The Bankster (Ravi Subramanian) (21 page)

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about. But let me find out. Give me some time. And Raymond, you don’t sound good. You need some rest.’ The person at the other end said after Raymond finished.

‘Yes. It’s been a bad day overall.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘I’m in a train, reaching Ghatkopar in a bit.’

‘Get off the train and call me. I’ll try and find more information by then. I can’t hear you clearly Raymond. Let’s chat about this once you. . .’ and the call dropped. ‘Damn these cellphone signals!’ Raymond exclaimed. He tried calling the same number once the mobile signal stabilized, but no one picked up. Each time it went into voicemail. He tried a few more times before he gave up. He was really scared.

The message in his voicemail and the subsequent call had cluttered his mind. Thoughts of Harshita, the bank, the issues with the retail bank, Jacqueline’s snub and his painful wife drifted in and out of his mind as he aimlessly fidgeted with his phone.

The more he thought about it the more of a wreck he became. He had to talk to someone. The train was entering the Ghatkopar station. Desperately wanting to speak to someone he could confide in, and who would advise him selflessly, he picked up his phone and dialled another number. Even as the dialled number was ringing, he walked to the exit and got off the train.

The moment the call was picked up, Raymond broke down. He started sobbing. All this while, he had managed to hold himself, but at some point or the other, the dam had to burst. ‘I. . .I. . .got-t-t a call sometime back. . .’ In between his sobs he tried to get across his story to the person at the other end. It was proving to be difficult.

‘I can’t hear you Raymond, where are you?’

‘Outside the Ghatkopar railway station.’

‘Stay there, I’m coming to get you. We’ll talk when I’m there.’

Back in Vienna, Johann Schroeder was overseeing the postmortem and other investigations into the death of the two Indians. The media briefing was a bit of an anti climax and he was not happy about it, neither was Gerhard Purtsi. Both were hoping that this would turn out to be a genuine case of an accident. Otherwise it would spoil an impeccable record that Vienna had built up over two decades. No tourist had ever met such a fate in Vienna. It was considered an extremely safe place for foreigners.

However, there was one thing which kept troubling Schroeder. The initial reports that had come to him had suggested that nothing had been found on their person. No passport, no bags, not even a mobile phone. It was extremely unnatural for tourists to roam around without any of these. The only saving grace was that the jewellery Harshita was wearing, which was quite expensive by any yardstick, was safe. Robbery as a motive of murder was ruled out. Just in case it was a murder and not an accident, what could have been the motivation? Schroeder had no answers. He was confident he would find them in time.

23

Thane Creek

Night of 30
^th
January / Morning of 31
^st
January 2012

The Thane Creek, a part of the estuary of the Ulhas River, has the Thane City at the head of the creek and opens into the Mumbai Harbour. Home to the migratory flamingos, it is also notified by the Bombay Natural History Society as an important bird area. A six-lane carriageway across this creek connects the city of Mumbai to the Indian mainland at Vashi, also referred to as Navi Mumbai. This carriageway, built not too long ago, was thrown open to traffic in 1997.

Adjacent to this six-lane carriageway was an old dilapidated three-lane bridge, which was commissioned in 1972. Within two years of being built, the bridge had started showing signs of stress. Cracks had appeared on the bottom of the pre-stressed girders. This led to the bridge being sparingly used and a new one being constructed. Today, the old bridge is bereft of vehicular traffic, has a pipeline running through it and is often used to shoot films and at times clandestinely, by drag bikers. The entire traffic to and from the island city of Mumbai now flows on the new Vashi bridge.

Driving on the new Vashi bridge from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai can be an interesting experience—sandwiched between the old road bridge fifty metres to the left and the railway bridge a similar distance to the right—an astounding view of three mammoth piles of girder and concrete, built to withstand extremely volatile and corrosive environmental conditions that prevail in the creek.

That night, Ramnath Balram Naik had gone fishing with three of his partners in the creek. It was a normal fishing boat with a small motor engine, which was enough to keep it going at a reasonable speed. Naik belonged to a fishing family from Panvel, where his family was one of a thousand others that depended on fishing and related businesses for livelihood. There was a time when he would fish in the Panvel creek, adjacent to the Thane creek, but of late, with the government announcing plans to build an international airport at Panvel, half of the creek where they used to carry out fishing activities had been levelled with sand, rendering it useless for fishing. They now had to go deep into the Thane creek to catch good quality crab, which they would then sell on the Panvel-Goa highway.

Ramnath Naik, along with his team of three helpers, had left after an early dinner that evening. The fishing trawler crossed the railway bridge, then the new road bridge and finally the old dilapidated bridge before they entered the creek. The tide was low. It was just about time for the tide to turn and water level to start rising. Naik knew that in a high tide situation, he would easily go past the rail bridge and the new road bridge but would struggle to go under the old road carriageway, which was significantly lower in level than the two newer ones. But he didn’t have to worry about that because he was crossing the bridge just as the tide was setting in. By midnight the tide would have risen to its maximum only to drop back by early morning, allowing him a window to cross the old carriageway safely on his way back.

Around the same time that night Indrani was attending the panel discussion at Taj Lands End, about twenty kilometres from where Naik was leaving on his fishing jaunt. Financial sector reforms, microfinance ordinance, rising interest rates, new banking licenses, the finance minister spoke about all of these issues. For Indrani, this was an opportunity to show allegiance to the finance minister and consequently she applauded him the most. Secretly she harnessed dreams of a gubernatorial posting at some point in time, after drawing curtains on her banking career. Getting closer to the people in power would help.

Sharing the table with her were the CEOs of some of the large private banks in the country. While the FM’s speech was on, one of them tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to her phone, lying face up on the satin cloth covering the round table. The screen was flashing; thankfully it was on silent mode. So engrossed was she in the proceedings that she hadn’t noticed it. She picked up the phone and brought it closer to her so that she could see who had called. Raymond’s name was flashing on the screen. She didn’t pick it up. Raymond tried calling her quite a few times. When the calls didn’t stop, she quietly lifted the phone from the table and dumped it into her handbag. She could do without any frivolous distractions. Her future depended on the person on stage—the Finance Minister.

Once the event ended and she was in the safe confines of the back seat of her Mercedes, she took out her phone. There were quite a few missed calls and messages. The most missed calls were from two numbers. One was Raymond, who had called her some eleven times before giving up. The second was from a number she did not recognize. She had seven missed calls from the other number. She looked at her watch. The smaller hand of the watch was just about touching the twelve mark. Too late to return anyone’s call. She would do that the next morning.

Naik enjoyed a satisfying round of fishing that night. It turned out to be a lucky night for him too. The biggest catch for him was a sixteen kilogramme crab. Though this was not the biggest that he had ever caught—that privilege went to a twenty-five kilogramme crab that he had once caught on a moonlit night on the Panvel creek—however, the one he caught today would surely fetch him a good price. By the time he decided to turn back and head home it was six in the morning. After all the hard work, he was hungry and so were the others. They decided to stop by at the jetty closer to the Vashi bridge for some breakfast. The good catch had worked up their appetite. By then the tide had receded, after hitting a high somewhere around midnight.

Turning the boat to the left, they headed to the nearest jetty, which was now in sight. The early morning mist had still not settled, leading to limited visibility. They could hear the rumblings of a local train crossing the Vashi rail bridge heading into Mankhurd ferrying hundreds of early morning office-goers. As they neared the shore, the rumble in the bottom of Naik’s stomach grew louder. He had worked up his hunger in anticipation of a well-deserved breakfast.

He could now see the pipeline on top of the old bridge. A film crew was shooting an early morning fight sequence adjacent to the pipeline. A huge vanity bus—the kind film stars normally use—was parked on one side.
One day, I will also act in a film,
he said to himself and he smiled, suddenly remembering his age—at fifty, he was hardly fit to be a movie star.

A few props erected for the shooting came into his sight. It looked as if a market scene was being shot. Going by the decorative torans put up, it could also have been a festival shot. As he got closer, he could see a number of people running up and down, with what looked like megaphones, trying to scream some instructions, all of them sounding important. He was a bit too far to make out what those instructions were. The entire thing seemed so fascinating, so upmarket for him. ‘Let’s go closer,’ he said to his team. Watching a film shooting always provided an opportunity to meet or atleast see the stars and his team readily agreed. They altered their trajectory just a bit and headed towards the bridge. They didn’t have to go too far from where they would have hit land and so it was not too much of an effort. Breakfast would be delayed by twenty minutes. But when one gets the opportunity to see the stars in person, breakfast doesn’t matter.

They stopped when they were about a fifty metres from the bridge. Just the right position to look up at the bridge from the water below and yet manage to catch a glimpse of what was going on. He was extremely tempted to dock and go up and see what was happening there, but that would have made a mess of the entire effort that the three of them had put in last night. They would reach home late, effectively leaving them with no time to clean their catch before getting to the highway in time to sell them off.

He strained his neck to see what was going on up there. Unfortunately what he saw was not enough to satiate his curiosity. All he could see was what he could see ten minutes ago; with the difference that everything seemed closer now. The detailing didn’t improve. The stars didn’t appear. He was disappointed.

‘Fuck it,’ he told his team in chaste Marathi, the local lingo. ‘Turn left. Let’s atleast get a good breakfast.’ His team readily obliged.

The boat turned left and headed towards the jetty, where breakfast would be waiting. They passed a pillar of the bridge, dirty green and corroded. The level reached by the high tide was marked by an overgrowth of green fungus, partly because of the continued dampness and partly because the water in the creek was extremely dirty. Scaffolding had been erected next to the pillars and covered the underside of the deck of the bridge; probably some kind of restoration work was going on. The bridge offered a good view of the creek and the Vashi municipality was keen to promote it as a leisure destination.

Naik counted. Five more pillars and they would hit the shore. He was leaning on one side and looking at the dirty water below, and the vast expanse of the creek beyond the three bridges and their pillars, wondering how far the pillars were below the water. They passed the second last pillar. One more to go and then the shore was just twenty metres away. He was staring blankly into the wilderness. Leaning on the side of the boat, he was mentally calculating how much today’s catch would fetch him when he spotted something hanging from the bridge. It was as if he had forgotten to blink. His eyes were wide open and his mind went numb. He couldn’t do the math, probably because he was tired after working all night.

And then suddenly he shook himself awake. Was he dreaming? Something shocking had passed right in front of his eyes, and he hadn’t noticed it. He rubbed his eyes, pinched himself and looked back. Was it a prop used for the film being shot on top of the bridge? Was it something else? Was it real?

‘Stop the boaaaaaattttttttt!’ he screamed; a scream so loud that two of his workers came running to him. The colour had drained from Naik’s face. He had never seen anything like this. He couldn’t speak. Despite the chill, drops of sweat appeared all over his face. This could not be true.

But it was. And when he realized it, he quietly took out his antique Nokia cell phone and dialled the police control room.

It took the cops about two hours to remove Raymond Saldanah’s body, which was hanging by a rope from the scaffolding below the old Vashi bridge. It appeared he had climbed down on to the scaffolding, walked to a place between two pillars, tied one end of the rope to the scaffolding, tied the other end around his neck and jumped. He was wearing a jacket and his GB2 Identity card was still dangling from his neck. A suicide note was found in his right coat pocket—an undated note that said that no one should be blamed for his death.

It was a case that left the cops flummoxed. Why would he choose such a location for committing suicide? If he really wanted to, there were easier ways to do so. Why didn’t he choose those?

Raymond’s body was sent for post-mortem. The Vashi police started their inquest assuming that this was a regular suicide by someone who was depressed, had a struggling personal and professional life and did not see any value in living his life to the fullest. The suicide note sealed the possibility of a debate.