Private India Read online

  Only the most determined gangsters had remained in Mumbai during the encounter years and Munna was one of them. His mentors had fled to Karachi and Dubai while Munna had gobbled up the residual empire left behind by them. Several corpses later, he had emerged more powerful than any previous mafia don, someone who knew the value of working alongside the enemy.

  A man walked into the bar’s dark air-conditioned interior. In the center of the garishly decorated place was a huge dance floor on which a few dozen young girls dressed in traditional Indian outfits gyrated to the rhythm of Bollywood songs. Seated at tables arranged around the dance floor were lecherous men who would get up every now and again to shower cash on girls who caught their fancy. Waiters unobtrusively served alcohol while quietly pocketing cash for arranging private encounters with the girls.

  The man appeared at the door of Munna’s booth. “Hello, Munna bhau,” he said.

  “Have you come to talk business?” growled Munna.

  “Indeed I have,” replied Rupesh.

  Chapter 21

  SANTOSH UNLOCKED THE door and entered without bothering to switch on the lights. His second-floor apartment was close to the Taj Mahal Hotel, a short walk from his office in Colaba. The bright sodium-vapor street lights outside his windows bathed his dark living room in an eerie golden hue.

  In the kitchen, he took out a glass from the overhead cabinet and placed it under the ice dispenser, enjoying the reassuring clink of ice cubes in the glass. He took it into the living room where he picked up the half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label from the side cabinet, poured the golden liquid into the glass, listened to the ice cubes crackle as the whisky settled in.

  Just one, he told himself. Just the one. Johnnie Walker or Jack Morgan—he’d made his choice. Jack had had faith in him, helped to pick up a broken man. And this—this was the biggest case Private India had handled so far.

  He wasn’t going to let Jack down.

  Santosh settled in too. He stretched out on the sofa, picked up the remote, and switched on the television set. He rarely watched TV but found the sound strangely reassuring. It was a news channel showing another uproar in the Indian parliament as the government and opposition benches traded charges of corruption and incompetence.

  Santosh ignored the events on television, took a generous gulp of the whisky, and stared at an oversized photograph on the wall. It showed a laughing young woman holding a six-year-old boy in her arms. It was a photograph he had taken at a hill resort, a few hours away from Mumbai.

  He had not known at the time that it was the last photograph he would ever take of his wife and son.

  He downed the rest of his glass in a single swig and poured himself another. His drinking had increased over the past few years, but it numbed the pain. The drooping eyes, the graying hair and unsmiling face were the result of a combination of loneliness, aging, anguish, and the drinking. Santosh continued to gaze at the photograph until he fell into a slumber. Then the nightmare took over. It was a recurring theme and varied only minimally.

  Santosh, Isha, and Pravir were returning from a weekend trip to the hill resort. It had been Santosh’s effort to reconnect with his family. His work had kept him so completely absorbed that he had begun to feel like an outsider when he was seated at the dinner table with his wife and son. Even though Isha had never complained, the distance between them had been growing. For the moment, though, they had succeeded in forgetting about it. Santosh was driving the car with his wife seated next to him. Pravir was playing a video game, seated in the rear. Santosh took his eyes off the road for a few seconds. He did not see the tree at the crest of a hairpin turn a few yards ahead. There was a sickening sound of crumpling metal as the car smashed into it. The screeching of tires, the car spiraling out of control, the smell of burned rubber and fuel … Darkness.

  “You killed them, you drunk bastard,” said a cop, holding out a pair of handcuffs to Santosh as he woke to the sound of alarm bells ringing in a hospital.

  The alarm bells continued ringing. Switch off those goddamn bells, thought Santosh. The bells persisted. Switch them off, motherfucker, he thought, but there was no respite. The bells continued to clang noisily in his head.

  Santosh woke to find his telephone was ringing. He pulled his feet off the sofa and sat up. He rubbed his eyes groggily. The clock on the wall showed three o’clock in the morning. He picked up the cell phone that was persistently ringing next to the empty bottle of Johnnie Walker and took the call.

  “What’s the matter with you? I’ve been trying to reach you for the past half-hour,” said Rupesh irritably.

  “Sorry, the phone was accidentally switched to silent mode,” lied Santosh.

  The answer seemed to mollify Rupesh. “We’ve got a third body,” he said without pause. “You need to get yourself over to Hill Road immediately.”

  Chapter 22

  HILL ROAD WOUND through Bandra, a posh suburb favored by Bollywood actors, musicians, and artists. The house in question was toward a quiet stretch of the street, close to Mount Mary Church.

  Santosh had asked Mubeen to pick him up. His head was aching and his stomach burning from alcohol-induced acidity. He had hurriedly dissolved a couple of Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water and gulped them down before jumping into Mubeen’s car.

  There was virtually no traffic on the roads at this hour and Mubeen was able to get them to Bandra within fifteen minutes. They waited in the car at the closed gate for a few minutes before the steel grille was raised electronically to let them through. Mubeen parked in the private driveway of the bungalow next to several police vehicles and gathered his equipment from the boot of the car.

  The house belonged to an Indian pop singing sensation—Priyanka Talati. A single song in a single Bollywood movie had fueled her meteoric rise to iconic status. That one song had made her a legend throughout India and all of South Asia. The soundtrack album had charted in sixteen countries worldwide, and the song had become the fastest-selling single in Asia. In a short career of five years, Priyanka had sung on over forty soundtracks across five languages and had won fifteen awards, including one National Film Award, two Filmfare Awards, and three International Indian Film Academy Awards.

  Hari and Nisha were already at the crime scene, having been alerted by Santosh to the developments. Rupesh was there too, lips red with cardamom-flavored chewing tobacco.

  “Your chap Hari Padhi has checked out the security system,” he told Santosh. “It’s a highly sophisticated one but it was never triggered. Either the intruder understood the technology or they were allowed in by the owner.” He led them through the entrance passageway into an elegant living room.

  One of the walls was covered with awards, trophies, and gold and platinum disks while another bore a huge canvas by Indian painter Syed Haider Raza, the painting having been publicly acquired by Priyanka for three million dollars during a charity auction.

  “Quite obviously the killer was not interested in either the painting or its value,” remarked Santosh, as he observed Nisha taking photographs of the crime scene. “Only a very wealthy individual would leave such an expensive painting on the wall. On the other hand, an intruder of modest means might not have fully appreciated its value.”

  He shifted his gaze from the walls to the floor. Toward the center of a vast and expensive Pietra di Vicenza marble floor lay the body of Priyanka Talati, dressed in a designer tracksuit and expensive sneakers. Around her neck was the now-familiar yellow garrote.

  “What is she lying on?” asked Santosh.

  “It’s a faux tiger skin,” replied Nisha. “Rather cheap. It’s certainly not part of the expensive decor.”

  “So it’s a prop. Yet another clue left by our killer,” said Santosh grimly. What the fuck are you playing at? he thought. Faux tiger skin? Why are you messing with my head?

  “Did you notice this?” asked Nisha as she bent down to take a close-up shot of the victim’s face.

  “Is that a rupee coin on he
r forehead?” asked Santosh, gripping his cane firmly in order to bend down a little.

  “Yes, it’s a one-rupee coin,” replied Nisha. “But it’s been sawed in half down the middle.”

  “Is that brass or gold?” asked Santosh, pointing to a small bell-shaped pendant that hung around the victim’s neck on a chain.

  “We will have to examine it in the lab to check the exact metallic composition,” replied Mubeen, who was scanning the body with a dermascope. “Although it’s unlikely that a woman occupying a twenty-million-dollar home with a three-million-dollar painting hanging on the wall would be wearing a brass pendant.”

  “You are right,” said Santosh. “If the pendant turns out to be cheap, we can safely assume that it’s a prop left by the killer. Any rough estimate of the time she died?”

  “Judging by lividity,” said Mubeen, continuing with his examination, “I’d say that she’s been dead for at least four hours. That’s all I can tell you at this stage. Let Zafar and me examine her in the lab and we should be able to give you a more precise answer.”

  Santosh look at his watch—3:30 a.m. If Priyanka Talati had been killed four hours ago, it would make the time of death around 11:30. Turning to Rupesh, Santosh asked, “How was her body discovered?”

  “There were complaints from neighbors that the music in her house had been turned up to full volume,” replied Rupesh. “The sanctioned noise limit in a residential area like Bandra is reduced from fifty-five decibels to forty-five by ten p.m. Her stereo was thumping out Bollywood numbers at over a hundred decibels. The neighbors called up the police control room to register a complaint. When the beat patrol got here there was no one to open the electrical gate. That’s when the beat sergeant called us.”

  “What about her personal staff?” asked Santosh, eyes flitting around the room, mentally taking snapshots of everything. “Someone must have seen something.”

  “Priyanka Talati had lived most of her life in Singapore,” explained Rupesh, who had already interviewed one of the neighbors. “She was uncomfortable keeping household staff, hence the high-tech security system in her house. She had a personal assistant who stayed with her for twelve hours in the day. A cook came in for about three hours in the morning to carry out the cooking for the entire day. A team of cleaners also arrived each day to do the housekeeping but they were usually out by eleven o’clock in the morning.”

  “No security guard at the gate?” asked Santosh.

  “It is remotely operated from within the house,” said Rupesh.

  “In which case, there would be a CCTV camera at the gate, right?”

  “Absolutely. There are two security cameras,” explained Rupesh, “one at the gate and the other at the entrance door. Both feed into a digital recording unit inside a closet. Unfortunately the hard drive containing the recorded material is missing.”

  Rupesh was staring at Priyanka’s body. Even though she was fully clothed, he was seeing someone else … a naked woman, bleeding internally from wounds inflicted by objects inserted into her body. Repeatedly raped.

  Santosh bent down to examine Priyanka’s forehead more closely. “Do you see what I see?” he asked Rupesh, breaking his reverie.

  “A rupee coin cut in half …” said Rupesh tentatively.

  “Yes, but look underneath,” said Santosh.

  Rupesh bent down to take a closer look. “Ah, I see it now. It’s a single strand of hair.”

  “Too much of a coincidence. I am convinced that the hair is a bogey—a prop left to mislead us,” said Santosh. “I’m pretty certain it will match the other two strands.” He stopped talking suddenly, squinted as he attempted to focus on the coin. “See the way that it has been placed … It looks like a half-moon. What day of the week is it today?” he asked animatedly. “Quick! What day?”

  “Tuesday. But what does that have to do with anything?” asked Rupesh, wondering how many whiskies Santosh had downed before getting there. Very little remained secret among the members of Mumbai’s security establishment.

  “If Priyanka Talati was killed at around eleven thirty then it means that the murder happened on Monday night, not Tuesday morning,” said Santosh, ignoring Rupesh’s impatience.

  “What the fuck are you driving at, Santosh?” asked Rupesh, slightly annoyed by the trivial questions and statements.

  Santosh turned to Nisha. “Do you have an almanac on your smartphone?”

  “Yes,” she answered curiously. “What do you need to know?”

  “The exact phase of the moon on Monday night.”

  Nisha did a quick search on her phone. “Let’s see. We had a full moon a week ago, a waning gibbous on Thursday night … and, ah, here it is. Monday night was a third-quarter moon.”

  “And a third-quarter moon is a half-moon!” exclaimed Santosh. Even though he did not smile, a look of satisfaction briefly crossed his face. “We have a rupee coin on Priyanka Talati’s forehead that looks like a half-moon. The night of the murder turns out to be a half-moon night. The murder happens on a Monday. The word Monday means day of the moon. Think about it. Isn’t it possible that this murderer is killing according to an astronomical calendar? Hmm? Isn’t it?”

  Chapter 23

  RUPESH WAS ASKED the same question six times. On each occasion, his practiced bland reply was delivered with the utmost patience. “At this time, we have a few leads that we are working on. Priyanka Talati’s murder is being treated as a high-priority case.”

  The conference room of the Mumbai Police Headquarters was packed with reporters, photographers, and news channel crews, and provided standing room only. A fire in the room that day would have wiped out India’s fourth estate entirely.

  Santosh and Rupesh had discussed the matter in great detail and had decided that not having a press conference about the inquiry into Priyanka Talati’s death would seem suspicious. She was simply too famous. “Just ensure that no one can link her murder to the previous two,” advised Santosh. “Let’s not give our killer the publicity he craves.”

  “Is it true that she was strangled?” asked a gray-haired hack from a New Delhi-based news channel.

  “It would hamper our investigations if we were to reveal details of the crime publicly,” replied Rupesh smoothly. “We are keeping such matters private so that we may bring investigations to a satisfactory conclusion as quickly as possible. I trust that everyone in this room will cooperate with us in this regard.”

  “Is Priyanka’s killing an isolated murder or part of a wider pattern?” asked the editor of the Afternoon Mirror.

  “We have no evidence at this stage to indicate that her murder is anything other than an isolated incident,” replied Rupesh, wondering from where this woman had obtained a tip-off.

  A lady from a news channel known for its proximity to the opposition party got up to deliver a speech instead of a question. “Last year, two hundred and fifteen murders, four hundred rapes, two thousand, five hundred burglaries, almost eleven thousand thefts, and over eighteen hundred cases of cheating were reported in the city. Does the police force of Mumbai intend to do anything to stem this crime wave? It seems that more than half of the city’s force is assigned to VIP duties, protecting politicians and their family members, rather than being available for crime-fighting.”

  “Madam, I understand your anguish,” lied Rupesh, knowing full well that the woman was speaking the truth. “Please understand that Mumbai’s police force is committed to reducing crime. Our Commissioner has instituted a high-level commission to find out how we can revamp our inquiry system.”

  “The government has become expert at appointing commissions of inquiry and doing little else,” replied the woman sarcastically, ensuring that her two accompanying cameramen focused on her and Rupesh in parallel while they exchanged words.

  “Have you received any information regarding the possible motive for the killing?” asked a young reporter from an Indian-language newspaper.

  “At this stage we are pursuing multiple l
ines of inquiry and we shall have a clearer idea once all angles have been investigated,” said Rupesh, revealing absolutely nothing of any value.

  Watching the press conference on the television in Private India’s office, Santosh smiled. Rupesh had handled it well.

  Watching the press conference on television in another part of town, someone else frowned.

  Chapter 24

  ISOLATED INCIDENT? TRYING to snatch away my hard-earned publicity? How dare they try to make Priyanka’s death look like a random killing? It’s time for me to increase the pressure on you chaps. It has been rightly said that one can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. It’s time for me to break a few more.

  Do you like eggs? Personally, I have never cared for them but here I am in front of the stove, about to boil a dozen. I have a vague recollection of painting pretty designs on Easter eggs. I recall being told that one needed to hard-boil the eggs before painting them or else they would rot quickly.

  I drop the eggs into the scalding-hot water. Do you like water? I used to hate it but now I love it. You know why? Because if you hold someone’s head in a tub of water, you can stop their breathing. Like a garrote, water is also a murder weapon. Be it a rumaal, a tub of water, or a pillow—they are all switches. Flick the switch and you can turn life into death.

  Oh dear, I have completely forgotten. Where is the ironing board? Ah, there it is. Now, let’s see, how many yellow scarves do I need to steam the wrinkles from? I’ve already used three. The rumaal is such a versatile murder weapon … I wonder why it isn’t used more often.

  Yellow was my mother’s favorite color, you know. She would wear yellow sarees. Ah, sarees! The Indian saree is the most sensual piece of clothing that one can wear. The six-yard piece of fabric requires some practice to drape but it hugs a woman’s body in all the right places. It’s exciting, not because of what it reveals but because of what it doesn’t. What an incredible feeling to have the soft fabric caressing your skin at all times of the day, even the most intimate of places.