A Cut-Like Wound (32 page)

‘Something hard, small and rounded … a hammer would splinter the surface differently. Imagine a coconut being swung against a man’s head. But this isn’t anything as big as a coconut. A ball of some sort is my initial reading…’

Gowda slipped off the mask. ‘Thank you, doctor,’ he said, beginning to move to the door.

‘I am going to do the internal examination now. Don’t you want to see what that throws up?’

‘I need to step outside,’ Gowda said. ‘I need to make a few urgent phone calls.’

Gowda was still lost in thought when Stanley walked out a little later.

‘What happened? Why did you leave?’ Stanley asked curiously, watching Gowda light up.

‘I needed to sort out my thoughts. There’s something very obvious that I am not seeing and I know it’s staring me in my face, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to…’ Gowda said, staring into the middle distance. He took a deep drag of his cigarette.

‘The post-mortem report is going to be crucial,’ Stanley said.

The sun had set and the veranda was wreathed in long shadows. Stanley glanced at Gowda and felt a great weariness. They had a bigger case to sort out. Counterfeit 1000-rupee notes were being unloaded in the state and they needed to be working on that. The impact it would have on the country’s stability was frightening. Sure, there was a serial killer at work here. But this was, after all, a scum on scum murder.
Should he just leave it to Gowda? Stanley wondered. He would need to speak to his bosses first.

Dr Reddy stepped out into the veranda. ‘You said he’s from Kerala, didn’t you?’ he asked Stanley.

Stanley nodded.

‘Can I bum a cigarette?’ The doctor turned to Gowda with a sheepish smile.

‘Sure,’ Gowda said. He pulled out his pack of India Kings, flicked the top back and offered it. The doctor took a cigarette. Gowda turned to Stanley. ‘C’mon, have a smoke. I can see you are dying for one.’

A wry smile lit up Stanley’s face. ‘I guess one cigarette’s not going to kill me,’ he said, pulling out a cigarette and tapping it against his palm.

Gowda lit a match and held the flame for both men to light up. He watched the two of them draw in the smoke with a hiss of satisfaction as the nicotine flooded their bloodstreams.

‘Why did you ask if the deceased was from Kerala?’ Gowda asked suddenly.

‘I just had a look at his stomach contents,’ Dr Reddy said, tapping ash into the ground. ‘It looks like his last meal was from a Kerala restaurant. I could see bits of undigested food. Parota, and he probably had some meat with it. Which means, given the state of the stomach contents, his last meal was eaten at about ten p.m. and the estimated time of death would be between eleven and eleven thirty.’

A few minutes later, he added, ‘One other thing. It will be in my report but I may as well tell you now. Your man liked to fuck in the ass. He’s cleaned himself up after the act or his sexual partner did it for him, but I could still see some traces of faecal matter on his penis.’

‘When will you be able to give us the final report?’ Gowda asked.

‘I’ll pick it up from you first thing in the morning,’ Stanley said, turning towards Dr Reddy. ‘The forensic lab will take time to process the information, but your PM report will be enough for us to start giving direction to our investigations.’

Gowda’s jaws clamped. He could see the case slipping away from him.

Later that night, Gowda and Stanley went back to Gowda’s home. Gowda brought out a bottle of Old Monk rum and two glasses. ‘Soda and ice or Coke?’ he asked as he poured Stanley a double large.

‘Jesus, Gowda, are you trying to get me drunk or what?’ Stanley demanded at the sight of his near-full glass of raw spirit.

Gowda grinned.

‘What about some touchings?’ Stanley said, drinking deeply of his rum and Coke.

Gowda brought a plate of chakli and peanuts and settled back in his armchair.

‘Shall we?’ he asked.

‘I thought this was a social call…’ Stanley sniffed.

‘We can socialize after we figure this out,’ Gowda said.

‘Fine.’ Stanley sighed.

They got to work piecing together the murder. It began with a young man thrown out of his job.

Mohan must have left the restaurant at 9.30 p.m. He shared a small house with three other boys from Kerala in Kammanahalli. He didn’t go back to his room however.

Someone saw him board a Volvo bus that went to Hebbal.
It was only logical to assume that he would have got off at either 80 Feet Road, Kalyan Nagar or Hennur Cross.

‘The bus ride from Marathahalli to Hennur Cross takes forty-five minutes, give or take a few minutes,’ Gowda said.

What had happened thereafter?

A call had come to the restaurant manager at a little past one. ‘He is dead; Mohan’s dead,’ a voice had said. But the man woken out of sleep had slammed down the phone in disgust. The little cocksucker was now trying to make him feel guilty, he decided, turning over to sleep. The manager had revealed as much when he was picked up for questioning by the CCB men.

‘In keeping with the calls that had been made to friends or family of the other targets. The murderer had a twisted sense of conscientiousness. It wasn’t enough to merely murder, he felt the need to inform so that the body wouldn’t remain untraced,’ Stanley said.

‘The estimated time of death is between eleven and eleven thirty. So we can assume that his last meal was eaten in the vicinity. Let’s say, a radius of four kilometres,’ Gowda said, circling a zone on the city map.

‘How many restaurants do you have there that serve Kerala food?’ Stanley asked.

Gowda shrugged. ‘Quite a few!’ He put his hand to his mouth and stifled a yawn.

Stanley looked thoughtfully at the diagram. ‘So what are we looking at?’ he asked.

‘The first thing to do is to make a quick round of all the possible eating places and see if anyone remembers him,’ Gowda said.

‘I’ll ask Santosh to take a couple of constables and a photo
of the deceased. I’ll ask them to go to every eating place that sells Kerala food within this zone,’ he said, tracing the circle on the map, ‘and ask around. Waiters. Cleaners. The manager. Parking attendants. Paanwallahs nearby. Let them check if he’s been to any of those places. Who he was with, and for how long. This is going to pace up the investigation, Stanley.’

‘Gowda, wait, I don’t think Santosh should do this. I’ll have to send my men,’ Stanley said. ‘You know this is technically our case now.’

‘What do you mean?’ Gowda growled.

Stanley shrugged. ‘You know what I mean.’

Gowda looked away, too angry to speak. It was like that bloody story about the Arab and the camel all over again. He felt like the guileless Arab who had allowed the camel to stick its head through the flap of the tent so that it may keep itself warm. Before the Arab knew what was happening, the camel had taken over the tent and he was out shivering in the cold desert wind.

SUNDAY, 21 AUGUST

Gowda was in a little teashop in a shadowed alley that he didn’t recognize. Urmila sat across the wooden table with a scarred white Formica top. Overhead, an old ceiling fan whirred slowly. He smiled at her. He watched as she smiled back, raised the chipped teacup and dropped it on the floor. The cup smashed into shards of white porcelain. The tea
splashed his shoes and formed a puddle of milky brown. ‘What the fuck, U?’ Gowda began and felt his words escape him as Santosh and the corporator walked towards them.

Then, to his horror, Urmila reached for his cup brimming with tea and dropped it on the floor. The splintering sound of the cup filled his ears. All of them laughed at his consternation. The corporator, Santosh and Urmila, and was that Dr Reddy and his two ghoulish assistants behind them? Peals and peals of laughter that turned into a whickering note of mirth that drew closer and closer until it seemed to buzz through his ears. Gowda woke up, startled to hear the doorbell ringing through the house.

He sat up, feeling like he had trudged up a mountain. Breathless, his heart racing, his eyes clouding over. He glanced at his watch on the bedside table. Quarter to nine. Shanthi had asked for the day off. Had she changed her mind?

He ran his fingers through his hair and went to the door. ‘I thought you said you wanted a day off,’ he said as he opened the latch.

Urmila stood there with a grin. ‘If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain … etc’

He gaped.

‘I dreamt of you,’ he said nonplussed.

She stared at him. ‘If anyone else had said that to me, I would have presumed that he was hitting on me. What were you dreaming of?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s complicated … sort of disjointed. What are you doing here?’

‘I thought I’d surprise you. It’s a Sunday and you said your maid had the day off. So…’ The confidence in her voice seemed to be dipping by the syllable.

‘Come in,’ he said.

She followed him into the living room, which was a mess of dirty glasses, abandoned food and empty bottles. She wrinkled her nose. ‘Late night?’

He grinned sheepishly. ‘Stanley, do you remember him? Stanley Sagayaraj, the basketball captain … he is in the police force too. He’s with the CCB and we are working on a case and we decided to bring the discussion here…’

‘And did it get anywhere?’ she asked, picking up the glasses.

He stared at her for a moment. ‘Not really,’ he said, the grimness of his tone making her look up.

She put down the glasses and went to him. She placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

He turned his head and, on an impulse, kissed her fingers. ‘No … but I am glad you are here.’

She smiled and nuzzled her cheek against his arm. ‘Go take a shower. I’ll make you some tea and something to eat.’

‘A shower would be a good idea if it worked. Mine hasn’t for god knows how long!’

She pushed him towards what she presumed was his bedroom. ‘Go!’

Gowda stepped into the bathroom. He looked ruefully up at the shower. One of these days he would get around to sorting it out. All it needed was half an hour of a plumber’s time and he could have long hot showers. In the meantime, he would have to make do with a bucket bath.

Gowda turned the tap on and adjusted the hot and cold streams. The water filled the bucket, splattering the silence of the house. He wondered what Urmila was doing. He hummed under his breath. He could hear his phone ring in the bedroom. He dipped the blue plastic mug into the
bucket and threw water on himself. But the phone kept trilling, ruining the pleasure of water sluicing his skin. If he had been under a shower … no matter what, he would get the shower fixed this week, he decided.

Urmila was making toast on the cast-iron griddle when he walked into the kitchen. ‘You don’t have a toaster,’ she said. ‘So it will have to be tawa toast for you…’

He saw that she had opened the cabinets and found the porcelain plates. At her home, perhaps only the help and the dogs ate off steel.

He shrugged. ‘You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. Shanthi must have left something in the fridge. Some food I can warm up…’

She didn’t respond and continued to butter his toast. He watched, amused. ‘I can butter my own bread,’ he said.

She looked at him steadily. ‘Really?’

He flushed.

‘Good?’ she asked, watching him eat.

He nodded. Her masala omelette melted in his mouth and the toast was precisely how he liked it: not too brown, but with a decided crunch and buttered liberally, so it flooded his mouth with an oozy, silky saltiness.

‘Thank you,’ he said, sipping his tea, strong and not too sweet, again just as he liked it.

‘What now?’ she asked. Unspoken questions hovered in the air.

‘We are going to sit in adjoining chairs in the living room and read the newspapers. And when it’s eleven, we’ll open a couple of beers and then I am going to take care of some unfinished business with you.’

She frowned. ‘What unfinished business?’

He laughed and reached for her. ‘Actually the newspapers and beer can wait. What can’t is this…’

She giggled against his chest. ‘But you just had breakfast…’

‘So?’