The only light in the room was the glow of the laptop screen. In the gloom of his office Kumar looked down to see his attacker peering up at him, and he gazed into the man’s eyes hoping to see some shred of mercy or pity, but found none.
“Please don’t do this,” he whimpered. “I’m a very powerful man. There is so much I can do for you. Name it. Name your price.”
“I have already named my price, Honorable Minister for Health and Family Welfare. I have already named it. You are about to pay it. You ask if there is anything you can do for me—the answer is no, you have already done enough. You are corrupt and venal and you have done enough.”
The intruder rose, and in his hand he held one of the needles. Kumar’s struggles were futile as the intruder used his index and middle fingers to tap up a vein in Kumar’s left forearm. The radial artery. In went the first needle. Blood flowed along the opaque medical tube and began to fill the bag below.
“Please …”
But the man in black was not listening. He was now holding the other needle, repeating the process in the other arm.
“Are you feeling your heart rate increasing?” he said, and drew over a second chair in order to sit opposite Kumar and watch the show. Kumar could indeed feel his heart beating rapidly, suddenly accompanied by a clammy sensation.
“You will now feel dizzy,” said the man in black.
Again, that voice. Kumar recognized the voice.
“Soon you will turn pale. Then shortness of breath will kick in. Once your blood pressure has dropped far enough, you will lose consciousness. Anywhere between twenty and thirty minutes’ time.”
Kumar watched helplessly as the man in black moved over to dismiss the screensaver of his laptop and read the letter on his screen. “Very interesting,” he said after some moments. “Very interesting indeed.”
And then he deleted the letter. Next he began opening other documents, reading emails, pleased at what he learned.
Ten minutes passed. The only sound in the room was Kumar’s whimpering, and even that began to fade as he felt his strength recede. As the blood was taken from him so was the will to live, as though his spirit and soul were being taken too. Suddenly he was gripped by a desire to say sorry for everything he had done, but knew the sudden need for what it was—a hypocritical, self-serving reaction to his imminent death. A need to salve his conscience.
His eyelids began to flutter. His blood flowed into the bags more slowly now. With it went hope. With it went everything he had ever been or ever would be. With it came the end.
And then, just as he was about to die, the man in black leaned forward in his chair, took hold of the balaclava from the bottom, and peeled it up over his face.
The last word Kumar ever said was “You.”
Chapter 27
THE BELL KEPT ringing. It was a big brass bell splashed in blood. And it was clanging because a swaying corpse was suspended from it.
Shut up, thought Santosh, but the bell kept clanging. Louder than ever.
It took a few more minutes for him to realize he’d been having another nightmare. With a gasp, he pulled himself from its claws, reaching for his glasses on the nightstand. He put them on and then saw the time on his bedside clock. Six in the morning, and the bell in his nightmare was really the ringing of his cell phone. He took the call. Neel.
“Nikhil Kumar is dead,” said Neel. “Just got the news.”
“Murdered?” asked Santosh.
“Let’s put it this way: the circumstances are highly suspicious,” replied Neel.
Santosh felt a headache lurking behind his eyes. There was throbbing in his head. While working in Mumbai, he had used to drink himself into a stupor before crashing out on the couch. Rehab had advised him to take sedatives instead, and in place of the whisky hangover he had one from the sedatives. At least the whisky had been enjoyable.
“I’ll meet you there in half an hour,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Have you informed Nisha?”
Chapter 28
THE CRIME-SCENE UNIT was at the house, but temporarily too preoccupied to register Private entering. In keeping with the Sherlock Holmes maxim of hiding in plain sight, the three investigators simply walked in as though they had a perfect right to be there, and at their head, Santosh crossed the entrance hall and entered the downstairs office quickly, knowing that despite what Holmes said, it wouldn’t be long before they were challenged.
The sight in the office brought him up short. In the midst of the scene-of-crime officers in protective suits and masks was the victim, Nikhil Kumar. Wearing elegant pajamas, he’d been taped to a chair but his head lolled on his chest and by the look of him—his skin a grotesque chalky color—he had been drained of blood.
According to Neel—in other words, according to Neel’s contact, Ash—Kumar’s wife had discovered her husband’s body early in the morning. Not finding him in the bedroom, she had assumed he would be asleep on the couch in his study. She had brewed him a mug of tea and carried it into the study, only to be greeted by his exsanguinated corpse.
Neel and Nisha entered the room behind Santosh. The investigators were paying them more attention now, exchanging puzzled glances. A challenge was imminent, Santosh knew, and he moved forward to inspect the corpse, noting the way in which the arms had been bound, not to mention the pinpricks that indicated where the blood had been taken. At the same time he ever-so-casually brushed the laptop on the desk to get rid of the screensaver, but the screen was blank. That’s odd, he thought. Laptop on, but no document, no web page showing.