The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown (6 page)

Rao let out an angry laugh. ‘Garewal is beyond help. And you are not a police officer any more.'

‘At least I
was
a police officer, Rao. No one has ever accused you of that.'

Rao's eyes bulged and his grip tightened on the lathi stick that he had unconsciously slipped from his belt.

‘I want to know why Garewal is being held here,' Chopra continued. ‘Why is he accused of this crime? Why is he not permitted a lawyer?'

‘By Gods, man, you haven't changed!' Rao exploded. ‘Always the cockerel! Well, take a look around. This is Mumbai Central Prison. Innocent men don't end up here. Your friend Garewal has made a big mistake and now he will pay for it. If you don't like it, take it up with the Chief Minister.'

‘Perhaps I will,' said Chopra hotly.

‘Who is this fellow, Rao?'

Chopra looked from ACP Rao's glowering face to the enormous white man looming behind him.

‘No one,' Rao ground out.

‘My name is Chopra,' Chopra said stiffly. ‘
Inspector
Chopra. Retired.'

He reached into his pocket and removed a business card, which he handed to the big man. The man squinted at the card, his bristling moustache dancing above his upper lip as he mouthed the words. ‘The Baby Ganesh Detective Agency… You're a private detective?' His eyebrows came together in a V of consternation. He had somehow contrived to make the words ‘private detective' sound like ‘loathsome cockroach'.

‘Yes. And this man is now my client. He is innocent of the crime you have accused him of. I will be investigating the incident.'

‘You will do no such thing!' Rao whinnied. ‘You have no jurisdiction here. What do you think this is? A kitty party? I heard about your agency. Do you know what they're saying about you on the force? You are a joke. Garewal has no rights. This is a matter of national security. The only one doing any investigating here will be me. Why don't you go back to looking for lost cats and dogs?'

Chopra stared coldly at Rao. He willed himself to control his fury. Then he turned to Garewal. ‘Hang in there, Garewal. I will be in touch.'

He stalked out of the cell, barging past the two men. As he reached the door he stopped and turned to the white man. ‘I didn't get your name.'

‘That's none of your business,' Rao said.

‘I can speak for myself,' growled the big man. ‘My name is Bomberton. Detective Chief Inspector Bomberton. From New Scotland Yard. I run the Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Unit.'

‘You are here to investigate the theft of the crown?'

‘What else do you think he is doing here?' Rao blared. ‘Enjoying the scenic views?'

Chopra stared at Bomberton. ‘I will give you a word of advice.' He pointed at Rao. ‘If you listen to this man you will never find the crown.'

He turned and walked out of the cell, Rao's furious last words echoing in his ears: ‘If I see you here again I will have you arrested! Do you hear me, Chopra? I'll throw you in a hole so deep you'll never see the light of day again!'

The drive from Poppy's Bar & Restaurant to Chopra's home ought to have taken barely fifteen minutes, but in the horrendous traffic of the lunchtime suburbs could easily take an hour. For this reason, at precisely 12.15 p.m. each day, Irfan set off on his sturdy Eastman delivery bicycle to make the journey back to the Air Force Colony complex.

Deftly leaning his red-framed cycle around corners – seemingly unhindered by the deformity of his left hand – and whistling a tune from the latest Bollywood blockbuster, Irfan would imagine that he was Assistant Commissioner of Police Jai Dixit, the hero from his favourite movie
Dhoom
, which featured a glamorous motorcycle gang.

When Irfan arrived at the complex he discovered, to his delight, the Nepalese security guard Bahadur hard at work washing Chopra's Royal Enfield Bullet.

The enormous 500cc motorbike was Chopra's pride and joy, but Irfan knew his boss was constrained from riding it as often as he would have liked by Poppy Madam's unwavering disapproval.

Eyes shining, Irfan set his bicycle against the compound's gate, removed the package containing Mrs Subramanium's lunch from the pannier and approached Bahadur, who was down on his haunches in his flip-flops and shorts, carefully rubbing down the bike's gleaming metal spokes with a yellow cloth.

‘Here, let me,' said Irfan. ‘That's not the way to do it.' He set down his package next to the motorbike, and took the cloth from Bahadur. ‘It's all in the wrists,' he said authoritatively. During his years on the street, Irfan had found many ways to earn a living, including polishing shoes and washing cars amongst other less savoury vocations.

Bahadur stood up, pushed his cap back on his head, and watched with interest. He was sweating heavily in his tatty white vest. Yet he did not begrudge having to clean the bike. Like Irfan he held a deep fascination for the Bullet.

When the spokes had been polished to his satisfaction, Irfan handed the cloth back to the guard. ‘Hold this.'

He scrabbled up onto the bike and grasped the handles. His feet couldn't quite reach the pedals, but what did that matter? He was sitting on top of a Bullet! The most powerful motorbike in the whole of India! No longer was he Irfan the delivery boy, but rather a daredevil policeman – like Chopra – chasing the dangerous head of an evil bike gang down the Western Express Highway at two hundred miles per hour!

‘Irfan, what are you doing here?'

Irfan turned to see Poppy getting out of a rickshaw.

‘Hello, Poppy Madam!' he said cheerily. ‘I was just delivering Mrs Subramanium's lunch order.'

‘Or not delivering, would be a more apt description.'

Both Poppy and Irfan turned to see Mrs Subramanium, the president of the apartment complex's Managing Committee, descending upon them.

Poppy narrowed her eyes.

Mrs Subramanium had long been her nemesis, a perennial thorn in her side. With her short grey hair and dark saris, Mrs Subramanium cut an intimidating presence in the complex, materialising when you least expected to issue dire edicts from her legendary building regulations manual. Most people were frightened witless by the aging widow, but Poppy refused to be cowed. As a consequence, the two women were frequently at loggerheads.

‘Boy, you are late. Again.'

‘Sorry, Mrs Subramanium Madam,' said Irfan, scrambling to get off the bike. Unfortunately, as he did so, his foot caught the bike's support stand, knocking it aside. The bike began to waver under him. As he sought to regain his balance, the bike teetered, and then toppled over, squashing the package beside it. Irfan leaped aside just in time to land in the arms of the unfortunate Poppy, who cried out in alarm, then hugged him. ‘Be careful, you silly boy!'

Mrs Subramanium meanwhile had moved closer to inspect the remnants of her lunch.

The thin dahl had leaked from the sides of the package and was running towards Bahadur's feet. Bahadur stared at the approaching yellow rivulet in rapt fascination.

‘This is outrageous,' said Mrs Subramanium eventually, turning to Poppy. ‘I will be speaking with your mother.'

Poppy glared at the older woman. She knew that her mother and Mrs Subramanium were as thick as thieves. In hindsight, their alliance had been inevitable. Both were widows, of a similar age, and possessed equally insufferable dispositions. Both treated her as if she were still twelve years old, a girl to be bossed and bullied.

‘My mother does not own the restaurant,' said Poppy icily. ‘It says
Poppy's
on the signboard, in case you had not noticed.'

‘Well, then,
Poppy
will have to see to my lunch,' said Mrs Subramanium haughtily. She turned on her heel, swished her sari, and walked back into the building.

‘I'm sorry, Poppy Madam,' said Irfan, hanging his head.

‘What are you sorry about?' said Poppy. ‘That woman would complain if you served her gold bars for lunch.' She smiled at the boy. ‘I have some time before I go back to work. Why don't I take you for an ice cream?'

‘Poornima Madam will be very cross if I don't get back to the restaurant.'

‘Oh, don't worry about her. Come on, we'll go to Natural's.'

Irfan shook his head. ‘No, Poppy Madam. I am working now. I must do my job. It would not be right to go and eat ice cream when I should be working. Chopra Sir would not do that.'

Poppy stared at the boy, a faint smile playing over her lips. ‘No, you are right. Chopra Sir would not do that.' She gave Irfan another hug, and tousled his bonnet of dark hair. ‘You are my conscientious little man, aren't you! Go on then, off you go. And ride carefully!'

The Prince of Wales Museum was a hive of activity. A convoy of official vehicles now guarded the front entrance on M.G. Road, hemmed in by dozens of mobile news trucks. Swarms of journalists and cameramen waited beyond the police barricade like mosquitoes ready to pounce at the first scent of blood. A crowd of passers-by had also gathered and, in the absence of new developments, were being endlessly interviewed for their opinions.

If there was one thing Mumbai would never be short of, Chopra thought darkly, it was passers-by.

He parked the Tata Venture on the edges of the melee. Then he went to the rear of the van, swung open the door and lowered the ramp.

Ganesha trotted out into the afternoon haze, his ears flapping gently as he greeted the sun. He blinked as he took in the raucous crowd.

A group of eunuchs had begun to sing nearby in their gravelly voices, accosting a pair of Force One guards, demanding money to go away. Itinerant peddlers of everything from twice-fried samosas to straw hats that would dissolve at the first hint of rain moved amongst the crowd. A nukkud natak – street theatre – performance was attracting a great deal of attention as the costumed actors caricatured the all-round incompetence of the Force One Unit.

Chopra gave a rueful smile. Another thing one could always expect of his fellow Mumbaikers was that they would excel themselves in making a comedy out of a tragedy.

‘Come on, boy,' he muttered.

At the entrance to the museum's formal gardens they were confronted by a phalanx of Force One guards. Chopra took out his identity card. The senior-most guard stared at the card as if it were written in ancient Sanskrit. Clearly, this fell beyond his jurisdiction.

‘Look,' growled Chopra, ‘I am a special advisor authorised by the Chief Minister himself. He was here this morning, wasn't he?'

The man's dark face took on a look of panic. Chopra guessed that the CM had not had many good things to say to the Force One contingent. ‘Do you want him to come back?'

The man looked around wildly as if the CM might appear in a ball of flames behind him at that very instant. He ushered Chopra through and did not even seem to register the fact that the former policeman was accompanied by a baby elephant.

In the museum's Central Gallery Chopra was confronted by the surreal sight of two white men in plastic crime-scene suits chatting and sipping cups of steaming tea. As Ganesha came in, they stopped talking and stared at him.

‘I say, do you know there is an elephant behind you?'

Chopra nodded. ‘He is with me.'

‘You have a pet
elephant
?' The man seemed incredulous.

‘He is not a pet.'

He left Ganesha there, examining the waxworks of the royal family, and walked up two flights of steps to the Tata Gallery.

When he had first gone to see Garewal Chopra hadn't been sure that he could help, or for that matter whether he even wished to. But the encounter with Rao had left him resolved to prove Garewal's innocence or, at the very least, to establish for himself that Garewal was guilty as charged.

ACP Suresh Rao always seemed to bring out the worst in him, he reflected.

He had decided that the first thing to do was return to the scene of the crime. He had often found, during his long career, that taking a second look at the scene the day after the crime was one of the wisest things any investigator could do.

The Tata Gallery was bustling with activity.

A half-dozen or so white-suited forensic technicians were crowded into the gallery going over the scene using a variety of arcane instruments, many that he did not recognise.

Forensic science was still an emerging discipline in India. Chopra, who had made a habit of perusing forensic textbooks and international criminology journals during his police years, had often lamented the fact that much of what he read would remain a distant dream as far as the Brihanmumbai Police was concerned.

The first thing he noted was that the remaining Crown Jewels had vanished. He had expected no less.

The theft of the Koh-i-Noor had put paid to the magnificent exhibition. He had no doubt that even now the priceless collection would be under heavy military guard awaiting transport back to its home in the Tower of London. The news channels were beside themselves, but the Indian government remained resolutely tight-lipped as to the current location of the hoard.

Chopra's eyes scanned the room.

A smattering of glass particles from the shattered display case sparkled on the carpet as they caught the light from a ring of arc lamps. His wandering gaze alighted on the gaping hole in the gallery's rear door. He recalled now that the door had been sealed for the duration of the exhibition. At the time it had seemed like a sensible precaution. Reducing the number of entrances into the gallery allowed the Force One guards to concentrate their vigilance on a single one. In hindsight, it seemed an unforgiveable error to have left the rear door completely unguarded. The hole in that door – just large enough for a man to squeeze through – now served as a chastening rebuke.

‘And exactly who might you be when you're at home?'

He turned to see a tall, thin figure bearing down on him. The man pulled off the white hood of his forensic boiler suit to reveal a head of spiked orange hair and a pink freckled face in which green eyes sat below red eyebrows and above a large, sunburnt nose. Chopra couldn't place the man's accent. It was English but not quite English.

‘Inspector Chopra. Retired. Special Advisor to the Mumbai Police. I am investigating the theft of the Koh-i-Noor diamond.'

‘Och, are ye now?' the man said, giving him an appraising look. ‘Well, that would be grand, except that as far as I've been told it's a crown we're looking for.'

Chopra coloured. But the ginger-headed man broke into a grin. ‘Semantics. Never had much time for them myself.' He stuck out a gloved hand. ‘Duncan McTavish. I work for the Met Polis. Forensics. What can I do for you, Chopra? And where's that oaf Bomberton?'

‘I am not with Detective Chief Inspector Bomberton.'

‘Detective Chief Inspector. Hell's bells, Chopra, you make him sound like the Second Coming. Between you and me the man is a complete buffoon.'

‘Why have they sent him here, then?'

McTavish tapped the side of his freckled nose. ‘Connections, Chopra. It seems our DCI Bomberton is distantly related to the royal family. Five hundredth in line to the throne or some such guff. Pardon me for not bowing and scraping in the presence of His Majesty.'

‘What about you?'

‘Och, I'm a Scot, Chopra. The day they make a Scot King of England is the day I'll dance naked on the Windsor Castle lawn.'

‘I meant, what are you doing here?'

McTavish waved a hand at the activity behind him. ‘Can ye no' see, man? We're going over the place with a fine-tooth comb. I've brought the whole kit and caboodle with me. By the time I've finished in here I'll be able to tell you what the old professor had for breakfast last week.'

Chopra wondered which professor McTavish meant, but then guessed that the Scot was referring to the learned historian who ran the museum.

‘Have you discovered anything useful to the investigation?'

‘Depends what you mean by useful. Here, put these on.' McTavish pulled a pair of plastic overshoes and latex gloves from the pocket of his boiler suit. Chopra slipped them on then followed the man across the room.

McTavish led him past the shattered display case to the rear of the chamber. They stopped in front of the eight-foot-tall sandstone sculpture of Kali that Chopra had noticed the previous evening. The sculpture, which had probably been torn from the façade of one of India's numerous ancient temples, resembled a figurehead from the bowsprit of an old wooden sailing ship.

McTavish beckoned Chopra around to the side of the sculpture. ‘Take a look.'

Chopra's eyes followed the curve of Kali's back as it flowed down to the gallery wall… and then he spotted the hole.

‘My guess is they chiselled that cavity out months ago,' said McTavish matter-of-factly. ‘Then they put the gas canisters inside and cemented a thin sandstone shell back over.'

‘How do you know the canisters were in there?'

‘Microscopic paint chips from the canisters. We found them inside the cavity.' McTavish patted Kali on the shoulder. ‘Our thieves knew she wasn't going anywhere. On the day of the robbery all they had to do was break through the shell. Easily enough done with a fist.'

Chopra reflected on this. ‘You are saying that this crime was planned a long time ago.'

‘No flies on you, I can see,' McTavish said. ‘Come on.'

He led Chopra next to the shattered display case in which the crown had been housed. ‘This is reinforced ballistic glass. You can bounce bullets off it. It'd take a sledgehammer to break through it, and I'm pretty sure there's no' enough space in that hole for one of those.'

‘Then how did they do it?'

‘I don't know. Not yet, anyrood. To be frank I'm no' so sure they
broke
the glass.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I have a theory… but I need to conduct more tests first. Come on.'

Chopra followed McTavish to the gallery's rear door, where a swathe of debris was being hoovered up by a forensic technician. Looking through the gaping hole in the very centre of the door Chopra saw another technician out in the corridor, similarly vacuuming the floor. Noticing his gaze, McTavish said, ‘They used enough charge to blow that hole through, but not enough to damage anything else in the gallery. Standard plastic explosive, C4, packed inside a copper focuser. Detonator and blast-cap set-up. Professional work. There seems to have been a bit of blowback into the corridor.'

‘Is that usual?'

McTavish shrugged. ‘Well, explosions aren't my speciality, but I believe so. Something to do with shock waves and negative-pressure blast winds.' He scratched the back of his skull with a gloved finger. ‘At any rate, the current thinking is that our villains came up through the fire exit stairs, into yonder corridor, blew a hole through this sealed door and ducked straight into the gallery. They recovered the gas canisters from the statue, put everyone to sleep, smashed the display case, grabbed the crown and went back the way they came. The whole caper couldn't have taken more than a few minutes from start to finish.'

Chopra looked through the gaping hole again and into the marbled corridor that stretched from the Tata Gallery to the Jahangir Gallery on the east wing. He knew that the corridor had been off limits during the exhibition, another security precaution that had backfired as it now meant that there were no witnesses. Halfway along the corridor, double doors led onto the fire exit stairwell. The media had surmised that the thieves had used these stairs both to infiltrate the corridor and then later to make their escape.

‘How did they get the plastic explosive into the building past the Force One Unit and the scanners?' Chopra asked. ‘And if they had a way to do that why did they need to hide the gas canisters in the statue beforehand? Why didn't they just bring them in on the day of the heist, like the explosive?'

McTavish gave a wolfish grin. ‘Top marks, Chopra. Who says Indian polis cannae find their own bottoms without a map?'

Chopra frowned. ‘I do not know. Who says this?'

‘What?' It was McTavish's turn to frown.

‘Who says this? About Indian officers and their bottoms?'

McTavish opened his mouth, then closed it. ‘It's just a saying. To answer your question: we might assume they hid the plastic explosive in another part of the museum, inside another statue perhaps, one accessible outside the Tata Gallery.'

‘Did they?'

‘Not a chance,' replied the Scot briskly. ‘We've gone over everything. Every exhibit. Every nook and cranny. No sneaky hiding places. Nothing.'

Chopra's frown deepened.

‘Little things, Chopra,' continued McTavish. ‘You ever read that story about the princess and the pea?'

‘What has that—?'

‘There was this prince,' interrupted McTavish, ‘on the lookout for a princess. Only he couldnae be sure the ones he knew were the real McCoy, if you get my meaning. But then along comes this wee lassie he likes the look of. So he decides to put her to the test. Sticks a pea under her mattress. Twenty mattresses, actually. And guess what? That pea kept her up all night. That's me, right there.'

Chopra was bewildered. ‘Are you saying you are a princess?'

‘What?' McTavish coloured. ‘No, man, I'm saying that little things like that pea bother me. That's what we have here. Lots of little peas.'

Chopra considered this. Aside from the matter of the plastic explosive there were other things bothering him too. ‘How did the thieves avoid the effects of the gas?' he asked, eventually.

‘Nose filters would be my guess. Either they brought them along or they were also inside that hidey-hole in the Kali statue.'