At 6 p.m., Nirav locked everything up and was about to leave the store when he saw a young man walk in. He seemed to be in his late twenties. Smartly dressed, in jeans and a semi-formal shirt, he looked like he belonged to an affluent family.

The security guard at the gate stopped him. That was the default option for him. Nirav Choksi did not entertain walk-ins.

‘I’m not a customer,’ the young man was explaining to the guard when Nirav walked up to him.

‘What brings you here, young man?’

‘I came here to meet you.’

Nirav nodded. ‘Go ahead. I am listening.’ His support staff was still hanging around to ensure the guy didn’t cause any trouble.

‘Aditya,’ he said, extending his right hand.

‘Right! Aditya. Nice to mee—’ Nirav said absently. Then suddenly: ‘Oh! Aditya! It’s wonderful to see you. Divya didn’t tell me you’d be coming.’ He shook hands with him warmly. ‘Come on in!’

‘She doesn’t know. I haven’t told her.’ Aditya looked at the other people standing around.

Nirav understood his discomfort and gestured to his staff to leave ‘Come, come.’ The two of them walked up to Nirav’s office and sat down on the sofa.

Aditya squirmed under Nirav’s scrutiny and moved a bit.

‘You know Aditya, Divya is my only daughter. I have to make sure that she makes the right decisions in life.’ ‘Of course, sir.’

‘I have to be certain that she’s not fallen for someone inappropriate…’

Aditya smiled. ‘Except that you operate out of this pigeon hole, even though you can afford a much bigger office in any of the diamond bourses around the globe.’

Nirav laughed. He liked Aditya. ‘You’re right! I could have moved. Bourses around the globe, I am not too sure. But certainly to the BKC Diamond Bourse. But you know what Aditya, the people who launched that bourse could not take much of Zaveri Bazaar with them. If they wanted us to move they should have kept our interests in mind too. Which they didn’t. There are a lot of small-time traders, who won’t be able to afford a space in the BKC Diamond Bourse. Too much money for something which is not significantly better than what they have here in Zaveri Bazar. That’s why none of us have moved there. And in any case this is a comfortable and lucky office for me. Three generations of my family have operated out of this office. It’s a legacy I have inherited and don’t want to give up. And for generations our family has protected the small traders here. We will continue to do that.’

‘Mr Choksi,’ Kabir said. ‘Your daughter almost committed suicide. Your prospective son-in-law schemed and wanted you dead. Your friend was tasked with murdering you, and yet the only thing you were bothered about was how to get even with everyone around.’

Nirav’s grip on Divya slackened. ‘What?’ he asked, surprised. ‘What do you mean, Mr Khan?’

‘Mr Choksi, do you know someone called Ankit?’ Kabir asked. He had an intense look in his eyes—one that scared the people in the room.

Nirav Choksi looked around the room, and then raised his eyes to look at the ceiling. He was thinking. Trying to put a face to the name.

‘Ankit Shah?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ Khan nodded. The look on his face didn’t change.

‘Yes. I know him. Akhil Bhai’s son. He went overseas for some work. Didn’t want to be in the jewellery trade.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Or is it that you wanted him out of the country? Because you wanted Akhil Bhai under your control? Isn’t it true that Ankit was pushing his father to move out of Zaveri Bazaar? And that’s why you sent him overseas, so he would be out of the way?’

‘That’s not true! We were neighbours in the Bazaar. But Akhil Bhai came to me one day and wanted me to help him get some work overseas. I put him in touch with some of my clients in Dubai. One of them—I don’t even remember who—offered him a job and he moved.’

‘That’s lovely. Who doesn’t want to help one’s neighbour!’

Nirav was quiet.

‘Do you know where he is now?’

‘No. He switched jobs once he went there.’

‘Are you sure you don’t know where he is?’

‘Absolutely. But what does that have to do with anything?’

‘Just curious,’ Kabir said. ‘I was speaking to his mother today. She said Ankit is overseas and that she still gets a monthly remittance from him, which now comes to you since his father is dead, and you pass it on to her.

When I asked her about his whereabouts, she started crying. She doesn’t know where he is.’

‘Neither do I. I give her the money every month. Last two months in fact. Yes. But that’s not something which he sends. I do it on my own. Just to keep her going. I just tell her that it is from her son.’

‘Why?’ Kabir asked him. He looked around the room and then at Nirav. ‘Is he dead, by any chance?’

Kabir was not looking for an answer, he was looking for a reaction. A reaction is far more meaningful and visceral than a mere answer; a reaction is not as easily manipulated as an answer.

Nirav had a shocked look on his face. ‘I have no clue.’

Kabir pulled out two pictures from his folder. And handed them to Nirav.

‘The first one is a Times of India newspaper cutting with a picture of Ankit Shah and his family. Published in the papers after Akhil Bhai was killed in the blasts. The second is the reconstructed photo of a man who was killed in the Wafi Mall heist in Dubai. Both are the same person. Isn’t it, Mr Shah?’

Nirav looked at both the pictures and slowly raised his eyes to meet Kabir’s piercing gaze.

‘You know, don’t you?’ Kabir asked. ‘You are the one who sent him to the Alsafa gang that deals in jewellery and antiques. He was your eyes and ears in the Middle East. You ran your trade through him.’

‘What rubbish is this?’ Nirav started yelling. ‘How dare you imply that I run a smuggling racket!’

‘Because you do!’ Khan said. ‘Till weeks before the Wafi Mall heist, you were in touch with Ankit in Dubai. The day he was shot at and killed, your calls stopped. Why would you not tell a mother that her only son had died? Why would you deprive her of the right to grieve? And most importantly why would you hide it? Ajmal Jewellers was a large client of yours. We had your accounts checked for remittances. Ajmal Jewellers accounts for over forty per cent of your foreign inward remittances.’ Khan had checked the bank statements as a routine part of the investigation. When he was investigating Dilip Patankar’s purchase of five cabs, he had asked for Nirav’s bank statements for the last one year. And when he specifically looked at it for evidence, it all came together.’

‘Ajmal Jewellers is an old client of mine.’

‘That may be true, but that does not explain you not sharing the news of Ankit’s death with either Akhil Bhai or his wife! Unbelievable!’

Kabir was furious now. ‘You promised to buy the property off Mrs Shah because you didn’t want her to create a scene and expose you. She still thinks you are a good Samaritan.’

‘I didn’t know that Ankit died in the heist. Besides, you can’t hold me guilty just because my acquaintances are guilty of misconduct. If Ankit does something wrong, I can’t be the one held responsible.’

‘Of course not!’ Kabir nodded. ‘I just wanted to set the context. Before I come to the issue right here in Thiruvananthapuram. Aditya clandestinely recorded Subhash killing Kannan. It turns out Kannan had seen Subhash strike deals with the cigarette vendor outside the Taj Hotel for stolen antiques. CCTV recordings from outside the hotel show Subhash frequenting the shop. They also show Kannan confronting Subhash the day he was killed.

When Divya called you after she took the Alprax, you went to her room. When you saw her sleeping, you decided to use the situation to your advantage. You saw the Sux and figured that this was a brilliant way of eliminating the competition—to put an end to the threatening Surat diamond bourse that Subhash wanted to set up. After all, the Surat diamond bourse would have been a very attractive proposition for many of the traders and merchants in Zaveri Bazaar. Despite your control on your people, they would have ditched you and gravitated towards the Surat bourse, thus severely undermining your control over the trade. These people hadn’t moved to the Mumbai bourse because of a lot of factors that were genuinely not trader friendly—capital value, rents, space, distance, cost of operation. It would have pushed the cost of doing business up and made the trade less profitable. It was easy for you to convince people to not go. But the same would not have been true for Surat. He was making inroads into your antique trade. And now he was out with a mandate to kill you. Obviously, you had no idea that he was trying to warn you about Aditya’s intent. All his messages were going to the other room. So before he could kill you, you killed him, probably hoping that the blame for the entire episode would fall on Aditya since he planned on killing Subhash anyway. You would also have got your revenge on the guy who cheated your daughter and rocked your lives.’

‘Nothing you are saying is making sense.’

He waited for Nirav Choksi to say something, but nothing happened. ‘What you didn’t bargain for was the fact that the hotel had upgraded its key lock mechanism only recently and hence did not rely on just the CCTV cameras to track movements. We don’t know whether you bought off the CCTV vendors or Aditya did or if it was a sheer coincidence. It doesn’t matter given the evidence we have now. You didn’t bargain for Subhash being used as a weapon to kill you to take you out of the equation in the conflict of the bourses and Zaveri Bazaar. You didn’t reckon on Subhash valuing your relationship of over forty years, and paying you back for the favour your dad did in keeping him out of the juvenile remand home, you didn’t—’

‘It was not me,’ Nirav burst out. ‘You are mistaken!’ And then realizing it was futile, he added. ‘I need to make a call.’

Kabir walked up to him, made a fist and punched Nirav in the face. Nirav tumbled to the floor. Divya started shrieking as blood spurted from his nostrils.