The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra Read online

  ‘The elephant nearly drowned yesterday, Mrs Subramanium,’ said Chopra, ignoring his mother-in-law. ‘I could not leave him in the flooded courtyard, so I brought him up here.’

  ‘It is an animal,’ said Mrs Subramanium sharply. ‘A dumb animal. If its fate was to die in the rain, then that is that. Its place is not inside my building.’

  ‘No, Mrs Subramanium, that is not that! This is this!’ Poppy had materialised from the bedroom. She stood now with narrowed eyes and folded arms, glaring at her nemesis. ‘This elephant is a living, breathing creature. He is an avatar of our Lord Ganesh. The poor baby nearly died last night. Now he is very, very ill. He is welcome to stay in my home as long as he wishes.’

  ‘But he is not welcomed by me, Mrs Chopra,’ growled Mrs Subramanium. ‘He is a danger to children; he is a menace to hygiene; he is a threat to the security of our infrastructure; he is a—’

  AAATCHOOOO!

  The sneeze reverberated around the room. Mrs Subramanium froze. Gradually, the echoes of the monumental sneeze faded. Mrs Subramanium looked down at her sari. She did not like what she saw. ‘Filthy, filthy creature,’ she growled. Without a further word she turned on her heel and marched from the room, stopping only to mutter: ‘You have not heard the last of this, Mr Chopra. This is really too much.’

  After Mrs Subramanium left, Poppy served lunch. Chopra watched her carefully. ‘Did you really mean what you said?’ he asked, eventually. ‘About Ganesha staying as long as he needs to?’

  ‘Well, if Mrs Subramanium thinks she can tell me what to do in my own home, then she has another thing coming.’ She set down the plate of steaming brinjal curry with a bang, and went back to the kitchen. Chopra watched her go, thinking that she had never been more magnificent.

  After lunch Chopra retired to his study. From the display cabinet he removed the medal that he had been awarded nine years ago, following the raid that had ended in the death of Kala Nayak. Presumed death. The Kirti Chakra was a significant honour for any policeman, particularly one as relatively young as he had been at the time. But the award was a reflection of how serious a problem Nayak had become to the city, the state and even the country. Although he had tried to play down the award, as was his nature, Chopra had been quietly proud of the accolade. He had been proud of the fact that he had helped to finish off Nayak and his gang, helped to make the city that he loved a safer place. Now, he felt like a fraud.

  He sent his mind back to that night, a very hot, humid night in the month of October, just after the rainy season had ended. He remembered waiting outside the building that Anarkali the eunuch had tipped them off about, waiting for Nayak and his gang to show their hand. He remembered seeing Nayak’s face at the window. But now, looking back, he thought… why? Why, if Nayak was in hiding, had he come to the window and spent a good minute there, smoking a cigarette? With the benefit of hindsight, it seemed to be an overtly deliberate gesture. It was as if Nayak had been making sure that he was clearly identifiable to anyone watching from below.

  Had he known that they were there? Had he planted the information on the street knowing that it would eventually find its way to the authorities? And inside, in the chaos of the shootout, who had actually seen Nayak’s death? Reviewing the debriefing sessions that he had conducted with his men, it seemed that a number of his officers had claimed to have seen Nayak engaged in the shooting. But Chopra himself had been in the middle of that chaos, and he would have been hard put to say exactly what he had seen among all those flying bullets and the smoke from the fire.

  And the fire… they had never really figured out who had started it. Certainly, the building seemed to have gone up in flames very quickly–suspiciously quickly, he now thought. Was it possible that all of it, the whole thing, from start to finish, had been orchestrated by Nayak himself? That the point of the operation had been for Nayak to vanish, leaving behind a burnt and smoking body, an impostor decked out in Nayak’s own jewellery?

  Chopra picked up the framed photograph of his father that stood on his desk. It showed Masterji with his two sons, standing beneath the ancient lychee tree in the dusty courtyard of their village compound. The tree had been a fixture of Chopra’s childhood. The picture had been taken on the occasion of his elder brother Jayesh’s marriage. Jayesh was dressed in his groom’s outfit; Chopra himself was resplendent in his own glittering costume. Their father was wearing his usual attire, a staid kurta and dhoti, a schoolmaster’s waistcoat. His hands were placed on the shoulders of his sons. His pride was evident, filling the picture.

  Chopra stood up and paced the room. He knew that he was agitated, and he knew that this was not a good mental state to be in if one hoped to conduct an investigation of any kind. To calm himself he sat down again and took out the diary that he had taken from Santosh Achrekar’s home. He considered it now to be a sort of talisman, a guide that kept him locked on to his true objective–finding the murderer of a poor boy from Marol.

  He went through the diary again, looking for anything he might have missed. But the entries were still either bland or enigmatic: ‘SNBO–how to expose them?’

  As he riffled through the pages, he noticed a sliver of white peeking out from the inside leather jacket of the diary. He teased out the paper, and unfolded it. On the paper were names and numbers:

  Dilip Phule Rs. 800,000

  Ritesh Shinde Rs. 750,000

  Sanjay Kulkarni Rs. 900,000

  Ajit Kamat Rs. 750,000

  Suresh Karve Rs. 700,000

  Shabbir Junjunwalla Rs. 800,000

  Chandu Pandit Rs. 800,000

  Anthony Gonsalves Rs. 700,000

  Chopra was astounded. He had an immediate idea of what this list represented; he had seen something like it before, many years ago, taken from the pocket of a member of the underworld… He was certain that this was a bribe list.

  And the individuals named on this list must be reasonably high-ranking officials to deserve payments in excess of seven lakh rupees!

  He recalled now the bundle of cash that he had seen the man in the red beret give to the leather shop-owner in the Atlas Mega Mall. It seemed he had been right to guess that this cash had been a payoff. Was the shop-owner one of the names on this list? Why did he need paying off? The more important question was: what was this list doing in Santosh Achrekar’s diary? What did these names have to do with his death?

  The answers to all these questions, Chopra suspected, lay with the man he believed to be Nayak. The names on this list could only be men that Nayak had bribed.

  But who were they? Their names were not familiar to Chopra; certainly they were not senior policemen of his acquaintance. But then, he did not know every policeman in Mumbai. And why should they be policemen? Perhaps they were customs officials, or tax men. Why not high court judges, or government ministers? There were so many men that someone like Nayak would need to bribe in order to smooth the terrain for whatever illegal activities he was engaged in.

  And somehow, Chopra was certain, these activities had led to the death of Santosh Achrekar.

  One other thing was also certain: Chopra now had in his hands compelling evidence that there was more to Santosh’s death than simply a crime of passion or a fight between friends that had gone too far. Which left him with the question of… what next? Well, he did have one clear lead.

  Inspector Chopra (Retd) made his decision. ‘I am just going out,’ he called to Poppy, as he made his way to the front door.

  After Chopra had gone, Poppy found herself alone in the apartment with Ganesha. Her mother, exasperated by the morning’s events, had wandered down to the eleventh floor to share her woes with her friend Lata Oja. Poppy found that she was suddenly overcome by a strange feeling of nervousness. Mrs Subramanium’s unwarranted intrusion had forced an automatic reaction from her, but now, faced with the somewhat dreamlike reality of an elephant in her living room, she found herself at a loss. What did Chopra expect her to do? After all, what did she know about elephants, anyway? W
hat did he know about elephants, for that matter? Really, her husband could be such a duffer at times!

  And then something curious happened. As the little calf continued to snuffle and sneeze, hunched down inside its quilts, the very picture of misery, Poppy felt her long-suppressed mothering instincts rising to the fore. Perhaps it was the influence of her recent thoughts about Kiran’s daughter’s baby, but suddenly she was overcome by a desire to nurse the baby elephant that her husband had seen fit to deposit inside her home.

  ‘OK, young man,’ she said determinedly, ‘first things first: let’s get you cleaned up.’

  She took a large tin tub from the pantry and filled it with steaming hot water from the bathroom. Into this she added some lemon-scented soap and half a bottle of her favourite bath scent. She dragged the tub out into the living room and set it down in front of Ganesha, who eyed it with a look of sudden trepidation. Poppy then removed all the quilts from around the little elephant and set down some plastic sheets around the rug, which she had already mentally consigned to the wastebin. She fetched her largest scrubbing brush from the bathroom, and set to work.

  First she washed Ganesha’s back and flanks. ‘Stop wriggling,’ she told the elephant sternly as he writhed beneath her ministrations. She cleaned his legs and his bottom. She scrubbed his feet and his large, square toes which were caked in mud. Finally she cleaned his face, even scrubbing his trunk. ‘Don’t moan,’ she said as Ganesha mooed in complaint, trying to draw his trunk as far away from her as possible. ‘It’s for your own good.’

  Just as she finished, Ganesha dipped his trunk into the tin tub, sucked up the remaining quantity of soapy water and then shot it all over her.

  She stood there gasping, and then wiped the water from her face. She glared at the little elephant, who returned her glare with a defiant look of his own. ‘Young man, if you think that will get you out of it, you don’t know Poppy very well!’

  She stalked off into the bedroom and returned with a large cotton towel with which she violently patted Ganesha down. Then she fetched a bottle of mustard oil and rubbed it onto Ganesha’s head. ‘My mother swears by this,’ she said. ‘She is sixty years old and still has skin like a baby.’

  Finally, she fetched a small plastic tub of Vicks VapoRub. ‘This will frighten away your cold in a jiffy,’ she said. Ganesha sniffed the bottle with his trunk; his eyes fluttered in alarm. He tried to lumber to his feet, but Poppy prevented his escape by telling him sternly in a no-nonsense voice to ‘SIT!’

  Ganesha huddled in miserable silence while she coated his trunk in the smelly ointment.

  Finally, her work done, Poppy cleaned herself up, changed her clothes, and then made herself a pot of tea. She sat back on the sofa. Ganesha eyed her warily. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘what shall we watch?’

  BASANTI RIDES AGAIN

  Meanwhile, Inspector Chopra had made his way to his friend Kapil Gupta’s garage. The streets of Mumbai were gradually filling up again. Like crabs emerging from the sand after the tide, Mumbaikers were reclaiming their city. The rain had instantly vaporised much of the road surface and Mumbai’s infamous potholes were back, adding to the traffic woes. There was a curious smell in the air: a sweet smell of jacaranda blossom and re-breathed dust, as if the earth itself had exhaled. Or perhaps it was the smell of death.

  One hundred dead, thought Chopra. And yet, in a city of twenty million, what did that mean? Almost nothing.

  No, he said to himself. Even a single death means something. To those who care, and even to those who don’t. Even a single death makes a demand on us all.

  Kapil’s garage was busy. The rain had damaged many vehicles. Chopra found his old friend knee-deep in irate customers. ‘This is extortion!’ blubbered one; ‘Highway robbery!’ roared another; ‘Blatant profiteering!’ growled a third. ‘If this was wartime you would be shot.’

  ‘Lucky we are not at war with anyone, then,’ said Kapil sweetly.

  Spotting Chopra, he pulled away from the angry mob.

  ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ asked Chopra.

  ‘I have decided to temporarily raise my rates.’

  ‘But with all the rain damage you must be flooded with customers.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Kapil, a broad grin breaking over his moustachioed face. ‘One must make hay while the sun is shining, yes? Or I should say when the sun is not shining.’

  Chopra smiled, then said: ‘I’ve come to take Basanti.’

  ‘Shiva have mercy!’ exclaimed Kapil. ‘I thought the day would never come.’

  He led Chopra to the rear of the garage, where a blue tarpaulin covered a hidden object. With no further ceremony, he removed the tarpaulin. ‘Here you are, old friend. Tuned up and ready to go.’

  Chopra drew in his breath. He felt that old excitement welling in his breast. Basanti! After all these years!

  The Royal Enfield Bullet gleamed. With its 500cc of unbridled horsepower, the motorbike stood there like a lion ready to pounce, the very embodiment of mechanical puissance. Its bulbous black petrol tank shone like the carapace of some giant beetle; its enormous tyres looked as if they could tackle the Himalayas.

  He remembered when he had first bought her, back when Poppy would still ride pillion, and they would tear around the city: across to Juhu Beach for kokum ice shavings, or down to Nariman Point to eat bhel puri at Chowpatty and walk around the curved, palm-tree-lined promenade of Marine Drive, known as the Queen’s Necklace, watching the sun go down on the Arabian Sea. Back then, Poppy had been as thrilled as he was by the bike’s power, the feeling that one was riding a wild stallion. And then, in a mad instant, everything had changed. Damn that donkey-cart-wallah!

  Afterwards, when Chopra had returned from the hospital with his leg in a plaster cast, Poppy had refused to sit on the infernal machine ever again, and nagged him endlessly to get rid of it. In the end she had made him promise to give up the bike.

  But now, thought Chopra, it was time for his self-imposed penance to end. It was time for Basanti to tear up the Mumbai roads again.

  Chopra parked the Enfield in the courtyard. Bahadur rushed over to examine it, his eyes shining.

  ‘If Poppy Madam asks,’ said Chopra, ‘this is not my bike.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ said Bahadur. ‘Chopra Sir’s bike is not his bike.’

  Upstairs, Chopra discovered Poppy and Ganesha transfixed by the goings-on in a soap opera about a newly married woman’s travails with her mother-in-law and her new family. This seemed to be the latest craze in Mumbai–family soap operas. Poppy and her mother were addicted to them. And now it looked as if the latest addition to their home was also being weaned onto the over-the-top melodramas.

  Chopra shook his head sadly and retired to his study. He had to complete his preparations.

  From the bottom of his cabinet he removed a locked steel box. Inside the box was a pistol wrapped in oilcloth. It was Chopra’s spare service revolver, which he was supposed to have handed back to the police armoury, but had not got around to doing. He had not fired the weapon for years, had not needed to. His work had become increasingly desk-bound. In some ways this had been a relief, as it had given him time to concentrate on the strategic aspects of local policing; and yet he had often found himself wishing, wistfully, for the old days when he could get out into the streets and get his hands dirty with the guts of an investigation.

  With great care Chopra cleaned the gun. First he disassembled it and degreased the frame, scrubbing it out with a nylon wire brush. He cleaned each part, then lubricated them with oil, paying particular attention to the contact surfaces of the hammer and the trigger pin. Then he reassembled the revolver and loaded it with .32 calibre bullets. He knew that the gun was old-fashioned, a long-barrelled Anmol revolver that carried only six rounds. Nevertheless, he had always preferred it to the newer German automatics that his colleagues now favoured. There was something reassuringly traditional about the Anmol.

  Next, he removed a cloth bag from his cabinet. From insi
de the bag he took out a pair of high-powered binoculars and a digital camera that Poppy had given him for his birthday two years ago and which he had never used.

  He cleaned the binoculars, checked that they were still focusing properly, and then sat down and read the operating manual for the camera. Finally, he charged the camera’s battery and practised taking photographs. When he was satisfied that his preparations were complete, he put the gun, the binoculars and the camera, together with its stand, into a rucksack. He stood for a while, thinking. Then he added a folding metal stool, his notebook and his calabash pipe.

  Chopra looked at his watch. There were still many hours to go before he could put his plan into action.

  He returned to the living room, where Poppy and Ganesha had moved on to watching a Bollywood potboiler starring Poppy’s idol Shah Rukh Khan. Shah Rukh was engaged in giving the suitably pantomime villain a good thrashing, but would occasionally pause for spots of comedic jackanapery. Poppy had placed a large bowl of fried banana chips on the floor. Occasionally, without taking their eyes from the screen, both his wife and the little elephant would lift chips from the bowl and insert them into their mouths. Not wishing to disturb them, Chopra took the newspaper from the sideboard and returned to his study.

  CHOPRA GOES ON A STAKEOUT

  The next morning Inspector Chopra (Retd) woke up just before dawn. Having dressed quickly, he stood for a moment looking down at his sleeping wife. He thought: it is not too late to tell her where I am going. But he knew Poppy would make a fuss.

  In the end, he simply left, closing the bedroom door gently behind him.

  In the living room, Ganesha was also awake. Poppy had left a shallow tin tub filled with water next to him, which was now empty. A second tin tub waited in readiness should Ganesha feel the need to exercise his bowels.