by Vaseem Khan
She wondered how Chopra had put up with it.
She had heard enough to know that the man had been a very capable officer, honest and well respected. But just because he had disappeared for a day it didn’t mean the world had stopped turning. His wife seemed a highly strung type.
Sheriwal had meant what she had said. Men were notoriously fickle. It wasn’t entirely beyond the bounds of possibility that Chopra had simply walked out for pastures new. Perhaps, even now, he was setting up shop with another woman. This thought brought a pang of unwelcome distress. She had enough self-awareness to know that her view of men had been incurably coloured by her own experiences.
As a younger woman she had married a man her parents had believed would be a good match.
They had been wrong.
After two years of emotional turmoil she had finally admitted to herself that he was an incorrigible cheat. To her horror she had discovered that the wretch had been keeping not just a mistress, but a second wife, too. He even had a child by this supernumerary spouse!
Sheriwal had confronted the scoundrel with her service revolver, listened to him claim innocence, then, as it dawned on him that she was to be made a fool of no longer, plead for mercy. The grovelling wretch had even dared to claim that she had driven him to it, that in the matter of marital passion he found her to be a cold fish.
That was when she had shot him in the foot.
Fortunately, her husband had refused to press charges, suspecting that his deranged wife would return to finish the job if he did.
They divorced a month later, and Sheriwal had joined the Encounter Squad, where she had found an outlet for her rage against the dominion of men.
She was sick of men getting away with it. Perhaps they could with Malini Sheriwal, but Shoot-’em-Up Sheriwal was a different matter.
Shoot-’em-Up Sheriwal would not allow any man to get away with getting away with it.
And yet… She knew that sometimes her prejudices clouded her judgement.
She tapped her desk with the butt of her revolver, and considered the troubled woman who had come to her for help.
Sighing deeply, Inspector Sheriwal picked up the phone.
A SINGING GHOST
Rangwalla’s eyes opened into a flickering gloom. A candle beside his bed guttered in the breeze from his bedroom window. For a moment he was disoriented… and then he snapped back to the present.
Something had woken him.
He slipped from the bed, rudely disturbing a mosquito that had been feasting on his throat.
He put on his sari and wig, and poked his feet into his worn leather sandals.
In the corridor he stood for a moment, frozen in a shaft of moonlight falling in from an open balcony.
He strained his ears, listening for the noise that had roused him.
There! It sounded like singing. A woman’s voice. Not the voice of one of his eunuch companions, but a softer, higher-pitched melody. He shuddered momentarily, recalling the travesty of his attempt to carry a tune earlier, the cries of the music maestro: “Hai! Hai! Is a donkey being castrated? Has a train derailed?”
This Master was a strange beast. Paying a king’s ransom just so he could hide in the shadows and watch a bunch of eunuchs—and one pseudo-eunuch—dance and sing. What the devil was he up to?
Rangwalla believed in simplicity. If a man murdered another man it was usually because of money, a woman, or drunken bravado. This Master was a deviant. That was the simplest explanation, regardless of the suspicions of the Queen of Mysore. He was a voyeur who took his pleasure from watching eunuchs perform.
As deviants went, Rangwalla had seen worse.
And, so far, the only person harmed by the whole sordid business was Rangwalla himself. And if his wife ever found out! Allah forfend!
The haunting voice broke into his thoughts again.
He followed it to the rear wing of the mansion. Here the haveli scattered into a maze of corridors lined with rooms, many of them padlocked shut. The walls of the corridors, Rangwalla noted, were painted in rolling murals of peacocks’ tails. As he padded past the colourful blue-green frescos, dotted with iridescent eyes, he couldn’t help but feel that other eyes, human eyes, were following him. Was the Master behind those walls? Was this how he operated, spying on his guests through secret passages in the labyrinth of his mansion?
Rangwalla turned a corner just in time to glimpse the hem of a sari flicking around another corner further ahead; he heard the padding of feet, the jangle of ankle bracelets. He quickened his pace as the voice receded.
He turned the corner, and braked to a halt.
He had come to a dead end.
He was standing in an alcove. Before him, two marble leopards—with rubies for eyes and inlaid with lapis lazuli—flanked a brass-mounted, teak chair decorated in low relief with squares and a foliate frieze. Behind the chair, hanging from a whitewashed wall, was an enormous gilt-framed painting covered by a cloth.
He looked around in mystification.
Where had the singing woman gone? Had she vanished into thin air? Or had he made a mistake? Had the singing been in his mind?
He pinched himself, and felt his eyes water. He was definitely awake.
He reached up and pulled back the cloth covering the painting.
The portrait was of a late-middle-aged woman, dressed in a heavy, brocaded maroon-and-gold Rajputi sari. The woman exuded a regal bearing and looked down on Rangwalla with an expression of supreme haughtiness. Her greying hair was pulled severely back. Behind her Rangwalla could see the haveli rising into darkness.
He found himself arrested by the expression in the woman’s eyes. Cold, dark, and utterly devoid of empathy.
Even though it was a warm night, former sub-inspector Rangwalla shivered.
He considered something that had been bothering him. Since arriving at the haveli this was the first picture he had encountered. Usually such mansions paraded their dynastic heritage with endless galleries of self-aggrandising images, but here there was a complete absence. Who had lived here through the generations? Why was this woman’s portrait covered? And why did this one painting remain when all others had been excised from the walls? Why would the Master himself not show his face?
Still consumed by this puzzle Rangwalla turned away and immediately bumped into a figure that had ghosted around the corner. A howl of alarm escaped him before he realised that he was looking at the watchman, Shantaram, holding up his kerosene lantern, the light throwing a ghostly radiance over his careworn features.
“What’s wrong with you?” hissed Rangwalla. “Sneaking up on people in the middle of the night!”
The watchman said nothing. He had a hangdog face, Rangwalla saw, deep canyons of age carved into the thin grizzle of grey clinging to his cheeks.
Rangwalla turned to the painting. “Who is this woman?”
The watchman craned his neck to look at the portrait. For a long time he seemed to examine it with his sorrowful gaze. Then he shuffled forward and pulled the cloth back over the woman’s menacing presence.
Rangwalla watched the old man shamble away, his lamp throwing moving shadows ahead of him as he went.
ACP RAO FACES THE MUSIC
Assistant Commissioner of Police Suresh Rao squinted at his reflection in the mirror, then reached up with a pair of scissors to snip at his prim moustache. Satisfied with the result, he slipped the scissors back into his pocket and retreated to his desk.
It had been a busy morning at the Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Nariman Point.
Rao had closed out one long-standing bribery case, and received a number of intriguing new leads, including allegations that a senior member of the State Cabinet had been fraternising with a junior colleague of the same sex.
Such information, in the right hands, would be of considerable value.
The CBI was tasked to investigate complaints against public officials—including the police force—as well as any major crimes of
a sensitive or sensational nature that might be sent their way. As a consequence those in the bureau commanded a great deal of power, power that was routinely employed to the benefit of those exercising it.
Rao thought of himself as the spider at the centre of a vast web.
Flies continually fell into the web. Sometimes the spider would eat the fly straight away—after all, the bureau needed to demonstrate its bona fides to those who held the purse strings in New Delhi. But at other times it was more judicious to wrap the fly up and save it for a rainy day. And the fly would be so pleased with this illusionary reprieve that it would offer the spider a token of its gratitude, a token Rao and his colleagues gratefully accepted.
That was how the game was played, and Rao was a past master at it.
ACP Rao had navigated the courtly intrigues of the Brihanmumbai Police for over thirty years. He had seen a great many things, and the one lesson he had learned early in his career was this: honesty was a virtue that only saints and madmen could afford.
A knock on the door interrupted his breakfast, a plate of deep-fried spinach pakoras. “Sir,” said the peon, “there is a Mrs. Chopra here to see you. She says it is about her husband.”
Rao almost choked.
Poppy Chopra? What the devil was she doing here?
A shadow passed over his moon-faced features.
Before joining the CBI Rao had commanded Chopra for many years at the Sahar station. The man had long been a thorn in his side, continually embarrassing Rao in front of his seniors with his unholy dedication to his job. It was despicable the way he made a virtue of his honesty! A man slaved his whole life to attain rank. What was the point of having it if you didn’t benefit from it? But Chopra sat there like a modern-day Gandhi, presiding over the rest of them with his stomach-turning integrity.
And now, even after the insufferable man had retired, he continued to clash with Rao, culminating in the recent humiliation when Rao, tasked to recover the Koh-i-noor diamond, had been undermined by Chopra’s own private investigation.
And then two days ago, a gift-wrapped opportunity for revenge had dropped into Rao’s lap: an anonymous call to the CBI unit accusing Chopra of involvement in a sensational crime—the kidnapping of Bollywood film star Vicky Verma. One of Rao’s colleagues had fielded the call. Knowing of the ACP’s animosity, the man had passed the information to him, lodging a favour that he would, no doubt, call in at a later time.
Rao had been sceptical about the tip-off. Kidnapping? A man like Chopra? Impossible.
Nevertheless… the caller had said that Chopra would be found at midnight at the Madh Fort with his accomplices.
Rao had raced to the fort where, to his astonishment, he had indeed discovered Chopra, albeit without the ransom, accomplices, or any sign of Vicky Verma.
Having arrested his nemesis, Rao had paused to think the matter through.
He finally had Chopra where he wanted him. The former policeman had made many enemies during the Koh-i-noor investigation, enemies with long memories and even longer reaches. Rao now had the opportunity to deliver Chopra’s head on a platter. In one fell swoop he could earn the gratitude of those who truly ran the city of Mumbai. The issue of Chopra’s guilt, when viewed in such a balance, was immaterial. Rao was not one to allow a man’s innocence to get in the way of justice. This was what Chopra had never understood. Justice in India was not a finely tuned instrument. It operated on the general rather than the specific level.
In the ACP’s opinion this made it no less effective.
Swiftly—while Chopra stewed in the back of the police truck—Rao had formulated a plan.
Then he had made some calls.
Two hours later he had dispatched Chopra to the Gouripur Jail, confident that he had finally seen the last of his nemesis.
But now, here was his wife. How had she found out?
Rao had no wish for his actions to come to light, and so had told as few people as possible what had happened. The only ones who needed to know, in good time, were Chopra’s enemies, the city mavens who might ultimately reward Rao for discreetly taking revenge on their behalf. In the meantime, what did Rao care if Vicky Verma had been kidnapped—if, indeed, that was true?
He had half a mind to turn Poppy away, but he was intrigued.
He wiped a napkin over his mouth. “Show her in.”
Poppy entered the office and looked around hesitantly.
She had had a difficult morning. Her meeting with Malini Sheriwal the previous evening had left her frustrated and afraid. But then, to her surprise, later that same evening, Sheriwal had called her back.
There had been no apology.
The bellicose policewoman had, ultimately, decided to help. She had made some calls and discovered that an ACP Rao at CBI headquarters might have arrested a man named Ashwin Chopra at Madh Fort the night before. She could uncover no further details. Instead, she advised Poppy to visit Rao first thing the following morning.
At the CBI HQ Poppy had stared up at the run-down old building and felt the first tremors of anxiety. She was a woman not easily cowed, but the building seemed to loom over her with the full extent of the monolithic and immoveable bureaucracy that had crushed the souls of millions of Indians over the years, ever since the first Indian had filed the first chit back before the dawn of time.
Now, as she looked at Rao’s round face and fish-like eyes, fear constricted her throat.
She knew from her husband that ACP Rao was not an honourable man. This thought sat in her mind like a glistening black rock as she took a seat. She knew that she would have to rein in her desire to rail at Rao. She understood that emotional restraint was not her strongest suit, and there was no subject that gripped her emotions more fiercely than that of her husband and his welfare.
Yet today she would need to exercise restraint if she wished to find a path through the forest before her. Yes, Poppy promised herself, if this was what was required, then she would be the very definition of patience and tact.
“Mrs. Chopra, isn’t it?” said Rao. “How can I help—?”
“Where the devil is my husband?” exploded Poppy.
“Mrs. Chopr—”
“I demand to know this very instant!” Poppy thumped the desk, causing Rao’s plate of pakoras to leap several inches into the air.
“But this is quite unaccept—” Rao spluttered.
“You have arrested my husband!” bayed Poppy. “Take me to him right now or I will tear this place apart around your ears!”
Rao squirmed on his seat, waiting for the furious harridan to calm down. Was she possessed? He studiously avoided Poppy’s basilisk glare. Finally, he spoke: “Who told you that I arrested him?”
“A police officer,” said Poppy.
“But this is confidential information!” whined Rao.
“How can it be confidential?” shouted Poppy. “You have arrested my husband. I have a right to know where he is.”
“I am afraid I cannot help you, Mrs. Chopra,” said Rao primly. “There are proper channels for these things. This is CBI business, after all. We can’t just go around giving out details to any old person.”
“Any old person!” exclaimed Poppy, rising to her feet in agitation. “I am his wife! I demand to know where he is!”
Rao pushed back his chair. “My hands are tied, Mrs. Chopra,” he said, keeping his expression wooden. How delicious! he thought, privately. Chopra in prison, and his wife grovelling for his life! How long had he waited for such a moment?
A loud rapping sounded on the door.
Without waiting for an answer, a woman entered the room. A policewoman in khaki. She looked vaguely familiar. From the stars on her shoulders he saw that he outranked her.
“Who are you?” he brayed angrily. “Can’t you see I am in a meeting?”
“My name is Malini Sheriwal,” said Sheriwal. “I am here with Mrs. Chopra.”
Rao continued to glare at the woman. Sheriwal? Why did that name seem so familiar?… And th
en his eyes dropped to the ivory-tooled grip of the handgun at her side.
The colour drained from his face.
Malini Sheriwal.
Shoot-’em-Up Sheriwal.
A cold sweat broke out on Rao’s forehead. What the hell was the Encounter Squad’s most lethal killer doing in his office? If the rumours were true the woman was completely insane. She had probably killed two men before breakfast that very morning.
Rao licked his lips. “Ah, how can I help you, Inspector?” he said carefully.
“You can help me by telling Mrs. Chopra exactly where her husband is.”
Rao gaped. “But—but that is a CBI matter,” he asserted lamely. “It is no business of yours.”
“I am making it my business,” said Sheriwal calmly.
Rao gulped. “Well, I can’t just reveal CBI business to anyone who walks through the door. If you wish to know then there is paperwork to be completed, forms to be filled…” His voice tailed off as Sheriwal slid out her automatic weapon, and pointed it at a potted plant in the corner of the room.
“You know,” she said conversationally, “someone once asked me to fill out forms. I shot him in both knees.”
Rao grinned maniacally. “Ha ha,” he squeaked. He stifled his panic, and endeavoured to reassert a stern expression. “Look here, Inspector, you can’t just expect me to—”
The plant holder exploded in a shower of terracotta chips.
Seconds later the peon came rushing in. “Sir!” he exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
Rao’s head emerged from behind his desk. He coughed. “Of course I am, you idiot. Get out.”
