beat coffee in keeping the brain awake.

  'We're missing something crucial here, guys,'

  'Is it at all possible…?' Jatin stopped, like he was still contemplating.

  'Out with it whatever it is.'

  'I'm wondering if the whole missing-the-camera-in-the-elevator-thing was fake.'

  Rita got it instantly. 'You mean the alleged Mr Sishir Singh knew about the obscured camera and planted the picture they wanted, and made it look like they missed it?'

  'Yes. Think about it, ma'am. If they could freeze all other cameras, misdirect the entire hotel security to believe they were watching a live feed across the property while those schmucks watched the replay of the day before, how challenging would it be for that brain to feed a chosen picture into a still camera?'

  'Brilliant. Bloody brilliant, Jatin,' Rita clapped.

  'You mean this picture was taken in some elevator locally?' Nene asked.

  Everyone looked at the XL candid-shot of Sishir Singh or Honey Singh plastered on one of the walls in the room. There was nothing that revealed where it was clicked. The angle from where it was shot warranted it had no background of any consequential value to determine where in the world it was. Not a chance.

  'But why was Honey Singh's picture chosen?' Nene questioned after a few minutes.

  'Maybe it was random…' Jatin hadn't thought of that.

  'Nope. It can't be random. Someone knew Honey Singh, at least cursorily, to plant his picture. How else would they find him to follow him?' Rita said.

  'So if it was merely a picture plant why follow Honey Singh and spend cash on that?' Nene quizzed further.

  'It could be that following Honey Singh was the only logical way to keep track if and when the police got involved and, if that was the motive, we sucked it in. They might only be following Honey Singh to follow us. On the two previous occasions — and my gut feel says they are connected — there was only robbery, no murder, and because it was domestic they would have known exactly which police station would investigate. They didn't need to leave phoney breadcrumbs and trick us to follow. That picture brought Victor to Mumbai and led us to Honey Singh. If that was the intention, it worked,' Rita reasoned on the fly.

  'But the hotel and airline staff had recognised Sishir Singh when they were shown the picture?'

  'Well, we know recognition across diverse human races is never absolute. If the guy who carried out the theft and murder even remotely resembled Honey Singh in shape, size, skin colour and hairstyle it could very well be an error. And therefore Honey Singh wasn't a random choice. You need to know the original to fake it. They knew that if anything went wrong they'd make Honey Singh their fall guy.' Rita thought about Veer Singh's description as she spoke.

  'So how does Kitty fit into all this?'

  'That, like so many other things, is a mystery—'

  Jatin's mobile phone rang before Rita could finish.

  'Joginder Raja,' Jatin saw the caller and announced and moved out of his chair to take the call. 'What?' he almost screamed, 'Wait a minute Joginder... let me put you on the speaker phone so we can all hear this.' He muted the call for a minute and said: 'Joginder Raja is on the line, says he saw Honey Singh's double yesterday.'

  'What?'

  'Joginder, you're on speakerphone now. I have DCP Rita Ferreira and Senior Inspectors Patil and Nene in the room with me. Tell us what you saw.'

  The police quartet in the room was stunned as Handlebar Raja narrated the events of the previous day. He had seen two Honey Singhs — one nervously lurking around the office complex, the other driving out and then driving in with Kitty — in different outfits. No, there was no confusion, he was absolutely clear on that; he even had pictures of both on his phone. No, he couldn't follow either of them as it happened quite suddenly. Yes, it was the first time he had encountered the two of them together.

  Handlebar sounded nervous but he also told them about the threat he had received from his mysterious client the week before for missing the police following him and Honey Singh.

  'Are you saying your client spotted the police surveillance teams?' Rita asked. Not because she hadn't comprehended what Raja had just reported, but she expectantly looked at Nene: how had his competent police teams overlooked a tail?

  'Yes madam, he said he has more than one person following Honey Singh—'

  'You mean the other team has also been following Honey Singh for past few months?'

  'I don't know that madam.'

  'But you didn't ever see anyone following you?'

  Handlebar remained silent.

  Nene, reddened with embarrassment, got up and walked out of the room. The other three didn't ask. They knew Nene would blast the surveillance teams that had covered the patch the other weekend for overlooking a critical incident. With what Handlebar had just conveyed it seemed the tail was there for pretty much all day. It was unacceptable, even laughable, to miss such things after years of police training.

  'Why didn't you tell this to any one of us for a week, Mr Raja?' Rita growled after Nene had left.

  Handlebar justified his actions by referring to the threat to his family. He was frightened, and irrespective of how hollow the threat was, he wasn't willing to take the risk. He sounded highly strung and justifiably so.

  Rita's temper calmed, albeit Handlebar had wasted a week of their time. Had the police known that they had missed being followed once they would have been extra cautious the next day. They wouldn't have missed the other person or people the second time around, certainly not if they had known about them. Talk about a wasted opportunity.

  'I wanted to ask you what should I put in my weekly report today?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Should I report that I spotted Honey Singh's duplicate?'

  'No way.'

  'But what if someone else saw it and they report it to my client? He would be all over me again, madam.'

  'Let us think. We'll come back to you in a couple of hours. Meanwhile, send us the pictures you took of the two Honey Singhs.'

  'OK, madam.'

  'Thank you Mr Raja.' Rita pressed the red button on Jatin's phone.

  ***

  Jatin's phone beeped. Handlebar had texted the two pictures. Jatin opened them, had a close look at them and shook his head in disbelief before passing on his phone to Rita. She did the same and passed it to Vikram. The three sat dumbfounded.

  Doppelgänger: a ghostly double of a living person. Honey Singh had a doppelgänger, and that changed everything. Their entire search, their analysis, their conjectures, their theories, all seemed redundant. When a paradigm shifts everything goes back to zero, isn't that what they say?

  'He can't be real,' Rita finally broke the silence.

  'You think Handlebar has made up a story?'

  'I wouldn't award him such high marks on ingenuity. One possibility could be that someone coached him, which should be sim
ple to figure out though. Jatin, call Mr Raja and tell him not to delete the photographs, then I want you to go over to his apartment immediately and see the date and time stamp on the photographs he's just sent. Take someone along who's good with technology, who can determine if the photographs were actually taken when and where he says, and not imported into his phone or Photoshopped. That should be enough to corroborate his story.'

  Jatin nodded.

  'And before you leave give these pictures to the print lab, they should be able to clean and enlarge them. Thanks.'

  'What is the other possibility, ma'am?' Vikram asked after Jatin left the room. 'You said, one possibility could be that Handlebar Raja was faking it…'

  'I can't believe it's possible to have an indistinguishable double from two different sets of parents. Isn't it a biological impossibility? I doubt if history has any such recorded occurrence. If Handlebar truly saw two Honey Singhs as he described, then someone's used a lot of plastic to make himself look like Honey Singh.'

  'There aren't many plastic surgeons in Mumbai. We can check.'

  'I thought about it before but I am pretty sure the surgery wasn't done here in Mumbai, Vikram. Or if was, then it's not on the registers.'

  Vikram acquiesced with a nod. 'What do you think we let Mr Raja write to his client?'

  'I think we should not mention the double, at least not this week. Ask Nene to put his best guys on surveillance of Honey Singh and Handlebar. Our guys shouldn't miss anything this time. I want to know if any fucking leaf is red or orange when it should be green or yellow. And I need one plainclothes team to watch Handlebar and his wife — twenty-four/seven security, without letting them know or anyone spotting our guys. Let there be no mistake this time.'

  Rita sat ruminating long after everyone else had left. Would Honey Singh number two reveal himself if he was Handlebar's client? That didn't make sense because he would know he'd be discovered and, being in the vicinity of the real Honey Singh, he'd be distinguished too. However, what could be the worst consequence of him being espied by Handlebar — Handlebar will write a report and tell him about it? And if the second set of comedians to spy on Honey Singh were also on his payroll they too would report the same sighting to him. At best they would report that Handlebar saw him too. Big fucking deal that. So the second Honey Singh didn't have anything to lose by revealing himself if he was certain that no one but the people he remunerated were on the lookout. Most investigative puzzles were perplexing because they had missing pieces; this one was mystifying with an additional piece. How did that fit in? In her mind, Rita went through the whole story Handlebar Raja had relayed. Step by step.