‘By this time, I was getting jittery. I had encountered too many unexpected hurdles. It was not my lucky night. Experience had taught me not to carry out my work when luck was not with me. I aborted my mission and returned to the Misty Valley Resort.
‘The next day, I heard about Phillip’s death and thanked my stars for having aborted my mission. That, sir, is my whole story. I have left out nothing.’
‘Okay,’ Athreya nodded slowly. ‘But you know more about Abbas than you have told me.’
‘About the murder?’ the mongrel asked. ‘No, there is nothing more.’
‘Not about the murder … but about something else. About Abbas’s business.’
‘I know nothing about his resort.’
‘Not the resort, my friend. His other business. The one that brings him money by the truckload. The one he runs across the Western Ghats.’
The mongrel blanched. He looked away, muttering, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, you do,’ Athreya disputed. ‘You have been here long enough to know what I am talking about.’
‘I … I have nothing to do with it. It is not something I touch even with a pole. It’s a dirty business … I’ve seen what it does to young men and women. It converts boys into thieves and makes girls sell their bodies. I’ve seen how addicts die … My father was one. I don’t touch it.’
‘I am not saying you touch it. I’m saying that you know something about Abbas’s drug business. You are a man who watches, a man who listens. The resort has been raided several times, but nothing has ever been found. The stock is being stored somewhere not far from here.’
The mongrel licked his lips and remained silent.
‘An anti-drug team is in town now,’ Athreya persisted softly, trying to persuade him. ‘If you help them crack the case, the police and the judge will count it in your favour.’
The mongrel hesitated. He was in two minds. Athreya knew what he was thinking.
This was an opportunity for him to play his card for his own benefit. Abbas was already neck-deep in trouble by having put out a contract on Bhaskar. Milking him now would be difficult. On the other hand, what Athreya had said was true–the police and the courts tended to look favourably upon those who helped fight drugs.
The mongrel looked up.
‘Abbas has a hidden cellar at the Misty Valley Resort,’ he said. ‘And there is this shack in Coonoor …’
The shack turned out to be one among a dozen that stood scattered on a slope beside a potholed lane on the outskirts of Coonoor. A hundred feet below was a black-topped road that ran north from the town towards the valley that housed Greybrooke Manor and the Misty Valley Resort. Near the shacks was a tea shop that doubled as a small restaurant, and a cigarette stall. A clutch of idle men loitered around, smoking and sipping tea.
Half an hour after Athreya spoke to the mongrel, a man who appeared to be a daily-wage worker sauntered in and struck up conversation with the cigarette-stall owner. Another man wandered into the crowd near the tea shop.
A little later, they had learnt that three men visited the shack after dark a few days a week, but always separately. One was Ismail from the Misty Valley Resort and another was a man who worked at a restaurant near the bus stand at Coonoor. The third name came as a surprise to the anti-drug team.
When a lorry blocked the view from the tea shop and the cigarette stall, a man materialized in front of the shack. Within thirty seconds, the lock was open. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. Inside, he found unquestionable evidence of drug trafficking.
The shack was put under round-the-clock surveillance. Before the next day dawned, the three men who frequented the shack would have been apprehended.
Once the shack had been searched, the team prepared to raid the Misty Valley Resort. Their primary target was the hidden cellar under Abbas’s office that was accessible only through a trapdoor concealed under a thick rug behind his desk.
Meanwhile, at the Coonoor town police station, an officer had been busy on the phone, calling nearby hotels and resorts in the hope of finding a man whose name he had been given by Athreya. He started with hotels in the heart of town, and slowly moved outwards.
The first hour had been fruitless as none of the hotels reported having hosted anyone by that name. After all, it was an uncommon name in this part of the world. Each call took several minutes. First, he had to get to the manager or his representative. Then, he had to convince the person that he was indeed a policeman calling from the station. And finally, he had to wait for the person to go through the guest register and report back.
By the end of the hour, he was growing frustrated. He had called twenty-odd hotels without success. An hour later, his hopes were fading. All the hotels in and around the town, including the few that were close to Wellington, had not hosted the man. Athreya’s hopes were also fading, but he insisted that they go over the entire list, and call all hotels and resorts.
Suddenly, the officer hit pay dirt. When he called a high-end resort to the south-east of Coonoor, he had a pleasant surprise waiting for him.
‘Yes,’ the hotel manager said. ‘We have a Mr Enrico staying with us. He checked in on Saturday, and is expected to be here for two more days.’
Enrico, the art valuer, had come to Coonoor after all. Disregarding his growling stomach, Athreya jumped into a police vehicle and hastened to the resort, which was half an hour away.
‘Mr Enrico?’ he asked when he met
