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He knew the way that Rupesh and his men worked once an arrest was made. He shut his eyes in a vain attempt to block out thoughts of what the police would do to Hari.
There was still a part of Santosh that wanted to trust Hari. He opened his eyes, stood up, opened the cabinet behind his desk, and pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker. After pouring three fingers of the golden liquid into a glass, he gulped it down like a thirsty desert traveler arriving at an oasis. Back at his desk, Santosh placed the bottle in front of him. He slipped into a stupor and his nightmare returned.
The soundtrack to it was from a Broadway musical, The Phantom of the Opera. It was playing on the car stereo because Isha loved it. The drive back to Mumbai was a picturesque one with a monsoon mist hanging over the distant hills. Pravir had insisted on buying a new cartridge for his hand-held game console and was contentedly battling demons on its tiny screen. Santosh was happy. It had been a peaceful break. He looked across at his wife. Even after ten years of marriage she looked as ravishingly beautiful as the day that he had married her. She smiled back when she realized that he was staring at her. Santosh tried to set aside his worries about the emotional distance that had developed between them. He would balance work and family going forward and would ensure that his wife had no reason to feel isolated or abandoned.
“Papa, look at—” Pravir began to say from the rear of the car when the hairpin turn appeared from nowhere. The car smashed headlong into the thick banyan by the edge of the road. After a few seconds of screeching tires and a gut-wrenching sound of collision there was silence. Santosh remained slumped over the steering wheel. Then darkness. Hospital corridors. “Another ten units of blood, stat! I’m losing him … blood pressure is dropping!” Running alongside the gurney was a cop holding a pair of handcuffs. “You killed them, you drunk bastard!”
“No, I did not!” shouted Santosh, a thin trickle of saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth and onto his desk.
He struggled with the policeman who had pounced on him. The cop was trying to pin him to the ground and cuff his hands behind his back. “Let go of me,” yelled Santosh as he fended off his assailant.
“Wake up, boss!” urged Nisha as she attempted to take hold of his flailing arms. He woke from his ordeal, embarrassed that Nisha had seen him in that state. He was relieved that the nightmare had ended but also knew that it would return. It always did.
He clumsily attempted to remove the bottle of whisky from his desk, forgetting the obvious fact that Nisha would have observed it while he was in deep slumber. “Mubeen has some important information for you,” she said, helping Santosh up from his chair. “Let me get you some coffee before we go to the conference room, though,” she said, a hint of concern in her voice.
Twenty minutes later Santosh was in the conference room with Jack, Nisha, and Mubeen. “Even if Hari is involved, he must have had an accomplice,” said Mubeen.
“Why?” asked Santosh. He gratefully took a gulp of the scalding black coffee that Nisha had placed in front of him.
“You remember that there was bleach and saliva on Elina Xavier’s eyebrow? Well, I managed to extract DNA from it. Given that India has no national DNA database, I’m now trying to run a match against several other databases, including one belonging to the Mumbai police as well as Private’s own directory.”
“But why the accomplice theory?” asked Santosh.
“While I cannot yet positively tell you whose DNA it is, I can definitely tell you whose it isn’t,” replied Mubeen. “The DNA is not Hari’s. We already have his sequence on record. The person who killed Elina Xavier and left DNA on her face was someone else.”
“It could belong to the victim herself,” suggested Nisha.
“The DNA is not that of Elina Xavier, nor does it match that of any other victim. It is completely different. Either Hari is not involved, or if he is then he is working alongside someone else.”
“What about the previous injury to Lara Omprakash?” asked Nisha. “Any thoughts on that?”
“What previous injury?” asked Santosh.
Nisha read aloud from the report: “Lara Omprakash, victim of ligature strangulation … Victim has a tattoo of a Hindu deity on her right upper arm. Her pelvis shows signs of contraction from a previous injury.”
“Ah, let’s not read too much into that,” said Mubeen. “Women can often injure the pelvis during childbirth.”
“Childbirth?” said Santosh. “That’s interesting.”
“Because she had no children?” said Mubeen. His eyes were soulful. The two men, both left childless by a cruel fate, shared an unspoken moment.
Santosh looked away. “No,” he said, “Lara Omprakash had no children. Or at least, none that we know of.”
Chapter 63
NISHA GANDHE WAS no fool. Perhaps there were times when her looks had held her back; when she’d been seen as nothing more than a pretty face, but she’d had to work hard to overcome that, and after all, there were more difficult crosses to bear.
There were also times when her looks could be a distinct advantage. And she wasn’t above using them to get what she wanted.
Like now. At home in her apartment in Mumbai’s Cuffe Parade, a desirable abode that was testament more to her husband’s stockbroker salary than to what she received from Private, she ended the call with Santosh. Then took the phone to the study in order to make her next call. It was a call that required her to be … well, she hesitated to use the word “flirtatious,” but it was as good a word as any. And innocent though it was, she didn’t particularly want to Sanjeev to hear. After all, why rock the boat? Family life was her solace. As an adopted child who thanked the Almighty for her loving husband and a beautiful daughter, she knew its importance better than anyone.
“Nisha Gandhe,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Would that be the same Nisha Gandhe, ex of Mumbai CID? Gorgeous smile? Tragically unavailable?”
She grinned. “If that is the same Ajay, municipal records wizard, then yes, indeed it is. It’s good to hear your voice, Ajay.”
“And yours. Especially if you’ve dumped your rich husband and decided to take up with a lowly municipal fixer?”
“Sadly not, Ajay. I was thinking more along the lines of a favor.”
