The Bankster (Ravi Subramanian) (39 page)

‘Look here. Before the two pipes meet, there is a ball of orange.’

Schroeder looked at the image closely. A horizontal rod-like cylindrical stretch of orange colour marked the image of the water flowing in the secondary pipe till the T-junction, except at one point. Just before the T-junction, the red colour seemed to momentarily dip into a small abyss and then recover its trajectory before heading straight into the filter marking the intersection of the two pipes. The trajectory followed by the red at that point seemed to be like an inverted omega symbol (Ω). ‘The hot water is accumulating at a point before the filter. Looks like a niche,’ Johann Schroeder noted, surprised.

‘This means, sir, that there is a chamber there, in the drain pipe. The hot water flows out of the apartment, and accumulates in the niche. This accumulation of water is what caused a back flow, which resulted in clogging of water when I opened the knob earlier. Only water that escapes the niche goes out through the filter into the external pipe.’

‘Why would someone design a pipe like that? Is this in the Wien Sewer Authority master layout?’

‘We checked. It’s not there. The master plan, which we pulled out, showed a normal pipe. Nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘So is this a secret storage for something? If so, what could that be?’ Schroeder pulled back the curtains and looked out again.

‘Karl,’ he called out and even before Karl could respond, ‘trouble,’ he added. Karl quickly ran up to the window and looked out in the direction towards which Schroeder was intently staring. ‘What is it?’

‘Why is the Wien Sewer Authority truck backing up into this building and extending its telescopic turntable ladder towards this apartment? As far as I know, this building has been empty for some time now.’

Karl looked out again. Johann too, silently observed what the WSA truck was doing. A mid-ship, like the ones used by firemen to rescue people stranded on higher floors in case of a fire, was affixed to the ladder being raised. Two men were standing on the road adjacent to the WSA van and were looking at their colleague who was inside the mid-ship. From a distance, the man on the mid-ship looked too polished to be a WSA employee.

‘Ask for back-up’, whispered Schroeder, turning towards Karl. ‘Quick! We have a team stationed at Nestroy,’ and looking at the other two men who were with Karl, but had stayed quiet all this while, he added, ‘You two watch the door. If anyone walks up, and you don’t get answers, shoot. And use silencers. We don’t want the entire neighbourhood rushing in here.’

Karl immediately got away from the window, and made a call. In no time, he was back to give Schroeder company. Schroeder took out his S&W 1911 from the holster and brought his hand up to the stainless steel slider. He cranked it back, and took position. ‘How long?’ he asked. ‘ETA, seven minutes,’ Karl responded.

‘They’re clearly not WSA employees. It’s a façade. If they are not what they are pretending to be, then I presume they are the ones who killed the Indians.’ The wind was strong. The jacket that the intruder in the mid-ship was wearing moved just a bit, but it was enough for the razor sharp eye of the deputy chief of police to catch the outline of a revolver tucked inside the trousers. ‘The bastard’s armed.’ Schroeder did a quick calculation and whispered, ‘It will take him three minutes to get the ladder down, so if he takes at least four minutes at the drain pipe, we will get them. Murderers. Bastards.’ Johann Schroeder was furious. Vienna was his city, and crime of any sort was unacceptable.

By this time, the mid-ship had come to a halt just below the window. Through a gap in the curtain, Karl and Schroeder observed what the visitor was up to. There was no way the man in the mid-ship could have seen Schroeder and Karl unless they exposed themselves to him. On reaching the drainpipe, the intruder took some tools out and got to work. He unscrewed a small portion of the secondary pipe, just next to the T-Joint. ‘He’s opening up the niche,’ whispered Karl. Schroeder nodded, but he didn’t remove his gaze from the intruder.

The intruder lifted the piece of the pipe which had come loose and carefully placed it next to him. When Johann saw what was below the piece that the intruder had lifted off, he was shocked. Concealed below the cover pipe that had come off, was a keypad. The intruder keyed in a six-digit code and the layer came free. He carefully removed that layer and one could see water in the pipe below. The suspect pulled out a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and wore them in a jiffy, post which he put his hands inside the pipe, into the niche and pulled out four tiny packets. Each packet was of the size of a pouch containing about ten Hershey’s kisses. The packets quickly disappeared into some secret compartment in his clothing. The intruder placed the keypad back, locked it with a code, and screwed on the top of the pipe back. Schroeder looked at his watch. Two minutes and the back-up would be there. He would be covered on the ground level and could take his chances. He drew back the curtain and threw open the window. Cold breeze caressed his face as he took aim and screamed, ‘Freeze!’

The intruder looked up and was shocked to see someone in the apartment, that too with a gun in his hand. Instinctively he reached out for his revolver with his right hand. Johann Schroeder fired. The bullet ricocheted off the railing of the mid-ship and disappeared somewhere in the thirty-five feet abyss down below. ‘Next time I will not miss. Put your hands on your head, where I can see them,’ cried Schroeder. The hands came up, in an indication of submission, and snaked their way up to the head, where they finally came to rest. The intruder looked down. For a minute he contemplated jumping. But it was too high, too risky. Chances of survival were limited. He dismissed that as a bad idea. Suddenly three police patrol cars with sirens blazing raced into the street and came to a screeching halt near the WSA van. Eight men jumped out of the cars and took positions, ready to fire at the two accomplices of the intruder, on the ground, just in case they tried to flee. They were hiding behind the WSA van. Schroeder looked down. He was glad that he had things under control. The case was close to getting solved—almost.

At that very instant, one of the accomplices from behind the van hurled a low intensity grenade at the cops. There was a minor blast followed by lots of dust and smoke. The cops ducked for cover. Sensing an opportunity, the two men turned away and started running, leaving the intruder behind. They were running towards an alley hoping that, by the time the cops would regain composure, they would have disappeared into the alley and thereon into the complex maze of lanes and by-lanes. Schroeder was watching. The men were approaching the alley. He couldn’t let them get away. Something had to be done. The S&W was put to use. He took aim and fired. It hit one of the men, who tumbled to the ground. Egged by what Schroeder did, Karl too took aim and fired. The first one missed but the second bullet hit his target on the ankle. He too crashed, holding his ankle in pain. Karl and Schroeder looked at each other and smiled. It was a mistake. This momentary lapse of concentration gave the window of opportunity to the intruder to pull out his gun and shoot in their direction. The bullet brushed past Karl’s left shoulder, knocking him down. Blood started oozing from of his shoulder. When Schroeder saw his protégé injured, he was furious. Looking out of the window, he took aim. The intruder had stepped out of the mid-ship and was hastily climbing down the ladder. It was a stupid move, as a posse of police officers was waiting for him near the WSA van.

Schroeder considered his options. He wanted some leverage. If his men accosted the intruder and took him into custody, it would take him ages to interrogate him and get to the bottom of the murder investigation. Once taken into custody, protocol had to be followed, which would prevent him from using certain techniques the cops normally liked to use. He needed quick answers.

Schroeder waited for about fifteen seconds. The intruder was now only ten feet from the ground. A few more steps and he would be a jump away. Carefully, he took aim and muttered something as he pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the intruder on his thigh. He fell off the ladder and landed on the ground with a thud. He tried to get up but couldn’t. Schroeder, followed by Karl, who was clutching his profusely bleeding left shoulder in his hand, rushed to the ground floor right and out of the building, to the place where the intruder lay bleeding.

By then, the back-up team had surrounded the intruder and disarmed him. Schroeder walked up to him and said, ‘What were you doing up there?’

‘I was repairing the sewage lines. We had received a complaint. . .aaaah,’ the suspect writhed in pain. It was becoming unbearable.

‘Since when did WSA employees start carrying firearms?’ he thundered. ‘And crude bombs?’ Karl added pointing towards his accomplices lying a few feet away.

‘What was it that you came for? Out with it!’ Schroeder demanded. The suspect kept moaning and didn’t respond. Schroeder bent down, caught hold of him and patted him down. He felt something midway between his chest and abdomen on the right. One of the cops gave him a small knife. He cut open the clothing to find the secret compartment, and out tumbled four packets that the intruder had pulled out from the niche in the drainpipe. He opened one of the packets and emptied the contents on his palm. He was shocked.

‘Raw uncut diamonds!’ Schroeder exclaimed. ‘Diamonds!’ Karl exclaimed. ‘Blood diamonds! Here in Vienna?’

Schroeder systematically checked the other three packets. They contained diamonds as well. ‘What the hell is this?’ exclaimed Schroeder. ‘Is this what you killed the Indians for?’ He was shocked to see raw uncut diamonds, the kind found in the mines of Africa. He didn’t know what or rather who he was dealing with.

‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ the intruder protested weakly. It was not without reason that Schroeder had shot him. Schroeder turned and looked at the eight cops who were a part of the back-up team. They were a team of hand-picked loyalists. He turned back. The intruder was still lying flat on the road, writhing in pain. Nonchalantly, Schroeder took aim. This time it was the other leg. The bullet pierced the thigh and burnt its way through, right up to the bone where it firmly embedded itself. A shrill scream erupted and shattered the calm of the neighbourhood. The intruder was in desperate pain. Schroeder was unmoved. He was not willing to hand him over to the medics till he gave them the whole story. Who was he? Where did he get the diamonds? Why did they kill the Indians? It was not too difficult, given the tremendous pain that the intruder was in. It was only a matter of time before he started to sing like a bird. The leverage that Schroeder had bargained for when he shot at the intruder was working. After getting all the information he required, Schroeder let him be taken away by the medics. He walked to his car, accompanied by Karl, who by then had been administered first aid. The bleeding had stopped.

As they were driving back, Schroeder asked Karl, ‘How did you figure out the secret of the niche in the drain?’

‘Quite by accident. In fact, we were checking the faucet for fingerprints when we accidentally pushed the knob. Water started flowing. Quite a fancy faucet it was. We didn’t know how to shut it off. In the interim, the water started filling up in the basin. That was quite a surprise because, given the proximity to the main drain and the height, water should not have clogged. That was the warning sign. And now when I look back at it, it was a very smart place to hide these diamonds from everyone. Smuggle uncut diamonds, drop them into the basin. The flow of water will take them to the filter connected at junction with the main pipe. The filter will stop them from going any further and they would collect in the reverse omega shaped niche, which is then accessed using the security passcodes, which our friend David Kosinski knew. No one else in their wildest dreams would have imagined that the drainpipe would contain diamonds. But I still have one question in my mind—why did they not take the diamonds when they hurriedly evacuated the building, the night the Indians went there?’

‘This question crossed my mind too. The only rational argument for this could be that the way the diamonds were stored in the niche in the pipe, made them difficult to access, particularly at that time of the night. Hence they fled the site on the night of the 30th leaving the diamonds behind, extremely confident that no one would be able to locate them. After the situation cooled off, and when they were convinced that there was no surveillance and it was safe to come back for the diamonds, they sent David Kosinski, their most trusted aide, who also knew the passcode, to recover the booty. They did not expect us to be there in the apartment. I guess they underestimated the Vienna police in general and Karlis Simanis in particular,’ Johann remarked, giving Karl an admiring look.

‘Yes sir. You’re right. There could be no other explanation for this. By the way, when is Purtsi retiring? Time for you to take over the Vienna Police,’ Karl smiled.

‘This gesture of sucking up is both unnecessary and appreciated,’ Schroeder winked at Karl. The car turned right off the main road into the building, which housed the Vienna Police Headquarters. ‘Time to get back to work,’ he said as he opened his car door and got out. Someone hurriedly collected the keys from him to safely park the car in the designated slot.

‘Yes sir!’ said Karl and followed him dutifully. Both of them walked into the building. They both knew they were close to busting the murders which had soiled their impeccable record.

‘And Karl, now that we know how the Leles were killed and who killed them, we must alert Interpol on what Kosinski told us. Will you call them and also the Israeli police right away and let them know that Joseph Braganza is scheduled to arrive into Tel Aviv airport this morning? In fact, he would have already arrived,’ Schroeder said to Karl as they entered Schroeder’s cabin. ‘David Kosinski gave us the name of the hotel. Pass it on to them and tell them that they will have to pick him up and extradite him to Vienna. He has to be tried for homicide in this country. I also have to brief Purtsi on the latest developments. We will work out an acceptable story for the media.’