She nodded. “One of the largest investors in Surgiquip is an anonymous fund based in the Bahamas. Some of the directors of the fund are known friends of Kumar. There’s every reason to believe that the money invested in Surgiquip also included Kumar’s money. Effectively, Kumar was Patel’s partner and, given his official position, was in a position to favor Surgiquip.”
Guha rolled the lozenge inside his mouth as he contemplated the implications of that information. “Let’s find an excuse to get Patel into the studio,” he said. “We can rip apart those connections once he’s in our hands.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” asked the show’s producer. “Some of these companies are our lifeblood. Without advertising bucks, we’re nothing.”
“These people need to be exposed,” said Guha. “You can be either a news channel or a profitable business. You can’t be both.”
Chapter 38
LOOKING MORE CLOSELY into Rahul’s death, the first thing Santosh had discovered was that there were very few details available. Contacts in the force had supplied him with a time of death—sometime between 9 p.m. and midnight—and Rahul’s occupation—shift worker—and that was it.
Now he stood in front of the late Rahul’s front door, an apartment locked and sealed with a length of police tape, and was about to let himself in when a door to the left opened and the face of a elderly neighbor appeared.
“Can I help you?” she asked, with such an admirable lack of suspicion that he opted to come clean.
“I’m a private investigator,” he said. He indicated the sealed door. “I’m looking into the death of your neighbor.”
She held herself as though to stop herself from shuddering. “Awful business.”
“Would you be willing to speak to me about it?” He shifted his weight onto his walking stick. Totem or not, it had its uses: weapon, pointer, putting elderly ladies at ease.
“You’d better come in,” she said.
In a few moments they were sitting together, drinking tea, the neighbor telling him what scant details she knew. No, she had never noticed anything unusual. No strange guests or visitors. Nothing like that. No, she hadn’t heard any odd noises. He was a good neighbor. Quiet. Kept himself to himself. Hardly ever there.
“He was a shift worker of some kind, wasn’t he?” asked Santosh.
“He worked the hospitals. A porter, I think. Orderly. Nothing medical. Nothing proper, you know. But even so, all these jobs need doing, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do,” agreed Santosh, thinking that those jobs weren’t usually well paid enough for ordinary hospital porters to be able to afford apartments. Not unless they were making something on the side. “Which hospitals did he work at, do you know?”
“No. In actual fact, I think he worked at them all at one time or another. Certainly I saw him in a number of different uniforms.”
From the inside pocket of his jacket, Santosh took Arora’s bio and showed it to the neighbor. “Did you ever see this man?”
She took a good look then shook her head. “Do you think he did it?”
“It’s just a theory at this stage.”
“What a horrible thing to do to someone,” she said, hugging herself once again.
“The eyeballs?”
“Well, not just that. The ice too.”
Santosh’s teacup rattled as he replaced it on the table. “I beg your pardon. Did you say ‘ice’?”
“Yes. When he was found—it was a colleague who found him—there were empty bags of ice in the bathroom. It had melted by that time, of course, but they think the bath was full of ice.”
Ice, thought Santosh. Like you might use to preserve an organ for transplant.
Back in the hallway—thanks made and the neighbor installed in front of the TV—Santosh broke the tape, picked the lock, and let himself into Rahul’s apartment.
It was not dissimilar to his own in terms of layout and lack of furniture. Whoever Rahul had been in life, he was not a homebody; the single armchair, TV, and coffee table in the front room suggested a person unaccustomed to spending much time in his own abode.
Along one wall was a low bookshelf; the few books on it were beach reads and bestsellers, the usual suspects. Meanwhile in the kitchen were exactly the kind of single-man ingredients and utensils that Santosh had in his own home.
Santosh thought back to Jack breaking into his apartment. Both locks had been easily picked. Had Rahul been at home when the killer had entered? Had he been asleep when the killer had filled the bath with ice? Surely not.