The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(97)

The doctor’s words rang in his ears. The bullet we extracted from Tara’s neck has paralyzed her, Inspector Rajput. We’ll understand the extent of the damage in the next few days. I’m sorry.

Under his exhaustion and wish to retreat from life, burned a larger, endless fire, a hunger for revenge. Naik’s periodic updates from the station frustrated him no end. After all this havoc, they didn’t have the accused in custody. Guilt and shame swallowed him up—he’d allowed this to happen to them, let Tara be injured in rescuing her daughter. He’d also let the suspect escape. When the sensei’s assistant came to the hospital waiting room to give him a break, he headed for the dojo to catch a shower and some answers.

His phone buzzed. Mhatre wished to meet him, outside the police station. Arnav invited him to the dojo.

After his bath, he heard all the expected words from the sensei over a simple lunch—Tara getting shot in the crossfire wasn’t his fault, he should stay strong for Pia, and so on. Arnav let the sensei speak while he dug into the meal, not tasting it, remembering the last time he’d fed Tara. A change of subject was in order. He could use information on the Viranis.

“On the set, Karan Virani appeared to be friends with you,” Arnav said. “Did you work with him before?”

The sensei turned away.

“Karan and I go back a long way. I was his schoolmate. We were never close.”

“We have called Rehaan Virani in for questioning this afternoon.”

Rehaan wouldn’t return home if Arnav had anything to do with it.

“You suspect him of kidnapping Pia?”

“I didn’t believe it at first, but I witnessed him . . . hurting his mother.” Arnav recalled the ghastly scene obscured by smoke. “He escaped before I could arrest him. Now his lawyers are saying he has an alibi. Unfortunately, Ms. Virani died.”

That was another mystery. Kittu Virani should have survived the smoke inhalation and loss of blood.

The sensei rose and stared out of the window.

“This sounds terrible,” he said, his voice low, “but her death doesn’t make me sad.”

“Kittu Virani?”

Kittu Virani might not have been a star, but she was an influencer. Arnav had watched the hospital TV running in the background. The ticker tape on the news said that hordes of Kittu’s adoring social media fans were inconsolable.

They speculated about the death of her fiancé in the fire. Firefighters had discovered his charred remains, and identified him by his expensive watch, which had lasted through the flames.

“Karan helped me when I lacked funds for this dojo. I’ll tell you this: talk to him about Rehaan and Kittu, and speak with his assistant, Bilal.”

“Bilal saved Pia.”

Even as he said it, the question that had lurked at the back of Arnav’s mind surfaced. What was Bilal doing at the farmhouse? He was Karan’s assistant, not Rehaan’s. And Karan was away at the time, at an intimate pre-Diwali party at Home Minister Namit Gokhale’s place.

“I’ll see you at the hospital,” the sensei said.

Arnav longed to return to the hospital, but he couldn’t muster the courage to face Tara and her questions.

The dojo receptionist walked in to announce that Mhatre waited for him.

Mhatre was the reason Tara was still alive. Naik hadn’t managed to find a doctor willing to hop on a police jeep on Diwali at midnight. It was Mhatre’s quick thinking and training as a former medical student that had kept Tara stable till the ambulance arrived.

“Thank you for last night, sir.” Arnav shook his boss’s hand. In the darkness, trauma, and anxiety of the night before, he hadn’t noticed Mhatre. The week of his leave seemed to have hollowed him out, deep shadows underneath his eyes.

“I know what you’re looking at,” Mhatre said, as Arnav turned quickly away to pull over a chair. “I hope no one else figured it out in the dark last evening. This was my first round of chemotherapy. They would force me to retire.”

So this was what Naik knew, why she trusted Mhatre.

“Are you OK, sir?”

“You mean, will I live? It is prostate cancer, early stage. I should recover. I’ll need to take leave for each chemo session. I came in to examine your evidence against Joshi for myself. I want to be ready for the enquiries.”

As they went through all the call recordings and Shinde’s papers, Arnav cursed himself yet again for not arresting Rehaan on the scene. All the evidence might not be sufficient to put Rehaan Virani away.

Arnav had asked to interview the movie star. His leg would show the wound where Arnav had shot him.

“Joshi sir says we can only arrest Rehaan if we have evidence,” Mhatre said. “Based on these papers, I understand why Joshi sir might be aiding a cover-up. But the truth is, Rajput, the bearded man you saw could have been anyone.”





CHAPTER NINETY-ONE


ARNAV

Arnav took a cab to his office on Diwali afternoon. Pain had become his constant friend—it distracted him from the crater in his life. How was it possible he had found Tara again less than ten days ago, and already stood to lose her?

Naik’s knock broke into his endless fretting.

“We’ve arrested eleven men from the grounds, one of whom claims he knows your informer. Ali.”