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“She’s closing,” she told Santosh.
“Early?”
“Oh yes.”
“Perhaps we’ve spooked her. Wherever she goes, follow her.”
“Right.”
They ended the call.
“Interesting developments?” asked Rupesh.
Santosh shrugged, saved from having to explain himself by Mubeen who had just entered his office in a hurry.
“You have to see this,” Mubeen exclaimed breathlessly.
“What?” asked Santosh.
“You remember we recovered saliva from the school principal’s eyebrow?”
Santosh nodded. He glanced at Rupesh. “Yes.”
“Well, humans have forty-six chromosomes. They come in twenty-three pairs in addition to some mitochondrial DNA,” began Mubeen.
“Why are you telling me this?” asked Santosh impatiently.
“Because twenty-two pairs are irrelevant. It is only the twenty-third pair that threw up this remarkable result,” gushed Mubeen, oblivious to Santosh’s irritation.
“What result?”
“There is absolutely nothing in the mitochondrial DNA and twenty-two chromosome pairs that can tell you whether a given sample of DNA came from a male or a female,” babbled Mubeen. “The genetic difference between males and females lies in the last chromosome pair—the sex chromosomes. Women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome.”
“And?” said Santosh, warming up to Mubeen’s excitement.
“I tested the sample for the presence of Y chromosome genetic material. I did not find any.”
“Tell me in simple language what that means,” said Santosh, his face flushed with excitement.
“The DNA we found on Elina Xavier is female DNA. Your murderer is a woman.”
“A woman?” repeated Rupesh. “The killer is a woman?”
“Devika Gulati,” snapped Santosh. He clicked his fingers at Mubeen.
Rupesh had stood. “I’ll call for backup at once,” he said, and hurried out of the room, his phone to his ear.
Santosh watched him go then whirled, his hand at his forehead. A woman? But the killer was anti-women. He hated women. His mission was one of destruction of women—the destruction of strong, successful women: a doctor, a pop star, a film director—and not out of envy, oh no, everything about the ritual of the killings, the corruption of the Durga symbols, suggested that his was a mission to desecrate women.
And all this time it wasn’t a he, but a she …
How? It didn’t make sense.
He’d thought the killer was a man. He’d assumed the killer was a man. The figure caught on CCTV looked like a man, the MO was that of a man who had a deep-seated hatred for women, but what if … what if it was a woman?
Just now he’d assumed that Devika was covering for D’Souza. But what if he were covering for her? What if she were killing on his orders? After all, he had good reason to kill Anjana Lal.
Or maybe there were two killers. Strangers on a Train-type stuff. One of the killers was Nalin D’Souza, the other was Devika Gulati.
