Living Hell

by Vivaan Shah

  ‘One I wish I had!’

  Inspector Gaekwad looked at him sternly. ‘This Nagpal fellow’s got his eye on you.’

  ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘That’s bad news. Means you’ll need an alibi. And that’s going to have to be me. Means we’ll have to let you off the hook. You’ll be no good to us out there, not once the whole Malad police force knows you are our tipper.’

  ‘Oh, come on! You’re not going to let go of me. Not after all that I’ve been through.’

  ‘What you’ve been through is your cross to bear, not ours. We’ve carried you long enough. We still haven’t got a damn thing on Taufiq Maharaj, or even his stupid son. We can’t just keep spending the taxpayer’s money for your welfare. You can’t expect us to be held accountable for your safety for as long as you live. What about after I retire? What will you do then?’

  ‘Look, just give me another week. Let me take a crack at this case.’

  ‘A week? By then, they’ll be taking a crack at you.’

  ‘Maybe it has something to do with the medication he was taking,’ suggested Nadeem. ‘Did you check his medical history?’

  ‘He was admitted once to Cooper Hospital for diarrhoea, once to K.L. Hospital for dengue and malaria. He suffered from high blood pressure, diabetes and asthma. They found an inhaler next to the bedside table.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ said Nadeem, ‘there’s just one more piece of circumstantial evidence which I haven’t disclosed to the Malad authorities, which could make them tear up the entire report and change the entire complexion of the investigation.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Inspector Gaekwad asked, leaning in over the table towards him.

  ‘The fact that the bathroom door was latched from the outside.’

  Inspector Gaekwad scratched his chin, looked up at the wall, his forehead wrinkled in thought. ‘That obviously means there was another presence in the house,’ he nodded. ‘Did they find any footprints?’

  ‘I don’t think so. The fingerprints expert did not detect anyone else’s prints on the glass panel of the sliding door as well. It isn’t impossible that the assailant wore gloves.’

  ‘What makes you think there was just one?’

  ‘Have you made a trip down to the morgue to have a look for yourself?’

  ‘I had my boys do that. They don’t seem to be convinced with the report, judging by the characteristics of the corpse. There definitely are traces of external force. It would require the strength of one or more persons to inflict the kind of wounds that were found on his neck. His collarbone has been practically dislocated. There were nail marks around the back of the cervical spine, substantial swelling on the double chin.’

  ‘It wasn’t a pretty sight, I can assure you!’

  ‘Well . . . from the expression on his face, it seems possible that he died in the middle of a seizure or an epileptic fit of sorts. But the possibilities are endless. And I’m afraid that all this is mere conjecture. The fact of the matter remains that there is no concrete proof substantiating any of this. Even after conducting a more thorough inspection, they were able to come across nothing more conclusive than what the blood tests offered. The presence of those drugs in the bloodstream rules out all possibilities of a murder attempt. Even the watchman’s testimony suggests that no one entered or exited the house, including Makhija himself. So, the only possible solution before the authorities is that the wounds were self-inflicted and could have been caused by any object ranging from a jute rope to a belt, and that he was of unsound mind. Either that, or you and everyone else in the building must be investigated. Those are the only suspects. The building residents.’

  ‘Hah!’ laughed Nadeem. ‘I’d like to see our secretary, Mrs Miranda, in the interrogation room.’

  ‘You’re the only one who would like to see that. No one else wants to waste the detection unit’s time to go around looking for some murder weapon from God knows where, for God knows what and God knows why. No one except the people involved with the post-mortem are even going to get a look at the corpse, so it doesn’t matter whether he was strangled or choked or even throttled to death. They just want to get it over with and close the files. No one has to know in microscopic detail exactly what happened to him. No one cares. All the public wants is the big picture, not the sordid details. Anyway, an overdose sounds better in the newspapers and makes for a better story than an unsolved murder case without any clues, motive and reason for anyone to give a damn about the victim.’

  ‘I know for sure that it was something that happened in the building when no one was aware of it,’ said Nadeem. ‘It is not possible to watch each and every corner of a building with just one watchman, no matter how small a building is. Perhaps it happened in the middle of the night when the watchman was asleep. For all we know, the murderer could have escaped from the balcony by jumping on to the terrace of the next building, which is not as high as Little Heights. The sliding door of the terrace balcony was jammed shut, but it could have been closed from the outside. None of the rooms were in any apparent disorder, the switches had all been left on and the tap in the bathroom was running. That’s about it. There was no furniture out of place. Nothing stolen, no motive. None of this evidence seems to be having the slightest bit of bearing on their investigation. Instead, all that they are choosing to focus on is the fact that I discovered the body. So, I am a potential suspect.’

  Inspector Gaekwad got up from his chair and stretched his neck left and right. He looked outside his mosquito-gauzed window and began pacing up and down the room, taking each step with deliberate precision.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he exhaled. ‘As long as I’m around to vouch for you, Nagpal can’t pin a thing on you. I suggest you let me handle it and forget about the whole thing. You don’t want to go on this wild goose chase. For all we know, the murderer might be considerably deranged, perhaps mentally disturbed.’

  Nadeem looked out with him, his gaze trying to follow the inspector’s train of thought. ‘Speaking of which,’ Nadeem blurted out in a sudden change of tone. ‘Irshaad Batla tried getting in touch with me today. He called today morning on Warren’s phone.’

  ‘I know. I’ve got his number tapped. Apparently, he has had two of his men tailing you for the last two weeks.’

  ‘Apparently, they even came by to the building.’

  ‘I have had my men watching them for the past few days. They are driving a dark green Ford Ikon, licence number MH-02-NA-0425. They seem to be making a lot of trips to the ATM.’

  ‘You think they could have had anything to do with it?’

  ‘That’s what you ought to find out. If I was you, I would go and have a word with this Rohini lady.’

  ‘You seem to be spending a lot of time wondering what it would be like to be in someone else’s shoes. You ever tried wondering what it would be like to be yourself?’

  ‘I have enough troubles where I sit. The only reason I’m stretching my arm out is to save your neck. What do I want with a stupid murder case that doesn’t concern me?’

  ‘What if I manage to find something that links this to Irshaad Batla? Then it does concern you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I got a call from his lawyer today.’

  ‘Razzaq Bhai?’

  ‘No, some other guy. Younger fellow. Can’t remember his name. He wanted to meet me. I, of course, told him to go to hell.’

  ‘Probably wanted to cut some kind of a deal.’

  ‘It’s going to be tough to nail them. If you want my advice, I suggest you go through all of Makhija’s postal records for starters. All mails and couriers he received in the last month.’

  ‘Now we’re talking . . .’ Nadeem’s eyes lit up. ‘Go on, I’m listening.’

  ‘Go to the bank with his account details. Take that Nagpal idiot with you, make him check Makhija’s bank statement, balance sheet, all transactions and transfers made by him or to him in the last year or so. Trace the flow of his expenditure. See if you can trac
e anything back to Taufiq and company, Irshaad, Razzaq, Naved ‘Pathla’. We did a background check on this Makhija character.’

  Inspector Gaekwad opened another file, which contained Makhija’s Vodafone bill, his receipts and his registration form.

  ‘We have got all the information on this guy from his mobile phone customer care service provider,’ said Inspector Gaekwad, as he handed over the file to Nadeem. ‘Apparently, he moved to Bombay in 2004, worked as a teller at Hong Kong Bank first, then went on to become a Prudential Fund salesman for HSBC. He was fired and apprehended for embezzlement last year. He spent two nights in custody. Shifted houses constantly, never managed to stay put in one place, at least not long enough to make friends. And by the look of his call records, it seems he had been looking for a new place for quite a while.’

  Nadeem glanced through his application forms. He had changed four SIM cards and was denied verification for the fifth one. Vodafone had deactivated his service because his phone bills were overdue for over three months. He was currently unemployed and had no visible means of support, no source of income. His wife had filed for a divorce.

  ‘His spouse was registered under the name of Rohini Makhija in the bank records,’ said Inspector Gaekwad, ‘but her actual name is Soniya Karamchand, daughter of advocate Hans Anand Karamchand. She changed her name after running away from home and is currently estranged from her family.’

  ‘According to the testimony I heard her give Inspectors Raane and Nagpal a couple of hours ago, she claims to have married Chintan Makhija for the money and had filed for divorce due to irreconcilable differences.’

  In one of the envelopes was a printout of all of Makhija’s mobile phone messages and notifications from the bank. One of the messages contained all his bank details: account number, CVV code and debit card number. There was a record of all the transactions made by him and his wife. They held a joint account. They had been living separately for the past year and she had maintained virtually no contact with him since their alleged separation.

  ‘Which bank does Makhija have an account in?’

  ‘Punjab National Bank, Andheri (East) branch, next to Shopper’s Stop.’

  Inspector Gaekwad’s phone rang. He picked it up and spoke into it as if it were a loudspeaker. He could be heard till the opposite wing of the headquarters.

  ‘Well,’ he sighed after finishing the call, ‘I guess you will be taking a taxi back home. I’ll pay your cab fare, unless you want to spend the night in the detention centre and wait for the first local out of Churchgate at 5:30 a.m. We’ve got a comfortable bench and it would save the taxpayers 350 bucks.’

  ‘400,’ Nadeem corrected, ‘Midnight charge.’

  ‘Knowing you,’ Inspector Gaekwad laughed, ‘you’d probably pocket the 400 and take a train back anyway.’

  ‘I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I? Being on your payroll, I guess I won’t get to sleep much.’

  ‘Being on my payroll, you’ll be lucky to sleep at all.’

  The Naked Dawn

  Warren was fast asleep when Nadeem returned home at 6 a.m. The television was still on and the curtains were open, carelessly letting in the sunlight that trickled in through the grill. The newspaper was folded and stuck into the door handle. The night watchman from the neighbouring building, who worked part-time cleaning cars in Little Heights, had taken note of Nadeem’s inappropriate entry into the building at so earnest an hour. He dutifully informed Kishorie Lal, who was in the staff bathroom, that the guy from the third floor had returned. The sweeper, meanwhile, minded his own business, emptying dustbin after dustbin and polishing the floors of the compound with his broom, blowing dirt and dust into the windows of the ground and first floors.

  Nadeem glanced through the narrow slits in the bathroom window, watching the particles of dust rise and settle on the glass. He could see the entire drainage system of the building descending into a network of pipelines converging and burying themselves into the plaster above the parapet of the ground floor, eventually spilling out into the shielded sewer holes at the base of the structure. Another narrower set of pipelines that ran along the walls disseminated into a network of capillaries that fed into the kitchen and bathroom water supply.

  Right above their flat, in 403, lived the Goyales, a rambunctious family of four who were known to be quite generous with their use of water. They sometimes even used up the water supply from Nadeem’s tank, by having the kids go up to the terrace where they played and steal water from the nearest tank (which happened to be 303) and empty it out into theirs. As a result, Nadeem and Warren often ran out of water when they needed it the most, while taking a shower or while brushing their teeth. They had complained to the secretary but to no avail. At night, they could often hear Mr and Mrs Goyale quarrelling through the ceiling, the kids’ footsteps thumping, tennis balls bouncing and the washing machine rumbling in the morning. Every now and then, bits of laundry would drop accidentally into their balcony. At any given time, the railings could literally be strewn with children’s underwear, banyans and coloured socks. Like any good God-fearing neighbours, they lacked civic sense and revelled in the discomfort of others.

  Flat no. 403 also happened to be the one below Chintan Makhija’s apartment. Obviously, they hadn’t stolen from his tank as it was presumably full. After all, the water had been running out of the bathroom tap for quite a while before depleting the supply. Nadeem’s thoughts immediately went to the water. Why was it on? Who left it on? And whose fingerprints would show up on the knob of the bathroom tap? If it was an overdose, then it was possible that his first response would be to turn on the tap and try to reach for water, but if the tank had been running for a day and a half, as common speculation suggested, then the water that had filled up should have been considerably more. If it wasn’t, then that meant that it hadn’t been flowing for quite as long as was suggested. That meant it was highly probable that the body was not more than a day old.

  The intercom rang, causing Warren to toss and turn as his slumbering face broke into an irritable frown. He did not even consider waking up to answer it; he just covered himself with the blanket, as if it were soundproof. Nadeem got out of the bathroom to answer it. It was Kishorie Lal.

  ‘What happened?’ Nadeem barked into the intercom.

  ‘All residents and service staff are to report in the ground floor lobby at 1 p.m. for a society meeting.’

  ‘I won’t be able to make it. I have to step out for some work.’

  ‘You better make it.’

  ‘Or else?’

  ‘Or else I’ll be forced to inform the secretary that you were the only one who was absent from the building the night before Mr Makhija was found dead, and the last one to return to the building the night before that. Is that clear, Nadeem?’

  ‘Would you also be kind enough to inform her that I was the one to discover Mr Makhija in the first place? Had it not been for me, God knows how much longer he would have been sitting there in that condition before we came to know about him.’

  Nadeem slammed the intercom down. It began to ring again. He finally took it off the hook, and when it continued to ring despite that, he pulled out the wire and disconnected it. He checked his mobile phone as he climbed into bed, an act he was habitually reduced to from time to time. It was as empty as a cornerstore on a Sunday afternoon, with neither a visitor nor a patron in sight. He browsed through it compulsively, aimlessly wandering past empty WhatsApp corridors, scrolling down the vacant column that was his inbox, as if searching for some answer to all that ailed him. Just a gentle reassurance that he had left his imprints on some corner of the rotten earth. There were no replies to any of the messages he had sent out to his potential clients. As he closed his eyes, he wondered whether anyone would reply. No one seemed to need a house, at least not the kind of houses that he offered. Everyone was too busy trying to find accommodation in the more fashionable areas such as Bandra, Versova and Juhu. Students stayed mostly in town as that w
as where most of the colleges were located. That left him with the dregs of humanity. The ones who had been kicked out of their flats by stern landlords and desperately sought accommodation elsewhere, or even those who had spent months sleeping on the living room couches of random friends. Unfortunately, the only people who called him were the ones who were as broke and unemployed as he was. The only missed call he had was from Irshaad Batla, and the only message he had in his inbox was from a sarcastic Inspector Gaekwad, which said, ‘Goodnight sweetypie! Sweet dreams’. It was replete with emoticons of an infinite variety from the hugging and kissing kind to the hearts and flowers. Inspector Gaekwad had just purchased a new phone and was probably testing it out.

  Investigation at the Building

  At 1:30 p.m., the painstakingly reassembled alarm clock went off. It kept beeping persistently until Nadeem was awake and hit the button on top to make it stop. He kicked himself upon noticing the time. The bank would be closed by now and he would have to wait another day to get any information on Makhija’s financial situation. He checked his phone. There was still no response from any of his clients.

  Downstairs, Feroz Machhiwaala, with the help of the watchman, Kishorie Lal, Mr Paritosh Sahoo and Mrs Miranda, had managed to round up the morning newspaper man, the milkman, the garbage man, the sweeper, the car cleaner, the dhobi, the mali, the bhaajiwaali, the kabaadiwaala, the electrician, the plumber, the postman and even the courier delivery boy to conduct an investigation of their own.

  Nadeem buttoned his shirt as he descended the stairs to take a look at the congregation that had assembled outside the lobby. They were all lined up like students outside a principal’s office. Mrs Miranda walked up and down like a policewoman, with her hands behind her back, looking them over from head to toe and flaunting her authority to intimidate them. Machhiwaala stood at the head of the line, sporting an expression of immense seriousness and gravity, with his eyebrows knotted in thought.