ANTI-SOCIAL NETWORK (13 page)

Virkar knew that he should not say anything and accept what was being offered to him but he could not control his natural instincts. ‘How can you be so sure?’

The ACP now turned his attention back to Virkar and winked. ‘Because I know the other four owners personally, and they are good men, even if they aren’t such good shooters.’

Virkar nodded a thank you and turned to leave. The ACP’s smile now turned apologetic. ‘Sorry
, yaar, subah subah pehala girahak tu hi mila
.’ Virkar let that one slide as he walked out of the room. Behind him he could hear the ACP raucous laughter, but all he could think about was the name he had just heard: Devendra Brahme.

V
irkar was always surprised when guilty people ran when they encountering policemen. It was a sure-shot indication of their guilt; moreover, the action of taking flight would ensure physical punishment as soon as the policemen caught up with the runner. In this particular case, Virkar was especially astounded since Devendra Brahme was much older and considerably more unfit than him. More so, he was running in the direction of Thal beach, where the loose sand would surely slow him down, making it easier for Virkar to catch up to him.

Virkar had left ACP Naik’s office the previous day and headed straight to the Maharashtra Rifle Association (MRA) shooting range at Worli Sea Face. A quick enquiry at the range had got him Brahme’s address in Kalachowki. A short Bullet ride to the Kalachowki chawl and a cup of tea with Brahme’s old neighbour had lead to the discovery that Brahme had taken off for his village near Alibaug, across the Mumbai Harbour. Another ten minutes of polite chit-chat with the neighbour had also given him the general whereabouts of Brahme’s ancestral house near Thal beach, Alibaug.

Early that morning, a forty-five-minute ride in a catamaran from the Gateway of India had deposited him at Mandwa Jetty. Another twenty-five minutes by autorikshaw and Virkar was outside a cluster of village houses nestled under a coconut grove near Thal beach. An enquiry at the first house had led him to the one inhabited by Brahme. But as luck would have it, Brahme had spotted him approaching his house and run out from the back. Unfortunately for him, he had stumbled against a stack of dry bamboos, bringing them down to the ground. The clatter of the bamboos had alerted Virkar and he had spotted Brahme just as he turned behind a hedge.

Now, after a few minutes of running on the beach, Virkar shortened the distance between Brahme and him to about a man’s length. Without warning, Virkar leapt in the air, his hands grabbed Brahme’s shoulders; the velocity of Virkar’s push destabilized Brahme and he slipped on the loose sand, collapsing to a heap. Virkar just about managed to maintain his balance and stopped short about a foot away from the panting Brahme. For a full minute, both men sucked in air into their desperate lungs. The younger and fitter Virkar regained his breath quicker but it was Brahme who spoke first, gasping, ‘What did I do, saheb?’

Virkar smirked back. ‘C’mon! You know why I’m here.’ Bramhe gulped in air and shook his head. ‘The Punjabi,’ Virkar clarified.

On hearing that, Bramhe looked crushed. ‘I got desperate and fell for his lie, saheb. He told me he was going to use the gun in Punjab.’

Virkar fixed him with a hard stare. ‘I think you’d better start at the beginning.’ He sat down on the sand next to Brahme and took out a small diary and a pen from his pocket.

Brahme quickly took him through his interaction with Akhbir at the shipyard. He spared no details and was extra graphic while describing how he had escaped certain death by Akhbir’s hands. Virkar’s interest, though, was only piqued when Brahme started telling him about Akhbir’s phone conversation. To Virkar’s understanding, it didn’t seem like Akhbir had been speaking to Philo—it seemed more like he was receiving instructions from someone who held sway over him. He mentally went over the checklist of items that were collected at the crime scene at the SuperTrance Nightclub and suddenly realized that no cell phone had been found on Akbhir’s body. This could only mean that either the cell phone had been lost in the ruckus that followed the shooting or Akhbir hadn’t carried it to SuperTrance. ‘Do you have the number that Akhbir called you from?’ he asked the now surly Brahme.

Brahme’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Maybe, but what do I get in return?’

Virkar was quick to retort. ‘Maybe I would be pleased enough to request my superiors that the case against you should be dropped.’

Brahme didn’t back down. ‘That’s all?’

Virkar’s voice now grew firm. ‘That’s about it…and if I don’t get the number in the next five minutes, I would be forced to search your house. Then I can’t promise how this case would turn out for you, especially if I found illegal weapons during my search.’

Brahme shot to his feet. ‘I have no illegal weapons, saheb. They are all legal.’

Virkar rose to face him. ‘Oh yes. My mistake. You only
sell
them illegally.’

Brahme responded to Virkar’s sarcasm with a dry gulp. ‘I have the number saved on my mobile phone, which is in my house.’

Virkar nodded. ‘Then what are you waiting for? Your time starts now.’

‘Brahme led Virkar back to his house as fast as he could. His mobile phone was lying next to his bed. Quickly extracting the number from his list of contacts, he read it out to Virkar, who first noted the number down in his diary and then dialled another number from his phone.

‘Inspector, it’s too early in the morning to call,’ Richard’s lazy voice drawled.

Ignoring what he heard, Virkar said, ‘I want you to find the entire call history of this number.’ He read out Akhbir’s number to Richard.

Richard yawned over the phone. ‘So what’s in it for me?’

Virkar sighed. ‘Everybody seems to be asking me that today.’

‘I’m waiting, Inspector,’ Richard said, sounding bored.

‘How about I don’t tell Naina that you’re still snorting cocaine behind her back?’ Virkar replied firmly.

Richard drew in a deep breath and didn’t respond for a few seconds. He didn’t want his current status quo with Naina to be affected in any way. His biggest fear was that Naina would go to his parents and tell on him…but then she really didn’t seem like a tattletale. He smiled. ‘Nice try, Inspector, but that won’t work. However, since I like you, I’ll tell you what you can do to get this information from me.’

‘M
y tickets.’ Richard held out his hand as soon as Virkar entered his hidey-hole in Khotachiwadi. He had demanded an all-expenses paid trip to Kullu-Manali as payment for the information that Virkar had wanted. Virkar had dialled a few numbers and had finally managed to wrangle a favour out of a travel agent to get Richard included in a promotional tour for a new hotel opening in Manali. Although Virkar was fuming from within, he managed to maintain a calm exterior and quietly handed printouts of the e-ticket and resort bookings to Richard. Virkar had been waiting for over a day to hear back from Richard and now he was eager to know the results.

After scrutinizing the printouts to his satisfaction, Richard said, ‘Do you know what TOR is?’

Virkar was in no mood to get into a long discussion about strange new Internet programs. ‘Just give me the information I asked for, okay?’ he growled.

Richard smirked. ‘That’s the problem with your generation, Inspector. You just want things to be handed to you on a platter.’ He sniggered at his own attempt at sarcasm. When Virkar looked as if he was about to slap him, Richard took a couple of steps back and started explaining. ‘TOR is a new international routing service. When someone uses TOR, their IP address is encrypted every few seconds and routed to numerous locations several times over. With TOR, someone could be in London but would be tracked as a zipping line that appears and then disappears from one location to the next instantaneously.’

‘So what does all this mean? Come to the point, man.’

‘It means that I can confirm that Akhbir did receive a call but I can’t confirm where the call came from. This guy is too smart for us,’ Richard admitted.

‘What about the number? Who is it listed to?’

‘No one. It’s a fake number. The call was not made from a SIM card. It was made over the Internet using TOR.’

Virkar became irritated. ‘So how can we get to these TOR people and ask them to help us?’

Richard laughed. ‘It’s a free software and an open network and it’s legal. They won’t give out any information because of the very fact that it is used for anonymity. It’s like asking the Swiss Bank for information about its account holders.’

Virkar just clenched his teeth, suppressing his anger. He didn’t know whether he was angrier with the mysterious TOR user or with Richard. ‘There has to be
some
information somewhere,’ he said with a hint of desperation creeping into his voice.

Richard shrugged. ‘Look, Inspector, I feel the same way. Believe me, I spent many hours scouring the Internet, going from one online forum to another, trying to find traces of this person’s identity. But there was nothing anywhere.’

Virkar turned and walked out of the room without a word. ‘Do you want me to cancel the tickets and the bookings?’ he heard Richard call out from behind him. But by that time, he was already out of the door and on his Bullet.

As he rode his bike out of the narrow lanes of Khotachiwadi to the crowded streets of Girgaon, Virkar began to run all the facts through his head. The loud honking of the crawling cars and the screech of the battered B.E.S.T buses changing gears began to sound like an off-key orchestra inside his head. Virkar dove deeper into his head, trying to find a quiet space. Soon, the sound of traffic reduced to just an unintelligible hum. Bang in the middle of the traffic-ridden road, riding his Bullet, Virkar had hit the meditative space that he normally only entered while on his night-time boat rides.

He realized that even though he did not have any concrete proof, his suspicions had been confirmed. There was someone else behind all the murders, someone who had used all the players like pieces on a chessboard. This person was extremely intelligent, resourceful and, most importantly, completely ruthless.
What was their motive, though? Was Philo a contract killer? How did she fit into this scheme?
Now it was up to Virkar to use whatever resources he had to hunt down this hidden mastermind. But where would he begin? All leads seem to have dried up. For all he knew, this person could be ‘sitting in London’, as Richard had put it.

But he quickly ruled that possibility out. He realized that the person behind all this needed to be in Mumbai to guide Philo and Akhbir’s actions. What suddenly struck Virkar was the fact that although Philo and Akhbir didn’t know each other they still seemed to have been guided by the same hidden person—a person who, having no further use of them, had decided to pitch both of them against each other. Perhaps the reason they didn’t need Akhbir and Philo any more was because the game was coming to an end. No one else had been killed recently.

But why had they been killed in the first place?

‘C
ocaine?’ Virkar’s eyebrow arched ever so slightly as he stared into Dr Girish Gite’s earnest face. The young doctor worked at the forensic lab in Santa Cruz and occasionally served as a ‘personal’ forensic consultant for Virkar, giving him a deeper insight into whatever case he was working on at the time. He had agreed to do this because Virkar had been instrumental in his becoming a doctor instead of a Naxalite. In his teens, Dr Gite, aka Giriya, had been enamoured by Naxalite propaganda until Virkar had been transferred to the police station near Giriya’s home in the district of Gadchiroli. As part of his policing duties, Virkar also engaged with the youngsters of the district and gave them English lessons. He was quick to identify Giriya’s restless intelligence and made a conscious attempt to veer him towards positive activities. He was the one who had recommended Giriya’s application to Nagpur Medical College and the rest was history. Giriya had become Dr Girish Gite and had got a job with the forensic laboratory in Mumbai. A few years later, when Virkar had come to Mumbai, they had connected once again and Dr Gite had become Virkar’s go-to forensic expert.

Earlier that night, Virkar had received the customary SMS that indicated he should meet Gite later that night. Now, as Virkar took in the information that he had just received, he wondered if the trip had been worth it.

‘Yes, cocaine. First grade quality, too,’ said Gite, interrupting Virkar’s thoughts.

Virkar put up his hand to stop Gite. ‘Hold on. You’re telling me that you found minute traces of cocaine on the gun that Akhbir was using and that this is a breakthrough?’

‘Yes,’ Gite nodded with a hint of impatience.

Virkar shrugged. ‘I really don’t get the significance, Giriya.’

‘It could mean that Akhbir or the previous owner of the gun were cocaine users,’ Gite explained.

Virkar shook his head. ‘That’s a really big assumption. The traces of cocaine could have come from anywhere. The gun fell on the floor of the SuperTrance Nightclub. There could have been some cocaine particles on the floor that could have been transferred to the gun—’

‘Not in this case,’ Dr Gite cut Virkar off in mid-sentence. ‘The particles were attached to the upper section of the trigger, the part that meets the body of the gun. That part generally doesn’t come in contact with the floor even if the gun is laid flat on the ground. However, that portion comes in constant contact with the gun user’s trigger finger—the same finger that a cocaine user generally uses while handling his cocaine.

Virkar looked at Gite thoughtfully. ‘Okay, I’ll grant you that. Let’s say Akhbir was a cocaine user. But how is this detail going to help me?’

Gite now sounded excited. ‘Well, you could start questioning all known cocaine dealers and find out more about Akhbir and his associates.’

Virkar sighed. ‘If only I knew how to get in touch with the drug dealers in the city. Even if I did, I doubt they’d be willing to share any information about their clients with a policeman.’

Gite opened his mouth to say something and then fell silent, looking a bit deflated. Virkar noticed his disappointment and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Giriya. I know you try hard but some leads are just too difficult to pursue.’ Virkar gave his shoulder a friendly pat. ‘I am quite stuck on this one, too.’ Giving him a small smile, Virkar turned and walked out of the building.