Compass Box Killer (7 page)

Having neatly worked out the plot in his head, ACP Wagh smiled to himself and glanced at his wristwatch, wondering whether he had enough time to catch the night show of any movie. It would have started by now, which suited him perfectly. Years of experience had taught him that night shows were the best possible excuse for not being available when all hell was breaking loose elsewhere in the city. After all, no one could begrudge a busy police officer his recreation time, his escape from the harshness of his daily grind. He quickly rose to his feet and called out an offer to his wife who was cooking in the kitchen—an offer he knew she wouldn’t refuse. ‘Lila, let’s go and watch the latest Aamir Khan film.’

V
irkar rode his Bullet down the dark, empty streets of early-morning Mumbai. Under normal circumstances, Virkar always wore his helmet, but today he wanted to feel the cool air whip his hair at the roots. The heat generated in his system over the past few hours had bothered him enough to hop on to his Bullet for his occasional ‘dimaag ka dahi’ early-morning rides. He found these to be extremely therapeutic.

For the past few hours, the image of him foolishly repeating, ‘Who are your sources?’ had worn his patience to the bone. ‘Hunterwali’ had lived up to her name. To add fuel to the fire, the repressed mirth in the eyes of all the night-duty policemen at his office had ignited his already simmering temper. A sympathetic comment by an old constable had made him lash out at him, spewing vitriol on the poor soul. By the time Virkar managed to control himself, the mirth in everyone’s eyes had changed to sympathy. Virkar decided that he had better do something quickly, lest he lose everyone’s respect too. He had left his office in a huff, aching for the comfort offered by a bottle of Godfather but deciding that the situation called for more drastic action.

Virkar’s Bullet sped towards the address he had extracted from the scared mobile phone company executive (being in the police had its uses). The object of his anger, Raashi Hunerwal, aka ‘Hunterwali’, apparently had a flat in a cooperative housing society in Andheri West. In Virkar’s fuming mind, the only way he could seek retribution was by having it out, fair and square, with the perpetrator of the injustice that had been heaped on him. He was going to have a firm chat with her, knock some much-needed sense in that pouty, pretty head of hers and show her what her flippant and foolish insinuations could do to his career. In his mind, Virkar started building scenarios that all ended with Raashi falling at his feet and apologizing profusely, having been shown the error of her ways. Virkar could already taste the triumph of putting her in her place.

But as the wind swept over the contours of his hardened face, he began to calm down; gradually, the waves of self-righteous anger began to retract from his mind. He slowed down the Bullet, abandoning his ‘Mission Hunterwali’. It never paid to unleash your wrath on the female species, especially not on a pesky crime reporter. Nevertheless, Virkar still felt the sharp sting of having been the object of ridicule that had played out on television for all to watch. Raashi’s sly insinuation that he had been lax about his work and was indirectly responsible for Dr Bhandari’s death had hurt him to the very core. Virkar had always been known to stick to his guns as an officer and was considered honest and upright to a fault. He was used to investigating his cases with utmost sincerity, delivering the desired results and quickly moving on to the next case without resting on past laurels. And now Raashi had cast aspersions on his abilities.

Being hounded by media was new to Virkar and he grudgingly admitted to himself that he was out of his depth in this crisis. In the ten years he had been posted in Gadchiroli fighting Maoists, he had never encountered such backlash for not having shared information with the press. In fact, he was used to withholding information with full cooperation from the media so that the suspects didn’t know the police’ s next move and could be caught unawares. Virkar suddenly wished he were back in the jungles of Gadchiroli under the moonlit sky with nothing but a bullet to separate him from his enemy. At least then he could see and feel the danger as it came for him.

As he cruised along the empty Worli sea face, he glanced at the turn for the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, itching to turn the Bullet and drive down it full throttle. But he kept himself in check, reminding himself that he was an officer of the law and couldn’t afford to break rules. He suddenly wondered what had caused a young, intelligent man like Nandu to become a hardcore criminal. He thought of the few times he had flirted with the idea of indulging in petty crime in his youth and sighed with relief at having never crossed that dangerous line.

Virkar gunned the Bullet back into action; the soaring phut-phut-phut of the bike was music to his ears as he rode towards Prabhadevi onto Mahim Causeway and turned off to the Western Express Highway to the right. At that time of the morning, he cleared the twenty-four kilometre distance to the Dahisar check naka in fifteen minutes flat. Riding headlong against the wind invigorated Virkar’s troubled senses and he was ready for the refreshing jolt of the early-morning ‘Nescoffee’ sold at the small shacks by the check naka.

There, sitting amongst flatulent truck drivers and half-asleep transporters from every corner of India, Virkar finally felt the belligerence inside him melt away. As he let the final drop of the strong, sweet, dirt-brown liquid trickle down his throat, Virkar was ready to face the media backlash that the first rays of the sun would bring, wrapped in fresh newspapers.

N
igel Colasco had stepped out of his house after five days, but even after an hour on the streets, he was getting increasingly restless because of the constant police presence around him. However, he was still greeting everyone he met with his customary smile that stretched across a face that had been weathered by years of exposure to the sun. After all, he was a supremely genial man who had acquired the enviable reputation of being known as a patient and intrepid crusader for the rights of slum children.

Having grown up in a devout East-Indian Catholic family in Bandra, Colasco had developed a passion for charitable work at an early age. Under the tutelage of the priests of his parish, he had spent years in slums and nearby villages, giving hours and hours of his time and resources to every lost cause. As an adult, he had come into his own and established his NGO while continuing to dedicate his every waking hour to the upliftment of the deprived and weaker sections of society. But for the past five days, he and all his actions had become the subject of intense scrutiny and speculation in the media. Why was Nigel Colasco the Compass Box Killer’s next victim? Nosy, self-propelled media ‘investigators’ had sifted through each little sinew of his body of work in the courts and slums of Mumbai. Overzealous TV anchors were thrusting their mikes towards any mouth that was willing to let its tongue wag. Even the watchmen, car cleaners, dhobis and maids from Colasco’s neighbourhood near Mount Mary Steps in Bandra were not spared in the hope of any grain of ‘exclusive’ information that they might unearth about him. Unfortunately for the media, Colasco’s clean life and straightforward dealings did nothing to help spin the rumour mill that could feed the media frenzy. To the great disappointment of channel crusaders, Colasco, now in his mid-forties, had had a perfectly strait-laced career that had begun with an assistantship at a small labour law practice firm and thereafter moved towards him taking up the cudgels for the downtrodden as an extension of his charitable work. They had come flocking to him as he began spending his free hours by working in the myriad slums of Mumbai. Soon, what was an avocation had become a full-time vocation as Nigel opened the NGO, Slum Baalak Suraksha. The plaudits that his stellar work earned in helping slum children get educated and find employment had led to Nigel becoming a familiar face at government offices. The somnolent officials were only too happy to help someone who was doing their job for them. Awards and accolades swiftly began to adorn the cabinets in the reception area of his office while his simple home in Bandra became a pit stop for every visiting foreign dignitary who felt it was their moral duty to empathize with the wretched and poor in India.

After his name was discovered written in blood on a piece of paper, he had been questioned and re-questioned by the police for two straight days, first at the Tank Bunder Police Station, then at the Crime Branch headquarters and finally in the comfort of his small, two-bedroom, sparsely-furnished apartment in Julia Dream Cooperative Housing Society. After ensuring that he had a clean record and knew nothing of the killer’s motive, the police brass had placed him under twenty-four-hour police protection. To escape the shrill-voiced reporters clamouring outside his apartment building thirsting to know how he was feeling, Colasco had decided to stay home until their interest in him died down. Whenever he wanted to step out of his house, he was escorted by a battery of policemen otherwise lined up outside his door. By the fifth day, though, he had had enough of the self-confinement and the crowd of reporters had thinned.

Colasco had been itching to venture out ever since the police investigation had started, not because he was anxious to step into danger, but because he felt that his absence from the slums would be construed as a sign of fear by the slum children who idolized him.

After spending an hour with the children, Colasco went back to his flat, flanked on both sides by a small police contingent led by the now infamous Inspector Virkar, the person who had become the media’s ‘whipping boy’ over the past five days. As he walked braving the mid-morning sun, Colasco read the agony written on Virkar’ s face. Like him, Virkar, too, had become the city’s favourite topic of dinner-table conversations.

Virkar wiped the sweat from his brow. It was an unbearably hot day and the sun beat down relentlessly from the clear sky. He had earlier been summoned to the Crime Branch headquarters to be severely reprimanded for his slip-up with the media and had been forbidden from making any more statements to the press. In fact, he had specifically been advised to avoid all eye contact with the bite-hungry mike-wielders. And though several people had called for Virkar’s resignation, transfer, or at least to have him taken off the case, he had been retained by his seniors.

ACP Wagh had taken Virkar aside and told him not to take things personally. Virkar could have sworn that he saw a small smile playing on Wagh’s fat lips. Though Virkar had simply nodded in obeisance to his boss’s advice, he had actually taken things to heart. Ignoring the barbs flying in all directions, he had sprung into action, determined to not be made a fool of again anytime soon. He had created a squad of crack policemen chosen from various sub-units and had instituted a three-shift, twenty-four-hour supervision module for Nigel Colasco which left no room for any lapses. He had cordoned off Julia Dream Society and furnished every resident with special photo ID cards that were checked every time they came in or went out of the building premises. A far better composite sketch of the suspect, Nandu, aka the Compass Box Killer, had been made with the help of the real Sandesh. This sketch was circulated in the Julia Dream Society and sent to every police station and government office, both small and large. Policemen personally paid a visit to the local political party workers in the slums and chawls under their jurisdiction and asked them to keep a lookout for suspicious people who resembled the police sketch.

A massive naka bandi or road check exercise was launched across Mumbai. Some plainclothes policemen masquerading as Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation workers were stationed across the road from Julia Dream Society, pretending to dig up the road. Virkar had gone as far as to depute two women police constables to dress up as kelewalis who roamed the neighbourhood with tokris laden with bananas, selling them to anyone who looked suspicious. This did get a few sneers from their male colleagues in the Crime Branch, but after two days, this move began to draw grudging admiration from the same men as they wised up to the advantages of an unsuspecting target being accosted by someone as innocuous as a banana seller in a traditional Marathi nine-yard saree.

However hard he tried, though, Virkar was not able to shake off the ever-looming presence of his bête noire, Raashi ‘Hunterwali’, who had positioned herself in the media cordon and doggedly monitored Colasco’ s every movement. To Virkar, it felt like she was monitoring
him
and not Colasco. Regardless of where Virkar stood on the Society’s compound, he could feel Raashi’s sky-blue contact lenses boring a hole in the back of his head. He tried to shake off the feeling and changed his position frequently. But whenever he stole a glance at her from the corner of his eyes, he caught her looking directly at him. Virkar was at his wit’s end trying to concentrate on the task at hand and Raashi’s constant presence was a distraction he didn’t appreciate. In the midst of all that was going on, Virkar would take some time out and escape to a quiet corner on the building’s terrace where he would turn his face heavenwards and plead for some relief from Hunterwali’s nauseating scrutiny.

By the fifth day of the vigil outside Colasco’s home, the policemen posted on the security detail began to relax a little, gathering in small groups for frequent chitchats and chai. Noticing their lax attitude, Virkar decided to wind them up again. He called for a quick emergency meeting and told them that he had been informed that the Hunterwali’s cameraman had shot a few of them napping on his camera and that she had sent the CD to the Crime Branch headquarters. Virkar casually let slip that he didn’t know who was on the CD but was expecting a call at any moment from his bosses. The policemen shuffled their feet, exchanging sheepish looks. Within minutes, each of them had resumed his duty, doubly alert and hoping against hope that
they
weren’t the ones on the CD.