The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown (9 page)

Chopra remembered the fuss when the bulldozers had moved in.

As head of one of the local police stations he had been told to send in his men to help evict the slum dwellers and prevent violence. Each time he thought about that day he felt a knot of shame twisting inside him. He had known well enough that the slum dwellers had nowhere else to go, but the high court order was inviolable. In a city bursting at the seams space was always at a premium and the ones that suffered were always those lowest on the totem pole. As an officer of the law he had been forced to uphold the high court's edict.

But as he had overseen the sundering of those poor slum dwellers from the little patch of earth they had called home for years, he had become infected with their rage, a rage aimed at the faceless men of power who, with a careless flick of the pen, signed away the lives of those they had never met and did not care to meet.

And he understood too that some of that hatred was reserved for people like him, the enforcers of those invisible vultures.

Chopra had rarely felt uncertain of his calling, but on that day, as he had stood behind slum children huddled together in a daze as they watched their homes being bulldozed into rubble, he had felt himself grow hot with his own helplessness.

Now, as he ascended the stairs of the building that had risen from the ashes of the slum, he realised that in all the years he and Rangwalla had worked together he had never once set foot inside his deputy's home. He noticed how worn down the building looked, even though it was barely two years old. He could not help but compare it to the meticulously well-maintained tower in which he lived. Once again, he felt perturbed by the stark reality of economics in the city of Mumbai.

The young woman who opened the door to flat 303 was wearing a red headscarf and traditional shalwar kameez. She was young, perhaps fifteen, and was chewing gum with a ferocious pounding of her jaws. She stared at him with insolent eyes.

‘Yes?'

‘I am here to see Rangwalla.'

‘Abbu is not here.'

Abbu? Chopra stared at the girl. ‘Rangwalla is your father?'

‘Correct. I don't go around calling any old person “Abbu”. You must be a detective.' The girl's voice was heavy with sarcasm.

‘My name is Chopra.'

The girl stopped chewing. ‘Chopra? Inspector Chopra? Abbu's old boss?'

‘Yes.'

Her face changed instantly. ‘Then you're the one responsible for what has happened to him! To all of us! I hope you are happy now, Mister Bigshot police inspector! I hope your big belly is full!'

Chopra was astounded. The girl seethed with fury.

‘Because of you we are living like beggars! Because of you we will be evicted from our home! Because of you I have had to leave my school! You have ruined us!'

‘Sumaira!'

The door opened wider. A middle-aged woman, also in a headscarf, pushed the girl away from the door. ‘Go on. Get back to your studies.'

‘What am I studying for?' the girl shouted. ‘Because of him I can't go to school any more.'

‘Is this how we have brought you up? To be rude to your elders? Is this what your school is teaching you? Do you think your abbu would be proud of you now?'

The girl glared at her mother, then stormed away.

The woman turned to Chopra. ‘I am sorry. She is very emotional. It is a difficult time for her.'

‘What has happened?'

‘It does not matter. It is not your problem.'

‘Please tell me.'

She hesitated. ‘Since my husband lost his job we have found things difficult. Word reached our daughter's school. The fees for next term were already overdue. Five thousand rupees. They decided we would not be in a position to pay and so they asked us to make alternative arrangements for Sumaira. It is a very good school. Competition is fierce and they wished to allocate the place to someone else.'

Chopra was aghast. ‘But… why didn't Rangwalla say anything?'

‘My husband is a proud man. He has looked after us very well.'

‘Where is he now?'

‘He is on the roof. I will send someone to fetch him.'

‘No. I will go to him.'

The roof of the apartment tower was a flat concrete deck bordered by a low retaining wall, ornately latticed and painted the colour of sandstone. The bleached concrete reflected the harsh sun beating down from above and would have been impossible to walk across in bare feet, even for a yogi.

In the southeast corner of the terrace was a sprawling, cage-like structure, slapped together from old bits of wood and chicken-wire, which Chopra realised was a dovecote.

Rangwalla was sitting on a stool outside it, holding a pigeon across his knees. A number of other pigeons milled around him, pecking at breadcrumbs on the floor.

As Chopra approached, Rangwalla looked around. His eyes widened, and then embarrassment came into his face and he turned away.

Chopra was shocked.

In the space of a few short weeks his former sub-inspector seemed to have lost weight, his face a haunted shadow of the one Chopra had known for almost twenty years. Rangwalla's close-cropped beard was unkempt and straggled below his chin. His dark, pockmarked cheeks seemed even more haggard than usual. He wore a string vest and below that a pair of ragged shorts and worn sandals. His dark hair was uncombed beneath a yellowing skullcap.

As Chopra watched, Rangwalla pinned the pigeon to his knee. He then proceeded to tie a small canister to the bird's leg.

‘What are you doing?' said Chopra.

‘My cousin has a garment business in Pune. We both raised racing pigeons together when we were young. Now we use them to play chess. I send him a move and then he sends me one back.'

‘Who is winning?'

‘I have stopped playing. I am sending him a request for a job. Perhaps he needs someone to make deliveries. I can drive very well.'

Chopra took a deep breath. ‘Why didn't you tell me, Rangwalla?'

Rangwalla shrugged, his back still to Chopra. ‘It is not your problem.'

Chopra moved so that he could crouch down and look Rangwalla in the eye. ‘We worked together for twenty years. You could have come to me. I thought we were friends.'

Rangwalla finally met Chopra's eyes. He realised that his words had struck his former sub-inspector deeply. ‘It just didn't seem right. You were my boss…'

‘And now I am simply an ordinary citizen.' Chopra stood. ‘Your daughter has grown into a fine young woman. You have a son, too, don't you?'

‘Abbas.'

‘How old is he now?'

‘Six.'

‘Tell me, Rangwalla, what does he think of his father, sitting up here in his dovecote?'

‘I do not know. But it is not much of a father who cannot provide for his family.'

‘Stand up.'

Rangwalla looked up.

‘Stand up, Sub-Inspector. That is an order.'

Rangwalla set down the pigeon and then got to his feet.

Chopra placed a hand on his bare shoulder. ‘You are the finest police officer that I know. You cannot be any less of a father. Your children are proud of you.
I
am proud of you.'

Diamonds glistened in the corners of Rangwalla's eyes.

‘I am in need of a man, Sub-Inspector. A very particular kind of man. You see, I have more cases than I can possibly handle at the agency. I require an associate private detective. Someone who is quick-witted, tenacious and resourceful. Someone who knows the ins and outs of the city. Someone who understands how an investigation must be conducted. Preferably someone who has had police experience. Can you think of such a person, Rangwalla?'

A lump bobbed up and down in Rangwalla's throat. ‘How much would such a person expect to receive as his monthly salary?' he asked hoarsely.

‘Oh, I was thinking a sum of nine thousand rupees per month would be sufficient. Plus expenses, of course. And there would be a signing-on bonus. Five thousand rupees.'

Rangwalla blinked back tears. ‘I think I may know just the man.'

Chopra clapped his junior colleague on the shoulder. ‘In that case, kindly send him to me at once. I will be waiting downstairs in my van. And tell him to dress appropriately. Associate private detectives do not carry out their work in string vests and shorts.'

As Chopra walked back down the stairs he reflected on how quickly a man's self-respect could be taken from him. So much of what a man
was
was tied up in what he
did
. He recalled the dark days earlier in the year when he himself had been forced to make the transition from police inspector to ordinary citizen. He fully understood Rangwalla's sense of helplessness.

At the same time he knew that the police service's loss was his gain. He could not have found a better man to help him at the agency. Rangwalla had the street smarts and dubious connections that Chopra himself could never hope to attain. Rangwalla was a man bred for police work, particularly the kind that required one to get one's hands dirty. Chopra had no doubt that under different circumstances, his former lieutenant would have made an excellent criminal.

Rangwalla was truly a rare breed of pigeon and Chopra was delighted he could help out his old colleague whilst helping himself too.

Inside the van Ganesha greeted him with a swift trumpet of recrimination.

He raised his trunk and patted his jutting lower lip. This was a sign that Ganesha was hungry. Chopra realised his own stomach was rumbling. It was well past lunchtime. Ganesha, he knew, preferred to conduct investigations on a full stomach.

Once Rangwalla had joined them, they stopped at a Punjabi dhaba.

The smell of butter chicken and tandoori roti always filled Chopra with nostalgia for his historic homeland in the state of Punjab, in spite of the fact that he had never been there. His ancestors had moved down to Maharashtra a few short generations ago and he himself had been born in the village of Jarul in the state's Aurangabad district. He was now as Marathi as the next Maharashtrian – indeed, Poppy came from a noted Marathi clan.

As they ate, Chopra asked Rangwalla how he had ended up being sacked from the service.

‘ACP Rao,' Rangwalla elucidated. ‘After the trafficking ring investigation, he blamed you for the CBI picking him up. As you know he used his connections to get his neck out of the noose and transfer into the CBI himself. Because you had already left the force he couldn't do anything to you. But he found out that I had helped you. And so he came after me instead. He accused me of beating a suspect to such an extent that the man ended up in hospital.'

‘Did you?'

‘No.'

Chopra continued to stare at Rangwalla, who had the decency to blush.

‘I mean I may have beaten him a
little
, but no more than usual. Certainly not enough to put him in hospital. The man had beaten his own wife into a coma. He was drunk and resisted arrest. When I threw him in the cells he was absolutely fine. But after Rao interviewed him, the man claimed I had all but killed him. A day later a fake medical report turned up. And that was that.'

‘Well, old friend, it seems that Rao continues to be a thorn in both our sides.'

Quickly Chopra brought Rangwalla up to speed on his investigation into the theft of the Crown of Queen Elizabeth and the predicament of Shekhar Garewal.

Rangwalla confessed that even in his present depressed state the case had captured his attention. It had been all over the news. The Indian government had, that very morning, announced an enormous reward for information leading to the return of the diamond. Within a few short hours hundreds of innocent people had been implicated in the crime and dozens of Koh-i-Noor diamonds had been delivered to the authorities. So far each and every one had turned out to be a fake.

Rangwalla snorted cynically. ‘It's as if they don't know their fellow countrymen at all.'

‘This case is a tricky one,' said Chopra, as he slopped up the last of his butter chicken. ‘These thieves were exceptionally clever. They planned everything well in advance. They had access to all the right equipment. They were well financed and thoroughly professional.'

‘Are you thinking what I am thinking, sir?' said Rangwalla.

‘Rangwalla, even God does not know what goes on in that head of yours. But if you are thinking that this could only be the work of one of the big organised gangs, then yes, I am thinking what you are thinking.'

‘Who are your likeliest suspects?'

‘Take your pick,' said Chopra. ‘The Rohan gang; Das's outfit; the Chauhan mob. The Koh-i-Noor is a piece of cheese the size of the moon for such rats.' Chopra shook his head. ‘I hate to admit it, but this was a slick piece of work. And they have covered their tracks well.'

‘They always make a mistake somewhere, sir,' said Rangwalla encouragingly.

‘Yes. But if I am to save Garewal, we will have to somehow discover that mistake on our own, in double-quick time, whilst avoiding the attentions of our friend Rao. He is determined to pin this on Garewal.'