Murder in Mumbai (2 page)

Chapter 1

The streets were coming alive with school- and office-goers. Stalls selling sandwiches, tea, and newspapers were already busy, catering to those on their way to work and those returning home after a long night on the job. Inspector Vijay Gaikwad, riding his Enfield Bullet motorcycle to work, watched the city that never slept awake. Gaikwad had been born and raised here, a Son of the Soil as it were, and he knew where to look to catch it stealing a nap. As a young man, he loved to watch Mumbai slowly rise, languidly stretch, and then return to a state of familiar frenzy. But those moments were rare now. The city hummed and he seemed to perpetually flit between home, the station, and crime scenes. Gaikwad barely had time for himself.

He was late for work this morning because he had to drop his always-tardy son at school. And he wasn't looking forward to the ride to work. The rains had been brutal. In places he could see the rainbow sheen caused by petrol from a leaking vehicle glistening in the morning light. He knew it would be a hot day, hot and sticky the way it invariably was after a downpour.

* * *

Gaikwad was dressed in his neatly pressed khaki uniform, riding past the past: roadside tea stalls, barbershops, and the seemingly infinite line of establishments that sold marble. At a distance, he could see the future: the city of new skyscrapers rising up in the haze. He was heading toward the new bridge that leaps from Bandra to Worli, across the Arabian Sea. Even if the rest of the city was crumbling, the bridge, especially when lit at night, let Mumbaikars believe, even if for an instant, that their India was indeed shining.

The traffic was particularly bad this morning on the Western Express Highway, just as it was particularly bad every morning, in every place. But the uniform did have its benefits. There were few things more intimidating in the city than the sight of a cop riding his Enfield bike down the highway. People—forget the people: even the city's holy cows and stray dogs moved aside to let him pass.

Gaikwad could see the Bandra-Worli Sea Link looming in front of him. It was beautiful even in the hazy daylight. But though the bridge was supposed to reduce the time it takes to go from Bandra to Worli, it created a bottleneck on the other side, obviating the need for it: another giant desi cock-up.
It took us ten years to build the 3.5-mile bridge span
, Gaikwad thought, quickly doing the math to arrive at a paltry third of a mile each year. The cost: $342 million, not counting the bribes and threats, veiled and explicit, that went into securing permits, paying off the cement mafia, protection money, and, of course, enriching the nation's great leaders. As his boss, Khan, often said,
there are many bad things we can say about our motherland, but there's no denying we have the best government money can buy.

Gaikwad decided to skip the bridge and take the old way: Mahim Causeway. He was fond of the area because it was one of those parts of the city that would never change. It looked the same as it did twenty years ago and Gaikwad knew it would probably look the same in another twenty years while a shoddy Shanghai, or whatever Chinese city Mumbai was trying to emulate unsuccessfully, sprouted all around it.

As he crossed the bridge into Mahim, taking in the smell of rotten eggs from the creek, his phone rang.

“Gaikwad here.”

“Sir,” said the voice on the other end. “There's been a murder.”

“Where?”

“Near Mahim Causeway.”

He was mere minutes away.

“Who is it?”

“Unidentified, sir. But she is a
phoren
lady. DCP sahib is also coming.”

“OK,” Gaikwad said. “I'm on my way.”

* * *

A murder was never good news, but the murder of a foreigner—especially a foreign woman—was particularly bad news. Foreign victims led to negative publicity. It was the only time when the press and the politicians took notice. No one cared the rest of the year when the poor were targets. Those victims would—if they were lucky—merit a one-paragraph story in the Crime Report column of the paper. But god forbid if someone rich or, worse, a foreigner, were the victim of a crime, especially a violent one like murder; it was hell for the investigating team.

There was the recent case of a murdered English teenager in Goa and a spate of rapes in the north. Both had received negative press coverage at home and overseas. Mumbai had been lucky in that it had avoided such tragedy—until now. Gaikwad knew that incriminating questions would be asked about the police and stories would follow about the safety of women in general and specifically Western women. And then, he knew, there would be recriminations.

As Gaikwad arrived at the scene and dismounted, he saw reporters were already there, ferreting around for any bit of information
. Bloody vultures
, he thought. His boss, Deputy Commissioner of Police Adnan Khan, walked toward him.

“Who's the victim?” Khan asked, not bothering with pleasantries.

“A foreigner, sir.”

“I can see that. Do we have any ID?”

“No sir. Not yet.”

“Who found her?”

“Kids from the
jhopadpatti
. I'll speak to them.”

“All right, ask everyone if they saw anything.”

“My men are on it, sir.”

“I want results on this one. Fast. What are you working on now?”

“Those burglaries, sir.”

“Make this your priority. I want a fast result.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gaikwad walked around the garbage dump and looked at where the body had been discovered. A large red suitcase lay in the pile, where the body had been concealed. He could still taste the breakfast in his mouth, and the smell of the rotting garbage made him want to gag. He turned away and took a deep breath. “Find out,” he said to the nearest constable, “where this bag came from. Make sure it's collected with any other evidence.”

Questions ricocheted through Gaikwad's mind: Who was this woman? What was she doing here? Was she reported missing? Who did this to her?

“Inspector,” said a familiar voice, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Are you on the case?”

* * *

Earlier that morning, Jay Ganesh sat unwashed, unshaved, and unkempt in his trademark black T-shirt and black jeans in his office at the
Mumbai Tribune
. The clothes hung from his frame, lean from years of running, a habit he regrettably no longer pursued because of his knees. He sat in his office, staring at the Crime Report column on his monitor and lamenting the decline in quality of crime in the city. Jay had seen better days. Once a star reporter at the rival
Chronicle
, Jay's professional decline had been almost as rapid as his rise. He'd had exclusive after exclusive, detailing the links between crime bosses and midlevel politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, and actors. The stories had won him a few friends, many enemies, and several awards and admirers. But the fall was precipitous. Almost everyone in the city took for granted the unholy nexus between politics, business, and crime. Jay should have known better. But in his professional zeal, he began to believe that he could make a difference. Despite warnings, subtle and otherwise, he had pursued a story about a senior state minister's involvement in an illicit land deal. He thought he had documents. He thought he'd crossed the
t'
s and dotted the
i'
s. He thought that his editors would be excited. He was wrong. They told him the story couldn't run. Jay begged and pleaded. He threatened to quit. He threatened to take his story elsewhere. And then one morning as he walked into the
Chronicle
's building, he found that his security key didn't work. He went to the front desk, but they said they had instructions not to let him in.
These were things that happened in the movies,
Jay thought, or
to other people.
He created a scene, but the only effect it had was having him escorted from the premises. He tried contacting his bosses and friends from the paper, but no one returned his calls. He was a pariah. Once, he saw a group of coworkers leaving a restaurant and when he made eye contact and smiled, they hurried away.

Jay drank for a week, brooded for another. He then began to look for another job. But it was as if there was a conspiracy. No one would touch him. And that's when he got a call from Manisha Thakkar.

He and Manisha had started their careers together, and she had risen to become the editor of the
Tribune
. Like everyone in the small, incestuous world of newspapers, she knew what had happened to her old friend. She offered him a job, which he gratefully accepted. But, she told him, he would have to stay away from the high-profile crimes for now—until the attention abated. He was not happy. But at least he had a job and still covered crime—even if it was mundane crime like burglaries.

For the past year, Jay had been editing the Crime Watch column. He was itching for something big, something that would revitalize his career. But that couldn't be done while editing the blotter. The crimes were usually petty (“Nine Break-Ins at Lower Parel”) and the bluster of the headline (“Psycho Techie, On Interpol Wanted List, Gunned Down”) seldom matched the substance of the crime.

Jay's office was a mangled maze of functioning chaos, much like the city he loved. His desk was cluttered with scraps of paper with phone numbers that no longer existed; bits of notes from long-ago crimes; old newspapers that had been read, but not disposed; a wilting plant thirsting for water; half-empty (or half-full) tea cups; and his laptop. There were no mementos or personal items, except for a postcard with a picture of Tintin. At the corner lay a sagging bookshelf whose contents suggested the reading habits of a bright graduate student. Perched on the windowsill lay possibly the city's last transistor radio, which was coerced into functioning every morning with a little thud on its battery panel. Depending on the time of day and year, it would be tuned to the BBC World Service or the cricket commentary. Today, it was tuned to a station that played an endless loop of sad Hindi songs from the 1950s, reflecting Jay's nostalgia for a time he never knew.

He should have been home. It was before nine in the morning and the newsroom was mostly empty. Technically, it was his day off. But the older Jay got, the more he found that the solitude he once coveted was turning to loneliness. He did not want to be alone. He could not bear the thought of wallowing in the self-pity that he was now accustomed to. He just wanted the hook of a good story, one that would put him back in the big leagues.

* * *

He dealt with the self-pity the way he knew best: by burying himself in work and hoping for a good crime. But of late those had dried up. The gangs had been quiet, content to reap profits in the city's legitimate businesses while taking the occasional potshots at rivals in exotic locations like Dubai and Bangkok. Even the story he was investigating, the theft of electronics from homes in South Bombay, lacked heart. His Mumbai had reached an affluent middle age. It appeared as if the city's criminals had, too. Everything was predictable in its blandness. Everything inglorious in its mediocrity. Why would criminals need to risk selling drugs when they could grab land and build a gaudy mall to sell Rolexes to the city's nouveau riche? The thought made him pensive. He called a couple of police stations. Nothing. He turned to his police scanner, a gift from a fence whom he had rescued from a trumped-up murder charge. Silence. It was like everyone was on vacation. And then, through the static, he heard it. Despite the interference, he recognized the voice immediately. His pulse quickened. It was Inspector Vijay Gaikwad. And if it was Gaikwad, Jay knew it must be serious. His ears strained to catch every last detail as he furiously jotted down notes on a piece of paper conjured from the organized chaos of his desk. He took a deep breath and looked at the marginalia: white woman; body; garbage heap; near St. Michael's Church; Mahim.

“D'Souza,” he shouted.

Janet D'Souza, the paper's best photographer at all of twenty-seven, had been out until two at a bar that charged too much for drinks that were too small. She craved the comfort of her bedroom and her head under the covers. The office was the last place she wanted to be. Jay was the last person she wanted to hear from.

“Yeah?” she replied, her voice hoarse.

“Get your stuff,” he said. There was excitement in his voice. “We're going to Mahim. There's been a murder.”

* * *

As a rule, Gaikwad did not like reporters. He thought they were amateurs who got in the way. They seemed to revel in level of access they had to VIPs and were afraid of getting their hands dirty—but never afraid of letting a good story get in the way of the truth. Jay Ganesh, who was standing in front of him now, smiling, was a rare exception. Gaikwad did not like him, but he did tolerate him. Besides, he knew what the reporter had gone through at the
Chronicle
and respected him for it. He looked at Jay and forced a smile.

The two men could not have been more different. Gaikwad liked to describe himself as someone from Mumbai—a Mumbaikar. Jay, on the other hand, was from Bombay, a Bombayite. They were in many ways two different cities united by geography and divided by economics. The men had grown up in different worlds. The policeman was raised in Parel, near the mills, speaking Marathi; the reporter had grown up in upper-middle-class comfort, the child of two English professors; he dreamed in English and spoke it to his contemporaries. He used Hindi and Marathi only when he had to.
In another life,
Gaikwad thought,
Jay might have made a good cop.
His eye for detail and his nose for a story ensured that he followed any lead to its logical end. The thing he found strange about Jay was that he was perpetually unshaven and scruffy and seemingly wore the same clothes every day.

Jay knew Gaikwad hated most reporters. But he also knew that he was honest, which nowadays was a rarity not only in the police department, but in practically every walk of life in India.