Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Missing Servant

"The vehicle belongs to one Mr. Surinder Jagga, three number, A, Block Two, Chandigarh Apartments, Phase Four, Home Town, Sector 18, Gurgaon," divulged Jyoti Auntie.

Mummy wrote down the details (she did not have a head for remembering addresses) and thanked her.

"You're playing bridge on Saturday, is it?" asked Jyoti Auntie.

"Certainly, if not totally," said Mummy. "Just my son, Chubby, is facing some difficulty and requires assistance."

"Nothing serious, I hope."

"Let us say it is nothing I cannot sort out," said Mummy.

Less than two hours later, Mummy and Majnu pulled up outside Block Two, Chandigarh Apartments, Phase Four, Home Town, Sector 18, Gurgaon.

Fat Throat's black BMW was parked in front of the building.

"You wait here and don't do sleeping," instructed Mummy. "Just I'm going to check around. Should be I'll revert in ten minutes. But in case of emergency, call home and inform my son's good wife. You're having the number, na?"

"Yes, madam," sighed Majnu, who was only half listening and privately lamenting the fact that he had missed his lunch.

Mummy let herself out of the car and made her way to the entrance to Block Two.

Chandigarh Apartments was not one of the high-end superluxury developments. It housed call center workers and IT grunts, most of whom hailed from small towns across the subcontinent and had flocked to Delhi to live the new Indian dream.

Like so much of Gurgaon's new housing, which had been sold for considerable sums amid a blitz of slick marketing and-false-assurances of round-the-clock water and electricity supplies, Block Two was beginning to crumble. Less than two years after its "completion," tiles had started falling off its facade; the monsoon rains had left enormous damp stains on the walls and ceilings; and the wooden window frames were warped.

The lift was out of order and Mummy had to climb the stairwell where the builders (who had cobbled together the structure with substandard bricks) had failed to remove blobs of plaster from the bare concrete stairs. Here and there, wires hung incongruously from the walls as if the very innards of the building were spilling out.

Mummy, bag in hand, soon reached the third floor landing.

Flat 3A was on the immediate left.

A pair of a men's black slip-on shoes lay in front of the door. On the wall to one side of it hung a plaque that read:

This was all the information Puri's mother required for the time being.

Now that she knew Fat Throat was a property broker, Mummy would ask around and find out more about him. With any luck, someone might be able to tell her what Jagga and his co-conspirator, Red Boots, were up to.

Mummy turned to head back downstairs. But just then, the door swung open.

Standing there in the doorway, eclipsing a good two-thirds of the frame, was Fat Throat, no longer dressed in his white linen suit but a black cotton kurta pajama. Behind him in the poorly lit interior she could make out another, smaller figure.

Surinder Jagga narrowed his eyes and stared at Mummy suspiciously, as if he recognized her, and said, in the same deep, chiling voice she remembered from the Drums of Heaven restaurant, "Yes, madam? You're lost?"

Mummy, caught off guard and intimidated by the sheer size of the man and his thuggish bearing, stuttered, "I…see…well…just I'm looking for, umm, Block Three."

"This is Block Two," answered Fat Throat abruptly.

"Oh dear, silly me. Thank you, ji. So confusing it is, na?" she said and started down the stairs.

Mummy had taken only a few steps when Fat Throat called after her.

"Wait, Auntie!"

She stopped, feeling her heart beat a little faster. Without turning around, she reached inside her handbag and wrapped her fingers around her can of Mace.

Could be, he spotted us following him home, Mummy said to herself. Curse that idiot driver of mine. It's all his fault, na.

"Which apartment you want?" Fat Throat asked.

"Um…a…apartment six number, A," she ventured.

There was a pause.

"The Chawlas, is it?" he asked.

"That's right."

"OK, auntie, it's across the way," he said. "You want I should send someone with you?"

"No, no, it's quite all right," she said, breathing a sigh of relief.

Mummy continued on her way. As she made the first turn in the stairs, she heard another voice coming from the landing above her. Looking up, she saw a second man emerge from Fat Throat's apartment.

He stooped to put on his black shoes and, in the shaft of light coming in through a window in the stairwell, Mummy got a good look at his face.

She recognized him instantly.

It was Mr. Sinha, one of Chubby's elderly neighbors. And he was carrying two thick briefcases. One in each hand.

Pandemonium broke out when Ajay Kasliwal arrived at the Jaipur District and Sessions courthouse at eleven o'clock the following morning.

But it was carefully orchestrated.

Rather than being brought in through the building's back entrance, away from the eye of the media storm, he was escorted through the main gate in a police Jeep.

Twenty-five or so constables made a show of trying to hold back the baying pack of "snappers" (which had grown significantly in number). But the determined press-wallahs quickly surrounded the vehicle. And as the accused stepped down from the back of the Jeep with the police around him, he was accosted by lenses and microphone-wielding reporters all screaming questions at once.

A couple of burly constables then took Kasliwal by his arms. With some of their colleagues acting like American football linebackers, they tunneled a passage through the crowd, frog-marching him inside the courthouse.

Inspector Shekhawat-plenty of starch in his spotless white shirt; comb grooves etched in his wavy hair-stood to one side of the steps, watching the "chaotic scenes" that he knew would play so well on TV.

After the media tidal wave crashed violently against the entrance and was successfully repelled, he answered some of the reporters' questions.

"Is it true you've discovered some bloodstains?"

"Our forensics team put Ajay Kasliwal's Tata Sumo under the scanner and came up with dramatic results. Dried blood was found on the carpet at the back. There was so much, it had soaked through."

"Anything else you can tell us?"

"We also found a number of women's hairs. These also we are analyzing. Also, we found a woman's bloody fingerprint on the bottom of the backseat. So there's no doubt in my mind her body was placed there and driven to its final destination."

"Can you confirm that Kasliwal refused to answer questions yesterday?"

"Yes, under interrogation he refused to answer any and all questions."

"Why he chose to be silent?"

"It's his right, actually. But it's unusual. An innocent man has nothing to hide."

Puri slipped past Shekhawat unnoticed and made his way inside. He found the corridor outside Court 6 crowded with defendants, plaintiffs, witnesses and a disproportionately large number of advocates in white shirts and black jackets. The court crier appeared, calling out the names of those to be summoned before the judge in the same affected, nasal voice that Indian street vendors use to advertise their wares. The presiding judge, Puri discovered, had an extremely busy day ahead of him. Kasliwal's arraignment, although the most high-profile case, was only one of twenty slated to be heard.

Some would require only a few minutes of His Honor's time: a deposition would be taken and then the case would have to be adjourned because a key piece of evidence had gone missing and the police needed time to track it down (a classic delaying tactic). Others might drag on for thirty or forty minutes while the lawyers wrangled over a precedent in law established in a landmark case dating back to Mughal times.