The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star

by Vaseem Khan

  BANDRA–WORLI SEA LINK

  1 MILE

  So that was where Ali was headed.

  The Bandra–Worli Sea Link—an eight-lane cable-stayed bridge that had taken a decade to construct and cost over sixteen billion rupees—shot out into the sea from the Bandra coastline, running five miles in a sinuous sweep all the way to the mid-city district of Worli. A few years earlier, the state’s Chief Minister had inaugurated the bridge to a deafening fanfare; the Sea Link had shortened the journey from the city’s western flank to the south by an hour. A “marvel of modern Indian engineering,” the CM had grinned, neglecting to mention the years of red tape that had dogged the project, and the rumours of bribes paid by those who had secured the construction contracts.

  As Ali swept onto the Sea Link’s northern viaduct, he gunned the engine.

  “Hold on, boy!” Chopra muttered, and stood on the accelerator.

  He had no choice now but to make a citizen’s arrest. Involving himself with the police was the last thing he wanted to do, having just escaped from Gouripur Jail, but he could not afford to let Ali vanish again. There was no telling when he would resurface now he knew Chopra was on his tail. It was a gamble: arresting Ali without first finding out where he was holding Vicky Verma could place the actor’s life in jeopardy—if, indeed, Vicky was not already dead.

  But Chopra would have to play the hand he had been dealt.

  The Tata Venture rattled alarmingly as it sped along. The van had not been built for high-speed chases. It had been designed to ferry one man and his elephant around the city in relative comfort, though comfort was a thing far from the elephant’s mind at this precise moment.

  Ganesha, struggling to keep his balance, stared at the whizzing black road. His trunk was hooked around the front passenger seat as he struggled to steady himself. During the mad dash through the suburbs he had bugled a note of alarm each time the van hit a bump or veered too close to a pedestrian, folding his ears over his eyes. As they raced along the Sea Link he glanced at Chopra, as if checking to ensure that his guardian had not completely lost his mind.

  And then: a stroke of good fortune.

  A honking truck cut directly into the taxi’s path, forcing it to veer sharply to the left, up onto the maintenance walkway, and slam into the bridge’s concrete and steel railings. The bonnet was instantly crushed inwards, a gout of steam flashing up into the night sky.

  Chopra whooped, and skidded the van to a halt thirty metres behind the crashed taxi.

  He leapt out, just in time to see Ali stumble dazedly from the cab, glance back once, then limp off along the walkway.

  “Stop!” shouted Chopra, as a passing motorist slid to a halt ahead of Ali. “There’s nowhere to run!”

  Ali glanced back. At that instant the passenger door of the sedan that had stopped ahead of him opened. Ali ran straight into it, rebounded, and fell. He looked up, stunned, from the concrete, and swore at the good Samaritan in the passenger seat, who thought better of his impulse, closed the door, and ordered his partner to drive away, leaving Ali coughing in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

  He rose to his feet just as Chopra caught up with him.

  “It’s over!” gasped Chopra. He reached for his revolver, then felt panic trickle into his bowels as he realised it wasn’t there. In the excitement, he had left it in the van. “Tell me where Vicky is. You have your money. Let him go. He doesn’t deserve this. His mother doesn’t deserve this.”

  Ali scowled. “Believe me, they deserve everything they get.”

  “I understand your anger, Aaliya’s anger. But this won’t change anything. The past is the past.”

  Ali’s eyes widened. Finally, he spoke: “You’re a clever man, Chopra. But justice is justice, no matter when it falls.”

  “You call this justice? Who made you ‘The People’s Judge?’”

  “I made me. Because in our country justice is only for the privileged. If people like Aaliya want justice they need to fashion it for themselves.”

  “End this now. You don’t want Vicky’s blood on your hands.”

  Ali narrowed his eyes. “You have no idea of the blood on my hands.” Without warning he hurled himself forward, grabbing Chopra around the midriff and bearing him to the railings. With a monumental effort he launched him over the topmost rail.

  Chopra yelled out, grabbing at his assailant. His fingers hooked the breast pocket of Ali’s hospital tunic; the pocket tore off and fluttered away as Chopra went over the parapet. Bellowing like a startled bullock, he clutched at thin air as the world cartwheeled around him… and then his flailing hands found the lowest rail.

  Swinging out above the sluggish water flowing in the Bandra Channel, Chopra clung on for dear life.

  Ali’s haggard face appeared above the parapet. “Don’t worry, it’s only a hundred metres to the shore,” he shouted. He turned and jogged away.

  Chopra wanted to call after him, “I can’t swim,” but terror had stolen his voice. Tentacles of fire arced through his shoulders; pain flowered in his wrists.

  Don’t look down.

  He tried to haul himself up, but failed. He tried to swing his legs up and catch the bridge’s concrete underlip with his heel, but failed.

  Don’t look down.

  He looked down.

  The dark water moved below him. So far below him. His head swam, sweat stung his eyes, his heart thrummed like a stuttering engine… He felt his grip slipping—

  A grey trunk reached through the railings and grasped Chopra’s wrist. He felt himself being dragged up, and redoubled his efforts. With a momentous heave he gained his footing, before scrabbling back over the parapet.

  He sagged against the railings in relief.

  Ganesha trotted forward, concern in his eyes. “Thank you, boy,” he mumbled, and patted the little elephant on the head… Little! It was easy to forget, he thought, that Ganesha weighed over two hundred kilos, and had the strength of a grown man.

  He looked up as a truck clanked by, a man staring at him from the passenger seat with a curious expression on his face. The Sea Link had recently become Mumbai’s most fashionable place to commit suicide, so much so that the state government was considering hanging a safety net beneath the bridge.

  He looked along the walkway, squinting into the shimmering haze cast by the illuminated cable stays rising up the diamond-shaped concrete pylons of the bridge’s central span… but Ali had vanished.

  Chopra turned back to his van—he had to get out of here before the traffic police came to investigate.

  As he passed Ali’s crashed taxi, something caught his eye. On the back seat was the kidnapper’s rucksack.

  Chopra pulled it out.

  Inside he found a change of clothes, but the clothes were expensive-looking—designer jeans, a good-quality-T-shirt, a gold watch—not the sort of thing he associated with a man like Ali. And then in a clear plastic bag he discovered something curious. Two gently curved, wedge-shaped plasticky pink objects made from some lightweight material. Mystified, he held them in his palm. What were they?

  Rummaging once more in the rucksack he discovered a folded sheet of paper tucked into an inner pocket. He unfolded the sheet and scanned it:

  CALL SHEET

  -------------------------------

  BALAKRISHNA PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

  Love on the Amritsar Express

  Call Sheet #44

  Breakfast on location 7:30 A.M.

  LIVING ROOM SET, STUDIO 16

  CREW CALL

  Director: Sham Goyal

  Producer: Kailash Sinha

  DoP: Rishi Amin

  Actors on set:

  Ruby Soleto

  Raheem Khan

  Tana Tandon

  Anjuman Shah

  Robin Mistry

  Jaya Singh

  Bina Padamsee

  Chopra focused on one name, his eyes narrowing. And suddenly everything fell into place. He understood what the plasticky objects were, and he realised, t
oo, why Ali’s Juhu address had seemed so familiar…

  Ganesha looked up at him quizzically. “Come on, boy,” said Chopra. “Let’s go find ourselves a rat.”

  A SECRET WEDDING

  The Juhu apartment of Robin Mistry was well known to members of the paparazzi and the tabloid press. The scene of many a raucous bacchanal, the seventh-floor bachelor pad had gained a degree of notoriety some years previously when a fire had broken out during a party. Flames had engulfed the building and it had been a miracle that no one had been seriously hurt.

  Now, as Chopra drifted the Tata van to a halt opposite Mistry’s apartment complex, he saw that the cosseting influence of wealth had returned the tower to its former glory.

  Chopra did not believe in coincidence.

  The call sheet he had discovered in the backpack had led him here.

  The sheet convinced him that Robin Mistry was involved in Vicky’s disappearance, that Mistry had conspired with Aaliya Ghazi to abduct Vicky. Mistry must have discovered the story of Vicky’s father abandoning Aaliya’s mother, and had turned it to his own end.

  For there was now a second clear motive behind Vicky’s kidnapping: jealousy.

  Jealousy, that oldest of human weaknesses, had consumed Mistry ever since he had been supplanted for the lead role in the biggest movie ever to be filmed in Bollywood. The wound had plainly cut deep, severing Robin and Vicky’s childhood friendship.

  It was not the first time Chopra had come across such a schism. He had long ago learned that friendship was a mutable endeavour; the strongest of bonds were not immune to the foibles of the human condition. Friendship was like a slipknot in a length of rope. In one direction the knot held fast, but pull it the wrong way and it unravelled in the blink of an eye.

  On the eighth floor of the tower he steeled himself before a brown oak door, then rang the buzzer.

  As the echoes of the blaring clarion died away he heard footsteps approach. Chopra tensed, instinctively patting the revolver tucked into the back of his trousers. This time he had come prepared.

  The door swung back, and Robin Mistry was standing before him, dressed in a pair of loud Hawaiian shorts, slippers, and a T-shirt bearing the legend DO IT FOR MUMBAI. A look of frank astonishment completed the ensemble. “Chopra!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  Chopra drew his revolver. “Let’s talk inside.”

  Mistry’s jaw fell. “Have you lost your mind?”

  Chopra advanced, forcing Mistry to backpedal into the apartment.

  Once inside, he kicked the door shut behind him.

  Mistry continued to gape at him. “What the hell is this about?”

  Chopra fumbled in the front pocket of his shirt. He extracted the call sheet and flung it down on the coffee table. “I took that from a man who just tried to throw me off the Bandra–Worli Sea Link. The same man who kidnapped Vicky and took the ransom.”

  Mistry’s gaze dropped to the call sheet.

  His face reddened. Then he pulled himself together. “As far as we are aware, you took the ransom. Where have you been?”

  “We both know I had nothing to do with Vicky’s abduction,” responded Chopra. “But I am here to get to the bottom of things. Now, before we continue, tell me: is Vicky still alive?”

  Mistry’s expression hardened. “You’re not going to use that gun. I’m going to give you one chance to leave. After that I’m calling the cops.”

  Chopra stared at him… Then he squeezed the trigger.

  The shot reverberated around the apartment. The bullet thwocked into the sofa, a plume of stuffing spraying out onto the Persian rug below.

  Mistry howled in fright, then scrabbled at his chest to see where he had been struck. When he discovered that he remained unperforated, his legs buckled beneath him, and he swooned back onto the sofa in relief.

  A short, sharp scream whipped Chopra around.

  A woman stood in the doorway of the bedroom, wrapped in a bedsheet, her hand lifted to her mouth in terror.

  “Robin!” shrieked Poonam Panipat.

  Chopra lowered his revolver, his face slack with astonishment. “Ms. Panipat,” he mumbled. “What are you doing here?” As soon as the words escaped his mouth he felt foolish. It was absurdly obvious what Panipat was doing here. The bedsheet, the disarrayed hair, the lateness of the hour.

  Sensing Chopra’s scrutiny Panipat straightened, an angry blush stealing over her handsome features. She reached up to pat her hair into shape, then marched, straight-backed, over to Robin Mistry.

  She sat down next to him and put an arm around his shoulders, then looked up defiantly at Chopra.

  “The question,” she said icily, “is what are you doing here? And why, precisely, are you shooting holes in our sofa?”

  “Our sofa?” echoed Chopra, feeling lightheaded. Surely Poonam Panipat, the Queen of Bollywood, was not involved in the kidnapping of Vicky Verma? How deep did this conspiracy go?

  “Did you plan this together?” he said, eventually, focusing on Mistry. “Was this another reason for taking revenge on Vicky? Not only did he steal your dream role but he also tried to steal your lady? The rumours of an affair between them could not have been easy for you to stomach.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” said Mistry, shaking his head. He got to his feet, pulling Panipat up beside him.

  The two stood there holding hands.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s true love,” said Chopra wearily.

  “In a way,” said Mistry. He waved his free hand at Panipat. “Allow me to introduce you to my wife.”

  Chopra gaped. “Impossible! How could you keep something like that a secret? And why?”

  “Keeping it a secret was the easy part,” said Mistry. “As for the why, that should be obvious.”

  “Do you remember the first time we met?” said Panipat. “I told you what I had gone through to get to where I am today, how hard I had to fight for the role in Mote. This picture will put me back on top. But this is Bollywood, Chopra. Had the producer known I was a married woman he would never have given me the part. The affair between myself and Vicky—do you remember I told you that I spread those rumours? Because that’s the sort of thing producers want. In this business scandal sells, not domesticity.”

  “So you were never having an affair with Vicky?”

  “Never.”

  Chopra’s head was spinning. He had arrived at Mistry’s apartment thinking that he had worked out the whole story. But now… He reached into his pocket and extracted the two plasticky objects he had discovered in Ali’s rucksack. He flung them down beside the call sheet.

  “It took me a little while to understand what those were,” he said. “Cheek plumpers. Isn’t that what they’re called? Actors use them to change the shape of their face.”

  Mistry had reddened.

  “You’re Ali, aren’t you?”

  Mistry hesitated. He flicked his eyes to Panipat, who nodded. “Tell him.”

  “Yes,” confessed Mistry.

  “And it was you who entered the stadium to kidnap Vicky, disguised as Ali.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Did you approach Aaliya Ghazi or did she come to you? Did she tell you about what happened to her mother, or did you find out some other way? You used her desire for revenge—you wanted Vicky out of the way, so you used Aaliya.” Chopra hauled in a deep breath, anger flushing through him. “Tell me, was it you who recommended her to Vicky as a PA?”

  “What?” Mistry looked startled.

  “Greta Rodrigues,” said Chopra. “She’s Aaliya Ghazi, isn’t she? It was the poster that did it. The poster of her mother. I’d never seen Ayesha Azmi before, I’d never seen that film, yet her face was so familiar to me. Why? And then it came to me. I had seen that face before. Greta. She has her mother’s face. After that, things fell into place. Details that had always bothered me suddenly became clear. You see, even though Vicky was your friend and probably shared details of the concert wit
h you, you couldn’t be sure exactly when he would come down from the stage into the dressing room. Concerts like that never stick to schedule. The only way you could have known is if someone called you at the precise moment Vicky was in the room. And the only people there were Vicky and Greta. She told me that she stepped away when he came down, to visit the washroom. But it was to call you, wasn’t it? You must have already been in the stadium by then. Waiting.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Before you say another word… is Vicky still alive?”

  Mistry hesitated, then nodded.

  “Where is he?”

  Mistry glanced at Panipat again. “If you let me explain.”

  Chopra raised his revolver. “No more explanations. I want to know where Vicky is. Tell me. Or this time I won’t aim for the sofa.”

  Panipat stepped in front of her husband, her eyes blazing. “If you want to shoot him you’ll have to shoot me first.” She glared at Chopra defiantly. “I took you for an intelligent man. This is not what you think. If you hear us out you will understand.”

  Chopra scrutinised her features. He saw in that beautiful face only the light of truth.

  He lowered his weapon. “Very well,” he said. “I am listening.”

  As Chopra drove into the night, he dwelled on his strange meeting with Robin Mistry and Poonam Panipat. He now had all the pieces of the puzzle… and what a puzzle! In truth, he had worked out much of it himself. By the time he had arrived at the apartment, he had been almost certain that Robin had been working with an accomplice, someone other than Aaliya Ghazi. The CCTV images of Ali entering and leaving the stadium had all but convinced him of this… and now he had his confirmation, and, with it, the identity of the true mastermind behind Vicky Verma’s kidnapping.

  After thirty years in law enforcement he had believed there was little left to surprise him. He was wrong.

  From the rear of the van Ganesha watched him with a quizzical eye. The little elephant knew that something had changed since Chopra had returned from the apartment complex. Over the past months he had become intimately attuned to his guardian’s moods—he recognised the set of Chopra’s shoulders, the expression of clarity and determination. His guardian was a man on a mission.