Compass Box Killer (18 page)

Raashi gave him a hurt look that he ignored. He looked around in the dark, trying to spot something.

‘So, Mr Smart Inspector, what are we going to do now?’ Raashi asked.

‘We are going to go back to the hotel and have an early dinner.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I’ll come back here and go through the records in their office.’

Raashi looked a little unsure. ‘Will you be able to get inside?’

‘Of course! His door has the old British style locks. No problem.’

Raashi made a mock grimace. ‘Virkar, sometimes I wonder whether you’re a policeman or a thief.’

‘I’m a bit of both,’ he smiled as he straddled his Bullet.

Raashi hugged him tight as she sat behind him.

‘By the way, did you see any dogs lurking around while we were inside the orphanage?’ enquired Virkar.

‘No, there were no dogs. Why?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘Because I don’t want to be bitten when I come here later tonight.’

B
ut Raashi was wrong. Virkar cursed under his breath, wishing he had gone with his instincts and checked instead of taking Raashi’s word for it. The dogs in the orphanage were not merely guard dogs—they were highly trained attack dogs. Why an orphanage in Belgaum needed attack dogs to defend it was a question that Virkar had no answer for. Not that he had time to stand around and mull over this; he was too busy running for his life. The attack dogs, obviously trained to bark only to signal their mates, had waited until Virkar was well inside the orphanage’s premises before cornering him. Whipping around at the first half-bark, Virkar had realized that his way back to the wall that he had jumped over had been cut off by two rapidly advancing Doberman Pinschers. Virkar quickly surmised that the only shelter he had was the orphanage building itself. He decided to run to the part of the building that was closest to him: the office block. As luck would have it, the door to the office block was not locked. Obviously the keepers of the orphanage were quite confident of the efficacy of their attack dogs. Thanking his stars that he didn’t have to clamber up a pipe, Virkar rushed in through the door and slammed it behind him with only seconds to spare. As he stood inside panting in relief, he heard the muted grunts of the two Dobermans as their bodies slammed against the old wood of the door. Before he could fully catch his breath, the light bulb above him was switched on with an unceremonious click. Behind him, a voice said, ‘You were lucky. They’re trained to tear a man’s arm off his body.’

Suddenly, the dogs began to bark loudly. Virkar turned around to see Reverend Anthony standing at the head of the staircase behind him, dressed in pajamas and a maroon, silk housecoat. Virkar wondered whether Reverend Anthony had any other tricks up his sleeve apart from flesh-tearing attack dogs. He eyed the priest’s hands that were clenched inside the pockets of the housecoat. There seemed to be something in there along with the Reverend’s clenched fist, something that Virkar was familiar with and didn’t particularly like. As if reading his mind, Reverend Anthony took his right hand out from the pocket, confirming Virkar’s fears—his fist was wrapped around a small, antique revolver that had been famous at the turn of the century: a Webley make known as the British Bulldog. As the Reverend levelled the gun towards him, Virkar didn’t really feel like taking a chance on finding out whether it still worked. Realizing that there was no other way out, he decided to come to the point. ‘He ’s going to die if you don’t tell me who he is.’

Father Anthony seemed to consider his words while his finger absentmindedly stroked the trigger.

‘Something bad happened to Tracy Barton and I believe he’s taking revenge for it. But they’ll kill him if I don’t get to him first.’

The barking of the dogs now rose sharply behind him and suddenly Father Anthony yelled out loud: ‘Laurel, Hardy, quiet!’ Immediately, the dogs fell silent, much like a switch had been flipped. The tension in Reverend Anthony’s fist eased as he lowered the gun. Virkar watched him warily as he walked down the stairs towards him. The Reverend reached out for him and, holding Virkar’s hand in his, said, ‘Son, he’s misguided. All he wants is love. Please save him.’

Virkar nodded. Reverend Anthony turned and led him towards his office. Once inside, he walked behind his desk and sat down on his chair. He motioned Virkar towards the chair across the table. After Virkar was seated, Reverend Anthony began: ‘About sixteen years ago, a British aid organization, Arms Around Orphans, contacted us with a unique plan. They would find sponsors in the UK for each orphan that we had here. Each child would be sponsored with school materials, clothes and fees for boarding and lodging. It was through this programme that a fifteen-year-old girl from the UK began to send us money to sponsor a ten-year-old boy. She used to save up her pocket money every month to be able to send us the fifty pounds we required for the sponsorship. Part of the programme was to let there be written and telephonic communication between the sponsor and the child. In this particular case, the relationship between Tracy and the boy grew stronger because Tracy was an orphan as well. The boy flowered into a student with superior intelligence and passed out from here with flying colours. But somehow he couldn’t make it through competitive entrance tests, so Tracy, who by then had saved up enough money from her well-paying job, sponsored him into an engineering college. The boy was one of the best students of the college till the day Tracy died. It all went downhill from there.’ Reverend Anthony lapsed into a meditative silence.

Virkar waited for him to begin again, but the priest was lost in his thoughts. It was only when Virkar saw that tears had began to streak down the Reverend’s cheeks that he asked softly, ‘What happened then, Reverend?’

‘The boy came to me one day and told me that he suspected Tracy had been murdered. He had been to Khandala and had returned with this theory. But I thought that he was just emotionally disturbed and brushed his theory aside.’

‘Did he say anything about somebody called the Smooth Operator?’

‘I don’t remember,’ said the priest. ‘He said a lot of things, and it all seemed so ridiculous that I was upset with him.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I called up the director of the engineering college and told him to give the boy a few days off as he was emotionally disturbed.’

‘And did they?’

Reverend Anthony sat back in his seat; his body seemed to have shrunk in size in the past few minutes. Finally, he sighed and said, ‘No. Instead, they threw him out of the college. You see, there was no one left to pay his fees.’

Virkar gave him a stern stare. ‘But, surely
you
could have paid his fees, Reverend?’ The Reverend shrank further into his seat but this time he was squirming with discomfort. Somewhat defensively, he said, ‘I have two hundred children who I look after…everything that I earn goes into the orphanage. I don’t have a single paisa in my name.’

Virkar continued to stare at him; slowly, a sense of understanding replaced the indignation he felt. ‘What happened then?’ he asked, his tone gentler this time.

Suddenly Reverend Anthony looked very tired. ‘It’s a long story, son, but it concludes with the boy ending up in jail.’

‘H
ari Prasad…his name is Hari Prasad.’ Virkar saw the shock of realization in Raashi’s eyes as soon as he said this.

‘Yes, I’ve realized it too,’ he said before Raashi could say anything.

The dying Colasco had, in fact, told them everything. He had said, ‘Hari…Tracy’s ward’ and not ‘Hurry…Tracy’s ward’.

Virkar had spent the entire night riding around the dark streets of Belgaum on his Bullet after leaving the orphanage. In his head, he kept going over the sequence of events.
Colasco knew
Hari’s identity and his relationship with Tracy, and perhaps also
knew that Hari was Akurle and Bhandari’s killer. But something
had stopped Colasco from sharing this crucial information with
the police. Was it the fear of revealing the crime that he himself
had committed? Or was it the fear of someone else—the Smooth
Operator, perhaps?

By the time Virkar made his way back to the hotel, it was dawn and Raashi had fallen asleep waiting for him to return.

Over breakfast, Virkar told Raashi what Reverend Anthony had told him, and more. Hari was not granted admission into his final year even though he was a brilliant student and had been topping his class every year. To earn money to pay his fees and gain re-entry into the final year, Hari had started teaching at a local coaching class. But as he hadn’t been able to cope with Tracy’s death, he became depressed and started having mood swings. In one such disturbed moment, he had fought with the owner of the coaching class over some underhand deductions in his salary. Hari lost his temper and beat the owner, destroying some coaching class property in the process. Instead of being treated for depression caused due to his circumstances, Hari had been convicted on drummed up charges of ‘attempted murder’ and imprisoned at the Central Prison at Barudanga.

Considered the equivalent of Andaman’s infamous Kala Pani jail, the Central Prison at Barudanga, spread over an area of about 150 acres, was built by the British in the 1920s. The dreaded jail has two hexagonal sections. The first hexagon comprises of barracks where the convicted prisoners, both short-term and those convicted for life, are made to stay and work. The second hexagon has blocks where those prisoners who are under trial are lodged. The prison has the facility to hang people and has three gallows. And, therefore, all prisoners sentenced to capital punishment are lodged in Barudanga. Among sundry criminals like murders and rapists, it also houses SIMI terrorists, members of the dreaded Dandupalya gang and members of Veerappan’s forest-poaching gang.

The prison was only about fifteen kilometres away from the main Belgaum city, a distance that Virkar covered in about twenty minutes. But not before Raashi spent two hours making phone calls to secure the required permission to visit the prison. She had finally swung it by calling in a favour from a contact in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry in Delhi who telephoned someone in the Secretariat at Bangalore, who, in turn, telephoned the Director of Prisons with a request to grant them permission to meet with the superintendent of Barudanga Prison.

The superintendent, V. K. Joseph, was cordial towards them even though they had barged in unceremoniously. But as soon as they were seated in front of the superintendent, Virkar decided to dispense with all niceties and came straight to the point. ‘Joseph saheb, we want to know everything about a prisoner who was jailed here—Hari Prasad.’

The superintendent looked thoughtful. ‘Hmm…Hari Prasad. I don’t seem to remember him…let me see.’ Virkar noticed the defocused and fixated position of superintendent’s pupils, indicating that he was lying. The superintendent then motioned to his assistant to bring out the file on the prisoner in question. After sifting through a few pages in the file he said, ‘Yes, I remember him now. He was a model prisoner. He was a good influence on a lot of other prisoners, too, especially his cellmate, whom he diligently tutored to secure a BSc degree.’

‘I see. And what was he convicted for?’ Virkar pressed further.

‘For attempted murder and destroying private property. He spent eight years here.’

‘Eight years for attempted murder! Isn’t that a little too harsh?’ asked Virkar.

‘Yes, I thought so too, but I am not the judge who sentenced him.’

‘When was he released?’

‘Uh…about a year ago.’

‘About a year ago?’ muttered Virkar, as though speaking to himself, and then added, ‘Wasn’t there some controversial incident here around that time?’

He noticed that the wary look on the superintendent’s face now showed hints of fear. Virkar knew that he had suddenly become suspicious that this meeting could be a sting operation or a spot raid. He realized that he needed to do something quickly before the superintendent called the meeting to an end. He darted a look towards Raashi who, as usual, was quick to catch on.

Flashing her broad, disarming smile, she raised her empty palms and showed them to the superintendent for his scrutiny, ‘Look, superintendent saheb, we don’t have any cameras or any other agenda. This is personal, not official.’

The superintendent seemed to relax a little. ‘I was not involved in what happened,’ he said. Virkar opened his mouth to ask another question but Raashi squeezed his knee under table. She did not break eye contact with the superintendent, nor did she drop her broad smile. Instead, she infused a tone of compassion into her voice. ‘We know,’ she said. ‘Your record is absolutely clean. We’re not here to tarnish your reputation. Just tell us all about Hari Prasad and we’ll be on our way.’

The superintendent relaxed further. ‘All I can say is that he did us all a favour.’

‘Us?’ Raashi’s question was gentle.

‘Well, yes. I mean the prison guards, the prisoners and even the people at large.’

Virkar, who by now was feeling thoroughly confused and impatient, asked, ‘What kind of favour?’ Unfortunately, Virkar’s intervention broke the spell that Raashi had cast over the superintendent. He blinked, realizing that he had been led into sharing more than he should have. He clamped up, turning his attention to some papers on his desk and pretending to busy himself in them. Virkar looked all set to launch into an interrogation but Raashi squeezed his knee once again, calming him down.

‘Sir,’ Raashi addressed the superintendent, ‘I understand that you may not want to share the details yourself, but maybe you can tell us how we can get this information ourselves?’

The superintendent sat still, looking thoughtful. He seemed to be considering Raashi’s statement. But then he rose and said, ‘I have to go on my rounds. Please excuse me.’