Private Delhi Read online

  He bent down and grasped the manhole cover. He pulled and it came off easily. He removed his worn scarf and tied it to the underside handle of the cover. He then gently nudged the cover back into place.

  Santosh made his way around the house, carefully observing the doors and windows. Nothing had been broken or tampered with. The intruder would have picked a lock to get inside. Which one? Front or rear? The manhole was toward the rear and the main door at the front was visible from the gatehouse. More likely that the killer had used the kitchen door.

  “You have exactly five seconds to get the hell out of here before I ask my men to arrest you,” came Sharma’s voice from behind. He had noticed Santosh’s absence from the study and had stormed outside to find him.

  Santosh turned. His breath bloomed in the garden. “Whoever executed this murder planned it perfectly. Lots of preparation went into it.”

  “Murder? Who says it’s murder?” bawled Sharma. “Looks like suicide to me. Yes, let’s go with that.”

  “He duct-taped himself to the chair?” asked Santosh.

  “I don’t need your fucking help, Wagh. Now get out before I take you into custody.”

  Chapter 29

  “WHO HAD MOTIVE to kill Kumar?” asked Santosh as he, Nisha, and Neel made their way to Neel’s Toyota. “Who were his enemies?”

  “Every politician has hundreds,” replied Nisha. “But no one hated Kumar more than Jaswal.”

  “And who were his friends? Often, real enemies may appear like friends and vice versa,” said Santosh.

  Nisha took a folded piece of paper from her shirt pocket and handed it to Santosh. It was a printout of a photograph that showed Kumar with Patel and Chopra.

  Chapter 30

  NISHA LOOKED AT the six names on her smartphone yet again. They were the six remaining Truckomatic customers who needed to be traced. She ran a Google search on each and then she made the first call.

  “Hello, could you put me through to your administration department?” she asked brightly.

  “Anyone specifically?” asked the switchboard operator.

  “No,” replied Nisha. “I need to discuss an insurance policy that is due for renewal on one of your company’s vehicles.”

  After a few minutes of elevator music, another voice came on the line. “How can I help you?” asked the man.

  “Hello, my name is Sherry,” lied Nisha. “The insurance policy on a black van owned by your company is about to expire and I was wondering if you would be interested in renewing it at a lower rate with us.”

  “Black van? You mean our vanity van?”

  “Yes, that’s the one,” replied Nisha. “My company can beat your current premium.”

  “Do you charge extra for operating the vehicle outside city limits?”

  “We usually do,” said Nisha. “But we could look at other ways to compensate for that. Is your vehicle used extensively outside Delhi?”

  “Almost entirely,” replied the man. “The van is used whenever we have distant shoots, which is most of the time. It’s hardly ever in Delhi.”

  Nisha repeated the process. It turned out that an airline used their van as a shuttle for their staff and it remained in service 24/7; a hotel had their van stationed in the entrance portico; and a pharmaceutical company stored theirs in Chandigarh, 250 kilometers away from Delhi.

  Nisha crossed off the four companies and then turned her attention to the two names of individuals left on her list. One was a Bollywood actress. Nisha spoke to her secretary and confirmed that the customized van remained in Mumbai.

  “Why did you register it in Delhi?” asked Nisha.

  “Because Mumbai has lifetime tax while Delhi has annual road tax,” said the secretary. “Substantial cost saving.”

  That left only one name—a “Mr. Arora.” She picked up the phone and dialed the number.

  A receptionist answered saying, “Dr. Pankaj Arora’s office. May I help you?”

  Chapter 31

  “WHO IS THIS Dr. Pankaj Arora?” asked Santosh.

  Nisha read aloud from the online biography. “Dr. Pankaj Arora, chief surgeon, Delhi Memorial Hospital. After completing his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery … blah, blah, blah … He worked for several years as general surgeon at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi … blah, blah, blah … currently chief surgeon of Delhi Memorial Hospital.”

  She showed him a printed page, complete with shot of Arora. His dark hair was slicked back, and an ill-fitting grin revealed a large gap in his front teeth.

  “Good work,” said Santosh. “This heightens my suspicions about Delhi Memorial Hospital. It’s closest to the Greater Kailash house where the bodies were discovered. Now we find that Arora’s van could have been spotted at the house. Any information on my college classmate MGT?”

  “Leave it with me,” said Nisha.

  Chapter 32

  THE ROLE OF the Irrigation and Flood Control Department was to protect Delhi from floods and provide drainage but, as with every other government department, it had the body of a Hummer and the engine of a lawnmower. Getting anything moving was next to impossible.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Wagh?” asked the superintendent engineer, after Santosh had made his way through a maze of corridors and bureaucrats to his office.

  “I believe the drainage system of Delhi was used to access a house and commit a crime,” said Santosh, scratching his salt-and-pepper stubble. “I was wondering if you could tell me how someone might go about getting a detailed drainage map?”

  The superintendent engineer opened a cabinet drawer, took out a rolled-up paper, and handed it to Santosh. “No special effort required. Anyone can get a copy of Delhi’s drainage map, for a fee.”

  “And does the department maintain a record of those who paid the fee?” asked Santosh.

  “Sure,” said the engineer. “But all we have is a name in a register. If someone supplied a false name, we’d have no way of knowing.”

  Chapter 33

  SHORTLY AFTERWARD, SANTOSH found himself at the Indian Medical Association for a meeting set up through the doctor in charge of his rehab at the Cabin in Thailand. Dr. Singh was Indian and his nephew was the president of the association.

  Santosh asked directions to the president’s office and was soon making his acquaintance.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I know you’re busy,” said Santosh when the small talk had all but dried up. “So I’ll get to the point. Could you tell me more about Mangalampalli Gopalamenon Thekkaparambil?”

  “The chief administrator of Delhi Memorial Hospital?” asked the president. “Sad story. Capable man. Tragic, though. Lost his only child when the boy was just nine.”

  “How?”

  “Wilson’s disease.”

  “What is that?” asked Santosh.

  “A genetic disorder,” replied the president. “Copper accumulates in the body’s tissues. It manifests as liver problems.”

  “Rare?”

  “Very. One in a hundred people is a carrier. The disease strikes only when both parents are carriers.”

  “Is there no cure?”

  “Sometimes a possible solution is a liver transplant. Unfortunately this was not an option in this case.”

  “Why?” asked Santosh. “Either of the parents could have donated part of their livers, no?”

  “The mother died a couple of years after childbirth,” replied the president. “The only possible course was for MGT to donate. Unfortunately he was a serious drinker on the verge of cirrhosis at that time.”

  “No cadaver donations possible?”

  “They waited, but sadly the boy died before an organ could be procured.”

  Santosh nodded, his vision clouding a little as he thought of Isha and Pravir.

  Chapter 34

  BACK ON THE street, Santosh considered hailing a cab but took a look at the traffic—the constant noise and movement, each blare on a horn signaling a near miss, a driver on the edge—and
he found himself cringing away from the idea, his mind still on the accident that had killed his family.

  He was back there. In the car with Isha and Pravir. He was driving and from the back, Pravir called, “Papa, look at my score!”

  Pravir was playing a hand-held video game. Just a silly game. And because Santosh had pledged to be a better father, to pay more attention to his loved ones, he took his eyes off the road. Not really to look at the screen, more to simply acknowledge his son, congratulate him.

  Either way, he took his eyes off the darkened, winding road for just a second, maybe not even that. But it was long enough to miss the bend.

  Santosh had never been a particularly good driver. His mind was rarely “in the moment,” which, ironically enough, was part of the reason he needed to consciously pay more attention to his family. And it was the reason his reaction time was slower than it might have been.

  In short, he was not the sort of driver who could afford to take his eyes off the road.

  And for that he had paid: Isha and Pravir both dead, him in the hospital. For a long time after that he had walked with a limp until he’d been told that the injury was psychosomatic. He’d lost the limp; he’d kept the cane. There were psychological scars that would never heal.

  So he walked, and as he did so, he thought how they had that in common, he and MGT: they had both lost their families. Both for avoidable reasons. If Santosh had not taken his eyes off the road then Isha and Pravir would be alive. If MGT had not been such a heavy drinker, then …

  He stopped. Pedestrians flowed around him; one or two insults were tossed his way but he didn’t care because it was as though light had suddenly flooded his mind.

  Could it be?

  He fumbled for his phone, called Neel, dispensed with the pleasantries: “The bodies at Greater Kailash. Did you say there was one that was better preserved than the others?”

  “Yes. Ash was due to examine it any day now.”

  “Can you call him? Ask him how he’s got on?”

  “He’s working. That might prove difficult for him.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” insisted Santosh. “There’s one thing I’m desperate to learn.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want to know if the body still has all its internal organs.”

  “I see,” said Neel, commendably unflappable. “Something tells me you already know the answer.”

  “I suspect I know the answer. See if you can confirm it for me by the time I reach the office.”

  Chapter 35

  “HELLO,” SAID ASH, cautiously.

  “Can you talk?”

  “Um, not really. I’m busy …”

  Neel sensed Ash was on the move, probably finding somewhere private to talk. Sure enough, when he next spoke he sounded out of breath, hissing, “What are you doing ringing me at work?”

  “Well, firstly I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the other night.”

  Ash softened. “Good. I had a great time too.”

  “And secondly …”

  “Of course, there’s a secondly.”

  “Secondly, I wanted to ask if you’d conducted the post-mortem on the intact cadaver.”

  “I can’t talk about that,” hissed Ash. “The walls have ears.”

  “Can you confirm something for me either way, yes or no?”

  “Go on.”

  “Were the organs intact?”

  Ash gave a small, impressed chuckle. “No.”

  “What was gone?”

  There was a pause, as though Ash had waited for someone to pass in a corridor, and Neel held his breath. “Ash? Are you there?” he prompted. “Which organs were missing?”

  Ash cleared his throat. “All,” he said.

  Chapter 36

  “WELL?”

  Santosh had burst onto the top floor of Private, cane tucked beneath his arm as he threaded his way between desks to where Nisha and Neel stood waiting.

  “Ash had conducted the examination,” said Neel, relishing the moment.

  The end of the cane swung his way. “And?” said Santosh. His eyes glittered. His blood was up.

  “All the vital organs were missing. All of them.”

  “I knew it.”

  Santosh was as close to happy or excited as Neel or Nisha had ever seen him, and they couldn’t resist trading a quick eyebrows-raised look. In a second, though, their boss had switched back to stern-mentor mode, targeting Nisha this time.

  “What do you think? Tell me what conclusions you draw.”

  Her head dropped to think. “Some sort of donation thing?” she said, uncertainly. “Kumar drained of blood. This body missing organs. Like they’re being … harvested.”

  “It could be, couldn’t it?” said Santosh. “It could be that our friend Dr. Arora is doing the harvesting. Now, what I want to do is find out whether there have been any similar murders. Something with a similar MO. Neel, while I’m a big believer in using the power of contacts and shoe leather, how would you feel about hacking into the National Crime Records Bureau?”

  Neel felt fine about it, and as Santosh waited for the hack to begin he reflected that his belief in nurturing contacts had been inextricably linked with his drinking. Was it a coincidence that giving up booze had left him willing to explore more modern, expedient methods of information gathering?

  He’d have liked to think it was a coincidence. But he knew deep down it wasn’t.

  Santosh and Nisha stood at Neel’s back as he worked a laptop and desktop unit at the same time, using the laptop to launch a formal, untargeted attack on the system, the other for a more specific search.

  Nisha had her arms folded across the front of her leather jacket, one foot behind the other. “Look at him go,” she teased. “Who knew we had such a nerd at Private, eh, Santosh?”

  Her smile faded as Santosh looked admonishingly at her over the top of his glasses and then returned to staring into space. Neel threw her a quick look over his shoulder, eyebrows raised, and the two shared a smile. Their boss’s epic sense-of-humor fails were a shared confidence, the kind of thing they talked about in hushed tones whenever he was absent.

  “Right,” said Neel after a few more moments. “Exactly what is it you’d like me to look for?”

  Santosh clicked back to the present. “Let’s start with murders committed within the past six months.”

  “This is Delhi. That will be a lot.”

  “I haven’t finished. Murders committed within the past six months in which … parts have been removed.”

  “Parts?”

  “Body parts. Bits of the body. Trophies. Some piece of the victim that the killer removed and took away with him.”

  Neel consulted his laptop. “We have approximately two minutes before they kick us out altogether,” he said.

  “You’d better work quickly then,” said Nisha, nudging him with her elbow.

  Neel scooted slightly to the right, chair wheels drumming the boards. His fingers danced on the keyboard of the desktop. Lines of information appeared. As one, Nisha and Santosh leaned forward to look more closely.

  “There’s nothing,” said Neel. “Correction, there is something. Here.”

  He pointed at the screen, indicating a brief murder report. The victim’s name was Rahul. He had been found in the bath.

  Both eyeballs missing.

  Chapter 37

  THE JOURNALIST AJOY Guha leaned back in his swivel chair in the DETV editorial office, sucking contentedly on a lozenge. On shelves behind him were neatly organized files, each containing in-depth investigations into various stories. It was well known that Guha required his team to devote hundreds of hours of research before broadcasting a show on any given topic. The sole personal item on the shelves was a photograph of a woman.

  He addressed his team, who had assembled in the office, some standing, some perched on the edges of desks. “The suicide of Kumar is a major story,” he said. “But we need an angle. Something unique to Carrot and Stic
k.”

  “How can we be sure that it was suicide?” asked one of the team members.

  “Very good,” said Guha. “Let’s look into that.”

  The subordinate glowed with pride.

  “There’s something I think you should see,” said a research assistant, passing Guha a bunch of papers.

  “What are these?” he asked.

  “Financial statements of Surgiquip India Limited,” she replied.

  “Patel’s company?”

  She nodded. “One of the largest investors in Surgiquip is an anonymous fund based in the Bahamas. Some of the directors of the fund are known friends of Kumar. There’s every reason to believe that the money invested in Surgiquip also included Kumar’s money. Effectively, Kumar was Patel’s partner and, given his official position, was in a position to favor Surgiquip.”

  Guha rolled the lozenge inside his mouth as he contemplated the implications of that information. “Let’s find an excuse to get Patel into the studio,” he said. “We can rip apart those connections once he’s in our hands.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?” asked the show’s producer. “Some of these companies are our lifeblood. Without advertising bucks, we’re nothing.”

  “These people need to be exposed,” said Guha. “You can be either a news channel or a profitable business. You can’t be both.”

  Chapter 38

  LOOKING MORE CLOSELY into Rahul’s death, the first thing Santosh had discovered was that there were very few details available. Contacts in the force had supplied him with a time of death—sometime between 9 p.m. and midnight—and Rahul’s occupation—shift worker—and that was it.