Bhendi Bazaar (11 page)

'I am sorry to have missed telling you something. When I visited the first crime scene, there was a faint floral scent lingering in the room despite the overpowering smell of cordite, my trusted inspector confirmed it too. Our first impression was that it could be a woman, but we didn't think it was likely. Then we found this lipstick on the second crime scene, which, though, could have nothing to do with our killer whatsoever.'

'Never disregard your first impressions; it's nature's way of telling you something.

That's how all other animals survive. They survive on their instincts, their first impressions. If you get any further pointers like that…' Ash puckered his lips, the eyes looked towards the ceiling as if an idea had just flashed. 'Is it possible for me to join you at the next crime scene?'

'You mean you are sure he's going to strike again?'

'Oh, I have no doubts he will; he will kill again. Very shortly. You should use your resources to establish if he knew the two victims or did he just select them on some random basis? Settling some past score — present wound or primordial? Or is he plain psycho? Is it passion killing or premeditated? Ad-lib place selection or is it preselected? If there is but one killer, there has to be a link, a pattern, some reason. Why these two men in particular, and not their neighbours? Think about it.'

‘We’ve searched and found the victims had nothing to do with each other, no connection whatsoever. They probably never met —’

‘You don’t find the connection, you don’t find a pattern; you don’t find the pattern, you don’t catch this killer. Ever. He isn’t someone you’d just catch in the act.’

'It could be just random...'

'A random killer kills at random but, like chaos theory, you should find a pattern — a similarity in victims, situations, times...something.' Ash sounded confident.

Rita was at a near complete loss. It was unsettling to know they were two murders down and hadn't picked up any trail yet. They were still looking for no one. And everyone. She remembered sitting for hours trying to solve the first puzzle her dad had bought for her when she was five or six. When she was on the verge of tears, her father had told her to leave the pieces that don't fit in for now. “Eventually, they will,” he had said. The pieces in this mystery weren't fitting in either, but she knew that eventually they would. When? The challenge was to fit these pieces together before...before the third…she kiboshed the next deliberation raising its ugly head in her mind. ‘Dinner?’ She looked at the clock. ‘Sure.’

‘You’ve got a car?’

‘I make it a point to drive every time I am in India to hone my Indian driving skills.’

The wide smile on the face of the maitre d' at Bombay Brassiere divulged that he knew Rita, and knew well who she was, despite her mufti. As they waited for dinner, Rita looked nonplussed; the murders were still dominating her mind, her hands inadvertently playing with the knife and fork that lay on the table.

‘You need to detach from the case, Rita.’

‘I know. Could you picture this guy…I mean with all the experience you have, could you mentally draw what he does, what he looks like…anything that can help?’

‘Who knows? The Boston Strangler, DeSalvo, had an abusive, alcoholic father. He didn't get much formal education and had a stint in the army. He reigned because the police had no description. Ted Bundy was actually a well-educated man who ran his own business and even served for Washington State Crime Commission. To keep going, whenever he could be identified, he moved locations, cities, and states. He was caught, and escaped, but he couldn't stop. You know why? It’s a perverse craving that doesn't just go away, it doesn't,

Rita. Once a killer goes down this path, it is inconceivable to get back to normal life. It's a cul-de-sac — the twisted mind, the love of killing, the passion doesn’t allow you to.

Circumstances don't permit either. There was one thing, however, that was common in the two killers I just mentioned.'

'Sexual control?’ Rita chipped in.

'That too, but what I was trying to point towards was their charm.'

'Charm?'

‘Both were extremely charming characters. Your killer seems charming too; if he can make other men accept him into their rooms, then drink whatever he gives them…but I reckon this killer is a loner, lives alone if he took the organ, which should make your task easier. He is, most likely, living with some form of sexual inadequacy, has above average intelligence, which is apparent from the planning and the execution. He is unquestionably a sadist; he causes bodily harm, mutilates, dismembers. What puzzles me is that one of the vital ingredients — sex — is missing. He cannot wipe off signs of sexual activity if there’s been any.’ Ash raised both his brows to indicate the waiter was close enough now, and that they should stop talking.

‘Bon appétit.’

‘One last thing about the case before we move on to talk about something better, these murders don’t look like crimes of passion; they aren’t chance murders, and it surely isn’t a scrambled brain contriving them.’

Rita shook her head in resignation, her eyes still full of questions.

‘Don't let routine throttle your intelligence, don't let logic overpower creativity. Think like you've never thought before to come up with an answer you cannot imagine or cannot believe. Think like him. What would you do, now, if you were him?’

The dinner was over. The business discussion had concluded.

‘Tell me something Ash, how do you remember me from college days?’ ‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘You were easy to remember — you were the only one who left after one year. But for you to remember the whole class…?’

‘Who said I remember the whole class? I remember you. Vividly.’

‘Why me?’

‘You were the only girl in the class who wore a bikini at the pool.’

‘What?’

‘You were hot. I mean you still are…’ Ash corrected himself.

‘If I remember correctly, you were hot back then too…in a different way.’ So, they had liked each other back in college.

‘Why didn’t you tell me then?’ asked Ash.

‘I didn’t want you to try to get me into your bed.’

‘Why are you telling it to me now?’ Ash had an expectant smile on this face. ‘Maybe…just maybe I want you to get into my bed.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous Ash, I am joking.’

‘Are you saying what I think you're saying? I mean are you really turning me down?'

'I am saying just that. Keep your hands off me…’ Rita laughed. It was good to find an old friend she could joke with.

Ash drove her to Bandra. She offered him a coffee, but he declined. He had to be up early next morning for a guest lecture at some medical college.

‘Are you turning me down?’ she bantered.

‘No. I am saving you for a better day. Don’t forget to check if you can take me along to the next crime scene.’

There was something strange in her apartment. Had she forgotten to switch off her bedroom light when she had left this morning? Easy mistake to make, she reckoned, but it was something else. She had experienced this before: the case, the murderer was getting under her skin.

She changed, took a shower. It was only eleven. She had made Jim a promise that she’d see him tonight; she kept it. Pouring a small one in a glass, she put on
Dylan
and sat down on the floor cushions to relax. The mind was edgy, the case was bothering her, but her mind had picked up another fear today: would she never be able to get over Karan? She pulled out the drawer to look at old photographs. Holding on to photographs was only a euphemism for trying to hold on to time, a bygone time. Most events happened only once in an individual's life, and her mind was crying out deafeningly. Karan was gone. Forever.

Replay, even if she could manage it, would never provide the same feeling. There was a reason why Frank Sinatra never sang the same song twice in the exact same way.
“No two recordings were ever the same,”
she remembered her dad telling her once. Move on Rita. How long can you live on hope?

ELEVEN
1985

Reagan and Gorbachev were to meet for the first time a year later, but the meeting wasn't expected to be cataclysmic, and it wouldn’t disappoint the cynics. A round of discussions between the Americans and Soviets didn’t mean
peace would break out or the Cold War would end.
Those who knew Viviane back in Moscow and thought that she had successfully escaped to the UK, along with Margaret and Deborah, would have envied her for living the dream, while she, unfailingly, deplored her mistaken fantasy of escaping to the western world; it had been a wrong turn from the Red to the red-light, she and Margaret often discussed.

Time was a foggy frame of reference — over sixteen years spent frolicking, even behind iron-clad Moscow, seemed to have passed in a flash; a couple of years in Bombay had become so unbearably heavy that they had altered their whole lives, the entire outlook, the attitude. Sadly though, this wasn't the end, Viviane reckoned, there was no way out. Deborah had underestimated the risks and attempted fleeing twice in their first year of arrival, and the sanctions had been severe: solitary confinement, then repeatedly being raped for over 24 hours with no food, no mercy whatsoever, but she, nevertheless, got away eventually — if killing oneself counted as a getaway, that is. The destitute slit her wrists after the second 24- hour punishment she suffered following a second futile attempt. It sent shivers down the spines of the all other girls in the lodging. This was one world that had no doctor, no police, no court, no jury. Just
ex parte
sentencing. There was only one law, one verdict, one executioner. Justice Pathak. This was Pathak's world; the dark underbelly that no one ever dared to scratch. No one even harboured the insidious idea of fleeing, much less giving it cogent thought.

Surprisingly, the initial angst Viviane had burnt with, waned. She realised that there wasn't much point souring oneself over something which she had no control over. All it led to was simmering, making her conscious of her defeat. In any case, the world wasn't waiting for an ex-whore. It wasn't like men queued up to take ex-hookers to church on Sundays or to their mothers to fix an alliance. What if she escaped now? Wasn't it too late? In the last few years, she had been made to fuck almost daily with whoever paid. She had mastered the art of shut- your-mind-and-open-your-legs.

Ironically, pulchritude wasn't a positive for Viviane. Considering her profession and circumstances, her beauty had men swooning, and the more men coveted her, the more she had to work. But she was no longer terrified of anything after her first year. She remembered the tipping point, the ordeal, clearly. She had been specifically asked to wear a short black gingham skirt, thigh-high stockings, white shirt and tie to see a rather burly bully of a client unexpectedly; unexpectedly, cause she had her periods, and clients usually stayed away for those three-four days, but this monster had specifically asked for Viviane despite her condition.

'I'm on the blob,' she told him, kneeling down to suck him off.

'So?' He pulled her up with her hair and threw her on the bed. 'Who do you think you are — Liz-fuckin'-Taylor? Turn around bitch. I know other ways to recover my money. Let me give your back passage some exercise.' He looked down at her. 'Ooh, what a tight balloon knot. You got some gel?'

Pressed under his weight, she could hardly move, but she resisted.

'No? No problem bitch.’ He spat into his hand and with sheer brute force punctured her sphincter. After violently thrusting for a few minutes, he left her balled-up, tears in her eyes. Tears of excruciating pain, tears of shame and degradation.

When she had later recounted the sordid episode to Margaret, her friend had laughed and explained that it happened all the time, and that men paid extra for it.

"It is a slam-dunk to get it up the arse. You'll get used to it. Aren't you lucky you aren't accosting on the streets of Bombay. You should be glad you're safe."

Lucky? Glad? There wasn't even relief. What could possibly be worse?

Viviane never bothered to confide her squalid humiliation or pain to Margaret. The two were, of course, friends, but perhaps only because there wasn’t anyone else. Besides each other, they could never trust anyone else in this duplicitous place. Backstabbing for tiddly favours, like a free cigarette or cheap alcohol, was common amongst girls.

Deviate, sick and weird men wanted more than just sex. An ambitious girl had agreed to go for an all-night-anything-goes party. She had to be physically carried back into the room at noon the next day. Viviane pledged never to agree for such a party. However, now that she was eighteen, it would be permissible for VIPs to buy her services discreetly in the comfort of their bed.

First rule of prostitution: never take a drunken trick's mumblings seriously. Rutting men ejaculated at both ends; some uttered vulgarities and obscenities, others showered the slag with praises, even love. Some even returned to lavish a chosen one with small gifts or pay generous tips without the knowledge of their pimps.

All in the name of lust!

When JD, the impossibly good-looking 28-year-old heir-apparent of one of the most dangerous illegal arms and liquor dealers in Bombay, saw Viviane for the first time the attraction was magnetic. And mutual. If rumours were to be believed, JD's father Bir Desai was ostensibly a benefactor of the Khalistan movement, when, in reality, he was an Amritsar- based notorious arms dealer who smuggled firearms — specifically the famous Kalashnikovs, the AK-47s —and disposed them of to the insurgent Sikhs in the late ’70s. Intrinsically connected to unscrupulous politicians, he was forewarned of Mrs Gandhi's intentions of Operation Bluestar way ahead of time. Having amassed enough wealth, he quickly moved his base to Bombay and laid low for a few months. He could have started a new life like other law-abiding citizens, but Bir Desai naturally gravitated towards the life of crime.

Bir Desai had been canny enough to carry the large consignment of Russian handguns, and ammunition — when he fled Punjab — which he sold cheaply to an equally infamous and dreaded liquor baron called
Dada,
who distilled more illicit alcohol than the whole of Scotland put together. Desai won favours off Dada and became his confidant. It wasn't long before Desai was screwing the heroin-addict kingpin's pretty, young wife Kiran. Together, the two lovers poisoned the old horse. Desai happily obliged by taking over the dying man's gang and the businesses. And his wife.

Bir Desai, thus, became a dreaded denizen of Bombay underworld.

When Kiran died, Desai met Marie — a young Anglo-Indian girl — a couple of years later and after another couple of years of concubinage, Jay Desai was sired.

Jay Desai was happy his parents had named him Jay Desai. He shortened it to JD, which was also the moniker for Jack Daniels, the whiskey he started drinking when he woke up till he passed out since he had been seventeen. On a friend's insistence, he had agreed to visit a massage parlour — a pseudonym for a whorehouse across the country —
Club Cuffe Parade
. However, when JD saw Viviane in the room, he was besotted. It was animal attraction at first sight. For the first time she didn't have to go through the motions, she actually found sex pleasurable.

Pathak was called into the room the next morning and JD demanded Viviane should only entertain him. Pathak didn't dare to negotiate; he knew JD's ancestry. If Pathak was believed to be dangerous, Bir Desai was a known nutcase. Moreover, JD was willing to pay for Viviane's time. And maintenance.

Success is such a relative thing; being a mistress of the son of a feared gangland's boss was respectable amongst hookers. Viviane became the queen-bee, venerated by some, envied by others.

JD funded some changes in Viviane's room; a bottomless minibar, always stocked with JD to keep JD inebriated, was installed. He was quite smitten and spent most of his nights with her. As for the day, he didn't work but he returned home only to refill his wallet from Bir Desai's exchequer. Desai Senior had no issues with his only son spending the money, but he wanted to see the son, in whatever state, every day. With no dearth of enemies, unbeknown to JD, but well known to anyone else who had any inclination to harm him, four plainclothesmen followed him everywhere. Surveillance was round the clock, even when he was with Viviane in the room. Bir Desai knew about Viviane. Heck! He knew more about Viviane, including her past and origins in Moscow, than even Pathak did, but he turned a blind eye. JD was safer locked in a room with a whore than on the streets.

JD showered more money on Viviane, buying her dresses, flowers, ordering food from the best restaurants while he was there. On her birthday, he told Pathak he was taking her out for the weekend. Money paid, JD took Viviane to The Taj Mahal Hotel — the one the three girls had eyed in awe when they had waited for Mr Patel three years ago.

However sleazy her relationship with JD was, Viviane convinced herself this was
the
dream even if only for just this weekend. She contemplated asking JD to help her get away from the filthy whorehouse, but didn't.

He might see that as her way of breaking loose from him. There would be more occasions, she was sure.

JD took her out shopping to Colaba, and they wined and dined in a Thai restaurant on Friday night. They woke up in each other’s arms on Saturday morning and ordered their breakfast in bed.

'You want to go anywhere in particular?'

'Bandra.' Viviane had known about Bandra even before she arrived in Bombay. The place had the distinction of housing the most number of Roman Catholic churches in any city.

Mount Mary Church, built by the Portuguese, faced the Arabian Sea, and was the most visited church in the area. It had been long — over three years — since Viviane had been to a church, any church. Though she didn't know what she would ask for. Forgiveness? Or should she
thank Him
? She was delighted that JD, despite being a non-Christian, came into the church with her, although she found it a bit bizarre that he kept looking over his shoulder, like he was expecting someone.

It was twilight when they came out of the church holding hands, unaware they were being watched. Watched by four pairs of tireless eyes in two white Tata Indica cars, parked at a distance. By the next morning, Bir Desai would know his son was now a devotee.

They, next, drove to where all lovers went to in Bombay: Band Stand — the rampart of the original fort built by the Portuguese in the seventeenth century, as it provided far- reaching views of the sea. Couples still came for the same reason: for the best sea views in Bombay. They sat in the car, overlooking the sea. Viviane was extremely happy to gaze at the sky and the stars.
How she wondered where they were
...and how had she lost her way with them in her eyes? Unaware of JD's lineage — and the perils that accompanied it — she wanted to step out of the car, hold his hand and take a walk, but he declined.

'It’s not safe,' he told her. 'Why? There's no one else here.'

'You think so?'

He looked in the rear-view mirror. He thought he had seen a car stopping at a distance. No, he hadn't heard the engine die, but he had seen the parking lights being switched off a few minutes ago. As his eyes got used to the darkness, he could see the metal outline of, in fact, two cars.

'There are two cars behind us, sweetie. And they've been there for quite some time now.'

'You think Pathak bhai’s getting us followed?'

'He wouldn't dare.'

'Wouldn't
dare
? Why not?'

'My dad would kill him if he did anything stupid like that,' JD responded in a matter- of-fact tone.

'What?' Viviane quizzically looked at JD.

'I said if Pathak even as much as thought of causing any harm to me, that would be his last thought. My dad would kill him and his rats.'

'You mean...really
kill
them?'

JD mimicked a gunshot with his hand. 'Yes.' He blew smoke out of the barrel of his imaginary gun.

'What does your dad do?'

'I'll tell you later.' He sensed some movement in his rear-view mirror, immediately turned on the ignition and put the car in gear.

It was a great weekend. Not once had JD made her feel like a whore. But, it was only a weekend.

Second rule of prostitution: fuck, fuck, fuck, but never get pregnant.

Viviane got pregnant. She was delighted when she found out in December, though all the others forewarned her that it would be the end of JD's fancy. Pathak reprimanded her on the carelessness; he couldn't believe she could be so dumb. He was conscious this would mean the end of a regular flow of cash from the Desai coffers and forbade Viviane — or anyone else — from breaking the unfortunate news to JD. He knew many quacks in Bombay who aborted illegally, that wasn't an issue. The problem was coming up with an excuse to refuse JD from seeing the tart for a couple of days. He couldn't share his wicked plan with Viviane. The only option left was to get someone to Cuffe Parade and let the amateur do the misdeed.

But if something went wrong, and Viviane died? He couldn't risk the wrath of the Desais.

Viviane disobeyed Pathak’s edict and told JD about the pregnancy before the week was over.

'When did it happen?'

'I hadn't anticipated how many times we'd make out when you took me out for the weekend, I ran out of pills…But, please don't tell Pathak bhai, he warned everyone not to tell you...please...' She almost pleaded.

'Why not? It's my baby.'

'He'll —'

'He wouldn't dare say anything.'

'Because your dad will kill him?'

'Yes. I was serious.'

'You didn't tell me what your dad does.'

'He's a gangster, not an ordinary gangster who works for someone else…'

'Is he like…
Godfather?'
A ray of hope appeared in Viviane’s eyes. If JD’s dad was more powerful than Pathak…

'Yes. Only twice as ruthless, and I am his only child.'

'And you, are you a gangster too?'

'Not yet. Does it matter?'

She flushed. Fear in her eyes, lips pressed tight, she gently shook her head. She really wasn't in a position to mind anyone's profession.