The Page 1 headlines the next morning, on the second day of the investigation, were:
- ‘MURDER OF FREE SPEECH’ (DT, banner headline)
- ‘Newspaper family (not NoI), HR head, have cardiac arrests’ (the News of India, second lead)
- ‘Police report four deaths in Secunderabad office’ (the Iyengar, single-column, below-the-fold)
- ‘DT decapitation portends new Telugu order’ (the New Indian Success, anchor)
- ‘CM offers condolences, holds meeting’ (Telangana Toady, third lead)
Mona scanned the headlines at the entrance to the mess. The newspapers were getting desperate in this era of the coronavirus. Hyderabad’s papers were arguably more ill-informed than other cities.
She joined the breakfast queue and scanned the offering. Idli, brown rice idli, bajra idli. Poori bhaji. A dosa station. Medhu vadas, dahi vadas and urad dal vadas. Poha. Oats. Muesli in yoghurt. A dry and crusty cereal. White bread for toast. Industrial jelly, but no jam or preserves. Guava juice, lime juice. Buttermilk, skimmed milk. Instant coffee. A teapot.
What Mona craved was an egg. A single egg, even hard-boiled, would do, though she preferred a two-egg mushroom omelette. But egg was not available here. Just another subtle reminder of who ran things around here. Or in India, as always.
‘Good morning, Ramteke Ma’am.’
A swarm of probationers gathered at her table with their plates, cups and glasses. Mona smiled and nodded at each one of them.
‘How’s the case going?’ asked Probationer Alka Mathur.
‘You know I can’t speak about it,’ Mona said, laughing. ‘As it is, the local police thinks of me as an interloper. And I’m a woman, which further annoys the brass. Maybe I can share facts with you in a couple of days?’
‘But tell us, na, how does it feel to be investigating a case in a different city?’ asked Probationer Shweta Nair.
‘Is language a problem?’ Probationer Rohini Anjlekar added.
‘It’s like a heritage walk through the city’s psyche,’ Mona said. ‘Not knowing Telugu is not a big drawback, not in this case at least. Anyway, the people here speak Urdu. Or Dakhni, I guess. Easier to sense when a witness is being economical with the truth.’
‘Ma’am, I wish you were giving one of our courses,’ Probationer Kavitha Vaidyanathan said.
‘What details do the papers give?’ asked Mona.
Mona came to know a lot. DT disclosed that there had been multiple murders, though only two were confirmed so far. It saw an insidious conspiracy against a family that had done much to uphold press independence and the freedom of expression in India, if not in the whole of Asia. The News of India found it suspicious that there were four cardiac arrests around the same time, and noted that though DT was the top-circulating newspaper in the city—in the old city, in Secunderabad, in high-tech city and in the outlying gated communities and slums—the News of India was the preferred paper of the influencers and young people in the Socio-Economic Class (SEC) category 1 that was targeted by advertisers. The Iyengar made a straight police press release even drier, revealing nothing of what lurked under the surface. The New Indian Success report was tangential, focusing on how the Reddys’ death meant a loss to the Congress party, giving the BGP an opening to broaden its voter support. Telangana Toady reported only the chief minister’s reaction to the deaths, which included a high-level meeting that unanimously supported his decision to levy a new newsprint duty.
‘That summary saves me some bother,’ Mona said. ‘Thanks.’
The group then proceeded to chat about life on the academy campus till Mona’s mobile phone buzzed. It was SI Pavani.
‘Morning, ma’am.’
The film unit Mona and Pavani planned to visit had begun shooting at the Ikea in Hitec city, at the opposite end of Hyderabad. Ikea apparently wanted them to finish before the customers came in, though that was down to a trickle because of the pandemic. Pavani suggested that they leave early to avoid traffic.
‘Yes, good. Will you pick me up from the academy?’
‘Ma’am, I’m at the academy’s entrance.’
Before long, Pavani’s motorcycle was chugging towards Hitec city. Mona’s tummy protested mildly at riding the motorized beast just minutes after breakfast. Soon, it settled down and she spent the next forty-five minutes peering at the roadside urban blight and at bored car passengers.
Suddenly, in the distance loomed a long, light blue building on which the word ‘IKEA’ announced itself in yellow, much like the Swedish flag. They had reached the Mindspace junction and taken a ramp to get into the superstore’s multistorey parking. Pavani stopped her motorcycle and a masked guard, wearing a uniform in the brand’s colours, approached hurriedly. He spoke excitedly in Telugu.
‘What!’ Pavani exclaimed. ‘Ma’am, a leopard has entered the premises and is headed towards the film unit.’
Mona and Pavani rushed in with the guard trailing.
‘Call the forest department and the local zoo,’ Pavani said. The relieved guard made a U-turn. As Mona and Pavani ran across the ground floor, they heard several shouts and screams echoing in the distance.
Unfortunately, the Ikea layout allowed for no shortcuts for the outsider, so customers had to navigate the entire floor before reaching their destination. No staff was in sight to assist them. Mona and Pavani whizzed by the array of pastel-coloured dishes, shiny pots and pans, dizzying curtains, racks of bath towels, pyramids of cups and glasses, other assorted accessories and the vast hall that housed all this. Oddly, the leopard had not knocked over any of the precariously placed displays.
They reached a cavernous warehouse where floodlights were turned on, blinding the leopard that had climbed atop a display pile of foldable tables in red and grey. The animal was spinning round and round, while film hands shouted advice in Telugu from the safety of neighbouring aisles.
It was a pale and short-legged leopard with a large skull. Perhaps a female. It was disoriented and continued moving, while the crew and store staff who had not fled the set, and who wore masks, shouted and beat on Ikea pots and pans, like villagers cornering a tiger in a forest.
Mona spotted a masked Gurleen Kaur hiding behind a rack of shelving units. The starlet held a purse, from the grip of which a gun peered out. Mona scrambled over to her while Pavani commanded the unit people to stop banging the accessories. She then introduced herself.
‘Is that something useful in your purse?’ Mona asked Gurleen.
‘A taser,’ Gurleen said, taking off her mask. ‘Imported.’ And then, for no discernible reason, she shrieked at the leopard.
‘Give, give.’
Mona estimated the leopard’s weight to be around fifty kilograms at the most. She came as close as the taser’s range would allow—what was it, fifteen feet—and aimed at the big cat. She fired, and at the same time, the leopard leapt towards her.
As soon as the taser’s probes hit, the leopard convulsed and lost consciousness mid-air. It fell close to Mona’s feet. The film unit cheered. Several of them rushed to get a selfie with the fallen leopard.
‘Rajan, ma’am, from the Nehru Zoological Park,’ a man in a mask said. He had just arrived with his team.
‘Tell me, Mr Rajan, where in the world did this poor leopard come from?’
In all probability, he felt, the leopard had emerged from the forest reserve during the lockdown. There had been other instances of leopards roaming the city after the streets were emptied of people, all of whom were hiding in their homes to escape the coronavirus.
‘But why come to Ikea?’ Mona asked,
‘For the Swedish meatballs?’ an assistant holding a syringe of tranquilizer asked.
‘Ma’am, we’ll conduct a physical exam and then release it into the forest,’ Rajan said.
The assistant tranquilized the sleeping leopard and, with the help of three others, loaded it on a gurney. Rajan waved goodbye as they departed, with the gathering spontaneously bursting into applause.
A burly man with sunglasses and a fine-tipped moustache that poked out of the sides of his mask walked over to the display where the leopard had been cornered. ‘Well, we missed our chance to film the leopard, but that’s okay,’ he said. ‘There will be good publicity, for sure. Although I hope the government doesn’t shut us down.’
The crew murmured.
‘Okay, everyone, back to work,’ he said and clapped his hands like a schoolteacher.
‘May I have my taser back?’
Mona whirled around, and there was Gurleen in her purple dress with a dangerously high hem. Mona introduced herself.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Where did you get this, by the way? Imported?’
‘A friend got it for me. He bought it in Bangkok.’
‘A girl’s best friend.’
‘The taser or the friend who bought it?’ Gurleen asked and stared intensely at Mona for a few seconds. ‘Haven’t we met?’
‘At the minister’s,’ Mona said. Gurleen immediately nodded in recognition.
‘I’m not here about that though,’ Mona said. ‘I need to ask about the deaths at the DT office yesterday. You were at its office near at the time, so we should speak.’
Gurleen’s face fell. ‘But I didn’t see anyone die,’ she said. ‘BJ didn’t look like he was having a heart attack.’
‘I know, I know. It’s just a formality. Can we talk now?’
‘I guess it’ll take them some time to set up again. I was halfway through my dance sequence when that leopard appeared. How scary! And the producer wanted me to keep dancing while the leopard prowled around the furniture.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. But who listened to him? At that moment, I was scared shitless. Anyway, I now have to have my make-up done again as the mask smudged it. Come on.’
Mona and Gurleen followed Coreena, the masked make-up artist, through a doorway marked ‘Staff Only’ to a room filled with plastic-wrapped pillows and plastic hangers, in the middle of which a plastic chair had been set up facing a large portable make-up mirror. Several Ikea lamps burned brightly to illuminate the chair. Gurleen sat down and her nose and cheeks were immediately attacked by two make-up brushes.
‘Was the guy with the moustache the producer?’ Mona asked, watching the artists at work.
‘Yes. Raghu Sir.’
‘I need to talk to him, too.’
‘He was at DT yesterday?’ Gurleen was genuinely surprised.
‘I guess,’ Mona said. ‘Why were you there, Ms Kaur?’
‘To pick up my taser. Babloo Jubilee had called the night before and asked me to come to the farmhouse to take it, but I figured it would be a lot safer at his office.’
‘Smart lady.’
Gurleen looked at Mona and grinned. They were silent for a moment. At that moment, Pavani came and stood next to the ACP.
‘He was probably coked-up when he phoned. Anyway, I was tired from shooting and reshooting a single dance sequence that day. Why must a dance sequence need so many takes? The director must think he’s David Fincher.’
The name sounded familiar, but Mona struggled to place it.
‘Did he take a lot of cocaine? How well did you know him?’ she asked Gurleen.
‘Babloo Jubilee was forever on coke. The thing is, girls in the Telugu film industry can’t avoid bumping into rich industrialists and their bratty sons. Can’t say much for them though. The fathers are rapists and the sons are spoilt by ayahs. Babloo Jubilee wasn’t all that bad, but he was too soft to be a threat. He must have really liked me because he kept calling me to his uncle’s farmhouse to party. He would snort lots of cocaine and lay sprawled on a velvet couch, while me and the other girls would spend the night dancing. Why not, you know?’
‘Nothing more than that?’
‘Maybe he wanted more. He was sweet enough to get me the taser. He went abroad before the lockdown, in January I think, and after he returned he invited me over to collect it. The fact that it took me many months, with a lockdown in between, to see him tells you how deep our relationship was. For all I know, he might have bought a carton of tasers for other friends. But, thankfully, he didn’t ask me to reimburse him.’
‘Sweet fellow,’ Pavani agreed. ‘As sweet as paayasam, perhaps?’
‘Paayasam?’ Gurleen blinked.
‘Hold still, Gurleen Ma’am,’ Coreena said as she got to work on the starlet’s eyebrows.
Gurleen’s eyes were soon transformed. The eye make-up was bright and shiny. The magenta melded with aquamarine, and the gradient shined bright with the mild glitter, which was also added later. It reminded Mona of the make-up trend in her late teens and early twenties.
Gurleen caught Mona staring at her, and with those freshly made-up eyes, she smiled. This brought Mona back to reality.
‘Did Babloo Jubilee look ill when you met him yesterday morning?’ Mona asked.
‘No, not even hungover.’
‘What did you two talk about?’
‘BJ talked about himself, as men usually do. He said he was tired of the newspaper business and wanted to diversify. I suggested that he bankroll movies for me to star in. He said maybe next year, but first he wanted to set up a vaccination business. He said that he could import a COVID-19 vaccine and sell it in India, making enough money to finance the entirety of Tollywood.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. He stopped talking abruptly. As if I were secretly recording him. As if I would steal his business idea or his plans. Silly, yaar. Here I am, worried that my tits are not big enough for the Telugu audience and he thought I wanted to get into pharma.’
‘You mean not big enough for half of the Telugu audience?’ Pavani asked.
‘How long, in all, would you say you were in his office?’ Mona questioned.
‘Maybe twenty minutes. He offered me a cup of tea, but I said no. How can you trust putting anything in your mouth during this pandemic?’
‘Isn’t a film shoot illegal during the pandemic?’ Pavani asked.
‘You’ll have to ask Raghu Sir about that. Everybody is wearing masks. Except me, because I don’t want to mess up my make-up. The entire set has been tested, and everyone was negative. We’re all reasonably safe.’
‘That’s what you think,’ Pavani said.
‘Let’s go talk to the producer,’ Mona said. And then hesitated. ‘Miss Gurleen, may I have your number? I may need to ask about your other meetings.’
Gurleen stood up and rattled out her number. She was dressed to kill. She bid the police officials adieu as they went off in search of the producer.
‘What other meetings, ma’am?’ Pavani asked.
‘I just said that,’ Mona said. ‘In case we have more questions for her’.
Raghupathi Pullaiah sat in a lawn chair, scratching his crotch absent-mindedly. He had a white tika on his forehead, running from his hairline to his where his eyebrows met each other. The continuity girl announced the police officials. He took off his sunglasses.
‘Haaah?’ he said loudly.
The continuity girl pulled her mask outwards, repeated herself and allowed the mask to snap back into place. The producer immediately stood up and ordered a lackey to pull two more lawn chairs for Mona and Pavani.
‘Myself Raghupathi Pullaiah,’ he said, sticking his hand out.
‘Have you forgotten COVID-19 protocol?’ Pavani barked at him in English.
There was a hush on the set. All eyes were on the sub-inspector.
‘What the fuck?’ Pavani said loudly. ‘Get back to work before I haul all of you off to jail for having an assembly of over fifty persons.’
The crew returned to hurrying about like gas molecules inside a box. Three dark, lanky men continued to hover around the producer, no doubt at his beck and call.
‘Raghu Sir, can we speak alone?’ Mona asked.
The producer waved his hand in stylish dismissal and the three beck-and-call men vanished.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you during this shoot, but time is of the essence,’ Mona said. ‘We’re investigating the deaths of the DT’s Reddys and their HR manager. You were in the building at around the time of the incident.’
Raghupathi giggled. ‘DT’s Reddys!’
‘Is Raghu Sir a suspect? What a great idea for a plot.’
A chocolate brown, bulky, bearded fellow with a massive explosion of jet-black hair on his head had mysteriously appeared by their side. ‘Writer-director,’ he said to Mona, sticking his elbow out as a greeting.
‘You’re David Fincher?’ Mona asked, ignoring his elbow.
‘Thank you, ma’am. You are a cineaste, likening me to David Fincher.’
‘Ma’am, don’t compliment Kashinath,’ Raghu said, shooting daggers at his writer-director. ‘He’s worse than the most spoilt leading lady.’
‘Er, okay,’ Mona said. ‘Does your production have permission to shoot?’
‘Yes, yes, paid the health minister off. What more do they want?’
‘How did you manage to get your crew out so early? I thought people in the industry were late birds.’
‘Ma’am, you think everyone in Hyderabad suffers from the Nawabi culture? Just because those DT journalists wake up at two in the afternoon doesn’t mean that we in the film industry also do the same. No, ma’am, we are a disciplined lot. Time is money. And of the essence.’
‘Impressive.’
‘Also, morning was the only time available at Ikea.’
‘Why Ikea?’
‘Ask Mr Fincher over there. Hey, Kashinath, wake up. Tell Ma’am why Ikea.’
Kashinath looked down. ‘How can a creative person fully articulate an ineffable aesthetic decision?’ he asked.
‘What he means to say is that there are less customers due to pandemic,’ Raghupathi explained. ‘Also, the company has provided generous discount to use its space and purchase any items for personal use.’
‘What a resourceful man, Mr Raghu! Indeed. You were at the DT office yesterday to meet Mr Velveti Rompy Reddy. Tell us everything about it, without missing any detail.’
‘I met Rompy Reddy Garu quite often, and yesterday was no different. Went early since I had to come here for the parking lot shoot-out. Yes, good scene. Just like that movie. Which was it, Kashinath, the English movie you showed me?’
‘Free Fire.’
‘Yes, that one. Intense shooting scenes. Plot so-so.’
‘You were telling me about Rompy Reddy,’ Mona said.
‘Yes, of course. Well, we had to discuss a private matter. We talked. Had a heart-to-heart chat. Then I left. Later I heard Rompy Reddy Garu had died of a heart attack. Immediately, I booked an executive check-up at Apollo Hospital in Jubilee Hills for myself.’
‘What was this heart-to-heart?’
‘Really, ma’am, it was not a heart-to-heart attack.’
‘Still.’
‘I’d rather not say.’
‘Well, if you tell me now, I’ll keep it off the record. Or else, we’ll have you interrogated in front of a magistrate. And I’ll give the transcript over to Telangana Toady.’
‘No need for threats,’ Raghupathi said, wiping his brow. ‘We didn’t talk about anything serious. Just some gossip about his nephew, Babloo Jubilee, and my leading lady, Gurleen. Nothing for the police.’
‘What gossip?’
‘Arre, how can I say it in front of ladies?’
‘It’s either the ladies or a magistrate.’
‘Just … well,’ Raghu said, his fingers drifting to the front of his mask. ‘That he was doing a good job with her.’
‘Is that true?’
‘No, no, I’ve heard he was actually an illiterate eunuch. No, I just made him look studly to please his uncle, Rompy Reddy Garu.’
‘You didn’t discuss further financing for this film?’
Raghupathi shot a sullen look at Kashinath. ‘Director Sahib, can you just check with the DoP if there are any shots of the leopard?’
Kashinath, nonplussed, went off to check with the cinematographer.
‘Pardon, ma’am, but I don’t want to discuss money in front of Fincher,’ Raghupathi said. ‘Or else he’ll start demanding real Swedish meatballs, not this Indianized version, for the crew’s tiffin and lunch.’
‘So, you were discussing money with Rompy Reddy?’
‘Ma’am, unlike Michael Reddy, Rompy Reddy Garu has no interest in hot chips,’ he said. ‘No, no, ma’am, his whole family is bankrupt, how can he give funds? We needed only ₹50 crore. Low-budget, thanks to the pandemic. Got it from an off-shore company registered in the Maldives. VRR Infra Pvt. Ltd.’
Mona looked long and hard at him. ‘Pavani,’ she said and stood up. ‘Let’s take him to your police station for a cup of tea. Ginger tea.’
‘Aiyyo, Amma, why are you getting angry?’ Raghupathi said, joining his palms in supplication. ‘I’ve already told you everything you wanted to hear.’
Mona sat back down, mulling his words. ‘VRR Infra, I take it, was a shell company belonging to Rompy Reddy?’
Raghupathi nodded.
‘That, and probably other accounts belonging to other shell companies, have undeclared money which escaped the banks’ notice when the Reddys declared bankruptcy?’
Again, Raghupathi nodded.
‘And if Rompy Reddy had no interest in films, then this was just a way of laundering money, isn’t it?’
Raghupathi beamed. ‘I win, you win, we all win. Except that bastard Rowdy Panja Naidu who is not fit to even make Doordarshan documentaries about Harappan pottery.’
‘I would hold off on the gloating,’ Mona said. ‘If it is a money-laundering operation, and your budget is ₹50 crore, how much did you tell him and how much is the film actually costing?’
‘Ma’am, just what I said.’
‘I know that’s not true,’ Mona said. ‘But I am not doing an income tax inquiry, GST audit or an enforcement directorate investigation, so I won’t bother about the funds. I’m just looking into a bunch of deaths. If I feel you are being less than honest, I’ll go straight to the chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes.’
‘Aiyyo, Amma. I’m being 100 per cent, no, 200 per cent honest. What you say is true; we are cost-cutting and hoping to wrap-up in under ₹30 crore. I told Rompy Reddy Garu it would be a ₹100-crore extravaganza. Yesterday, he got angry with me and asked who is this Gurleen, and that his nephew had told him that Gurleen couldn’t bring a return on that much money. So, I said that we could set him up as a distributor and let him keep ₹50 crore as profits. Money laundered. He said that was okay. Trouble is that he had only given ₹35 crore till now. Now I have no choice but to keep costs down, come what may.’
‘Maybe Shrek Fund will find all this information useful,’ Pavani said.
Raghupathi looked from Mona to Pavani and back at Mona again. ‘Ma’am, please don’t do that. They’ll go to court and get a stay on my film and say that this money should be given to creditors. They will demand all of the ₹50 crore to be handed over to the banks, which I don’t have, which means I’ll have to give ₹15 crore from my own pocket. Om Balaji, save me.’
‘Again, I might keep this off the record,’ Mona said. ‘Do you have any idea how much money they had stashed away?’
‘Rompy Reddy Garu never spoke about their money. Sankatram Anna was more loose-lipped. I heard him mention something like ₹3,000 crore, but I can’t say for sure. I have no proof. Word of mouth only.’
The mention of such a big amount jolted both Mona and Pavani. They took a long pause.
‘Sounds like a motive,’ Mona said. ‘Who else had this information?’
‘Everybody,’ Raghupathi said. ‘Except the banks and the central government. Those monkeys! Perhaps Shrek Fund, but I wouldn’t know for sure what they know or don’t know. All our local industrialists likely knew. Certainly the chief minister’s son. But no one can access this money unless they have a list of the Reddys’ shell companies.’
Mona looked hard at Raghupathi. ‘What time did you leave Rompy Reddy’s office?’
‘Ma’am, in roughly twenty minutes, around 11.30 a.m. He looked fine. No sign of a heart attack. What a tragedy.’
‘Was there anything else he mentioned? Try to remember. It won’t look good if we find out later that you held something back.’
Kashinath returned. ‘Sub-Inspector Pavani,’ he said. ‘You have quite an impressive personality. Why don’t you make an appearance in our movie, in uniform, as an angel of vengeance?’
‘Good idea,’ Raghupathi said. ‘She will be a stunning scene-stealer. Just a figure of speech, ma’am.’
‘I have a better idea,’ Pavani said. ‘Why don’t you have your background dancers wear masks while dancing? It will give a social message, too.’
‘Fantastic idea,’ Kashinath said. ‘We can have masks with tiny leopards.’
‘Or each mask with a sponsor’s logo,’ Raghupathi said.
Mona’s phone buzzed then. It was the medical examiner.
‘Well, it’s confirmed,’ Dr Dharma said. ‘Mr Velveti Rompy Reddy also died because of batrachotoxin … injected into his armpit. We almost missed the puncture mark; it was in an acrochordon. It is a harmless skin flap, or tag, that comes with age, amidst the hair. He had more than one acrochordon, and the toxin was injected into the largest flap.’
Just the thought of a skin flap hanging in the armpit made Mona queasy. ‘Do these flaps happen to women also?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but it’s harmless. Just collagen.’
Mona shivered.
‘By the way,’ Dr Dharma continued. ‘I conclude that at least three different syringes were used. I would say four, but there’s a possibility that a dropper was used for the paayasam. Or it could have been added straight from the vial or a tube.’
‘No traces of any of the victims in the others?’
‘Absolutely. Also the entry of each syringe was shaky, so epidermal tissue was disturbed. An identical entry mark would have shown up on another body had the same needle been used.’
‘Three, maybe four, injections?’
‘Either one killer carried several syringes, or his accomplice, or accomplices, carried one or more of the syringes. You may ask your subordinates to hunt for them.’
Mona mulled the necessity yet inevitable futility of searching for syringes. ‘The other death?’ she asked.
‘Yes, the youngster. He died of a cocaine overdose. Massive. Instant cardiac arrest.’
‘How is that a murder? And I thought there was no residue in his nostrils.’
‘We collected fluid residue from the lungs and subjected it to Raman spectroscopy,’ Dr Dharma said. ‘We found nanometres of benzoylecgonine. Cocaine in high concentration, of high purity. Low in sodium bicarbonate. Not the kind that is peddled on the streets. Someone took a high concentrate and injected the victim with a fatal dose. Immediate cardiac arrest, instant death. Whoever gave it was confident that his victim would die. Ergo, murder.’