Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  ‘You were not completely honest with me,’ said Chopra, raising his voice above the din of the monstrous contraption.

  Engineer blinked from behind his spectacles. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A year ago, the club tried to remove Cyrus from his role as chairman.’

  Engineer seemed to deflate. ‘Not the club,’ he finally said. ‘Boman.’

  He led Chopra to his office, leaving Ganesha behind in the grand hall.

  Once the door was closed, he hobbled to the sideboard, poured himself a whisky, then sank into a padded armchair. ‘It was shortly after they had that fight in the lobby. Boman came to me and told me that he wanted the committee to declare Cyrus unfit for the post of chairman, and to elect him instead.’

  ‘Why did he want Cyrus replaced?’

  ‘He would not say. I suppose it was all to do with whatever had caused them to fall out in the first place.’

  ‘What did you say to the request?’

  ‘What could I say? There has always been a Zorabian as chairman here. He was the face of the club. Besides, there was no reason to oust him.’

  ‘What did Boman do when you refused?’

  ‘He called an emergency meeting of the managing committee, then raised a vote of no confidence in Cyrus.’

  ‘He could do that?’

  ‘As a member of the committee, yes. As long as he found someone to second the motion.’

  ‘Which I assume he did.’

  ‘Boman has his own coterie within the club,’ affirmed Engineer. ‘Family friends, and those who do business with him.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘Not that it did him any good. The vote went Cyrus’s way, by a large margin. Boman thundered out of here in a rage, vowing to get even.’

  ‘And you did not feel that the authorities should be informed of this?’

  ‘Boman is a hothead, but he is no killer. Besides, as I told you before, we prefer not to air our dirty laundry in public.’

  Chopra absorbed this. ‘Who is the club’s current chairman?’

  ‘I thought you knew,’ said Engineer. ‘Perizaad, though technically I suppose she is a chairwoman, the first we have ever had. When her father passed, I asked her – on behalf of the committee – to take on the role. She accepted.’

  Chopra considered this fact, wondering why Perizaad had not mentioned it. But then, why would she? It was hardly pertinent to her father’s death. He tacked in another direction. ‘What do you think of William Buckley?’

  Engineer’s brow puckered. ‘Cyrus’s PA? He is a very competent man. Very organised.’

  ‘Did you know that he is a convicted criminal? Did Cyrus know?’

  Engineer’s eyes wobbled behind his spectacles. ‘Surely not!’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘If Cyrus knew, he never mentioned it.’ Engineer leaned forward. ‘You think Buckley could have wished Cyrus harm? Why? Cyrus always spoke highly of him.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Chopra took out the Latin letters, with the sheet of translations, and showed them to Engineer. ‘Cyrus received these before his death. Did he mention them to you?’

  Engineer examined the letters and the translations, then shook his head. ‘No. What do they mean?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Chopra now took out the architectural plans he had found inside Cyrus’s bank locker. He spread them before the club secretary. ‘Cyrus was involved in raising finance for this development in Vashi. Did he discuss it with you?’

  ‘No. But Cyrus was involved in so many things. As I told you, he was the head of our philanthropy programme.’

  ‘What if this wasn’t about philanthropy?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Chopra hesitated. The notion that he wished to express had been slowly forming. The discovery of the architectural plans, and the cash, coupled with the fact of Cyrus’s dire financial circumstances, had led him to speculate on a possible motive for the Parsee mogul’s murder.

  ‘What if Cyrus was not involved purely as a benefactor? What if he was using his position at the club to generate funds for the development in order to line his own pockets?’

  Engineer looked aghast. The glass of whisky almost fell from his grasp. ‘I do not believe it. Such a thing would go against everything the Zorabian name stands for.’

  ‘Desperate times lead men to desperate acts,’ said Chopra. ‘Perizaad tells me that her father’s business was ailing. He was facing bankruptcy. Perhaps he did what he thought he had to.’

  Engineer shook his head. ‘Cyrus, an embezzler? No. I cannot believe it.’

  A few days ago, Chopra would not have believed it either. But now, he found himself increasingly plagued with doubt. He was a man ruled by his conscience. Each case he took on was weighed on the scales of that conscience. He found himself striving to solve the murder of a man who, with each passing hour, was slipping in his estimation. His thoughts drifted to the two burned bodies. If there was anything that set him apart in his own mind, it was that many in this venal city would take money to help the likes of a Zorabian, but few would exert themselves for two nameless corpses.

  ‘It might explain the letters,’ he said, returning to the moment. ‘Perhaps someone found out, and was trying to obliquely warn him, encourage him to desist. Or, alternatively, it might have been someone setting the scene for a blackmail attempt.’

  ‘Latin is common in the Parsee community,’ said Engineer. ‘We tend to go to the same schools, and nearly all have Latin on their curriculum. It could have been anyone.’

  Chopra got to his feet. ‘It’s just a theory for now. There may be nothing to it.’

  ‘What will you do next?’

  ‘I think it would make sense for me to talk to Boman Jeejibhoy again, don’t you?’

  Returning to the grand hall, Chopra found Ganesha pushing the vacuum cleaner around by ducking his head and shoving it along from behind. The veteran cleaner was sitting on a chair, enjoying a cup of tea as the little elephant moved in happy circles around the room.

  Chopra paused before the waxwork statue of Rustom Zorabian. He recalled the portrait of Cyrus that he had seen in the Samundra Mahal. In the right light, the two could have been twins. Rustom, with his throne-like seat, his princely clothes and mace, looked every bit as regal as Cyrus had in the portrait.

  But the problem with kings was that, sooner or later, they always overreached themselves.

  Which is why so few ever died in their beds.

  Rangwalla poked his head around the door. The office was empty. He sagged with relief.

  The thought of coming face to face with Malini Sheriwal again had been giving him palpitations. He understood, of course, that the woman no longer held any authority over him. The only problem was that Sheriwal was as unpredictable and volatile as a keg of dynamite. During the short time he had served under her at the Sahar station he had learned that the only way to avoid the woman’s wrath was to stay well out of her way.

  He wondered again why Chopra had brought her into his investigation. There was nothing wrong with police officers – former or otherwise – helping each other out, of course, but the least Chopra could have done was to have given him fair warning. Walking in on the woman earlier that day had almost led to an unscheduled emptying of the Rangwalla bowels.

  At least they were both gone now.

  Which was just as well, because he needed the office. It was the only quiet space he could find to work on the files he had obtained from the BMC. His own cramped apartment was besieged by his children, at home from school with a stomach bug.

  He hauled the box of files on to the desk, then gradually placed them into neat piles, ordered by year.

  He sat down, opened a large ruled notebook that he had taken from his son’s schoolbag, squinted at the end of the blunt pencil he had fished from his pocket, and made a very deliberate note of the date. He studied the date, then underlined it.

  Twice.

  For a brief, terrifying instant, his mind
was filled with a paralysing blankness. This sort of thing was not his forte; he had always felt most comfortable discharging his duties as an officer of the law out on the streets, poking vagrants in the ribs with his nightstick, cajoling his network of street informants for gossip, occasionally sticking the boot into some wife-beating hoodlum in need of a salutary lesson. Wading through a paper trail was the sort of advanced policing that left him feeling woefully out of his depth. He understood, well enough, that this was an essential part of the process. Hadn’t Chopra drilled that into him over the long years of their association? But during his time at the station there had always been someone even lower on the totem pole for him to delegate such onerous tasks to.

  Dung, as they said, always rolled downhill.

  Sighing, he lifted the uppermost file from the stack before him and untied the string holding it together. Inside, he found the first of the purported notices issued by the BMC to Hasan Gafoor with regard to their unfavourable assessment of the state of his premises.

  Rangwalla’s dark eyes moved along the inked paragraphs, his lips slowly forming the words.

  A clock ticked unnoticed on the wall as he lost track of time, becoming engrossed in his investigation, occasionally stopping to make a belaboured scribble in his notebook.

  Boman Jeejibhoy reveals the truth

  Chopra found Boman Jeejibhoy at his boatyard.

  The industrialist was in his office, a large, wood-panelled space cluttered with balsa wood models of boats of various designs. The walls were lined with framed accolades from the boatbuilding industry, and photographs of Boman with grinning celebrities inaugurating a medley of yachts and other marine-going vessels.

  As Chopra entered the office, the industrialist looked up from the half-finished model of a catamaran on his desk. He unhitched the jeweller’s loupe from his eye.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he growled.

  Chopra did not waste time with pleasantries. They would be wasted on a man like Boman. ‘Why did you ask for a vote of no confidence in Cyrus Zorabian at the Vulture Club?’

  Boman’s chin sank into his chest. ‘We had a difference of opinion.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought he was a scoundrel. He did not.’

  Chopra moved closer. ‘It is time to tell me the truth. Sooner or later I will discover it, even if I have to speak to every Parsee in the city.’

  ‘The truth,’ spat Boman. ‘What will you do with the truth? You are an outsider. You would not understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Boman’s hard eyes glinted in the sunlight filtering in from the room’s blinds. Finally, he came to a decision. ‘Very well. Do you remember the last time we spoke I told you that Cyrus betrayed me?’

  ‘You said that he had agreed to partner with you on a business venture, and then reneged.’

  ‘What I actually said was that it was a family venture, and that after I put up my half of the deal, he did not fulfil his side of the bargain.’

  Chopra waited. He sensed that Boman Jeejibhoy was actually looking forward to finally speaking his mind. His heartbeat quickened. Could it be a confession . . .?

  ‘You know of course that Cyrus has a son. Darius. Well, I have a daughter of the same age. Dinaz. She is my only child, the most precious thing in the world to me. Many years ago, when Darius and Dinaz were still children, Cyrus and I agreed that they would be married. We shook hands on it. As the children grew, we encouraged their friendship. My daughter fell in love with Darius. I assumed the reverse was also true.

  ‘Just before Darius was due to begin his year at Harvard, I spoke with Cyrus. And he spoke with his son. Cyrus assured me that as soon as Darius returned, he would announce an engagement between the two. My daughter was overjoyed by the news. She was always a trusting soul.’ Boman paused, his face aglow with the awful light of the past. ‘When Darius came back, I held Cyrus to his word. But something had changed. My “friend” began to avoid me, to make excuses. Darius refused to see my daughter. When he finally did, I discovered what I had already begun to suspect. He no longer wished to marry her. He had found someone else. My daughter had been discarded.’ The old Parsee lashed out with a huge fist, obliterating the model boat on his desk. Wooden chips exploded in all directions. ‘He ruined her! Since that day, she has become a shadow of herself. My beautiful, happy, healthy child has become a recluse, wasting away in our home like a pale wraith.’

  ‘Surely you cannot blame Cyrus for his son’s decision? For that matter, how can you blame a young man for falling in love? No one can predict the vagaries of the human heart.’

  ‘This isn’t about Darius falling in love!’ bayed Boman. ‘This is about what is right. The Parsees have always kept our bloodlines pure through intermarriage. The match between Darius and Dinaz was perfect. For them, and for our dwindling community.’

  ‘Some might argue that marrying outside the community would be a step in the right direction for the Parsees.’

  ‘Such people do not understand us,’ Boman ground out. ‘Our traditions, our history. We do not tell others in this country of a million factions how they should live. We do not expect to be preached to.’

  Chopra knew that this was a sore topic, and one that he had no real wish to wade into. He decided to head in another direction. He took out the clutch of Latin letters and handed them to Boman. ‘Did you send these to Cyrus? Was this your way of getting him to understand that by not forcing his son into marrying your daughter he was, in some sense, letting the Parsee community down?’

  Boman scanned the letters, then set them down on his desk. ‘I have never seen these before. They are nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But you read Latin?’

  ‘So do thousands in this city. What does that prove?’

  Chopra hesitated. ‘Are you sure there is nothing more you wish to tell me? About the night Cyrus died? By your own admission, you have no alibi for the time that he was murdered.’

  Boman rose to his feet. Anger curled from his bullish features like smoke. ‘You think you can come here and sling accusations at me? Have you any idea of what I have endured because of Cyrus and his son? My daughter’s life has been destroyed by the Zorabians! She will never be the same.’

  ‘You may be surprised. People are resilient.’

  Boman’s eyes narrowed. ‘You know nothing. Now, get out.’

  Back in his van, Chopra took out his phone and dialled Darius Zorabian. It was time for another talk with him. He was surprised when a woman’s voice answered.

  ‘Who is this?’ he asked.

  ‘This is Lucy, Darius’s wife. He forgot his phone this morning. Can I pass on a message?’

  Chopra considered the offer. An unexpected opportunity had presented itself. ‘My name is Chopra,’ he said. ‘I need to speak with Darius. But, perhaps, I might speak with you first, if that’s OK?’

  ‘Chopra? Are you the man investigating Cyrus’s death?’

  ‘Yes. Darius told you about me?’

  ‘He did.’ A hollow silence floated down the line. ‘I – ah – yes. Why don’t you come to our home?’

  ‘When would suit you?’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better to speak immediately. There are some questions I have for you too.’

  Not every fairy tale has a happy ending

  Darius Zorabian’s home was not quite what Chopra had expected. A shabby, twelve-storey tower in a rundown part of the mid-town Dadar district, the building, with its flaking grey walls, caged balconies, cheap advertising hoardings and thickets of snaking electrical and phone cables, looked severely ill, as if it had contracted some sort of debilitating architectural disease.

  Chopra was unsurprised to discover that the solitary lift was out of order.

  Indeed the ‘out of order’ sign itself was out of order; it was hanging loose from one side and had been spat upon repeatedly with betel-nut fluid, and possibly worse.

  Chopra trudged up the stairs, passing a gang of sa
ri-clad women on the fourth floor, each clutching a seemingly identical child to her hip. The women, chattering animatedly before his arrival, clammed shut the moment he trudged into view, then eyed him beadily until he vanished up the stairwell before resuming their heated discussion.

  The Zorabians’ apartment was on the tenth floor, high enough to avoid many of the smells that had assaulted Chopra on his climb. He knocked on the door, then stood back, his thoughts momentarily alighting on Ganesha, who he had left in the compound below. The elephant’s spirits were much improved. Perhaps Lala had been right. Ganesha was an emotional creature and, like everyone else, entitled to good days and bad days.

  After all, humans did not have a monopoly on feeling blue.

  The door swung back and Chopra found himself face to face with a statuesque red-haired white woman, with green eyes and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She wore a pair of slacks and a T-shirt imprinted with the words MINNESOTA OR BUST. The baggy garment could not hide the fact that she was heavily pregnant.

  ‘I’m Lucy Mulvaney,’ she said.

  Chopra followed her into the cramped apartment. It was even smaller on the inside than he had supposed, and a great deal messier.

  As if sensing his thoughts, Lucy waved apologetically at the chaos. ‘Sorry about the mess. I haven’t had a chance to clean up. We had to let the maid go, and . . . I just get very tired. With the pregnancy, you know?’

  Chopra didn’t know, but nodded sympathetically. ‘When is your baby due?’

  ‘A couple of months. I was hoping to be in a better apartment by then, but that hasn’t quite worked out.’

  He sensed a note of bitterness. He guessed that life in India hadn’t quite turned out the way Lucy Mulvaney had anticipated. For Darius too, such reduced circumstances must have been chafing, fuelling his sense of outrage, and stoking his anger towards his father.

  She gestured for him to sit on the worn two-seater sofa in the middle of the room, taking a firm-backed wooden seat opposite him. He fell into the sofa . . . and kept falling. The springs creaked exhaustedly, a death rattle that left him with his bottom scraping the floor, even as his knees swung upwards towards his ears. He felt like a praying mantis, and wondered just how he was going to get up again.