The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

Six

No one spotting the auto rickshaw driver who parked his three-wheeler down Basant Lane behind Connaught Circus would have guessed that he was a sattri – in ancient Chana-kyan terminology, a spy. Nor that he knew every brothel, illegal cricket-gambling den and cockerel-fighting venue in the city – not to mention most of its best forgers, fencers, smugglers, safecrackers and purveyors of everything from used Johnnie Walker bottles to wedding-night porn. Blind in one eye, with henna-dyed hair and tatty, oil-stained clothes, he blended into the cityscape as seamlessly as Delhi’s omnipresent crows.

Not even his family knew about his secret life.

Perhaps one day, when his three children were old enough, Baldev Pawar would tell them. But for now it was too risky. If word of his true identity ever leaked out, his life would be in jeopardy and his ability to operate seriously compromised.

Worse, he would be disgraced in the eyes of his father.

Papa Pawar had, in the best family tradition, spent his life working as a professional thief. And like his father and his father’s father, he had worked diligently to ensure that his sons became proficient, capable crooks themselves.

From the age of seven, Baldev had been trained to pick pockets and relieve aunties of their handbags. As a teenager, he had graduated to locks, ignitions and safes. And in his mid-twenties he had started robbing banks. But after he was caught emptying the safe of the Faridabad branch of the Punjab National Bank and subsequently confined to a rat-infested cell for five years, he had decided to do the unthinkable and go straight. Papa Pawar had been devastated. It was his son’s destiny to rob and cheat; dacoity was in their blood, he’d argued. But India was changing. Just because you were born into a certain caste, tribe or clan didn’t mean that you had to stick to the job description of your forebears, Baldev had argued.

How Baldev, aka Tubelight, had become one of Vish Puri’s operatives was a story in itself. Suffice it to say, it was not one he would ever share with his father or his brothers, all of whom were still in the family business and living nearby. Better that they believe him to be a lowly auto rickshaw driver than find out the truth, that he worked for one of their natural enemies: a jasoos.

Besides, a rickshaw wallah was the perfect cover for the type of work Tubelight was now engaged in – tailing grooms, spying on errant husbands, befriending servants and milking them for their employers’ secrets. He didn’t have to account for his whereabouts to anyone; he could hang around on any street corner or in front of any chai stand without raising suspicion; and – requisite bribes demanded by the police aside – the three-wheeler was an economical and agile means of transport.

Refusing fares was not a problem, either. Dilli wallahs were well accustomed to gruff, unaccommodating auto rickshaw drivers forgoing their custom whenever a requested destination did not suit them.

Still, as Tubelight crisscrossed the city, he sometimes took on board paying punters. Besides making a few extra rupees, it was an excellent way of keeping his finger on the pulse of the city.

This morning, en route to his rendezvous with Puri, all the talk from the backseat had been about yesterday’s sensational murder. An elderly couple had described Kali as if they’d seen her themselves. Towering a hundred feet tall, she had slain dozens of people, hence the police cordon around the area, they said.

“Let us hope she rids us of our politicians!” the old woman had declared.

A fertilizer salesman from Indore believed Kali was going to cleanse the world of sinners. Judging by his terrified expression, it seemed the man had sinned a good deal.

Dainik Jagran, the bestselling Hindi newspaper (readership 56 million), was also preoccupied by the same news.

As Tubelight waited for Puri on the backseat of his auto rickshaw, he read a description of how, last night, “in the interests of national security,” the police had cleared the streets around India Gate of thousands of Kali worshippers.

“Thus far,” the editorial pointed out, “Hindu nationalist politicians have not sought to exploit the situation. Doubtless because of the site’s proximity to Parliament and key ministries, not to mention their own residences, they have appealed for calm.”

“Think Swami-ji did it?” Tubelight asked Puri in Hindi after the detective finally arrived.

The two were standing in front of one of their favorite breakfast dhabas that served kokis. The aroma of onions, green chilies, cumin seeds and fresh coriander frying in ghee wafted over them. They both ordered one of the Sindhi-style pancakes and sipped their cups of chai. The drink seemed to perk up Tubelight, who was still groggy, early mornings being anathema to him.

“If he is the guilty one, proving as much will be a challenge, that is for sure,” said Puri. “We would need someone to get on the inside of his ashram. That is the only way.”

On the hot tawa, the koki mixture spat and sizzled.

“How did you get on last night?” asked the detective in Hindi.

Puri had charged Tubelight with tracking down Constable R.V. Dubey, the first police wallah to have reached the murder scene, to find out if he had seen or heard anything that had not appeared in the offical panchnama.

This was Most Private Investigators’ standard procedure given that constables often failed to report key information to their superiors – either through sheer incompetence (anyone with the ability to sign their own name could become a beat cop and they received no investigative training whatsoever) or deliberately (usually because someone bribed them to keep their mouth shut or they were just plain scared).

“I befriended Constable Dubey at the liquor store,” answered Tubelight, who combined a gift for getting people to talk with an ability to hold his liquor like few men could. “We enjoyed some Old Monk rum together.”

“And?”

“Approaching the scene, he passed an ice cream wallah pushing his cart. He was with a rag picker. Male, twenties, black skin.”

“Paagal!” bawled Puri. “That was the murderer! He just let him walk away, is it?”

“Of course, Boss.” Tubelight shrugged.

Their kokis were served with a dab of fresh butter and some curd and garlic pickle on the side.

As they greedily tore them apart with their fingers, the detective asked: “Did this prize Charlie see the murder weapon?”

“Didn’t see it, Boss.”

“You believe him?”

“Yes, Boss. By the end of the evening he was chattering away like a parrot. Believe me, I learned all his secrets. Most of them I’d have preferred not to have heard.”

“Now I’ve another assignment for you,” said Puri, adding in English: “No rest for wicked, huh?”

Tubelight did not reciprocate Puri’s mischievous smile. He had been working long hours over the past few weeks, and thanks to the heat and constant ‘load shedding’, or power cuts, he and his family had taken to the roof of their small house at night. Sleep had been in short supply, what with the mosquitoes and the incessant arguing of the husband and wife next door. The operative badly needed a few ‘offs’. But now did not seem the time to broach the subject; Boss had that unstoppable look in his eye.

“You know any magicians?” asked Puri.

“Jadoo wallahs?” Tubelight’s eyes widened. “You want to stay clear of them.”

“Why exactly?”

“They’ve got powers. I’ve known them to put curses on people.”

Puri could not help but smile at his operative’s superstitious nature.

“All the same I would need to talk to them,” he insisted.

Tubelight regarded him warily.

“They live in Shadipur Depot, in the slums,” he said. “Have their own language – a magician’s language passed down father to son. No one else understands it. Not even me. But there is one old babu who might help. Calls himself Alcbar the Great.”

Puri’s task for the day was to call on the surviving members of the Laughing Club. Before that, he planned to break into Dr. Jha’s office at DIRE. The detective was certain the institute would be closed and wanted to take the opportunity to snoop through the Guru Buster’s desk and files without anyone else knowing he had done so.

This was typical of Puri’s approach to detective work. ‘Less everyone knows what I know, the better’ was one of his credos.

Handbrake drove him to Nizamuddin West, once a self-contained village abutting the tomb of India’s most revered Sufi saint, but now a South Delhi colony. The India of narrow alleyways filled with Muslim pilgrims, beggars cradling drugged babies and the smoke of sizzling lamb kebabs gave way to well-swept residential streets lined with houses and apartments owned by wealthy Muslim merchants, lawyers and the odd gemstone dealer.

DIRE HQ was a 1950^s bungalow. There were rusting bars on the narrow windows and buddleia growing from cracks in the grime-stained walls. A poster on the gate read:

DO YOU HAVE SUPERNATURAL POWERS?

CAN YOU CURE A TERMINALLY ILL PERSON?

REPAIR A TRANSISTOR WITH USE OF REIKI?

WALK ON WATER?

READ OTHER PEOPLE’S MINDS?

FLY TO THE MOON AND BACK WITHOUT AID OF

SPACESHIP?

IF SO YOU COULD WIN 2 CRORE RUPEES!

JUST PROVE YOUR POWERS IN A LOCATION

SPECIFIED BY RATIONALIST AND ‘GURU BUSTER’

DR. SURESH JHA.

APPLY WITHIN.

IT MAY BE NOTED: THE TWO-CRORE-RUPEES AWARD

IS NOT KEPT IN OUR OFFICE.

As he had anticipated, Puri found the front door padlocked. It was still only nine o’clock and Dr. Jha’s secretary would not be along for at least an hour, if indeed she was coming to work at all, which he doubted. According to Mrs. Jha, with whom Puri had spoken briefly after her husband’s cremation yesterday, the future of DIRE was uncertain. The old Guru Buster had run it more or less single-handedly and had not appointed a successor.

The detective made his way down the side of the building to the kitchen door and found it already open. The lock looked as if it had been forced, probably with a strong, metal implement like a knife.

He could hear activity inside the bungalow – drawers being opened and closed; the rustle of papers; a cough.

Puri stepped inside but had to proceed slowly on account of the squeaky rubber soles of the orthopedic shoes he wore to account for his short left leg.

He crossed the stone kitchen floor on tiptoe without making a sound and entered the reception-cum-administrative office. It was a large room, dark and musty and simply furnished with a couple of desks and chairs, and an old Gestet-ner stencil printer with fresh blue ink on the roller.

The door to Dr. Jha’s office was on the right-hand side of the room. It was closed, but someone was moving around inside.

The detective continued on tiptoe. But as he reached the door, he felt a painful cramp shoot through his left leg. This forced him to stop, and in shifting his weight onto his right foot and almost losing his balance, his shoe squeaked like a child’s bathtime rubber duck.

Puri froze, his heart beating wildly. He waited for the cramp to ease off, not moving a muscle. It was almost a minute before the pain passed. Then slowly he pushed the door to Dr. Jha’s office open.

It was empty. To the right of the room stood another door that was ajar. Puri approached it cautiously. He pushed it gently open.

Just then he was hit on the back of the head with a hard object. He heard someone say, “Oh, bugger!” before he fell to the floor, unconscious.

When Puri came around, it was to a throbbing head and the sound of a woman’s voice asking him if he could hear her.

Gradually, his vision came into focus. The first thing he saw was a wavering, large red dot. When his sight cleared, he recognized the face of Dr. Jha’s secretary, Ms. Ruchi, who had been at the cremation yesterday. She was wearing a big red bindi.

“Mr. Vish Puri, sir, are you OK?” she asked, staring down at him.

The detective tried to respond, but his words came out slurred.

“Better take rest, sir,” she said. “You’ve had a nasty bash. Fortunately there’s no blood.”

The detective felt the back of his head; a large lump had already formed.

“Whoever it was got you with this, sir,” said Ms. Ruchi, holding up a cricket bat. “Knocked you for six, looks like.”

Another five minutes passed before Puri was able to sit up. The floor around him was scattered with papers, the contents of Dr. Jha’s desk drawers and the drawers themselves. Someone had evidently turned the place over.

“Last thing I remember…” said Puri, who was suffering from mild amnesia, “I was… crossing the reception… I heard… something inside. But after… it’s all… there’s nothing. It’s a blank, only.”

“You saw who hit you, sir?” asked Ms. Ruchi, regarding him with a caring, sympathetic expression.

He hesitated before answering. “I don’t believe so… but…” he answered.

Puri had a nagging feeling, as if there was something he had forgotten to do, but he couldn’t remember what it was. “Could be it will come back to me,” he added. “How long I’ve been here?”

“I’m not sure, sir. I came five minutes back. The time is half past nine.”

Ms. Ruchi helped the detective up into a chair and then went to fetch him a glass of water. Puri sat surveying the office. Pinned to a board on the wall hung a collection of photographs of Dr. Jha and a group of young volunteers working in rural India during a recent DIRE ‘awareness’ campaign. They could be seen taking turns walking across red-hot coals, a feat performed by many traveling sanyasis to demonstrate their ‘supernatural powers’. Watching was a group of villagers. The idea was to impress upon these illiterate peasants that India’s holy men were con artists.

Could some of the volunteers or perhaps a rival rationalist have carried out the murder? the detective wondered hazily. Such types studied the tricks and illusions of Godmen, after all. Perhaps one of them had wanted Dr. Jha out of the way?

“Sir, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what are you doing here?” asked Ms. Ruchi, breaking into his thought processes when she returned with a glass of water.

“Just I was passing by and found the door open. The lock had been forced. So naturally it was my duty to do investigation.”

“I suppose it must have been one of Maharaj Swami’s people,” said Ms. Ruchi.

“You saw him, is it?” asked Puri as he sipped the water and his head began to clear.

“I’m afraid I caught only a glimpse of his back as he climbed over the wall behind the building. He had a car waiting. I heard it drive away.”

“What all he was after?” asked Puri.

“Doctor-sahib’s file on the Godman, most probably.”

“He found it – the file, that is?”

“Fortunately not. Doctor-sahib keeps it hidden away. I mean…” Ms. Ruchi dropped her gaze to the floor; she looked suddenly overcome with sadness. “I mean… he kept it hidden away.”

“I’m most sincerely sorry for your loss,” said Puri, who had not had the opportunity to offer her his condolences at the cremation yesterday. “Dr. Jha will be sorely missed. An upstanding fellow he was in every respect.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said as the tears began to trickle down her face. She dabbed them with her handkerchief, quickly regaining her composure. “Is it true you’re investigating his murder?” She added quickly: “Mrs. Jha told me.”

“Most certainly,” he answered. “And let me assure you, my dear Ms. Ruchi, I will be most definitely getting to the bottom of it by hook or crook. Vish Puri always gets his man – or in this case I should say ‘his deity’, isn’t it?”

“I’m pleased to hear it, sir,” she said. “I’d be happy to help in any way I can. As much as anyone, I want Maharaj Swami to face justice.”

“You’re certain it was he who committed the act, is it?”

“Who else could it have been?” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, as if Puri had blasphemed. “Dr. Jha was Maharaj Swami’s enemy number one. He had been campaigning against him tirelessly. And recently he had been investigating a suspicious suicide of a young woman at the Godman’s ashram, the Abode of Eternal Love. Her name was Manika Gill. Dr. Jha believed she was murdered.

“And there’s another thing,” continued Ms. Ruchi. “Yesterday Dr. Jha received a death threat. I’ll fetch it for you.”

She disappeared into the reception and soon returned with the piece of paper pasted with letters cut from a Hindi newspaper. Puri read it out loud: “‘Whenever there is a withering of the law and an uprising of lawlessness on all sides, then I manifest myself. For the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of such as do evil, for the firm establishing of the Law, I come to birth, age after age.”

“That is from Bhagavad Gita – book four, I believe,” said the detective. “Some believe it means Lord Vishnu will appear on earth when humanity no longer understands right from wrong. It is a kind of doomsday prophecy. How this arrived?”

“It was hand-delivered – put through the letterbox the day before yesterday. That was Monday.”

“Dr. Jha’s reaction was what exactly?”

“He didn’t take death threats seriously, Mr. Puri – he’s had quite a few over the years, as you can imagine.”

“Ms. Ruchi, be good enough to give me one copy of this thing and keep the original safe here with you.”

“Absolutely, sir. There’s a photocopy wallah under the pilu tree in the street.”

“I would also be most grateful for one copy of Dr. Jha’s file on Maharaj Swami, also. That is at all possible?”

“Of course, sir. I’ll go and fetch it.”

She went to find the file while the detective stood up, still feeling unsteady, and made his way back into the kitchen.

Getting the lock dusted for fingerprints would be a waste of time, he reasoned. But Puri wanted to see if there were any other clues: perhaps a boot mark on the floor or a thread caught on a nail.

He was examining the door when Ms. Ruchi came to find him, clutching the bulging file.

“To tell you the truth, that lock was easy to open,” she said. “One time I forgot my keys and I managed to get in using a screwdriver I keep in the car. I’ve been meaning to get it fixed for ages. Later this morning I’ll get the lock wallah to come.”

“Anyone else knew it was broken?”

“Not that I’m aware. The only other people who use it are the cleaners.”

Puri had seen enough and accompanied the secretary out into the street to make use of the photocopy wallah’s services.

“Tell me, Ms. Ruchi,” he said, “why you came into the office today? You should be taking rest, no?”

“Someone has to be here to look after the office and…” Her eyes started to well up again. “I suppose I wanted to be here… to be, well, near him. Does that sound strange?”

“Not at all. It is quite understandable.”

Tears started to flood down her face.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” she said, straining to keep her voice steady. “Dr. Jha was like a father to me – so calm and kind. It’s like there’s a big hole in my heart. What am I to do without him?”