Dead in a Mumbai Minute (35 page)

I had to get moving, and a taxi wouldn’t do. I called Sohana and in fifteen minutes was at her house, starting her ancient blue hatchback. She had been to the area a couple of times to cover the land unrest that Shakuntala had told me about, and gave rough directions.

‘It’s just off the highway, so you shouldn’t have a problem.’

I was still unfamiliar with Mumbai, let alone a village an hour away. Using the phone as GPS, I got started. But as I reached the outskirts of the city, I lost network. Thankfully, Sohana’s directions proved easy to follow and there were road signs showing the way. And yet, the closer I got to my destination, the more uncomfortable I became. I was far from the Mumbai I knew.

I finally hit a huge construction site which was the nearest landmark Sohana had been able to recall. Soon I saw a cluster of factories, all abandoned. And then a dilapidated sign for Paras Hills Foods. There was an unpainted boundary wall right beside it. I parked the car and approached a heavy-duty metal gate, which was unmanned and unlocked. I pushed it open and walked in.

It closed behind me with a click. The moment I heard that sound, I realized my deepest fears had been correct: I had walked into a trap. I was inside a high-tech hideout for a high-tech war, and my little lock-pick set wasn’t enough to get me out of it. That mail I received was fake. I would not find Shayak inside. No one knew where I was except Sohana, and she would have no reason to come looking for me. It was too late to call for reinforcements – and it struck me with cold certainty that my phone had probably been hacked and my network killed to prevent just such a thing. Probably why I couldn’t reach either Shayak, Ajay or Archana.

I scanned the perimeter. The wall was at least ten feet tall, with barbed wire looping around the top. It was electrified.

There still was not a person in sight. But there were cameras everywhere. My isolation was an illusion.

With no turning back, I could only forge ahead. I walked towards the building: a one-storey affair with shuttered windows. I approached the door, turned the knob. I had little doubt that if I didn’t enter voluntarily, I’d be forced to soon enough.

I was in a small, sparse room with a set of functional sofas. The windows I saw from the outside were for show: on the inside they were boarded up and the only light filtered in through tiny recesses to allow ventilation. The air was heavy with the salt smell of the sea and a strange, oppressive, chemical odour.

One of the doors opened and out walked Rishi. ‘Gotta give you credit, Reema, you were getting awfully close.’

I shocked myself by managing a smile. ‘I’ve been dancing around you this whole time.’

How could I have not put it together sooner? It was only this morning, while speaking with Neeraj, that I finally worked it out. I had no excuse except that I had been blinded by my dislike for Adlakha. Once I realized it was an inside job, my judgement had been hijacked by Adlakha’s reluctance to let me in, his resentment, his standing in the way of the Afreen investigation. And yet, all he had been doing was following orders, a concept I had no regard for. So I ignored all the signs that had pointed to a technologically-inclined mind being behind this, which Adlakha clearly was not.

‘Get moving, Reema,’ said Rishi.

My mistakes flashed through my mind one after another. Even if Adlakha could have paid an accomplice, wouldn’t he have done a better job of planting a fingerprint? Instead Rishi, the tech genius who had no idea about forensics, had been slipped up by popular science – the ease with which fingerprints are found in crime shows. An investigator of Adlakha’s experience wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake. Shayak’s print was not taken anywhere near that bar. It was lifted from somewhere everyday – like from the Titanium office or a doorbell – and carefully controlled, scanned and planted into the police forensics report digitally.

‘We could stay here,’ I said. I was mirroring his eerie sense of calm. But when he shot me back a small, cold smile, I began to fear that Rishi was far more – to put it bluntly – psycho than I had suspected.

Every piece of evidence we found in this crime was digital – except the two very real dead bodies. And behind it all was Rishi. No matter how good he was behind the computer, he was out of his depth in the real world. When it came to a tiny smear on a treated, oil- and water-repellent surface, his hack was easy to catch.

‘Walk out of that door over there,’ he said, pointing to a side exit.

As I complied, I weighed my options. I could try to overpower him – he wasn’t very large and I had the skill to do it. But he was surely armed. He was being very careful to keep me in front of him. He had a plan.

I opened the door and walked out to find myself on a deck. There was a speedboat in front of us.

And there it was: the muzzle of a gun leaving a cold circle against the back of my neck.

‘Get in,’ he said. ‘We’re about to take a trip.’

I looked around. It was just me and Rishi, the boat and the sea. ‘There’s no audience here, Rishi. Must we resort to tired clichés?’

‘Forgive me if the quality of my conversation isn’t up to your standards. Perhaps we could try silence instead.’

I got in – I had no choice – and was filled with dread at what I saw: a long length of rope and a military-grade knife. ‘

Pass me your cell phone,’ he said. ‘Slowly.’

I reached into my pocket and did as I was told. I heard a small splash as he chucked it into the water. With it sunk all my hopes of being tracked down.

‘Kind of pointless, since you commandeered it anyway.’

‘No harm in extra measures. Sit on the floor,’ said Rishi.

Once I was restrained, breaking free would be far more difficult. ‘Rishi, I thought we were friends,’ I said, kneeling before him.

‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘If you had stayed out of this, maybe we could have been. But when Jay got you Bobby Gill’s number, I knew you’d figure things out soon enough,’ he said.

‘You weren’t in office that day because you were busy putting a bullet into Afreen.’

‘And so it is. A half day. That’s all it takes,’ he said, bending to put down the gun and pick up the rope.

In the second he was distracted, I rested on my palms and kicked back in the direction of his kneecap as hard as I could. He let out a scream of anger and pain and, as he lost balance, I made a mad scramble for the gun.

But I hadn’t done enough damage for, even flat on his back, Rishi had recovered and grabbed the weapon, pointing it back at me.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ he said, breathless. ‘Sit down now or I shoot you right here.’

‘Why don’t you just get it over with?’

Rishi didn’t respond.

As he got back to work, I asked myself why he hadn’t killed me already. We were in the middle of nowhere; wasn’t this as good a place as any to get the job done?

Rishi tied my hands with a rope, this time making sure he had a firm grip on the gun. ‘Wrap this rope around your legs.’

I did as I was told, keeping it as loose as possible.

‘Nice try,’ he said, quickly tightening them with one hand before putting the weapon down and tying the knot.

Rishi started up the boat, pulling away from the shore before opening his laptop. The way he was bumbling about, it was clear he didn’t know what he was doing.

I could smell fuel, and surmised that the jerry cans which I had seen at the back carried a supply. I didn’t know how far we’d go in this vessel or whether Rishi was planning to make any stops along the way, but I was fairly certain we’d be heading in the direction of Goa. Somewhere in the vicinity of Sunset Bar.

That was, if Rishi didn’t get us lost at sea first. He looked thoroughly confused as he stared at the controls – and that confusion was what I was counting on to save me.

An hour later, I was convinced that Rishi had no idea what he was doing or where he was going. He had made a couple of pained calls to someone – given where we were and the size of the device I assumed it was a satellite phone – and continued to look at his computer in a bewildered fashion.

‘I might be able to help, you know,’ I said.

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Getting lost at sea isn’t on my list of things to do today.’

‘I am assuming that neither was getting abducted by a disgruntled colleague.’

‘I don’t think “disgruntled” quite covers it.’

‘Just a turn of phrase.’

‘You’re unhappy at Titanium?’

‘Do my actions strike you as those of one who is content?’

‘Most people would just leave.’

‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Ray.’

‘I have been told otherwise. And you didn’t answer the question.’

‘Why should I when it is so much more fun this way?’

‘Whom are you working for?’

‘Why do you assume I am working for someone?’

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

He shrugged. ‘In a loose sort of way.’

‘It’s George, isn’t it? And we are going to meet him at Sunset Bar.’

He looked at me, clearly surprised.

‘I bumped into your friend,’ I said. ‘He had an interesting tattoo on his wrist. A man in the sunset of his life, creating a second career for himself in a little spot of undiscovered south Goa, with a view of the sun going down over the Arabian Sea, 365 days a year,’ I said, quoting Rishi’s words back to him.

I saw a flash of annoyance pass over my captor’s face. ‘Sometimes we all talk too much,’ I continued. ‘Why take me to him?’

‘Why do you think?’

And then it dawned on me. This was never about me – just like Dhingre’s murder had not been about Kimaaya. ‘You are using me as bait.’

‘Took you long enough.’

‘No one knows I am missing.’

‘They’ll be told in time.’

They thought Shayak would come for me. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

‘Do I? There is a lot one can glean from hours of surveillance tapes.’

‘You’ve been watching me?’

‘Only incidentally, at first. But once Shayak made a few stops by your place, I knew you’d come in handy.’

I remembered that tender forehead kiss in the doorway, in full view of the security cameras. ‘Why, Rishi? With talent like yours, you could make a fortune without the capital crime under your belt.’

‘Hackers like me aren’t after a fortune.’

‘So you infiltrate the Titanium system for the thrill of it?’

‘You might say that.’

‘At the behest of a gang of Goan gangsters?’

‘Sometimes you need a pretext. And I wouldn’t call them gangsters.’

‘Sorry, George Santos is a spiritual guru.’

‘You’re not bad, Ray, but don’t get ahead of yourself. George is but a small piece of the puzzle, much like me.’

‘What am I missing?’

‘George is a part of the whole, but he is pretty much legit. I worked for him as a security consultant. Took up the job after I dropped out of college, before he told me about this opportunity at Titanium.’

‘Who is calling the shots?’

‘It was my plan,’ Rishi said, suddenly on the defensive.

‘Why?’

‘Boredom. For the joy of the hack. Because no one loved me when I was a little boy. Take your pick.’

Rishi’s bravado really did not seem like an act. It would have worried me had I not seen the chink in his armour. ‘Was that really enough reason to kill two people?’

‘Ray, you think you’ve figured this all out but what you see are the trees, not the forest.’

‘Tell me about this grand plan of yours. How did killing two people benefit anyone?’

‘The deaths were a transactional necessity, not an end in themselves. Dhingre was never meant to die. Afreen was collateral damage; at a convenient place at a convenient time.’

‘You had to stop Dhingre from approaching Kimaaya with what he knew about the stolen documents.’

‘The wheels had been set in motion. It was important nothing got in the way. I couldn’t let Kimaaya stop publication.’

‘All to discredit Shayak.’

‘And Titanium.’

‘Then with Afreen you were killing two birds with one stone. She refused to help when called upon to do so, and was a good starting point to frame Shayak.’

‘If she hadn’t been so skittish, she would have lived. But she knew too much, and couldn’t be trusted anymore. There is a lesson in there for you.’

‘George wanted information.’

‘She clammed up. I wouldn’t have moved so fast, but after Dhingre died …’

‘You had upset some people with the way things were going, and needed to make amends, clean up after yourself.’

He shrugged. ‘If I helped smear Titanium, I’d be set up for life. I’d never have to work for anyone again.’

‘What was your prize?’

‘What difference does it make?’

‘Just curious.’

‘I might not have wanted a fortune, but this would give me my independence. I could use my talent how I saw fit.’

‘It always boils down to money.’

‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

But Rishi was distracted. He was fussing around the controls. I could tell from his expression that it wasn’t looking good. Not only was it approaching darkness, it was eerily overcast.

‘Don’t you think it is a better idea to anchor for the night?’ I suggested.