The Mahboob Chaudri Mystery

by Josh Pachter

  “Too much truth about what?” Chaudri asked patiently, amused by the man’s air of self-importance.

  “Too much truth about his baby,” Kwaja announced. “Too much truth about the—”

  A muffled report sounded from somewhere behind them, and the look of pride on the Indian’s face warped into a mask of shock and pain. The glass of tea dropped from his hands and shattered on the concrete floor. He slumped back against the pale blue bench and clawed weakly at his chest, where a crimson blossom grew quickly among the flowers of his shirt.

  “Water!” he gasped, and his clear black eyes were glassy now, and filled with tears. “Water!”

  A minute later, someone came forward with a paper cup of water for him, but by then it was too late.

  * * * *

  “Jeetje mina!” Roelof Smit wheezed huskily. “This is hot!”

  They were sitting in a curtained booth at the Star of Paradise, a small Pakistani restaurant not far from the police barracks in Juffair. Mahboob Chaudri was enjoying a large order of brain masala, but the Dutchman was having trouble with his bowl of beef rogan josh.

  Smit filled a tumbler from the metal pitcher in the center of the table, and drained it in one noisy swallow. “I don’t understand how you can eat this spul,” he complained. “’s Niet te geloven!”

  “I am glad you took my advice and ordered your dinner mildly seasoned,” Chaudri chuckled. “If you had gone ahead and asked for it spicy, I’m afraid I would have had to carry you back to your hotel. Here, let me pour you some more sweet water.”

  Smit took another long swallow and wiped the back of his hand across his bushy mustache. “Why sweet water?” he wanted to know. “It tastes like ordinary drinking water to me.”

  “The word ‘Bahrain’ is Arabic for ‘two seas,’” Chaudri explained, “which is a reference to the Gulf on the one hand and the fresh-water springs that lie beneath the island on the other. Compared to the brackish salt water of the Gulf, the spring water is sweet indeed.”

  “And expensive, like the Stutje woman said?”

  “Oh, dearie me, yes. In fact, until the last round of increases in the price of oil, the service stations here in the emirate would wash the windows of your car with gasoline because that was cheaper than using sweet water.” He ripped a large piece of bread from his bubbly round chapati and sopped up curried gravy from his plate. “You’re not eating, Lieutenant.”

  “I’ve had enough,” Smit sighed, pushing his plate away and shaking his head sadly. “Anyway, I don’t want to eat, I want to talk.”

  “You talk,” mumbled Chaudri around a mouthful of brains, “and I will eat for both of us.”

  The Dutchman settled back in his chair. “All right,” he said, “I’ll talk.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table and chin cupped in his hands. “We’re dealing here with four separate incidents: the drowning of Hendrik Hofstra’s son, the dismissal of Ebezer Kwaja, the explosion at Umm as Hawwak, and Kwaja’s murder. Each of these incidents gives rise to one or more questions. Was the death of Hofstra’s child an accident, for example, as Hofstra himself told us—or was it something else? Was Kwaja really fired because of what he knew about the drowning—as he told us—or, if the boy’s death was accidental, was there some other reason? Who blew up the Qatar Causeway, and why? And, again, why and by whom was Ebezer Kwaja killed?”

  Mahboob Chaudri nodded attentively, but his eyes never left his plate.

  “Finally,” Smit pressed on, “what relationships exist between these various events, if any? Was Kwaja fired because of what he knew about the drowning—and, more important, was he killed to keep him from passing that knowledge on to us? Did Kwaja take revenge for his dismissal by blowing up the bridge, or was the explosion nothing at all to do with him? Were the blast and the drowning connected, or the blast and the murder—and, if so, how?”

  Chaudri set down his knife and fork and poured himself a glass of water.

  “We need to talk with Hofstra again,” Smit suggested. “We need to know his explanation of the firing of Ebezer Kwaja, and why he sent us down to Personnel instead of telling us about it himself, and where he was this afternoon when the Indian was shot. We need to know more about young Pieter’s death, too—perhaps a conversation with Mrs. Hofstra would be worthwhile. And we need to find out who might have had a motive for setting those explosives. What do you think our next move should be, mahsool?”

  Chaudri said nothing. He was staring, transfixed, at the glass of water in his hands.

  “Mahsool?” said Smit, more loudly. “Mahsool?”

  Startled, Chaudri looked up. “Oh, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About what?” he repeated slowly. “How strange, Lieutenant. That is exactly what I asked Ebezer Kwaja a moment before he was shot.” He shook his head and took a small sip of water. “I was thinking about a book I have been reading to practice my English, a book of the many adventures of your great European detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. ‘You see, my dear Watson,’ Mr. Holmes chastised his friend in one of the stories, ‘but you do not observe.’ And now I am chastising myself. Sometimes, my dear Lieutenant, it seems that I hear—but I do not listen.” A dazzling smile suddenly illuminated the nut-brown face. “But what was it you were asking me while my thoughts were far away in Victorian England?”

  “Our next move,” the Dutchman supplied. “What do you think our next move should be?”

  “Aha!” said Mahboob Chaudri. “Our next move, I think, should be to order some khulfi for dessert. It is a combination of vanilla ice cream and spaghetti and you will almost certainly hate it, but it is very typical of my country and I would like for you to try it.”

  “You’re avoiding my question. I mean, what’s our next move about the case?”

  Chaudri beckoned to a white-jacketed waiter. “Ah, yes,” he said indulgently, “the case. Well, my friend, there’s nothing more we can do tonight. Tomorrow morning, when the university opens, we have a delivery to make, and then we shall see what develops.”

  * * * *

  “We haven’t got a forensics laboratory of our own yet,” Chaudri explained as he steered the dusty blue Public Security jeep into the main parking lot of Gulf Polytechnic’s Isa Town campus. “So when we need lab work done, we bring it out here to one of the professors. Usually they are able to help us. Insh’Allah,” he added automatically.

  “That’s not the first time I’ve heard that word,” said Smit, swinging out of the vehicle and following Chaudri up a covered walkway towards the science department’s modern building. “What does it mean?”

  “Insh’Allah?” Chaudri smiled. “It is the Arab’s constant prayer. ‘Tomorrow it will be cooler, insh’Allah.’ ‘Your car will be fixed by this afternoon, insh’Allah.’ ‘Their marriage will be a happy one, insh’Allah.’ It means: if Allah is willing. If Allah is willing, anything can happen.”

  “We might even solve this case,” the Dutchman grimaced.

  “Insh’Allah,” laughed Mahboob Chaudri.

  They found Professor Emad Rezk in his classroom, going over his notes for the day’s first lecture. Rezk, an Egyptian, had been with Gulf Polytechnic since the establishment of the school several years earlier. He was a talented chemist and had held a tenured position at the University of Cairo, but the offer of a substantially higher salary, a house, a car, and complete academic freedom had lured him—along with a large number of his colleagues—to the Gulf. Though his thoughts were always perfectly organized, Rezk’s exterior was usually disheveled. His white lab coat showed acid burns in various places, his fingers were permanently yellowed from exposure to caustic chemicals.

  “Mahboob Chaudri!” he exclaimed with delight as they edged between two rows of students’ desks. “And a friend! How charming it is to see you both!”

  Chaudri introduced Ro
elof Smit to the Egyptian, then pulled a small package wrapped in brown paper from his pocket. He unwrapped it carefully, to reveal the chunk of rubble he had taken away from Umm as Hawwak two days before. “How soon can you analyze this for me, Professor? It is, I believe, quite important.”

  Rezk took the rock from Chaudri’s hand and squinted at it. “Concrete,” he said simply. “Is that soon enough for you, my impatient friend?”

  Chaudri rolled his eyes comically.

  The professor pushed back the right sleeve of his lab coat and checked his watch. “I have a class in 15 minutes,” he said. “Second-year students. Hopeless cases, most of them, but they are trying. Very trying, much of the time, I’m afraid. They visit with me for one hour. When they leave, I will have time to apply myself to your intriguingly important mixture of cement, mineral aggregate, and dihydrogen monoxide. What, if I may ask, am I to analyze it for?”

  “If I’m right,” said Mahboob Chaudri cryptically, “you will know it when you see it. May I phone you in, say, two hours?”

  * * * *

  “Back to Personnel?” Roelof Smit ventured, as they stepped off the elevator at the fifth floor of the tower in the al-Khalifa Road.

  “Not this time,” said Chaudri. “This time we are here to pay a call on the Purchasing department, where the late Mr. Ebezer Kwaja was employed as a clerk.”

  The director of Purchasing, Egbert Merkelijn, received them in the cubbyhole that had been partitioned off in a corner of the large workroom to provide him with a private office. The space was barely big enough for his desk, two filing cabinets and the man himself: Merkelijn was no taller than Mahboob Chaudri, but he weighed at least 250 pounds. His tiny eyes were sunk deep in layers of fat; in spite of the air conditioning, his puffy face was flushed and damp. He seemed broader than the entrance to his cubicle, and Chaudri wondered if he was able to leave it at day’s end, or if the partitions had been erected around him and had trapped him there.

  There was nowhere for Chaudri and Smit to sit, so they stood in front of the desk and spoke down at him.

  “Did you know Ebezer Kwaja?” Chaudri began.

  “Yes, of course,” the fat man rasped. “He worked here in my department.”

  “What can you tell us about him?”

  “About Kwaja? He was quiet, he was respectful, he did his work efficiently.”

  “Then why was he fired?”

  Merkelijn jutted out his lower lip and exhaled noisily through his nose. “I don’t know. I had no complaints. But the order came down from the sixth floor: get rid of him.”

  “How long had he worked for you?” The question, this time, came from Roelof Smit.

  “Ach, ja, a year, perhaps a bit longer. I’d have to look it up.”

  “What was his job?” asked Chaudri.

  “He processed purchase orders. When an order was submitted from any of the other departments, it went to Kwaja. He countersigned it, and made out an authorization for disbursal of the necessary funds.”

  “Would it be possible to see some samples of his work?”

  Merkelijn grunted and swung ponderously around to the file cabinet nearest him. He slid open a drawer, drew out a thick file folder, and laid it on his desk. “That contains all the purchase orders we have handled so far this quarter,” he said, “in chronological order with the most recent on top. You’ll need to go back a few days before you reach the last of the ones that went through Kwaja.”

  Chaudri leafed quickly through a dozen or more sheets, most of which had been filed that morning by Nicolaas Sjollema, then slowed down and began to examine each page individually.

  “There are three signature lines,” he commented. “The first signature is apparently that of the person requesting a purchase, then underneath that is Kwaja, and then comes the first signature again.”

  The fat man nodded. “That’s right, verifying that the monies requested have been paid out—either directly to the supplier or, in some cases, to the person submitting the request for transfer to the supplier—and that the merchandise ordered has been delivered.”

  Chaudri flipped deeper into the sheaf of papers, found a sheet that interested him and paused to make a note. He continued in this way through the entire pile, glancing at most of the order forms cursorily, stopping occasionally to jot down a line on his pad.

  When he finished, he straightened up the papers and handed the file back to Merkelijn. “Yes,” he said, “this seems to be in order. May I use your telephone?”

  Egbert Merkelijn waved a pudgy hand at the instrument, and Chaudri picked up the receiver and dialed the number of Gulf Polytechnic. He asked the operator for Emad Rezk, and waited patiently as the call was switched through.

  “Professor Rezk?” he said at last. “This is Mahboob Chaudri speaking. Have you had a chance to examine that specimen I brought you?... Yes?... Yes?… Yes, that’s exactly what I expected. And what would the consequences of that be?... Can you estimate how long that process would take?... About five years, you think, or perhaps a bit more or less.... Yes, I see. Very well then, professor, I thank you for your time.... No, no, thank you.” He cradled the phone.

  “Well?” said Smit, recognizing the grim satisfaction etched across Chaudri’s face. “What did he tell you?”

  “He told me why the Qatar Causeway had to be destroyed, and why Ebezer Kwaja had to be silenced,” Mahboob Chaudri replied. “And he told me who it was who committed both of those crimes.”

  * * * *

  Hendrik Hofstra and Nicolaas Sjollema were huddled over Hofstra’s model of the causeway when Chaudri and Smit walked into the office without knocking.

  The director was furious. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. “This is a private office, Mr. Chaudri. You can’t just barge in here unannounced!”

  “Rustig aan,” Sjollema soothed him. “They wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t urgent. Would you like me to leave, officer?”

  “I’d rather you stayed,” said Chaudri. “What I have to say concerns you, too. Sit down, gentlemen—this may take some time.”

  Hofstra growled under his breath, but he did not argue.

  The four men settled themselves into comfortable armchairs, and the Dutchmen turned expectantly to Chaudri.

  “First,” he began, “a question. Mr. Hofstra, you personally ordered the dismissal of Ebezer Kwaja from your Purchasing department on December 2nd, just under a week ago. Why did you issue that order?”

  “I—” The director glanced quickly at Nicolaas Sjollema, then turned back to Chaudri. “My reasons have no bearing on your investigation,” he said gruffly.

  “Your reasons, if you will excuse my saying so, do not exist,” Chaudri corrected him. “You gave the order to get rid of Kwaja, true, but I suggest that you did so at the instigation of someone else. Kwaja knew who was truly responsible for his dismissal: the ‘big man,’ he told us, ‘from the distant Netherlands.’ He said that the big man had fired him because he—Kwaja—knew too much about the big man’s baby. We assumed that he was speaking figuratively when he said the words ‘big man,’ and that he was speaking literally when he referred to the big man’s baby: the big man, we thought, was the big boss—you, Mr. Hofstra—and the baby was your son Pieter.”

  “My son was not a baby,” Hofstra objected. “He was six years old, almost seven.”

  “Exactly. Ebezer Kwaja was speaking figuratively when he used the word ‘baby.’ He was not referring to the death of your child. But he spoke literally when he said that a ‘big man’ had fired him. And you, Mr. Hofstra, are hardly big. Who, then, was the big man who convinced you to dismiss Ebezer Kwaja, for reasons that were clear to the Indian if not to you? Who was the big man whose ‘baby’ Kwaja knew too much about? Who was the big man who killed him in order to keep him from telling us what he knew?” Chaudri paused for a moment, observing Hofstra closely. Then he we
nt on: “You do not seem surprised, Mr. Hofstra, to hear that Ebezer Kwaja is dead.”

  The director’s aggressiveness seemed to have melted away from him, leaving him tentative, confused. “No,” he said, “I—I’m not surprised. Nick told me, shortly before you burst in here.”

  “Ah,” Chaudri nodded, “now that is very curious. Because Kwaja’s murder has not been mentioned on the radio news, or on television, or in this morning’s paper. Which leads me to wonder, Mr. Sjollema, how you could possibly have known about the killing? Unless, of course, you were there at the Central Market when it happened. Unless, in fact, you murdered Ebezer Kwaja yourself.”

  Nicolaas Sjollema eyed him narrowly. “You’re crazy,” he said. “I barely knew the man. What possible reason could I have had for shooting him?”

  “Shooting him, Mr. Sjollema? Oh, dearie me, and I am quite certain I never mentioned that Mr. Kwaja had been shot. ‘Killed,’ I said, and ‘murdered,’ but never ‘shot.’”

  “Nick,” Hendrik Hofstra said angrily, “what is all this? What’s he trying to say?”

  “I am not trying to say anything, sir,” Chaudri told him. “I am saying that your foreman, Nicolaas Sjollema, shot and killed Ebezer Kwaja at the Central Market early yesterday afternoon.”

  “But why, dammit? Why?”

  Chaudri sighed. “Kwaja told that as well, though I am afraid we didn’t understand him at first. He said that he had been fired because he knew too much. ‘About what?’ I asked him. ‘About his baby,’ he replied, speaking figuratively. ‘About the—’ And then the shot was fired, and he gasped the word ‘water’ twice, and died. We thought that, in his final moments, he was asking for something to drink. He was not. He was finishing his sentence. ‘About the water,’ he was saying. He was fired because he knew too much about the water.”