Inside, the fluorescents struggled, flickering as she pushed the door. With an exasperated sigh she gave it one last shove and there was a splintering sound. Something heavy fell to the floor on the other side and, finally, the lights came on—and Sunita Kadam saw what was inside.
On the tiles lay a woman’s corpse. She wore a white nightshirt and her face was colorless. In contrast, the yellow cotton scarf around her neck was a bright yellow. The marks it had made were a livid red.
Sunita stared at the body. A numbness crept over her. A sense of wanting to run but being rooted to the spot. Later she’d look back and stifle a guilty laugh about this, but her next thought was: How the hell am I going to clean this up in fourteen minutes?
Chapter 2
“YOU KILLED THEM, you drunk bastard.”
With a gasp, Santosh Wagh pulled himself from the grip of his nightmare, fingers scrabbling for his spectacles on the nightstand. He pushed them on, squinted at the numbers on his bedside clock and groaned.
4:14 a.m. Drinker’s dawn.
He pulled himself from bed, avoiding his own reflection in the mirror as he lolloped out of the bedroom. Who wanted to see a hungover man at 4:14 in the morning, a craggy, 51-year-old vision of guilt and shame? Not him. Right now what he wanted was a little something to guide him gently into the morning. Something to chase away the headache lurking behind his eyes. Something to banish the residual nightmare image seared into his brain.
His apartment was empty, stale-smelling. On a coffee table in the front room was a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker, a glass, and his Glock in its holster. Santosh dropped with a sigh to the couch, leaned forward, fingertipped his Glock out of reach, then drew the bottle and glass toward him.
He stared at the drink in his hand, remembering, casting his mind back to 2006 and the seven Mumbai train bombs. At the time he’d been an agent with RAW, India’s intelligence agency, and the investigations into the bombings had brought him into contact with Jack Morgan.
Two years later, the car accident that plagued his dreams.
It was Jack who had asked him to head up Private India; Jack who had picked him up when he’d needed it most. And if he drank this drink then it would lead to another drink, and another, and with each subsequent drink he’d fall a little harder and fail Jack a little more.
He placed the glass back on the coffee table, pulled his knees up toward him. Decided to wait the morning out. He dozed, then woke, then dozed again, and each time he woke the drink was still there, waiting for him. He ignored its call. He chose Jack over Johnnie.
Even so, it was a relief when the phone rang and duty called.
Chapter 3
SANTOSH LEANED ON his cane and scrutinized the dead woman who lay on the bathroom floor of room number 1121.
“Name?” he said, without taking his eyes off the corpse.
Nisha Gandhe, mid forties, head-turningly attractive, even dressed down in cotton shirt, T-shirt, and jeans, marveled that her boss could be an investigative genius and still not know that breath mints were useless at disguising the smell of whisky.
“Dr. Kanya Jaiyen,” she replied, reading from notes made on her phone. “Mean anything to you?”
“No,” he said. He angled his head to study the face of the deceased. She was South-East Asian, middle-aged. Her sharp, attractive features looked incongruous pressed to the hard tiles of the bathroom.
“She’s Thai—from Bangkok apparently,” continued Nisha. “Her body was found by the maid. It had been hanging on a hook on the back of the door but when the door moved the hook gave way, and …”
Santosh glanced at the damaged door then back at the body. He scratched salt-and-pepper stubble on his cheek.
“No signs of sexual assault,” he said, part question, part statement.
“Apparently not, but Mubeen is on his way. We should have a clearer idea once he’s through,” replied Nisha.
Mubeen was Private India’s full-time medical examiner. Time of death, cause of death, manner of death—death was his specialty. He’d arrive with Hari, Private’s technology geek, who’d be dusting for prints, scanning the cell phone that Santosh had spotted by the bed. Tech-wizard stuff.
Santosh shifted his weight on his cane. The car accident had left him with a limp.
“You do realize it’s psychosomatic, don’t you?” a doctor had told him.
“I’m keeping the cane,” he’d replied.
“Have it your own way.”
He did. One of the few advantages of being Santosh Wagh was that he had things his own way. Plus it was useful to have a cane sometimes. On a morning like this, for example, when he felt as though it was the only thing keeping him upright.
He palmed sweat from his forehead. “Okay, let’s not touch anything until we get the go-ahead from the police. There’s nothing to prevent us from observing though. And I’m especially interested in this …”
With the tip of his cane he indicated the victim’s hands, both wrapped with string. A flower was bound to one, an ordinary fork to the other.
“And this,” he said, motioning his cane at her foot. “What do you make of that?”
Tied to one of the dead doctor’s toes was a small toy Viking helmet.
Nisha bent down to take a closer look. “Could the killer be a nut job with a Viking fetish?” she asked.
“Maybe. But if he was a genuine Viking enthusiast he’d know that real Viking helmets didn’t have horns,” said Santosh. “The bull horns are an artistic contrivance.”
“Okay. So …?” said Nisha. You could almost see the cogs of his encyclopedic mind turn, she thought.
“So—either our killer doesn’t know about the horns. Or he doesn’t care. Or the Viking bit isn’t significant but the horn bit is.”
“Right …” she said, uncertainly. “And what about the flower on her hand? A lotus. And the fork? Maybe she snatched it to defend herself?”
“No,” said Santosh, lost in thought. “They were tied to her hands to look as if she’s holding them.”
Crouched down close to the body, Nisha noticed a black hair on the otherwise spotless tile floor. “There’s a hair here I’d like to bag, when we can,” she said. Santosh nodded.
“When do you think she was killed?” asked Nisha.
He glanced at her. “Look at the body. Consider the bed. The nightdress. When do you think she was killed?”
“Last night?”
“Exactly. Mubeen can tell us for sure, but yes—this happened last night. Did you check for signs of forced entry?”
“The windows are hermetically sealed. There’s no sign the bedroom door was forced nor any indication of lock tampering,” replied Nisha, glancing at her notes.
Santosh nodded. He looked from the body to Nisha with eyes that had seen too much pain. “This isn’t the last, Nisha,” he said. “Of that you can be certain.”
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Copyright © James Patterson, 2015
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