Murder at the Grand Raj Palace

by Vaseem Khan

  Chopra skimmed the report.

  Burbank had died from a stab wound directly to the heart. The knife had pierced the left atrium, one of the two upper chambers of the heart. Homi’s report explained how the penetration had caused massive and profuse bleeding, resulting in acute tamponade—compression of the heart by an accumulation of blood in the pericardial sac surrounding the heart. The result had been a very rapid death.

  A number of photographs accompanied the report, including one of Burbank stretched out on the bed, the knife handle jutting out from his chest. He was dressed in one of the suite’s luxurious bathrobes, monogrammed with the hotel’s logo. A flower of red soaked the thick white cotton over his heart. Chopra paused for a moment, staring at the glassy eyes, the grey, lifeless face. He had seen numerous bodies during his long career. So rarely had the faces of those corpses been imbued with the peace that was said to come from man’s final release.

  Hollis Burbank certainly did not look like a man who had gone to meet his maker with a clear conscience.

  He took out his phone and dialled Homi Contractor. The need to speak to the pathologist had become acute.

  Homi was his usual caustic self. “So they’ve pulled you into that steaming pile of horse manure too, eh? Well, I suppose it’s my fault. Rohan told me about his doubts and I made the mistake of mentioning your agency to him. Told him you were still as sharp as you’d been on the force. Perhaps what I should have said is that you’re just as keen to chase your tail around the city looking for murderers and rapists and whatnot. Can’t keep a good fool down, eh?”

  Homi had often said that he couldn’t understand why, after retiring, Chopra hadn’t gone to live the high life somewhere. And yet, he secretly suspected that his friend would be exactly the same once he was forced to hang up his surgeon’s gloves. The man was a dynamo.

  “The angle of the knife,” said Chopra. “Was it consistent with a man stabbing himself?”

  “Consistent, yes,” said Homi. “Practical? Usual? No.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it was all very clumsy, wasn’t it? A man wants to kill himself with a knife—why not slice open his wrists? Instead, he chooses to stab himself in the chest. I mean, cardiac penetrations are hardly the most fatal of traumas. You have a far better chance of surviving a stab wound to the heart than, say, a wound to a major artery in the neck or thigh.” Homi sighed. “If you’re asking me whether this was staged, whether Burbank was helped along on his journey to the next world, then the short answer is: I don’t know. On the face of it there’s no evidence to support that conclusion. His prints were on the knife handle—in exactly the right configuration to indicate a two-handed grip, with a strike downwards into the heart. My guess is he was lying on his back when he did it. That way he wouldn’t have to fall down afterwards. All very inelegant. And besides, lividity was fixed. The body wasn’t moved after the heart stopped. He definitely died on that bed.”

  “What about time of death?” Chopra asked next.

  “Based on the liver temperature taken by the on-scene pathologist, I’d say he died somewhere between one a.m. and two a.m.”

  Chopra thanked Homi, and ended the call. He tapped the phone thoughtfully against his thigh.

  Homi’s opinion was something he had relied upon for many years while running the Sahar station. And yet, balanced against this were his own instincts, honed over decades of sifting through crime scenes and often murky preliminary investigations. Like Tripathi he could sense that something was out of kilter with Hollis Burbank’s death. It was not, of course, beyond the bounds of possibility that such a man might contemplate taking his own life, but there was a world of difference between impossible and improbable.

  He finished looking through the file.

  There was very little forensic evidence collected from the scene.

  Fingerprints—but none from anyone who couldn’t or shouldn’t have been in Burbank’s room; some trace fibres and, in one corner of the bedroom, by the mirror, some shards of coloured broken glass that might have come from a bangle or other piece of decorative jewellery. Dried blood had been discovered on the shards, but it had been unidentifiable. The report supposed that the shards had been left there by the prior tenant of the suite, a glamorous actress, and that they had somehow escaped the cleaning crew.

  He was intrigued by a note saying that staples had been discovered on the bed Burbank had died upon. They had been found in the gap between the headboard and the top of the mattress.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Staples?”

  Tripathi shrugged. “There was a lot of paperwork in Burbank’s room. Thick sheaves of it. Apparently, he liked to take his work with him when he travelled, probably read it in bed, the same way I read investigative reports. Hence the staples. Before you get excited, we’ve been through it. It’s all reports and legal documents relating to his various operations around the world. Instant cure for insomnia.”

  Towards the end of the file was an inventory of all the personal belongings discovered in Burbank’s room. Aside from a number of very expensive suits, Burbank appeared to travel lightly.

  Something at the bottom of the list caught Chopra’s eye.

  #Photographs 1–4 [found inside inner lining of deceased’s briefcase]

  “What does this entry about photographs refer to?” he asked.

  “Oh, just a bunch of old pictures we found inside his briefcase. Why?”

  “I’d like to see them.”

  “They’re meaningless.”

  “I’d like to see them anyway.”

  Tripathi shrugged, then picked up the phone and asked one of his junior officers to fetch the photographs.

  A constable in blue shorts arrived at a breathless rush, handed an evidence bag reverentially to Chopra, then glanced nervously at Tripathi. Chopra guessed that his old friend was keeping his men—and women—on their toes. The preservation of evidence from crime scenes had often been a haphazard endeavour in the Indian police service. But now, conscientious, forward-thinking officers like Tripathi were putting paid to such lackadaisical attitudes.

  “What do you want? A medal?” barked Tripathi, glaring at the constable.

  The man fled from the room.

  Chopra took out the photographs and laid them out on Tripathi’s desk.

  There were four, all black-and-white prints, all eight inches by six, with deckled edging.

  They showed a group of people, the same group, lined up in various configurations in and around what seemed like an industrial building. It wasn’t clear from the photos what sort of plant it was, and there were no landmarks to determine where the site might be.

  The figures in the pictures, four of them, were equally ambiguous. Three men, one woman.

  They wore hats—sun hats, rather than protective hard hats—and white lab coats. Three of the figures were Indian. The fourth was a tall, handsome white man, clean-shaven, wearing a blue button-down shirt and aviator sunglasses.

  Chopra paused on this figure. He didn’t recognise the man. He half-expected it to be Burbank, a younger version, but the face was too different.

  He held up one of the pictures, tapped it with a finger. “Who is that?”

  Tripathi shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I asked Burbank’s PA. He didn’t know either. Didn’t know anyone in those pictures. Burbank had them hidden inside the lining of his briefcase. They must have been very personal.”

  Chopra turned the photo over.

  On the back, written in faded black ink, were the words: “Faulkner, Murthi, Sen, Shastri. Chimboli, Feb. 1985.”

  He checked the other pictures, but there was nothing on the back of any of them.

  “There are names here,” he said.

  “Only surnames,” said Tripathi. “From thirty years ago, if that date is accurate.”

  “Where is Chimboli?”

  “Out near Pune. It’s a backwater. Mostly just villages and dust. And if you’re thinking of tra
cking down whatever that facility is, forget it. Even if it still exists, I don’t have the manpower to chase ghosts. Gunaji would have a fit just knowing I’d asked you to poke around.”

  “Do you mind if I hang on to this?” Chopra asked.

  “Why? Those pictures haven’t got a thing to do with Burbank’s death.”

  “You’re probably right. But I’d like to hang on to it just the same.”

  “I can give you a photocopy,” said Tripathi. “Chain of evidence, and all that. You’ll probably want to take a look at this too,” he added, opening the drawer of his desk and handing Chopra another evidence bag.

  Inside he found a charcoal sketch on butcher paper. The sketch was of a half-naked figure in a loincloth, slumped against a wall in a dark alley, the face a grotesque parody of a man laughing at something only he could see. There was no signature on the sketch, only initials in the corner: K.K.

  “We found this in the same place, in the lining of his suitcase.”

  “Did he buy it at the auction?”

  “No.”

  “Then he may have brought it to India with him.”

  “Possibly. It’s not something we’ve spent much time looking into. More pressing leads to pursue and all that,” said Tripathi dryly. “It’s probably just a piece he really likes. I’m an absolute philistine when it comes to all this art guff, but it’s got a certain something, I’ll admit.”

  “I’ll need a copy of this too.”

  Tripathi shrugged. “Okay. Who am I to second-guess my old mentor? Just remember: Gunaji has his boot on my throat. Time is of the essence. Unless you can come up with a convincing reason to declare Burbank’s death as something other than suicide, he is going to shut the door on this investigation.”

  Chopra stood, turned to leave.

  “By the way,” said Tripathi. “Is it true you’re wandering around the city with an elephant?”

  “Yes,” said Chopra, his expression stiffening. He knew where this was headed. Many of his old colleagues thought he must be addled when they discovered he had taken in an elephant. “Why?”

  Tripathi looked embarrassed. “Well, it’s just, er, you know I grew up in the south? There was this elephant orphanage outside our village…”

  Chopra smiled with relief. “His name is Ganesha. Would you like to meet him?”

  “He’s here?” Delight spread across Tripathi’s features.

  Once again Chopra reflected that the mere thought of encountering an elephant could knock ten years off a man’s age.

  “Come on,” he said. “He’s probably got half your station trying to feed him chocolate by now.”

  POPPY CHECKS IN

  A few hundred yards away, in the lobby of the Grand Raj Palace Hotel, the general manager Tanav Dashputra was staring in disbelief at Poppy Chopra and Irfan. A semicircle of porters and room-boys lounged beside the luggage carts they had just pushed into the hotel, looking on, goggle-eyed, failing to disguise their delight at the GM’s discomfort.

  “But, madam, I cannot just give you a room!”

  “I did not ask for a room,” said Poppy. “I asked for a suite.” She waved at the train of luggage carts. “I have a few essentials with me, as you can see.”

  The GM gaped. A vein throbbed at his temple. The collar of his shirt seemed about to burst from his throat. “This is-is—” he began, but Poppy cut him off with a flattened palm, as if she were conducting traffic.

  “My dear Mr. Dashputra,” she said primly, “three days from now it is my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I had high hopes that this would be an occasion that my husband and I might enjoy together. That we might spend some time in each other’s company. Instead, I now discover that he will be otherwise engaged, in your hotel, investigating the death of one of your guests. Now, another woman in my shoes might well have accepted the situation. But I, Mr. Dashputra, am not ‘another woman.’ I do not accept. I do not turn the other cheek. Turning the other cheek was yesterday. Today it is: kindly give me my suite or I will bring the ceiling down on your head.”

  Dashputra stared queasily at the woman.

  During his twenty-five or so years in the hotel industry he had encountered every type of guest imaginable: the smugly irksome, the routinely obnoxious, the inexplicably hostile, the drooling lunatics. And yet, in all that time, he had never deviated from the guiding principle that underpinned the hospitality business on the subcontinent, an ethos inscribed on wooden plaques in the offices of innkeepers and hotel managers up and down the land: Guest is God.

  Well, if the guest standing before him now was a god, then she was Kali, black-tongued and vengeful, goddess of death and destruction.

  Woe betide any man foolish enough to tangle with the dark mother.

  And there was also the small matter of discretion.

  He wouldn’t put it past this insane woman to begin shouting about her husband’s investigation into Burbank’s death in the middle of the lobby. Already he could see that the porters’ ears had perked up. The wretches lived on gossip, even though he had warned them a thousand times about indulging in idle talk about the guests.

  All things considered, a complimentary room seemed a small price to pay to nip a possibly calamitous situation in the bud.

  “Very well, madam, I will see what I can do.”

  “Thank you,” said Poppy. “And I would prefer a sea view, if you don’t mind.”

  An hour later, Poppy and Irfan had settled into the Rani of Jhansi suite on the ninth floor.

  Being in the Jhansi suite filled Poppy with a quiet delight.

  The Rani of Jhansi was a particular heroine of hers; a Maratha queen who had fought—and died—against the British in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Now there was a woman who had rarely suffered from self-doubt, even when charging into the guns of the 8th Hussars, “raining a fire of hell,” as the old poem went!

  The suite itself was magnificent, so plushly decorated that Poppy had the feeling that she had stepped inside a wedding cake. The concierge proudly informed her that film stars and politicians had stayed there, that it was the preferred choice of one of the country’s top cricketers. He gave Poppy the grand tour, then stood by the door coughing ostentatiously.

  Poppy, misunderstanding the gesture, took out a bottle of cough syrup from her handbag and insisted he take three spoonfuls.

  As the hapless concierge reeled away, Irfan made himself at home on the enormous sofa, which had the sturdy look of a seventeenth-century naval vessel about it. He switched on the TV, and instantly became glued to a cartoon show called Mighty Mohan about a small boy with superpowers who raced around the city fighting evil, oblivious to his own safety.

  In many ways this Mighty Mohan resembled her husband, Poppy thought, with a shake of her head.

  Chopra was, in some respects, still a boy at heart. He thought in childlike terms, in black and white, with nothing in between. In truth, it was one of the things she had always admired about him. He remained the most honest man she knew. In a country seemingly ravaged by corruption this was not something to be taken lightly… If only he would learn that it wasn’t up to him to solve every problem, to right every wrong, to cure every ill. Why couldn’t he let others take the reins now and again?

  “Would you like to take a look around the hotel?” she asked Irfan.

  “After the show,” mumbled Irfan.

  Poppy gave a semi-exasperated smile. Like many of the boys in her class at the St. Xavier Catholic School for Boys—where she taught classical dance—once he was installed in front of a screen he became as lifeless as a zombie.

  Well, if anyone deserved a little leeway it was Irfan.

  He worked as hard as anyone at the restaurant, and the trauma he had suffered early in life had failed to subdue his spirited demeanour or basic good nature.

  “In that case, don’t leave the room. I’ll be back soon.”

  A BAD BUSINESS ALL ROUND

  Chopra returned to the Grand Raj Palace at eleven, and headed s
traight for the business centre. Here he asked the way to the VIP members-only club.

  At the door to the lounge a tuxedoed concierge barred his entrance, looking Chopra up and down with ill-disguised disbelief.

  “I am here to see Avinash Agnihotri,” said Chopra.

  “Is Mr. Agnihotri expecting you?” said the concierge archly. “Is he expecting your, ah, elephant?” The stooge behind him gave a soft snigger.

  Chopra’s brow furrowed.

  He took out his identity card, which identified him as a “Special Advisor to the Mumbai Police,” duly signed and stamped by the commissioner of police himself, a concession Chopra had won following an earlier case. “I am investigating Hollis Burbank’s death. If you don’t let me in to see Agnihotri right away I will be forced to drag him out by the collar. I will be sure to let him know you were responsible for his humiliation.”

  The concierge blanched. “Come with me, sir. And please, feel free to bring your, ah, associate.” He bobbed his head at Ganesha. “Sir.”

  Ganesha twirled his trunk, and swaggered through the doors behind Chopra.

  Chopra met Avinash Agnihotri in a private room, with carpet so thick it reminded him of the northern Indian grasslands where the grass was so tall elephants became lost inside it. His own elephant, Ganesha, appeared delighted with the squishy flooring, and moved around in happy circles while Chopra sank down into a faux empire armchair opposite Agnihotri.

  The Indian businessman was aggressively sipping a martini. “My own brand,” he said, pompously. “Indian-made.”

  Chopra recalled that Agnihotri—who was based in Bangalore, down in the southern half of the country—had made his fortune in software. He was one of the crop of Indian IT czars who had grown rich seemingly overnight in the outsourcing bonanza that had convulsed the developing world during the past two decades. Chopra had recently read that the wheels were beginning to come off that particular cart, as the backlash from local customers and workers’ unions in Western markets made itself felt. Agnihotri, for his part, had successfully diversified and was now involved in a range of manufacturing enterprises around the country. He was known for being fiercely patriotic. His mantra of “Make Indian, Buy Indian,” a philosophy that hearkened back to the days of the Independence movement, had given him a popular, man-of-the-people appeal.