“My men will strip you naked and string you up spreadeagled,” whispered Sharma into Thakkar’s ear. “Then we will go to work on you with our interrogation tools. You will wish that you were dead by the time we are finished with you.”
“Could I get some water please?” whined Thakkar.
“Sure,” replied Sharma. “After we’re done. So, are you ready to cooperate or not?”
Chapter 87
ARORA HOPPED ABOARD the Blue Line train of the Delhi Metro at Indraprastha station and sat down. He waited for the next stop—Yamuna Bank. Apart from an elderly gentleman who sat reading a newspaper bearing the headline ‘WHEN WILL WE HAVE ANSWERS?’, he had the carriage to himself.
The doors opened at Yamuna Bank and a familiar face appeared. Ibrahim. A mere nod was exchanged between them before the train took off.
“I had told you to stop. Now Thakkar has been picked up by the cops!” said Arora, the urgency in his voice all too apparent.
Ibrahim looked at him and smiled. “It bothers you that, inshallah, I’m able to get the same stuff at a fraction of the price, right? You’re worried that your tidy little business model is getting disrupted by me. You were happy to use me as a conduit to Thakkar in the early days, only to cut me off when it suited you. You were happy to use me to dispose of the bodies …” Ibrahim grinned, revealing brown, crooked teeth. “Tell me, what did happen at Greater Kailash?”
With a curse, Arora looked left and right. “You know full well. You—that’s you, my friend—were supposed to destroy the … evidence in a safe, controlled space provided to you by myself, MGT, and Thakkar. We gave you the venue. All you had to do was concentrate on melting down the bodies.”
Ibrahim spread his hands. “Well then, I fulfilled my part of the deal because the bodies were indeed melted.”
“The operation was discovered.”
“A technicality. Answer me this: were any of the victims named? Were any of the bodies identified as patients of Dr. Pankaj Arora—the famous Dr. Pankaj Arora? TV’s Dr. Pankaj Arora? Did the discovery of those bodies result in policemen knocking on your door in the middle of the night? No, none of that happened, did it?”
Arora’s crimson face conceded the point.
“Let me tell you something else,” continued Ibrahim, warming to his theme. “That particular—what was the word you used?—venue was provided for a reason, was it not? So that if the operation was discovered then suspicion would fall on Mr. Chopra.”
“Well, that didn’t happen, did it?”
“Presumably because you failed to take into account the strength of Chopra’s relationship with the police chief, Sharma. Again, that’s not something for which I can be held responsible. Now, listen to me, my friend: I’m the man who procured valuable stuff for you. I’m the man who took those bodies to Greater Kailash for you. And yes, you got me started, but now you’re simp
ly getting in the way. Your ego is getting the better of you.”
“I strongly suggest that we should let this activity be confined to what I do in my hospital,” said Arora menacingly. “If we have more deaths we’ll all be in trouble.”
Ibrahim scoffed so loudly that the old gentleman reading the newspaper looked across at them. “Take a look at what’s going on around you. Hasn’t it occurred to you that we’re already in trouble?” he laughed.
Chapter 88
SANTOSH OPENED THE door of his hospital room and peered out. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The corridor lights had been dimmed to night mode. Santosh knew that he was on the tenth floor. Room 1016. It was the same floor on which the chief administrator’s office was located.
He should have been discharged by 5 p.m. but he had complained of severe stomach cramps. The doctor on duty had been forced to extend his stay by a day. Santosh had then requested Nisha bring him a flashlight. His cell phone—which had an inbuilt flashlight option—had been shattered during his altercation with Ibrahim.
He walked barefooted toward the nurses’ station that was next to the elevator bank. The corridor ended there and a right turn from that point would take him toward the administrative wing. He wondered how many nurses would be on duty at that time.
He reached the end of the corridor and stopped. He needed to know whether any of the night-duty nurses were looking out of the glass panel that separated the nurses’ station from the corridor. He peeped from the corner of the panel. Two of them were inside, both with their backs to him. They seemed to be helping themselves to coffee from a machine.
Santosh quickly crossed the station and took a right turn toward the administrative wing. Another corridor. This one was entirely dark. Administrative staff had left for the day and no lighting was required. Santosh squinted his eyes to adjust to the darkness and felt his way along the corridor. He tried to recall how far along the chief administrator’s office had been. As far as he could remember, it was about halfway down the corridor.
He tried one of the doors but it was locked. The second door opened with a gentle push but it opened into a storage closet. He was in luck with the third. He entered the room and shut the door behind him. Once he was sure there were no footsteps in the corridor, he felt for the light switch and turned it on.
The harsh overhead lighting hurt his eyes. He quickly turned it off. The office had a window that overlooked the hospital’s entrance porch and it was possible that the security guards could become suspicious seeing a light in a supposedly closed area of the hospital. He switched on the flashlight instead and headed to MGT’s office, which connected to the outer office where his secretary sat.
The inner office door was locked. Santosh walked back to the secretary’s desk, opened a drawer, and took out two ordinary paper clips. Putting down the flashlight on the desk, he straightened out both the clips. He converted one into a pressure pin by bending it at ninety degrees. The other clip he converted into a rake by creating a zigzag pattern using the secretary’s scissors.
Santosh bent down and inserted the rake into the key slot and pulled down in an effort to push some of the lock levers down. He then inserted the pressure pin and rotated it left then right. Two minutes later the door was open.
He picked up the flashlight and walked into the office, shutting the door behind him. The desk was untidy and several files and documents lay strewn across it. Santosh began looking through the papers on the desk. Most of it was mundane stuff. Uniform requisitions, staff attendance and overtime reports, equipment repair orders, and canteen instructions.