“It does. It really does. When you learn to leave behind all the guilt and regrets, the what-ifs and what-might-have-beens. It gets easier. It’s just that getting rid of those things is the hard part. Choosing how to do it is the trick.” He gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “I can certainly help you when it comes to choosing the wrong methods.”
Nisha remembered her boss stinking of whisky first thing in the mornings. Yes, Santosh knew all about self-medication. “I have Maya,” she said. “She’s what keeps me going. Her and work, of course.”
“As long as the balance is right,” said Santosh, and Nisha felt a little stab of guilt in return. They both knew full well that the balance was rarely right.
By now they had arrived at Greater Kailash. The house was just as Nisha remembered it, except of course the police were no longer there, just plastic incident tape that fluttered across the front door and bordered a hole in the front garden.
“Here’s where I spoke to the neighbor,” said Nisha when they had pulled to the curb and stepped out, and were standing on the sidewalk.
“Strange comings and goings,” mused Santosh, looking up and down what was a thoroughly unremarkable street. “A black van registered to Dr. Arora. The coincidences are piling up. And yet they refuse to form a cohesive, logical conclusion. Come on.”
He led the way to the house, where they made their way through the front gate and into the garden.
“I didn’t get this far before,” Nisha said with a trace of apology.
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” insisted Santosh with a raised finger. “Our remit was different then. Besides—” But then he stopped. “Oh, that’s interesting.”
He was heading off the path that led to the front door and onto the grass. Then stopped and knelt down.
Once again, Nisha was half surprised, half amused at how sprightly Santosh was, despite the cane he always carried.
“Look,” he said. And Nisha found her attention directed to a bald patch in the grass.
“Yes?”
“Something’s been taken from here.”
Santosh stood. His head twitched this way and that as though he was looking for something in the overgrown garden, and then he was setting off with great strides toward the far corner. There they found another bald patch, similar to the first.
“Something has been taken from here,” he repeated. He pointed with the cane from one empty patch to another. “My hunch is we’ll find two, maybe more of these, and that they are—or were—some kind of surveillance, security device.”
“A laser mesh trap.”
“Possibly.”
“But one that’s been removed.”
“Exactly.” Santosh’s eyes sparkled. “And do you know what? I’d bet my life that it was disguised to look like something different, a sprinkler or something. That girl the neighbor saw running away, who fell through the subsidence and into the cellar below—she and her boyfriend presumably triggered the warning system. Some kind of cleanup team came and removed the equipment.”
“Why not remove the bodies?”
“No time. The neighbor had already called the police—the regular police.”
Then Nisha said, “Something’s occurred to me.”
Santosh looked at her. “Let’s hear it.”
It was her turn to lead him across the grass to where the incident tape marked out the courting couple’s unfortunate entrance into the basement. They peered into the basement below but there was nothing to see. Forensics had taken everything; crime-scene cleanup teams had done the rest. Not a single shred of evidence would be left.
But then, that wasn’t where Nisha and Santosh’s interest lay.
“They went through here, yes?” Nisha said. “And given that the neighbor saw the girl’s clothes in disarray, we can be reasonably sure what they were up to at the time.”
“Yes.”
“Well, why here? Why outside on a cold night?”
Santosh nodded almost happily. “Of course, Nisha, of course. A neglected, near-derelict, and very obviously empty house—they would have tried to get in first.”
“Break a window, pick a lock.”
Together they strode to the front door of the house and within seconds they spotted that almost out of sight, close to the door, was a clean space. Something removed.
“A mailbox, perhaps?” said Santosh. “Or some kind of entry panel disguised to look like a mailbox. Our libidinous friends tried to get in, failed, so found a spot over there. It was just dumb luck and no doubt the fact that the acid had weakened the structure that they fell through. Otherwise, this was a virtually impregnable facility.”
“Was this what you were expecting?” asked Nisha.
“Something like this, yes. Something to confirm my suspicion that we’re dealing with a large conspiracy here, an outfit that is evidently well funded and blessed with top-level access.”
“And their business?”
“Organ harvesting.”
They looked at one another, both knowing what the other was thinking: this was big and Private was getting close to being out of its depth. They hurried back to the car, both glowing with the thrill of their discoveries.
“There are still so many imponderables,” said Santosh. “Why was Kumar killed?”
“Because he was getting in the way. Whatever this outfit is doing, the Health Minister was either blocking it, threatening it, or wanting a slice—and so he paid with his life.”
“He certainly did. Drained of blood like that. But why like that, do you think? Why in such an attention-grabbing manner? Why not just a bullet in the back of the head?”
“As a grisly warning to those in the know.”
“It could be,” said Santosh. “It could be.”
Nisha started the engine. “So we have a name: Dr. Pankaj Arora. Isn’t that enough to take to Jaswal? Or the police?”
“Not until we can be sure who’s involved and who’s not,” sighed Santosh. “It could be that Jaswal is involved at some level.”
“We need to put a stop to it, Santosh,” warned Nisha. “People are dying.”
But Santosh shook his head, resolute. “I understand, and we must work quickly. But even more people will die if we reveal our findings prematurely. There’s no point in standing on the tail of the snake, Nisha. We need to cut off its head.”
Part Two
Deliverer
Chapter 43
FROM THAT NIGHT when he had killed his drunk father to his escape on a train to the holy city of Varanasi, every detail was firmly etched in the killer’s mind. His subsequent experiences had taught him to be prepared and extra vigilant.
Upon arriving in the holy city, the boy had made the railway station his home. What little money he’d had was used to purchase a single meal each day. It hadn’t been too long before his money had run out.
One day a priest wearing a white dhoti and saffron shawl with beads around his neck had seen the boy. Realizing he was hungry and lost, the priest had bought him a sumptuous meal. The boy had eaten ravenously as the priest sipped from a cup of masala tea. His hunger satiated, the boy had confided that he had no place to live and that his parents were dead.