Not one to be intimidated, the commissioner stood his ground and said, ‘Even if there was one, you would still have a problem, Mr Khan. Similar idols can be found in multiple temples.’
‘And it’s very easy to steal them, isn’t it? These ancient treasures . . . ’ Kabir persisted.
Murgavel was a silent spectator to the entire discussion. He did not know how to react. Embarrassed and a tad confused, he kept quiet.
‘Mr Khan, there are thirty-three thousand temples in Tamil Nadu alone. How is the government supposed to protect all of them? We don’t have the manpower to provide security to even one-tenth of that number. It is left to the local village councils to manage them. I understand there are issues here, but we have bigger problems to deal with. Your missing idol does not fit into our priority list.’
‘I am sure.’ Kabir stood up to leave. ‘Thank you for your time.’
16
When Kabir Khan walked into the lobby of the Taj Coromandel in Nungambakkam, Ashokan was already waiting for him. As soon as he saw Kabir, Ashokan sprang up from the sofa and hurried towards him.
The men shook hands warmly. It was evident that they knew each other well.
‘So, what do you have?’ Kabir asked him when they had settled into an isolated corner. He didn’t have time for polite conversation. ‘Were you able to figure out where the statuette is from?’
‘No, not yet, sir.’ Ashokan was always nervous in Khan’s presence, and the latter’s brusque manner only made it worse.
‘Then why are you wasting my time?’ Kabir snapped.
‘Not sure how much it is worth, but . . . ’ He fidgeted with his phone for a bit and then showed a picture to Kabir.
The expression on Kabir’s face changed as he looked at it. ‘Where is this?’
‘I can take you there. But this is an old picture.’
‘How old?’
‘A few months for sure. One of my contacts sent this to me.’ Ashokan let out the breath that he had been holding. He was happy that Khan saw value in what he had shown. For informers like him, their place in the system was linked to the value of the information they brought to the table. And Kabir Khan’s sudden interest suggested that the information was significant. ‘When do you want to go?’
Kabir looked at his watch. He had a flight back to Delhi later that night. But what Ashokan had shown him had piqued his interest. Delhi could wait. ‘How about now?’ he said.
‘Now?’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Not at all. Let’s go.’
17
Their destination was 26 kilometres outside Chennai, on the road to Sriperumbudur. As a result of heavy traffic, it took Kabir Khan and Ashokan over an hour and a half to get there. About a kilometre ahead of Sriperumbudur, Ashokan took a left turn on to a muddy track. In the growing darkness, they continued on that track for another 1.5 kilometres, occasionally passing clusters of huts on the way. The land was quite barren and dry. Two dusty Ambassadors went by in the opposite direction. Ambassadors were very common in rural Tamil Nadu, and by the looks of it, Kabir and Ashokan were almost in rural Tamil Nadu.
For a minute, Kabir wondered if he had done the right thing in trusting Ashokan and coming with him without his regular entourage. But then the information he had brought was too exciting not to follow up on. Kabir pulled out the image Ashokan had shown him at the hotel and looked at it. He swiped his way to the image of the statuette that Mohammed Jilani had sent Inamdar. He swiped back and forth a few times.
The images were very similar.
‘How much further?’ he asked, looking up from his phone.
‘Almost there.’
Five minutes later, they stopped outside a makeshift gate made of planks of wood that had been nailed together. A huge compound wall enclosed what looked like a workshop. There was no sign of human civilization for acres and acres. Inside, it was pitch dark. Kabir patted his holster to confirm the presence of his service revolver. He wondered if he should send his coordinates to his team, to call for backup, but dropped the idea; it was too late now.
Ashokan cut the ignition, stepped out of the car and walked through the gate. Kabir followed him in the eerie silence, walking stealthily, trying to crouch in the shadows.
‘It is okay. You don’t need to do that.’ Ashokan smiled, not bothering to keep his voice down, much to Kabir’s despair. Something was not right. Kabir’s intuition was usually bang on target. But Ashokan was not bothered.
‘Annaiya!’ he called out. Loud and clear.
No response.
‘Annaiya! Annaiya!’ he called again as he walked into the workshop. While the outside light was on, there was no light inside. He walked to his left and switched on the lights. He had been here before. He knew the lay of the land.
‘Annaiya!’
Still no response.
‘Must be drunk,’ Ashokan remarked, looking at Kabir. ‘These guys spend all their money on arrack. Make money during the day and blow it all up in the evening. Had this guy been in America, he would have earned millions.’
‘Nobody earns millions making plaster of Paris impressions,’ Kabir retorted.
‘Ah, but this guy is very good.’
‘That’s fine, but all he does is make moulds and then cast copies of statues to be sold in some third-rate curio store.’
‘Maybe. But even that requires talent.’
‘Talent!’
‘Of course!’ Ashokan insisted, walking into the room next to the main hall. ‘If he didn’t have the talent, he wouldn’t have got the contract for making so many impressions of the Ganesha statuette. Didn’t you see how close to the original the replicas look? Simply perfect!’
Kabir looked at his phone, at the image that Ashokan had sent him—over one hundred plaster of Paris imitations of the statue that resembled the statuette found after the Wafi Mall heist were lined up as if waiting to be packed and dispatched. It was not the number of statuettes that bothered Kabir; it was their similarity to the original. There was a possibility that these were dummies produced for sale in the normal course of business—they would know once they interrogated Annaiya, the owner of the manufacturing unit where all these had been produced.
Kabir opened the rear door and walked into the deserted backyard. A few coconut trees. A tin-roof shed. It seemed as if at one point in time a few cows might have been tied there. A large tank. He had seen those before. In the days when open bathrooms were popular, such tanks were used to store water. But this guy, Annaiya, was using them for a different purpose. The white marks on the sides of the three-foot-tall tank, which shone in the moonlight, told Kabir that Annaiya was using it to mix industrial quantities of plaster of Paris prior to pouring it in moulds. A primitive way of manufacturing plaster of Paris artefacts, but effective nevertheless.
As he turned to go inside his foot brushed against something. He stopped and looked down. It was a slipper. A Bata rubber slipper. He bent down and picked it up. It looked new. He flipped it over and saw that the price tag was intact. He stared at the slipper for a moment, then—
‘Ashokan! Come here. Now!’
Kabir rushed to the tank, Ashokan in close pursuit. There was something on the side wall of the tank that had caught his eye. He picked it up. It was the other slipper.
Apprehensively, he looked down into the water tank. It was all white. Plaster of Paris. As he had suspected, Annaiya was using the tank for mixing the plaster of Paris. However, what caught his attention was the smooth round bulge in the otherwise flat surface of the plaster of Paris in the tank. Kabir swore angrily.
Ashokan followed Kabir’s gaze and immediately realized what he was looking at. ‘Annaiya!’ he gasped. ‘How could this have happened?’
Kabir Khan didn’t answer. He just pulled out his phone and dialled a number. ‘There has been a murder.’
Annaiya was lying in the plaster of Paris, his curved paunch the only part of his body visible above the plaster. Whether he was kil
led and then thrown into the tank or whether he was drowned in the tank, Kabir Khan couldn’t say.
‘The plaster is wet,’ Ashokan said.
‘This can only mean that he was killed a short while ago.’
‘We need to leave.’
‘You go,’ Kabir whispered. ‘I will wait for the police to arrive.’
18
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
Dharmaraja Varma arrived at the temple at 7.20 a.m. that day, as he had been doing ever since he was crowned king of Travancore. As per the rules of the temple, the king was duty-bound to visit the lord every morning and brief him on the happenings in the kingdom. Now, even at the age of ninety-one, the king still followed the ritual. He would go to the temple and spend about ten minutes in the sanctum sanctorum, locked in with the deity, before continuing with his day.
That day when the king ascended the ottakal mandapam, the elevated and enclosed platform in the centre of the temple from where one can get darshan of the deity, he ran into Rajan. In the normal course, the king’s representatives would have cleared the temple of all unwanted elements, but knowing Rajan’s litigious nature and thinking of the case pending hearing in the Supreme Court, they didn’t force him to leave.
The king stood on the mandapam, facing the statue of a reclining Padmanabha. The statue was so large that it could not be viewed all at once. Three large viewing doors stood between the king and the statue of Padmanabha, the first offered a glimpse of the visage of the reclining lord; the second, Brahma seated on a lotus emanating from the lord’s navel; and the third, the lord’s feet.
Rajan was also in the mandapam, right in front of the middle door. The king looked at Rajan and smiled. A smile full of mockery.
‘So you visit the same god you have stolen from all these years . . . eh?’ Rajan asked unabashedly. Dharmaraja Varma might be the king, but for Rajan, he was an ordinary mortal. No different from him. Rajan was far from intimidated.
The king was taken aback. He looked around hurriedly to see if anyone had heard Rajan. His entourage never stayed on the mandapam with him. They escorted him to the mandapam and then left, returning only when summoned.
Displaying great self-control, possibly because he was in front of the lord, Dharmaraja Varma ignored Rajan’s words, closed his eyes and said his morning prayers. He sat down on the mandapam and kept muttering something to himself. Possibly updating the lord on everything that was going on. After about ten minutes he got up. Rajan was still standing there, staring at the lord, as if in a trance. The king slowly bent down and touched his forehead to the ground, a gesture of subservience before the lord, his master. As he rose, he looked at Rajan and said, ‘Do you have the courage to do this? If you want to take everything from the lord, have the courage to give him everything you have.’
As per folklore, prostrating oneself in front of Lord Anantha Padmanabha meant surrendering all of one’s worldly belongings to the lord. By offering oneself to the lord, a person formally declared themselves his slave. Since the king had ritualistically offered everything to the lord, there was nothing left for him to offer and hence it was an acceptable practice for him to prostrate himself in front of the lord. But for everyone else, the belief had deteriorated to such an extent that if they were to accidentally drop something on the ground while standing on the mandapam, it was considered an irretrievable offering to the lord.
Rajan smiled again and said, ‘I have nothing left to offer to the lord but myself. So I have nothing to fear.’ He folded his hands as he dropped to his knees and kowtowed to the lord. ‘All that I have is yours, Padmanabha,’ he said, touching his forehead to the ground.
The king turned and started walking away from the mandapam. At the top of the steps he turned around. His calm demeanour gave way momentarily as he thundered, ‘What you are doing is not right! It will only anger the gods. Beware, foolish man! You and only you will be responsible for the misfortune that will befall this province.’ He stopped as abruptly as he had begun and walked down the few steps to where his entourage awaited him.
19
CHENNAI
Kabir Khan was at the office of Union Transport and Logistics Pvt. Ltd when he received a call from Commissioner Iyer’s office.
‘The commissioner has requested your presence in his office at noon,’ a voice at the other end curtly informed him.
‘I will be there,’ he said and disconnected the call. A frown appeared on his face. He was just about to get his hands on some information from the logistics company.
The previous night, once Ashokan had left and before the police arrived, Kabir had scanned the workshop thoroughly for any clues. The only item of relevance that he found was a receipt that showed that Annaiya had shipped some replicas from Chennai to Hong Kong through Union Transport and Logistics. That explained Kabir’s presence at the company’s office.
‘Here it is.’ The customer service executive handed over a piece of paper to Kabir.
‘Was the consignment inspected before it was shipped out?’ Kabir demanded, glaring at the young man.
The executive shook his head. ‘Unlikely.’ Seeing the expression on Kabir’s face darken, he hastily added, ‘The consignment had a “Not required to be checked” clearance from customs. Not only that, given that it was a handmade consignment, it even had a government-issued certificate that said “Modern Handcrafted Replicas”. Hence it is quite unlikely that the consignment would have been checked at our end or even by the on-site customs team.’
‘Hmm.’ Kabir nodded. He walked up and down the room for a few seconds and then turned towards the executive. ‘Were any other consignments shipped out by the same person?’
The executive stared into his computer for a few seconds and then looked up. ‘No. This is the only one.’
‘Never ever?’
‘No. Not in the last five years. Not unless he used a different name.’
‘And what about the receiver? Has he been sent any other shipments from here?’
A few minutes of silence followed. Then the executive looked up again, a curious mix of triumph and fear on his face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There is one consignment. Shipping out.’
‘When?’ Kabir barked.
The young man looked at his computer again, as if he was reconfirming, and whispered. ‘Tonight. It leaves the port tonight.’
‘What!’
‘Yes. Tonight. The manifest says that it is garden furniture.’
‘Damn!’ Kabir exclaimed and looked at his watch. ‘Damn!’
20
Kabir had been waiting in the conference room of the Chennai Police headquarters for nearly fifteen minutes when Commissioner Iyer walked in. He was not alone; there was someone with him.
‘Mr Khan,’ Iyer exclaimed as he shook Kabir’s hand and nodded.
Kabir forced a smile in response.
The commissioner looked to his left at the apology of a snowman. He was short, fat, balding, and it looked like if he didn’t run and get himself suspenders, he ran the risk of his trousers falling victim to gravity.
‘Meet Mr Madhavan.’
His mind elsewhere, Kabir nodded and absently shook hands with the snowman. ‘Hello, Mr Madhavan.’ It sounded more like a question than a greeting.
‘Mr Madhavan is the DIG of the idol wing of Tamil Nadu Police.’
‘Aah!’ Kabir tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. So that’s why he had been summoned to the commissioner’s office.
‘Do you have any explanation for your actions yesterday, Mr Khan?’ Madhavan asked.
If Kabir was still undecided on what stance to take, the question, or rather Madhavan’s tone, made the decision for him. He took an instant dislike to Madhavan.
‘Yes. Indeed,’ he said. ‘My informer had shown me a picture which suggested that someone was manufacturing replicas of the idol that had been found in Dubai. I went to the location to check out the lead.’
‘Don’t you think you should have taken Tamil Nadu Police into c
onfidence?’
‘Really?’ Kabir scoffed. ‘You expected me to keep you in the loop? For what?’
‘Your actions have resulted in the death of a human being. Someone who could have been a valuable source of information.’
‘Aaaah!’ Kabir exclaimed. ‘If you think my actions resulted in him being killed, I am sure you also know who killed him, Mr Madhavan. Why not just spill the beans and kill the surprise?’
Stunned by Khan’s vitriol, Madhavan looked at the commissioner for guidance.
‘And if he was such a valuable source of information for you,’ Kabir continued, ‘where was Tamil Nadu Police when he was being dumped in a tub of plaster of Paris? And,’ he turned to Iyer, ‘when I met you yesterday, you showed little inclination to be of assistance. Why then should I have kept you in the loop while following up on a task assigned to me by the director himself?’ He paused before adding, ‘Albeit unofficially.’
Madhavan fumbled. He didn’t know what to say. ‘There isn’t even an FIR in the state. Why should we follow up on someone’s whims and fancies?’
‘Interpol is on it. The case came to us at the Centre through Dubai Police. Director Inamdar is personally interested in it. Isn’t that enough?’
‘We don’t have any formal intimation on it. Nothing, apart from your discussion with the commissioner yesterday,’ Madhavan argued.
‘It’s not like you would have done much had you had any information,’ Kabir mocked. He was angry. Rather than helping him, Madhavan was throwing the rule book at him. ‘And by the way, you have a case now. The murder of an idol replica manufacturer. And just to set the record straight, you are dealing with the murder of a smuggler here. Not a saint.’
‘How can you be so sure, Mr Khan? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’
‘Well, he shipped two hundred idols to a Hong Kong-based company.’
‘That doesn’t make him a smuggler.’
In the Name of God Page 5
