Private India Read online

  She sighed. Santosh had the sense that she had sat down. It was late there in Bangkok. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Wagh. This is very, very sad. We’re all in a state of shock. How may I be of help?”

  “Dr. Jaiyen was a reconstructive surgeon?”

  “She was. A very good one. And if you’re thinking that that’s the usual kind of disingenuous rubbish I’d trot out in the circumstances then you’d be wrong. She really was a good surgeon. One of the best.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Uwwano. Please be reassured that myself and my colleagues are doing everything we can to try and catch her killer. If you’ll allow me to ask some questions. I’m given to understand that Dr. Jaiyen reported to you, is that right?”

  “Yes. I was her senior in the hospital’s Reconstructive Surgery team.”

  “And what does that involve exactly—reconstructive surgery?”

  “It’s as broad as it sounds, Mr. Wagh. Whether it be for cosmetic or psychological reasons, in the aftermath of a car crash …”

  Santosh froze, feeling as though he’d been slapped. On the other side of the desk, Nisha watched him carefully, concern on her face, then leaned forward, whispering, “Boss?”

  “Mr. Wagh?” the doctor was saying.

  He composed himself. “Sorry, Dr. Uwwano. Do go on.”

  “Well, I think I’d finished, really,” said Dr. Uwwano.

  Nisha relaxed back into her seat, dragging a hand through her hair and watching him warily.

  “Of course, of course,” said Santosh. He waved “everything’s okay” to Nisha. “Well, you could tell me, what was the purpose of Dr. Jaiyen’s visit to Mumbai?”

  “It was a personal visit,” said Uwwano. “She told me it was to meet an old friend. She applied for a week’s leave of absence in order to take the trip.”

  “Did she tell you the name of the friend she planned to meet?” asked Santosh.

  “No,” replied Uwwano. “She was rather reserved about her personal life and I did not feel like prying.”

  “Was anything troubling Dr. Jaiyen? Did she have any problems in her professional life? And what about her family life? Was it normal?”

  “She was happily married,” replied Uwwano. “She did not have any kids, though. No, as far as I can tell, she had no worries. The only surviving family member other than her husband is her mother who lives in Chiang Mai.”

  “Had Dr. Jaiyen performed any surgeries that went wrong?” asked Santosh. “Any instances of lawsuits or complaints by patients?”

  “No. As I said, Dr. Jaiyen was one of our best surgeons,” explained Uwwano. “I’m having a hard time trying to find a suitable person to fill her shoes.”

  Later, of course, Santosh would realize the mistake he had made when he spoke to Dr. Uwwano, but for now he wished her good day and ended the call. And then, when Nisha had left his office, he reached for the bottle.

  Chapter 14

  IT WAS PAST eight that night when Mubeen reached Mumbai’s infamous police morgue at Cooper Hospital. Strong stomach or not, he’d been dreading his visit to this most dilapidated of the city’s facilities. What’s more, the man he was meeting, Dr. Zafar, had a certain reputation for eccentricity.

  He got out of his van and crept past the muddy porch with a handkerchief held to his nose. The smell was overpowering, almost the equivalent of a few dozen dead rats decaying in a corner of the filthy building. Mubeen knew better, though. The overwhelming stench was not from dead rats but from rotting human bodies. It was the stench of death.

  Mubeen could hear his own footsteps echo as he reached the dark entrance, a single light bulb casting an eerie glow. He began walking through the long, dimly lit passage. On both sides were gurneys bearing human forms covered in sheets. Despite his training, Mubeen felt a hollow in the pit of his stomach. He swallowed hard as he forced himself to cross the passage lined with cadavers.

  He felt something move against his foot and looked down to see a massive gutter rat scurry away with a piece of flesh in its mouth. A shudder went down Mubeen’s spine and he felt his hair stand on end.

  Further ahead he could see a glimmer of light emerging from a room. He quickened his pace to get there. As he crossed the doorway, he felt himself slipping and had to reach out and grab hold of a gurney to prevent himself from falling. He glanced downwards and realized that he was standing on a floor slick with blood, fluids, and human tissue. He pulled his hand away in shock as he realized that he was holding on to a frozen limb of a cadaver rather than the steel frame of a gurney.

  “Never knew you would come so late,” boomed a voice behind him. Mubeen spun around to see a man dressed in green surgical scrubs, surrounded by a few dozen more gurneys containing decaying corpses. The voice belonged to Dr. Zafar, the police surgeon. Mubeen had reached the autopsy center in the police morgue of Cooper Hospital.

  The morgue received around fifteen corpses daily and a third of these were without claimants. As per official policy, the police had to search for claimants for seven days before allowing disposal. Unfortunately, this was a slow process. Disposal happened at the rate of three or four bodies per day, thus resulting in a pile-up of more than a hundred cadavers in a fifty-five-rack morgue.

  Dr. Zafar looked at Mubeen and smiled. He was wearing his surgical mask so the smile was only discernible from the twinkle in his eyes. “How can you keep cheerful in a hellhole like this?” asked Mubeen as he walked across to Zafar, carefully avoiding the puddles on the floor but grateful for the immediate presence of another living human.

  “A smile is a curve that sets everything straight,” laughed Zafar, taking off his mask and applying some Vicks Vaporub under his nose to neutralize the permanently foul odor of the place. “I am used to this hellhole.”

  Mubeen quietly thanked his stars that he did not have to work in conditions like those that Zafar worked in.

  “Your bodies are ready,” announced the police surgeon, opening the door to the refrigeration chamber, like a baker announcing a fresh batch of bread from the oven. Mubeen helped him pull out the two tagged corpses and load them on gurneys.

  “Would you like to carry out the autopsies here?” asked Zafar.

  “No,” replied Mubeen. “I need the equipment in my own lab. If you don’t mind, I’ll simply take the bodies and share the results with you by email.”

  “I need to be present during the autopsy, as instructed by Rupesh,” replied Zafar apologetically. “Either you carry out the autopsies here or I come to your lab.”

  Mubeen thought about this. All he wanted was to get the hell out of Zafar’s ghoulish morgue. He made up his mind quickly. “Let’s get these loaded into my van. You may come with me.”

  “I would have got one of my assistants to help move the corpses if you had showed up before eight o’clock,” explained Dr. Zafar. “Unfortunately at this time it’s only me in this place.”

  Zafar discarded his scrubs and washed his hands with soap and hot water before helping Mubeen roll the gurneys back to the white van belonging to Private India. Both men loaded them inside then climbed in the front.

  Mubeen drove out of Cooper Hospital and headed toward Colaba. On reaching Private India’s office block, he drove into a parking garage at the rear of the building. The door closed behind them and lights came on automatically. He flicked a switch on his hand-held remote and the floor of the garage began slowly rising. Within two minutes the van had been transported into Mubeen’s state-of-the-art medical and forensics facility in the heart of Private India’s office complex.

  The contrast with the Cooper Hospital autopsy center could not be more apparent. Mubeen’s lab was sophisticated, modern, and spotlessly clean. Gleaming white tables illuminated by shafts of light supplied by overhead energy-efficient fixtures ran the entire length of the lab.

  It was equipped with the very latest tools, including a new machine that combined multi-slice computed tomography with magnetic resonance imaging to produce a virtual autopsy in 3D that could easily
detect internal bleeding, bullet paths, and hidden fractures, hard to find with a traditional autopsy. Spectrometers for detection of explosives and illegal drug residues dotted one side of the laboratory, while equipment for the analysis of bloodstains, fingerprints, DNA, hair, fibers, and other trace evidence occupied the rest. A newly acquired device that could accurately identify specific dyes in acrylics, cotton, and other fibers occupied a table of its own.

  Having unloaded the corpses from the gurneys, Mubeen began by carefully examining the necks of both victims with a dermascope.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Zafar, as he glanced around the facilities, somewhat awed by the infrastructure available to Mubeen.

  “Inflamed edges,” replied Mubeen, continuing to scan the skin surface with his dermascope and handing over another one to Zafar so that he could work in parallel.

  “Inflammation is absent,” he said into the cordless microphone on his collar. “A clear sign that these victims were dead before being strung up.”

  Next, Mubeen and Zafar loaded each body into the MRI machine. As the neck scans of the victims showed up on the bank of high-resolution monitors, the answer became apparent.

  Once again speaking into the microphone, Mubeen said, “The neck’s hyoid bone usually breaks during strangulation but rarely during hanging. In both corpses the hyoid bones are found broken. It is my considered opinion that we are dealing with a strangler, not a hangman.”

  Chapter 15

  “HAVE WE CHECKED the cell phones that were discovered at both crime scenes?” asked Santosh, turning to Hari.

  Private India’s core investigation team was seated in the conference room for a meeting and Santosh was reviewing their progress.

  Hari cleared his throat before speaking. “Both phones were in working order. The phone belonging to Dr. Kanya Jaiyen was only used for conversations with two other numbers. On the other hand, the phone of the journalist Bhavna Choksi was used much more extensively.”

  “You say that the Thai doctor’s phone only communicated with two other numbers. Do we know whose numbers they were?” asked Santosh.

  “That was very easy to figure out,” replied Hari. “One of the numbers belonged to Bhavna Choksi.”

  “So it’s evident that our two victims knew each other,” observed Santosh. He shot Nisha a gleeful look. “There’s our connection.”

  Hari nodded. “Oh yes. Kanya Jaiyen and Bhavna Choksi had several phone conversations on the day that Jaiyen was killed,” he said. “The problem is that the other number that communicated with Kanya Jaiyen was from a prepaid SIM. The name and address provided to register the SIM are false and there is simply no way to trace the actual caller.”

  “Given the fact that there was no sign of a break-in at either crime scene, it’s highly probable that the murderer knew both victims,” said Santosh. “It’s very likely that the second SIM showing up on Kanya Jaiyen’s call logs belongs to the killer.”

  “Either that or the killer knew enough about their routine to be able to get into their living spaces,” said Nisha, looking up from her smartphone.

  “Do we know whether either woman was sexually assaulted?” asked Santosh, directing his question at Mubeen. “Any indications of rape?”

  “No sexual assault in either case …” replied Mubeen, “no traces of blood, saliva, or semen. At both crime scenes we have single strands of hair. The strands match under the microscope … They came from the same head.”

  “Any luck with DNA?” asked Santosh.

  “No roots present, hence no DNA,” said Mubeen. “I tried searching for nuclear DNA in the hair shaft but none was present.”

  “What about time of death?” asked Santosh, closing his eyes to think. “Do we now have a precise idea regarding when these women died?”

  “Kanya Jaiyen was killed between eight and ten on Sunday night,” answered Mubeen. “This can be further narrowed down by the CCTV footage, which showed the suspected killer going into her room at eight fifty-one and leaving at two minutes past nine.”

  “And Bhavna Choksi?” asked Santosh.

  “My medical estimate is between eight thirty and ten on Monday morning. Given the fact that the cleaning lady discovered the body at nine thirty, we can safely assume that time of death is between eight thirty and nine thirty.”

  There was silence. Santosh got up from the table and began to pace the conference room, an action that made everyone else rather uncomfortable. He had an annoying habit of popping up behind them unexpectedly.

  “Do you mind if I leave you for a moment?” asked Mubeen. “I was in the middle of a critical test and should have the results in a few minutes.” Santosh nodded irritably as Mubeen got up to leave the conference room.

  “Why don’t we release his picture to the press?” asked Nisha.

  “He is waiting for us to do precisely that,” said Santosh. “Look at the crime scenes and all the props around the bodies. Consider the fact that the second victim is a newspaper reporter. The strangler is hungry for publicity. Give the murders some extra column inches and you will see the body count increase. Yes, the body count will go up.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Nisha. “It may also send the city into a panic. No one knows that there have been two women strangled in similar fashion. As of now, they are simply two unrelated murders in a city that is famous for its high crime rate. Any public disclosure could make the murderer that much more careful. We would rather have a careless perpetrator.”

  “We also need to keep in mind,” said Santosh, “the possibility that the person in question may simply have been a visitor. We have no clear evidence linking them to the murder. On the whole, it’s better that we keep this under wraps.” He settled down in his chair. Within a few seconds he was up again and over behind Hari.

  “For a moment,” he said, “let’s focus on the fact that both women were discovered with a variety of objects tied to their hands and feet with string.”

  “I’m stumped on that one,” Nisha admitted. “A lotus flower, a dining fork, and a Viking helmet at the first scene; a rosary and a bucket of water at the second. The murderer is obviously trying to tell us something but I wish I knew what.”

  “Have we contacted Dr. Kanya Jaiyen’s relatives?” asked Santosh.

  “We have informed her husband in Thailand,” replied Nisha. “Her body will be sent home via a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok this evening.”

  “What about the suitcase in her hotel room? Anything of importance?”

  “Just personal effects—clothes, shoes, toiletries, jewelry, makeup, and medicines,” said Hari. “We found her passport, some cash, and her American Express credit card. The card had not been used in Mumbai except to guarantee her reservation at the hotel.”

  “Have we checked relatives and employers of the journalist?” asked Santosh.

  “No family. Just a boyfriend,” replied Nisha. “He’s an investment banker and has been out of the country for the past five days. We’ve ruled him out as a suspect. I’m scheduled to meet Bhavna’s boss at the Afternoon Mirror in the next hour.”

  Mubeen strode briskly back into the conference room. “I have some important information,” he interrupted. His face was flushed with excitement. “The fiber and dye analysis that we ran on the two garrotes used for the killings. Both are made from handwoven cotton. In both, the yellow dye is a natural one that has been used for centuries in India—Acacia nilotica.”

  Nisha looked questioningly at Mubeen. “What exactly do the fabric and dye tell us?” she asked.

  Santosh cut in before Mubeen could speak, his encyclopedic memory having been spurred into action. “Handwoven cotton or silk—dyed using Acacia nilotica—was used by an ancient Indian murder cult called the Thugs.”

  Chapter 16

  “THUGS?” ASKED NISHA incredulously. “Didn’t the British wipe them out from India entirely?”

  “Yes, but while it’s easy to destroy a cult,” replied Santosh, “it’s far more di
fficult to destroy the ideology that spawns it—an ideology that has thrived for five hundred years.”

  “Five hundred years?” said Nisha. “I thought that the Thugs were a nineteenth-century phenomenon.”

  “Actually, tales of an ultra-secret cult of killers roaming India go all the way back to the thirteenth century,” explained Santosh. “It’s just that the Thugs became famous only after the British took over India. In the 1800s India’s British rulers began getting sporadic reports of a substantial number of travelers going missing, but there was no proof to indicate that these were anything but isolated incidents of weary people becoming lost.”

  “What’s your point?” asked Nisha, bemused by his historical digression.

  “It was the discovery of several frighteningly similar mass graves across India that revealed the truth,” said Santosh, effortlessly recalling from memory details of the obscure group—information that no normal individual would bother to hold on to. “Each grave site was filled with the corpses of people who had been ritually massacred and buried. The uniform method of killing was strangulation with a rumaal—a yellow silk or cotton handkerchief.”

  “Why strangulation in particular?” asked Nisha.

  “Shedding blood was strictly prohibited. This was at the very core of thuggee belief. It was thus absolutely necessary that the murders were carried out in a perfectly bloodless manner.”

  “But why exactly did these people murder others?” said Nisha.

  Santosh tapped his fingers on the conference table excitedly. “The word thug actually means deceiver,” he began. “In fact the English word thug is etymologically derived from the Hindi word thag. The Thugs traveled across India in groups. They pretended to be pilgrims, traders, or soldiers and would mingle with fellow travelers, patiently gaining their trust and confidence. Thugs would often travel for days and miles with their targeted victims, cautiously waiting for an opportune moment to strike. When travelers least expected it, usually during camping hours at night, the leader of the Thugs would give a signal for the massacre—or thuggee—to begin.”