In the Name of God

by Ravi Subramanian

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ She was embarrassed and it showed. Nirav had a surprised look on his face. Vikram Rai, who had been a silent spectator, was busy on his phone texting. Asking one of his contacts for help, presumably.

  Divya bowed her head; she didn’t want to say anything. It was only when a worried-looking Nirav put his arms around her to reassure her that she tearfully looked at him and shook her head. ‘You know this is not true, Dad,’ she pleaded. ‘I did not kill Subhash Uncle.’

  ‘A few hours before Subhash Parikh was murdered and a little before the CCTV cameras in the hotel went blank, the camera in the hotel lobby captures you rushing out. About fifteen minutes later, you surface at Menon Medical Stores, about half a kilometre from the hotel, and ask for Succinylcholine. The chemist refused to give you the medicine at first, but you bribed him and got what you wanted. Everything is recorded on the store camera. Your mobile triangulation also puts you in that area at that time. Do you still deny it?’

  Not to be left behind, Krishnan added, ‘There are very few stores in Thiruvananthapuram which stock Succinylcholine. It is not a commonly available drug. So it was easy to find out which store you bought it from.’ He pulled out a copy of the bill and flung it on the table. ‘There you go!’

  Attached to the Menon Medical Stores bill was a screen grab of Divya buying the drug from the store. Though the bill was for some other drug, the photograph showed her reading the text on the injection.

  ‘Not only did you buy Sux from there, you also bought four strips of Alprax,’ Khan added. ‘The proprietor of Menon Medical Stores has been detained for selling prescription drugs without a proper prescription. He identified you!’ Kabir said with a flourish.

  Divya was quiet.

  Irritated by her silence, Khan said, ‘I have asked the coroner to re-examine Subhash’s body and have asked him to specifically check for Sux. The post-mortem is most likely to be positive. Everything points to you. Time to confess!’

  Divya began to shiver. Nirav was sitting right next to her. He looked confused. A bit dull too. Probably falling blood sugar levels were beginning to affect him.

  Krishnan turned to look at Aditya. ‘While she’s confessing, maybe you’d like to shed some light on why you wanted to pack off Subhash Parikh and Nirav Choksi, both?’ And he raised his right hand and pointed it towards Aditya. ‘You got lucky. Plain lucky! She killed him before you did.’

  Kabir looked at Divya and then at Aditya. Neither of them spoke. ‘So you don’t want to speak?’ Kabir asked them. Divya looked at Aditya, a look of disgust on her face.

  ‘In that case, I guess it’s time for a tête-è-tête.’ Khan led Aditya and Divya out of the room, marching them briskly to another room at the far end of the corridor.

  He opened the door and ushered them inside. The moment they stepped in, they came to an abrupt halt.

  Sitting in the room, dressed in an orange sari, graceful as ever, was Shreyasi Sinha.

  ‘Game’s up!’ Kabir sounded triumphant.

  117

  A few hours earlier

  Shreyasi Sinha was in room 1203 of Hotel Lotus Pond when Kabir Khan, accompanied by a team of Kerala Police, knocked at the door. She had been in that room ever since she arrived from Singapore. By severely restricting her movements—going out rarely, keeping away from the crowd, staying away from the cameras—she had hidden fairly successfully. She had cut her hair short and streaked it grey to avoid easy detection. Even the hotel staff hadn’t seen much of her, which explained why they were unable to confirm if she was a guest when the police were hunting for her.

  The Interpol notice against her came in handy. It was easy to take her into custody.

  She just requested the police to wait, changed into a sari, and walked out of the room, a picture of grace and composure. Kabir could see why, despite the age gap, Aditya had fallen for her.

  In the interrogation centre at the police headquarters, Shreyasi denied any wrongdoing in the case of the Dancing Nataraja statue that she had supplied to the National Museum of Australia. The transaction was done through the Singapore Freeport, and the statue was shipped directly from the Freeport to the museum. While the transaction itself was not illegal, the fact that the statue was shipped into Singapore, held at the Freeport and shipped out directly from there, thus evading sales tax and luxury tax in Singapore, made it a federal crime. ‘Every art dealer in Singapore does it,’ she claimed. Kabir had no knowledge of the laws in Singapore. However, when she laid out the contours of the transaction, it made sense.

  ‘Whom did you buy it from?’ Kabir asked.

  ‘HK Global Artisans Development Company,’ she replied. ‘Subhash Parikh’s company.’

  Kabir was both surprised and relieved. Shreyasi’s confession clearly established a serious business relation between her and Subhash Parikh. It also pointed towards Subhash Parikh’s involvement in the temple scam in Tamil Nadu. Whether he masterminded the entire operation or merely bought the artefacts cheaply from the perpetrators was still uncertain. When he asked Shreyasi this, she feigned ignorance.

  ‘Subhash Parikh’s store on Fifth Avenue was a front for all his activities. It lent credibility to his nefarious activities. How he carried them out, I have no clue,’ she explained.

  ‘Why would he agree to risk everything and hide you in the hotel? Records show that he was the one who booked the room for you. True, he booked it through MakeMyTrip, but the credit card he used for the transaction was his,’ Khan said, mentally thanking Pallavi for figuring this out. When Tanveer’s fiancée was looking through the rooms for which she had to pull out the Internet usage data, she discovered that there were two rooms for which the same credit card number had been provided as a surety. Both rooms were in Subhash Parikh’s name, albeit one of them was in the name of Subhash Chandra Parikh.

  ‘Because we were to get married,’ she said calmly.

  ‘Married?’ Khan was stunned. Then what was Aditya doing in her room, in Amsterdam and here!

  ‘Yes. But somewhere down the line, I felt that he was using me as a conduit for his illegal antique trade and that didn’t go down well. We had an argument.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’

  ‘No one would have believed me. He was rich. He had the money, the contacts.’

  ‘What is your relationship with Aditya?’ he asked point-blank when he couldn’t think of a more sophisticated way of asking her.

  ‘He is a . . . friend.’ There was a faint pause before ‘friend’. ‘I first met him at the jewellery design competition, in Amsterdam. We got close.’

  ‘How did he end up in your room?’

  ‘Is it a crime, Officer?’ Shreyasi asked with a smirk.

  ‘No,’ Kabir hastily responded. ‘But it seems unlikely that he came to your room merely to pocket your key and walk off. And here? Is he spending nights in your room because he is just a friend?’

  ‘You are getting too personal, Mr Khan,’ she remarked icily.

  ‘Well, Ms Sinha, a man has been murdered. And more often than not it is the personal stuff that leads to murders. So it might be too personal for you, but for me it is bloody work! So shed this damn arrogance and answer my questions!’ Khan barked. The sophisticated ways of the art world were beginning to irritate him. ‘Let me ask again: What was your relationship with Aditya?’

  ‘Just a friend.’

  ‘I see!’ he snapped. ‘The 2 a.m. friend takes on an entirely new meaning here, doesn’t it?’

  Shreyasi chose to remain silent, though anger was building up inside her.

  Finally Khan came to the question he had wanted to ask her all this while.

  ‘Gujarat?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Ever been to Gujarat?’

  ‘Yes, quite a few times. Why?’

  ‘In the last two years?’

  ‘Not in the last two years.’

  ‘Business interests in Gujarat?’

  Shrey
asi seemed flustered. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead and neck. ‘No,’ she said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

  ‘Maybe then you can explain the twenty acres of land you bought in Surat last year.’

  ‘Just an investment. Had some free cash, so I bought it.’

  ‘Who had some free cash?’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘Who had some free cash, Ms Sinha?’ Khan repeated forcefully.

  ‘If memory serves me right, this land was bought in return for some artefacts and antiques that we had supplied to some diamond jewellers in Surat.’

  ‘Any reason why Mr Parikh had your power of attorney and executed the transaction on your behalf?’ He sprang the surprise question. The property papers that he had asked for clearly showed that Subhash Parikh had bought the property using the general power of attorney given by Shreyasi Sinha.

  ‘As I told you, we were going to get married. He used to take care of these deals for me in India. It was difficult for me to travel every few days to collect payments from customers.’

  ‘Strange! Given that he himself was a New York-based art dealer.’

  Shreyasi fell silent. The problem with lying was that while the first few lies were thought through, the subsequent ones tended to fall apart. That’s why no liar ever emerged unscathed from a sustained interrogation. Their ability to connect all the lies in a cohesive story diminished with every subsequent lie. Shreyasi was fast reaching that point.

  ‘Did you have any plans for the property or was it just an investment?’

  ‘Subhash wanted to do something with it. I’m not sure what,’ she replied, regaining some of her nonchalance. ‘But now with him dead, I guess I will just sell it and move on.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Kabir asked her, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Of course! I have no interest in Surat.’

  ‘Have there been any more transactions like this? Transactions where he used your power of attorney to buy property?’

  Shreyasi thought for a while, and then shook her head. A feeble ‘No’ escaped her lips.

  Kabir asked her a few more questions and left. He wanted to put Aditya, Divya and Shreyasi in the same room and question them together and see where it all led to.

  As he sorted through the ideas crowding his mind, one thought stood out: Did Shreyasi too have an interest in seeing Subhash dead?

  118

  Present

  Aditya acknowledged Shreyasi with a subtle nod. Divya completely ignored her and walked to the far end of the table and sat down.

  ‘So,’ Kabir began. He had been through such situations many times in the past. ‘Ms Sinha says that her relationship with Aditya was a friendly relationship.’ He intentionally started off with a statement which was sure to rile up Divya.

  There was a moment’s silence and then—

  ‘Really?’ Divya drawled. She had taken the bait.

  Kabir nodded. ‘In which case, there was no need for you to have clandestinely eavesdropped outside her room.’

  Shreyasi looked at Divya in horror. This was the first time she had heard that someone was eavesdropping on her.

  ‘I have said before, I trust my instinct more than what anyone may have to say. What I heard in the room is enough for me to know that what was going on in that room was not between just friends,’ Divya responded, dripping venom with every word.

  ‘What’s with her? She is talking crap, Officer.’ Shreyasi was taken aback by Divya’s tirade.

  ‘Coochie-cooing with someone in your room while his girlfriend is asleep is not my definition of a friendly relationship,’ she spat. ‘Scheming, plotting, strategizing! Friends my foot!’

  ‘Scheming?’ Krishnan caught on to the word. ‘Scheming about what?’

  ‘The Surat diamond bourse!’ she declared.

  ‘Aah!’ Kabir Khan exclaimed. His lips stretched into a wide smile. This is what he had wanted to hear. It was what he had imagined all along. The snatches of conversation that Lakshmi Narain Sharma had heard over the phone at midnight, a few hours before Subhash Parikh died, had given him the idea. There was no reason for Surat to be mentioned in a hostile conversation unless there was something big at play. Kabir liked the way this was playing out.

  ‘So it was more than a romantic liaison?’ He egged Divya on.

  ‘They wanted to usurp Subhash Uncle’s land.’

  ‘Subhash Parikh?’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Subhash Parikh,’ Divya replied testily.

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘Apparently Subhash Uncle had a large parcel of land in Surat which was bought in her name.’ She pointed towards Shreyasi. ‘When they were in a serious relationship. Now both of them wanted to bump off Subhash Uncle to take control of that land.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ Shreyasi reacted. ‘I bought it. It was mine. It is in my name. I don’t have to bump off anyone to take back what is mine.’

  ‘Aditya has confessed to having schemed to pack off Mr Parikh, Ms Sinha. So there’s no point denying it. His confession is on tape and is admissible as evidence in court.’

  ‘What does that have to do with me?’ Shreyasi asked. ‘If he says he had planned it, then ask him. Why are you asking me?’

  Aditya looked stunned.

  Khan turned towards Shreyasi. ‘So you’re saying that you were not a part of his plan to kill Subhash.’

  ‘Not at all. I have no clue what is being spoken of here.’

  The door opened and Madhavan walked in. He crossed over to Khan and whispered something. The two of them left together. Khan returned some moments later carrying a document. There was an uneasy silence in the room.

  ‘How about you tell us what happened in room 1203’—he pointed towards Shreyasi Sinha—‘the night Subhash Parikh was killed.’

  No one responded.

  Aditya looked down at his shoes. Shreyasi looked at Aditya. And Divya looked at both of them.

  ‘Perhaps Ms Choksi could tell us . . .’ Kabir suggested. ‘Seeing as these two don’t want to.’

  ‘There was a huge argument going on in the room when I reached there.’

  ‘What argument? Between who all?’

  ‘Them and Subhash Uncle.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I recognized their voices.’

  ‘And what was the argument about?’

  ‘Like me, Subhash Uncle had also discovered their relationship a few days ago. There was a fair bit of unpleasantness. While I was happy that Subhash Uncle had found out about them, what got me worked up was that they wanted him to kill Dad.’

  Khan looked at Krishnan, who had been silent all along. They were getting somewhere.

  ‘Why would they want your father dead?’

  ‘Apparently Subhash Uncle wanted to set up a diamond bourse on the land he had bought in Surat.’

  ‘He? You mean he had bought the land in Surat?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what they were saying.’

  A cynical smile creased Shreyasi’s face when she heard Divya say this.

  Oblivious to Shreyasi, Divya continued. ‘There was a huge argument about that. Subhash Uncle felt that setting up a bourse in Surat would do wonders for the diamond trade. Compared to Mumbai, Surat would be a lot cheaper and more effective for a diamond bourse. Labour and realty are cheaper. The travel time is less. The space is larger. There are many of benefits. But the only hitch was that it would kill the already tottering BKC bourse. The diamond trade in Mumbai would be split between Mumbai and Surat. Most likely in favour of the latter. And that would sound the death knell for the Mumbai trade. This woman here, she didn’t want any of that. She wanted to sell the land and keep the money. Aditya was more dispassionate. He offered Subhash an alternative. Kill Dad, sell the Surat property, split the money and become the chairman of the BKC Diamond Bourse.’

  ‘How would killing your father help?’

  ‘Dad is very influential in the diamond trade in Zaveri Bazaar.’

  ‘Yes, so we’ve hea
rd.’

  ‘Today, only twenty per cent of the BKC Diamond Bourse is occupied. Dad calls it a bhoot bangla. Low occupancy has rendered it commercially ineffective. The bourse is losing crores every month. But no one is moving there, because the entire diamond and jewellery trade ecosystem is around Zaveri Bazaar. BKC has been plagued with issues—connectivity, traffic, apathy, high rental and capital values—which make recreating the Zaveri Bazaar model very difficult. Impossible, actually.’

  ‘So why your father?’

  ‘Dad has always been very vocal against the BKC bourse. And until he gives the go-ahead, the Zaveri Bazaar jewellery union will not move. Dad knows that while moving there will be good for the big and rich traders, a large number of the lower-end traders will go out of business. He has been talking to them and convincing them not to fall prey to it. Even our neighbour, Akhil Uncle, wanted to sell his property and move, but Dad talked him out of it. Poor man was killed in the Mumbai blasts, last year. Dad could have been killed too, but luckily he survived.’ A single tear escaped from her eye and rolled down her cheek. ‘This is what he gets for being so nice to them. For taking up the cudgels on their behalf. For helping out people whose life depends on Zaveri Bazaar.’ She was sobbing now. ‘Subhash Uncle protested for some time. But then they showed him some video, and . . . and he fell in line. I am not sure what was on the video. But I guess the position of a chairman of the BKC bourse was too good to pass up on. He agreed to kill Dad that night.’ A steady stream of tears flowed down her cheeks.

  Kabir unceremoniously shoved a box of tissues in Divya’s lap and turned to Shreyasi. ‘So the battle that you had in your room was because he wanted to set up the Surat diamond bourse and you didn’t?’

  ‘As I said, Mr Khan, the land is in my name. ‘It is mine. Subhash was only helping out. Why would I need anyone’s permission to sell my own land? What kind of stupid logic is this?’ With her right hand she tucked her short hair behind her ears and continued, ‘This girl here is jealous because of her boyfriend and—’ She didn’t complete the thought. ‘What she’s saying is rubbish! And you are believing her.’