Murder in Mumbai by K. D. Calamur Page A

immediate task at hand: a fresh angle on the story of the burglaries. He would have to keep working that story until he interviewed Kabir Khurana later that day or fresh revelations emerged on the Barton murder.
    One aspect of the burglaries puzzled him: Jay couldn’t figure out how a perpetrator or perpetrators could walk unobstructed and undetected into apartment buildings and make away with so much.
The answers,
he thought,
must be obvious.
It could be that they were residents of the buildings in question, but that was too ridiculous to consider because that would mean an absurdly large gang that worked together in the area, and he knew from experience that if a gang were large, its members would have slipped up by now. No. It must be small. Perhaps one or two and no more than three people. Which would rule out residents because there would be too many of them given the number of buildings and the areas in which the crimes had been committed. Then who? Vendors or building staff who had access to the complexes? Possibly, but they would draw the scrutiny of the watchman had they behaved differently than they usually do. So it was likely a confident stranger—one who walked comfortably past the security guard and into the lift, and then the apartment and then made his way out. But how would he know where to go? How would he know when to go? How did he know that the apartment’s residents were out? Why did he take electronics? What could you do with electronics? You can sell them in the black market. You can keep them at home. But so far seven homes had been affected and practically the same items had been taken: computers, some electronics, some jewelry. No thief was likely to hold on to all those items. Chances are he was going to sell them. That could be done in two places: Chor Bazaar—the thieves market—or Lamington Road.
    He decided to start with Chor Bazaar.
    * * *
    Jay walked past young and old Muslim men, some with skullcaps, who eyed him warily. He saw groups of men stripping apart cars for their tires, carpets, engines, gear boxes, and steering wheels, all of which would be sold. The men doing the work paused briefly to watch him walk past. He made it a point not to look at them.
    There was nothing you could not buy here. Schoolboys loitered around a sandwich wallah, men pulled handcarts with gunny sacks covering large blocks of ice that would later find themselves cubed, cooling the drinks in ritzy South Bombay; men, no older than boys, sat idly on scooters and chatted with one another or barked into cell phones; a lone goat walked by, unaware of its fate as the main ingredient in biryani; the call to prayer wafted through the air. Jay walked past storefronts that sold headlights, bicycles, exercise bikes, plastic mugs, past little boys eating snacks and past prying eyes. Men walked with their burqa-covered wives in tow. It was one of the few places in the city where you could still see young men who wore jeans and carried backpacks while they rode motorcycles to engineering colleges living side by side with religious and social orthodoxy. But the area was changing just like everything in Mumbai. Tall, poorly built skyscrapers hovered over the neighborhood like vultures awaiting the clearing of prime real estate. The city had changed so much, Jay thought. Soon, this area will go the way of others: unrecognizable and unremembered.
    Jay walked to Trustwell Electronics; he knew the owner, Shakil Shah, who’d been in school with him.
    â€œWhat’s up, you bastard?” Shakil asked cheerfully, happy to see his old friend.
    â€œThe usual,
yaar
. Middle of a story and all that.”
    â€œWhat’ll you drink?
Thanda? Garam
?”
    No was never an option. You could either have something cold—
thanda—
or something hot,
garam
.
    â€œChai. No sugar,” Jay said. He’d long stopped counting, but this was the third of his nearly dozen cups of tea during the