Authors: Anish Sarkar
Sara exclaimed, ‘But I’m not fair!’
Omar replied sotto voce, ‘Maybe that’s why you’re still alive, Sara.’
Roy continued. ‘With this hypothesis as a starting point, I began to compile a list of all unsolved murders over the past ten years which fitted these two criteria. Even after I struck off a few for various reasons, I was left with a shocking number.’ He gulped down the remnants of his whisky. ‘I can probably write a book about my entire investigation but to cut a long story short, what finally led me to Karan was someone very close to him.’
‘Who?’
‘His estranged wife.’
Sara asked, ‘Delnaz?’
He nodded.
Omar turned to Sara. ‘You know Karan’s wife?’
‘So do you, Omar,’ Roy said quietly. ‘You’ve met her on three occasions. Twice in Goa, including at the Marriott, and once at your Mumbai flat.’
70
Omar
‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘She’s Karan’s wife?’
‘That’s correct,’ Roy said.
‘My God! I had absolutely no idea.’ Memories of my encounters with D flashed through my mind. I frequently thought about her, for there was no woman I had been more attracted to in a long time.
‘For a while, she didn’t know about your connection to Karan either.’
‘Now that you mention it, she did say that her husband doesn’t enjoy normal sex, or something to that effect. I just assumed he was kinky or perverted, but definitely not this.’ I thought for a moment. ‘She seemed really scared of him.’
Neel broke in impatiently. ‘What the hell are you two talking about?’
I turned to him and said, ‘I met this woman at the Marriott in Goa and I…We hooked up.’
‘But you anyway had a date that evening, right?’
‘Yes but I got stood up. I had never seen this woman before. She picked me up at the casino.’
Neel smiled wryly. ‘These things just seem to happen to you, don’t they!’
‘Yeah, whatever. Anyway, I bumped into her again just before leaving Goa. This time, we spent a couple of hours with each other and I got to know her better.’
‘I’ll bet you did.’
I ignored the jibe. ‘The third time we met was in Mumbai. She called me and came over to my place, where we had dinner together.’
‘All this while, you had no idea who she was?’ Sara asked. ‘And if you told her about yourself, she would have likely guessed you might know Karan.’
‘She spoke about her family, her childhood and so on but didn’t reveal her name. All she said was that people call her D. And if she guessed that I know Karan, she didn’t let on.’
Roy interjected. ‘Omar, she figured that you knew Karan when you told her about your schooldays, perhaps mentioned Sara—I don’t know. It was during your second meeting, I think.’
I said slowly, ‘That’s possible. She did go off quite abruptly that day.’
Neel looked at Roy and said sharply, ‘How do you know all this? Omar hasn’t even mentioned any of this to Sara or me, for God’s sake!’
Before replying, Roy got up and poured himself another whisky. ‘Delnaz figured out pretty early in her marriage to Karan that there was something seriously wrong with him. For reasons best known to her, she chose not to leave him even though they hardly have a relationship anymore, physical or otherwise.
‘One day, quite by chance, she found a bag inside a drawer in his office, containing the blood-stained clothes of a woman. I guess he had kept it there and forgotten to dispose of it. A rare mistake. She immediately suspected the worst but wisely chose not to confront Karan.’
‘Poor girl,’ said Sara. ‘What bad luck to have married a man like that!’
‘Yes but remember how charming Karan can be, Sara. You fell for him yourself.’
She made a face. ‘Don’t remind me of that. Please.’
‘Anyway, Delnaz began to quietly snoop on her husband, going through his effects when he wasn’t around, trying to keep tabs on his whereabouts and so on. For a long time, she found nothing objectionable. Even the bag with the clothes had disappeared. She began to wonder if she was imagining things or drawing conclusions too quickly.
‘But she didn’t give up. Her instincts told her she was right. She knew about Karan’s violent nature, of course, and his sadistic streak had started to reveal itself more and more when they had sex. He often tied her up, hit her and wanted to do role plays where he was killing her in different ways.’
I saw Sara shudder but she didn’t say anything. I wondered if she was thinking about the sex she had had with Karan herself a long time ago.
Roy went on. ‘It took a while but Delnaz finally found the mother lode. Though Karan was fiercely possessive about his computer, she managed to figure out his power-on password and logged into it one night, when he was asleep.
‘She found gigabytes of S&M porn on his hard drive, some of it unbelievably graphic. But that wasn’t all. She systematically went through his document folders and found an Excel spreadsheet named “Events”. It only contained a single table with a series of names, dates and places. Had Delnaz not suspected what she did, it may have seemed innocuous to her.
‘She guessed correctly that it was a list of his victims, though the number appalled her, as expected. Her hands shaking, she randomly picked three names and Googled them. Two threw up details of murders corresponding to the respective time frames and locations. One of them was incidentally Sasha, on whose death there was naturally a huge amount of online information. She tried another three names and this time, all three came up as matching cases of unsolved killings of young girls.’
Sara asked, her voice quavering, ‘What…what did she do then?’
‘Her first impulse was to run, get as far away from Karan as possible. Then she forced herself to calm down and think clearly. Running away wouldn’t help, of course. Neither would going to the police, she realised. Her evidence was hardly convincing, especially given Karan’s stature. She even considered killing him in his sleep but didn’t have the stomach for it.
‘For the next few days, Delnaz pondered over what she should do. There were again moments of self-doubt. What if she was wrong? After all, there was no real proof that Karan had really killed all those women. All she had were some bloody clothes, a directory of perverted porn and a list of names.
‘After a lot of thought, she decided to trust her instincts. She
had
to do something. If Karan was innocent, then that would eventually get established. There would be hell to pay for later but she was ready for that. If her suspicions were correct though, then her actions could save the lives of future victims and bring a heinous criminal to book.’
An indescribable sadness washed over me. I knew D was troubled but hadn’t imagined that it could be anything of this magnitude. I only wished she had confided in me. Though there wasn’t necessarily anything I could have done to help her, I would have at least shared her burden and who knows, maybe the two of us would have figured out some way to bring down Karan.
‘She should have gone to the police,’ I said. ‘I’m sure someone would have taken that list seriously and cross-referenced their records with it.’
Roy shrugged. ‘Maybe…But there was this overwhelming fear in Delnaz’s mind that the police were in Karan’s pocket. She did the next best thing she could think of—take her story to a woman she had met socially a couple of times but knew far more from her highly visible campaigns protesting crime against women. Coincidentally, it was the Member of our organisation who had already launched an investigation into the same murders.’
Neel said, ‘Did you already suspect Karan at that time?’
‘Well, he was on my longlist but honestly, I hadn’t really thought it could be him. However, when I met Delnaz and heard her out, I knew I had my man. I did some further checking and found that in a large number of the cases, I could place Karan in the city or town where the killing took place around the time it happened. For me, there was no further doubt.’
We lapsed into silence, digesting all this information. Then Sara said, ‘What about Rachel…How did she know about you, Roy?’
Roy sighed. ‘Rachel did a brilliant investigation of her own. She had figured out it was Karan well before I did—in fact, she had gathered enough evidence to nail him but he killed her before she could act on it. When I realised that Rachel was sniffing on the same trail as I was and a couple of steps ahead of me, I reached out to her to combine forces. She was understandably shocked to see me alive but I swore her to secrecy. Unfortunately, it was too late for…’
He stopped abruptly, and grabbed the Walther from the table. Then he shouted, ‘Go in right now!’
Before anyone could react, there was a muffled crack and the front door flew open.
71
Roy
My sixth sense had warned me a fraction too late.
Three men walked in. They looked calm and unhurried. Professionals, I figured. Not good news at all. One of them kicked the door behind him but it didn’t close properly. They had probably used some low-intensity explosive to blast the lock.
I studied them carefully.
One man stood a little ahead of the others, and was clearly the leader. He was of medium height and had a wiry build. I guessed he would be quick on his feet, and deceptively strong. His features were flat, unremarkable except for the eyes which stared back expressionlessly at me. The irises were jet black, with the whites visible around them. They were the eyes of a demented man.
The other two men could have been brothers. Perhaps they were, I don’t know. Both were over six feet tall, with thick arms and large hands. One’s nose had been broken in the past, and the other had a long, ugly scar running down his face. They had been in fights before, serious ones. Neither looked very bright. They were obviously the locally hired muscle.
All three carried Chinese M20 pistols. It’s a pretty accurate gun and popular among all classes of criminals in the country. The silencers weren’t standard issue, though.
There was no doubt in my mind that they had come to kill us. Maybe they would dress up the scene later to make it look like a burglary gone wrong but the real objective was to take us out, that much was certain.
‘Sit down!’ Crazy Eyes spat the words at me in a hard voice.
I slowly sank back into my chair but not before I had managed to slip the Walther in my pocket. The others had been too stunned to move.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
He didn’t reply. His eyes swept around the room, even as his henchmen kept their guns trained on us. I detected a faint note of confusion on his face as he carefully checked out each of us. I presumed that he had been told there would be three people inside the house, not four.
Sara raised her head and said bravely, ‘This is my house. If you want money or valuables, I can tell you where you’ll find them. Please don’t hurt us!’
The man turned towards her and gave a half-smile but remained silent. His gaze travelled to her breasts and lingered, making her cringe.
Neel clenched his fists and shouted, ‘If you touch her, I’ll…’
One of the other men took two strides forward and struck Neel on the face with the butt of his M20. For his bulk, he moved surprisingly fast. I thought Neel had been knocked out but then he raised his head and stared back defiantly at his assailant. His lips had been reduced to a bloody pulp and there was a deep gash on his right cheek.
Sara screamed. She started to move towards Neel when there was a dull thump and a bullet flew into the sofa six inches from her head, throwing up a small puff of dust and foam. Crazy Eyes said menacingly, ‘Don’t move! The next one won’t miss.’
Sara fell back with a weak moan. Neel hissed, ‘You bastard! Kill me, if you have to. Leave her alone!’ Despite the circumstances, I felt admiration for him. Neel had more balls than most guys I’ve known.
The man who had struck Neel pressed his M20 against his temple and looked questioningly at Crazy Eyes, who shook his head.
‘What do you want?’ I repeated.
‘You’ll find out.’
With his free hand, he made a waving motion to his goons. On cue, they unslung the backpacks strapped on their shoulders. One began to walk around the room and stuff items into it randomly—two mobile phones, a pair of silver jars, a computer tablet, a set of expensive looking crystal figurines. The other man went out through the door leading further into the house.
My presumption was correct. They were going to make it look like a burglary.
The way Crazy Eyes kept staring at Sara made me really uneasy. I was sure he was planning to have some fun with her before killing us. It would only add authenticity to the crime scene. Rape-robbery-murder was not an uncommon crime cocktail in the capital.
I knew I would have to do something very soon. With only two of them to deal with, our odds had improved but I needed a distraction. Crazy Eyes didn’t let his attention on us wander for a moment. His gun-hand remained rock-steady. I caught Neel’s eye and nodded imperceptibly. I hoped he had seen me pocket the Walther and understood what I needed him to do.
He blinked twice to signal that he had.
Crazy Eyes’ flunky had almost completed his circuit of the room. Waiting until he was within striking distance, Neel dived off the sofa and from an almost horizontal position, kicked out at the man’s knees in a jack-knifing motion. He connected spectacularly. The man was taken completely by surprise and fell face first on a side table, smashing the glass top.
Even as the man was sliding to the floor, I had the Walther out and was lining it up on Crazy Eyes. He had frozen for a moment at the sudden move by Neel but instinctive reflexes took over and he began to swing his M20 towards me. Something told him that I was the real threat. In that split second, I knew he would get there before me, because he had a much shorter arc to cover.
Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement. I didn’t look but I guessed it was Omar. He had picked up a heavy metal ashtray and flung it at Crazy Eyes. I saw it enter my field of vision and strike his shoulder even as my ears registered a muffled pop from the M20.
I felt nothing. It was impossible that Crazy Eyes could have missed me completely at that range but he obviously had. Omar had thrown his aim by a couple of degrees and it had been enough.