Sagramanda, a Novel of Near-Future India

look at the readout. As the technician had implied, the inspector did not need to ask for an explanation.

'The pattern of the cut matches others already on file for similar cases.'

'Enough of them, anyway.' The tech nodded. 'You had better catch this evil person or persons, Chief Inspector. They are not going to stop killing until they are caught.'

'I know that.' Mindful of the effect his tone had had on the sergeant, Keshu kept his response carefully neutral. 'Don't you think I and my people are trying?'

Bending over, Bachchan ran the tips of the sensor-implanted glove on his left hand over the stump of the dead woman's neck. 'You need to try harder, Chief Inspector, or you will never achieve mukti.'

'This job isn't conducive to becoming a gurmukh,' the inspector responded. 'Candidate for residence in an asylum, maybe.' He added something in Punjabi so that it would remain private between himself and the technician.

Straightening, Bachchan looked up at his nominal superior. 'You must not let your frustration lead you to make this personal. One murderer is no different from another, because a victim is always just a victim.'

'I know that's how I should look at it, my friend, but this is different.' He gestured at the corpse. 'A visiting Chinese businesswoman. Two Australian tourists. Local citizens respected and otherwise. Serial killings tend to follow patterns. They're sexual in nature, or the killer has a grudge against some business, or the government, or relatives. Nothing matches up here.' Despite his determination to maintain con trol, his voice rose slightly. 'There's no pattern to these slayings.'

'Does not that suggest a kind of pattern in itself? Could not this seeming randomness be suggestive of something in the murderer's state of mind?'

'Yes, yes.' Keshu agreed tiredly. 'I've thought of that. But it makes it damn difficult to try and predict where she will strike next.'

' 'She'?' Bachchan's reaction showed that he had not been brought up to date on the latest suppositions.

'There are indications that the killer may be a woman, or perhaps a transvestite,' Keshu informed him moodily.

His gaze returning to the corpse, Bachchan nodded solemnly. 'Not a virtuous date. But if true, one with a strong arm, who has had much practice at their vocation.'

'Practice?' Keshu frowned slightly.

Leaning forward again, the technician did not hesitate as he ran his gloved palm across the dead woman's open neck. 'This decapitation was accomplished with a single blow. The sharpness of a blade aside, one does not make a cut like this without being well versed in the use of the chosen weapon.'

Too well versed, Keshu mused. 'I can understand that. If, as we are coming to believe, it is the same individual who is responsible for all these murders, then she has had plenty of practice indeed.' Nodding farewell to the technician, he walked back to rejoin the duty sergeant.

'Witnesses?' he inquired tersely.

'Nothing yet.' The sergeant indicated the electronic pad he held. 'We have to be circumspect about it. The hotel management is naturally frantic to keep this as quiet as possible.'

'I know.' Keshu let his gaze take in the entire crime scene: the white walls presently devoid of full-depth virtuals, the curved ceiling stripped of its projected sky and clouds, the pair of massage beds; one with its marble- like victim. The blood stains on the floor. The disem bodied head near the feet of another forensics tech. Unbidden, a line from the Sidhha Goshth came to him.

' 'The perverse are gone astray and are under the sway of death.' '

A sudden and atypical wash of claustrophobia overtook him. He needed to get out, back into the sunshine and the heat, the city air that was far from fresh but was at least alive with familiar smells and not the stink of waning death. He needed a break from dreadfulness.

'Let me know the moment you have anything.' He headed out before the sergeant could reply.

To help clear his mind, he and his wife spent the evening in their local Gurdwara, helping out in the langar, the community kitchen that was open to people of all faiths. On the way out he made sure to swipe his credcard through the reader at the entrance so that it would deduct his regular, voluntarily pledged sum to help with the running of the place of worship and the community service in which it was engaged.

The evening's prayers helped to settle his emotions, but not his thoughts. Every crime assigned to him that he could not solve caused him to lose sleep, but it had been a long time since he had taken the activities of any lawbreaker as a personal affront, as he was doing with this still-unidentified serial killer. The sheer randomness of the attacks, the indifference to the innocence of the slain, rankled him both personally and as a Sikh. The ineffectualness of the ongoing investigation was beginning to trouble him night and day. He could not put it out of his mind even as he recited the sohila, the prayer before retiring for the night.

'The Khalsa is of the Wondrous Destroyer of darkness.' So the prayer went. It was incumbent on him to find and stop the person or persons responsible for these killings, not only professionally but because of who he was-and he was failing in that responsibility.

What was it Bachchan had said? 'Could not the seeming random ness of the killings be suggestive of something in the murderer's state of mind?' Something like that. Randomness, randomness. The reason the killer was killing seemed to be nothing more than that he or she enjoyed killing. Reveling in murder. In death.

It gave him an idea, but he could only put it into practice tomorrow.

There were a number of cults that venerated death. Put the word out on the street and perhaps something useful would come back.

As it turned out, the following morning brought to light information more useful and specific than he could have hoped for. Nor could it have come at a better time, what with the pressure from his superiors to produce results threatening to become onerous. Not that he blamed them. As was inevitable, word had finally reached the media about the death of the visiting businesswoman and the gruesome manner of her passing. The Chinese embassy was now involved. Coming so close on the heels of the deaths of the two Australian tourists, the travails of his section were threatening to go global. It was the kind of international publicity his department, the municipality of Sagramanda, and the country at large could do without.

Efficacy arrived in the person of a familiar diminutive operative from downstairs. Mustering a smile and waving to one side the projections that were hovering above his desk, the chief inspector greeted his visitor. 'Ah, Mr. Subrata-the man who likes to search for patterns. I hope you've found a useful one.'

The researcher permitted himself a half smile; about as effusive an expression as he allowed himself while on duty. 'Better even than that, it may be hoped. A match. May I?' He extended the police spinner he was carrying.

In response to a positive gesture from his superior, Subrata switched on the compact device he was holding in his right hand. Exchanging codes with Keshu's desk, it inserted therein a number of items of information together with several three-dimensional images. As the images rotated, the chief inspector's excitement rose. One image was the computer-generated re-creation of the woman seen by the elderly museum guard in the company of the two Australian tourists just before they had turned up dead in the Hooghly. The second was brand-new, but similar enough to excite immediate comparisons. He asked his visitor for clarification.

Subrata halted the rotation of the second projection. 'This composite is based on a description provided by the young man who was tending the poolside bar the afternoon of the Chinese businesswoman's murder. It depicts, as best he could recall, a woman seen sharing drinks with the deceased that same afternoon. Notice, sir, the similarities between the two separate descriptions.'

'Unavoidable.' Keshu had to restrain himself from thrusting a fist skyward. 'Can you do a fusion?'

'Already programmed, sir.' Murmuring into his spinner's pickup, Subrata complied. As both men watched, the two three-dimensional images merged into one. Unseen software smoothed and blended.

Where two composites had hovered, a single woman now hung in the air between them.

'Doesn't look Indian,' Keshu observed tautly. 'That was apparent from the description provided by the guard at the museum. This con firms it.'

'Not a Latin type, certainly not Oriental.' The technician had resumed rotating the combined image. 'Preliminary maxillary-cerebral structural analysis suggests a European or North American origin. She could still be a resident, or an expat working here.'

'Those possibilities are already being considered,' Keshu informed him. 'But this finally gives us something