Compass Box Killer (3 page)

‘Mrs Akurle?’ he asked.

The woman sighed and nodded.

Inflecting his voice with the correct amount of sympathy, Virkar continued, ‘I’m very sorry to hear about Akurle saheb.’ He pulled up a chair next to hers.

She wiped her eyes with the pallu of her sari. ‘I told him so many times to stay away from street-side vada paos. The oil is always stale. But he wouldn’t listen.’

Virkar looked at her, nonplussed. ‘Vada paos?’

‘Yes,’ she said, sniffing. ‘This morning he woke up with a high fever and started to vomit. He said it was because of the extra peg of scotch he drank last night…’ Mrs Akurle trailed off, dabbed her eyes again and continued, ‘…but I knew it was the vada paos. I told him to go to the hospital but he just wouldn’t listen.’ Tears welled up again in her eyes. Virkar swallowed hard, a little ashamed of his own addiction to street-side vada paos. His stomach churned involuntarily. ‘It’s just the beer,’ he told himself, hoping that the vada paos he had had for breakfast had been digested by now. He turned his attention back to the weeping woman. ‘Have faith in God, vahini. He will give you strength,’ Virkar said, bending down and touching her feet as a mark of respect.

He rose and exited the room into the passageway, making his way to the swivel doors through the growing crowd of policemen. He noticed that many of them had covered their noses. Only then did the strong stench of vomit hit him—he had been too preoccupied to notice it earlier. Reeling, he bravely stepped inside Akurle’s cabin. The sight made his stomach heave again, this time so violently that the beer in his belly rose to his throat. Clamping his hand over his mouth and nose, he turned his full attention to what lay before him.

Senior Inspector Akurle was seated in his oversized chair, his upper body sprawled across his desk as if he was taking a nap, except for the fact that his eyes were wide open. His mouth was gaping and the contents of his stomach were spread across the glass top of his table in a smelly, slushy, dirt-coloured paste. Mrs. Akurle had been right: small bits of semi-digested vada pao were spread generously in the slushy vomit along with flecks of blood.

As he had been informed by ACP Wagh, the station’s Police Inspector in charge of crime (PI Crime), a sub-inspector from the detection unit and a government doctor were waiting for him inside. The sub-inspector saluted Virkar while the PI Crime picked his teeth with a steel paper clip that had been straightened to reach the deep recesses of his mouth. Virkar ignored him. The government doctor looked up at Virkar and said something that was muffled by his white surgical mask—all he could make out was ‘food poisoning’ . Virkar raised a curious eyebrow and said, ‘I’ve never seen such a severe case of food poisoning.’ The government doctor now took off his mask and spoke in a tone that bordered on condescension, ‘It happens. It’s because of the spurious oil used for frying the vada paos.’ The PI Crime added with a bored expression, ‘I have taken the vadapaowala into custody. He was using spurious palmolein oil. I have already sent it to the forensic lab for testing.’

Virkar nodded distractedly as he let his eyes wander over the crime scene. ‘Glad to see that you’ve talked to Mrs Akurle and reached a quick conclusion based on what she said. I’m sure she will be happy.’ The sub-inspector nodded with pride while Virkar continued, his voice dripping with sarcasm, ‘Maybe you should also consider my point of view. I would like to put forth, for your consideration, the proposition that it was not food poisoning. Instead, in my humble opinion, some kind of poison was mixed in his food.’

The PI Crime opened his mouth to protest but Virkar silenced him by raising his hand. ‘If it
was
the spurious oil used in the vada pao, we would have received other complaints of food poisoning by now,’ he explained, letting the penny drop slowly.

The government doctor looked sheepish but didn’t back down. ‘Inspector Virkar, I have examined the vomit and found an unknown oily substance mixed with the vada pao…’

‘Don’t just accept the first possibility because of emotional reasons or because it’s easy to explain,’ Virkar cut him off. ‘Or for the sake of the cameras outside. Please go to your hospital and examine this oily substance thoroughly.’ The government doctor didn’t argue further and left, looking a few inches shorter than his earlier pompous self. Virkar, ignored the PI Crime and the sub-inspector who hung around fidgeting, and walked towards the pile of old files and stationery beside the glass-topped table. ‘What is this?’ he asked with a jerk of his head.

‘Akurle saheb was in the process of clearing out all the old, unnecessary things in his office,’ said the sub-inspector.

Virkar picked up some dusty files and leafed through the sheaf of yellowed papers inside. The dust released by the ruffling of the papers tickled his nose, however, and a loud sneeze rose from him, shooting out into the musty air. The file slipped from Virkar’s hands and dropped back on to the pile, kicking up more dust in the process. He instinctively turned away from the pile, but as he did so, a metallic glint caught his eye. After the dust settled, he picked up the files and sifted through them again, this time taking particular care not to release another dust cloud. The object of his attention was lying under the files, partially covered by a crumpled newspaper and glinting in the light of the naked bulb overhead. Virkar bent down and peeled the newspaper away.

It was a student’s geometry instrument box. Colloquially known as a ‘compass box’, this particular one was made of metal, but was so scuffed and battered with age that Virkar could hardly read the brand name stamped on its top. A few dull streaks of paint clung to the compass box’s edges, indicating that it might have once been bright yellow ochre in colour. Shrugging, he set it down atop the pile and turned his attention towards the body. He didn’t notice that the precariously piled files had teetered under the compass box and were slowly toppling over. All of a sudden, he heard the startled cries of the two other men in the room as a loud crash rang out behind him. The compass box clattered on to the old mosaic tiles and flew open and a piece of paper the size of a visiting card fell out of it. Virkar would not have given it a second glance had he not noticed that the paper had writing on it, and it wasn’t in ink. He leaned forward and confirmed his suspicion. The note was written in dried blood. But what was more interesting to Virkar was the message itself: Akurle is just the first to die. To find out who is next, find me first.

‘S
aheb, I beg of you. I don’t know anything,’ the bleeding, blubbering vadapaowala wailed.

Virkar had just entered the lockup after having spent the night at the government hospital. He hadn’t slept a wink and his eyes were bloodshot but his long strides were energetic. He hadn’t found the time to take a bath or even change his clothes, so he was still wearing the civvies from last night that now stank of stale cigarette smoke and hospital disinfectant. But he was glad he had personally pushed the government doctor to work through the night to determine the chemical composition of the ‘oily substance’ found in Akurle’s vomit.

‘Ricin!’ The doctor had finally declared just as the first rays of the sun had lit up the sleeping city. ‘He was poisoned with ricin,’ he continued, but now he spoke with a mixture of awe and amazement. ‘Akurle was fed ricin mixed in the vada paos in such a concentrated dose that it only took a day for the man to die.’ Before Virkar could open his mouth, the doctor launched into an explanation in his usual pompous tone, ‘Ricin is a little substance that is roughly 1,500 times more toxic than cyanide. Ricin poisoning shuts down the central nervous system and causes multiple organ failure. Its symptoms include fever, nausea, bloody diarrhoea, shock, vomiting, lymph node and kidney damage and, eventually, haemorrhaging and death.’

‘So is this ricin readily available in the market?’ asked Virkar.

The doctor shook his head. ‘No, ricin isn’t available by itself, but it can be derived from castor beans which can be easily bought in wholesale subzi mandis across many parts of India. But even then, ricin needs to be extracted from the seeds by a chemical process called chromatography, which takes skill and serious intent.’ The doctor sounded thoroughly impressed by the intelligence of the person who had clearly gone to great lengths to plan and commit the murder.

Virkar had driven his Bullet back to the Wamanrao Marg Police Station immediately, allowing himself the single indulgence of taking a detour via Marine Drive. As he rode along the promenade, the cool early morning breeze floating in from the sea had cleared his head. Eager to get the truth out of the vadapaowala, Virkar was armed with the knowledge that the man couldn’t have had the scientific know-how that was needed to extract ricin from castor beans.

Now, as he stared into the vadapaowala’s terrified eyes, Virkar realized that he was definitely not the killer. The vadapaowala had just been the medium through which the killer had gained access to his target. The man they were looking for was obviously educated and devious enough to have poisoned his victim right under the noses of the best law enforcers of the city. Apart from displaying complete disregard for authority, the killer wanted to engage in some kind of horrific game by sending a message that had sent shivers down the spines of the other policemen at the station.

The police machinery had moved fast. ACP Wagh, in consultation with his own seniors, had decided to clamp down on the incident fearing a massive uproar in the media. Although Virkar was a new arrival at the Crime Branch, he had been pencilled in as the investigating officer despite others from his department being more experienced and wanting to muscle into a potential high profile case. After being transferred to Mumbai from the Gadchiroli district and serving for only six months at the Colaba police station, Virkar had been transferred to the prestigious Crime Branch. Some said it was because Virkar had political clout. Little known was the fact that his boss in Gadchiroli, Additional Commissioner of Police Abhinav Kumar, was now heading Mumbai’s Crime Branch and had personally requested Virkar’s transfer to his department. Kumar had observed Virkar closely as the Inspector had valiantly fought the Maoist menace in Gadchiroli at grass-roots level while winning the confidence of the simple tribal folk who had become innocent casualties in the closet war being fought in the jungles. It was Virkar’s bravery that had earned him the President’s Gallantry Medal, which in turn had secured him a posting in his hometown, Mumbai, and an induction into the elite Murder Squad of the Crime Branch.

ACP Wagh, on the other hand, was eager to ingratiate himself with Abhinav Kumar, which is why he had rooted for Virkar to head the investigation, citing his presence of mind in locating the real clues to the murder before the policemen from Wamanrao Marg Police Station had declared it a case of accidental food poisoning. Virkar had not let on that it was a lucky sneeze that had caught him the break in the case, attributing it to his luck, something he needed very badly to succeed in his new job.

To divert the media’s attention, Akurle’s death had ironically been attributed to a case of severe gastro-intestinal haemorrhage due to accidental food poisoning. The vadapaowala had been detained in the police station as the unknowing, negligent culprit and was made the media scapegoat—with the tacit understanding that he would be reinstated to his position on the streets at another locality when the heat died down. However, some of the policemen at the station were not satisfied with their prime suspect getting off scot-free. Perhaps it was the fear that they could be the killer’s next target or just the anger that wells up in a policeman’s heart at an attack on a fellow policeman, but these disgruntled policemen spent the night ‘interrogating’ the poor vadapaowala to extract whatever little information they could. They subjected him to the infamous ‘third degree’ through the night until he was close to breaking point—he would have confessed to assassinating Rajiv Gandhi if it meant getting some sort of reprieve from his ‘interrogation’.

‘Just tell me who made the vada paos,’ asked Virkar in a sympathetic tone, looking down at the cowering figure in front of him. The vadapaowala teared up with gratitude, relieved that this lanky police officer with the day-old stubble was not using force to elicit an answer from him. He spoke quickly through his sobs, ‘Saheb, I have been frying the vada paos myself for the past ten years. Until today, my delivery boys have never come back with a single complaint.’ Virkar’s brain quickly processed this piece of information.
That’s it! The delivery boy.
The innocuous
person who no one pays attention to in an office.

Virkar ran his fingers through his ruffled hair that had not seen a comb in over thirty hours. ‘Who delivered the vada pao to Akurle?’

‘Saheb, it was that boy, Nandu. A poor young fellow, he had just come from some village near the Karnataka border.’

‘Where is this Nandu?’

‘He lives somewhere near Kalachowki with some other delivery boys. I just hired him a couple of days ago. He begged me for a job and I took pity on him because he looked like he hadn’t eaten in a few days. Plus he spoke Kannada. The Mumbai Central Karnataka Sangha Hostel is close by and many of my customers are Kannadigas, so it always helps if some of us know their language.’

Virkar immediately left the Wamanrao Marg Police Station and made his way to Nandu’s address in Kalachowki, taking a few plainclothes policemen with him as backup. Meeting them outside the Jain Derasar on Parel Tank Road, he gave them the description that he had got from the vadapaowala and entered the crowded Bhatwadi Chawl after having placed the plainclothes men in strategic positions to stop Nandu from getting away. However, somewhere deep inside Virkar knew that this was an exercise in futility, because if Nandu were an accomplice of the killer, he would be long gone. On the flip side, if he had merely been used by the killer to deliver the vada paos, Nandu might already be dead, because the seemingly intelligent killer wouldn’t have executed such an elaborate plan without having thought of eliminating the only person who could identify him.
Either
way, Nandu’s living quarters might throw up some vital clues
, thought Virkar.