The COMPLETE Siya Rajput Crime Thrillers (Books 1 to 4)

by UD Yasha

  ‘I don’t know what Zakkal has planned, but it definitely isn’t just letting us know where he has kept the women.’

  Halfway through breakfast, my phone buzzed once. It was Rathod. A text message.

  Zakkal signed the deal just now.

  I cleaned up my plate and went to the garage. I needed to find a link either between Zakkal and the new killer or one of the new victims to see if that could lead me to Zakkal’s protégé. I had a working theory. If the Bedroom Strangler had killed before and had a different modus operandi, then it would have taken him immense courage and strength apart from love for Zakkal to change his method.

  While dealing with any change, humans try to find a level of comfort and some factor of familiarity with the new situation, even it does not exist. It is natural to seek it. It makes the impact of change less drastic. The classic example of this is when someone moves to a different country or city, and then seek people who are from their country or speak the same language. I wondered how hard it was for the new killer to actually change his method of killing. In that phase of transformation, would he have also searched for familiarity?

  If he did, then what was his circle of familiarity?

  A geographical territory he was comfortable with? Supriya died in KP. Tarla died in Magarpatta. They were far from each other. The familiarity could also be the people he knew. We had not found a connection between the two victims yet. They appeared to be random choices, apart from both being women around the age of thirty. One woman worked in an office while the other worked from her room.

  He knew their personal routines. He knew when Supriya would be alone at home. He also knew about Tarla’s appointment with her therapist. Did he know them from before? I played in my mind what I knew about the victims.

  Tarla Raheja only left her house to go to her therapist. That’s the only place her killer could have gotten to know her. That, her chemist or during her commute to the hospital. But Tarla drove her own car. She went to the chemist erratically, especially after she had started ordering medicines online. There was no routine there, except for her weekly appointment with her therapist. But, at the same time, Supriya Kelkar did not have a medical condition. She did not visit hospitals. So, where had the killer met her?

  It came to me out of nowhere. Supriya Kelkar had been trying to conceive a child for the past three years. She would have had to go to a fertility clinic for that. I jumped up from my chair to call her husband. Tarla went to City Prime Hospital for her therapy. If Supriya went to the same hospital for her fertility treatment or saw the same doctor, we would finally have a connection.

  Supriya’s husband answered my call on the third ring.

  ‘This is Siya Rajput. I had come to your house last week.’

  ‘Oh yes. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I wanted to know from which hospital did your wife get her fertility treatment done?’

  A flash of silence.

  ‘It was Saraswat Hospital.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘And who was her doctor?’

  ‘Dr. Shalimar Shah.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘We are exploring a lead. We’ll keep you posted with our investigation,’ I said and hung up.

  I wanted to know if Dr. Shah was on the roster of City Prime Hospital as well. If not him, who else was contracted by both the hospitals? I went to their websites and checked for common doctors. The websites only listed the heads of various departments. I needed inside access. I texted Rathod to help me with finding the common doctors who consulted in both hospitals.

  I let the thought simmer in my brain. I went to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. Radha was reading a textbook while I could hear Rahul on a call upstairs.

  ‘Shama had called,’ Radha said. ‘She and Karan are coming to Pune. They’ll leave tonight by train and reach by tomorrow noon.’

  ‘How long are they going to be here for?’

  ‘A week.’

  I nodded in acknowledgement. Karan's presence was going to be a big relief. He could be home and look after everyone if I was out.

  I took my coffee to the garage and got back to trying to find a connection between the victims. I went through their profiles multiple times. There had to be something. Both were working women, though they did all kinds of jobs. I wondered if they knew each other through work.

  I could ask Vivaan. The thought of speaking to him again made me feel funny in the stomach. I had to stop feeling this way every time I thought about Vivaan. I called him.

  ‘Hello, Siya,’ Vivaan said in a pleasant tone.

  I was already feeling better. The tension that had built up in my temples eased. ‘Hi. I’ve a quick question. Did anyone by the name of Tarla Raheja ever do some freelance work for you?’

  ‘I’ll have to check to be sure. But we hardly ever contract individuals. It’s always their company, even if it’s a proprietorship.’

  ‘Give me a second,’ I said and rolled my chair to the other end of the desk and flipped through the report on Tarla’s murder. ‘In that case, look for a company by the name of Bit By Byte.’

  ‘I’m looking it up as we’re talking,’ Vivaan said. ‘I’ll need a minute.’

  I could hear a faint breath across the line. I imagined Vivaan sitting against the afternoon glow of the sun. My heart sank for a beat. Had I seen a ring on Vivaan’s finger? No way. I would have noticed it. I felt embarrassed thinking about it.

  ‘No, we haven’t done any business with that woman or that company.’

  ‘Okay, thank you. Also, can you please send me the building log of everyone who came to your office in the past month?’

  Silence.

  I wondered if he would send it to me.

  ‘I wouldn't be able to send it for the entire workspace as there are multiple companies working here. I can send you the list to which I have access. It has the general visitors along with those who visited our office.'

  ‘That’ll be helpful,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll send you the contact of Our Work’s security head if you want the logs for the entire building.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said and hung up.

  Before I could daydream again about Vivaan, I had got the email from him. I opened it before getting distracted. A total of six hundred and fourteen people had visited the Our Work office in the past month. I searched for our suspects, to begin with.

  No hits.

  I pulled out the list of people who had visited Zakkal. Luckily, both documents were searchable. One by one, the names flew by.

  There was a match.

  Devaki Sharma had visited Smart Tech, but only after Supriya Kelkar had been murdered. She was probably there for a story. I resumed my search. I kept typing name after name.

  There were no matches.

  I could have asked Our Work’s security team to send the logs for the full building but that would require a warrant. No judge would ever sanction it. Vivaan had only sent me what he could in good faith.

  I heaved air out of my mouth very loudly. I pushed my chair using my feet and rolled back. I checked the time. It was two o’clock. I was no better off now than before. I headed back inside the house. We had a quiet lunch. None of us spoke; Radha and Rahul probably from anticipation and tension while I was silent from frustration.

  As we finished eating, my phone started ringing. It was Rathod.

  ‘Siya, I have some news,’ he said. He sounded excited and, in that moment, I somehow knew that the next words he was going to utter would change everything.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I got up from the dining table and walked outside to the garage.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  ‘Just give me a second,’ Rathod said. ‘Sonia was conducting tests on the hair we found yesterday and she came across something staggering. Maya Shroff, one of the women who Zakkal had admitted to kidnapping had a child after she was kidnapped by him.’

  My stomach turned to ice. ‘
When did she have the child?’

  ‘I had the same question. It was before Zakkal was caught.’

  ‘So, she had a child with Zakkal?’

  ‘It looks like it. I don’t see how any other man would have met her after Zakkal kidnapped her. Sonia double-checked her findings too. Maya Shroff had a child about six years ago according to her analysis of the hair.’

  ‘Just a year before Zakkal was caught,’ I said, working out the timeline in my head.

  Silence.

  Multiple thoughts ran in my mind. The first was pure terror. If Zakkal had fathered a child with Maya, then the kid might have been kept along with the women he had taken. Post Zakkal’s arrest, I couldn’t imagine what the Bedroom Strangler would have done to that kid.

  ‘There’s a very high chance that the kid might already be dead,’ Rathod said.

  ‘I know,’ I said, my voice barely escaping.

  Killing the child was the most obvious thing the Bedroom Strangler could have done, I thought. I sat in my armchair in the garage.

  ‘But he kept the women alive,’ I said, more out of hope than anything else.

  ‘They had a role to play in whatever Zakkal has planned here,’ Rathod said. ‘That’s the only reason they are alive.’

  ‘The kid might have a role too. We might not be aware of it. There’s a slim chance that he might not harm a kid. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore,’ I said, trying to make sense of it all.

  Silence.

  I closed my eyes, forcing myself to think straight. I tried to place myself in the Bedroom Strangler’s shoes and guess what he would have done.

  ‘What do you think happened to the kid then?’ Rathod said.

  ‘Let’s go through the options the Bedroom Strangler would have considered.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘First, he would have killed the child. Second, he would kept him or her with the women. Third, he could have raised the child on his own. Fourth, he would have put him up for adoption. The third options has a lot of risks. Up until Supriya Kelkar’s murder, the Bedroom Strangler wanted to stay under the radar. Nothing screams more attention than having a small child come in your life out of nowhere. We don’t even know if he is married or single. But in any case, a child would draw too many eyeballs. In addition to that, the paperwork to create any kind of an identity for him is too risky.’

  ‘So, you’re thinking he either killed the child, kept him with the other women or put him or her up for adoption?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We can’t do much if the child was killed or if he’s held captive.’

  ‘We can trace the child if he was adopted. We can narrow down the timeframe from the day Zakkal was arrested to a few months later.’

  ‘Even in that case, thousands of kids would have been adopted.’

  ‘I got Zakkal the first time around because his son has Marfan Syndrome. That means, this child has a fifty percent probability of having it as well. But we can use the Marfan Syndrome filter to further narrow down the kids who were put up for adoption.’

  ‘Why would the Bedroom Strangler take so much risk to keep this child alive? If he put up the child for adoption, it would leave a paper trail which could lead us to him. He would know that.’

  I knew that was a fair point. ‘I’m not sure how he would have gone about it. But it’s worth exploring more,’ I said. ‘Maybe the Bedroom Strangler did not know that the child could have Marfan Syndrome.’

  ‘In that case, he would have not considered the child being traced back to him,’ Rathod said and then paused. I could tell he was thinking. He continued. ‘All this will only work if the child was put up for adoption in the first place. I’ll get to work. I know there’s a central database maintained by the Government of India for adoption,’ Rathod said.

  ‘There’s a high chance that Marfan Syndrome doesn’t show up until much later in life. So, you’ll have to check for children who are around six years old right now, who were adopted five years ago and who might have the Marfan Syndrome.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. That’s going to be a difficult combination to trace down,’ Rathod said and hung up.

  I sat silently in the garage. I had no intention of telling Radha or Rahul about this. But thinking about what Zakkal had done to Maya Shroff got me thinking about all the nasty stuff that maa would’ve had to endure. Ranjit had cautioned me that it wouldn’t all be rosy if and when maa returns. She would have to go through intense counselling to undo or reduce the trauma that she had gone through.

  I wondered why Zakkal had kept the child for a year before he got caught. How had he managed it? When I was investigating him before he was caught, he spent almost all his time with his family. This new dimension of the child made me wonder what others secrets Zakkal was hiding. I wanted to ask him about the child. I knew the child would mean something to him if he was kept alive by Zakkal himself for a year before he was caught.

  As bad as the thought sounded, I knew I could use this point to know where Zakkal had kept maa and the other women. I had cracked his tough exterior the last time I met him. Now this time, I needed to break him completely. Armed with one more of Zakkal’s dark secrets, I felt confident as I exited the garage to meet Ranjit Kadam, the person who had helped me get inside Zakkal’s twisted mind the last time around. I was eager to know what he could tell me about Zakkal’s childhood—the place where the answers to my questions lay.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Radha, Rahul, Shadow and I started for Ranjit’s sister’s house. It was in an area of Pune called Khadki, which was about forty minutes from my house in Baner. We were signed in at the entrance of the society by a security guard.

  Just then, my phone buzzed in my hand. It was a text from Ranjit.

  I am running a few minutes later. Please wait by my porch if you have reached already.

  Ranjit’s sister lived in a one-storeyed standalone row house with a small garden at the front. I checked the time. It was a minute past four. That meant that I had about forty minutes until I would leave for Yerwada. Less, if Ranjit was late further. I wanted to be there right from the moment Zakkal started his open time at five.

  Almost on cue, we turned around on hearing a car pull over in front of the house. Ranjit stepped out. He was wearing a grey shirt and black trousers.

  ‘I'm sorry I'm late,' Ranjit said. ‘I was stuck in a meeting. It was right around the corner so I thought I would ask you to come home to save time. I underestimated the Pune traffic. It seems to be getting worse because of the construction of the metro. I can't believe what it'll be like near my house in Dadar's Shivaji Park when they start constructing a metro station there. I'll hope then as well that my work keeps taking me out of Mumbai.'

  I introduced him to Radha and Rahul after he unlocked the door and we got in. The living room looked cosy. It had an old-fashioned sofa set and centre table.

  As we sat on the sofa, Ranjit turned to me and said, ‘My makeshift office is right down that corridor. ‘Let’s go there if you want to talk. But first, give me just a minute. I’ll put up a kettle of tea knowing how much we all love it.’

  Once Ranjit came out of the kitchen, we went to his office. It was provisional in truest sense as it only had one table, two chairs and a large bookrack which was overflowing with books of all shapes and sizes. We sat opposite to each other.

  Ranjit said, ‘I said this before, but I need to say it again. You did a superb job with Zakkal yesterday. I don't know how you managed to crack him. People, including me, have been trying it for years.'

  ‘I got some help from you,’ I said. ‘That’s why I wanted to meet you again before I see Zakkal in some time.’

  Ranjit narrowed his eyes and scratched his stubble. He said, ‘Zakkal told you that he killed his own father. That was big. There was something else he said which was equally important. When you asked him why he held his victims captive for so long, he said because he wants to show them the other side
. That sounds vague on the surface of it. But it has a deeper meaning.’

  ‘I wanted to ask him what he meant by that but he said he’ll only answer one more question.’

  ‘No. I think you did great. Here’s what I think. His father was an alcoholic. Most alcoholic husbands come home and beat their wives. Zakkal, even at a tender age of eight, could not bear to see that happening. The violence he saw at home was unbearable. There was only one way to stop it. That’s why he killed his father. He could’ve easily deflected your question like he did on a number of times. The fact that he told you that means he is proud of it. He didn’t care about its repercussions.’

  Just then, my phone buzzed on the table. Rathod was calling me.

  ‘Where are you?’ he said, his voice was urgent.

  Something is wrong.

  ‘I’m with Ranjit Kadam, preparing to meet Zakkal in the evening. What’s the matter?’

  ‘You won’t believe what happened. Zakkal had a heart attack when they were preparing him for the free time outside.’

  The shock in my eyes made Ranjit lean forward. He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘What’s happening now?’ I said.

  ‘They’ve taken him to the special care unit at Yerwada. There’s a high chance they’ll move him to Sasoon Hospital in a few minutes.’

  ‘Have they confirmed if it’s a real heart attack?’ I said, knowing heart attacks could be faked.

  ‘Yes, it’s real. The doctor here confirmed it..’

  Silence.

  ‘What if he gets away? It’s the classic getaway move from prisons.’

  ‘I know. I asked Warden Shetty. They’ve all kinds of measures in place. They’re good at what they do, Siya. They’ve done this before. Let’s hope this isn’t the one-off instance in which the inmate escapes. Get here now. We’re waiting and ready to move to Sasoon,’ Rathod said and hung up.

  I stared at the phone, wondering what was happening. I had always believed Zakkal had a bigger game at play. His goal was freedom. The heart attack was too much of a coincidence.