Compass Box Killer (15 page)

‘How long ago was that?’ Virkar asked.

‘Around nine years ago.’

Virkar lowered his voice to a menacing tone. ‘Tracy Barton died around nine years ago—don’t you think that’s a strange coincidence?’

Dr Tupe now pulled himself together. ‘Look, what’s all this about? I was told that this was an unofficial visit about a documentary film on old morgues…’ He glanced at Raashi for confirmation but she was busy observing her nail polish.

Virkar nodded and rose from his chair. ‘Thank you, Dr Tupe. You’ve been very helpful…with the research on our doc.’ The joke was not lost on his host who gaped but extended a limp and clammy hand towards Virkar who shook it firmly. Raashi, too, got up, slightly surprised by Virkar’s sudden decision to leave. She followed him out of the room.

The Khandala Government Hospital lay on a small hillock overlooking the picturesque valley below with a spectacular view in all directions. But on the way to his parked Bullet, all Virkar could think of was how he could extract the information he was sure Dr Tupe was hiding.

Raashi, who had been walking next to him looking thoughtful, finally said, ‘So, this was a dead end. Now what?’

Virkar started the Bullet. ‘Now we shall have brunch,’ he said, signalling her to climb on to the back seat.

T
he Chicken Satellite Sizzler crackled in front of Raashi, reflecting her volatile mood. Virkar and she were seated at a table on the terrace of the open-air Monkey Hill Restaurant. From their vantage point they had a spectacular view of the hillside that they had made their way down from. In front of them lay the lazy stretch of road that wound all the way back up to the government hospital. The Monkey Hill Restaurant was known for its spicy sizzlers as well as for the monkeys who frequented the terrace for scraps of food. In fact, the restaurant had shut down for a couple of years because a monkey had bit a lady while she was lunching. It had only reopened because the new management ensured that well-equipped attendants sporting thick bamboo sticks kept the macaques at bay while the patrons partook of their meals. Virkar had brought Raashi to the Monkey Hill Restaurant promising to review their visit to the hospital, but all he had done since they had taken their seats was to discuss the menu in depth! Every time Raashi tried to broach the subject of the hospital, Virkar quickly sidestepped the issue.

As the sizzle on her plate died down and the Chicken Satellite cooled down enough to eat, Raashi brought it up once again. ‘So…what’s your verdict on Dr Tupe?

In response to her query, Virkar picked up a few French fries drenched in melted cheese and pepper sauce. Popping them into his mouth, he masticated slowly, savoring the succulent juices as if they were tantalizing his palette.

Raashi’s mouth twitched impatiently at the corners. She expressed her frustration by stabbing a still sizzling piece of chicken hard with her fork. But her action only drew a placatory response from Virkar; between mouthfuls, he spoke a muffled sentence that sounded like, ‘We’ll speak after we finish eating.’ He picked up the fork and knife and began to cut a piece of his sizzler with the extra caution common among people who are uncomfortable using cutlery. A small smile of amusement crept to the corner of Raashi’s mouth. She picked up her fork and knife and sliced her chicken steak with the ease of an expert. She saw Virkar following her hand orchestrations with interest. As his eyes connected with hers, a hint of embarrassment rippled across his face. Raashi popped a small piece of the chicken in her mouth, enjoying her victory, however small it was.

Virkar, in fact, was not looking at her but at something moving far away along the winding road that lay in front of them. While Raashi enjoyed her meal, Virkar peered over her shoulder at the moving object that turned out to be a man riding a bicycle. He smiled on seeing the approaching figure. All of a sudden, he spat out the contents of his mouth into his plate, making a loud belching sound.

‘Eww…!’ said Raashi and shrank back in her chair. She threw Virkar a disgusted look and sprang away from the table.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Virkar apologized, grabbing his plate and handing it over to a waiter. ‘It must be because of that brandy I drank last night; I had a feeling it wasn’t good.’

Raashi shrugged and said nothing but Virkar knew that she was repulsed by his uncouth upchucking.

Virkar got up, looking embarrassed. ‘Please excuse me while I visit the washroom.’ Clutching his stomach, he rushed towards the men’s toilets at the back of the restaurant. Watching him go, Raashi signalled the waiter to take her plate away too and asked for a coffee instead. She had lost her appetite.

Meanwhile, Virkar had walked past the gents toilets and exited through a small door that led to the back of the restaurant. He quickly crossed a small compound, heading towards the barbed wire fencing that separated it from the forest land along the hillside. He ducked through a gap in the barbed wire and made his way through the trees that lay beyond. Virkar soon found himself on one side of the winding road. Positioning himself behind a grassy mound that hung just above the road, he waited, watching the road. A few minutes later, the same cyclist came into Virkar’s line of vision. He tensed. Waiting till the cyclist was right below the grassy mound, he jumped and landed on top of the rider, who lost his balance and fell hard on the road. Before the man could figure out what was happening, Virkar dragged him by the scruff of his neck behind the grassy mound. Leaving him lying there still dazed, Virkar ran back on to the road, plucked the fallen bicycle off the road and hid it behind the grassy mound, away from the prying eyes of nosy onlookers.

The cyclist was now coming to his senses. Virkar sat down in front of him and said in a low, menacing tone, ‘Bhoir, now tell me what you know about Tracy Barton’s body. You’ve got two minutes before I drag you and your cycle across to the other side of the hill and throw you into the valley.’

Bhoir began to stammer. ‘Pl—please, saheb, I was not a part of it. I was ju—just paid 25,000 rupees to keep my mouth shut.’

The menace in Virkar’s voice grew. ‘You have one minute to open that shut mouth.’

Bhoir swallowed hard. ‘Someone strangled her with their bare hands after sex, saheb,’ he half-whispered, unwilling to meet Virkar’s gaze.

‘Was she raped?’

‘No, it wasn’t forced sex.’

‘Who told you that?’

Bhoir hesitated, but Virkar’s resounding slap across his cheek got him talking again. ‘Dr Tupe told me. He was on duty when they brought in the body. While they were busy doing the paperwork, he quickly examined the body.’

‘Who are “they”? What paperwork?’ barked Virkar.

‘Inspector Akurle and Dr Bhandari, saheb. They brought her in and prepared the accident report.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I was called in. I stored the body in the VIP freezer. The next day, some Christian man called Colasco came from Mumbai and took the body away. I don’t know where.’

Virkar was quiet for a few seconds, letting the information sink in.

‘Please, saheb, I’m a poor man,’ begged Bhoir, falling at Virkar’s feet. Tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘Tupe saheb and I were forced to take part in it. We were threatened and told to keep our mouths shut. They promised to take care of us if we did. They kept their promise. Tupe saheb got the chief’s job and I got my 25,000 rupees.’ Bhoir paused and added in a low voice, ‘I’ll return the money to them if you tell me to.’

Virkar stood up and brushed off Bhoir who was still clinging to his feet. ‘Bhoir, you can go now. If you tell anyone about this conversation, I’ll come to your morgue and lock you alive in your VIP freezer, understood?’

Virkar turned and ran into the foliage. Making his way through the barbed wire, he went back to the gents toilet. He quickly splashed water on his face and wiped himself down with a hand towel. Feeling pleased that everything had gone according to plan, he turned to head back to the terrace. Suddenly, he noticed a small tear in his cotton pants near his knees. The sharp edge of the bicycle pedal had nicked him as he had jumped on Bhoir, opening up a bloody gash. ‘Aai cha gho!’ Virkar swore as he dabbed the wound with some toilet paper and then made his way to the terrace.

Raashi looked at her watch as she saw him approaching. ‘It’s been twenty minutes since you’ve been gone! Hope…umm…your stomach is not giving you too much trouble.’

Virkar suddenly remembered his ‘throwing up’ incident and went red in the face. ‘Ah, no, no. It’s all right, thankfully. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I…umm…fell in the toilet. The floor was slippery.’ He showed her his wound.

‘Oh dear, that needs to be taken care of,’ said Raashi, looking at him with concern.

‘It’s okay. Let’s head back to Katrak Villa. I’ll get some first aid there.’

He gestured towards the waiter.

‘No worries, I’ve already paid the bill,’ said Raashi. ‘I’m ready to leave.’

‘Then let’s do that,’ said Virkar, leading her off the terrace towards his Bullet. As he rode past the grassy mound, Virkar scanned the surroundings and smiled to himself. Bhoir was nowhere to be seen.

‘A
hh!’ The tincture of iodine stung badly as Raashi dabbed it on to Virkar’s wound with a cotton swab. Virkar cursed Pesi Katrak under his breath for handing the tincture of iodine to Raashi as the best solution for wounds. As with everything else in Katrak Villa, the medicines in its first aid kit were also frozen in time. The world had moved on to soft, soothing antiseptic Band-Aids while people like Pesi were still using the dark liquid favoured by their grandfathers.

Raashi dabbed the solution on to the wound one final time and then dumped the bloody cotton swab into a dustbin. As she began to tidy up, Virkar sat up on his bed, watching her. He was feeling foolish sitting in a pair of old cargo shorts borrowed from Pesi. Raashi had assumed the role of his nurse and insisted that his wound needed to stay open while being treated. Since the only other garment he had was a pair of full-length jeans, he had used this as a convenient way out to refuse her treatment. But when she began to throw around words like ‘septic’ and ‘tetanus’, he had reluctantly agreed to play the wounded soldier and had ended up wearing Pesi’s cargoes, since it was either that or his underwear.

Having finished playing nurse, Raashi dragged the wooden chair towards the bed, placing it as close as possible to where Virkar was reclining. She sat down squarely and faced him.

‘So, Inspector. Are you going to tell me what Bhoir said to you?’ she asked with a straight face.

Virkar didn’t have time to be stunned as Raashi continued almost in the same breath, ‘Just how many times are you going to test my skills, Inspector?’

Virkar felt a grudging admiration for her building up inside him.
She’s good. Almost as good as me.
But, how did she…?

As though reading his mind, Raashi showed him the pair of compact pocket binoculars that she had taken out from her purse and he immediately understood. ‘After you left, all I had to do was to use this little baby to spot Bhoir on his bicycle and I knew where you had gone. When you came back with your wound…’ Raashi gave an all-knowing shrug.

Ankh khuli andhe ki, toh vaat lagi dhande ki
, thought Virkar. He wondered where to begin, and then decided to go with the hard facts. ‘Tracy Barton was murdered by the Smooth Operator.’

His bland statement did not change the set expression on Raashi’s face.

‘And you’ve drawn this conclusion from the information Bhoir gave you?’ she asked in a flat tone.

‘Yes, from what Bhoir told me I can conclude that Akurle and Bhandari didn’t do it. Neither did Colasco, because he was in Mumbai at that time. That leaves only the Smooth Operator and the Compass Box Killer. Keeping in mind the Compass Box Killer’s revengeful killing of the others, the only person who is left as the prime suspect in Tracy’s murder is the Smooth Operator.’

Raashi’s eyes registered something that Virkar found difficult to understand as he continued giving her details of the information he had gleaned from Bhoir. ‘Tracy was brought in with strangulation marks on her neck. She was apparently strangled by someone with their bare hands after sex.’

Raashi lowered her gaze and looked away, trying hard not to let Virkar read her feelings. However, Virkar was too quick for her. He had already noticed the thin film of moisture that had welled up in the corner of her eyes. He was just a little surprised at her reaction. He had thought that she was hard as nails, but here she was, displaying empathy towards someone she didn’t even know. As Raashi’s shoulders began to tremble, the confusion that clouded Virkar’s mind disappeared. Although he tried to control himself, he couldn’t help reaching out with his hand and touching her on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. As his fingers touched the bare skin near her collarbone, he felt a tiny spark deep within the synapses of his brain. Raashi turned to look at him. A few teardrops had escaped from her eyes and were running down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t know…’ her voice cracked before the dam broke. Tears began to flow freely and a tortured cry escaped her mouth. Her shoulders began to shudder violently, so much so that Virkar felt the desperate need to hold them tight just to steady them. When her eyes connected with his, she held his gaze for just a few seconds before breaking away…and laying her head against his chest. Surprised, Virkar didn’t react but let the warmth of her forehead radiate through the fabric of his T-shirt to his skin.

But when the wetness of her cheeks also permeated to his chest, his arms rose almost of their own accord. Virkar wrapped them around Raashi’s back, feeling something electric inside him as he drew her closer to him, engulfing her in the breadth of his chest. Feeling her warm softness against him, Virkar suddenly began to feel helpless against the emotions that were growing within him and dictating his actions. He was still struggling with himself, almost afraid to move, when she raised a soft palm and touched his cheek. Looking down upon her upturned face, he took only a second to read her eyes and, finding an open invitation there, lowered his face and rested his lips on hers. Unsure of how to proceed, Virkar waited. But Raashi had known exactly where this was going. Her tongue darted out from between her parted lips and made its way into Virkar’s waiting mouth. He felt her tongue connect with his and let himself be manoeuvred into the kiss…a kiss that went on almost forever. There was a mini explosion in his brain as he felt the sparks down to his toes; his body felt as though it was on fire. Just when he thought that he couldn’t take it anymore, he felt Raashi nimble fingers working the buttons of his shirt. As his shirt front fell open to allow her better access, she began to rub her palms gently against the expanse of his chest, making her way down to the waistband of his cargo shorts. Virkar felt the urgent need to reciprocate. He slid his hand to the base of her spine and was about to go further down when she unzipped his cargo shorts and set him free. Virkar couldn’t hold himself back anymore.