“And what does that involve exactly — reconstructive surgery?”
“It’s as broad as it sounds, Mr. Wagh. Whether it be for cosmetic or psychological reasons, in the aftermath of a car crash...”
Santosh froze, feeling as though he’d been slapped. On the other side of the desk, Nisha watched him carefully, concern on her face, then leaned forward, whispering, “Boss?”
“Mr. Wagh?” the doctor was saying.
He composed himself. “Sorry, Dr. Uwwano. Do go on.”
“Well, I think I’d finished, really,” said Dr. Uwwano.
Nisha relaxed back into her seat, dragging a hand through her hair and watching him warily.
“Of course, of course,” said Santosh. He waved “everything’s okay” to Nisha. “Well, you could tell me, what was the purpose of Dr. Jaiyen’s visit to Mumbai?”
“It was a personal visit,” said Uwwano. “She told me it was to meet an old friend. She applied for a week’s leave of absence in order to take the trip.”
“Did she tell you the name of the friend she planned to meet?” asked Santosh.
“No,” replied Uwwano. “She was rather reserved about her personal life and I did not feel like prying.”
“Was anything troubling Dr. Jaiyen? Did she have any problems in her professional life? And what about her family life? Was it normal?”
“She was happily married,” replied Uwwano. “She did not have any kids, though. No, as far as I can tell, she had no worries. The only surviving family member other than her husband is her mother who lives in Chiang Mai.”
“Had Dr. Jaiyen performed any surgeries that went wrong?” asked Santosh. “Any instances of lawsuits or complaints by patients?”
“No. As I said, Dr. Jaiyen was one of our best surgeons,” explained Uwwano. “I’m having a hard time trying to find a suitable person to fill her shoes.”
Later, of course, Santosh would realize the mistake he had made when he spoke to Dr. Uwwano, but for now he wished her good day and ended the call. And then, when Nisha had left his office, he reached for the bottle.
Chapter 14
It was past eight that night when Mubeen reached Mumbai’s infamous police morgue at Cooper Hospital. Strong stomach or not, he’d been dreading his visit to this most dilapidated of the city’s facilities. What’s more, the man he was meeting, Dr. Zafar, had a certain reputation for eccentricity.
He got out of his van and crept past the muddy porch with a handkerchief held to his nose. The smell was overpowering, almost the equivalent of a few dozen dead rats decaying in a corner of the filthy building. Mubeen knew better, though. The overwhelming stench was not from dead rats but from rotting human bodies. It was the stench of death.
Mubeen could hear his own footsteps echo as he reached the dark entrance, a single light bulb casting an eerie glow. He began walking through the long, dimly lit passage. On both sides were gurneys bearing human forms covered in sheets. Despite his training, Mubeen felt a hollow in the pit of his stomach. He swallowed hard as he forced himself to cross the passage lined with cadavers.
He felt something move against his foot and looked down to see a massive gutter rat scurry away with a piece of flesh in its mouth. A shudder went down Mubeen’s spine and he felt his hair stand on end.
Further ahead he could see a glimmer of light emerging from a room. He quickened his pace to get there. As he crossed the doorway, he felt himself slipping and had to reach out and grab hold of a gurney to prevent himself from falling. He glanced downwards and realized that he was standing on a floor slick with blood, fluids, and human tissue. He pulled his hand away in shock as he realized that he was holding on to a frozen limb of a cadaver rather than the steel frame of a gurney.
“Never knew you would come so late,” boomed a voice behind him. Mubeen spun around to see a man dressed in green surgical scrubs, surrounded by a few dozen more gurneys containing decaying corpses. The voice belonged to Dr. Zafar, the police surgeon. Mubeen had reached the autopsy center in the police morgue of Cooper Hospital.
The morgue received around fifteen corpses daily and a third of these were without claimants. As per official policy, the police had to search for claimants for seven days before allowing disposal. Unfortunately, this was a slow process. Disposal happened at the rate of three or four bodies per day, thus resulting in a pile-up of more than a hundred cadavers in a fifty-five-rack morgue.
Dr. Zafar looked at Mubeen and smiled. He was wearing his surgical mask so the smile was only discernible from the twinkle in his eyes. “How can you keep cheerful in a hellhole like this?” asked Mubeen as he walked across to Zafar, carefully avoiding the puddles on the floor but grateful for the immediate presence of another living human.
“A smile is a curve that sets everything straight,” laughed Zafar, taking off his mask and applying some Vicks Vaporub under his nose to neutralize the permanently foul odor of the place. “I am used to this hellhole.”
Mubeen quietly thanked his stars that he did not have to work in conditions like those that Zafar worked in.
“Your bodies are ready,” announced the police surgeon, opening the door to the refrigeration chamber, like a baker announcing a fresh batch of bread from the oven. Mubeen helped him pull out the two tagged corpses and load them on gurneys.
“Would you like to carry out the autopsies here?” asked Zafar.
“No,” replied Mubeen. “I need the equipment in my own lab. If you don’t mind, I’ll simply take the bodies and share the results with you by email.”
“I need to be present during the autopsy, as instructed by Rupesh,” replied Zafar apologetically. “Either you carry out the autopsies here or I come to your lab.”
Mubeen thought about this. All he wanted was to get the hell out of Zafar’s ghoulish morgue. He made up his mind quickly. “Let’s get these loaded into my van. You may come with me.”
“I would have got one of my assistants to help move the corpses if you had showed up before eight o’clock,” explained Dr. Zafar. “Unfortunately at this time it’s only me in this place.”
Zafar discarded his scrubs and washed his hands with soap and hot water before helping Mubeen roll the gurneys back to the white van belonging to Private India. Both men loaded them inside then climbed in the front.
Mubeen drove out of Cooper Hospital and headed toward Colaba. On reaching Private India’s office block, he drove into a parking garage at the rear of the building. The door closed behind them and lights came on automatically. He flicked a switch on his hand-held remote and the floor of the garage began slowly rising. Within two minutes the van had been transported into Mubeen’s state-of-the-art medical and forensics facility in the heart of Private India’s office complex.
The contrast with the Cooper Hospital autopsy center could not be more apparent. Mubeen’s lab was sophisticated, modern, and spotlessly clean. Gleaming white tables illuminated by shafts of light supplied by overhead energy-efficient fixtures ran the entire length of the lab.
It was equipped with the very latest tools, including a new machine that combined multi-slice computed tomography with magnetic resonance imaging to produce a virtual autopsy in 3D that could easily detect internal bleeding, bullet paths, and hidden fractures, hard to find with a traditional autopsy. Spectrometers for detection of explosives and illegal drug residues dotted one side of the laboratory, while equipment for the analysis of bloodstains, fingerprints, DNA, hair, fibers, and other trace evidence occupied the rest. A newly acquired device that could accurately identify specific dyes in acrylics, cotton, and other fibers occupied a table of its own.