Thus, Shayak’s insistence on working Terrence and me to the bone. If Titanium was to be restored even to a shadow of its former self, in an industry where trust was everything, it meant getting to the bottom of the conspiracy – and it would have to be soon. He was so desperate that he went along with my plan to go undercover in Goa. With so little to go on, and all of our leads pointing solidly in one direction, there didn’t seem to be an alternative. We were going in armed with precious few answers. That was the sort of vulnerability that could put a target on our heads – out there where the bullets were real.
As had become routine, the morning after my hypothetical death by the tree, I could barely move. The session had continued well past nightfall, and the only part I had excelled at was hand-to-hand combat. My aim at the firing range was iffy at best, but it was my stamina that caused the most concern.
‘Don’t worry about speed so much, Reema,’ Shayak told me over and over again. ‘Worry about how long you can keep going.’
Shayak must have anticipated the jelly legs because he let me sleep till the shockingly permissive hour of 6 a.m. and had scheduled only a brief workout after which there was a breakfast meeting.
I walked into the conference room drenched in a cold sweat after my hot shower. Whoever said the only way to prevent post-workout stiffness was another workout had clearly never worked out a day in their lives.
‘Sit,’ said Shayak, pouring the coffee. A bowl of fruit sat in the centre of the table. Toast and eggs were brought in by the resident kitchen staff. There was nothing fancy. Food was there to keep our strength up and help us reach our training goals. Period.
Unable to bend at the knee, I collapsed into my chair, skimming over the soft board covered with pictures, documents and a scribbled web of names. A board we had become intimately familiar with.
With only days to go before we shipped out, we still knew next to nothing about George Santos or his ashram. The spiritual guru of British origin who had made Goa his home had more than a passing acquaintance with the man who had killed two people in an effort to sabotage Shayak. That’s what we knew three months ago, and for all intents, that’s what we knew now.
We needed leverage, and Shayak had promised some intel before we were thrown into the deep end. George had turned evasion into high art and the only reason Shayak hadn’t severed ties and left him at the mercy of law enforcement was that there was so little on him that he would, no doubt, get off scot-free. So best to hedge our bets and go in with him on our side. Though which side he was really on was anybody’s guess.
Shayak tossed two identical folders next to our plates. ‘Everything we have on George Santos. Some of it you’ve seen before, news articles and the like, but the first few pages are new, and should be of some use to help you get into character. It might not seem like much now, but remember, in about a week, Terrence and Reema will be man and wife. You are going to have to make it look convincing, and the more at ease you are in your new environment, the easier it will be.’
I scalded my mouth on the coffee and looked through the literature. I did not like being reminded of our cover story at the ashram. George, as we knew, helped you ‘find your way to the truth’, took your money and sent you on your way. But on paper at least, there seemed to be more to it.
‘Have you chosen your names yet?’ asked Shayak.
Terrence nodded. ‘Vishal Chowdhary.’
‘Good,’ said Shayak. ‘Generic enough, with sufficient regional ambiguity.’ Then he looked at me. The brief had been simple: choose two names that are comfortable, and that we wouldn’t mind responding to. Nothing too memorable or exotic; just everyday names. ‘Aparna Shenoy. Apu for short.’
He stared for a second longer than necessary, and something I couldn’t quite define flashed in his eyes. And then he nodded, back to business once again. ‘That should work,’ he said.
‘Where will we be staying?’ Terrence asked.
‘Soul Retreat Wellness Spa,’ said Shayak.
Terrence let out a low whistle. ‘Sweet.’
‘Fancy, is it?’ I asked.
‘One of the fanciest.’
‘As for your cover stories, I’ll have a complete dossier tomorrow.’
We knew the broad strokes – we were a disenchanted married couple who were moving back to India after a few years in Silicon Valley. We were not happy to be back, and our marriage had hit choppy waters, causing us to seek George out before settling down in Mumbai.
‘How much of this will we actually have to be a part of?’ I asked.
‘George usually insists on the participants attending his sessions, so you’ll need to be there for at least some of it to avoid suspicion.’
‘And what if the investigation goes on for more than two weeks?’ asked Terrence.
Which was likely, given the scale of the conspiracy before us.
‘He often has hangers-on, so I don’t think that should be a problem. Or if you feel you’ve had enough time at the ashram to learn what you need to know, you’ll be transferred to another base.’
I paused at George’s picture. A head full of straggly dark brown hair streaked with grey. Skin lined by decades in the sun. Whenever I had met him in the course of the Maaya Island murder investigation, he had been wearing worn flip-flops on his feet, along with clean but frayed clothes. But it was the eyes you remembered most. Arresting. Blue. Disarmingly, deceitfully open.
I was skimming through passages extracted from George’s tenets when something gave me pause. ‘The body is one of the most honest routes to the soul, through the soul. In the Truth Temple, every path to knowledge is embraced. It is the only form of the divine we can be sure of.’
‘This sounds awfully like it may degenerate into one big sex orgy,’ I said.
Shayak gave a brief nod. ‘I suspect most of these things do. You should be able to use the married couple cover to deflect some of that.’
‘Really? Is the marriage institution likely to be seen as an obstacle to extracurricular sex, if it is the ultimate route to my soul’s truth?’
‘You can always say that your relationship isn’t open,’ Shayak suggested.
‘Why would we do a thing like that?’ asked Terrence.
Shayak ignored him, which was how he usually dealt with his newest employee’s sense of humour.
‘No one is asking you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with,’ Shayak said pointedly.
I trusted my ingenuity enough to know I would find a way around the problem. As for Terrence, I didn’t anticipate very much trouble. I just hoped he wouldn’t be spending all of his time chasing George’s more impressionable students at the expense of the task at hand.
‘Once more, from the top?’ I said.
‘Vishal,’ Shayak asked, ‘how long have you been married?’
‘Almost five years,’ said Terrence, without missing a beat.
‘Age?’
‘Apu is a smashing thirty, and I am thirty-two and showing every day of it.’
We had increased my age a few years, which I knew wouldn’t be much of a problem. I had never looked young, even when I was.
‘Maybe I could have allegedly cheated on you,’ I interjected. ‘Thus, our strict no-extramarital-fraternization policy.’ It might be the perfect story: not only would it make for a ready, convincing response to randy old men, if any, but it would also ensure fewer distractions for Terrence, who engaged in flirting as others talk of the weather.
‘Hey, how come I get cheated on and not the other way around?’ he protested.
Shayak waved away the objection. ‘Who would believe you would cheat on her?’
Terrence shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Go on,’ prompted Shayak.
‘George will give us access to his documents, and enough of his time to make sense of it,’ continued Terrence. ‘He and his assistant will be the only ones who know of the operation. Our primary objective is to insinuate ourselves as deep as possible in the ashram
to track any suspicious behaviour.’ And all under two weeks, preferably.
‘And what do we know so far?’ Shayak asked, turning to me.
‘Precious little,’ I said. ‘George has been secretive, trying everything he can to slime out of cooperating in this investigation. But it was either that or be held as part of the conspiracy behind the Maaya Island murders.’
‘What I still don’t get is why he was so rattled by that,’ remarked Terrence. ‘He didn’t do much at the end of the day, did he? He tried to leverage a contact to find out what he could about the investigation, supposedly at the behest of a friend. Hardly something for which he could see jail time.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘So, what that says to me is that he would rather open himself up to an investigation he can control rather than rat out this friend prematurely, and draw attention to himself.’
‘George is afraid,’ said Terrence.
‘You bet. It fits with all his evasions.’
‘So why not just leave the country?’
‘Who is to say this friend wouldn’t hunt him down? He is powerful enough to think he can take down Titanium, and corrupt enough to need to. George might be slimy, but whoever instigated the double homicide is most likely much worse. Add to that the fact that George has too much to lose, and that he is arrogant enough to think he can hide it from us.’
‘If his computer is anything to go by, he might be right,’ said Terrence.
We had brought a copy of his hard drive and the search turned up nothing of note. I had been combing through the documents for the past few weeks after tech handed it over to me, but apart from a few cryptic files I couldn’t quite make sense of, there was nothing. I had left the original with an expert in Mumbai – Neeraj, who had helped us in the past – to pull any available metadata.
‘And yet we have no choice but to work with him,’ continued Terrence.
‘George is, unfortunately, our only good lead,’ said Shayak. All of the information we had retrieved from the murderer – his apartment, hard drive, cloud – was useless. He was not cooperating; after his arrest, he had hired the best lawyer he could find and clammed right up.
‘We also have motive,’ I said. ‘Take down Titanium – and you along with it – at any cost. Which brings us to the drug angle – and if we can find some sort of connection, that seems as good a place as any to start looking.’
‘And here is what we know about that,’ said Shayak. ‘About two years ago, there was a huge drug haul confiscated from some trucks by the Mumbai Police. The stash was housed in a building where there was an explosion, leading to the deaths of DCP Daanish Alam, who had been called in to investigate, another policeman and three civilians. The drugs were removed before the bomb was set off. We were asked to investigate, but then were called off a few months later. Details about the forensics, etc. are here,’ he said, passing around a sheet of paper.
‘Then, just over three months ago, in a remarkably similar series of events, a consignment was intercepted in Mumbai, packed with synthetically produced drugs such as oxycodone and ketamine. Due to the echoes of the previous bust, our friend, the new DCP Ajay Shankaran called us in. There was a shoot-out, and though this time they couldn’t make off with the drugs, three people died in the crossfire.’
Terrence and I already knew this much, but I could sense Shayak had made some headway.
‘What we know now, after detailed chemical analyses, is that these drugs might be from the same source. There was just enough trace left from the first bust for us to see some similarities.’
‘They are both from Goa?’ I asked.
‘If my initial investigation was correct, then yes. The trucks had come from Goa, or at the very least, through Goa, because the drivers who had been apprehended had not been present when the cargo was loaded and could not give a definitive location. But the chemical analyses in conjunction with my original data that the explosives used in that first blast originated from an ordnance factory in Goa seems to confirm that Goa is the thread tying all this together. And it has become pressing – and personal – because the murders at Maaya Island were part of a concerted effort to ruin Titanium after the conspiracy to infiltrate it and destroy evidence of this Goan drug trail failed.’
‘Saving Titanium means solving this crime,’ said Terrence.
‘Exactly. And whoever masterminded the plot to infiltrate Titanium had made initial contact with the murderer when he was working for George in Goa. Even if George is only the “connector” he claims he is, he is closely associated with the people behind all of this,’ I said. ‘And that’s why we need to go back into George’s affairs for over two years. He can’t have always been this careful. If we dig deep enough, we’ll find his mistakes.’
Shayak pulled out a brown cardboard box from under the table.
‘What’s in there?’ asked Terrence.
‘Everything pertaining to Daanish Alam that was recovered from the first Worli explosion. If we are correct in assuming that the real objective of the blast was to kill Daanish, we need to learn what we can about his death, and his life too.’
‘Isn’t this box police property?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but since they didn’t launch an investigation into his death per se, it was just lying around. Ajay has made it available to us.’
Ajay Shankaran, officer in charge of the Maaya Island case. We had worked together on it, and he had asked me out once, though with all the madness that subsequently ensued, I hadn’t seen him since the case was closed.
‘Once we are done with it,’ Shayak continued, ‘I’ve been asked to hand over the contents to his wife. She is coming here now.’
I opened it. A fragment of khaki uniform, bloodstained, signs of charring. A belt buckle. A rusty key chain, at the very bottom of the box, holding one old-fashioned rusty key, and dangling from it, the remnant of a small lilac seashell.
‘What does this key open?’ I asked.
‘The police didn’t know – nothing at his office apparently,’ said Shayak.
‘We’ll just have to ask his wife,’ I said.
I returned to the forensics on the blast. Shayak’s data connecting the explosives to the Goa factory was there, as well as the chemical composition of the drugs. The details of the five victims. Not much else could be salvaged from the site after the explosion and firefighting.
Shayak passed out another couple of sheets. ‘The forensics from the shoot-out.’
My attention went first to the comparison between the two drug consignments. There were overlaps in the chemical fingerprint, but it hardly seemed damning.
‘Just how little of the earlier drugs were found?’ I asked.
‘Honestly, there was only what we found on one of the two drivers, who had helped himself to some MDMA. On that basis, we can definitively say that at least one of the drugs in the two shipments was almost identical.’
‘Apart from that, every last pill was gone?’
He nodded. ‘They weren’t messing around.’
‘So we are actually looking at a burglary and then an explosion?’
‘Yes. The drugs were cleaned out of the building and then the bomb went off.’
‘Why do you think Daanish was the target, then? Wasn’t crores worth of drugs enough motive?’ asked Terrence.
Shayak looked at me for an explanation. ‘Sure – but why bomb a building when you had already broken in and got what you wanted? It just isn’t efficient,’ I said.
‘You think the same people who sent the shipment and bombed the building later dispatched another shipment which got intercepted and sent in the firing squad to get it?’
‘It is always possible that the drugs are being sold to a number of distributors, but the other methods employed – the way the trucks were loaded keeping the drivers in the dark, the origin of the trucks in Goa, even the way the consignments were shipped – point to the same people,’ Shayak replied.
‘Have any other shipments of the same kind b
een intercepted?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘It is very odd in its circularity,’ I mused. ‘Similar drugs, similar bust. What are the odds?’
Shayak nodded. ‘This new evidence regarding the similarity of the drugs changes things. Hopefully we will learn more by going to the source of the drugs.’
‘And also, maybe we need to relook at the second bust,’ I suggested.
‘The cops are all over that, aren’t they?’ said Terrence.
‘Not as much as you’d think,’ said Shayak.
‘Do we know how the drugs were intercepted?’
‘They claim it was a random discovery. The trucks were pulled over, and the drugs were discovered in furniture cartons.’
‘Ajay called you in to investigate when he found irregularities.’
‘Then we were called off, and all hell broke loose soon after. Ajay is off the case too.’
‘Why?’
‘He has not been given a reason.’
‘Can he be brought in?’
‘I don’t know. He is pretty ill at ease right now. The commissioner has made it clear that all collaborations with Titanium are off, even if we help close a case. I’ll give it a shot, though.’
A guard entered the room to let us know that Faiza Alam had arrived. Shayak asked him to show her to the smaller conference room and organise a fresh round of coffee, grabbed the box and headed out.
Faiza was a pale woman, eyes shadowed by dark circles which cast a pall over her pretty features.
‘Thank you for coming, Ms Alam,’ said Shayak.
‘Call me Faiza,’ she replied.
‘I know this is not easy to do. We wouldn’t be doing it at all if it wasn’t most necessary.’
‘What I don’t understand is the sudden urgency,’ she said softly, her voice quivering just a little bit.
The Bollywood Affair: Reema Ray Mysteries Page 29
