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The gun. Rupesh was going for the gun. With a shout of effort, pain lancing up his body, Santosh threw himself forward using the sword as a spear point and catching Rupesh on the calf. Rupesh screamed, fell, blood already gushing from the wound on his calf. He fell across the corpse of a child, half its face shredded by the beaks of vultures. He gave a cry of revulsion as he rolled away, then kicked out as Santosh pulled himself to his knees and swung once again with the blade.
Can’t let him reach the gun, thought Santosh. If he reaches the gun that’s it.
A cloud of disturbed flies billowed from a nearby corpse as Rupesh’s heels slipped on putrefying matter. Throwing out a hand to lever himself up, he plunged it through the ribcage of an adjacent body, ripping it back out, stinking and dripping, with a scream of nausea.
Rupesh’s flailing bought Santosh a precious half-second. Getting to his feet was too much of an effort, so he pitched forward from kneeling, swiping right to left with the blade and nearly catching Rupesh a third time.
Nearly.
Rupesh dragged himself to his feet. Blood poured from the wound at his wrist and his torn trousers flapped at the gash on his leg, but he left Santosh out of reach, marooned in a sea of rotting cadavers.
“You fucker,” Rupesh cursed again, but it was as though he were talking to himself now. With a Herculean effort he hobbled toward the gun and Santosh, stranded, watched him lurch away knowing he’d played his final card. Knowing he would die here and because of that Nisha and God knows how many bomb victims would die too. He had failed. He had failed them. Just as he had failed Isha and Pravir.
By now Rupesh had reached the gun and with a shout of triumph swept it up, and whirled to face Santosh …
And overbalanced. Lost his footing. Tumbled to the stone on the edge of the pit where his prone body seemed to teeter for a second and a look of absolute horror crossed his face as he realized what was about to happen.
And he fell. He fell screaming, landing with a sickening squelch in the rotted substance that lay in the bottom of the ossuary pits.
For a moment there was silence. The vultures had been scared off by the fight, but now it was as if they sensed the presence of a wounded animal in the tower and they began to caw, even more loudly than before, swooping into the pit to investigate.
Fingers scrabbling for the sheath of his sword, Santosh reassembled his cane again and used it to lever himself upwards, and moved carefully to the edge of the pit. In the cold, white light of the moon overhead he saw Rupesh below. He lay as though pressed into the ooze by an invisible hand, one broken leg at a hideously unnatural angle and the blood from his wounds gleaming darkly in the moonlight. A frightened, pleading look in his eyes.
The first, most intrepid of the vultures landed, its huge parchment wings obscuring the upper half of Rupesh for a moment as it pecked once, twice with its beak. Rupesh then began to shriek, and the bird took flight, a strip of his facial skin in its beak.
“No, no!” screamed Rupesh. His screams were wet, the most terrifying cries Santosh had ever heard. “Please, no …”
And he was still screaming as a second, and then a third vulture moved in, excited by the stink of fresh meat, and Santosh pulled himself away from the edge, the screams ringing in his ears as the vultures continued to feed.
Chapter 94
IT WAS TWO in the morning, and Yoga Sutra was a hive of police activity. Overall control of the crime scene had been given to Private, and Santosh and Jack stood over the body of Devika Gulati. She wore her loose kurta pajama practice clothes and her neck had the familiar yellow garrote tied around it.
There was no Nisha, which on the one hand was good news, because there was no second body. But on the other hand, it was bad news. It meant the killer had Nisha and she would die that night, the ninth victim.
And yet her death would be a footnote if the Mujahideen’s attack went ahead.
“Oh God, Santosh, you look like shit,” said Jack.
Santosh looked at him, his eyes tired and haunted behind his glasses. “You should have seen me before my shower,” he said.
He’d been home to change. The bottle of Johnnie Walker had called out to him and he’d looked at it, known it would blot out the screams of Rupesh and the image of Isha in his arms.
But instead he’d chosen Nisha. He’d chosen Mumbai.
“I’ve spoken to Commissioner Chavan,” said Jack, his hands in his pockets. “The Rupesh business. They’re going to recover his body and obviously they’ll be launching a full investigation, but they’ve agreed to leave it twenty-four hours before they pull you in.”
Santosh nodded, grateful, as Jack added, “For what it’s worth, the Commissioner was not exactly blind to what Rupesh was doing. He told me as much over our round of golf. Truth be told, I arrived in Mumbai earlier at his specific request. I think you’ll come out of it well. Meanwhile the Commissioner assures me we have the full cooperation of the cops to find Nisha. You know Nisha—to know her is to fall in love a little bit and all these guys,” he gestured behind them at the cops moving in and out of the studio, “they all know her. Anything you want, Santosh, you shout.”
“A trace on her cell phone?”
“Done. But no dice. You need a working battery in the phone and either Aditi’s removed it or it’s flat.”
“And her RFID chip?”
Jack looked uncomfortable.
“What, Jack?”
