Predator (20 page)
His thoughts wandered all over as he felt a strange rush. He checked his cell phone for missed calls from Officer Amar Singh. There were several.
There were five samples of semen found on the soiled clothes, but they had only four suspects. Who on earth was the fifth? Or was it merely an oversight at Doc’s end and there were only four culprits?
Perhaps Doc was losing his edge with age. Whether it was for the best or not, Inspector Khan wouldn’t trust his own father with this case. His experiences in life had turned him into a cynic.
Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair
,
Simple Simon placed hidden cameras everywhere
Simple Simon went to look if plums grew on a thistle
;
Peeping Tom, he watched women in the shower or a drizzle
He pricked his fingers very much that made poor Simon whistle
,
Simple Simon wasn’t so simple; he just worked his nozzle.
—The Predator
The Devil’s Lair
The dingy room stank of blood, urine and excrement. But for the lone bulb close to the buttery, there was no other visible source of light. The clay walls and the earthen floor helped maintain a very cold temperature in the dungeon. Communication with the outside world was nigh impossible from beneath the ground. Only a lone, brave intermittent signal could make it to the outside world and needed Salmonella to catch it.
Grace’s world was reduced to a point where the angel of death was welcome. The apostle of life had clocked out. Metal chains clanked once again to announce the arrival of the powerful ones to tame the soul of a Venusian and make it surrender to the devil. Men! Love! Purity! Hah! God, are you watching this show!
Grace was a fallen angel in captivity; soul dead and body bruised with nothing more to lose. Lying naked on the damp floor, the physical and psychological shockwaves had merged into an intense chill that sliced through her spine.
She had always been an active child. Her parents would punish her by making her sit in one place for at least an hour before she could resume her hurricane-like hyperactivity.
Her innocent, childlike soul languished during those times and yearned to break free; after all she was born free. But not this time.
Now, alone and bruised, on a cold dark floor, she remembered the frustration she had felt when she had been banished to a corner as a child. The memory was a welcome relief to the reality that was way more ferocious. Although bound and gagged, her mind raced faster than ever. It took her on a one-way trip to the beautiful memories of the past. Her life flashed before her eyes. Life was so different back then – now life itself was the punishment because all it held was fear and agony.
The Predator and his pack had raped her repeatedly taking turns, until the pain had turned her numb. The horrific painted faces loomed around her once again. She knew they’d come back for more. Every time she wished that this would be the last time and fervently hoped that they would kill her.
Yet again, the brutal dance of the devil started up as the painted faces made her body limply sway to the rhythms of their insatiable lust. Her blood soaked thighs and lower abdomen hurt with excruciating pain as the painted faces raped her yet again one after the other. Her groans only seemed to add to their twisted pleasure, and she’d forced herself to remain quiet after the first few times.
The ordeal lasted for almost an hour as the silent screams tore through Grace’s soul. Something told her that it would all be over now. Satisfied, the painted faces looked at the leader of the pack as he magically produced a blanket and passed around wet towels.
‘Wipe your faces, men. Cover her up. It is time,’ he said, and, wiping the bizarre maquillage off his face, leered at Grace. She stared in dismay to see Joe, who tossed a blanket to Chris, as his face and the other faces emerged from their façades. She wasn’t surprised to see Chris and Prince. Nor was she surprised to see the greying, Joe, the most respectable man in town, and Ram Singh, his flunkey. But she couldn’t get her head around the fact that the fifth man, the stranger, her lover, her muse, could be one of them.
She closed her eyes. Her memories and reality seemed at odds, and Grace wondered if her mind was playing tricks on her. She wondered if it had just been a dream. The fairy tale night at the café, where they had met for the first time, and he had captured her heart with just a cup of coffee. She remembered the first time he had taken her out on a date to one of her favourite restaurants. It had all been a charade and had obviously meant nothing to him.
How could any man be so paradoxical and twisted? She’d have given him everything he wanted in a heartbeat. So why did he have to make her suffer this way? Was it all about sex? Or was it male domination? Or something else altogether? He’d led her down a black hole all the way to a point of no return. But why?
He had hurt and damaged her the most – emotionally, psychologically and physically. All in the name of love. The others seemed to call him ‘Manja’ – was that his nickname?
Grace’s mind was racing and alert as the anger and desperation inside her burned while her body seemed to have given up altogether. She couldn’t afford to die without seeing these bastards brought to book – evil had to die. Barely alive, her half-closed eyes burned with fury as she helplessly watched Ram Singh undo the chains that bound her hands and feet. She wasn’t prepared to die – not just yet.
Chris buckled up his five pocket jeans and donned his denim jacket. A sudden rush of love seemed to overcome him as he sat down and hugged her in a tight embrace. He had claimed to love her from the bottom of his heart. She was the only girl he really cared for.
If only she had accepted him, he would probably have been a changed man. He could have made her life beautiful. Well, her life would still be beautiful; after all, she would soon be the devil’s muse for all eternity.
The bastard! As he embraced her, Grace felt something hard and metallic in his pocket. Her presence of mind told her it was a cell phone. Her heart was pounding as she mustered all her strength to lift her hand and reach into his pocket as he held her tight in his arms. Surreptitiously, she managed to take his Smartphone, and slid it behind her back, trying not to wince at the pain of the effort.
‘Get up, you pansy bastard, the effect of the drug is wearing off. Get your fix, asshole and man up. We’ve got work to do!’ yelled Joe as he saw Chris holding Grace gently. Prince had an amused look as Ram Singh followed his master, Joe, to the other exit of the small room that led into the buttery.
Chris tenderly covered Grace from neck to toe with the blanket and got up to follow Joe as he started barking out orders, ‘Leave her alone, pansy boy, see that the branding iron is ready! Prince, prepare the barrel for the ritual and get everything in order. I’ll get the robes and prepare the candles. Ram Singh, bring the tub and the grapes. You! Manja! Keep a look out for that pesky cop!’
A flurry of activity ensued as the preparations for a strange ritual began. In her semi-conscious state, Grace watched them running around from afar. She knew if she closed her eyes, she’d never be able to open them again. She wanted to die, yes, but not until she was able to send a message to the outside world. She struggled not to pass out.
It had taken Grace a lot of strength to steal the phone from Chris, and she was wondering if it had a password lock on it. She was surprised when she saw it was her own smartphone, the one she had given to the stranger, ‘
Manja
’.
She wondered what it was doing in Chris’s pocket, but had no time to dwell on that now. With a lump in her throat, she hurriedly punched in the numeric, four-digit passcode, hoping fervently that it hadn’t been changed. It was her house number 6768 and then – swoosh! Her heart sank as she tried to remember phone numbers, but she couldn’t recall a single number from her address book. She could see the telephone signal lines appear on top of the cell phone.
With great presence of mind she quickly clicked on the phone settings and turned on the geo-location tagging. As she switched on the ‘Location Services’ on her phone, she could only hope that someone would try to find her smartphone. Salmonella was a smart cookie, she’d taught her that.
She could hear the sound of the approaching footsteps now. The sound of heavy furniture being moved had subsided. In the dim light, she could faintly see the beasts coming back to get her. With every bit of strength in her body, Grace gently placed the smartphone on the floor and pushed it away with all her might, and it skittered away to a nook, to lie hidden under the eerie wall decoration of empty wine bottles. There was nothing more she could do. Prayers didn’t exist in her world anymore.
Grace smiled a dying woman’s smile. Something told her that she was about to die. The brutal ordeal was finally about to end. As she waited for the rapists to come and ravage her body once again, she let her mind drift to the happy memories of her childhood once again.
Images flashed in front of her eyes of her mother picking her up when she was a baby and walking in the sunshine with her father by her side. She dreamt of her twelfth birthday when her parents had gifted her a bicycle. She remembered the morning assembly prayer in the school courtyard. She dreamt of her first crush in school. How silly it was of her to secretly follow him to his house, throw a rose at him and then run all the way back to her house panic-stricken. She dreamt of the long evening walks and the talks that she used to have with her parents. Wasted love.
Grace was growing delirious. Nothing mattered anymore. She couldn’t feel the pain anymore. She had risen above it all. Those were the days of fun and frolic; those were the days of incessant laughter when life glided by smoothly and she was footloose and carefree. Those were the days when all that mattered was happiness, a happiness which didn’t impinge on computers.
Those were the moments etched onto the golden page of life, that lucky page which played in the courtyard of the past unaware of the dangers lurking in the convoluted labyrinths of the present and the future. Life had been wondrous back then. ‘Take my body, you bastards, you’ll never take my soul … ’ she said to herself as the gargoyles around her let go. They had lost.
Everything had been so perfect until she had given in; until she had met the stranger, the one these swine called ‘
Manja
’. Never in her wildest nightmares could she have imagined him to be a monster capable of such evil. The sick, perverted bastard had crushed her dreams under his ugly boot.
Grace didn’t feel the pain anymore. She just wanted to die. She knew it wouldn’t be long as she could feel it in her shattered bones that death was just inches away. Her mind wandered on. When she was a child, she would walk to church every Sunday morning with her mother and pray to Jesus. On their way back, her mother would take her to the small lake by the church, and they’d sit on the bench and watch the ducks swim in the rippling water.
Her mother would hug her tight and tell her she was the most beautiful girl on the planet and that her prince charming was on his way on a magnificent stallion. Grace used to chuckle in delight and dream of the handsome prince. Like every girl, she’d just wanted to be loved and cherished. She wanted marriage, children and a happy life. This wasn’t the end anybody could ever wish for. Grace had no one to blame but herself. She deserved to die.
The Ritual
Her dreams lay shattered like the bones inside her. Hope had died with her soul when her pride was taken away. Her belief in goodness and fun had been violated repeatedly and she had brought it all upon herself. The Predator had killed the spirit of a beautiful, young, innocent woman for reasons only he knew.
The sound of Beethoven’s symphony filled the air; she could faintly hear the vocals from his masterpiece Choral. The gentle music playing inside the buttery wafted into her dingy prison. She felt cold and lay curled in a foetal position within the blanket; broken and bruised in mind, body and soul.
A faint fragrance seemed to emanate from the buttery. It triggered an olfactory memory. Her mother would buy patchouli oil from vendors in the flea market and used a drop or two to rinse out their laundry. The sweet aroma would pervade the house. Grace welcomed the wafts of her happy childhood. Was this an illusion or did the smell really exist in the buttery, she wondered. But the familiarity made her feel human again; it gave her hope of survival in the world of the wicked.