dogs lie, right? I mean the main thing is we didn’t have to pay a bribe and the kids are going to go to a good school.”
“Sir, I can see you’re getting a hang of how things work here in India,” said Puri with a smile, rising from his chair and handing Rathinasabapathy his money. “And now if there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leaves. I have a most puzzling murder to look into.”
Four
As soon as Rathinasabapathy had left, Elizabeth Rani called Puri over the intercom and suggested he turn on his TV.
“Apparently there’s some amazing video of the murder,” she said.
At exactly 6:37 AM, Edouard Lecomte had been riding in a tour bus toward the Presidential Palace. While filming out the window, his attention had been drawn to what looked like some kind of ‘exotic Hindu ritual’ being enacted by a small group of people on one of the lawns. Only later did he realize what he had captured: Dr. Jha’s murder.
The footage was unsteady and hazy thanks to the smog and the distance at which it had been shot. But it showed the goddess Kali, complete with four writhing arms and a hideous red tongue, floating three feet above the ground. She could be seen driving her sword through Dr. Jha and cackling wildly. Then came a bright flash. Evidently, this had startled the Frenchman, who had lowered his camera and could be heard muttering, “
The channel was playing the thirty or so seconds over and over again, slowing it down, enlarging key frames and drawing little circles around certain details. It proved beyond doubt that whoever or whatever had killed the Guru Buster had not hung from wires suspended from overhanging branches. The graceful manner in which ‘the apparition’ glided through the air suggested it was standing on neither stilts nor a box.
“Could it be someone wearing a jet pack?” postulated one of the
“You’d see evidence of that,” a science commentator answered. “There’d be an exhaust and the movement would be jerky. Those things are hard to control. I can’t explain what we’re seeing here.”
Puri, who watched the footage numerous times on the small set he kept in his office, agreed with this last assessment.
“Absolutely mind-blowing,” he kept muttering to himself.
A part of him wanted to believe that it was a genuine supernatural occurrence – that the goddess Kali really had materialized on earth. Believing in something fantastic, something inexplicable, was always easier than accepting the mundane truth. But Puri was certain that his eyes were being deceived, that a mere mortal had killed Dr. Jha, and he felt roused to the challenge of hunting down the murderer.
The video convinced him of one other thing: the general public would believe there had been a miracle.
The authorities had evidently come to the same conclusion.
Riot police armed with lathis, tear gas and water cannons had sealed off all the approach roads to Rajpath. And as Puri soon discovered, setting off in his Ambassador complete with new windscreen, this had brought gridlock to the British bungalow-lined streets of New Delhi. The many roundabouts, congested and chaotic at the best of times, were a logjam of cars and auto rickshaws playing a discordant symphony for horns.
After ninety minutes, the detective had only reached Safdarjung Road, and it was here that he decided to abandon his car. Having made arrangements with the incharge at the front desk of the Gymkhana Club to leave the Ambassador unattended in the car park (and passed up the opportunity to have some lunch – the special was kadi chaaval followed by moong daal halwa), he and Handbrake continued on foot.
Puri found the going hard. By now it was blisteringly hot and muggy and it was not long before he felt as if he were swimming in his safari suit. The unusually high curbs built by the Angrezi along their fastidiously laid-out avenues – presumably to deter bicyclists and motorcyclists from using the pavements – presented Puri with a formidable challenge thanks to the shortness of his left leg. Every time he had to cross the road or the entrance to one of the many bungalows, he needed a hand up.
For Handbrake the going was hardly easy either. While exposed to the full force of the midday sun, he had to walk alongside Boss, shielding him with a black umbrella. But of the two men, the driver reached the corner of Janpath and Maulana Azad Road (where police barriers prevented them from going any farther) in better shape and without complaint. Puri, on the other hand, looked close to fainting and had to rest in the shade of a tree for ten minutes in order to recover. Glugging down a bottle of chilled water purchased from a passing ice cream wallah, he bemoaned the fact that he could go no farther and thanked the heavens when Inspector Jagat Prakash Singh came to the rescue in his air-conditioned jeep.
“What took you so much of time?” asked the detective as he climbed inside the vehicle, leaving Handbrake outside, and sat panting in the cool air like an overheated dog. “It is hotter than hell out there.”
“Press conference, sir,” answered the inspector in his deep baritone.
Inspector Singh was a stern bear of a man, six foot two inches tall with enormous hands and size 14 feet. He was sitting on the backseat of his jeep (his driver was behind the wheel) with the top of his head touching the roof, his neck and spine bent like a bow and his knees pressed into the back of the seat in front of him. Although a Sikh, he kept his black beard trimmed. His hair, too, was short and he didn’t wear a turban.
But while Singh’s religious identity was liberal, his investigative style was conventional. A graduate of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy and the son and grandson of former officers, he had a good track record when it came to solving bank robberies, rapes, kidnappings, burglaries and crimes of passion where the clues were staring him in the face and the choice of suspects was few. But when dealing with more sophisticated crimes, like cunningly orchestrated, premeditated murders for example, the inspector often found himself stumped.
In such circumstances, he turned to Puri.
The detective had solved a number of Singh’s cases, and pointed him in the right direction on various others, but never taken credit for his work. This rankled him; Puri relished the glare of the cameras and the opportunity to impress everyone with his acumen and skills. And yet the currency he received in return for his anonymous assistance was invaluable. He could count on information and cooperation with his own cases. And it often helped having an ally in the department to keep the chief, who reviled him as a ‘filthy jasoos’, off his back.
There was not another man on the Delhi force with whom Puri would have entered into such an arrangement. Singh was incorruptible. It didn’t hurt that, being only thirty-four, he was suitably deferential as well. Nor that he was Punjabi and enjoyed a couple of stiff pegs at the end of a hard day’s work.
“So, Inspector, what progress you’ve made till date?” asked the detective, wiping his face with his handkerchief and drinking more water.
The Sikh splayed his enormous fingers across his knees, studying his hairy knuckles and wedding ring.
“Honestly? I can’t make head or tail of it,” he admitted. “I’m starting to believe something supernatural
Puri nodded.
“It looks so… well, so
“Inspector, believe me, I am one man who believes in miracles. Unlike Dr. Jha, I know such things can and do occur. But because gold exists, it does not mean there is not fool’s gold, also.”
Singh made a face. “Sorry, sir?”
“Not every strange occurrence is automatically a miracle,” the detective clarified. “Take that incident few years back when Ganesh statues started drinking milk. Millions believed something miraculous occurred. A kind of
