“The lady looking after me was nice,” said Maya, then shot a baleful look at Sharma.
“I was doing my job, Mrs. Gandhe,” said Sharma. “Take a seat, would you? My colleague Nanda told me you’ve been about as much use as she has: ‘He wore a mask. He was disguising his voice.’?”
“Then what else do you expect? What else can we tell you?”
They were all sitting now, Sharma huge on the opposite side of the table, filling the room with the stink of smoke, sweating with agitation and last night’s whisky. “What I want to know is why when Mommy was pointing her gun at the bad man she didn’t pull the trigger.”
“He wasn’t a bad man,” blurted Maya suddenly. “He was a good man.”
Sharma’s eyebrows shot up. “A good man, eh? Do you want to know what he did to Mr. Kumar, or Mr. Patel, or Mr. Roy? Shall I tell you?”
“Commissioner!” warned Nisha, beginning to rise from her seat.
“Sit down,” warned Sharma.
“He was about to hurt me,” said Maya. Her eyes shone with tears and her voice shook. “He was about to do really, really horrible things to me. I know the kind of things. Things you hear about on the news when children go missing and their bodies are found. Things like that. And the man in black stopped him, and I don’t care if he killed him because it serves the bad man right. It serves him right for what he was going to do to me and what he’s done to other children.”
Sharma sat back. His eyes were hooded. To Nisha he said, “Quite a chip off the old block, isn’t she?”
“She’s been through a lot.”
“Is that why you didn’t take him down? You think he’s a good man, do you?”
Nisha leaned forward. “Listen. I used to be a cop, just the same as you. And like you I don’t discriminate. A killer is a killer.”
“Even if he’s a hit man with a heart of gold?”
“That’s what you think this guy is, do you?”
“What about you? What do you think?”
She sighed and threw up her hands. “Oh, come on! This is getting us nowhere, Commissioner. We’ve told you everything we know. If you don’t plan to charge us with anything, then I’ll thank you to let us go. My daughter has been through a terrible ordeal.”
“Charge you? What did you think I might charge you with?”
“I don’t know. You can think of something. Criminal damage on Roy’s gates…”
Sharma nodded. “Yes. Maybe that. Or maybe aiding and abetting.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake, Commissioner. You’re reaching. This is ridiculous.”
Now it was his turn to sit forward. “Who’s employing Private, Mrs. Gandhe? It wouldn’t be Mohan Jaswal, by any chance, would it? You know full well that I report to Ram Chopra and that Ram Chopra and Mohan Jaswal aren’t exactly the best of pals.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I’d watch yourselves if I were you. That’s all it is. You tell that to your friends at Private. You tell them that I think you, Mrs. Gandhe, deliberately allowed a serial killer to escape. You tell them that the next victim’s blood is on your hands.”
Moments later, Nisha and Maya emerged into reception, where Jack and Neel were waiting.
“Santosh?” she said.
Jack grimaced, looking tired. “Well, first we hoped he was alive, and then we thought he was dead, and then we hoped he might come alive again, and now we’re not sure. I think that’s about the size of it.”
Nisha put her hands over Maya’s ears. “For fuck’s sake, is he alive or is he dead?”
“What Jack’s saying is right,” Neel assured her. “The prognosis is good. We’re hopeful he’ll make it.”
“Thank God,” she said, then shot an apologetic look at them both, particularly Neel. “I’m sorry about your car,” she said.
“Don’t worry about the car, we’ll cover the car,” said Jack. “Also, Nisha, I’ll put you and Maya up in the Oberoi until you feel comfortable moving back into your own home and…” he held out his hands, “there’s no rush, no rush at all. You take your time.”
Privately, Nisha wondered if she and Maya would ever be able to move back into the apartment.
“In the meantime, I think we have another theory to work on,” she said.
“Let’s hear it,” said Jack.
Nisha glanced back to where the desk sergeant sat behind glass, engrossed on the phone. “I don’t think this is some kind of organized-crime war we’re talking about. I don’t think our guy is a hit man; I think he’s a vigilante.”
Part Three
Martyr
Chapter 81
DEATH IS THE great equalizer. The Deliverer had seen hundreds of corpses being cremated at the burning ghats as he grew up in Varanasi. From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, king or beggar, saint or sinner. The River Ganges could wash away your sins, and if you were cremated by its banks, you could also be guaranteed salvation if your ashes were immersed in the river. Instant moksha.
After he had killed the priest, the Deliverer had run to the Ganges to bathe and wash off his sins. He had taken up the worst job—that of a “Dom.” Cremations occurred at the burning ghats throughout the day and night. After the cremation, the leftovers would be immersed into the river by the chief mourner, usually the son of the deceased. The bones did not burn completely, so the Doms were responsible for collecting the remaining bone fragments and immersing them in the river. It was a sickening and filthy job. The smell of death had seemed to permanently attach itself to his skin, no matter how many times he took a dip.
One day a young army captain had arrived at the burning ghats in order to cremate his father. He’d noticed the boy scavenging for bones when the cremation was over. The captain’s heart had gone out to the boy doing that despicable job. He’d pulled him aside and asked him his name.
“Deliverer,” the boy had replied.
“Well, Deliverer, do you go to school or do you simply deliver?” the army man had asked. “What do your parents do?”
“My parents are dead,” the boy had replied without any expression. “I work here to earn enough to feed myself.”
The army captain had taken the boy to the cantonment school and convinced the reluctant headmaster to accept him. It would be a tough slog with this one. It had taken several days just to get him clean. When food had been placed on his plate in the canteen, he had eaten ravenously like a dog, almost immersing his face in the plate. Not surprisingly, he had been picked on by one of the seniors, a cruel bully.
One day he’d found that his plate had been replaced with a dog bowl. The bully and his friends had been shouting “Woof! Woof!” as the boy looked at the bowl. He had been desperately hungry, so he’d eaten from the bowl, ignoring the howls of laughter from the bully and his friends.