Brutal (6 page)

“Frankly, I have never seen one. But then I’m also seeing a terrorist for the first time in my life,” Mohan replied with a chuckle

“Did he have craters on his arms… near the veins?” He remembered seeing them on a junkie’s arms in one of his previous cases.

“For what?”

“Well, if you’re an addict, you keep on injecting yourself day-in and day-out. That creates a lot of spots and small craters.”

“I am not sure I saw anything like that.”

They discussed the time and manner of Afroz’s death for a few more minutes. The autopsy report was to come in a day on priority basis, so Prakash thought there was no point in spending more time with this sub-inspector.
Asshole. So full of himself.

One thing was clear to him – Nitin’s murder was a conspiracy, which was shrewdly covered up under an organization called Mujahid-e-Bashariyat. The lone link to this outfit was also now gone with Afroz’s death.

Someone somewhere was running the show quite magnificently. It was like a two-sided jigsaw puzzle. When one side looks perfectly assembled, the opposite side is hopelessly jumbled. The world was presently looking at the make-believe representation of order. Prakash was looking at its other side. The chaos. And the people behind the chaos.

I’m going to get you, he thought, a rush of adrenaline sweeping his body. It was time to roll up his sleeves and get dirty. He took out his mobile phone and dialled a number.

S
eema re-read
the mail she was about to send:

Subject: Regarding your mail to Nitin

Hi,

I’m an acquaintance of Nitin. I know you had tried to warn him of the dangers coming ahead. He had forwarded me your emails before his death, but he was too disturbed in his personal life to pay attention to your warnings. I really want to know what happened with Nitin. And I know you can help me with that. Please reply to me. We can talk.

You can trust me.

Seema

She had taken almost an hour and a half to draft this mail. Writing, editing and then rewriting – trying to sound as gentle and harmless as possible.

It was 11:30 PM. She was done with her dinner. So was Vidisha who was sleeping peacefully in her bedroom. She had helped her kid with her homework for about half an hour before she went to bed.

After her father’s death two years ago, Vidisha had become very quiet and cut-off from the outer world. She was no longer like the naughty, talkative and playful children of her age. She was unusually obedient, much to the anxiety of her mother. She would come home from school every day and remain at home, sometimes watching TV, sometimes talking to her toys. Seema used to feel sad her daughter’s mischievous giggles and yells had stopped after her father’s death.

But then Seema had changed too. She had gone into severe depression after Mohit’s death, often locking herself in a room and crying for hours.

It was only with Prakash’s help that she began pulling herself together. He used to be a close friend who had somehow distanced himself from her with time. But he came back into her life during her most tragic period. She noticed that Vidisha had begun to like his presence a lot. In his company, the little girl would often return to her cheerful self and without him she would regress into gloom.

Seema had always been aware of Prakash’s feelings towards her since her Globe News days. But she always saw her alter ego in him. Both were so passionate about journalism that they often ignored their personal lives. That’s why she knew it would never work out between them
.
Like two similar poles of a magnet, they would never stick.

Moreover, she had hardly been able to move on from Mohit. He had been the light of her life and now he was gone. Her heart did not have place for anyone else now. There was a void instead, which she had to fill somehow. So, she pushed herself harder professionally. She went on to win many awards over the months, making the world believe that she actually was a ‘superwoman’. But deep within, she still lived with a sense of guilt. Of not being able to make Vidisha forget her past and move on. Of not being able to make peace with Mohit’s absence.

A glance at her screensaver brought Seema back to where she was. She had not yet been able to find any clue to the owner of the email ID. In her mind, she had begun calling the user ‘X’. Presently, the only way to reach X seemed to be through good old email.

She had tried assigning the job of tracing the email ID to a hacker her news channel often hired. But he could not be of much help. It was difficult to trace the email ID owner because the person was using a private IP address concealed by a proxy IP. The hacker was still able to bypass the user’s proxy and get down to the location of the private router. But this was the best he could do. The router belonged to a popular Internet service provider in India, based out of Mumbai. Any further research would need access into its private network. Without the involvement of the police and a warrant signed by the magistrate, she would not be able to know who the sender was.

She studied the mail one last time and then decided to add her mobile number at the end.
Just in case X wants to call me.
She had first thought of sending the mail from Nitin’s mailbox, but then changed her plans.
Mail from a dead man may spook the user.
As a work around, she had now created a new Gmail account in her own name and was using this account to send the mail.

After a few moments of hesitation, she clicked on the ‘Send’ button.

Let’s hope somebody responds.

P
rakash stood
on the pavement outside his hotel. The road in front of him, usually a busy street in the mornings, was washed completely in darkness in the absence of any streetlights. The weather was cool and pleasing, quite in contrast to the morning heat.

He looked around.
Not a single soul moves.
A couple of street dogs nonchalantly crossed the street in front. One of them looked at the unknown character standing across the street and gave a half-hearted bark.

He had been standing there for the last 20 minutes. The man he was waiting for had entered Ambala half an hour ago.

While the world slept peacefully, the journalist in Prakash was restless. What he had initially thought to be a small piece of news had now the makings of a profound conspiracy. And the fact that the guy he was after had died under mysterious circumstances told him that he might be in the right direction.
But what is that direction?

What he was about to do was quite dangerous and could threaten his career as well. But he was willing to take that risk. Otherwise, this mystery was going to keep him occupied forever. Whenever he was about take a big risk, he would often tell himself that he has seen much worse things in life. To some extent, that was true.

He was once caught in the crossfire between two rival gangs in Goa. He had gone to do an interview with a drug lord of Russian origin known by the nickname ‘Popo’. The don was boasting about how he kept everyone in the system in his pocket, when one of his henchmen had rushed in hollering like a maniac – “Costa gang! Costa gang!” Before they could react, bullets rained on the wall behind them like hailstones. One of the attackers, who later tried to show some bravado by putting bullets into dead bodies, hit jackpot when he found Prakash alive. Thankfully, before he could squeeze his trigger, his eyes fell on Prakash’s media ID card. “
Aila!
” the man said and ran over to his boss. Soon, Prakash was shaking hands with the new don. ‘Sometimes, write about our gang also’, the kingpin said. ‘It helps our business.’ ‘Absolutely,’ Prakash replied and then bolted from that place.

Over the years, he had been in many such tough situations that had shaped his reputation as a crime reporter.

He squinted on seeing the headlights of an approaching car, the loud music played in it audible from this far.
Looks like him.
He started waving his hands. The car slowed down in response. He walked towards the car and stopped on the driver’s side.

A lean guy wearing thick-rimmed specs was at the wheel. He wore cargo pants and a T-shirt with a massive skull-and-bones graffiti drawn over it. Thin beard and moustache, shoulder length hair tucked behind his head in a ponytail, with a few strands of hair dangling over his face – he looked like a rapper, minus the jewellery.

“Hey, hey, hey. Stop the music!” Prakash said, trying desperately to keep his voice low. “The whole Ambala city will know that the great fucking Mrinal is here.”

Mrinal, grinning, opened his door and said in his usual hip-hop style of speaking, “It gives me the fuel to work through the night, baby.” He turned off his music player.

“Don’t come out of the car. Be seated. We need to talk,” Prakash said. He moved towards the other side of the car, got on to the front seat and closed the door.

“What’s this?” Mrinal whined. “I thought you’d have booked a room for me.”

“Yes, I have. But we need to go somewhere.”

“Go? Now? Man, it’s past 1 o’clock in this ghost town and you’re telling me we are going somewhere? I’ve been driving for last three hours. Even night-owls like me need rest,” he protested and then added with a wink, “By the way, we aren’t going for a date. Are we?”

“Buddy, I think I heard correctly when you said you’re willing to work for Globe News as an external consultant on this story. You’re getting paid by the hour. So, why not start talking about something serious.”

“OK. OK. Begin.”

“We are going to get into Afroz’s house now.”

“You got permission from the police so quickly?”

“No. We are going on our own. Without anybody’s permission.”

“Are you crazy? The police would have sealed that place. If we get caught, we’ll get our asses fried in jail.”

“I know, but we can’t wait. I have a hunch that we are going to find something big there. Something that these lousy policemen will never find, because they don’t suspect anything fishy in this case.”

“Spare me pal. I’m just a discarded equity analyst who feeds himself by working as a researcher-on-hire,” Mrinal said. “With all due respect to your injurious profession, I ain’t a journo. I’m a desk jockey!”

“Relax Mrinal. You don’t need to do anything there. Just hang around with me. I need an extra brain to get to the bottom of this.”

“Do you media guys always use consultants this way?” Mrinal asked with a frown, making Prakash almost laugh.

“You’re a genius. You need to be treated differently,” Prakash answered with a smile. He knew that a little bit of praise worked on his friend.

“You are so sweet,” Mrinal replied with a mocking smile. “But I’ll charge overtime rates.”

“I know, I know. You better justify your rates then.”

“Hmmm. So where’s the party tonight?”

S
eema woke up with a start
. She had passed out on her study table waiting for a response to her mail. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. Her reading lamp was still on. So was her laptop. She looked at her watch.
2 AM.

She thought about shutting down her laptop and moving to her bedroom, but was tempted to check her mailbox one last time. She unlocked her machine and eyed her Outlook screen.
One unread mail.
There was a reply to her mail. She felt her heartbeat rise as she clicked on the mail. It was a very curt reply.

‘I know you are not an acquaintance of Nitin. So, who are you exactly, Seema? And why should I trust you?’

Shit! Mr X or Miss X seems to know Nitin quite well.
Seema understood that there was no point in hiding her identity now. She needed to build some trust.
This is the only chance I am going to get. X might not respond if I bluff again.
She began typing a reply.

I am a journalist with Century News. Can we talk? I just want to understand why Nitin did what he did? Is there anything more to it?

Not a single word will go out if you are not OK with it. But if you have something to say, why not confide in me? I have taken interviews of wanted Naxal leaders and Jihadi commanders, all with professionalism and trust. Only what they agree to, comes out as news.

Trust me.

Seema

She clicked on the Send button and started praying for a response.

T
hey hardly came
across any traffic as their car made its way through Jalbera Road.

“Take left from here and drive slowly,” Prakash instructed, as he counted the third lane from Manav Chowk. “And turn off the headlights.”

Mrinal complied. He reduced the speed to almost 10 KM/hour. “Which house?” he whispered.

Prakash didn’t reply. The darkness was making it difficult to locate things. He looked hard, trying to find any police tape stuck on the gates of the buildings passing by. He wondered whether Haryana Police even used those yellow ‘Crime Scene: Do not cross’ tapes or not.

After a minute of anxious looking around, he was finally able to see the familiar yellow tape on the gate of a short building. Mrinal was about to stop the car in front of the gate when Prakash told him to move on.

“Let’s keep the car a few houses away. We don’t want to alarm anybody by parking a car at night in front of the crime scene,” he said.

They finally parked the car about 50 meters away in a perfect dark spot.

“Now what, chief?” Mrinal said with a mocking face. “We break the doors and get in?”

“I don’t think it’ll come to that. If my intel is correct, we will have no problem getting in.”

“Can we be charged with ‘tampering with evidence’ or something like that?”

“As far as I know, the crime scene has already been thoroughly sifted and investigated by the police. So, every piece of evidence that can have any relation with the dead man has probably been collected already.”

“Wait a minute,” Mrinal asked. “What are we going in for if everything’s already collected?”

“I have a hunch that we are going to find something.”

“Wow. Sherlock Holmes,” Mrinal said and sighed. He looked nervous.

But then Prakash was himself a bit nervous. Ashish, his fellow local correspondent for Globe News had told him that the police wasn’t able to find any key to Afroz’s house. So, they had just chained it from outside. It meant there might be a way to get in.

Both of them got out of the car. These were summer days, but the weather post-midnight here was cold. Prakash started walking towards Afroz’s house, with Mrinal following him. His trouser pockets were bulging with a few tools he had bought for this adventure. An electrical hardware shop had sold him an LED-based torchlight and a small hacksaw. He had also carried along his favourite Victorinox Swiss Army knife.
I look like a burglar.

On reaching the gate outside Afroz’s house, Prakash looked at the surrounding houses.
No lights. No peeping Toms.
The metal gate outside the small compound was not locked. Prakash opened it, taking extreme care to avoid making any noise.

Prakash and Mrinal were now standing on the small ground in front of the veranda. There was a bike standing beside.

Prakash moved up to the veranda and switched on his torch. He checked the door. A metal chain had been inserted into the door handles on either side of the door and then fastened with a lock. But because the chain was pretty long, it had become slack. So slack that the doors were almost half open.
God bless Ashish. This is good.

“I think we both are slim enough to get into the house through this opening,” Prakash whispered. Mrinal was standing right behind him.

“This is a ridiculous way of securing a crime scene,” Mrinal said, grinning.

“I have seen worse things in my life,” Prakash replied. “Now let’s get in.”

He pushed the doors further in till the chain became taut. The opening was now wide enough to let them in easily. He lifted his right leg over the chain and then his left leg, and made his way inside. Mrinal followed suit.

Both were greeted by absolute darkness and damp smelling walls. Prakash moved the torch around to take a view of the living room. He saw a small table with two plastic chairs. There was a kitchen to his right and the way to a bedroom to his left. He could smell a faint odour of chemicals in the room.
Chemicals used by crime scene investigators.

“Nothing seems to be of interest here. Let’s get into the bedroom,” Prakash whispered and started walking towards the bedroom. An eerie white chalk sketch on the floor greeted them. It was the outline of the body of the deceased.

“Holy shit!” Mrinal was taken aback seeing the glowing outline. “I can’t believe I am doing this.”

Prakash ignored his scared partner. He was a bit unsettled himself. He washed the room with torchlight again. The beam passed over a bed with a crumpled sheet tossed over it. A couple of pillows lay astray over it. At one corner of the room, a wooden cupboard attached to the wall stood partially open.

He bowed down and pointed the torchlight below the bed. His eyes caught a medium sized metal trunk, which appeared to be opened recently. He hauled it out. Its lock was broken.
Seems the police have gone through this also.
He pulled the lid. It opened with a shrill metallic creak, which made both of them cringe. In response, Prakash immediately turned off the torch.
Let’s hope no one has heard it.

After a few moments, he turned on the torch again and flashed it inside the trunk. There were a few clothes and some documents. Prakash fixed the torch between his jaws and rummaged through them. There were photocopies of his education certificates. Afroz seemed to be a well-educated man. A copy of his degree certificate put him as a civil engineer. He also found a few packets of empty SIM cards. He passed them to Mrinal.

“Will the mobile numbers written on these packets be of any help?”

“I will have to see,” Mrinal said, putting them in his trouser pockets.

Prakash was busy sifting through the documents, when Mrinal nudged him.

“Did you just hear that?” Mrinal whispered. He sounded spooked.

“Hear what?”

“I heard some movement in the other room.”

A chill ran down Prakash’s spine. He immediately switched off the torch. Both of them went silent for a moment, trying to listen to any movement. Nothing. They could only hear dogs barking somewhere far away.

Prakash continued his work. But he was not able to find anything useful. He closed the trunk and shoved it under the bed again. He now pointed the torch towards the cupboard.
This is our last hope.

As he walked towards the cupboard, something started to bother Prakash – a half-formed thought trying to take shape. Probably something, which should have been in this house, but wasn’t there.
What is it? What is it? What is it? Come on!

Getting no answers, he ignored his feelings and looked inside the cupboard. Clothes – both ironed and crumpled lined the racks. There was a drawer too. He opened it. It contained a bike key, a few visiting cards from local shops and a photo frame. He picked the latter. It looked like a recent photo of Afroz, standing with a man.
Who are you?

A cracking sound hit his ears. As if someone had tripped over an obstacle. He flashed his torchlight across the room. Mrinal was not there.

“Hey, Mrinal. Where are you?” Prakash whispered.

No reply.

He walked towards the living room. When he reached the door joining the two rooms, a ghostly figure leaped out of nowhere and gave him a solid jab on his face. Prakash yelped, lights flaring in his brain like numerous camera flashes at once. Before he could react, another blow struck his wrist and his torch was flung away.

A third punch would have hit his face again had he not ducked on time. The assailant’s hand went on to hit the wooden door, evoking a stifled cry from his mouth. But, the man quickly improvised and Prakash was not ready for it. His knee rammed into Prakash’s chest with a massive force. He slumped to the ground, writhing in pain.

The attacker was wearing heavy boots. Lying on the ground, Prakash heard the thuds from the man’s footsteps proceed into the bedroom. What followed were sounds of the trunk being pulled and the cupboard being opened.

He took out his Swiss Army knife and pulled out the part that converted it into a knife. Carrying it in one hand, he wriggled away from the door where he was lying. Feeling dazed, he summoned all his strength, taking support of the wall to stand again. A smell of burning touched his nose.
What is the man up to?

He heard the thak-thak sound from the heavy boots again. The man was coming out of the bedroom towards him. Prakash held the knife tightly in his hands. As soon as the man passed in front of him, he plunged the knife into what felt like his shoulder. The man whimpered in pain. But like a trained professional, he swung his elbow forcefully in a reflex action. It crashed into Prakash’s jaw, tossing his full body backwards. His head struck the wall. There was no turning off the flash bulbs in his brain now. Before his mind blanked out, he thought about Mrinal. Was he dead or alive?

“
P
rakash
… are you OK?”

Someone was whispering in his ears. His eyes opened for a second, but shut down again, dazzled by the dim light in the room. He opened his eyes again, slowly this time. His neck felt numb, something icy pinching his skin. He realized he was lying flat on the cold concrete. Someone was standing bent over his body, holding a lighted mobile phone. It was Mrinal.
He’s alive. Good.

Prakash took the support of the wall behind him and stood up. His head was spinning. He waved his palm over his scalp. A burst of pain shot through his body when his fingers touched a wound behind his head. The area was moist.
Blood.

“Who the hell was he?” Prakash asked.

“I wanted to ask you the same thing,” Mrinal replied. He sounded jittery. “The son-of-a-bitch punched my eye.”

“How long have I been lying there?”

“10-15 minutes… who knows? I wasn’t fucking counting seconds.”

“Let’s get out….” Prakash stopped before completing his sentence. “Is something burning?”

Mrinal nodded.

Prakash snatched the mobile phone from him and dashed into the bedroom. He saw that the metallic trunk had been pulled out and a plume of smoke was coming from it. He bent over it. There was nothing but smouldering ashes in the box. He went towards the cupboard. It seemed empty. The drawer was also empty, except for the key.

“It seems things were taken out of this cupboard too, and then burnt,” Prakash said.

“So, your gut feeling was correct,” Mrinal said, hunched over the trunk fire. “Somebody going so far to destroy evidence means that there is some conspiracy going on.”

“That’s what’s worrying me. Let’s get out of here quickly. We are like sitting ducks here.”

Both of them hastened towards the living room and wriggled out of the front door. Prakash could feel a throbbing pain in his chest as he walked. His jaw was also hurting.

They rushed towards their car, which now appeared to be so distant. Prakash reached the vehicle first and looked behind. Mrinal was walking like a drunkard – completely dazed.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yeah… kind of,” Mrinal groaned.

“You want me to drive?” He felt as if his chest was squeezed between the jaws of a monkey wrench, but still offered, feeling a bit apologetic for putting Mrinal in danger.

“No. I can do it,” Mrinal said, opening the driver-side door. Prakash took the seat beside him.

“Did you see the face of the man?”

“The last time I checked human beings couldn’t see shit in darkness, Einstein!” Mrinal whined. After a few seconds, he said apologetically, “The bastard hit me from behind first. And then gave me a black eye…. No. I wasn’t able to see him.”

“Must have been a tough guy. I stabbed him with my Swiss knife, though.”

“How glad would I be to pump a bullet into that man’s ass?” Mrinal leaned his head on the steering wheel for a few moments, taking a couple of deep breaths. Then he lifted his head and growled, “Let me ask you a pretty straight-forward question. What the ‘fuck’ were we looking for in that house?”

“When we went inside, I was just looking for random clues. But now I know what I’m looking for – Afroz’s mobile phone. The police were also looking for his phone, but could not locate it.”

“So you thought you could become a cowboy and find something so obvious which the investigators missed?”

“He might have hidden it somewhere.”

“Yeah… in some underground safe, which can be opened by a secret key,” Mrinal sneered. “Good heavens!”

His words struck Prakash like a bolt from the sky. There was a ‘key’ and he had never paid proper attention to it.
How could I have missed this?

“I am going back,” Prakash said with excitement.

“Now what?” Mrinal protested.

“I’ll tell you. Just wait here for me.”

Prakash got down and ran towards the house. He went in, holding his own mobile phone for light. He rushed towards the cupboard and took out the key from its drawer.
It’s a bike key. Bad miss.

He came outside and threw light over the parked bike. He found what he was looking for. There was a small storage case above the engine. He inserted the key in its lock. It opened. There was a crumpled polythene bag inside.

Prakash brought his mobile phone close to the bag and started sifting through its contents. There were a few tools for bike repair, a first aid kit…. and a mobile phone.
Voila.

He took the phone and kept back all other stuff in the bike. Exactly when he turned, he saw a jeep pull over at the gate. A red light was blinking over its roof.
Police. Shit!