by Vish Dhamija
Rita kept quiet. Ash had valid points to ponder.
'The only way you can break this case is by ferreting out both the Honey Singhs and sweat them simultaneously.'
Ash was referring to Prisoner's Dilemma, an age-old technique practised by most law enforcement agencies around the world. Capture two people of the same group on some lesser charge and take them to solitary confinement where they cannot exchange messages. Then sweat them out. Ask them to cooperate separately by providing them with incentives to betray their partner. In more cases than not, one of them breaks, squeals when they realise the police have enough on them.
'However,' Ash continued, 'I would strongly urge you to keep this under wraps. Honey Singh shouldn't know you're looking for his doppelgänger.'
'That's not possible. Handlebar omitting the spotting of Honey Singh's duplicate in his report would have tipped them off that Handlebar is operating under someone's orders or influence.'
'Maybe, but does he know that Handlebar has done this on your instructions?'
'I'm pretty sure he is smart enough to twig who could behind it but us.'
'Yep, I guess so. You'll have to find some other way.'
There was a brief silence again.
'What time are you coming home?'
'I don't know Ash. I'll call you a bit later. Sorry.'
'No worries.'
Rita's mind returned to the conundrum at hand. Handlebar had already submitted the report so the cat was not only out of the bag; it had jumped in full sight of the client by now. He would have read the message and found the sighting of the second Honey Singh excluded. If the second Honey Singh had been deliberately planted outside the office for detection Handlebar would get reprimanded again. No doubt there. If the doppelgänger's outing at the wrong place had been a genuine slip-up, the client — if it were either of the Honey Singhs — would be only too happy that Handlebar had missed it. Ash was right: it was in Rita's interest to feign that they weren't exposed to the double.
She was in the middle of her thoughts when the mighty private investigator Mr Handlebar Raja called.
'Hello madam, myself Raja. We met when you came to see me regarding the case.'
How would I have met you otherwise? At the prom?
'Yes Mr Han… Mr Raja,' Rita almost slipped, 'of course we met. Hope you are keeping well. What can I do for you?'
'I was trying to reach Inspector Jatin, but could not get through. I have received another message from my client.'
Rita waited for him to read out the message or explain but nothing came; all she heard was heavy breathing on the other side.
'What did you client have to say now Mr Raja?'
'I haven't opened it madam, that's what I am calling to check. Should I open it? I'm very scared.'
He can't shoot you through the computer screen.
'You have nothing to be scared of Mr Raja. You're working with us and your safety is our responsibility. Open the message and tell me.'
What a big muppet.
A clacking of the keyboard could be heard via the earpiece, and Rita could visualise Handlebar's fat fingers and fatter head logging in and navigating to the DRAFTS folder.
'Read it to me verbatim, Mr Raja.'
'Am I really safe?' Handlebar confirmed.
Should I come and sleep in your bed with you to make you feel safe?
'Yes you are,' she assuaged his fears yet again before another attack of paranoia could erupt. 'We have people in place to see no harm comes to you or your family. You should not be concerned, just go around like nothing's happened.'
'OK.'
Then Handlebar read the message verbatim:
“So you arrived late for surveillance because you had a flat tyre? Are you sure it was the tyre? Because if I find out that you got waylaid because of something else it would not be good for you and your family. OK — you say you were late, but did you return early too? Did you not see anything unusual that needed reporting? I have another report from my other agents and it says they saw a looka-like of the target. Am I to believe that you missed him altogether? What I want to know is why are you feeding me piffle? I give you twenty-four hours to confirm to me what you really saw — with pictures, I know you snapped a few — or I'm coming for you, and Ill make you pay. Which body part do you want to lose first...?”
Handlebar Raja's voice quivered. Rita could sense the guy was frightened. Petrified. And if Honey Singh & Co. were the clients and they were the ones behind the cold-blooded murder of Veer Singh it wasn't so empty a threat. Taking body parts sounded a bit drastic and melodramatic though, but a bullet through Handlebar's massive head couldn't be ruled out. And it couldn't be risked.
Rita pondered if she should tell Handlebar to tell his client the truth. However, what would that construe? The client, whoever it was, obviously knew it already. All it would suggest is that Handlebar had been dishonest in his original report and now that his evasion had been picked up, the investigator had regurgitated the truth when threatened? That might land Mr Handlebar Raja in an even bigger mess.
'What…should I…do now?' Handlebar almost whispered in staccato, his voice wavering, almost child-like like he was about to cry.
Rita could empathise, she felt sorry for the guy. Whatever he had been, he hadn't been evil or wicked. Agreed, he had come across as self-confident and conceited in the beginning, but he had meant no harm. And the situation he was in now was primarily a result of following her orders to censor information from his client. And now the client had threatened. And threatened big time. The fact was, she could triangulate who that creepy client was, but she had no evidence to take him out. Not yet.
She had to do something that was visible to him for his sanity.
'Mr Raja, we have twenty-four hours before your client will take any action, like he's said in his message. I'll arrange tight security for you, leave that to me—'
'But it's not just me and my wife madam, in his last message, he also threatened my kids and grandchildren.'
Shit.
'Why didn't you say so before?'
'Because he had only warned me at the time that I should not make mistakes again, it was more a warning, not a direct threat.'
'I'll ask Jatin to get the addresses of your children too. I'll get security for them also.'
'How...can you...guard us all our lives?'
'I can and I will, I promise. And I'll get to this client of yours sooner than you think.'
'You know who it is?' There was a bit of optimism in the voice now, like a dehydrated leaf looking up at the sky and finding promising rain clouds. If his client was apprehended his ordeal would be over, forever.
'We are not a hundred percent certain, but we'll get him soon.'
'How soon?'
'Very soon, and don't you worry about anything. Jatin will visit you and Mrs Raja today.'
'Thank you madam. And when you catch this client, please call me. I want to slap his face.'
Conversation over, Rita was back to where she was. Still no clue except the fact that Raja's client knew there was a duplicate, which wasn't anything new. If Honey Singh was the client and his lookalike was a party to his criminal activities, it was understandable they had figured out that Handlebar Raja had lied to them for a second time. Evidence against either one would crack the case open. The trouble was she couldn't find either.
Veer Singh dead. Another murder. Was she responsible for it? If you took your police job merely as a job then no, of course not; the murder had occurred out of her bailiwick. But if you were Rita and police was your calling, then any murder or any crime that any policeman — or woman — failed to impede was a failure for the whole police community. Poor Veer Singh, according to Rita, might have paid the price of the Mumbai crime branch getting too close to the agents of Ron Jogani's murder, and as such she was, in some indirect way, responsible for his death. She made it a point to ask someone in the team to check who had made the call to Veer Singh that the Mumbai Police
had been looking for him. That could be a cue.
On that note she looked at the time: 9:13 PM. Her three reports had long left the office.
She felt guilty at having left Ash alone all day. She called Ash, apologised, shut the computer, and left the office.
***
Ash was home. He had ordered some pizza from the local Italian and was waiting for it when Rita walked in.
Hug. Kiss.
'Tired?'
'Yes. And I'm really, really sorry for having left you alone on a weekend,' she said.
'And I forgive you yet again. Though I don't see why you should apologise in the first place. I'm here on a vacation now, and you're working on a murder case. According to me that should be your priority; I know I would attend to that before my personal interests.'
'You are a gentleman.'
'What took you so long to work that one out?'
'Ha-ha.'
'Anyway, did you discover anything more?'
'Less than nothing,' Rita uttered, the voice giving away her frustration.
'Don't fret, don't lose hope. No one can fly below the radar screen forever, Rita. At some point they all get caught out, whoever they are. That's a fact. I'm not quoting some fiction writer.'
Before Ash could start with his smarms or cheesy one-liners, the bell rang. The pizza guy had arrived.
'Coke?' Rita smiled when Ash walked in with the pizza and a large bottle of Diet Coke in his hands.
'It was free with the pizza, so why wouldn't I take it?'
'Fair point.'
'I know you must be tired so let's have a quick drink, finish our dinner and then I'll give you a massage and you can tell me about your day?'
'Massage? You are a masseuse now?'
'Masseur. Masseuse is generally used for a female.'
'Oh, I didn't realise that. Are you a masseur now?'
'Well, I can do wonders with my hands.'
Here cometh the sleazy lines.
A shot of Jim, pizza with Diet Coke and back to Jim Beam — it was all in a span of twenty minutes, all the time it took Rita to narrate the day's findings to Ash Mattel.
'Veer Singh's murder tells us one thing,' Ash began after he had cleared the dishes. Good man. 'Insipid as it might sound, but it's the truth: when hope begins to die, desperation skyrockets. People panic, become reckless. Some make compromises, others lash out. Veer's murder is an indication that the culprits are freaking out, to say the least, don't you think?'
'I know, we concluded that too. In a way it indicates we are on the right track. However, finding two Honey Singhs does expand the possibilities, though not always in a positive way.'
'That depends—'
'On?'
'Half of eight is four or three or a zero depending on who asks the question, isn't it? Mathematically, it has to be four, but if you are in some art class then you could cut the figure of eight side-ways or vertically and respectively make up a three or a sphere. It's the same with expanding possibilities. While I agree that two Honey Singhs are double the menace, it should also be easier to search for two needles in the proverbial haystack than one.'
'I've ordered a fresh search for the other Honey Singh. If we're lucky the search should lead us to the duplicate or maybe we will end up with the already known Honey Singh yet again. Fingers crossed.'
'Great.'
'Do you think Honey Singh knows about the duplicate?'
'Of course. They are working in collusion, no doubt about that.'
'One thing bothers me...' Rita got up, put on The Doors debut album, walked to the bottle of Jim Beam kept at the table and carried it back to the couch where the two of them snuggled.
They tinked their glasses.
'So what bothers you?'
'I know we dwelt on this before but it still bothers me as we have no explanation. The private investigator — Mr Raja — has been trailing Honey Singh for months now. How come, then, he never witnessed the second Honey Singh ever before? Don't you find it a bit surprising?'
'It could be one of the two things. I've never met him but from what you've told me, this Mr Raja isn't one of the shiniest and sharpest tools in the box, so it's entirely possible that he missed the duplicate before. Maybe he saw both of them but since he didn't see them together it never occurred to him there were two? That's the simplest explanation. The other reason could be that with Veer Singh having gone from the scene — or if Honey Singh & Co. knew it was about to happen, which shouldn't surprise any of us since our premise is that they ordered the killing — they had to reveal the duplicate to lead you astray. My speculation would be that the duplicate, now established, will vanish from the scene forever. So — '
'We leave Honey Singh alone and chase someone who's disappeared from Mumbai. And they can meet after an interval and live prosperously after the police have closed the case or relegated it to a cold case and parked it in some deep freezer.'
'It is a brilliant plan, isn't it?'
'Bloody brilliant, I have to say. In which case we should refrain from admitting there is a duplicate at any expense.'
'That's the difficulty. If Mr Raja has been threatened, it means that they know he's witnessed the duplicate, taken photographs and deliberately omitted it from his weekly log. And they claim someone else has seen the duplicate so they have that confirmation from someone else and maybe photographs, maybe some other evidence to tilt the game in their favour.'
The rest of the evening passed discussing the case. Jim Beam was in top form and Jim Morrison echoed that “it was the end, my friend”, apt lyrics for Rita and Ash, as Ash would be gone in a day. This was the end till next time.
***
Ash brought Rita morning coffee. She realised she was being pampered. Ash would be gone tomorrow and then it would be her, in her apartment, all by herself. She closed her mind to his imminent farewell. 'But medically speaking, how is it even possible for a doppelgänger from another set of parents?' Rita asked even before she opened her eyes. 'It could be plastic as you've worked out.'
'What else could it be?'
'I could use the cliché that everything happens for the first time at some point, but in this case it's already happened before, so it can indeed happen again. There have been some known cases before.'
'Really?' her eyes popped open.
'Do you know when fingerprinting of criminals started?'
'Early twentieth century...I think.'
'It was in 1903, somewhere in Kansas in the United States. They used something called the Bertillon system before that, which was nothing but physical measurements of individuals to establish their identity, till they found two African-American inmates that were a mirror image of each other, serving their sentences in the same prison at the same time. I know all of us who work for or with law enforcement agencies always discount coincidences, but here's another one: they even had the same name: one was Will West and the other was William West. On probing further they found no familial relationship whatsoever between Will West and William West. It was only fingerprints that told them apart.'
'So Honey Singh Two may well be a genuine doppelgänger?'
'It hardly makes a difference in your case. Plastic or genuine, you still need to find them both before you know if they are an anomaly of nature or handcrafted. Though, there is yet another rung of coincidence if they are true lookalikes…'
'That they both end up being in Mumbai and know each other well enough to collude in crimes.'
'Bingo! You're a smart girl. Now, should we make love and eat breakfast or have breakfast first?'
'What's the plan for the rest of the day?'
'I don't know. What do other couples do on a day off?'
'I've got limited experience, but how about cuddling up to watch a film?'
'Let's do that then, but only on one condition.'
'And what pray could that condition be?' Rita could predict something lewd was about to come out in response.
'No clothes under the sheets.
I want to research how your body reacts while watching a film. Purely for research reasons, I promise.'
'You're such a perv.'
Oh, now I'm a perv, am I?'
They say if you do not remember any dreams when you wake up, chances are you didn't have any. The resulting consequence is you have a clear head in the morning. In fact, the night you have a deep sleep you do not dream. Dreams occur in shallow sleep. Dreamless slumber is a positive thing. Rita had slept like a baby. It was Ash's last night in Mumbai before he flew off on Monday. They dressed up in silence, the sadness hanging in the atmosphere, and then Rita dropped him at the airport before heading to the office.
Rita once again wallowed in her case, staring at the two photographs Handlebar had clicked. Frowning, concentrating on them. Not looking at them for something specific, but merely taking in everything as a whole. Her gaze skipped from one photograph of Honey Singh to the other. Both clicked minutes apart. In fact a little over nine minutes apart. Two of them, twice the problem. Puzzle heaped upon puzzle. Then, a random flash occurred and she discerned they weren't two distinct puzzles; they were like two pieces of the same one. And they were coming together for her only now. Buy two for one. The Americans called it twofer. She surmised that it might have been part of the plan from the beginning — it wasn't some accessory planted after the event. It must have been carefully thought of before, albeit they didn't need that to be uncovered in the past thefts.