It was a man.
“Come out where I can see you. Where is Aditi? What have you done to her?”
“Where is Aditi? I am Aditi. Dr. Jaiyen saw to that. But Dr. Jaiyen became greedy. Dr. Jaiyen wanted to blackmail me. So like the others, Dr. Jaiyen had to die.”
“Come on then,” Nisha growled at him, “show yourself. You’re dying to show yourself. Show me who you are and why you hate me so much.”
He stepped out of the shadows.
Chapter 101
“YES, ADITI CHOPRA came to us for gender reassignment.”
Santosh fought to stay calm, control his breathing. “What name did he leave with?”
“She left with the same name with which she arrived, Mr. Wagh.”
“Anything you tell me now—anything may help in saving people’s lives. Do you remember her?”
“Oh yes. I remember her. She was visited by a man who arrived in a large black Mercedes, quite an entourage he had.”
Nimboo. Her financier, no doubt.
“He talked about wanting to study hairdressing when he left,” Dr. Uwwano was saying. “He wanted to work in Bollywood.”
Santosh’s mind was working, thinking, He did—he did work as a hairdresser. He worked as a hairdresser to the Attorney General, which is why he was able to collect samples of his hair and leave them at the crime scenes.
“One last thing, Dr. Uwwano. While I hate to risk casting aspersions upon your colleague, I must ask—is it possible that Dr. Jaiyen could have been blackmailing Aditi?”
Uwwano’s voice was frosty now. “Well, of course it’s possible …”
“In your opinion, is it likely?”
“Dr. Jaiyen had a taste for what you might call the high life, and it doesn’t come cheap. Perhaps if she had discovered what Aditi was doing, maybe.”
Some kind of hairdresser to the stars, thought Santosh. A celebrity hairdresser. It would give him the access he needed. The film sets, to women’s houses, a face they trusted. It would make sense that Bhavna had somehow got in the way while researching her article.
“Thank you, Dr. Uwwano, thank you. You don’t know how helpful you’ve been,” he said, and was about to end the call when she stopped him.
“Do you think Aditi is responsible for those murders, Mr. Wagh?”
“I’m very sorry to say, Dr. Uwwano, but yes.”
She sighed, as though somehow not surprised. “There was something … damaged about her, even more so than … Well, many of our patients have what you might call ‘issues.’ But with Aditi, she was a beautiful girl. Now that I have reviewed her case file, I remember some of the nurses were commenting as though it was a waste of such a gorgeous creature, and of course we don’t see it that way—but in any case there was something about her beauty, as though it had caused her great hurt in the past.”
“I think you’re right, Dr. Uwwano,” agreed Santosh. “And I think that for Aditi having a sex change wasn’t enough. You’re right, her beauty h
ad caused her great misery. In the end she took it out on all womankind.”
He finished the call, knowing he had it now. He had all the pieces except for the last one.
“Hari, where’s that mugshot?”
“Coming, boss,” called Hari from the other room.
He hobbled through to Hari’s desk just as the picture appeared on Hari’s screen.
She had been right, Dr. Uwwano. Aditi had been beautiful. She had her mother’s high cheekbones and her full mouth. She had her father’s eyes.