Second Lives (22 page)

I asked, ‘So you think Roy’s behind all the deaths?’

Neel nodded. ‘There can’t be any other explanation.’

‘Maybe that’s why he staged his disappearance,’ Sara said. ‘It was the perfect cover for carrying on his serial killings. How can a dead man be suspected of a crime?’

I took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. ‘I still can’t believe it.’ But the rational part of my mind disagreed.

Sara exclaimed, ‘Remember what D’Mello had said? Whoever murdered Rachel knew her well. Roy perfectly fits the bill.’

‘The bastard must have somehow conned her into believing he’s innocent and then…’ Neel’s voice choked over with anger.

‘And Omar, you heard Roy’s voice when you were being beaten up, right? He obviously tried to kill you and would have succeeded, but for the timely arrival of the police.’

I had run out of arguments. But my mind was in a complete muddle.

‘Nothing’s proven yet,’ said Neel quietly. ‘I think we need to go to the police with this information and let them investigate.’

‘What will we tell them?’ I replied. ‘We’re smartly joining all these dots but I’m not sure the evidence we have will be taken seriously by anyone else.’

Neel thought for a moment and said, ‘You could be right. For starters, I don’t even know the name of the man I waylaid that night, let alone where he lives. Even if I do manage to locate him again, he’s unlikely to repeat his story to the police. In fact, he’ll almost certainly file a complaint against me instead.’

‘Exactly. And while Kabir told me he had seen Roy, I doubt he’ll agree to have his word used to launch a fresh enquiry into the case.’ I sighed. ‘Our story, while it sounds convincing to ourselves, is just too flimsy.’

Sara retorted, ‘So what are you guys saying? All this is bullshit and we should stop believing that Roy is not dead!’

Neel put his hand on her shoulder. ‘No, we’re not saying that, Sara. But we need more than what we’ve got right now to make others believe it too.’

‘What would make others believe us, Neel?’

‘We need to find Roy.’

55

Sara

I remembered Rachel’s last words to me. ‘I know what happened to Roy.’

My first reaction had been panic! Trying to keep my voice as calm as possible, I asked her to elaborate but she repeated that she couldn’t say anything more and hung up. I tried calling her back later the same day and over the next couple of days but she wouldn’t pick up. She just sent me a text message, saying that she was all right and would call me back soon.

And then suddenly she was dead!

I had racked my brains then to figure out what Rachel could have meant.
Had she seen everything that night and only decided to tell me after all these years?
I decided that was highly unlikely.
Had he decided to confess to her?
Again impossible.
Was there some other witness who had come forward?
I couldn’t rule that out but our campsite had been in the middle of nowhere. Even if someone, maybe from a nearby hamlet, had wanted to take a stroll on that bitterly cold night, there were no roads or footpaths within visible distance of our tents.

The only reasonable explanation I could think of was that Rachel had found an old record of Roy’s body floating in the river or washing up somewhere downstream, either from police files or another source. What I would have loved to know is whether she had been specifically trying to find out what happened to Roy or come across it by chance.

It didn’t strike me even once that she may have meant Roy was alive.

The sight of his unconscious body floating away in those turbulent waters had been enough for me to be convinced he was dead, as conclusively as by getting a bullet in the head! It’s nothing short of a miracle that Roy had managed to get out of the river alive, and I was really curious to know how he had accomplished that.

In hindsight, I should have connected what Rachel told me about Roy to the other thing she had said, about having discovered something “shocking” which had put her life in danger. I was so flustered about Roy that I ignored the rest of the conversation.

I remembered those words again when Rachel died, of course. They became the very basis of my rejection of the suicide verdict.

I was prepared to fight the battle on my own until it occurred to me to rope in Neel and Omar, who would be as distressed to learn that Rachel had been murdered. I knew Neel was on a self-imposed break and Omar anyway did his own thing so it wouldn’t have been difficult for either of them to land up in Goa at short notice. It was another matter that none of us had expected or prepared for the dark adventure that was to follow!

I have to admit that another reason for summoning the two guys was to find out if Rachel had told them anything about Roy.
I was quickly reassured that she hadn’t.

I tried to retrace Rachel’s journey in my mind.

It was a safe bet to assume that her starting point was the conversation with Mrs Iyer. She must have discovered Roy’s link to Jo’s murder, though I doubt she used the same tactics as Neel. Shocked, she would have decided to investigate further. As a journalist, she knew how to dig deep to research a story. I am sure she would have called in every favour she had earned and every contact she had made during her career.

We were able to deduce that there were multiple murders only from the clues Rachel had left behind but I’ve no idea how she had found out in the first place. I suppose it was as much a question of suspicion as of the evidence to back it up. Even now, we didn’t know how many victims there were, and most were probably killed too long back for Rachel to have found any serious proof that Roy was the killer. My guess is that she came very close to finding that proof with Anna Grishin but was killed before she could expose him.

I thought about Roy, and the time I was madly in love with him. It was more than an obsession. Every fibre of my being wanted to be with him, to make love to him, to possess him. It was strange that I, used to so much male attention, could ever feel that way about someone, especially when it wasn’t reciprocated. That’s what I was led to believe, at least. I really was crazy.

It should have come as no surprise to me to learn that Roy was a psychopath, or the extent of his crimes. I had first-hand experience of his deranged mind.

Neel was right. We needed to find him.
Quickly.

I’ve read somewhere (or was it in a movie?) that revenge is a dish best served cold. I’m ready for my revenge.
Once again.

I don’t know why but one part of my mind has always stopped me from revealing to anyone that Roy had raped me on our school campus.

56

I always liked Rachel. I truly did. It was really unfortunate that she went sniffing around where she shouldn’t have.

She told me everything before she died. Voluntarily. I guess she was so outraged that she ignored the perils of doing so. Or maybe she didn’t care. And I think a part of her believed that our past association gave her some kind of immunity from me. It was funny because she didn’t initially figure out that I knew about her investigation, and pretended to make normal conversation, like two friends meeting after a long time. She even made me a cup of coffee.

I was shocked at how much Rachel had discovered. Not only did she know about many of my victims, starting with Jo, but she had found out details I was sure were forever buried. She may not have realised it but her body of evidence, even if circumstantial or based on questionable sources, was enough to finish me off. Thankfully she waited too long for something she felt would stand up in court. She had just got it when I caught up with her.

For example, I couldn’t imagine how she connected me with Sasha’s death. It was one I had planned very well.

I had been casually introduced to Sasha at a party, and the beast had approved immediately. She was a little rustic but absolutely gorgeous. After that first meeting, I got a DVD of one her films and watched it. It was B-grade fare but I felt hot stabs of desire every time Sasha came on the screen. There was this one song, incongruously melodious, to which she gyrated so sensuously that I ended up masturbating for the first time in years. I felt quite foolish after that but I knew I had to do something about this woman.

Never had I seen anyone with such a brilliant, flawless complexion. Even at that party, she had no make-up on except lipstick and mascara. She didn’t need to. I visualised her perfect, alabaster body fully naked and my knife slowly cutting through that creamy skin, ruining it forever.

It was the first time I was targeting any kind of celebrity and I knew I would have to be very careful. Sasha wasn’t some superstar but she was reasonably well-known and often featured in the gossip magazines.

She had given me her number, with more than a hint of invitation. I knew plenty of women like her, always ready to barter sex for career favours. Even though I wasn’t from the industry, I guess she thought I could help her indirectly. She was right, of course, but she didn’t know what she was letting herself in for.

I met her twice secretly. She readily understood the reasons I gave her. It wasn’t the first time she had faced such paranoia from men she dated. I chose an empty apartment the first time, and a top-end hotel after that. Both times, I ensured that she came and went without anyone having seen her. Or knowing it was her, at any rate.

Sasha was puzzled that I didn’t have sex with her on either occasion.

She was used to men jumping her without much ado during these trysts. It wasn’t easy for me, I can tell you. Being alone with her sent me into a real tizzy. I controlled myself with difficulty and told her that I wanted to get to know her before moving on to anything else. I was at my charming best and she fell for it. Over glasses of wine, which I figured she only pretended to enjoy, she told me her life story. My mind was busy imagining what I would like to do to her but I kept nodding at appropriate intervals. I had read up everything about her anyway.

She said she loved cooking but hardly ever had the time for it. It was the perfect opening for me. I asked if she would invite me over to her place for dinner one day. She immediately agreed and we fixed up a date.

I was certain that Sasha’s sudden death would draw a massive amount of publicity.

The media would devour a story which involved a beautiful woman falling victim to a violent crime of passion. The fact that it happened at her own home, where the killer had come at her invitation, would make it look like the handiwork of a former lover. In Sasha’s case, that would mean a good number of suspects. I planned to add a few more elements to the crime scene to ensure that nothing was left to chance.

To cut a long story short, it was one of my most memorable “events” ever. Sasha turned out to be stronger than I had thought and she fought me like a tigress, even managing to get me to drop my knife. In the end, I had to use her own pillow to smother her, and cut her up only after she was dead. It was the first time I had done that but it felt almost as good.

It was amusing to find out later just how much trouble I had created for several men in the city, many of them quite well-known, by murdering Sasha. The police investigated relentlessly, as they always do when the press follows their actions closely. They questioned everyone known to have had links with the slain starlet and many who didn’t, but they came no closer to solving the case. My name didn’t come up at all.

To return to Rachel, it was clear that she had done an outstanding job of probing into my alter ego, so to speak. She told me she had been at it for six months. I admired her skill and persistence. It was almost as if she had access to inside information but that was impossible.

Or was it?

I didn’t enjoy killing her. In fact, I hate having to kill more people just to prevent detection. It doesn’t give me any pleasure and unnecessarily increases the risk. But sometimes it’s inevitable. With Rachel, I wanted to make it look like a suicide. I couldn’t bring myself to create another “event” out of her.

Her last words to me were, ‘I hope you go to Hell.’ This, even though I tried to make it as painless as possible, by drugging her before slipping the noose around her neck. But she still struggled and squirmed until well after her brain had shut down.

Things didn’t quite turn out the way I had expected. The Anna Grishin bogey continues to haunt me through Rachel.

Unlike with Sasha, I hadn’t anticipated the kind of sustained press coverage it would end up receiving. And Rachel told me that she had enough proof to incriminate me in that particular case, even if I escaped the others.

The good thing was that she was carrying out her research on her own. I took away and destroyed her laptop, which I assumed contained all her notes and material. Thank God for the double-edged sword that is modern technology. I didn’t know how many people she had spoken to but I hoped that no one would be able to piece together the story anymore.

I had specifically asked Rachel if she had mentioned anything to the others, especially Sara, but she told me she hadn’t.

The police have reopened her death as a murder case. I got to Grigor and his woman in time but it was a close thing. There’s no doubt that those three are not letting up on trying to find out why Rachel died. I have as little desire to kill them as I did Rachel. It would have complicated things. I sent them multiple warnings in Goa but they chose to ignore them all. Those two idiots who disobeyed my instructions and tried to abduct Sara should have ended up scaring them even more than I had intended but that didn’t happen, obviously.

My patience has finally run out.

57

Omar

My phone buzzed. It was an unknown number.