The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(4)
Bilal would take care of his wounds. Always had.
“You’ll be sick again. This has to stop or I’m leaving.”
“This is better than the other thing, you keep saying.”
“It is the other thing I’m talking about. The last time had better have been the final one. No more. I’m here only because of your father, and he hasn’t been alive for years. Remember that.”
“Not even if they deserve it? If they exceed the time? If they want more money?”
This one had exceeded her time, was not afraid, coveted his money. Granted, it wasn’t Diwali yet, but she met the conditions, and he’d been upset. Quite upset.
Bilal couldn’t understand the amount of control it took not to give in. The pain of gazing at them from a distance. Being that close, not closer.
“One more time, I’m out.” Bilal stood up, his job done. “You’ll be on your own.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ARNAV
Arnav had known the portly Dr. Meshram for years. The quiet man with his soft, kindly features looked more like a benevolent priest than a forensic officer who examined dead bodies and recorded the results for a living. He smiled, introduced a white-coated man as his new assistant, shook hands with Arnav, and busied himself with thermometers and his camera. A constable followed him, making notes for the panchnama—a precise, detailed account of the scene signed by two witnesses from members of the public, without which there would be no case. Courts tended to believe the accused rather than the police.
Meshram hadn’t said yet if this body was male or female, but Arnav couldn’t help imagining this person’s last moments. Did they see it coming? Did they suffer? Did they know the person who did them in? His training and decades of crime scenes had failed to inure him to those first moments of empathy and suffering before the mask of professional calm and feigned indifference set in. And that twinge of fear. Would it be a familiar face? Heaven forbid, a loved one. Soon, it would be twenty-three years since he’d seen his sister’s lifeless, bloated face. In the intervening decades, it had endured in his nightmares. Solidified, instead of fading away. As clear in his memory now as in the moment he’d found her.
Arnav watched Dr. Meshram wield a small trowel to remove soil from around the cadaver and place it in a bucket his assistant held for him. He wore a mask and a pair of gloves, and alternated between a brush and the trowel to uncover as much of the body as possible without causing damage. Soon, he gestured to Arnav to use a mask from the forensic examination kit and step closer.
“The head is missing.”
Arnav slipped on the mask and leaned into the pit. He could see the leathery black-and-brown shoulders, but only a blackened stump where the neck should have been.
“This will take me some time to uncover. Delicate work, all of this, kya?” Dr. Meshram stood up with a groan. He tagged a kya at the end of his sentences whenever he wished to emphasize a point. Literally, what, but meaning, don’t you agree?
Arnav agreed, and nodded to show he appreciated the skill required for the task. “Any details on the victim?”
“Based on the shoulder bones, it is either a woman or a teenage boy. My money is on a woman, because the shoulder is narrower, and has less bone development at the muscle attachment site.”
“You can’t say for sure?”
“Only after I’ve uncovered the pelvic area. For a woman, the inlet will be open, circular, and the subpubic angle wider.”
“Any idea when this body was buried?”
“Could be months or years—the rate of decomposition depends on numerous factors: ambient temperature, the soil, moisture, the body’s fat content. The topsoil has already been disturbed here. Impossible to tell the duration of decomposition unless I’m able to extract and transfer the body for a proper postmortem.”
“How long will that take?”
“This is a cold case. I sometimes have to buy gloves and masks with my own money—do you think my bosses are going to agree to a rush on this?” Dr. Meshram shrugged, and sank to his knees again.
Cold cases held relatively low priority. “No priority” would be more accurate, unless the case was high profile in some way.
A memory stirred at the back of his mind. Many years ago, he’d helped out on another case around Dussehra. It had rained. That body had remained underground for a great while, but on the basis of the bones, it was a woman. No skull, no hands and feet. In her twenties. They hadn’t been able to solve the case. At the time, Arnav was a new constable on his probation at Dadar Police Station.
His brain felt foggy from hunger and lack of sleep, but the details would come back to him.
He turned to Naik, who was taking pictures of the site for the department’s record.
“Get someone to look up all unsolved cases involving bodies that were buried in and around Mumbai. Check if any of them were decapitated. Go back twenty years. I think I remember a case that was registered at the Dadar station.”
“That long, sir?”
Arnav held back a sigh. Naik meant to ask whether they could spare a constable’s hours for cold cases. Another assistant sub-inspector might have raised more questions, but not Naik, the best at her job and at following orders.
“Yes, but keep it quiet for the moment.”
These perished women deserved for someone to take notice. His boss would likely throw a fit at the “wasted” police hours, but Arnav had never let that stop him.