A VIOLENT ENCOUNTER WITH THE PAST

If Chopra had thought that his trials for the day were over once they had returned from the quarry he was mistaken. After a meal of thin lentil soup and stale chapatti, he was informed by his cellmate Iqbal Yusuf that they were now required to spend the evening assisting in the quartermaster’s storeroom. “My previous cellmate used to assist there too,” explained Yusuf. “You will take his place.”

“What happened to him?”

“I’ll tell you another time,” said Yusuf, not meeting Chopra’s eyes.

The storeroom was located at one end of the enormous compound, together with a cluster of whitewashed administrative buildings.

Working with a dozen other prisoners Chopra helped unload sacks of grain and lentils from the incoming delivery trucks under the gimlet eyes of the quartermaster, a broad, flatfooted prisoner with greasy hair and double chins wearing another of the black uniforms denoting rank within the dubious prison hierarchy. He couldn’t help but notice that baskets of vegetables and fruit were among the provisions, and yet such fare had been noticeable by its absence in the prison canteen at lunch.

His stomach growled.

“When do we get those?” he asked.

“Never,” said Yusuf. “The quartermaster sells the good produce on. We get the refuse that’s left over.”

An hour later Chopra found himself stacking shelves inside a dimly lit storeroom. Cockroaches skittered across the cool stone. After the dust and heat of the quarry it was almost pleasant in here. For the first time in hours his churning thoughts settled, spiralling inevitably towards his predicament.

But before he could dwell on the matter he heard the door creak open behind him.

He turned to find a big man with a stubbled jaw hulking in the doorway. His eyes dropped to the knife clutched in the man’s fist. A spear of alarm embedded itself in Chopra’s chest. “I have no feud with you, friend,” he said, his heart pounding.

“That’s where you’re wrong, friend,” said the man, stepping forward. “You don’t recognise me, do you? Well, I recognise you, Chopra. I knew you the moment I set eyes on you in the quarry. If I hadn’t been chained up I would have finished you there and then.”

Chopra squinted at the man. The beery face was beginning to look familiar. “Rastogi,” he said eventually.

“It is good that you remember me. It is important to know who is about to end your life.”

Chopra ransacked his memory.

He had arrested Rustom Rastogi ten years earlier. Rastogi had been an enforcer for a local gang. Back then he was rumoured to have killed half-a-dozen men. But it was for the murder of his young wife that he’d finally been convicted. Rastogi had stumbled home drunk one evening and his wife had refused his advances.

That was all it had taken.

Clearly, Rastogi held a grudge.

The former gangster advanced. Chopra backed away.

Rastogi charged. Chopra plucked a tin from the shelf beside him, and flung it at the demented prisoner before leaping sideways. The can ricocheted off Rastogi’s skull, eliciting a howl of rage. Chopra crashed into a shelf, taking it down with him, tins raining down on him as he fell to the floor.

He thrashed about, struggling to regain his feet, but his efforts were cut short by a heavy foot that lashed into his ribs, then his stomach.

The air went out of him.

Coughing and wheezing, Chopra fell back, spots flashing before his eyes. A shadow blurred in and out of focus above him.

“I am going to enjoy this,” hissed Rastogi.

Chopra heard the shuffle of bare feet across concrete, and then a shriek. He saw Rastogi fall back, clawing at his eyes. The knife clattered to the floor.

“Come on,” hissed a voice in Chopra’s ear, as he was hauled upright.

Iqbal Yusuf placed Chopra’s arm around his shoulders, then limped him out from the storeroom.

Behind them Rastogi continued to thrash around on the floor, weeping pitiably.

“What did you… do to… him?” Chopra gasped.

“Chilli powder,” said Yusuf. “You’d be surprised how many uses one can find for the stuff.”

That night Chopra lay on his bunk replaying the events of the day. His muscles fluttered with fatigue. The back-breaking labour of quarrying rocks had exhausted him. The punishment inflicted by Rustom Rastogi added a secondary chorus of pain—his body registered its protest with each trembling breath.

Iqbal Yusuf, having brought Chopra back to his cell and palpated his ribs with his fingers, had assured him that no bones were broken. Fetching a coconut shell wrapped in old newspaper from beneath his bunk, the old man had smeared a thick paste over Chopra’s bruises, making his nose twitch violently at the smell of turmeric.

In the hours since the attack Chopra had learned a great deal more about prison life from his cellmate, none of it good. The only note of optimism had been Yusuf’s reassurance that Rastogi would not tell anyone else that he had recognised Chopra.

“How can you be sure of that?” Chopra had asked.

“Because he wants to kill you himself,” replied Yusuf, matter-of-factly.

Chopra wondered just how long the old man had been at Gouripur. Yusuf’s brow crinkled with the effort of recollection.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I gave up counting years ago. I remember, a month after I was sentenced, they shot Indira.”

Chopra was aghast. “But that was thirty years ago! Surely you have served your sentence?”

Yusuf shrugged. “One year, thirty years. What does it matter to me now? What would I do even if they released me? I have nowhere to go.”

Chopra realised that the old man had become so thoroughly institutionalised that he would be unable to function in the real world, a world that had changed beyond recognition since he had entered the penal system. “What did you do?” he asked at last. It was the question he had been putting off.

He was not sure that he wanted to know the answer.

Yusuf fell silent. When he finally spoke his voice was weighted with a deep sadness. “I was a younger man, then. They called it a crime of passion, but that wasn’t true, not really. It was a crime of revenge.

“I murdered a man. In cold blood. He was the son of a district collector, a boy, no more than twenty. He attended the same college as my daughter. She was my only child. When we had her something went wrong and we were told we could have no more children. She meant everything to me. So what if I didn’t have a boy? She was as good as any boy in my eyes. Clever, beautiful, and the sweetest nature imaginable. I always used to say to her, God must have been in a good mood the day he made you. She told me she was going to become a politician. She was going to change things. Help run this country right.” Yusuf paused as the eye of memory took him deep into the past. “He was a very charismatic boy, the collector’s son. My daughter was not impressionable, but he made an impression. He convinced her of many things. That her cause was his cause; that he too wished for change. I discovered afterwards that it was all lies. He was well known for it. It was a game to him.” Yusuf sighed. “And after he had taken what he wanted, he abandoned her. He had promised marriage and my daughter believed him. When she realised he had betrayed her—that she was left with nothing but the mark of her shame—she confronted him.

“He did not expect this, I suppose. He thought she would simply vanish, like so many others before her. But not my daughter.” A note of pride entered the old man’s voice. “The confrontation turned ugly. He ended up strangling her.” Chopra was astounded at the flatness with which the revelation was delivered. “But he was the collector’s son. I knew long before the verdict came down that the court would clear him. The judge said he had acted in self-defence. The boy walked free with his blessings, grinning from ear to ear.” Yusuf stared at the wall. “Two days later I caught up with him. I stabbed him forty-five times as he sat in his car. And then I walked into a police station, and told them what I had done. I was at peace.”

Chopra was stunned by the terrible tale.

Morality was a spectrum, and the judgements human beings raised against one another could never be explained or understood unless viewed through the prism of context. Chopra had always been a scrupulously moral man. He believed in the ideal of justice while recognising that it was often unattainable, particularly in India with its ineffectual judicial system.

And yet he could not bring himself to condone Yusuf’s actions.

Murder was murder. Besides, had Yusuf’s terrible revenge solved anything? He had spent his whole life inside these barren walls with the ghost of his murdered daughter. What had happened to his wife in that time? Revenge had its consequences, not just on those it was exacted upon.

Yusuf asked about Chopra, then. The former policeman explained the circumstances that had brought him to Gouripur Jail.

Yusuf scratched his grizzled beard, evaluating Chopra with a thoughtful expression. “I have had more cellmates than I can remember,” he said eventually. “Most have claimed to be innocent in one way or another. Yours is the first story I might actually believe.” His brow furrowed. “If what the warden said to you is true then you are in big trouble. It is easy for a man to disappear in our prisons. Even if Rastogi, or someone else, doesn’t kill you, they may simply transfer you elsewhere. They’ll keep moving you around until you become another statistic. They have the power. In here we are corn before their sickle.”

“I have a wife. I have friends. They will look for me. A man cannot simply vanish.”

Yusuf burst out in cynical laughter. “I am living proof, my friend, that when the forces of wealth and power are ranged against you, anything can happen in this great country of ours.”

Chopra considered his words. “In that case the only option I have is to escape.”

“No one escapes from Gouripur.”

“Are you telling me no one has ever tried?”

“Many have tried. Most have died. That brute Singh is merciless. But he is not the one you must fear. Do you recall the guard above the quarry, with the rifle?”

Chopra nodded.

“His name is Tiwari. He is a former sharpshooter from the army. They discharged him years ago. I believe they thought he was mentally unstable. Hah! Imagine that. Too unstable for the army! They sent him back to his village. A few weeks later he climbed the water tower and started shooting people. He killed five of his neighbours before the tower collapsed on him. He had spent years on the Line of Control up in Kashmir and I suppose he couldn’t stop seeing enemies each time he opened his eyes.

“Because he was a soldier they wouldn’t give him the death penalty. They didn’t want to execute a man who had worn the uniform. And so they gave him to us instead, one more madman for the asylum. And then they put a rifle in his hands.

“He has shot dead twelve men since he arrived. Every once in a while someone thinks they can make a run for it. But Tiwari never misses. That murderer could shoot the wings off a fly. He sits up there all day, smoking, waiting. You think he’s half asleep, and some poor idiot sees a flash of freedom. But it’s an illusion. You know, if he wanted to, he could probably escape himself. But he never will. He likes being up there, waiting, like a hawk, for the next man foolish enough to run.”

A mouse crawled out from under Yusuf’s bunk. Chopra watched as the old man allowed it to climb up into his palm and nibble on a piece of stale chapatti.

He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

It was becoming clear that his predicament was worse than he had imagined. In his heart, he had believed that Rao’s outrageous duplicity would swiftly be discovered and that he would be returned to Mumbai. But now he remembered what Rao had said to him when Chopra had bested him in the Koh-i-noor diamond case. The investigation had discomfited many high-ranking parties in the city. Rao had warned him, through a face suffused with rage, “You have made enemies of some of the most powerful men in the country. Worse, you have made them look foolish. They will not forget. And they will never forgive.”

The words seemed prophetic now.

Chopra thought about Poppy, about what must be going through her mind. He had promised to stay out of trouble, and yet fate seemed determined to undermine his good intentions. And to vanish without so much as a goodbye! He cringed at the thought of what she would do to him if she ever got hold of him again.

Perhaps he was safest in here, he thought, ruefully, far from her wrath.

His thoughts lingered on the life he had so recently left behind. Already it seemed unreal, a shimmering veil beyond which lay another man’s cosseted existence. Mornings at the restaurant, the smell of Chef’s carrot-and-onion bhajis, Rangwalla arriving in a breathless rush, Irfan slipping into the office to give him a hug, Ganesha rooting with his trunk in Chopra’s pocket for the bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate he always brought along for the little elephant.

Karma, he thought. Once again, it all boiled down to fate.

To wrest his mind from his seemingly hopeless situation he turned his thoughts to the Verma case, reviewing what he had learned before his investigations had been so unceremoniously cut short.

Chopra had long been a devotee of Sherlock Holmes—particularly as played by Basil Rathbone in the forties—and wished that he had his calabash pipe with him. He did not smoke, but he liked to chew on the pipe while he pondered.

He cast his mind back to the ransom drop at the Madh Fort.

Firstly, he considered how Rao might have found out about the exchange. Who had informed him? Why? Who gained by sabotaging the safe recovery of Vicky Verma?

He had too few facts to attempt an answer.

Meanwhile, Ali had slipped away from the fort and vanished into the night while Rao had been engaged in arresting Chopra. The ransom had vanished with him… But what had happened next? Had Ali released Vicky? Or had Chopra’s worst fears been realised? Was Bijli Verma even now being summoned to the morgue to identify the body of her son? It depressed him bitterly to realise that she would blame Chopra for such a turn of events. He hated the thought of letting Bijli down.

Meanwhile, the kidnapper was still out there, somewhere.

Ali.

But how was Ali connected to P. K. Das? It made sense to Chopra that Das’s organised-crime backers would use low-rung operatives to carry out the actual kidnapping. It was their usual modus operandi. After all, it was well documented that Mumbai’s ganglords routinely employed impressionable villagers to carry out assassinations, paying what was to them a king’s ransom to enter the city, commit their ghastly crime, then vanish once again into the vast hinterlands. It was almost impossible for the authorities to locate such “day-rate” killers.

Had something similar happened here?

Was Ali a hired gun, a low-level cog in the insurance scam orchestrated by Das and those he had inadvisably got into bed with?

Or did Ali have absolutely nothing to do with Das?

An earlier thought now resurfaced in Chopra’s mind. Something Poppy’s colleague Malhotra had said at dinner, about Bijli receiving death threats after she had decried right-wing groups in the city following the 2008 terror attacks that had shocked the world. The rogue radical who had made the threats had vanished—could he have returned to make good on his dire promises by kidnapping Vicky? Was Ali that same man?

It seemed a far-fetched scenario, Chopra thought, though he was not yet ready to dismiss it entirely.

At least he had one lead. The girl from Mira Road, Aaliya Ghazi, Ali’s cousin.

If he could have found a way to make a phone call he would have asked Rangwalla to follow the girl. Perhaps she would lead them to Ali. And if Chopra could find him, then he was certain he could uncover the truth.

A couple of other things were bothering him too.

Two insignificant details that circled his brain like a pair of troublesome mosquitoes.

Firstly, the CCTV images of Ali entering and leaving the stadium on the night of the kidnapping. Something had nagged at him at the time, but he couldn’t quite grasp what it was, or why it should be important. Secondly, his thoughts kept returning to the faded film poster he had seen in Aaliya Ghazi’s home. There had been a woman in the poster, an actress from yesteryear whose face had seemed familiar. For the life of him, he couldn’t work out why this memory troubled him. What possible bearing could it have on the case? And yet it was like an itch he could not scratch. There was something incongruous about the poster itself. In a house where the paint was peeling from the walls, where there were no other photographs, paintings, or posters, why had this one been put up? Why this movie, and not another?

And then it came to him.

There was something intensely personal about the poster. Which meant that the actress was important to Aaliya Ghazi. If Chopra could discover who she was, he might learn more about Aaliya, which would bring him one step closer to Ali.

Perhaps, when he returned to the land of the living, he would find the answers he needed… If he returned.