by UD Yasha
Silence.
‘Are you ever going to free the women you had abducted?’
‘If you were to ask me, they’re already free. You see, people define freedom in various ways. I believe it’s to be who you are. When these women are with me, they are expressing their highest form of beauty. They’re free even right now. I don’t want to trap them by letting them in the outside world. It’s a very mean place to be in or so I’ve heard.’
Zakkal got up from his chair and walked to the inner bars. ‘I'll give you something that will help you. Consider it to be your birthday gift. I would've given you a balloon-like the first time I saw you but I can't get that in here. They're too paranoid I'd strangle someone with it.'
Zakkal put a hand in his mouth and pulled out something. He put it on his open palm and held it out through the bars.
What the hell.
He was holding a small plastic bag. I could not make out what was inside it. But I could tell that it was small; probably the size of a pea. I would have to stretch my arm through the bar to get it.
‘Oh sorry,’ he said and retracted his arm.
He went deeper in his cell, back in the shadows. He came out in ten seconds. He had a crumpled tissue paper in his hand. He walked to the bars and held out his hand again. ‘How silly of me! I didn’t even wrap your birthday gift earlier. It’s all ready now.’
‘What is it?’
‘I was hoping you would be more excited. It’s a gift, Siya. A gift. You don’t ask what it is. You say thank you, take it and open it with excitement. Maybe even preserve the wrapping paper. I’ve never got why people to do that. Is it still a thing?’
Silence.
Zakkal smiled. ‘You know, I am a wonderful gift giver. I put a lot of thought behind them. It probably stems from my childhood. Just like all my actions according to all the psychoanalysts who’ve seen me. I don’t think anyone ever truly got me. What’s the best gift you have ever got, Siya?’
I flinched. I did not know where this conversation was going.
Zakkal said, ‘You want to know my deep dark secrets. You want to read me like I’m an open book. I deserve to take a small bite of you. Don’t you think that’s fair?’
The best gift I had ever got was a camping pass with Shadow. Radha had given it to me. The two of us and Shama had gone with Shadow. We had set up a tent next to Pawana Lake for three days. We had made our own barbecue, spent hours in nature and swam with Shadow in the lake. More than the camp itself, it was the first time I had stayed over anywhere outside after recovering in some way from the shock of wrongly defending Kunal Shastri. I was not going to speak about Radha or Shama with Zakkal.
I said, ‘The best gift I’ve ever got was a synthesizer. It wasn’t brand new. Instead, it belonged to my father. It was repaired and given to me five years ago. It was an honour to have it.’
‘Who gave it to you?’
‘My brother.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘He gave it to you but it wasn’t your best gift. This is your last chance. If you ever lie to me again, I’m not going to talk to you. And you won’t get what you want.’
I told Zakkal about the camping pass. I kept out the part where I defended Kunal Shastri.
‘Who gave it to you?’ he said. ‘Don’t lie.’
‘My sister.’
Zakkal got up from his chair again and came to the bars. ‘You deserve this,’ he said, extending his arm once again through the bars.
I was still hesitant.
‘Don’t be shy. Remember this is the present you’re looking for.’
I was suddenly aware of my hand. I closed my fist, unsure. I stepped towards the outer bars. I looked up at Zakkal. He jerked his head towards the crumpled tissue in his hand.
‘Come on, take it. It’ll be life coming back to a full circle.’
I did not know what he meant by that. I stretched my right arm through the bars. His hand was icy cold as my finger scraped it when I grabbed the tissue from his hand. My heart thudded in my ear. I hoped Zakkal was not able to hear it.
‘Happy birthday to you. That was liberating, wasn’t it? I’m sure I’ll see you soon,’ he said and retreated to the shadows of his cell.
He never came back.
Chapter Fifteen
I tried to get out of Chamber Number 12 as soon as possible. The prison walls seemed to shrink down on me every second I was inside. The whispers of the other prisoners resounded in my ears.
‘What did he say?’ Rathod asked me when I reached the office outside.
I had never been happier to see daylight. I showed him the tissue and opened it. Zakkal's words came back to me. They suddenly had meaning. It’ll be life coming back to a full circle. The surprise on my face must have drawn Rathod to the tissue. I knew what the pea-sized object was.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘It’s a pollen grain. Zakkal gave it to me.’
‘How did he get it inside?’
‘He had it in his mouth. Don’t ask me how it got there. Probably the same way he communicated with the new killer. He knows I got him in the first place because of pollen. He’s given me one again.’
I folded the tissue as it was earlier and put it in a plastic evidence bag I was carrying in my tote bag.
‘I’ll give it to Sonia for testing,’ Rathod said. He lifted three big fat folders from the table and said, ‘These folders have all the letters and correspondence Zakkal had with anyone since being imprisoned. It beats me why people are so interested in talking to a deranged murderous sociopath. Let’s hope there’s something here that gets us to the Bedroom Strangler. I’ll have some constables from CID bring over copies of the papers inside to your house in batches.’
‘That sounds good.’
We headed to the CID office in Pashan. On our way, I gave Rathod a rundown of my conversation with Zakkal while he had the ACP on the phone. He gave the tissue with the pollen for forensic analysis once we reached the CID office.
‘Sonia has just finished her autopsy of Supriya Kelkar,’ Rathod told me. ‘I’ll send you the full report but I’ll give you the gist. Supriya died from strangulation,’ he said and turned to his phone to read the report. ‘Sonia found that the bones of Supriya’s neck have been crushed. The killer kept releasing and choking her. The death would’ve been extremely painful. She has stated that the cause of death as asphyxiation, which is consistent with the marks around her neck. The tox screen results came out clean. She was not poisoned. Judging by the undigested food in her stomach and the decomposition of her body, the time of death is estimated to be between four and eight in the morning.’ He looked up from his phone. ‘We know she was in her office till almost one that night.’
‘The killer was home, waiting for her all along,’ I said, imagining the terror that would have struck Supriya when she realized that. ‘He was also stalking her, so he knew she was alone at home and had nothing to do till evening. He had eighteen hours to kill her, splash the bathroom with the blood and leave the message.’
‘I still find it staggering that he was actually inside her house,’ Rathod said.
‘Because it is. Picture your house. Now, think about all places in it where someone could hide and you wouldn’t know right away?’
A beat of silence as Rathod thought.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s shit scary now that I think about it.’ The pitch of his voice went up.
‘We don’t have a house as big as Supriya’s but even then, there are lofts and cupboards where someone could easily hide. We don’t look there every day.’
‘It doesn’t even have to be cupboards or lofts or empty rooms. Do you check under your bed every day? It’s the classic childhood scare, right?’
‘I’ll start now. In fact, I’ll call my wife right away,’ Rathod said, feeling the fear, calling his wife.
He had a hard time explaining to her the rationale behind his odd request. He got off the ph
one call in a minute and again referred to his mobile. ‘I didn't finish the autopsy report,' he said. ‘There's a vinyl residue under Supriya's fingernails, suggesting she resisted the strangulation. Also, from the strokes of the letters, the message left on the ground was written by a right-handed person. We don't have suspects for now but that could be useful later. The ME also confirmed that the blood in the bathroom belongs to Supriya. It was drawn from the victim's wrist using a fat syringe.'
‘Just like Zakkal.’ The more I thought about Supriya Kelkar’s murder, I was starting to believe her death was Zakkal’s plea to get attention. Zakkal stalked but he also liked to speak to his victims. We did not know yet if the Bedroom Strangler had spoken to Supriya but he had been staying at her house.
‘Also, Sonia is performing more tests on your mother’s hair and what they found at the crime scene. We should have the results on that soon.’
A shiver ran up my spine at the mention of maa. I wondered if that would ever stop.
Rathod continued, ‘Also before we ask a palynologist to look at the pollen grain, Sonia wants to analyse it for other evidence. I have Dr. Raghav Barve's contact details. I'll contact him myself after Sonia is done with the pollen.'
I sat in CID’s waiting room for the next five minutes before Radha, Rahul and Shadow came to pick me up. Both of them had decided to skip work that day. I told them about our visit to Supriya Kelkar’s house, my meeting with Zakkal and the autopsy results on our way home.
‘We need to be careful,’ I told them as we reached home, wondering if it had been a good idea to have mentioned Radha while talking to Zakkal.
‘I’ll double check all the locks, windows and doors. The security company you contacted is coming tomorrow morning as well,’ Rahul said and disappeared upstairs.
‘Are you okay?’ Radha said, putting an arm around me.
‘Yes, I am. There’s a chance maa is alive. Can you believe that? After all those years of mourning and missing her? I’m going to fight like hell to get her back this time. I cracked Zakkal once before. I’m going to get him again. The hope of saving her can take us through everything.’
I paused a moment after I stopped talking and realized Radha had other concerns. She had seen me at my rock bottom, feeling devastated, hopeless and lost. I was surprised myself at my new-found resolve. It was hinged on getting maa back. I had not thought about the scenario in which she could not be saved. Until then.
Chapter Sixteen
Five years ago
Armed with a solid new clue, I got a jolt of energy investigating maa’s disappearance.
In the coming days, Rahul introduced me to Dr. Raghav Barve. Within the next three weeks, he narrowed down the possible places where we could find the Lundi plant in Pune. We were not successful because of its widespread pollination. Also, it was next to impossible to know the places where it might have been present ten years ago.
I then made a list of all children who had Marfan Syndrome. I got over two thousand results. I knew this was not a failproof method to go about finding the person of interest as the kid only had a fifty percent chance of getting the disease. But once again, I had no other lead to follow so I went ahead nibbling bread crumbs, hoping to catch a lobster.
Santosh Wagh introduced me to India's Foreign Ambassador to the United States. He knew him through a case he had worked on. The Ambassador agreed to help me with highly sensitive immigration data. I was not even sure then if the data I acquired would be permissible in court, but I had nothing to lose. No bribe was paid anywhere. I just asked the Ambassador for a list of Indian men who were in the United States when Holly was murdered but back in India when my mother went missing. I also gave him a list of the fathers whose kids had Marfan Syndrome and asked him to tell me if any of them were in the US and India on the concerned dates.
Suddenly, the list was shredded to just twenty-six people across India. I could handle twenty-six. I was feeling optimistic. Finally, there were suspects to pursue. I trimmed the list down to eighteen by eliminating those people who were under the age of sixteen when my mother disappeared.
I met Dr. Barve again. I shared the profiles and addresses of the shortlisted people with him. He cross-referenced the addresses with known points of Lundi pollens. I decided to go around the country, taking soil samples and making my own profiles on all the eighteen suspects. The process was time-consuming but I was determined and Santosh Wagh gave me a free leash for two months. I used to send the soil sample to Dr. Barve the moment I left a place. He would tell me in two days if it was a match for Lundi. Even if it was, it did not prove anything conclusive because of the rampant presence of Lundi in India and big leaps of faith I was taking with this case. But at least I was making progress. No attempt is unsuccessful for it teaches you how not to go about your goal. I kept moving from one suspect to another.
Then came suspect number twelve in Pune. Kishore Zakkal. I began following him in the morning on Thursday. He seemed like the others–normal, living a mundane life and fighting it out in the city to earn bread for his family. He was married with two children, both boys. He played with them before heading for work. He even opened the door for his wife and made dinner. He worked long hours as an accountant at an IT firm. He was well liked and respected in the office. He had a decent income from the looks of it.
But then Zakkal – the seemingly ideal family man – did something out of character on one Friday night. He left his office earlier than his usual time – six o'clock. He removed his blazer and rolled up his sleeves. He put on a black jacket. He went home and made dinner. The family of four ate together after praying to God. He and his wife were in their kids' bedroom for a while after that, probably telling them a bedtime story. Then they went downstairs and had sex in the living room. Holding hands, they went to their bedroom and slept – I guessed as the lights went out and there was no sound. I waited for thirty minutes. I was almost ready to call it a night.
It all seemed normal till then.
But then, out of nowhere, Zakkal exited his house from the back door. He was wearing a black hoodie. He walked with his head down on the narrow road behind his house. It was deserted and had inch deep potholes at every foot.
I got down from my vantage point. Why was this man out on the road past midnight? He got in a car that had been parked where the road got wider. Whose car was that? It was a dark blue Honda hatchback. I followed him from a distance and on parallel roads. With every kilometre we progressed, a chilling realization hit me. He was driving towards our old house – the one from which maa had been taken.
He slowed down the car as he drove past our old house a few times. He peeked out of the window whenever he passed it. How often had he been doing this? My hands shivered on the steering wheel. I immediately decided I would have a security camera installed overlooking the street in front of our current house at all times. I got more careful following him, putting more distance between us.
As my thoughts wondered, he turned around and drove towards Viman Nagar. He entered a neighbourhood of standalone bungalows called Leela Park. He drove up and down the lane two times. He slowed down in front of a particular bungalow near an old banyan tree both times. I watched him from a distance. After five minutes, he drove out of the lane and parked the car. He set off on foot for the bungalow. He walked fast with his head down and went inside it.
I went in the lane after him and noted he had entered a bungalow named ‘Tulip'. The letterbox on the gate told me the house was occupied by a woman named Sangeetha Rajan. I immediately asked Santosh Wagh to give me information about her.
No lights had come on even after Zakkal had gone inside. The house was still. My mind was scampering. Why had he gone inside? Did they know each other? Was Sangeetha in danger? I weighed my options. I could break in, but for all I knew, Zakkal actually knew Sangeetha. He was probably not a killer but just a cheating husband. But then why had he driven past our old house? As I watched the house from the bushes outside I got a mess
age from Santosh with some information on Sangeetha that he had gotten from her social media accounts. She was a doctor, thirty-one years old and a recent widow. Her husband had died of colon cancer. Her photo revealed she was attractive, even in her hospital ID. Panic unfurled inside me.
Just then, Zakkal came out. I ducked back in the bushes. He looked around, then strode towards his car and headed back home. He parked the car where it was before and went back to his room, to his sleeping wife as if nothing had happened. The events of the night did not make sense to me.
Santosh and I decided to share our investigation on Zakkal with Kapil Rathod in confidence. We told him we did not have concrete evidence. Even from a legal standpoint, there was not enough to arrest him. The evidence we had was also not going to be permissible in court. Rathod said he would have a team on standby at the Viman Nagar Police Station. But due to lack of funds, keeping it alert round the clock was not possible.
I observed Zakkal for the next three weeks. He used to step out at night every time he cooked. On weekends, he would follow Sangeetha everywhere. At her workplace, at shopping malls, at restaurants. He kept his distance. But he made notes. He went back home to his wife that day and made love to her. I was genuinely concerned about the safety of both the women in his life. Who knew if there were more?
On the third Sunday, he did something that scared me in a way I would never forget. Once Sangeetha exited her house for an early dinner, he broke in using a lock pick. I wondered what he would do next. I was terrified. What would happen if Sangeetha actually came back home right now? But at the same time, if Zakkal was indeed a killer, then taking him in on stalking and breaking in charges was not enough. However, I could not let anything happen to Sangeetha. While I was observing her house, Rathod was monitoring her at a restaurant. Thirty minutes later, he told me that she left for her house. Twenty minutes later, I saw her pulling her car over in front of her house.
