Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  Over the course of the next hour they sat in Homi Contractor’s cramped and badly ventilated basement dungeon, and went through the folder, comparing each of the pictures with the photos of the newly reconstructed faces. Of the male victim they found no sign. ‘In all likelihood, he was never reported as a missing person,’ remarked Sheriwal. ‘Many people vanish in this city every day without anyone even realising that they have gone.’

  Chopra knew that this was the unfortunate reality of life in a place as obscenely overcrowded as Mumbai, a city that attracted migrants, drifters and desperadoes from all over the subcontinent. Many came to the metropolis having left their families behind in villages dotted around the interior, promising to send money orders once they found work. Often they were never heard from again.

  They had better success with the female victim.

  Halfway through his stack of photos, Chopra was struck by a bolt of lightning.

  The woman in the photograph was young – twenty-six according to the accompanying missing person’s profile – pretty, with a dusky complexion, twinkling eyes and full lips. Many aspects of her features did not quite match the reconstruction by Bekker – the flare of her nostrils, the thickness of her lips, the arch of her eyebrows. The girl wore her hair short, shoulder-length, a modern hairstyle at odds with the ponytail that Bekker had chosen for the cast.

  Yet the similarities could not be dismissed as mere coincidence. He knew, instinctively, that they had found the person they were looking for.

  He held out the photograph to Sheriwal. The policewoman examined it, then compressed her lips. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘It is her,’ said Chopra.

  ‘What you mean is, you want it to be her.’

  ‘I know it is her.’

  Sheriwal gave him a sceptical look. She glanced down at the profile. ‘Arushi Kadam. Her mother filed a missing person’s report four months ago.’

  Chopra looked uneasily at the photograph.

  Arushi Kadam had been captured smiling breezily at the camera, a pair of sunglasses parked in her short hair, her eyes crinkled in self-aware amusement. She seemed every inch the image of modern Mumbai youth, a head full of dreams, her life shimmering before her.

  Sheriwal was right. There was a chance that he had it wrong, that his instincts had betrayed him. The similarity between this girl and the reconstruction was noticeable but by no means definitive. Perhaps his own unconscious bias was at work here, his overwhelming desire to find a connection so that he might progress his parallel investigation into Cyrus Zorabian’s death.

  He vacillated, considering how the girl’s parents would react if he told them that their daughter had been murdered, her body burned beyond recognition.

  ‘What would you do?’ he finally asked.

  Sheriwal shrugged. ‘If this is truly Arushi Kadam, her parents have a right to know that she is deceased. It is not our responsibility to consider how they will come to terms with their grief.’

  A mother’s grief

  Arushi Kadam’s home was located in an area called the Postal Colony, a tortuous forty-five-minute drive from the Sahar Hospital. Evening traffic congested the winding thoroughfare that led there. Tempers had clearly frayed at the end of another busy day in the city of dreams, and Chopra was forced to smear his horn at numerous attempts to overtake the Tata van by those around him. Ganesha joined him enthusiastically, tooting with his trunk each time he banged the wheel.

  They left the van on a patch of dry wasteland pockmarked with ancient boreholes and littered with left-over concrete pipes from abandoned building projects. The pipes now served as home for a number of street families, and various wild animals.

  Kadam’s apartment tower, optimistically named Grace Oasis, was rundown, in dire need of repair. Chopra pegged it as a refuge for lower-income families, clinging tenuously to their foothold on Mumbai’s social cliff-face; one wrong move – a missed rental payment, a loss of employment – and they would plunge into the seething chaos of the slums below. The state of the building brought him momentarily back to Cyrus Zorabian’s involvement in the Vashi slum redevelopment project, and his own suspicions that Cyrus’s intentions in the matter had not been entirely philanthropic.

  He had always suspected that true altruism, the kind that entailed a genuine cost to the individual and yet offered no reward in return, was rare. Cyrus Zorabian, renowned for his philanthropy, had been facing bankruptcy. The more Chopra discovered about the man, the more he was convinced that the Parsee industrialist may have been willing to get his hands dirty in order to save his business.

  The door to Arushi Kadam’s apartment was flung open by a late-middle-aged woman in a white blouse and checked slacks. Her hair was cut short, like Arushi’s; her facial similarity to the victim told Chopra that they had found Arushi’s mother.

  The woman stared at Sheriwal’s uniform, then at their sombre expressions, and her face collapsed. ‘I knew that you would come one day. I prayed that it would be with good news, but in my heart I knew that was no longer possible.’

  She led them inside the small, neat flat, ushered them on to a sofa. She asked them to wait, then went into the bathroom. They heard her weeping gently behind the door.

  Chopra glanced at Sheriwal. The policewoman sat rigidly beside him, lips grimly pursed. It was impossible to know what she was thinking.

  His eyes wandered around the room. Polished marble floor. A porcelain pot on the sideboard, Japanese in design. An African death mask on the wall. A stylised black and white print of a classic Bollywood movie from the fifties.

  A modern home, with modern sensibilities.

  When the woman returned, she dropped into the wing chair before them, her demeanour once again businesslike. ‘My name is Mona. As you may have gathered, I am Arushi’s mother.’

  Chopra quickly explained how Arushi’s remains had been identified, also clarifying his role in the investigation. He hesitated before describing the gruesome nature of Arushi’s death, but realised that the woman had a right to the truth. Mona Kadam’s jaw tightened as she absorbed her daughter’s final moments, but otherwise she did not react. He took out the photo of the reconstruction and showed it to her. She examined it with hollow eyes, then nodded. ‘Yes. That’s Arushi. It cannot be anyone else.’

  Chopra was willing to take the woman’s word for it, but privately decided that a final confirmation might be in order later.

  ‘Is Arushi’s father here?’ Sheriwal asked.

  Mona shook her head. ‘He passed away seven years ago. A heart attack. I have never remarried.’

  ‘Do you have any other children?’

  ‘No. It is just Arushi and me.’

  ‘Can you tell us about her?’ asked Chopra.

  Mona grimaced. ‘She was intelligent, and strong-willed. I suppose she got that from me. I always urged her to be independent, especially after her father passed. She studied hard, got a degree from Bombay University in business administration. She wanted a career, wanted to achieve something with her life.’

  ‘I take it that she was the outgoing type?’

  Mona frowned, as if perhaps Chopra had impugned her daughter’s character. ‘She was a lively, pretty girl. She had a circle of friends, and she enjoyed going out with them. She loved Bollywood movies; she loved music. And she loved social causes.’

  ‘This is a delicate question, but did Arushi have a boyfriend?’

  ‘Why is it a delicate question?’ barked Mona. ‘Are you one of those who still think women in India must conform to some outdated notion of virginal purity, while men get to run around with whomsoever they please?’

  ‘Not at all—’ Chopra protested.

  ‘Let me tell you, Mr Chopra,’ interrupted the suddenly irate woman, ‘I always encouraged my daughter to break through barriers that men like you seek to put in her way.’

  ‘But I assure you—’ Chopra spluttered.

  ‘My daughter,’ continued Mona, mowing him down beneath the bulldozer of mater
nal indignation, ‘was an attractive, proud Indian woman. If she chose to have a boyfriend, then more power to her.’

  Chopra waited, in case there was more to come. He glanced at Sheriwal who, he couldn’t help but notice, was struggling to suppress a smirk. Finally, he risked opening his mouth again. ‘I apologise if I have caused offence. The reason I ask is because Arushi’s body was found with a male victim, of similar age. We were hoping you could help us identify him. They were both murdered in the same way. To be frank, it has all the hallmarks of an honour killing.’

  Mona sat back in her chair, momentarily overcome by fresh grief. ‘There was a boy. I don’t know his name, but Arushi was quite taken with him for a while. I only found out because a neighbour saw her on a motorbike with him. I asked Arushi about him, but she wouldn’t tell me any details.’

  ‘I thought you encouraged your daughter to be modern?’ said Sheriwal.

  Mona glared at her. ‘Just because she was modern it doesn’t mean she wished to share everything with her mother.’ She sniffed. ‘All I know is that Arushi was obsessed with her career. If she was in a relationship then it was not serious, and certainly not the most important thing in her life.’

  Chopra realised that there was little to be gained by pursuing the matter, and so he changed tack. ‘Can you tell us where Arushi worked?’

  Mona’s response was immediate. ‘A property company. A firm called Karma Holdings.’

  Chopra froze, the name tolling in his mind. He had seen it somewhere before, recently. He flicked open his notebook . . . And there it was.

  Karma Holdings.

  The same company that had prepared blueprints for New Haven, the Vashi slum redevelopment project that Cyrus Zorabian had been involved with.

  Like most good investigators, Chopra did not believe in coincidences. Here was an unambiguous link between Cyrus and the two deaths the industrialist had, for reasons that were not yet clear, taken a keen interest in.

  He stood up. ‘We will do whatever we can to find your daughter’s killer.’

  Mona did not bother to see them out. Her eyes were hollow, locked on to her own memories. ‘But that will not bring her back, will it?’

  On the short drive back to the station Chopra told Sheriwal he planned to visit the offices of Karma Holdings the following day, the address of which he had obtained from Mona Kadam.

  Sheriwal frowned. ‘I am tied up for the next three days. I have been tasked with running some training classes at the academy in Nasik on the mechanics of encounter shootings. First, they stick me in the back of beyond for shooting criminals, and now they want me to teach the next generation how to do it properly.’

  ‘At least you will be able to get back to doing the only thing you seem to enjoy,’ muttered Chopra.

  Sheriwal stiffened. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said hurriedly.

  Sheriwal glared at him. ‘If I allow you to carry on with your investigation, I expect to be kept up to speed with everything that you discover.’

  ‘If you allow me?’ Chopra almost swerved into the rickshaw puttering along to his right.

  ‘This is a murder case,’ said Sheriwal coldly. ‘Now that one of the bodies has been identified, it falls within my jurisdiction to continue the investigation.’

  ‘You would not have identified the body at all without my intervention.’

  ‘That may be so, but it does not change the fact that this is a police matter. And you are no longer a policeman.’

  Chopra ground his jaw. He slammed the horn at a passing and entirely blameless motorcyclist. ‘I have been hired by the Zorabian family to—’

  ‘Yes, yes. So you have already said.’

  A heated silence fell between them.

  Ganesha looked from Sheriwal to Chopra and back again. His ears flapped earnestly.

  Finally, Sheriwal coughed. ‘However, as I am due to be otherwise engaged, I think that perhaps, in this instance, and in the cause of furthering the investigation in the speediest possible manner, it would behove my team to work with your team.’

  A muscle worked on Chopra’s forehead. ‘That would seem to be the most expedient way of moving forward,’ he finally managed.

  No further words were exchanged for the remainder of the drive.

  Having dropped the prickly policewoman back to her office, Chopra headed for the restaurant. Here he discovered Rangwalla apparently slumped unconscious over his desk, folders, printouts, and the remains of a lamb biriyani spread messily around his prone form.

  Chopra had to jab him three times in the ribs before his deputy finally stirred to life.

  Rangwalla looked up blearily. ‘Wah?’

  ‘This is not a hotel,’ said Chopra sternly.

  Rangwalla’s brain returned from whatever distant planet it had been orbiting. A look of panic swarmed over his dark features, and he sprang to his feet, a windmill of flailing arms and legs, sending sheets of paper and the biriyani dish cartwheeling into the air. A well-gnawed chicken bone struck Chopra in the face, then slid down his shirt and into his front pocket.

  He glared stonily at Rangwalla, then, very deliberately, removed the offending article, and set it down on the desk.

  ‘I presume you have accomplished something more than simply eating biriyani?’

  Rangwalla, now ramrod straight, gave a rictus grin. ‘I thought this would be the best place to go through the BMC paperwork.’

  Chopra waved away his annoyance. ‘Sit. Tell me what you have found.’

  Rangwalla gingerly lowered himself back into his seat.

  He excavated his notebook from under the mound of paperwork, then laid it out before Chopra. The senior man could make nothing of the untidy, looping handwriting, which reminded him of a phalanx of dead spiders squashed between the pages of a book.

  ‘I have boiled it down to a few key documents,’ explained Rangwalla. ‘First are the two BMC structural surveys of Gafoor’s building that he claims never took place. These were initiated after he was approached by agents of an unnamed company wishing to buy his site. Gafoor refused and the next thing he knew the BMC had declared his building unsound. When he continued to refuse his would-be buyers, the BMC issued a demolition order.

  ‘Instead of capitulating, Gafoor threatened to take the BMC to court. Conveniently, the building collapsed not long after, supposedly due to a gas cylinder explosion. At least, that was the cause cited in a BMC report of the disaster, though Gafoor is adamant it couldn’t have happened that way.

  ‘Following the collapse Gafoor was arrested, tried for negligence, and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. In the meantime, the BMC issued a repossession order for the site – based on another report that stated that the site would be used for “the public good”. Once the repossession was complete, however, the BMC reversed the ruling with a new land use classification order, reverting the property back to private use. This then allowed the BMC to put up the site for auction; where it was purchased by a private company. But the intriguing thing is this: all these documents – the structural surveys, the demolition order, the collapse report, the repossession order, the land use re-categorisations and the auction sale order – were countersigned by the same individual.’ Rangwalla paused, allowing the tension to build. ‘One Geeta Lokhani. Head of the BMC’s Planning Committee.’

  He sat back, clearly pleased with his efforts.

  For the second time in the space of an hour Chopra felt the ground shift beneath him.

  The fates, it seemed, were playing games with him.

  For here, now, was a second connection to the Cyrus Zorabian investigation, one he could not possibly have foreseen. Cyrus had visited Geeta Lokhani before his death; he was involved in helping her with the Vashi slum redevelopment project. Yet Rangwalla had uncovered if not evidence, then at the very least tangible cause for concern as to Lokhani’s integrity as a senior BMC official. If Gafoor’s suppositions were correct, then he had been railroaded off his property by th
e machinations of the BMC, all in the interests of selling the plot to a private buyer. No doubt a vast sum would have changed hands, and further fortunes would be made when the new apartment development on the site was complete. With so much money sloshing around, it was inevitable that many stakeholders would be wetting their beaks, including those at the BMC.

  Chopra was forced to reassess his own first impressions of Lokhani.

  He had to admit to himself that he had been impressed by the woman – intelligent, successful, attractive. A deep disappointment wound through him, like a crocodile wading through the murk at the bottom of a river. In Lokhani he had sensed a kindred spirit, someone committed to redressing the inequalities built into the fabric of the city in which they both lived. He felt . . . betrayed. Why hide from it?

  ‘What was the name of the company that bought the site?’

  ‘The company currently building apartments on the site is called New World Developments,’ said Rangwalla. ‘But then I remembered what you said about following the money and who really benefits. And so I said to myself, Rangwalla, dig deeper.’

  Chopra reserved comment. It was never a good sign when his deputy began to talk to himself. He braced himself to be underwhelmed.

  ‘I asked Soman, the BMC official, to help me locate the deeds of purchase. It turns out that the plot was actually bought by a property company by the name of Karma Holdings.’

  Shock rippled through Chopra.

  Karma Holdings.

  Yet again he was confronted by the same interconnecting thread, snaking itself around his investigation. What was that old saying? Once, an accident; twice, a coincidence, and three times . . . a conspiracy.

  ‘You recognise the name?’ said Rangwalla, peering at him.

  Quickly Chopra filled in his deputy, outlining the link between Karma Holdings and Cyrus Zorabian, and also the fact that Arushi Kadam had worked for the company.

  ‘It looks like we’re working the same case,’ said Rangwalla.