It was a typical Sunday morning, in the quiet little colony of MG Nagar in suburban Mumbai, where Inspector Maya lived.
After a gruelling week, Maya was dreaming of a takeaway breakfast, followed by her favourite coffee-and-a-good-book.
She called Anna’s, the popular restaurant located on the main road in front of the complex.
When no one answered, she reluctantly changed out of her night-dress and walked up to the place.
She reached Anna’s, only to see a huge crowd around it. To her surprise, a couple of policemen emerged from the eatery. Her phone buzzed.
Maya had a gut feeling about what was coming.
As she answered it, Maya saw her book and cup of coffee holding hands and flying away together to some distant land, leaving her to grapple with a new case.
She was right. It was her superior on the line. “The Head CHEF was found dead inside the restaurant this morning.”
“Yes, Sir, I’ll look into it,” Maya replied wearily.
Anna’s was an average sized eatery, serving South Indian snacks and lunches. Its owner was Mahesh Shetty, fondly known as Anna. He was a tall, handsome, middle aged man with a bushy moustache and a head full of salt-and-pepper hair. His charming smile and soft-spoken demeanour were well known.
Maya was shocked at the sight that greeted her. The Head Chef was lying just inside the doorway, his body covered in wounds from what was obviously an animal attack. The severity of the wounds stunned Maya.
She moved around. She couldn’t find any animal.
The place was a mess. It was obvious that the unknown animal had chased the chef through the MAZE of tables and chairs and many of them were lying around haphazardly. Blood stains were everywhere.
The trail of blood on the floor and the position of the body indicated that the chef was trying to reach the door and open it, obviously to escape the attacker, but wasn’t successful.
Two policemen were collecting blood samples and looking for fingerprints. Maya asked them, “Call Anna!”
Anna came before Maya
“Namaste Madam. See what has happened.”
Maya observed Anna holding back tears.
“Sada was with me for fifteen years. So loyal, so perfect.. What would I do without him?”
“Can you explain what happened today?”
“I came as usual, at 4:45 am. I was shocked to find the door ajar. I entered and saw Sada on the ground. I checked, he was gone. Then I called the police.”
So the animal must have escaped through the open door, thought Maya. But what animal in the city could be so ferocious? And how did it enter a closed restaurant?
“Anna, how many people work here?”
“Three cooks work under Anna. There is a boy who washes the dishes and four waiters.”
“Did you touch anything here?”
“No. I didn’t enter any further.”
“Show me the CCTV footage.”
“Madam, CCTV is out of order since last week.”
“Hmmmm..” Anna squirmed. Maya continued.
“Did you call the vendors to get it repaired?”
“Yes. They’ve not turned up yet.”
“You know that this is going to hamper investigation, right?”
“Y-yes, Madam.”
“Okay, where does your staff live?”
“See that chawl.” Anna pointed to an old structure on the opposite side of the road. “Sada and one of my cooks share a room there. The waiters share another room. Their families are in their native places. The rest of my staff live some distance away, with their families. They belong to Mumbai.”
“Sada has been alone for fifteen years?”
“No. His wife returned five years ago, to take care of both their parents, who are old and don’t want to leave their hometown. Kids are married and settled elsewhere.”
“Call your staff. I want to talk to them, one by one. Alone. Here.”
She turned to the policemen.
“Have you completed your work?”
“Yes, Madam.”
“Drive away the onlookers and send Sada’s remains for a post mortem. I want the results asap.”
Maya proceeded to question the resturant staff, one by one. But she couldn’t gather any unusual information
“Sada Sir was an excellent chef, Mam.. “
“He has a quick temper.”
“But he treated us well.”
“He has trained me to be thousand times better in my cooking than what I was when I joined here.”
“No enemies that I know, but there are some personal acquaintances who hated his temper.”
“He had no debts. Firmly principled in this matter.”
“No affinity towards animals. He just ignores dogs and cats.”
“His wife will arrive in the evening.”
Maya was beginning to get bored, till she finished her interview of Sada’s roommate, the last person in her list. “Okay Raghu, you may go.”
Raghu reached the main door, then stopped and turned back. He looked around. There was no one nearby. He went back in and asked in a whisper, “This conversation, is it confidential?”
Maya raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, are we quoted?”
“Do you want to say something?”
“N-no...”
“Okay, you won’t be quoted. Say it.”
“Anna doesn’t treat us well.”
Maya’s eyebrow went up again.
“He pays us reasonably well, so we don’t leave and go elsewhere. He also pays our rent. But he treats us like trash.
“I know you’re wondering how such a charming, polished man can behave like this. Mam, that charm is for the public, to attract customers.”
He paused for effect, then continued. “He abuses us with colourful words that I’m ashamed to repeat in front of you. He screams at us for the slightest mistake and in front of everyone.
“Sada often retaliated when shouted at. This would result in nasty arguments.”
“No one told me all this.”
“Mam, we all want to keep their jobs.”
“Continue.”
“Sada and Anna had a particularly nasty argument a week ago. Sada’s wife was unwell, DELIRIOUS with fever and he wanted a few days off to be with her. Anna didn’t allow. He wanted Sada’s perfection every single day without a break.
“Sada returned to the room that night muttering that he wished something would happen to Anna. I was surprised; he never wishes anyone bad.
“By the way,” Raghu suddenly sat up straight, as if he remembered something.
“What?”
“You asked what Sada was doing in the restaurant at night. I mean, he has a set of spare keys, but why would he go there at night. I do not know anything because I’m a deep sleeper. But there’s a CCTV camera at the traffic signal outside our chawl.”
Within the next half hour, Maya had reached the police station and accessed the footage. She saw Sada leave his room at around midnight and walk in the direction opposite to that of Anna’s. He returned in a few minutes, carrying a heavy sack with great difficulty and walked in the direction of Anna’s.
All the time, he was looking around to see if anyone was watching. The streets were empty in that tiny colony, with no pedestrians and hardly any vehicular movement.
What was in that sack, wondered Maya.
She saw Sada return in half an hour with an empty sack. At around 3:30 am, to Maya’s surprise, he ventured out again in the direction of Anna’s. He didn’t return.
Maya noticed the difference in Sada’s walk when he left his room at midnight and then at 3:30 am.
With nothing more to do at the moment, she ordered a sandwich.
***
The post-mortem results came in. Death by heart attack, it said. The wounds were dog bites, possibly a pitbull.
Maya remembered the case of a pitbull fatally mauling a five-year-old a couple of days ago and then going missing. The owner was in police custody. No, these cases can’t be related, she thought. Or maybe...
She picked up her phone and called one of her informers.
“I need you to do something,” she said.
***
It was 11 am on Monday morning. Maya was at the police station with Sada’s wife, Anna and Raghu. With them was a man in handcuffs.
Maya was exhausted, yet her face had the satisfaction of having resolved the case.
“Madam,” she addressed Sada’s wife. “Sada used to sleepwalk, right?”
“Rarely, b-but y-yes.”
“It turns out that Sada was so angry with Anna that he decided to reach him a lesson. He had some shady friends helping him, I see.”
“I don’t know anything about his friends, Madam.”
“Well, one of them,” she pointed to the handcuffed man,”happened to lay his hands on the runaway pitbull that had attacked a boy a few days ago. Sada thought it would be a good way to take revenge on Anna. There were no CCTV cameras to record his doings.
“So they drug the dog and Sada transports it to the restaurant in a sack. The plan was that the dog, which has a track record of rogue behaviour, would be awake by the time Anna opened the restaurant in the morning.
“Little did he expect that he himself would sleepwalk and open the door before Anna. The pitbull attacked him so badly that he suffered a fatal heart attack while trying to escape.
“The pitbull is now in our hands. We have to decide on it.
“And that, Sir, concludes this case,” Maya said to her superior, “a case where a man was killed by his own plot to kill someone.”