The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(14)

“Ji, saab.” The usual Ali greeting. “Sorry I couldn’t speak when you returned my call.”

“Tell me,” Arnav said.

“I’ve heard chatter about a regular contract. To get rid of a lafda like the one you talked about. Around this time of year. Dussehra-Diwali.”

“Are you sure?”

“It is hush-hush. Top-level work. The fellow I spoke to is with Bhai’s team, but not high level enough. They have to bury the body so it is never traced, not toss it into the sea like usual.”

That did sound like the remains at Aksa.

“You’re saying this is recent. You mean your Bhai has taken the contract?”

“I don’t know for sure, saab. This man was drunk and blabbering.”

Ali’s words brought on a familiar pang of disquiet and ferment. The cadavers at Aksa might make a cold case, but if an established contract for body disposal had been renewed this week, it meant someone had killed again.

“Keep an eye out,” Arnav said. “Anything on the other big man?”

Even though he used burner phones and so did Ali, it was safer not to name Taneja now, especially after Mhatre’s warning.

“There is, saab, I’m sure. Big-time real estate in Mumbai means land mafia. He won’t get his hands dirty himself, so it will take a while to dig. I have to be careful. This one is a big shark, much more dangerous than Bhai.”

“OK, you can count on the usual,” Arnav said. “And if your information leads to an arrest, I’ll double the payout.”

Arnav returned to his friend, keener than ever on the file, only to find Tukaram’s seat empty.

A loud clang from the adjacent room startled him. Rushing in to check, he wound up at the door to a hidden room. A weak yellow bulb flickered above. Tukaram called out, and Arnav made his way around steel shelves to find Tukaram under a heap of collapsed files. He rushed over to offer the man a hand.

“The revenge of the files.” Tukaram gave a shaky laugh.

“I didn’t know about this place.”

“It’s been there, hidden behind shelves.” Tukaram gasped as Arnav helped him up. “They opened it up two years ago and extended the Record Storage area.”

No one seemed to have dusted it in a while. Tara would have enjoyed cleaning up the thick coat of grime—he’d often caught her singing an odd tune, face covered with a scarf like a bank robber, holding a stick tied to a broom, getting rid of cobwebs. That girl had a mania for neatness. It cheered her up, so whenever she appeared out of sorts he used to open up a room or two in his parents’ bungalow and let her have at it. It embarrassed him now to think he’d been in such a funk for all those months after she left without so much as a goodbye. They hadn’t made any promises.

This room would have taken her more than a day. Dust rose, making him cough. That helped him shake off the sudden happy flash at the thought of that young girl. It didn’t matter. She didn’t matter.

“I think I located your file.” Tukaram wiped his face, removing a streak of cobweb from his cheek.

Tukaram was about to give the file a whack, but Arnav grabbed it. He didn’t need another dust cloud.

“You go on out.” Tukaram seemed rueful. “I’ll set these back up and join you.”

Arnav walked out of the room, and grabbing some tissues from a nearby table, wiped the file clean. He flipped through it and came upon the details he remembered. The conclusions from the postmortem, which didn’t amount to much. He was a constable then, and had merely assisted in making the panchnama. His superior, a dour sub-inspector named Rajesh Bendre, was in charge.

Arnav kept turning the pages, and didn’t stop when he heard Tukaram come in.

“The team found sequins in the soil along with bones. Discolored. We’ll have to get the evidence reexamined.” Arnav kept up a commentary as he flipped the pages.

He found a note in Marathi in a margin, from Bendre: Seems similar to a case at the N M Joshi Marg station last year. Check.

“If this N M Joshi Marg case mentioned here is verified, it might have been the first. In 2002. This case file is from 2003; the case Naik has listed from Azad Nagar station was in 2008. And now the bodies at Aksa.”

“If they are all by the same suspect, that’s quite a gap between the murders,” Tukaram said.

“We may not have discovered all of them, and we don’t know when the women buried at Aksa were killed.”

As the officer who had made that note, Bendre might be able to help. At the time, Arnav had argued with Bendre about the rules for a new constable and Bendre had packed him off on probation to a different station. Arnav hadn’t seen him since.

“Can we speak to Sub-Inspector Bendre?”

Tukaram paused while offering Arnav a plate of biscuits. “He’s no more.”

“He died?”

“Yes. Road accident. No arrests made. He left behind a wife and children, but since he died when off duty, they received no compensation. A stinking heap there, if you ask me.”

“Why?”

“My wife and I visited Mrs. Bendre, and my wife became friends with her. Sounds like Bendre received threats. Mrs. Bendre couldn’t tell us what the threats were about or what the caller wanted Bendre to do, but she said there were several calls before he was killed.”