The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(15)
“What year?”
“January 2004,” Tukaram said.
Arnav had been in a blue fog all of 2003, the year after Tara disappeared. He had no recollection of the news.
Bendre had died. In the Azad Nagar station case, the officer in charge, Gawde, was handed a punishment posting. Dreadful things seemed to happen to those investigating crimes resembling the Aksa case.
“What’s wrong?” Tukaram said.
“I’ll need a copy of this file.”
Tukaram nodded. “I’ll get it done. By the way, your boss was the one who signed off on the statement on Bendre’s death, calling it an accident.”
“Mhatre?”
“The very same.”
With the photocopy of the file in hand, Arnav drank the rest of his tea in a gulp.
“Thanks for all of this. Let’s meet soon.”
“I no longer go drinking.”
“We’ll think of something.”
“Remember,” Tukaram said as they walked to Arnav’s car, “this job will let you go someday. Find yourself someone who won’t. Maybe a good girl. Get married. Your family will stick by you. Invite me to the wedding.”
“I will.” Arnav smiled as he lied to his nosy, well-meaning friend. No marriage or family for Arnav Singh Rajput.
“I’ve known you since you were a green constable, Avi.” Tukaram was the only sub-inspector allowed to use the shortened version of Arnav’s name. “Wherever you look, you see your sister. She’s gone. You can’t bring justice to all the dead women.”
Arnav drove away into a light drizzle, his mind on the victims who had ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Like Asha, who’d taken a shortcut through an alleyway because she was late for her tutoring sessions.
After her family had made enquiries around the vicinity, having failed to reach her phone, and learned from the coaching center that she hadn’t showed up for her classes, Asha had returned home past nine in the evening. Clothes torn, scratches on her face and throat. She rushed into her room and locked herself in. In a radical step during those days when a rape was hushed up for fear of bringing dishonor to the family, Constable Rajput had filed a complaint on his daughter’s behalf and made her go through medical checkups, unwavering in his faith in his bosses. Months had gone by, and she’d finally smiled that evening their parents had gone out to attend a wedding. Fifteen minutes. That was how long he’d left her alone to fetch her chaat from across the road. It was the first time in months that his sister, who had given up eating, had asked for her favorite savory snacks.
“Get me a sevpuri and a pao bhaji? Extra tamarind chutney.”
Those were her last words.
He’d skipped off imagining how much she’d enjoy, after months, the crunch of sevpuri, the sour tang of tamarind. When he returned and couldn’t get her to unlock the door, he knew. Dropping the food, he shoved against it with all the strength his thirteen-year-old body could muster, his feet slushing on the chili sauce and tamarind juice on the floor. The neighbors broke open the door when he raised the alarm. He caught a glance inside the room before someone bodily carried him away. The red saree Asha had used to hang herself, part of her trousseau her mother had been gathering for years, the eyes, the bloody nose, the swollen tongue, the wet salwar, her bent feet, the mess on the shiny floor.
Arnav braked hard—the reflected shine on the road had blinded him for a moment. While driving in the middle lane, he’d abruptly taken a left. Thankfully, no cars followed close behind or they would’ve crashed into his. He’d reached the tree-lined neighborhood in Malabar Hill that he’d been staking out for years. The second home of Joint Commissioner of Crime Neelesh Joshi.
When Arnav first met Joshi more than twenty years ago, Joshi was a newly minted assistant commissioner of police. As a clueless thirteen-year-old, Arnav had vowed to destroy the ACP, who was lax on the case filed after Asha’s rape. Arnav’s father, a police constable, had begged for help, but Joshi had said, “Why was your daughter out at night?”
Ever since he’d joined the police, Arnav had unofficially tailed the commissioner, and watched him from a distance on Republic Day parades, during award ceremonies and memorial services. Joshi rose from case to case and post to post, moving from the peak caps with the silver IPS badge of a senior police officer to the caps of the topmost ranks with gold-embroidered visors. His startling career graph took off thanks not only to his uncanny ability to sniff out criminals but also to his connections with the political party that had ruled the state of Maharashtra for many years.
Decades ago, Arnav was convinced he could bring Joshi down. He was no longer as sure. He watched the house, lights switched on in all its rooms. If Joshi was in touch with any remaining gangs, there had been no outward evidence of it in the past years—no suspicious cars or individuals lurked near him. His personal reputation was blameless.
Arnav started his car. Once home, he left a bunch of instructions for Naik and her team to organize all the connected case files and reexamine the investigation into Sub-Inspector Bendre’s death. They required enough evidence to justify interviewing Taneja. That would prompt Mhatre to set up a departmental enquiry on disobedience, but Arnav wasn’t new to those. If Ali was right about his Bhai signing a contract to bury a body, another woman would die soon.