Roy’s name was the first one on that page. It was followed by an email ID, office phone number, and residential phone number. She copy-pasted the residential phone number into a reverse lookup website and waited impatiently for the result to pop up.
And she had it. New Moti Bagh. She looked at the map on her phone. Sixteen minutes to get there at this time. In the distance she could hear the sound of sirens and she knew that by rights she should remain behind for the ambulance but she couldn’t. Time was all that mattered now. She dashed to the bedroom, reached to the back of her bedside table, and found her old .38 police special. She clipped it to her belt as she scrambled outside, back into the Toyota, and a moment later she was pulling out into traffic.
“I’m coming, baby,” she said. “I’m coming.”
Chapter 72
Nisha drove the car recklessly as she crossed Rao Tula Ram Marg on her way to Moti Bagh. She would have preferred to take the shorter route via Hare Krishna Mehto Marg but roadworks blocked the way. She cursed her luck and followed the longer route.
I’ll kill him if he’s touched her. So help me.
A cab in front of her refused to yield in spite of her repeated attempts. Nisha switched the headlights on full beam, jammed her hand on the horn, and overtook it, avoiding grazing it with just a couple of millimeters to spare. The man in the car shouted obscenities at her. He tried to chase her but was unable to keep up.
She wondered whether she should call Jack or Neel but decided against it. Santosh’s death was a body blow to everyone. She was on her own.
Like a tigress protecting her cub.
Chapter 73
Jack looked at the corpse.
It was Santosh.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Santosh’s knees were slightly lifted off the ground and his arms were bent at the elbows. He had obviously been attempting to adopt the fetal position in order to fight the bitter cold as he died.
Beside him, Neel was staring at his dead boss, a vacant expression on his face.
“Hey, bud, you okay?” said Jack, and put his hand to the other man’s upper arm.
It was as though the contact spurred Neel into action. “Help me,” he said.
“Help you what?”
“Get the body out. Please, quick — time is of the essence.”
They maneuvered the corpse onto a gurney and in the next instant were wheeling it out of the morgue.
“What are we doing, Neel?” Jack asked as they went at full speed to the elevator.
“Follow my lead,” said Neel. “I’ll explain when we get there.”
They loaded the trolley into the elevator and Neel pressed for the fifth floor — the Intensive Care Unit. When the doors opened they were greeted by a doctor about to step into the elevator.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, eyes flitting from the two men to the corpse on the gurney. “Where do you think you’re going with this body?”
“He’s not dead,” said Neel.
“He looks dead to me.”
“He’s not. His arms are slightly bent at the elbows,” urged Neel. “Just try straightening his arms.”
The doctor looked from Neel to Santosh, took hold of a hand, and tried to straighten the arm. It bounced back a few inches.
“You see?” said Neel. “Dead muscles cannot contract. He has severe hypothermia but he’s not dead.”
The doctor was nodding his agreement. “Okay, right, we need to take him to an ordinary room,” he said. “Intensive Care is kept freezing cold to prevent infections. We need to crank up the temperature of the room.
“Nurse!” he called. “Let’s put him in 1016 and get me an electric blanket. We’ll need heat packs for his abdomen and groin.” They wheeled Santosh toward the designated room. Neel and Jack followed, disregarding the rules that prevented visitors — no way in hell they were going to leave Santosh now.
“What the fuck’s going on, Neel?” whispered Jack. “Santosh has no pulse.”
“He’s gone into forced hibernation,” explained Neel. The doors of the treatment room swished shut behind them. “There was limited oxygen inside the refrigeration unit. The combination of freezing temperatures and low oxygen resulted in suspended animation — a sudden halting of chemical reactions.”
They watched, feeling suddenly useless as nurses covered Santosh, cranked up the central heating of the room, and slipped an oxygen mask over his face. Hot-water bottles were placed under his blanket and heart and blood pressure monitoring equipment was hooked up.
“There are plenty of examples of humans who appeared frozen to death,” said Neel, to reassure himself as much as Jack. “They had no heartbeat and were clinically dead but they were successfully revived after spending hours without a pulse in extremely cold conditions.”
Chapter 74
Amit Roy passed through the gates of his house, glanced in his rearview, and saw them slide shut behind him. The Audi came to a stop haphazardly on the gravel in front of the house, and for a moment he simply sat there, panting, trying to process the sudden turn of events.
And the feeling — this feeling: giddy, dizzy, a great rush of profound internal energy. Having barely recovered from the unexpected euphoria of killing the old woman, he now had the little girl to look forward to, all the while basking in the knowledge that she, his last victim, would be his best; that he would ascend in such superlative circumstances.
His one problem was lack of time. It had been an hour or so since the broadcast. Sharma would no doubt be dispatching his men to execute a high-profile arrest, complete with news footage as he was led in cuffs to the squad car. His gates would keep the press at bay for the time being, but they wouldn’t deter cops with a warrant.
Meantime he emerged from his reverie with the realization that his phone was still ringing. Had it ever stopped? Looking at the screen: no. There were twenty-five missed calls. God knew how many text messages.
“Well, fuck you!” he cried, then stepped into the chill night and slammed his phone to the gravel, stamping on it again and again. “Fuck you!” he screamed at the sky, grinding the phone under his shoe, alive with the thrill of his emancipation. “Fuck you, all of you, every single one of you!” he bellowed, his voice cracking with the effort.
And then he went to open the trunk.
Inside cowered Maya Gandhe. Having killed the interfering childminder, he had grabbed the girl and carried her kicking and screaming out to his car, thrown her in the trunk, not caring if the Gandhes’ neighbors saw what was happening. It hardly mattered now, and though she’d mewled and thumped at the trunk lid all the way home, as with his cell phone he’d simply tuned out the noise.
Now she screamed again, in shock and fear, this time at the deranged apparition looming over her, this terrifying man who responded to her cries not with reassurance or even anger, but by joining her, so that for a moment they both yelled into the night until the sheer strangeness of the situation tipped her over into silence.
Now he reached in and yanked her bodily from the trunk, a demented strength to him as he manhandled her into the house, leaving the Audi on the gravel drive, its engine still running.
In the kitchen he bundled her to the floor and she screamed with new fear and pain as he reached into a kitchen drawer for a knife and a roll of tape. From his inside jacket pocket he took her essay.