Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  ‘A new case?’

  ‘Potentially.’

  Chopra hesitated. ‘I have just taken on something important. It may tie us both up for the foreseeable future.’

  He quickly outlined the Zorabian investigation, and his early inroads into the matter.

  ‘Those Parsees are crazy,’ said Rangwalla. ‘It’s all that drinking and inbreeding. Is there anything you need me to do?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Chopra. ‘I am still working my way through the original investigation.’

  ‘In that case, will you meet this man?’

  ‘Is he an acquaintance of yours?’

  ‘Yes. He lives in my building.’

  ‘What is the case?’

  ‘It’s better if he explains it himself.’

  Chopra frowned. It was not like Rangwalla to be so cryptic. His suspicions were always raised when his deputy avoided giving straight answers.

  ‘Very well.’

  Rangwalla left the room, returning briskly with a bald, elderly gentleman in tow. The man – who must have been in his sixties – wore wire-frame spectacles, a wispy white moustache, and was dressed in a plain shirt, trousers and sandals. A row of pens poked out in regimental fashion from the front pocket of his shirt. Rangwalla introduced him as Prem Kohli.

  Chopra bade him take a seat, which he did. ‘How can we help?’ he asked.

  Kohli blinked, as if composing himself for a difficult task. There was a quality of sadness about the man that Chopra recognised. It was the distinctive air of tragedy.

  ‘Two years ago, my daughter was killed. She died when the building she was working in collapsed. Many others died with her. The official investigation ruled that it was an accident – a gas cylinder had exploded, causing a fire, which, in turn, led to the collapse. I do not believe this. I wish you to investigate. I wish to know the truth.’

  ‘What makes you think the investigation is at fault?’

  ‘It does not feel right,’ said the man. He patted his chest. ‘Here. It does not feel right here.’

  Chopra leaned back in his chair. ‘Please explain.’

  ‘I am a structural engineer by background,’ said Kohli. ‘The building where my daughter died is located in Marol. It was scheduled for demolition by the BMC. The owner of the property, a man named Hasan Gafoor, is an old friend. He gave my daughter a job at my request. She was studying textile design at Bombay University and wished to gain some practical experience.

  ‘Gafoor asked me to look over the property after the BMC engineers filed their demolition order. I did so. My conclusion was that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the building, certainly not enough for it to be condemned. Gafoor threatened to challenge the BMC ruling. A short while later the building collapsed. Everything became moot, after that. The shock of losing my only child sent me into illness; it took a long time for me to recover.’

  ‘Is that why you have waited two years?’

  ‘That and the trial. I wanted to see if justice would be done, if the truth would come out. I am convinced that it did not.’

  Chopra knew that he was in a difficult position. Dealing with a parent’s emotions was something that had always to be handled with care. Besides, he had already taken on one investigation that challenged the official version of events – did he really wish to take on another? The BMC – the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation – was a powerful outfit. As the body responsible for the civic infrastructure and administration of Mumbai, it had a budget larger than most states in the country. Such wealth, combined with the power BMC officials wielded, meant that the organisation was routinely accused of corruption and malpractice. Yet that same Byzantine structure made any investigation into its inner workings an endeavour fraught with difficulty.

  Kohli reached into the pocket of his trousers, then set down a thick bundle of five-hundred rupee notes. ‘I am willing to spend every rupee I have. I must know why my daughter had to die. If necessary, I will mortgage my home.’

  Chopra glanced at Rangwalla. He knew now why his deputy had brought the matter to him. Saying no to this man would have been beyond him.

  ‘Put your money away,’ he said eventually. ‘We will look into the matter. But I can make no promises. If it appears that the original investigation was sound then we will proceed no further.’

  ‘And if it does not?’

  ‘Then we will do whatever we can to uncover the truth,’ said Chopra.

  ‘That is all I ask for,’ said Kohli.

  An Englishman’s office is his castle

  Cyrus Zorabian maintained an office not far from his home. At precisely 10 a.m. the following morning Chopra left Ganesha in the van and was shown into a newly renovated tower block on Lal Bandar Road by William Buckley, the deceased industrialist’s PA.

  Buckley had agreed – at Perizaad Zorabian’s request – to assist Chopra in poking around Cyrus’s office; but he did not seem particularly happy about it. ‘This was Mr Zorabian’s most private place,’ he said, as he unlocked the door. ‘It has been left untouched since the police investigation.’

  Chopra shouldered his way past the PA, shaking himself out of a halo of maudlin thoughts from the previous evening . . .

  As he had suspected, his wife had been less than thrilled to discover that he had returned home with a vulture in tow. Poppy was a woman of vast emotional latitude – less than a year earlier she had given Ganesha sanctuary for a night during a monsoon deluge that had almost drowned the little elephant – but this was one vertebrate too far. She had vowed not to speak to Chopra until the carrion-eating menace was removed from her home. Her mother, the widow Poornima Devi, had been little better. ‘Who do you think you are? The vulture whisperer?’ she had sneered. ‘That scavenger will probably peck out my heart while I am asleep.’

  ‘What heart?’ Chopra had muttered, under his breath.

  He forced himself back to the matter at hand.

  He stood now in Cyrus Zorabian’s office, a lavishly appointed space that would not have looked out of place in a Merchant Ivory production. The theme was clearly Edwardian gentleman’s study: the walls were lined with oak bookcases, walnut wainscoting and embossed wallpaper. Beneath Chopra’s feet was a thick, emerald-green Oriental rug flecked with gold coins. The furniture, including the expansive desk, was baroque; the wing chairs upholstered in chintz. The only thing missing was a draconian fireplace.

  Chopra inhaled a sense of the man from this space. ‘He was an Anglophile,’ he concluded.

  ‘The Zorabian family worked closely with the British during their time in India,’ said Buckley. ‘The respect was mutual.’

  Chopra examined the bookshelves.

  The bulk of the reading material was non-fiction, encyclopedias and the like, as well as entire shelves dedicated to yellowing copies of National Geographic. There was a shelf dedicated to classical poets, both Persian and English – Firdausi, Rumi, Byron, Keats – but Chopra got the feeling these had been ordered wholesale for the purposes of fleshing out the canvas.

  ‘Was he a big reader?’

  Buckley hesitated. ‘Mr Zorabian regretted not having as much time for reading as he would have liked.’

  In other words, thought Chopra, this was all largely for effect. What did that say about the man whose murder he was attempting to solve?

  ‘What exactly was Cyrus’s role in the family business?’

  ‘He was the CEO,’ said Buckley simply.

  ‘How long has he been at the helm?’

  ‘He took over when his father died. And then he handed the business over to his son a few years ago, but when he left, Mr Zorabian stepped in again.’

  ‘Why did his son leave?’

  Buckley blinked rapidly behind his spectacles, as if he had let slip something better left unsaid. ‘Mr Zorabian and Darius had a difference of opinion regarding the direction they wished the business to go in. In the end, it was deemed prudent by all parties that Darius should branch out on his own.’

 
‘So Cyrus kicked his son out,’ mused Chopra. This was something he could not recall reading in the newspapers.

  ‘It was a mutual decision,’ countered Buckley stiffly.

  ‘I wonder if Darius would agree?’

  ‘Perhaps you can ask him when you speak to him?’ replied the Englishman testily.

  Chopra gave a brisk smile. ‘You don’t approve of Perizaad hiring me, do you?’

  ‘It is not my place to question Miss Zorabian’s decision,’ said the PA, his eyes drilling straight ahead.

  ‘Tell me, Buckley, why are you still here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, it has been three months since Cyrus’s death. You were his PA. He is no longer around. So why are you?’

  A flush stole over Buckley’s parched cheeks. ‘The winding up of Mr Zorabian’s affairs has been a complex process. I have been helping with the arrangements.’

  ‘Is Perizaad the new CEO?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you her PA?’

  Buckley pushed his spectacles up his nose. ‘She has her own personal assistant.’

  Chopra allowed the awkward silence to stretch, until Buckley could stand it no longer. ‘It is my hope that I will be retained. If not, I shall move on. There are plenty of opportunities for a man of my experience.’

  ‘How did you end up working for Cyrus?’

  ‘How does anyone end up anywhere?’ replied Buckley cryptically. ‘I grew up in England, but travelled extensively for many years, working all over the world before arriving in India. I found employment with a British expat living in Mumbai. Eventually he decided to return to the UK. He recommended me to Mr Zorabian before he left. The rest is history.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘Like him?’ echoed Buckley.

  ‘Cyrus. Did you like him?’

  ‘We had an excellent working relationship,’ said Buckley. ‘I was by his side for nine years. He was a great man. A great man.’

  So great, you had to say it twice, thought Chopra.

  He was beginning to get a measure of the Englishman, and what he sensed made him uneasy. There was something about Buckley that didn’t quite ring true. He wondered if Perizaad Zorabian had sensed it too, and that was why she had not offered him a new role.

  He made a mental note to take a closer look at the man’s background.

  Chopra next took out a photocopy of the sheet found in Cyrus Zorabian’s wallet, with its enigmatic jumble of letters: INDUKNAAUIKBAHNXDDLA.

  ‘Have you any idea what this means?’

  ‘The police already asked me this. No, I have no idea.’

  ‘Does it seem curious to you that the first five letters are IND and UK?’

  ‘Curious? Why?’

  ‘One might read them as “India” and the “United Kingdom”.’

  ‘If that is indeed what they stand for, then, yes, it is curious. But what of it?’

  ‘You are from the UK. Cyrus was from India.’

  ‘I do not see your point.’

  Chopra continued to lock eyes with the man, then put the paper away. He wasn’t sure what his point was. The line of text would have to remain an enigma for now. He struck out in another direction. ‘The police gave me a movements timeline for Cyrus on the day of his death. That morning he visited a woman named Geeta Lokhani. Lokhani has been in the news recently. She is one of only a handful of very senior women in the BMC – Mumbai’s municipal council. But she is leaving to enter politics. She plans to run for member of the state Legislative Assembly. By all accounts she is a shoo-in for her local seat when the elections take place later this year. Why was Cyrus meeting with her?’

  ‘He met with many politicians. He was a man of influence, constantly being courted for his patronage. There was nothing unusual in that.’

  ‘Was this the reason the chief minister disliked him? Lokhani is running for the key opposition party.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Buckley. ‘He never discussed that with me. But it was no secret that he and the CM didn’t see eye to eye.’

  ‘I would like to speak with Lokhani. Today, if possible. Can you arrange it?’

  ‘I will try,’ said Buckley, somewhat sullenly, Chopra felt.

  He turned his attention to his immediate environment. ‘I need to go through Cyrus’s desk.’

  ‘The police have already searched the office.’

  ‘I suspect their search would have been cursory, at best,’ said Chopra. ‘If Perizaad’s assertion is correct that they had been all but ordered to bungle the investigation.’

  Over the course of the next hour he went through the desk, and then the rest of the office, meticulously looking into every nook and cranny, pulling out books from the various shelves and checking behind them, exploring any potential hiding places. Buckley stood in silence, watching him with a cold look in his blue eyes, as if he fully expected Chopra to make off with the family silver.

  It was as he was leafing through one of the poetry books – a copy of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat which had caught his eye because of its worn spine – that a folded paper fell out.

  He scooped it up from the floor.

  It was a clipping from a popular Mumbai newspaper. The story was about a burned car wreck in which two unidentifiable human bodies had been discovered. The article was dated four months earlier.

  He held up the clipping. ‘Do you know anything about this?’

  Buckley scanned the article. ‘No,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Why would Cyrus have kept this article?’

  ‘How do you know Mr Zorabian put it there?’

  ‘Most of the books here have never been touched. But this one is the most well-thumbed of the lot. You say he wasn’t much of a reader, but I think he liked it.’

  Buckley said nothing.

  Chopra scanned the clipping again. There was little he could glean from the scant details provided. He noted, however, that the car had been found in an out-of-the-way corner of Marol, the neighbouring cantonment to his former police station in Sahar, the biggest in the region. That gave him a thread, at least, because it meant that any investigation might well have landed up at his old station.

  He continued to stare at the article. There was something about the deaths, the horror of burned flesh, that sent a shiver through him, a premonition, perhaps, that this seemingly insignificant and possibly unrelated crime – if, indeed, it was a crime – would somehow haunt him.

  Why had Cyrus held on to this? What did it mean to him? Because there was no doubt that it meant something. If there was one thing Chopra had learned over the course of his career it was that seemingly inconsequential details often helped shed light on what made a man tick. So often, that was the difference between solving a case or not.

  He folded the clipping into his pocket, then put the book back. ‘Is there anything else you would like to tell me? About Cyrus’s affairs? Anything that might be tied to his murder?’

  ‘No,’ said Buckley.

  Chopra bit his tongue. The Englishman’s clipped responses were infuriating. ‘Very well. I will wait for your call regarding the meeting with Lokhani. Thank you for your time.’

  When he was once again inside his van, Chopra called Perizaad Zorabian. ‘How much do you know about William Buckley’s past?’

  ‘He was my father’s man. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I get the feeling he wishes you hadn’t employed me.’

  She gave a tell-tale sigh, one of tiredness, stress. ‘William believes the matter should have ended with the police investigation. He feels there is little to be gained by pursuing things further. That, in some ways, I am refusing to allow my father to find peace. Perhaps he is right.’

  ‘We shall see,’ muttered Chopra.

  Rangwalla wavered in the street, lunchtime crowds passing by him in a din of chatter and industry. Before him was the Sahar police station where he had spent two decades of his working life, until he had been unceremoniously ejected from the
ranks of the Brihanmumbai police. Even though he knew it was ACP Rao who had engineered his dismissal, he could not help the bitterness he still felt towards his old employers.

  And yet without his khaki uniform, he felt strangely naked, and, more importantly, vulnerable. For the first time, perhaps, he understood how daunting it was for the ordinary Indian citizen to enter such dens of law enforcement, given the dubious reputation of the service.

  He walked across terracotta tiles towards the saloon-style doors of the station. As he reached them, a jeep screeched into the courtyard behind him. He turned to see two policemen, one he did not recognise, the other the man he had come to see, spilling from the vehicle, dragging behind them a ragged-looking individual wailing at the top of his lungs: ‘But it wasn’t my fault! They didn’t have any cash – what was I supposed to do?’

  Rangwalla winced as the larger of the two cops thrashed the man across the back of his legs with a wooden truncheon. ‘Tell it to the judge,’ he said, bundling him through the doors.

  His colleague’s eyes widened in recognition. ‘Rangwalla Sir!’ He snapped to attention and shot off a quick salute.

  ‘How are you, Surat?’ said Rangwalla.

  Constable Surat – now Sub-Inspector Surat – had once been Rangwalla’s understudy at the station. Young, overweight and irredeemably idealistic, Surat had seemed to Rangwalla to encapsulate everything that was wrong with the modern generation. He had taken the recruit under his wing, attempting to educate him in the ways of the world, but, for some strange reason, his cynical view on matters had simply washed off the junior policeman’s back.

  ‘How is Inspector Chopra Sir?’ asked Surat. He had always hero-worshipped the man, Rangwalla now remembered.

  ‘He needs your help. That’s why I am here.’

  Surat practically vibrated with enthusiasm.

  ‘About two years ago there was a fire at the Gafoor Fashions Textile Factory over in Marol. The building collapsed, killing a number of the employees working inside. A police complaint was registered against the building’s owner – here at the Sahar station. The investigation ruled it an accident, caused by negligence, but the father of one of the victims believes there was more to it. I need to talk to the officer who carried out the investigation.’