The Case of the Missing Servant

'Someone else must have thrown it there.'

'You never touched it?'

'When I first entered the room, I picked it up. But I didn't return to the room after that.'

'Did you inform anyone the next morning?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

Munnalal looked cornered. He took another long, hard drag on his cigarette and said, unconvincingly, 'It could have meant trouble for me.'

Puri pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose.

'Let me tell you what I think really happened,' he said. 'You went to that room to have your way with Mary. Probably it wasn't the first time. She turned a knife on you. There was a scuffle and you stabbed her. Maybe she died then and there. Or, like you say, she was still alive. Either way, you carried her to the Sumo and drove away. Later, you came back to the house and cleaned up the blood, got rid of her things and threw away her knife. Probably you also went into the house and took a silver frame to make it look like she'd stolen it and run away.'

'I told you, I didn't murder her and I never stole anything either,' objected Munnalal. 'Go to the Sunrise Clinic and they'll tell you she was brought in alive.'

Puri stood up.

'I'll do that,' he said. 'But there is still the matter of the knife and the witness who saw you remove the body.'

'Sir, I'm sure we can come to some arrangement,' Munnalal said. 'I'm a reasonable man.'

'When you're ready to tell me the whole truth, then we'll find out how reasonable you can be,' said the detective. He handed Munnalal his card. 'You've got until tomorrow morning. If I don't hear from you before then, I'll tell Inspector Shekhawat everything I know.'

Nineteen

Puri and Tubelight sat together on the backseat of the Ambassador as Handbrake drove to Jaipur airport.

'How many of your boys have you got watching Munnalal?' asked the detective.

'Zia and Shashi are on the job, Boss.'

'They're experienced enough? I don't want anything going wrong.'

'They're good boys,' said Tubelight. 'Want me to check on this Sunrise Clinic?'

'Make it your top priority. I want to know if that bloody Charlie took the female there. Ask the doctors and all. They must be knowing. Could be they'll tell us what became of her.'

'Think she tried suicide, Boss?'

'Munnalal is so used to telling lies he wouldn't be knowing the truth if it landed in his channa. But why he would concoct a cock-and-bull story about a clinic?'

'You think he killed her?'

Puri shrugged. 'We're still only having some of the facts. So many open-ended questions remain. There's been no satisfactory verification of the body. I'm certain the police are barking up the wrong tree. Let us be sure not to do any barking of our own.'

Puri's mobile rang and, after scrutinizing the number on the screen, he answered it.

By the time he hung up, Tubelight had formulated his own theory about what had happened at Raj Kasliwal Bhavan on the night of August 21.

'Munnalal rapes the girl,' he said. 'Gets trashed and abuses her. She pulls a knife and there's a tussle. Mary gets stabbed and expires. Then he carries the body to the vehicle and dumps it on Ajmer Road.'

He looked triumphant, but Puri sighed.

'Baldev,' he said, using Tubelight's real name, 'why you're always insisting on doing speculation?' Puri's tone was not patronizing. Tubelight was, after all, one of the best operatives he had ever worked with, even if he was prone to jumping to conclusions.

'A pen cannot work if it is not open. Same with the human mind. Let us stick to what facts there are. According to police estimates, the body was dumped on twenty-second night. So if Munnalal did the killing, seems odd he would hang on to the body for twenty-four hours.'

'He had to move it, Boss.'

'He's a fool, but not so much of a fool. Either Mary and the dead girl are not one and the same, or something else transpired after Munnalal removed Mary from her room.'

Puri took off his sunglasses and rubbed his sore eyes.

'Ask yourself this: why a common driver should be opting to take the female to the private clinic who'll be charging a hell of a lot when the state hospital is near to hand? Number two, what's he doing hanging around the house so late in the first instance? Not doing the dusting, that is for sure. Should be Jaya and other servants have the answers. Let us hope Facecream finds out. Three, if Munnalal didn't return to the scene, who cleaned away the blood and all?'

Tubelight nodded, impressed. 'I hadn't thought of that,' he said.

'Deduction is my specialty, actually. But deduction cannot be done with thin air. That is where you come in. After the Sunrise Clinic, find out where this bugger got so much money. Must be he's doing blackmail. Question is, to whom he's giving the squeeze?'

Puri checked his watch as Handbrake pulled up outside the airport terminal. The last flight was due to depart for Delhi in thirty minutes. That was just enough time to buy a ticket and get through security.

'You're coming back tomorrow, Boss?' asked Tubelight as Puri got out.

'Handbrake's to proceed from here directly to Gurgaon. Tomorrow morning we'll revert at first light. Should be we'll reach by eleven, eleven-thirty.'

'You've got airsickness pills, Boss?'

Puri gave him a resigned look.

'Bloody lot of good they did me last time,' he said.

Puri didn't get airsick. It was a myth he perpetrated to disguise the real reason he avoided planes: being up in the air terrified him.

Over the years, he had tried all manner of treatments to cure his phobia, but so far nothing had worked. Not the Ayurvedic powders. Not the hypnosis. And certainly not the Conquer Your Worst Fears workshop run by that charlatan 'Lifestyle Guru' Dr. Brahmachari, who'd taken him up in a hot air balloon and only succeeded in giving him nightmares for weeks.

To make matters worse, Mummy was forever reminding him about the prophecy made at his birth.

According to the family astrologer (a complete bloody goonda if Puri had ever met one), the detective was destined to die in an air crash.

'Don't do flying,' Mummy had been telling him for as long as he could remember. 'Most definitely it will be your doom.'

Puri considered himself a spiritual man, but in keeping with his father's belief system, he was not superstitious. To his mind, astrology was so much mumbo jumbo and had an adverse effect on people's thinking.

Rumpi did not altogether agree with him, of course. She couldn't help herself. But the detective had always told his three daughters that no good had ever come from soothsaying.

'Imagine some seer predicts you will marry a rich babu,' he'd told them one day when they were all teenagers. 'It will create a bias and get your thinking into an almighty jumble. You and your mother will pass over boys with greater qualities who are more compatible. Ultimately, you will not find contentment.'

'But I want to marry a prince, Papa!' Radhika, the youngest, who'd been twelve at the time, had told him.