Chain of Custody (31 page)

Santosh placed his hand gently on hers. That was all he dared. ‘For what it's worth, you can count on me,' he said.

2.00 p.m.

The postmortem report said what Gowda had already deduced. The lawyer's skull had been smashed in, Dr Khan had written. There was nothing in the contents of the viscera to suggest he had been poisoned or drugged. In fact, it seemed the lawyer's last meal had been several hours earlier.

Meanwhile, there was the other visitor to check on.

‘Do we have an address for him?' Gowda asked Gajendra.

‘It's incomplete,' Gajendra said. ‘These security guys are perfectly useless fellows.'

‘They may be, but not the security camera. Get the vehicle number and we can track the owner's name and address,' Gowda said, his eyes pausing on a line in the description of the injury.

A typical signature fracture. A localized depressed fracture where the outer table had been driven into the diploe. The inner table was fractured irregularly and to a greater extent comminuted. A spider's web with no displacement of fragments of the skull. The roughly triangular depression indicated that it was possibly caused by an uneven object made of stone or metal. There was bleeding from the ear, suggesting the transverse sigmoid sinus had torn and there was a posterior fossa haematoma. However, he hadn't been dead yet. The sudden nature of the attack had caused him to fall so heavily on his face that he had broken his nose and drowned in his own blood. The fracture line suggested that the assailant had been a little taller than the victim and left-handed. Gowda thought of
Sid. The boy was at least 6″2′ and the angle of the blow would have been different.

He thought of the weapon. The stone Buddha they had found on the floor? Could a child have done it on his own? He thought of the two boys who had run away. Had they returned? But how had they entered the gated community without the guards spotting them?

‘In the rains we had three weeks ago, a section of the wall fell. But there is a quarry on the other side of the wall. Quite a deep one,' Byrappa said. ‘So the security must have been lax there.'

‘Let's take a look,' Gowda said, rising. The three men drove into the gated community. There was a group of people near the broken wall. Gowda groaned. ‘Oh no,' he said, ‘Laurel and Hardy.' Gajendra hid his smile.

‘We were getting a quote from the contractor,' Laurel said, and Hardy nodded his head.

‘How long has this wall been down?' Gowda asked, climbing the rubble to see what lay beyond.

‘Three weeks,' Hardy mumbled.

‘It should have been built the next day, but the association is filled with retired bureaucrats,' Laurel said, following Gowda up the rubble.

Beyond lay an abandoned quarry, deep and dangerous, with its sides jagged at some points. There was a pool of green water at the bottom. ‘Only a fool would attempt to climb the wall this way,' Laurel said.

Or a very desperate person, thought Gowda. There was a narrow lip of land abutting the wall and edging the quarry. It was possible to walk by holding on to the wall and enter through the broken section. But who knew about the breach in the wall? Beyond the quarry was a barbed-wire fence, behind
which were a few low-slung tile-roofed buildings. ‘What's there?' Gowda asked.

‘A pig farm. Bloody nuisance. They slaughter every few days and the residents complain of the squealing,' Laurel said.

Suddenly the case was acquiring dimensions that even Gowda hadn't anticipated. Could someone who worked on the pig farm have come in?

‘We need to check on the farm employees,' Gowda told Byrappa as they entered.

He glanced at his watch. Michael had messaged asking him to come by late afternoon. He would have to leave as soon as Ratna and Santosh returned.

Gajendra's phone beeped. He stared at the message and looked at Gowda with a dumbfounded expression. ‘You are not going to believe this. The number you asked me to trace? It was the lawyer's.'

‘What?' Gowda sat up.

What did Nandita's disappearance have to do with the murdered lawyer? What was he not seeing?

4.00 p.m.

At the Sunshine Home, Gowda was greeted by the sight of Mr Right, Urmila's ridiculous dog, on Tina's lap. She was murmuring into the dog's ears and he was licking her face. Urmila stood alongside, smiling and talking to the girl.

Michael stepped out of his room. ‘Urmila dropped in on her way to the vet and when the girl saw the dog, her eyes lit up. Over the last three days, I haven't seen her react or show a single flicker of emotion. Usually she won't even look at any of us.'

Ridiculous as he was, Mr Right could be the perfect Mr Right.

Michael looked at Gowda. ‘I don't know if she will talk when she sees you in uniform.'

Gowda whistled through his teeth. But Tina remembered Gowda from the rescue and her lips stretched a micro-millimetre in recognition. When he walked towards her, he saw her stiffen. He stopped mid-stride and pretended to look at a picture on the soft board.

‘Tina,' Gowda said. ‘Do you remember me?'

She nodded.

‘Do you remember Ratna and Santosh? We were the ones who rescued you.'

Tina didn't speak. Instead, she stroked Mr Right.

‘I need you to tell us how you came here. Only then can we catch and punish the people who did this to you,' Gowda said, careful not to step forward.

She continued to fondle the dog. Michael cleared his throat.

‘Tina, we can do it another day if you don't want to talk now,' Urmila said, sitting down beside her.

‘No, I'll tell you what happened,' she said softly. ‘Does he understand everything we say?' She looked at Urmila and then at Mr Right.

Urmila smiled gently. ‘Even if he does, it won't matter to him.'

‘Will he still like me?'

Urmila squeezed Tina's hand. ‘He will. He loves unconditionally. Do you know what that means? He just loves. He doesn't wonder why and how.'

Tina nodded and laid her cheek against the dog.

‘What about Abdul?' she asked suddenly. ‘Where is he?'

‘We'll talk to him separately,' Gowda said.

Tina nodded. ‘How is he?' she asked. ‘He was taken away from his home too.'

Michael put on the voice recorder on his phone. ‘Whenever you are ready,' he said quietly.

Tina took a deep breath and looked at the wall opposite as if it were a white screen. When she began speaking, Urmila's eyes met Gowda's. The tone was tinny and flat. And there it was again, the third person. This was not her but someone else called Tina, stuck in a nightmare that she would never escape.

Tina began observing Mohan. She thought if she did, she would know how to protect herself till she escaped.

Mohan was clever. He gave nothing away. He watched her all the time. Tina realized they were playing a cat-and-mouse game. And the mice were Abdul and she.

Tina saw the sim he retrieved from his pocket and inserted into a phone to make a call. One afternoon, he brought her new clothes. A brilliant blue salwaar kameez with a dupatta edged with tinsel. ‘Cover your head with it and don't show your face. And put these on,' he told her, thrusting a card of stick-on bindis and a dozen glass bangles into har hand. She didn't understand. Why was he suddenly being nice? What other horror awaited her now?

It all fell into place when Tina saw the three tickets he had got them. Second-class tickets for a man, his young bride and his son from his first marriage.

They boarded the train. ‘Not a word to anyone, do you hear me?' Mohan said as he shoved a little suitcase under the seat. The chooha barely spoke. Tina saw he had a fresh bruise on his face. After the first time Mohan had slammed her
face into the wall, he had stopped doing it. Instead, he slammed the chooha's face into the wall. He made her watch, and though she steeled herself not to flinch, she did. And then with a grin that wasn't a real grin, he would thrust her against the table, spit on his palm and slather the saliva between her buttocks, and shove his lund into her anus. The pain was excruciating each time and she could tell that her whimpering excited him as much as the sight of Abdul's bloody face.

What had Abdul got it for, she wondered. She reached out and took his hand in hers. He didn't look at her but his fingers tightened around hers. It was the first time she had acknowledged his presence. They held hands till Mohan got up to go towards the door for a smoke.

‘How did you get here?' Tina asked.

‘I was taken outside my home like you were,' the boy whispered through cracked lips.

‘Where is home, chooha?' she asked. His Hindi was not the Mumbaiyya Hindi.

‘Don't call me that,' he said.

‘Sorry,' she said, stroking his face.

‘Muzaffarnagar,' he said.

‘Where is that, Abdul?'

His fingers tightened around hers. ‘Uttar Pradesh. I went out to play in the evening after school. We were playing near the railway tracks … the other boys went back. I waited for them to leave so I could go see if my magnet was ready.'

Tina frowned. ‘I don't understand.'

‘I had heard one of the older boys at school say that if you placed a piece of iron on a railway track, it would become a magnet once a train ran over it. There was a man there. He held up my magnet and asked if I wanted more. I went with him and he offered me a sweet on the way.'

‘How could you have been so stupid?' Tina asked.

‘And you were not? They got you too! It doesn't matter. They know how to get us.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘What are we going to do?'

‘I don't know. I don't know, didi,' he said, and she felt a teardrop on her hand. It was the first time she had seen him cry. Tears filled her eyes too.

They didn't dare cry. Mohan would be angry if he saw tears.

‘We'll make a plan,' Tina said.

‘And what plan would that be?' Mohan asked, sitting by her side.

She didn't reply. But she felt Abdul's fingers clasp her tighter.

A vendor came by with a metal tray stacked with food packets. The man signalled to him. ‘Two,' he said.

The vendor put the tray down in the middle of the aisle. ‘What about you? Aren't you eating?' he asked. ‘There will be no food till the breakfast stop at Raichur or Guntakal Junction.'

Mohan saw the other passengers look at him. He had forgotten that the gaze of the long-distance co-passenger extended beyond mere curiosity.

Mohan smiled and shook his head. He didn't want to draw any attention to them. If he said the boy and girl would share a packet, there would be questions. Polite words of enquiry, but questions nevertheless.

He thrust the packets of food into their hands. Abdul tore open a packet and stuffed his mouth. He ate in a frenzy, afraid the food would be taken away from him. It was the first time in many months that he was eating more than the leftovers from someone else's meal.

Tina ate slowly, chewing one grain at a time. She feared what would come next. But as she looked around her, a small sense of relief grew in her. He wouldn't dare do anything to her or Abdul with so many people in the compartment. A couple of hours passed. Then Mohan gestured for her to get up. When she stood up, he said loud enough to be heard by anyone who was listening and understood Marathi, ‘Beta, come, use the bathroom before you go to sleep.'

They walked down the aisle towards the end of the compartment where the toilets were. There was no one there. The rest of the passengers hadn't begun on their dinner yet. He unlatched one of the toilets and shoved them in. It was a tight squeeze but Mohan didn't seem to think so. Tina stared at the toilet. Now what, she thought. The train had started at Surat and had been running for many hours before they boarded at Kalyan. It had been hosed down, but the toilet still bore the stench of a bathroom used repeatedly.

She heard him unzip his trousers. When she looked up, he had his thing in his hands. ‘Hold it,' he told Abdul.

The boy looked at him blankly.

‘Hold my lund, you madarchod,' he said. ‘Unless you want me to slam your head against the sink.' He reached for Abdul's head. Tina reached out and took it in her hand. It came alive.

‘Stroke it,' he said. ‘Up and down.'

She did as he asked.

‘Now take it between your fingers,' he groaned.

The biriyani she had eaten heaved into her mouth. A retch escaped her lips.

‘You don't like it, do you, cunt?' he growled. ‘I'd stick it down your throat except I don't want you biting it off. Looks like you
are enjoying it. Or dear chooha's head will go bang-bang against the steel sink.'

Tina saw the fear in Abdul's eyes. She bit down on her lip and told herself that she would think of the time her mother and she went to see a film at a multiplex in Bandra. The tickets had cost a lot of money, but her mother had said that for once they were going to splurge and have popcorn too. Caramel and salted popcorn. Make sure you mix them well, her mother had told the boy at the counter. He had smiled and added an extra spoon of caramel popcorn, giving her a wink. Sweet and salt. She didn't know what each handful would bring to her mouth. Sweet or salt. Or sometimes a combination that made her feel that this must be what Jesus ate in heaven.

She felt something splatter into her hand. The sticky fluid that his thing spat into her when he shoved it up her shithole. So this was what it was. She looked at her fingers, not knowing what was expected of her next.

‘Wash your hands and let's go back. The next time I gesture, you come here. I'll follow you in a while,' he said, opening the door and stepping out.

‘Didi,' Abdul said.

She glared at him. ‘Don't say a word. Don't say anything. Or I'll scream.'

When it was time to sleep, he offered his lower berth to an elderly woman. ‘The boy can climb to the top and so can my wife. I'll take the middle berth,' he said.