“Maybe somebody checking up since her death, like we were?” she suggested, realizing she was speaking in a whisper now.
“Right. But as far as I can tell, I’m the only person to have looked at it since she died. I’m talking about before she died.”
“How long before she died?”
“A month or so.”
“And are you able to say who it was that accessed the information?”
There was the sound of a car engine from the far end of the alley and Nisha began to move more quickly now, cursing.
Can’t lose her. Whatever I do, I can’t lose her.
“Yes, it was Rupesh,” said Ajay.
By now she had reached the rear of the building and peered carefully around the corner. The car was reversing from garages to her left, one of the apartment block’s residents. The rear of Yoga Sutra, meanwhile, was silent. Two cars in the parking bays, a silver Mercedes and metallic-blue Audi, both exactly the kinds of cars you’d expect in an area like this. Exactly the kinds of cars you’d expect someone like Devika to be driving. Maybe she hadn’t left.
There was a rear door, a glass-panelled back entrance, the kind that stars in dark sunglasses use when they wanted to be discreet. It was ajar.
“Thanks, Ajay,” she said, even more quietly now. “That’s really, really important. I owe you one.”
“Why are we whispering?” said Ajay.
She grimaced. “The same reason I can’t talk right now.”
“Whatever you’re doing, be careful,” he said. There was no mistaking the genuine concern in his voice.
“I will be,” she whispered, ending the call, resolving to tell Santosh the news as soon as possible. Just as soon as she investigated this open door.
Coming closer now, she peered into the gap. Inside, the scented air of the yoga studio, shrouded in an after-hours darkness.
“Hello? Miss Gulati?” she said. “I wonder if I could just ask you a couple more questions.”
There was no answer. But there was a movement from inside, a shuffling sound.
“Hello?”
Nothing. She raised her Glock. Stepped into the threshold of the door. “Hello? Is everything all right, Miss Gulati? Are you all right?”
She took another step inside, then another. Squinting in the half-light, she reached into the pocket of her jeans for a small flashlight, fumbling as she pulled it out so that it fell to the carpet. Raising her Glock slightly, not taking her eyes off the corridor ahead of her, she crouched, fingers reaching for the flashlight, not liking this. Not liking it at all.
Suddenly from behind her came the slam of a door, just as her fingers gripped the flashlight and she wheeled, raising the gun and the light at the same time.
She saw the shape looming. Something hit her before she could pull the trigger and she pitched back with a cry of pain, twisting too late as something came down over her mouth and nose. She inhaled chemicals. In her pocket, her phone buzzed.
Chapter 89
“Nisha was engaged — now she’s not answering,” said Santosh impatiently. “Let’s go.”
“Santosh, we’ll go in my Jeep,” said Rupesh. “A siren might help us get there more quickly.” Santosh flashed him a grateful look, waving for Mubeen to leave.
Mubeen was already pulling away by the time Santosh and Rupesh clambered into the Assistant Commissioner’s Jeep and set off.
“Don’t worry, Santosh,” said Rupesh. “I called for backup. Nisha will be fine.”
“Thank you,” said Santosh. He clasped his cane and gazed out of the window, seeing but not seeing a riot of Mumbai color. Caught in the overspill from Colaba Causeway, the Jeep moved slowly at first, Rupesh leaning on the horn and every now and then thrusting his head out of the window to curse at cyclists and unwary pedestrians.
Santosh, meanwhile, was lost in thought. He was thinking about Aditi Chopra, unwanted child of Lara Omprakash. Had Aditi changed her name to Devika Gulati? Was she writing her biography in blood, each corpse a new chapter?
And there was something else as well. Another question hanging around on the outskirts of his mind.
They had pulled away from the main throng now, were traveling faster, but not a route Santosh recognized. Not the way to Devika Gulati’s studio.
He glanced at Rupesh. “Where are we going?”
The gun was in Rupesh’s fist before Santosh had time to react, the barrel of it pointing across the seat at him. He grimaced. Fool. What a fool — so wrapped up in the Aditi Chopra lead that he hadn’t questioned why Rupesh needed to leave the room to supposedly call for backup.
“This is something to do with Munna, isn’t it?” said Santosh. “You’re working for him now, aren’t you?”
Rupesh gave a rueful smile. “Let’s just say that this is an opportunity to mix business with the resolution of a little personal matter, Santosh.”
“Where are we going?” asked Santosh.
“You’ll find out — when we arrive,” said Rupesh.
Chapter 90
The rasp of the vultures overhead. The dry flapping of their wings in the night sky. And the stench. The terrible, terrible stench of death — of corpses laid out to rot in the sun, dozens of bodies left as carrion for the maggots and the flies and the scavenging birds that constantly circled overhead.
This was where Rupesh had brought them. To the Tower of Silence on Malabar Hill, an oasis of green within the concrete hustle and bustle of Mumbai.
But a deserted one. The Tower of Silence was where the Parsis disposed of their dead — an individual’s final act of charity, providing scavengers with food that would otherwise be destroyed. There, bodies were laid out to be shredded and eaten by the vultures that were a permanent feature of the sky above the tower.
With Santosh at gunpoint, he and Rupesh entered through an iron door on the east side — the only way in or out — and found themselves on the inside of a vast basin, a huge sunken ossuary pit in the middle.
A full moon illuminated bodies laid out on the stone, men in an outer ring, female corpses in the middle, and children in the innermost ring. Once the flesh had been pecked by vultures, and the bones bleached by the sun, the remnants would collect in the pit, where they would gradually disintegrate into fine powder.
“Go to the pit,” said Rupesh.
Though he had one hand over his mouth, Santosh was still retching at the overpowering stench of rotted flesh and bird-shit. He turned and limped toward the edge. The moon cast the stone in a silvery glow. Tendrils of light reached into the pit where a mix of festering blood and tissue and human bones lay coagulating and decomposing.
Glancing to Rupesh, he saw the other man doing the same. Supposedly, the tower could only be entered by a special class of pallbearers, who would be asleep in their quarters. How had Rupesh gained entry? Perhaps, when you counted Munna and Nimboo Baba among your friends, anything was possible.
“Alas, the story must end here, my friend,” said Rupesh. He reached into his back pocket with his left hand while his right continued to hold the Glock, pulling out something that he held up for Santosh to see. A pair of handcuffs. And in a voice from the heart of a nightmare said, “You killed them, you drunk bastard.”
For a second, Santosh forgot the stink, the vultures, the corpses at their feet, and the gun pointing at him. He simply stared at Rupesh. It was almost as though every second had been stretched into an hour. He felt woozy. Rupesh’s words echoed inside his mind as it went into flashback. “You killed them, you drunk bastard!”
And he had, hadn’t he? He had killed them.