Half joking. Always in the back of his mind was the fact that the same extracurricular activities that had paid for the large, well-appointed house in which he now stood, the Jaguar, five-star hotels, and high-class hookers, might also one day require him to disappear at a moment’s notice. He’d seen Heat. That De Niro quote about how you needed to be able to leave in thirty seconds if you felt the heat around the corner? Dr. Arora had taken that to heart.
But he was going to make things slightly easier for himself. He was going to leave in thirty minutes. He shrugged himself out of his jacket as he passed through the large reception hall of his home, opened the double doors that led into the dining room.
He stopped.
Laid out on the dining-room table were three large jars and a plastic funnel. Inside one of the jars was a human heart. The second was full of blood. The third one was more difficult to distinguish in the low lights of the room, but it looked like…
It was. Preserved in some kind of liquid was a large lump of skin that was pressed up against the glass, floating like a gelatinous marine specimen.
The killer. He was here. Arora turned and tried to run but a figure stepped out from behind the door, a glittering hypodermic syringe in his hand. The attacker’s arm swung in a blur. The next thing Arora saw was the floor as it rushed to meet him.
Chapter 103
ARORA AWOKE FROM the sedative—etorphine, if he wasn’t very much mistaken—to find himself taped to one of his own dining chairs and seated in a privileged position at the head of the table.
And there they were, still laid out in front of him. The jars.
Oh God.
“Are you hungry?” came a voice from behind, and he twisted his head to see the intruder move from his rear to the edge of his peripheral vision. All he saw was a man in black.
“What are you going to do to me?” he said, and was pleased to find that he sounded strong and resolute. Who knew, perhaps he could talk his way out of this.
The man gave a soft chuckle. “What I’m going to do is serve you dinner.” A black-gloved hand indicated the three jars.
“Come on,” said Arora. “You don’t really believe you’re going to be able to get me to eat that.”
“I’ll have help,” said the attacker, and he placed something on the table next to the jars, a piece of metal apparatus that Dr. Arora recognized as a speculum.
“Look…” the doctor tried to say, but his mouth was dry. The words wouldn’t come. He gathered himself. “Look, why are you doing this? Whatever your reasons, let’s talk about them.”
“You don’t know why I’m doing it?”
His voice was familiar. He was making an effort to disguise it but, even so, Arora recognized it. Just a question of trying to place it. If he could work out the man’s identity then maybe he could establish some kind of bond between them.
“No, I don’t know why you’re doing it,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me?”
A gloved fist slammed down on the table, and even that gesture seemed familiar to Dr. Arora. “You should know!” he spat. “You tell me. You tell me now.”
Again the voice was so familiar. It was as though the intruder’s identity was there, on the tip of Arora’s tongue, dancing around in his memory but not quite staying still long enough for him to recall it.
“Okay, okay, keep your cool,” panted Arora. “It’s the transplants, isn’t it? Are you from Ibrahim? Do you work for people who want a cut? That can be arranged. Just say the word.”
“Venal to the last. You shouldn’t judge others by your own standards. No, Dr. Arora, this has nothing to do with wanting a cut and everything to do with…Well, I suppose it’s revenge.”
Arora changed tack. “Well, I can see that you’re well informed and you’ve been told that I’m heavily involved. But you do know that’s not strictly speaking true, don’t you? I’m very much on the sidelines. It’s true, I perform operations, but the life-saving operations, not those…other ones.”
“What other ones?”
“You know…”
“No. What other ones? The other ones that Rahul told me about before I scooped out his eyes, perhaps? The other ones who were found at the house in Greater Kailash?”
“Yes, those.”
“You had nothing to do with those?”
“No.”
The man in black paused, as though mulling things over, then, as if suddenly deciding, said, “Well, I’m afraid I don’t believe you. Now, shall we begin?”
“No!” pleaded Dr. Arora. That note of strength in his voice was absent now. He strained at the tape that bound him to the chair, whipping his head back and forth as the attacker inserted the speculum between his lips. With his mouth clamped he wanted to swallow but found he couldn’t and began gagging at once. He heard the ripping of tape and saw the intruder advance, the black balaclava closing in as tape was pulled across his forehead and his head was jerked back. Arora bucked and gurgled, pulling against his bindings, but to no avail, knowing that his ordeal had only just begun—knowing only that he wanted it over with as quickly as possible.
“This won’t be swift, you do know that, don’t you?” said the intruder, as though reading his mind.
And now the man in black lifted the jar containing the heart above Arora’s head so that the doctor could see it. The screw lid jangled as gloved hands unfastened it. Next he reached into the glass with one of Arora’s own forks, speared the organ, and removed it. Preserving fluid splattered Arora’s face as the heart was taken out of view, presumably to the table, and he heard the unmistakable sound of a knife and fork at work.
“Perhaps I should have cooked it first,” said the man in black. More fluid dripped to Arora’s face as the fork reappeared, this time with a smaller morsel on the prongs.
“Patel’s heart,” explained the attacker matter-of-factly. “A bit of it, anyway. Who knew he even had one?”
Arora could only make a dry sound, trying unsuccessfully to pull away as the fork disappeared into his mouth and he felt the meat touch his tongue, a taste that was at once gamy and metallic, before it slid down his throat. He spluttered. His mouth filled with vomit. His chest heaved and he coughed, expelling just enough vomit—and possibly even a bit of the heart—to allow himself to breathe, and then again he coughed, trying to clear his airways but dragging bits of meat and vomit into his windpipe.
Another jar was opened. “This is Roy’s skin,” stated the man in black, and continued to feed him, spooning chunks of skin into his mouth and using the fork to shove them into his throat. Trying to breathe through his nose, Arora snorted like a horse, but he could feel that airway blocking too.
“Now, let’s wash it down, shall we?” said the man in black, and in the next instant Arora felt the plastic of the funnel against his teeth, the nozzle nudging it way down his throat, setting off his gag reflex. The jar containing the blood was presented to him. “Kumar’s blood.” Arora watched as hands unscrewed the lid, tossed it aside, and then began to pour the contents of the jar into the funnel.
As he poured, the man in black spoke. “This is for Rita,” he was saying. “This is for my beloved wife.”
The funnel filled. Arora felt Kumar’s blood run thickly down his throat, spill out of his mouth and over his chin, knowing he would soon drown in it. And then, as the darkness beckoned, and Dr. Arora came to the end of his wicked life, the man in black reached to remove his balaclava.
Chapter 104
A TEMPORARY OFFICE had been set up in a conference room at the Oberoi. There a police tech guy in a headset sat watching the surveillance feed from vans parked outside Arora’s and Thakkar’s houses. Opposite sat Commissioner Sharma and Nanda. All three men jumped slightly as the door to the meeting room slammed open and in burst Jack, Santosh, Nisha, and Neel.
“Well?” said Sharma, standing. “Did you pick him up?”
“You were wrong,” said Nisha bitterly, “just as I said you were. The killer is not Ibrahim. Ibrahim wa
s his latest victim.”
Sharma seemed about to take it up with her, but Santosh was already moving in to calm the situation. “It simply means that Private’s theory currently remains the most plausible,” he said, looking quickly between Sharma and Nisha, “and it seems as though the killer is reaching the closing stages of his campaign. If we stay here for the time being, we’re perfectly situated to—”
“Hey,” said Neel from the other side of the room. He’d taken a seat beside the tech guy. “What’s this?”
The investigators clustered around his monitor. There on the feed from Dr. Arora’s residence they could see a figure leaving the grounds then crossing the street.
“Who’s that?” asked Sharma.
The figure was careful to keep his back to the camera as he stepped into a BMW parked at the curb. Rear lights flared. A moment or so later the car drew away.
The tech guy looked nervous as all faces swung toward him. “We didn’t see anyone going in,” he said defensively, hands upraised.
“Get Red Team in there, now,” demanded Sharma, and the tech guy relayed the order into his headset. Seconds later they watched as armed officers from the surveillance van appeared on screen and ran to the gates of the house, nimbly climbing the low wall and disappearing into the grounds.
Sharma was pacing, hand to his forehead. “Jesus! Jesus! Somebody went in there right under our very noses. Run that plate, Nanda. Tell me you got the plate, right?”
“I got the plate, boss,” said Nanda. “Running it now.”
“He must have got in through the back,” said the tech guy. Into his headset he said, “Red Team, get a couple of guys around the back, see if there’s access.”
“You didn’t check access?” exploded Sharma.
The tech guy quailed. “I don’t know, sir, I don’t know. That would be down to the team commander on the ground.”
“For fuck’s sake!” Sharma swept a coffee cup from the conference room table that dinged off the wall and left a brown splat on the wallpaper.
Jack looked disdainfully from the stain to Sharma. “That’s on your bill,” he said, finger pointed. “Now, will you calm the fuck down and act like a professional.”
All stood waiting now, watching the screen intently, the camera trained on Dr. Arora’s gate.
Santosh glanced at Nisha, who stood with her hands on the small of her back, also watching. “Was that him?” he asked.
“I think so,” she nodded. “Same build. Same height.”
The call came back. The tech guy directed it onto overhead speaker. “Go ahead, squad leader.”
“Sir, Arora’s dead. No sign of the killer, just the body all tied up and jars full of…stuff.”
“Stuff?” barked Sharma.
“Sir,” they heard, “it looks as though the killer fed him bits of skin and heart, then poured blood into him until he drowned.”
Chapter 105
“WE KNOW THE killer found another way in,” said Santosh suddenly. “He’s determined. Sharma, deploy more men at the house of Thakkar—send men around the back. My guess is he’ll be on his way there now.”
“The idea was to mount covert surveillance,” hissed Sharma, rounding on Santosh. “We want to catch him, not send him scurrying for cover.”
“He knew we were there,” reasoned Santosh. “He was looking out for a surveillance van. He evaded it easily.”
“If he knew we were there, then why did he allow himself to be seen on the way out?” said Sharma. “Why draw attention to himself?”
Santosh put a hand to his forehead, thinking hard. “I don’t know,” he said, feeling suddenly useless, knowing that the eyes of the room were on him, the great detective, head of Private India, outfoxed by a killer moving around under his very nose.
Now came a fresh development. The screen showed DETV news vans arriving at Dr. Arora’s house. Sharma’s mouth worked up and down in rank confusion. His deputy Nanda crossed to a television, snatched at a controller, and turned it to DETV, where a reporter was already broadcasting from the gates of the house: “Information received moments ago suggests that the killer may have struck again…”
“What the fuck is going on?” said Jack, his gaze going from the television to the two monitors. “How in the hell did they find out so fast?”
On the second screen more news vans arrived outside the gates of Thakkar’s home.
“Blue Team, you see what I’m seeing?” said the tech guy. “Because I’m seeing a bunch of news vans arriving at Thakkar’s house. What the fuck are DETV doing there?”
The reply came over the speaker: “Beats me, sir.”
Sharma had scuttled over to watch what was going on, hardly able to believe his eyes. He snatched at the headset, tearing it off the tech guy’s head. “Blue Team leader, get men outside—find out what the news people are doing there.”
Nanda came off the phone. “They ran the plates, sir. The car was stolen an hour ago. It belongs to a woman in Noida.”
Sharma cursed loudly then switched his attention back to the screen. “What are they doing?” he asked, indignant. “What are all these bloody news vans doing here?” Then, screaming into the mic, “Blue Team? Blue Team, are you reading me? Have you found out what all these news vans are doing?”
“It’s a diversion.”
Jack and Nisha both looked at Santosh, both familiar with the detective’s sudden brainwaves, knowing one was on its way.
“The vans,” said Santosh, pointing at the screen, finger waving from one screen to the other, “they’re a smokescreen. It’s a trick, a simple diversionary tactic to make us look one way, in one direction, and miss what’s happening in the other direction.” He turned to Sharma. “Get men at the rear of the property, at once. That’s where he’ll be.”
“How, though?” said Nisha. “How could he organize all this?”
“Same reason he was able to recognize a surveillance van when he saw it. Same reason he was able to tip off his own news channel to attend the houses of Arora and Thakkar. Same reason he stole a car at Noida, the media hub of Delhi. Because the killer is Ajoy Guha.”
Chapter 106
NOW SHARMA WAS bawling into the headset mic, “Blue Team, get men in the house, now! Report on the status of Thakkar. Do it at once, do you hear me? Do it at once!”
The investigators paced. Moments later the report came back.
“He’s gone, sir. Thakkar has gone.”
“What? You mean he’s there and dead? Or he’s gone, as in literally gone?” barked Sharma.
“The second one, sir. Literally gone. No longer there.”
Sharma snatched off the headset and sent it the same way as the coffee cup. “We’ve lost him. We’ve lost them both,” he said, suddenly ashen-faced. His eyes rose to meet Santosh’s. “If it is him. Ajoy Guha. I was feeding him information. I was practically giving him a list of victims.”
“I have a feeling there will be a great many recriminations on this one,” said Santosh. Once again he was thinking. “He’s got a show tonight. Carrot and Stick is on in just a few minutes.”
“Is he likely to do the show now?” said Jack. “Won’t he be busy scooping out Thakkar’s vital organs?”
“No,” said Santosh. “The other day, the judge handed down a gagging order on a story Guha wanted to run…” He looked inquiringly at Sharma, who nodded gravely.
“Yes,” admitted the Commissioner. “It was the story about the organ transplants. Some coalition of Patel and Thakkar’s companies was trying to stop him.”
“He’ll run it,” said Santosh, certain of it. “He’ll run the story and end it with the death of Thakkar.”
“You seem awfully sure,” said Sharma.
“He’s a man on a mission,” said Santosh, cursing himself for having been so blind. “He always has been.”
Chapter 107
THE DELIVERER MADE his way to the studio, sucking on his lozenge. It was medication that he constantly needed to prevent upper respira
tory tract infections. It had become a constant worry after he’d received a bullet to his lung during the Kargil War between Pakistan and India.
Guha recalled his early days as a newspaper reporter at the Daily Express. He had been one of their best reporters. He had imagined that his outstanding work would also make him popular among his colleagues. He’d almost imagined himself as universally loved and admired. That had been when he’d decided to contest elections for the Press Council of India.
It was a twenty-nine-member body ensuring press freedoms were maintained and that members of the fourth estate exercised responsibility and maintained ethical standards in their reporting. Guha had been convinced he would be able to force the mainstream press to report freely and fearlessly once he was on the council.
Of the twenty-nine members, thirteen represented working journalists, of whom six were to be editors of newspapers and the remaining seven were to be working journalists other than editors. These seven positions would usually be filled by nominations from newspapers around the country but the Daily Express was different and egalitarian. It allowed for internal elections that would decide who would be sent as the newspaper’s representative to the council.
Guha had lost badly.
Dejected, he had been about to hand in his resignation at the Daily Express when his editor had called him into his office. “Even though you lost, I like your spunk,” the editor had told him. “I had a chance to hear some of the talks that you gave to your colleagues. They were pretty good. Have you considered a career in television?”
The editor had proceeded to tell Guha that the Daily Express had decided to start a twenty-four-hour news channel called DETV. A consortium of investors had agreed to fund the project. The editor had felt that Guha would be ideally suited to anchor the primetime news show and spearhead the channel’s investigations. Guha had jumped at the opportunity.
Life was suddenly being kind to him. During his stint contesting elections, he had met a young columnist who worked the entertainment desk. Her name was Rita and she’d had the most gorgeous dimples when she smiled. Guha had fallen head over heels in love with her and they had ended up getting married just three months later.
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