The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(18)
This was an ongoing joke and debate. The staff at Malwani teased Arnav and Shinde, naming them for the Bollywood blockbuster classic Sholay, about two small-time thieves who defeat a gang of robbers. You couldn’t join Mumbai Police without hearing of the movie and the actors who were immortalized by their leading roles.
“My inspector must have already arrived on the scene. And you’re the worst Veeru I’ve seen. Veeru’s bike had a sidecar.”
Jai was brooding, smart, and a great shot, and Veeru the opposite. Shinde fit Jai’s mold—he was cranky, too, and manipulative when it suited him. A sidecar? Really?
“Why are you going? We can turn back,” Arnav said. “Let your inspector do his job.”
“I would have, especially after I saw your bike. But it is not an ordinary dead body. They messaged me pictures right before you reached my apartment. The woman has no head, hands, or feet.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ARNAV
When Arnav fought to tug his boot out of the gray, sulfur-smelling mangrove swamp, it sucked back, and for a moment he reached an impasse. Then, like Asha, who used to swing him around and release him with a giggle when he was at his most unsteady, the swamp let go. He would’ve fallen headlong down the slope had he not grabbed a mangrove branch and broken the momentum.
Arnav had dealt with bodies hacked up and packed in suitcases before—killers found them easy to wheel out without attracting attention. Despite Shinde’s constables offering to haul the large black suitcase out of the mud for him to examine, Arnav waded in. He wanted to see the cheap rexine suitcase for himself. His boss had railed at him about cold cases. Well, the constables said this was a decapitated body. That meant that the cases in Aksa might be combined into an investigation to trap an active serial killer. He could afford to miss nothing.
These mangroves in Versova ran alongside the narrow, polluted Malad creek. Cross the creek by boat and you hit Madh Island. Aksa beach lay a short drive farther. Even though Aksa was under the jurisdiction of Malwani Police Station, and the Versova police were in charge of these mangroves, as the crow flew, the two sites were not far apart. Whoever was dumping the bodies was familiar with that area.
Lit up by his flashlight, the suitcase lay awkwardly on the torpedo-shaped mangrove seeds spiking out of the swamp. Mudskippers and frogs scattered at the team’s stumbling approach. A few paces inward, and the suitcase would have sunk under the black, boggy water.
Around him, a million crickets sang, and frogs took up the chorus. A constable stepped forward, and together they dragged the suitcase back toward the road. Curved mangrove roots exploded out of the water near the mudbanks, looking like dark, ghostly arms stretching up into the darkness. Small wonder that not many locals ventured out in this area late at night. Arnav spotted a shiny object on a nearby root and leaned forward to pick it up with his gloved hand. A metal watch strap. The swamp was used as a dumping ground and the tide brought in its own debris from the sea, festooning the mangrove with swaths of dirty cloth and broken plastic, but the strap hadn’t been there for long.
Back on solid ground, he placed the watch strap into a plastic bag as a constable unzipped the suitcase. The yellow glow of the flashlight showed an unclothed woman’s body stuffed in, curled in a fetal position. In place of the head, hands, and feet—dark stumps of dried blood. Arnav tamped down his burst of vindication. The woman had been brutally murdered—bruises flowered at her shoulders—she’d been tortured before she was decapitated. Fantasizing about flinging an “I told you so” at Mhatre could wait.
Shinde rested against the bike, nursing his right arm in a sling. The inspector who reported to him hadn’t reached them yet.
“What would you like to do?” Arnav said.
“Based on what you told me about the bodies at the Aksa site,” Shinde paused, taking in the dense mangrove trees, “this has been going on for a while. Rasool could be responsible, or not. Let’s find out more.”
Shinde hailed his constables, and soon they stood in a tight circle around the bike.
“Who followed the vehicle?” Shinde said.
“I did, sir.” A tall, well-built constable with a thin mustache stepped up.
“You saw them toss the suitcase out?” Shinde said.
“There were three people, sir—two in the front seat, one in the rear. They flung it from the back seat.”
That watch strap could belong to the goon who had tossed out the body.
“You weren’t near enough to stop them?” Shinde’s voice took on a challenging tone. “Which way did they come from?”
“My bike faltered, sir. I called for backup, but by the time we reached the main road crossing, they were gone. They didn’t stop at our checkpoint.”
“What make was the car?”
“A big black Maruti van, sir.”
“Any updates on the number plate?”
“Came in right now, sir. It was fake.”
Arnav listened to the conversation and made mental notes. The suspects were well prepared, possibly professionals. Ali’s input was correct. Someone did indeed have a contract for disposal of these bodies. He’d have to call Ali as soon as he finished here. Arnav took a drawn-out breath of air heavy with the smell of wet leaves, and asked Shinde if they could speak alone.
Shinde asked him to wait, and turned to the head constable on the scene. “Get two constables to comb through missing persons reports. And pick up the footage from the CCTVs around the crossing. We must find the black van.”