The Darya Nandkarni Misadventures Omnibus: Books 1-3 Read online

  ‘Your father called us to rule out any foul play.’

  Her heartbeat quickened. This was news.

  ‘Why did he suspect foul play?’ she asked.

  ‘No particular reason,’ he replied. ‘Your uncle was living alone. He died all of a sudden. Your father was ruling out possibilities.’

  Why had her father never discussed this or mentioned it in any of their conversations?

  ‘And?’ she prompted. She could tell the man staring back at her, caressing the ends of his moustache had a lot on his mind. She was not sure she wanted to hear it but knew she had to.

  ‘I called and told your father about it yesterday. He didn't believe me,’ he said.

  ‘You told him what?’

  She wiped away a trickle of sweat from her neck. It was growing stuffier by the minute. Was there a window she could ask him to open? It didn't help that the inspector was taking his time to say what she was anxious to hear.

  ‘I'd gone with a colleague of mine to see your uncle's body before he was cremated. We were not in uniform, you understand? It was off-duty hours,’ he said. Absent fingers stroked his moustache. ‘We didn't spend long with the body. We took a few photographs and a blood sample. We also removed a few things we found around the body.’

  ‘Had my father filed a police complaint?’ Darya asked.

  ‘There was no reason to, like I told you,’ the inspector shrugged. ‘But he had the feeling something was not right.’

  ‘As in?’ It was surprising to Darya that the police had so much time on their hands. But then, Filip Uncle had always been very persuasive.

  ‘Just a feeling something wasn't right,’ the inspector said vaguely. ‘At first when he told me, I brushed him off. But now...’ The inspector fell silent. Jiggled his legs.

  ‘What have you found?’ Darya asked, her breath quickening.

  He took in a deep breath and looked at her keenly. ‘All this was done discreetly, you understand? Not through formal channels. I asked my friends and colleagues for their informal professional opinion. At first, I thought nothing would come of it.’

  ‘What is it?’ Darya asked, her voice betraying the impatience she felt despite her best efforts. ‘What did you—?’

  ‘Needle marks on your uncle's neck,’ the inspector interrupted, his face grim. ‘I didn't recognize it right away... they had looked like moles to me. But later, when I showed the photo to a colleague at forensics, he said they were most likely made by a syringe. A large one.’

  Darya looked at him, a blank expression on her face.

  ‘He was sick, right?’ Darya hadn't kept in touch with her uncle in the past couple of years, so she wasn't sure where this was leading.

  ‘Actually, he wasn't,’ the inspector said. ‘He was quite healthy when he died.’

  Darya snorted. ‘Well, he died.’

  ‘What I mean is he had been quite healthy until he died. It was sudden and unexpected,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ Darya said. ‘So, what are you saying? The needle marks are for...’

  ‘Could be drugs,’ the inspector said.

  Darya gasped.

  ‘No fucking way,’ she said, shaking her head slowly, uncaring she had sworn out loud.

  The inspector did not react.

  ‘It's a possibility,’ he said. ‘We don't often suspect bad things in people close to us.’

  True that.

  It seemed to Darya now that she hadn't known her uncle at all. Did they even belong to the same family? He seemed to her like a stranger now and she had to take a step back and evaluate everything about him again with fresh, unsullied eyes.

  Even the bizarre things the inspector was telling her now.

  ‘He died of cerebral thrombosis,’ Darya stated. ‘He might have used some medical drugs. I've no idea.’

  ‘See, the thing is...’ The inspector leaned forward. She noticed his eyes were bloodshot. ‘The most common explanation for needle marks is drugs. And this being Goa, we find a lot of such so-called accidental deaths. But these marks were on the back of his neck.’ He flattened his palm and made a slicing gesture on the right side of his neck. ‘There were a couple of sutures. It's unlikely he injected a needle in his own neck.’ He made a show of plunging a syringe from above his head to his neck. ‘And,’ the inspector added before Darya could react. ‘We also checked the blood sample we collected from his body.’

  Darya waited.

  ‘There wasn't anything that stood out in the toxicology report,’ the policeman said.

  ‘No sign of drugs you mean?’

  ‘Yes, none.’

  Darya heaved a sigh of relief. ‘I thought for a minute there, you were implying my uncle was a druggie,’ she said. Let out a weak giggle. ‘Or...,’ she blinked her eyes as she grasped for the words, ‘he had died a... umm... an unnatural death.’

  The inspector did not return her smile. He tapped his fingers on the table for a few seconds, then got to his feet. Moving to the row of cabinets, he opened one of them and took out a slim, yellow file. He pulled out a piece of paper from it, placed it on the table in front of her and dropped the file next to it.

  Darya sneaked a look at the cover: Confidential, for Nourahno was scrawled in black ink.

  ‘You have a file,’ she commented.

  ‘Yes,’ the inspector said, sitting back in his chair. ‘This is unofficial, and I keep it in my personal cabinet. It's not uncommon to get requests from people to dig deeper into a death. Not every investigation begins with a First Information Report or FIR as you must know it. Many people call me solely on the basis of a vague conviction that their loved one's death was unnatural. People are always looking for someone or something to blame. In most cases, there's really nothing to look for. The relatives are just overreacting but in this one...’

  ‘But you just said...’

  ‘How can you explain the syringe marks?’ the inspector asked. ‘Let me show you.’ He opened the folder, took out a large glossy photograph and slid it across the table.

  Darya looked down and winced. It was a vivid close up of her uncle's neck—brown and freckled—an unpleasant reminder. Worse still were the three large, discoloured contusions on it—dark red in colour, raised above the skin, sickly looking purple rims around them.

  ‘Horrible,’ Darya muttered, trying to quell the queasiness in her stomach. ‘They look like puncture wounds.’

  ‘I'm not going to go into the details of what our pathologist said. But those,’ he pointed, ‘could have resulted in an arterial air embolism which reached his brain and caused a haemorrhage. Local neck inflammation and systemic sepsis is uncommon in intravenous drug users but possible, but those marks appear rough... made by a big syringe.’ He paused. ‘That made us wonder.’

  ‘What? That someone else did it?’ Darya looked up at him. ‘But who and why? And if you found nothing in his blood, no poison or drugs I mean, how did he die? What was the syringe used for?’

  ‘There was wine in his bloodstream,’ the inspector said solemnly.

  ‘So?’ Darya asked.

  But her heart had started to hammer in her chest.

  ‘There have been some cases... not in India but abroad...,’ He leaned back, eyebrows furrowed, fingers intertwined in front of his chest, ‘...there have been cases reported where a victim was made drunk, and an empty syringe plunged into his neck causing his death. It takes a few hours but if expertly done can be quick. I suspect... something like that happened to your uncle as well. It's a possibility we should consider now, given the evidence.’

  Darya sat in stunned silence as the words sank in.

  ‘But why?’ she cried; her tone incredulous. ‘Why would someone want to kill my uncle?’

  ‘That's what we need to find out,’ Inspector Nourahno said. ‘But as you can imagine, it'll be hard to prove since his body has been cremated.’

  Darya stared at him. The world around her reeled.

  ‘He may have injected himself with a medicine the doctor
prescribed for an illness,’ Darya said, considering the possibilities, eager to prove him wrong. ‘Or he may have taken drugs sometime... probably when he was younger.’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘But on the back of his neck?’ he said. ‘And also...’ He stopped, looking as if pondering over something. Then—‘There's this!’

  He opened the file and took out another photograph, a snapshot of a piece of paper whose creases had been straightened and held by paperweights on opposite corners for the photo. On the paper were tiny letters in beautiful cursive.

  The inspector pointed. ‘Paritosh was clutching this in his hand,’ he said. ‘Take a look.’

  And even before she'd picked up and read the words, she knew.

  It was a verse from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam.

  She took in a deep breath, trying in vain to shake off her growing discomfort. Read the words slowly:

  'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

  Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

  Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

  And one by one back in the Closet lays

  ‘Plays, slays, lays... the poem's gloomy.’ The inspector scowled to show he didn't approve. ‘And I checked online,’ he said. ‘A Persian poet wrote it. Your aunt was from Iran,’ he added, his eyebrows rising as if to suggest you know what that means?

  But Darya did not know. It was baffling, in more ways than one. She read the words again, her eyes transfixed on the photo in her hands.

  ‘So, what are you implying?’ she asked finally.

  He shrugged. ‘I don't know yet. Two things, I think. One that your uncle's death was murder. And two,’ he gave her a knowing look, ‘it's somehow connected to your aunt.’

  ‘Connected to my aunt?’ Darya said slowly, not fully understanding, or not ready to. ‘But she's dead.’

  ‘Like I said, I don't know. I'm only looking at the possibilities,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘that's not a possibility.’

  They did not speak for the next few minutes. The air between them grew thick with what was unsaid and mostly thought.

  Finally—‘Or those verses mean nothing. Just that Paritosh loved his wife very much,’ the inspector said, ‘And died with a part of her.’

  Darya looked up startled. She hadn't thought of it like that.

  ‘I want to look into it, to rule out foul play, to see if what I'm thinking has any basis in reality,’ Inspector Nourahno said.

  Darya nodded and stared at the two pictures in front of her. Her hands were stiff, her movements slow. A pain was beginning at the back of her head.

  But he wasn't finished. ‘To move forward though, I need to know what your father feels about this. Does he want to register an FIR? We will start a formal investigation only after that. We can also take suo moto action, but in this case, given the sensitivities and Filip's involvement, I wanted your father to take a decision and tell us what to do.’

  ‘But my uncle was cremated,’ Darya said dully. ‘How will you prove anything?’

  ‘I'll see what I can do,’ the inspector said. ‘But first ask your father if he wants me to do anything at all. Is the evidence compelling enough for him? It should be...’ He closed his eyes and tapped his fingers on the arms of his chair for a few seconds. Then spoke, his lips hardly moving, ‘If your uncle was indeed killed, it worked out very well for the murderer. His body was not discovered for two days... not until the Panjim central hospital received an anonymous phone call.’

  They sat in silence. The ceiling fan clattered over them. They heard footsteps on the passageway, followed by loud laughter.

  Darya surveyed the sea of green on the walls. Then lowering her head to the table, her voice barely in a whisper, she asked, ‘Were you involved in my aunt's case twenty years ago?’

  He shook his head. ‘I'd just joined the force and was posted elsewhere. I'd read about it then and refreshed my memory again recently.’

  ‘Do you know anyone I can speak to about the case?’ Darya asked.

  ‘Why?’ he said but looked hardly surprised at the question. ‘I can tell you the police searched extensively for half a year and found nothing. Obviously, you know that.’

  ‘I ask because you think her death and my Uncle's might be connected,’ Darya said.

  He nodded slowly. ‘It's possible. But I have little hope of finding anything from over twenty years ago. Much less connect the two, if they are indeed connected. I remember the Panjim police worked very hard on the case, but nothing came out of it in the end. They had very few clues to go with, to be honest. Hardly any help from technology or eyewitnesses either. There were a few crazy people sighting her here and there, but otherwise nothing at all.’

  Darya shuddered, remembering.

  ‘Sightings where?’ she asked.

  ‘Up in the mountains, down in some grocery store, in a hospital's maternity ward, just about anywhere you can think of. The police checked out a few of them too. All false alarms.’

  ‘Can I talk to somebody about the case?’ she asked.

  ‘No one now, I'm afraid,’ the inspector said. ‘That was over twenty years ago. The investigating inspector is dead now. I read the case file and it has as much as I told you. The records weren't very well kept.’ His hands swept through the room. ‘Not much has changed since either.’

  ‘What am I to do now?’ Darya asked, feeling perplexed.

  The inspector looked at her kindly. ‘Tell your father all this,’ he said. ‘If he wants to lodge an FIR, he should meet me. If not, I'd understand.’

  She wanted to leave as soon as possible and call her father, but she saw that the inspector was not yet finished.

  ‘Sir, what is it?’ Darya asked.

  He hesitated. Then with a thump on the table—‘How well do you know the Salgaonkar kids?’

  ‘Vidisha and Gaurav?’ Darya asked, surprised at the turn in their conversation. ‘I used to know them as a child. We used to be playmates but lost touch over the years. I met Vidisha again recently—briefly—when she was visiting her home at Heliconia.’

  ‘Are you close to either of them?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘So, if I ask you a few questions in confidence, you wouldn't run along and tell them?’

  Darya stared at the inspector. Then shook her head slowly, wondering what was coming.

  ‘Do you think they could harm their parents?’ he asked.

  Her mouth fell open. She stared at the inspector.

  He isn't implying... or is he?

  But isn't that what even Vidisha said?

  ‘You think one of them...’ she swallowed.

  The inspector stayed silent, watching her, waiting for her to speak.

  Darya stared at the table and spoke wearily, ‘Vidisha thinks there was foul play in her parents' death. She told me about it. She thought it was...’ Darya didn't want to mention Vidisha's suspicions about Gaurav or the fact that she'd lied about being out of touch with him. Not until Darya could put her head around why she'd done it. ‘... highly unlikely her parents went on the boat drunk... that late at night.’

  He nodded and sounded apologetic when he said, ‘Their bodies were discovered quite late too. The bodies were bloated and already in advanced stages of decomposition. We looked for two days after Filip phoned in to say they were missing.’

  ‘So…?’

  ‘Gaurav didn't call us,’ the inspector said. ‘Although, he was living with them at the time. He was nowhere to be found when we went to the house.’

  Worried there was more bad news, Darya waited.

  The inspector gave his moustache a thoughtful tug. ‘When we found the bodies... I can't reveal the details... but the corpse of the woman showed signs of massive pulmonary oedema.’ When Darya looked at him blankly, he explained, ‘There was a foamy froth on what was left of her face.’ She grimaced. ‘Yes, not a pleasant sight but it means it could be wet drowning—she was immer
sed in water while still breathing,’ he said.

  She'd thought nothing could surprise her further at this point, but that didn't seem likely.

  ‘I thought you found alcohol in their bloodstream,’ Darya said, ‘and their boat capsized because they couldn't control it.’

  ‘That's why we never thought to investigate it. When we got hold of Gaurav later, he told us his parents had been drinking the whole week he was there. Also, the presence of foam is not considered conclusive evidence and the police found nothing else to indicate foul play. The autopsy revealed swelling in both the brains and haemorrhaging in the mastoid bones, but these symptoms also appear in people who die of heart disease or substance abuse. Honestly, in cases of drowning, it's very difficult to call it a murder unless there are other clues pointing to it.’

  ‘Then why are we talking about it now?’

  ‘The question remains... how did they get so drunk? How did they get to the boat? Was a third person involved? Could it be murder? Did someone get the two so drunk that the boat's capsizing was inevitable? Maybe he used a drug like Succinylcholine or some other muscle relaxant easily available in the market which along with the wine proved fatal,’ he muttered, rubbing his temples, ‘to be honest, I'm merely speculating at this point in time.’

  ‘But I don't understand,’ Darya shook her head, ‘why are you even speculating?’

  ‘It struck me that something was amiss when I met the kids during their parents' cremation. They blamed each other for the deaths. Had a shouting match. It was quite pathetic to watch.’

  ‘They don't get along,’ Darya remarked.

  ‘Vidisha seemed to be quite sure that her brother had something to do with it. He'd been staying at their home in Goa the week before. But Gaurav claimed—quite vociferously—that Vidisha was the one responsible for their deaths and it was... it was to protect her dirty secret or something. The two almost hit each other. We had to tear them apart.’

  ‘Where did Gaurav say he was during that time?’ Darya asked.

  ‘In Delhi. He had flown out of Goa that very night and had flights tickets to prove it,’ the inspector said.

  ‘Boarding pass?’