Chief Minister’s Mistress: A Murder. A Cover-Up. A Horrifying Truth

By Joygopal Podder

She is beautiful, she is smart, she is kind, She is a bloody rare find. But she is dead now . . . And those doe-like wonderful dark brown eyes no more offer warmth or love. The ruby red of those lips is now a cold blue. And the curve of that body is now frozen in rigor mortis. What happened? Who killed her— the chief minister' s secret mistress?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9788175993532

Book preview

I hate to see you making such a fool of yourself, said Dinesh over the phone. I hear you may be out of job soon.

Another warning. They are going to put pressure on Digvijay Sandhu to get rid of me. Don’t worry about me, said Rajat with studied nonchalance. His heart was beating wildly beneath his shirt.

I’m not losing sleep. But there’s no sense in it. The Boss feels bad about how you’re running around trying to blow up an open-and-shut case into something more than it really is. He knows you feel terrible about her death, but your assumptions are all wrong.

Did he ask you to call me?

Rajat heard a loud snort from the other end.

"The thing is, if you’d stop making waves, if you’d just use your head, there wouldn’t be any problem. Think straight, Rajat, you could come back to work for us. Us! Just like the old days."

Just like the old days. Even the words haunted him. The old days are dead and buried, Dinesh.

"You are going to be dead and buried, Rajat, if the police pin the murder charge on you."

I don’t think so. I think it’s some other people who ought to be worrying.

You’re creating trouble, muttered Dinesh. And you’re asking for trouble. I’m letting you know . . . for old times’ sake.

Have you said all you had to? If you have, then just tell your friend I’m still digging.

There was a pregnant pause. Then Dinesh said: You’ve got it all wrong, Rajat. The Boss isn’t worried about this thing. He hardly knows what’s going on in this matter. You’re the one who keeps blowing this thing up.

A nerve ticked in Rajat’s jaw; he was getting fed up. "Dinesh, I’m sick of hearing about ‘the Boss’. He may be your boss. He may be your meal ticket. Heck! He may even be the chief minister, which he is, but the laws apply to him too, just like the rest of us."

he’s dead, all right, sir, said the thin, young policeman in the neatly pressed uniform, his eyes lit up in scary excitement. I saw that right away, as soon as I came in through the door."

Detective Inspector Badrish Sharma said nothing. He didn’t even nod. Kneeling beside the dead woman, he was trying to see everything at once: the bruises on her face, the position of her body, her jewellery, her clothing, the hair or flesh that might be under her fingernails . . . the thousand and one things he was trained to look for.

Do you think they raped her, sir? asked the young policeman. She is a very good-looking girl.

Badrish Sharma turned and looked at the young policeman. He was short—they’d lowered the height requirement again; soon they’d be recruiting midgets—and earnest looking, and when he spoke he pronounced each word carefully. His nameplate said Suresh Ram.

I doubt it, Suresh, replied Badrish. "She’s fully dressed, so I doubt it. Why don’t you go out the back door and talk to the delivery boy? He’s there. Try to calm him down. And don’t touch anything."

Yes, sir, Inspector saab, said the young policeman, saluting smartly. Putting his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, he eased himself out through the French windows into the small but well-maintained back garden, where the delivery boy from the local supermarket was sitting in a deck chair, crying.

Detective Inspector Badrish Sharma turned back to the body. For a few more minutes, before the medical examiner and the fingerprint analyst and the other detectives arrived, this case was his alone. He liked that feeling. He felt no particular emotion about the dead woman; he had seen far too many. Badrish accepted death. To him, the dead woman was only a challenge; a challenge as well as an opportunity. He stood up and started to look around the house.

At first glance it had seemed a more or less typical upmarket house belonging to a well-heeled, cultured family. Built three floors, with a tiny powder room-cum-bathroom by the front door, a tiny garden out back, it had large rooms which were crowded with books and paintings and expensive furnishings. Yet the detective in him had sensed something strange, something amiss about this place. And then he’d realized what—the house lacked any lived-in quality. The furniture was sleek and impersonal; the paintings were modern and, to him at least, enigmatic. The portable bar in the corner had a brand new look to it; it looked like a bar in a magazine photograph. The bar stocked, more predictably, imported scotch and gin and rum and, less predictably, a tall unopened bottle of locally made plum brandy.

Badrish studied the books that lined a couple of shelves on one wall of the living room. Most were popular novels and books about politics. He wasn’t much interested in politics, but he very much wanted to become detective superintendent and he was already thinking of how this case was going to positively influence the politics related to his eventual promotion. It was going to be a big case—high-society murders in upmarket houses usually became so—and he could visualize the newspaper headlines already. And those headlines would help nullify the backbites of his competing and jealous colleagues and also, hopefully, influence his superiors to award him the promotion he felt he was due for. When he had joined the police force, he had scorned politicians, but in time he had come to understand that politics was not just folding your hands into a namaste or shaking hands of potential voters or standing for elections and running for government office; politics was everything. Even solving a murder could be politics.

Another of the bookshelves contained several volumes of film actors’ biographies by authors whose names meant nothing to Badrish, though he recognized some of the celebrities whose lives had been documented. There were also bound copies of screenplays of some movies he had heard of but not watched; these were mostly movies which had won some award or the other.

The inspector wondered about the screenplays. Perhaps the dead woman had been an actress. She was pretty enough to be one. He glanced at the body again, wedged between the sofa and the coffee table, wondered where the medical examiner was, and then climbed the steep stairway to the first floor.

The front bedroom was the one she had slept in. The big bed was neatly made, but the dressing table was cluttered with cosmetics, and the bedside table had a small travel clock, set for seven, a yellow push-button landline telephone instrument, a blank notebook, and a paperback copy of The Diary of Anne Frank. Badrish thumbed through the book looking for underlined passages, but there weren’t any. Next he looked through the cupboard, hoping to find identification or letters or a diary or her mobile phone crammed with contacts, but he found only bright-coloured tops and blouses, neat piles of lingerie, and a box of elegant but inexpensive jewellery. Then, on the floor of the cupboard, the inspector found what he’d been looking for; a ladies’ handbag stuffed with the usual tangle of tissues, cosmetics, ballpoint pens, and the like. But it contained no wallet or identification or mobile phone.

Badrish cursed and looked at the clothes hanging from the hangers in the cupboard. There were dresses and jeans and salwar kurtas. They looked about the right size for the woman downstairs and were branded, but carried no shop labels or drycleaner tags. Feeling a bit dispirited, he left the bedroom and walked down the narrow hallway to the room at the rear of the first floor, which was some sort of a workroom. A functional desk with a computer atop it—but no printer— faced the windows that overlooked the small back garden. He glanced out of the window and could see the policeman and the delivery boy from the local supermarket sitting in the midmorning sunlight. He looked back at the computer with interest. Would it hold a clue to the woman’s identity? He was tempted to switch it on but resisted. His training and experience did not allow him to mess around where experts could do a better job looking for clues—he’d leave it to the police IT guys to unlock the secrets, if any, stored in the computer. Perhaps they would locate a route to her Facebook and e-mail accounts and make everything—her identity, her friends, her enemies, threats made to her—available for easy inspection, like gifts handed on a platter . . .

Besides the computer, the desk held a white coffee mug filled with freshly sharpened pencils, a sheaf of white bond paper, and a dictionary. But there weren’t any notes, any filled pages, any indication that actual writing had emerged from this writing room. Perhaps she typed on the computer? Badrish Sharma thought of the film scripts downstairs and wondered if the dead woman might have been a screenwriter instead of an actress.

The second floor was no help at all. The two bathrooms were spotless, the two bedrooms were neat, and there were no signs that the rooms had ever been used.

The inspector heard a car door slam out front. He went downstairs and greeted Jagdish Vardhan, the medical examiner—a fat, dour, owl-eyed old man who called homicide cases his ‘house calls’.

Jagdish Vardhan grunted a hello and lowered himself onto the floor beside the dead woman. Who was she? he asked.

We don’t know yet.

Strange, said Vardhan and began moving his stubby fingers over the woman’s head.

I’ll be out back, said Badrish. He and Vardhan had disliked each other for ten years, ever since a celebrated murder trial had ended in an acquittal because—as Badrish Sharma saw it—the medical examiner had messed up in the crucial part of his testimony.

The inspector walked out to the back garden where the delivery boy was waiting with the rookie policeman. The boy was about eighteen, tall and smart-looking. Clean-cut. He had told them his name was Praveen Bhatia and that his father owned the supermarket whose goods he delivered around the neighbourhood against home-delivery orders.

Is she dead? he asked when Badrish Sharma sat down in a chair opposite them.

Badrish nodded and the boy began to cry again. The inspector sat quietly, enjoying the sun on his face, until the boy stopped. Praveen, you can help us if you’ll tell us everything you know about her.

The boy blinked his eyes and nodded. I’ll try, sir. I don’t know very much.

Do you know her name?

No, sir.

Don’t you usually know the names of your customers?

Yes, sir. But the thing is nobody lives in this house most of the time. But sometimes people stay here, and when I see a light or a car, I come round and ring the bell and hand over a visiting card and they sometimes order from our supermarket. Sometimes they visit our store, but mostly they place orders over the phone and I deliver, and when they leave they’re the kind of people who give me a big tip.

What kind of people are they?

I’m not sure, sir. One man might have been in films; he looked like an actor I may have seen in some movies. Once or twice, when I’ve been delivering nearby, I saw parties going on here. And I saw cars with sirens on top and small flags in front—VIP cars, I think. Maybe ministers. But most of the time nobody’s here at all. I think a maidservant comes once or twice a week—I think I saw a cleaning woman leaving one or two afternoons.

Badrish Sharma wondered about the cars with the sirens and flags. He wondered if the dead woman might have been a call girl. She must have been a damned expensive one, to afford the rent on this place.

Do you remember what day she came? The maid, I mean?

No, sir.

What about this woman, the one who’s been staying here?

I’d never seen her until about a week ago. I was out on a couple of deliveries in the evening and I saw a light on here and so I knocked—to introduce our store and hand a free-home-delivery card with our telephone number—and she came to the door.

Describe her.

Short, not as tall as I am. Really pretty. Very nice, long hair and big eyes. Sort of . . . sort of gentle and graceful in the way she talked and did things. I asked her whether she’d like to order provisions from our supermarket, and she said she did. She invited me in and gave me a glass of water. She said that she had an uncle who owned a supermarket and that a long time ago, when she was in school, she used to spend her holidays in his house and help out in the big store with her cousins.

Did she say where? What city?

No, sir, I don’t think so. Anyway, yesterday afternoon I delivered a few groceries but she didn’t have any change for a thousand rupee note and neither did I. So I told her she could pay with her next bill but she told me there was not going to be a next bill because she was going away the next morning— today, it would have been—so she asked me to come back this morning. She said she was going out later and would get change from somewhere or draw out more money from an ATM or perhaps do both.

So you came back this morning?

Yes, sir, before our supermarket opened. She said it was okay, she’d be up early. I knocked and she didn’t answer, so I thought maybe she was around at the back and I walked down the driveway to the back garden. First I saw the big glass sliding doors open. I called and nobody answered. It didn’t make sense that she’d go away and leave the doors open, not around here. So I walked over to the doors. That’s when I saw somebody on the floor. I yelled and ran back to the front gate and ran down the road until I saw this policeman on the next road, and we came back together.

You didn’t go in?

No, sir.

Did you touch the glass doors?

I don’t think so, but I may have.

Badrish Sharma heard car doors slamming in front of the house and stood up. I’ll want to talk to you some more, Praveen.

I’m already late for work.

You’d better forget about work for today. Call and tell your father what happened, but not too many details, okay?

I already have. He told me to tell the police everything I could remember and not hold anything back.

Very good advice. Tell him I want you to go home and unwind and not talk to anybody. This policeman will escort you home. Either I or some other detective will meet you again at your house this afternoon. Okay?

If you say so, sir.

Good boy.

Badrish watched the tall teenager leave. He seemed like a fine kid. But he was big enough to have nurtured fantasies about a friendly, beautiful woman customer, big enough to have made a clumsy pass at her, then to have scuffled with her and knocked her down and fled—and to have had the idea of covering himself by ‘finding’ her the next morning. So he would be checked out. Any record? Window peeping? Any complaints of fresh talk or flirting attempts with women customers while delivering groceries? The boy was a suspect. Everyone was a suspect.

In the meanwhile Jagdish Vardhan had finished his examination, and called him inside. For now, he told Badrish, I’d say somebody right-handed hit her with his fist or with a very ferocious slap and she fell over backwards and struck her head on the edge of that coffee table. When? Twelve hours ago, give or take an hour. Say between 10 o’clock and midnight. Rape? Doubtful. Anything under her nails? Doesn’t appear to be, but we’ll check it in the lab. Call me tomorrow and we’ll have the full report.

Thanks, said Badrish, and the old doctor lumbered off outside, towards the car he’d left parked on the road in front of the house. As he drove off, the fingerprint analyst and the police photographer arrived. Badrish told them what he wanted done.

When the fingerprint analyst was finished with the telephone instrument, Badrish used it to call a young detective at police headquarters who was checking out some things for him. The inspector could have used his mobile, but he wanted to test out something. He listened for the echo of his voice as he spoke; no, the telephone line did not appear to be bugged and no recording device seemed attached to it. The delivery boy had claimed to have seen VIP cars parked outside the house, so bugged telephone lines was a distinct possibility. Badrish planned to check out the lines more thoroughly. He would also check for hidden CCTV cameras, although so far he had not seen any signs of a CCTV networking in the house. But that could wait. For now he went outside and lit a cigarette.

The neighbourhood was still quiet, unruffled, unaware. Soon, it would change, when the ambulance would arrive, and the reporters and the TV crews. Neighbours would gather across the street to gawk and gossip and exchange rumours. And while they did, Badrish