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  “Hello? Heena? Maya? You in there?”

  The hallway yawned emptily at her. Beyond that, their living room. From there came a noise, a rustling, slithering sound, followed by something like a gasp or a hiccup.

  “Hello?” she called, moving faster now, along the hallway and into the front room, where training and instinct made her crouch to present a smaller target.

  The lights in the room were off. She noticed a lamp lying on its side on the floor, signs of a struggle that made her want to cry out with anguish. From the kitchen doorway was a faint glow of light within.

  And then she saw what lay on the kitchen floor. She saw the blood. She heard the gurgling sound that Heena made.

  In a second she was over to her, kneeling down, fumbling for her phone, trying to do so many things at once. Check the pulse. Oh God, so weak. Evaluate the injuries. Three, maybe more, stab wounds. On the floor nearby was Nisha’s own bread knife, gleaming with Heena’s blood. Stem the blood. Call an ambulance. Check that whoever did this—Roy—was no longer in the apartment. And most of all, find Maya.

  Blood bubbled at Heena’s mouth. Her eyes rolled and went in and out of focus as she struggled to stay conscious. One clawed hand reached to Nisha.

  “He took her. The beast took her,” she managed.

  “Roy? Roy took her?”

  Heena nodded weakly. “Go get her, Nisha,” she breathed. “Go and save your little angel.”

  “Stay with me, Heena,” urged Nisha. “Stay with me.” She had her phone to her ear, calmly giving instructions to the emergency services. But it was too late. Heena’s hand that held her jacket relaxed and splashed into a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Her eyelids fluttered then closed. And when Nisha checked her pulse, there was none.

  Chapter 71

  NISHA SAT ON the kitchen floor, head swimming, momentarily stunned into inaction. For perhaps twenty seconds she wondered if she was up to this task—if life had finally given her a challenge she could not meet.

  And then with a curse she shook the thought out of her head. She stood up. Her head was clear. Her only priority was to kill the bastard who had abducted her daughter and get her baby back. At that moment Nisha was the embodiment of Shakti—female power.

  She scrolled to the browser of her phone, Google-searched “Amit Roy, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,” and clicked the link for the ministry. Once it had loaded, she clicked on the “Contact Us” link. On that page were the email IDs and phone numbers of the senior officials of the ministry.

  Roy’s name was the first one on that page. It was followed by an email ID, office phone number, and residential phone number. She copy-pasted the residential phone number into a reverse lookup website and waited impatiently for the result to pop up.

  And she had it. New Moti Bagh. She looked at the map on her phone. Sixteen minutes to get there at this time. In the distance she could hear the sound of sirens and she knew that by rights she should remain behind for the ambulance but she couldn’t. Time was all that mattered now. She dashed to the bedroom, reached to the back of her bedside table, and found her old .38 police special. She clipped it to her belt as she scrambled outside, back into the Toyota, and a moment later she was pulling out into traffic.

  “I’m coming, baby,” she said. “I’m coming.”

  Chapter 72

  NISHA DROVE THE car recklessly as she crossed Rao Tula Ram Marg on her way to Moti Bagh. She would have preferred to take the shorter route via Hare Krishna Mehto Marg but roadworks blocked the way. She cursed her luck and followed the longer route.

  I’ll kill him if he’s touched her. So help me.

  A cab in front of her refused to yield in spite of her repeated attempts. Nisha switched the headlights on full beam, jammed her hand on the horn, and overtook it, avoiding grazing it with just a couple of millimeters to spare. The man in the car shouted obscenities at her. He tried to chase her but was unable to keep up.

  She wondered whether she should call Jack or Neel but decided against it. Santosh’s death was a body blow to everyone. She was on her own.

  Like a tigress protecting her cub.

  Chapter 73

  JACK LOOKED AT the corpse.

  It was Santosh.

  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Santosh’s knees were slightly lifted off the ground and his arms were bent at the elbows. He had obviously been attempting to adopt the fetal position in order to fight the bitter cold as he died.

  Beside him, Neel was staring at his dead boss, a vacant expression on his face.

  “Hey, bud, you okay?” said Jack, and put his hand to the other man’s upper arm.

  It was as though the contact spurred Neel into action. “Help me,” he said.

  “Help you what?”

  “Get the body out. Please, quick—time is of the essence.”

  They maneuvered the corpse onto a gurney and in the next instant were wheeling it out of the morgue.

  “What are we doing, Neel?” Jack asked as they went at full speed to the elevator.

  “Follow my lead,” said Neel. “I’ll explain when we get there.”

  They loaded the trolley into the elevator and Neel pressed for the fifth floor—the Intensive Care Unit. When the doors opened they were greeted by a doctor about to step into the elevator.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, eyes flitting from the two men to the corpse on the gurney. “Where do you think you’re going with this body?”

  “He’s not dead,” said Neel.

  “He looks dead to me.”

  “He’s not. His arms are slightly bent at the elbows,” urged Neel. “Just try straightening his arms.”

  The doctor looked from Neel to Santosh, took hold of a hand, and tried to straighten the arm. It bounced back a few inches.

  “You see?” said Neel. “Dead muscles cannot contract. He has severe hypothermia but he’s not dead.”

  The doctor was nodding his agreement. “Okay, right, we need to take him to an ordinary room,” he said. “Intensive Care is kept freezing cold to prevent infections. We need to crank up the temperature of the room.

  “Nurse!” he called. “Let’s put him in 1016 and get me an electric blanket. We’ll need heat packs for his abdomen and groin.” They wheeled Santosh toward the designated room. Neel and Jack followed, disregarding the rules that prevented visitors—no way in hell they were going to leave Santosh now.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Neel?” whispered Jack. “Santosh has no pulse.”

  “He’s gone into forced hibernation,” explained Neel. The doors of the treatment room swished shut behind them. “There was limited oxygen inside the refrigeration unit. The combination of freezing temperatures and low oxygen resulted in suspended animation—a sudden halting of chemical reactions.”

  They watched, feeling suddenly useless as nurses covered Santosh, cranked up the central heating of the room, and slipped an oxygen mask over his face. Hot-water bottles were placed under his blanket and heart and blood pressure monitoring equipment was hooked up.

  “There are plenty of examples of humans who appeared frozen to death,” said Neel, to reassure himself as much as Jack. “They had no heartbeat and were clinically dead but they were successfully revived after spending hours without a pulse in extremely cold conditions.”

  Chapter 74

  AMIT ROY PASSED through the gates of his house, glanced in his rearview, and saw them slide shut behind him. The Audi came to a stop haphazardly on the gravel in front of the house, and for a moment he simply sat there, panting, trying to process the sudden turn of events.

  And the feeling—this feeling: giddy, dizzy, a great rush of profound internal energy. Having barely recovered from the unexpected euphoria of killing the old woman, he now had the little girl to look forward to, all the while basking in the knowledge that she, his last victim, would be his best; that he would ascend in such superlative circumstances.

  His one problem was lack of time. It had been an hour
or so since the broadcast. Sharma would no doubt be dispatching his men to execute a high-profile arrest, complete with news footage as he was led in cuffs to the squad car. His gates would keep the press at bay for the time being, but they wouldn’t deter cops with a warrant.

  Meantime he emerged from his reverie with the realization that his phone was still ringing. Had it ever stopped? Looking at the screen: no. There were twenty-five missed calls. God knew how many text messages.

  “Well, fuck you!” he cried, then stepped into the chill night and slammed his phone to the gravel, stamping on it again and again. “Fuck you!” he screamed at the sky, grinding the phone under his shoe, alive with the thrill of his emancipation. “Fuck you, all of you, every single one of you!” he bellowed, his voice cracking with the effort.

  And then he went to open the trunk.

  Inside cowered Maya Gandhe. Having killed the interfering childminder, he had grabbed the girl and carried her kicking and screaming out to his car, thrown her in the trunk, not caring if the Gandhes’ neighbors saw what was happening. It hardly mattered now, and though she’d mewled and thumped at the trunk lid all the way home, as with his cell phone he’d simply tuned out the noise.

  Now she screamed again, in shock and fear, this time at the deranged apparition looming over her, this terrifying man who responded to her cries not with reassurance or even anger, but by joining her, so that for a moment they both yelled into the night until the sheer strangeness of the situation tipped her over into silence.

  Now he reached in and yanked her bodily from the trunk, a demented strength to him as he manhandled her into the house, leaving the Audi on the gravel drive, its engine still running.

  In the kitchen he bundled her to the floor and she screamed with new fear and pain as he reached into a kitchen drawer for a knife and a roll of tape. From his inside jacket pocket he took her essay.

  “You’re going to read to me now,” he said, red-faced and gasping for breath. “You’re going to read to me, do you hear?”

  And despite everything, some fast-receding chink of light in Maya hoped this was all he wanted: just for her to read.

  But now he was backing her into the front room. His eyes were wide and foam flecked his mouth. Indicating a chair with the knife, he made her sit and then began to tape her to it.

  “Please, please, don’t hurt me,” she pleaded. “Please, please let me go back home now.”

  “No—no, I can’t do that,” he told her, spraying her with saliva. “You’re staying here with me; we’re both going up together. We’ll ascend together in union, don’t you see?”

  “Please, please—I’ll read my essay.”

  “Fuck the essay!” he roared, and screwed it up and cast it to the floor. The light inside of Maya died.

  Now the monster stood. The low light in the room skimmed along the blade he held. He shrugged off his suit jacket and with his other hand reached to his belt buckle.

  “Together,” he was saying. “Together.”

  And then from behind him came a movement.

  Maya saw it. “Mama,” she called, but it wasn’t Nisha. And as Roy swiveled to see what was happening, the sight of the new arrival did nothing to reduce Maya’s terror. It was a man dressed all in black. Face covered by a balaclava. He carried something that Maya thought at first was another knife but then realized was a syringe. And he stepped forward and plunged it into Roy’s neck.

  The Principal Secretary’s trousers fell to his ankles as he raised a hand to the side of his neck and then dropped to his knees.

  The man in the balaclava stepped smartly away to allow Roy’s body to fold to the floor, before turning his gaze on Maya.

  Maya was paralyzed with fear. “Please don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.

  “No, no,” said the man, his tone gentle. He reached down and placed the syringe on the floor, held up his hands to show he was no longer armed. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. Is this …?” He reached for her essay, the screwed-up bits of paper belonging to another life now. “Is this yours?”

  She nodded furiously.

  He looked at the title page. “‘Health Care, Fair and Square?’” he read. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was putting on some kind of voice, as though he needed to clear his throat. “You wrote this?”

  Again she nodded.

  “There is hope, then,” he said. “A hope that lies with the young. Do you mind if I take it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Thank you.” He pushed the essay into his back pocket. “I look forward to reading it. I have a feeling I will like it. Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to move you to another room in order that you don’t witness any more unpleasantness. I will let you go afterward, I promise. Trust me.”

  Chapter 75

  LYING ON HIS front, Roy regained consciousness. The first thing he saw when he raised his head was that the girl was gone. Her seat was empty. Bits of severed tape were curled on the floor. He registered that his shirt had been taken and his trousers were around his ankles. At the same time he tried to raise himself from the floor then realized his hands were somehow pinned to the boards, outstretched on either side of him.

  And then he saw the nails. Driven through both hands, deep into the wood. Blood ran from the backs of his hands and dripped to the floor. And almost as though it had been lying in wait ready to get him, the pain pounced and tore through his body, making him scream through bared teeth.

  “Oh God,” he whimpered when the pain had died down. “Kumar, Patel, and now me. You’ve come for me.”

  “Very astute of you. Yes, I have. I have come for you. You are my next, but by no means my last.”

  “But why?”

  “Really? You have to ask?”

  “Kumar and Patel were in it up to their elbows, noses in the trough. But not me.”

  The pain in his hands was white hot and searing, and yet he had the feeling it was merely an aperitif.

  “How? Tell me how Kumar and Patel were corrupt?”

  “You know!” screeched Roy. “You already know! Isn’t that why you killed them?”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Because Kumar helped fund Surgiquip and awarded them contracts in return for a backhander. He and Patel were in it together. Like I say, noses in the trough.”

  “And ResQ?”

  “ResQ and Surgiquip are in bed together. But it’s them, not me. I had nothing to do with it.”

  The intruder crouched. He placed something on the floor that when Roy twisted his head to look he saw was a field roll. Nimble fingers untied and spread open the fabric. Scalpels glittered beneath. Roy whimpered.

  “You had nothing to do with what?” asked the man in black.

  “You know.”

  “Say it.”

  “I’m in too much pain. I can’t think straight.”

  “Say it.”

  “Will you let me go if—”

  “Say it.” The man in black placed the heel of his palm to where the nail pierced Roy’s right hand and applied pressure. The searing pain intensified.

  “All right, all right, I’ll say it! Organ harvesting. Illegal transplants. Whatever you want to call it. Patients having their organs removed then sold on. You know that. You know that. But I promise you, I had nothing to do with it.”

  “You had nothing to do with it, yet you knew it went on. You did nothing to stop it.”

  “Nothing yet!’ squealed Roy. “I was biding my time. Change can only come from within.”

  The man in black chuckled drily. “I can’t believe you’re honestly telling me you would have tried to change things.”

  “I could have. I would have. Let me go and I’ll prove it. We’ll join forces.”

  “Oh yes? Just as soon as you do something about this pesky child-abuse allegation, eh? I don’t think so. If not for that then for two other reasons: one, because they are greater in number and way, way more powerful than you could ever hope to be. And two—and given
what I’ve just walked into, I think this is probably the most important—because you are a deviant more interested in serving the perverted pleasures of your own flesh than helping the city you are appointed to serve. Each man on my list deserves to die, Amit Roy, but none of them deserves to die more than you.”

  Roy’s eyes were wide as a gloved hand reached to select a long-handled scalpel. The hand was out of sight and he heard the cutting before he felt the pain, the scalpel piercing the flesh of his back as the man in black diligently began to peel the skin away, exposing the scarlet, fatty tissue beneath.

  The pain exploded in stars in front of his eyes. Pain so fierce and intense it was all-consuming, so white and blinding it was almost perfect. Then, as the man in black went to work on his upper thighs and Roy understood that his death—from blood loss, or bodily trauma, or whatever else his attacker had in store for him—was just moments away, he accepted that this celestial pain was in fact his ascendancy in action.

  And so, as the man in black pulled off his balaclava so that Roy might recognize the face of his killer, he embraced his death and went to it willingly, knowing that ultimately, and agonizing though it was, the pain of his death was preferable to the pain of his life.

  Chapter 76

  BLACK WROUGHT-IRON GATES at the entrance to Roy’s home brought Nisha to a skidding halt, and she scrambled out of the Toyota, looking for another way in.

  Nothing. Just a keycode panel, intercom. Sensor.

  Fuck it. She dived back into the Toyota and reversed twenty yards or so, offering up a silent apology to Neel as she revved the vehicle, making herself low in the driving seat, before jamming her boot on the accelerator.

  The Toyota shot forward and hit the gate. The bonnet crumpled; the airbags deployed. She looked up from her low position in the driving seat, pawing the airbag out of her way to see that the gates were a twisted mess—not exactly open but wide enough apart for her to get through.