Dead in a Mumbai Minute (15 page)

‘Your wife had to leave early.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah. Not that she wanted to come in the first place.’

‘Do you know where she went?’

‘You’ll have to ask her that, man. She told me it was an emergency at one of her charities the next morning. She had to get there by 9 am, and she knew it wouldn’t have happened if she stayed the night.’

‘She was right about that,’ said Shayak.

‘How did she get back?’ I asked.

‘We have a captain. He took her, though she can sail better than I can.’

‘Why didn’t the yacht come back for you?’

‘Didn’t seem to be much of a point. Someone would have given me a lift back. Besides, with the renovation work, the dock seemed a bit tight for her.’

It took me a second to realize that the ‘her’ Pratap was referring to was his boat.

‘She’s a beauty, but she can’t be easy,’ said Shayak.

‘And these bloody jokers just have to make it even more difficult and block every single effort to set up a private dock. You’d see the number of yachts in Mumbai double overnight with a half-decent facility. But I wouldn’t give her up for the world. Last year we sailed to the Mediterranean, and she was a dream.’

‘Cannes, right? Didn’t Kimaaya go on that trip?’

‘Yup, she, Deepak and Salman.’

‘What about later that night, after you all went to bed? Did you see or hear anything unusual?’

He shook his head. ‘I passed out. I’d been travelling non-stop and was dog-tired to begin with. Sorry I can’t be of more help, man.’

‘Not at all. Whatever you can tell us is important.’

Pratap took a sip of his drink. ‘How’s it going with the other investigation?’

Shayak looked at me. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on Mrs Puri for quite some time now, and I haven’t found anything suspicious,’ I said.

‘She’s up to something man, I just know it!’

‘Mr Puri – ’

‘Pratap, please.’

‘Could I ask you to reconsider your position on more in-depth surveillance strategies?’ I said.

‘I don’t know,’ Pratap said, shooting a glance at Shayak.

‘We could try a phone tap, or a bug in your home,’ he suggested.

‘Dude, no way!’

‘How about monitoring her financial transactions? Could you give us access to her records?’ I added.

‘Our joint ones, yes. But she has her own private accounts and that would be hard.’

‘We could look into her electronic communication.’

‘You mean hack her e-mail?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let me think about it.’

We left Pratap and, to make the most of the daylight hours, headed back to the crime scene.

‘You want to tell me why you were following Pratap?’ asked Shayak.

‘Who said I was following him?’

‘You are investigating his wife and you just happen to bump into him at a nightclub?’

‘I didn’t think it could hurt to find out more about them both,’ I said.

‘And what did you learn?’

‘That Pratap’s tabloid persona is an accurate reflection of his socializing style. He certainly is very happy approaching complete strangers in nightclubs.’

‘You mean he hit on you?’

‘Yes. While he is having us investigate his wife for supposed infidelity.’

Shayak didn’t seem overly surprised. ‘Even cheaters get cheated on.’

‘Are we helping him get a comfortable divorce?’

‘We are making an exception by helping one of our loyal customers on a personal matter. I don’t judge beyond that. Neither should you.’

‘Not judging. I’d like to know, that is all.’

‘Let Pratap decide how he wants to proceed. For the moment, that is on the backburner anyway.’

‘But maybe it is relevant here. Doesn’t it sound awfully like Pratap wishes Kimaaya was more than just a friend? Couldn’t he possibly be a person to watch?’

‘She usually has that effect on men.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘But at this point, we are watching everybody,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t see how killing Dhingre could help him win over Kimaaya. Unless you think Kimaaya wanted him dead and wouldn’t hesitate to use Pratap to get the job done.’

Shayak got behind the wheel of the golf cart, with me in charge of the field kit. We took another look around where the body had been found, and ensured all bases had been covered. When we got to where Viraat had been discovered, I lingered longer.

‘Why would he be here in the first place?’ I asked myself, standing in the gazebo for a little elevation. From there, I could see Shayak’s yacht in the water; it wouldn’t have taken more than three minutes to walk to it at a reasonable pace, perhaps five minutes for a careening, drunk man. He had gone to his boat to get a bottle of wine once; could he have returned for more? In his stupor, did he decide to make himself comfy in a hedge? If the drugs had knocked him out, he couldn’t have taken them – inadvertently or otherwise – too long before. Maybe he went to the boat to dip into his secret stash. The yacht had been taken back to the mainland and the police had searched it. They hadn’t found anything yet, but they could have missed something. But why would he be self-administering the date rape drug?

I moved closer to where we had found Viraat, and I could not see the spot where Dhingre’s body had been. I crouched to the ground and spun around. From that vantage point, I could see the house. The ground floor was largely obstructed by trees, but a number of rooms on the upper level had windows looking on to this vista. Maybe someone apart from Carol had seen him?

A little further along the hedge from Viraat’s makeshift bed, I saw the earth had been dug up, and the cavity had a very distinct rectangular shape. I felt around with my gloved hands. There was nothing there but I was almost certain that there must have been quite recently.

Shayak came up to me. ‘Found something?’

‘Doesn’t it look like something was buried here? Something rectangular?’

Shayak pulled the camera from the kit and took some more photos. ‘You’re right. The team should have spotted this yesterday.’

I took the dimensions: it was about six by four inches, and three inches deep. I took a closer look with a flashlight and saw something glinting in the corner. I picked it up with a pair of tweezers. ‘It looks like a shard of wood with some paint on it. Gold and blue.’

‘We can send it to the lab,’ said Shayak.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I think I know what this is.’

‘Really?’

There was the hint of a paisley in that gold paint. ‘I’ve seen this sort of thing before. It’s one of those Kashmiri boxes you get in every gift shop in New Market in Calcutta. I’ve lost count of how many times I have bought them for people.’

‘So it could have held anything?’

‘I suppose. Most women I know use them for jewellery, but that doesn’t mean anything.’

I bagged the fragment and labelled it. We then drove to the old pier, currently being overhauled and in a rather precarious state. Shayak got off and led me to the muddy pathway. ‘There are footprints that start on the wooden planks that can be traced as far as the path running towards the house,’ he said. ‘The first ones were disturbed when the team made casts, but you can still see them here. It hasn’t been confirmed by forensics, but on superficial examination they seemed to belong to the victim.’

‘There are a number of other footprints as well.’

‘All of them older. The household staff hasn’t been here recently with the pier out of commission, and the construction crew was due to start work in this area only this week.’

‘Why would Dhingre use the old dock?’

‘He has been to the island before but not recently. Only someone who had been here in the past two weeks would know that it is not functioning at the moment.’

‘And with no other fresh prints here, that means the murderer knew which pier to use – unless he was already on the island when Dhingre got here.’

Shayak nodded his head. ‘Precisely.’

SEVEN

W
e continued to an annexe of the house, which had a line of rooms styled in a similar manner to the main building but enclosed.

‘This is the service wing. There are a number of rooms here. The housekeeper has her own, so do Raj and Nimisha when they are around. The others are dorm-style for the rest of the staff. The gardener and the boatman usually stay in a small one-roomed cottage near the old pier, which is currently being used by the police.’

‘Would you like me to interview the staff?’

‘For now, I want you to have a look around, get a sense of the space.’

The quarters were well concealed from the house. They were single-storeyed, with a thick fringe of trees between it and the main building, which was angled away from it. There were paths leading to the grounds.

‘Did the police search include the servant’s quarters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything turned up?’

‘Not that I know of. But the police tend to rely more on confessions than evidence, Reema. Don’t expect them to be thorough.’

‘Did the Titanium team search the premises? What about the other guests?’

‘That, unfortunately, we could not do. Kimaaya will not permit it unless we find specific evidence implicating one of them. She said the police search was inevitable, but she wouldn’t put her guests through further inconvenience.’

We were headed back to the house when we heard a ruckus in the direction of the pier. Getting closer, we saw that from among the media boats had emerged a larger cruiser. Shayak pulled up to one of his men. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Sir, that is Bindu Bisht.’

‘Why is she docking?’

‘It is Bindu Bisht,’ he repeated.

‘So? No media. I thought I was clear about that.’

‘Sir, Miss Kapoor herself asked us to let her on the island.’

‘Just perfect,’ Shayak mumbled, speeding off as fast as the golf cart would allow. ‘Of all the vultures to invite into her home at a time like this, Kimaaya has to choose the worst of the lot.’

‘Why is she here?’ I asked.

Shayak shrugged, annoyance writ on his face. ‘She has an all-access pass in Mumbai. No matter what she writes.’

‘That bad?’

‘She is the best connected because she is the journalist who is much more than a journalist. She is a socialite, a bestselling author, a trophy wife and effectively the most powerful gossip columnist in town.’

‘I’ve read her column and I don’t know that I’d categorize it as gossip.’

‘She throws in substance now and again to keep people guessing, and she is careful never to trample the egos of those whom she likes, and those with true power. But make no mistake – Bindu Bisht is toxic.’

I turned around to see a woman being led off a boat, amidst shouts from the other reporters who had been camped out for two days.

‘Why are you letting her on?’

‘Tell Kimaaya to hold a press conference and we will all go away!’

The police officers on watch made it very clear that if they got any closer, there would be consequences.

Bindu Bisht arrived in her always impeccable skirt suit, her working uniform, as she called it, in the interviews she was so happy to give. Pearls in place around her neck.

At the house, she seemed to know everyone except Afreen, Shayak and I, air-kissing her way through the room, finally throwing her arms around Kimaaya with a sympathetic cluck.

‘Poor Kookie! This must be so awful.’

Kimaaya closed her eyes and nodded. ‘You’d met Ashu, right?’

‘Who hasn’t? He used to be everywhere back in the day.’

Kimaaya nodded again, and gave a delicate shudder. For the first time since I’d met her, she was in full performance mode.

‘Are the police being ghastly, dear?’

‘They tried their best and have practically held all of us hostage since the nightmare began, but thankfully Shayak is here to help,’ said Kimaaya, with a flutter of eyelashes.

Shayak’s jaw clenched as Bindu looked towards him. ‘You two haven’t met?’ asked Kimaaya.

‘I don’t believe we have,’ said Shayak softly.

‘Bindu, this is Shayak Gupta, one of my oldest friends.’

She took a long look at Shayak before proffering a hand.

‘And this is Reema,’ he said.

Bindu turned her unerring grey eyes on me and I knew that this woman could not be dismissed as yet another Bollywood hack. I hadn’t read any of her books on cinema – or the racy fiction it had inspired – but after this meeting, I thought I might.

We all proceeded to the formal dining room where a lunch buffet had been served. The sideboard was laden with salads and appetizers, while the main course was on the long wooden table. Kimaaya, Afreen and Bindu seemed to have an appetite only for salad. Afreen, in particular, picked at a few leaves and little else besides. The men, Sandhya, Carol and I made the most of the spread of poached salmon, spinach and ricotta quiche, honey-glazed ham and bread.

Bindu dominated the table. ‘It is just appalling how they have made this into a circus. So crass. All those cameras out there should be towed back to the city.’

‘I haven’t turned the TV on out of fear. My assistant is keeping a watch. If they cross the line, I am taking them to court,’ said Kimaaya.

‘Line? What line, darling,’ said Bindu with a laugh. ‘They are making this murder about you and your lovely island, and may as well have forgotten about poor Ashutosh.’

I wondered who had paid for the speedboat that had brought Bindu here. The newspaper she worked for, perhaps?

‘You knew Ashutosh?’ I asked.

‘As I said, I’d met him.’

‘You must know everyone in Bollywood.’

She shot me a sharp look. ‘Yes, that’s true. And you mustn’t call it Bollywood, dear.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Our film industry is not derivative of any other in the world. It is unique and deserves respect.’

I nodded, though I couldn’t quite believe I had just been told off by the woman who had named her first novel
Bollywood Belles
.

‘So where is the investigation now, Shayak?’ asked Carol.

‘It’s only been two days. These things take time.’

‘What happens next?’ asked Sandhya.

‘I, for one,’ said Pratap, ‘leave tomorrow morning. I am in the middle of a fucking deal and I can’t be here indefinitely, just because someone happened to be murdered.’