The Nidhi Kapoor Story (4 page)

The cat had deep gashes on its shoulders. Its white fur had turned red and its head had split open to reveal pinkish mass beneath the white and grey lumps of hair.

Dead bodies of these animals, or whatever remained of them, were stacked together in a heap of flesh and bones, gathered carelessly in a big puddle of blood on the rug.

Rujuta had almost slumped on the floor. Prakash, Tambe and Verma seemed to be faring better. Prakash squatted next to the dead bodies and was peering at the pencil stuck in the face of the bulldog. Tambe stood attentively next to a wall. Verma shuffled uncomfortably near the entrance of the room, trying not to look at the mess in front of him.

Rujuta was probably so disturbed because she was not mentally prepared to scout through a crime scene. An hour ago, she was making plans of going out with Prakash and now she was now face to face with a gory crime scene. She spared a thought for her own cat, Felix, at home. Felix was her only constant companion. Since she was young, very attractive and on the fast track to being successful, she had no dearth of suitors. But for some reason she kept everyone at bay. She did have a few men that she used as accessories, tools, toys and playboys. She would often get sloshed with her Jing bang and get one of them back home for the night. She probably wanted a similar arrangement with Prakash, but right now, she could not think of anything but the pets. Her gaze was fixed onto the heap of dead bodies and she seemed to have lost her speech. Tambe, when he saw her
slump, had rushed to help her but Prakash had stopped him from doing so.

When Prakash was done looking at the dead bodies, he asked Naveen Verma, “When did you discover this?”

Verma’s discomfort was heightened by Prakash’s indifference and Rujuta’s trauma. “I don’t know. We found this…” he paused, pointed ambiguously in the middle of the room, gulped and continued, “this morning when Nidhi came into her office. Poor girl is still in shock. Cho, Caesar and Cookie meant the world to us. Nidhi and Payal took care of them as if they were their children.”

Prakash glanced at Tambe and turned back to Verma. “No one at the house saw or heard anything? The security guards? If someone had to kill these animals, they had to have access to the house. And don’t dogs and cats make a lot of noise? There is no way someone mutilated these animals without anyone hearing a thing,” Prakash said.

Verma was surprised at this rambling of Prakash. Tambe however, knew that Prakash was merely talking to himself. He and Prakash had been working together since Tambe moved to Mumbai from Satara, another district in Maharashtra. Tambe had been a beat constable before his promotion and transfer four years ago.

Verma eventually answered, “These were very friendly dogs. They did not bark even if you took their food away. They have been… had been with us for a long time and Payal had trained them herself.”

“Mr. Verma, I asked if someone saw or heard something,” Prakash said curtly. He apparently had no time for Verma’s pointless rant.

Verma started to say something but Prakash interrupted him. Prakash knew he was pushing his luck but he wanted to ascertain if Naveen Verma knew more than he was telling. It had to be an insider. There was no way someone from outside could do this. He shot another arrow in the dark. “Do you have more pets in the house? Did you speak with the guards?”

Or maybe it was an outsider. How hard could it be for someone with enough motivation to climb the wall and get into the study? The pets would have noticed the movement and they would’ve got excited. The crime scene made Prakash wary and he was unsure about the modus operandi. It looked like a planned assault, executed methodically in cold blood. If it was indeed an outsider, he had access to the bungalow and even the main residential building. He had come in, done the barbaric job and left without getting noticed. All this at Ronak, one of the most watched houses in the country.

“No. No. I haven’t had time to speak with anyone. Nidhi discovered this… mess and then all hell broke loose. Even Payal was hysterical. Both of them are in Nidhi’s bedroom upstairs,” Verma said. Prakash was looking around the room but he hung onto every word that Verma spewed. He had an eidetic memory and he could remember conversations, words, scenes, clothes, smells and other things from the crime scene for a long time.

Prakash walked to the writing table. “Hmm… OK. I want to talk to every member of the house, including the servants. I want to spend some time here by myself. Please wait for me outside till then.”

He continued, “Tambe, take Rujuta madam out of the room and get her some water or something.”

Both these statements were more like orders rather than requests. Tambe was used to these but Naveen Verma wasn’t. He wanted to revolt but had no energy left to do so. He did not want to be in the room with the dead bodies anyway. Verma started to walk out and paused momentarily when he saw Rujuta wilted outside. “You know, this is exactly how I found Nidhi, right here by the door,” he said and without waiting for an answer, sidestepped Rujuta and walked out.

∗∗∗

The moment Verma was out of sight, Tambe muttered, “Sir, something is wrong. This Verma guy is not as worried as he’s trying to appear. But who would kill these poor animals? They had a far far better life than most of us. They live in air-conditioned rooms with enough food to feed five families, and access to doctors that take more money for each visit than we spend on medicines in our entire lives.”

Tambe always had an opinion on everything. And most of those opinions would conform to an average Mumbaikar’s. He was in that sense, the voice of the city.

“And this is why someone killed them. Maybe you did. Did you? You clearly are jealous of them,” Prakash barked. As much he liked Tambe and his opinions, he hated interruptions while he was working a case.

Tambe realized he had irked Prakash. He bowed and quietly headed towards the door to tend to Rujuta who was
still visibly distressed.

Prakash worked like that on most of his cases. He’d take one long, hard look at the crime scene to acquaint himself with it. Then he would talk to everyone who could have had anything to do with the victim or the crime scene. He would then let everything simmer in his head and wait for the dots to connect. Every new piece of evidence added another layer of connection between the dots and he kept on breaking and making these connections until he cracked the case. He believed that most crimes had a clear motive and more often than not someone connected with the victim was the key.

Although he never took notes, somehow the answers almost always dawned onto him, even in seemingly impossible cases. His repertoire of successful cases included confiscation of a large stash of illicit drugs and a famous hit-and-run by the son of a leading industrialist. In both these cases, the police did not have any substantial clues. In the drug bust, he just had an incoherent account from a junkie and tyre marks on a dirt track of a dusty road. In the hit-and-run, he had a grainy footage from a CCTV and a sleepy guard manning an ATM.

Prakash was always called in when cases seemed too complex for the police force to handle. He was amongst the best officers of Mumbai police but nothing in his countenance gave that away. At 5 feet 8, he was rather small compared to other police officers. He kept his head shaved and no one could tell that he was just thirty-four. He had come to Mumbai with his mother when he was five and the city was still called Bombay. His mother was a successful
theater actress in Pune, some 160 KMs from Mumbai. He father was headmaster of a small school on the outskirts of a sleepy Pune. Even though they made an unlikely couple, theirs was a love marriage. But right after Prakash was born, the daily grind of the household began to test the patience of the couple. They started to quarrel, occasionally at first and almost everyday subsequently. His mother was young, talented and harbored the desire to be a film star. His father preferred the small town life. Their differences became so much that Prakash’s mother decided to run away to Mumbai with Prakash in tow. But reality hit harder and sooner than she had expected. Her only appearances on screen were a few sightings in the background scenery of big films and a couple of side roles in smaller films. She, like others, turned to alcohol, hoping to find solutions and success.

Prakash’s mother eventually committed suicide when he was thirteen. She was depressed about girls half her age getting meatier roles than her. Even in her death, she did not get the fame she craved for; there was not even one obituary. Prakash had no option but to go back to Pune. But by this time, his father had moved on and a young Prakash could not trace him. He came back to Bombay and put all his energy and time into his education. He never pardoned his mother for her ambitions and always blamed himself for not being able to find his father.

Back in Nidhi Kapoor’s office, the room reeked of overpowering odors of animals, excreta, burnt flesh and air-conditioning. While examining the room, Prakash spotted a typed sheet of paper stuck in the typewriter. He used his phone to click a few pictures of the typewriter and the sheet of paper hanging from it. He then tore the sheet and started
to read.

Most other officers would have waited for the police photographer to arrive and take pictures of the crime scene before they start with the investigation. Not Prakash. He liked to take action, and swiftly. He thus often disregarded protocol for the sake of speed. But he was careful enough with anything that could be used as evidence. He knew his technology and knew that pictures from an iPhone were as good as the ones from official police cameras. Probably better. No one used the pictures anyway, except the newspaper hounds, and that too when the pictures were leaked by the police department itself to try and generate some leads.

The letter was written in chaste English. Tambe was back and he saw Prakash reading the crumpled piece of paper with rapt attention. He chose to remain quiet as Prakash held the paper carefully from the edge and read through it.

“Whoever wrote this definitely has a knack for good prose. Too bad that the letter is at the crime scene, or the writer could have written a few films for the Kapoors,” Prakash said and handed over the letter to Tambe, who carefully sealed it in an evidence bag. Tambe really wanted to read the letter but he wasn’t good with English and more importantly, he knew that while Prakash went through a crime scene, he wanted everyone on their feet.

“Tambe, when was the last time you heard of a pet dog being friendly to outsiders? Plus, how do you kill three things at the same time? Why did the second or the third pet not protest when the first one was being killed? Why can’t I
see any signs of struggle? Maybe… maybe, he is right.”

“Who, sir?”

“The murderer. He left a letter for us.” Prakash pointed at the letter that Tambe had sealed in the evidence bag. Tambe gasped.

“Can we get an autopsy done on these animals to know what time they were killed?” he struggled to stay on track.

“Not autopsy Tambe, it’s called Necropsy. And yes, we will do it but nothing much would come out of it.” Prakash paused for a second and then exclaimed, “Look Tambe!” He was standing next to the yellow couch. He bent over the gramophone and pulled something out from the pile of vinyl records.

“What is it sir? A vinyl record? I have seen many of those at Chor Bazaar.” Tambe was trying to think hard and figure out the reason for Prakash’s excitement. Maybe the record had visible fingerprints or some blood spats or something that they had missed all this while.

“An original record for
Pyasa,
the Guru Dutt movie. I have always wanted to own one of these. It would fit in well with my collection.” Prakash started to read the back cover of the record.

Tambe sighed. “Sir what about these books? Do these film heroines actually read all these books?” He thought it was safe to get into idle banter, now that Prakash was not really focusing on the crime scene. The backup was still a few minutes away and they had to wait for the technicians to arrive.

“What about the books? Can’t you tell that these are just for display?” Prakash was still reading the cover. He
hadn’t thrown a second glance at the bookshelf since he came into the room.

Tambe was visibly perplexed. “Display? How?”

“Tambe, look at the books crammed into the shelf. There is not one empty place in the entire shelf. Plus, the books are ordered as if a meticulous librarian did it. Not one book is out of place. People who actually read books, they usually read more than one book at a time. They always leave the books they are reading at strange places. This place is spotless,” Prakash answered.

“Now look at the gramophone here,” Prakash hadn’t stopped talking. He wanted Tambe to develop a knack for investigation and tried to train Tambe whenever he could. “Unlike the books that are hardly read, someone plays this gramophone regularly. A record’s been left in the slot. Plus, even though the vinyl records are stacked neatly like the books, some of them are not in their jackets, like this
Pyasa
record, and some have been left in the open around the player.”

Tambe nodded. “Right, sir. And there are no magazines? Our staple evening newspaper, Maha Sakaal, is also missing.” He paused as he thought of something. “Sir, which paper does Rujuta madam write for?”

“I don’t know. It’s some top-secret assignment for some international magazine,” Prakash replied carelessly. All I know is that I am supposed to keep her with us for a month and let her click whatever photographs she wants. Fifteen more days I think.”

Tambe began to laugh. He had this infectious laughter that could bring alive any drab situation. When he laughed,
one could see all his teeth. Most of them had yellowed because of a lifetime addiction to tobacco, cigarettes and tea.

“What’s the joke, Tambe? Shut up and let’s get moving. I have seen what is there to be seen. See if Ashok and team have arrived,” Prakash instructed. Tambe instantly shut his mouth, nodded and flipped out his walkie-talkie to speak to his colleagues. Ashok was a part of the forensics team attached to Prakash’s division.