by UD Yasha
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.’
He dialled the officer's number and heard the phone ring.
‘What’s the matter?’ Radha said.
‘He’s not answering the call.’
‘Let me check if I can spot him outside our house,’ Radha said and scampered to the balcony door.
She felt some resistance as she pulled it. A strong gust brought inside the rain. Radha leaned on the grill and looked at the road but was not able to spot the officer. She saw his car though, parked parallel to their compound wall. She went back inside, drenched in rain.
‘He could be in his car,’ Radha said but she felt something terrible had happened.
‘I’ll check,’ Rahul said.
‘I don’t have a good feeling about this,’ Radha said. ‘We’ll come with you.’
‘That’s probably not the best idea. Stay in this room and lock it from the inside. Only open the door when I return,’ Rahul said and started walking away. He turned back and was about to say something but then hesitated. ‘Also, call Siya and tell her what has happened.’
As Rahul turned on his flashlight and stepped outside the room, he saw a strange light emanating from the living room. It was not coming from a bulb or a tube light. As he realized what it was, he inhaled a very strong and strange odour of alcohol. Is that a fire? His suspicion was confirmed when he reached the landing of the stairwell. He immediately took a step back as blue flames coming from the living room licked the staircase.
He then heard the crackling sound of the fire, almost playing in tandem with the buzz of the rain outside. From the landing, he also saw the garage, up in flames.
He ran to the bedroom and cried out loud, ‘There’s a fire in the living room and the garage.’
Radha had turned on her flashlight by then and was on the phone with Siya.
‘Did I hear that right?’ Siya said.
‘Send a fire brigade here right now,’ Radha said instinctively. ‘We need to get out of here.’
'We can't afford to wait for help. We need to exit the house right now. The fire will only grow,' Rahul said. 'When I came up, the staircase was not lit up. There was a small area in the living room that didn't seem to be on fire. We can use that to get out of here.'
Radha leaned forward towards Rahul and said in a low voice, ‘How did the fire start? What if it’s Zakkal?’
‘I have no idea. But we can’t wait inside. We have to take the chance.’
Radha looked at Maa and asked her, ‘Are you holding up well?’
‘I am. We can make it out,’ Maa said, sounding confident.
Radha crossed to Siya’s room and opened her cupboard. She was hoping Siya wasn’t carrying her weapon, a Glock 9. She pulled out the drawer where she kept it. It’s right here! Radha did not have experience in using firearms apart from an incident a year ago in which she had been shot. But she figured having a gun in hand was better than being unarmed.
‘Let’s go,’ she said on returning to the room.
‘Hold on,’ Maa said. ‘We all better wear something with full-sleeves if there’s a fire downstairs. Open my cupboard and pull out any three cotton kurtas.’
Radha followed Maa's instructions and slipped into a kurta herself while tossing one each to Rahul and Maa. Maa's kurta was definitely a size smaller for Rahul but it served its purpose.
Rahul took the lead, while Radha was at the back with Maa in the middle. He was carrying the suitcases he had got from the garage. Maa had Shadow's leash and two flashlights. Radha was holding the Glock. They tiptoed down the stairs even though the real danger was in the living room. They could hear the fire crackle loudly as they made it to the landing of the stairwell.
‘That area in the living room still hasn’t lit up,’ Rahul said, ducking over the railing. ‘The front door’s on fire. But we can use the one at the back. That looks to be safe.’
They brisk-walked on the path that Rahul carved. The flickering fire spit at them every now and then. It almost made Radha and Maa jump, but the full sleeves of the kurta protected them. Soon, they were at the back door. Radha jumped in front of Rahul, ready with the Glock held arm-high.
Maa panned the flashlight across their small backyard. It was empty as far as they could tell. But they couldn’t be sure because it was raining heavily. Radha relaxed the grip over the Glock but still held it high enough to shoot a man in the chest. Once they were in the front yard, the light coming from the street lamps and other houses was sufficient for them to move without stumbling. Maa handed the mobile phones to Radha, who in turn slid them into her jeans pocket.
They heard a distant wail of the fire truck as they moved to the main door. Once outside, they turned back at the house and saw that the fire had moved to the staircase. The fire on the outer walls of the garage had been washed off by the rain.
Rahul ran to the police officer’s car. ‘He’s unconscious,’ he shouted. ‘But I can see that he’s breathing. He’s been hit on the head. I can see some blood.’
Radha looked around to watch out for the person who had set the fire to their house. But she saw no one. The rain piled on. They were drenched but they didn’t care because they were sure they had just evaded death.
In the next minute, the siren of the fire truck got louder. Radha saw its large headlights turn into their housing society, closely followed by two smaller pairs of headlights.
The fire engine screeched to a halt outside their house. Six men stepped out of it just as Siya and Rathod reached the house along with a mini ambulance.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I hugged Maa and Radha tightly. I was glad they were okay, having feared the worst until a few seconds ago. Maa was shivering, partly from the cold rain and partly from being afraid.
Two firemen put the injured police officer on a stretcher. They transferred him into the ambulance. The ambulance took off once the paramedic ensured that no one else was hurt.
The same firemen guided all of us to Rathod’s car. Rahul sat on the front seat while I slid in at the back with Radha and Maa. One of the firemen gave us some towels and energy bars.
A few minutes passed before anyone spoke. ‘We’re alright,’ Maa said. ‘That was scary, but we’re okay and that’s what is most important.’
‘I’ve no idea what happened,’ Rahul said. ‘The lights went off. At that time, I was downstairs in the garage. By the time I came up, it had been about a couple of minutes. Within two more, the house was on fire.’
‘And you heard or saw nothing?’ Rathod said.
'Absolutely nothing. It all happened too quickly. A total of three or four minutes would have elapsed before the house was lit on fire. I smelt alcohol when I started going downstairs and then saw the fire.'
‘It was raining hard then as well,’ Radha said.
I took an umbrella and walked up to the fire truck. The firemen had pulled out the hose and were spraying water inside our house from the veranda. I could see that the fire had spread to the first floor through the windows. Two firemen got on the elevated tower ladder of the fire truck and sprayed water through the windows on the first floor.
The fireman at the steering wheel peered out at me and said, ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. It’s already under control.’
‘What kind of damage do you think the house has suffered?’ I said.
‘The good news is that the structure has not been affected at all. But everything inside the house has been completely ruined. You’ll need to redo the entire place in a few days.’
‘Do you have an idea
about what caused the fire?’
'My men informed me before you came that they smelt an industry-grade propellant inside. Their guess is ethanol as the fire's blue in colour. The smell was strong so the ethanol concentration must have been high. We'll have to file a police report as this is clearly an act of arson.'
I suspected as much after what Rahul had told us. ‘Would the fire have also caused the lights to go out?’
‘As standard practice, if there’s an option, we turn off the electricity at the site of the fire. In this case, when my men went to turn it off, they realized that the wires had been cut off. Someone deliberately cut the power and lit the house on fire,’ the fireman said.
I thanked him and headed to Rathod’s car. The grim expression on my face must have given me away because Rathod said, ‘Let’s go to the CID office for now. We’ll figure out what to do then.’
No one spoke during our drive to CID’s office. Two hawaldars escorted us into the building. We were taken to the waiting room on the first floor of the office. It was a square-shaped office with glass walls. The blinds were shut. A peon got us warm cups of coffee. A while later, Rathod got us some sandwiches. We ate in silence. We realized how tired we were when we took our first bites. The incident in the evening had sucked out our energy.
I thought about how the fire might have started. As per Rahul, the window of opportunity was too narrow. I was certain that Zakkal was behind it. But how had he pulled it off? For him to come to our house to set it on fire seemed too big a risk for him.
It was almost nine in the evening by the time we finished eating.
‘We’ll try to go to a safe house for the night but we might have to stay in the guest room upstairs,’ I said.
Radha and Rahul nodded.
I could make out from Maa's face that she was thinking hard about something.
'Was the fire related to the case you're working on?' Maa said.
I needed to make a decision. Maa had always known when I had worked on any case after we had gotten her back. She had once told me that as a family we had been through the worst possible situation anyone could have. Yet, we are together. Happy and healthy. Those words played in my mind. Maa was a pillar of strength. She had not complained even once about what had happened to her.
