by Juggi Bhasin
Rahul got up and eyed Suhel with a pitying stare.
‘Shut the fuck up, Suhel. Don’t play the martyr with me. Adjust the advance in expenses. You are the chief operating officer, not the chief wrecking officer. Grow up, and get on with your life. Get a woman or a man or anyone you feel like. You have been married to the company for far too long. You think too much. Try taking it easy.’
On his way out of the room, he turned and spoke to Suhel. ‘One last thing, old friend. Do me a favour. Try and respect my girl. Don’t force me to make a choice.’
Rahul went out of the room, and a young girl pressed a glass of wine into his hand. He hesitated but was too absorbed to refuse it.
‘Hey, have you seen Simone?’ he asked her.
‘She was last seen in the balcony holding court,’ answered the girl. Rahul headed there through a passage strewn with balled-up paper napkins, red wine spills, and even a torn condom outside his bedroom door. The music was deafening by now, and the bedroom door was ajar. A couple was making out on his bed.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘That’s my bed. You won’t be here tomorrow to wash the sheets!’
The half-naked couple quickly disengaged and, picking up their clothes, ran to the connecting bathroom.
Rahul smiled. Shaking his head, he walked across to the balcony. Simone was in deep conversation with some of her teammates. He walked to the other end of the balcony and leaned against it, taking in the view. The lights at the DLF golf course and club were twinkling. One of Simone’s teammates yelled at him, ‘She’s all yours, Chief. We were just leaving.’
‘Take your time,’ Rahul responded lightly. He really did not mind being alone for some more time. The teammates laughed and left Simone and Rahul standing at two ends of the balcony.
‘It’s done,’ he called out to her. ‘I told him in no uncertain words that he has to change. If he persists, I will take the next step. Is that all right?’
‘I am happy for you, Rahul,’ she replied after a pause.
‘Us, you mean?’
She kept enigmatically quiet.
‘What’s the matter? You seem distant. I did all this for you. I could have fixed things at the meeting itself. I threw the party to send a message to everyone that we are in it together. We have plans, and a hundred Suhels cannot come between us.’
Simone smiled, sipping her fifth glass of champagne.
‘That subject exhausts me. It is not relevant in the larger scheme of things.’
She attempted to keep her glass on the parapet, but her hand slipped and it crashed ten storeys below. She leaned over to look where the glass had landed and spoke as if she was addressing the larger universe.
‘What are the chances, Rahul, that the glass could have landed on someone and a shard cut open somebody’s head? Imagine all the blood and brains oozing out?’
Rahul walked up to her and held her from behind. This was his signature move with her. She shivered. He spoke into her ear. ‘You have a vivid imagination. I am more prosaic. I live in a world of numbers and balance sheets.’
He kissed the nape of her neck, and his hand moved up trying to discover her areola under the black top. His eyes closed with pleasure.
Softly, she asked him, ‘Have you ever noticed how birds have this habit of hitting their heads against glass panes? Yet, they keep coming back, again and again. The simple explanation is that they cannot alter their flight path. But I think it is something else. I think they have a neurotic gene somewhere in them, and they have a compulsive desire to spill open their brains. They enjoy this ritual of slow, painful death.’
Rahul, by now stroking her breasts, was suddenly alarmed. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Simone? Look at me.’
She turned, and he looked into her unfocused, widened eyes. She gently pushed him away.
‘Rahul, I have seen the face of fear. I want to tell you about it. I want to share with you what I have seen. But I have had so much champagne that I cannot hold my pee. Wait here for me. I will be back soon.’
He could not help but grin. ‘Sure, babes. I’ll be waiting. Just FYI, there was a couple making out on my bed. They went into the bathroom. They should be out by now, but I thought you should know.’
She stopped and turned to look at him. To him, she looked like her old self, smiling, full of love. She traced his hairline with her finger and then walked away, leaving him alone on the balcony. Rahul sipped his wine and looked out, waiting for her to return.
The minutes ticked away. The temperature outside dropped. The parapet felt cold, and only a few lights continued to blaze away in the condominium at this time of the night. The music from the living room sounded muffled. It was that odd hour when the party animals were drained of energy and everyone wanted to huddle in corners. Rahul, too, felt relaxed, almost sleepy. He sat on a cane chair in the balcony, waiting for Simone. He felt as if all the troubles of the past week had suddenly disappeared. A welcome drowsiness filled him. He felt connected to everything around him. He never knew when sleep overtook him.
It was a while before he woke up, feeling cold and alone. The music had stopped. For a moment, he wondered if everyone had left. He looked at his wristwatch and frowned. He had lost track of time. It had been almost half an hour since Simone had gone to relieve herself. Maybe she had forgotten her promise to Rahul and joined the swinging crowd in the living room. Or else, God forbid, she had puked, maybe missed a step on the tiled bathroom floor and was lying with a gash across her head.
He ran to his bedroom and rushed into the en suite bathroom. The lights were on, there was tissue paper carelessly thrown around the pot, and even somebody’s puke, but no Simone. He opened the wash cubicle, but it was empty. He breathed a little easier and walked to the living room. The crowd had lost its enthusiasm for dancing and people were sprawled all across the room in various states of drowsiness. Simone was not among them. He quickly searched the other rooms, but there was no sign of her. A deep sense of uneasiness was growing within him. She had been in a strange kind of mood. Maybe she had stepped out or gone down for a smoke, he thought, trying to keep all negative feelings at bay.
Over the next hour, he searched in every inch of the condominium for Simone. A young staffer was sent to her barsati to check if she had left without informing anyone. Rahul tried calling her cellphone a number of times, but it was switched off. After a while, the relatively sober ones also joined the search. Suhel pitched in too and told Rahul, ‘She must have been upset about something. Maybe she left in a huff for a friend’s place.’
Rahul snapped back, ‘Well, that would have to be on your account, wouldn’t it? She’s many things, but she does not throw tantrums. It would be most unlike her.’
‘What can I say, Rahul? Yeah, she was upset with me. Maybe she’s taken a train to Goa. Her mom lives there . . .’
Rahul shot back again. ‘Not unless that train goes to Portugal. That’s where her mom shifted to a year ago. Do me a favour. Stop speculating and move your butt. Get someone to check with all her friends. And if nothing comes up, then . . . well . . . call up the hospitals. I am beginning to get a bad feeling about this.’
In the next few hours, most of the Yummimages senior management had fanned out looking for Simone. The search carried on till the next day, and by noon, when it had yielded no results, Rahul knew it was time to call the police.
He was anxiously waiting for the police when an inspector with the Gurugram crime branch, who had been handed charge of the investigation, walked into Rahul’s apartment with his team. He was chewing on a toothpick and had a casual air about him. There was something about his heavy-set gait and watchful eyes that set Rahul on edge. He had a sense that the man would be interested in things other than the facts of the investigation.
‘My name’s Kripal, Sirjee,’ the inspector drawled, addressing Rahul. ‘I take it you are the affected party. I will talk to you at length after I finish with the rest. But first, we need to search the house and interview
all the partygoers.’
‘Please do,’ answered Rahul curtly.
Kripal nodded and barked orders to his team. They searched the rooms and talked to the company’s senior staff. Rahul felt that even as Kripal went about the investigation, he was looking at him from the corner of his eye. It was as if instead of looking for evidence, he had narrowed in on who he was going to pronounce guilty. Rahul felt extremely wary as he had heard of several messed-up cases where the innocent had been rounded up based on just a hunch. Later that evening, they finished with the interviews and permitted the partygoers to go home. Kripal then turned his attention to Rahul and Suhel.
‘So, Sirjee, here is the thing. Your office people know nothing. They have no idea what could have happened. All they did during the course of the evening was to drink and smoke hash. You do know that smoking hash is a crime? I can actually book all of them and you for this illegal activity. But never mind. I will let it pass. You owe me big time for not making a case of consuming illegal substances under your roof.’
He continued. ‘So, Sirjee, we will address the issue at hand. It is about Miss Shamona’s disappearance. Your fiancée, correct? Er . . . by the way, is she a foreigner? Has to be with a name like that. But never mind that. What do you think has happened? She’s disappeared. So what? It could be a disagreement you might have had with her. It could be a lovers’ tiff. She might have gone to a place you are not aware of. Such things happen all the time. Or is it that you suspect something else? Do you think she might have been abducted, perhaps even . . .’
Kripal let his conclusions of what might have happened hang in the air. He smiled and chewed on his toothpick. ‘You fear the worst, Sirjee, don’t you? I wonder why?’ Rahul, exhausted from the exertions of the previous night, chose not to respond. Suhel stepped in to answer the questions.
‘Mr Kripal, let me make a few corrections first. Her name is Simone, not Shamona. She’s Goan, very much part of the country, and Simone is not an unusual name in Goa . . .’
The inspector began to laugh hysterically.
‘Sirjee, same thing, don’t you get it? It is Shamona in Haryana. In Goa, you can call her by another name. By God, Sirjee, did not they teach us at school “What’s in a name?”’
Suhel looked awestruck. He backtracked. ‘You are so very right, Inspector! My fault really. Shall we continue?’
‘Sirjee, be my mehmaan!’
Suhel had a hard time controlling himself. Nevertheless, he continued.
‘Second point, Inspector. Rahul and Simone, sorry Shamona, are not engaged. They were . . . are rather . . . very good friends. They did not have a tiff, or a lovers’ quarrel. It would be most unlikely, rather out of character, for Shamona to walk away without informing anyone. She’s a very tough person, and she never sulks. That’s why we are very worried. She’s never done anything like this ever.’
Kripal spat out the toothpick and inserted a new one between his teeth. He smiled for Suhel’s benefit.
‘Sirjee, tell me something. Have you ever worked in a company called HMV, His Master’s Voice?’
‘No, never,’ replied Suhel dully.
‘If not, why don’t you allow your master to speak?’
Rahul looked up and asked Suhel to step back.
‘You are right, Inspector. Suhel is a very close friend. His first instinct is to shield me. He can’t bear my grief. Ask me anything you wish to.’
Kripal took out the toothpick and began to clean his teeth.
‘Now we are talking, Sirjee. A good film runs because of the hero and not the supporting cast. So, Sirjee, I come back to my original point. Why are you so worried? Give it time. She will come back. Or is it that you are not telling me something? Maybe that’s why you are so worried?’
‘I don’t understand, Inspector. What are you trying to say?’
‘Okay let me explain, Sirjee. Let me give you a nice example.’
Rahul looked at Kripal in complete exasperation. He had not eaten a morsel since last evening. The exhaustion had completely claimed him, but there was still some way to go thanks to Kripal. The man did not know when to stop.
‘So, Sirjee, this is a case I cracked some time ago. There were these two corporate types, not very different from you two. You could call them the Jai and Viru of the corporate world. Viru was sleeping with a girl who worked at his office. He showed her rose-tinted dreams that he would marry her. He continued to have fun with the girl, while Jai watched his back.’
‘Sirjee, lust can be the colour purple one day and orange the next day. We live in tempting times. You have a night of fun, maybe some more similar nights, but then it goes stale. You get tired of the same girl under the sheets.’ Kripal drew a hole in the air using his thumb and second finger. He smiled broadly, his eyes glittered. ‘You must have heard the saying, “variety is the spice of life”. Whoever came up with it must have been a golfer. Ask me why, Sirjee?’
‘Why, Inspector?’ asked Rahul with a deadpan expression.
‘Because, Sirjee, you can only discover variety on an eighteen-hole course. You don’t play golf on a single hole!’
‘Brilliant, Inspector,’ remarked Rahul, clearly not amused.
‘Thank you, Sirjee. Hope you are not offended even though you look like it. Should I continue with Jai and Viru’s story?’
‘I am all ears. Haven’t heard a better story.’
‘Well, it gets more interesting. So, Jai and Viru, like so many people, would head to the so-called Thai massage parlours after playing golf. You don’t need great imagination to know that they went there to get massaged by chikni chamelis. So, it was double delight for the likes of Viru: first the office girl and then the massage girl. The only problem was that Viru Bhaisahib became careless, and the office girl was soon pregnant.’
‘Then, Sirjee, the story took an interesting turn. The girl wanted Viru to marry her. But Viru being a veteran of the eighteen-hole golf course wouldn’t even dream of such a proposition. He refused, and the office girl burst into tears, threatening to make the matter public. That’s when the cookie began to crumble for Viru Bhaisahib. He wanted someone to clean the mess. So, what did dear friend Jai do? He contacted someone to clean the mess. Now, Sirjee, there are so many gangs operating along the NH-8. They specialize in such jobs. The office girl disappeared and her body turned up in a gutter in another state. Jai and Viru thought they had got away with the perfect murder. But then I entered the scene. And me, Sirjee? I don’t rest till I find out the story behind the story. Get the picture, Sirjee?’
‘Today Jai and Viru are behind bars, awaiting trial. They face murder charges. At the very least, they will get a life sentence. Viru must be cursing the day he stopped playing the one-hole game and walked into the eighteen-hole course.’
Kripal spat out the toothpick and compulsively reached in his pocket for another one.
‘Very entertaining story, Inspector,’ Rahul said. ‘Surely your talents lie elsewhere besides policing. But why are you telling me this story?’
Kripal continued to smile.
‘Sirjee, what if Viru and Jai were Rahul and Suhel?’
There was a moment of silence after Kripal levelled the accusation.
‘You are going too far, Inspector,’ warned Rahul.
‘Am I?’ snarled Kripal, his mood changing suddenly. ‘You take me to be Donald bhai Trump to believe this disappearing girl story?’
‘Is there another story? Like a concerned citizen, I called in the police. And what has your response been? You accuse us of some brain-dead conspiracy? Do you think I am some drunk driver you caught at IFFCO Chowk who can be blackmailed for a bribe? You think I don’t know where this is going?’
Kripal looked as though he had been slapped. He looked at his team waiting for instructions. He signalled them to leave the apartment. He was furious when he turned back towards Rahul.
‘You fucking bahenchod, you humiliated me in front of my boys! So, yes, you got it right this time. My time is mo
ney. I have to give some to my team too. You will pay, and lots of it . . .’
The dehydration, the hunger, the sense of hopelessness and the outrage—all of it took over Rahul. Completely out of character, he spat in Kripal’s face.
‘Fuck you, slob! You don’t get a penny. I will report you to the higher-ups.’
Kripal slapped Rahul hard, which sent him reeling into a corner. The inspector unhooked his belt and came after him, even as Rahul looked on stunned.
The first blow landed across Rahul’s face. He screamed as the fight went out of him. He was writhing in pain. Suhel realized what was happening. He folded his hands and tried to come between the two men, requesting the inspector to calm down, but Kripal pushed him aside. He was enraged now. ‘Gandu, chutiya chief executive, Gurugram police wallah pe haath uthata hai? Harami, I would have settled for some cash. I was making my move. But you had to play the hero. Now, you wait and see the number of cases I file against you. You will be spending half your life in a jail cell. I will make you pay every day till you wish you were never born. But, first, I am going to make this humiliation count.’
Kripal savagely beat Rahul till his back was as red as a ribbon, his skin torn and bleeding. He only let go when Suhel flung himself at his feet and begged him to stop. Soon after, a handcuffed Rahul was marched into a police van that took him to the DLF Phase-11 police station. Kripal took out the first information report register and filed a complaint of obstruction of justice and assault on a public servant. He added a number of tough penal code sections to buttress his case.
Suhel, meanwhile, furiously worked the phones and finally established a connection with the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) of Gurugram district. He made a deal with the commissioner that involved the transfer of a fairly large sum of money. People from top to bottom were paid to drop the charges. The case, however, was not closed.
The DCP instructed Suhel, ‘Your CEO will stay in jail tonight, Mr Suhel. You can get him released on bail tomorrow. With great difficulty, I have persuaded the investigating officer to bring down the charges. If such an episode happens again, then all bets are off. Counsel your idiot CEO. I promise you, we will seriously look for Miss Simone. But Kripal will stay as investigating officer in this case. That bit is non-negotiable.’
