The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown (12 page)

Chopra had read a
Times of India
article in which the Encounter Squad's most successful detectives were lionised. Malini Sheriwal had been top of the tree. In three short years she had notched up more kills than the rest of the squad put together. Sheriwal was a crack shot, winner of the service's Golden Gun tournament three years running. The word was that she was both fearless and ruthless.

But in the past year the tide of public sentiment had begun to turn. Human rights activists had begun to raise questions about these so-called ‘encounter' killings. Suddenly the Encounter Squad was being portrayed as a gang of licensed vigilantes rather than heroic upholders of the law. The upper echelons of the force had sensed which way the wind was blowing and had quietly disbanded the unit and dispatched its members to relatively anonymous postings to lie low until things blew over.

This explained what Sheriwal was doing at the Sahar station. It didn't explain to Chopra how he was going to get the Kanodia case file.

Luckily Rangwalla had a solution.

‘Leave it to me, sir.'

The starscape above the courtyard was an astrologer's dream.

Chopra had often wondered how anyone could believe that their destiny was written up there, in the random patterns made by unimaginably distant balls of burning gas. But the human mind has an infinite capacity to delude itself. And in that gap between reason and superstition, all manner of fantasies prevailed.

Then again, he thought, if the last year had taught him anything, it was that perhaps not everything that failed to meet his own stern test of logic and rationality could be consigned to the realms of mere fantasy.

He looked down from the starry heavens to where Ganesha was hunkered down in the mud below his mango tree. The little elephant continued to be uncommunicative and withdrawn, enveloped in seeming despair.

Following the visit to St Xavier, Chopra had taken Ganesha to see the vet, Dr Rohit Lala.

Lala, who had become quite attached to Chopra's ward over the past months, had examined Ganesha carefully before applying a waxy burn emollient to his tail. ‘It's nothing,' he had said in his booming, jovial manner. ‘The burn is superficial. Nothing to worry about.'

‘Then why is he so…?' Chopra's voice tailed off.

‘He has suffered a shock. Do not forget that he is a child. Imagine a human child that has been teased, bullied and burned. How would that child react? This, my friend, is the sort of wound that leaves deeper scars on the inside than the out.'

Chopra sensed that Lala was right.

He had brought Ganesha home and settled him back into the courtyard. He had then pulled out his twin bibles on the care and husbandry of elephants.

The first was the weighty, fact-based encyclopaedia
The Definitive Guide to the Life and Habits of the Indian Elephant
by Dr Harpal Singh.

Chopra thumbed through the glossy pages and learned that although an elephant's hide appeared to be robust, in reality there were places where that skin was as thin as paper. He discovered that elephant skin is sensitive to heat, and that elephant calves sunburn very easily, hence their tendency to hide beneath their mothers, to squirt water over themselves and slather themselves in mud at every opportunity. Dr Singh wrote that ‘an elephant's skin is so sensitive that it can detect even a fly landing upon it'. These revelations made Chopra think that perhaps Dr Lala had underestimated the pain Ganesha had suffered from his injury.

Then he turned to the second book, his personal favourite.

It was a thin volume entitled
Ganesha: Ten years living with an Indian elephant.
The author was a British woman called Harriet Fortinbrass who had come to the subcontinent in the 1920s. Fortinbrass had adopted a young elephant whose mother had been shot dead by her father, a British diplomat – indeed the name she had given her ward had inspired Chopra to select Ganesha for his own charge.

Whereas Dr Singh was a font of dry facts and details, Fortinbrass's passion for her ward shone through. ‘Elephants are great communicators [she wrote]. They use their heads, bodies, trunks, ears and tail as a form of language. For example, when a female elephant feels threatened, she will make herself appear larger by holding her head as high as she can and spreading her ears wide. An elephant's mood can be determined from its bodily movements. An elephant that withdraws from the tactile world is an elephant in emotional distress.'

Chopra had tried everything he could think of to bring Ganesha out of his funk, but to no avail.

In the end he had decided to leave the elephant alone while he worked in the restaurant's back office. A number of cases required documentation and a backlog of client correspondence had built into a miniature pyramid inside his filing cabinet. Irfan had done his best but there was only so much the boy could do to keep the wolves at bay. Paperwork was a chore that Chopra did not enjoy but his long years in the service had taught him the value of maintaining a meticulous paper trail. It was a strategy that had paid dividends many times over. And he had insisted on that same rigid attention to detail in his junior officers.

A nervous Sub-Inspector Surat delivered the Kanodia case file to him just as the evening restaurant crowd was beginning to swell.

‘Did Rangwalla ask you to do this, Surat?' Chopra asked sternly as he took the dog-eared manila folder.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Listen to me carefully. You are not to do anything like this again. You have a new commanding officer. You owe him –
her
– your loyalty. Did you stop to think what she would do if she found out you were handing over police files to non-police personnel?'

Surat paled as he thought of the consequences of upsetting Shoot 'Em Up Sheriwal.

‘Never mind. What's done is done. Let me take a look at this tonight and then I want you to return it to the station first thing in the morning.'

Surat snapped off a spectacular salute. ‘Yes, sir.'

‘And Surat… you don't have to salute me.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Chopra sat out under the stars and opened the file. Crickets sang a chorus above the steady rumble of traffic from Guru Rabindranath Tagore Road. The smell of cinnamon drifted from the restaurant – Chef Lucknowwallah was preparing his special cinnamon-infused rice pudding. Chopra hoped the chef would save a plate for him; it was a particular favourite of his.

Balram Kanodia – known to friends and associates as ‘Bulbul' Kanodia – had been born in the city of Rajkot in the state of Gujarat in 1959. He had moved to Mumbai in his early thirties and had set up a hole-in-the-wall gemstone business in the industrial quarter of Sahar known as SEEPZ. In time, the business had become a small jewellery operation – Kanodia was descended from a line of Gujarati jewellers and was rumoured to be an exquisite craftsman, particularly adept at designing complex gemstone jewellery.

Kanodia had come to Chopra's attention when a street informant had fingered the jeweller as a small-time fence. Bulbul had clearly decided that the razor-thin margins he made from his work were not enough to meet his needs.

Chopra had had Kanodia's operation monitored and then sent an undercover agent in. Kanodia had taken the bait and agreed to find a home for what he had been expressly informed was stolen merchandise. The entire sting had been secretly recorded and Chopra himself had slapped the cuffs on the would-be middleman.

The investigation and arrest were meticulously logged in the file, as Chopra expected them to be. He was gratified to discover, however, a wealth of additional information.

Chopra had long insisted that his men continue to make notes in case files well after an initial arrest, so that criminals who might resurface in the locality could be monitored. It had paid off numerous times, and it did again now.

A number of further entries described Kanodia's life following his arrest.

Chopra was surprised to note that although Kanodia had begun his sentence in the general barracks of the Arthur Road Jail, within a month he had been transferred to Barrack No. 3 – the barracks run by the Chauhan gang. Kanodia's time in jail seemed to have been greatly eased through his association with this band of organised criminals.

Upon his release from prison – due to an early parole that Chopra did not believe was warranted – Kanodia had gone underground for almost a year. Then, out of nowhere, he had found the capital to set up a jewellery emporium called Paramathma – meaning ‘divine soul'.

So Bulbul developed a sense of irony during his time in jail, Chopra thought.

According to Rangwalla there were now at least six branches of the Paramathma chain around the city, the largest one in the affluent suburb of Bandra. The one thing that modern Indians had in common with their ancestors was a love of jewellery. From Mughal emperors to the lowliest members of the lowest caste, this pursuit of gold and gems seemed as much a part of the fabric of Indian life as spices and religion.

Business was booming for Bulbul.

Chopra put down the file and tried to impose order on to his thoughts.

Bulbul Kanodia was now his number one suspect as the mastermind behind the theft of the Crown of Queen Elizabeth.

He knew that jewellers from every corner of the country had descended upon the Prince of Wales Museum in the past weeks. After all, when would they get another chance to behold the most magnificent creations their particular brand of artifice had ever conjured up?

Kanodia, however, was a man with a track record, a man connected to Mumbai's criminal underworld. Chopra had little doubt that organised crime had financed Bulbul's chain of jewellery stores. Kanodia was a front man and Chopra believed that the jewellery stores were being used by the Chauhan gang to launder black money into white. The plot to steal the Koh-i-Noor was exactly the sort of thing the gang would consider a coup.

A metallic clanking signalled Irfan's arrival with Ganesha's evening bucket of coconut milk. Irfan salaamed his boss and then approached the little elephant.

Chopra watched the smile fade from Irfan's face. ‘What is the matter with him?'

‘I am afraid Ganesha has had another encounter with human nature.'

A look of confusion passed over the boy's face. He set down the bucket and then knelt down beside Ganesha. ‘Hey, boy, cheer up. Don't let the world get you down.'

Ganesha remained unresponsive.

Irfan stood up and began to dance, singing a popular Bollywood number that never failed to delight Ganesha.

Nothing.

‘Chopra Sir!'

Chopra turned to see the statuesque figure of Rosie Pinto, one of Chef Lucknowwallah's two assistant cooks, standing on the veranda in her white uniform and toque blanche.

Rosie was an enigma to Chopra. A Goan Catholic with a figure that reminded him of the statues of primitive mother goddesses that he sometimes saw on the Discovery Channel, Rosie had a personality as large as her figure and a booming voice that easily cut through the bustle of the restaurant when the need arose. Chopra had found himself quite intimidated at first, but Chef Lucknowwallah had been effusive in his praise for her skills in the kitchen.

Rosie seemed equally popular with the clientele. She had a saucy air about her, and it had not escaped his eagle eye how often Rosie's generous backside was slapped by overfamiliar patrons as she wiggled her way across the restaurant floor. Rosie never seemed to mind, but he had considered having a word with her about the matter. He did not wish to encourage licentious behaviour in his staff. After all, this was a family restaurant, not a ladies bar.

‘What is it, Rosie?'

‘Chef wishes to see you urgently. He is waiting in your office.'

Chopra's heart sank. As he reluctantly hauled himself to his feet and trudged towards the restaurant, he tried to focus on the fact that he was exceedingly fortunate to have secured the services of Chef Lucknowwallah.

Azeem Lucknowwallah, by his own admission, was a genius. He had spent a lifetime working in the kitchens of five-star hotels and ‘tip-top' restaurants. He had travelled the subcontinent, imbibing recipes and techniques from the masters. Lucknowwallah had retired three years earlier, but had come out of retirement to apply for the position of head chef at Poppy's Restaurant, the post having been recommended to him by his nephew and Chopra's neighbour, ghazal troubadour Feroz Lucknowwallah.

Chef Lucknowwallah's father had been a police constable in faraway Lucknow, once renowned as the City of the Nawabs. Lucknowwallah Senior had been killed in the line of duty, run down by a crazed bullock during a protest march by the Indian farmers' union campaigning against government-set cotton prices in the early seventies. The young Lucknowwallah had been left with the harrowing memory of his father expiring on a dusty cornfield to the echoes of a police lathi charge and the yelps of stricken farm folk. Ever since that ill-fated day, he had sought for a means to honour his late father. The opportunity offered by Mumbai's first restaurant dedicated specifically to the police service was too good to pass up.