ANTI-SOCIAL NETWORK (10 page)

He froze. Even though he had changed his hairstyle, Virkar recognized Akhbir, aka. Axeman’s angular-jawed face. Virkar’s instinct was to lunge at him but he forced himself to consider all his options, quickly concluding that it would be better to follow Akhbir to his house in the hope of capturing his other associates. Hence, Virkar finished up his act and zipped himself up. Turning his back on Akhbir, he turned and walked out of the
khopcha
. Outside on the pavement, he walked to a shop close by and began to display a keen interest in its wares while keeping one eye on the entrance of the
khopcha
. A few minutes later, Akhbir emerged and walked past Virkar without casting so much as a glance at him. After Akhbir had walked about fifteen feet past him, Virkar began to follow him.

Akhbir walked through the streets to a small Iranian restaurant where he ordered a chai. Meanwhile, Virkar hung around outside, watching Akhbir savour
kharis
with his Irani chai. Fifteen minutes later, he was on the move again, walking through the small Byculla back lanes until finally heading towards a shabby old seven-storeyed building.

Virkar lingered at the corner of the by-lane, watching Akhbir’s movements when, suddenly, Akhbir stopped as if he had become aware of something. Virkar tensed, thinking he had been spotted. But Akhbir just turned around and walked to a paan-bidi shop across the road. Virkar heaved a sigh of relief. He watched Akhbir take a packet of cigarettes from the shopkeeper, wave and walk away without paying for it. Virkar smiled, realizing that Akhbir ran an account at the paan-bidi shop, and that meant that the shop owner would have a lot of details about Akhbir, his associates and his comings and goings. When Akhbir finally walked into the building, Virkar reached for his cell phone and dialled the number of the Mumbai Police Flying Squad. To his good fortune, a two-man team of the special motorcycle-borne police commandos was in the vicinity and they said that they would be with him in the next few minutes.

A
khbir Singh Mann, aka Axeman stopped short as he entered the passage that led to the corner where the lift stood—he had suddenly smelt a hint of a fruity women’s perfume that lingered in the passage. An expensive fragrance such as this was alien to the environs of the building that housed middle-class Gujarati families, who were generally conservative when it came to using aromatics. He covered the last few steps to the end of the passage on tiptoe and peeked around the wall. A slender girl was waiting in front of the collapsible grill of the lift shaft, her designer leather handbag and matching leather high heels making it clear to him that she was the source of the expensive scent. She had her back to him and was engaged in the activity of punching the lift button again and again in the hope that the decades-old lift would make its way down. Akhbir’s eyes scanned her from head to toe—the thick strands of her streaked hair rested on her shoulders in the most perfect bunch of curls he had ever seen. Although she was wearing a salwar kameez, the cut could only be described as ‘sexy’. The top was fitted to enhance the contours of her body and flared just the right amount at the hips to encase her rear in a most alluring manner. Akhbir felt a familiar stirring in his loins.

He pulled himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. Satisfied that he looked his best, he walked out of the passage and towards the lift. When the girl heard the shuffle of his feet and turned to look at him, Akhbir realized that he had been right about the cut of the dress: the plunging V-shaped neckline gave a clear view of the girl’s ample cleavage. Lingering long enough on it to get an eyeful, his eyes moved to the girl’s face. The playful smile at the corner of her mouth and the twinkle in her eye conveyed that she knew where his eyes had been, and that she was okay with it. Rapidly scanning his brain for the various options he had for an opening line, Akhbir finally chose, ‘The lift gets stuck if you press the button too many times.’

The girl stopped punching the button immediately and replied, ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’

Akhbir smiled. ‘That’s okay. It’s your first time here, isn’t it?’

She gave him a curious look. ‘How did you know?’

Akhbir shrugged. ‘You didn’t know about the lift button.’

The girl giggled in response. ‘Oh, of course. How silly of me.’ Her eyes locked themselves with Akhbir’s. By now, Akhbir was just a few feet away from her and for the first time, he saw that her features were vaguely north-eastern.

‘Have I seen you before?’ he asked.

A hint of mischief played across the girl’s face. ‘Maybe at the SuperTrance nightclub. I’m a hostess there.’ She reached into a pocket, took out a colourful card and offered it to Akhbir. He took it, suddenly realizing that the girl was trying to connect with him. She then continued, ‘Although you might not recognize me there.’

‘Why not?’

She pointed at herself and giggled. ‘I don’t wear such conservative clothes at the nightclub.’

He smiled back at her while trying not to look back down at her ample cleavage again. The sudden sound of the lift starting on its way down to the ground floor distracted him. As it arrived, he eagerly pushed aside the collapsible grill and ushered the girl inside.

‘Which floor?’

‘Top,’ she replied.

He punched the button that said sixth and then turned to her. ‘You’ll have to press the button for the seventh after I get off; this lift has its own rules.’

She smiled back and they lapsed into an awkward silence. After a minute, she said, ‘So you live on the sixth floor?’

He nodded. Desperate to continue the conversation, Akhbir asked the only question he could think of: ‘Have you come to meet a friend?’

She looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Yes, but I can be your friend, too.’

This time he stuttered as he said, ‘Mmm…my name is Akhbir Singh Mann.’ He stopped himself from using his trademark line. Something told him that this girl was different. She smiled, her perfect white teeth between her full lips looking extremely inviting. The cupid’s bow of her upper lip was begging to be kissed.

‘Would you like to sample some lipstick off my lips?’ she asked with a knowing smile. Before he could reply, the lift arrived at the sixth floor with a loud thunk. They stood staring at each other, the lift humming, waiting for its doors to be opened. ‘I’ve got a few minutes before I go up to my friend’s flat,’ she said, her eyes locked with his. Without another word, he leaned towards her, but as soon as his lips touched hers, the lift’s call button began to buzz. She leaned away, distracted and conscious all of a sudden. He pushed open the collapsible grill and stepped on to the sixth floor, and she followed him without a word.

As soon as he shut the lift’s door, it was called down. He held her hand and began to lead her down the passage towards his small rented flat. As they walked past the staircase, he glanced down the shaft and his eyes chanced upon something on the ground floor. He froze. A man wearing camouflage fatigues was standing on the ground floor with a 9mm carbine in his hand, ready for attack. Akhbir swivelled around and looked at the girl.

‘You bitch! You’re with the police.’

The girl stopped, looking confused. ‘What! I don’t understand?’ The surprise in her eyes was entirely believable but Akhbir didn’t want to stand around talking.

He rushed away from the girl and ran up to his door, rummaging in his pocket for the key. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the girl was still standing in the passage, busy fiddling with the zip of her handbag. He finally pulled out his key and inserted it into the lock. In the background, he could hear the hum of the lift riding up the building. He was just moments away from entering his apartment. As he turned the key in the lock, he heard the click-clack of heels behind him. ‘Damn that chick!’ he cursed, turning to face her.

He swivelled on his feet and saw the girl leap towards him, knife in hand. On instinct, he moved to the right and that move saved his life. The long shining blade missed his heart, slicing the side of his shoulder and embedding itself in the door. Blood spurted from his wound and the girl’s leaping body slammed into him as she was thrown off balance because of his sudden change in position. He pushed her away and opened the door with his uninjured arm. As she fell away from him, her hair flew off her head and landed in a heap on the floor. With a shock, Akhbir realized that she was wearing a wig. The girl leapt to her feet again with the agility of an alley cat, but before she could lunge at him once more, he opened the door and jumped into his flat, slamming the door behind him. Knowing she only had a couple of minutes to get away from the scene, the girl quickly grabbed the knife’s handle, extricated it from the door and shoved it into her bag. She then scooped up the wig and pulled it back on her head. Turning on her heels, she ran to the staircase and rushed up to the seventh floor just as the lift laden with Virkar and two armed police commandos arrived on the sixth.

T
he old seven-storeyed building in Byculla had been built in the expansion boom of the mid-1960s. It aped the Art Deco style of the buildings on Marine Drive and Back Bay Reclamation, and although the building had now gone to seed, it still retained most of the quirks that were signature to that architectural style. The most important of these was the garbage chute that ran down from the seventh floor to the garbage refuse area on the ground floor. The entry to the chute was situated in a small foyer that could be accessed through the kitchen door at the back of each small apartment.

Virkar stood in front of the metal chute on the sixth floor. Crinkling his nose to avoid inhaling the fumes of the rotting garbage, he popped his head into the chute, hoping to see Akhbir Singh Maan, aka Axeman, somewhere down the chute. But the Axeman was long gone.

Virkar and the police commandos had knocked on his door, asking him to open up. Getting no response, they had decided to break down the door with a combination of hard kicks and full body lunges. The door had finally come off its hinges, but approximately twelve precious minutes had been lost by then. Axeman was nowhere to be found. A trail of blood droplets led to the kitchen door and further through to the back foyer, which was open, leading Virkar to come to the quick conclusion that Axeman had used the garbage chute to make his escape. Now, looking down the chute, Virkar closely examined the iron rungs fitted into the wall that helped a cleaner go up and down the passage. A spattering of blood on one of the iron rungs confirmed his suspicions. Virkar now hoped that the Axeman’s injury would perhaps constrain him enough for them to catch up with him.

By now, a police party from the local police station had arrived at the scene and were waiting for orders. Virkar withdrew his head from the chute and grabbed a walkie-talkie from a constable standing behind him. ‘He’s bleeding. The injury is perhaps on the upper part of the body. Look for a man wearing a blood-stained shirt,’ Virkar barked into the walkie-talkie.

‘Yes, sir,’ the voice of a policeman positioned at the entrance of the building crackled back at Virkar. Virkar turned the device off and began to walk back into the flat when he caught sight of something colourful lying near the opening of the chute. He bent down to pick it up and realized that it was the visiting card of someone called Philo Garlosa from SuperTrance Nightclub in Lower Parel. It could be something connected to the case, or it could be part of someone’s garbage. He was about to toss it away when he heard a sub-inspector call out to him from inside the flat. Virkar absent-mindedly shoved the card into his pocket as he walked towards him.

The sub-inspector raised a quizzical eyebrow at Virkar. ‘Saheb, are you sure that this person was involved in this extortion network?’ The small one bedroom-hall flat was extremely spartan in its décor, and there was nothing to indicate that it had ever housed a perverted Internet extortionist. In fact, it looked like a typical, middle-class bachelor’s home. The police party began searching the flat but even after fifteen minutes of sifting through dirty clothes and a few dirty magazines, they found nothing incriminating.

Virkar did not reply as he was distracted by the knife gash on the front door. He had been wondering how Akhbir had got injured in the few minutes it had taken Virkar to meet up with the police commandos and make his way to the sixth floor. Someone must have been lying in wait for Akhbir to return. As Virkar examined the knife-gash with his fingers, it quickly struck him who that someone could have been. He rushed back to the constable and grabbed the walkie-talkie. This time, his voice was breathless as he asked, ‘Did a young girl with long hair come out of the building?’

After a few seconds of silence, a voice replied, ‘No, sir, but a young girl with short hair did come out about five minutes ago.’

‘Why didn’t you stop her?’ shouted Virkar.

‘Saheb, we were looking for a man, not a girl.’

Virkar sighed. ‘Which direction did she take?’

The silence this time was for a full thirty seconds. ‘Don’t know, saheb. We didn’t pay attention. We were looking for a man as per your instructions.’

Exasperated, Virkar hung up, casting an irritated look at the sub-inspector who was still waiting for a reply. ‘There is no evidence here, saheb,’ the sub-inspector shrugged.

Virkar shot him a stony stare. ‘Maybe you haven’t looked hard enough,’ he barked.

Before the sub-inspector could say another word, Virkar strode into the bedroom and walked towards an inner door, assuming that it led to an attached bathroom. But when he opened the door, he realized that it was a small closet. A constable who was rifling through a stack of files lying on the table called out to Virkar, ‘There is nothing inside, saheb. Just some empty suitcases.’ Virkar nodded and walked away from the closet, heading into the toilet through another door he had not previously seen. But a thought suddenly struck him and he headed back to the closet. Pulling out the empty suitcases, he knocked on the wood panelling at the back of the closet. A hollow sound rang out, making his pulse quicken. He summoned the rest of the police party and once again using a combination of kicks and lunges broke the wood panelling. A small recess behind the panelling revealed a shiny, new iMac attached to a home LAN server.