Murder in Mumbai by K. D. Calamur Read Free Book Online

through the media that Liz Barton was dead, her husband did not. Gaikwad also knew he was having an affair. He’d have the chance to ask him more questions the next morning. In the meantime, he still had to talk to Gaja Kohli.
    * * *
    There were two ways in which to conduct an investigation: You could go in without any warning and surprise and possibly coerce a suspect into a confession, or you could make an appointment and treat it like a sympathetic conversation until the suspect revealed something new. Gaikwad preferred the second way. It was, in his mind, less messy, more effective. Immediately after leaving Barton’s house, Gaikwad called the environmental activist Gaja Kohli, who agreed to meet him in an hour at an Udupi restaurant in Nariman Point.
    It was dark when he got there. Gaikwad was struck to find the restaurant was near the Mohini building, a massive glass-and-concrete structure. Outside the building was Mohini’s logo: two palms enveloping the Earth. In the recent protests against the company’s operations, some signs had cleverly parodied the symbol—with the palms crushing the Earth.
    Gaikwad saw reporters, cameramen, and photographers gathered in a scrum outside. Some of the TV reporters were doing inane live shots, no doubt offering new—and undoubtedly false—tidbits about the case. By now, everyone knew that the American CEO of an Indian company had been found dead. The vultures were hovering.
    Gaikwad walked into Madras Café. There were a few diners, mostly bachelors who had no one to cook for them at home.
    â€œKohli?” he said, making his way to a table where the activist was seated with a woman.
    Kohli was wearing a long kurta with jeans. He had stubble on his face and looked tired. He peered at Gaikwad from atop his glasses. The woman was dressed in a loose-fitting
salwar kameez
. Her cell phone was on the table and she kept glancing at the time on it, as if every moment here was time ill spent. She looked at Gaikwad warily. He recognized her immediately. She was Arundhati Hingorani, the city’s premier human rights lawyer.
    â€œInspector sahib,” Kohli said. “How can I help you?”
    He spoke in Marathi, the local language.
    â€œI’d like to talk to you about the Baar-Tone case.”
    They sat in the non-air-conditioned section (the air-conditioned section cost more and the department was footing the bill). A cashier, either the owner or a close relative, sat behind the counter, greeting familiar faces. Incense sticks behind him paid obeisance to Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, and Laxmi, the goddess of wealth. Gaikwad could hear the buzz of efficiency—or was it the ceiling fan that whirred noisily above them? Waiters moved silently about; a water boy ensured no steel tumbler was unfilled.
    Like most Udupi establishments, Madras Café left a large tray filled with water in steel tumblers on a pedestal near the entrance, so thirsty passersby could slake their parched throats. Not many people paid attention to it anymore, but it was a custom meant to reverse discrimination against India’s lower castes, who for thousands of years were not allowed to drink water from the same source as their higher-caste brethren.
    In Gaikwad’s mind, this was India at its best. While every community clung desperately to its customs and language and culture, Mumbai asked no questions. No one cared who you were, what caste you belonged to or where you came from. The city was the confluence of the three things that improbably brought the country together: cricket, Bollywood, and food. It took India’s disparate, often warring identities and crafted something entirely new—something unrecognizable, uniquely Bombay.
    Gaikwad looked at the man sitting across him. He knew that had it been someone else investigating the case, Kohli would be in a cell being threatened with slaps; who was he kidding—those threats would have been