The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown

by Vaseem Khan

  And finally, even Wadia turned to stare at her.

  ‘If I am expelled my father will kill me, madam,’ sniffed Fonseca.

  ‘My parents will die of shame,’ declared Baig.

  ‘I won’t even be able to go home,’ agreed Joshi.

  Wadia said nothing.

  ‘I think there is a way to stop those things from happening,’ said Poppy.

  Hope flared in the boys’ faces.

  ‘Do you really think so, madam?’ asked Fonseca, his eyes round behind his spectacles.

  ‘Yes,’ affirmed Poppy. ‘I really do.’ She patted Fonseca on the arm. ‘But first you will have to tell me what you have done with dear Father Gonsalves’s head.’

  Chopra sat in his chair in the courtyard of Poppy’s restaurant. Before him, on a stool, lay a heap of manila folders, an almost empty glass of lime water, and his mobile phone, which he had just set down, his ears still ringing with Mrs Roy’s dire threats.

  Chopra sighed.

  The backlog of work on his cases was becoming critical. Mrs Roy was not the only unhappy customer. But what could he do? Between the Koh-i-Noor case, Poppy’s missing bust, and looking for Irfan, both he and Rangwalla had been completely swamped. It was not for nothing that he had prised himself away from the Koh-i-Noor investigation and spent Christmas morning catching up with some of his other cases. But the simple truth was that he would need a dozen such mornings to make much headway.

  There was nothing to do but grin and bear it.

  After all, he could always return the retainers he had accepted. It was not the money that bothered him, anyway. Chopra was loath not to follow through on a commitment. In that sense Mrs Roy had every right to castigate him.

  He turned as Poppy and Rangwalla entered the compound.

  Chopra recalled the telephone conversation he had had with his wife that morning.

  He had been delighted to learn that Rangwalla had been successful in engineering the return of the missing bust. He also knew that following the successful conclusion to the case, Rangwalla and Poppy had once again set off on their quest to locate Irfan.

  From his wife’s crestfallen expression he realised that they had not been successful.

  ‘No luck?’ he said, rising to his feet.

  Poppy shook her head, on the verge of tears. ‘It is as if he has vanished.’

  ‘You will find him,’ said Chopra reassuringly. ‘We will find him.’ He put his arm around her and squeezed her shoulders, realising that Poppy was struggling to come to terms with the fact that they might never see Irfan again.

  Ganesha, who had been dozing beneath his mango tree, trotted towards them and rubbed his head against Chopra’s thigh. ‘That’s a promise to you both,’ said Chopra. ‘We will find him.’

  They decided to have lunch in the courtyard.

  Chopra asked Chef Lucknowwallah to set out a table and chairs and to serve up a mix of dishes: aromatic lamb biriyani for Rangwalla, an exotic chicken kolhapuri for himself, and Poppy’s favourite, a traditional Maharashtrian pao bhaji – buttered rolls with a spicy vegetarian curry.

  The atmosphere was subdued and Poppy seemed to have little appetite. She remarked, more than once, on how miserable it felt not having Irfan around on Christmas Day, sharing lunch with them, horsing around with Ganesha instead of focusing on his food, as he was wont to do. Chopra tried to lighten the atmosphere by asking for more details of the resolution to the missing bust case. This got Poppy talking and he was glad to see a semblance of animation returning to his wife’s usually boisterous demeanour.

  He listened intently as she explained their efforts, focusing on Rangwalla’s successful gambit and how it had flushed out the thieves of Lobo’s beloved bust. He found himself shaking his head as he pictured the four boys from St Xavier’s stealing the examination papers – not once, but twice! What arrogance! But perhaps that was the problem with the modern generation. They simply did not grasp that there could be consequences to their actions. They seemed to operate from a misplaced sense of invulnerability.

  It was galling to Chopra that one day this brigade of louts would be running the country.

  ‘Well done, Rangwalla,’ said Chopra, eventually. He was genuinely pleased. ‘I knew hiring you would be a good idea.’ He reached down and picked up the stack of folders from the stool beside his chair. ‘Here is your reward. You can get on with this lot. Start by following Mrs Roy’s husband around. I want to know if that old duffer is drinking his lunch. When you find out, let Mrs Roy know immediately.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Rangwalla.

  ‘Excuse me, Poppy Madam, there are some people here to see you.’

  The three of them turned to see Rosie Pinto leading four youths into the courtyard.

  Chopra recognised the uniform of the St Xavier Catholic School for Boys. Having just heard the story of the nefarious goings-on at the school he found himself bristling at the sudden presence of these four young hooligans. But then he saw that the boys were subdued, and advanced towards them behind expressions of intense contriteness.

  He wondered what they were doing here, on Christmas Day.

  ‘Madam,’ said Raj Wadia stiffly, addressing Poppy, ‘we have been sent here by our parents. We wish to say something to you.’ He licked his lips and exchanged glances with Fonseca, Baig and Joshi. ‘We wish to thank you for saving us from expulsion and for convincing Principal Lobo to give us a second chance.’

  A smile appeared on Poppy’s face. ‘You are all most welcome.’

  Fonseca, who was hopping from foot to foot, suddenly surged forward and clasped Poppy in a hug. ‘We will never do anything like that again!’

  An astonished Poppy finally extricated herself from the overcome young man. ‘I know that you won’t,’ she said. ‘You will all go on and make me very proud.’

  After the boys had left, Rangwalla turned to Poppy. ‘What exactly did you say to Lobo to get them off?’

  ‘I merely reminded him what it is to be young,’ Poppy told him. ‘We all make errors of judgement. Everyone deserves a second chance. And besides, we place too much pressure on our young people to do well in exams. Do you know how many children committed suicide last year in our country because they could not meet the expectations of their parents? We must all learn to be a little more forgiving.’

  ‘Wise words,’ agreed Rangwalla with feeling. He had never had much time for exams and recalled the many beatings his father had given him for his poor results.

  Chopra reflected once again on his opinion that many of the younger generation in India were becoming afflicted by the vices of arrogance and irresponsibility. Clearly, his wife did not share his opinion. Was he being too harsh? Hadn’t he been young once? After all, who was he to judge? He had made mistakes too as a young man. What gave him the right to think ill of others?

  Nevertheless, he felt that there was a sense of entitlement amongst a certain type of privileged youngster that was breeding the wrong sort of brashness. Not the kind that promoted entrepreneurialism and endeavour and might benefit both individual and nation, but the sort of loutish behaviour that led to acts of foolhardiness at best and sheer irresponsibility at worst.

  Little did Chopra know then that, in just a few short hours, he was to encounter the ultimate demonstration of this phenomenon.

  THE ELEPHANT CATCHER

  Chef Lucknowwallah snored. Each stentorian exhalation gently lifted the damp handkerchief that he had placed over his face, and then just as gently set it down again. The dinnertime rush was over and the chef, having partaken of a simple meal of aloo matar – spicy potato and peas – was enjoying a period of quiet recuperation in the restaurant’s office before the late-night crowd began to filter in. The air was redolent with the odour of flue-cured Virginia tobacco, a thick cheroot of which he had smoked just before settling himself into Chopra’s chair, and which he ordered by the bushel direct from his friend Anmol Mazumdar’s plantation in faraway Andhra Pradesh. His doctor had forbidden him fr
om smoking, but what did that old duffer know? The man couldn’t even boil an egg.

  Lucknowwallah had had a trying few days.

  Not only had he been forced to work overtime in order to prepare the spectacular Christmas dinner that they had just finished serving – an undertaking grossly undermined by Chopra’s mother-in-law, causing him more than the usual heartburn – but his sous-chef, young Romesh Goel, for whom he had high hopes, had managed to all but sever a finger whilst filleting a fresh pomfret for Lucknowwallah’s Goan seafood masala.

  The boy seemed increasingly distracted these days.

  The chef had a sneaking suspicion that this was because of Rosie Pinto, his other assistant chef. It had not escaped him how Rosie had been making goo-goo eyes at the pimply-faced young Romesh. Really, these youngsters must think he was blind!

  The thought of the burgeoning romance had caused Lucknowwallah to dwell on his own wife, departed these past ten years. The late Mrs Lucknowwallah had been a fiery one, a Mangalorean princess he had swept along on his travels, beguiling her with his fried Goli bajji, against which her prickly persona had proved no defence. In choosing her Lucknowwallah had gone with his heart, refusing the arranged marriage his family had planned for him.

  He had never regretted his choice.

  His wife and he had fought every day of their marriage, but that was all part and parcel of the great love that they had shared. Thirty good years and two fine sons, married now and vanished abroad. And then he had watched, helplessly, as that invidious traitor cancer had eaten her away, diminishing, day by day, the person he had known and loved since his youth. But that was life. Why get worked up about what you could not control?

  The door to the office slammed open, startling Lucknowwallah from his doze. The handkerchief fluttered to the floor as the chef blearily focused on the intruder. It was Rosie Pinto.

  ‘What the devil…?’

  ‘Sir! Please come quick! They are trying to steal Ganesha!’

  Lucknowwallah burst onto the veranda at the rear of the restaurant just in time to see three coolies hauling Ganesha across the courtyard by a rope that they had dropped around his neck.

  The three men were being bellowed at by a fat, dark-skinned man in a navy blue safari suit. Ganesha was resisting with all his might, digging in his heels. But, inexorably, he was being pulled towards the alley that led out onto the main road.

  As Lucknowwallah watched, the supervisor leaned in and jabbed Ganesha in the flank with an electric cattle prod. Ganesha immediately let out a bellow of pain, his body convulsing and his hind legs spasming uncontrollably.

  As his footing faltered, the men dragged him a further yard.

  A curtain of red dropped over the chef’s eyes. With a bellow of his own, he charged into the fray, grabbing the supervisor by the lapels of his safari suit. The man’s eyes widened in fright and he dropped the cattle prod.

  ‘I am going to teach you a lesson you will never forget!’ roared Lucknowwallah, brandishing a fist.

  ‘Don’t hit me!’ yelped the man. ‘I am a government official! I am merely executing an order to take this elephant into detention. If you touch me you will surely go to prison!’

  ‘What the devil are you talking about?’ Lucknowwallah’s face had flushed and the unusual exertion was causing his heart to gallop wildly in his chest. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Romesh and Rosie on the veranda, expressions of horrified concern pasted on their faces.

  The man scrabbled in his breast pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, which he held up to Lucknowwallah’s face. ‘My name is Kondvilkar. This elephant assaulted a boy. I must take him to the animal detention centre in Pune. By order of the Maharashtra Dangerous Animals Division.’

  ‘This is preposterous! Ganesha wouldn’t hurt a fly!’

  ‘That is not for me to say. He will be examined by experts. If God is willing it, he will be returned very soon.’

  The chef’s mouth fell open, but he realised that he had run out of arguments.

  ‘Please, sir, could you let go of my shirt now?’

  Lucknowwallah released Kondvilkar. The big man stepped back, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and patted his brow in relief.

  ‘I must inform Chopra,’ growled the chef.

  ‘You may inform who you wish,’ said Kondvilkar breathily. ‘But still the elephant must go with me.’

  Lucknowwallah bent down and picked up the electric cattle prod. ‘This stays here.’

  ‘But that is government property!’

  ‘Then the government can come and get it.’

  It took a further twenty minutes for the struggling coolies to haul Ganesha into the black truck Kondvilkar had brought with him.

  As soon as the elephant calf had been manhandled aboard, Kondvilkar clanged the rear doors shut and leaned against them in relief. Ganesha immediately turned and charged the doors – but the truck had been reinforced for bigger and stronger beasts than him.

  Lucknowwallah tried one more time to call Chopra. But the man was not answering.

  The chef, surrounded by the restaurant’s staff, could only watch helplessly as the black truck roared away, the little elephant looking out at them through the mesh grill in forlorn unhappiness.

  A white Hindustan Ambassador, long the favoured vehicle of government officials on the subcontinent, honked its way through the press of bodies crowded onto the Apollo Bunder plaza, before grinding to a halt in the shadow of the Gateway of India.

  The rear door flew open and Detective Chief Inspector Maxwell Bomberton unfolded his enormous frame from the vehicle’s back seat.

  A beggar, faster off the mark than his peers, bore down on the Ambassador with a hopeful air, but then recoiled as the hulking, red-faced foreigner turned towards him and pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his white tuxedo as if drawing a pistol.

  ‘Damn this infernal heat,’ muttered Bomberton, mopping his brow. ‘It’s Christmas Day. It’s not supposed to be hot.’

  ‘This is India. It is always hot.’

  Bomberton turned to see Inspector Ashwin Chopra (Retd) nimbly navigating his way through the late-evening tourist crowd.

  ‘Nice outfit, Chopra,’ said Bomberton acidly. ‘Who are you supposed to be, exactly? Harry Houdini?’

  Chopra looked down at his attire.

  He was wearing a crisp white kurta pajama with a sleeveless black button-down waistcoat. His hair was hidden beneath a grey-furred astrakhan cap. Thick black-framed spectacles covered his eyes.

  Chopra had put a great deal of effort into his appearance. In order to pursue the course of action he had chosen he would require a plausible disguise. It was a new kind of policing, one that he’d had to learn since becoming a private investigator. Although initially uncomfortable with the new methods he was forced to employ, he had vowed to himself that he would do whatever it took to pursue the cause of justice. And if that meant having to endure the ignominy of the occasional costume, then so be it. After all, hadn’t Basil Rathbone often disguised himself in the course of his investigations as Sherlock Holmes? Why, in The Spiderwoman, he had even dressed up – with the aid of a turban and a little lampblack – as a retired Sikh military officer named Rajni Singh in order to ensnare the eponymous femme fatale.

  Chopra regarded the Englishman’s own efforts.

  The white tuxedo with double-breasted waistcoat and scarlet cummerbund straining around Bomberton’s ample stomach. The red bow tie. The Sandown cap disguising the bald pate. The monocle.

  ‘Not bad,’ he conceded grudgingly, wondering where on earth Bomberton had obtained the outfit.

  ‘Remind me again, who am I supposed to be?’

  ‘Lord Cornwallis,’ declared Chopra as Bomberton tugged at his bow tie.

  ‘Lord? Are you trying to insult me? For my sins I am acquainted with more than a few peers of the realm, Chopra, and I can tell you that the only thing they are good for is eating large dinners in the House while they hum and haw about the price of
fish. And this monkey suit is making me itch.’

  Chopra checked his watch. ‘Let’s go. And remember, stay in character at all times.’

  ‘Aye, aye, skipper,’ muttered Bomberton, giving his colleague the evil eye.

  Ganesha paced the rear of the truck, his trunk swishing angrily from side to side and his ears flapping in agitation. In the front of the truck Pramod Kondvilkar twisted his bulk to look through the iron bars partitioning the driver’s cabin from the rear.

  ‘Your master should have paid me,’ he said morosely. ‘Then all this trouble would not be necessary.’ He shook his head. ‘Always there is one! Why to give everyone a black name by trying to be honest? Who does he think he is? Raja Harishchandra?’

  The driver nodded in agreement, then yanked the wheel viciously to the left, skidding the truck around a corner and almost knocking over a handcart piled high with rods of sugar cane.

  ‘Now I will have to do something I do not like,’ continued Kondvilkar. ‘It is not my fault, you understand. There is simply no room for an elephant in our caging facilities.’ He shook his head again. ‘I know you cannot understand a word I am saying but it is only fair to tell you that you are going to meet your maker. I have a pit of quicklime prepared for troublesome creatures such as you. Do not worry, you will not be alone. There are plenty of others down there. Mad bulls, stubborn camels, worn-out mules, retired circus bears and, of course, elephants. Plenty of elephants.’

  The driver sniggered and glanced back at Ganesha via his mirror. The little elephant had stopped pacing the rear of the truck and was standing stock-still, his attention focused on Kondvilkar.

  ‘It is almost as if he is listening,’ said the driver.

  ‘Oh, he is listening, that is for sure,’ opined Kondvilkar. ‘But he is not understanding. None of them do. Not until the last second when the ground suddenly gives way beneath them, and they realise that they have fallen into the pit of their doom. Such a shame, really. But the state only gives me a small amount to house these creatures. If I were to actually spend it on cages what would I keep for myself? I must eat too, yes?’