His diligence has yielded good results. My sources tell me that six suspects are being held on suspicion of murdering Vicky Rai. Apparently Sub-Inspector Vijay Yadav was on traffic-control duty at the farmhouse when the killing occurred. He immediately sealed off the premises and ordered the frisking of each and every one of the three-hundred-odd guests, waiters, gate-crashers and hangers-on there at the time. The place was practically bristling with weaponry. During the search, six individuals were discovered to have guns in their possession, and were detained. I am sure they must have protested. After all, simply carrying a gun is not an offence, provided you have an arms licence. But when you take a gun to a party at which the host gets shot, you automatically become a suspect.
The suspects are a motley lot, a curious mélange of the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. There is Mohan Kumar, the former Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, whose reputation for corruption and womanizing is unparalleled in the annals of the Indian Administrative Service. The second is a dim-witted American who claims to be a Hollywood producer. Spicing up the mix is the well-known actress Shabnam Saxena, with whom Vicky Rai was infatuated, if the gossip in the film magazines is to be believed. There is even a jet-black, five-footnothing tribal from some dusty village in Jharkhand who is being interrogated at arm's length for fear that he might be one of the dreaded Naxalites who infest that state. Suspect number five is an unemployed graduate named Munna with a lucrative sideline as a mobile-phone thief. And completing the line-up is Mr Jagannath Rai himself, the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Vicky Rai's dad. Could a father stoop any lower?
The six guns recovered are equally assorted. There is a British Webley & Scott, an Austrian Glock, a German Walther PPK, an Italian Beretta, a Chinese Black Star pistol and a locally made improvised revolver known as a katta. The police appear to be convinced that the murder weapon is one of these six and are awaiting the ballistics report to match bullet to gun and pinpoint the culprit.
Barkha Das interviewed me yesterday on her TV show. 'You devoted much of your career to exposing the misdeeds of Vicky Rai and castigating him in your column. What do you plan to do now that he is dead?' she asked me.
'Find his killer,' I replied.
'What for?' she wanted to know. 'Aren't you happy Vicky Rai is dead?'
'No,' I said, 'because my crusade was never against Vicky Rai. It was against the system which permits the rich and powerful to believe that they are above the law. Vicky Rai was only a visible symptom of the malaise that has infected our society. If justice is really blind, then Vicky Rai's killer deserves to be brought to account just as much as Vicky Rai did.'
And I say this again to my readers. I am going to track down Vicky Rai's murderer. A true investigative journalist cannot be swayed by his personal prejudices. He must follow the cold logic of reason till the very end, no matter where and who it leads to. He must remain an impartial professional seeking only the bare truth.
Murder may be messy, but truth is messier. Tying up loose ends will be difficult, I know. The life histories of all six suspects will need to be combed. Motives will have to be established. Evidence will need to be collated. And only then will we discover the real culprit.
Which of these six will it be? The bureaucrat or the bimbo? The foreigner or the tribal? The big fish or the small fry?
All I can tell my readers at this point in time is – watch this space.
SUSPECTS
'The accused are always the most attractive.'
Franz Kafka, The Trial
2 The Bureaucrat
MOHAN KUMAR glances at his watch, disengages himself from the arms of his mistress and rises from the bed.
'It is already three. I have to go,' he says as he hunts for his underwear amidst the tangle of clothes at the foot of the bed.
The air-conditioner behind him stirs into action, expelling a blast of tepid air into the darkened room. Rita Sethi looks crossly at the machine. 'Does this wretched thing ever work? I told you to get the White Westinghouse. These Indian brands can't last the summer.'
The shutters on the windows are down, yet the oppressive heat still manages to seep into the bedroom, making the sheets feel like blankets.
'The imported A-Cs aren't tropicalized,' Mohan Kumar replies. He has half a desire to reach for the bottle of Chivas Regal on the side table but decides against it. 'I'd better get going. There is a board meeting at four.'
Rita stretches her arms, yawns and slumps back on the pillow. 'Why do you still care about work? Have you forgotten you are no longer Chief Secretary, Mr Mohan Kumar?'
He grimaces, as though Rita has scraped a fresh wound. He has still not come to terms with his retirement.
For thirty-seven years he had been in government – manipulating politicians, managing colleagues and making deals. Along the way he had acquired houses in seven cities, a shopping mall in Noida and a Swiss bank account in Zurich. He revelled in being a man of influence. A man who could command the entire machinery of the state with just one phone call, whose friendship opened closed doors, whose anger destroyed careers and companies, whose signature released bonanzas worth millions of rupees. His steady rise through the echelons of bureaucracy had bred complacency. He thought he would go on for ever. But he had been defeated by time, by the inexorably ticking clock which had tolled sixty and ended all his powers in one stroke.
In the eyes of his colleagues, he has managed the transition from government rather well. He is now on the boards of half a dozen private companies belonging to the Rai Group of Industries which together pay him ten times his former salary. He has a company-provided villa in Lutyens' Delhi and a corporate car. But these perks cannot compensate for the loss of patronage. Of power. He feels a lesser man without its aura, a king without his kingdom. In the first couple of months after his retirement he woke up on some nights, sweating and itchy, and reached dimly for his mobile to see if he had missed a call from the Chief Minister. During the day, his eyes would involuntarily turn towards the driveway, searching for the reassuring white Ambassador with the revolving blue light. At times the loss of power has felt like a physical absence to him, akin to the sensation experienced by an amputee in the severed nerve endings of a stump where a leg once used to be. The crisis reached such a point that he was forced to ask his employer for an office. Vicky Rai obliged him with a room in the Rai Group of Industries' corporate headquarters in Bhikaji Cama Place. Now he goes there every day, and stays from nine to five, reading a few project reports but mostly playing Sudoku on his laptop and surfing porn sites. The routine permits him to pretend that he is still gainfully employed, and gives him an excuse to be away from his house, and his wife. It also enables him to slip away for these afternoon assignations with his mistress.
At least I still have Rita, he reasons, as he knots his tie and gazes at her naked body, her black hair spread out like a fan on the pillow.
She is a divorcée, with no children, and a well-paying job which requires her to go to the office only three times a week. There is a gap of twenty-seven years between them, but no difference in their tastes and temperaments. At times, he feels as if she is a mirror image of him, that they are kindred souls separated only by their sex. Still, there are things about her he doesn't like. She is too demanding, nagging him constantly for gifts of diamonds and gold. She complains about everything, from her house to the weather. And she has a ferocious temper, having famously slapped a former boss who was trying to get fresh with her. But she more than makes up for these deficiencies with her performance in bed. He likes to believe that he is an equally good lover. At sixty, he is still virile. With his height, fair skin and full head of hair which he dyes diligently every fortnight, he knows he is not unattractive to women. Still, he wonders how long Rita will stay with him, at what point his occasional gifts of perfume and pearls will prove insufficient to prevent her from falling for a younger, richer, more powerful man. Till that happens, he is content with these stolen afternoons twice a week.