She nodded. “A bitch she may have been. But she took me back when I had no home. I owed her for that at least.”
“And then?” pressed Nisha.
“I became one of her best-earning girls,” recalled the madam. “I was often sent to take care of her special political friends too. She welcomed me with open arms … so long as she knew I’d welcome new customers with open legs!”
“What prompted her to enter politics?” asked Santosh.
“She was especially close to someone high up in the government. She was soon serving the needs of several other politicians. I suppose it’s possible that she called in a favor,” replied the madam with a yawn.
She leaned and spat betel-nut mulch into her spittoon, the interview over.
On their way back down the creaking stairs they passed Mr. Blow Job, still nursing his swollen nuts and bruised ego. As they left the depressing and hopeless place and made their way toward Grant Road, they each privately breathed a grateful sig
h of relief.
“It is said that politics is the second-oldest profession in the world but that it bears a close resemblance to the oldest,” said Santosh. “It seems that Ragini Sharma mastered both.”
Chapter 66
“YOU’RE NOT GOING to like this,” said Mubeen, entering Santosh’s office.
“Go ahead,” replied Santosh. “I’m a big boy.”
“The hair we found on Ragini Sharma’s pillow? I was able to extract DNA from the root. I then ran it against several databases. I ended up with a match, but you’re not going to believe whose it is,” said Mubeen anxiously.
“Given that the root was intact,” said Santosh, “I would have expected the hair to belong to the victim, Ragini Sharma.”
Mubeen handed over a single A4 printout to him: details gleaned from a database at the …
“India Fertility Clinic and IVF Center?” Santosh started. “You found a match using a hacked database?” Mubeen had been right. He didn’t like it.
Mubeen shrugged. “There’s no national database, so …”
“You hacked.”
“It’s called cooperation, not hacking,” replied the medical examiner defensively.
Santosh shook his head then looked at the printout once again. Sure enough, they had a match. The DNA from the hair found on Ragini Sharma’s pillow—it belonged to a clinic sperm donor.
“There’s something else you need to know,” said Mubeen.
Santosh looked up from the printout. “Yes?”
“In the entire series of killings we only found two DNA samples—the hair on Ragini Sharma’s pillow and the saliva on Elina Xavier’s eyebrow. We thought we had a possible third sample under Ragini Sharma’s fingernails because she seemed to have fought back, but the material turned out to be dirt.”
“Go on,” said Santosh curiously.
“I expected the DNA from the hair to match the DNA from the saliva on Xavier, given that both murders were apparently committed by the same killer,” continued Mubeen.
“They’re not the same?” queried Santosh.
“They’re not,” replied Mubeen. “But they are related.”
Santosh’s eyes traveled down to the bottom of the page. Saw the name there.
Nalin D’Souza.
Chapter 67