Chain of Custody (9 page)

The Bullet was washed clean. Gowda stood and admired it with the hose still in his hand. The chrome sparkled and even the tyre
rims glinted in the twilight. There was a puddle of water around the bike but it would soon dry up, he knew. It was only early March but already summer was on in earnest.

Gowda heard a mew. He turned around, wondering if a cat had dropped her litter somewhere in the premises. He darted a look upstairs. The previous tenants with their dog had been replaced by yet another young couple. A techie couple who worked at Manyata Park. They never seemed to be home except late at night. The mew again. Why would they have got a pet when they were away all day? Gowda frowned.

He was on the patch on the side of the house where, on Shanthi's prompting, the gardener who came once a week had started a vegetable garden.

‘You are going to blitz them if you point your hose directly at the plants,' a voice said from behind him.

Gowda turned on his heel abruptly, sending a stream of water all over Urmila. She gasped in shock. He exclaimed in surprise, ‘Oh fuck!' and dropped the hose.

She stood on the spot, staring down at her drenched top while he hurried towards the tap to shut the water down.

Gowda came back, trying hard not to grin. ‘You caught me by surprise,' he said.

She glared at him.

‘C'mon, U,' he said, ‘it was an accident. I am not twelve to drench you on purpose. Though now that I see what I can see, I wish I had done this earlier.' He leered suggestively. She glared at him. ‘I wasn't expecting you. So I turned around without thinking …'

‘That's the problem. You don't … I mean you don't think of me. Out of sight is out of mind,' she said, turning away so he wouldn't see the hurt in her eyes.

He went towards her and took her hand in his. ‘Let me give you something to change into,' he said, tugging at her hand.

‘I am not going to wear your wife's clothes,' Urmila said quietly.

Gowda didn't speak. Instead, he proffered her a clean white t-shirt from a pile in the wardrobe. Then he went to the kitchen and made two mugs of instant coffee.

‘Do you think I am such a boor?' he asked, placing a mug by her side. ‘I know I am not the sensitive type who cries at a beautiful sunset but I am not a rhino either.'

‘Why rhino?' Urmila laughed.

‘Its skin is 1.5 to 5 cm thick. And that's how you think of me, as … a thick-skinned boor. God, Urmila, how could you think I would offer you Mamtha's clothes to change into?' Gowda said, holding her gaze.

She looked away.

‘Santosh is back,' he said, attempting to quell the awkwardness that had sprung up between them.

‘Oh,' she said, looking up. ‘How is he?'

‘Well enough. He needs some help with his voice. The injury to his throat has affected it,' Gowda said, dropping into the sofa to sit by her side. ‘I missed you.'

She peered at him from the corner of her eye. ‘You did? That is a first from you, Borei. I don't remember when you ever said that.'

He smiled. ‘When I saw Santosh, I realized how close to death he had come. And it struck me that we go through life without telling the people we care about that we do care about them.'

Urmila leaned towards him and cupped his face in her palms. ‘I missed you, my dear Inspector Borei Gowda. Do you realize it's been more than three weeks since we met?'

‘Yes,' he said, nuzzling his face into the side of her neck.

She squirmed. ‘Don't … you are tickling me!'

‘Do you still feel ticklish at your age?' he murmured.

‘Shut up, Borei. You make me sound like I am your grandmother …' Urmila mock-punched him in the gut.

Horseplay — that was what they were doing, he thought with a secret grin. Did I ever think I would be fooling around with a woman at this stage in my life?

‘Borei … come back … where have you gone?' Urmila's voice eased him out of his reverie. As he reached for her again, his phone rang. Gowda let it ring till it stopped on its own. It rang again and stopped. When it began ringing again, Urmila sighed. ‘You had better take it! Whoever it is won't stop till you do.'

Gowda picked up the phone. It was Head Constable Gajendra.

‘Sir, I think you need to come to the station. We've got some information about your maid's daughter.'

Gowda looked at the call log. There were two missed calls, both from his wife. He would have to call her back.

Gowda frowned as the jeep drew closer to the police station. He felt a deep-rooted weariness tug at him. He thought of his bed longingly. It wasn't sleep he craved as much as a soft bed and some uninterrupted silence. A group of men squatted outside the gate under a tree.

‘What's going on?' Gowda asked David.

‘The boy's people, sir.'

‘Which boy?' Gowda's heart sank.

‘I don't know, sir. Something to do with your maid's daughter,' David said as he turned in through the gateway.

The tubelight outside the station was switched on, casting a large pool of light. The rest of the grounds were in darkness.
Gowda made a mental note to ask for better lighting of the station area.

Gowda saw Shanthi and her husband hovering by the building. He gestured for them to come in.

Head Constable Gajendra followed him into his room. ‘Have someone bring me some tea,' he said to a constable who had tailed after Gajendra.

‘Yes,' he said, turning his gaze towards Gajendra.

‘Apparently, a boy saw the girl, sir. I have asked him to be brought in for questioning.'

Gowda nodded. ‘How old is the boy?'

‘I checked. Don't worry, sir; he is twenty.'

Gowda smiled almost in apology to Gajendra. ‘You know how it is … there are half a dozen organizations, both government bodies and social activists, who will descend on us if we bring a minor into the station without a child welfare officer around.'

‘Sir, shall I call the boy in?'

Gowda leaned back in his chair. ‘Ask Shanthi and her husband to come in first. Gajendra,' he said.

The head constable paused at the door. ‘Sir?' he asked.

‘Please have this towel removed. I don't want it here,' Gowda said.

Ranganna crept in with downcast eyes. His usual aggression and garrulousness had been replaced by a tongue-tied timidity. Why did police stations do this to people, Gowda wondered. Something about us intimidates people even when they have no need to fear us.

‘Sit down, Ranganna,' Gowda said.

He shook his head fervently. Shanthi, who seemed less intimidated, came to stand by her husband's side.

‘Tell me about the boy.' Gowda spoke softly.

‘He was talking in the angaddi about Nandita,' Shanthi said.

‘Why would he discuss your daughter in the market?' Gowda asked abruptly.

‘All because of this useless man,' Shanthi sniffed, jabbing a finger into her husband's side.

‘I was doing what any father would,' Ranganna growled.

Just then the constable came in with a small cup of tea on a tray. Gowda glared at him. ‘Where's my cup?'

‘It broke, sir.'

Gowda sighed and looked at the plastic cup. Then he said, ‘What did you do, Ranganna?'

‘The rascal gave my daughter a love letter. So I thrashed him. And now, sir, do you know what he was saying at the market?'

Gowda gestured with his hand for Ranganna to continue talking. He had little patience for these rhetorical questions and studied pauses.

‘He said Ranganna acts as though his daughter is Virgin Mary. If she is such an innocent, why would she leave the exam hall early and take a bus? Where was she going? Now I hear her parents say she's missing. I tell you she's eloped with some boy,' Shanthi said before her husband could speak.

‘And …' Gowda said, knowing for certain that there was more.

‘And I thrashed him again and dragged him to the station. That's when his people rallied around him.'

Gowda stared at the man and then snapped, ‘Wait outside. Shanthi, I need to speak to you for a moment.'

Ranganna sniffed as he walked out of the room.

‘Was Nandita involved with any boy?' Gowda asked Shanthi, not bothering to couch his words.

She shook her head fervently. ‘No, sir. She is a child. A good child …'

‘I know, but children these days grow up very quickly,' Gowda said softly.

‘No, sir. I am certain. She had many friends, some of them boys, but she didn't have anything to do with boys in that sense.'

‘Well then, let me speak to the boy.'

Gowda rang the bell and a constable came in. ‘Tell Head Constable Gajendra to take the boy to the room. I'll join him in a few minutes.'

A tall dark boy in a red t-shirt that clung to his skinny frame and a pair of faded jeans stood slouching against a wall. There were several bracelets around one wrist and a glinting silver earring in one ear. The boy straightened when he saw Gowda.

The interrogation cell that they simply referred to as ‘the room' had a lone table and two chairs. It was probably meant to be a storeroom. However, it served well as an interrogation room with its narrow confines and lack of natural light. Most first-time criminals blanched on entering it. It was suggestive of police brutality and third-degree torture. There was a hook on the ceiling that was probably meant to hang a stalk of bananas. But to the rookie criminal it was the hook from which the police in movies strung up criminals and caned them. So much of police work was conjecture, Gowda thought wryly as he saw the fear in the boy's eyes. ‘Sir, I am innocent. I didn't do anything,' he burst out. ‘I am being falsely accused!'

‘Aah thoo … lowde ka baal,' Gajendra spat at the boy. ‘Quiet!'

Gowda cringed. There really was no need to get so aggressive or call the boy a pubic hair. But that was what most policemen sought to begin their interrogation with: a large dollop of intimidation by tone and word, and a gesture of contempt.

‘What is your name?' Gowda asked.

‘Raju, sir.'

‘So, Raju, tell me what you saw,' Gowda said softly, sitting on the lone chair in the room.

‘I was delivering a package to a house by the Hennur bus depot. There is some roadwork going on there. So I had to wait for the traffic in front of me to clear. That's when I saw her. Nandita, sir. She was in a bus. I knew she had an exam and that there was an hour left for the exam to be over.'

‘So you told everyone she had eloped …' Gajendra said, looking at the boy as if he were a maggot that had crawled out of a cow pat.

A defiant expression appeared on the boy's face. ‘Something like that happened two years ago in our village.'

‘How do you know that Nandita had an exam and how long it would last?' Gowda asked softly.

The boy dropped his gaze. ‘I just know!'

‘You can't just know. Do you have a sister or a brother in her class?' Gajendra asked, bringing a steely edge into his voice.

The boy shifted his stance but wouldn't speak.

‘Don't make me work on you,' Gajendra said, moving from where he stood leaning against the wall.

‘What is it, Raju?' Gowda asked.

‘I love her,' the boy burst out. ‘So I keep tabs on her. One of her classmates is a boy I know. He tells me everything that is going on.'

Gowda and Gajendra exchanged glances.

‘So was something going on?' Gowda murmured.

‘Not to my knowledge, sir. But I don't know what she does once she leaves school.' The boy's voice rose as much in anguish as in fear.

‘Send him home,' Gowda said, rising to leave. He paused on his way out and said, ‘Did you see the bus number?'

The boy nodded. ‘It was 292C.'

‘And where does it go?' Gajendra asked.

‘Up to Majestic …' the boy said.

Gowda walked back to his room deep in thought. A young girl in a school uniform on her own in the main bus stand. ‘What were you thinking of, Nandita?' he asked her photograph on the FIR.

Rekha looked around surreptitiously. The restaurant was plush and the waiters uniformly good-looking. It was a boutique hotel, Sid had said. Mostly used by businessmen. So you don't have to worry that anyone you know will be walking in. Rekha hadn't responded. She had been too overwhelmed by what she was about to do.

Sid had dropped her off at the hotel portico. ‘It's best if I don't come in,' he said. ‘Just go to the restaurant and wait there. The client will join you. I'll call you by ten. I'll be in the reception lounge. You must excuse yourself by saying it's time for you to leave and slip away.'

‘What about the money?' she had asked, horrified at the thought that the man would slip notes into her hand as though she were a whore.

‘Not to worry.' He had smiled. ‘I've already collected it,' He patted her arm. ‘And tomorrow we get the rest, after which you and I go shopping!'