The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

by Tarquin Hall

  'He was wearing a ski mask but I noticed one thing: he had blotches on his hands,' said Ragi.

  Puri wondered if the assailant might be a barber. Alum, which was used to heal nicks and cuts, causes blemishes to the skin.

  'He held a rag over my face. Presently I passed out,' added Ragi who went on to explain how he regained consciousness lying on the back seat of his car, which was parked in the Pusa Hill Forest.

  That made sense, Puri thought. It was a secluded spot where no one would have disturbed the thief while they removed the moustache. But why would anyone want to steal a moustache? Could the thief have some kind of fetish? Or was he indeed a collector of unusual curios, as Thakur had surmised? Perhaps Ragi's moustache was destined to be mounted above a mantelpiece like a prize stag?

  There was one other possibility.

  'Could be some individual or other wants you and Bhalla out of the way, so to speak. You were planning to make any appearances together?' asked Puri.

  'We're not the best of friends - in case you hadn't noticed,' answered Ragi.

  The detective left the house and called his client to bring him up to date. For once Bhalla had little to say. 'If it wasn't Ragi, then who?' he asked.

  'Leave that question in my most capable hands, sir,' answered Puri.

  FIFTEEN

  CHANEL NO. 5 pulled up in front of a mansion in the exclusive City Light Town District of Surat, about two hours after Tubelight had hired him to locate Full Moon's hawala agent. There were lights on inside - a man's silhouette was in a window on the first floor - and so the young operative went straight up to the gate and rang the bell. It was answered by a prim maidservant who behaved as if she owned the house. He knew the type.

  'Pizza delivery!'

  Chanel No. 5 held up a Domino's box that had been delivered to his place before he'd set off. He was wearing a uniform, stolen a few months ago from a genuine employee's washing line. He hadn't managed to get hold of one of those unflattering baseball caps, but then he probably wouldn't have worn it anyway. Hats interfered with his hairstyle. He wore it spiked and shaved on the sides. It went with the coloured strings and bands he wore on his left wrist, the birthstone stud in his left ear and his brazen manner.

  'One peppy paneer with cheese-stuffed thick crust and extra toppings of jalapenos, green peppers and pineapple, extra spicy,' he said in heavily accented English.

  The maidservant scowled with contempt.

  'No one ordered pizza,' she said, arms folded, head cocked to one side. 'This is number 22.' She pointed to the digits on the gate. 'Can't you read?'

  'Hey, sister, no need to talk like that!' he replied. 'I'm just doing my job. Deliver in half an hour, they say. Get it to the customer hot and crispy. And that's what I do. It says here' - he read from the fake order slip he'd printed out - 'number 22, Mihir Desai. He called at exactly eight twenty-two. That's' - Chanel No. 5 checked his watch - 'twenty-nine minutes ago. See, you're holding me up, sister! The pizza will go soggy and then I'll get the blame! That could cost me my job!'

  With a roll of her eyes, the maidservant told him to wait.

  When she returned, triumph radiated from her snapping brown eyes. 'Like I told you, no one ordered pizza,' she said. 'Sir and Ma'am don't eat junk.'

  'You checked with him yourself?'

  'Who else? Now stop wasting my time or I'll call your office and make a complaint.'

  'What am I supposed to do with the pizza?'

  'Think I care?' she said with a toss of her head, slamming the gate shut in his face.

  Chanel No. 5 thanked her under his breath. Desai was at home. He was the one in the window - had turned and talked to the maidservant when she'd gone to ask him about the pizza.

  So far so good. He got back on his Vespa, rode to the end of the street and parked on an empty lot. Crouching down behind a bush, he took off the uniform and shoved it into his backpack; then he slipped on his favourite T-shirt, printed with a picture of the goddess Britney Spears.

  He had already marked out a tree with plenty of foliage on the street from where he would be able to keep an eye on Desai. First he needed to take care of the street light that stood right next to it. For this he reached into his backpack and took out his catapult and a marble. The target was an easy one for someone who had grown up in the Bapunagar slum and routinely killed rats and pigeons and sometimes, for sport, took out the headlights of passing cars on the Bajipura Road.

  The sound of the impact and subsequent shower of glass that rained down on the pavement and the parked SUV underneath brought the security guards posted outside the other houses running. They looked up at the shattered fixture, examined the shards of glass, discussed what could have caused the bulb to explode, looked up and down the street with bemused expressions, chatted for a while about this and that, and then, one by one, returned to their posts.

  When the coast was clear, Chanel No. 5 emerged from his hiding place and clambered up the tree, taking his backpack and the pizza box with him.

  Once he was settled on a sturdy branch, he sent Tubelight an SMS informing him that he was in position. He sent another to his new girlfriend, Padma, whom he had met at an illegal rave, and a third to his mother to let her know he'd be out late. Then he stuck his headphones in his ears, selected Metallica's Kill 'Em All on his MP3 player and tucked into a nice slice of peppy paneer.

  While Tubelight and Flush were boarding the evening flight to Ahmedabad, from where they planned to drive to Surat, Mummy and Ritu were making their way down to the water's edge at the Har ki Pauri ghat in Haridwar. They'd avoided the crush of the aarti ceremony when thousands gathered to watch temple priests perform a dramatic evening show complete with thalis of fire, clanging bells and plenty of evocative chanting. But the ancient steps were still busy with devotees washing themselves in the waters of Mother Ganga, the air perfumed with incense, the atmosphere one of calm deference.

  It was only a few degrees above freezing and the two women were wearing bulky winter coats and thick-knit sweaters over their white kurta pajamas. With their woolly hats pulled down over their ears and dupattas draped over their shoulders, they resembled Indian auntie versions of the Teletubbies. Ritu had to tug off her mittens in order to take from her purse the fee the pandit had quoted for conducting the Asthi Visarjan ceremony. The three 100-rupee notes quickly vanished within the folds of his saffron robes. The priest then set about arranging a few stainless steel containers on one of the steps. These were filled with the accoutrements of his trade - marigolds, rose petals, brightly coloured powders - and the urn was placed next to them.

  The pandit began to recite the last rites, his nasal delivery rising above the sound of the rushing water. Mummy and Ritu saluted the Ganges with a namaste. They crouched down, holding their cupped hands before them, and these were filled with marigolds and rose petals. To this potpourri was added a few pinches of Bal Bawar's ashes, the timeless mantras flowing as freely as the river itself. 'Om brahm bakhtam samarpayamee.'

  The two women allowed the flowers and ash to cascade from their hands. The mixture floated on the surface for a moment and quickly dissipated amongst the eddies. The pandit then emptied the remaining contents of the urn into the river, where they began an epic, 1,500-mile journey across the great plains of India to the Bay of Bengal. Finally, Ritu crouched down on the last step and cast off a floral diya, a banana leaf boat filled with petals and an oil lamp made from clay. It was quickly captured by the current, which pulled the tiny vessel out into the middle of the river, the flame of its cotton wick soon a speck on the vast body of water.

  The ceremony was over. Bal Bawar had departed . . . at least from this life.

  Ritu stood on the steps for a while longer, tears running down her cheeks, saying a final, silent prayer for her late husband. Mummy remained by her side, one arm around her friend's shoulder, offering her words of comfort. She also kept one eye on the man who had been tailing them all day.

  Trying to tail them, more like.
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  Shaking him off that afternoon had been simple. After lunch, while Ritu took some 'meter down' in their hotel room, Mummy crossed the busy pedestrian bridge that spanned the canal. Halfway across, she scattered a bagful of peanuts, attracting the attention of three or four of the city's bold and fearless monkeys, who started to fight over the pickings. With the way effectively blocked, Mummy proceeded to the other side of the bridge, where she got clean away in an auto.

  The next few hours proved fruitful.

  Mummy located the Panda who kept the records of the village in Madhya Pradesh where Mrs Harnam Talwar, wife of notorious politician Sandeep Talwar, maintained she'd been born. There was no record of either her or her parents. She was not who she claimed to be. This information might be all that Mummy needed to link Harnam Talwar to Faheem Khan. But she didn't want to jump to any conclusions. There was one last name to verify: Call Centre King Satish Bhatia's mother, Jasmeet, who had sat just two places away from the victim at that fateful dinner.

  Mummy planned to go in search of her family's Panda tomorrow.

  Of course she would have to shake off her tail first. He was working for Chubby - of that she was sure. Not an especially smart fellow, it had to be said. Once this was all over she would have to have a word with her son about the calibre of people he was using. He had underestimated her, imagined she was just some silly old lady who wouldn't spot him in the crowd. Ha! Just look at him now over on the steps, lighting a beedi and holding the match up to his face so it illuminated his features. A prize duffer if ever she'd seen one.

  Still, he could easily ruin things for her. If he found out that she had been talking with the Pandas of Haridwar and researching the ancestry of some of the women who'd been present at the murder, the great Vish Puri would guess what she was up to.

  Mummy gave Ritu's arm a light squeeze.

  'Better revert, na,' she said. 'You've been fasting all day - should be eating something. Come.'

  They mounted the steps and made their way along the riverbank. Ritu moved slowly, rocking from side to side like a Weeble toy, stopping periodically to give change to the beggars with crippled limbs pleading for alms.

  They were nearing the footbridge, the one where Mummy had shaken off Chubby's man that afternoon, when a black cat ran across their path. Ritu recoiled automatically as if she'd come face to face with a king cobra, grabbing Mummy by the arm. She insisted they take three steps backwards before continuing. A moment later, four or five bricks came crashing down on to the path in front of them. Mummy looked up; they had fallen from the top of a half-constructed building to their right.

  A crowd gathered, demanding the labourers on the scaffolding climb down and explain themselves. It was an accident, they insisted, apologising profusely and promising they would be more careful in the future.

  Ritu was still shaking when they got back to the hotel. And Mummy felt jittery herself, although she was in no doubt that it had been an accident. Forgoing her supper and getting into bed to write her diary, she thanked God for Ritu Auntie. She'd saved their lives. Her and the cat.

  It was five in the morning when hawala broker Mihir Desai's Range Rover pulled out of the gates of his Surat mansion. He drove himself, speeding through the empty residential streets of the City Light District, one of the city's wealthy new suburbs. A motorbike appeared behind him but, at the junction with Canal Road, peeled away to the left.

  Desai headed east into the city, making short work of a route that during the day, in the gridlock of Surat's traffic, would have taken an hour or more. When he reached Chowk Bazaar, a Muslim-dominated area since the massacres of 2002, he pulled up outside one of the drab, narrow buildings that lined the claustrophobic lanes. A man carrying a satchel soon appeared from a doorway and climbed into the front passenger seat. Desai promptly made a U-turn, heading back the way he'd come, and joined the Dumas Road.

  New shopping malls appeared on the outskirts of the city - 'Come Fill Up In Happiness!' Apartment complexes picketed the horizon. He passed the Grand Bhagwati, 'India's first five-star vegetarian hotel', and took the next right towards the shipyards. Cranes stood silent against the faint dawn sky. The hulk of a half-built ship loomed closer. At the end of a long line of corrugated iron shacks where labourers slept out in the open on charpais, Desai joined a muddy track that skirted the high fence encircling the shipyards. It led down to the banks of the Tapi River.

  The Range Rover finally stopped near a coal barge anchored in the water. Desai flicked his high beams. Presently, three men appeared on deck. A long, narrow plank was extended to the bank. Two figures walked along it, balancing like trapeze artists, to reach the shore. They wore filthy clothes, their hands and faces also black with grime and soot. For this reason, perhaps, Desai failed to shake hands with them when he dismounted from his vehicle.

  A few words were exchanged and then one of the men knelt down, reached up inside his trouser pocket and pulled out a small packet. This he handed to Desai, who in turn passed it to the short man sitting in the Range Rover.

  A good ten minutes passed as the contents of the packet were examined.

  Finally, Desai retrieved a bulging plastic bag from the back seat of his vehicle. This he handed it to the two men who promptly headed back to the barge.

  'Dirty business,' whispered Chanel No. 5.

  He and Tubelight had watched the whole transaction through binoculars from behind a rusty old goods container on the edge of the docks. The Range Rover, a magnetic homing device still attached to the back door, turned and pulled away.

  'Our man Desai is buying blood diamonds,' he added.

  'From Africa?' asked Tubelight, watching the barge as its engine puttered into life.

  'First smuggled to Arab countries. Then by sea to India.'

  SIXTEEN

  PURI STOOD ON the flat roof of his mock-Spanish villa looking down, in more ways than one, at the new home on plot number 23/B. It had been built over the past seven months, a constant source of hammering, banging, and voices raised over the sound of loud machinery, but was now, mercifully, finished. The owners had spent lakhs of rupees on the facade, a cross between the White House and the Taj Mahal with reflective silver windows and a portico large enough to support a helicopter pad. The building's sides, however, were windowless and bare - just big, tall slabs of poured concrete. Given that the plots around were empty and there was no garden surrounding the property, it looked as if the house had been scooped up by a hurricane and randomly dropped by the side of the road.

  The owner was a local Jat farmer who, by the looks of him, had spent most of his life in the baking sun dragging a wooden plough across mustard fields. That is until the local government, effectively working on behalf of a major property developer who wanted to build a mall or perhaps a new office block, had offered him several lakhs per acre for his ancestral land.

  The fact that a Jat farmer could now live wherever he chose was progress of a sort, reflected Puri. Money now spoke louder than caste, at least in India's 'metros'. The new Indian suburbia was populated by people of different backgrounds, ethnicities and, to a lesser extent, religions.

  Not that there was much of a sense of community. Few of Puri's neighbours knew one another. And even if they did, they rarely interacted. The high walls and gates of their mansions and villas were hardly conducive to neighbourly chats.

  Puri certainly had no plans to welcome the family into the colony. They were not his type. Despite the luxurious pile they had built for themselves, the family (great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and a big brood of children) spent their evenings sitting on a couple of charpais outside the front gates of their home. They drank rot-gut desi sharab, told raucous jokes, sang bawdy songs and picked lice out of each other's hair.

  'Delhi hillbillies,' Puri called them. Most definitely not his type at all.

  He turned away from the edge of the roof and stepped into the small greenhouse where he kept his chilli plants during the winter. It was nice and humid
inside, the perfect temperature, and his Naga Vipers were flourishing. Some of the fruit was already shiny and plump and he could hardly wait to pick them. The seeds had come from Cumbria in England, hardly chilli-growing country. However the friend who'd smuggled them into India on his behalf claimed they produced the hottest chillies in the world. An incredible 1,381,118 SHU!

  The detective had yet to eat a chilli that was too hot for him; his taste buds were as anaesthetised as an Indian bureaucrat's conscience. The fact that these were Angrezi chillies made the challenge all the more appealing. Nothing short of national pride was at stake.

  The same could be said with regard to the Faheem Khan murder case.

  Former Deputy Commissioner Scott had called from London last night, concerned that another bookie had been murdered and wondering how he could have been poisoned while Puri was with him. The detective explained that the assassin was a professional - 'not your average five thousand rupee a pop goonda' - and had disguised himself as a paan seller.