A Cut-Like Wound (5 page)

Muni Reddy had taken to dropping in on him and some days he brought along a tiffin carrier of home-cooked food. ‘You must miss home cooking; eating out every day must have turned your taste buds deader than a dead rat’s tail,’ he offered in explanation the first time, when Santosh had protested.

Soon the mealtimes had turned into sermons on the Diktats of Life according to Muni Reddy, which Santosh had no option but to endure. Muni Reddy’s wife was a splendid cook and if the food came at a price – Muni Reddy’s life lessons – he would stomach that as well.

Muni Reddy put the spoon back into the dish and said, ‘We protect people when they come to us; we don’t go out looking for trouble to save them from.’

‘You mean to say that we will watch someone commit a crime and get away with it simply because no one filed a complaint. How can you be like that, Muni Reddy?’

The head constable shook his head ruefully. ‘That’s exactly what Borei Gowda would say. And he wouldn’t listen to me, either. Look what happened to him!’

Santosh pondered if he should question Muni Reddy on Borei Gowda, whoever he was. But would it be construed as gossiping about a senior officer with a junior? Santosh
stuffed a piece of puri into his mouth before the curious streak in him overwhelmed prudence.

But Muni Reddy was not a man to be silenced. ‘The thing is, I have never seen an officer like Borei Gowda. He was fearless and intelligent. Do you know what it means for a policeman to have both those qualities? It is a terrible combination, if you ask me. It means he becomes unstoppable. It means he goes looking for trouble. That’s why I want you to listen to me carefully. I’ve been wearing this uniform for twenty-five years now. I can see when an officer will go places and when he will be shuttled from one station to another like a lost soul seeking salvation.’

For the next few weeks, Santosh tried to trace Borei Gowda’s service record. At the Meenakshipalaya police station, it seemed there had been a golden era for a period of seventeen months. The crime rate had fallen drastically. Known defaulters were kept under surveillance. A murder case had been solved. And then suddenly Borei Gowda had been sent to the traffic desk. From star officer he had been condemned to a posting where he was little more than a clerk.

‘What happened, Muni Reddy?’ Santosh demanded.

The older man looked away. ‘Why are you digging up the past? What is going to change?’

Santosh drew himself to his full height, schooled his features to forbidding grimness and snapped, ‘As your superior officer, I command you to tell me exactly what happened, without leaving out any detail.’

Muni Reddy sighed. ‘It was a little past nine in the morning when Ramesh Rao, who worked at the State Bank of Mysore, came to the station. His eyes darted all over the station. I could see it was the first time he had entered a police station and he
seemed guilty. Why do people look guilty when they enter a police station even if they have done nothing wrong?’

Santosh sniffed impatiently. ‘Don’t digress … tell me what happened.’

‘Apparently, the night before, the bank clerk had heard some noises in his neighbour’s home. He had thought they were quarrelling. They did that a lot. But in the morning when their maid came to his house and told Mrs Bank Clerk that no one was opening the door, the two of them went across. The neighbour’s scooter was parked outside. All the windows were shut. But through a slit in the curtain, Ramesh Rao could see the furniture had been turned over.

‘Gowda drove the jeep himself to the house and in less than half an hour had the door broken down. It was as Ramesh Rao had said. The house was a mess. Furniture lay scattered, and pans were strewn around. In a bedroom on the ground floor, Shankar, the husband, lay unconscious. He had been bludgeoned on his head and there was a small pool of blood. Upstairs, Suma, the wife, was found dead. Her nightie lay in shreds around her and her throat had been slit.

‘By the time Shankar was discharged from the hospital and Suma’s post-mortem report arrived, Gowda had solved the crime. He merely needed the medical reports to validate his findings. Shankar had murdered his wife and made it seem like an intruder had attacked and incapacitated him, and then raped and killed his wife.

‘In the case diary, Gowda’s preliminary findings were categorically recorded: A ladder was found propped against the balcony that opened from the bedroom upstairs. As it had rained the previous night, footprints were clearly visible. However, there were no footprints leading to the ladder. Instead, the footprints led to the back door. The gash on
Shankar’s forehead seemed to be self-inflicted rather than caused by an intruder’s weapon. No weapon or heavy object that could cause such an injury was found anywhere in the premises or surrounding area. Neither jewellery nor money was stolen from the house.’

‘But how did he know the husband did it?’ Santosh was incredulous.

Muni Reddy smiled. ‘Gowda found a small trace of blood on the door jamb of the puja room. It matched Shankar’s blood type. He saw that a pair of rubber slippers had been left under the tap near the back door. Shankar’s slippers. The post-mortem report showed evidence of sexual activity. Shankar had had sex with his wife that night. They found a trace of semen in the lungi he was wearing and a couple of his pubic hair in one of the shreds of the nightie the wife had worn. Gowda had sent that to the forensic lab.

‘The post-mortem report also revealed that Suma had had sleeping pills that night. Shankar had slit her throat when she was asleep, torn her blouse and petticoat to suggest force had been used but there were no bruises of any sort that should have been there.

‘Then he threw the furniture around and hit his head on the door jamb to make it seem like he had been attacked. The doctor’s report showed that it wasn’t a major injury. Shankar had taken three sleeping pills himself so he would be found unconscious. And groggy when consciousness returned, just as someone with a head injury would be. He had thought of everything.

‘It was an open-and-shut case. Shankar confessed and the case went to trial.

‘And Gowda felt he was infallible. He was Huli Gowda. Tiger Gowda. That was his mistake.

‘He heard of a group of underage girls being held in a little house in Shanthi Colony. I was part of the raid and we booked two men under 366/366A/376/349 IPC and Section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 Immoral Traffic Prevention Act. One of them was a minister’s cousin and the other, the underworld don Kolar Naga’s brother-in-law.

‘Gowda could do nothing but watch helplessly as the case became a no-case. In his haste he had forgotten to get a warrant issued. Suddenly he became the one who had broken the law by trespassing. The underage girls disappeared from the shelter they had been taken to. There were no records to mark their admittance there. The register had been tampered with as well. Gowda was shunted off to traffic and that was the beginning of the end. He got into trouble there as well and eventually, five years later, he was moved to Bowring Hospital station. The huli was reduced to an ili. A hospital rat at that.

‘He has had twelve transfers so far and has been bypassed for promotion. Which is why he is still only inspector. And there is a joke about him. They call him B report Gowda. Gowda, whose cases come to nothing.’

Muni Reddy shrugged. Santosh looked at his desk, unable to meet the older man’s eye. He was being cautioned, he realized.

What was this path he had chosen for himself? Would he too become another B report Gowda? The tiger who became a rat. But Santosh had made up his mind. His brother, who was an author of some repute and the editor of a Kannada weekly, knew whom to call. There was always a cousin or an uncle or the friend of a friend who could be prevailed upon to pull strings.

When Santosh’s transfer orders to Gowda’s station
arrived, Muni Reddy said thoughtfully, ‘He is not an easy man to work with. But thank God, you have one thing going for you. You belong to the Gowda caste too, don’t you? He will watch out for you, I am sure.’

Gowda smoked a cigarette and watched while Santosh threw up his breakfast. The young man was retching as if to evacuate every trace of what he’d had to look at. When he straightened, wan and glassy-eyed, Gajendra offered him a bottle of water.

Santosh thrust it away furiously. ‘He knew, didn’t he?’ he snarled.

Gowda frowned. ‘You smell of vomit. Clean yourself up before you get into the jeep with me.’

Santosh grabbed the bottle and splashed water over his face and into his mouth. Somewhere in his chest a sob of outrage gathered. Who the fuck did Gowda think he was? That
boli maga
!

‘I thought you said you had been in service for three months. How do you expect me to know that you hadn’t seen a corpse yet?’ Gowda offered.

Santosh stared at him. It was the closest to an apology he would ever get, he realized.

‘He has seen corpses, sir, but nothing like this,’ Gajendra said carefully. The young fool would worsen the situation by saying something silly. Especially now that Gowda seemed to be exhibiting a slight trace of remorse. Gowda didn’t like to feel remorseful, Gajendra knew.

‘Third-degree burns can be hard on the eye,’ Gowda said, confirming Gajendra’s reading.

Santosh raised his head, unable to believe what he had heard. Could anyone be so callous? So unmoved by the
nature of the horrific death? That was a man once. Hard on the eye! ‘Think of what he must have suffered,’ he whispered, feeling a chill down his spine.

‘Third-degree burns are not painful, you didn’t know, did you? What did they teach you at Mysore? All the nerves would have been damaged so they wouldn’t have been able to relay any pain signals to the brain.’ Gowda lit up yet another cigarette. ‘In fact, he would have lost all sensation in the first thirty seconds or so…’

Santosh felt bile rise up his throat. ‘Stop,’ he screamed. When the jeep ground to a halt, he tumbled out, retching. This time, when Gajendra offered him a bottle, he didn’t say anything.

‘The next time, you won’t be so affected,’ Gowda said when Santosh was back in the Bolero.

‘After a few times, you won’t even blink an eyelid. It’s all part of the learning curve of being an investigating officer.’

PC David shot Santosh a look of pity, but didn’t speak. He was only a driver but he was attuned to the tenets of police dharma: don’t get involved in what doesn’t concern you. He started the vehicle and glanced at Gowda’s face. But Gowda was deep in thought.

The throbbing in his temples increased as the day sped by. All he wanted to do was get into bed and pull the covers over his head. He knew that he should stay on in the station house and tackle the mountain of paperwork that had grown on his table in his absence. But at a little past six, he had PC David drop him home.

He pulled the curtains across the windows so it was dark and quiet. And then, like a wounded animal retreating
into its burrow to lick its wounds, he crawled into bed and passed out.

When Gowda woke up, it was almost eight. The headache was gone and had been replaced by a dreadful lassitude. He lay on his bed in the dark room and felt the emptiness of the house and his life gnaw at him. Until, unable to bear the nipping teeth of his own thoughts, he stumbled out of bed into the bathroom.

He turned the shower on, hoping that, in his absence, the God of Blocked Showers may have decided to step in with a miracle. The shower hissed to life, spluttered and stopped. Gowda sighed. Obviously the God of Blocked Showers had bypassed him again. He would have to call a plumber one day very soon.

Gowda filled a bucket with water and splashed sleep and inertia out of himself.

He padded naked into his bedroom and looked at himself in the full-length mirror. He ran his fingers through his greying chest hair and tugged at them absently. He didn’t much like how he looked. The sag in the belly. The hint of grey in his pubic hair. The flaccid penis that seemed content to stay flaccid most of the time, to Mamtha’s immense relief, he thought. Even the texture of his skin seemed to have changed.

In the movies, policemen his age looked distinguished if they were good cops. Or, were fat and feckless if they were the bad ones. His eyes narrowed as he appraised himself in the mirror. The truth was he looked neither. He just looked fucked.

Then he turned and felt the first sight of pleasure at his own body. On his right bicep was his first act of impulse in many years. A three-inch-high, five-inch-wide tattoo. A wheel with wings.

Gowda had never thought that he would get a tattoo done but, some months ago at the Bullet mechanic’s shop, he had seen a young man with a giant tattoo of a bike on his back. The string vest he wore covered most of it, but it was visible enough to trigger Gowda’s interest. Kumar, the mechanic, had seen Gowda’s eyes return to the body art again and again. ‘Sir, there is a tattoo place here in Kammanahalli. Just two streets away. He is the best in Bangalore, I am told. You should get one too … a small one!’

On a whim, Gowda had walked to the tattoo studio. The tattoo artist had seen the hesitation in Gowda’s gaze and gait; this would be a convert worth having, he decided. Besides, it was a quiet afternoon and he had all the time to pander to this man who was clearly a policeman. He had never had a policeman’s skin to work on before. He opened his album and showed Gowda the various designs he could create. Only one of them excited Gowda. He looked at it for a long time.

‘Great choice, sir,’ the tattoo artist said. ‘It is actually a compound symbol that indicates the kind of speed one needs to be airborne …’