Last Victim of the Monsoon Express

by Vaseem Khan

  ‘Thank you for coming, Mrs Bannerjee. I felt it was time that you were given the opportunity to view your husband’s body.’

  She walked to the bed and drew the shroud down, revealing Bannerjee’s greying face. She raised a hand to her mouth, but then let it drop just as quickly.

  Was it an act? He couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Death becomes him,’ she said finally.

  ‘Mrs Bannerjee, the last time we spoke you talked about marriages having to make accommodations to survive. But sometimes those accommodations are simply not possible. When that moment arrives a marriage ends.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ she said, still transfixed by the sight of her dead husband.

  ‘You were less than truthful with me. You were attempting to get a divorce. He was being difficult, refusing to cooperate. This must have infuriated you.’

  She turned to him finally. ‘How is this any business of yours?’

  ‘Consider the circumstances. At this point, your feelings towards your late husband are my only business.’

  ‘Surely you don’t think I killed him?’

  ‘You had the means, the motive and the opportunity. I myself saw you awake around the time of his death. This is a critical moment in our nation’s history, Mrs Bannerjee. I think it is time for honesty, don’t you?’

  She was silent for a moment, and then ran a tired hand through her hair. ‘He was such a shit,’ she finally said. ‘A first-class shit.’

  Chopra said nothing; he was content to let her talk.

  ‘I know what people think – I still remember all those “beauty and the beast” headlines – but the truth is that I loved him. He was intelligent, witty and supremely self-confident. We were close, for a while. And then—’ She stopped.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then reality came crashing into our marriage. News of his womanising began to filter back to me. For years, I tried to ignore it. I thought he would grow out of it, the closer he came to fulfilling his political ambitions. I thought he would realise that behaviour would derail his path to the top. But he just didn’t see it. Or didn’t care. And then there was the fact of our childlessness. We tried for years to have a baby, but it wasn’t to be. I needed his sympathy, I needed his strength, but he already had a child from his first marriage; he didn’t need or want another.’

  ‘Why did you come aboard the Monsoon Express, Mrs Bannerjee?’

  ‘He insisted. He wanted me on his arm as the world’s spotlight focused on him. The politician who married a movie star.’ She flashed a bitter smile. ‘I was cast as the doting wife.’

  ‘You could have refused.’

  ‘He promised that if I did this he would finally grant me a divorce. No fuss, no fighting it out through the courts – which would have been terrible for us both.’

  He sensed an enormous weariness in her, in the sadness in her eyes, the tension in her jaw.

  ‘Why were you really awake last night? How did you get that bruise?’

  ‘Yes, I came here last night. I had brought the divorce papers with me. I asked him to sign them. I didn’t trust him to keep his word once the journey was over. He said no, of course. I told him that if he didn’t sign, I would get off at Delhi and tell the whole world that we were divorcing. He became angry, enraged. He threatened me, swore, called me all sorts of names. Said that it had never been his intention to agree to the divorce, that he would never allow me to humiliate him, to ruin his chances of becoming prime minister. I told him to go to hell. That was when he slapped me.’ She paused, reliving the moment, before continuing. ‘He was as shocked as I was. He’d never hit me before. For all his faults, he was never a violent man. He’d been drinking. Not that I’m excusing him.

  ‘He apologised immediately afterwards, but I was in no mood to listen. I left him in his suite, slumped on the sofa, head in hands. I have no doubt he was regretting what he had done, but only insofar as he knew that it might destroy the image he has so successfully presented to the world. Neil was the most selfish man I have ever met. I am only ashamed that it took me so long to understand that.’

  ‘Did you kill him, Mrs Bannerjee?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘When I left, he was alive. I went out onto the viewing platform, to smoke, to calm myself. You saw me there some time later.’

  There was no more to be said. Without a confession, there wasn’t much he could do. The truth was that Kimi Rawal was an accomplished actress. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that, enraged at her husband’s refusal to grant her a divorce, infuriated by his physical assault, she had stormed down to the galley, taken the knife, returned to his cabin and stabbed him in a moment of madness.

  Of course, at present he had no way of proving this. But it was certainly an avenue worth pursuing.

  After Rawal left he lingered over the dead man’s body.

  In death, at least, Bannerjee appeared benign. How easy his task would be if a man’s nature was written on his face. Bannerjee had clearly been someone who thought little of others. He was the centre of his own universe and his actions in life had reflected that. But now . . . now he was just so much flesh. Yet his death continued to make demands on those he had left behind.

  Unanswered questions that it fell to Chopra to answer.

  The thought brought him back to the bobbin found in the Indian politician’s throat.

  He took out his phone and dialled Abbas Rangwalla, his associate detective at the agency.

  Rangwalla – once Sub-Inspector Rangwalla – had served as his deputy at the Sahaar station for two decades, a man whose approach to police work was distinguished by knowing where not to be when the shit hit the fan. Yet Rangwalla understood the streets in a way Chopra had never managed and he had become an invaluable addition to the agency.

  ‘How’s it going on the Fool’s Express?’

  Rangwalla was also a world-class cynic. When Chopra told him that he had been invited aboard the ‘reconciliation journey’ he had grimaced and said, ‘I hope you enjoy hot air and wind. And I don’t mean the kind that comes out of a steam engine.’

  ‘We have a problem,’ said Chopra.

  ‘We? Who’s we?’ said Rangwalla. ‘You and me we or India and Pakistan we?’

  Rangwalla was also shrewder than many people gave him credit for. Chopra had realised this years ago. It was another reason he had hired him.

  Quickly, he explained the situation, reminding Rangwalla of the need for secrecy, then passed on the information Iyengar had given him about the bobbin. ‘I want you to go to the retailer – this Patnayak & Sons – and find out who might have bought that bobbin back in 1977.’

  ‘Are you serious? That was forty years ago.’

  ‘Just do the best you can,’ said Chopra, and hung up.

  For a moment, his thoughts lingered on Rangwalla and Mumbai. Though he had only been away for a day he missed the city. Thirty years he’d lived there; he knew it as intimately as he knew himself. They called Mumbai the city of dreams. And for some it was. But where there were dreams there were also nightmares. Who knew that better than a policeman?

  He pulled the shroud back over the dead man’s face then turned to leave the room.

  His eyes fell on the coffee table, and the interrupted game of chess.

  Here was another of the questions Bannerjee had left behind.

  Who had he been playing with? If it wasn’t Mary Ribeiro, then who? The businesswoman had been right about one thing. There was no shortage of chess aficionados in India.

  As he gazed at the board, a strange feeling stole over him. Something was out of kilter. But what? He continued to stare. And then it hit him.

  Quickly, he counted the pieces.

  There were thirty-one.

  A piece was missing.

  A flutter of excitement moved through him.

  He counted again. Thirty-one.

  He dropped to his haunches and looked under the table, and then under the sofa, and finally under the
bed.

  No sign of the missing piece.

  He stood in the centre of the room and considered the problem.

  Assuming that Bannerjee, like most people – especially an obsessive compulsive – would abhor an incomplete chess set, it could only mean one thing: someone had taken away a piece.

  He examined the board again.

  The black king was missing.

  This was the sort of anomaly that set his teeth on edge. A seemingly insignificant detail that would keep him up at nights. Had Bannerjee’s killer taken the piece? If so, why? And if not the killer, then who?

  He picked up the black queen. It was unusually large, heavy in his palm, hand-carved from a beautifully polished dark wood streaked with darker lines. He lifted it to his nose. It gave off a fragrant scent allowing him to place the wood: Indian rosewood, also known as Bombay Blackwood. Chopra was a keen chess player himself; he’d seen sets like this before, though this one was superior in workmanship to any he had encountered. New, too, judging from the smell. The distinctive rosewood scent tended to fade over the yea—

  He stopped, struck by an outlandish thought.

  Scent.

  Whoever had taken the missing piece probably did not even realise just how powerful the rosewood smell was. Wherever it was currently hidden it would continue to broadcast its characteristic scent.

  Which meant that a sensitive enough nose might be able to track it down.

  The chess player

  Ganesha was hunkered down next to a large Gucci trunk. Chopra recognised the signs. The young elephant was sulking. One of the earliest things he had learned about his ward was that elephants shared with humans the curious trait of emotions. They had been observed to exhibit grief, fear, delight and affection. What Chopra hadn’t been prepared for were the bouts of moodiness that Ganesha occasionally fell into.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ he muttered. ‘The train cannot stop until I’ve solved this damned murder.’ Then, louder: ‘Guess what I have for you?’

  The elephant shifted around, presenting his bottom.

  Chopra brought his hand from behind his back, to reveal a large mango.

  Ganesha’s ears twitched. His head moved around and his trunk stretched out to tap at the fruit. Within moments, he was back to his old self, shovelling the mango into his mouth and chewing with every indication of delight.

  Once the little elephant had finished, Chopra took out the chess piece. He held it out and waited for Ganesha to snuffle at it with the tip of his trunk.

  The second thing he had learned about his ward was that an elephant possessed one of the keenest senses of smell on the planet. An elephant’s trunk contained millions of chemical and olfactory receptors, allowing a sense of smell so acute it could put a bloodhound to shame. Indeed, scientists had regularly observed elephants in the wild sniffing out water sources from up to a dozen miles away. Chopra himself had witnessed Ganesha’s extraordinary sense of smell in action. Now seemed an opportune moment to put it to the test once more.

  He waited as the young elephant absorbed the scent, and then set off snuffling around the goods car. When he was done, Chopra led him to the next carriage. It was a tight squeeze getting Ganesha through the adjoining doors, but everything on the Monsoon Express had been built to generous proportions and a shove from behind eventually did the trick. In this way they moved through the staff carriage – eliciting expressions of delight, surprise and consternation along the way – and into the dining car. In the galley, they found the chef with his team planning the evening menu. He looked on in astonishment as Ganesha ran his trunk along every surface, even delving into the storage units. Chopra could only imagine what was going through the man’s mind. ‘Needs must,’ he muttered, glancing at the aghast cook.

  Having worked their way through the empty dining car they moved into the lounge. Here many of the other passengers had gathered, conversing in low voices as they cast nervous glances over their shoulders. The atmosphere remained muted. The fact that they had passed right through Delhi without stopping had left no one in any doubt as to the seriousness of the situation. Chopra sensed also the coldness that had sprung up between the Pakistani contingent and those from India. Suspicion stalked the carriage. It saddened him to realise that the Monsoon Express had become a microcosm for the old simmering hatreds that had so long divided the subcontinent.

  ‘Here he is!’ said the Pak delegation deputy, Imran Reza, as Chopra entered the cabin. He stood up belligerently. ‘You have no right to keep us hostage like this.’

  ‘Who do you think you are, anyway?’ chimed in Moeen Elahi. ‘You have no authority over us.’

  ‘We should call in at the next station and have that murderer hauled to the nearest cells,’ announced Jagmohan Panday from the Indian delegation.

  Reza turned towards him, face reddening. ‘Who are you calling a murderer? There’s no evidence for such an accusation.’

  ‘What do you call that bloody great knife they found in his room, then?’ growled Panday.

  ‘That was planted there. Even a blind man can see that.’

  ‘Hah! Again with the conspiracy theories. Why can’t you just admit it? This is just the sort of thing you Pakistanis would do.’

  ‘Who are you calling a Pakistani?’

  Chopra had the feeling that Reza was becoming unhinged.

  ‘You seem to be forgetting, my friend, that you are standing on Indian soil,’ said Panday.

  Reza pointed to his feet. ‘I am a diplomat on an ambassadorial mission. This train is as much Pak territory as it is Indian.’

  ‘The man has lost his mind!’ announced Panday to the world at large. ‘You would do well to remember the hiding we gave you back in ’65.’

  ‘’65 was a draw, damn you!’ Reza was practically apoplectic with fury.

  Chopra knew that the 1965 Indo-Pak War was still a sensitive matter to many Pakistanis.

  In September of that year the Pakistani government had sanctioned an operation to send soldiers undercover into the state of Jammu and Kashmir, hoping to precipitate an insurrection against Indian rule. India responded with a full-scale military assault. The seventeen-day war left thousands of casualties on both sides, only ending when a ceasefire was brokered by the United Nations. The feuding neighbours had effectively fought to a standstill. Not that anyone would have guessed judging from the wild celebrations in both countries at their respective ‘victories’. The fact that neither side had gained an inch of new territory or achieved any strategic objective was neither here nor there.

  The exchange seemed to light the fuse for a chorus of shouting, with both sides hurling insults, accusations and counter-accusations at one another.

  ‘Quiet!’

  The American voice cut through the chaos, instantly subduing them. Ellen Howe looked around with barely disguised fury. For a woman who had said very little till now, Chopra was impressed by her ability to command the room.

  ‘Mr Chopra has been asked to handle this investigation,’ she said. ‘He is doing us all an enormous favour. Consider this: do any of you really want hostilities to break out? More importantly, do you want to go home having utterly failed in your mission? Do you think your governments will pat you on the back and reward you for precipitating an international crisis? How many of your careers will survive that, do you think?’ She paused, giving this a chance to sink in. ‘Let the man do his job. If he can find out what really happened to Neil Bannerjee perhaps we can still salvage something from this unholy mess.’

  With silence restored, Chopra nodded his thanks to the American, then carried on with his mission. Ganesha plodded through the lounge, running his trunk over each person gathered there.

  ‘This is ludicrous,’ he heard someone mutter.

  James Fairbrother stepped close and said, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘Humour me,’ said Chopra.

  As they reached the end of the carriage he saw Mary Ribeiro and Kimi Rawal sitting toge
ther once again. Ribeiro raised an eyebrow as the elephant calf snuffled closer. ‘You continue to surprise me, Chopra.’

  Ganesha’s trunk lingered over her martini glass, then moved on, before coming to rest over the diamante clutch sparkling on the seat beside her. The elephant became animated; his ears flapped and he rolled his head from side to side. He attempted to grip the bag with his trunk, but it eluded him.

  ‘Hey!’ said Ribeiro in alarm, reaching out. But Chopra beat her to it.

  ‘May I?’ he asked.

  ‘You can’t just—’ she began, but Chopra had already sprung open the clutch and thrust his hand inside. A moment later, he took it out again.

  Nestled in his palm was the missing chess piece.

  ‘I can explain,’ said Mary Ribeiro.

  They had moved to her cabin, at her request. Chopra had left Ganesha behind in the lounge car. He hoped the elephant would help defuse the tense atmosphere. It continued to amaze him how his young ward managed to bring out the best in those he encountered. People seemed to find it impossible to behave in an objectionable manner when he was around. Such were the pacifying effects of his little companion that Chopra sometimes wished the UN would hire a few elephants as goodwill ambassadors.

  ‘You can try,’ he said grimly.

  ‘I know how this must look. It’s true I lied to you. I was in Bannerjee’s suite last night.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not for the reason you think.’ She sighed. The sardonic air had evaporated. ‘I bought my way onto this train for one reason and one reason only. To confront Bannerjee, and then destroy him.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She stopped, before speaking again. ‘Years ago, I started my first company. It was a biotech start-up aimed at increasing yields for cereal crops, particularly millet. At the time there was a government scheme offering large sums of money for companies working in that sector. I was a start-up, competing against established players; I didn’t think there was much chance of me getting anything.