“I WANT TO see my daughter now, please,” said Nisha, steel in her voice. “You’ve had more than enough time to interview her.”
Two hours, to be precise. Sharma’s assistant, Nanda, had spent the time reviewing events with Nisha, increasingly frustrated at what he claimed was her lack of cooperation. The truth was, she was hiding nothing. But that didn’t stop the insinuations, the suspicions.
“Now,” she said, slamming a fist to the interview-room table. “I want to see her now.”
Nanda stared at her awhile, just to show her who was boss, that he wouldn’t be ordered around by her. Then with a nod to the duty officer he let himself out of the interview suite and Nisha settled down to wait.
After twenty minutes or so—a decent enough show-her-who’s-boss interval—the door opened once more, this time to admit Maya, followed by Sharma.
The interview-suite chair scraped as Nisha stood and rushed around the table, kneeling to take Maya in her arms. “Sweetie, I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do about that. Were they nice? Were they nice to you?”
“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.”