Compass Box Killer (2 page)

A huge glass-topped wooden writing table with an overlarge chair dominated the dimly-lit room. A few scrawny metal chairs faced the table in subservience. A fat, naked, 200-watt light bulb hung over the table. Maps dividing the entire Wamanrao Marg area into smaller sections adorned the walls of the room. On the far wall, a red graph tracked the fluctuating fortunes of crime in the area over the past decade. A large, precariously-stacked pile of dusty, crumbling old files and used stationery in the corner behind the table was the only eyesore in the otherwise sparse, neat room.

The young man strode silently up to the dusty pile and pulled out a small, rectangular package wrapped in a newspaper that was bulging from the pocket of his khaki shorts. He bent down and quickly stuffed the package under the lowest file, taking care to hold the pile steady. Although a casual observer would be unable to see the package, the man still pushed at it, trying to shove it away from sight completely.

A sharp voice cut through the air behind him. ‘Hey! What are you doing?’

The young man turned his attention to the glass of chai lying at the foot of the glass-topped table beside the pile. Picking it up, he turned to look the source of the voice in the eye.

He ran his fingers through his hair and said, ‘Nothing, saheb, I was just collecting your glass, see? It’s time for your afternoon chai, right?’

Senior Inspector Akurle smiled at him through his corpulent features. The soft, shapeless mass that was his stomach hung over his uniform belt. It jiggled as he waddled to his desk. ‘Yes it is, and make sure that you get me two garam vada paos along with it.’

The young man smiled back. ‘With extra lasoon chutney, as usual?’

Akurle’s smile widened. ‘Yes! You’re a smart boy. Only two days on the job and you know my likes and dislikes already. Good!’

The youngster smiled a little self-consciously. ‘I’m trying hard, saheb.’

The Inspector sighed, ‘If only the rest of my police station was like you.’

The young man fidgeted, not wanting to prolong the conversation. ‘I’ll be back in just ten minutes.’

Distracted by an important-looking circular lying on his table, Akurle nodded and waved him away. The young man turned and walked out of the swivel door, bobbing his head in obeisance to the now fully-alert constable standing ramrod straight at his post by the door.

A casual whistle found its way to the young man’s lips as he walked back through the passageway and out into the street towards the chai stall that stood across the road.

I
nspector Virkar picked up the glass mug topped-up with Godfather Beer, his favourite. Taking care to not let even a single drop escape its confines, he raised the mug to take a sip when a flickering movement across the dimly-lit room caught his eye.

‘Aai cha gho!’ a muted curse escaped his lips as his eyes focused on the colourfully-clad figure of a girl in the distance. He put down the mug, casting a single glance of regret at the rapidly disappearing foam atop the liquid and turned his attention back to the girl. Mike in hand, she was just getting into her act on a small, elevated stage set up on the far corner of Lotus Bar. Soon, the first bars of her signature song rose up mellifluously from her garishly painted lips and filled the room with a happy buzz. As was always the case, the girl seemed to have a magical effect on the patrons of Lotus Bar; almost all conversations stopped as lust-filled eyes turned towards her. The girl’s lithe body swayed as she sang a song that spoke of joyous times in the days gone by. However, her eyes didn’t seem to believe any of the words emanating from her mouth and, although her face displayed a fixed smile, the drooping corners of her mouth reflected an incomprehensible sadness that the bar’s patrons barely noticed.

Virkar seemed to be drawn into the song—only a close observer would have seen his gaze shift to the scraggly, middle-aged man sitting a few tables away from him in the darker shadows of the bar. The man returned Virkar’s look with a slight nod. Suddenly, rising from his table, he rushed towards the singer shouting, ‘Binky…Binky!’

The singer stopped singing, stunned. Her sad eyes locked on to the middle-aged man who was striding towards her through the smoke-filled haze of the bar. They lit up with recognition. Happiness shone on her face for the first time since taking the mike. ‘Papa!’

The single word rang out through the mike like a shrill announcement. Lotus Bar’s waiters and patrons watched in shock as the bizarre scenario unfolded in front of them. As the middle-aged man reached the stage, the girl dropped the mike and rushed towards him. He opened his arms and she sprang into them with a squeal of repressed joy. ‘Binky…my daughter, I’ve found you at last!’ The man’s delight was audible to everyone in the room.

Virkar rose from his seat and walked towards the father and daughter and suddenly, the spell broke. Tough-looking bouncers surrounded the middle-aged man and Binky and began to pull them apart.

‘Thamba!’ Virkar barked, his deep, bass-endowed voice cutting through the commotion. The words were spoken with just the right amount of intimidating force, one that could only be used by a man of the law. The bouncers froze and looked towards him with respect. For a few seconds, Virkar stared them down, his lean, muscular body poised for a fight. Then he began to walk towards them, the way he moved clearly conveying that he had participated in many a street brawl and won. But what really made the bouncers shrink back was the fact that, even in the smoke-filled room, Virkar’s eyes were clear—clear to the point of being expressionless—almost as if he didn’t care how much damage he inflicted on anyone who didn’t follow his orders. Virkar smiled to himself. He could always rely on his powerful voice and carriage to create an impact.

‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded.

‘She is my daughter, saheb. I have been looking for her for three years,’ the middle-aged man blurted out.

Virkar looked pointedly at the singer. ‘Tell me, is this true?’

Despite Virkar’s aggressive, no-nonsense tone, Binky cast a nervous glance at the burly bouncers.

Virkar voice turned gentle. ‘Don’t be afraid. I am a police officer.’

The change of tone had its desired effect and Binky burst into tears. Falling at the middle-aged man’s feet, she began to wail. ‘Please forgive me, papa. I was wrong to run away from home. Take me back, take me away from here!’

A man dressed in a cheap black jacket stepped up. ‘You can’t leave right now. You have a contract with us,’ he said, his tone threatening.

Virkar ignored the man. ‘How old are you?’ he asked Binky.

‘Sixteen,’ piped up the middle-aged man.

‘That’s a lie! She’s eighteen as per our records,’ retorted the man in the black jacket who, by now, had started to sweat.

‘Okay. Go and get your records,’ said Virkar without hesitation.

Black Jacket lost all his bravado and fell into a sullen silence.

‘I will have to take these two with me to the police station to record their statement,’ Virkar announced loudly to no one in particular. But before he could say anything else, a dark, portly man in an electric blue silk lungi-kurta ensemble emerged from the door behind the stage. Everyone except Virkar and the father-daughter duo moved aside in deference as he sauntered forward. The chunky gold chains around his neck and wrists shone under the bright lights of the stage. His thick, bushy moustache hung over even thicker lips which parted lazily to ask, ‘Why are you getting involved in this, Inspector Virkar saheb?’ As a Lotus Bar regular, Virkar recognized the man as Sadhu Anna, the owner.

Sadhu Anna continued, ‘These kind of things happen daily in our business, saheb. Please take your seat and I’ll send you another beer. Or better still, I’ve just received a couple of cases of your favourite Godfather Beer from Delhi; I’ll send them to your home. Enjoy!’

‘This is a serious matter, Anna. This girl is underage,’ said Virkar, without backing down.

Sadhu Anna raised his portly, gold-laden arm and placed it around Virkar’s shoulders. He smirked. ‘Virkar, nothing is going to come out of this. You know all your seniors are my friends, don’t you?’

Virkar’s eyes turned to steel. ‘You’re right, Sadhu Anna. So, maybe I should get a few of the juniors who are my friends to start questioning all these nice customers sitting in your bar to check whether they have liquor permits,’ he replied in a loud voice that carried across the bar. Immediately, a few patrons slammed down whatever money they had in their pockets and quickly slunk towards the door. Virkar was amused to see Sadhu Anna’s mounting irritation.

He turned to Virkar. ‘Why are you behaving like a filmy hero?’

Virkar shrugged. ‘This is a filmy situation. A father goes to a bar for a drink and finds the daughter he had lost, performing there. But the villainous bar owner does not let them reunite. A policeman, who is also at the bar, comes to their rescue. The villainous bar owner lets them go with the policeman because he realizes that the policeman will otherwise make his life a living hell.’

Sadhu Anna spat on the floor of the stage. ‘All right, take them with you. But remember, you will no longer be welcome here. And I will be speaking to your seniors.’

Without wasting another second, Virkar held Binky’s wrist with one hand, her father’s with the other and pulled them towards the exit. Sadhu Anna watched them for a few tense moments and then turned towards the bouncers and waiters. ‘Laudu log, what are you all staring at me for? Get the next singer!’ he yelled.

Outside the Lotus Bar, Virkar hailed a cab. He made the father and daughter sit in the back seat while himself getting into the front. ‘Girgaon Police Station,’ he told the driver.

No one spoke a word during the ride. The father and daughter sat in tense silence. The cab had only driven for about ten minutes before stopping at the signal in front of Mumbai Central Railway Station when Virkar handed the surprised cab driver a hundred rupee note.

‘Change rakhle,’ he patted the driver and waved him away.

Virkar asked his co-passengers to get out of the cab. Then, reaching into his pocket, Virkar fished out two train tickets and handed them to the middle-aged man who was overcome with emotion. ‘I will never forget your good deed, Inspector Virkar. Thank you,’ he said.

Binky joined her hands in namaste, too choked for words.

Virkar cleared his throat and pointed towards the railway station. ‘You’d better hurry. Your train leaves in fifteen minutes.’

The man reached out and hugged Virkar. Turning to his daughter, he said, ‘Seek his blessings; he is like God for us.’ She immediately bent down to touch Virkar’s feet as a sign of respect. Embarrassed, Virkar took a step back. ‘Please go…before I change my mind and take you to the police station.’

The man’s eyes flew to Virkar’s face in panic but relaxed when he noticed the smile twitching at the corners of the Inspector’s mouth. He motioned to Binky and together they rushed towards the railway station’ s gate.

Like an anxious parent, Virkar watched them merge with the crowd. Only after they had disappeared from sight did his thoughts go back to when he had spotted Binky’s grainy picture while reading the Sunday edition of
The Hitavada
(a habit he had picked up from his days in the Gadchiroli district of interior Maharashtra). Binky had been lucky that Virkar, probably the only policeman in Mumbai who read
The
Hitavada
, also frequented the bar that she had been semi-sold to. All her dreams of becoming a famous singer in Bollywood had come crashing down on to the stage floor of Lotus Bar. Virkar’s trained eye had picked up the fact that the garishly made-up singer he listened to every other night was the same Binky who had disappeared from her home in Bhopal a few months ago. Years of experience had also made Virkar aware that Lotus Bar’s owner Sadhu Anna’ s connections within the police were so strong that, should Virkar have pursued the case officially, his efforts would surely have been tied up in red tape and consigned to a dusty back shelf of a storeroom full of unsolved cases. As for the underaged Binky, she would have been shuttled from one juvenile remand home to another for ‘protection’ until the paperwork was done, and after having been satisfactorily ravished by corrupt, lecherous officials, she would finally be spat out on to the streets of Mumbai with no choice but to sell her soul to feed her already ravaged body. After some amount of rumination, Virkar had called Binky’s father on the number listed in the advertisement with a plan.

Virkar walked towards the parking lot of the railway station to extricate his Bullet motorcycle from the jumbled mass of two-wheelers. He had parked it there earlier in the evening when he had bought the rail tickets. As he kicked the Bullet to a start, the only regret that Virkar had was that his days frequenting the Lotus Bar were over—it was one of the few bars in Mumbai that served Godfather Beer. ‘Khao, khujao, batti bujhao,’ he smiled and shrugged, wearing his helmet.

His cell phone rang just as he was about to drive into the traffic. Cursing under his breath, he quickly extricated the phone from his pocket, half-expecting it to be Binky’s father. It was his boss, ACP Wagh of the Crime Branch Murder Squad. Before Virkar could say anything, his boss’s familiar gravelly voice barked out loud and clear, ‘Virkar, report to Wamanrao Marg Police Station immediately. Senior Inspector Akurle has been found dead in his cabin.’

D
ark clouds rumbled in the Mumbai sky as Virkar stepped into the now sombre-looking Wamanrao Marg Police Station. A constable on duty gave him a sleepy salute and ushered him in. Taking care not to get cornered by the few reporters hanging around, Virkar ducked quickly into the crowded passageway leading to the Senior Inspector’s cabin. His long strides came to an abrupt halt, however, when he heard a woman’s muted sobs coming from one of the typist’s rooms on the side of the passage. At first glance, he couldn’t see anything clearly in the semi-darkened room, but as he craned his neck and focused his eyes past the line of old manual typewriters, he saw the huddled figure of a middle-aged woman sitting in the shadows. A female police inspector was doing her best to console her. Virkar surmised that the woman must be Akurle’s wife. He stepped into the doorway and cleared his throat, seeking permission to enter. The woman looked at him with wet, anguished eyes.