Nisha drove past the security gate and down a long winding road surrounded by well-maintained lawns until the car reached the block that Rupesh had indicated. There were several police vehicles parked outside. Santosh, Nisha, and Mubeen got out of the car, picked up their equipment, and headed for the stairs. The police had already cordoned off the entrance to the third-floor apartment.
Rupesh was waiting for them at the doorway. “Her name is Bhavna Choksi, aged approximately thirty-seven. A journalist who worked for a tabloid—the Afternoon Mirror,” he explained as he led them to the bedroom where her body had been discovered.
The apartment was a compact one-bedroom unit. It was quite obvious that Bhavna Choksi was single but financially sound. The furnishings were simple yet elegant and the apartment was well organized and clean.
The body was suspended from a ceiling fan in the center of the bedroom. The room was completely still but for the barely noticeable pendulum-like movement of the corpse. Nisha shuddered.
Santosh sniffed, detecting the odor of urine. He looked down at the floor and noticed a puddle by the base of the bed. “She was strangled there,” he said. “She peed involuntarily as she was being cho
ked. Urination or defecation are known body reactions that can be triggered by strangulation. Yes, triggered by strangulation.”
Unlike the first victim, who had been in her nightdress, the second was fully dressed in work clothes—cotton slacks and linen top—ideally suited to a journalist on the prowl in Mumbai’s hot and humid weather. The slacks were damp with urine. Around her neck was an unmistakable yellow scarf to which a rope had been attached in order to suspend her from the fan. Both her hands had string tied around them. In one hand the victim had been made to hold rosary beads, and in the other a plastic toy bucket—the sort that kids use to build sandcastles on the beach—containing a couple of inches of water.
“Who found her?” asked Santosh as he looked up at the hanging corpse.
“The cleaning lady let herself in with her key at nine thirty,” answered Rupesh. “She assumed that Bhavna Choksi had already left for work, which was the case most days.”
Santosh took advantage of the police ladder that had been placed under the fan. Handing his cane to Nisha, he climbed up several rungs so that he could look at the ligature. It was the same sort of yellow scarf as they’d found on Kanya Jaiyen. He peered into the victim’s wide-open eyes. Lifeless now, they must have been terrorized as a garrote choked the victim and deprived her lungs of air. Eyes are the windows of the soul … reveal your soul to me, woman, thought Santosh. Tell me your story, Bhavna.
“I need to swab her eyes,” said Mubeen, pulling out two cotton buds from his satchel. Santosh snapped out of his trance and descended the ladder so that Mubeen could use it.
He climbed up carefully and gently swabbed each of her eyes, placing the buds into specimen tubes. “Why the eye swab?” asked Rupesh, who had never seen any of his own police medical examiners do it.
“Notice the room’s temperature?” replied Mubeen as he came down the ladder and packed away the specimen buds. “The air conditioning has been left running and it’s bloody freezing. I can’t depend on the body’s ambient temperature reading to estimate the time of death. A diagnostic machine in my lab can analyze potassium, urea, and hypoxanthine concentrations present in the vitreous humor of the eye. It provides a far more accurate estimate of time of death than basal body temperature.”
“We saw the murderer on CCTV leaving Kanya Jaiyen’s hotel room at two minutes past nine last night,” said Santosh. “The cleaning lady discovered this victim at nine thirty this morning, leaving the murderer with a substantial window of around twelve and a half hours within which to kill a second time.” He paced the room carefully. “A window of twelve and a half hours.”
“Unless this second murder had actually happened before the hotel incident,” argued Nisha.
Crouching down, Nisha noticed a strand of hair on the floor exactly below the hanging corpse. She pointed it out to Mubeen, who immediately bent over to pick it up with forceps and bag it.
“Hopefully a comparison with the first sample should tell us whether it comes from the same person,” he said to Santosh. But Santosh’s mind was elsewhere.
“This murder scene is fresh,” he said softly, almost to himself. “Fresh, because the urine on her slacks is still wet, not dry, in spite of the air conditioning. This killing happened after the hotel murder, not before. And forget about the god-damned hair. It’s just another annoying prop!
“Crap!” he hissed suddenly under his breath, thumping his cane on the floor and giving everyone else around him a start. What did the objects mean? What was the killer trying to tell him? Why the single strand of hair at both murder sites? Come out of your hiding place, bastard!
“Unfortunately the CCTV system of the building was down owing to a technical glitch,” said Rupesh. “So we cannot get a visual of the murderer. No signs of forced entry either.”
“Any idea regarding the firm that handles security surveillance of the estate?” asked Santosh.
“Xilon Security Services,” replied Rupesh. “They were in the process of sending over an engineer to rectify the fault, but obviously it wasn’t soon enough.”
“In all probability,” said Nisha, “the victim knew her killer and allowed the murderer access, given that there are no signs of forced entry.”
Santosh pointed to Bhavna Choksi’s desk. “There’s a cell phone and a laptop. Get Hari to examine both of them. Let’s find out the last story that Bhavna Choksi worked on. Maybe she ruffled someone’s feathers?”
Turning to Rupesh, Santosh asked, “Do I have your permission to take over the case, assuming that the two crimes are related?”
“Why on earth would I have called you here if I didn’t think they were connected?” replied Rupesh, placing a rather generous pinch of premium black-market chewing tobacco in the corner of his mouth.
Rupesh stared at the suspended body while chewing his tobacco. In his mind he saw a naked woman. Beaten black and blue, subsequently raped. Repeatedly humiliated and violated until she died. Death was a wonderful balm indeed … Rupesh snapped back into the present when he realized that Santosh was studying him curiously.
“Good. It’s possible that someone may have seen the murderer enter or leave the premises. Let’s question the cooperative’s security guards, the neighbors as well as any nannies or children who may have been in the garden.”
Chapter 12
I CAN FEEL the smooth fabric of the garrote around my neck. I grasp both ends and gently pull. Oh, yes … I can feel the compression. A little more pressure and I’m gasping for breath. I’m about to black out as I release the garrote and allow myself to breathe once again, allowing myself back from the brink of darkness.