He reached out and drew, over the image of her face, the sign of the cross.
15
Rana was woken early by the chime of the doorbell. She fumbled her way out of bed, pulled on her wrap and moved to the speaker by the inner door of her new, spacious apartment.
“Who is it?”
“Security, Lieutenant Rao. Investigator Vishwanath sent me.”
“Oh… yes. Of course. Come on up.”
A minute later a spry Tamil sergeant stepped into the lounge carrying a case of equipment and a com-board. “A small matter—I’ll be no more than ten minutes,” he said. “First I’ll install an alarm pad in case of emergencies.”
She rubbed her eyes. “Emergencies?”
The Tamil bobbed his head from side to side. “Standard procedure,” he said. “We’ve got to protect our officers. I’ll make a sweep for bugs and other electronic surveillance apparatus.”
He set to work installing the alarm. “I’ll put it in here, behind this picture,” he said, in case of emergencies, all you need to do is press it lightly. This will activate alarms at the local station.”
Rana sat on the arm of a chair, watching him attach the small, flat rectangle to the wall behind the picture, a Chinese landscape inherited from the apartment’s previous occupant.
He replaced the painting and looked around the room. “Now I’ll sweep the apartment for electronic listening devices and suchlike.”
He opened his case and took out an instrument like a communicator, switched it on and turned in a circle, directing the device at the walls.
He examined the screen and frowned. “I’m getting something.”
Rana rubbed her tired face. “You mean the place is bugged?” She was unconvinced.
“No, not bugged. There’s a homing device in the apartment, a very crude affair. It’s…” Like a diviner seeking water, he moved the device back and forth. “It’s in that drawer,” he said, pointing to her desk.
Her only possession worth locking away was the soft-screen. She unlocked the drawer and lifted it out. Wafer thin, perhaps half a metre square, it was blank until pressed. Then it showed a fictional narrative set on some colony world, a drama featuring intrepid explorers battling through mountainous terrain.
“Do you mean this?”
The sergeant nodded. “Can I examine it?”
Rana passed him the softscreen. He turned it over, minutely examining the weave of the fabric. “It’s very old,” he said. “Perhaps a hundred years old?”
She nodded. “It’s an antique. It was… my father gave it to me when I was young.”
She could hardly tell him the truth, that she had taken the softscreen from her father’s safe, along with a few hundred rupees, all those years ago.
The sergeant was frowning. “It’s implanted with a primitive homing device. Did your father put it there, to trace it in case it was ever stolen?”
Rana shrugged. “I don’t know.”
But her father could not have known about the homing device, or he would have used it to trace her when she ran away from home…
The sergeant looked up. “Can I take it back to the lab, Lieutenant? I’d like to examine it more closely. The homing device is embedded very skilfully into the fabric of the screen. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’ll issue you with a receipt.”
“You’ll bring it back when you’ve finished with it?” she asked.
“I’ll bring it back in a week, Lieutenant.” He folded the softscreen into his case and wrote out a receipt.
“The rest of the apartment is clean?”
He smiled. “You’ve no need to worry, Lieutenant. I’ll be back in a few months to run another check.”
The sergeant packed his case and saluted as he left. Rana closed the door behind him, then made herself a cup of coffee and drank it slowly, sitting by the window and staring across the mist-shrouded Nehru park.
A week had passed since Rana had reported to Vishwanath about the Man in the Black Suit, and the killer from Madrigal whose computer-generated image was now with every police station in the city. She had expected, in her naivety, to hear about the apprehension of the suspect within days, but there had been no progress at all on the case of the crucifix killer. Vishwanath had counselled confidence, and told her to try another lead. He had praised her initiative so far, but told her that in all likelihood the black suit had been just another one of those lines of enquiry that resulted in a dead end. Homicide work, he said, was full of them.
Rana had worked on other cases, murders she had had no real involvement in, and therefore could not feel as enthusiastic about. She knew they had to be solved, and she worked hard on them, but they would never have the appeal of her first investigation.
The chime of an incoming call sounded in her ear. She clicked her jaw to activate the communication. “Rao here.”
“This is Lieutenant Nazeem.” His voice sounded loud in her ear. “Vishwanath wants you quick sharp.”
“What is it?”
“The crucifix case you’re working on.” He emphasised the “you’re’, as Vishwanath had reassigned him shortly after Rana’s arrival in the department. “Something’s happened.”
“What? Have they caught—”
But Naz had cut the connection.
She hurried from the apartment and caught a taxi to the police headquarters. She still had an hour to go before her shift officially started, so to be called early like this must mean that something important had occurred. She tried to control her excitement as she dashed into the building and rode the elevator to the eighth floor.
She unlocked her desk and retrieved her com-board, then made her way to Vishwanath’s office.
“They’ve caught him?” she asked when she got there.
Vishwanath shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Far from it, Lieutenant. That was forensic. It appears that our man has struck again.”
Rana felt as if a punch had knocked the wind from her. “But I thought we had extra patrols—”
He nodded. “We did. But he didn’t strike where we thought he might.”
“Are you sure it’s the same killer?”
“Forensic seem pretty convinced.” He picked up his com-board and stood wearily. “Shall we go and take a look, Lieutenant?”
She followed him into the elevator and then out into the underground car-park. They climbed aboard a squad car and accelerated up the ramp and into the street. The morning mists had lifted and sunlight filled the bustling streets with its harsh glare.
“Where did he strike, sir?”
“Somewhere in the Raneesh suburb.”
Rana accessed the city map on her com-board. “Below the left-hand crossbar of the crucifix. Do you know the identity of the victim?”
“One Raja Khan. He’s known to us—he’s a smuggler and extortionist. It would seem that the killer is continuing his moral crusade.”
Rana watched a food market flash by in a kaleidoscopic blur of reds and greens. She felt suddenly depressed at the thought of another murder, and it came to her that it was not the loss of life that was dispiriting—the dead men were, to a soul, evil-doers after all—but the fact that the killer could so easily get away with his crimes. Every new murder pointed up her department’s, and her own, inefficiency.
Raneesh suburb was a modern, rich residential area of habitat domes and state-of-the-art polycarbon structures. The squad car halted by one such, a building tastelessly styled on the pyramid foyer of the Louvre. Rana followed Vishwanath past the house and down a tree-shaded footpath.
The usual activity surrounded the scene of the crime. Officers had erected low-powered laser-cordons to keep away the gaggle of sightseers, curious children and rich citizens out walking their dogs. Crawlers scurried back and forth across the path like oversized beetles. A forensic officer knelt by the corpse, entering data into his com-board.