SHE WAS NOT a particularly fast driver—like most newcomers to the city, she found the Delhi traffic a little intimidating—but even so, Nisha drove slowly out of respect for her passenger. From the corner of her eye she could see him staring straight ahead, impassive, his cane held tightly. The whites of his knuckles the only sign of any inner turmoil.
“So, what’s prompted this visit, then?” she asked, hoping to break the ice.
“I have a theory,” he said enigmatically. “Bear with me on it, would you, Nisha? All will—or will not—become clear when we have a look at the house. Did you notice anything unusual about it the other day?”
“Well, apart from the police presence, I can’t say I did. At least we’ll have the advantage of their absence this time around.”
“You didn’t get a good look, then?”
She wondered if he was questioning her professionalism. Feeling herself tighten a little, she replied defensively: “The terms of the investigation were a little different then.”
“Quite, quite,” agreed Santosh hurriedly, putting her at ease. “Much has changed in the meantime. Much of it thanks to your investigation, Nisha. Private is fortunate to have you.”
Equilibrium restored, the two of them lapsed into silence once more, and Nisha watched the road as Santosh stared straight ahead, occasionally gazing out of the passenger window at red stone buildings flashing by, the vibrancy of Delhi just a fingertip away.
The silence—such as it was, assaulted by a constant deluge of activity from outside—was companionable, but even so, Santosh broke it, clearing his throat. “How are things at home, Nisha?”
She turned left, using the opportunity to control a sudden heartache. “Maya misses her father, of course. It’s difficult for us to come to terms with his death. I don’t suppose we ever will.”
Santosh nodded.
There was a pause.
“Tell me it gets easier, Santosh. Reassure me of that at least.”
“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.”