Bhendi Bazaar (4 page)

Annie also wrote down some names and telephone numbers — of Lele's friends and business associates — including his ex-wife's, on a sheet of paper, put it in a manila envelope and handed it over.

'Thanks. You've really been a great help. If you remember anything else that you think might help us find Mr Lele’s killer, please contact me immediately.' Vikram gave her his card, shook her hand and briskly left the office.

He could, as he waited for the elevator outside the glass door, see Rose run into Annie's room.

Once in the elevator, he gave a once-over to the little slip of paper with the telephone number Annie had given him: a pointer or extraneous information?

THREE
2007

Mumbai Police HQ was not
in
Crawford Market; it was in the building opposite it. But Crawford Market, a legacy of the British, was such an architectural marvel that the area around it had gladly taken the name like an orphan eager to adopt rich, good-looking parents. No one remembered how and when it also became a metonym for the Police HQ, but every cabbie, every convict, every politician, every police station in the city, and the media referred to it as Crawford Market. Perhaps, it sounded better too: Crawford Market, Scotland Yard.

Besides the top brass of police, the Crime Branch was stationed here and, as such, there was a constant turf war between the crime squad and the 90 independent constabularies across the city.

DCP Rita Ferreira had moved here on a promotion only a few months back. Early March. She had been in Pune, in the uniformed division, prior to this promotion, having joined the Indian Police Service a little more than eight years back. She had been excited about the move, as she wanted to be in the crime squad more than she cared about the promotion.

Rita was a Goan of Portuguese descent. Catholic by birth, agnostic by experience: God to her was like Hobbes to Calvin; it was good to have an imaginary friend, but one couldn’t depend on him. A bright girl, she went to St Stephen's College in Delhi where the police service bug bit her like it bit many others at Stephen's. Her parents had tried to influence her to take some other administrative service: ‘
Police is for men
.’ But she convinced them that she would be fine, she’d fit in. Eight-and-a-half years later, here she was, reporting to the Joint Commissioner of Police — Crime Branch, Mr Vinay Joshi, who was one down from the head: the Commissioner of Mumbai Police, Mr Sanjay Saxena. ‘
Sexy’
was what everyone referred to Sanjay Saxena as.
Sexy
.

Unfortunately, both her parents had passed away in quick succession five years ago.

Battling dehydration from Jim Beam the night before and all the fluid she had lost perspiring in the Mumbai heat, Rita, sipping chilled water from a refilled plastic bottle, walked into the newly appointed Operations Room for investigation of the murder of Adit Lele. Being the chief of the investigation — Joshi had three DCPs, other important matters to attend to, and couldn't solely focus on a case — Rita did not have to visit the Ops Room. Anything she required could be called for from her room, but this being her first homicide investigation in Mumbai, she wanted to immerse herself in the case, be close to it. She was, after all,
doing a man's job.
'Everything under control?' she asked looking at Jatin, who sat there with sheets of papers.

'So far so good, ma'am. I've spoken to the Forensic Unit, told them we need the reports ASAP. Requested them to complete their investigation on the mobile phone and send the instrument to us by the evening. Asked AirMobile to send us the call-logs from Lele's mobile, ditto from MTNL for his landline phones: sent them a requisition to give us a record of all telephone calls made to and from Lele's residence, and office, in the last thirty days. The clerk, there, has promised to get it ready by 4 p.m. today. Our constable will collect it in person.'

She smiled. Jatin never failed to impress her. Was he this thorough in his life outside the job? Or did he let his guard down once he left this place?

'So, the machinery is in motion...'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Good. I don't think we need any more people for now. Vikram, you and I should be able to handle the case with the support staff. What do you think?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Anything else?'

'The Inspector from Versova constabulary had called to say all refuse bins of the apartment complex had been turned out by his men but they found no gun or knife. The team has questioned every shop and restaurant owner around the area, and the entire Yari Road in Versova. Most of the shops close around ten, while the restaurants are open till midnight and as such there is too much of a crowd to notice anything abnormal. Plus, it's too far from the complex; Mangal Nagar is not even visible to them.'

The manner in which Jatin had paused signified he had some more info.

'However, the watchman at the building gate remembers seeing Lele's blue Ford Ikon drive into the apartment block a little after 9:30 p.m. last night. The windows of his car had a dark film so he didn't see if Lele was alone or with someone.'

'Our initial estimate of the time of Lele's death is between 10 p.m. and midnight, so if he returned home only after nine-thirty, either his guest waited for him or arrived soon after. Let's wait for Vikram to come back and report what he finds from Lele's office. In the meantime, ask the local police around his residence and office to call their rats to check if Lele was in any financial mess, any unusual money transactions, any rumours. And don't forget to look into if he used drugs, and had any outstanding payments or rivalries because of them. In any event, if he did drugs, even occasionally, find out where he got his supplies.

Track down the peddler and bring him in for questioning.'

'Okay, ma'am.'

'Lunch? What are you doing for lunch?'

'The tiffin-wallah should be here in some time.' Jatin looked at his watch.

Tiffin-wallahs, the uninterrupted lunch delivery service in Mumbai since 1880.

Almost two hundred thousand lunch boxes were collected from people's residences, or caterers, and delivered to their offices at lunch hour. Which club did Jatin Singh belong to? Did his wife pack his lunch or his mother? Or did he depend on food from some caterer?

'You're most welcome to join, there's always enough food for more than one person,' Jatin offered sincerely.

'Thanks, but I'll order something in my room.'

Vikram updated Rita on the conversation at Lele's office from his car and carried on to Mahim to see the deceased's ex-wife. He tried the Dubai number a few times, but the phone was not reachable. Possibly the person was on a flight back to Dubai? Now, manoeuvring his non-air-conditioned jeep in the Mumbai traffic where vehicles crawled bumper-to-bumper at 5 kmph, he arrived at Crawford Market after 3 p.m. The back of his shirt was so drenched it looked like he had a shower wearing it. He spent ten minutes standing with his back directly facing the air-conditioning unit. Relieved, the antennae moving again, the labouring ant marched to Ops Room. Rita and Jatin, having had their lunch, were already present. Vikram ran through his detailed notes to apprise the other two of the day’s findings. 'The call, which Lele's personal assistant so enthusiastically described, came from a Dubai mobile number which I've tried many times, but there is no response.'

'It could well be a business associate travelling to India. If the caller wanted to be discreet, he or she would have certainly blocked the Caller ID. Anyway, Jatin has asked for detail call logs. Let's see if there are more calls from the same number or any other numbers lately. We'll ask someone to call all numbers listed in his contact list on the mobile phone at any rate. Have we got Lele's phone instrument yet?' Rita peeked at the clock on the wall. 4 p.m.

'Not yet, but it should be here anytime now.'

'What about his ex-wife?'

'I saw her — Priti — on the way here. The divorce, it seems, happened under some really hostile circumstances. Initially, she wasn't even willing to speak about Lele, and I had to coerce her. She was indifferent to his death — no waterworks, thankfully. She doesn't believe he would have left anything to her in his will, and claims she doesn't want anything either. She got all that was rightfully hers at the time of divorce, though with his death the alimony would stop. But, she runs a small clothing boutique and looks financially comfortable. They never met since, not even once. Despite all that, she admitted Adit Lele wasn't a ruffian and he didn't deserve what he got in the end.' Vikram closed his notebook shut.

'Any other relatives?’

'No parents. Just one brother who moved to Australia in the early-Nineties. I urged Priti to visit the morgue at Lilavati Hospital to formally identify the corpse. Arranged for a car from the local police station to take her there.'

'That’s brilliant work, Vikram. Any friends?'

'Yes. Got a list of some close friends and business associates.'

'Any registered will?'

'Yes, the personal assistant thinks...knows he had one, but wasn't aware where it was.'

'If we do not hear from anyone by tomorrow afternoon, we should get a search warrant for his office.' Rita looked at Jatin, who took note.

'I've got some report too,' Jatin said, securing the top of his pen. 'Adit Lele had only one vice — womanising. No drugs, if you do not count alcohol as a drug, which, too, he took in moderation most of the time. No criminal record, did not own a gun, at least not legally.

Did not owe anyone money, did not loan any money. No known enemies in personal life, no business rivals. Basically, a nondescript guy who minded his own business, so to speak.'

'But still, he managed to offend someone enough to kill him.'

'That's true.'

'I have a nagging feeling it's got to be an ex-boyfriend of some girl he'd been nasty with,' Vikram had decided.

'So we've got nothing thus far,’ Rita voiced. 'The only solace is that the media has been kind to us by relegating the news to a small column on local pages in the afternoon editions. I have my one-on-one meeting with Mr Joshi first thing tomorrow morning and I'll mention the case to him, lest he hasn't seen his e-mails. I've created a folder on the shared drive. Please key in all the notes of this enquiry today. I am expecting reports from the autopsy and forensic units tomorrow.'

8:00 p.m. The MTNL provided the list of all incoming and outgoing calls made from Lele's home and office numbers. Barring the last call from the Dubai number at his office, which his secretary had already told Vikram about, there was a call from the same number, at Lele's residence, at 9:53 p.m. the same evening, which had lasted less than three minutes. There was a time when MTNL — and every telephone exchange in the country — charged subscribers a fixed sum for three minutes, and in blocks of single minutes thereafter; the technology of voice transmission might have moved into twenty-first century, but the exchanges still calculated call times in same chunks. A two-minute-fifty-five second call could well be an eleventh-hour business message; a twenty-second call could be for a final seduction. But both would be registered as three-minute-calls.

Rita looked at Vikram, who tried the Dubai number yet again and put it on speaker:
‘The number you are trying to contact is currently out of reach. Please try after some time.’
The same message, apparently, was repeated in Arabic before the call got disconnected. No option given to leave a voice mail.

Lele's mobile phone, a Nokia Communicator, was sent back after the Forensics had sucked the last drop of data from the instrument. The call log showed there was a missed call from the same Dubai number at 9:51 p.m. So the caller tried the mobile before calling up Lele's residence line. There was no outbound call from Lele's mobile phone to the Dubai number. The other calls — inbound, outbound and missed — were to acquaintances, which Vikram already had on file. The mobile call summary received from AirMobile, obviously, corresponded to the log on the phone. Lele had deleted no calls. Moreover, Lele didn't call or receive many calls from numbers which weren't on his contact list.

'We need to find this Dubai caller. He or she was the last person who, on record, appears to have had any contact with Lele, except for the murderer.' Rita's words sounded like someone, invisible in the room, had pressed the mute button off. The three had been engrossed in the telephone companies' records for a while pondering how to advance the investigation.

'I'll keep trying the Dubai number. Maybe he or she is travelling and the phone's switched off.'

Perchance.

The reconstruction of the prior evening was now evident: Adit Lele left his office, in Dadar, sometime after 8 p.m. the previous night. He drove to his residence, which in Mumbai's hostile traffic at that time of the day would have taken him over an hour to get to. The watchman at the building gate remembered seeing Lele’s car drive into the apartment complex after 9:30. He received a call at his landline from a Dubai number, which he answered, at 9:53 p.m. He died between then and midnight. His maidservant had told the local police that she had come in the afternoon as every day, cooked his dinner and left. She had also enlightened them that it wasn't the first time he had not eaten the food she had prepared for him. Some evenings he ate out, and other times he just drank himself to sleep. Which implied either Lele had broken his journey at some place to pick up some food, or snacked on roadside
bhajia
on his way home or he died before dinner. How significant was that? The food, surely, wasn’t crucial. The content of his stomach would be reported in the autopsy report. But supposing he had stopped to pick up a hooker? What about the call he answered at 9:53? Well, he would still take a call at home in her presence.

Time is the greatest mathematician, they say. Only time would tell if Vikram's phone, that began ringing this minute, was a divine or diabolic intervention. Vikram looked at the screen. 'It's from Dadar police station,' he said and moved out of the room, while the other two paused the already recessed conversation.

'That was a Station House Officer from Dadar Police Station. One of his constables who had gone to see a close friend of Lele has given some useful info. Adit Lele laundered money. He was a
hawala
broker.’ Vikram returned to update.

Hawala
infested Mumbai like pigeon shit. Pathetic, undesired, but ubiquitous. And after 9/11, with governments around the world tightening the clutches around money laundering, and many brokers having been caught, it had become an even more lucrative business for those who were willing to take the risk. Simple demand and supply.

‘There were couriers at Lele's place, at least, three, four times a week. Large amounts. The friend knew about couriers from his office. Didn't know if Lele accepted couriers at his residence, but he said he wouldn't be surprised if that was the case,’ Vikram carried on.