by UD Yasha
Murali was a thin and bespectacled guy. He looked like he was twenty, but was actually fifteen years older than that. He was soft spoken and had come in with rave reviews.
‘Sure,’ Murali said and referred to the file. ‘Suicide…killed himself on the same day as the one where Kabir was murdered. Do you think there’s a connection? I’ll run it against the murders we know of. In fact, in our case, only Jane Doe was stabbed,’ Murali went silent for a spell and then said, ‘I’ll see what I can find.’
Rathod said. ‘Call me downstairs once you’re done.’
Rathod returned to his desk and started reading what the police had recorded about Shikhar Kunte. He went to the final page where the police had made their observations and then stated why they thought Kunte’s death was most likely a suicide.
For starters, the police had found that Kunte had no known enemies. He was a kind and loving man. They had found no evidence at the crime scene or in Kunte’s personal life to think he was murdered. At the same time, they stated that he was a high-risk suicide candidate. The statement had been backed by three independent psychologists. Their reason was simple. Kunte worked at the Headquarters of Mumbai Police, which meant that Kunte had dealt with a life of high-stakes crime. Prolonged exposure to violent crimes increased the odds of suicide according to the psychologists.
Rathod wanted to know more about Kunte. He was aware that ACP Shukla had more contacts in the Mumbai Police Department, especially from the days when Kunte was an officer. He went to Shukla’s office and told him what he had come across.
‘It can’t be a coincidence,’ Shukla said.
‘That’s what I thought too. I was wondering if you could ask any of your old contacts about him.’
‘I’ll ask and tell you,’ Shukla said.
Rathod returned to his desk when his phone started ringing. It was Murali. Rathod ran downstairs and went straight to Murali’s office, which was smaller and further inside the corridor than Sonia’s office.
Rathod knew Murali had stumbled upon something given the smirk on his face. In their short time together, Rathod had gathered that Murali didn’t show much emotion.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ Murali said. ‘I examined the photos and scans of the slits on Kunte’s wrist. I can tell you that there’s a very high chance it was not a suicide. The direction of the cuts is opposite to that of how anyone would usually make a cut.’ Murali gave me a demonstration. ‘For example, as Murali cut his left wrist, the cut marks should have been from the outside to inside of the wrist. Here they are from right to left, indicating that someone next to him had cut his wrist. And that’s not it. Because someone else cut it, the knife or blade entered the skin at an angle. I compared it to Jane Doe’s stabbing. Without examining the remains of Kunte, no medical examiner can give you a sure answer. But based on the evidence I have, Jane Doe and Shikhar Kunte were killed using the same weapon.’
Rathod felt the blood cruise through his body. He hugged Murali, which took him by surprise. He gently patted Rathod’s back as Rathod pulled out of the hug and said, ‘Great work,’ and then ran upstairs.
He had a theory in mind and he needed to check something before he could confirm it.
Chapter Forty
I went to the garage and put the phone on speaker, closing the door behind me.
‘I’ve already sent across the picture of the face to you,’ Kedar said.
Radha refreshed my inbox and nodded animatedly as she saw the new email.
Kedar said, ‘A word of caution. The face that I have is about eighty percent accurate. Having said that, anyone who knew her would be able to recognize it. There were far too many tweaks to her face to give an accurate image. The face I reconstructed accounted for aging. But I have sent you three versions of how she would have looked before the first surgery. That’s the version of her that people will remember if you show the pictures to them.’
‘Opening it now,’ I said as three images popped up on my laptop’s screen.
Radha, Rahul and I exchanged glances. We shook our heads, not being able to recognize her.
‘Did you find out when she had got the first surgery?’ I asked.
‘The first one was definitely between fifteen and twenty years ago. Twenty years because the technique used to graze her bones was not available before that. More than fifteen because the surgery technique used on her then changed and got more advanced. I noticed scars of the old surgery technique on Jane Doe’s face. Also, my guess is that the woman is between forty and forty-five-years old right now. That means she didn’t have surgery until she was at least twenty years old.’
‘What was the technique used for her surgery called?’ Radha said.
Kedar said, ‘It’s called free tissue transfer. It involves making sure the new skin gets enough blood supply. It helps with restoring it post-surgery, otherwise it would appear dead. The woman’s mandible, that’s her jaw bone, and mouth’s floor were changed drastically. The finesse with which it was done indicates that free tissue transfer was used.’
I turned to Radha to see if she had any more questions to ask. She was already looking up something on her laptop.
‘You’re a lifesaver. Thanks a lot. I owe you one,’ I said to Kedar and hung up.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked Radha.
Rahul was now next to her, looking something up with an equally high amount of energy.
Radha said, ‘We’re looking at the surgeries that Dr. Niyati Jathar conducted, and shortlisting those that were conducted between fifteen and twenty years ago on women aged between twenty and twenty-five. We’re also checking which ones involved operations to the mandible that used the free tissue transfer technique.’
Before I could say anything, Radha said, ‘Got it.’
‘Found the woman?’
‘I’m close. I found three women who fit that criteria,’ Radha said.
Rahul peered into my laptop and read out Kedar Sathe’s email address.
‘I just sent their surgery notes and reports to Kedar Sathe and asked him to check which one belonged to Jane Doe. We’re soon going to get a name if Niyati operated on Jane Doe.’
The air of anticipation lingered among us.
I heard a car come to a halt outside. I looked out the garage window. It was Rathod. I was surprised to see him. He knew we were in the garage so he directly came inside.
‘I think I’m onto something,’ he said and started pacing the floor of the garage.
There was not much room left to move, considering we were all inside.
‘What happened?’ I said.
‘First of all,’ he said and looked at me. ‘Jane Doe’s killer also killed another guy named Shikhar Kunte on the same day that Kabir Ahuja was murdered.’
I punched the air. ‘Who is he?’
‘A police officer at the Mumbai Police Headquarters. I checked. He’s not connected to our investigation.’
I waited. I knew how the tone of Rathod’s voice changed when he thought he had a strong hunch about something.
‘I have a theory,’ he said. ‘I came down to tell you because I was not sure that sharing it over the phone was a great idea.’
‘Do you think that the Viper could be snooping?’ Radha said.
‘Considering where we are right now, yes,’ Rathod said. ‘It’s just a theory, though.’ Rathod blew air out of his mouth and massaged his temples. ‘Okay, here we go. Shikhar Kunte worked all his life at the Mumbai Police Headquarters opposite Crawford Market. All his life. I double-checked and realized that Motilal Ahuja also always uses police personnel for all his raids and encounters from the Mumbai Headquarters. It’s some sort of arrangement that he had with the IAS officer who heads the HQ. I also checked the old records. Between December 2001 and November 2002, Kunte was listed on the teams of four encounters that were headed by Motilal Ahuja.’
I thought about how Motilal was called an encounter specialist and how apt the nickname Viper was if he was indeed t
he person behind all this.
‘Are you saying that Motilal Ahuja is the Viper?’ Radha said.
‘I’m not saying that, but I feel it’s a damn big coincidence that the person who worked for Motilal Ahuja was murdered on the same day as his son. One of the major points that is stopping me from believing this is the murder of his own family members. What kind of father would kill his own son and daughter in law?’
Just then, Rathod’s phone started ringing. He answered it right away. It must have been a quick message because he put it back in his pocket ten seconds later.
He turned to me and said, ‘Sure Locked has only two clients in Pune. And guess what? A robbery was reported at one just nine days back.’
‘I guess we know where we’re going to go.’
Chapter Forty-One
The robbery had taken place at a company called Safe Zone. It provided high-end security solutions. They had been using Sure Locked’s safes and locks for the past thirty years and had never reported a robbery.
Until now.
Previously, there had been two attempts to break into different safes, but they had been thwarted because of an alarm that went off. That was an impressive record. Just two attempts, all failures, in thirty years. But that had changed.
The Safe Zone office was in an area called Deccan in Pune. It was a fifteen-minute drive from my house. The safes were located in the office in a basement.
‘I’ve asked my SWAT team to be ready in thirty minutes,’ Rathod said. ‘If we’re going against someone like Motilal Ahuja, we need all the backup we can get.’
At seven fifty in the evening, Rathod pulled over outside the Safe Zone office. A man stepped out from the office premises and beckoned us to park inside. Once we were inside, I realized how big the entire space was. I wondered how I had never heard of Safe Zone before.
The same man ushered us into a fancy-looking lobby that had high ceilings. A woman in a suit walked up to us and called us into her office.
‘I’m Vibha Mishra, the Head of Operations of Safe Zone, India,’ she said. ‘The robbery was unfortunate. It’s the first time someone broke into one of our safes.’
‘Whose safe was broken into?’ I said.
The woman pursed her lips.
‘Look, we can play games here,’ I said. ‘Or we can cooperate. This guy here is with the police. I am not. I am only a consultant and a lawyer. I know these are tough times for you. I’m sure your clients wouldn’t like to read about Safe Zone’s failure all over the newspapers. Within days, you would have no business left. I have no intention of telling anyone as long as we help each other out.’
Vibha smiled. She was trying to be cocky but I could tell she was nervous. ‘Alright, what do you want to know?’
‘The name of the person whose safe was broken into and robbed,’ Rathod said.
‘He’s a man called Mr. Roark Coutinho,’ Vibha said. ‘We’ve been trying to contact him but haven’t had any luck yet. We also sent a representative to his house but he isn’t answering the door either.’
‘Do you have a picture of him?’ I asked.
Vibha stood up and crossed to the other side of the room. She opened a cupboard and pulled out a file. She returned to her desk and said, ‘Here’s the file he gave us when he opened an account with us.’
‘When was that?’ I said,
‘Seventeen years ago, in 2003,’ Vibha said and handed the file. ‘It’s all in there.’
That’s when dad disappeared.
I opened the file and saw Coutinho’s picture. He was a young man eighteen years ago. The way he looked would have changed, but I was still sure that I had not seen him anywhere. Rathod also shook his head when I shot him a questioning glance.
From the file, we gathered that Roark Coutinho was a lawyer by profession. He specialized in contracts. Back then he was forty-two years old, making him sixty now. He had wavy white and grey hair and was wearing a suit in the picture he had submitted to Safe Zone. There was an address as well. He lived in an apartment on Fergusson College Road, which was very close to Deccan.
I was not sure if Roark Coutinho was this person’s real name. I had no idea how powerful Coutinho was, but I wondered if he was somehow connected to the Viper. Maybe he was the Viper’s lawyer.
I looked up from the file. ‘Do you know who broke into the safe?’ I said, realizing that knowing that could be helpful.
‘We’re investigating that,’ Vibha said.
‘How are you going about it?’ Rathod said.
‘A camera has recorded the face of one of the two people who broke into the safe. At least half of it.’
‘We need to see it,’ Rathod said.
I could make out that Vibha was not again very comfortable with the idea of sharing the video with us, but she got up and went to the cupboard once again to get the tapes.
‘Do you know what was in the safe?’ I said.
‘Even we don’t know,’ Vibha said, and I believed her.
‘How did the camera not alert any of the guards or trigger any of the systems?’ Rathod said.
‘We don’t employ a lot of people,’ Vibha said. ‘It’s all artificial intelligence based. The people who broke in hacked into our system and trained the AI to ignore them as it classified them as friendly objects. We never thought that was possible, but well,’ Vibha said, walking back to the desk.
She had brought a pen drive with her. She plugged it in her laptop and turned the screen around to face us. ‘Here you go,’ she said and pressed play. ‘Look closely at the twenty second mark.’
We waited and watched. The video was clear and well lit. It was fascinating to know that the robbers had just walked in and stolen by having trained the AI. At the eighteenth second, my hands started trembling.
Nineteen.
I felt my stomach quiver.
Twenty.
I grabbed Rathod’s hand and froze on seeing the face on screen. It was the last person I was expecting to see.
‘No way,’ I said, my voice barely coming out. ‘Dad?’ I whispered.
I checked the date of the recording again and again. It was from nine days ago.
Dad’s alive.
Chapter Forty-Two
Who said miracles don’t happen? My head felt light with relief and happiness. There was no way I had got it wrong. I was sure that the man I saw in the video was my father. The quality of the video was good and his face was clear. The other person had the same physique as Vivek Saxena. Vivek and my father had robbed the safe that belonged to Roark Coutinho.
We watched the rest of the tape. My dad and Vivek were inside the room-sized safe for about five minutes. They had walked out of it just as casually as they had walked in. They knew that the cameras wouldn’t detect them.
Dad was alive.
I stepped out of the office, pulled out my phone and called Radha.
‘Dad’s alive,’ I said, barely able to believe the words coming out of my mouth.
I knew Radha was stunned. She wasn’t able to say anything. I told her the longer version to give her time.
‘I can’t wait for him to hug me, Siya. I simply cannot,’ Radha said and started crying across the line and I teared up as well. I bid her goodbye and returned to the office.
Speaking to Radha made it seem more real. I felt giddy. Everything around me seemed to fade away. All voices got shut out. I held Rathod’s hand firmly. Or at least I thought I did. To see dad move, walk and breathe was the thing I wanted the most. It was too good to be true. I realized then that our job was only half done. We still had to get him back safely.
As Rathod and I walked out of the Safe Zone office, he said, ‘Siya, we’re going to get him back. But we also need to consider that he stole from the safe. We don’t know why or for whom.’
Just as we got into the car, my phone started buzzing. It was Jay Parikh. I answered the call and switched to speaker.
‘Siya, I managed to break into Kabir Ahuja’s World of Titans’ account.
Your suspicion was right. He was using the game to talk to someone.’
‘Who was he communicating with?’ I said, still dazed from happiness.
‘I hacked that person’s account too. It’s someone named Roark Coutinho.’
‘What?’ I said
Jay mentioning his name just after we had found out about Coutinho brought me back to my senses. I said, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. I even have an address,’ he said and read out the same one that Coutinho had given Safe Zone.’
‘What were they talking about?’
‘Yeah, I was coming to it. It’s about the pictures you sent me where the floppy disk was missing in all but one photo. I think they were talking about the floppy disk. Coutinho told Kabir the evidence is in a tape labelled “381”. I cleaned up the image you sent me and I could make out the 3 and 8. The last digit was not visible.’
‘I am asking you once again, Jay. Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely, especially 3 and 8.’
‘Give me the full story. What were they talking about?’ Rathod said, realizing I was still a little shocked from finding that my father was still alive.
‘Coutinho reached out to Kabir and told him he was representing a man named Shikhar Kunte. Kunte had some big evidence against someone Kabir knew well. Kabir still promised to look at it objectively. It seems like Coutinho was not very comfortable sharing the evidence with Kabir. But then Kabir convinced him to give him a copy. They decided on a date and time. It was decided that Coutinho would give a copy of the evidence to Kabir on the 20th November at two in the afternoon.’
‘The same day that Kabir and Kunte were killed,’ I said. ‘Did Coutinho say he would give it?’
‘Yes, he said that his client is scared and he’s going to slip under the radar, especially after Kabir got the evidence.’
‘What was the evidence?’
‘They didn’t say what it was except for what I told you. Coutinho said the evidence was labelled 381 and that was somehow important. But Coutinho and his client, Kunte, didn’t want money or anything else. They just wanted Kabir to go public with the information,’ Jay said.
