Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  Also by Vaseem Khan

  The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra

  The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown

  The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star

  Inspector Chopra and the Million Dollar Motor Car (Quick Read)

  Murder at the Grand Raj Palace

  Bad Day at the Vulture Club

  Vaseem Khan

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Mulholland Books

  An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Vaseem Khan Limited 2019

  The right of Vaseem Khan to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 978 1 473 68539 0

  Hardback ISBN 978 1 473 68536 9

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To UNICEF and all the other social activists and agencies that work tirelessly across the subcontinent to improve the lot of the disenfranchised and the dispossessed. Often they are unheralded and unrewarded, but, ultimately, appreciated and adored by those to whom they have dedicated their efforts.

  Contents

  The palace by the sea

  The Poo2Loo campaign

  Crime Branch showdown

  Lunchtime at the Vulture Club

  The Towers of Silence

  A vulture of substance

  A client at the restaurant

  An Englishman’s office is his castle

  A star in the making

  The best of rivals

  Prison is no place for the pious

  A fool and his money

  The prodigal son

  A question of jurisdiction

  An old friend comes in handy

  Homi has an idea

  A Latin detour

  Ginwala takes a stand

  Bringing back the dead

  A vote of no confidence

  Boman Jeejibhoy reveals the truth

  Not every fairy tale has a happy ending

  Dead men can tell tales

  A mother’s grief

  Shedding an identity

  A meeting with Karma Holdings

  What lies beneath the shell

  Run off the road

  Floating in darkness

  No place to be sick

  The worm in the apple

  Vote for Geeta Lokhani!

  A man of principle

  A killer revealed

  The meaning of duty

  Of vultures and elephants

  Homecoming

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  The palace by the sea

  Perched on a rocky outcrop thrusting dramatically into the Arabian Sea halfway up the city’s western flank, the Samundra Mahal – the ‘palace by the sea’ – seemed to Inspector Ashwin Chopra (Retd) to encapsulate everything he had come to associate with the Parsees of Mumbai. There was a sense of lofty idealism about the old place, a magnificent grandeur, somewhat dulled now by a creeping decay. Time’s inescapable embrace shimmered around the mansion’s marbled façade: in the crumbling plasterwork, the faded paint, the creepers that wound unhindered between the rusted railings of the wrought-iron gate.

  Truly, thought Chopra, with a twinge of sadness, all things must wither and die.

  He recalled Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias, which he had encountered in his youth. A similar feeling of poignant loss overcame him, for he had always staked some part of himself to the past, even as the future had taken hold of his country, rampaging her along the tracks of modernity like a runaway train. There was still much to be gained, he felt, by reflecting on the millennia-long journey that had laid the foundations for the glittering new society he saw around him.

  In Mumbai, foremost among those who had paved the way for this transformation were the Parsees. Over the span of three centuries their industry and acumen had brought wealth to the great metropolis, and with it the lifeblood of commerce. They had worked for and with the British, then strived just as tirelessly for the Independence movement. In post-colonial India, Parsee philanthropy had shaped social welfare, the arts and, to a large extent, the city’s cosmopolitan mindset.

  Yet, for all this, the Parsees were at a crossroads.

  Once heralded as the grand architects of the city, now fewer than forty thousand remained, an ever dwindling population besieged by the twin onslaughts of intermarriage and their own insularity.

  In a very real sense the Parsees of Mumbai were dying.

  Which made the murder of Cyrus Zorabian, one of the community’s most respected grandees, all the more shocking. For if death could so unceremoniously take a man like Cyrus, then what hope remained for those left behind?

  Chopra had parked his sturdy Tata Venture beneath a succession of coconut palms lining the narrow road that snaked past the mansion. He stepped out now and walked to the rear of the van. A puff of hot air escaped as he swung open the door and let out his companion, the one-year-old baby elephant that had been sent to him almost a year earlier by his long-vanished uncle, Bansi. In the letter accompanying the little calf, Bansi had failed to explain his reasons for sending the enigmatic gift to Chopra, suggesting only that: ‘this is no ordinary elephant.’

  In many ways, his words had proved prophetic.

  The elephant’s arrival had coincided with Chopra’s own retirement from the Mumbai police service, a departure forced upon him by a heart condition known as unstable angina. For a man yet to achieve his fiftieth year, a man who for three decades had known only a singular purpose – the pursuit of justice in khaki – the loss of his post, and with it his allotted place in the grand scheme of things, had been devastating.

  He had wasted little time in self-pity, instead steeling himself to rise swiftly from the ashes of his former life.

  He had opened a restaurant, and, shortly afterwards, a private detective agency.

  The restaurant had been a deliberate attempt to embrace the future, but the agency had materialised by happenstance in the wake of a case that Chopra had continued to pursue after his retirement, ultimately unravelling a major criminal network in the city. The agency’s name he owed to his new ward. He had christened the animal Ganesha, after the elephant-headed god that inspired such maverick devotion around the country. During that first investigation he had discovered that his unusual inheritance possessed depths of intelligence and resourcefulness he could not have guessed at. A year later there was still much about his new companion that he had yet to fathom. But there was little doubt in his mind that his uncle had been right: there was something extraordinary about the creature. He would never claim that the elephant was, in any way, his partner at the detective agency – for that was most assuredly not the case – but he had quickly fallen into the habit of taking the little calf along
with him on his peregrinations about the city. Ganesha needed the exercise, and, though he would be loath to admit it, Chopra had become so accustomed to his presence that he sometimes forgot just how ludicrous it might seem to others, a grown man wandering around the crowded metropolis with an elephant in tow.

  Then again, this was India.

  There were stranger sights on the streets of the subcontinent’s most fabulous city than a baby elephant.

  Ganesha trotted down the ramp into the bright haze of mid-morning.

  The temperature was already in the high thirties; heat shimmered from the tarmac and came rolling in off the sea in warm gusts that rustled the leaves of the palms lining the road.

  Gulls cawed in the silence, a rare commodity in Mumbai.

  The little elephant waggled his ears.

  For a brief moment he appeared to contemplate the expanse of blue water glittering before him, sweeping out to a sparkling haze in the far distance, then turned and followed Chopra towards the Samundra Mahal.

  They were met inside the gates of the Zorabian mansion by a tall, severe-looking white man who Chopra guessed to be in his early forties. Introducing himself as William Buckley, personal secretary to the murdered man, he led them through a formal garden and into the mansion. Buckley, with his blond crew cut, watery blue eyes, sunken cheeks and spare frame put Chopra in mind of an ascetic of the type India had in abundance.

  The interior of the mansion was lavishly appointed. Yet, once again, Chopra had the feeling that these fixtures – Carrara marble, Bohemian chandeliers, teakwood sideboards – were the legacy of past grandeur.

  Buckley swept them along a wood-panelled corridor, lined with a succession of baroque, robber-baron family portraits: the Zorabians of Mumbai, staring down upon them through a haze of constipated myopia. Chopra knew that the Zorabian dynasty – beginning with old ‘Bawa’ Rustom Zorabian – numbered among the original group of Parsee families to settle in Mumbai, having fled their ancestral homeland in Persia to protect their faith from an emergent Islam. Combining native intelligence with an unstinting work ethic, they had quickly found their feet in the teeming metropolis, subsequently prospering under British rule. Venerated for their philanthropy and business acumen, the Zorabians, like many Parsees, had managed the enviable trick of amassing great wealth in a land distinguished by its poverty, yet continuing to enjoy the general goodwill of those around them.

  When Independence finally arrived – with a cataclysmic political thunderclap – their close ties to the British had not, to all intents and purposes, earned them lasting opprobrium. Indeed, most Indians had a healthy respect, even an affection – if sometimes grudging – for the lovably eccentric Parsee community, heirs to the legacy of their forebears who had created much of Mumbai’s wealth, and built many of the city’s visionary institutions.

  It was no wonder, then, that Cyrus Zorabian’s death had made headlines around the country; particularly so because of the shocking nature of his passing.

  At the end of the corridor Buckley paused.

  He nodded up at the portrait before him. ‘Mr Zorabian,’ he said simply.

  Chopra examined the painting with a critical eye: Cyrus Zorabian in his pomp, a tall, fleshy man with the glossy cheeks of the ancestrally wealthy, an impressive whisky-drinker’s nose, and a head of swept-back, darkly dyed hair. Dressed in an ivory-coloured three-piece suit, he cut a dashing figure on the front lawn of his home. Here, the portrait suggested, stands a man of rare influence and power. A man used to bending fate to his whim.

  And yet, ultimately, even the Cyrus Zorabians of this world were forced to kneel before the greatest leveller of them all – death.

  They entered an expansive drawing room – fitted out with claw-footed furniture and an ancient Pianola – where the woman Chopra had been summoned to see awaited.

  Perizaad Zorabian was younger than he had imagined. Elegant and attractive, with shoulder-length jet-black hair parted dead centre of her high forehead, an aquiline nose, and piercing brown eyes, she put him in mind of a mortician. There was something unsettlingly clinical in her look, and in the precision with which she greeted them.

  Her gaze rested only momentarily on Ganesha, who shuffled closer to Chopra, unnerved by the scrutiny. For a second Chopra thought she would comment on the little elephant’s presence, but instead she turned to address Buckley. ‘Please leave us.’

  The Englishman frowned, then seemed to think better of objecting. He dipped his head and exited the room. Chopra thought that he detected an unspoken animosity in the air.

  ‘He worked for my father for almost a decade,’ said Perizaad, perhaps sensing his thoughts. ‘I think he still believes he should be consulted on all matters relating to him.’

  ‘I am very sorry for your loss,’ said Chopra automatically, and then regretted the words. He had never been a man for appearances.

  Perizaad ignored the sentiment.

  Instead, she rose from her teakwood desk, and began to pace the room. She wore a grey trouser suit, belted high at the waist. A cloud of perfume trailed her as she weaved figures-of-eight over the marble flooring.

  ‘Thank you for coming so quickly. I know that you must be a busy man.’ Abruptly, she wheeled on them, frightening Ganesha into shrinking back behind him. ‘How much do you know about my father’s death?’

  ‘I know that he was murdered three months ago. I know that no suspect has ever been identified for his killing.’

  ‘As you can imagine, this is not a satisfactory state of affairs.’

  ‘You are unhappy with the police investigation?’

  ‘The police!’ She slapped out an angry hand, accidentally knocking over a vase perched on the corner of her desk. It fell to the floor, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. Ganesha’s trunk vanished behind Chopra’s legs. ‘They have redefined the meaning of incompetence.’

  ‘If I remember correctly they concluded that your father was the victim of a random attack. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘My father was killed inside Doongerwadi,’ said Perizaad. ‘Murdered on holy ground. In the entire history of the Parsees in this country no one has ever been murdered in the Towers of Silence, let alone a Parsee of my father’s standing. No one would dare.’

  ‘And yet it happened.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, a shadow clouding her eyes. ‘It happened. And the killer is still out there, somewhere.’

  Chopra considered the matter.

  He had understood when Buckley had contacted him that Cyrus Zorabian’s murder most likely lay behind his invitation to the Samundra Mahal. The PA’s call had brought back to him the fuss in Mumbai when the Parsee industrialist’s body had been discovered. The sensational nature of the killing, coupled with the victim’s stature, had kept the city’s news editors frothing at the mouth for weeks.

  Eventually, as it became clear that no leads or suspects were forthcoming, the story had died a quiet death. In a city such as Mumbai, with twenty million inhabitants, twenty million stories waiting to be told – or twenty million tragedies waiting to unfold, as his friend and pathologist Homi Contractor would often put it – there was no shortage of news.

  Thinking of Homi – who himself was a Parsee – reminded Chopra that this was a unique situation. The Parsees, so heavily outnumbered in the seething mass of India’s billion-strong horde, were, in many ways, under siege from without as well as from within. Chopra had always found them an agreeable and generous bunch – even Homi, with his surly disposition, concealed a heart of, if not gold, then certainly something approaching it.

  Gold alloy, perhaps.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what makes you think there is more to your father’s death than the police have concluded?’

  ‘Because of how many unanswered questions remain. My father was a careful man. What was he doing inside Doongerwadi, alone, at that time? And there are other things about the case that the police have simply made no headway with. Either beca
use they were incompetent, or because they simply didn’t care to.’

  ‘Yet you think I might do a better job? I was a policeman for thirty years.’

  She arched her eyebrows at him. ‘Do you know much about my father, Chopra?’

  ‘He was wealthy. He was a widower. He was well-liked – generally speaking. Beyond that I know no more than the average Mumbaiker.’

  ‘My father is – was – an institution in this city. Because of our family’s history here, and our varied business interests, he knew just about everyone with any influence in Mumbai. Yet he was also, socially speaking, a clumsy man. Apt to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. He used to joke that he’d put so many feet into his mouth over the years that he should have been born a millipede.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘The truth is that he was hated by many of the people who run this city, including the chief minister. My father clashed with him last year over the rise of right-wing militancy in the state. He felt that the CM was pandering to the demagogues – not doing enough to shut down their hate speech.’

  ‘Is this why you believe the police haven’t investigated his murder thoroughly?’

  ‘The commissioner of police serves at the pleasure of the chief minister, does he not?’

  Chopra made no comment but privately felt that this was doing the man a disservice. He had met the commissioner on two prior occasions, and although he wasn’t quite convinced that he was the right man – or woman – for the role, nevertheless he was a far cry from the sort of kowtowing oaf that had for so long distinguished the post. The truth was that no one could hope to run the police service for a city such as Mumbai without being a political animal. Wooden ears, a hollow heart and a forked tongue. That was how Homi had described the ideal aspirant to the role.

  ‘Have you spoken with him?’

  ‘The commissioner? Yes, of course.’