One Down, Three to go

 

I

The road never had any major traffic movement after nine in the evening and it was no different that day. Apart from the expected public transport, there was hardly any movement of vehicles in and around the Marine Pier Bus stop, a busy neighborhood of Ballard Pier during the day, but almost like a ghost city after evening. An old Fiat car stood its ground near the bus stop. There were three people seated inside the car, two in the front and one on the back seat. All three stared towards the entrance of the building that was located in front of the Bus stop. Locals knew the building as Marine Tower and it housed offices of companies which majorly acted as shipping agents. The old ancient grandfather clock that hung at the front of the building showed the time as nine fifteen. The street lights gave a serene look to the road on which the Fiat car stood. The three waited in silence, all looking towards the entrance. A moment later, a middle aged man dressed in a suit over a white shirt and black trousers walked out of the entrance. The driver signaled to the other two. The person who was seated at the back opened one of the doors and slowly got out. The other one who was seated in the front also got out. Both were dressed in a white round neck shirt and a blue denim. The two looked at the middle aged man as he stood there looking for some transport. Looking around and finding an empty road, the two men slowly crossed the road and started to walk near to the middle aged man. One of them removed a country made pistol that was tucked in his pant at the back. He checked the pistol and as they walked by the middle aged man, one of them looked into his eyes while the other one raised his arm with the pistol. The middle aged man was shocked as soon as he saw the pistol.

“Shoot,” shouted the other one.

The middle aged man stood there trembling. Suddenly two gun shots were heard by the driver of the car. He started his car and drove it near to the entrance. The other two got inside and the driver pushed the accelerator and speeded away through the road ahead. The light tower near the entrance was an audience to a dead body in a pool of blood.

As the car drove through the lanes of South Mumbai, the one seated at the back messaged a number.

“One down, three to go!”

II

The revolving fan on the ceiling didn’t miss the view of the country made pistol that was kept on the old table at the center of the room. The sound from the television filled the room with energy and life. It was not always like that. Generally, the room would be dark and closed as its occupants would be out for most part of the day. That evening was different. They had executed their first target. Though they were regular in such executions, the last one was not that easy. It had taken more than two months for them to execute their plan.

Everything had begun some two months ago when they had agreed to execute the contract. The first target had been informed to them with very minimal information about him. Their first task in executing the first target was something they had never tried before. Collecting information about the target was something they had always avoided. Until then, they had executed contracts where in the target was local and very easily accessible but their latest one was someone not very social in his whereabouts. So their first task was the most difficult part.

They had searched him on social media. After about validating more than five hundred names with the same name, they had finally zeroed in on the one they were searching. “Ashlesh Bhatia” was his name. They were informed that he was a secret informant of a regulatory authority and supplied information to them regarding non complaint companies. They had never been fussy about the purpose of the execution but never the less, they asked to show that they validated contracts and only if found non risky, they would accept the same. They found Ashlesh Bhatia as a non-risky target and the conclusion of the same was formed only after getting the entire background of the person.

It had taken more than a month for them to get their conclusion. They had started by following him on various social media platforms. Through the various social media handles they had got a good hold about his activities and routine. To their surprise and also to their benefit, they found that there were no living relatives of Ashlesh. That made a lot of things easy for them. When they had taken up the contract, they were supplied with the home address of Ashlesh. Everything started from there.

For five consecutive days, all three had kept a good eye in and around his home. One would keep an eye from the tea stall near the entrance of the building, other one would keep an eye from the restaurant where he frequented and the third one had become a sales representative and would enter the building in which he lived in disguise. In those five days, Ashlesh had the same routine. Every morning he would come down to the tea stall and have tea and then proceed to the restaurant for having breakfast. After breakfast, he would walk back to his home and then by mid-morning he would be out of his building. Some days he would go to some companies and then proceed to some regulatory offices while on some days he would stand outside offices and befriend the watchman and the administration staff who would get him copies of some files and documents. This would be his routine.

For the last few days before he was shot, he was frequenting the Marine Tower building. For continuously four days, the three had observed that Ashlesh would get into the tower at about six in the evening and come out only by night nine. They had concluded that perhaps that point would be best place to execute him as there would be no evidence in and around the locality.

So, it took a good quantum of planning and some tailing before which they had zeroed in on the place of action.

Back in the room, they watched the television. There was no news about any murder around the Marine Pier locality. They thought perhaps he was not that important that a news channel would cover the event. By the time dinner was finished, all three came together near the center table and looked at each other.  There was no time left for them to relax. One of them removed a photo from the bag that was kept near the table. The photo was placed on the table. All three looked at it. That was their second target, Vijay Kant Singh.

  

III

The sound of a click disturbed his thoughts and brought him back into reality. Detective Victor Fernandes was in deep thought when the photographer from the local newspaper disturbed him with his clicks. He had done a thorough review of the crime. It was not every day that Victor was called in, but when he was, he was convinced that the investigation was to be kept secret. It didn’t take him to be a genius to guess the fact that perhaps no one was interested in the murder of an unknown. Ashlesh, surely had been an unknown to the media and perhaps to the police but he was someone very important to the regulatory authorities as they had been informed about non compliances of big corporates only through him. It was the very reason that he had been there. He was representing the regulatory authorities’ side in the investigation with a parallel and a secret investigation.

It seemed like a routine shoot out case to the eye but the choice of the location of the action couldn’t escape his thoughts. On that side of the town, when there were hardly any human lives around what would anyone be doing at that time, though Victor. He could guess that Ashlesh was perhaps on his investigative spree but what were his murderers doing at that point of time. Of course, waiting for him and that meant that they already knew that he would be there. Only two possibilities could be seen by him. One was that the killers were provided by the information of his whereabouts or the killers were following him. Out of the two, he considered that perhaps the killers were tailing him and that was how they would have zeroed in on the point of action.

There were three close circuit cameras in the area. One at the traffic junction ahead, one near the turn of the road and the last one at the start of the Marine Pier locality. The cameras would have caught them if they had traveled through those lanes. He ensured that he would get the footage from the central surveillance office of the city. The bullet shot on Ashlesh’s head was blunt, hard and deep. It was a close shot, he was told by one of the forensics. So they must have walked near to him and shot at him, he guessed. His thoughts again wondered on the mannerism of the planning for the murder. If they had followed him then surely they would have started from some point or a known point which couldn’t have been other than his home. His stint as an investigator had often thrown up a simple fact that more often than not, in majority of the cases of tailing, the start point was always the home of the subject who was tailed.

Victor never wrote anything and nor he typed, he processed everything in his brain and stored everything in his brain. He marked three things to follow up, the locality of  the residence of the victim, the close circuit cameras in the Marine Pier locality and the ballistic report. He was very confident that these three sources would take him close towards solving the case. By the time the corpse was taken for post mortem, it was eight in the morning. He thought of taking a small nap and then proceeding to the central surveillance office for the close circuit camera footages. Unlike a trade mark of a detective, Victor Fernandes wore a simple body fitting shirt and a grey trouser and carried a backpack. To the eyes, he would be normal officegoer but only few people at important places knew that he was Detective Victor Fernandes.

IV

Curiosity was one of the more prominent features of Victor’s personality since his childhood. When he had been seven years old, he was curious about everything he observed. Unlike the other children of his age, he questioned everything and everyone. His relatives would often say that he was the perfect symbol for a management study called as “Always, First ask why.” His major interest in investigation came about at the age of eleven when he had accidentally solved a footwear robbery case in his residential housing colony. From that day onwards, whenever there would be anything that anyone wanted to know they would go to Victor and he would without any thought oblige to their demand.  By the time he turned eighteen he had solved more than fifty cases of robbery and this had made his name quite famous in the locality. It was this fame which actually got him his first major assignment from a corporate organization. They wanted him to tail an employee whom they suspected of leaking information to a rival company. He had solved the case in a fortnight. The company recommended his name to a known regulatory department. The department liked what they saw of Victor and hired him on freelance basis. By the time he was twenty-five, he had solved more than ten cases for the regulatory authority out of which four were missing person cases and two were of murder. The latest case of Ashlesh which Victor was working on was indeed the more serious ones of his life until then. At the age of twenty six, Victor Fernandes loved what he was doing, he had always cherished to do this. The remuneration offered was extremely lucrative and was much better than his friends who had been working in multinational corporates. He was equipped with perks and benefits.  By then, he had learned to live a life like an ordinary citizen and carry out some extraordinary work.

He made a cup of coffee for himself and sat down on the leather sofa and switched on the television. He messaged about his previous day to his family who currently resided in the city of Panjim at Goa. As he sipped his coffee, he surfed all the news channels. There was no news about Ashlesh’s shoot out. Once he finished his coffee and had some pasta, he fell on the same sofa and took a nap. Small naps were his medicines for a sharp mind since his childhood and the habit continued. 

Within the next one hour after the nap, he was back on the road in his crisp white shirt and black trouser and his backpack. His first visit was at the central surveillance office of the city that collected all the close circuit camera footages of the city and reviewed for any suspicious observation. He had already called the office before his arrival and requested to keep the required footage ready. By the time he reached the office, the footage was ready and he observed it on the big screen of the conference room of the office. The camera had indeed captured the old Fiat car which drove through the lanes at the locality. The people inside the car were not clearly visible in any of the cameras. The only thing which it captured correctly that Victor could see clearly once they zoomed in more was the Number plate on the vehicle. Victor noted it down and mailed it immediately to the local Traffic control office and requested for the information on the same. By the time he was out of the office, his next stop was the forensics office where the ballistic report was kept. On reviewing the Ballistic report, it came to light that a country made pistol was used to carry out the killing. He took a copy of the report on his mobile and exited. It was at that time when he received the reply to his mail that he had sent to the traffic control office. The car belonged to some Ravi Kapoor. The mail had provided the contact details of Ravi Kapoor. He found it unusual that someone actually used an Old Fiat car in this age of automatic vehicles. He had to decide between contacting Ravi Kapoor and visiting the residential locality of Ashlesh. He chose the latter one for the day.

By the time he reached the colony where Ashlesh lived, it was sometime around five in the evening. It was a fifteen floor building in the west of Andheri. It wasn’t one of those colonies which could be clubbed as a gated community and so it wouldn’t have been difficult for the killers to get into the colony in the pretext of disguise of some other work. While he was roaming around the building, he had observed that there were two close circuit cameras on the road that crossed the building. He called up the central office surveillance and indicated the location and requested to look into the images for the last one month. He realized that it would take some time for footages to come out. He took a glass of tea from the teal stall opposite to the entrance of the building. While casually talking to the tea vendor he showed a mobile image of Ashlesh and inquired about him to which the tea vendor informed him that Ashlesh had been a regular at his stall. The tea vendor informed that after having tea he would go to the nearby restaurant for the morning breakfast. Victor gave him an extra tip and walked to the restaurant where he inquired about Ashlesh. He requested to have a look at the close circuit camera’s footages of the restaurant to which the owner did not agree at the onset but later on obliged when Victor informed about Ashlesh’s death.

On reviewing the footages sitting in small room on the second floor of the restaurant, Victor observed that there was nothing unusual in them. It was normal and routine. He requested a copy of footages for which he paid some money. By the time he was out of the restaurant, he received a call from the central surveillance office. They informed him that the footages were ready. He informed them that he would drop in by night nine at their office.

By nine, as promised, he was at the office. He reviewed the footages. There was nothing unusual in the footages. He played both the footages together, one that he got from the restaurant and the one that belonged to the road outside Ashlesh’s building. After about two hours of scrutinizing each details of the footage, he had a smile on his face. In the both the footages, on each of the five days, one man could be seen in the footages of the road outside the building and another man could be seen in the footages of the restaurant. It intrigued Victor that at the road side footage, one man was seen every day for a period of five days and on the same five days another man was seen in the footage of the restaurant. He looked closely and ensured that in both the footages the suspects were a different one. He thought that it could even be coincidence that they were there on each of the five days. He made an arrangement by which the photograph of those two individuals were enlarged on the big screen and then the same were printed. Victor wanted the images to be distributed to the local informers. The photos would be distributed by hard form and also in soft form. It was a chance he was taking but his instinct hinted something against those two individuals. His only point against those two was the fact that how come both of them would have been there each and every day of that five-day period and that too in the respective footages. It hinted towards a collaborative effort towards tailing someone.

In the meantime, he called upon Ashlesh’s secret file which was maintained in the database of the informers by Regulatory authorities. The database had bifurcated informers based upon category they had been working for. As per the database, Ashlesh had been working for Economic offence group. He had been responsible for collecting information on economic offenses by companies and wealthy individuals. By the time the soft copy of the file was ready it was already mid night. Victor packed up the files in his personal laptop and left for home. It was that part of time when the city would come into its own. Victor loved Mumbai nights and especially walking home through the night.

 

V

On the other side of the town, a young man who must have been twenty-three years of age, stood outside an eating joint near Ghatkopar station which was a suburb located in central Mumbai. The young man was standing outside the eating joint for the past thirty minutes waiting for someone from the eating joint to come out. It wasn’t until the next forty minutes when the man finally did come out. The young man recognized the man coming out. He clicked his image on the mobile phone and messaged it to number that existed in the dialed call list. The man who had come out of the joint had a bike which he started and drove down the station lane. The young man held upon an auto rickshaw and ordered him to follow the bike. After about thirty minutes, the bike reached an old three storey building. The auto rickshaw halted some meters away from the gate of the building. The young man got down and noted the address. By that time the bike had already crossed inside. He sat back in the rickshaw and asked to take him back to Ghatkopar station.

 

Back in his room, Victor went through the data files about Ashlesh that were provided to him. He went through the entire career graph of Ashlesh. Ashlesh Bhatia had been a routine office going man who had an excellent skill of getting along with people. He had a very rare quality of persuading people on the things he wanted them to do and think. It was this quality of his that had struck a chord with his then boss who had recommended him to one of his friends who worked with the Economic offence department.  Over the period of eight-year career as an informer, Ashlesh had uncovered quite a bit of dust over number of offences that were committed by various corporates and individuals. Somewhere in his mind, Victor had an intuition that the murder of Ashlesh must have a connection with the cases that he was currently handling. While reviewing the current on-going cases under Ashlesh’s name, Victor was particularly interested in one company known as Celebrity Media handlers Pvt Ltd. That was the last case on which Ashlesh had been working on. The company was a celebrity social media handling company which did an online management of the social profiles of number of celebrities from various fields. In intrigued Victor to no ends as to what could such a company do to get in the list of Ashlesh’s cases? He clicked on the latest information that were uploaded by Ashlesh on the case. He observed that the upload was done some two days before his death. The substance of the case was simple. The company was acting as an agent for the celebrities in siphoning off unaccounted money to a foreign country. Ashlesh had explained the entire process through which the money was siphoned off in the name of the loan given to a company that were registered and opened in foreign countries. Victor was not a finance person, but Ashlesh had made the concept very clear. The celebrities paid huge sums of money to the company as fees which the company would account as loan and income. Income was accounted only for thirty percent and the rest as loan. That seventy percent was then given as a loan to foreign company by this Indian company. The foreign company never paid back the loan and thus it stayed in the banks of the foreign country. For Victor, it was interesting case. He looked up into the case file and noted down the names of the people handling the case. There were four people. One was Ashlesh. One among the other three was a person named as Vijay Kant Singh who was designated as an enquiry officer. Somewhere up in his mind something clicked and he looked at the names. There were four people and one was gone. He thought for a scenario what if one down and three to go. There was no reason why Vijay Kant Singh wouldn’t be the next target. He picked up his mobile phone and dialed a number.

VI

The three men had gathered around the center table in the room. There were papers all around. The photo image of Vijay Kant Singh was placed on the table. One of the young man from them had gathered all the information on him and his daily routine.  Unlike the last task, this was a bit difficult as Vijay Kant was not as available as Ashlesh was. Vijay Kant generally traveled in his bike and would for most of the day sit inside his office. He would step out for evening tea and mid night drink. The only time Vijay Kant was vulnerable was at the point when he stopped outside his housing colony and pushed his bike inside due to steep rise which he avoided. He walked over the slope by taking his bike along. That was the only time when they could attack him. It was risky and they didn’t like risky operations. They didn’t want to come to the notice of people. The problem was that time as running out for them and there were two more targets to be executed. After a lot of thought, it was decided that they would go ahead with the hit at the decided point of action. The colony gate of his building when he would be pushing his bike.

 Victor was hoping for some clues from Ravi Kapoor, the person in whose name the old Fiat car had been registered, but to his dismay Ravi Kapoor had informed him that he had sold the Fiat car to an old garage. Victor had taken down the number of the garage and when contacted he inquired for some old car he wanted to sell. He was very careful in revealing his true identity. The old garage was located in the western part of the town known as Sion. It was located in the center of the central Mumbai. By the time Victor visited the garage it was mid-afternoon. He had carried the number of the old Fiat which was used during the Ashlesh murder.  By the time he had started to interact with the owner of the garage it was evident that he was not involved with anything in the case. While walking along with the owner, he tried to view the number plates of majority of the cars. It was not before a complete one hour of questioning that he finally had come across the car that he had been searching for. He noted down the number and it matched. His first catch was on. The fiat car was picked up from this garage and they again dumped it here, he thought. He informed the owner that he would call him once he discussed his proposal with his family and walked out. While he walked out of the garage he was very sure that the killers would surely again come here to take the Fiat to execute their next task.

VII

Associating was a skill that Victor had built in him since his childhood. A much underrated skill in management, associating had indeed made this case look much simpler and solvable. The very ability to join all the dots and connecting it to an act or event had turned out an important skill for Victor in many of his earlier cases. But this one was a serious one and he needed to get to the killers before they got to the next victim. His intuition was claiming that the next target would be Vijay Kant Singh. He informed about his plan to the local police officer named, Mr Gaikwad. Mr Gaikwad was shown all the possible evidences by Victor. There was no direct evidence but only circumstantial evidence. It could also have been a case of the wrong person at the wrong place, he thought. But Victor left no stone unturned to explain him. He drew his entire plan on a big white page and showed it to Gaikwad. It was a challenging decision to be made by him. If they would go wrong then heads would turn. But he liked the plan. They would not take action until there was any evidence of any intent to hurt. Finally after lot of thought, Mr. Gaikwad agreed.

On the other side of the town, the three men looked at each other and got ready for the kill. They had decided that it was that night when they had to execute the plan. All three got out of the room and walked to the nearby stand and took a rickshaw. By around eight thirty they had reached the garage. After negotiating with the owner, they borrowed the old Fiat car for the night and drove out of the garage, unaware that someone was waiting for them on the other side of the road. Victor was bang on when he had guessed that they would surely come back for the Fiat. On his bike, he started to follow the old Fiat car by keeping a safe distance in between him and the car. Over the next one hour, passing through the central suburb of Kurla and Vidyavihar, they had finally reached Ghatkopar station. One of the men got down while the car proceeded ahead. The bike followed the car. A Police team was already placed outside the eating joint where Vijay Kant was having dinner. They were in plain clothes and the young man who had got down from the Fiat car didn’t have any idea about the same. Victor followed the car until it reached a secluded place outside a three storey building. The car halted under a tree that was straight outside the entrance. The two people seated inside had clear view of the entrance. They were unaware that a bike was parked some meters away and someone was hiding in darkness.

At Ghatkopar station, Vijay Kant walked out of the joint and sat on his bike. He looked around. The young man called up his partner who was waiting in the car.

“He is starting from here. Will reach there in thirty minutes,” informed the young man.

“We are ready here.”

The call was cut as Vijay Kant drove away and the young man got into the rickshaw and followed Vijay Kant. What the young man didn’t know was the fact that he was been followed by Police in plain clothes who were disguised as common citizens on bike. Three of them were following the rickshaw that was following Vijay Kant. It took not more than thirty minutes to reach the spot of action. Vijay Kant reached the gate of his building. He got down from his bike and at the same the two men got down from the car. One of them carried a country made pistol in his hand. The young man by now had reached the spot on the rickshaw. Victor followed the two men who were proceeding towards Vijay Kant. The young man who had got down from the rickshaw saw a third figure following his two partners. As he was about to shout, he was held by two person who held his mouth by their hands and took him into the corner.

Four more policemen who were waiting for the suspects emerged from the other side of gate. Vijay Kant looked up.

The two men who had come to kill stood grounded thinking. One them raised his arm and tried to shoot but at that same moment Victor jumped on him and got hold of him. One of the other policemen got hold of the other man who was about to pick up the pistol. Vijay Kant was only a spectator to all this.

“What the hell is going on?” yelled Vijay Kant in utter shock.

It was around one in the night when all the three suspects were arrested and taken into custody. All three were arrested red handed with the help of a brilliant plan that was planned by Victor. He very well knew that only circumstantial evidence wouldn’t be enough to put them behind bars, they had to be caught red handed while they were about to commit the crime. It was the perfect old school plan. All the three had confessed to their crime and stated that they were provided with a contract to kill the four people.

Victor could guess those people who had given the contract to these people, but his job had been done, and the police would take it from there. By the time the formalities were completed, it was early morning five.

It was surely some night, thought Victor. It was one of the most daring cases Victor had taken up. As he drove home, he thought of taking some days off and go for a vacation.

By the time he reached home, and was about to sleep. He received a message from his immediate senior.

“Detective Victor Fernandes. Well done. Time to go to the next level!”

Victor could very well guess what it meant. After all, he was a master in associating by then.

 

This story is a complete work of fiction.

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