by UD Yasha
‘Let’s go upstairs. I need to talk to you about the case,’ I said to Rathod.
‘The tea will be ready in fifteen minutes. I’ll get it for you,’ Radha said.
Rathod and I went to the balcony as we needed some fresh air. It also had the added bonus of having a large wooden swing.
‘What do you have in mind?’ Rathod asked me as he sat on the swing.
I walked up to the railing and leaned against it. ‘The last twenty-four hours have been intense,’ I said.
‘To put it mildly,’ Rathod added.
'Of course. A lot has happened. I think we need to distil what's important and focus on it. We have a little over thirteen hours to find Zakkal.'
‘Let’s go back to the drawing board,’ Rathod said.
'Here's what we know so far. Zakkal wants me to surrender myself to him. If I don't, he'll kill more women. He had thought of this plan in advance—starting with delivering the letter to Meena Kiran and then taking Sudha Barve. He made a mistake while kidnapping her though, because he left behind that trace of evidence. We also know that he has been abducting women for the past eighteen months. The body farm we found coupled with the evidence at Sudha Barve's house led us to his water tower hideout.'
‘We’re yet to get an analysis of the stuff picked up from there by our forensic evidence. Dr Sonia texted me that they’d be able to share what they know by evening.’
‘Going by what we found there, it looks like Zakkal is abducting women, dressing them up like me—right from my hair to how I smell. I would have not been so sure that it was all directed towards me, and not Radha and Maa too, had he not said it explicitly in the video he left for us at Blossoms.’ I paused. ‘So, what are our options going forward?’
‘I don’t know how helpful this will be, but it’s worth venturing into. I know a criminal profiler who is a visiting faculty at the National Forensic Sciences University in Gandhinagar. He’s not teaching this semester and is currently in Pune. I think we should pay him a visit and try to understand Zakkal better.’
‘The last time I consulted a profiler for Zakkal, the profiler himself turned out to be the killer,’ I said.
‘You can’t let that stop you, though. I know he’s been consulting various law enforcement agencies and has built quite a reputation for himself.’
I said nothing as I remembered my conversations with Dr Ranjit Kadam. Ranjit had built a profile of the killer who we believed was Zakkal’s protégé. It turned out that Ranjit had been describing himself all along. I had made the connection eventually and just saved Maa, Radha and Rahul in the nick of time. Having said that, Ranjit had told us that Zakkal liked collecting trophies like earrings and necklaces from his victims. That revelation had taken us a step closer to him.
Rathod continued. ‘His name is Rudra Dastur. I’ll ask him to drop by CID’s office if he’s free.’
I nodded and said, ‘Let’s do that. What’s troubling me is that while we knew a lot more about this different version of Zakkal, we still don’t know where to look for him.’
‘I can again tell that you’re thinking about something,’ Rathod said.
‘It’s the same thing that I thought about earlier. It’s very hard to believe that Zakkal is doing all this on his own. He’s got to have some help. Especially for evading the police for over two years. What’s the update on Zakkal’s second pen pal Manoj Bedi?’
‘My guy who has been watching him since yesterday has not reported anything suspicious. Bedi goes to work in the morning and comes back at night. He’s a resident doctor at Star Hospital so he was out the entire day yesterday. My guy managed to search his place. He told me it’s a bachelor pad. He found nothing alarming.’
‘I know someone is helping him. I think if we can find out who it is, it’ll open a lot of doors.’
A knock on the balcony door frame and we turned around. It was Radha. She had brought us tea. We thanked her. She realized that we were in the middle of a conversation so she promptly left without saying anything.
Rathod got up from the swing and joined me. The railing was thick enough so we both kept our teacups on it.
He said, ‘What if Zakkal kept hiring Shirole’s men without Shirole knowing? Like he did with Kumar Singhal.’
‘I think they’re useful for the jobs he hired them to do. The ones that we know of already. But I’m thinking about the larger picture. How does Zakkal survive the day-to-day? Where's he staying? How has no one seen him? How has he managed to take at least six women without anyone noticing?'
‘He did all those things on his own the last time around,’ Rathod said.
‘No, he didn’t,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’’
I grinned widely first and then hugged Rathod. ‘How did we not think about this before?’ I said in excitement.
‘Think about what?’
'When Zakkal was killing the last time around, he was considered a law-abiding citizen of this country. No one even suspected him to be a maniac killer. If you met him at the mall or bumped into him at the cinema theatre, you wouldn't ever be able to tell that he was a serial killer. Hell, he's even been described as being charming. What I mean to say is that, back then, he led a seemingly normal life. That “normal life” image was further strengthened by him having a loving wife and two small kids.'
‘Could they be helping him? That can’t be because we’ve been watching them too.’
‘No, it’s not them. But a woman. A woman who loves him,’ I said, and as I said those words out loud, I remembered what Zakkal had said in the video and written in the letter. ‘Zakkal said that in these past few days, he has realized that love is a much more powerful emotion than lust.’
‘He abducted a woman six months after escaping from prison. How could anyone love him so blindly that they pardon him for killing six women?’ Rathod said.
The moment he said it, he got an answer to his own question.
I took a generous sip of my tea and said, ‘The woman didn’t fall in love with him after he escaped from prison. She fell in love with him during the time he was in prison. She already knows about his wicked past.’ I paused. ‘Think about it for a second. A woman who is in awe of you would be the perfect cover to stay invisible. Zakkal could’ve convinced her to do anything he wanted. He does what he has to do while flying under the radar because of her.’
‘I remember reading some letters that women wrote to Zakkal when he was in prison,’ Rathod said.
'I do too. Radha had even asked me why anyone would be attracted to a serial killer. It baffles me too, but from my work as a criminal defence lawyer, I knew a lot of nasty and seasoned killers who had a big female fan-following.'
Rathod said, ‘Let’s go through the letters that Zakkal had gotten then and find this woman.’
‘Three people had visited him back when he was in Yerwada. One was Ranjit Kadam. The second was his lawyer Hardik Karve. And the third was Devaki Sharma.’
‘You think she’s—’
'She met him a few times. To date, I don't know who told her that my investigation into Zakkal had led to his arrest. Only a handful of people knew, and I trusted them. They would never give me up to a journalist. But even Zakkal knew about my role in his capture. He could have very easily told Devaki about what happened.' I went silent for a couple of beats and thought about it. 'Whoever this woman is, Devaki or anyone else, Zakkal would have had to be extremely sure about her. If it isn't Devaki, but someone who wrote to Zakkal in prison, then he had to be extremely sure that the woman would react favourably when he reached out to her for help. I'm thinking that your criminal profiler friend Rudra Dastur may be able to help us shortlist Zakkal's potential lovers based on the letters.'
Rathod referred to his phone. 'I've just got a text from him. He said he'll come to the CID office at two-thirty in the afternoon. Let's pay Devaki Sharma a visit. We'll be back in the office by the time Dastur comes by,' Rathod said and when he saw me drink down the last fe
w sips of my tea, he realized that he hadn't touched his tea at all. 'Hold on, please,' he said, downing the entire cup in ten seconds. 'Let's go now.'
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Before we left, I had to take care of a couple of things.
‘We need some help in going through the letters that Zakkal got from his female friends,’ I said to Rathod.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘Radha and Rahul helped me the last time when we went through the letters written to Zakkal.’
'Good idea. It'll save us time. I'll ask Bhalerao and Mathew to go through them as well,' Rathod said.
While he called Shukla to update us on what we were up to, I returned to the house and told Radha and Rahul that they had an assignment.
‘Luckily, I took some papers from your garage office yesterday before the fire broke out. Those papers have copies of the letters written to and by Zakkal,’ Rahul said.
We left the safehouse at noon, which meant Zakkal was going to kill a woman in twelve hours and twenty minutes if we couldn’t find him before that.
To not waste time, we decided to drive to News Twenty-Four Seven’s office and meet Devaki Sharma in person.
We realized it was going to be tricky to treat her like a suspect because she was a journalist. We knew her moral compass pointed only towards getting more views, likes and shares. So, if we rubbed her the wrong way, she could easily write a story that ruined our reputations. That’s why we knew we had to be careful with the questions we asked her.
Until a few hours ago, I had never considered her to be Zakkal's partner or lover. Maybe once, when Ranjit Kadam was killing again. But I had ruled out that thought very quickly back then. To be fair to her, nothing that she had done till then had indicated that she was helping Zakkal or was in love with him.
‘Let’s try to make her believe that we’re seeking her help based on her knowledge of Zakkal,’ Rathod said. ‘We will make her think she’s important. She met him a few times in prison so she would believe us as well.’
‘Great idea. We’ll gauge how she reacts and behaves while talking about Zakkal.’
The News Twenty-Four Seven office was on Mahatma Gandhi Road, or ‘MG Road’ as it was popularly called. It occupied the sixth, seventh and eighth floors of a commercial building. Initially, it was an English-language only news agency. In the past five years, they had branched out from having only newspapers to having full-fledged news channels in ten Indian regional languages. Given the population size in cities like Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur in the state of Maharashtra, their Marathi language channel was doing very well.
It showed in their office. Everything inside it screamed class except, at times, the news that the channel reported. The news agency was accused of favouring a certain political party.
We were greeted by a kind lady at the reception. She was initially unwilling to let us meet Devaki Sharma. But her eyes and face lit up when we mentioned we were the investigating officers in Zakkal’s case and she guided us to Devaki’s office.
Devaki was one of the second most important person in the Pune office of News Twenty-Four Seven. She had won many awards over the years. All of them were on display on the shelves behind her. Apart from that, a large polished desk lay in the middle with chairs on either side. There was a large window to our right, overlooking the western part of Pune.
'When Manu, my assistant, told me that the CID wants to talk to me about Zakkal's case, I was first taken aback,' Devaki said, feigning an overtly friendly tone. 'I thought some creeps were saying that to be able to meet me. I only believed it when I saw you two on the CCTV camera.'
‘We need to talk to you about an important matter, Miss Sharma,’ Rathod said.
‘Please call me Devaki. Even your ACP was calling me Miss Sharma today at the press conference.’
‘Alright, Devaki,’ Rathod said. ‘The matter is serious. Can we talk to you in confidence?’
Devaki’s eyes narrowed. She leaned back in her chair. Despite having known of her for many years, I had never spoken to Devaki for more than a few seconds. Up close, she had an intense look on her face. Her attire, a shirt, a blazer, trousers and black leather boots, all meant business. I didn’t know how old she was until I saw her degree framed on the wall on our right. I did some mental calculations and concluded that she was about thirty-seven years old.
Zakkal was also in the same age group.
‘I thought Siya Rajput was the subject matter expert on Kishore Zakkal,’ Devaki said. Her tone was a touch harsh but she had a smile on her face.
‘Look, Devaki. We don’t have time for such games,’ I said.
Devaki’s smile was unmoved. It was slightly creepy if I was honest. ‘You need something, but so do I.’
‘And what’s that?’ Rathod said.
‘We’ll trade information for information.’
Rathod shot me a quick glance and then turned to Devaki. ‘You know there are some things that we cannot tell the media. That’s why I wanted to speak to you off the record.’
Rathod is good. By saying that, he was making the prize that Devaki wanted even more elusive.
‘Off the record doesn’t work for me.’
I decided to up the ante and said, ‘Don’t you care about the women who might die? Didn’t you tell Rathod that we need to issue a statement to save all the women who might be in danger? Where did that concern vanish?’
Silence.
‘Alright, we’ll give you something,’ Rathod said.
‘Zakkal has threatened us that he’ll kill a woman at midnight. We need to stop him before that.’
‘Threatened. That implies he wants something in return.’
‘He wants me, and then he wants my sister and my mother.’
Silence.
I thought I noticed Devaki’s face relax a tad.
‘Is that serious enough for you?’ I said.
Silence.
Devaki bit her lower lip and then pushed her chair back. ‘Alright, what do you want to know? I am happy to help. How can I do that?’
Rathod paused before saying anything. He didn't want to seem too eager. 'For starters, we're trying to figure out some parts of Zakkal's life. You met him at Yerwada Jail after he was arrested.'
Devaki was nodding along.
Rathod continued. ‘Can you tell us what you two spoke about?’
Silence.
‘You’re not a police officer. He would have had his guard down while speaking to you,’ Rathod said. ‘Whatever you share with us will be helpful.’
Another long spell of silence.
So far, I hadn’t picked up on anything that indicated that Devaki was Zakkal’s lover.
She finally spoke. ‘I wanted to record our conversations but Zakkal told me not to. He told me he’s camera and microphone-conscious. But I was the only journalist whom he had agreed to meet so I wasn’t going to let the opportunity go.’
I didn’t know that Zakkal had refused to speak to other journalists.
‘Do you know why he chose to speak to you?’ I said.
‘Not really,’ Devaki said. ‘I mean I can’t be sure.’
‘You have your suspicion though.’
Devaki bit her lower lip again. ‘I do. This was seven years ago. I was thirty years old. I was squarely in the middle of the age group that he had been known to target. No other woman I knew had even applied for the opportunity to speak to Zakkal. I think he chose me because I was a woman, and he hadn’t seen one in a long time.’
For the first time, I felt sorry for Devaki. I knew how tough it was to walk down the corridor up to Yerwada Jail’s Chamber Number Twelve, the grim place that Zakkal was locked up in.
'I was still a rookie back then. My mother told me not to go. My dad was afraid I would not be able to recover from the mental trauma. But I was young and carefree. To be frank, I didn't even realize back then what I was doing. There was a buzz around Zakkal even back then. I was going to be the only reporter who could get q
uotes from him. it was the story that everyone wanted, and strangely, the story of the subject wanted me.'
‘Did he treat you well while you were there?’ I said.
‘He made a few untoward remarks at the start of the interview. I didn’t pay attention to them so he stopped later. I had a list of questions memorized and I went through them one by one. My only objective was to get the answers. I ignored everything else. It was tough, but it was my job.’
‘What did he tell you apart from the stuff you published?’ Rathod said.
'Nothing much to be honest. He blabbered about his life in jail. He told me he couldn't believe he had been caught. He talked about how he missed killing women. He spoke about his three most favourite parts of the entire ordeal of killing someone. The first was the stalking. He told me he used to watch his victims for days and weeks. In fact, I remember him saying that the longer he watched someone, the more connected he felt to them, thereby making the kill sweeter.’
The image of the cupboard of wigs, clothes and hair products from the water tower flashed in my mind. He had been watching me for over a year. I physically shook my head to return to the present moment.
Devaki continued. ‘The second was the blood that he drew from his victims.’
I leaned forward. I didn’t know why Zakkal would draw blood and then spray it in the bathrooms of his victims.
‘He told me he loved how the women reacted when he drew their blood. They panicked and tried to move about. They were not sure about what was happening or if they would bleed out. I remember the way he chuckled when he told me some women thought that they would run out of blood then die a slow, painful death. He said he killed such women the same night they said something like that. The third was the long abduction.’
‘Wait, I’m sorry to interrupt,’ I said. ‘Did he say anything about why he sprayed his victims’ blood in the bathroom?’
‘He didn’t. I’m sure because I checked my notes from our meeting when I got to know that he was active again. I remember certain bits from the conversation like they took place a few seconds ago.’
