Compass Box Killer (4 page)

As he approached the wide-open door of the small room occupied by Nandu and eight others within the crowded tenement, Virkar’s fingers brushed against the service revolver at his hip, concealed just under his sweat-stained bush shirt. He wondered if he would need it.

He stepped inside the tenement; it was pitch dark. As his eyes tried to adjust to the gloom, he realized that all around him were prone figures of thin, young men, lying stretched out on the floor. ‘Iski maa ka…!’ he cursed instinctively, taking them to be unconscious or dead, but soon realized that they were only asleep. The soundness of their sleep indicated that they were probably daily-wage workers who had just returned from pulling a night shift somewhere. Since all the space on the floor was used up by the sleepers, their meagre belongings were wrapped in bundled sheets attached to hooks on the ceiling. Each bundle hung precariously above each sleeper, indicating its ownership. Virkar stood at the door, wondering which one of the sleepers was Nandu, since all of them seemed to match the broad description given to him. One of the young men on the floor opened a curious eye and lazily surveyed him. ‘Nandu?’ Virkar whispered the question, not wanting to disturb the others.

‘Gone,’ the half-asleep man whispered back, pointing towards an empty-looking bundle hanging from the ceiling in the far corner of the room. Deciding that he had had enough conversation for the morning, the young man rolled over and went back to sleep. For a second, Virkar felt the urge to join the sleeping men on the floor and shut his fatigued eyes briefly. He sighed, knowing he couldn’t do anything like that; instead, he would have to summon the plainclothes policemen to rudely wake up all the men and troop them down to the police station for interrogation. Tip-toeing over the men, he made his way across the room towards the hanging sheet-bundle. As he reached it, he snaked his hand between its folds, searching for anything that might provide some clues of Nandu’s whereabouts.

His hand connected with something cold and metallic. Suddenly, his tired brain whirred back to life. Virkar looked at the familiar object grasped in his hand. It was yet another old and battered metal compass box, quite like the first one he had found at the site of Akurle’s murder. Virkar gently pried it open with his fingers, his pulse quickening. He was not disappointed; the note screamed at him in blood that seemed fresher than the one on the earlier note:
Y
ou found me. Now find Dr Prabhat Bhandari.

R
aashi Hunerwal was angry. She had been waiting for nearly two hours in the visitors’ waiting room at the Mumbai Crime Branch headquarters. In the five years of her remarkable career, she had become accustomed to waiting for important people—politicians, businessmen, top guns in the law enforcement hierarchy—but she didn’t expect to be kept waiting by someone as inconsequential in the pecking order as this Inspector Virkar. Clad in an expensive-looking pair of stilettos, her impeccably pedicured feet tapped on the floor impatiently. She was thirsty and hungry and desperately wanted to go the washroom, but was controlling herself fearing that the slippery Inspector could use an absence of even five minutes as an excuse to not meet her. He had been avoiding her calls for the past two days but today, Raashi was determined to buttonhole him into spilling the story, strands of which she had picked up from one of her police informants. Something big was happening on the Mumbai crime scene (at least that’s what she’d been told) and she was determined to find it, expose it and propel herself into the big leagues of TV journalism. For two years, she had been waiting on the sidelines, diligently digging up dirt on small-time domestic crimes and plastering each sordid little detail of sundry street crimes on her show
Crime Update
on the local CrimeNews channel. She was hankering to take a bite out of the big-time and was waiting to break a story that would score her the massive brownie points she desperately needed to get noticed by the big guns of the national news channels. Today was her day to hit the jackpot, she could feel it.

As the clock passed the two-hour mark, she reached into her patent leather handbag and drew out her compact mirror and lipstick. She flipped open the compact and surveyed her sharp-featured, attractive face for the umpteenth time. Eyes: sky- blue contact lenses.
Check
. Skin: flawless.
Check
. Nose: sharp and straight enough to be called sexy.
Check
. Hair: tightly curled and hanging firmly in place.
Check
. Satisfied, she swiped the lipstick across her full lips, rendered dry by the sultry Mumbai weather and anticipation. Practicing the famous television smile that was known to disarm even the hardest heart, she decided that she was ready, as always, to plunge into her mission. She was going to whip the unsuspecting Inspector Virkar into submission and prove to her colleagues that her nickname, ‘Hunterwali’, was not unfounded.

Hearing the click of the swivel door of the waiting room, she hastily shoved her compact into her bag. A podgy, oily-haired constable entered the room, a lascivious grin stamped on his face. He looked her up and down; Raashi let his eyes roam over her body, her tight skirt-and-blouse ensemble, until they met her steely gaze. ‘Zhala, bhau?’ she spat out in Marathi, asking him if he was done leching after her. The shocked constable immediately lowered his gaze with a sudden flush of shame.

‘Ma-madam, Virkar saheb is now done with his meeting,’ he stammered with embarrassment.

Raashi sprang up without another word and exited through the swivel door. With the constable shuffling behind her, she briskly walked into the passageway that led to the main office area. Smoothening her skirt, Raashi inhaled sharply before walking through the doors.

She instantly became the cynosure of all the appreciative eyes within the room where officers and other policemen milled about. She avoided all eye contact and marched towards the corner desk that she had earlier identified as Virkar’s by slipping a peon a ten-rupee note. As she walked across the large room, the man seated at the desk glanced up from his papers. She took in his clean-cut, unconventionally handsome, swarthy features with some amount of surprise. As he locked his gaze with hers, his dark, sleep-deprived eyes seemed to drill into her with an intensity that sent a ripple of excitement through her. She composed herself and, assuming an aggressive tone that was meant to put Virkar on the defensive, said, ‘I’m Raashi Hunerwal from the CrimeNews channel. I’ve been trying to meet you for two whole days.’ Virkar’s intense expression turned deadpan. He had been warned about the wily ‘Hunterwali’ and had secretly been awaiting her arrival. He couldn’t help noticing that she was more attractive in person than on TV.

‘I’ve been busy with an investigation,’ he shrugged, going back to his papers.

Undeterred, Raashi broke into her trademark smouldering smile. ‘Yes, that’s what I wanted to speak to you about, Inspector
saheb
—your investigation.’ The exaggerated emphasis on ‘saheb’ was not lost on Virkar.

‘Sorry, madam, I have no comments on that,’ he said in a businesslike manner.

Raashi calmly pulled up a chair from a nearby desk and sat down. Leaning forward, she enquired in a conspiratorial tone: ‘I heard you found another compass box?’ Virkar flinched. He was tired and extremely frustrated. He had just spent the last two days interrogating the vadapaowala and Nandu’s roommates, and had come up with nothing more than a vague description of the seemingly nondescript young man. The fingerprint experts had not found any prints on the two compass boxes, apart from Virkar’s. And, despite all his efforts to keep the details of the case a secret till he had had a breakthrough, someone had leaked information to the media. To make matters worse, Raashi’s flirtatious manner, her push-up bra, her soft but too-perfect-to-be-real curls, her artificially luminous eyes and her generously-applied lipstick were only irritating him further. He curbed his urge to question Raashi and get her to reveal her source as he was aware that any interest he showed would only confirm her suspicions. So he decided to use a technique that he had recently mastered after observing his boss at close quarters.

He reached for his mobile phone inside his trouser pocket and pressed a key. A Bollywood item number began played loudly, indicating an incoming call. Fishing out the phone, Virkar smiled apologetically at Raashi, ‘It’s my boss,’ he said, excusing himself.

‘Yes sir…’ he said into the phone.

Raashi broke into a sarcastic smile, ‘Nice try, Inspector Virkar. Unfortunately, I’ve used this trick enough times to recognize it.’

Virkar ignored her and continued his conversation, ‘Yes sir, I’ll come right away.’ He dumped all the papers lying on his desk into an open drawer, locked it with his free hand and put the key into his pocket. He rose from his chair, casting one last apologetic glance at the slightly taken-aback Raashi. Then he swiftly walked away, while continuing to speak into the phone. His colleagues around the room seemed amused though they managed to maintain a straight face.

Raashi’s agitated voice called out to Virkar, ‘I hope you know some better tricks, Inspector Virkar. Be ready with them the next time we meet.’ But Virkar had already reached the exit door.

Raashi flung one final glance at Virkar’s receding back. She then switched off the spy camera feature on the mobile phone she had placed on Virkar’s table.
This one’s not going to be easy
, she thought.

M
oonlight bounced off the foam-capped waves of the Mumbai harbour as the Koli Queen, a small mechanized fishing trawler cut through the water, making its way out to sea. The two Koli fishermen, or nakhwas, were standing at the prow watching the water intently; their hands were itching to cast the blue nylon fishing trawl nets lying forlorn on the floor of the trawler. One of the nakhwas turned towards the single small cabin behind him and waved at the man at the wheel, pointing him towards the west. The man at the wheel waved back and turned the wheel towards what might be a potential cache of the few remaining shoals of fish near the Mumbai shoreline. Behind him, Virkar sat on a makeshift wooden bench on the open deck at the back of the trawler. It had been nailed to the wooden floor so as to keep it steady against the rise and fall of the boat. The trawler had set out around midnight and was scheduled to return to Mumbai only the next morning. Virkar reached out and opened a large thermocol icebox kept on one side of the wooden bench. He pried open the lid to reveal four bottles of Godfather Beer lying tantalizingly on a bed of crushed ice. Virkar popped open the cap of a chilled bottle and took a large swig directly from it. Letting the cold, malty fluid stream down his throat, he didn’t make any attempt to suppress the small burp that conveyed his satisfaction. His free hand reached into a plastic bag lying next to him on the wooden bench and drew out a few greasy pieces of red hot Jhinga Koliwada enmeshed with raw onion curls. Popping the fried prawns and onion curls into his mouth, he let the succulent spices seep into his tongue and then began to masticate the fleshy treat. The juices triggered off his thought process and soon he was immersed in nostalgia.

Ever since he was a teenager, a midnight fishing trip was his escape from the big, bad world. The open deck of the boat was his refuge, the wooden bench his sanctum sanctorum. Something in the crests and troughs of the waves and the crispness of the midnight sea breeze always relaxed his wound-up senses, rejuvenating them to the sharpness he was known for. The beer and the prawns were just accompaniments to celebrate this happy state of mind.

Having grown up in Mumbai’s Colaba Machhimar Nagar, a small Koli fishermen’s community nestled between the residential skyscrapers of Cuffe Parade and the office towers of Nariman Point, Virkar was adept at deep-sea fishing. When he was young, he would accompany his father and his crew in the fishing trawlers that set out each morning in the hopes of filling their dol, or net
,
with a good catch. But with the change of times, the Koli fortunes dwindled and the community began encouraging their young to educate themselves in the Catholic schools nearby. As a result, Virkar got himself an English-medium education at the Holy Mary High School. He hit a small speed breaker when he didn’t get into an engineering college and instead flirted with the idea of joining the Gotya Gang, a notorious group of chain snatchers and burglars. But, thankfully, good sense prevailed and he had gone to college, graduating with a degree in psychology and opting for the only job that would keep him out of trouble with the law—that of a policeman’s. Indeed, he considered himself lucky when, today, most of the boys he had grown up with were either fishermen eking out a meagre living or wanted criminals living in constant fear of the bullet that would end their lives.

Virkar’s thoughts now rolled with the sway of the boat. Sometime earlier that night, while examining the police artist’s sketches of Nandu’s likeness at his office, a massive pang of hunger hit Virkar and he realized that he had not eaten anything substantial in the past twenty-four hours. To top that, he suddenly remembered that he had been working non-stop for the past thirty-six hours. He decided that he had earned a break and quickly rushed to Pure Punjab Restaurant opposite the GPO to pick up a kilo of his favourite Jhinga Koliwada, a fried prawn delicacy. Many a visitor to Mumbai thought the Jhinga Koliwada was an authentic delicacy of Koli cuisine but, in fact, it was the Punjabi migrants from Pakistan settled among the small Koli community of Sion Koliwada who had concocted this unique and pungent preparation. Virkar couldn’t care less. For him, Jhinga Koliwada was soul food. With the hot kilo of food secure in a plastic bag, Virkar quickly rode his Bullet to a brewery godown in Mazgaon and picked up half a dozen bottles of his favourite Godfather Beer from the friendly godown in-charge, who was always ready to indulge Virkar’s fondness for this particular brand of beer that was so difficult to come by in Mumbai. Virkar had parked his Bullet in the shadows outside the godown and hailed a passing cab to his last stop for the night. The cab took him to Bhaucha Dhakka, otherwise known as the Ferry Wharf, where the Koli Queen was just getting ready to embark on its nightly fishing expedition. Two bottles of beer and two hundred-rupee notes bought him full occupancy of the wooden bench along with exclusive rights to the thermocol icebox.