by UD Yasha
‘As much as I hate not finding out who’s helping Zakkal, I’ve had time to reflect and I think I agree with you on this.’
‘Zakkal has actually played us twice in a row.’ Rathod smacked the steering wheel with his hand in frustration. ‘I really thought we were onto something.’
‘It wasn’t all a lost cause,’ I said. ‘We know that he’s a step ahead of us and predicting our moves. This entire incident just highlights that further. Zakkal knew we would go to Shirole. He also knows that Shirole is a tough nut to crack so he would have expected us to not be able to get him so quickly. But we did that.’
‘What else does he expect us to do?’ Rathod said.
‘The obvious answers are us looking into his lawyer and his two pen pals.’
‘It’ll be too ignorant on our part to not consider them,’ I said.
‘You’re right. So, do you want to pay them a visit?’ Rathod said, turning on the vipers as it began drizzling again.
‘I don’t think we’ve anywhere else to go right now,’ I said as my voice faded away.
‘What’s the matter?’ Rathod asked.
‘We can never be a hundred percent certain that Shirole had no role to play. He is a seasoned criminal and he knows how to outsmart cops. He would have made sure to have a solid scrutiny-proof story ready in case we dug deeper.’
‘I can sense there is a “but” coming…’
‘Yes. Let’s say our intuition about Shirole is right and he is innocent. In that case, someone has to be helping Zakkal. He could not have possibly evaded the police for two years without any help whatsoever,’ I said and then fell silent.
‘You’re right. Let’s find out if it was one of his pen pals,’ Rathod said. ‘We’ll first go to Shaam Pundlik’s house. He lives in Deccan so it’ll be on our way.’
‘While we meet Pundlik, would it be possible for you to put Zakkal’s other pen pal, Manoj Bedi under surveillance? It will just give us more information on him.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ Rathod said and then made a call to the CID office to ask a junior officer to stay put outside Manoj Bedi’s office.
It was fifteen minutes past four when we reached Pundlik’s house. The clouds were low and looked heavy, making it appear like seven in the evening. On the way, Rathod had called the hospital where he worked and they had confirmed it was Pundlik’s weekly day off.
Pundlik lived on the first floor of an old-looking building called ‘Glen Towers’. We scampered up to his door, rang the bell and waited. We rang the bell again.
Just when I was about to ask Rathod if picking the lock was a good idea to check out the place, a man with dishevelled hair opened a wooden door behind the grilled metal door. I recognized him as Shaam Pundlik from his pictures in the CID files.
‘Yes?’ Pundlik said.
Rathod flashed his badge through the grill. ‘I’m Senior Inspector Rathod from the CID and I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
Pundlik stepped back and said nothing for a few seconds. He wiped his forehead with his hand and then opened the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘What’s the matter?’ Pundlik said, stepping away from the doorframe to let us in.
Pundlik stood at about six feet tall. He was lanky and had long hair. His beard was about a day old. He generally seemed like someone for whom personal cleanliness wasn’t too high on the priority list. After glancing around his apartment, I couldn’t tell which was untidier, him or his house.
‘Sorry for the mess,’ Pundlik said, scratching the back of his head while he looked behind him at the mess.
He stepped back further and made space for us to sit on the couch. Rathod glanced my way and I shook my head ever so slightly, indicating to him that we were not going to touch anything in the house.
‘Do you know Kishore Zakkal?’ Rathod said.
Shaam turned to me and then switched his gaze back to Rathod. He gulped hard. ‘I do…I know of him.’
‘We’re here in connection to the letters you wrote to him while he was in prison.’
Pundlik turned white in a flash. ‘I didn’t…I didn’t mean any of it.’
‘Why did you write to him in the first place?’ I said.
Pundlik shook his head and sat on the couch. He stared at the floor for a spell. His eyes were bloodshot when he looked up.
‘I’ll quote what you wrote to Zakkal: I am strangely not feeling nervous. I've selected my target. As you said, I am trying to get to know her from afar. I'll let you know everything. My hands are shivering with excitement as I write this,’ I said.
Pundlik began shivering.
Rathod said, ‘Who was the target?’
‘I’m sorry…I…I really am,’ Pundlik said.
Rathod stepped towards Pundlik. At over six feet, Rathod was an imposing figure. ‘I’m asking you again very politely. Who was the target?’ Rathod said, pronouncing each word in his last sentence with a slight pause.
‘I didn’t have one,’ Pundlik said loudly. ‘I know I shouldn’t have written to Zakkal. It was a mistake.’
Rathod stepped closer and was now only a few inches away from him. ‘We don’t have time. Women are in danger and you need to act fast to save them.’
‘I told you… I… I made it all up,’ Pundlik said, looking as if he was on the verge of crying.
Rathod held Pundlik by the collar and picked him up off the ground. In one quick motion, he pushed Pundlik against a wall and held him a few inches from the ground.
‘This is the last time I’m asking you. If you don’t cooperate, I’m going to arrest you for abetting the murders of six women.’
Pundlik heaved for breath. His eyes turned even redder. I could see the muscles on Rathod’s forearm tighten. He was applying more pressure. Pundlik tried to speak but his vocal cords were being pressed harder every passing second.
Finally, Rathod relented. He released Pundlik who collapsed on the floor right away. He held his own neck and tried to massage it. His face had turned slightly blue. Rathod stepped back as a pool of yellow spread from Pundlik’s pants.
While taking deep breaths, Pundlik spoke like his life depended on it. ‘I have never met Zakkal. I just wrote to him. It was a mistake. There was no target.’
Rathod scowled at Pundlik. ‘Stay here,’ Rathod shouted while pointing a finger at Pundlik.
He walked away and first went into the only room in the house, and then to the kitchen. He returned to the living room a few minutes later after searching both places.
He said, ‘Let’s get out of here. This guy is worthless.’
Once we exited the building, it began raining hard so we ran to our car. We said nothing more about Pundlik. We had realized that he was too feeble a person for Zakkal to rely on for anything, let alone kill other women or help him stay out of prison.
‘Have you got an update from your guy who’s watching Manoj Bedi?’ I said.
‘Let me call him,’ Rathod said and dialled his number.
A young female officer answered the call and said, ‘Jai Hind, sir!’
‘Jai Hind, Rashmi. What have you got for me so far?’
‘I’ve been watching our subject for the past hour. I followed him home from his workplace, which is a government hospital called Kamla Bai. It’s in Hinjewadi. He appears to be with his girlfriend right now. I don’t know her. But they are at his house watching a movie while engaging in other things…if you know what I mean.’
Rathod thanked her and asked her to stay put.
‘Instead of meeting Manoj Bedi right away, let’s see what else Rashmi finds out by tailing him,’ Rathod said. ‘In the meantime, we’ll conduct a thorough background check and get a judge to sign off on a warrant that allows CID to search Bedi’s house and get his phone records of the past two years.’
The rain was coming down in buckets while we drove to the CID office. Rathod turned on the blinkers and slowed the car to roughly twenty kilometres per hour.
An idea
was brewing in my mind. ‘If I were Zakkal, I would have planned Sudha Barve’s kidnapping right down to every excruciating detail. Including leading us down the wrong path and wasting valuable time. I don’t think we should try to find a lead in Sudha’s kidnapping. On the other hand, the bodies at the farmhouse present us with a chance to get to Zakkal. While he would have been careful, the relative planning would have been lesser.’
‘You’re right. I’ve been wondering how he selected these women,’ Rathod said.
‘One thing’s clear. He wanted to keep them a secret. He didn’t spray their bathrooms with their blood when he took them. He was discreet. With Sudha Barve, he wanted us to know it was him.’ I paused as another idea occurred to me. ‘Apart from the murder of Holly Summers, Zakkal is known to keep his victims alive for a while before killing them.’
‘Then why did he kill these six women so quickly?’
‘Something has changed,’ I thought out loud. ‘There was no blood or signs of an altercation at the farmhouse, correct?’
‘That’s right. It only had the bodies,’ Rathod said.
‘I have got a theory. Zakkal kidnapped these women and took them to his hideout. I don’t think he stays there because that’s too risky. But the hideout is where he keeps the women alive before he kills them. He had told me he kills his subjects when they stop being beautiful to him. He used to take years to find them unattractive. That’s why Maa’s still alive. But why kill them so fast now?’
'He's also moving faster now,' Rathod said. 'As you said, something has changed.'
As Rathod veered into the CID building, I felt nervy as a thought entered my mind: Was Zakkal killing these women so fast because he was fixated on me?
Rathod’s phone began buzzing. It was Bhalerao. He answered the call and it got connected to the car’s Bluetooth system.
‘Where are you?’ Bhalerao said.
‘I just parked my car in my spot. We’re coming upstairs.’
‘Alright good, come to the conference room on the first floor quickly. I’ve found the identity of Jane Doe from her breast implants.’
In the next few minutes, we were in the conference hall. ACP Shukla had also walked in along with us. Bhalerao was seated at the head of the table. He passed two papers to us. One had the face of Jane Doe and the other had information about her.
Bhalerao said, 'As you can see on the paper, Jane Doe's real name is Aarti Lunkad. She's twenty-nine years old. She got breast implants two years ago at City Point Hospital. I spoke to the doctor who operated on her and he confirmed her identity too. There was a missing person's report filed for her six months ago. Her friend, who's also her roommate, had filed it. Through her, I also got to know that Aarti was a prostitute and worked at a high-end prostitution firm.'
‘Prostitutes are easy targets,’ I thought out loud.
Rathod said, ‘Absolutely. No one misses them and their employer doesn’t want to get involved in a legal battle. Now that I think about it, it makes sense that Zakkal went after one.’
‘I’ve a feeling the rest of the women we found were also prostitutes,’ Bhalerao said. ‘I’m looking into it.’
‘I am troubled by something else too,’ I said. ‘Aarti Lunkad went missing six months ago. Zakkal is known to keep the women he kidnaps alive for a while. If he took Aarti six months ago, I would be extremely surprised if he hasn’t taken anyone else since then. He also sent me Maa’s earrings six months ago, indicating that he was becoming more aggressive. I’m sure he’s kidnapped more women, and those women, at least for now, are alive…’ My voice trailed away when another realization hit me. I said, ‘Now that he knows we’re on to him, he’s not going to keep them alive for much longer. We need to move fast.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Water dripped from Kishore Zakkal's clothes as he stepped into his apartment on the twenty-first floor. He rubbed his hands to keep himself warm. He had been caught on the wrong side of the rain. He cursed loudly and the cuss words echoed back in the empty apartment as if the universe was also telling him to screw himself.
He didn't have time to waste. He was already running late. A quick glance at his wristwatch told him it was fifteen minutes past six.
‘Freaking hell,’ Zakkal said out loud.
He could not afford to be late. But he also couldn’t possibly do what he needed to do next while he was this drenched. Zakkal decided he needed to take a shower and change into fresh clothes. He stepped into the bathroom and stood under steaming hot water for two minutes.
To calm himself down, he thought about what he was about to do. Just thinking about the next step of his plan made him happy. He got back outside and wore crisply-ironed clothes. He sprayed some perfume on himself and walked out into the living room.
He stared at the city of Pune through the large window. The sun had not set yet but the clouds had made the evening dark. City lights twinkled in the distance while getting slightly distorted.
The rain is an added touch.
Zakkal inhaled sharply. He went back to the only bedroom of the house and returned with a large bag. He swung it over his shoulder and set off to execute the next phase of his plan.
Under normal circumstances, at six-thirty in the evening, Radha and Rahul would have been meeting their tailor that day for the measurements of their wedding clothes.
But with Zakkal on the prowl, that was out of the question. Instead, Rahul and Radha had pulled out Siya's notes from her original investigation of Zakkal. Being a biologist and having a passion for crime-solving, Rahul had been a consultant to law enforcement authorities on a few cases in the past. In fact, he had first introduced Siya to Dr Raghav Barve.
The sky tore open with a flash of lightning. Radha and Rahul were in the living room with Shadow, who was hiding under the sofa, and Maa, who was knitting a sweater.
Radha made sure that the main door was locked and then went upstairs to her room with Rahul. She had been feeling anxious and restless through the day.
‘I can’t just sit around doing nothing,’ Radha said after closing the door of her room.
Rahul went up to her and massaged her shoulders. ‘I know. Even I feel like we can be of some use to Siya. With Zakkal, it has become personal for me too.’
‘Let’s go through the case files that Siya had made when she first caught Zakkal,’ Radha said.
Rahul sat next to Radha on the bed. ‘Don’t you think Siya would have made a connection between something she wrote then to what’s happening now?’
‘Yes, that’s true. But I feel that we need to do something. I can’t seem to tame my mind. Siya always told me that she needed to be prepared to face any eventuality. Right now, we need to do what we can do.’
‘Alright, I’ll go get some of her notes from the garage,’ Rahul said.
A knock on the door. ‘Can I come in?’ Maa asked.
‘Of course,’ Radha said.
Rahul was right next to the door. He opened it for her. She stepped in, looking worried. Shadow was right behind her.
Radha said, ‘Are you alright?’
‘Is there something you haven’t been telling me?’ Maa asked.
Siya’s heart rate picked up. Before she could say anything, Maa said, ‘I’ve had a strange feeling since yesterday. I know Siya has been teaching at a college again, but she’s only ever stayed out so long if she was working on a case. She got back home pretty late yesterday. I heard her downstairs.’ Maa sat next to Radha and held her. ‘Is she okay? Should I be worried about anything?’
Radha wondered if Maa needed to know that Zakkal was back and that Siya was trying to catch him again. She knew Maa was intuitive about such things. So, she decided to go with half a truth.
Radha said, ‘She’s working on a case, but you don’t need to worry about it. The woman who came to our house yesterday is in some trouble so Siya directed her to the CID. The woman is a friend of Siya’s friend so she’s comfortable with her around.’
Maa nodded her
head but said nothing.
‘She’s going to be alright. I spoke to her about an hour ago,’ Siya said.
Loud thunder ripped through the sky again.
At that very moment, the lights in the house went off.
Radha grabbed Maa’s hand. Shit, Rahul is outside.
‘You’re shivering, beta,’ Maa said.
Radha glanced outside. Through the closed frosted windows and drawn curtains, she could make out that the rest of the neighbourhood had lights. Why is there a blackout only in our house? For a beat, everything around Radha seemed to fade away. In the moment of silence, she could hear her heart thud away. Is this Zakkal’s doing?
‘Rahul?’ she yelled out her fiancé’s name.
There was no response.
This can’t be happening. I can’t let anything happen to Rahul. How had Zakkal managed to get in?
Radha wanted to go downstairs to run after him but she knew couldn’t leave Maa alone. Not if Zakkal was in the house. She fumbled on the bed for her phone. It was pitch dark and she needed its flashlight. Please don’t let anything happen to Rahul. Just as she found her phone, she heard loud footsteps coming up the stairs. She pushed the phone into her pocket. It was dark and she didn’t want to give away their position.
‘Duck behind the bed,’ she whispered to Maa.
As they took their position, the sound of the footsteps stopped. They first saw a strobe of light. Then they heard the voice.
‘Siya?’
It was Rahul. Relief flooded inside Radha.
Rahul was standing at the door with a flashlight in his hand. He kept two suitcases he had got from the garage on the floor. She ran to Rahul, gauging his position based on the flashlight, and hugged him tightly.
‘Don’t worry, it looks like a storm is coming. It’s a blackout,’ Rahul said.
She realized he hadn’t noticed. ‘It’s only our house,’ she whispered in his ear and felt his body stiffen.
Rahul withdrew from the hug and said, ‘I’ll call the police officer who’s standing guard outside.’
