by Vivaan Shah
‘Two and a half years. We had met at Inorbit Mall through a mutual friend who was a broker and was helping me find a flat.’
‘What kind of man was Mr Makhija? Was he a particularly possessive sort of husband?’
‘No.’
‘Was he a big spender?’
‘Not really. He couldn’t handle his affairs. I used to take care of his finances for him. When he got himself fired from HSBC, he moved to the cheapest accommodation he could find.’
‘Which he found in Little Heights,’ said Inspector Nagpal.
‘Where do you currently reside?’ asked Senior Inspector Raane.
‘Shakuntala Building. Block number three, B-Wing, Juhu Tara Road. I stay there alone. I had a flatmate, my friend from college, but she left Bombay and went back to her home town.’
There was a long pause as Senior Inspector Raane got up from his chair and began to pace up and down the room. Nagpal asked her if she would like any tea or water. Srikant then opened one of the files and started noting down some facts and information that seemed relevant to the case. After having put up a sufficient display of protocol, Inspector Nagpal leaned back in his chair, breathed heavily and asked with a hint of informality in his strained voice. ‘Why would anyone want to kill your husband?’
‘Plenty of reasons,’ she sighed. ‘He owed a lot of money around town. He wasn’t an agreeable sort of fellow. Got into a lot of altercations and conflicts. Was a bit of an antisocial element.’
‘Is that why he used to visit a psychiatrist?’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
Srikant pulled out the prescription from his chest pocket and flashed it before her. It said: Dr G.D. Vengsarkar, Healthy Mind Clinic, Dadar (East), next to King’s Circle.
‘We’ve sent our men to look over the place. We have reason to believe,’ said Nagpal, ‘that your ex-husband was receiving counselling and therapy from a shrink by the name of Dr G.D. Vengsarkar. We found this medical prescription in his pant pocket.’
‘I wasn’t aware of that. Chintan always opened up to me about his problems. Even after our separation, we were on good terms.’
‘I see,’ Inspector Nagpal smiled.
‘Would you by any chance,’ asked Senior Inspector Raane, scratching his forehead, ‘happen to have any idea why your deceased husband was visiting a psychiatrist?’
‘For sleeping pills, I suppose. He used to have trouble going to sleep at night.’
‘Was that one of the causes of your separation?’ asked Inspector Nagpal.
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered.
‘Are you a sound sleeper?’ asked Inspector Nagpal, again in the same tone of militant formality, yet there was a note of insincerity in his voice.
‘I don’t see what that has to do with the case?’
‘I do apologize, Ma’am,’ he laughed. ‘I’m simply trying to comprehend the circumstances of your marriage. I mean, Mr Makhija was not exactly the kind of person who could knock you off your feet. Not exactly a matinee idol, if you know what I mean. He was an overweight, middle-aged man with enough debts to keep his forehead permanently creased.’
‘He was a good man,’ she added.
‘I’m sure your divorce counsellor would gladly corroborate that statement.’
‘Ahh!’ She smacked her hand in the air, turning away from the inspector to look outside the window. There wasn’t much to look at.
Inspector Nagpal had every reason to detect some rudeness in her manner and clamp down upon it, yet he used his discretion. Her face started contorting into a righteous frown. She hadn’t said a word out of place as far as she was concerned. There was silence in the room. The wind blew a couple of dried up gulmohar tendrils in through the window. By now, Nadeem had silently crept into the conversation by pushing the door slightly ajar, so he could hear more clearly. Srikant noticed this and whistled at him under his teeth to back off. He slammed the door shut and locked it.
‘Mrs Makhija,’ Inspector Nagpal began. ‘I’m sure you don’t mind if I refer to you as Mrs Makhija, do you? After all, you seem to have had a change of heart regarding your husband.’
‘You can call me Rohini,’ she snapped, having lost all patience and civility by now.
‘I’m not exactly on a first name basis with you as yet, Ma’am,’ said Inspector Nagpal, as politely as he could. ‘That, however, is completely up to you. As you know, I can either be a friend and confidant or an adversary. Whatever you wish. I would advise you to avoid the latter, given the circumstances.’
‘Would you like us to call your parents?’ asked Senior Inspector Raane.
‘No.’
‘Then I’m afraid you must cooperate with us and answer a few questions,’ said Inspector Nagpal. ‘When was the last time you got in touch with him?’
‘I didn’t get in touch with him. He got in touch with me.’
‘Your name was first in the call log on his mobile phone.’
‘He had called to ask if he could keep my deck.’
‘Your what?’
‘Music system. I objected saying that I wanted it back.’
‘That’s right,’ said Inspector Nagpal. ‘According to one of my men, on your visit to the house prior to this, you had asked if you could collect certain articles and objects of value which you claimed belong to you. Isn’t that a little insensitive considering the tragedy that has just occurred?’
‘Those things are my property and I have the legal right to their possession,’ she said. ‘Plus, I don’t know when I’m ever going to get to see them again. It was my first visit to his house, and I hope it was my last.’
‘What was the reason for your divorce, Ma’am?’ asked Senior Inspector Raane after a long, deliberate pause.
She didn’t say a word.
‘Why did you get married to him?’ asked Inspector Nagpal, breaking the awkward silence.
‘I would like it, Inspector Nagpal,’ she snarled, ‘if you could keep your curiosity out of this conversation.’
‘It is merely my curiosity as a police officer, Ma’am, that leads me to inquire why you divorced him.’
‘And your curiosity as a man that leads you to ask why I married him.’
‘There is a certain curiosity even men cannot explain and certain actions even women cannot justify.’
‘Look around you, Inspector,’ she thundered. ‘What kind of men do you see? Studs, Greek gods, frog princes, poster boys, Adonis’, eligible bachelors?’
‘The kind of men I come across in my line of work hardly fit the bill for model husbands!’
‘What makes you a think that a woman has a choice for anything other than the bottom of the barrel as far as finding a suitable partner is concerned?’
‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that, Ma’am,’ said Inspector Nagpal. ‘There are plenty of good, honest hard-working men out there. You just haven’t found the right one.’
She couldn’t take any more of Inspector Nagpal’s badgering. She trembled, reached for her handkerchief, and before Srikant could even lift a finger to get her a glass of water, burst into tears.
‘There, there, now, Ma’am!’ Senior Inspector Raane consoled her. ‘This is no way to display your concerns. We expect you to be in as much control of your faculties as we are. If we were to let our emotions get the better of us, I dare say we’d scarcely make it through a day’s work.’
Srikant got her a glass of water, which she sipped thoughtfully. She asked if she could step out for a smoke. Senior Inspector Raane did not approve of a woman smoking in his presence, but Inspector Nagpal was of the opinion that it might get her to open up a bit. They escorted her out to the entrance of the police station where the jeeps were parked.
She seated herself on one of the steps while the female constable sat on the one just above her. Inspectors Raane and Nagpal stood attentively, waiting for her to speak, hanging on her every puff, but all they got in response was a deep disconcerting sigh.
‘We are re
ady to talk whenever you are, Ma’am!’ said Inspector Nagpal.
The Lizard
After signing their statements, Nadeem and Warren were allowed to leave the claustrophobic confines of Malad (West) police station. Rohini, however, was detained, held in police custody for further questioning. The autopsy report was due in the morning, and until then they had a watch planted outside the building to monitor the movement of all residents. A hawaldar was spending the night outside flat no. 502. The beat patrols had been notified to circle the area at intervals of fifteen to twenty minutes. Dilip and Srikant split up with a squad of four men in two jeeps and began to go to each and every chemist, pharmacy and hospital in the entire Andheri (West) region, all the way from Juhu Circle to Madh Island. They were still trying to trace and locate the two unidentified visitors who had signed in the register with fake names. They had put out a notice of the descriptions Kishorie Lal had given.
At the building, the secretary’s congregation had disbanded for the night and was due to report in the lobby first thing in the morning for a summation of the night’s proceedings. Two men in plainclothes sat in a white Maruti Gypsy parked right outside the compound. One of them kept dozing off, while the other kept busy unscrewing the green cap of his white tube to pour the chuna out into the tambakoo-laden palm of his hand. The hawaldar upstairs kept doing rounds of the fourth and fifth floors, checking if the terrace was still locked. The likelihood of it having been a possible entry point was considered practically negligible, according to the investigation. The watchman was going door to door, personally questioning every resident if they had had any visitors at all during the past few days. The secretary was not pleased with this. A slip-up of this sort was liable to cost the watchman his job. That was what they were paying him for, to keep a firm eye on everything and not let anyone slip by on his watch. They couldn’t afford a CCTV camera.
It was late at night when Nadeem and Warren returned home. Warren immediately leapt on to the sofa and switched on the television. Nadeem dragged out the dustbin and placed it next to the doorway for the garbage man to collect in the morning. After closing the door, he turned the circular lever behind the latch twice, adjusting the lock in place. Even though it wouldn’t rotate any more, he still kept turning it just to be sure. He didn’t want to go to sleep with an unlocked door that night, not after what had happened.
‘I have to say,’ said Warren, ‘I’m surprised that neither Makhija’s landlord nor the watchman has been called down to the station for questioning.’
‘They did their questioning on them in the compound premises,’ said Nadeem.
‘Then what makes us so special?’ grunted Warren, as he fumbled with the remote control.
Nadeem too wondered why Machhiwaala and Kishorie Lal had been spared the painful ordeal that the two of them had endured.
‘Hell! You know, Warren,’ said Nadeem. ‘Paranoia’s a funny thing.’
‘Why is that? Can’t say I’ve ever suffered from it.’
‘Gets so that you start thinking that the whole world is conspiring against you. That the walls are closing in. You see, the more I think about this whole situation, the less I like it.’
Warren put the television on mute to try and comprehend what Nadeem was blathering about.
‘You see, I’m trying to think that things will be all right, you know, hope for the best and what not, keep the fingers crossed. I answer each of your questions the way I hope the law will answer mine. But when you start asking me certain things that even I don’t have an answer to, it gets me thinking.’
Warren looked at him in numb silence. The night insects could be heard rattling about in the distance. They were getting a good breeze at that hour of the night. Nadeem always did say that at least the place had good ventilation. He liked to focus on the good things of life, the little things that made all the difference, but unfortunately, Warren couldn’t see things his way. His chief concern was making it through the day in one piece so that he could be in front of the television for the graveyard shift.
‘It gets me thinking about things, Warren.’
‘’Bout what?’
‘’Bout a lot of things, things that actually matter. You see, if the law only thought about things that truly mattered, we would have a lot less crime. The only problem with them is that they only think about things that look good on paper. It doesn’t work like that on the ground level. Things that look good on paper don’t necessarily look too good when you see them in front of your own eyes. Like, take the two of them for instance, the watchman and the landlord. Right now, I’m beginning to wonder why I had been sent up there by Mr Machhiwaala in the first place, and why it wasn’t a task that he could have accomplished himself.’
‘Well, I don’t know. I suppose it’s because you were a . . . uh . . .’ Warren didn’t know how to put it in words, and the words that were coming to his head, he didn’t want to use in front of Nadeem.
‘If it were for the sole reason that I have a background of being an underworld collector or a messenger of doom to people who do not want to face the facts, then it does seem reasonable that Mr Machhiwaala should call upon my services for such an endeavour.’
‘Hmm . . .’ contemplated Warren.
‘But the very fact that he was aware of my background brings up another disconcerting question altogether.’
Warren sat up, literally upright, in attention. His droopy eyes were suddenly enlivened and things were beginning to make sense to him.
‘How did he come to know that one of his tenants . . .’
‘ . . . who had submitted to him only one photocopy of his PAN card and driver’s licence . . .’
‘ . . . had previously been under the employment of Taufiq Ahmed Sheikh?’ Warren completed Nadeem’s sentence.
‘From whom did he find out, and what would be the first step he would take in such a situation?’
‘Would he eject his tenant?’ Warren looked around to make sure he was still sitting in the same flat.
‘Or go to the authorities as any decent, respectable, law-abiding citizen and landlord would?’
Nadeem highly doubted that his landlord would have informed the police, for the sake of his own interest.
‘Taking a name like that to the police tends to get a person mixed up in something he should have never got mixed up in, in the first place,’ he said. ‘If he would have taken Taufiq Maharaj’s name, he would have been the one being investigated, not me.’
‘Well, we’re going to need funds if we’re to get a lawyer.’
‘We can’t afford a lawyer. I’ll have to take care of this myself.’
‘We can take a loan.’
‘Forget about that. I still owe Taufiq and co. twelve lakhs. Don’t forget that. And any one of these days I’m sure they are going to send someone around to collect it.’
‘I’d say one of those days has already passed by.’
‘Well . . . I don’t know . . .’ Nadeem mumbled, studying the dotted patterns on the tiles, his mind wandering off to thoughts of the inevitable. ‘Anyone could have sneaked into the apartment from the wall at the back. It’s not impossible to scale. There’s no broken glass on top of it.’
‘What do you think Kishorie Lal told them?’
‘God knows,’ exhaled Nadeem, as he untied his shoelaces. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t have anyone to turn to but Warren, who wasn’t exactly being much of a help in the anxiety department. He had no funds for legal assistance, no friends he could ask a favour from at such short notice. Not even a relative that would vouch for him.
After being released from prison, Nadeem had been banished from his home and set free to roam the streets, to live in perpetual fear of coming across one of Taufiq Bhai’s shooters while crossing the road or in some back alley while taking a leak on a dark night. The word on the street was that Taufiq Maharaj had put out a supaari on his head. He had acquired this information, or khabar as people on the street liked to call i
t, at the risk of his own life by going to one of Taufiq Maharaj’s sites, despite having been strictly instructed by the police to cut off all relations and keep a safe distance until they needed some more information.
Eventually, he had to go back to the Byculla police station, where he had originally been apprehended, and look for Inspector V.M. Gaekwad, who was the apprehending officer and DCP Kaambli’s subordinate. Since DCP Kaambli was not exactly approachable, he had to count on Inspector Gaekwad’s complete assurance that no harm would come to him under any circumstance. Which is why, as time passed, he earned the nickname of ‘khabri’, which means tipper. He would wander the streets at night, arm in arm with the patrolling jeeps that paraded the area, circling the activity they beheld before them at all odd hours. Many a time, Nadeem would go to sleep on the benches of the waiting room at the Byculla police station, and as the approaching dawn would bring with it a grumpy hawaldar who gave him the lathi (stick), he would invariably be on his way.
He came to be known as Nadeem Chipkali, meaning the lizard, an appropriate name considering his ability to change colours like a chameleon at the drop of a hat. He was one of those rare birds who were on comfortable terms with those on either side of the fence.
‘The way it looks,’ Warren concluded, ‘we got two options. Either we go to Byculla or to Bandra. It’s either the cops or the company.’
‘The company’s not an option. Taufiq Bhai’s family lawyer, Razzaq, won’t even designate one of his underlings to me. And if they do agree to help us out, it’ll only be because they have other plans for me, and then, they’ll be the ones standing trial for murder.’
‘I think we should just wait it out and hope to God that we don’t get summoned again, or else we make arrangements for what we do if we do get summoned. If you’re going to be doing a murder stretch, I’m gonna need someone else to split the rent with. I can’t afford twelve-three-seventy-five a month.’
‘WARREN! I am NOT going to be doing a murder stretch! For God’s sake! I didn’t do it!’
‘I know you didn’t, man,’ Warren jittered, possibly exhibiting some genuine apprehension for the first time. ‘You think it was him?’