Chain of Custody Read online

  CHAIN OF CUSTODY

  ANITA NAIR is the author of the novels The Better Man, Ladies Coupé, Mistress, Lessons in Forgetting, Idris and Alphabet Soup for Lovers. Chain of Custody follows on from the success of A Cut-Like Wound, the first Inspector Gowda novel, published in the UK by Bitter Lemon Press in 2014. Anita is also the author of Goodnight & God Bless, a collection of essays, Malabar Mind, a volume of poetry, and five books for children.

  BITTER LEMON PRESS

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Bitter Lemon Press, 47 Wilmington Square, London WC1X 2ET

  www.bitterlemonpress.com

  First published in India in 2016 by Harper Black

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

  © Anita Nair, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher

  The moral right of Anita Nair has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 978-1-908524-75-1

  Offset by Tetragon, London

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY

  ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’

  —Edmund Burke

  Contents

  Prologue: 14 March, Saturday

  Part 1: Nine Days Before …

  5 March, Thursday

  6 March, Friday

  7 March, Saturday

  8 March, Sunday

  9 March, Monday

  10 March, Tuesday

  11 March, Wednesday

  12 March, Thursday

  13 March, Friday

  Part 2

  14 March, Saturday

  15 March, Sunday

  16 March, Monday

  17 March, Tuesday

  Epilogue: 18 March, Wednesday

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  14 MARCH, SATURDAY

  7.30 A.M.

  A wall of mirrors. He could see himself reflected in it. A big-built man in a pair of mustard-coloured leggings and a navy blue t-shirt that just barely reached the top of his thighs. He had never seen anything more grotesque or disquieting in his life, he thought, staring at the multiple Borei Gowdas. The music began, and the instructor, a tall, thin young man who looked like he had been poured into his clothes and whose limbs seemed attached to his body with double hinges, swayed in time.

  ‘Go on, Inspector Gowda,’ he said. ‘Get going, listen to the music, let it flow through you. Only then can you tango. Now remember, forward with your left, forward with your right, forward with left …’

  Gowda stopped listening. What the fuck am I doing here, he asked himself, and the many Borei Gowdas in the mirror.

  The mobile rang incessantly from the bedside table. Inspector Borei Gowda woke up with a start. What was that fucking dream all about, he wondered as he reached for the phone groggily.

  His eyes widened at the sight of the time on the phone. It was almost eight. How could he have slept through an alarm that was set to ring every fifteen minutes from six to seven? But it seemed that he had drunk himself to oblivion last night. Something he had sworn never to do again. He sighed.

  ‘Hello,’ he said into the phone.

  ‘Sir, there was a control room call. It was about someone in that gated community near Bible College. I think you should come,’ Head Constable Gajendra said even as Gowda heard the Bolero pull up outside his home.

  ‘I will be there in fifteen minutes,’ Gowda said, walking to the bathroom. He stood under the shower with a toothbrush stuck in his mouth. The water beat down on his head, stilling the hammering at the back of it. The incidents of the past night ran through his mind in vivid technicolour with Dolby surround sound. He closed his eyes. Later, later, he told himself. For now duty called.

  Gajendra was waiting by the gate of the house when Gowda drove up to Shangri La. That was the name etched on the burnished brass plate embedded in the gatepost. The head constable’s face was drawn.

  A group of people had gathered outside the gate. Gowda nodded in greeting and walked towards the house. A small, thin man peeled himself from the group and hurried to catch up with Gowda. ‘Hello Inspector, I am the president.’

  Gowda paused and stared at him, wondering if the man was mad. ‘President of which country?’

  The man flushed. ‘President of the association.’

  Gowda nodded. ‘Oh I see. I will have to ask you to step back.’

  The man’s face fell as he turned to leave.

  The front door had been broken in by two constables. Gowda entered the house and paused. The door had opened into a vestibule like an old-fashioned club. In keeping with the style was a giant mirror in a gilt frame, and beneath it what looked like a table sawn in half. It must have a name. Urmila would know it.

  He looked at the man sprawled on the floor on his face. He flinched. One side of his head had been smashed in. A pool of browning blood haloed his head. Near him lay a stone Buddha on its side. The marble floor was cracked like the skull.

  The man wore navy blue Crocs on his feet and a t-shirt that had hiked up in the fall. Gowda could see a bruise below his ribs on the left side. Through the lycra shorts he wore, his flaccid penis was clearly visible. Who was this man? Gowda pinched the bridge of his nose thoughtfully.

  A towel lay a few feet away. Gowda bent down and hoisted the end of the towel with his pen. It was still damp and smelled of chlorine. The man had gone swimming, he thought. He remembered a glint of blue on the left as he drove into the gated community.

  ‘He was supposed to have a video call with a client at eleven last night. Apparently, the client tried several times and finally called someone else. She couldn’t reach him either. When he didn’t respond to the calls or messages this morning as well, she had a colleague call the control room,’ Head Constable Gajendra said.

  ‘And he lived alone?’ Gowda asked. He could see the rest of the room was in order. No upturned furniture. Not even a piece of broken glass or a muddy footprint. It wasn’t an intruder. It was someone the victim had known. That much was obvious.

  ‘What about his phone and laptop?’ Gowda asked.

  ‘All there,’ Gajendra said. ‘I don’t think it is a burglary gone wrong.’

  ‘Where is the woman who called the control room?’

  ‘She was in Chennai last night. Apparently, she has taken the first flight out and is on her way here from the airport,’ Gajendra said, turning at the sound of a car slowing down.

  A young man and a woman came hurrying up the garden path. Gowda walked towards them.

  ‘Dr Rathore, is he all right?’ the woman asked as the man tried to peer over Gowda’s shoulder.

  Gowda shook his head. ‘I am sorry.’

  The woman’s face crumpled. ‘Oh my god, oh my god,’ she whispered, her hand going to her mouth.

  ‘What happened, Inspector?’ The man’s voice quivered in shock. ‘Dr Rathore took care of himself very well.’

  ‘He was a doctor?’ Gowda asked.

  ‘Not a doctor doctor. A doctor of law,’ the man said. ‘Can we see him?’

  Gowda held up his hand. ‘Not now. It’s a homicide. Till the forensics team arrives, I can’t have the crime scene contaminated.’

  ‘Homicide! But who would want to kill Dr Rathore?’ The woman’s voice rose.

  ‘Obviously someone did. His skull was bashed in,’ Gowda said.

  They stared at him, horrified. Gowda held their gaze, not knowing what else to do. There was no easy way of announcing death, be it a suicide, an accident or a homicide. Polic
emen and doctors knew this. It was their lot to remain unmoved by the toll it took on everyone associated with the victim.

  ‘We need some details,’ Gowda said.

  Head Constable Gajendra examined the faces of the couple in front of him. He knew Gowda was doing the same.

  Gowda figured the two would have nothing to contribute except perhaps what was already in the deceased’s planner. He had seen the woman’s gaze sweep the garden like she was seeing it for the first time. He saw the man’s eyes settle and then linger on the bar counter in a gazebo in a corner of the sprawling lawns. Dr Rathore had never had a drink with his colleagues or invited them home. It seemed to Gowda that the lawyer had a very private life, far removed from what his employees and associates knew of him.

  ‘His family?’ Gowda asked.

  ‘His wife and son live in London. She looks after the UK end of the law firm,’ the woman said. There was a hint of disapproval in her tone. The young associate, Gowda realized, had been a little in love with the man.

  ‘I’ll need to speak with you at length,’ Gowda said suddenly.

  The woman nodded. Her eyes welled up. ‘I still can’t believe that …’ The man put his arm around her.

  Gowda’s eyes met met Gajendra’s. Get rid of them, he gestured with a slight tilt of his chin.

  Police Constable Byrappa sidled up to Gajendra. ‘The security at the gate has a CCTV and a list of visitors.’

  Gajendra smiled. He went looking for Gowda. ‘I think it will be an open-and-shut case,’ he said.

  Gowda stared at him. ‘You say?’

  ‘Yes, sir. PC Byrappa said there is CCTV footage and a guest register. Once we have the time of death, it’s not going to be hard to know who killed the lawyer.’

  Gowda said nothing. Deep down he didn’t think it was going to be that easy. Gowda turned to look at the dead lawyer one last time. Something niggled at him. He wasn’t sure what it was. But it would come to him.

  The little man who had called himself the president of the association came in with two other men and a woman. ‘Do you think it’s the Dandupalaya gang?’ one of the men asked in a low whisper.

  ‘Apparently they choose lonely houses with few members. Isn’t that the gang’s modus operandi?’ the woman said, stressing the words with the air of a clever child who has learnt a new phrase. The third man pulled his phone out to shoot pictures.

  Gowda frowned. ‘No photography,’ he said, not even bothering to respond to the query about the Dandupalaya gang. Ever since the release of the film Dandupalaya, based on the real lives of a family in a village in the outskirts of Bangalore, who had gone on a spree of looting, rape and murder, the Dandupalaya gang had assumed a mythical status. He was quite certain that, within the force too, there would be officers who found it convenient to assign this homicide to the resurgence of the Dandupalaya gang. After all, almost 112 cases had been registered against them more than a decade ago.

  ‘Who do you think did it?’ the president asked.

  ‘The investigations have already begun,’ Gowda said.

  How had the murderer entered and exited the lawyer’s house? Who else had keys to the house? There was something beyond these obvious questions that he was missing. Gowda reached for his phone. He needed a fresh pair of eyes. He needed Santosh.

  Part 1

  Nine Days Before …

  5 MARCH, THURSDAY

  The smell. Grime, sweat and the unwashed reek of a body dressed in soiled clothes that were threadbare in patches and unravelling at the ends. The pong of desperation.

  It was a smell I recognized. For I had lived with it.

  In the crowded general compartment of the 18463 Prashanthi Express, scheduled to reach Bangalore City station at 12.05 p.m., desperation hung like a low cloud. The collective breath of the creatures who occupied every seat and aisle.

  I looked around. It was a mixed group as always. About ninety people packed into a compartment meant to hold seventy-two. There was barely room to move.

  They sat leaning against each other. Three scrawny boys dressed in t-shirts and track pants. Their skin was the colour of clay; their flat noses with flared nostrils and rather prominent brows told me they were from one of the tribal villages of Odisha. Each had a thread around his neck with a little silver charm. One of them touched his charm and rubbed his finger on it. He was frightened of what lay ahead and was willing himself to be brave.

  The boys clutched a plastic bag each. It probably held all their possessions: a few worn-out clothes and worthless gewgaws that each would fight viciously to keep. Their feet were bare and only a little dirtier than their faces. But there was something resolute about their expressions that drew me to them.

  I knew it all. For I was them, once.

  I was six years old when my father sold me to a man for a thousand rupees. That was to be my price for the season. ‘You can plant the fields with half the money and the rest will keep you and your family going till the crops are ready to be sold. I’ll bring him back once the season is up,’ the man told my mother.

  My father called the man sardar and I was told to call him the same. The man had five families with him, including my uncle’s, and they had offered to include me as part of their group. Men and women like my parents, children like me, two old women, an old man and two babies. My head reeled with all the new names and sensations.

  We took a train. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t care. Wherever it was, it would be better than home, I knew. I had never been on a train before or seen running water that came when I opened the tap. Every few hours, the man gave me something to eat. I clung to the window bars of the train and felt the hot wind tattoo my face. I wanted to sing. It felt like my horizon was arced with rainbows. Thousands of them.

  We were asked to get off the train at a station called Kazipet, and he took us to a place that made bricks. ‘You like playing in the mud, don’t you?’ my uncle said with a strange sounding laugh.

  I nodded as I looked around. At first I thought I couldn’t breathe. The heat pressed down upon me and the air hurt my throat and eyes.

  ‘Stop gaping and help me,’ my uncle said. We had to build our own little room where all of us would sleep. My uncle, my aunt, his mother-in-law and their two children younger than me. We had been given some straw and a blue sheet. That would be our roof – thatch and plastic. But we would need to build the walls. All of us worked quietly and quickly. That night I lay on the ground outside the unfinished room, staring at the skies. It didn’t matter, I told myself. There are others here as well. Somehow that made me feel better.

  The days were relentless. At first I was given lumps of coal to beat against each other so they turned into bits that would feed the furnace. Then I was asked to carry small loads of freshly moulded bricks to the kilns. I had to do what I was asked to do. That was what the other children did as well.

  I worked through the day. In return, I was given some food, and several beatings. My uncle beat me, my aunt beat me, my aunt’s mother beat me, the older boys and girls beat me, the kiln owner’s supervisor beat me … After a while I stopped wondering what I was getting beaten for. All I knew was that there was a furnace with a gaping mouth in my belly. It felt hollow and hot. I didn’t know if it was hunger or fear.

  I forgot my name. Everyone called me Pathuria. Everyone else was also Pathuria.

  The train sped into the day. Soon the ticket collector would make a cursory visit. He seldom went beyond the door. The stench from the bathrooms and from the clogged pores of these vacant-eyed, hollow-cheeked creatures would deter even the bravest man. Once in a while, though, he would pounce on a hapless face and demand, ‘Tickets! Tickets!’

  Sometimes a tiny runnel of luck would slip into the cloud of desperation, and even if that person didn’t have one, the man sitting alongside or someone else from across the aisle would pass him a ticket. And such would be the impact of that jet of luck that the ticket checker would not ask the good samaritan for his
ticket. Such happenstances occured in the general compartment.

  Sometimes though, a face would give itself away. A shifty look, beads of sweat on the upper lip, a tightening of the jaw. The ticket checker was not an idiot. He would see the owner of that face for what he was. Class: Vermin. Category: Vagrant. With the glee of a dog sniffing out a nest of baby rats, he would pounce on him. Ready to toss him out onto the next platform with a growl and a threat. ‘Do you want me to call the railway police?’

  It was then I would appear. I would have a sheaf of tickets in my pocket. I would wedge my way through the heaving mass of perspiration and fear till I reached the group that I knew was certain to be ticketless and with no knowledge of what to do next.

  I leaned against one of the seats now. The boys avoided looking at me as I knew they would. They stared out of the window or at the floor. Look at me, I wanted to tell them. Meet my gaze, let’s make this easier for you and me.

  You are Krishna, I told myself, thinking of how the thekedar had grasped my shoulders, looked into my eyes and named me. I repeated in my head the words the thekedar had said to me the first time and many times thereafter: Those who come to me go beyond the world of shadows.

  I boarded at Chipurupalle station in Andhra Pradesh at 10.58 a.m. It was an hour when no one noticed anything. Sleep weighed heavy on the eyelids and turned all thoughts into a slow, murky stream. At 11.30 a.m. we would be at Vizinagaram with the possibility of the ticket checker turning up any moment. I had a few minutes left to make the boys my own.

  They had two bottles of water between them. One of the boys raised a bottle to his lips. His eyes met mine.

  ‘Tame kouthu asicha?’ I mumbled in Odiya, hiding a yawn behind my hand. I spoke five languages: Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Odiya and Bengali, and I had a smattering of Telugu and English. In my line of work, you are nothing if you cannot speak the language of your customers, and mine came from different parts of the country.

  His eyes widened and he mumbled something to the boy next to him. This one was the leader of the group. He frowned and then answered my query after a pause.