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

by UD Yasha

  It moved.

  Very slightly, but enough to tell us that there was something behind it.

  Rathod yanked it further. The square tile came out like it was a drawer. It rolled out when Rathod applied more pressure. There must have been some kind of a suction mechanism to keep water from flowing in, making opening the hidden drawer hard.

  ‘There’s stuff inside it,’ Rathod said in a soft voice. ‘This is why his house was ransacked.’

  Rathod stepped aside to let me check the drawer.

  It was filled with files of three colours. Blue, Red and Yellow. There were more than a dozen files of each colour. I picked out a blue file at random. The cover had the name and logo of a company. It was called Secure Point and the logo was a globe with a circular pattern around it that resembled a pulse.

  I opened the file and saw numbers that seemed to be random. I turn to the next page. The same thing. Numbers, line after line, at times with spaces in between. I wonder if it was an encrypted message. I picked out another blue file. Opened it. There were similar numbers inside.

  I picked a yellow file. This one did not have random numbers but had records of hundreds of financial transactions. The figures in question were big. In excess of five lakh rupees. The entire file was filled with information from different accounts. The accounts did not have numbers but some sort of an alpha numeric code.

  I picked a red file. It was again different from the other colours. This one had names of different people with a unique number against each of them. The names were filed alphabetically. Each page had a hundred names. There were twenty pages in one file. So, each file had about two thousand names. There were fifteen yellow files. That made it thirty thousand names in total.

  What was Sitaram Mule doing?

  ‘We need to take them all,’ I said to Rathod.

  ‘There’s more stuff deeper inside,’ I said, pulling it out. My hands found another file. This one was black.

  I opened the black file first and began glancing through it.

  The papers inside had four columns. The first was for names. The list seemed to be of policemen as the second column had police ranks. The third was titled ‘Money Given’, while the fourth had a date.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ I said under my breath.

  I flipped through some pages. The earlier ones had yellowed. The date written against the first cop on the list was 12th February 2001. The last date was 25th February 2019. The same week as the disappearance of the Gills and also when Manohar had first visited the place off the Pune-Solapur highway.

  Rathod looked over my shoulder into the file.

  ‘This seems like an elaborate database of bribes given out to cops,’ Rathod said. Rathod pointed at a name. Vinod Gadgil. ‘Like for example, this man here. I know he took a bribe of ten lakh rupees in 2004. He was sacked because of it. This file has at least a thousand names. I don’t think that many cops have been caught while taking a bribe.’

  ‘How did he compile all of this? And why didn’t he report it?’

  ‘There are some battles that are not worth it. Or you know about the bribe but there’s no evidence to prove it.’

  I flipped through the pages. My stomach sank on seeing one name. My hands started shaking.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Rathod said.

  I could not say anything. I felt a cold sweat gather on my forehead. This cannot be happening. I pointed at a name in the file to show it to Rathod.

  At that moment, I knew my entire life had changed.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I read the name again just to be sure. How could this be possible? My eyes ached. I hoped I was reading the name incorrectly. The letters on the paper got bigger. I read them again.

  Aniruddha Rajput. Senior Inspector. Rupees fifty lakhs. 22nd May 2003.

  Maa had been taken in August of 2003. I could not breathe through my nose. I heaved air in and out loudly through my mouth.

  Aniruddha Rajput was my father. He had gone missing on 23rd November 2003. It was three months after my mother had been abducted by a serial killer. Radha, Karan and I had been heartbroken to lose both our parents within such a short time. There had been no lead in dad's disappearance. Not a shred of a clue. Until now.

  ‘That’s my father,’ I somehow managed to say.

  Rathod knew who he was.

  ‘We don’t know if the contents of the file are true,’ he said.

  ‘I know, but the chances of them being untrue are slim,’ I said.

  We returned to the bedroom. I sat on a cracked chair.

  The memories of the days immediately after dad’s disappearance came back to me. We had gotten by with the help of our maushi—our mother’s sister. I cried every single day in my room for the next year. I was afraid of the dark, of any harsh sound and of the phone ringing. I feared the next call I get would be from a cop, telling me my mother or father or both had been found dead in some deserted corner of this world. But that phone call had never come. People, including other cops, had doubted that dad had a role to play in maa's disappearance. I had never once believed it. In fact, that's what had driven me to take up criminal defence. I knew how much it hurt when your loved ones are accused of heinous crimes. Especially if you believed they were innocent.

  I had always believed in dad. Every waking second. But everyone suspected him even more when he also went missing without a trace. I could see why others thought he was guilty. The husband is often the culprit when the wife goes missing. But I was sure dad would never hurt his wife and three kids—all of whom he adored so much.

  Even as the days became months and years, I kept believing in him. I fought for his innocence when people raised accusations three months back, when a new slew of murders were being committed by a killer, who had a connection with maa’s abductor.

  So, when I saw his name on the list, everything I believed to be true about dad had begun to crumble. I felt terrible. My teeth were clattering. I was confused. A big part of me was in denial. This has to be a mistake. This has to mean something else. Maybe this isn’t even a list of bribes given out to cops.

  Rathod put a hand on my shoulder. I held back the tears. I gulped hard once and got up. I did not have time to feel bad right now.

  ‘Let’s search the rest of the house,’ I said, opening the next drawer.

  ‘You can take a moment. I’ll look around,’ Rathod said.

  ‘There’s no time right now. I’ll deal with this later.’

  Rathod watched me silently for a few seconds. ‘There’s more stuff inside the chamber,’ he said. ‘Wait here. I’ll get it.’

  He hurried to the bathroom and came back out in twenty seconds.

  ‘These two maps were inside,’ Rathod said, handing them to me.

  ‘This one looks like the layout of a building,’ I said. ‘It’s massive. Like a warehouse, but it’s something else. More than ten percent of the space has been assigned to the generator backup. What on earth is this?’

  I looked at the paper closely. The layout was of a fifty thousand square foot building. It had at least ten different rooms of two thousand square feet each, five toilets, three large offices and two bathrooms. It did not hint in any way what the place was.

  I turned the paper around. There was a handwritten message.

  It read: 400 people = $4 million

  ‘What does this mean?’ I said out loud. That was ten thousand dollars or roughly seven lakh rupees per person. My mind went back to the figures I had seen in the yellow file earlier.

  Rathod turned my way and looked at what I had read out. ‘What does the ‘equal to’ sign in the middle mean? How do four hundred people equate to four million dollars? Is that the price of four hundred people?’ Rathod said.

  Something that I had thought about earlier came to my mind right away.

  Dr. Malini Sinha was into women's fertility treatment and awareness. I had briefly thought then that perhaps Rucha’s kidnapping had something to do with child prostit
ution or child slavery. Was the figure an amount that someone was willing to pay for four hundred children or people?

  ‘That’s not it. Here’s the second map.’ He handed it to me. ‘It appears to be of the same place that is off the Pune-Solapur highway that Manohar went to,' Rathod said, referring to the big road marked on the map that labelled the highway. ‘I think we're looking at the right stuff, Siya. It's no coincidence that two different people have in some way mentioned the same place, especially with everything going around.'

  I was intrigued. We had found two different places. Mule had the blueprint of one and an almost turn by turn map of the other.

  ‘We must go to the place on the map,’ I said. ‘We know where it is. It must be a crucial piece of evidence given that it was in the safe. We’ll figure out what the place in the blueprint is later.’

  Rathod scratched his clean-shaven chin and said, ‘Sure, let’s go to the place on the map.’ He paused. ‘What do you want to do with Mule? We can’t just leave him here.’

  ‘I might know someone,' I said, thinking of an old friend.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Zara Shroff was a medical examiner. I used to consult her when I practised law. I pulled out my phone and tapped its screen twice to call her. I had last spoken to Zara Shroff soon after I had quit. I had only told her that I needed time away from law and I was going through something. She had not pressed me to tell her what had happened but had instead offered to be there for me if I required her. As the phone rang, I felt guilt tug at my heart for not having spoken to her since then. I had only a few close friends back then and I promised myself to start speaking to them once we found Rucha.

  ‘Siya Rajput?’ Zara’s said in an excited tone.

  ‘Dr. Zara Shroff,’ I said as calmly as I could.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ She was still speaking in an excited tone.

  ‘Long story. I owe you a big apology. I also need your help right now. It’s pretty big.’

  ‘Only on the condition that you tell me the long story later.’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Superb, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘I’m investigating a case and I can’t turn over a dead body to the police. He was a good guy. Got caught up while trying to bust something. He was just killed. Can you please take him in?’

  ‘Text me the address,’ Zara said. ‘I’ll send someone over.’

  I said thanks, feeling guiltier than before, and then hung up. Rathod was giving me a questioning look.

  ‘She’s an old friend. We go back a long way. We went to the same college. She studied medicine while I studied law. She's now a big shot medical examiner at a government forensics centre that looks at covert and high-profile cases concerning national security. You didn't hear about any of this from me, by the way.'

  We went to the other room. It was also a huge mess. Like Rathod had described it, everything in it had been broken. We looked around but found nothing of interest.

  I could not stop thinking about dad’s name being present in the file. My head still ached. I closed my eyes. I knew I could not afford to think about it now. Not at this juncture when the stakes had shot up high after both Manohar and Mule had been killed. I decided I would deal with it later. But, the more I tried to push it away, the more difficult it became to focus on anything else.

  I walked around to distract myself. I wanted to know what Mule was up to. The coloured files were clearly extremely important as they were kept in a secret chamber. Mule had retired from the police force a long time back. It looked like he had taken up a gig with a company called Secure Point. I decided to visit Secure Point’s office the next day.

  We took one final look around the apartment before leaving. We took all the files with us. I left the front door open so Zara’s people could get in. I held the file with dad’s name tightly.

  ‘Rathod?’ I said when we stepped into the warm night air again.

  His eyes glinted in the moonlight as he looked at me.

  I said, ‘Please don't tell Radha or Rahul about Mule's bribe list. Especially that dad's name is on it. I'll tell them later myself.'

  ‘Of course. I also wanted to tell you that you can count on me being there whenever you decide to look into your father’s disappearance.’

  I said nothing in response. We got back to the car and told Radha and Rahul what else we had found in Mule’s house.

  ‘Here’s one thing I take from the papers you found,’ Rahul said. ‘One was a map. It was in Mule’s possession. We know Manohar has been there. There’s a real possibility that one of them could have drawn it for the other.’

  ‘The place isn't there on popular navigation maps. I can find the roads around it though,' Radha said. ‘I can also check if the handwriting on the papers is similar to that of the remarks that Manohar made on Natasha Gill's file for Ad Astra. I have photos of it. That way we’ll know if Manohar wrote any of the notes.'

  Why was dad’s name in the file? What had he done? I shook my head in an attempt to shake away the distraction.

  I said, ‘What about the blueprint that we found?’

  ‘Could it be the same as the place circled in the map off the Pune-Solapur highway?’ Rahul said.

  Radha shook her head. ‘The dimensions of the two are very different. The blueprint is of a really big place—almost like an extremely large warehouse. The place off the Pune-Solapur highway is much, much smaller.’

  I said, ‘Considering that they were looking at the blueprint, there’s a possibility that they were scoping out the building, looking at the location of different rooms inside, entry and exit points and general directions of passages and windows.’

  Rathod said, ‘Makes sense. Because that large a structure has to have good security and plenty of CCTV cameras.’

  ‘Then there is also that note behind the blueprint,’ Radha said. ‘Four hundred people equals four million dollars. I’ll look through the account statements and other files that you found. Maybe it has some answers.’

  With that we went silent. It was a chilling figure. Four hundred people. Were they in danger? Who were they? What was the money being paid for?

  My mind drifted. I played my last conversation with Manohar in my mind. His exact words came back to me. You have to know that you cannot trust anyone. Even any law enforcement authority. Especially the people right at the top of the hierarchy. Corruption is rotting the system. I made the mistake of approaching the police the first time around. That's why I wasn't sure I could trust you. Even right now, I am going out on a limb when I tell you this. But this is the closest I'll come to trusting anyone. You may call me paranoid but what the hell.

  Manohar had the biggest issue trusting me as well. From the way he described it, the operation was huge. Now we knew, at least four million dollars were at stake.

  I wondered, how then, had he come to trust Sitaram Mule in the first place? How had they met? The more I thought about it, the clearer my next step became. If I found out how Manohar ended up with Mule, I would know exactly what this was all about.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The clock on the car’s dashboard told us it was almost two in the night. We drove in silence. I kept trying to find connections between Manohar and Mule. I stopped after a spell when I realized I needed to know more about Mule to proceed. The best way I could think of was to visit his workplace at Secure Point which I was going to in the morning after getting some sleep.

  The city petered out the further we drove. It was funny to see the sizes and density of buildings on either side of the road reduce. It got less bright and the roads became narrower. The road was good. We could tell it was newly made, which was not a surprise as the General Elections had taken place recently in India. Infrastructure and development activity saw a spurt twelve months before the elections. The ruling parties across the country hoped that one massive undertaking would get them votes—and they were not wrong most times. We motored ahead for a while. R
adha kept updating us with our location and route.

  ‘We’ll be there in five minutes.’

  We zoomed past large trucks that carried freight at night. There came a point when the civilization around us almost dropped off a cliff. Only street lamps lit the road. There were farms on either side. I made up my mind to go to such a calm and quiet place with everyone once all this was over.

  We turned right off the Pune-Solapur highway, onto a completely dark road full of potholes. We could only see as far as the car’s headlights. We inched forward as Rathod reduced the speed. There was no scope to go faster.

  ‘It’s going to take more time with this road,’ Radha said.

  We went along the same road for the next ten minutes before taking another right. We were far from the highway and a large stretch of farms separated us from it.

  ‘Okay, slow down now. We’re almost there,’ Radha said.

  ‘If we go any slower, we’ll start going backwards, babe,’ Rahul said, only to earn a playful punch on the shoulder from Radha.

  ‘Pull over,’ she said.

  Rathod stopped at the side of the narrow road, blocking it almost entirely. We stayed inside. It was four in the morning.

  ‘Are you sure this is the place?’ Rathod asked.

  His question was legitimate. Tall maize plants towered around us. They were all we could see.

  ‘Where is it?’ I said.

  ‘About six minutes if we walk.’

  ‘Let’s start,’ I said.

  ‘Are all of us going?’ Rathod said.

  ‘Yeah,' I said. ‘I don't know what this place is. But I feel that staying in the car is more unsafe. The road is wobbly so Radha and Rahul can't get away quickly if there's any danger. We’ll be stronger and safer together.'

  All of us stepped out of the car. The night air was cooler here and our nostrils flirted with the smell of fresh corn. Rathod picked four torches from his trunk along with headbands for them. He put twelve backup batteries in the front pocket of his jacket. He handed me three extra rounds for my Glock. He had an extra gun. He glanced at Radha and Rahul, deciding who to give it to.