stadium up on the bend of the Hooghly?'
'No sir.' The driver was a sergeant, middle-aged and experienced. Henna-tinged curls bunched up over the back of her collar; a current fashion that did not violate departmental dress code. 'One involves about a thousand chanters protesting conditions in a couple of out lying northern region jails where mistreatment of alleged political prisoners is claimed to be rife.' Leaning forward slightly, she checked a readout. 'Latest information indicates four dead so far, a dozen pro testers and two police seriously injured, with the situation being brought under control.'
Keshu nodded. Nothing out of the ordinary. 'And the other?'
'Something to do with Raj Tanur Khan's latest picture not being granted a license for general exhibition because of social censorship concerns. His fans are fighting with objectors from two religious groups who are trying to have the film banned outright.' Again she eyed the relevant readout. 'Twelve dead, forty-two seriously wounded. No breakdown on which side is dominating, but there are half a dozen mobile tactical squads now on the scene, with crowd dispersal and arrests in progress.'
That was about right, the chief inspector mused. Far greater out rage and injury was being inflicted over the content of a film than over the behavior of human beings. There were times when the actions of the citizens of Sagramanda made the prospect of taking early retirement loom large in his thinking. Such thoughts eventually passed, however, most commonly for two reasons.
He loved the challenge of his job, and he loved the city that was his home.
Which made his exasperation at not being able to capture one particular suspected serial killer, or even latch onto a stronger lead as to that individual's identity, all the more frustrating.
He shifted in his seat. 'If one disturbance is breaking up and Tactical is down on the other, it shouldn't take us too much longer to get to the Chatham.' The driver said nothing, concentrating on making her way through the jam.
He could have taken a chopper. But five-star hotels were understandably uneasy about having police copters set down in their parking lots. It tended to provoke awkward questions from the guests. This need to respect the wishes of the influential and well-connected had already cost him an hour this morning. An hour that could have been spent more usefully than fuming helplessly in traffic. To be fair, while riots were a daily occurrence, they were usually avoidable. Encountering two of them at the same time was just bad luck. Then, just as he was ready to give vent to his frustration once more, they were safely around the corner, and the Chatham International hove into view.
Sheathed in fake sandstone and decorated with carvings of animals, plants, and temple dancers (but no gods) that had been brought forth not by artisans' hands but by a computer-controlled industrial lathe, the hotel combined Mughal architecture in the style of the Taj Mahal with the shikhara spires of a traditional Hindu temple. It was all very Disney. Keshu supposed the hotel's guests loved it. If only, he ruminated, the real India were so simple.
While unobtrusive, the gate barring the entrance to the main hotel lot was solid enough to stop a war elephant-or a runaway eighteen-wheeler being driven by a wild-eyed terrorist or extortionist. Picking up the special low-frequency broadcast from the police vehicle, it opened automatically to admit them. His driver parked near a pair of cruisers and a van housing a mobile forensics lab. Seeing him step out of the car, a junior officer introduced himself while Keshu stared at the architectural jumble that was the hotel. If not for his purpose in being there, he would have found the sight amusing.
'The fatality is still on site?' he asked the junior officer as the latter led him toward the nearest service entrance. It was flanked by two armed men; an officer from the department and a senior member of the hotel's security staff. Both nodded in recognition as the senior inspector and his escort passed between them.
'Yes, Inspector,' the younger man assured him. 'Forensics have been taking their time with it. When the crime fits an ongoing modus, nothing is to be disturbed until the chief investigating officer in charge of the pertinent file has been allowed to make his own observations.' He stepped to one side and gestured. 'I'll take you there, sir.'
Straight from the manual, Keshu reflected, but he didn't upbraid the junior officer for reciting the blatantly obvious. One did not encourage improvement by slapping down those engaged in its pursuit.
Their route took them through service areas camouflaged with expensive landscaping, around the back of the hotel grounds, out of sight of the laughing, yelling guests frolicking unknowingly in the pool. Happening to glance through the vegetation, Keshu noted the fashionable slenderness of many of the swimmers and sunbathers. While they eschewed food and lay in the heat of the tropical sun out of choice, a few hundred meters down the road and a world away local people were starving unwillingly and dreaming impossibly distant dreams of shade and air- conditioning.
The appalling handiwork of one of its more disagreeable extant representatives was to be found nearby, in the hotel's designer under ground facility dedicated to the ancient healing arts of Ayurvedic mas sage and the extraction of millions more rupees in supplementary fees from paying guests. Discreet signage at the top of the stairs leading down to the entrance indicated that the hotel regretted that the facility in question was closed for temporary repairs. At the bottom of the stairway, Keshu found inconspicuous plainclothes officers ready to assist hotel security staff in gently but firmly turning away any curious wandering guest who might happen to stumble across the crime scene. Or Krishna forbid, hotel management's worst nightmare, a representative of the media.
So far, a sergeant on duty assured him, they had been able to keep this one off the Net and the vit. It was only a matter of time, of course, before the incident became common knowledge. In an age of near-universal access to and hunger for information, secrets were impossible to keep for very long. Where the police were concerned, this unstoppable flow of information cut both ways.
Acknowledging the duty sergeant's assistance, Keshu adjusted his turban slightly and looked past the officer toward the shadowy interior of the closed facility. An idiosyncratic mingling of aromas he could not recall having previously encountered emanated from somewhere within: sandalwood, rose, and human blood.
'Where is it?'
The sergeant jerked his head slightly in the direction of the facility's interior before starting in. His expression grim, Keshu followed.
Ignoring the forensics team that was still actively scouring the interior of the private massage chamber for evidence, the chief inspector studied the body without approaching or touching it. The poor victim was very definitely beyond the help of the Ayurvedic arts or anything else. Quite a lot of blood had been cleaned up. The woman's skin was pale and waxen. Kneeling, he had a look at the face on the front of the head that had rolled some distance away from the corpse after it had struck the floor and bounced, a consequence of having been neatly severed at the neck from the rest of the body.
The duty sergeant hovered nearby. 'Mai-ling Xinzhou. Vice presi dent Hiang Manufacturing Consortium, home office Guangdong Province, China.' Unnecessarily, he added, 'Had meetings scheduled with two local companies for this morning. Did not make either of them.' He nodded at the headless cadaver. 'Competitors playing rough?'
'What do you think?' To his surprise, Keshu found that he was angry. It was rare that he allowed what he felt inside to seep out, but
this time he could not keep his feelings from communicating them selves to the sergeant.
The other man was clearly taken aback. 'It was just a thought, Chief Inspector. I did not mean to appear disrespectful, either to you or to the victim.'
'Forget it.' Putting his hands on his knees, Keshu straightened and walked over to Bachchan. Having completed necessary chemical analysis of the body and its surroundings, the elderly forensics spe cialist was now imaging the corpse from every angle.
It was a running joke in the department. Bachchan was one of those unfortunate men born with a long face and premature wrinkles, who had looked old when he was twenty and who was short to boot.
'How can I retire, when there are so many incompetents in the department?' His grin flashed through a perfectly trimmed beard that was gray fading to white. With a nod, he indicated the cadaver. 'Poor woman. I know what you are going to ask, Chief Inspector, and here is your answer.' Holding up his scanner, he let Keshu have a
