Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  Chopra was, and always had been, the soberest of men.

  ‘Mr Poo!’ he gasped. ‘Only in India! No one would believe it in the west.’

  ‘It is a noble endeavour,’ she said sternly, suddenly suspicious that he was laughing at her.

  ‘I am sure it is, Poppy,’ he replied, calming himself. ‘And you are a noble woman.’ His phone rang, and he answered it, glad of the distraction.

  It was the vet Lala. ‘So, the blood test came back on your vulture. Most curious. She had significant quantities of diclofenac in her system.’

  ‘Diclofenac?’ Chopra mentally riffled through his notes. ‘The chemical that almost wiped out the vultures a decade ago?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Did you not tell me that it had been banned?’

  ‘I did, and it has.’

  Chopra’s mind ticked over silently. ‘What does this mean?’

  ‘I took the liberty of checking with some colleagues. Diclofenac is definitely not being administered to livestock any more. There are still old stocks of it lying around, but no farmer would be foolish enough to use it – the government has been very harsh on transgressors. This leaves us with two possibilities. Either your vulture accidentally stumbled across some diclofenac and ingested it – though heaven only knows why she would do that; no vulture would touch it in its raw state – or . . . or someone intentionally fed it to her. Inside a carcass. A dead rodent. A small monkey. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Why would anyone do that?’

  ‘Don’t you read the papers? Plenty of people – non-Parsees, I mean – want Doongerwadi shut down. Those Parsees have made some powerful enemies with their body disposal routine. I suppose the logic would be: kill off the vultures and you kill off Doongerwadi. Then again, it might be someone closer to home. Someone who had access to the place, someone disillusioned with the whole damned business. A disgruntled employee, perhaps.’

  Chopra suddenly had a vision of Anosh Ginwala, the head corpse-bearer at Doongerwadi, a man who had professed exactly the sort of sentiments Lala was describing. Cyrus had publicly stood up for the old values, sacking two priests for deviating from the millennia-old tradition of leaving it to the vultures and instead cremating bodies. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that Ginwala had played a hand in that incident. Or perhaps, bitter at Cyrus’s refusal to meet his demands for better pay and conditions, Ginwala had simply decided to sabotage Doongerwadi’s operation.

  ‘This is most helpful,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you can do something else for me? I wish to know the names of all those holding diclofenac in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.’

  ‘Let me guess, you intend to ask if they have sold any of it to someone connected to your client’s death?’ Lala scoffed. ‘And you think they will happily incriminate themselves by telling you?’

  ‘You would be surprised what people will say when put on the spot. Besides, I doubt that it would have been illegal for them to sell the diclofenac on.’

  ‘I have a better idea. Why don’t you let me follow up for you? At least I know what I am talking about when it comes to this chemical.’

  Chopra was surprised by the offer. ‘You wish to help?’

  ‘I’ve always wondered what it might be like. Playing detective. Kicking down doors, slapping suspects around. Eating enormous meals at the taxpayers’ expense.’

  Chopra frowned. ‘If you are to help you must take this seriously. A man has been murdered.’

  ‘It was just a joke,’ said Lala. ‘I will be the very definition of sober when I question these people. Besides, it doesn’t sit well with me that someone has been out there trying to kill off these endangered birds. At least we now know how you managed to run that vulture over. The quantity of diclofenac your bird ingested was not enough to kill her, but more than enough to give her the mother of all hangovers. As bad a driver as you may be, Chopra, even you couldn’t hit a healthy vulture. They have a sixth sense for predators. They’re used to eating with one eye open.’

  Rangwalla had had few occasions to visit the BMC headquarters in south Mumbai. As the seat of urban governance for the Mumbai metropolitan region, the municipal HQ had long discouraged the average citizen from casual visitation. A man had truly to be in desperate need to enter the Byzantine administrative swamp that resided within the century-old neo-Gothic edifice.

  As he weaved his way across the crowded square from the CST train station, blasted from all directions by a frenzy of rabid horns – this was, after all, one of the most congested junctions in the city – he craned his neck upwards to take in the building’s magnificent façade.

  With its cusped windows, dominating arches and lion-headed gargoyles, the place gave off a distinctly colonial air: the British had built it as a definitive marker of authority; now it had become simply another facet of the city’s architectural heritage, a proud symbol of India’s commitment to self-rule.

  The area around the building had once been called Gallows Tank. It was here that criminals convicted by the Portuguese founders of the city had been publicly hanged, left to swing in the street, covered in cow dung and egg shells, as an example to others.

  Inside the main doors, Rangwalla was confronted by a sweeping stone staircase rising out of a softly lit central hall. As he made his way up to the Citizen Facilitation Centre he couldn’t help but notice how the much vaunted renovation had transformed the place since the last time he had set foot here, over a decade earlier. Gone were the rickety old benches, clunky steel cupboards and creaky ceiling fans. In their stead were plush couches, air-conditioning and chandeliers. Lovingly restored Minton tiles, stained-glass windows and buffed Burma teak roof arches added to the newfound grandeur of the place.

  At the citizen’s centre, he found his onward progress halted by a queue. He took a ticket and sat down to wait.

  It was an hour later that he was finally able to present his request to the pleasant-looking woman behind the counter. As he explained what he was after, the woman looked him up and down, and then down and up, as if he had demanded from her an answer to the very meaning of life. Finally, she asked him to wait, then scuttled off to fetch someone who might be able to make something of his unusual query.

  Another hour passed, and then, just as Rangwalla was drifting off to sleep on the comfortable couch on which he had ensconced himself, a short, grey-haired man sporting bottle-bottom glasses and dressed in the national uniform of the Indian bureaucratic flunky – untucked white shirt and dark trousers – tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Please come with me.’

  Rangwalla followed the fellow to an office.

  Once they were both seated, the man fixed him with a wobbly look through his glasses. ‘My name is K.D. Soman. I am a senior administrator here at the BMC. You have requested information about a matter that we have marked as closed. Can you tell me what this is about?’

  Rangwalla hesitated, wondering how much it was prudent for him to reveal. After all, if Hasan Gafoor was correct, BMC officials may well have been involved in the sordid attempt to strong-arm the textile factory owner.

  Eventually, he decided that he would have to take a leap of faith. Without Soman’s help, he was at a dead-end.

  Quickly, he explained the situation that had brought him to the bureaucrat’s desk.

  The man picked up a pen and absentmindedly tapped on a small bronze of the god Krishna. His expression had compacted into one of concern. ‘This is most irregular,’ he said. ‘We have a complaints division to investigate precisely this sort of matter.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that that could take months,’ said Rangwalla. He did not bother to add that there were documented cases of complaints made against the city’s civic authority that had taken so long to resolve that the complainant had, literally, died of old age. Instead, he nodded at the picture on Soman’s desk of a young man who, from the facial resemblance, he presumed was his son. ‘I see that you are a father. The man who hired me lost a daughter in that building
. Can you imagine if such a thing happened to you?’

  ‘That is unfair,’ said Soman. His eyes involuntarily went to the photograph, a face that only a father could love. He sighed. ‘Do you know what it takes to run a city like Mumbai? It is akin to spinning a million plates in the air at the same time. If you upset the balance, everything could come crashing down.’ He sighed again. ‘But neither can we function if there is grit in the engine of governance. Let me see what I can find.’

  Ginwala takes a stand

  On his second visit to Doongerwadi in the space of three days Chopra was let in, this time through the main, western gate, by Ramin Bulsara. Anosh Ginwala’s deputy in the community of corpse-bearers was a plump man with sloppy white whiskers that seemed to have washed up on his face like debris on the tide.

  Bulsara led Chopra to a rundown collection of brick houses – little more than hovels – a hundred yards from the gate, hidden from inconvenient eyes by a screen of fig trees. In the dusty courtyard between the homes, Chopra found a gang of red-hatted corpse-bearers sitting on frayed charpoys, chatting, smoking and watching a soap opera on a small TV set. Children ran around them, and women called occasionally from inside one of the shabby homes.

  Chopra paused. An idea had occurred to him.

  He hovered by the men, Ganesha eliciting curious glances, then sat down beside them and began to gently probe them for information. He discovered that they were only too happy to talk. Like Ginwala they had a bellyful of complaints about their circumstances. He gradually steered the topic around to the night of Cyrus’s death. The men became more animated, each attempting to outdo the other in their supposed revelations about the affair. Chopra casually asked them about Ginwala discovering the corpse, his hatred of Cyrus. This set off another round of animated gossip. Even Bulsara became vocal. Chopra got the impression that there was little love lost between the deputy and his senior.

  By the time he moved on, he had a wealth of new information. His next task would be to sort out the truth from the hyperbole.

  He was led by Bulsara along a dirt path to another rundown dwelling set apart from the main group. Bulsara waved at the squat little home. ‘He is in there,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t ask me to go in with you. He is not in a good mood.’

  He scuttled off the way he had come.

  Chopra knocked on the open doorway, then ducked inside.

  Here he discovered a red-eyed Ginwala chopping up a chicken with a cleaver, hacking at the denuded bird with repeated blows.

  There was something hypnotic about the act, and for a moment Chopra simply watched.

  Finally, Ginwala sensed his presence. He froze momentarily in shock, the cleaver raised above his shoulder, then lowered it, and fixed him with a sour look.

  Behind Chopra, Ganesha poked his head in the doorway, decided that the two-roomed dwelling was too small and grim for his liking, and shuffled back out into the dirt path.

  ‘The last time we spoke you were less than truthful with me,’ began Chopra.

  Ginwala’s sullen expression did not change.

  By way of reply he fished a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. A halo of acrid smoke mushroomed around his head.

  ‘You harboured a grudge against Cyrus Zorabian. He had treated you badly, you and your fellow corpse-bearers. Refusing your demands for a pay rise, for better working conditions. He was a poor employer, and you had had enough.’

  Ginwala continued to stare at him.

  ‘I spoke to the others. They told me that your wife left you just over three months ago, soon after Cyrus last refused your demands. Just before he died, in fact. She had had enough. By your own admission her life as a corpse-bearer’s wife was a difficult one. Now it was also financially untenable. She took your son with her. Your friends say you blamed him for your misfortune. Hours later, he was murdered.’

  Ginwala’s expression had frozen.

  ‘Where were you that night?’

  Still Ginwala said nothing. Smoke continued to rise from the cigarette burning between his fingers, making slow swirls about his writhing jaw.

  Chopra waited, allowing the silence to spin itself out. Usually this well-worn tactic would be enough, but Ginwala was a man of unusual restraint. He decided to try a different tack.

  ‘And now I discover that someone has poisoned one of the vultures here. Your colleagues tell me that this is not an isolated incident. There’s been a spate of dead vultures recently.’

  Finally, Ginwala blinked. ‘Are you accusing me?’

  ‘Are you denying it?’

  ‘Have you lost your mind? Why would I harm the vultures? They are holy animals. Besides, without them our work becomes infinitely more unpleasant than it already is.’

  ‘Perhaps that was the point. You knew that Cyrus was facing increasing opposition from those wishing to shut down Doongerwadi. Without the vultures, the situation would have dramatically worsened. It would have placed pressure on him to improve your circumstances. After all, with no vultures, he would need to rely ever more on you and your men to dispose of the bodies.’

  Ginwala ground out the cigarette on his chopping board. ‘You can bark all you wish, Chopra. But I do not answer to you. Cyrus Zorabian was an arrogant, cruel man. He had all the wealth in the world, yet his heart was empty of the smallest charitable impulse. We were nothing to him; our lives were nothing to him. They say that every man earns his own fate. Cyrus more than earned his.’

  Chopra mentally contrasted Ginwala’s depiction of Cyrus with the impression Geeta Lokhani had painted of a man hell-bent on philanthropic works. ‘Where were you that night?’ he repeated.

  Ginwala stared at him. ‘I was sick. In bed, all night. I could barely move.’

  ‘Did you call a doctor?’

  Ginwala laughed. ‘You think we can afford doctors, even if they were willing to come out here?’

  ‘Who can testify to your illness?’

  ‘No one has to. It is the truth.’ He shifted on his feet. ‘You are a dog chasing shadows, Chopra. And I have nothing more to say to you. Get out of my home.’

  Chopra realised that he was not going to get any further with the obstinate corpse-bearer. He had no direct proof that Ginwala had poisoned the vultures at Doongerwadi, and even less evidence of his hand in Cyrus’s murder. Yet there was little doubt that Anosh Ginwala had had the means, the motive and, quite possibly, the opportunity.

  He walked back to the other huts, found Bulsara. ‘Ginwala says he was ill on the night Cyrus died. Can anyone verify that?’

  Bulsara frowned. ‘I don’t know about ill, but he was definitely in his hut that night. I went there in the evening, then again later, around eleven. I wanted to plan out the next day’s corpse cleansing – a number of bodies had come in late that day. He was in his bed both times, dead to the world. So, yes, he could have been ill. Or, more likely, flattened by booze. He doesn’t like anyone to know that, of course. Our patrons wouldn’t be impressed if they discovered the head khandia was a drunk.’

  Chopra sensed Bulsara’s naked ambition. Nevertheless, his testimony meant that Ginwala could not have murdered Cyrus. Cyrus had been killed almost a mile away on the far side of Doongerwadi. Bulsara’s account placed Ginwala in his hut during the time of the murder, dead to the world, drunk or ill. Either way, it was highly unlikely that he could have risen from his charpoy and stumbled through the forest to commit murder.

  His phone rang in his trouser pocket. He fished it out, then stepped away from Bulsara.

  ‘The thing about a good steak, Chopra, is that it needs to be eaten at exactly the right time. Eat it too soon and it’s not rested enough. Leave it too long and it becomes cold cuts.’

  ‘Please tell me that you did not call me simply to advise me on the qualities of a good steak.’

  ‘Just wanted you to be aware of the sacrifices I make for you,’ said Max Bomberton. ‘Here I am, sitting down to dinner in a lovely little restaurant just off Parliament Square, the sort of steak y
ou’d sell your grandmother for, and guess who should call?’

  ‘I cannot guess,’ said Chopra. ‘Nor do I wish to.’

  ‘All right then, let me tell you. Detective Superintendent Todd Wilson. Of the Avon and Somerset Police. The Avon and Somerset Police, in case you didn’t know – and I am pretty sure you didn’t – is where Yeovil is located. Do you know what DS Wilson had to tell me?’

  ‘No,’ said Chopra. ‘I do not. If I did I would be a mind reader. Which I am not.’

  ‘Someone’s in a foul mood,’ observed Bomberton. ‘I had phoned up Wilson and put him on the task of digging up what he could about your man Buckley. He was only too glad to help. It’s not every day a cop in his shoes gets tapped up by a big cheese from the Met Police.’

  ‘By “big cheese” are you perhaps referring to yourself?’

  ‘Who else would I be referring to?’

  ‘I have never understood this expression. Big cheese. Why “cheese”? There is nothing inherently prestigious about being a bigger cheese than another cheese. I was under the impression that the quality of a cheese is entirely dependent upon its taste.’

  Bomberton was momentarily speechless. He had forgotten about Chopra’s literal bent. ‘I’m surprised you don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘It actually comes from India. The word “cheez” means “thing” in Urdu. Big cheez literally meant “big thing” during the Raj. Over time it became “big cheese”.’ Chopra heard his old friend bellowing at a waiter. ‘Anyway, you’re ruining my story. Let me tell you what Wilson found out. It appears that this Buckley was born in Yeovil and grew up there. Only he wasn’t born Buckley. He was born as one Adam Beresford. We identified him from his birth date and his photo.’

  ‘Why did he change his name?’ asked Chopra.

  ‘I was getting to that,’ said Bomberton irritably. ‘It seems that young Beresford was a troubled young man. Lost his parents when he was eight. Grew up in a foster home. In and out of young offenders’ institutions. Shoplifting, petty thuggery. Eventually graduated to the big top. Car-jacking, burglary, fraud. He served a five-year stretch in his twenties for violent assault – the fact that he had a record made it easier to find him. And then he vanished.’