Doosra (16 page)

B
y late morning Rita's team, working with uniformed Mumbai Police in various locations, had run all the canvassing and come up empty. Anita Jogani and every single person she had been in touch with in the past one year had been checked out and cleared. The entire Jogani household staff — which alternated as his office staff — and their connections had been sussed and absolved. Ron Jogani's close social coterie had been examined, their alibis checked and their names struck off the suspect register. Rita and team had no doubt whatsoever that the killer had known Jogani; the question was how? How well had Jogani known the killer that he had divulged his plan?

'His travel agent must surely have known the detailed plan, maybe even the hotel Jogani was staying in?' Rita, coffee in hand, once again voiced the first new question in the Operations Room.

Vikram jotted it down.

'Anything from Mr Joginder Raja's computer, Jatin?' Rita asked, though Jatin's countenance displayed nothing of consequence was mined whatsoever.

'Obviously, we were careful to disconnect his PC before running the tests. As expected Joginder Raja's mysterious client uses VPN, and guess whose IP address comes up when we dug in?'

It was a rhetorical question. Rita glanced at Vikram. Vikram glanced at Nene. No one asked or took a shot at answering. They waited Jatin out.

'His own.'

'Is that possible?'

'Well, the so-called client has masked his own ID and diverted the log-in such that it bounced off somewhere in Hong Kong and then redirects such that it appears that our Mr Raja is the only one who accesses that email account. We also tried to check where the email account was created, but the person masterminding the whole operation had been careful to mask the IP right from the beginning. A kind of dead-end.'

'Could it be that Mr Raja has prevaricated that he has some client when he's the one who follows Honey Singh, reports it and then reads it?' Nene wasn't serious, but nothing was ever impossible.

'You haven't met him Nene, or you wouldn't have given him so much credit. This is the same Mr Raja who missed your team following him following Honey Singh this Saturday,' Vikram explained.

'Really? He missed all three cars?'

'Vikram is being harsh on Mr Raja. I think the guys you sent on the task were real good.' Rita gestured a thumbs-up.

'Thank you ma'am.'

'So, in effect, we are no better or worse with access into Mr Raja's computer?'

'No ma'am.'

'Could our IT gurus not check what kind of malware this
Mandrake,
the magician uses?'

'They're at it, but it would be difficult to check without connecting it to online diagnostics.'

'OK. Ask them not to make that mistake again please. I am pretty sure that if we log in from another location, the change in Mr Raja's IP or whatever might send some kind of early warning sign to Mr Raja's client. They should do as much as they can without connecting it. Then return the PC A-Sap, preferably today itself. We want Mr Raja to keep communicating with his mysterious client as usual.'

'Roger that, ma'am.'

Vikram noted Jatin's task, too, on his pad.

'At least we are clear on one thing,' Rita exhaled loudly to emphasise the effect. 'The guy who killed Ron Jogani's computer and Mr Raja's mystery client are both computer-savvy. I can bet it's the same set of people. It's too much of a coincidence to swallow that two sets of computer geeks running two separate operations just happened to overlap, wouldn't you say?'

Sure.
No one could argue with that.

'And I can't believe why someone would do that unless they were to get the share of the diamonds? They might be in tandem or they might be the same set of people.'

'How can we know that?'

'That's what we'll find out.'

'Should we approach Honey Singh for help? He can assist us with tracing if he is any good?' Vikram floated a new idea.

Rita let that idea hang. It was like the proverbial Catch 22. If Honey Singh knew — or could guess or conclude from what they told him — why someone would be following him around, then there was a high probability he would also know who that person was or might be? And if Honey Singh didn't have the faintest indication that he was being tailed wouldn't he want to help the police to discover who it could be and why? Wouldn't anyone in that predicament? Conversely, if Honey Singh was even remotely involved in this entire Jogani case, the police would blow away any cover they thought they had by approaching him.

'No, let's exhaust all other possibilities before we approach Honey Singh. All we have until now are three ambiguous links between Sishir Singh and Honey Singh: they both live in Mumbai, they share a common family name and both are well versed with computers — hardly any proof that they are the same guy. There can be another five thousand men in this city with these three common attributes—'

'But they are carbon copies of each other. You've seen both pictures, ma'am,' Nene exclaimed.

'Yes, I have. You're the one who's done the entire search into his family. Any chance of an identical twin separated in
Kumbh-ka-Mela?'

Nene smiled. 'Like some old Bollywood film, you mean?'

'Identical twin is a biological phenomenon, which we cannot ignore or deny, can we?'

'We can check with his mother, she would certainly know.' Nene concurred.

'But she might not certainly tell you the truth. Why should she if there is a tragic story behind? In any event, she is under no obligation to tell us the truth unless we subpoena her into court, and we can't do any of that till we have a case against her or her son. How about we avoid the family and find out where Honey Singh was born? We dig into hospital and municipal records and find it ourselves.'

Vikram jotted that down too. He was meticulous about every case.

Their tasks handed out, Nene and Jatin left for action.

'And Vikram, I want you to concentrate entirely on Honey Singh. I need all records of Honey Singh's travels — business or pleasure — from the beginning of the year. I doubt if they keep video recordings of passengers at airports for three months, but they should have printed records of travel from in and out of the country. Ask them to check if Honey Singh went abroad at all, not only to Belgium or Europe but also anywhere outside India. All the phones he owns or those listed as his company phones, their call records — especially in the week of Jogani's murder. And GPS co-ordinates, if any, of these mobiles; if any the phones travelled abroad we should know. He runs a legitimate business so there should be no reason at this point for us to suppose he has any clandestine pay-as-you-go telephone connections. Any capture of his car on any police camera in the city during the week of Jogani's murder in Belgium. Anything that can alibi him.'

Vikram scribbled on.

'Same for Kitty.'

'Who?' He looked up.

'Miss Kitty Varghese, his girlfriend who's a model — get her phone records too, and her whereabouts at the time.'

'Yes ma'am.'

'If we find anything that places him near Belgium we have a case against him. If nothing comes up, we go see him. For all we know he might be in danger from whoever this Sishir Singh is or from Mr Raja's unidentified client, if they are not one and the same... but that's for after.'

Vikram left and Rita went back and prepared another cup of hot coffee — demitasse as she called it. It was nearing lunchtime now and Mr Hotness had not called yet. She checked her mobile, but there were no missed calls, no text either. She sat in her chair, reclined and ran her hand through her hair, only to realise again that it was shorter now than a year back. She smiled. What a case that had been, chasing a serial killer through Bhendi Bazaar and being taken captive herself. She still came out a winner. However, in this case she was working on hand-me-down information, which peeved her. But she knew well that when the world including
Sexy
and Joshi put you at the top you don't have a moral right to make excuses of any kind. She couldn't just go back now to
Sexy
and say she couldn't crack the case because... that would be nonsense.

They say if you want to know about someone's private life you should ask their driver. The driver is the one who took them somewhere and brought them back. The driver overheard a lot of conversation since the invention of mobile phones. In some cases the driver also picked up and dropped their guests to local Mumbai stations or taxi stands. In some other cases the drivers in Mumbai also did miscellaneous shopping on their behalf. In short, the driver had access to information that some retail companies' CRM departments would be willing to pay to see add-ons and complementary products they could bolt on to the original purchases. Not that Rita had any inhibitions or anything to conceal but there seemed little point in her police driver's knowledge augmentation by exposing him to the fact that Rita was to pick up Mr Ash Mattel after dinner and take him to her place. Worse still, that DCP Ferreira stayed the night at The Oberoi.

Rita called Kuldeep and told him to come up and hand over the car keys to her as she might get back late tonight.

'No problems madam, I'll wait.'

'No, I will get back very late and there's no point in holding you back. You can carry on, you're relieved for the day.'

'It's OK, madam.'

Why don't you understand my dilemma, you loyal soldier, she wanted to call out in frustration. It's not about you; it's about me.

'Please send the keys up. I'll call you tomorrow morning. No more discussion.' She told him to hand over the keys to someone below rather than come up to her office and reopen the same discussion.

'OK,' Kuldeep reluctantly agreed like his best toy had been snatched from him. Rita had barely concluded her conversation when her mobile rang: Ash Mattel.

'Apologies, I got held up in some overheated discussion on one of the topics.'

'It's OK. And hello.'

'Hello, really tied up this afternoon, but I'll be free by seven as it's an early dinner.'

'Where's the dinner?'

'I haven't really checked, why? You want to join me?'

'As your…'

'As my college friend, Hun-bun.'

'Will other people be bringing their college buddies too?'

'Why do you care?'

'Who said I do?' Rita laughed out.

'What's the plan? You said you wanted to discuss some case with me?' Ash suddenly sounded formal. 'Has someone just walked in your hearing distance then?'

'Kind of, yes.'

There was no way Rita was going to let the opportunity go.

'How about discussing the numerous techniques of sex?'

'Uh-huh, uh-hmm! Yes certainly, we could do that.'

'Ha! You suddenly got a sore throat now?'

Ash didn't respond. He still seemed to be in in someone's earshot.

'OK, I'll let you go now. I'll be in my office. Let me know when you leave for dinner so I'll time it such that I can pick you up after that.'

'That will be great.' Ash still sounded formal.

'I have a
“Bad case of loving you, Doctor, Doctor”,'
Rita recited Robert Palmer's lines before she cut the call.

***

Jatin and the IT team spent the full day on Handlebar's PC, but came up with nothing. If they could not connect the web based diagnostics there was not a chance in hell of tracing any latent malware on the machine. Perhaps it was hidden behind some files ingrained into the hard disk or perhaps it wasn't there on Raja's machine in its entirety. One line of thought was that just a bit must have been dropped, which, if and when activated, would be enough to scrape the data of the PC. Whatever it was, it was untraceable, and hence irremovable. You can't fight what you can't see.

A follow up idea from the IT group was to replace Mr Raja's computer — like for like — with another machine without giving admin rights to Mr Raja so he couldn't download anything new sent from his mysterious client. However, after consulting Rita, Jatin vetoed it. The idea, when evaluated, had more holes than a colander. If the furtive client was smart enough to erase Jogani's computer remotely, wouldn't he somehow tell that the machine that's been communicating with him for the past few months had changed? Plus they couldn't think of any upside of doing that. They had attempted discovering and unmasking the IP address of the client and failed; they had scanned Mr Raja's PC and found nothing that was of any import to the police, so changing the PC was saving exactly what? And the downside was that if the client discerned that the computer was changed he might break all contact with Mr Raja or worse still, go after Handlebar.

***

As agreed, Rita was still at work at seven when Ash Mattel called. Except for a few random humans in the office, most of the others had left, as this wasn't one of the ninety plus uniformed police stations; this was Mumbai Police Headquarters. The whole top brass were housed in Royal Alfred Sailors' Home, which was built in 1876. However, everything in the vicinity was dominated by one of the marvels of architecture called Crawford Market and all surrounding areas, too, were referred to as Crawford Market. Mumbai Police Commissioner and Additional Director General of Police for the state of Maharashtra, Mr Sanjay Saxena aka
Sexy
sat here, as did the several senior police officers that reported to him, and the Crime Squad of which DCP Rita Ferreira was a part.

'We're going for dinner now, so my guess is I should be able to slip out by eight, eight-thirty,' Ash explained.

'I can pick you up, where is it?'

'There's a Japanese restaurant in this hotel that's been booked for us, so I don't think it makes any sense for you to pick me up and drive me all the way back to Bandra in Mumbai traffic. What do you think?

'You can always cab it after dinner—'

'Or you can sleep over at the hotel. I've got an ocean view room.'

'Ocean view that looks over the Arabian Sea?'

'Well that's what they call it in the brochure.'

There was a silence for a few seconds, as both of them mentally digested the repercussions, if any, of Rita staying over at the hotel, in Ash's room.