“Is there no cure?”
“Sometimes a possible solution is a liver transplant. Unfortunately this was not an option in this case.”
“Why?” asked Santosh. “Either of the parents could have donated part of their livers, no?”
“The mother died a couple of years after childbirth,” replied the president. “The only possible course was for MGT to donate. Unfortunately he was a serious drinker on the verge of cirrhosis at that time.”
“No cadaver donations possible?”
“They waited, but sadly the boy died before an organ could be procured.”
Santosh nodded, his vision clouding a little as he thought of Isha and Pravir.
Chapter 34
BACK ON THE street, Santosh considered hailing a cab but took a look at the traffic—the constant noise and movement, each blare on a horn signaling a near miss, a driver on the edge—and he found himself cringing away from the idea, his mind still on the accident that had killed his family.
He was back there. In the car with Isha and Pravir. He was driving and from the back, Pravir called, “Papa, look at my score!”
Pravir was playing a handheld video game. Just a silly game. And because Santosh had pledged to be a better father, to pay more attention to his loved ones, he took his eyes off the road. Not really to look at the screen, more to simply acknowledge his son, congratulate him.
Either way, he took his eyes off the darkened, winding road for just a second, maybe not even that. But it was long enough to miss the bend.
Santosh had never been a particularly good driver. His mind was rarely “in the moment,” which, ironically enough, was part of the reason he needed to consciously pay more attention to his family. And it was the reason his reaction time was slower than it might have been.
In short, he was not the sort of driver who could afford to take his eyes off the road.
And for that he had paid: Isha and Pravir both dead, him in the hospital. For a long time after that he had walked with a limp until he’d been told that the injury was psychosomatic. He’d lost the limp; he’d kept the cane. There were psychological scars that would never heal.
So he walked, and as he did so, he thought how they had that in common, he and MGT: they had both lost their families. Both for avoidable reasons. If Santosh had not taken his eyes off the road then Isha and Pravir would be alive. If MGT had not been such a heavy drinker then…
He stopped. Pedestrians flowed around him; one or two insults were tossed his way but he didn’t care because it was as though light had suddenly flooded his mind.
Could it be?
He fumbled for his phone, called Neel, dispensed with the pleasantries: “The bodies at Greater Kailash. Did you say there was one that was better preserved than the others?”
“Yes. Ash was due to examine it any day now.”
“Can you call him? Ask him how he’s got on?”
“He’s working. That might prove difficult for him.”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” insisted Santosh. “There’s one thing I’m desperate to learn.”
“What is it?”
“I want to know if the body still has all its internal organs.”
“I see,” said Neel, commendably unflappable. “Something tells me you already know the answer.”
“I suspect I know the answer. See if you can confirm it for me by the time I reach the office.”
Chapter 35
“HELLO,” SAID ASH, cautiously.
“Can you talk?”
“Um, not really. I’m busy…”
Neel sensed Ash was on the move, probably finding somewhere private to talk. Sure enough, when he next spoke he sounded out of breath, hissing, “What are you doing ringing me at work?”
“Well, firstly I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the other night.”
Ash softened. “Good. I had a great time too.”
“And secondly…”
“Of course, there’s a secondly.”
“Secondly, I wanted to ask if you’d conducted the postmortem on the intact cadaver.”
“I can’t talk about that,” hissed Ash. “The walls have ears.”
“Can you confirm something for me either way, yes or no?”
“Go on.”
“Were the organs intact?”
Ash gave a small, impressed chuckle. “No.”
“What was gone?”
There was a pause, as though Ash had waited for someone to pass in a corridor, and Neel held his breath. “Ash? Are you there?” he prompted. “Which organs were missing?”
Ash cleared his throat. “All,” he said.
Chapter 36
“WELL?”
Santosh had burst onto the top floor of Private, cane tucked beneath his arm as he threaded his way between desks to where Nisha and Neel stood waiting.
“Ash had conducted the examination,” said Neel, relishing the moment.
The end of the cane swung his way. “And?” said Santosh. His eyes glittered. His blood was up.
“All the vital organs were missing. All of them.”
“I knew it.”
Santosh was as close to happy or excited as Neel or Nisha had ever seen him, and they couldn’t resist trading a quick eyebrows-raised look. In a second, though, their boss had switched back to stern-mentor mode, targeting Nisha this time.
“What do you think? Tell me what conclusions you draw.”
Her head dropped to think. “Some sort of donation thing?” she said, uncertainly. “Kumar drained of blood. This body missing organs. Like they’re being…harvested.”
“It could be, couldn’t it?” said Santosh. “It could be that our friend Dr. Arora is doing the harvesting. Now, what I want to do is find out whether there have been any similar murders. Something with a similar MO. Neel, while I’m a big believer in using the power of contacts and shoe leather, how would you feel about hacking into the National Crime Records Bureau?”
Neel felt fine about it, and as Santosh waited for the hack to begin he reflected that his belief in nurturing contacts had been inextricably linked with his drinking. Was it a coincidence that giving up booze had left him willing to explore more modern, expedient methods of information gathering?
He’d have liked to think it was a coincidence. But he knew deep down it wasn’t.
Santosh and Nisha stood at Neel’s back as he worked a laptop and desktop unit at the same time, using the laptop to launch a formal, untargeted attack on the system, the other for a more specific search.
Nisha had her arms folded across the front of her leather jacket, one foot behind the other. “Look at him go,” she teased. “Who knew we had such a nerd at Private, eh, Santosh?”
Her smile faded as Santosh looked admonishingly at her over the top of his glasses and then returned to staring into space. Neel threw her a quick look over his shoulder, eyebrows raised, and the two shared a smile. Their boss’s epic sense-of-humor fails were a shared confidence, the kind of thing they talked about in hushed tones whenever he was absent.
“Right,” said Neel after a few more moments. “Exactly what is it you’d like me to look for?”
Santosh clicked back to the present. “Let’s start with murders committed within the past six months.”