Ash shrugged. “Well, as the medical examiner on the case I do indeed have some details. However, they are very scant. The killer is not only extremely good at covering his own tracks but also those of his victims. There’s one cadaver that’s slightly better preserved than the others. I’ll be examining it over the next couple of days.”
“And do you think you’ll be at liberty to share your findings?”
Ash smiled. “I certainly won’t be at liberty to do that, no.” His smile broadened lasciviously. “But I might just do it all the same.”
“That would be very much appreciated. Anything else you can tell me?”
Ash nodded. “I have something that might be of interest to you. I’m still curious to know who’s employing Private, though.”
“It’ll go no further?”
“Of course not. But you better hurry. Our pizzas will be here soon. Not to mention that second bottle of wine.” Ash’s tiredness seemed to have disappeared.
“We’re being employed by Mohan Jaswal.”
Ash smiled, rolled his eyes. “Figures,” he said. “And I suppose Jaswal is keen to catch the killer, is he?”
“As I’m sure you can guess, Jaswal is far more concerned with putting one over on Chopra or making sure Chopra doesn’t put one over on him. We’re stuck someplace in the middle. Such is life. But what else is it you’ve discovered?”
Ash pulled a face. “Like I say, it’s precious little.” He reached into his jacket, retrieved a small plastic bag from his inside pocket, and placed it on the table between them. Inside was a tiny piece of fabric. “How do you fancy analyzing that on some of that fancy gadgetry you have at Private?”
“You scratch my back …”
Ash twinkled. “I’ll happily scratch yours.”
Neel pocketed the evidence bag. “You’ve had a good loo
k at it, presumably.”
“I have.”
“And?”
“And I’m fairly sure I know what it is. I’d be interested to see if you concur.”
“Give me a clue. We’re trying to catch a killer here, not play forensic noughts and crosses.”
“All right, then. You win. I think it’s a piece of a hospital gown.”
Chapter 21
“I THINK HE’S right,” said Neel the following day.
He was hunched over a powerful microscope, scrutinizing the tiny piece of fabric given to him the previous night. The thought of Ash made him stop suddenly and he raised his head from the eyepiece, allowing himself a smile of remembrance, and then went back to the job at hand.
Behind him stood Nisha and Santosh. “You think it’s a piece of hospital gown?” said Santosh, leaning forward, hands clasped over the head of his cane.
“I do.”
“That is very interesting,” said Santosh. “It means we have a connection.”
“We do?” said Nisha.
“May I?” said Santosh. He laid his cane on the table, shifted his glasses to the top of his head, and took over from Neel at the microscope. For some moments there was silence, broken only by Santosh murmuring his agreement that yes, it was a fragment of hospital gown. “Here,” he said to Neel, bidding him scrutinize the evidence again. “Do you see traces of a black marking?”
Neel looked, then nodded. “You think you know what they are?”
“Dhobi marks,” said Santosh. “Some public hospitals don’t do their own laundry. They outsource the job to teams of dhobis, a specific community that specializes in washing clothes the traditional Indian way—soaking them in hot water and then flogging them against laundry stones in vast open-air concrete pens. Each dhobi uses indelible ink to mark the garments to stop them going missing. So where there is a dhobi mark, there has to be a dhobi. Finding that dhobi will reveal which hospitals those bodies came from.”