by Tarquin Hall
'They came together, sir?'
'Separately.'
Another swift swig of whisky and the Britisher continued: 'A few weeks later - June of last year - Sengar was supposedly found hanging from a ceiling fan in his luxury pad in Mumbai. The investigating officer said it was suicide, but I have my doubts.'
'Such as?'
'He didn't leave a note, he'd just eaten a large meal and there was a good deal of cocaine and alcohol in his system. He was also a big lad - about 220 pounds. I don't believe any ceiling fan could have taken that weight.' Scott paused for a beat. 'When it came to finding out more about these two individuals here in India - I was after financial records, phone taps, that sort of thing - I got stonewalled. No one would lift a finger to help. I certainly couldn't count on the ICF's India investigator who was supposed to be working for me.'
Puri asked for his name.
'A former senior police inspector called Johri Mal,' answered Scott, at which the detective let out a hollow chuckle.
'A total scoundrel. Could not organise a game of bingo in a bingo hall.'
'Yes, well, naturally I made an official complaint, but my boss, the ICF President, told me not to "rock the boat". Worse, he said he saw no grounds for any further investigation of Mohib Alam or Vikas Sengar.' Scott drained his glass again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'The fact is, Vish - and I don't need to tell you this - when it comes to cricket, Britain might be the home of the sport, but this is where all the money is being made. The ICB has grown - very quickly, mind - into the richest cricket board in the world. The Indian Cricket League Tournament alone is worth billions. That makes the Indians very powerful. And they're starting to flex their muscles. The ICB has started laying down the law when it comes to scheduling of international series, appointing umpires, taking on advertisers--'
'And naturally ICB is totally corrupt,' interrupted Puri.
'I didn't say that,' said Scott.
'Sir, you did not need to. The ICB is unlike any other cricket board in the entire world, actually. Its members are not appointed by any higher body like a sports minister and such. It is a private syndicate. Like a kind of mafia, we can say. Members are elected by other members, only. Thus no accountability is there. Many of these individuals are total goondas. Take the current president, Sandeep Talwar, who, by the way, was seated at the table along with the victim. He is a crook. Of the highest order. Most probably he's in league with the bookies, who are providing so much of black money during elections. So he will not want any Indian bookie unmasked, that is for sure, and he will make sure that charlie Johri Mal does not do any singing for his supper.'
The two men drank in silence for a minute.
'You said you were working for another organisation, sir?' asked Puri.
'It's relatively new, Vish, so you wouldn't have heard of it. We don't even have an office yet. But we're calling our campaign Clean Up Cricket.'
'We, sir?'
'Retired players, umpires, coaches, senior commentators - all concerned individuals. Concerned that all this over-commercialisation and the illegal betting industry are ruining the great game of cricket. We want to see it cleaned up - something the ICF is failing to do and in our view will carry on failing to do.'
'And you want my help, is it?'
'We'd like to hire you to investigate this murder. Find out who did it.'
'That will not be at all easy, sir. We are talking about a can of worms. Many cans in fact. And it will be dangerous, also.'
Puri was thinking of his counterparts who had delved into Aga's affairs. Pakistani detective B.K. Laghari, for example, who had turned up in a sports bag at the Gadani Ship Breaking Yard near Karachi. And the head of Mumbai's Detection Unit . . . hit by a suburban train at Andheri, an accident according to the official report, despite the lengths of rope found tied around his arms and legs.
'Look, Vish, we'll understand if you don't want to take us up on our offer,' said Scott. 'But Clean Up Cricket has got deep pockets.'
'Where the money is coming from exactly?'
Scott put up his hands in a defensive posture. 'Look, I'm not going to lie to you,' he said. 'We're being financed by two of Europe's biggest betting companies.'
'No doubt they'd dearly love to get their hands on the Indian market,' observed Puri.
'Is there anything wrong with that? The only way to clean up cricket is to legalise betting on the subcontinent.'
'True. And match fixing hurts the legal betting business in Europe and elsewhere, no? Keeps the punters in Britain away from the betting shops if they believe the game has gone for a toss.'
'There's that as well,' conceeded Scott. 'But I'm not in this for the betting industry - and that goes for my fellow members as well. We just want to see the game cleaned up.'
Puri replenished their glasses for a third time. Scott watched him, waiting for a response.
'I would be having certain terms,' said the detective. 'Naturally a contract should be there - signed, sealed and delivered. But also -' He faltered. 'Well, the thing is, sir, well, you see -'
'You want a free rein, Vish - want to handle things your way.'
'Exactly, sir. Not to say of course that your advice would not be invaluable -'
Scott held up a hand. 'I got it: no back seat driving,' he said. 'Just provide me with updates now and again, some indication of how you're getting along and I'll keep out your hair. So do we have a deal?'
Puri's face showed marked relief. 'Undoubtedly,' he said.
They shook on it and Scott stood to leave. He was due to fly back to London in a few hours.
'One other thing I wanted to mention,' he said. 'In case you run into difficulties getting a visa to Pakistan, my colleagues and I will sort it out for you.'
'Pakistan?' asked Puri, his voice suddenly weak.
'I assume you'll want to travel there. Surely the Indians aren't going to be able to keep Kamran Khan here? He's going to want to return home with his father's body.' Until now the thought of going to Pakistan had not even occurred to Puri. It was the one country in the world that he had vowed never to set foot in. He hated the place with every ounce of his body.
'Well, yes . . . I . . . naturally, why not?' he stuttered.
'Good,' said Scott. 'You can reach me on my BlackBerry night and day. The line's scrambled.'
Puri saw his client to the door and watched him climb into the waiting auto. He then exited through a door in the back of the booth. The taxi he'd hired from Randy Singh at International Backside was still parked in the lane that ran behind the shops.
On the front seat lay a fake beard, a chin net and an unravelled pink turban.
FIVE
TUBELIGHT HAD BEEN asked to track down all manner of unusual items in his time - everything from a runaway nautch girl to a eunuch's disembodied head. When Mahatma Gandhi's glasses were stolen from the National Gandhi Museum, it was Puri's senior operative who traced them to the den of a so-called super chor known as Ruby. Tubelight had also been instrumental in recovering his friend Hazrat Ali's kidney after he was abducted and operated on by organ dealers.
But locating a dead pye-dog? In the middle of Delhi?
'You'd have better luck finding a virgin on GB Road, Boss,' he told Puri on the phone about an hour after the ATM meeting with Scott.
There were tens of thousands of stray, flea-bitten mutts living on the streets of India's capital and every day dozens succumbed to disease or were mowed down by the city's angry traffic, Tubelight pointed out.
'Few years back it would have been totally impossible,' replied Puri. 'Now at least we're in with a chance.'
The detective was referring to the demise of Delhi's traditional, eco-friendly, cost-free and thoroughly efficient canine clean-up service.
Namely, its vultures.
These magnificent birds, which had always been a feature of the capital - circling on the heat eddies in the skies overhead or perched up high in the branches of diseased trees - had been a
ccidentally killed off in the past few years after feeding on the carcasses of cattle treated with a banned but still widely available veterinary drug.
Dog disposal was now the detail of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's street cleaners, who were supposed to cart the carcasses off to landfills but often dumped them in more convenient locations like drains and ditches or 'jungles', as the wooded areas of Delhi were known.
'I'll get on to it, Boss,' said Tubelight. 'But what has this dog got to do with the case?'
The canine in question was, of course, the one that had made such a scene at Kotla Stadium yesterday afternoon.
'I suspect the pooch died from the same poison that was used to kill Faheem Khan,' answered the detective. 'We need it for post-mortem. Find out if the grounds wallahs saw anything out of the ordinary - someone feeding it, perhaps? Could be they can identify the murderer.'
'What if the police are looking for the dog as well?'
Puri guffawed. 'Don't do tension, yaar! The Chief could not tell his backside from a hole in the ground.'
Tubelight hung up and continued eating his lunch. Before him, laid out on the grass in a semicircle, sat the three round, stainless steel sections of his tiffin box. The first contained a few rotis, the second some aloo subzi, and the third cucumber raita seasoned with roasted cumin. The food had been prepared by his wife in the early hours of this morning, and he had carried the container with him in his autorickshaw while fulfilling his first assignment of the day, namely picking up and dropping off Puri's new client, the pink-faced Angrezi police wallah.
As he tore off a piece of the flat bread and scooped up a lump of potato with his right hand, he felt the sun's rays break through the winter haze. He had almost forgotten what its warmth felt like; the cold had penetrated into the very marrow of his bones.
His home, a small rented apartment in a typical, shoddily constructed building with no insulation, was like a fridge at this time of year (an oven for the other eight months). The two heaters he owned required electricity and with all the neighbours hooking on to the overhead lines illegally (the new scam was to draw electricity from overhead lines using TV antennas and step-up transformers), the colony's junction boxes kept overloading and tripping.
He closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun. The heat spread through him like an isotope, warming the blood in his veins. The other men and women - paint-splattered decorators, sweepers, a clutch of office workers - eating their lunch amidst beds of poppies and sweet peas, reacted in the same way, stretching and yawning as if emerging from hibernation.
Tubelight finished his food, lit a beedi and lay back on the grass. For a few minutes, he almost forgot about the latest task he had been assigned by Boss - and the fact that he was in the middle of New Delhi's Mathew Chowk roundabout at the junction of the Akbar Road and Tees January Marg. About fifty feet across and set with flower beds and neem trees, it was one of the few truly beautiful places in the city where anyone of any background was free to sit without fear of being moved on. Sometimes, between jobs, he even came here to take a nap, impervious to the honking traffic.
But today he couldn't afford that luxury; not if he was going to find the dead dog. Tugging on the last of his beedi, he sat up and packed his tiffin, stacking one container upon the other and locking it with the metal arm that held the whole thing together.
Before returning to his autorickshaw, which was parked next to his friend's paan and cigarette stand on Tees January Marg, he picked up a marigold blossom lying on the grass and tucked it behind his ear.
Tubelight was barred from entering the Kotla Stadium by the security guards on duty. He turned instead to the dhaba near the gate on Bahadur Shah Zafar Road and there, he struck up a conversation with the owner.
'Yes, I recognised that dog, bhai,' said the dhaba wallah, a large, greasy-faced man who was busy doing four things at once - taking orders from new customers who all expected to be served simultaneously; frying baturas in a wok; counting change; and scratching his groin.
'Sometimes I used to give it scraps,' he continued while garnishing a tobacco-leaf plate of channa with chopped chillis and coriander. 'It was always friendly, but then it went crazy.'
'Any idea why?' asked Tubelight.
'I didn't say the dog was my best friend! How should I know?'
'Did you see anyone else feeding it?'
More customers arrived; more change was begrudgingly handed over from a container of grubby notes and coins; a big steel pot with a blackened underside was given a stir.
Puri's operative repeated his question and in reply got an irritated, 'Haaa? Why the interest in some dog, bhai?'
Tubelight produced a fake police ID. 'I'm working undercover,' he said, flashing it conspiratorially. 'We suspect terrorists of using dogs to spread disease.'
The man looked unmoved, his apathy born of a lifetime spent on Delhi's brutal streets.
'Look, I was busy that day,' he answered. 'There were big crowds. Think I can watch everything that goes on? There are lots of dogs hanging around. Why don't you bother someone else? Like those two over there.' He gestured to two groundsmen crouched on the pavement eating their lunch. They were the ones who'd taken the dog off the cricket pitch.
'Oi, you two! What happened to that dog? The one that went crazy?' the dhaba wallah shouted.
'We dumped it over there,' one of them replied.
He indicated a ditch next to some big sewer pipes waiting to be laid. Tubelight went and investigated but there was no trace of the dog.
'The Kala Bandar must have eaten it,' concluded the other groundsman.
The Kala Bandar, literally 'monkey man', was a kind of Indian Big Foot who was said to prowl the streets of Delhi. Dozens of people claimed to have been attacked by him; many more witnesses had described his nocturnal activities: bounding down streets, jumping ten feet over cars, scaling walls. The police were taking the issue seriously and had issued a likeness, plastering wanted posters on to walls and lamp posts across the city. They showed a creature covered in black hair with razor-sharp claws and a monkey face. His only apparel was a motorcycle helmet.
'He doesn't eat dogs,' bawled the dhaba wallah. 'So you shouldn't worry!'
'Chippkali ke jhaant ke paseene!' swore the groundsman. Sweat of a lizard's pubic hair!
The dhaba wallah's helper, who was about ten years old and was standing on a stool pouring small glasses of chai the colour of mud, spoke up. 'I just remembered something!' he announced.
'The name of your father?' quipped the dhaba wallah.
'No bhai! Two men came and took that dog away!' he said. 'They wore masks and gloves. There was something written on the side of their Tempo.'
'You're talking about that dog?' chimed in one of the stadium security guards, overhearing the conversation.
'You saw the men who took it?' asked Tubelight.
'Maybe. Who wants to know?'
The fake police ID was produced again, but the security guard said he still couldn't quite remember the details. It took a 50-rupee note to refresh his memory.
'They were from Rabies Control,' he said.
Tubelight drove as fast as his autorickshaw could travel (top speed 31 miles per hour) north to Timarpur Marg. But he was too late. A blood sample had been taken from the dog, and according to the chowkidar on the gate, the usual rag picker charged with disposing of animal carcasses had taken it away. He'd done so on a bicycle cart a couple of hours ago.
'What's the rag picker's name?'
'How should I know?'
'Where does he come from?'
'Get lost.'
It was then that Tubelight noticed an oily trail leading out of the gate and down the road. The route taken by the rag picker's cart? He decided to follow it. A mile on, he found himself in front of a concrete dumpster where cows grazed on a mound of garbage. Here, another rag picker confirmed that he was on the right track and pointed him in the direction of the Bhalswa jugghi.
Tubelight contin
ued north, past dense, suffocating townships of bare concrete blocks. And soon, above the otherwise flat terrain, he spotted the mountain. The air turned foul, a toxic stench catching in the back of his throat as the massif loomed larger. He could make out a road cut into its side, a dump truck heading towards the flat-top summit. A black cloud of birds wheeled overhead like a portent of doom. There were figures picking their way along the escarpment - women, the reds and pinks of their saris bright against a crumbling, unstable terrain the grey of nuclear ash.
The English word for the place was 'landfill' but this was a misnomer, Tubelight reflected as he turned off the highway on to a rough track. An open 'drain', or sewer, with garbage-strewn banks led to a tangle of tumbledown shacks blackened by dirt and pollution. He stopped to ask a kabari wallah if a rag picker with a dead dog had passed that way. By a miracle the man knew his name: Raju. Finding this Raju, however, didn't prove easy. The area's geography was defined, indeed as most of Delhi is by the majority of its inhabitants, by landmarks and narratives.
