The Rat Eater

by Anand Ranganathan

  ‘Yes, you may have a point after all, Kharbanda.’

  Ban-cho Kharbanda, you are a genius, thought SP Kharbanda to himself.

  ‘Well, just make sure Dev doesn’t open up during this next month.’

  ‘That I promise.’

  ‘Good. Just one more thing.’

  ‘Ji, Ajay saab?’

  ‘You said, about the body—one clean shot?’

  ‘As a whistle, sir.’ SP Kharbanda went on to demonstrate the euphemism.

  ‘I’d like to see the body.’

  ‘But sir, there’s no need. I have personally seen it. It’s an open-and-shut case. The autopsy report says so, too. Point-blank. Forehead. Dhamaak.’

  ‘Nonetheless, it is important that I see the body.’

  SP Kharbanda was fighting for his life. He tried one more time. ‘But sir, really, why should you go out of the way? I will prepare all the papers. You can be back in Delhi tomorrow.’

  But Ajay was unyielding. ‘Kharbanda, I have been in this business far too long to make sure shit doesn’t land at my doorstep. Don’t mind my saying so, but I wouldn’t flinch one bit if the blame of a botched-up investigation were to all fall at your end. But not at my doorstep, no. You get me?’

  SP Kharbanda exhaled in defeat. ‘Er, as you say, sir…arey, driver. Take a U—we are going to King Edward Memorial Hospital morgue.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘KEM. In Parel. Tata Memorial ke paas. Take the Lalbaug flyover.’

  ‘Ji, saab.’

  Ajay thought it fit to cut in. ‘…And one last thing, Kharbanda.’

  ‘Ji, sir?’

  ‘Ask the driver to pull over by that postbox—enough is enough. And switch that ban-cho siren off.’

  ‘Oh. Of course, sir. Driver.’

  The car screeched to a halt. Ajay extricated himself from the thick padding and walked hurriedly towards the postbox, dismissing the stirred-up dust with a wave of his hand. He looked in all possible directions and proceeded to vandalise public property. Done, he shook the last drop away and turned around, surprised to find SP Kharbanda so close to the action.

  ‘Shall we, Kharbanda?’

  ‘Shall we what, sir?’

  ‘Have tea with bloody Saane, is what.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Driver?’

  ‘Ji, saab.’

  The procession was underway once more. The silence was broken from time to time by the squealing springs of the back seat. Ajay shifted his position a little. ‘How much further, Kharbanda?’

  ‘It’s just here, sir, just next to the Grand Mumbai Food Court.’

  ‘Well that’s convenient—for the customers, I mean.’

  ‘They serve very good vada-pav, sir—you should try some while you are here.’

  ‘Maybe after we are done at the morgue…’

  ‘Er, I think we are there already…arey driver, park by the side entrance and leave the AC on. Full blast. Come, sir.’

  Once again, Ajay had to squeeze himself out of the car. He made a mental note to circulate a memo demanding that the padding in lal-battis be sheared down to half its tog value. SP Kharbanda had hopped out already and was holding the entrance door open for DIG saab.

  Ajay inspected the building like an unsure tenant. ‘Chalo, chalo, we haven’t much time.’

  SP Kharbanda was most welcoming and considerate. ‘After you, sir.’

  Once inside, the officers took one breath and wished immediately that they hadn’t. The air was thick with formalin of nineteenth-century vintage.

  Coughing and gasping, SP Kharbanda hollered. ‘Arey is anyone there? Hello. Arey bhai, I said hello…’

  Ajay cleared his scratchy throat. ‘Typical. Must have gone for paan.’

  ‘Very likely, sir. They must think no one can slip out.’

  ‘Shut up—and find out.’

  SP Kharbanda was a touch disappointed at the roasting. ‘Y-yes, sir…Oye hello.’

  Hearing the commotion, a cadaver moonwalked from the booth next to the hallway. It was clear that besides an occasional bribe, the man took no nourishment. The eyes had sunk in completely and the cheekbones would have merged with the cranium had they progressed any higher. He wore a heavily soiled vest, and underneath, even more heavily soiled khaki trousers. He was either a morgue keeper or a mechanic, or both. Ajay started counting the ribs.

  ‘Yes yes, coming,’ said the man as he snatched his shirt from a hook and commenced the rather painful exercise of wearing it. ‘Oh. Kharbanda saab. What brings you to our maikhanaa?’

  ‘Well, Patankar, keep your chatter to yourself. This is DIG Ajay Biswas...’

  The man had a name after all. Patankar stopped buttoning up his shirt midway and stood to attention, which was, in his case, a loose interpretation of the phrase.

  ‘Oh. Welcome, sir. What would you like. Chai? Some soft drink? Arey Tiwari?’

  Ajay couldn’t look directly at Patankar as much as he tried. Instead, he addressed the next stage in human evolution. ‘Please can we get on with it, Kharbanda?’

  ‘Y-yes, sir. Arey Patankar, saab wants to see Mr Saane.’

  Patankar seemed delighted. ‘Sure, no problem. He was due back to his family this afternoon but they haven’t turned up yet. Please follow me.’

  Kharbanda noticed a floating straw and decided to clutch at it. ‘DIG saab has a very busy schedule. If it isn’t possible, then…’

  ‘No, no, it is. The family can wait, no hurry for them. Arey Tiwari, find the Saane file and bring it to Room 4.’

  Patankar led the two officers through the hallway and into a large hall. He continued to limp forth, providing ample time to the officers for a look around. Ajay was surprised and relieved—there were no dead bodies strewn about as far as the eye could see. Patankar must be leading us to a temperature and humidity-controlled room, with an operating theatre-like overhead lighting, with large drawers-on-wheels that could be pulled out from the walls, just like in the movies, he thought.

  Room 4 came into view. Patankar pushed open the doors.

  It was as though Ajay was run over by a truck made wholly out of foul smells. ‘What th...Open the windows. Teri maa ki...What’s with...oonh-hoon, behn ki...what’s with all this water, ban-cho?’

  Patankar thought it proper to warn: ‘Careful, sir—with that one on the floor.’

  SP Kharbanda wore an I-told you-so expression. ‘Sorry sir, but I told you so. There was no need.’

  ‘Shut up. Patankar, what’s with all this mess?’

  ‘Arey saab, power goes off ten to four. The only way is to keep the bodies on ice slabs that are supplied every other day.’

  ‘Man, this is disgusting. Don’t you have an exhaust? And where is Saane?’

  Patankar stooped to clutch his knee and started to limp away efficiently. ‘Ji saab, it’s at the end, the VIP corner…here, saab.’

  Ajay was shocked beyond belief. ‘Oh God, Kharbanda—the body has nearly decomposed. I can’t make out whether it is Saane or not–’

  ‘Yes sir, this ban-cho morgue has always been like this—bas naam ka King Edward. But for that massive mole by Saane’s nose it is now impossible to...

  ‘Yes, quite right. What a massive mole.’

  ‘Not very photogenic, was he, sir?’

  ‘Shut up. Can you turn the body, so that he is looking up?’

  ‘Ji, sir.’ SP Kharbanda wedged his foot between the fast-melting ice slab and Saane’s love handle and booted the dead politician over, something possible only with a dead politician.

  ‘Bloody hell—some point-blank, this.’

  ‘Ji, sir.’

  ‘…hang on, hang on, hang on.’

  SP Kharbanda was doing just that, for dear life. ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Hand me your baint, Kharbanda.’

  ‘Sir, if you don’t mind, please don’t touch the body with it. It’s Kashmiri willow, got it especially...

  ‘Shut up. I’ll get you another one.’

  ‘Ji, sir.’

  Ajay poked
and prodded. ‘Hm...here…and here...do you see this, Kharbanda? Patankar?’

  ‘What is it, sir?’

  ‘You mean, Kharbanda, you can’t make out?’

  ‘No sir, what?’

  ‘His neck is broken. And the right shoulder, here, is dislocated. And do you see that stab wound below the lung? And look at the way his lower leg bends upwards—how can it be? Show me the autopsy report.’

  Tiwari, who had arrived unnoticed and had been dipping and ducking his head for a better view of the proceedings, now handed over the file to Ajay, drawing open the laces with a flourish. ‘Here, sir.’

  Ajay glanced through the tea- and pickle-stained pages, each one duly signed and dated by a gazetted officer, that forever-hunted but rarely sighted animal. He studied the concluding paragraph on the last page with the care it deserved, for the sake of the Shakespeare who wrote it. He began counting on his fingers the number of times the word ‘vide’ appeared, but soon ran out of digits. Hmm…Kharbanda?’

  ‘Ji, sir?’

  ‘It is clear that Saane fell from a height. And he was probably stabbed, too. But the autopsy report doesn’t mention these injuries at all. Was Saane shot after he was dead?’

  SP Kharbanda decided the best option now was to hang his head in shame and wait for the storm to pass, something he had learnt from DSP Sharma, who, in turn, had learnt it from Sub-Inspector Jatinder, who had learnt it from his younger brother just before he was thrashed with a cricket bat by his father.

  ‘Kharbanda?’

  ‘J-ji sir, er, sir please, hear me out...’

  ‘No wonder you didn’t want me to see the body.’

  ‘No no, sir, you misunderstand...’

  ‘Ban-cho, you were taking me for a ride, haan. Why? I want to see the crime scene. How far is it?’

  ‘Sir, but...’

  ‘Kharbanda!’

  ‘Close by, sir—Lalmatti Gardens, behind Bombay Presidency Golf Course.’

  ‘And whereabouts is that?’

  ‘Chembur, sir.’

  ‘Let’s go. And I’ll sort you out in the car.’

  ‘J-ji, sir.’

  Ajay strode out with such a look of guaranteed apocalyptic reprisals for his subordinates that SP Kharbanda began to mentally draft the first version of his will. Patankar and Tiwari were nowhere to be seen—they had presumably crawled back into the formalin tank they had emerged from. Down but not out, SP Kharbanda manufactured a long jump and resurfaced in front of Ajay just in time to open the entrance door. Following Ajay to the waiting car, he struck the bonnet with his baint. ‘Driver! Lalmatti Gardens.’

  ‘Ji, saab…and decoys?’

  SP Kharbanda turned around and thought it best to take a second opinion. ‘Sir, he is asking about decoys.’

  ‘Decoys ki maa ki. Let’s go.’

  ‘J-ji, sir.’

  En route, when he thought things had calmed down a little, SP Kharbanda tried one more time. ‘Sirji...’

  Ajay was unmoved. ‘Not one word from you, Kharbanda—not one. Just let me know when we are there.’

  Kuljit, meanwhile, was hunched over his steering wheel, habitually changing into higher gears at low speeds, further adding to Ajay’s annoyance. He rolled down the window and spat out an elaichi.

  SP Kharbanda decided that the minute of silence that had passed was an appropriate enough gap for him to try his hand at a grovelling apology again. ‘Sirji...’

  Ajay looked up, and pretended his pineal gland was about to flare up a third eye. ‘You open your mouth again, Kharbanda, and you’ll get it.’

  And so it was back to watching the world go by for the distraught SP Kharbanda. If he were in a less sombre mood he would have tonked Kuljit behind his ear for making the world go by so slowly. Fifth gear at forty meant you were never sure if the hum being generated under your backside was through your own efforts or the car’s.

  Ajay was getting impatient. It had been close to three-quarters of an hour since they had left King Edward. ‘Well? How much more?’

  ‘Not long now, sir, maybe three-four minutes.’

  ‘Great. Tell me, Kharbanda. How long does it take for the earth to spin one rotation on its axis?’

  ‘Er, twenty-four hours, sir.’

  ‘Really? I thought it was three-four minutes.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘And for the earth to go round the sun?’

  Kharbanda couldn’t make head or tail of this bizarre line of questioning, but he was thankful he still remembered his fifth grade science lessons. ‘365 days and six hours, sir.’

  ‘You sure it’s not three-four minutes?’

  ‘Positive, sir.’

  Kharbanda firmed up for the next question. Here comes one on Pluto.

  Ajay brought things down to earth. ‘So are you going to tell me why Saane was shot after he was dead?’

  ‘Sirji, please, you can do anything—fry me in boiling oil, throw me to the gharials—but believe me when I tell you that this is all that DSP Sharma’s doing.’

  ‘I don’t care. This thing will shake your testicles off you—I’ll make sure of that. Bastard, lying to me. On my bloody face. Driver. How much longer?’

  Kuljit slowed down to negotiate a speed bump, refusing to shift from third. It was a toss-up whether it was because of the car or a genetic predisposition that he stuttered a reply: ‘B-bas, saab, w-we have reached. I’ll park for you here, sir?’

  Ajay couldn’t wait to get down. ‘Yes yes.’

  After he had done so, he noticed the forlorn SP Kharbanda still staring blankly out the window at a lamp post.

  ‘Well, are you going to get down or you want to be bloody pushed?’

  ‘Y-yes, sir.’

  ‘Come on then, dammit. And I take it you have personally seen the spot.’

  SP Kharbanda pulled up his trousers. ‘Yes, sir. Only this morning...’

  ‘This morning? Saane has been dead for three days. You donkeys don’t surprise me anymore.’

  ‘Er…please follow me, sir.’

  ‘Keep talking, keep talking…’

  ‘Sir, what can I say? You are in a position to strip me naked in the market, sir.’

  Ajay stepped on the elevated footpath that looped the great expanse. ‘That I will, I promise you.’

  ‘Sirji, you know very well how it is.’

  ‘No, I very well don’t.’

  SP Kharbanda slowed down a little. ‘The pressure got to me, sir. The pressure of giving results to the Dilli team.’

  ‘You are a bunch of bloody jokers, you know that?’

  ‘Worse, sirji, worse. I am at fault—I myself acknowledge that.’

  ‘Oh. How grateful I am to you for that—sirji.’

  ‘I’ll give you nothing but the truth now, sir. I told Sharma to shoot Saane.’

  Ajay stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Why, you bastard, why? Was he trying to get you transferred; was he doing some hanky-panky with your wife?’

  ‘No no, sir, not like that. I told Sharma to shoot Saane—the dead Saane. There was no time to investigate. The team would have wanted results. We already had a bona fide story of an encounter—that Kitla ban-cho.’

  Ajay shook his head in disgust. ‘I tell you, man...’

  ‘On such occasions I have always relied on my sixth sense.’

  ‘Well that’s great—exactly what’s prescribed in the police manual.’

  ‘I thought a good story would be to mix Kitla with Saane. Admit it sir, you yourself liked it.’

  Ajay couldn’t believe his ears. ‘You ban-cho, Kharbanda. Now you are blaming me?’

  ‘No, sir. I am only saying that everyone would have believed.’

  ‘Wah, Kharbanda. So now the job of the police is to make stories up, is it?’

  ‘I am completely at fault, sir—hang me if you wish.’

  ‘You be sure of that, Kharbanda, you be sure. Ban-cho, making stories…now why the shit are we going around in circles?’

  ‘Bas, just near tha
t champa, sir, can you see? By that bench.’

  The men reached the park bench. SP Kharbanda was tempted to take a seat but decided wisely to wait and watch if DIG saab did so first.

  Ajay tapped the armrest with SP Kharbanda’s Kashmiri willow baint. ‘Is this where? Behind this bench?’

  ‘Yes, sir. To the best of my knowledge, the body was in the bag when it was discovered.’

  ‘To the best of your knowledge? I admire your nerve, Kharbanda.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Shut up. Shut up.’

  SP Kharbanda felt giddy.

  Ajay, meanwhile, had set the wheels of his brain in motion. ‘The body was found behind this bench. Add to that the fact that Saane’s bones were all broken. Well, it doesn’t take an Einstein to conclude the bastard fell from above and probably rolled over a little to rest here…look up, Kharbanda. Saane obviously fell—or was pushed—from the top of this cliff here. What’s on top, there?’

  ‘Sir, it must be the golf course. You see there those carved-out stairs?’

  ‘What are we waiting for, then. Your baaraat?’

  ‘Er, yes, sir, please follow me.’

  Ajay felt he needed to fill up the silence in the minutes it was taking them to climb the stairs. ‘What a force, man, what a force, I tell you. I mean, you guys came here and obviously you knew at once that Saane must have fallen from a height. But you’d rather not move your lazy asses and do a bit of investigating…’

  He took a breather at the fifteenth step and recommenced. ‘That you leave to a senior officer from Delhi. And I can guess why. Because I am a crazy enough ban-cho to see things for myself. Most would only be too happy to take your word for it—grab the reports and go back to Delhi. And I haven’t even come to how you ban-chos managed to fabricate the autopsy report.’

  Ajay grabbed at his knees and interrupted himself to ask, ‘How much more, Kharbanda?’

  ‘Sir, only three-four more steps…’

  ‘Just as I suspected.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Shit, the picket seems to be locked.’

  ‘No sir, look, just a piece of wire holding the gates. Please follow me…’

  The men went past the rickety gate and found themselves standing on top of freshly cut and watered grass.

  SP Kharbanda was impressed. ‘Looks like a lawn, sir.’

  ‘Green. It’s called a green.’