Tarquin Hall

by The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

  “Listen to me very carefully, beta. I don’t know where he is. And I don’t care. My only concern is your future. Tell me your exact location immediately.”

  “You’re lying, Pa. He’s not here.”

  “Where is here? Tell me! I’m your father!”

  Laxmi grabbed the phone and disconnected the call.

  She and Tulsi stared at one another, confusion and disbelief writ across their faces.

  “What did he say?” asked Sanjoy, who looked equally baffled.

  “He says he doesn’t have Ram,” said Laxmi.

  “You believe him?”

  “He sounded genuine,” said Tulsi.

  One of the neighbors, whose house stood a couple of hundred yards away, pedaled past on his bicycle. Had he seen anything? Laxmi asked.

  “A black SUV with tinted windows was parked here earlier.”

  “Did you see who was inside?”

  “Two men got out.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “I was too far away.”

  “Did you see anyone leave with them?”

  “A young man I think.”

  Laxmi thanked the neighbor and hurried back into the safe house to grab her bag. She emerged again to find Tulsi in floods of tears.

  “I should just go home. That way no one will get hurt,” she said, gripped by grief.

  “I don’t think that’s the answer,” said Laxmi as she tried to comfort her. “Now, listen: I promise we’ll get to the bottom of this. For all we know Ram was taken by someone hoping to get a reward from your father. Either way, I’ve a friend who can help—a private detective. In the meantime I need to get you somewhere safe. You’re going to have to trust me. Can you do that?”

  Tulsi thought for a moment and then gave a nod. They remounted the scootie.

  “We should split up,” Laxmi told Sanjoy. “Rendezvous at the bus station in three hours. Make sure you’re not followed—and change your mobile chip.”

  She disposed of her own down a drain and then headed back through Agra’s burgeoning suburbs.

  Once Tulsi was out of harm’s reach, she’d call Vish Puri using another number.

  The fact that he was supposed to be going on a pilgrimage with the rest of his family wouldn’t prove an issue. The man hated taking time off.

  Still, it was going to prove awkward having to explain what Laxmi—or rather, Facecream, the sobriquet Puri always used for her—had been doing in Agra when she was supposed to be enjoying her offs sunning in Goa.

  One

  It had been a quiet month—as quiet as it ever got in a nation of 1.2 billion people.

  The start of June had brought a desperate call from the Khannas. The couple had arrived to take possession of their new apartment in Ecotech Park Phase 7, greater NOIDA, on a day deemed auspicious by their astrologer, only to find another family simultaneously trying to move in. Vish Puri’s task had been to track down the double-crossing real estate broker, whom he’d located in the bowels of northeast Delhi.

  Next, celebrity chef Inder Kapoor had commissioned Most Private Investigators Ltd. to find out who hacked his computer and stole his mother’s famous recipe for chilli mint marinade. Puri’s reward for identifying the culprit had been an unforgettable plate of homemade papri chaat drizzled in yogurt and tamarind chutney spiked with pomegranate, black salt and just the right amount of fiery coriander-chilli sauce.

  “Should you have need of my services, I am at your disposal night or day,” Puri had told Kapoor after licking clean four platefuls.

  Then last week, he’d played bagman for Mr. and Mrs. Pathak and got back their precious Roger from his kidnappers.

  How they could have brought themselves to pay the five lakh rupees was beyond him. It was a staggering amount— more than the average worker made in ten years. But what was even more shocking—“absolutely mind-blowing” in Puri’s words—was madam’s claim that she would have paid ten times that amount after receiving the “traumatizing” ransom video that showed her pooch being “tortured”—lying on a dirty concrete floor rather than a silk cushion.

  The detective almost wished he hadn’t bothered delivering the cash. He would rather have enjoyed the prospect of the kidnap gang carrying out their threat to eat Roger. And they would have done it too, given that they hailed from Nagaland, where pug kebab was considered something of a delicacy. But being “a man of his word and integrity, also,” Puri—along with his faithful team of undercover operatives—had caught the goondas by using a miniature pinscher as bait.

  June had also brought in a few standard matrimonial investigations—although with the monsoon almost upon them, India’s wedding industry had taken a honeymoon.

  And then there was the Jain Jewelry Heist.

  Puri had caught the thieves. Within seven hours of receiving the call from his client, First National Hindustan Insurance Corporation Inc.

  “These Charlies left so many of clues when they decamped with the loot, it is like following crumbs to the cookie jar,” Puri declared at the time, certain that he’d broken some kind of record.

  But then he’d hit “something of a brick wall.”

  Of the 2.5 crore of jewelry taken from the Jain’s multimillion-dollar luxury Delhi villa, Puri had recovered just two pairs of earrings, four bangles and a couple of hundred thousand rupees in cash.

  Delhi’s chief of police gloated, telling the baying press corps that “amateurs” were not up to the task. And yet the chief fared no better, soon coming to the stunning conclusion that the gang had stashed the loot at some secret location between the Jains’ palatial residence and their hideout.

  Desperate, the chief had then reverted to a “narco analysis test.” Although a violation of an individual’s rights under the Indian constitution—not to mention a form of torture according to international law—this involved injecting the accused with a truth serum and monitoring their brain patterns.

  The results were comic at best. Under the influence, the gang members, who all giggled as they “deposed,” told their interrogators that they might care to find the jewelry in a variety of different locations. These included the top of Mount Everest and up the chief’s rear passage.

  When sober, they strenuously denied having taken anything more than the earrings, bangles and cash.

  “That was all there was in the safe!” their leader insisted.

  In the three weeks since, Puri had questioned everyone who’d had access to the house. He’d also put every known dealer of stolen gemstones in north India “under the scanner” in case one of them had been passed the consignment. But to no avail.

  “Only one case has slipped through my fingers in my long and illustrious career and that through no fault of my own,” Puri reminded his executive secretary, Elizabeth Rani, as he sat in his office at Khan Market that Saturday morning.

  The Jain Jewelry Heist file lay on the desk in front of him. The words STATUS: CASE SUCCESSFULLY CONCLUDED AND CLOSED, which he’d hoped to stamp in bold definitive letters across the front some days ago, were conspicuous by their absence.

  “Even the most rare of diamonds has flaws,” he added. “Yet when it comes to Vish Puri’s performance, ’til date you will not find a single one.”

  Elizabeth Rani had brought him a fresh cup of masala chai only to find the last one still lying untouched on his desk along with his favorite coconut biscuits. This was unprecedented. Usually the refreshments lasted minutes. Things must be bad, she reflected.

  “I’m sure it will only be a question of time before you locate the jewels,” she said, as supportive as ever. “It has only been a few weeks after all. No one evades sir forever.”

  “Most true, Madam Rani, most true. Even Jagga, one of the most notorious dacoits to terrorize India ‘til date, did not escape the net.”

  Puri’s eyes wandered listlessly around his office, lingering on the portrait of his late father, Om Chander Puri, who’d served with the Delhi police. Next to him hung a likeness of t
he patron saint of private investigators, a man synonymous with guile and cunning—the political genius Chanakya.

  The sounds of flapping feathers and cooing came from outside the office window as a pigeon landed on top of the air conditioner unit. The detective’s attention was drawn to the darkening sky beyond. A squall was brewing. It perfectly reflected his mood.

  “Madam Rani, there is no point ignoring the elephant in the room: the case has gone for a toss,” he said. “I am clue-less in every way and Mr. Rajesh of First National Hindustan Insurance Corporation is getting worried—and justifiably so. What all I should tell him, I don’t know.”

  “You visited the house again this morning, sir?”

  “I have come directly from there, only. I was doing follow-up interviews of the employees. As you are very much aware, there has not been one shred of doubt in my mind from the start that an inside man or inside female was there. Some individual guided them—that much is certain.”

  “Perhaps one of the Jain family, sir?”

  Puri gave an exasperated sigh. “Naturally, Madam Rani, I considered that as a possibility some days back. But I am satisfied none of them were party to the crime.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She eyed the clock. It was almost six. Sir was due to leave for the railway station in fifteen minutes. She was growing concerned that he was stalling.

  “Should I call the driver?” she asked.

  Puri didn’t seem to register her question. His eyes remained fixed on the Jain Jewelry Heist file.

  “Who all provided the gang with the insider information? That is the question,” he said, half to himself.

  “Sir, your car?” prompted Elizabeth Rani.

  Puri looked up, puzzled.

  “Ma’am must have reached the station by now,” she said.

  By “ma’am,” she meant his wife, Rumpi.

  The detective responded with a half shrug like a child who didn’t want to take his medicine. “Really I don’t see how I can go out of station. What with this case pending and all, it is really impossible. Should Mr. Rajesh of First National Hindustan Insurance Corporation come to know, my reputation would lie in tatters,” he said.

  Elizabeth Rani had feared as much. Given his workaholic nature, Puri was always loath to take offs. In the twenty-odd years she’d worked for Most Private Investigators Ltd., he and Rumpi had enjoyed only a few holidays away—and invariably these had combined work with pleasure.

  Take that Bangalore trip four months ago, for example. It had coincided with an international conference on “digital forensics and cyber crime.” Since then, he hadn’t spent a single day at home.

  A short break would do him a world of good. And the exercise—the family was due to make the pilgrimage to the top of the Trikuta Mountain to visit the popular Vaishno Devi shrine—would be no bad thing, either.

  Besides, Elizabeth Rani had made plans of her own. Tomorrow being Sunday, she’d be at home with her father. But she’d been promised Monday and Tuesday off as well and arranged to take her nephews to see a movie at Select Citywalk mall. She was also looking forward to doing some shopping in Lajpat Nagar, getting her eyebrows threaded and having tea with her childhood friend, Chintu.

  How best to handle him?

  It wasn’t in her nature to bully. And arguing would get her nowhere. Any attempt to appeal to his need for time off would simply be met with a weary riposte like “Man was not made to sit idle, Madam Rani.”

  What was needed was a subtler approach. Sir, like most men, suffered from an acute fear of failure. If she could convince him that all would be well with the unsolved case, then she was in with a chance. A little massaging of his ego wouldn’t go amiss, either.

  “Sir, you owe it to yourself to take some offs,” said Elizabeth Rani.

  “And why is that exactly?”

  “Such sacrifices you make of yourself every day, assisting people from all walks of life. No doubt everyone will understand if you are absent for a short while.”

  “And what if some Tom, Dick or Harry has need of my services for some emergency or other? What then? Lives could be at stake.”

  “That of course is possible, sir,” she conceded. “Such incidents can occur at any time without warning.”

  “Crime knows no boundaries, nor distinguishes between night and day, Madam Rani.”

  “But it is not only here in Delhi that people require your valuable assistance. Who knows what might occur during the pilgrimage? What if it is your karma to be there on the pilgrimage?”

  Puri despised astrology and all forms of stargazing, often describing it as a social evil that afflicted his fellow countrymen and women. Yet he was not altogether immune to superstitious thinking. Nor from perceiving himself as the sun around which the solar system orbited.

  “Most true, Madam Rani, most true,” he intoned. “Who is to say what the God has in store for us, no?”

  He went thoughtfully silent for a moment, then added, “Naturally, duty to family is there, also. They will be looking for me to lead them on the pilgrimage.”

  Elizabeth Rani reminded him that his senior operative, Tubelight, was also hard at work on the Jain Jewelry Heist case. He and his boys were trawling the underworld for any clues as to the whereabouts of the missing loot. “So it is hardly as if the case is lying idle,” she added.

  Puri’s countenance began to brighten. “I suppose a few days cannot hurt,” he said. “It is a pilgrimage after all. Some blessings will be there. Perhaps the goddess will offer me some sort of guidance with regard to the case.”

  “Some time away will help you see things in a fresh light, sir, I’m sure.”

  “My thoughts precisely, Madam Rani.”

  He picked up the file, put it inside the drawer of his desk and gulped down the cup of chai. “To be perfectly honest and frank, I had already made up my mind to go,” he said in a confiding tone. “Just I was playing devil’s advocate, actually.”

  He spent the next five minutes frantically packing his things and calling out reminders to his secretary to do this and that while he was away.

  “Be sure to get Door Stop to polish the sign on the door each and every day.” “Ensure he doesn’t waste milk.” “Dusting of my personals is required, also.”

  Elizabeth Rani noticed him slip his pistol into his bag along with a box of ammunition. This was unusual—Puri rarely carried—but then sir had received a tip-off recently that conman Bagga Singh was back in Delhi.

  “I can be contacted night and day, round the clock, come rain or shine,” he said as he paused at the door. “Should any development be forthcoming regarding the robbery, I would want to know without delay.”

  Elizabeth Rani watched Puri make his way down the stairs and disappear into Khan Market’s Middle Lane.

  She closed the door, returned to her desk and relaxed back in her chair, relishing the silence. Although she was keen to get away as soon as possible and buy some Safeda mangoes in the market (it was nearly the end of the season and these would be the last she’d taste for the next nine months), she knew better. Sir would call en route to the station to remind her to attend to some of the tasks he’d already mentioned and if the phone went unanswered he would have fresh doubts about leaving Delhi.

  No doubt he would also need another pep talk to assure him that the god Shiva would not usher in Armageddon in his absence.

  The phone rang five minutes later.

  Elizabeth Rani was surprised to hear Facecream’s voice on the line. “How is Goa?” she asked.

  Mention of the word “emergency” caused her heart to sink. “He’s on his way to the station,” she said before hanging up. So much for the nice quiet break.

  Two

  Clouds the shade of smudged charcoal rolled over Delhi like some biblical portent. A torrid wind spitting sand began to buffet the trees and stirred a maelstrom of loose leaves, twigs and plastic bags. The light took on an ethereal quality, the greens of the city’s flora rendered psychedel
ic in their intensity. In Connaught Place, that paradigm of whitewashed British imperial architecture, tourists and locals alike ran for cover. Even the ubiquitous touts selling carved wooden cobras and Rajasthani puppets abandoned their pitches and took shelter between the colonnades.

  The traffic thinned and bicyclists, motorcyclists and auto rickshaw drivers joined the beggars and migrant workers beneath one of the city’s numerous “overbridges.” Dozens of black kites, giant wings stretched wide, wheeled and cried overhead. And then the first drops of rain fell—big, angry dollops that banged down on the roofs of cars and left long streaks on red sandstone façades.

  Puri had always relished these summer squalls. As a child, when they’d rolled in from Rajasthan (as they generally did in the weeks preceding the arrival of the monsoon), he would run up onto the flat roof of his father’s house in Punjabi Bagh. Despite the threat of lightning and strong, unpredictable gusts, he’d put his face up to the sky, relishing the sensation of cool droplets splashing down upon his flushed skin. Not even Mummy’s chiding would persuade him to come down until the storm had passed and the air was thick with the strangely intoxicating smell of steaming concrete.

  This evening, however, he had no wish to get wet. He was wearing his favorite black Sandown cap and a new safari suit, a gray one made by his tailor, Grover of Khan Market. Besides, it was unseemly for gentlemen of his maturity and reputation to run around in storms. Such behavior was allowed only on Holi and when participating in a wedding baarat. Furthermore, the Jammu Express would be pulling out of the station in less than twenty minutes, and with the electricity knocked out by the storm and the traffic lights on the blink, the gridlock on the approach to the station was threatening to make him even more delayed.

  Not even satellite imaging could have made sense of how the jam had formed. A vehicular stew, it bubbled with angry drivers honking and gesticulating at one another, the twofinger twist synchronized with a jerk of the head—that was the tamest expression of their frustration. Puri watched, helpless, as the rain came down in earnest and gusts drove litter across the street. Everything was dripping wet now: the backpacker hotels and crowded eateries with their forlorn façades and cockeyed signs; the fruit-and-vegetable wallah’s barrows on the half-dug-up pavements; the omnipresent crows perched on the sagging overhead wires. Only the beggar children seemed to be enjoying the downpour, broad grins of brilliant white teeth beaming from tawny faces as they danced in the puddles.