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

by UD Yasha

  The cold morning air slapped me in the face with fierce intensity the moment I stepped out.

  But I did not notice, for what was in front of me made me stop in my tracks, doubt what I was seeing, and think: What the hell is going on?

  Chapter Four

  Rathod liked going to crime scenes with Bhalerao because he provided some amusement before the reality of the situation hit them. It was good to laugh about trivial things for a few minutes. Rathod had always wondered if Bhalerao would have been as entertaining if they were not driving to examine dead bodies and catch killers.

  But that day was different.

  Rathod’s mind was restless. He was absently looking at the small idol of the elephant God, Ganesh, that was stuck on the dashboard of Bhalerao’s car. His mind was occupied elsewhere. He wanted Bhalerao to stop talking so he could focus. But even that seemed to take his mind away from what was bugging him.

  He had gotten a text from Siya Rajput a few minutes back. He reread it. Come here only if I don’t text you within 30 minutes.

  He had an odd relationship with Siya. He respected her and stood by what she believed in. He knew she put justice and her love for her family over everything else in her life. That scared him as well. He knew she was capable of putting herself in danger for her values. He wasn’t sure what was happening in her life because she shared very little with him, and often much later, months after the event had passed. He had shared his frustrations on how she disappeared for months and then returned at the most unexpected times, like that morning. Deep down, he knew she meant well but was probably scarred from everything that had happened in her life. Yet, he somehow felt compelled to be there for her in crunch times.

  She had discussed her father’s disappearance with him a few times before. There were no leads in the sixteen-year-old case. That something had come up suddenly, without a warning, made him suspicious. Siya was alone, not knowing what or who awaited her. He knew her well enough to understand that she would not ask for his help had she not felt something was not right.

  He looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was ten minutes past four. Fifteen more minutes until Siya’s buffer time expired. But he could not wait. He thought of calling her, but was not sure if the ringing phone would put her in danger by giving away her position. He decided to text her.

  He typed out the message and hit send. I’ll be there. Are you okay?

  He put his phone back in his pant pocket. He began thinking about how much solving the mystery of her father’s disappearance would mean to Siya. He was glad her mother was safely back with them. One more thing concerned him. While he did not know Siya’s father personally, his name had shown up in a register of corrupt cops maintained by the former Chief of Pune Police. Siya and Rathod had found it on their last case together a few months ago. He wondered if Siya’s father, a man named Aniruddha Rajput, was indeed as clean and honourable as Siya believed him to be. He wanted to believe her, but, by putting on his police uniform every day, his primary responsibility was to respect the facts, and not be swayed by emotion.

  The clock ticked on. Rathod’s mind began counting down the time. Eleven minutes to go now.

  He was snapped out of his thoughts when Bhalerao put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Sirji, we’re here,’ Bhalerao said.

  Rathod took a second to gather his mind.

  ‘You looked dazed. Are you okay?’ Bhalerao said.’

  Rathod nodded. ‘Yes, it’s probably just the lack of sleep. Let’s go in,’ he said, swinging open his door.

  The air outside was cold and Rathod buttoned his long jacket. The murders had been committed on the sixth floor of one the buildings in a lavish residential complex named Natraj Meadows. Rathod looked around. The buildings were tall and there was greenery everywhere. German-manufactured cars were lined up in the parking lot. In India, such cars were even more expensive because of the import duty issued on them. It was clear to Rathod that Natraj Meadows housed some rich people. That also meant that the security measures would be high. Rathod counted at least ten CCTV cameras from where he was standing.

  Two hawaldars were standing outside Building ‘D’. Rathod acknowledged their salute with a nod of his head as they beckoned him in the direction of the lift. The lobby had a shiny marble flooring and a tall ceiling that could have easily accommodated two apartments.

  ‘I’ll help you with the code,’ the skinny hawaldar said, and moved forward into the lift. ‘The lift opens into the apartment. I got this card from the security guards of the complex.’ He waved it out of his pocket and held it against a sensor inside and the lift zoomed up.

  Rathod wondered how the killer had got past the security at the gate, then evaded the cameras and got past the lift card, which was as good as a key.

  Rathod gave Bhalerao a look when he started adjusting his hair in the mirror of the lift. Its door opened with an elegant swoosh onto the sixth floor.

  The lift opened into a small corridor, and not the apartment directly. There was another door a few feet away. The killer managed to get past one more obstacle, Rathod thought. The name on the door of apartment 6 told Rathod that the house belonged to Malhar and Niyati Jathar.

  Another hawaldar at the door handed Rathod and Bhalerao plastic overalls. They slipped into them to avoid contaminating the crime scene.

  Rathod checked the time. It was four fifteen. Ten minutes to go, he thought. He double-checked to see if Siya had responded. There was nothing yet. Maybe I should call her. For the first time that morning, he felt his stomach sink in fear. He decided to wait. He dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief to wipe off the sweat.

  Rathod ducked under the yellow crime scene tapes outside the door and went inside. The CID’s tech team was already inside, taking photos and collecting samples.

  Rathod examined the door’s lock from the inside. It was intact and did not even have a single scratch. As he looked up, a senior constable named Yash Jadhav walked up to Rathod. Jadhav was forty years old but looked more like fifty because of a balding head.

  ‘What do we know so far?’ Rathod said, looking around the house.

  He would have praised the owners for how beautiful it was had he not been there to investigate a murder. The living room occupied a vast area in front of him. It had a beige theme going. Rathod’s eyes froze on the TV set. It was probably the largest he had ever seen.

  Jadhav said, ‘Three people are dead in one of the rooms inside. The couple and another man whom we haven’t identified yet.’

  ‘What about the CCTV, the guards, the main door?’

  ‘Someone hacked into the CCTV and kept playing the previous hour’s footage. The guards did not notice anything suspicious until the neighbours reported that the Jathars weren’t opening the door.’

  ‘Which neighbours? I thought there was only one apartment per floor.’

  ‘I meant the people living on the fifth floor.’

  ‘Why were they knocking on their neighbour’s door at three in the morning?’

  ‘The husband is a pilot and has odd working hours. The wife travels for work as well. So, they keep their house keys with the Jathars. It’s usually kept in the corridor that opens into the lift. The Jathars had given them access, but as the keys weren’t there today, the guy rang the bell, because according to him Malhar Jathar had told him to wake them up in case they forget to leave it outside.’

  ‘The neighbours seem friendly.’

  ‘You can talk to them. They’ve been extremely cooperative.’

  ‘I will in a bit,’ Rathod said, referring to the time on his mobile. There was no word from Siya. The time was four twenty-one. Four minutes to go. Should I call her? He didn’t and instead asked Jadhav, ‘What about the main door? Was it locked from the inside when the bodies were found?’

  ‘Yes. Looks like there is no damage to it. We’ll conduct a thorough check to know for sure.’

  Rathod nodded his head absently, but he was thinking about Siya.
/>   ‘Do you want to see the bodies?’ Jadhav asked.

  Rathod looked at him, confused. ‘Yes, I want to,’ he said.

  Jadhav led Rathod and Bhalerao to one of the bedrooms. They walked through a corridor that had expensive-looking paintings on either side, each lit by a spotlight. Rathod had observed that the yellower and dimmer the lights at someone’s house got, the richer they were. Poor people only cared about their house being lit, not the way it was lit. They walked past at least three doors and eventually turned left at the end of the corridor to look at the scene of murder.

  There were hushed conversations in the room between the two crime scene technicians and CID’s Medical Examiner Dr. Sonia Joshi.

  ‘We just got here too,’ Dr. Sonia said on seeing Rathod.

  Rathod nodded his head in acknowledgement. Two of the three dead bodies, a man and a woman, lay squarely in the centre of the room. The third body of a man who seemed to be in his late-twenties lay in the bathroom’s door frame.

  ‘Those are the owners of the house,’ Jadhav said, pointing at the couple. ‘Mr. Malhar and Mrs. Niyati Jathar.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘Both are doctors.’

  Rathod walked towards them. Both Malhar and Niyati were in jeans and shirts that had bathed in blood. They had been shot once in their torso and now lay in a pool of their own blood. Some of it had got sprayed on the bed. With the way their bodies lay awkwardly on the floor, it seemed like they were sitting on the bed when they had been shot and then had fallen to the ground.

  ‘Next of kin?’ Rathod asked.

  ‘Two daughters. Both live in the US. We have managed to inform them. They are both planning to come down as soon as possible.’

  Rathod turned to the unidentified man who lay across the bathroom doorway. His head was inside the bathroom while his body from waist down was outside. He was shot in the head and chest. His face was crusted with blood. His clothes were threadbare and had even torn in a few places. They didn’t just look old but were also full of stains. The man’s hands and face had grease on which made Rathod wonder, what was he doing in such a fancy apartment?

  ‘Did the security not see him come in?’ Rathod said.

  ‘They claim they didn’t but we will go through the security tapes to check,’ Jadhav said.

  Rathod checked the time. Four twenty-three. The seconds hand seemed to move slower on his phone’s clock app.

  ‘I’ll be back in some time,’ he told Jadhav. ‘I need to make an important call.’

  He took the key card from Jadhav, walked out of the apartment, stripped off his plastic overalls and rode down the elevator to step out in the open air. He dialled Siya’s number. Each ring seemed to last longer. Pick up, come on.

  The call rang out.

  Shaking his head, Rathod stomped his foot on the ground.

  He tried again. The rings seemed to mock him this time as the call rang out again.

  Just then, his phone started ringing in his hand. For a moment his body relaxed and he relaxed his fists, thinking Siya was calling him back. It tensed again when he saw Bhalerao’s name flashing on his mobile screen.

  ‘Where did you go?’ Bhalerao said the moment Rathod answered the call.

  ‘I…I…have to take care of something,’ Rathod managed to say.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yes, Bhalerao. But I have to go. Something urgent has come up,’ Rathod said and hung up.

  He checked his phone again. Four twenty-five. About fifteen seconds to go. Still nothing from Siya. He thought of his next steps. He knew he had to go to Stan Mills. He looked up its location on his phone. It was about twenty minutes away, lesser if he hit the accelerator hard. He went to one of the hawaldars standing outside the building and asked for the keys to Bhalerao’s car. He stepped in, texting Bhalerao that there was an emergency at home.

  As Rathod strapped the seatbelt, he looked at his phone one last time. The thirty-minute deadline was up. He hoped Siya was alright. He wondered: Siya, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?

  Chapter Five

  I heaved loudly as my lungs filled with oxygen, making me feel like they were on fire. A heavy weight seemed to push down my chest. I heaved heavily again, taking in the air, feeling the blood cruise through my body. It seemed like I had woken up from the dead.

  What had happened?

  My eyes opened to a blur. Even though I could not see properly, I felt dirt and soil under my body. I wanted to get up but my body had stopped obeying my brain. My lungs wanted to scream as I inhaled again.

  The smell of ash hit my nose. It slowly came back to me. The cold air fluttered against my face as I realized I was at Stan Mills’ factory. I tried to remember what had happened, but the thoughts faded away just as they formed.

  My head throbbed. I felt like my mind was in an ocean, trying to swim to the nearest island. As the giddiness began washing out, I started forming a timeline of what had happened.

  I had got a call a little before three thirty. What time was it now? I sent a hand over my jeans but could not feel the bulge of my phone. My gaze swept the ground around me but my eyes were still hazy.

  Thinking of the phone, I was reminded of mechanical shrill in the voice of the person that had called me. Shivers snaked through my spine. I had been called to Stan Mills. I had to know what had happened to dad and this was my only chance. His voice from my dream came back to me. You never came looking for me. A pang of guilt unfurled inside me. I tried to push it away, thinking dad would never have said that to me.

  My eyesight cleared a bit more. I had got another call once I was at Stan Mills. I was following their instructions…until the call had ended. I had sensed something was wrong and I wanted to get out of there. I ran downstairs.

  What had happened after that?

  As I tried to remember, my brain felt like it was going to come out of the skull. I had seen something. Someone. But I could not recollect who it was. My vision cleared. I panned my eyes across. I was outside the back door of Stan Mills’ factory.

  That’s when I noticed that my clothes were damp. Thoughts stopped forming in my head when I saw them. I jumped back as a sweat broke all over my body. I refused to believe what I was seeing.

  My clothes had blood on them. Large dark patches that had seeped through the clothes, making them cling to my body.

  My gut churned. I searched for an injury with my hands. Please let it be mine. Please let it be mine. But as my hands looked for any cut or wound, a chilling realization hit me. The blood was not mine. It belonged to someone else.

  Whose was it?

  The smell of blood was coppery and impersonal as blood always is. It made me nauseous. I stumbled to the side and puked, somehow managing to hold my hair up. I coughed hard, unable to breathe properly. I tried to remember what had happened once the call had ended and I had tried to get out of the factory. It was all blank.

  Had I blacked out?

  That’s when I noticed my hands. I fell back to the ground in shock. My hands had blood on them. I instinctively rubbed them against the back of my jacket, which as far as I knew was the only dry and clean spot on me.

  Had I hurt someone?

  There was blood on my hands. And I had no idea how it had got there.

  I staggered sideways. The moonlight was dim but my eyes had gotten used to the sparse light. The air around me was still, bearing no sign of the violence that it may have witnessed not so long back. I wondered how long it had been since I got here. I looked skywards. It was still dark. So, the sun had not risen still. It was winter so it had to be before six thirty.

  I realized I had got there in my car. I stumbled forward and felt my legs get stronger with every step. The car was at the front. Just then, I stopped in my tracks.

  What’s that sound?

  It grew louder with every passing beat. A car. It was probably a few seconds away. Who could be coming here and why?

  Going to the front could be dang
erous so I ran to the bushes by the side and hid in them. I had a clear view of the factory’s front. I was relieved to see that my car was still there. I looked through the leaves as the beams of the headlamps strobed their way forward. My headache had disappeared. Subconsciously, I was preparing for a response.

  What if someone was here to kill me and they had realized they had done their job well?

  The thought of having hurt someone flashed in my mind again. I knew if I had harmed someone, it would have been out of self defense, not hate. As much as I had wished to kill mom’s abductor Kishore Zakkal, I had turned him over to the police. I wondered if that was the right call as he had escaped prison almost a year back. Which made me think again: Was Zakkal behind any of this? Apart from the way Zakkal operated, something told me the phone call I had got had no connection to Zakkal. It did not make sense before, neither did it now.

  The noise in my mind paused as the approaching car swerved in front of the factory. I could not make out much except that it was an SUV. Its lights went out as the rumbling of the engine stopped to make way for silence.

  A man stepped out of the car.

  A wave of relief lashed on me. I knew him. It was Rathod. What was he doing here?

  I dashed out of the bush towards him. He turned in alarm on hearing my footsteps, one hand ready to pull out his gun and shoot. But he realized it was me. He was confused to see me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he said as I hugged him, feeling safe and relieved to see the face of one of the people I trusted the most.

  Rathod was taken aback by my hug but then he rubbed my back after a few seconds. He stepped closer after we pulled out of the embrace and pointed at my face. ‘There’s something on your face,’ he said. He brushed a finger on my forehead and then brought it closer to examine it. He sniffed it twice and said, ‘It’s blood.’

  His eyes wandered up and down my body. ‘Your clothes too,’ he said, his voice trailing off. ‘What happened? Is everything okay?’

  ‘I don’t remember what happened,’ I said and looked to either side, hoping something around me would trigger the memories.