Murder in Mumbai (16 page)

“He's a cool customer, sir,” a constable had later told Gaikwad.

They gave Dinesh a few minutes before they knocked on his door. The hurried sounds from inside stopped. The silence was piercing. They knocked again. They could hear footsteps and then, after an eternity, the door opened.

“Yes?”

“Dinesh bhai?”

“Yes. Can I help you?”

“I'm with the police,” an officer said, showing him his badge. “Can we come in?”

“What is this regarding?” he tried to keep his voice calm, but was failing.

“It's not a request, Dinesh bhai. Let us in.”

“I'll tell you everything,” he said, the fear creeping into his voice. “I was just the driver.”

* * *

“Got all you want?” Gaikwad asked Jay when he'd finished both interviews.

“Do you think he did it?” he asked by way of reply.

“Off the record. No. Don't mention the murder in your story—you'd be doing me a favor.”

“I'll hold off on it for now, inspector. But you'll have to give me dibs.”

The man was a vulture, Gaikwad thought. “OK.”

* * *

Jay Ganesh left the police station and walked up to his Premier Padmini parked a few blocks away. The sun was setting, and there was still no sign of the second rains. Jay was sweating by the time he reached his car. He reached down his pockets for the keys; they were stuck. He cursed himself and tugged at the key ring. That's when he heard it—a click. He turned around and saw a metal object pointed at his head. He knew enough to know it was the barrel of a gun.

“Hand over the keys,” said a voice.

Jay did as he was told. Carjackings were unheard of in Mumbai, but he realized soon enough that this wasn't a carjacking. He was blindfolded and pushed into the rear seat. The man with the gun took the seat next to him. Another person, who had not spoken, sat on the other side. A third person started the car and began driving.

Jay turned his head to see if he could discern anything through the blindfold, but it was dark and they had tied it tightly.

“Keep looking ahead, you fool,” said the man with the gun. “Someone wants to see you.”

Chapter 16

Jay could not tell how long he'd been in the car. The blindfold was disorienting. He could not tell where he was being taken. The men in the car did not speak. They ignored his questions. (“Where are we going?” “Who wants to see me?”) He did not know who they were. He tried to listen for familiar sounds that could give him a clue to where he was, but when he most needed it, Bombay's sounds deserted him. There were two things, however, that Jay knew for certain: that they had spent much of the time in traffic, which meant they hadn't gone far; and if the men had meant to do him harm, they would have done so already.

The car finally came to a halt. The doors opened and the man next to him pushed Jay out. Another grabbed him. He felt himself being escorted forward. Doors were opened and shut and only when he detected motion did Jay know that he was in an elevator. The men still said nothing. The elevator stopped. Again, he felt himself being pushed out.

“Wait here,” said one of the men, pushing Jay onto a couch. “Don't try anything.”

Jay knew that he couldn't try anything—some of his escorts were probably still with him. Besides, now that he'd come this far and had built up (misplaced?) bravado, he wasn't about to leave without discovering who had arranged his abduction and why. He placed his hands upon the couch. It was fine leather, the kind found in luxurious hotel lobbies. But Jay knew it was unlikely he was in a hotel.

“Take that damn blindfold off,” said a voice. Pointedly, the words were spoken in English, as if the speaker wanted Jay to know he was dealing with much more than a petty thug. Jay felt stubby fingers prod at his eyes and whip the blindfold away. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the sudden brightness.

“Welcome, Mr. Ganesh. Sorry that our meeting had to be under such circumstances.”

Jay looked at the speaker and saw the hint of someone familiar.

“I'm Ram Iqbal, Chhota Mirchi's son.”

Jay gauged the young man in front of him. Typically, Bombay's underworld possessed both power and wealth, but sadly these two attributes did not translate into taste. Their clothes were both expensive and loud; their speech coarse—a pity because as anyone who knew them could attribute these were intelligent men; intelligent and ruthless. But the man in front of Jay was a different beast altogether. He spoke well. He was dressed in black trousers and a button-down white shirt: simple, but elegant. He looked more like a returning graduate student from America than a gangster's son.

“What do you want with me?” Jay asked. “Or are you speaking for your father?”

Ram Iqbal examined Jay with amusement.

“You've been asking questions.”

“What kinds of questions?”

“Mr. Ganesh, please don't insult my intelligence. You've come here as a guest and I intend to treat you as such.”

“You kidnap all your guests?”

“You were unlikely to have responded to an invitation.”

That was probably true, Jay thought.

“So are my questions of the wrong nature?”

“Shall we just say that while there's nothing wrong with your questions per se, the assumptions you may be drawing from them could be erroneous.”

“And what assumptions am I drawing from them?”

The smile on Ram Iqbal's face became serious.

“Mr. Ganesh, I know your work and respect it. You could either deal with me or with my father's aides and their old ways. I personally don't like it—find it too messy—but they swear it's effective.”

“OK. Fine,” Jay said, not relishing that prospect. “What do you want to know?”

“Why are you asking questions about Eagle?”

“I want to know why Vikram Hazra hired you.”

Iqbal laughed.

“What so funny?” Jay asked.

“Nothing. Go on.”

“I'm looking into the death of Liz Barton, the American CEO of Mohini Resources. Hazra wanted her out of the way. He hires you. She dies. Did he order her dead? Did you kill her?”

Ram Iqbal was silent, as if soaking in the magnitude of each word Jay had uttered, reveling in their implications. Finally, he smiled.

“Mr. Ganesh, let me tell you a story. Will you indulge me?”

“Do I look like I have a choice?” Jay replied, gesturing toward the cord used to bind his hands.

“True. But it's a good story—and one that I hope will not only entertain but illuminate, much like what your newspaper claims to do.”

Jay could not help but think he was in the presence of a Bond villain. All that was missing was a life-sized aquarium with giant sharks. At any moment, he thought, at the press of a button, he would find himself swimming among them.

“Have you been to Asalfa Village, Mr. Ganesh?”

“I've ridden past it on the bus from Andheri Station.”

“Why didn't you stop and get off?”

“It had a certain reputation. Area burned in the riots.”

“And what do you think of the place you're in right now, Mr. Ganesh?”

Jay looked around him. The flat was tastefully furnished. He was on a high floor. The views from the balcony were expansive. It was difficult not to impress.

“Are we in Juhu?”

“You know the city well,” Iqbal replied, chuckling. “So, my father started off in Asalfa and we're now in Juhu. What does that tell you?”

“That you like the beach?”

“Funny,” Iqbal said, not laughing. “Would you want to leave such an environment and live a life of risk? I'll answer for you—no. My father had a heart attack last year. It was kept quiet. We have too many businesses and we don't want the other gangs encroaching on our turf. But I had to return from America where I was studying computers. My father never wanted me to join this. So I decided to transition it into a more legitimate enterprise.

“Besides, there's more money in ‘legal crimes' like property development than ‘illegal crimes' like extortion and murder.”

“So what did Hazra want with you?”

“He wanted us to keep an eye on her.”

“An eye?”

“He didn't trust her. Thought she was selling out the company's secrets to that Kabir Khurana.”

“And did she?”

“I can't reveal the details of a confidential inquiry, Mr. Ganesh—it's not like I work for a newspaper. We have standards.” Iqbal laughed at his own joke. He continued: “But she was spending an awful amount of time with him.”

“So Hazra didn't order her dead?”

“Between you and me, he's too meek for that. He just wanted surveillance. We did the job, gave him the results.”

“Why did he come back to see you?”

“After her death, he was spooked. He didn't want any link to us. Of course, he didn't count on you seeing him leave our offices.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“As I said, we're trying to go legit. The more you look into our activities, the more it spooks potential clients. They want discretion—not the object of gutter press coverage.”

Jay couldn't help but admit the logic to that reasoning.

“What now?” he said.

“Well, you leave. And don't tell anyone about what you heard. We found you once,” he said, gesturing to his men. Iqbal knew he didn't have to complete the sentence. “You'll find your car waiting for you.”

* * *

Inspector Vijay Gaikwad did not much believe in coincidences. At the start of this investigation, he would not have thought to tie together the burglaries with Barton's murder. But the arrest of the two men had changed his mind. The men had without prompting confessed to disposing off the body in Mahim, but they were insistent they hadn't killed her. His instinct told him they were telling the truth. He had to admit, though, that the case against them was strong. After all, who would believe their innocence when they had already confessed to a string of crimes and to the fact that one of them had been inside the dead woman's apartment and was stupid enough to leave his fingerprints all over the crime scene? But the suspect had claimed that he had tripped and fallen over the body—one of the most absurd excuses he had ever heard from a criminal—and had feared that his fingerprints were all over the scene. Clumsy, true. But plausible? He had spoken to his boss, DCP Adnan Khan, about the investigation and his belief that they should proceed with the inquiry into the American woman's killing. Khan was not happy. He was a result-oriented man, and each day they were without a result meant that he had to deflect the media's queries about the case and had to assure the Western press that India was, in fact, safe for business. But Khan, despite his temptations to declare the case closed, decided to give Gaikwad another week.

* * *

“If by that time you don't have anything,” he said, “we have to charge those two idiots.” Gaikwad did not like what he heard, but he realized Khan had few choices. Trouble was Gaikwad had fewer. Why was the man in the video, Pankaj Taneja, there in the first place? Taneja had told him it was for Liz Barton's laptop, possibly her cell phone and other electronics. But those items, unlike the ones found from the other burglaries in a subsequent search of Taneja's flat, had not been recovered. Where did they go? Gaikwad went over the notes from the interview with Taneja and Dinesh. All the men had spoken of was the effort to get the body in the bag out of the building. No mention of a laptop or any other electronics. He walked over to the holding cell and peered inside. Taneja was sitting on the cold, hard ground with his head buried between his raised knees. He looked up when he heard the cell door open.

“What did you do with the laptop?”

“What laptop?”

“Barton's laptop.”

“What about it?”

“We couldn't find it when we raided your place.”

“You think I waited to complete the job? All I could think about was getting out of there.”

“So you left it there?”

“I didn't even see it.”

“So it should still be there?”

“As far as I know. Why?”

But he got no reply. Gaikwad returned to his desk and dialed Barton's number. John answered.

“Hello?”

“It's Inspector Gaikwad.”

“What do you want?” His tone was hostile.

“Do you still have the laptop?”

“What?”

“Your wife's laptop. Do you still have it?”

“Yes. I believe it's still here.”

“We need it.”

“Why?”

“Part of our investigation.”

There was no reply.

“Sir, we're in the midst of a murder investigation and your own cooperation in this case has left much to be desired,” he said. “If you insist, I can get a warrant for it, but it would save us both time and a good deal of grief if I can come over and take the laptop now.”

“All right,” he said with resignation. “Send your man.”

* * *

Getting the laptop was one thing, getting past the password screen was another—John Barton didn't know it. By the time a constable had gone to retrieve the machine and returned, most of the whizzes in the cybercrimes office had gone home. Gaikwad thought he could wait until the next morning, but he could sense that the answers he sought lay just beyond the screen.

As if hoping for a miracle, Gaikwad tried the most obvious passwords he could think of: He tried Liz's name, her husband's name, the name of her company. He tried these and others in various combinations of upper- and lowercase letters. It seemed to go on forever, and each time the machine told him he had supplied the wrong answer. He could call in one of the tech whizzes, he thought, but that would involve overtime, which they had been asked to limit except in the case of dire emergencies.

Gaikwad was on the verge of giving up. There was always tomorrow, he thought. The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Dad, I need a ride home.”

It was his son. Gaikwad wanted to tell him to take the bus the way he did when he was a boy.

“Where are you?”

The boy told him. It was only ten minutes away.

“I have a couple of things to finish off. Come here and we'll leave together.”

“Thanks!”

He hung up.

He went over the case in the file once more. He was risking everything on a laptop that may or may not yield anything. Still, it was further than he had been in the case, and Gaikwad felt hopeful.

He was lost in the files, reviewing the post-mortem report for what seemed like an eternity.

“Hey, Dad.”

He looked up and couldn't help but smile. The boy walked in with the casual confidence of the young, without a care in the world. He was dressed in cricketing whites, turned brown from the practice, and carried a bag that weighed almost as much as he did, stuffed with his kit. When had he grown so much? Gaikwad wondered. It was only yesterday he was teaching the boy to ride a bike. If he were aware that his father was perpetually worried about his future, he was either oblivious of it or he didn't show it.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Give me a couple of minutes.”

“Interesting case?” The boy was peering at the open files on the table and fingered his way through the papers.

“That's work stuff,” Gaikwad said sharply. “Have some respect.”

Gaikwad never discussed the details of his cases with his children, lest they think the profession was glamorous. It was at the end of the day more thankless than anything. He didn't want either of them to be seized by some misplaced sense of adventure and join the force, too.

“New computer?” his son asked, oblivious to the rebuke and making his way straight to Barton's computer, still on the table, and admiring it.

“No. It's part of a case,” Gaikwad replied. “And it's locked.”

“You need to get in?”

“Yes. But the IT guys don't come in until tomorrow.”

“I can do it for you now if you like.”