The Case of the Missing Servant

Five

Puri came around to find Rumpi kneeling by his side, holding some smelling salts under his nose. Nearby, Malika and Monica stood looking down at him with concerned expressions. In the doorway of the stairwell hovered an anxious Sweetu, wringing his hands.

"Sir, sir, sir, so sorry, sir. I didn't mean to, sir! I heard shots, sir, so I came running and then…I didn't know you were there, sir! Sir, please don't die…"

Puri's head was spinning and he felt nauseous. It took what seemed like several minutes until he could focus his thoughts and then he whispered to Rumpi, "For God's sake, tell the boy to shut up and go away."

Rumpi complied, assuring Sweetu that "sir" was going to be fine and that he should get back to work.

After seeking further reassurance that his life was still worth living, the houseboy did as he was told and returned downstairs.

The girls soon followed him to the kitchen, leaving Rumpi to apply an ice pack to the bump on Puri's forehead.

"Thank heavens you're all right, Chubby," she said tenderly." "I thought you'd been shot."

"Had I not reacted with lightning reflexes and thrown myself on the ground, most certainly I'd be lying here permanently," he said. "Just I was crawling over to the door when that…that fool burst in. Otherwise I would have caught the shooter. Undoubtedly!"

"Oh please, Chubby, it wasn't the boy's fault," chided Rumpi gently. "He was only trying to help. Now tell me how you're feeling."

"Much better, thank you, my dear. A nice cup of chai and I'll be right as rain."

Slowly, the detective pushed himself up into a sitting position, taking the ice pack from Rumpi and holding it on his forehead.

"Tell me, anyone see the shooter?" he asked.

"I don't believe so," answered Rumpi. "I was in the toilet and the others were downstairs. I heard the shots and the next thing I knew Sweetu was shouting you'd been shot and we all came running."

"You called the police, is it?"

"I've tried several times, Chubby. But I keep getting a message: 'This number does not exist.' You want I should try again?"

"Yes please, my dear. An official report should be made. Most probably the cops have been negligible in paying the phone bill. Last I heard, they were some years behind, so the lines were cut off. If you can't get through, send that Sweetu to the station. Tell him to say that some goonda tried putting Vish Puri in the cremation ground, but very much failed in his duty."

The police-an officer and four constables-arrived an hour later. After stomping around on the roof, they concluded that the would-be killer had positioned himself in the vacant plot behind the house.

Their search of the area yielded nothing of value and, predictably, they turned their full attention on the servants.

"Nine times out of ten, it's the help," the officer told Puri.

The questions put to Monica, Malika and Sweetu were accusatory and misleading, and after all three had answered them in turn and professed their innocence, the policeman told Puri he strongly suspected an "inside job." Sweetu was his "chief suspect."

"You think he's dangerous, is it?" asked Puri, playing along.

"I'd like to take him down to the station and get the truth out of him," replied the officer.

The detective pretended to give this suggestion some thought and then said, "Actually, I'd prefer to keep him here. That way I can keep an eye on him and he'll lead me to the hit man."

Puri showed the cops to the door and, after watching them drive away and pausing for a moment to contemplate their crass stupidity, headed up onto the roof.

A careful inspection of the holes in the water tank and the pits made by the two bullets that had impacted on the exterior wall indicated that the hit man had positioned himself on top of the half-constructed building that stood a few feet to the east of the Puris' home.

Five minutes later, the detective was standing on the spot, behind a half-built wall, from where his assailant had shot at him.

There, on the ground, amid some broken bits of brick and lumps of dried concrete, he found six empty slugs and a few cigarette butts. These he scooped up one by one, wrapping them carefully in his handkerchief, and then returned to ground level.

From a number of boot impressions left in the earth, which matched those visible in the dust on the top of the building, he determined that the hit man had entered the site through an open back gate and could easily have come and gone without anyone seeing him.

Puri spent a fruitless hour asking the neighbors and their servants if they had seen anything unusual that morning and then returned home.

Once seated on the big blue leather couch in the sitting room, he wrote down everything he knew so far.

1. Hit man waiting 15 mins. at least.

2. Hit man expecting subject.

3. Hit man uses country-made weapon.

4. Hit man is man-size nine boots.

Next, Puri turned to his Most Usual Suspects file, which he'd retrieved from the safe in his study.

It contained up-to-date information on all the individuals with a strong motive for having him murdered and whom he judged to be a grave threat. In the event of his untimely death, Rumpi was under instruction to take the file to his rival, Hari Kumar. Despite their differences, he and Hari had an understanding that they would not allow each other's murder to go unsolved.

The Most Usual Suspects file contained details of four individuals. A fifth name, that of a serial killer known as Lucky, had recently been removed after he had been awarded the death sentence.

"Not so lucky after all." Puri chuckled to himself as he looked over the other names. In no particular order, they were:

Jacques "Hannibal" Boye, the French serial killer, serving a life sentence in Tihar jail for murdering and eating seven Canadian backpackers.

Krishna Rai, the opposition MLA from Bihar, whose son Puri had helped convict for murdering a bar girl.

Ratan Patel, the head of India Info Inc., serving six years for insider trading.

Swami Nag, the swindler, confidence man and murderer.

Without doubt, this last individual posed the greatest threat. There was a note on his page that read "absconding, whereabouts unknown." Before going into hiding, the Swami had sworn to kill Puri himself "by any and all means."

The detective decided to call his usual sources within the criminal underworld to find out about Swami Nag's whereabouts and whether any of the other three had put out a contract on his life recently. He would also ask Tubelight to make some inquiries; no one else had better informants.

Beyond that, there was not much more Puri could do.

There were hundreds of hit men for hire in Delhi; nearly all of them were ordinary, everyday people desperate to do anything to provide their families with their next meal. Their fingerprints were not on record; their weapons of choice were often "country-made" pistols and rifles, which were impossible to trace. Puri closed the Most Usual Suspects file, put it on the couch next to him and opened another dossier containing details of the attempts that had been made on his life.

Today's incident brought the tally to twelve.

On six occasions, his enemies had tried shooting him; twice, they'd attempted poison (once using a samosa laced with arsenic); and during the Case of the Pundit with Twelve Toes, a hired thug had tried to force Puri's car over the edge of a hairpin bend on the road to Gulmarg.

The most ingenious attempt had been orchestrated by a cunning murderer (a naturalist by profession) working in Assam's Kaziranga Park, who had secretly sprayed Puri's clothes with a pheromone that attracted one-horned rhinos.

The closest anyone had come (not including the three rhinos, who could move surprisingly quickly) had been a criminal hijra who had pushed a pile of bricks off the top of a building into an alley in Varanasi where Puri had been walking.

Hardly a day went by when Puri didn't relate one of these stories to someone. Prospective clients, journalists, visiting children doing school projects and Scotland Yard detectives had all heard one or more.

"Danger is my ally," he would tell eager listeners.

Fostering an image of fearlessness was vital to his reputation as a detective. But Puri was not lax about his own security. His Ambassador was a customized model fitted with bulletproof glass and a reinforced steel undercarriage. He kept two Labradors in the garden and employed an alert chowkidar armed with a shotgun. And he varied the route he took home.

Puri was also careful to appease the gods, visiting the temple at least once a week and observing all the major festivals.

If all that failed to protect him…well, the detective had not stared death in the face without being somewhat fatalistic. As he was fond of saying, "We're all one breath from this life to the next, only."

A couple of hours after the shooting, with the bump on his forehead no longer throbbing, Puri decided he was well enough to drive to Jaipur.

Rumpi had other ideas.

"Chubby, you must rest," she insisted in Punjabi, the language the two usually spoke with each other, returning from the kitchen with some tea for him.

"I'm making you some khichri and later I'll rub mustard oil on your head."

Obediently, the detective sat on the couch again. He knew when it was prudent to do as he was told. Besides, spending the day at home would not be all bad. He could repot his chili plants, watch some cricket and, in the evening, visit the temple.

Rumpi returned to the kitchen and Puri switched on the TV, surfing through the inordinate number of satellite channels until he found one showing the India vs. West Indies match in Hyderabad. It was the second test-the Indian batsmen having collapsed in the first-and the tourists were nearly eighty-two for one, with Lara two runs short of a half-century.

Half an hour later, as Puri was enjoying Rumpi's khichri with homemade curd and tart mango pickle, and reflecting on the perks of being shot at, a car honked its horn outside the front gate and the dogs began barking.

The detective listened as the gate was opened and a vehicle's tires ground against the gravel. Two doors banged shut and footsteps approached the house. A few seconds later, Puri heard the sound of his mother's voice in the corridor.

"Namaste," she said to Rumpi. "I came directly, na. But traffic delay was there. So many cars you can't imagine. At Ring Road junction, the light was blinking, causing backup. Police were being negligent in their duty. Drivers were just honking and shouting and such. But what a terrible thing has happened! Everyone is all right, though, na? Thank God. Where is Chubby? He is OK? That is the main thing."

Puri heaved a drawn-out sigh and looked affectionately at the TV like a lover bidding his sweetheart a reluctant adieu. He switched it off and pushed himself off the couch. As his mother entered the room, he bent down and touched her feet.

"Thank God you are all right, my son," she said, tears welling in her eyes as she raised him up by the shoulder. "As soon as I came to hear, then directly I called your number. But the line was totally blocked. Must be there is commotion here and such. So I rushed right away. Of course, I felt certain everything would be all right. But Ritu Auntie was in agreement I should come. This shooting person must be found and I've little else to do."

The fact that Ritu Auntie, an insatiable gossip, had encouraged Mummy to drive over came as no surprise to him. Nor did the fact that his mother had learned about the shooting so quickly. Although recently retired and living with the detective's eldest brother twelve miles away, Mummy-ji had a staggering number of mostly female friends and acquaintances who acted as her own intelligence network across the city (and often well beyond).

Puri was in little doubt that the leak had emanated from his servants. One of them had told the subzi-wallah about the shooting and he in turn had passed on the news to one of his other customers, more than likely one of the drivers working for a household a few doors down. This driver had told his mistress, who in turn had informed her cousin-sister, who in turn had called up the auntie living next door. In all likelihood, this auntie was a bridge player who had paired up with Mummy at a recent kitty party and they had swapped telephone numbers.

Puri had learned from hard experience that it was impossible to hide dramatic developments in his life from his mother. But he would not tolerate her nosing about in his investigations.

True, Mummy had a sixth sense and, from time to time, one of her premonitions proved prescient. But she was no detective. Detectives were not mummies. And detectives were certainly not women.

"Mummy-ji, there is no need to come all this way," said Puri, who always sounded like a little boy when he addressed his mother. "I am fine. Nothing to worry about. No tension."

She made a disapproving tut. "Tension is there most definitely," she replied firmly. "Quite a bad bump you've got, na."

Mummy found the armchair nearest the door and perched on the edge of the seat, her back perfectly straight. Despite the abruptness of her departure from home and the race through Delhi's pollution and traffic, she was calm and composed. The former headmistress of Modern School, she wore her silver hair, which had only been cut once in her life, pulled back from her face into a sedate bun. Her cotton sari was a conservative green and matched her emerald earrings.

"For tension, bed rest is required. Two days minimum," she continued.

"Mummy-ji, please. I don't need bed rest," protested Puri, who was sitting back on the blue leather couch. "Really, I am fine."

A silence fell over the room. Puri noticed the Most Usual Suspects file still lying next to him and hoped that his mother wouldn't notice it.

"There are clues?" asked Mummy, suddenly.

Puri hesitated before answering. "No clues," he lied.

"Empty cartridges?"

"No, Mummy-ji."

"You've made a thorough investigation of the scene?"

"Of course, Mummy-ji," he said, sounding as stern as he could when addressing his mother. "Please don't get involved. I have told you about this before, no?"

Mummy replied impatiently, "Peace of mind will only be there once this goonda is behind bars. He may be absconding, but he will revert. Meantime, there is one other matter I wish to discuss." She hesitated before continuing. "Please listen, na. Chubby, last night, I was having one dream…"

The detective let out a loud groan, but his mother ignored him.

"Just I see you walking through one big house," she said. "Lots of rooms there are, and peacocks, also. I believe it is in Rajasthan, this place. You're entering one long passage. It is dark. One flashlight you are carrying, but it is broken. At the end, there is one young girl. Just she's lying on the ground. She is dead. So much blood, I tell you. Then from behind comes one goonda. Most ugly he is. And he's carrying a knife and…"

Mummy stopped talking and looked confused.

"And what, Mummy-ji?" interrupted Puri.

"Well, see, at that moment I was waking."

"So you don't know the end?"

"No," she admitted.

"OK, Mummy-ji, thank you for telling me," he said to appease her. "Now, let's have no more talk of knives or goondas or shootings. We'll take tea and then, you are right, I should take bed rest. Tension is most definitely building."

The detective called out to Sweetu, who was in the kitchen. In double time, he appeared in the doorway, looking uncharacteristically alert.

"Bring masala chai and biscuits," instructed the detective.

"Sir, what to do with Auntie's tachee?" he asked.

"Tachee?" repeated Puri.

"My trunk case," explained Mummy. "I'll be staying for some days. It's my duty to remain, to make sure you are all right, na? I'm your mummy after all. When you are safe, then I will revert. Meantime, don't go to Rajasthan, Chubby. I forbid it. There is grave danger and such awaiting you there."