The Accidental Apprentice (39 page)

‘Are you Sapna Sinha?' he addresses me. Behind him are half a dozen other constables.

I nod, still groggy with sleep. Ma immediately tenses up, her mother's instinct telegraphing that something bad is about to happen.

‘You are under arrest,' he says.

‘For what?'

‘For the murder of Vinay Mohan Acharya.'

I am jolted out of my half-sleep. ‘You must be joking.'

‘This seems like a joke to you?' he says, holding up the arrest warrant with my name on it.

‘There must be a mist—'

Mother doesn't even let me finish the sentence. She lets out a howl of anguish and promptly faints.

*   *   *

Arrest is easily the most shattering and disorienting experience of life. It cleaves your world into two, before arrest and after. You are suddenly wrenched from your everyday life, from your friends and family, and thrown into an utterly alien environment.

I am transported to Vasant Vihar police station and booked for murder. They take my fingerprints, DNA sample and mugshots. My apartment is raided and my computer taken away together with my personal diary. The clothes I was wearing yesterday as well as my shoes and cell phone are confiscated. I am produced before a magistrate who denies me bail and remands me to police custody for seven days.

Now I am at the mercy of Assistant Commissioner of Police I. Q. Khan. A tall, trim man with a craggy face and a neat moustache, there is something very un-policeman-like about him. He has the military bearing of a soldier and the cultured grace of an old aristocrat.

A female constable called Pushpa Thanvi has been attached to me like a conjoined twin. An overweight, bosomy woman with a bad complexion and a voice like that of a duck with laryngitis, she watches me like a hawk and has the disconcerting habit of habit of poking me whenever she needs my attention.

Even more disconcerting is ACP Khan's unblinking stare as I sit across from him. The fatigue of the previous night, coupled with all the rushing around since the morning, has worn me out. The only thought circulating in my brain is that this is some horrible dream from which I will awaken shortly.

We are meeting in ACP Khan's office, a large, cheerless room made even more stuffy by heavy velvet drapes. The whitewashed walls are adorned with framed photos of Gandhi, Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose and motivational quotes from Einstein and Kahlil Gibran. A wall-mounted Philips LCD television is switched off, but a wall clock next to it is busily ticking away the seconds to 3.55 p.m.

‘Are you prepared to make a confession?' he asks, staring me in the eye.

I look away, wilting under his remorseless scrutiny. ‘I have nothing to confess.'

‘Did you go to Mr Acharya's house last night, or do you want to deny even that?'

‘I did go to Acharya's house. But I didn't kill him. To be more precise, I didn't even meet him. I kept pressing the doorbell, but no one responded. So I just came right back to the hospital.'

‘So you did not find his dead body inside his bedroom?'

‘No. I never entered his bedroom. In fact, I still can't believe that he is dead.'

‘Then have a look at this photo,' he says, sliding a glossy print across the table.

It is the ‘official photo' of the murdered man taken by the police photographer. I see a pale, waxen face beneath a mantle of silvery hair. It does look like Vinay Mohan Acharya. He is lying in a pool of blood, dressed in an off-white silk kurta pyjama. His eyes are open, but he is quite dead, his features frozen in an agonised grimace, a knife with a wooden handle jutting out of his bloodstained chest.

An involuntary shudder passes through my body as I gaze at the photo. Even though I have witnessed the murdered body with my own eyes, I cannot shake off the air of unreality about Acharya's death, as though I still expect him to walk into the police station and declare, ‘You have failed the seventh test!'

The one thing I don't feel is regret. Acharya had committed a horrific crime and deserved to die. But who had killed him, and why? This was a mystery yet to be solved.

I slide the photo back to ACP Khan. ‘Who discovered the body?'

‘It was Dr Kabir Seth, Mr Acharya's personal physician. Acharya was in Mumbai the whole of last week, admitted to the Tata Memorial Hospital. He arrived back in Delhi only yesterday. Last night, at twenty-two fifty hours, he telephoned Dr Seth, complaining of feeling uneasy and asking him to come over to Prarthana. When Dr Seth reached the house just before midnight, he found Mr Acharya lying dead in a pool of blood and immediately alerted the security at the gate, something that you should have done, if you did not murder Mr Acharya.'

‘What makes you think I murdered Acharya?'

‘Well, let's see. At least twenty people in Shastri Hospital heard you screaming on the phone at Mr Acharya at twenty-two hundred hours, threatening to kill him. You arrived at his house in pouring rain at twenty-two fifty-eight hours. The guard at the gate personally spoke to Mr Acharya on the intercom and received instructions to let you in.'

‘Yes, I heard him too.'

‘Well, then you yourself confirm that he was alive at twenty-three hundred hours. The medical examiner has listed the time of death as being not earlier than twenty-two hundred and not later than twenty-three fifteen. Since Mr Acharya was very much alive at twenty-three hundred hours, it means he was killed between twenty-three hundred and twenty-three fifteen. You were the only one inside the house during that period. So only you could have killed Mr Acharya.'

‘How do you know I was the only one inside the house? The real killer must have been hiding there.'

‘Prarthana is a fortress. Even a bird cannot dare to fly in without permission. On Saturday, eleventh of June, there were only two visitors who entered the premises. One was Rana, Mr Acharya's aide, who came to the house at nineteen thirty hours, spent an hour with Mr Acharya, and then left at twenty thirty-five hours. The other person was you.' He pauses to consult his notes before resuming. ‘After arriving back from Mumbai at ten hundred hours, Mr Acharya did not leave the house the entire day. He had lunch at his usual time of thirteen thirty hours, and dinner at nineteen hundred hours. Then he dismissed all his servants for the night, telling them he did not want to be disturbed under any circumstance. All the servants left at twenty thirty hours. Rana left five minutes later, at twenty thirty-five. After that no one entered the house till your arrival. The security at the gate is absolutely certain of this. Which means, when you entered Prarthana, you and Mr Acharya were the only persons inside the house. Ten minutes later he was dead and you were in an auto, making your getaway.' He pauses and gives me that same fixed-gaze treatment. ‘So why did you kill Mr Acharya? From what I know of him, he was a gentle and kind man. A fountain of philanthropic generosity.'

‘He was a monster,' I hiss through clenched teeth. ‘You don't know anything about him. He destroyed Neha's life. And now he's destroyed mine. All because of those wretched seven tests.'

‘What seven tests?'

I take a deep breath and begin. ‘It all started when he accosted me in the Hanuman temple that winter afternoon…'

Speaking continuously for more than an hour, I tell him everything, starting from that fateful meeting in Connaught Place to the acid attack on Neha.

ACP Khan listens to me with utmost attention, taking notes in a slim notebook. When I finish, he lets out a breath of air, rubs the bridge of his nose contemplatively and quotes an Urdu couplet: ‘
Katl bhi hue hain hum aur kasoorwar bhi hum the/Apne hi katil se ishq me giraftar bhi hum the
' (‘I am the murdered man as well as the culprit/My crime: that I was in love with my own murderer').

‘Acharya was not in love with me, and neither was I in love with him,' I correct him.

‘We'll see about that,' he says when a sub-inspector enters the room and salutes him smartly. ‘
Jai Hind,
sir. A lot of media people have gathered outside. What should I tell them, sir?'

ACP Khan sighs in exasperation and nods. ‘Tell them I'm coming to brief them.'

He gets up from his chair and turns to Pushpa Thanvi. ‘Watch her.' Then, with long strides, he leaves the room.

Now that she is alone in the room with me, Pushpa's face crinkles into a smug grin. She goes to the window, lifts the heavy curtain and peeks out. ‘They are all here.' She lets out a little giggle.

‘Who all?'

‘Aaj Tak, Zee News, Star, IBN-7, NDTV, Sunlight, ITN … Looks like finally I'll be able to fulfil my dream of being on TV.' She takes out a compact mirror and quickly checks her teeth.

*   *   *

ACP Khan is gone for over an hour. When he returns, his body language is quite different. ‘I hope you used the interval wisely to repent,' he says, standing over me.

I sit staring pensively at the cement floor, picking at the threads of my sky-blue salvar suit. He smiles in a sad sort of way and quotes yet another Urdu couplet: ‘
Voh kaun hain jinhen tauba ki mil gai fursat/Hamein gunaah bhi karne ko zindagi kam hai
' (‘Who are the fortunate ones who have the luxury to repent/I don't have time enough even to commit sin').

He sits down in his chair and resumes briskly. ‘We've just located Mr Acharya's will.'

‘And?'

‘And he's donated his entire personal wealth to charity. So, if you were expecting to inherit a fortune, I'm sorry.'

‘Acharya was against the culture of inheritance. He had only promised to make me his CEO, not his heir.'

‘I'm afraid I have more bad news for you.'

‘What now?'

‘Forensics has just confirmed that the blood on your sneakers matches Mr Acharya's. You took the precaution of washing your shoes to rinse off the blood, but in doing so you failed to notice the blood that had seeped into the crack between the upper and the sole. We found it.'

My heart pulses violently and the blood rushes to my head. I am about to say something when he raises his hand. ‘Wait. It gets worse. Forensics has also confirmed that the fingerprints on the knife that was used to murder Mr Acharya match yours.'

‘That's totally impossible! I never touched the knife.'

‘Perhaps this might refresh your memory,' he says, holding up the murder weapon encased in a plastic bag. Now that I see it at close quarters it does seem eerily familiar. I can make out KK Thermoware imprinted on the wooden handle, and a bolt of recognition strikes me like a punch in the gut. It's the same knife I had bought from the street hawker on the night I was attacked by those three hoodlums outside Japanese Park.

‘This is what is technically called an open-and-shut case,' ACP Khan observes as he snaps shut his notebook. ‘So save yourself a lengthy interrogation and sign a confession statement.' He looks at me hopefully.

I shake my head. ‘I did not murder Acharya. But now I have a good idea who killed him.'

‘Well, let's hear it.'

‘It's Rana. He alone had access to that knife with my fingerprints.'

‘How?'

‘Don't you see? Acharya had me attacked by those goons outside Japanese Park as part of the third test. They took away my knife and must have returned it to Acharya or Rana. And that same knife has now been used to murder Acharya. Which means only Rana could have done it.'

‘But Rana left Prarthana at twenty thirty-five and did not return till midnight.'

As I ponder the problem I am struck by another idea. ‘What if this isn't murder, but a suicide?'

He looks at me intently. ‘Have you now decided to go in for an insanity plea?'

‘What if this is a suicide?' I repeat. ‘Remember the seventh test? Acharya said it will be the hardest of them all. Well, this is it.'

‘You're not making any sense.'

‘Look, Acharya was the one who set those ruffians on me outside the Japanese Park so he could get hold of the knife with my fingerprints. Then he lured me to his house with that acid attack on Neha. The moment I started walking towards the house, he stabbed himself with the same knife, just so that I could be framed for his murder. This is easily the biggest crisis of my life. Hence the final test. QED.'

‘You can tell these fanciful theories to your state-appointed lawyer,' ACP Khan laughs, and signals to the lady constable, signifying that the interrogation is over for now. ‘Take her to the female lockup.'

‘
Jai Hind,
sir-ji.' Pushpa offers Khan a limp salute and pokes me in the forehead. ‘
Chalo.
Let's go.'

She escorts me down a short corridor. We pass the male lockup, where a couple of unshaven, unkempt men are slumped behind the door. They watch me with dull curiosity. I clamp my nose, unable to bear the strong smell of liquor that radiates from them like incense smoke.

At the other end of the corridor is the female lockup, mercifully empty. Pushpa unlocks the sturdy cell door, allows me to step inside and clangs it shut with such force that the metallic echo rattles in my ears like thunder. I stand for a moment staring at the dim, dirty light filtering through the grille of the iron door, blinking back tears, absorbing the fact that I had finally become a prisoner.

On paper, police custody means that an accused is kept in a police station under police surveillance temporarily till the next judgement. In practice it means being held prisoner in a fetid, oppressive cell that reeks of human misery. The walls of the female lockup are stained with mildew, graffiti and years of dirt. The floor is bare, rough concrete. There is no window and no sunlight, making it a dark, gloomy place even in the middle of the day. The bed is a lumpy, lice-infested cotton mattress. Worse of all, the bathroom is not separated from the rest of the cell. Behind a low wall is an Indian-style toilet with no mug, no toilet paper, no running water. It gives off the rancid stench of excrement and urine of previous occupants. A metal bucket in the corner actually has faeces smeared all over it. The smell is so distinct, so overwhelming, I can taste it.