Compass Box Killer (11 page)

Virkar face turned red with embarrassment. He cleared his throat. ‘A female British singer? How can she be connected to our Compass Box Killer?’

Raashi shrugged.

Virkar continued to think out loud. ‘Hmm…maybe the killer is not Indian. Perhaps the killer is an NRI? From the NGO files I saw at Colasco’s office, I discovered that he was connected to many international aid organizations that regularly send foreigners and NRIs to Mumbai for volunteer work.’ Virkar took out three hundred-rupee notes and slipped them under the beer mug. He gave Raashi a small nod and rose to leave.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ Raashi looked surprised.

‘I’m going back to Colasco’s office. I have to check out this NRI angle, I hadn’t thought of it before. I probably have a couple of hours left before the peons come to open the office.’

Raashi clicked her tongue. ‘Take it easy, Virkar, I was just showing off my knowledge of western pop music. How can you jump to conclusions based on an old song called
Smooth
Operator
?’

Virkar turned to go. ‘Maybe I
am
jumping to conclusions. But I’ve got to check out all the possibilities. I’ve overlooked too many things already and made too many mistakes.’

Raashi got up to join him. ‘I’ll come with you.’ But Virkar put out a restraining hand. ‘No, thanks. I’ll do this on my own.’ Raashi looked at him, a little miffed.

‘Don’t worry. If I find something, I’ll definitely let you know,’ he added, his tone reassuring.

Raashi attempted to protest as they walked out into the back alley that served as the exit for patrons of Sunny Bar’s morning shift. But Virkar smiled at her and ducked into a narrow bylane where he had parked his Bullet. As he rode away, Raashi’s face bore an indecipherable expression of concern and dread.

‘T
racy Barton. That was her name. Tracy Barton from Durham, England. “Little Orphan Tracy”. Taken in by abusive foster parents who cared less for her and more for drugs, an addiction that they both succumbed to when she was sixteen. Tough Tracy. Who had put herself through school and got herself the best college education through sheer grit and intelligence. She had landed herself a plum corporate job as soon as she graduated and was well on her way up, climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder, when suddenly, at the age of twenty-five, Tracy quit her job, left London and travelled to Indian shores—to Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum in Mumbai, to be exact. Tracy planned to dedicate her life to orphaned children in India. She wanted to set up the biggest Adoption Agency in the UK. But first, she wanted to understand the way the system worked. After coming to India, she moved from one orphanage to another to try and understand the formalities that came with adoption in India. She travelled to nearby villages, helped out in blood donation camps, taught English in sundry literacy drives, cleaned slum drains till her hands were calloused, worked tirelessly for the underprivileged till her clothes carried the smell of her travels and her white skin turned a crisp brown under the harsh Indian sun. Her delicate looks, however, did not fade. Despite her dishevelled hair, her chipped fingernails smelling faintly of dried wood smoke, she was never short of attention from the opposite sex,’ said the forty-something Lourdes D’Monte, Colasco’s long-time private secretary.

She paused to take a brief respite from her outpouring and then continued, ‘Tracy was such a good soul. She used to tell me that even while studying in London and working two jobs to pay her college fees, she managed to save enough money to send to India to sponsor the upkeep of orphans like her.’ Lourdes’ eyes turned moist. Loyal, God-fearing Lourdes who had been party to all of Colasco’s secrets had remained mum all through the investigation. But now that Colasco was dead and Inspector Virkar had landed at her respectable, middle class home in C.G.S. Colony, Antop Hill, at an early morning hour, stinking of sweat and stale beer and scaring her two little children, Lourdes’ tongue had let loose. ‘Tracy first came in contact with Nigel Colasco when she met him during one of her many trips to the Mumbai slums. Later, she worked briefly with Slum Baalak Surakasha. Tracy was…’

Virkar, who had been listening to Lourdes patiently, suddenly cut her short, ‘Was?’

After he had thought of the ‘NRI/foreigner’ connection to Colasco during his conversation with Raashi, Virkar had remembered seeing an email folder the previous night called ‘International Contacts’ in Colasco’s inbox on his office computer. Virkar was desperate to join the dots. Colasco’s last words had been echoing in his mind even though ACP Wagh had dismissed their significance. He had gone back to Colasco’s office and picked the lock, as he had before, to quickly gain entry. At Colasco’s table, Virkar had turned on the computer and hacked into Colasco’s email account again by keying in Colasco’s date of birth and month as the password. The fact that most people still foolishly used their date of birth or their mother’s maiden name as their email passwords never ceased to amaze Virkar.

Having gained access to the ‘International Contacts’ folder, Virkar had typed out Colasco’s last words, ‘hurry’, ‘ward’ and ‘tracing’ one by one in the search bar. The first two had yielded no results but as he typed T-R-A-C it had thrown up the name and email address of someone called Tracy Barton. Virkar discovered that, though the name did exist in Colasco’s email address book, there were no email exchanges between him and Tracy. This could only mean that the emails between them had been deleted. His policeman’s instinct had urged him to follow this lead, however slender it seemed to be. He quickly looked through all the files on the computer but found no emails or letters. Glancing at the filing cabinets lined up on one side of the office, he realized that he didn’t have time to go through them. In any case, since he had already gone through them the previous night, he felt he wouldn’t find anything. But Virkar wanted to dig deeper, which meant that he’ d have to shake information out of someone. And he knew exactly who that person was. He had immediately ridden his Bullet to Lourdes’ house. He was, in fact, quite taken aback at the ease with which he had managed to squeeze out information from Lourdes. He wondered if Tracy Barton could be
the
‘tracing’ in Colasco’s last words. Was he inching closer to finding the Compass Box Killer?

Now Virkar repeated his question. ‘Why have you been using the term “was”?’

Lourdes raised a quizzical eyebrow in response.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand your question,’ she replied.

‘You keep referring to Tracy in past tense. Where is she now?’ asked Virkar, trying his best to remain patient.

Lourdes gave him a strange look. ‘At the Christian Cemetery in Lonavala.’

Virkar felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. ‘What…when…did she die? How?’ Virkar managed to croak.

A tear rolled down Lourdes’ cheek. ‘She died in 2004 in a car accident in Khandala.’

Virkar sank back into the ratty old sofa. Suddenly, he felt tired. Very tired.

‘Nigel sir was very shaken by the suddenness of her death. He couldn’t bear to be reminded of her, so he deleted all her mails and photographs,’ Lourdes added gently.

‘Colasco was her…?’ Virkar’s mind struggled to focus as he tried to probe further.

‘Her good friend,’ replied Lourdes, her loyalty towards her deceased boss reasserting itself.

Virkar changed tack. ‘Hmm… Where was Colasco when Tracy died?’ he asked.

‘Here, in Mumbai,’ Lourdes stated. ‘Tracy had gone on one of her solo weekend trips to Khandala, borrowing Nigel sir’s car. She had drunk a lot of booze and fell asleep while driving. Later that night, Nigel sir was woken by a call from the Khandala police who told him that his car had been found at the bottom of a ghat with Tracy lying dead at the steering wheel.’

Virkar’s policeman’s instinct was completely alert now.

‘How old was Tracy when this mishap occurred?’

‘In her mid-twenties, I suppose,’ replied Lourdes. ‘Why?’

‘A young foreigner drunk and dead in a car crash should have made headlines,’ Virkar said, looking pointedly at Lourdes.

‘It was 2004, sir, the news channels were not what they are today. It did make it to the newspapers, but as a small news item in the inside pages,’ said Lourdes, without missing a beat.

Virkar made a mental note to check newspaper archives. ‘What about her family? Didn’t they come to claim her body?’

Lourdes now looked tired. ‘Haven’t you been listening to me, Inspector? Tracy was an orphan; she had no one in this world. Some of her friends sent a few condolence emails, that’s all.’

‘Why was Tracy driving drunk and alone at night?’ Virkar asked, his fingers drumming against the sofa ’s armrest.

Lourdes looked at him blankly and shrugged. ‘I… I never asked Nigel sir; he was so devastated.’

Virkar was not satisfied. ‘But what about the police? Wasn’t there an investigation?’

‘Yes, of course there was one,’ said Lourdes. ‘The investigation declared it to be what it was—an unfortunate accident.’

With some effort, Virkar raised himself from the sofa that he was sorely tempted to make his bed. Thanking Lourdes and apologizing for his sudden appearance at her doorstep, Virkar walked out into the bright and busy street. It was 8.30 a.m. He turned his face up towards the sun, letting it warm his skin before getting on his Bullet and riding into the busy Antop Hill traffic.

His body was begging for some rest but his racing mind wanted him to ride straight to Khandala. To Tracy’s grave.

Khandala

U
p until the mid-noughties, Khandala and Lonavala, the small hill stations that lie on the Western Ghats of Maharashtra, perhaps ranked highest on a list of weekend vacation retreats in India, courtesy the weekend-warriors from Mumbai who mercilessly swarmed the twin hill stations for rest and recreation. The allure was such that, at one time, almost every self-respecting ‘yuppie’ from Mumbai aspired to own a weekend retreat on the green slopes of the ghats. Many of them did manage to fulfil their dream, leading to houses being built in droves and transforming Khandala and Lonavala from quaint, picturesque hill towns, to concrete-stricken, hilly suburbs of Mumbai. The twin towns’ weekend charm fell on hard times as the average corporate Mumbaikar’s disposable income increased and their travel ambitions soared. While the flushed-with-funds Mumbaikars began seeking solace in better climes, Khandala and Lonavala slowly became the holiday destination of the budget tourist from interior Maharashtra. As the breezy Mumbai-Pune Expressway eliminated the need to pass through Khandala and Lonavala while travelling between Mumbai and Pune, it is only the die-hard trekkers who make their way along the old Mumbai-Pune Highway to partake of Khandala and Lonavala’s faded glory these days.

Virkar smiled to himself as he zoomed past the usual morning traffic of struggling trucks that were huffing and puffing their way up the winding Bhor Ghat section of the old Mumbai-Pune Highway. The workhorse Bullet engine ate up the arduous eight-kilometre Khopoli-Khandala stretch, climbing the height of 369 metres with the ease of a champion steed. Virkar’s dark mood began to lift as his Bullet crested the stretch in record time. After leaving Lourdes’ house, he had called the on-duty officer at the Crime Branch headquarters and reported sick. Then he had gone back to his tenement, showered, changed into a fresh pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt and quickly packed a small backpack for his trip to Khandala. Then he had ridden his Bullet to a nearby cyber cafe to find Sade’s music video for
Smooth Operator
as well as archived Internet news reports on Tracy’s accident. Twenty minutes later, he was back on his Bullet, making his way to the Eastern Express Highway leading out of Mumbai.

As he entered Khandala, Virkar mentally debated whether he should head directly to Tracy’s grave at the Christian Cemetary in Lonavala or visit the Khandala police station first to look up old police reports on the accident. His cursory search of the Internet had yielded only a sketchy account of the accident and Virkar was curious to read its exact details. But he decided to first check into a hotel and change into ‘sober’ clothing befitting an Inspector from the Mumbai Crime Branch.

Virkar turned his Bullet into a winding bylane hoping to find his way to Katrak Villa, the old guest house that he used to frequent in his teens. Virkar and his friends would beg and borrow from their respective relatives for weekends filled with cheap liquor and hundreds of rounds of Mendicoat, their preferred gambling card game. To his delight, Katrak Villa still existed, looking almost the way it had when he visited it last, around fifteen years ago. Rustomji Katrak, the old Parsi owner had died and passed the ownership to his son, Pesi, who had decided to run the small guesthouse much the same way that his father had. Unfortunately, times had changed and people’s desires had expanded, leaving Katrak guesthouse with only a few odd customers for the weekend. This suited Virkar just fine as he was able to take his pick of the rooms, and despite the dampness and the cracked walls, he chose the corner room he had frequented in his youth—it had the best view of the greenery surrounding the property. Changing into a simple full-sleeved shirt and cotton trousers, Virkar left for his destination, locking his room with the padlock provided by Pesi.

‘Shinde saheb?’ asked Virkar of the constable on duty at the Khandala Police Station. Even though Virkar was not in uniform, the constable saluted him. Policemen can always spot one of their own ilk because of the manner in which they carry themselves. Besides, the authority with which Virkar had spoken left no room for doubt that he was a policeman, and an officer at that. The constable got up respectfully and led Virkar to Senior Inspector Shinde’s office at the back. As he entered the station, he surveyed the solid, whitewashed walls and the brick-and-tile construction of the old army barracks undoubtedly built during the British era to house the Indian soldiers who protected the vacationing British officers and their families. Senior Inspector Shinde’s office was in a small hut at the back of the barracks that housed the main police station.