Special 26

by Gabriel Khan

  It was the day after I had been assigned the case. Ranveer, Rahul and I had met at the restaurant at nine in the morning at my behest – I wasn’t about to land up at the minister’s residence with a nervous Ranveer in tow. I had to get him to relax more and worry less, especially since he had good reason to be apprehensive: the minister would most certainly throw a fit when he saw that despite the suspension, Ranveer was still on the case.

  It helped. As Rahul and I spoke to him and drew him out, his inhibitions fell away through the binding power of shared experience.

  ‘All right, Ranveer. It’s time to face your demons,’ I said, getting up and depositing a few coins on the table for our tea. ‘We’d better leave now if we have to reach Gupta’s place by ten.’

  In a moment, Ranveer’s face turned ashen again. ‘You want me to come, sir? But why? Won’t that just anger him further? He might—’

  ‘He won’t do anything, believe me,’ I interrupted. ‘You’re with the CBI now. Don’t forget that.’

  I couldn’t figure out the fellow. he was enterprising enough to gather all that evidence on the gang even after he had been suspended and then to approach the CBI, but on the other hand, he was frightened about what he didn’t have to be frightened of. It was a strange dichotomy.

  At exactly 10 a.m., the three of us arrived at Minister Gupta’s bungalow. Rahul stayed back in the jeep while Ranveer and I went to keep our appointment. Our approach was completely unhindered – the men at the gate stood aside respectfully, the other guards strolling about on the lawn steered clear of us. It was pretty obvious that the fellow didn’t want to antagonize the law in any way. Well, not so soon, at any rate.

  A puny, bespectacled man whom I placed as Minister Gupta’s PA – notorious after the infamous ‘raid’ – opened the door for us with an almighty scowl on his face, which deepened when he saw Ranveer. ‘Come this way, please,’ he snarled. Typical, I thought, power gone to his head. Well, if the gang had slapped him, at least they had done one thing right.

  The PA led the way to a room on the right, which would typically have been the library of a bungalow such as this, but instead was filled with trophies and heads of prey. ‘The police are here, sir,’ he announced.

  For a moment, it felt like I was in a scene from a badly made mobster movie, in which the minister was presenting himself as the omnipotent mafia boss. Reclining in a mammoth armchair behind an ornate, garish table, the minister gestured for us to come in with a pudgy hand covered with rings and bracelets.

  ‘I’ve already spoken to the police,’ he said, affecting a boredom that was at odds with the thin film of sweat visible on his forehead. He was scared shitless, and he reeked.

  I decided to help nudge that emotion to the surface. Walking slowly up to the table, I leaned forward and deliberately placed my hands on the tabletop. With just enough of a pause to let him know that I was taking control of the situation, I said, as menacingly as possible, ‘I am not the police. I am the CBI.’

  At times like this, a rasping voice helps. And my voice rasped like nobody’s business.

  The illusion of calm shattered; his face crumpled. ‘CBI? Again?’

  ‘No, not again. For the first time. The men who looted you weren’t from the CBI. I am. And you will talk to me.’

  The man’s eyes swivelled to Ranveer, filled with anger for a moment, then readjusted themselves when his brain realized that the man was with me.

  Ranveer chose this moment to speak up. ‘Sir, this is Waseem Khan. He’s a big figure in the CBI. Waseem sir has decided to investigate your case.’

  The minister panicked again. ‘But-but-but I don’t want to file an FIR! I’ve already told—’

  ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to. And I’m investigating a bigger case, not your case alone,’ I said, settling down in the seat across from the minister. Just to spite the man, I placed my feet on the table with exaggerated slowness, in my very own mafia movie. ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m a fool, minister. I know exactly why you’re not lodging an FIR. I also know that you’ve told a few pals of yours, but they aren’t helping out because they’ve got the same things to hide that were stolen from you. I know everything,’ I said calmly, not taking my eyes off his. ‘Minister,’ I added.

  He gestured to Ranveer. ‘And him?’

  ‘He’s with me.’

  ‘But-but it’s because of that idiot that I was robbed in the first place! I thought he was suspended! Just you wait, I’ll see to it that—’

  I interrupted before he could get his bluster back. ‘You won’t see to anything. In fact, you should thank him, because he brought me into the game. Besides, I said he’s with me.’

  The man gave up at last. There was no way he could win, not even on his own turf. No matter how powerful you are, nothing beats two decades of experience of running after criminals and breaking them. And everyone knew I did it especially well.

  I got up. ‘I want you to show me everything. What they did, how they got in, where they searched, everything. No, not him…’ He’d started pointing to the PA. ‘I want you to come with me.’

  I was thorough. Two hours’ worth of thorough. By the time we left, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the minister was seriously considering giving it all up and going back to his cattle.

  On the way back to HQ, I got Ranveer to fill Rahul in on all that had happened. I was driving, and the steady intonation of his summary helped me concentrate.

  I was only half listening, though. There were too many thoughts rattling around in my head, the foremost of which was the realization that this wouldn’t be an easy case. The men were clearly professionals, and had thought of every single thing. I prided myself on noticing the little things that gave a criminal away, but these guys were good – I’d found nothing.

  So, we would have to do this the hard way.

  I interrupted Ranveer’s narrative. ‘When we get to HQ, I want you two to get cracking. Rahul, you’re already speaking to the police stations, correct? Good. Get on to them again. Stay on their asses until they give you something. Ranveer, did you describe the men for the sketches? Okay. Hand out those sketches to a few others. I want you to go through all the files we have – criminals, thugs, gangsters, petty crooks, don’t even leave out the chain snatchers. See if you can find a record of any of those four men.’

  The next week was spent in hectic boredom. Hectic because not a moment was wasted; it was work, work, work all the way. And boring because if you sit looking at file after file after file, it tends to get highly monotonous.

  But it wasn’t, of course, all boring. If the police diaries were correct, and if all of these acts had been committed by the same gang, then it would most certainly not be an easy chase. My eyes widened as I looked at the list of all the places the gang had hit – Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Lucknow, Patna, Indore, Guwahati, Salem, Trivandrum, Vizag – you name the place, they had struck there. Initially, there were just too many cases to put a finger on it, but I’d been on the force long enough to know that if you looked hard enough, there was always an underlying pattern.

  And soon, I found that pattern. The victims were always in that grey area between law-abiding and crooked, and the men were always masquerading as the law. Be it the CBI or the police or even the income-tax bastards in some places, these guys were making a mockery of the law, and something told me that it was deliberate. If they were good enough to get away with this, why did they constantly stick to one modus operandi? They should surely develop some other methods, because sooner or later, the police would catch on, and then their lucky streak would run out.

  But no, it seemed that these guys were mocking the police, and there had to be a reason. Usually, these things were subconscious, but this was nothing like that, it was a major part of their strategy. Of course, it stood to reason that if they used another MO, they would be virtually impossible to track amid the sheer number and variety of criminals these days, and we couldn’t have co
nnected them to the other crimes in any case.

  Suddenly, it clicked into place.

  I looked to the next table, where Ranveer was poring over the old files the CBI maintained on criminals. He looked haggard, on the verge of dropping off. Time to wake the kid up with some adrenalin.

  ‘Ranveer, wake up, man!’

  With a jolt, he came around, and when he saw me, his eyes focused immediately. Maybe I did look a little excited.

  ‘Find Mohan. Tell him to get you all the files we have on ex-cops. Go through them.’

  ‘Ex-cops?’ Ranveer said, uncomprehending. ‘What about these, sir?’

  ‘Leave them. First go through those files. I’ll go home for a bit while you’re at it.’

  ‘Okay, sir.’ Puzzled, he staggered off to find Mohan.

  It had been three days since I’d gone home. As I parked the scooter, walked up the narrow stairs and unlocked the door, I shuddered to think what my wife was planning to do with me. The last time, she’d been explicitly threatening with regard to my entrails.

  But I was lucky this time. Maybe it was because I’d told her this would get me a promotion and an increment, or maybe I was looking exhausted. Shazia took pity on me, and fed me the most delicious dinner I’d had in months. Akbar was asleep, and it was just the two of us. It helped to see the spark of desire in her eyes, as well. It would be a happy, fulfilling night, I thought.

  Yes, Shazia would be her usual shy self, which she usually was until I took her to bed – when she turned into a near-insatiable, passionate goddess.

  The bed was soft, and so was she, filled as we both were with a longing to make love like we’d never done before. She lay beside me in her nakedness, and I slipped under the sheets beside her, reached out and—

  R-R-R-R-R-RING!

  Bloody stupid phone! How the hell did it know to ring exactly when it shouldn’t!

  Leaving Shazia alone in the bed, I ran to the phone. ‘Yes, hello?’

  It was Ranveer, and he sounded excited. ‘We’ve got him, sir! I found him!’

  Lying with Shazia, the case had receded to the back of my mind. But Ranveer’s voice brought it back. I hadn’t really expected my hunch to bear results, and not so quickly, but now that it had, the puzzle immediately became a little clearer in my mind. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘P.K. Sharma, sir. Used to be a constable with the Chandigarh police, Sector 9 police station.’

  ‘Used to be, huh? I’ll be right in,’ I said, and hung up.

  I turned around, wondering how I’d tell Shazia, when I saw her standing at the door to the living room, the bedsheet wrapped around her, lightning in her eyes. Those last few words clearly hadn’t gone down very well, it was apparent.

  ‘Darling, I too want to—’ I started, but she stopped me with a look and stalked back into the room, ignoring me.

  Bloody hell.

  I dressed hurriedly, apologized to Shazia again, who by this time was pointedly pretending to be asleep, started the scooter, yelled at a night-duty cop who was trying to stop me to question where the hell I was racing to at one at night, and was at my desk in less than twenty minutes.

  ‘What’ve we got?’

  From Ranveer’s excited chatter and Rahul’s calmer tones, I pieced together what they had found out. Ranveer’s Sharmaji was a bent cop, but not fully crooked. He had been caught red-handed asking for a bribe of five thousand rupees from a local businessman. He said it was the first time he had tried to extort money, but it was actually his twenty-eighth, if all the cases lodged were to be believed. Apparently the man was trying to put together money for his second daughter’s wedding, but he had chosen an ill-advised formula.

  Sharma had been suspended in 1979, so he had eight years to hone his skills. By Ranveer’s account, he was the man in charge, which meant that he had gathered at least three more men and formed a gang, then gone about looting the country’s crooked.

  ‘How did you know he’d be an ex-cop, sir?’ said Ranveer. He was practically gushing now, seeming more in awe of me than ever.

  ‘It’s nothing, really. From your account of the raid, it was clear that the men knew exactly how to handle themselves, especially their leader. That means they must’ve had some experience, either raiding or being raided. It couldn’t have been the second, because if you’ve been raided, your file is in our records. So it had to be the first. And who would have experience in raiding a place?’

  ‘The police?’ Ranveer finished.

  ‘Exactly.’

  It fit like a surgeon’s hand in a latex glove. Disillusioned cop gets sacked, then gets back at the police by making them look like fools. It certainly fit.

  But I sensed there was something not quite right with the theory, though. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ I told Ranveer. ‘Something’s not right here.’

  ‘Not right? But you’ve got him, sir! We found him!’

  I noticed Rahul nudge Ranveer into silence, and nodded my thanks at him.

  Something was nagging me. I checked every detail in Sharma’s file, and finally, the idea began to take shape.

  From the file, Sharma came across as a simple, congenial sort with more children than cousins. He had been a high-school dropout, had just about been selected as a recruit for the police force, had a most unremarkable record in the force, and was dumb enough to get caught asking for a bribe the way he did. Whichever way I looked at it, I couldn’t see this guy climbing out of that hole in his head where his brain ought to be and turn into a brilliant criminal mastermind overnight, not in five or eight or even a hundred years. To plan heists like this gang was doing required a certain level of genius, which was singularly lacking in Sharma’s resume.

  I looked up and shook my head. ‘I think we’re wrong. Call it a gut feeling, but Sharma is not the leader.’

  ‘But sir, he was!’ protested Ranveer. ‘He was leading all the others throughout the raid, I know—’

  ‘Maybe you’re right, Ranveer. But I don’t think he’s the big fish. We’ll go with it, of course, make him our prime suspect, but unofficially, I’m telling you. Keep your eyes open for more.’

  Ranveer looked crestfallen. His big breakthrough had just been shot down, and I had to convince him it wasn’t so. ‘Listen to me, Ranveer. What you did was good. You got the breakthrough. You found Sharma. So cheer up. Even if it takes the investigation along a slightly different path, you should be happy.’

  That was all I could manage before my self-consciousness about giving speeches kicked in, and taped my mouth shut.

  I turned to Rahul. ‘What do you have?’

  Rahul was the most efficient man I knew, and he didn’t disappoint now. Handing me a piece of paper, he said, ‘That’s his address. I activated my informers while Ranveer was phoning you. One of them got back to me.’

  ‘Good. Anything else?’

  ‘No, sir. But I also made Ranveer go through all known associates of Sharma. None of the three others have any records.’

  Damn. That was a setback. But it was to be expected. In fact, it was more proof that Sharma couldn’t be the brains behind the gang. It had to be someone else.

  ‘Fine. Keep looking. There has to be something on the others. Find out whatever you can. And activate all your informers. Everyone you’ve got. It’s time we nailed these suckers.’

  All charged up, Rahul and Ranveer rushed out.

  I sat back, not even remotely fired up. From the look of things, this wasn’t going to be easy at all.

  8

  The Crazy Quartet

  The sun was rising over the city, and the teeming millions were just awakening. The city that never sleeps, but does occasionally doze a little after downing a pint or two. But in this small bylane of Dongri, there were few who noticed the sunrise.

  From his first-floor balcony, Ajay watched the figures as they scurried about, busy, wrapped up in their simple lives of work, pleasure and pain. They say every man is a unique, complex crea
ture, but from where Ajay was standing, all of them seemed singularly indistinguishable from one another.

  He stood there, lost in contemplation, for a long time – a regular sight for the neighbourhood, which he did not realize. They’d all grown used to this odd little boy who kept to himself and his books; then the odd young man who stood stone-faced and dry-eyed as he watched his father’s body being taken away to the funeral pyre; and then this odd, lanky man who still didn’t say much but would often stand at his balcony for hours on end, staring into space.

  He had been sixteen when his father had died, or rather, ceased to live: his will to get up and face another day had been eroded over the years into nothingness, until that night when he went to bed for the last time. At least it had been a peaceful death, but it was the final stamp of the orphan identity on Ajay.

  Those who met Ajay didn’t know what to make of him – a man who had an open face but eyes that were shuttered and an enigmatic smile. He was never discourteous, never loud, and kept to himself in a neighbourhood where everyone knew everything about everyone else. All his all-knowing, all-opining neighbours would be flummoxed if they were ever to attempt describing Ajay.

  The jarring sound of the phone ringing behind him broke Ajay’s train of thought. He strolled over unhurriedly and picked it up. It was Joginder.

  ‘Hello, Ajay! Hello?’ Joginder bellowed. He still had difficulty adjusting to the concept of a device with which he could hear someone hundreds of miles away. He’d almost died of joy when Ajay and Sharmaji had got him the telephone.

  ‘I can hear you, Jogi, don’t shout,’ said Ajay. ‘What news?’

  ‘All quiet.’

  ‘Anything in the papers?’

  ‘Nope, nothing yet.’

  ‘Checked everything?’

  ‘Yes. Hindi, English, Punjabi, there’s no mention of our—I mean—nothing anywhere.’

  ‘Good. Sell off everything quickly before word gets out.’

  ‘Will do.’