by Vaseem Khan
But what if he was wrong? There would be hell to pay! And the terror arose within him again–not the terror of what he might face on the boat, but the far greater fear of ruining the reputation that he had taken a lifetime to build.
No, he thought, he could not take that risk.
Chopra took his notebook from his pocket and wrote down the registration number of Nayak’s car. The number was a start, but if Nayak had managed to stay hidden for so many years he would not be foolish enough to leave such an easy trail. He needed definitive proof.
And there was something else… Chopra needed to confront Nayak. It was his fault that Nayak had slipped through the net. Nayak had made a fool of him and, by extension, of the force. It was Chopra’s responsibility to bring the man in. It was the policeman’s code.
He would board the boat and locate Nayak. Once he had identified his nemesis, he would make a citizen’s arrest. Anyone who got in his way would be dealt with. Then he would take Nayak to his superiors.
Chopra considered the plan and acknowledged to himself that it was naïve in the extreme.
After all, he had no idea how many people were on board the trawler. It was practically a certainty that most, if not all, would be armed. There was also the possibility that Shetty had spotted Chopra tailing him. The Bullet was a hard thing to miss, particularly in the dead of night. Could Shetty have been luring him here? Was he now waiting on the boat hoping that Chopra would be foolish enough to step aboard, alone and armed with only his old Anmol revolver?
Sweat pooled on his upper lip as he wrestled with the dilemma. He knew that he should turn around and leave. And yet, his feet would not move.
Finally, after agonising with himself for what seemed an eternity, Chopra decided that for once in his life he had to leave rationality aside. His instincts were urging him forward, urging him to strike while Nayak was still on the boat. He could not let this chance pass. He could not walk away.
He gripped his revolver and moved silently forward, all the while thinking that it had been a long time since he had last fired a weapon in anger.
The trawler bobbed gently beneath his feet. He walked along the narrow corridor of decking between the boat’s hull and the superstructure. He reached a doorway. Holding his revolver before him, he swung the door open and entered.
He was in a short passageway, closed doors on either side of it. He picked the door on the right. He walked into a darkened room, lit only by a single lantern that swung gently with the rocking of the boat. There was a charpoy leaning up against one wall. A wooden pillar rose from the centre of the room to meet a crossbeam. A bucket rested in one corner, next to a tangle of fishing nets. In the other corner was a small table flanked by two stools. On the table was a bottle of whisky, two glasses, a metal ashtray with a lit cigarette resting on its lip, and tattered playing cards laid out in two hands.
‘Where are they?’ murmured Chopra. He was not given the opportunity to complete his thought. The blow caught him on the back of his head, whirling him into blackness.
When he awoke it was to the sound of dripping water. His head ached. He shook it to clear his thoughts. He realised that he was sitting down, trussed to a chair. He could not move. A cotton rag was tied around his mouth.
He turned his head. He was still in the small room where he had been ambushed. The chair to which he was tied was in turn roped to the wooden pillar in the centre of the room. On the small table he had noticed earlier was Chopra’s gun–but it might as well have been a million miles away. The sound of water that he could hear was the gentle plink-plonk of rainwater falling into the bucket in the room’s corner from a leak in the ceiling. The boat bobbed gently below him. He knew, from the moonlight streaming in from the room’s solitary window, that it was still the dead of night outside. He could hear the rain drumming on the boat’s wooden timbers.
Inspector Chopra (Retd) tried to calm his mind. Think! There was no point cursing his stupidity; it was too late for that. He had allowed his desire to track the man he suspected to be Kala Nayak to get the better of him. And now he was well and truly in hot water. As a rule the Mumbai underworld did not kill policemen; it caused too much disruption for their own organisations, too many of their own men subsequently shot dead in police ‘encounters’. But Chopra was no longer a policeman, and that made all the difference.
He wondered what his obituary would say?
‘Inspector Ashwin Chopra (Retd). Expired in Versova, Mumbai, at hands of criminal elements in the line of what-was-no-longer his duty. A model police officer and good citizen of Mumbai for over thirty years. Recipient of the Kirti Chakra for gallant action above and beyond the call. Lover of cricket and vada pao. Owner of one elephant. He is survived by his wife Archana Chopra.’ Perhaps to this should be added: ‘Silly fool who is dead because he ignored the most basic precautions of police work.’
What would Poppy say, he wondered? No doubt she would be furious with him for dying on her just when he had retired. She would certainly be furious that he had ignored the doctors’ edicts not to excite himself. Chopra felt a sudden lifting of his mood. At least she was still young and attractive enough to remarry. And if he knew his wife she was certainly not the type to spend the rest of her life as a widow, mooning about all dressed in white. He wished the best for her, always had done.
He thought briefly of the new property on Guru Rabindranath Tagore Road, still unfinished and now likely to remain so. Poppy would find out about that sooner or later. What would she make of it? She would be angry, no doubt; angry at his plans, at the fact that he had kept this secret from her. But in the end what did it really matter? What did anything matter once a man was gone from this world? Karma. That’s all a man could do. Husband his karma, so that in the next life he had a fighting chance.
Chopra tested his bonds, but they were too tight; tied by an expert, he thought. If this were a Bollywood movie and he were a Bollywood action hero, he would, no doubt, be able to call upon the deity of his choice, find the superhuman strength to tear apart these ropes, and then, muscles bulging, leap into action to summarily dispatch a dozen or so villains, before a final showdown with Kala Nayak.
He wondered when the fishermen would wake up and go out in their boats. Surely that would be his opportunity, perhaps the only one he would get, when the beach would be crawling with fisherfolk, fish buyers, litter pickers, ice-sellers. The trouble was, he couldn’t even shout for help…
Suddenly he became aware of another sound, a low keening sound just below the edge of hearing. He strained his ears. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere below his feet. He wondered what it could be. It was difficult to isolate from the sound of the rain, and he began to suspect it was simply his imagination. But before he had a chance to analyse the sound further, the door to the room swung open and two men entered. One was a thin dark-skinned man wearing a Hawaiian print T-shirt; the other was the man in the red beret. Shetty.
‘He’s awake,’ said the Hawaiian T-shirt.
‘Welcome, Inspector,’ grinned Shetty with an expansive wave of his arm. ‘How do you like our boat?’
Chopra glared at him.
‘He doesn’t have much to say, does he? Normally, these policemen can’t stop yakking. Isn’t that right, Inspector?’
The two men grinned at each other as if they had just told a fabulous joke. Chopra watched them with wary eyes. He could sense the threat of violence that lay behind their words.
Shetty picked up Chopra’s gun and pretended to examine it. ‘This is why the police are so useless,’ he said. ‘You have such old guns. Me, I have a German automatic.’ He reached into the waistband of his jeans and took out his pistol. He weighed both guns in his hand, then said: ‘What do you think, Chotu? Revolver or automatic?’
‘Only one way to find out, boss,’ grinned Chotu.
Shetty placed his automatic onto the table. Then, with mock ceremony, he pretended to examine the revolver, before emptying five of the six bullets from its chamber. He twir
led the chamber around, snapped it back into place, then put the gun to Chopra’s forehead. ‘You know, it’s not very polite to follow people around, is it, Inspector?’ He grinned, displaying a mouthful of flat, broad teeth. ‘You have to be very lucky not to be spotted. Let’s see how lucky you are, today.’
‘Stop!’
All three of them looked to the doorway. Another man came into the small room, trailed by a second goon. Chopra froze, his eyes narrowing.
‘Ram, ram, Chopra,’ said Kala Nayak. ‘It is so nice to see you again, after all these years.’
NO ORDINARY ELEPHANT
Poppy awoke. For a moment she splashed around in confusion, swimming out of the depths of her dream. She had imagined herself to be lost in the jungle, unable to find her way out while strange creatures with nine legs and seven eyes chased her through the trees, trees which themselves sprang to life and joined in the chase, reaching out with viney limbs to clutch at her throat and choke the life from—
She sat up.
A sound had woken her. She could hear it now. It rose above the sound of the rain hammering on the windows, above even the sound of her air-conditioning unit. Poppy turned to her side to nudge her husband awake… and discovered, to her horror, that he was not there. And then she realised that he had probably risen to go to the bathroom or drink a glass of water, as was his habit.
This realisation was overtaken by the memory of the previous evening, when she had gone to bed alone, seething because he had neither returned nor called to inform her of his whereabouts. She had been determined to stay up in bed, waiting to give him the shock of his life as soon as he walked in the door; she would show him, Mister This-and-That! But the stress of the past few days had worn her out and she had fallen asleep almost as soon as her head had hit the pillow. That was another thing: Chopra had always been a much lighter sleeper than her, which had bothered her at first until he had reassured her that she did not snore in her sleep. It would be just terrible if a woman snored, Poppy thought.
She sat upright, listening. The strange sound, a sort of dull scraping, was clearer now. What could it be? Surely her husband was not making it.
Filled with an incipient sense of trepidation, Poppy slipped out of bed and crept into the living room. A glance at the kitchen area and through the open doors of the bathroom and the study confirmed her worst fears: Chopra was not in the flat.
For a moment she was stunned, rooted to the spot by shock. In twenty-four years of marriage this was the first time her husband had been away for the night without informing her first. Surely, this was the last piece of evidence that Poppy needed; surely, now, it could only be another woman!
Poppy tried to picture her husband in the arms of some floozy, some two-bit hussy dripping sweet poison into his ears. She was overcome by a terrible rage that made her whole body flush. Coupled with the rage was shame; shame that she had not been able to hold on to her husband; shame at what the neighbours would say, what her family would say. How would she ever face anyone again? Poppy, who had always been the fearless one, the confident one. Now she would not even be able to meet the eyes of her friends. A woman abandoned by her husband had no value in India. She would become invisible, a ghost that no one wished to associate with. She might even be forced to return to her native village, back to her parents’ house, to live out her days like a leper in the company of her idiotic brother and her exasperating mother, who would, no doubt, never let her hear the end of it. A deathly panic trembled through her, and tears began to seep from the corners of her eyes.
It was at this point that she realised that the strange scraping sound she had heard was coming from the front door. She turned and saw Ganesha rubbing his head against it.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and moved towards him. ‘What is it, boy?’ she said. Ganesha ignored her and butted the door gently with the top of his knobbly skull. It was obvious that he wished to leave the apartment.
Poppy opened the door and followed him out into the lobby.
Ganesha circled the lobby anxiously until he came to the marble staircase. He dangled one leg over the top step, but then moved back, confused.
‘This way, boy,’ said Poppy and summoned the lift. Together they rode down to the ground floor.
As Ganesha trotted out into the courtyard, Bahadur, who had just that moment got up to visit the lavatory, let out a yell. The sight of the elephant suddenly materialising out of the darkened lobby had frightened him to the point where he no longer needed to use the toilet.
Together, he and Poppy watched Ganesha as he butted the gates to the compound. Bahadur looked at Poppy, who nodded. He went to the gates and unlocked them. They watched as Ganesha lumbered away towards the main road.
Now that Chopra could get a good look at his face, he realised that Nayak had not changed as much as he had at first thought. If you took away the stubbled beard, the altered hair and the pale eyes–clearly the work of coloured contact lenses–he felt confident he would have recognised this man anywhere.
Nayak stood before him, a gaunt, imposing man in a white linen suit, leaning on his cane. The cane was made of ivory, with a silver base and finely wrought handle.
‘You like this?’ said Nayak, noticing Chopra’s gaze. ‘Pure elephant ivory, carved from a single tusk taken from a giant bull. A gift from you, Inspector, in a way. That night in MIDC you nearly upset my plans. A bullet caught me in the hip. It was only a grazing blow–at least that’s what I thought at the time. But the wound became infected; a bone fragment went the wrong way. The doctors had to operate. They didn’t do a good job, as you can see. Take off that gag.’
Chopra felt rough hands pulling away the gag. He sucked in a deep lungful of air as it fell away.
‘You must have so many questions,’ said Nayak.
‘Why?’ said Chopra finally.
‘I had to disappear. Things were going badly for me. We were in a gang war, the old dons fighting to hold onto power. They got together, pooled their strength; sooner or later they would have finished me off. Then we had you and the special taskforce, closing in. I could feel the noose tightening around my neck. I suppose I could have tried to shoot my way out of trouble. But I preferred to use this.’ Nayak tapped the side of his skull. ‘The whole thing at MIDC was a set-up. Only one of my men knew what I was up to, a loyal lieutenant who knew that I had planted the police information, knew that a raid was coming, knew that we would start the fire ourselves, knew that I would be replacing my ‘corpse’ with another. It was a high-risk strategy; many things could have gone wrong. But it had to look real, or else it would never have fooled you.’
‘Whose body did we find?’
‘The loyal lieutenant’s. I could not leave any loose ends. You understand that, don’t you, Inspector?’
‘How did you get out of the building?’
‘I changed into a police uniform and limped out with the rest of your men. In all the smoke and chaos of the fire, no one noticed. By the next day I was out of the city. A day after that I was in Dubai.’ Nayak shifted his weight on the cane. ‘Have you ever been to Dubai? I highly recommend it. For a person like me it is a Mecca. I had been putting money there for a long time. Within a month I was up and running again. But this time I stayed in the shadows. You taught me a valuable lesson, Chopra–there is nothing to be gained by being a hero. In this business the ones who live to a ripe old age are the ones who play the cautious game, who manage the risks and stay out of the limelight. In the past nine years I have built up my organisation again; now it is stronger than it has ever been. Drugs, guns, construction… anything you can think of, I am making money from. But almost no one even knows that I exist. That is the real secret!
‘And I will tell you one other thing: I am older, I am wiser. I know what to spend my money on now. Not the flashy ornaments of a young man, but the one thing that can guarantee a long life and prosperity. Do you know what that is? Power. With the money I make, I buy power.’ Nayak smiled. ‘Do you
know, there is even a word for people like me now: entrepreneur.’
‘And yet,’ said Chopra, ‘for all your fine talk, your fine clothes, you are still nothing but a petty crook. A goonda.’
For a moment Nayak said nothing. Then he smiled ruefully. ‘It is a shame that our paths have crossed again, Chopra. The world is a more interesting place with men like you in it.’
He turned and left.
Shetty now spoke to the two goons. ‘Take him onto the beach. Put him in the sea. It must look like a drowning. No knives, no bullets, no punches–do you idiots understand? You already left a bruise on his skull. If you mess up again you’ll be joining him in the water.’ Shetty looked down at Chopra and grinned. ‘What do you think of Boss’s idea, Inspector? “Recently retired policeman commits suicide.” “Depressed inspector drowns himself.” Too good, yes?’
‘Did you kill him?’ asked Chopra.
‘Kill who?’
‘The boy. Santosh Achrekar.’
Shetty frowned. ‘Santosh? Poor kid. He killed himself. This suicide business, it’s becoming a craze.’ He guffawed loudly.
‘Why?’ asked Chopra. ‘Why did he have to die?’
Shetty stopped laughing. ‘You know your problem, Inspector? You ask too many questions. The kid is history. Who cares why?’
‘I care.’
‘And that’s why you’re sitting here now,’ growled Shetty, tiring of the game. ‘Come on, why are you two idiots looking at my face? Take him.’ Shetty waved his automatic at the two thugs. ‘When you finish, I want the pair of you to get out of town for a few weeks. Go to the Pune office.’
‘But boss, what about the… cargo?’
‘You don’t have to worry about that. Mangesh and Namdeo will be along any minute. I’ll be back in a couple of hours myself. I don’t want to see your ugly faces here when I return.’
The gag was tied back around Chopra’s mouth. He felt his bonds being loosened, then removed. Rough hands pulled him up. He tried to struggle but his captors were too powerful.
