Last Victim of the Monsoon Express

by Vaseem Khan

  ‘And you thought you could change his mind?’

  Fairbrother sighed. ‘I don’t know what I thought. I just—’ He stopped. ‘Sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand.’

  Chopra’s expression became stern. ‘You went to his suite. You argued. Things came to a head. You lost control. The next thing you knew, Bannerjee was dead.’

  ‘I admit, I went to his room. It was late, but I knew that he was an insomniac. He was surprised to see me. I stood there, staring dumbly at him, rehearsing everything that I was going to say . . . and then I didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘Say anything. I lost my nerve, Chopra. Is that what you want to hear? I pretended that I had just come to check on the preparations for the stop in Delhi and then I returned to my room.’

  ‘Do you expect me to believe that you confronted him and then did nothing?’

  ‘My word is all I have,’ said Fairbrother. ‘Bannerjee was very much alive when I left.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Around eleven p.m.’

  Chopra made his way to Pravin Sharma’s cabin. Here he found Sharma in close discussion with his delegation colleagues, Jagmohan Panday and Aparna Sen.

  ‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’

  Sharma nodded at Sen and Panday. ‘Please give us the room.’

  Panday glared at Chopra as he departed. ‘It’s a good thing you locked that rogue up. Otherwise, God knows what I would have done.’

  Aparna Sen, on the other hand, seemed troubled by Chopra’s action. ‘Has Agha actually confessed to the murder?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I chatted to him after dinner yesterday. He was quite charming. He genuinely seemed to want the best for this mission. What could possibly have provoked him into killing Mr Bannerjee?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if he is guilty. There are plenty of others aboard who may have wished Bannerjee less than well.’ He glanced pointedly at Sharma.

  ‘I still cannot believe he’s gone,’ she said. ‘He was so . . . so alive. Larger than life, in fact.’ He sensed that the woman was struggling with the death of her boss. He suspected that her confidence in the new delegation leader was, as yet, a fragile thing. Chopra’s early impressions of Pravin Sharma were that he and Bannerjee were chalk and cheese. From what he had seen in the media and been told – or read between the lines – by those he had interviewed, Bannerjee had been loud, ebullient, supremely self-confident, and willing to go to any lengths to get what he wanted. Sharma, on the face of it, was cut from a different cloth. But that did not mean that he wouldn’t do what he felt was necessary to get ahead. Had killing Bannerjee been a way to achieve that?

  ‘Look,’ Sen said, lowering her voice, ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Pravin went to see Bannerjee late yesterday evening. At around ten p.m. He seemed unhappy about something.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘It seemed unimportant. I mean, the pair of them always got along fine. It’s just—’

  ‘Just?’

  ‘Since we came aboard, there’s been some tension between them. I didn’t really pay any mind to it. Until now.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Sen left and Chopra sat down opposite Sharma. ‘How would you describe your relationship with Bannerjee?’

  ‘I suppose there is a reason you feel the need to ask such a question.’ Sharma seemed quite unperturbed. He was impeccably dressed, groomed as if heading out for an evening soirée.

  ‘I have been told that Bannerjee replaced you as the leader of the Indian delegation. That must have stung.’

  ‘We are all professionals here,’ said Sharma coolly. ‘My only objective is the furtherance of our national interest.’

  ‘Bannerjee was an ambitious man, interested only in his own rise to the top. He did not care who he hurt along the way.’

  Sharma stared at Chopra, for the first time exhibiting a trace of irritation. ‘Yes, he was ambitious. There are many such men in our country. I have learnt how to deal with them.’

  ‘By orchestrating your removal from the top spot he must have upset your own ambitions. Or are you the one man in Indian politics who has none?’

  Sharma grimaced. ‘What exactly you are accusing me of?’

  Chopra hesitated. ‘In an investigation like this the key element is motive. Why would someone risk killing Bannerjee here, in a closed environment, with a high likelihood of being caught? The nature of the crime suggests to me that emotion was the catalyst. Rage, perhaps?’

  Sharma said nothing, but his previously unflappable demeanour had vanished. He stroked the fine cloth of his trouser leg, an unconscious gesture.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Bannerjee? I have information that you were in his suite late last night, that you were unhappy about something.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t bother to deny it. I won’t stop asking until I have an answer. If you don’t answer to me you will answer to those who follow. Their manner of questioning may not be as pleasant.’

  Sharma’s lips formed themselves around a smile, one that had little to do with humour. ‘You are a very persuasive man, Chopra. I have no doubt that you must have been a highly successful policeman. But in this case your instincts are mistaken. Regardless of how I may have felt about Bannerjee – and yes, off the record, the man was everything you say, a truly loathsome human being – the fact remains that he was my duly appointed senior. I did everything I could to assist him.’ He paused. ‘I went to his cabin last night. I admit that I was upset. But it was a trivial matter.’

  ‘What trivial matter?’

  Sharma hesitated. ‘He wished to change the order of introductions to the Pak government. In Islamabad.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It was due to be done in order of seniority. Bannerjee, then me, then Panday, then Sen. He told me that I was to be moved to the last position.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He wished to humiliate me,’ said Sharma heatedly, for the first time revealing his emotions. ‘Just as he has tried to humiliate me at every turn.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because he hadn’t forgiven me for being selected as the original leader of the delegation. He was a vindictive man.’

  ‘Not such a trivial matter, after all,’ said Chopra. ‘Perhaps this was the final straw. He’d already taken the delegation from you. Your anger must have been uncontrollable.’

  Sharma seemed to calm himself. ‘You are correct that Bannerjee taking over was a blow to my personal ambitions. But I am smart enough to understand that there is more than one way to climb the tower of Indian politics. The shadow of a man like Neil Bannerjee is not such a bad place to be.’ He rose gracefully to his feet. ‘I did not kill him. He was alive when I left his suite. And now, if you don’t mind, I shall return to my colleagues. We have much to discuss. I, for one, still believe this mission may be saved.’

  A shot fired in the night

  Chopra made his way back down the train to the goods car. As he passed through the lounge carriage he saw that the passengers were lingering following the lunch service, knotted in tight clusters, a pall of horror and suspicion hanging over them. The atmosphere was subdued; everyone was on edge.

  One of them is a killer.

  It occurred to him, not for the first time, that perhaps Bannerjee’s murder had been deliberately planned in order to upset the peace initiative. With such long-running enmity between the two nations, it was a reasonable enough conjecture. Only time would tell whether it was the correct one.

  The thought stayed with him as he moved through to the goods car and then stepped out onto the viewing platform at the rear of the train. Ganesha bundled out behind him, eager to be out in the fresh air.

  On the rattling platform Chopra discovered Homi Contractor leaning over the railing, sipping a whisky and smoking a cigar. />
  ‘Isn’t there anywhere a man can go on this damn train to get a little privacy?’ he grumbled.

  ‘You could try your cabin,’ said Chopra, mildly.

  ‘My cabin is a railway station. You’ve got them all cooped up here with a murderer in their midst. I have an anxiety pandemic on my hands.’ He shook his grizzled head. ‘I should have stayed at home, gone to watch Sachin make another hundred.’ Homi was referring to Sachin Tendulkar, his and Chopra’s favourite cricketer. The two men shared a love of the game.

  ‘What would you have me do, old friend?’

  Homi answered by blowing out a cloud of smoke which the backdraught caught and flung into Chopra’s face. He coughed and glared.

  Ganesha butted Homi from behind. ‘Don’t you start,’ he muttered.

  The midday sun beat down relentlessly on them as the train sped through parched lands, a patchwork quilt of ochre, yellow and burnt umber. Heat rippled from the dusty earth, hazing the distant horizon. In the foreground, Chopra saw the half-eaten carcass of a bullock, gnawed at by a pack of wild dogs, their ribs as prominent as rebar. High above vultures rode the thermals.

  ‘What have you found out so far?’ Homi asked eventually.

  ‘Not enough and too much. It seems that our friend Neil Bannerjee wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue.’

  ‘And this surprises you? The man was a politician.’

  ‘He certainly had a knack for inspiring hatred.’ Quickly, he ran through the list of those who had reason to bear the murdered man a grudge: James Fairbrother and Ellen Howe, Bannerjee’s colleague, Pravin Sharma; and then there was his own gut feeling that Justice Kadir Khan and the businesswoman Mary Ribeiro were hiding something. After all, what real reason had they to be on the train?

  ‘Is there anyone on the train who didn’t want to kill him?’ asked Homi acerbically.

  Chopra took out his phone and began fiddling with it.

  ‘I see the rules are different for those in charge,’ said Homi, eyeing the phone.

  ‘I need it for my investigation.’

  ‘Really? What exactly are you doing, pray tell?’

  ‘Looking up a number.’

  ‘Whose number?’

  ‘The head office of Usha International, the sewing machine company.’

  Homi stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

  The call connected and, after navigating a maze of receptionists, Chopra was eventually put through to an archives department. Here a man who introduced himself as Kirit Iyengar took up the line. ‘How may I help you, sir?’

  ‘I’m trying to trace the provenance of a bobbin,’ said Chopra.

  ‘That is most intriguing,’ said Iyengar. He had a slow, drawling manner of speaking that put Chopra in mind of an old tutor from his schooldays. They had called him ‘Kaa’, after the snake from The Jungle Book. ‘Tell me, sir, is there a serial number on the bobbin?’

  Chopra gave him the number.

  ‘I must dig into our records,’ said Iyengar. ‘It will take some time. I shall call you back when I have an answer. Please be assured, I shall neither eat nor sleep nor rest until I have satisfied your request. At Usha International customer service is our watchword.’

  Chopra ended the call then patted Ganesha on the head. The train rattled over an iron bridge, a river sparkling below it. A flock of cranes lifted from the water as they rumbled above. ‘The trouble is no one saw or heard anything last night,’ he said, resuming his conversation with Homi.

  ‘Except the driver,’ remarked his friend.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The driver heard a gunshot, remember?’

  ‘The driver heard something that sounded like a gunshot. But Bannerjee wasn’t killed by a gun.’

  ‘No,’ agreed the doctor. He took another gulp of whisky. ‘Do you remember the ’92 riots? I was at the hospital when they started bringing in the dead and the wounded. Muslims and Hindus hacking at each other like madmen. No one spared. Women, the elderly, even children.’ Another swallow from his glass. ‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like back in ’47. The doctors coming onto the trains, moving through a carriage after death had been there, looking at all those bodies, knowing that this was the work not of demons, but ordinary men. Men who, that very morning, had kissed their own children on the cheeks, had fed ageing parents, had touched their foreheads to the earth as they bowed before God.’

  ‘Hatred is the most malleable force in the world, my friend.’

  Homi sighed and was about to take another pull on his cigar when he noticed Ganesha looking at him. He scowled and extinguished it on the railing. ‘You’re worse than my wife,’ he muttered, then, to Chopra: ‘What did your search throw up?’

  ‘Other than the knife, nothing.’

  ‘What about the goods car?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I noticed that the luggage in the goods car appears untouched.’

  Chopra frowned. He stepped back into the carriage and scanned the closest trunks. Homi was correct. The baggage appeared undisturbed. How had he missed that?

  He walked through the train and found Singh. ‘Did your men search the goods car?’

  Singh shook his head. ‘You told us to search the cabins. You didn’t mention the goods car.’

  Chopra stifled the urge to shake the man. It was his own fault for not giving explicit instructions. ‘Come with me,’ he said, turning on his heel.

  One by one they worked their way through the trunks and suitcases in the goods carriage, forcing the locks where necessary.

  Homi looked on, eyeing Ganesha. ‘You know, if we locked you in a trunk with a flask of poison and a Geiger counter, you could be Schrödinger’s elephant. A whole new paradigm in quantum mechanics.’

  The little elephant flapped his ears and tapped the Parsee’s shoes with his trunk.

  Twenty minutes into the search, Singh called Chopra over. ‘Look at this,’ he said, gazing down into the aluminium trunk he had been examining.

  There, nestled at the bottom, was a revolver.

  Chopra picked up the revolver – a long-barrelled piece, much like the one he had carried for decades until automatics became the norm – and pushed out the cylinder. Five of the gun’s six chambers were loaded. He held the gun close to his nose. A faint whiff of cordite invaded his nostrils. Had the gun been fired recently? He couldn’t be sure, but he thought so.

  ‘Whose is this?’

  Singh lifted the lid back up and looked at the tag hanging from the handle. ‘Justice Kadir Khan,’ he said.

  Chopra walked through the train, his mind aflame.

  The articulate, even-mannered judge had hidden a revolver in his luggage. Why had he brought the gun aboard? Why had he fired it? If he had fired it, when and where?

  There was a possible explanation that made sense . . .

  He entered Neil Bannerjee’s suite and closed the door gently behind him.

  The air conditioner was on full blast – with nowhere else to take the body Homi had cooled the room as far as possible, using it as a temporary morgue. Bannerjee lay on the bed, shrouded in a white sheet, his lumpy frame ghoulish in the opulent setting.

  Chopra walked to the nearest wall. He scanned the wood panelling, ran his fingers from top to bottom until he was satisfied that there was nothing to find.

  With infinite care, he worked his way around the room, examining each wall minutely.

  Fifteen minutes later, he found what he was looking for.

  Halfway up the peacock’s-fan mural that adorned the wall opposite the bed, there was a bullet hole.

  Using a penknife, he dug out the slug.

  He compared the flattened metallic pellet in his palm to a bullet from the revolver. Without proper ballistics, it was impossible to be sure, but his instincts told him that the slug had come from the weapon.

  He closed his fist around it and stared at the wall.

  The driver Gita Viranjali had heard a gunshot late on the night of Bannerjee’s death. Someo
ne had fired this gun in Neil Bannerjee’s room. The likelihood was that the gunman was Justice Kadir Khan.

  But why?

  Had he attempted to murder Bannerjee and somehow failed? Perhaps he had meant only to scare him? Or had the pair been horsing around with a loaded weapon and accidentally discharged a bullet? Bannerjee had been drinking with someone that evening. The whisky he had ordered was a brand the judge appeared to enjoy.

  Motive. It always boiled down to motive.

  He sat down on the sofa and took out his phone, dialling a number he had not used in a while. When it connected, he spoke quickly. ‘Shekhar, how are you? It’s Chopra here. I need your help.’

  Twenty minutes later, his friend, the Bombay High Court judge Shekhar Basu, called him back. Basu had once confided in Chopra that he counted a number of legal minds across the border among his friends. Senior judges in both countries tended to face similar issues; as a consequence, friendships were forged, even if they were largely conducted at a distance.

  Chopra scribbled in his notebook as Basu relayed the information that he had requested. Once he was done, he thanked the man, ended the call, then sat back to review his notes.

  James Fairbrother had not exaggerated when he claimed that Justice Kadir Khan was one of the most respected legal minds in Pakistan. According to Shekhar Basu, Khan had begun his legal career in Karachi, completing a law degree at the University of Karachi before establishing his own practice, specialising in constitutional cases, particularly historical land reform disputations. He subsequently served as a Chief Justice in the High Court of Sindh, before being elevated to the Supreme Court of Pakistan in his late forties, one of the youngest ever justices. His two decades in that role had been distinguished by a commendable lack of controversy, unusual for a Supreme Court judge in the subcontinent – in both Pakistan and India, judgements from the highest court in the land inevitably fell foul of partisan interests.