The Case of the Love Commandos (24 page)

“Some total Charlie came to the house with a fake ID—one of those scamster types. So Mummy-ji welcomed him in with a smile, showed him the whereabouts of the meter and locked him under the stairs.”

“Marvelous! And is it true she’s up for some award?”

“As if she needs any further encouragement. God only knows what’s going on at Vaishno Devi. Rumpi was tight-lipped when I talked to her a while back.”

Their drinks arrived. Puri raised his glass, took a big gulp and let out a long, satisfied sigh. The chilli-cheese toast was
quick to follow and he attacked it like a man who hadn’t eaten for weeks.

“Now I want to know what’s going on with you, Chubby,” said Dr. Ghosh, who stuck with the salted cashews. “I’ve never seen you so fed up. Something’s eating you.”

“Nothing I can’t handle, Shubho-dada,” Puri answered with a wave of his hand.

“We all need a shoulder to cry on, Chubby. Tell me. Perhaps I can help.”

The detective sighed. “You’ve seen the Vishnu Mishra case on TV?” he asked.

“The Thakur accused of murdering the Dalit woman?”

“Her son is missing, also.”

“Wasn’t he trying to elope with Mishra’s daughter?”

“Correct,” said Puri. “A Dalit boy and a Thakur girl. What the world is coming to, I ask you?”

Dr. Ghosh regarded him with almost pitying eyes. “Come now, Chubby, times are changing. You sound like a Thakur yourself.”

“I’m not one to discriminate against caste.”

“Then what have you got against two people coming together?”

“Let them come together provided their parents and family are in agreement.”

Dr. Ghosh scoffed. “And since when are elders all so wise? Just look at our leading politicians. Hardly one below seventy. And arrogant beyond all measure.”

“You believe youngsters can do better?”

“They could hardly do worse. You know my views on the subject, Chubby. The family model is too stifling. Our young people are not taught to think for themselves. That’s why you’ve got this paralysis. We could do with a bit of revolution.”

“I’m in no doubt that our politicians are a bunch of crooks. But it is the family that binds India together—the values we share, of common decency and community, that stops it from falling apart. I, for one, am against anything that threatens it.”

“And caste? Does that bind us all together, Chubby?”

They both fell silent for a minute or so, each lost in his own thoughts. When Puri spoke again there was not the slightest hint of animosity in his voice, a testament to the high regard in which he held Dr. Ghosh and the value he placed on their friendship.

“Talking of caste, I wanted to pick your brains so to speak,” he said.

“Anything, Chubby.”

Puri told him about his visit to ICMB and the work they were doing.

“They’re taking blood samples from illiterate village types, paying them one hundred rupees, only, and getting their thumbprints on some consent form.”

“Well, that’s clearly unethical. But to be honest, even with the best intentions in the world, it’s very hard to police. Indigenous communities from South America to Australia have been exploited.”

“Seems communities who’ve intermarried over generations offer rich pickings, is it?”

“Amongst groups who’ve remained endogamous over long periods, mutations occur in the genes, Chubby. This can create disadvantages and weaknesses, but it can also prove an advantage. Sickle-cell anemia is a good example. Those who carry the recessive gene have been found to have a very high resistance to malaria. So, yes, once we find these mutations in the genes and the chromosomes, there’s the possibility of developing treatments.”

Puri sat forward in his chair, placing his drink on the table in front of him as if he needed his hands free to think.

“Let us imagine I take the blood sample of a certain young man and find something worthwhile in his DNA and I want to do further tests and all …,” he said, his eyes almost feverish.

“Are you asking how much blood would you need?” asked Dr. Ghosh.

Puri gave an eager, childlike nod.

“Well, that would depend on how many tests you were carrying out. But I would imagine a number of samples would be necessary for comparisons.”

“And if your laboratory lost power over many hours during load shedding?”

“Your samples would be ruined.”

The detective took out his notebook and flicked back to the notes he’d made after his conversation with the Swedish director, Bergstrom.

“
After all the failures on the national grid, we had to build our own power plant
.”

“That’s why they needed Ram,” concluded Puri. “He was giving them blood and in return they were paying him for his services.”

The Vaishno Devi treasury was housed in a building a short distance from the shrine complex. It contained a vault into which daily contributions were placed after all the coins and notes had been sorted, counted and bagged. From what Mummy and Rumpi could gather from a priest to whom they spoke, the vault was watched over at night by a lone security guard employed by a private firm. This security guard, who was obese but had previously been considered reliable, had fallen asleep. A thief—Inspector Malhotra apparently believed the job had been the work of just one—had then entered the building via a skylight and shinnied down a rope.

The priest also told them that the vault’s combination lock had been opened with the use of sophisticated safecracking equipment, including a diamond-tipped drill that had been discarded at the scene. The thief had then escaped with an undisclosed sum.

“Must be that Weasel Face priest was the one doing drugging of the security guard using sleeping tablets,” said Mummy as she and Rumpi stood outside the treasury watching the police come and go.

“How do you know he’s not the thief?” asked Rumpi.

“Why he would do climbing in through the roof?”

“But he could have the loot.”

“Doubt it. Remember he was on duty inside the shrine.”

Rumpi made a face. “You’re absolutely sure you didn’t doze off last night, Mummy-ji? Perhaps just for a few minutes?”

“Don’t be silly, beta.”

“And there’s no way Dughal could have climbed out the window?”

“You’ve seen his size, is it?”

“Well, then surely we should find your Weasel Face and find out what he knows.”

“Hardly he is going to tell us how Dughal decamped with the loot.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Watch and wait. And trust to the God.”

Mummy’s fatalism paid off about an hour later when Inspector Malhotra and his jawans suddenly emerged from inside the treasury and made off down the hill. Mummy and Rumpi followed at a distance. The police wallahs soon arrived at their guesthouse and entered. The manager was waiting for them. He was holding a rucksack and a mountaineer’s climbing rope.

“We found it under the bed in room seven, sir,” the clerk told Malhotra as Mummy and Rumpi entered the guesthouse and loitered on the edge of the reception, eavesdropping on the conversation.

“And where’s the occupant?” asked the inspector.

“Gone, sir.”

“When?”

The clerk gave a shrug.

“Describe her to me.”

“Young—I’d say thirties, dark hair, athletic type.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Last night when she checked in, sir.”

“What time?”

The clerk thought for a minute, then answered, “Around nine, nine thirty. I can’t be sure. We were very busy. One hundred percent occupancy.”

Malhotra asked to see the register and the clerk duly pointed out the entry made by the aforementioned guest. “That one: Gauri Nanda, a Delhi address is given,” he said.

“And you haven’t seen her this morning?” asked Malhotra.

“No, sir, she must have gone.”

“Where’s the night clerk?”

“Sleeping.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs.”

“Fetch him.”

The young man was sent for and appeared a few minutes later bleary-eyed and with his trousers on back to front.

“The woman in room seven—Gauri Nanda. You remember her?” asked Malhotra.

The night clerk gave a petrified nod.

“Did she leave the guesthouse at all last night?”

“I … I don’t re-remember,” he stuttered.

Mummy piped up. “Inspector, I witnessed her leaving,” she said.

Recognizing her voice, Malhotra turned slowly around with a look of fatalistic resignation. “Mrs. Puri,” he said, injecting a sense of inevitability into his voice.

“Yes, Inspector. I’m a guest here, also.”

“And you saw this young woman—Gauri Nanda.”

“Correct.”

“And she left her room in the middle of the night?”

“One o’clock, exactly and precisely.”

“Was she wearing this pack?”

“Correct.”

“And you saw her return, madam?”

“After three o’clock give or take.”

“Did you see her leave again this morning?”

“Negative, Inspector. Beyond six thirty I was taking bed rest. So tired I was.”

Malhotra thanked her, his graciousness tinged with faint bemusement, and then asked the manager to show him Gauri Nanda’s room. He spent less than five minutes inside and left without making any significant discoveries.

“Suspect is female, thirties, going by name of Gauri Nanda. I want any female matching her description held at the bottom of the mountain for questioning,” he could be heard saying into his walkie-talkie as he and his jawans swept back through reception.

When they were gone, Mummy approached the manager.

“Kindly tell me when exactly this Gauri Nanda made her room booking?”

The manager checked his computer. “One month back, madam,” he said.

“Kindly do checking of another reservation. Name of Dughal,” Mummy said.

He obliged her, quickly confirming that it had been made on the same day.

“They were made within half an hour of one another in fact,” he added.

Mummy stepped away from the desk.

“You think she was Dughal’s accomplice?” asked Rumpi.

“No doubt about it at all.”

“You mean Dughal was just the mastermind?”

“Could be,” answered Mummy, although there was a degree of uncertainty in her voice.

She made her way down the corridor and found the door to Gauri Nanda’s room open. There was a cleaner inside sweeping the floor. Apart from the rucksack, he said he’d found nothing else out of the ordinary. Mummy had a look around herself and came across nothing either. She then asked to see the Dughals’ room, which was yet to be cleaned. Inside, it was a mess, with sweets wrappers, empty Coke bottles and takeaway boxes scattered around the place.

When Mummy stepped into the bathroom, something crunched beneath her chappals. Kneeling down, she found some sand scattered across the floor. There were more traces in the shower around the plughole.

“It must have got into his shoes coming up the mountain,” suggested Rumpi.

“He wasn’t doing walking, na,” pointed out Mummy.

They wandered back down the corridor and stopped on the steps of the guesthouse. Some pilgrims who’d made the ascent overnight passed them, elated at having reached the summit. A couple of sedan chairs appeared, both occupied by overweight Punjabis whose expressions showed none of the sense of achievement exhibited by the pilgrims on foot.

Seeing them and the porters who bore their weight triggered a question in Rumpi’s mind. It left her lips, however, as a statement.

“You’d think the Dughals would have taken a helicopter up the mountain, seeing as they chartered one to go back down again. It really can’t be that comfortable sitting in those chairs for hours on end.”

Mummy sent Rumpi a puzzled look, her eyebrows knitted together. “What is that you said?”

“I was just saying that it seems odd—”

“Odd! That is it! He wanted whole world to see them! Just it is a smoke screen!”

“What do you mean a smoke screen?”

Mummy pulled her by the arm. “Come. We are doing checkout.”

“Checkout, Mummy-ji? What about the others?”

“Two horses are required, also.”

“You want to go after the Dughals? But we’ll never catch them in time.”

“Don’t do tension, na. Someone will be waiting down below, also.”

“Who?”

“He knows every person from here to Jammu.”

“Not Jagdish Uncle! He can’t possibly handle this kind of thing.”

“It is a simple thing, na.”

“Simple for you maybe, Mummy-ji.”

Tulsi, who was wearing the same kurta and jeans she’d worn to her finals five days ago, squeezed through the gap in the wall that skirted Agra’s Mehtab Bagh, the Moonlight Garden. Officially, the place closed after sunset, yet as a trespasser she was in good company. Many of the city’s courting couples came here to while away their evenings free from the prying, disapproving eyes of family and neighbors. The guards rarely turned them away and weren’t averse to donations of a few rupees. However, their collusion came with the strict understanding that only the most innocent of canoodling would be tolerated.

For a young woman to come here on her own after dark was unheard of, however, and Tulsi was fortunate that the guard recognized her and remembered Ram, whom he asked after with some fondness.

“You haven’t seen him?” she asked, her voice trembling with expectation.

“Not for a long time.”

“If he comes tonight, please tell him I’ll be waiting in the usual place.”

Tulsi made her way between the rows of flower beds, fighting
back tears as the scent of the roses triggered memories of their first date.

Ram hadn’t been able to afford the trendy coffee shops where she and her friends usually hung out. But when he’d come to pick her up from her dormitory on his old, battered scooter, he’d promised her “something magical that no amount of money in the world can buy!”

Outside the entrance to the Moonlight Garden he’d bought her a choco bar and Tulsi was struck by the consideration he’d shown the vendor. No one in her family or circle of friends would have deigned to talk to a common man in such a familiar—and humane—way. Nor would any of them have shown such relish for a simple ice lolly.