Compass Box Killer (9 page)

Suddenly, Virkar saw a discarded cardboard placard lying on the dusty floor. A handwritten message on it read: ‘East or West, Nigel Colasco is the Best’. But what had actually caught Virkar’s attention was the wooden stake that had held the sign up earlier. In one smooth motion, he scooped up the placard and ripped away the wooden stake. Hopping on to the dais, he took a stab at the steel mike with the stake, flinching as he saw Colasco’s palm gradually starting to char. Virkar realized that, to break the flow of the electric current, he needed to wedge the stake between Colasco’s hand and the mike. Taking care not to touch the electrified steel, Virkar leaned closer, his keen eyes searched for an opening between Colasco’s fingers. He prodded Colasco’s hand, feeling his vice-like grip on the steel mike stand. Noticing a small gap in the space between Colasco’s right forefinger and thumb, he tried to drive the sharp end of the stake through it. But the gap was not big enough for the wooden stake to penetrate deep enough to dislodge the charged mike stand.

By now, Colasco had started frothing at the mouth, muttering incoherently. Virkar threw the stake aside; there was no time for niceties. The only way he could get the steel mike away from Colasco was if Colasco himself opened his tightly-clenched fingers. Without further thought, Virkar stomped on Colasco’s chest with all his might. The base of his leather police boot connected with Colasco’s heart with a massive ‘thump’. Virkar felt pinpricks of current running up his leg—he knew the electricity had entered his boot through the tiny metal nails embedded in the sole of his service boots. Colasco’s system registered a severe shock, making him cough out loud. Suddenly, his body stopped shivering, his palm flew open and his fingers let go of the steel mike which then rolled off the stage and on to the ground. An eager young police constable jumped on to the dais to help lift Colasco off the floor, but before he could touch him, Virkar barked, ‘Thamb! Electricity could still be running through his body.’

Virkar placed his foot on Colasco’s chest again. He was trying to feel the tiny electric currents he had felt when he had stomped on Colasco earlier. However, this time he didn’t feel any tingling sensation in his leg.

‘Get a doctor, quick!’ shouted Virkar, as he fell on his knees next to Colasco.

‘I’ve already called him, saheb. He’s on his way,’ said the young constable.

Virkar saw that the foam that was continuing to bubble out of Colasco’s mouth was flecked with blood. Colasco was making incoherent guttural sounds. Virkar leaned closer to the man’s ear and said, ‘Mr Colasco, hold on, the doctor is on his way.’

But Colasco kept babbling. Virkar tried to make sense of his garbled words but couldn’t comprehend anything. Suddenly, Colasco’s right hand shot up and grabbed Virkar’s shirt lapel. With surprising strength, Colasco pulled Virkar towards him until the Inspector was so close to that he could smell the faint odour of burnt flesh emanating from his body. Inaudible words streamed out of Colasco’s mouth along with blood-speckled foam. Virkar strained his ears, trying to make sense of the man’s garbled words. ‘Please, could you speak a little louder?’ he urged. Suddenly, he felt Colasco’s hand going limp on his shirt lapel and dropping to the ground with a faint thud. His mouth had frozen in mid-speech and his glazed eyes had turned still.

A bespectacled man with a briefcase rushed towards Colasco along with a policeman. ‘Doctor saab has arrived,’ some people murmured in the crowd. The man knelt next to Virkar and immediately started giving Colasco a cardiac massage to try and revive him. Realizing that there was nothing more he could do, Virkar slowly raised himself to his knees. With drooping shoulders, he turned away from the futile ministrations of the doctor. Virkar suddenly felt drained as he stood surveying the crowd that was chattering in hushed tones.

Raashi and her cameraman came into his blurred vision. They had obviously been filming the entire episode as it had unfolded. Virkar searched Raashi’s face for censure but was surprised to see her face displaying shock and dismay laced with sympathy. Perhaps that was the reason that, when she caught his gaze, she signalled her cameraman to turn the camera off. Before she could ask the inevitable question, Virkar offered, ‘Colasco’s last words sounded like, “hurry…tracing…tracing’s ward”’.

B
arkat Alitronics was being stripped apart under the regretful gaze of its owner. The still-seething Virkar had found out that Barkat Ali was the man who supplied the mike and loud speakers every year to the Kunjupada event. A speedy visit to Barkat Ali’s shop had resulted in what Virkar had expected: there was no sign of the suspect, now famously known as the Compass Box Killer. Rapid cross-questioning had revealed that a new recruit, a young man who called himself Ilyas and who resembled the police sketches of Nandu and the man who had posed as Sandesh Jejurikar, had not reported to work that day. Just one resounding slap on Barkat Ali’s face had further revealed that Ilyas’ first major—and as it turned out, last—task had been to install the mike and the loud speakers at Kunjupada the previous day. He had apparently carried out his duty diligently. Finishing late last evening, he had reported its completion over the phone before quitting for the day. But the next morning, Ilyas had called Barkat Ali on the phone and excused himself from work on account of running a temperature. After the tragedy at the Kunjupada’s function, Barkat Ali had frantically tried calling Ilyas, but the phone had been switched off.

A visibly shaken Barkat Ali had then opened up the portals of his workshop to the police who wasted no time in rounding up all the workers and individually interrogating them. But as usual they came up with nothing but a sketchy profile of the young man named Ilyas who had joined only a few days ago and had kept mostly to himself.

Having recovered by this time, Barkat Ali cursed Ilyas and spat out his paan. ‘That bhenchod! I knew there was something satkela about him.’

Virkar shot back through clenched teeth, ‘You knew that there was something wrong about him? Why the hell did you employ him then?’

‘Arrey, Inspector saheb, where do you get good technicians these days? Everyone has gone to Dubai.’ Barkat Ali emitted a rueful chuckle.

Virkar clenched his jaw even tighter. He was fed up of hearing how ‘good’ the killer was. He was fed up of always being one step behind the killer. He was fed up of people dying on him. ‘Please tell your men to be a little gentle, Inspector saheb,’ Barkat Ali’s voice cut in through Virkar’s thoughts. ‘I have customers to please and a business to run!’ The policemen were shoving things around as they sifted through the electronic goods lying on the repair tables. Suddenly, a small microwave crashed to the floor and broke into pieces.

‘Saheb, please! The owner will take full vasooli from me,’ yelped Barkat Ali. Virkar eyed the man without uttering a word. The crash of glass was heard from another corner. A policeman had dropped the glass top of a front-loading washing machine in his impatience.

Barkat Ali was near tears. ‘Saheb, please, I will become kangaal this way!’

Virkar looked him squarely in the eye. ‘I’m sure you earn enough from your hawala business to avoid that.’ The blood drained from Barkat Ali’ s face. He tried to get up from his chair.

‘Sit down!’ barked Virkar. ‘My men are not looking for your hundis or other record books. They are looking for something that Ilyas would have left behind: a student’s compass box. As soon as they find it, they will stop.’

Barkat Ali sank back into his chair. ‘If I see that guy anywhere, I’ll give him one solid punch kaan ke neeche…’ he muttered to himself.

‘Since when have you been supplying loud speaker systems to Kunjupada?’ Virkar cut in.

‘Saheb, why only Kunjupada? I’ve been supplying to akkha Dharavi for the past thirty years,’ Barkat Ali said proudly.

Virkar frowned. ‘Should I repeat the question?’

Virkar’s icy tone had its effect. Barkat Ali’s boastful tone suddenly grew meek. ‘Saheb, I have been supplying to Kunjupada for the past five years. I don’t charge the slum dwellers for this.’ He paused and added, ‘It’s my social service for Colasco saheb.’

The realization that the killer had intimate knowledge of each victim and their activities suddenly hit Virkar.
He must
have observed the victims closely for over a year
.

Virkar walked around the godown lost in his thoughts.
Why
didn’t the killer just buy a country-made pistol and shoot his victims
on a dark night?
The answer came to him instantly.
Because his
motive runs deeper than merely killing his victims.
The killer wants
to say something more critical; he’s sending us a message.
Virkar wondered where the compass box fit into the picture, but this time the answer eluded him.

Suddenly, his phone rang. It was ACP Wagh. Virkar sighed. By now, the media must be done crucifying him. He ignored the call, in no mood to take a verbal reprimand from his boss who, till now, had cleverly stood on the sidelines and watched the spectacle unfold. He glanced at his men and saw that, even though they were busy taking apart all the electronic goods one by one, they had not even covered a third of the rambling godown. Virkar sighed again. This was going to be a long night.

He turned towards Barkat Ali who, having lost interest in the policemen, was now watching a rerun of an old mushaira show on a television mounted at the shop front. Virkar called out to him. ‘Can you please change the channel to CrimeNews? I want to see the headlines.’

Barkat Ali shook his head. ‘Saheb, this TV picks up only one channel: Doordarshan, my favourite.’

Virkar moved closer to the TV and peered at it in amusement. ‘What’s wrong with your TV? Why is there no colour?’ he asked.

‘Saheb this is my first TV; I bought it in 1980 when I got married. You won’t believe it, it had not worked for so many years till that harami Ilyas came and fixed it. This is the only reason I gave him the job.’ Then he went on to recount to Virkar how the upstart Ilyas had stunned him with his knowledge of electrical work, leading to Barkat Ali entrusting the boy with the installations at Kunjupada.

Virkar’s eyes narrowed to slits as a thought struck him like a bolt of lightning. He got up and quickly walked towards the television. Grabbing it in both hands, he wrenched it out of the wall cabinet. An anguished cry rose from behind him. ‘Saheb! Please…that television is one of my last memories of my dead wife. She preferred it even after I bought a colour TV,’ pleaded Barkat Ali.

Virkar ignored the man’s request and in one singular motion raised the television over his head and smashed it on the ground. The television broke to smithereens, scattering glass, metal and chrome all over the tiny shop front. The shocked Barkat Ali sputtered behind him as Virkar kicked the debris around, searching for something. And then Virkar saw it. Lying on a bed of crushed glass and taped to a piece of the broken picture tube was the object of his search: an old, worn-out student’s compass box. Virkar picked it up with his handkerchief so as not to get his own fingerprints on it, even though he knew that he wouldn’t find the killer’s fingerprints on this one either. By now, all the policemen across the godown had heard the crash and had come rushing to the shop front. Virkar laid the compass box on the shop counter and opened it slowly. The policemen exchanged glances with each other in the pin-drop silence that followed.

This time, the words written in blood said: Three down. Now you’ll have to work harder. Find the Smooth Operator before I get to him.

‘I
nspector Virkar’s bravery in the face of danger needs to be praised,’ pronounced Raashi on her TV show. The earnestness with which she said this was in sharp contrast to the combative attitude she had displayed all along. Shots of Virkar trying his best to save the electrocuted Colasco began playing on the screen. Raashi’s admiring voice played over the visuals. ‘Inspector Virkar displayed great presence of mind, despite the fact that he, too, could have succumbed to the electrical current. Unfortunately, the shock delivered by the mike proved too fatal for Nigel Colasco. Later investigations by Inspector Virkar revealed that it had been deliberately plugged into an amplifier that wasn’t grounded properly. The electrical current that ran through the mike stand when it was turned on was too strong for any human to withstand, as can be seen by Colasco’s charred palms.’ Raashi paused for a minute to allow the visuals of a dying Colasco to play in a loop. He was babbling incoherently, ‘Hurry…tracing…tracing’s ward.’

Raashi reappeared on the screen, looking solemn and restrained. ‘Those were Nigel Colasco’s last words. He died shortly thereafter.’ The camera caught a close-up of Virkar’s frustrated and dejected face with Raashi’s soft voiceover saying, ‘Inspector Virkar has been trying his best to provide protection to the victims, but it appears as though the Compass Box Killer is too smart for the Mumbai police. I spoke to ACP Wagh of the Crime Branch and this is what he had to say…’

A stoic ACP Wagh sitting at his desk stared into the camera, his bloodshot eyes more a result of Old Monk than tireless hours spent at work. ‘We will get this killer,’ he thumped his desk. ‘It’s only a matter of time, but get him we will.’

Raashi’s tone now turned conspiratorial, her blue contact lenses twinkling. ‘Would you like to see what our committed ACP Wagh did next?’ Her voice rose theatrically. ‘We now bring you exclusive footage procured by our special sting operation cell.’ The visuals on the screen now cut to grainy spy camera footage. ACP Wagh was still sitting at his desk but now facing Inspector Virkar who was standing across from him with only his profile visible on the screen. The angle of the visuals was such that could have only been shot through a small, hidden camera placed on ACP Wagh’s desk.