3 and a Half Murders: An Inspector Saralkar Mystery Read online

  Other titles by Salil Desai published by Fingerprint!

  THE MURDER OF SONIA RAIKKONEN

  An Inspector Saralkar Mystery

  KILLING ASHISH KARVE

  An Inspector Saralkar Mystery

  LOST LIBIDO AND OTHER GULP FICTION

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  Copyright © 2017 Prakash Books India Pvt. Ltd.

  Copyright Text © Salil Desai

  Salil Desai asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise (except for mentions in reviews or edited excerpts in the media) without the written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978 81 7599 453 9

  To

  RAVI KAKA

  (1948 - 2015)

  uncle, writer, sparring partner

  Two corpses occupied the one-bedroom flat. The woman lay sprawled on the bed, her torso sunk into the soft mattress while her legs, folded at the knees, dangled over the side of the bed. A pillow covered her face. Outside, in the drawing room, the man’s body swung lifelessly from a noose of nylon rope, fastened to a ceiling hook. He obviously wasn’t watching the programme playing on the sports channel, but the television was on. And so were the lights. The windows of the flat, however, were shut and the doors were closed.

  If no one bothered to check, the dead couple could well have remained entombed in the flat, like pharaohs in their pyramids. But that was not to be.

  “Has Doshi madam left the house key with you?” Surekhabai asked Mrs. Seema Tambe, as she put off the cooking gas and dumped the cooking utensils into the sink.

  “Have you counted the chapatis?” Mrs. Tambe counter questioned pointedly. “You often make one or two less, Surekha.”

  “Yes, tai, I’ve made twelve,” Surekhabai replied, wiping her hands clean.

  Mrs. Tambe briefly considered counting the chapatis herself, then realized it would be an affront to the cook. You never knew what rubbed them the wrong way. “Okay,” she said finally. “No, Doshi madam hasn’t left the key with me. Isn’t she at home?”

  “No, I rang the bell several times.”

  “That’s strange,” Mrs. Tambe said. “I would’ve sworn it’s their television blaring away since morning.” She opened the balcony door ever so slightly to make her point and immediately the strains of an ad jingle could be heard floating out from the neighbouring flat.

  Surekhabai shrugged. “I’ll try once more,” she said, making her way into Mrs. Tambe’s drawing room and out to the front door. Seema Tambe followed her and stood watching as the cook rang the bell of the Doshi flat, across the landing.

  Seconds passed but neither Anushka Doshi nor her husband Sanjay opened the door. Surekhabai’s puzzled expression intensified and she again rang the bell a few more times in rapid succession.

  “Maybe they went out and forgot to switch off the TV,” Mrs. Tambe reasoned eventually. “I’ll tell Anushka you had come.”

  “Okay, tai. Also ask Doshi madam to call if she wants me to come and cook in the evening. If not, tell her to leave my wages with you,” Surekhabai replied and skipped away to other houses that awaited her culinary skills, such as they were.

  Little did the maid know that she was going to be deprived of her wages, simply because her employers lay dead inside, her last-cooked meal for them lying undigested in their stomachs.

  “Don’t you have a medical check-up every year in the department?” Dr. Kanade asked, peering at Saralkar, who lay irritably on the examination table.

  “Yes . . . but I don’t need an elaborate check-up. I just require this certificate for private purposes,” Saralkar replied, exasperated inside.

  “What private purposes?” Dr. Kanade asked, once again pumping the bulb-shaped rubber balloon to tighten the inflatable cuff of the sphygmomanometer around Saralkar’s upper arm.

  Saralkar felt cornered. Dr. Kanade was a GP he visited sometimes for minor ailments. He was not too keen on telling the doctor that the medical certificate was required for the *child adoption application Jyoti had talked him into making.

  “Do I have to necessarily tell you, Dr. Kanade?” Saralkar snapped as gently as he could.

  Dr. Kanade looked at the recordings, then at Saralkar. “Whether you tell me or not, I must tell you that your BP readings are pretty high.”

  “What?” Saralkar asked with agitation.

  “There, it’s shot up again,” Dr. Kanade quipped. “What’s your age?”

  “Forty-seven,” Saralkar replied, still trying to absorb the information.

  “When was the last time you had a complete medical?”

  Saralkar pondered briefly. “About three years ago, I think,” he lied.

  “Hmm,” Dr. Kanade murmured. “I think it’s time for another. Right now, I’ll give you some pills for three days. Come back for a check-up on the fourth day. We’ll take a reading again.”

  “What’s the reading now?”

  “160/110. Not good. Have you been under stress lately?”

  Saralkar ignored the doctor’s question and put one of his own. “What’s supposed to be normal?”

  “120/80,” Dr. Kanade said absently, scribbling a prescription. “It’s been revised to 110/70 these days, so yours is way above.”

  Saralkar grunted, feeling a trifle disturbed. “But isn’t one supposed to feel dizzy or have a headache or something? I feel perfectly okay.”

  “Well, many patients have no symptoms at all,” Dr. Kanade replied cheerfully. He just stopped himself from observing that that’s why hypertension was known as the silent killer.

  “I am not a patient,” Saralkar said petulantly. “Maybe your BP instrument is faulty.”

  Dr. Kanade’s mild manner didn’t change but his reply was as acerbic as they come. “No, the instrument is fine. I just like to scare my patients so that they keep coming back for treatment.”

  Saralkar hadn’t expected the sharp retort. “All I meant was that maybe it’s just a . . .”

  “Look, Saralkar, if you want that medical certificate for private purposes, take the pills and come back to me after three days,” Dr. Kanade said. “Now don’t waste my time. Other patients are waiting.”

  Senior Inspector Saralkar grabbed the prescription, paid the doctor, and stomped off. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so roundly ticked off by anyone other than his boss or his wife. The list of people he couldn’t bellow back at was growing!

  “That’s the one that needs to be removed,” Shailendra Vyas, secretary of Atharva Apartments said, pointing to the rather substantial beehive clinging to a parapet above the third floor of the building.

  The beehive remover squinted at the swarming dark brown mass and played his opening gambit. “That’s very big, sahib.”

  Vyas was no mean negotiator himself. “Much smaller than the last one . . .”

  “No, n
o,” the beehive remover shook his head vehemently. “Much bigger! And it’s at a much more difficult spot too.”

  “Why difficult?”

  “Sahib, last time it was in one corner next to the second floor balcony. This hive is in the middle of nowhere, below the chhajja above the third floor . . . much more risky,” the man replied, articulating the building blocks for driving a hard bargain.

  “So are you going to be able to do it or not?” Vyas asked, feigning impatience.

  The hive remover nodded and quoted a fee. They haggled vigorously for a few minutes and then struck a deal.

  “I’ll have to access from that third floor flat balcony,” the hive remover said finally.

  “Are you going to burn the hive or disperse it by removing the queen bee?” Vyas inquired, trying to show off his knowledge. “I want a permanent solution. It shouldn’t be that another hive is formed in a few months.”

  “I need to take a closer look first,” the hive remover replied.

  “Come,” Vyas beckoned him towards the staircase at the front of the building. They trudged up to the third floor and rang the bell of the Doshi flat.

  No one answered. Vyas, like Surekhabai, tried a few more times then began searching for Sanjay Doshi’s number on his mobile.

  “Where could they have gone?” Vyas muttered, more or less to himself.

  “I can hear the TV inside,” the hive remover remarked.

  Vyas frowned and nodded distractedly, then began dialling Sanjay Doshi’s number. The rings passed but no one picked up the phone. Momentarily, Vyas wondered whether he should check with Doshi’s neighbours on the landing, but he wasn’t on particularly cordial terms with the Tambes and the other flat was locked.

  The beehive remover was now glancing impatiently at his watch, as if he had a hundred other hive destroying appointments that very day.

  “Can you come back later?” Vyas asked tentatively.

  “Is the common terrace open?” the hive remover asked pointing upstairs. “I can climb down into their balcony from above and take a look at the hive.”

  “Without ropes or anything?” Vyas hesitated. It was one of those twenty-five- to thirty-year-old buildings that did not require Spidermanly skills to clamber around or scale. He shrugged. “I have no problem but do it at your own risk or come later.”

  The hive remover smirked at this typical middle class caveat. “My risk only, sahib! I am not asking you to come along, am I?”

  Vyas ignored the jibe and both climbed up another floor and unlocked the terrace. In no time the hive remover swiftly descended into the Doshi balcony.

  “Be careful, don’t break anything. I don’t want any complaints from the family,” Vyas warned.

  The hive remover didn’t care to respond, he was busy inspecting the hive and assessing the task at hand. He looked around for the footholds he would require, making a judgment of the structural peculiarities that he would have to keep in mind.

  Satisfied, he mounted the parapet of the Doshi balcony to climb back on to the terrace above. All he needed was a foothold to help heave himself on to the chhajja and then the terrace, something that the old-style window grill of the flat could easily provide.

  The hive remover reached out and opened the window just wide enough to put his foot comfortably on the grill and almost lost his balance by the sight and smell that greeted him from inside the house.

  * * *

  * Read The Murder of Sonia Raikkonen

  PSI Motkar wondered what in the world had prompted him to accept a role in a three-act play being staged by the Pune Police Cultural Society. He had never acted before, except for the role of a tree in a school skit.

  Perhaps it had been the sheer thrill of doing something different that had made him spontaneously agree to participate, when an old colleague had approached him. And now as the rehearsals had begun in earnest, he was simultaneously petrified and excited about the whole damn thing. The drama practices would generally happen in the evenings, but today being a Sunday, the director, an overbearing cop called Walimbe, had called them all in the afternoon.

  Motkar’s attention wandered now as the director harangued some of the main actors about understanding the inner motivations and discovering subtle nuances of the characters they were playing. As far as Motkar could see, the project wasn’t going well at all, coming off as an excruciatingly belaboured and amateurish theatrical effort that was doomed to be either stoically endured or hooted out by the audience.

  But of course, who was he to pass judgement? He himself hadn’t been able to master the few lines of dialogues of his role, and had kept fumbling during rehearsals, almost always messing up his tone, expressions, and delivery, even if he did manage to remember the words.

  Acting was clearly not his cup of tea and the PSI had considered coming up with some excuse to withdraw, but somehow couldn’t get himself to slink away. If only an out of the ordinary case materialized somehow!

  His prayers were about to be answered as his mobile rang. Avoiding the dirty looks being thrown at him by the director, Motkar scrambled out of the practice hall apologetically to take the call.

  “I just want three pills. Why do I have to buy the full strip?” Saralkar growled at the chemist.

  The chemist would have liked to tell him sarcastically that the argument would do his BP no good, but politely forbore from doing so. “Can’t help it, sahib. These tablets come in strips of ten only. I can’t sell them loose,” he replied.

  “What do you mean you can’t? You just don’t want to. Why should I pay for ten when I just want three?” Saralkar demanded.

  The chemist nodded weakly then suggested, “Perhaps the doctor might ask you to continue the dose. Then they won’t go waste.”

  It was just the kind of sentence that could’ve caused Saralkar to explode, but the rings of the senior inspector’s mobile saved the chemist.

  “Hullo.”

  “Sir, Motkar here. A couple has been found dead in their house. Man seems to have hung himself, woman’s been strangled.”

  “Where and when?” Saralkar asked.

  “Atharva Apartments, Kothrud, sir. The society secretary reported they discovered one of the bodies at about 4 p.m.”

  “Young couple or old?”

  “Middle-aged, sir. Sanjay and Anushka Doshi.”

  “Hmmm . . . Are you already there?”

  “No, sir, I’m on my way now,” Motkar replied.

  “Okay. I’ll join you in a while,” Saralkar said and rung off.

  He looked at the tablet strip, then at the chemist who was attending another customer.“How much?”

  “Fifty rupees, sahib.”

  Saralkar dipped into his pocket, took out a twenty-rupee note, and placed it on the counter. Then he picked up the strip, quickly tore four tablets from it, and stepped out of the shop, leaving the chemist gaping.

  Atharva Apartments was located in a cluster of buildings, in the once quiet Mahatma Society locality of Kothrud. Once famous as the fastest growing suburb in Asia, Kothrud was more Maharashtrian and even Brahminical in flavour and character than perhaps any other part of Pune city, except the old city peth areas.

  Barely twelve years ago, PSI Motkar recollected, Mahatma Society had been a charming, peaceful locality with trees, bungalows, and open spaces, secured on one side by a hillock. Newly married, he and his wife had scouted around for a suitable, affordable flat in the serene area then, but hadn’t been lucky. Now, of course, Mahatma Society was beyond recognition and had turned into a proverbial concrete jungle, no longer charming, serene, or green, or providing open vista of the hillock. But then, Motkar reflected, which part of Pune had escaped unscathed from the construction overdrive?

  The building was located in a narrow lane, not very different from all the other apartment complexes around it—possibly a cluster that had been built around the same time, fifteen to twenty years before the construction boom—solid, secure, middle class dwellings of three to four store
ys, which were strangely comforting in contrast to the spanking new multi-storey gated communities visible or springing up every day.

  The residents of Atharva Apartments seemed to be gathered by the parking lot, as if ready for some mass evacuation. Two police vehicles stood by the gate.

  “Third floor, sir,” a constable said, recognising PSI Motkar. He nodded and entered the building, passing the onlookers. No lift! Motkar grinned to himself. Senior Inspector Saralkar wasn’t going to like it, having to climb all the way up. But then that was going to be the least of his boss’s problems, given what Motkar had heard about the state of the dead bodies.

  The door of Flat 10 stood open, with another constable at the door. Foul smell had already started emanating and the moment Motkar stepped inside the flat, the familiar, disturbing odour of death and decomposition knocked his breath away. God alone knew what it would do to Saralkar then, whose tolerance for mutilated flesh was surprisingly low for a homicide investigator.

  As always Motkar’s nostrils quickly acclimatized to the stench, his attention now monopolized by the sight of the man’s body still suspended between the ceiling and floor. It was a classic suicide position—a convenient cushioned stool kicked away and the body limp as if in total surrender. Motkar had always felt that in no other position did a dead body look so utterly vulnerable and abject as in a suicide by hanging.

  The man appeared to be between thirty-five to forty years, about five feet seven inches, dressed in a round neck T-shirt and slip on shorts. He had a moustache and full black beard dotted with specks of white. Motkar wasn’t sure if the white specks were the hair colour or dried froth that seemed to have foamed out of his mouth as he choked to death. The liberally ringed fingers of both his hands were clutched into fists as if priming himself for the task.

  The crime scene photographer and forensics team were busy doing their stuff, all of them nodding a greeting to Motkar.

  “Want to see the woman’s body, Motkar?” PSI Sarode called out, waving out to him. “Here, it’s in the bedroom.”