Dead in a Mumbai Minute (10 page)

‘Kaustav, don’t worry. We’ll have a look at the surveillance video and then we’ll get back to you,’ Shayak said. ‘You didn’t touch the body when you discovered it, did you?’

‘No. Unfortunately, I have seen my fair share of bodies in the construction business, sir, and I know a dead man when I see one. I also know better than to get too close.’

And then Shayak said it was time for us to go back to the city. We hadn’t met Shiv, Sandhya or Carol yet, or any of the other staff.

‘You don’t want me to stay here?’ I asked.

‘The DCP has the island in lockdown. None of the guests are leaving right now. We need some answers before we can ask the right questions.’

Shayak called Kimaaya to tell her we’d be leaving, and then we headed back towards the boat. Another vessel had arrived at the makeshift jetty: a woman and a man carrying a camera bag were disembarking.

‘Who are these people?’ Shayak asked the guard.

‘Sir, I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me.’

Shayak intercepted them before they got very far.

‘May I know who you are?’

The woman looked flustered. ‘Meera Verma,’ she said.

‘And you?’ he said, addressing the man.

‘Srini V. K.,’ he replied.

‘You are here for …’

‘Work. We need to meet Kimaaya Kapoor.’

‘You are journalists?’

The woman gave a reluctant nod.

‘Ms Kapoor does not receive uninvited guests on her private island.’

‘But sir, please, if you could let me pass. If she refuses to meet me, I’ll leave.’

‘I’m sorry that you took the trouble to come all the way, but you have to go back now. When Ms Kapoor wishes to address the media, you will hear from her. In future, I’d advise that you make an appointment.’

I felt almost sorry for her. She seemed shattered, unable to say a word in the face of Shayak’s firm yet polite stand. I had been on her side of the fence, and I could imagine her trying to explain to her editor why she had come back empty-handed. She should at least be satisfied at having got farther than any of her colleagues were likely to get in the future. As soon as Shayak saw them safely on the water again, he turned to the guard.

‘Never again should a journalist get on land. I want a barricade of some sort put up around here. Find bamboo, wood or anything else and get the men from the construction site to help you put it up, and also to be on standby in case anyone tries to force themselves through. From now on, two of you are always to remain on duty. One of you must be at the jetty, and must communicate names of all visitors before letting anyone disembark. I’ll send a list of people allowed to pass as soon as I am back in office. Another team will be arriving soon to help.’

The guard looked crestfallen.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Shayak. ‘This was not your fault. But it will only get worse from here, so be prepared.’

FIVE

B
ack on the yacht, Shayak handed me a pill and a bottle of water from the cooler. With my stomach drugged preemptively into submission, I found my body calm but my mind troubled.

‘How did the guards not hear anything at all?’

‘There is just too much ground to cover, and the two of them have been horribly overextended as it is. There are usually four guards working shifts but, with Kimaaya’s unscheduled return, this was the best I could do on no notice. Reinforcements would have arrived in a couple of days.’

‘You are blaming yourself even though Kimaaya doesn’t see it that way?’

‘She insisted on coming here despite the reduced staff, against my advice. But it is my job to protect the island, regardless of the idiosyncrasies of the owner.’

I shook my head. ‘You want to tell me what I am getting into here?’

Shayak sighed. ‘Where would you like me to start?’

‘How about India’s most successful actress of her generation,
the
Kimaaya Kapoor, being your ex-wife?’

‘If you think it is relevant.’

‘You don’t?’

‘As far as I am concerned, she is a client in trouble thanks to a security breach Titanium should have prevented.’

‘That’s it?’

‘What are you implying?’

‘No need to get so defensive. Just pointing out that perhaps you are too close to this.’

‘Just as you were when your ex-boyfriend’s wife got kidnapped in Calcutta. Didn’t stop you from solving that case.’

‘This is not the same thing!’ I was appalled that Shayak had brought that messy business up now.

‘Why?’

‘Because my relationship with Amit was in the open. As was the fact that it was over. Here, your entire marriage is under wraps, which makes it far more loaded.’

‘Loaded? Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just don’t see why my prior relationship should be a problem. While it gives me extra insight into her life, there is no evidence so far that this crime has anything to do with her.’

‘The murder was committed on her private island.’

‘Where there are over thirty other people at the moment.’

‘None of whom appear to have anything to do with Ashutosh Dhingre.’

‘With a suspect being found unconscious in the hedges not 500 feet from the crime scene, that might be a premature conclusion to draw.’

‘Maybe so, but I think your deliberately obtuse attitude right now makes it especially important to know the backstory.’

Despite himself, Shayak cracked a smile. ‘Deliberately obtuse? That’s what you call your boss on the third week at work?’

I shrugged. ‘If the shoe fits.’

He drew a deep breath and then began. ‘I have known Kimaaya since we were both about five years old. We were in school together. We were friends till high school, after which we decided, stupidly, as teenagers often do, that we were in love. When we were still too young to know any better, we married. Within two years we were separated, and soon after that, divorced.’

‘The separation was, what, fifteen years ago?’

‘Give or take.’

‘And no one knows about it?’

‘It is a well-kept secret.’

‘Why?’

‘You may have noticed that movie stars – especially female ones, in our country – usually wait till their time has more or less come and gone to tie the knot.’

‘That is why your marriage ended?’

‘That is why our marriage ended quietly. In the industry, no one knew that we were married in the first place. Very few did outside it, either.’

‘Oh, come on. Something like that must have been hard to hide.’

‘It was a different time. It all happened before Kimaaya’s first hit, in an era well before the twenty-four-hour news cycle and paparazzi. When I was away from Mumbai forty-five weeks of the year.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I was in the armed forces. Don’t tell me my brightest young detective didn’t know that?’

If his praise was an attempt to distract me, I wasn’t about to let it succeed. ‘There still must have been some people who knew – after all, friends and family must have found out about it. These things have a way of getting out.’

‘Friends and family, yes. But only close ones. Some others probably did at least suspect a relationship of some sort. But information about our marriage was not in the public domain. And you forget – at the time it happened,
we
were not in the public domain.’

‘Why was it such a secret then?’

‘I was leaving on a mission; I suppose we were both afraid that I might not make it back. It was practically decided overnight. Then I was gone a long time, almost a year. By the time I returned for any significant period, and our families were planning to have a reception to make the marriage public, both of us realized we had made a mistake.’

‘Fair enough, but you don’t think someone like, say, Dhingre, Kimaaya’s first agent, might have had an inkling?’

Shayak’s face was stormy, but his silence gave me my answer.

‘What do you think Ajay will do when he gets to know?’

‘He doesn’t need to know.”

I started shaking my head even before the words were out of his mouth. How could I be the only one seeing this? ‘If he goes digging – which he might, despite your partnership with the police – and finds out, it will be far worse than if you told him.’

‘I am sure there are plenty better motives to kill Dhingre than the secret of a marriage a decade and a half old.’

‘You may be right. But motive is still motive, and it will need to be pursued.’

‘So you are implying that Kimaaya did this to keep Dhingre quiet about her marrying her high-school sweetheart?’

I didn’t say anything, but Shayak guessed what was on my mind. I saw a hint of anger creep into his gaze. ‘No, that’s not it, is it? You think it gives
me
motive.’

‘It’s not about what I think. It is much more important what Ajay Shankaran thinks. That you and Kimaaya are still close, and work together intimately in various fields, may prompt a deeper look into your relationship. What is essentially harmless when revealed voluntarily looks very different when concealed.’

I thought Shayak was about to say something, but he held his tongue.

‘She is having financial problems?’ I asked.

Shayak nodded. ‘She has mismanaged her fortune epically.’

‘And you are helping her get out of the hole? Building the resort, selling her yacht?’

‘Happy to see nothing gets past you.’

‘I’d think it would be a quality you’d value.’

‘Kimaaya has always been short on friends.’

‘Doesn’t look that way.’

‘Those aren’t friends,’ said Shayak. ‘Not really. Except for Auntie Clementine.’

‘The housekeeper?’

‘More like surrogate mother.’

‘You never did say why you weren’t at Kimaaya’s party last night. She clearly was expecting you.’

‘I don’t recall being asked.’

‘I’m asking now.’

‘You know I have been out of town.’

‘You called me at an obscene hour to tell me to get my ass moving. I’m assuming you were in Mumbai at that time.’

‘I was. In my flat. There is security footage to prove it. I got back late last night.’

I half expected him to remind me he was my boss. When he didn’t – not that he would have stopped me, just slowed me down – I continued.

‘And have you had any association with Dhingre since the split?’

‘No, nor before it. I’ve never met the man.’

‘But you have been friends with her through it all.’

‘For the first few years, it was strained. I was very busy, frequently away, and her star was on the rise. It is only more recently that we have become close again.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘suppose for the moment that you are right – that no one in the film industry or media knew about the marriage. What about the paparazzi now? You think they won’t go digging into Kimaaya’s past after this?’

‘This is India – the gossip rags are thankfully still immature and there is only so far they are willing to go to dig up smut.’

‘Things have changed in the past few years. Don’t you think you are being optimistic?’ I asked. Naïve was the word that had come to mind, but I thought better of spelling it out.

‘Realistic. As opposed to paranoid.’ Shayak turned away from me, fixing his eyes on the placid waters ahead, signalling the end of the conversation. I thought better of pushing him any further for the moment so I went below deck, prepared to battle a new bout of seasickness rather than listen to his continuing refusal to admit what was, to me, blatantly clear.

It was past 4 pm when we were finally back on dry land and seated in the car, with Vinod at the wheel. He had come to pick us up from the coastguard jetty, where Shayak was allowed to anchor his vessel, for reasons I did not know but was beginning to guess at.

It had already been a long day, and there was no end in sight. I closed my eyes and felt my head reel. I hadn’t eaten anything since that blasted smoothie in the morning. When I prised them open, we were in standstill traffic. Beside us was a filthy grey wall, brightened by a line of film posters. Kimaaya Kapoor’s gamine face was all I could see, and I felt a twinge of something unexpected. Anger? Jealousy? I brushed it away.

Shayak finally spoke. ‘Of course you are right. I am too close – which is why I need you.’ He looked out of the window as he continued. ‘Give me time to think about what to do with the information I have. For things to crystallize. Can you do that?’

He was asking my permission? ‘Shayak, the call is yours to make.’

‘No, I need you to stay focused on the big picture. Even when it seems difficult.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There will be a lot of distraction in this case. The media. The number of witnesses. Kimaaya herself.’

‘Why Kimaaya?’

‘She’s a star, Reema. She can’t help but make everything about herself.’

There was no time for him to elaborate, for we had pulled out in front of a greying building.

‘Welcome to the state forensics headquarters. Even if you can’t depend on anyone in the system, these guys are impeccable,’ said Shayak.

‘So why is Titanium needed here?’

‘The men are good, but their machines are prehistoric. What makes ours an especially potent synergy is that they turn to us for help, ready and willing, thanks to our superior resources. You’ll see how it works.’