At that moment, Puri's phone rang. He had preprogrammed the alarm to go off thirty seconds after he'd entered the office. He pretended to answer it.
'Murti this side,' he said, pausing as if to listen to a voice on the other end of the line. He allowed his eyes to widen. 'Bloody bastard!' he bellowed. 'What is this delay? Where are my results?'
The clerk behind the counter watched him with growing unease.
'Don't give me damn excuses, maaderchod! I want results and I want them yesterday! Top priority! I'm answering directly to the home minister himself. The man doesn't take no for an answer and neither do I! If I don't see action within one hour, you'll be doing traffic duty in Patna!'
Puri hung up the phone, muttered 'Bloody bastard' and turned on the clerk.
'What were you saying? Something about two days minimum, huh?'
'Yes, sir.' The clerk quivered.
'What bullshit! Get me the incharge. Right away. No delay!' bawled the detective, thoroughly enjoying himself. Oh, how he loved watching bureaucratic types squirm!
Puri was ushered into a partitioned cubicle, the domain of C. P. Verma, whose seniority was denoted by the fact that he wore a jacket and tie.
'I want the record for unidentified bodies discovered in August,' Puri told the bureaucrat, who had stood up. 'It's of national importance. Top priority.'
C. P. Verma, who had overheard the exchange between the desk clerk and Puri, hadn't risen through the ranks without learning how to respond to authority and recognizing when to jump.
'Of course, sir! Right away, sir!' He called for his secretary, who swiftly presented himself in front of his boss's desk. C. P. Verma ordered the man to bring him the file, his tone no less abrupt than Puri's. 'Jaldi karo! Do it fast!' he added for good measure, his face contorted with displeasure.
The secretary scampered off to dispense orders of his own to the subordinates ranked below him. The incharge's expression melted into an unctuous smile.
'Sir, you'll take tea?'
The detective brushed away his offer with a motion of his hand, busying himself with his phone.
'Just get me the file,' he said flatly, pretending to make another phone call, this time to his assistant, whom he accused of mismatching a set of fingerprints.
Less than five minutes later, the secretary returned with the file. Puri snatched it out of his hands and began searching through the pages. Nine unidentified bodies had been discovered in Jaipur in August alone. Of these, two were children, both suffocated and dumped in a ditch; four were hit-and-run victims found dead on the sides of various roads; one was an old man who fell down a manhole and drowned (he was not discovered for a month); another was a teenager whose headless torso turned up one morning on the railway tracks.
The ninth was a young woman.
Her naked body had been found on the side of the Ajmer Road on August 22.
According to the coroner's report, she had been raped and brutally murdered and her hands had been hacked off.
A grainy, out-of-focus photograph showed extensive bruising around her face.
'Why only one photograph?' Puri asked C. P. Verma.
'Sir, budget restrictions.' It was evidently a phrase he was used to parroting.
'What happened to this woman's body?'
'Sir, it was held in Sawai Mansingh Hospital for the requisite twenty-four hours, and after no claim was made upon it, cremation was done.'
'Give me a photocopy of this report and the photo, also.'
'Sir, I'll need authorization.' He ventured a smile.
'Authorization is there!' shouted Puri, showing him his badge. 'Don't do obstruction!'
Within a matter of minutes, the photocopies were in Puri's hands.
C. P. Verma saw the detective to the door personally.
'Sir, anything else from me?' he asked.
'Nothing,' snapped Puri as he left.
'Thank you, sir. Most welcome, sir,' C. P. Verma found himself saying to the detective's back.
The incharge then returned to his cubicle, pleased with himself for having assisted such a highly ranked detective. He was even more senior than the other investigating officer Rajendra Singh Shekhawat, who had asked to see the same file the day before.
Ajay Kasliwal couldn't tell whether the girl in the coroner's photograph was Mary.
'So much of bruising is there,' said the lawyer, grimacing at the image when Puri showed it to him in the evening.
Mrs. Kasliwal studied it for a few seconds and then said in a tone that might have been born of caution or confusion, 'These people look so much alike.'
'You can make out any distinguishing marks?' the detective pressed her.
'How should I know?' she answered brusquely.
Puri decided to show the photograph to the servants and asked that they be brought into the sitting room one by one.
Bablu, the cook, came first. A fat, greasy-faced Punjabi with bloated fingers, he gave the photocopy a cursory glance, said, yes, it could be Mary and then returned to his kitchen. Jaya, the shy girl who'd answered the front door for the detective in the morning, was next. She held the piece of paper with trembling hands, looked at the image, squealed and closed her eyes. Puri asked her if she recognized the girl, but she just stared back at him with wide, frightened eyes.
'Answer him,' Mrs. Kasliwal instructed.
'Yes, madam…I…I…,' Jaya said, her eyes darting between the Kasliwals and Puri.
'Don't be afraid,' urged Puri gently. 'Just tell me what you think.'
'I don't…couldn't…say, sir,' she said after further coaxing. 'It…well, it could be…Mary, but then…'
Puri took back the picture and Jaya was dismissed.
Kamat, cook's assistant, was equally nervous and no clearer on whether the woman in the photograph was his former co-worker. But he seemed remarkably unmoved by the shocking nature of the image and, with a shrug, handed it back to the detective.
That left the mali.
Mrs. Kasliwal would not allow him to enter the house, so he had to be brought to the kitchen door, which opened into the back garden.
The gardener was evidently stoned and stood there with a silly grin and dopey eyes, swaying from side to side in time with a tune he was humming to himself.
Puri handed him the photograph and he stared at it for thirty seconds with his head moving back and forth like a rooster's.
'Do you recognize her?' he asked.
'Maybe, maybe not,' replied the mali. 'My eyesight is not what it used to be.'
All this went to confirm why Puri rarely bothered asking servants-or most people, for that matter-direct questions. Getting at the truth, unearthing all the little secrets that people buried deep down, required a subtler approach.
Which was why, later that evening, the detective made a few phone calls to Delhi, putting into motion the next stage of his investigation.
The detective spent the night in one of the guest rooms in his client's house Raj Kasliwal Bhavan and, after breakfast, announced his intention to return to Delhi.
Ajay Kasliwal looked taken aback by this news. 'But, Puri-ji, you just got here,' he said.
