by UD Yasha
‘Are you hurt?’ Rathod said and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘No, I checked’, I said. ‘The blood is not mine.’
Silence.
‘How did you know I was here?’ I said.
‘You told me to get here,’ he said, narrowing his eyes.
I did not remember talking to Rathod.
‘What’s the time?’ I asked, hoping that would give me some perspective.
Rathod referred to his phone and said, ‘Five past five.’
Silence.
‘You texted me an hour back to come here in case I didn’t hear from you in thirty minutes.’
‘I don’t remember messaging you,’ I said. ‘I don’t have my phone.’
Rathod briskly pulled out his gun. He said nothing but his eyes explored my clothes as he saw more blood on them. He opened the door of his SUV.
‘Sit inside,’ he said. ‘I need to check this place. Someone might still be around.’
‘I want to come with you.’
‘You need to rest. Let me do this alone, please?’
‘What if it’s not safe?’
‘More the reason why you should stay inside. I’ll handle it. You look shaken up,’ he said and then ducked in the car and gave me a bar of chocolate from the glove box. ‘Get some energy back. We’ll get you checked.’
I took the chocolate and stayed silent.
‘Can you tell me what you remember?’ he said, looking around to see if he could spot anybody.
I told him everything I remembered which was basically all that happened until I stepped out of the factory.
‘But you don’t remember texting me, right?’ he said.
‘No, I have no memory of that,’ I said as my head started hurting again.
Silence.
Rathod’s eyes wandered as he tried to take it all in. He said, ‘In your mind, can you go over everything since you got up once again?’
‘Yes,’ I said and began recollecting everything that had happened. I tried to remember every little thing, hoping something would be helpful in remembering the full picture. But I could not summon the memories of what had happened after I had stepped out of the factory.
‘I don’t remember what happened when I stepped out and saw someone.’
Rathod was patient. He stayed quiet for a few more beats, letting me swim in my own thoughts. Once he was sure I would not say anything, he said, ‘Okay, don’t worry about it. Just tell me if the person you saw seemed familiar? Or did they have a striking feature? Like a scar, some unique eye colour or if they said something?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m sure I saw someone. But there’s nothing else.’
‘We’ll find out what happened,’ Rathod said. ‘Stay in the car, I’ll sweep the area and be back.’
‘Rathod?’ I said as he turned around. ‘Can you please not call this in?’
Rathod gulped once. ‘Yes, I wasn’t thinking of calling it in,’ he said and merged with the darkness.
Chapter Six
The silence was deafening.
A cold draft of air came through the half open window of Rathod’s car. It stung me at first and then numbed my face. There was a constant buzzing in my mind and I was not able to form any thoughts. I stared into the darkness, waiting for Rathod to come back. I wanted to remember what had happened, but pain jolted through the nerves of my brain every time I tried.
I grimaced in frustration. I slammed my hand on the head rest of the driver’s seat. I snapped out of my daze, feeling hopeless. I sat alone with my thoughts. I gave up trying to remember what had happened. The memory would come back. I did not know when it would, but in the meantime, I had to do something useful.
The smell of blood on my body was a constant reminder that someone had been hurt. I needed to know who it was. The person held the clues about what had happened to both me and dad. Was it the same person who had called me?
I had not seen anyone near me after I had gotten up. There were three places where they could be. Firstly, they could have escaped from the Stan Mills factory on their own. Secondly, they could have been helped by someone else to get away. Thirdly, they were still at the factory. In that case, I could find them.
I had a lot of blood on me and I realized the person might even need medical help. I did not remember seeing any blood on the ground near the back door of the factory. So, the place where they had been hurt had to be somewhere else. I must have been there with them as it was the only realistic reason the blood had got on me.
Was a third person involved in this entire setup? Me, the person who called me, and someone else. I thought so because the call had gotten disconnected. Had the person across the line hung up on purpose because there was some eminent danger? They were being discreet. There was no reason to call me in the middle of nowhere. Had someone got to know of our meeting?
I found a torch that I could strap to my head in Rathod’s glovebox. I put it on and stepped out of the car. I returned to the place where I had blacked out. My head had stopped spinning and my vision was back. I pulled out my gun, ready to squeeze the trigger.
The torch on my head beamed away. I focused on the ground, looking for signs of a brawl, blood or a body. I looked in the bush first. Beyond them, trees gradually increased in density and then blurred into a forest. I went around the factory, walking by its walls. I only saw charred ash and mold on the walls.
I returned to the car and saw Rathod coming from the other end. He followed the beam from my torch and had seen me before I had noticed him.
‘You shouldn’t be walking,’ Rathod said.’
I ignored him. ‘What did you find?’ I asked instead.
Rathod shook his head. ‘Nothing. It’s all clean. But I’ll come back here to check it in the daytime.’
We walked to our cars.
‘I can get my crime scene tech team here to go through everything,’ Rathod said.
I said nothing, wondering if it was the right thing to make what had happened official. Needless to say, come alone. Trust no one, not even the people who you think are on your side. Cops are not your friends. The words of the caller rang in my ears. I had already broken that agreement by telling Rathod. But I trusted him. Even though he was a cop.
Rathod went to his car and brought a hand towel and a bottle of water.
‘Wash your face,’ he said, handing them to me.
I took the bottle and splashed some water on my face. A stinging pain cruised through me right away. I touched the point of pain and realized I had been cut on my right cheek.
Rathod leaned forward and put a hand on my back when I shrieked. The pain faded away but again erupted when I wiped my face with the towel.
‘It’s a deep gash,’ Rathod said, examining my face.
‘It hurts like hell when I touch it,’ I said, trying to remember how I had got it.
‘The wound is not big enough for all that blood. But it at least tells us you got into some kind of a physical fight,’ Rathod said, looking around.
I dabbed the cut with the towel. Putting water on it had opened it up. It wasn’t paining as much as stinging. I processed the new information. I had got into an altercation with someone.
‘Do you have your car’s keys on you?’ Rathod said.
I felt my pockets instinctively and felt it against my jeans. I pulled it out.
‘Did you check your car?’ Rathod said, and I felt dumb not to have thought of it before.
‘I didn’t,’ I said, my voice fading away as I turned to my car and unlocked it.
Rathod opened the back door and checked the back seats while I searched the front.
‘There’s nothing here,’ I said almost as Rathod ducked out shaking his head. I bent down and popped open the boot. I jerked my head towards it to tell Rathod to examine it.
He turned away towards it. The next words he said cut through the cold night air and sent shivers through my body.
Chapter Seven
‘Siya, there’s a bo
dy in here,’ Rathod said.
I rushed to his side and saw a woman’s body curled up in the boot of my car. Her clothes were drenched in blood.
Rathod put a finger on her neck. ‘I can feel a pulse. She’s alive,’ he said, his eyes almost popping out.
‘Let’s get her to the front,’ I said.
Rathod held her shoulders and I picked up her legs. We transferred her to the back seat. Rathod took the wheel and I sat at the back with the woman. That’s when I saw my mobile phone. It had fallen on the car floor near the back seat. I picked it up and checked it. I saw the call I had made to Rathod and the calls I had got from the unknown person. There was nothing else on it since morning.
‘She has been stabbed in the stomach,’ I said, noticing the stab wound in her clothes.
Blood was still oozing out. I took the same hand towel I had used and pushed it against the wound to reduce the bleeding. I didn’t know if it helped because the towel quickly got soaked in the blood. I kept the pressure constant.
‘Her pulse is weak. We need to get her to a doctor,’ Rathod said.
‘Even her breathing is shallow,’ I said and put her head on my thighs. ‘Call it in, we need to go to a hospital.’
‘There’s a good chance you will be implicated if she’s taken to a hospital.’
‘But I can’t let her die. She needs medical attention.’
‘What about that friend of yours who helped us with Sitaram Mule?’ Rathod said, turning to face me for a beat.
Dr. Zara Shroff. I had worked with her when I used to practice law. She had helped us keep Mule’s death under the radar for a few days by preserving his body. We had handed it to the police after the investigation. I had spoken to her a couple of times since, mostly as an effort to reconnect with friends I had made as a lawyer. I wanted to stop associating them with my mistake. I was taking it slow and it had been going well.
‘I’ll call her,’ I said, wondering whether it was the right not to take the woman to the hospital.
I called Zara and explained the situation to her, and asked if the woman could be taken care equally well or better somewhere else.
‘What did she say?’ Rathod said as soon as I hung up.
‘She knows a doctor who can help us,’ I said and just then, my phone buzzed in my hand. Zara had texted me the doctor’s address.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, giving my phone to Rathod for navigation. I continued. ‘His name is Dr. Shantam Rastogi. He was Zara’s mentor at medical college. Zara told me he has a sophisticated clinic which is attached to his own hospital which is next door. She’s calling him to tell him we’re coming.’
‘And he would just take us in?’ Rathod said, surprised.
‘Zara told me that the two of them go back a long way. She has used his help several times to keep things under wraps. He also has a loyal and efficient staff. Zara was sure he’ll take care of this woman much better and faster.’
As silence engulfed the car, I saw the woman closely for the first time. I hadn’t recognized her earlier and no bells went off in my head when I saw her up close either. She was probably in her mid-forties and had dark coffee coloured skin. Her hair had strands of grey and was tied using a hairband. She was on the taller side at around five feet eight inches. I guessed she weighed about seventy kilograms.
I did not realize that the sun had risen until I looked out the window for the first time. A glance at the clock on the dashboard told me it was six ten. The roads were not empty anymore, but Rathod drove faster, blurring out our surroundings.
I did not realize when we had exited the Mahatma Gandhi Road and turned a few times into several by-lanes until the road got narrower. I checked the woman’s pulse and felt a slight throbbing. Come on, hang in there for a few more minutes.
Rathod slowed the car as we approached the end of the lane. He stopped in front of a bungalow. A frail looking man, who I guessed was the watchman, emerged from a small door in the compound wall. He was wearing a sweater and a muffler. He opened the gate of the bungalow and beckoned us to drive inside.
As soon as the gate closed behind us, lights turned on inside the compound. A person of about sixty years of age with a balding head and long beard walked out of the back door.
The man said, ‘I’m Dr. Shantam Rastogi. Where’s the woman who’s been stabbed?’
Rathod pointed at the car. The older man and the watchman stepped briskly towards it. The door to my side opened and the three of them pulled out the woman. Before I knew it, they had taken her inside the bungalow through its back door.
I followed them inside. I heard them in a room to my left. Stepping in, I realized it was a full-fledged clinic. They had placed the woman on a stretcher. Two nurses were starting an IV while a third was setting up the ventilator.
Dr. Rastogi was leaning over her, examining the stab wound. The old guy who I thought was the watchman was handing Dr. Rastogi different instruments on command. I wondered if he was a watchman at all. Perhaps a nurse.
Leaning over the woman, Dr. Rastogi said, ‘Set up three bottles of O positive and prepare for operation.’
The man crossed to the other side of the room and pushed through a door that I had not seen earlier. He came out a few seconds later with three bags of blood and a trolley stand to hang it from. One nurse started the drip.
Dr. Rastogi said out loud to no one in particular, ‘There’s too much blood loss. Her internal organs could have been hit. We need to minimize the damage. She’s collapsing. Prepare the OT.’
We watched two more nurses come into the clinic. They pushed the stretcher into another room that I had not seen before. Its door closed after them.
Rathod’s phone began ringing. He answered it.
‘Boss, where are you?’ Bhalerao said. ‘We’re waiting for you.’
Rathod said, ‘I can’t make it right now. Continue without me. Give me a report and I’ll speak to Dr. Sonia in a bit.’
‘Is everything okay?’
‘My mother was not feeling well. Her chest was hurting. We got her checked, but it’s just a heart burn and nothing serious. But she’s all shaken up so I’m going to stay with her for some time.’
‘Yes, sure. Do what you have got to do,’ Bhalerao said and Rathod hung up.
Rathod said, ‘There’s a triple murder at a house in Model Colony. I was at the crime scene when I got your message.’
‘Thanks for coming,’ Siya said, narrowing her eyes, still not remembering texting Rathod.
‘You want to tell me what’s going on?’ he said with a hint of frustration in his voice.
‘I told you whatever I know.’
‘Not about what happened earlier. But why did you get a call and someone claimed to have information about your father?’
‘Even I don’t know what happened. I’ve also been trying to figure it out.’
‘And is it a coincidence that you get a call about your father’s disappearance—a man who has been missing for over sixteen years with no clue—just a few months after we found his name in a registry that had names of corrupt cops?’
I paused before answering. I had not told anyone about the first call I had got six months back. I had to tell Rathod, but I was scared. I did not know why. Maybe, a part of me was afraid that my father was actually involved in something illegal. I had wondered for the past six months about how easy it would have been if the person who maintained the registry, the brave former Chief of Pune Police Sitaram Mule was still alive. He had died fighting while trying to rescue a small girl from horrors that I could never think about.
I said, ‘I’ve been thinking about it too. It’s probably not a coincidence. But at the same time, I don’t know how they could be linked. Sitaram Mule had maintained that register for a long time. He put dad’s name in it before he disappeared. We just found out about it now.’
Silence.
‘Then why do you think it’s not a coincidence? Nobody had any leads about your father for all these years and the
n you get a call out of nowhere and you are asked to come to a godforsaken place in the middle of the night. What made you think this was a good idea and not a ploy to hurt you? I don’t know how, but you’ve made enough enemies when you used to practice.’
‘I have to tell you something,’ I said and inhaled deeply before telling Rathod about the first call I had got soon after our previous case together.
Rathod shook his head as I finished talking. ‘Why would you keep something like that from me?’
‘I was scared.’
‘Of what?’
‘It’s my dad. I have grown up believing he was a good man. Even when he was accused of kidnapping and killing maa, I always backed him. Then when we got to know that he was corrupt, it shattered me. To think that he was not always on the right side of the law like I had thought. I…I was trying to protect the good version of him. When I got that call six months back, I hoped I would find that he was a great man like I thought he was. I wondered if I could prove it myself by following up with the person who called me. I didn’t have much to work with. I roped in Jay Parikh to know about the call’s origin but got nothing. I was starting to believe the call was nothing much until I got it today again.’
‘All this must be crazy, Siya. I know. But you can’t keep pushing people away and try to do everything on your own. I’m glad you messaged me today at least. You needed to do it sooner. Imagine if both of us were there today. We could have backed each other. And forget that, it was dangerous to go out there alone. You can’t have a one-track mind about such things.’
I listened to Rathod, taking in everything he said. ‘I know. I thought about the dangers of going alone. But this was the first breakthrough in dad’s case. I didn’t want to mess it up. I was told not to tell anyone. I was cautious after what we found at Sitaram Mule’s house.’
‘That’s exactly why you should have told me. Because of what we found at Mule’s house. If that was true and your dad was corrupt, there’s a very good chance that it might have something to do with his...disappearance.’
