“What sort of signal?” asked Nisha.
“The leader would usually ask someone to bring the tobacco,” said Santosh. “This phrase was a signal to the other Thugs that the looting and killing could begin.”
“‘Bring the tobacco’? Are we now dealing with a reborn thuggee cult?” wondered Mubeen.
“This is not the work of a Thug,” replied Santosh.
“Why?” asked Nisha. “How can you be so sure?”
“Thuggee beliefs forbade them from killing certain classes of humans. Women, holy men, musicians, lepers, and foreigners were not considered legitimate targets. Our first victim—Dr. Kanya Jaiyen—was a foreigner, and both victims were women.”
His team digested the information. “How were the Thugs vanquished?” asked Nisha finally.
“Due to the efforts of a Bengal Army officer—Sir William Henry Sleeman,” answered Santosh robotically. “He devoted his life to the annihilation of thuggee. By analyzing murder sites, Sleeman and his troops predicted future attack locations. His men used the Thugs’ own modus operandi against them. Disguised as traders or pilgrims, the officers would stick around at predicted attack sites, waiting for a band of Thugs to draw near. They would be ambushed the moment they tried to attack. Information obtained through the interrogation of prisoners was also used to plan every ensuing operation. By the end of the nineteenth century, the British were able to declare that all Thugs had been exterminated.”
“Had they actually been finished off?” asked Nisha.
“Many have wondered if the British were too quick to pat themselves on the back,” said Santosh. “How a secret brotherhood that had withstood centuries could be annihilated in such a limited window of time has remained a puzzle. While it is true that mass murders and graves are a distant recollection, in some far-flung provinces of India rumors still persist about yellow-sashed wanderers who befriend travelers with their engaging smiles and chatter.”
One voice in the room had stayed absolutely silent. Its owner remained seated at the conference table, his face now ashen white. A build-up of sweat on his forehead had begun to trickle down his face in spite of the air conditioning. Hari Padhi attempted to maintain a calm expression as he digested the information offered by Santosh.
Chapter 17
IT WAS EARLY evening when Nisha entered the offices of the Afternoon Mirror in the old Fort district of Mumbai. She passed through the hustle and bustle of the newsroom to a glass-walled office that was occupied by the newspaper’s editor, a chain-smoking woman in her mid fifties.
Ignoring the fumes and the disconnected smoke alarm, Nisha strode in and introduced herself. After perfunctory pleasantries had been exchanged, she opened up a notes tab on her smartphone and began to ask questions.
“Were there any recent threats against Bhavna?” she said. “Anyone upset by anything that she had written?”
“Not that I can remember,” answered the editor, taking a deep drag from the Virgina Slim that dangled from her lips. “Last year she wrote an article about teenage pregnancies at a famous Mumbai girls’ school. The principal was very upset and stormed into her office. That was a while ago, though.”
Nisha held out a photograph of the man who had been caught on CCTV leaving Dr. Kanya Jaiyen’s hotel room. “We believe that this man may have visited Bhavna at her home on the morning she was killed. Does he look familiar?”
The editor studied the photograph carefully and eventually shrugged. “You can’t see his face.”
“Even so …”
“Sorry, it doesn’t ring any bells. I don’t think I have ever seen this man before. I could give you a list of the names and phone numbers of contacts that Bhavna had scheduled to interview over the next few days. Maybe it could throw up a match?”
“Thanks, I appreciate that,” replied Nisha. “Anything that you can tell me about her personal life?”
“As far as I know, it was quite normal,” said the editor. “She wasn’t married but was seeing a guy—a decent bloke. She introduced him to me during our last New Year’s office party. A banker, I think.”
“Were they getting along? No fights?” asked Nisha.
“Not that anyone in this office was aware of,” said the editor. “As far as we could tell, she was on her way to eventually marrying the chap. She was working late during the last few days because he was on an overseas trip.”
“What was the latest story Bhavna Choksi was working on?”
“Ah, now that I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
The editor exhaled smoke and smiled wanly through the cloud. “A bit of both, Mrs. Gandhe. Bhavna had a workstation and I dare say we could boot it up and have a look at her files, but we’re a newspaper. To be helping … you’re not even the police, are you? To be assisting a law enforcement agency such as yourselves, well, it would seriously compromise our editorial integrity. Unless …”
“Yes …?” said Nisha carefully, thinking she knew exactly what was coming next.
The editor stubbed out her cigarette and leaned forward. “Unless we could perhaps come to an arrangement.”
“And what sort of arrangement would that be?” sighed Nisha.
“Perhaps we could help you with details of Bhavna’s assignment in return for details of the murder.”
“Details?” repeated Nisha.
“Mrs. Gandhe, all of us are devastated by the loss of Bhavna,” said the editor, “but we realize the show must go on. She would have wanted details of her murder to appear as an exclusive on the front pages of her own tabloid—not in some other newspaper. Come on now, what information on the case can you offer me?”
Nisha shook her head in disgust. “We’re trying to find a killer here—”
“And I’m trying to run a newspaper,” shrugged the editor. Her phone began to ring and Nisha thanked her stars. She signaled that she had to leave and made a quick retreat from the office before the editor could put down the receiver.
As Nisha left the office building she was being watched by a camera. Its telephoto lens whirred like a casino counting machine.
Chapter 18
“HARI?”
Private’s tech wizard turned at the sound of Nisha’s voice. “What can I do for you?” he asked, pleased to see her, and even more pleased when she perched herself on the edge of his desk.
“I went to the Afternoon Mirror today,” she explained.
“Looking for a job?”
She chuckled. “Looking for information on Bhavna Choksi, only her editor was far more interested in what I had to tell her about the murder than actually helping us find the killer.”
He pulled a face. “Newshounds, eh? Tsk.”
“We recovered a laptop from Bhavna’s home,” said Nisha. She pointed. “That one there, I believe. Could you crack it?”
“Of course,” he smiled.
“Brilliant.” She eased herself off the end of his desk, departing with her jacket slung over her shoulder and her Glock at her hip. “Let me know how you get on.”
“Will do,” he said, watching her go. Then he placed Bhavna Choksi’s Windows notebook before him on his workstation. This was going to be fun. The hacker in him always relished the prospect of entering forbidden territory.
He plugged in a USB flash drive preloaded with a program titled Ophcrack and held down the power button until the machine powered off. He then powered up the computer, entered the machine’s BIOS, changed the boot sequence, saved the changes, and exited.
Taking a deep meditative breath, Hari restarted the machine and waited for Ophcrack to load. The program used rainbow tables to solve passwords up to fourteen characters in length and Hari had found that it usually took less than ten seconds to pop one out. He began counting backwards from ten.
Exactly on cue, Ophcrack spat out Bhavna’s password. Hari wrote it down on a piece of paper, unplugged the USB flash drive from the computer, rebooted it, and logged in using the password supplied b
y the program. He then began examining the journalist’s computer for material that could be of use to Private India.
Besides previous articles on a variety of subjects, Hari began looking for Bhavna’s latest web searches. Within a few minutes he knew that she had been searching for travel coordinators, stylists, pet groomers, physiotherapists, public relations managers, nutrition experts, fashion designers, beauticians, psychiatrists, and fitness instructors. Not only that, but …
Hari picked up the intercom handset and dialed Nisha’s extension. “I can tell you what Bhavna Choksi was working on in the twenty-four hours before she was killed,” he said. “She’s got web searches galore, plus she was good enough to keep a list on her desktop.”
“Excellent,” Nisha beamed. “Apparently her most recent piece was a feature on the lifetstyles of the rich and famous …”
“I’m looking at it now. It’s a bunch of names, lots under the heading ‘possibles,’ just one under the heading ‘definite.’”
“All right,” she said, “let’s have the definite.”
“It’s a hairstylist. Name of Aakash—just ‘Aakash’—at the Shiva Spa Lounge.”
“Excellent,” she said, “I owe you one,” and hung up.
In his own office, Hari replaced the receiver, feeling an odd mix of emotions: pride at having recovered the information Nisha needed, but something else too, and for a second he simply stared at the silent receiver in its cradle.
Then he stood, left his office, and took the stairs to Colaba Causeway, where he lit a cigarette. As he exhaled a cloud of smoke through his nostrils he made a call.
It was answered by a husky female voice.
“Can we meet later tonight?” Hari asked her. “It’s urgent. There’s something I need to discuss.”
Chapter 19
“IT’S NOT A hair salon, it’s a hair lounge,” said Aakash the head stylist, his eyes ablaze.
The difference, as far as Santosh and Nisha could see, was that the Shiva Spa had a resident DJ who played deafening music. Stylists bobbed their heads in time to the beat as they dealt with trendy clients, all of whom regarded themselves with empty expressions in the mirror, as though to show an actual human emotion might be considered uncool.
Aakash, however, was allowed to show an emotion—something to do with his artistic temperament, no doubt—even if that emotion was best described as emphatic irritation. He wore an orange tailored jacket with the sleeves pushed up. Beneath it was a T-shirt that had been artfully ripped and stressed, and tight jeans with a chain hanging off the waistband. He was hairless.
“Well, perhaps we could find a place somewhere in the lounge that’s a little more private?” Nisha yelled over the din of a Bollywood tune.
Aakash glanced from her to Santosh, who stood at her shoulder, rolled his eyes as though the whole thing were a terrible inconvenience, then turned on his heel and strode toward the rear of the salon—sorry, lounge.
Nisha and Santosh swapped amused glances and followed, pleased to hear the music recede. Indeed, away from the DJ was where the place earned its spa status. Waltzing on ahead, Aakash led them through a section where slightly older patrons were being seen to by chic stylists wearing black, and back here the atmosphere was more serene. The music was classical, and the stench of hair products and eau de toilette was at least partly replaced by the smells of coffee and burning incense.
Finally they reached the office, where Aakash, still wearing an expression of exasperation, directed them to a pair of unnecessarily uncomfortable steel-tube chairs, while he sank himself into a sofa.
He kept them waiting while he studied his phone then dropped it, looked at them, sighed, and said, “Yes? What can I do for you?”
Santosh, his cane held between his legs, let Nisha do the talking.
“We’re investigating the murder of a journalist, Bhavna Choksi. We believe she’d been in contact with you.”
Aakash tilted his chin, thinking—or pretending to.
“No, I don’t think I know the name,” he said.
“She represented the Afternoon Mirror.”
“Oh, her.” He pulled a face. “Yes, she did get in touch, you’re right.”
“And you agreed to do an interview?” said Nisha.
“At first, but I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
Aakash looked haughty. “She told me she wanted to know more about my work but it was all false pretences.”
“Really? I thought she was writing a piece on those who look after the rich and famous. The support staff, if you like.”
He bridled. “I’ll have you know, I’m far more than ‘support staff.’ What I do …” he waved his hand airily “… is closer to art.”
“Be that as it may …”
Aakash frowned. “Look, she may have pretended to be writing a soft feature, but I could tell—she was digging for dirt.”
“And did she get any?” asked Nisha.
“No,” he sniffed.
Nisha threw Santosh a look and he raised his eyebrows. She leaned forward. “Mr….”
“Aakash,” he said, affronted. “It’s just Aakash.”
“… Aakash—I’m having difficulty understanding why you wouldn’t want to talk to the Afternoon Mirror. After all, the free advertising alone surely would have made it worthwhile. I’m picturing it now, the salon—sorry, the lounge—featured in the Afternoon Mirror, waiting lists stretching off into infinity. It would appear to me to be—what do you call it?—a no-brainer.”
“Well,” he said defensively, “that’s just where you’re wrong.”
“Why?” she pressed. Her voice was soft, but probing. “Was there something you were worried she might discover?”
By now Aakash was looking shifty. The office door was open. He got up, walked over, and closed it. The act was dropped a little. “Look,” he said, “I may have, um, overplayed the celebrity angle of my work.”
Nisha and Santosh exchanged a glance.
“In what way?” said Nisha.
“In the sense that the celebrity bit of my client list needs working on.”
“You are yourself becoming something of a celebrity, are you not? The very fact that Bhavna wanted to interview you attests to that.”
“I am,” said the hairdresser proudly.
“And yet this reputation is built on false pretences …”
Aakash froze as if the walls had ears. “All right,” he said, “keep it down. Don’t tell the world. I do have some celebrity clients, just not lots.”
“How many celebrity clients?”
“Three.”
They both looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Okay,” he admitted. “None. Yet. But did you see the lounge? They’ll be pouring in soon, just you mark my words.”
“I see,” said Santosh, the first words he’d spoken since they’d arrived at the Shiva Spa. He looked at Nisha and saw his own disappointment reflected in her eyes. “I think we’re done here.”
Chapter 20
THE MAN KNOWN only as Munna sat across two seats of the booth in the Emerald Bar, an illegal dance bar. Huge and perspiring heavily, he mopped his wet brow with a handkerchief every now and then, piggy eyes blinking as he spoke into his phone.
Munna liked gold. Under an open-necked shirt he wore gold-rope chains around his neck. His chubby fingers were made even chubbier by an assortment of thick gold rings. On the table in front of him was a pack of Marlboro Lights, a solid gold lighter, and a sleek gold-plated cell phone. He was rumored to carry a gold-plated Desert Eagle in his waistband.
There were other rumors about Munna. That the lake bordering his weekend home on the outskirts of Mumbai was used to breed crocodiles, an efficient and ecologically friendly means of disposing of human bodies.
In booths to the left and the right sat some of Munna’s men who, as well as drinking, smoking, and pawing the girls, provided an intimidating gauntlet to run before an audience with the gangster. But in Munna’s priv
ate booth were his personal bodyguards, standing to his left and right, their Glock 22 pistols in shoulder holsters under tailored cotton jackets.
Next to him a girl sat curled up. Not a day older than sixteen, she wore a tiny skirt and a bra top, had dark rings under heavy-lidded eyes, and track marks on her arms, visible if you looked close enough. With her legs tucked up beneath her she leaned into Munna and endured his wandering hands. Soon she would dance for him, once his business was concluded, and after the dance, perhaps he would bid his close protection to leave them, and they would stand outside the door of the booth and listen to her stifled screams.
Munna controlled most of the city’s drug traffic, bootlegging, prostitution, extortion, and illegal betting. Growing up in the slums of Mumbai, Iqbal Rahim had fought his way to the very top of the crime ladder by bumping off his rivals and accomplices in equal measure. He had somehow managed to retain a baby face, and hence came to be known as “Munna”—or baby boy.
There was absolutely nothing that Munna could not get done in the city and he often used that power to play Robin Hood to full effect. Whether it was the school admission of a child, the medical treatment of a cancer patient, or the out-of-turn allocation of a subsidized house for someone on an endless waiting list, Munna ensured that he was both loved and feared. There was no politician in Mumbai who could hope to win an election without Munna’s invisible support.
Barely two decades earlier, Mumbai had been in the throes of a deadly gang war. The police chief set up an encounter force to deal with the situation. In Mumbai police terminology, an encounter was a euphemism to describe extrajudicial killings in which a police team shot down suspected gangsters in carefully staged gun battles. It was all-out war.
The net result was that the Mumbai police had succeeded in crippling the underworld in Mumbai. Although “encounter specialists” within the police force were criticized by human rights activists, they were praised by ordinary citizens. Rupesh’s boss—the Police Commissioner—had started his own career as an encounter specialist and had worked his way up to his present position.