“Want us to watch the back of the house in case they try to get down the alley?” asked Tubelight.
“No one is going to run away. Stay in position. I would not be more than fifteen, twenty minutes maximum.”
Puri approached the front gate and pressed the buzzer. A bar of ‘Jingle Bells’ played somewhere inside the house.
Thirty seconds passed with no result. The detective peered through the narrow gap between the solid metal gate and the gatepost. He could see a light on in the front room on the ground floor. The shadow of a figure moved across the curtains. The detective tried the bell again. Still nothing. He banged on the gate with his fist.
“Professor-ji! Open up, yaar! No need for games!”
The detective’s words were answered by a gunshot.
Puri spun around, disoriented. His left leg got caught on his right ankle and he toppled over onto his side.
“That came from inside, Boss!” shouted Tubelight, running across the street toward him. “Don’t think it was aimed at you.”
“By God, someone’s shooting!” cried the detective, appalled. “How that is possible?”
Sounds of a struggle came from inside the house. Something crashed to the ground. One of the ground-floor windows was smashed. Glass tinkled onto the concrete.
Tubelight helped Puri onto his feet as Shashi and Zia reached them.
Another shot was fired. A man’s voice cried out.
Zia shoved his shoulder against the front gate, but it was locked from the inside. Without a moment’s hesitation, he began to scale the gate.
“You two get around back!” the detective ordered the others.
“Right, Boss!”
Tubelight and Shashi took off down the street.
A third shot rang out. About ten seconds later came a fourth.
By now, Zia was on top of the gate with his right foot balanced precariously between its crown of spikes. He managed to jump down to the other side, landing on the hood of Pandey’s car.
A moment later, the gate swung open.
Zia and Puri skirted around the now dented car, keeping their heads down. They approached the front door. It was unlocked. In the corridor beyond lay a couple of pairs of shoes and a pile of old newspapers. There was a radio on somewhere inside the house playing All India Radio’s FM Gold station.
They could hear laughter as well.
Cautiously, Puri made his way down the corridor and entered the front room. Professor Pandey was lying on his back in a pool of blood near the window. He was chuckling to himself as if daydreaming about something funny he had seen or heard.
In horror, Puri rushed to his side and shouted back over his shoulder: “Fetch a doctor! Jaldi karo!”
The detective peeled back the wounded man’s blood-soaked shirt. He had been shot in the stomach.
“Professor, can you hear me?” He tilted back Pandey’s head to keep his air passages clear. “Who did this? You saw?”
The dying man chuckled again and began to cough. Blood spluttered from his mouth. He arched his back and grimaced with pain.
“Try to relax. Help is making its way here. Tell me, who did this?”
The professor smiled, as if a lovely thought had suddenly occurred to him, and then his body went slack and his eyes glazed over.
“By God, Professor-ji, what you went and got yourself into, huh?” mumbled Puri as he moved to search the rest of the house.
Tubelight and Shashi turned into the alleyway behind Professor Pandey’s house. They spotted a male figure fifty yards ahead hurrying toward them. He stopped in his tracks, turned and sprinted off in the opposite direction.
“Oi, rook!” shouted Tubelight.
Puri’s operatives gave chase, soon reaching the far end of the alleyway. Here they turned right and, with Shashi in the lead, pursued the figure down the residential street that led past Modern Public School.
Three stray dogs joined in the chase. Scrambling after the fleeing man, they snarled and snapped at his heels. One of them got hold of his trouser leg, and for a moment, it looked as if the cur might stop him. But then another shot rang out and the animal yelped and collapsed in a bloody heap.
Whimpering, the other two canines hightailed it in opposite directions.
Tubelight and Shashi briefly took cover behind a parked car.
“That’s five shots,” said Tubelight, who was out of breath. “He should only have one more.”
The killer crossed Jhulelal Mandir Marg, causing a couple of cars to come to a screeching halt, and climbed over the railings surrounding the old Mughal Shalimar Bagh Gardens.
Half a minute later, his pursuers followed him inside.
The killer sprinted down a path that passed the forlorn ornamental fountains and fruit trees once so beloved of the Emperor Shah Jahan. He reached the crumbling central pavilion and disappeared inside.
A few seconds later, a sixth bullet whizzed past Tubelight and Shashi. Instinctively they dropped to the ground.
“That should be his last,” panted Tubelight. “There’s only one way in and out of there. Wait here and make sure he doesn’t double back.”
Tubelight crept toward the small building.
“There’s no escape!” he called out in Hindi, mounting the steps. “The police will be here soon. Give yourself up!”
His words echoed off the bare walls. They went unanswered. He inched past the columns at the entrance. Moonlight filtered through a window in the domed roof, illuminating the dusty interior. Tubelight almost gagged on the stench of bat droppings that littered the floor. There was no one inside.
Confused, he crept back to the entrance.
“Did he double back?” he hissed to Shashi over his shoulder.
“No, chief.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“But… that’s impossible. There’s no other way out of this place.”
They both made another search, but the figure had vanished.
Cautiously Puri searched the back rooms on the ground floor of Professor Pandey’s house.
He passed through the kitchen and into a small yard, where he noticed a couple of rubber mats, like the ones found in cars, draped over the top of the back wall.
The detective returned inside and mounted the stairs.
He found a bloodstain on the third step. Another on the fifth. He hurried up the landing and turned the corner around the banisters.
There he found another man lying facedown in a pool of blood.
Puri knew who it was without having to turn the body over.
He checked for a pulse, hoping vainly that perhaps the man could still be saved. Finding none, he slumped down on the top stair with his face in his hands.
This was where the doctor found him ten minutes later.
“I’m afraid this one’s dead as well,” he said after examining the body. “Did you know him?”
Puri didn’t answer. His eyes were creased with sadness.
“Sir, do you know the name of the deceased?”
The detective let out a long, anguished sigh.
“Yes, I knew him,” he replied. “His name was Dr. Suresh Jha.”
