Inspector Chopra and the Million-Dollar Motor Car by Vaseem Khan

Author:Vaseem Khan [Khan, Vaseem]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Upload
ISBN: 9781473650169
Published: 2018-02-01T06:00:00+00:00

A warning at the hospital

The Lilavati hospital was one of Mumbai’s best private hospitals. It was a grand old building that looked like a hotel, with three wings. The hospital was the first choice of film stars, politicians and other VIPs. It had the best doctors in the city and world class facilities. Recently, foreign tourists had begun to come there looking for cheap surgery.

Though ‘cheap’ was a relative term, Chopra thought.

No ordinary Indian could afford to be treated at Lilavati.

For the average person in Mumbai there were the government hospitals. Often, these had no money, and badly trained staff. He had heard horror stories of people going in for minor complaints and coming out with fewer body parts than they went in with. The Indian caste system was another major problem, with lower castes sometimes being refused treatment.

For Chopra, this just summed up the problems he saw in the city that he loved.

Mumbai was known as the city of dreams.

This was where people came to make their fortunes, to become famous on the sets of Bollywood, to open small businesses in the city’s slums. But Mumbai was also the place where wealth and power could corrupt the best of people. If you had the money or the influence, you could get away with a lot in Mumbai, and this had always upset Chopra.

It was almost midnight as he parked his van outside the hospital.

He followed the signs to the kidney ward.

Here he found a nurse in a pink uniform scribbling on a clipboard. The nurse’s name badge said: De Souza.

‘May I help you?’

‘My name is Chopra. I am a detective on an important case.’ He took out the tablet bottle. ‘I need to know if you have patients here who are taking these tablets.’

De Souza gave Chopra a look that said: have you lost your mind?

‘I am sorry, sir,’ she said dryly, ‘but we cannot give out such information.’

‘I understand,’ said Chopra, ‘but this is a matter of life and death.’

Nurse De Souza looked unimpressed. ‘We are in a hospital. Everything is a matter of life and death. But patient records are confidential. As I am sure you must know. Being such a hotshot detective,’ she added.

Chopra ground his teeth. The woman was right. ‘Is this where all the kidney patients are kept?’

‘Yes. And visiting hours are now closed. Sir, I must ask you to leave.’

‘I must see the patients in this ward.’

Nurse De Souza put down her clipboard and folded her arms. ‘I am going to count to three. Then I am going to call security.’

Chopra glared at the woman, then turned and went back to the lobby. Nurse De Souza followed him out to make sure he didn’t try to sneak back up.

He went into the toilet, where she couldn’t follow him – though he feared she might. He took out his phone and called Jon Carter. ‘Mr Carter, is there someone at Premier No.1 who has severe kidney disease?’

‘What?’ said Carter. ‘Kidney disease? What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘It’s just a hunch,’ said Chopra.

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