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

by UD Yasha

  ‘I’ve found six canals, all of which open at different points in and around Bund Garden,’ Rathod said, pointing at the screen to show the circles he had drawn on the map. ‘I’ve gone through four so far. We have one advantage here. Because the canals are old, they are located at extremely tricky points—completely isolated from easily accessible areas. That makes monitoring them extremely easy. There was no activity near the four I have looked at. But them being in unpopular areas is also a drawback as there aren’t enough shops or restaurants around them. So, we don’t have the kind of CCTV footage we would want.’

  ‘How are you checking them out then?’

  ‘As I know where the canals are, I’m looking at the vehicles that have travelled in their direction from Sudha Barve’s house. I know it sounds tedious but there’s no other way.’

  ‘Let me help,’ I said.

  Rathod pointed at a free computer next to him. ‘Use that. It already has the data we want. Check for the canal near the Royal Connaught Boat Club. I’m looking at the one next to it near the Max Mueller Bhavan.’

  I booted up the computer and got to work. A lot of Pune’s elite were a part of the Boat Club. It was a classic place to enjoy an evening or spend your Sunday afternoon. Despite the club's extensive coverage, no camera pointed directly at the canal I was interested in.

  'Even I'm using the footage from the Boat Club. These are the moments I love rich people the most—the extent to which they go to protect their own or keep the world at large away from them is staggering. But I wouldn't complain if it gets us to Zakkal,' Rathod said with a smirk on his face.

  Rathod pushed a list towards me. ‘Those are the cars that came from around Sudha Barve’s house post eight in the evening yesterday. Check if any of them show up near the Boat Club canal.’

  I glanced at the list. It was long. Each entry had a number plate, a rough description and the make and model against it. I could tell that Rathod had been at this for a while and he had worked tremendously hard to find the canal that Zakkal had used. He believed in his theory. It was a sound one, which enthused me as well.

  I squinted my eyes hard at the screen. I didn't make much progress in the first minutes. Then, in quick succession, I saw two cars from Rathod's list crossing the Boat Club area. One was a Mahindra Scorpio, a large SUV and the other was a Honda City, a sleek sedan. Both cars had exited one after the other from Sudha Barve's lane at fifty minutes past nine. They had entered the Boat Club premises nine minutes later. The Scorpio had exited Boat Club almost right away but the Honda City had stayed back. This seemed strange to me.

  I got a zoomed-in version of the number plate on both cars from the cameras at the security gate of the Boat Club. I noted it down for Rathod to run it through the central database. Being a consultant, I did not have access to it. I tried to zoom in on the faces of the people inside the cars. But the sun had long set and the light simply was not enough. A powerful camera would have been able to get a better picture, but the grainy feed of the zoomed-in CCTV footage was not cutting the bill.

  If Zakkal was in one of the two cars, then I guessed there would be some movement at the canal near the Boat Club. I switched to the feed of the camera nearest to the canal.

  The timestamp read fifty-nine minutes past nine.

  The angle was not ideal. The feed I was looking at was coming from the rowing area’s entrance. The canal was deep in the background and in the dark as it was not a part of the Boat Club. Apart from the canal and the rowing space’s entry, I could see a part of the restaurant building and a small portion of one of the three car parking areas. It was going to be hard to spot any movement near the canal. I looked for other cues that could give me something to work with.

  The light from the tower near the rowing area was just about reaching the place where the canal was supposed to be. It was slightly breezy because of the rainy weather. I could make out ripples in the water from the light coming from the rowing tower. I did not know much about camera technology but a photography expert I knew from my days of practising law had once told me that everything looks better when it is brighter. When I was trying to get a better view, the light shining on the water near the canal made the ripples much crisper.

  I had found my reference point.

  Once again, it was not ideal, but better than literally staring into the dark. I had to be on top of my game to spot the movement if there was any. That's why I could not afford to fast forward either. I watched the seconds roll by. They soon turned into minutes as the clock kept ticking. The timestamp on the bottom right of the video read thirty-two minutes past ten when I still had not found anything.

  I paused and went back to check the main gate’s cameras. I could afford to fast forward footage from this angle. At twenty-two minutes past twelve, the Honda City went out. It had been inside for around two hours. I went back to the canal’s video and kept watching it frame by frame.

  Then, something strange happened at forty-one minutes past ten. The Honda City entered the car park. I had one eye on the clock so I knew it stayed there for four entire minutes. Then, it drove away. I could only see its profile view. No one had entered or exited it from the side visible to me. But the other side was a blindspot. Anybody could have exited the car from the doors on the side I couldn’t see. The car also had stayed long enough for whoever had stepped out to not be blocked by the car itself.

  I turned to Rathod, feeling confused but hopeful.

  ‘I might have got something,’ Rathod said to me just as I said, ‘I think I’ve got something.’

  If Rathod had longer hair, his eyebrows would have touched it.

  ‘Wait, you got something too?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said in a low voice.

  ‘You were looking at the Boat Club videos, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I was looking at the canal near Max Mueller Bhavan,’ Rathod said.

  ‘Both of us possibly can’t be right,’ I said.’

  ‘You go first,’ he said and I told him what I had seen.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ he said and turned to the paper on which I had scribbled the registration numbers of the cars. He fed them into his system and waited. His fingers tapped the desk while a small circle on his screen got filled.

  The moment the circle got fully coloured, Rathod slammed his fist on the table, drawing the attention of the people around us. ‘I got it,’ he yelped. ‘We’ve found our first clue, Siya.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rathod jumped up from his desk in excitement. His hands were still working away on the keyboard and mouse.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I said. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Hold on for a second. I’m making sure I’ve got this right,’ he said as he read the document that had popped up on the screen.

  A few minutes passed before he spoke. 'Nana Shirole. He's involved,' Rathod said, looking at me. 'The two cars that you found are suspected to be used by members of his gang. I was just checking some police reports where they have been sighted before at crime scenes in which Shirole's gang are suspects. By itself, what you found would not have been enough. But, it ties in perfectly with what I came across. The canal camera footage that I was looking at was also not a hundred percent conclusive. But it clearly shows that a car that exited the lane of Sudha Barve's house stopped very close to the canal for a minute. It was a Maruti Suzuki Ertiga. It's an SUV, so it's big enough for Zakkal and Sudha Barve to be at the back. Its windows had a dark tint. I got a partial view of the person driving the car. A guy named Kunal Shah. He's a known associate of Nana Shirole.' Rathod paused for a flash. 'What are the odds that three cars linked to Nana Shirole left from around Sudha Barve's house and stopped near two canals, either of which Zakkal might have used.'

  I felt a cocktail of anger, excitement and frustration rip through my veins. ‘What time did the car you were tracking leave Sudha Barve’s house?’ I said, remembering that the cars I wa
s following had left at nine fifty.

  ‘Forty minutes past nine,’ Rathod said.

  ‘So, before my cars left.’

  ‘Some could have been a decoy.’

  ‘Why have three cars?’ I said.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  ‘Great work,’ I said.

  ‘But…’ Rathod said, realizing that even though we had linked Zakkal to Shirole, we were going to get very little out of the lead. ‘Shirole…that son of a bitch won’t talk.’

  ‘Can we offer him something for his cooperation?’ I said.

  ‘We’ll have to take it up with the Governor.’

  ‘Why would Shirole get in bed with Zakkal?’ I said, voicing a thought I had right from the start.

  ‘Money,’ Rathod said. ‘Shirole runs after money. Zakkal might have offered him a high amount to seek his services.’

  ‘That’s true, but Zakkal’s evil is extremely different from Shirole’s evil. I can’t figure out the reason.’

  Silence.

  Rathod said, ‘Could Zakkal have something on Shirole? Could Zakkal be blackmailing the master of blackmail?’

  ‘We need to talk to Shirole. It’s going to be hard getting through to him but we need to figure out a way.’

  ‘Even if we meet him, he’s just going to deny any wrongdoing. At best, we have circumstantial evidence. But like you said, he’s our only lead right now.’

  ‘Along with Shaam Pundlik and Manoj Bedi,’ I said.

  ‘You still think they might be involved, especially if Nana Shirole is in play as well?’

  ‘There’s no reason why Zakkal has not involved both of them. I still can’t think of why Shirole would help Zakkal, knowing how nasty he is. From what I know, Zakkal has always liked working independently. Despite being close to Ranjit Kadam and trusting him immensely, Zakkal never involved Ranjit in the actual act of killing women. That’s why, Zakkal involving Shirole for an abduction is tough to understand,’ I said.

  ‘I get your point. But that means Shirole’s men being present first near Sudha Barve’s house and then near the canals on the same night as Zakkal abducted a woman is a coincidence. That’s too big a coincidence.’

  ‘I know. Everything about this is strange,’ I said. ‘It’s worth meeting Shirole once though. I want to look him in the eye and ask him if he has been helping Zakkal.’

  ‘I might have a way in mind to get in touch with Shirole,’ Rathod said. ‘It’s not going to be peaceful though.

  Right then, Meghan Mathew walked up to us. ‘Bhalerao is on the line for you,’ he said, glancing at the telephone on Rathod’s desk.

  Rathod looked confused for a beat before going to his cubicle. He put the phone on speaker.

  ‘I’m here. Tell me what’s happening,’ Rathod said.

  ‘You need to come to the basement now to the forensic department. Dr Sonia has found something that changes everything.’

  ‘But I thought Dr Sonia was working on the Farmhouse Killings Case right now,’ Rathod said.

  ‘You’re right. She is. Exactly why everything changes. Come downstairs, now,’ Bhalerao said and hung up.

  No matter what the situation was, I had always perceived Bhalerao to be a jolly person. So, when I heard a slight uneasiness in his voice while he spoke to Rathod, I knew Dr Sonia had found something alarming in her autopsies.

  I felt a thin layer of sweat gather on my forehead and palms as we stepped into the forensic department, even though the temperature inside was several degrees lower. Rathod led the way through the corridors, turning right twice and opening two secure doors with his fingerprints.

  The layout of the forensic department had changed since I had last visited it. I reckoned that the CID had increased security after the incident where Dr Sonia had been shot.

  We reached a large room which had a long table and a projector at the far end. ACP Shukla and Bhalerao were sitting at the table. I found it a bit strange since usually, for meetings where autopsy results were presented, the entire investigating team was present.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Rathod said, probably thinking along the same lines as I was.

  'Please take a seat,' Sonia said as she sat at the table.

  She pressed a button on the remote she was holding and the screen next to her lit up. It had a picture of the crime scene from the day before. Six bodies were laid out on the terrace of the farmhouse.

  'I've found something deeply concerning,' Sonia said. 'I had told you yesterday that I could tell with certainty that two of the six women had been strangled. I did further investigations. I found that all women suffered injuries near their larynx. Their hyoid bone was either fractured or badly bruised.' Sonia paused for a beat and inhaled deeply.

  ‘What did you find out?’ Rathod said with a touch of impatience.

  ‘I’m coming to it. The strangulation marks are prominent in the latest victim because there’s less decomposition. I managed to create a model of the hands of the murderer based on the length and size of the hands that gripped the neck. I found a match.’

  Before Sonia uttered the next words, my stomach slowly turned to ice because I knew what was coming.

  ‘My system suggests that based on the strangulation marks, the hands that killed this woman are a ninety-nine percent match with Kishore Zakkal’s hands,’ Sonia said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dr Sonia changed the screen behind her to a comparison of two images from different crime scenes. I recognized the picture on the left-hand side as Holly Summers, Zakkal’s first real victim after his father. Holly’s murder had led me to Zakkal so I had seen this image thousands of times.

  ‘How certain is your system?’ I said.

  ‘Finding a match for hand or finger marks on the neck can be tough. It’s a technology that’s still in development. But it’s extremely unlikely for two marks to be so similar, hence the ninety-nine percent likelihood,’ Sonia said. ‘It’s my job to present the findings to you. Let me tell this to you straight.’ Sonia pointed at the screen behind her. ‘That is the work of Kishore Zakkal.’

  It seemed like the temperature dropped even more when Sonia said it again.

  ‘What else have you found?’ Bhalerao said.

  ‘I haven’t been able to complete the autopsies yet. But I can share some more information that will definitely help you. There’s no other injury that I have found yet apart from the damage to the victims’ necks. All women were between twenty-five and forty years old when they died. The most recent death would have happened between five and ten days ago. The remains of the oldest murder indicate that the death happened twelve months ago. So, this must have started then.’

  ‘That is a year after Zakkal escaped from prison,’ Rathod said. ‘Any chance you can identify the women?’

  ‘Yes, I have done that for one of the women. The body of the second murder victim is the most interesting. The woman had breast implants and each breast implant has a lot number as well as a serial number.’

  Sonia changed the picture of the screen once again to reveal what I could only guess was the implant. But it did not look like what I had imagined.

  ‘The woman, Jane Doe, had a silicone-based implant. They are made from an element called silicon, which you’ll find at number fourteen on the periodic table. The implants are nothing but silicone cases filled with silicone gels. The picture doesn’t look like an implant because the vultures would have ruptured the silicone case while scavenging on the body.’

  ‘Was there a medical reason for her getting the implants?’ I asked.

  'So far I have no sign of any disease like breast cancer that would warrant a breast reconstruction which would, in turn, require a breast implant.'

  ‘Is the serial number visible?’ I said, leaning forward.

  ‘Yes, but partly. The good news is that the woman had two implants, so that gives us two chances to get the breast implant serial number as both will be from the same lot.’

  Sonia changed the s
lide to reveal a super-zoomed-in image of the breast implants. The entire picture appeared to have a shade of blue. I could see some markings on it just under the manufacturer’s name.

  ‘I dyed the implants to be able to read the serial numbers better.’ Sonia changed the picture again to show just one implant. The numbers on it were clearer than the previous image. ‘Using combinations from the implants, I know that the manufacturer is Genova BioTech. The batch number is 135409MK. The registration number is usually a ten-digit number. I have got nine.’ Sonia turned to us and smiled for the first time that afternoon. ‘It could have been worse. Except for the last digit, the registration number of one implant is 989829325, while the other is 989829325. The last digit could be any number from zero to nine.’

  ‘Put me in touch with Justice Chandra,’ Shukla said. ‘We’ll seek a warrant from him to get the information from Genova Biotech.’

  'Those are my findings for now,' Sonia said, switching off the screen behind her. 'I'll complete the autopsies and give you more information about the women who were murdered…by Zakkal. I've also asked for a complete facial reconstruction of five of the six women. It'll help us identify them.'

  ‘How long do you think that will take?’ Rathod said.

  ‘The person has already started the work. I’d expect to get the reconstructed image by evening today,’ Sonia said.

  'I'll get on it,' Bhalerao said. 'I was already looking at a missing-persons list and cross-referencing it with the height or built of all these women.'

  ‘How many women are on that list?’ Rathod asked.

  ‘It depends on which areas we’re looking at. If it’s just Pune district, then twelve thousand women have been reported missing in the past eighteen months.’

  Silence resounded.

  Despite all of us working in law enforcement, the enormity of some numbers never failed to stun us.

  Sonia finally spoke. ‘I’m in touch with Dr Barve’s lab and I’m relaying the information we’ve found to them. I haven’t yet told them about Zakkal’s involvement in the bodies we found at the farmhouse,’ Sonia said and left the room.