Penumbra (29 page)

Seconds later Vishwanath emerged from his office. He pulled a chair up to Rana’s desk and stared at the screen, minutely going through the article about the Church of Phobos and Deimos.

He shook his head. ‘The very fact of the church’s demise would suggest that there’s no link to the killings.’

Rana shrugged. ‘What if there were some church members left behind? Their descendants might have secretly carried on the traditions . . .’ She stopped, realising how far-fetched it sounded.

‘I don’t know, but we can’t dismiss it out of hand. Check with the victims to see if they had any links with Mars.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Of course, all this is pure speculation, based on the presumption that the location of last night’s murder was a part of this old symbol.’

Rana felt herself redden. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘But I’ll put an extra patrol out in the area of the other side of the arm, where the second circle would be, just in case.’

Rana sighed. ‘I don’t seem to be getting anywhere fast, sir.’

Vishwanath gave a paternal laugh. ‘You’re doing fine, Lieutenant. You can’t expect instant success. Homicide work involves much unrewarded speculation. But speculation has to be worked through and dismissed.’ He smiled. ‘Often the breakthrough comes from the most unlikely of sources. Keep at it, Rana.’

Rana, now . . . She smiled as she watched him stride back to his office.

Five minutes later her screen flashed. She accessed the call. The face of a receptionist stared out at her. ‘We have a private outside caller wishing to speak to you, Lieutenant.’

Rana frowned. She knew few people outside the force who might want to contact her at work. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Put him through.’

She was surprised to see a street-kid’s frightened face fill the screen.

‘Vandita - this is a surprise. Is everything okay?’

The girl was in a public com-screen kiosk, obviously unaccustomed to using the technology. Rana wondered if this might account for her cowed expression.

‘Rana, I need to see you.’

‘Vandita? What is it? Is something—’

‘I need to see you. Please, will you come right away? I’ll be by the bridge.’

And without further explanation she cut the connection.

Rana tidied her desk, deactivated the com-screen, and locked away her com-board. She was due to leave in one hour, but Vandita had sounded desperate. She could always come back here and put in the hour when she’d talked to the girl.

She hurried from the building and took a taxi to the Howrah bridge.

Vandita was squatting on her heels by the railings, a tiny figure obscured by the passing crowds, when Rana climbed from the taxi. She pushed her way through the press to the girl, who looked up at her with a timid smile.

‘Vandita . . . ?’

‘We can’t talk here. Come with me.’

She stood and gripped Rana’s hand, pulling her along the street to the steel pillars of the bridge. Rana’s mind raced through the possibilities. She wondered if one of the kids had done something wrong, which might explain the girl’s anxiety.

Vandita kicked off her plastic sandals and climbed on to the timber platform, squatting on a mattress and not meeting Rana’s gaze. Three candles provided fitful illumination. The other children had not yet arrived home. Rana removed her boots and sat cross-legged before the girl. She reached out and took her hand.

‘Vandita, please, what’s wrong? I’ll do everything I can to help. You know that.’

The girl was clasping her hands around skinny shins.

Her eyes finally focused on Rana. ‘Last night, Rana, someone I know ... he saw a terrible thing.’

‘Tell me,’ Rana said.

The girl remained silent.

‘Do I know him? Does he live here?’

Vandita shook her head. ‘He lives near the spaceport, in the old scrapyard. But last night he was somewhere else, in a rich area. He saw something and told his friends, and I found out.’

‘Tell me what it was, Vandita. What are you frightened of?’

The girl looked pained. ‘This boy, I know him only slightly. He won’t be happy if police are involved.’

‘What was he doing in the rich suburb last night, Vandita?’ She squeezed the girl’s hand. ‘I can guess, but tell me.’

‘He was stealing - robbing a house.’

‘And he saw something, but was too scared to tell the police because of what he was doing? Vandita, if you tell me what he saw, I’ll ignore the fact that he was burgling a house, ah-cha?’

Vandita shrugged unhappily. ‘He won’t like me telling you.’

‘There’s no need for him to know that it was you who told the police. Now...’

For long seconds Vandita looked at Rana, and at last she whispered, ‘He was robbing a house in the Raneesh district—’

Rana stopped her. ‘Raneesh?’ She was aware of her hammering heartbeat.

Vandita nodded. ‘He was coming from the house when he heard two men talking on a pathway nearby. One of the men tried to run, but the other man fired a laser at him. The man fell over and the other man fired again, at his face. Then the man walked away. After a few seconds the boy followed the man, perhaps a kilometre, and saw him go into a house. Then he left quickly and went home to the scrapyard near the spaceport.’

Rana swallowed. She tried to marshal her thoughts.

‘Vandita,’ she said at last, ‘do you know where the killer lived? Did the boy say?’

Vandita shook her head. ‘I didn’t talk to the boy. A friend of his told me. He didn’t say where the killer lived, but the boy saw the house he went into.’

Rana was nodding. Shiva . . . after all the work she’d done, all the complex reasoning, she might solve the case thanks to the testimony of a chance eye witness.

‘Vandita, this is important. Can you tell me the boy’s name? I swear to you that I won’t tell him who told me. You’ve no reason to be afraid.’ She paused. ‘You’ve got to tell me. We’ve got to stop this man killing again.’

Vandita nodded. ‘Ah-cha. The boy is called Ahmed Prakesh. You will find him in the old Tata scrapyard.’

Rana reached out and stroked the young girl’s cheek. ‘Vandita, you don’t know how important this is. I’ll see you later.’

Rana left the makeshift dwelling beneath the Howrah bridge and took a taxi to the spaceport. She considered contacting Vishwanath about the latest development, but decided against it. She would have to be very careful in her dealings with the boy. The presence of more than one police officer might provoke Ahmed to flight. She would handle this interview herself.

The Tata scrapyard was a vast area of tangled carbon-fibre parts neighbouring the spaceport. The mammoth carcasses of decommissioned spaceships reared against the lights of the port, arranged like the exhibits in some forgotten museum. Rana paid the taxi fare and squeezed through a rent in the polycarbon fencing. In the glaring overspill of the spaceport halogens, the scrapyard was transformed into a landscape of dark shadow and highlighted carbon fibre. Rana walked between the sliced and sectioned remains of ships that had once proudly made their way through the void, sad chunks of machines bearing the faded livery of lines long defunct.

She halted, stood quietly and listened. The only sound was from the port itself, the roar of a tug as it hauled a spaceship across the tarmac to a blast-off pit. The noise faded, replaced by silence. To her right, Rana detected the faint sound of music. When her eyes adjusted to the dark shadows, she made out movement - the figure of a young boy or girl, running towards the source of the music, no doubt to tell his or her friends of Rana’s intrusion.

Rana walked towards the bulbous shape of a derelict space-tug. The music stopped. Rana imagined a gang of street-kids, holding their breaths, watching each other in alarm.

She ducked through the entrance hatch of the old tug. Before her, half a dozen big-eyed urchins sat around the bulky shape of an ancient radio. A defective glow-tube provided stuttering half-light. A drooping stick of incense filled the old cargo hold with a sickly sweet stench.

Rana squatted on her heels and looked about the group of boys and girls. She smiled at the chubby, frightened face of a small girl. ‘Amita? Is that you?’ she asked in Hindi.

The six-year-old smiled timorously. ‘Officer Rao,’ the girl said. ‘We thought it was a security guard!’

Rana smiled. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me, Amita?’

She glanced around the group, trying to detect the boy called Ahmed from his guilty expression. The difficulty was, their suspicion of the police gave them all expressions of guilt.

Amita looked at her friends. ‘Officer Rao works with children,’ she explained. ‘Last year she gave me rupees for a new dress.’ She glanced at Rana, smoothed her palms down the front of a dirty blue smock, and smiled proudly.

‘Who are your friends, Amita?’ Rana asked.

‘This is Nadeen, and this is Sumar, and Kal, and Ahmed, and Ashok . . .’

Ahmed ... a tiny boy in shorts and a ripped T-shirt that once upon a time might have been white. He was no older, Rana thought, than six or seven. He stared at Rana, a rabbit mesmerised by a cobra.

Rana nodded. ‘The thing is, you see, I came here hoping that you might be able to help me. I have a hundred rupees to give to anyone who can tell me something.’ She paused and stared at the children. Their eyes bulged at the thought of so much money. ‘Last night a terrible murder was committed in the district of Raneesh, three kilometres south of here. A man was shot dead with a laser.’ She glanced at Ahmed. He was staring at the ground. ‘I need information about this killing. I need to know where the killer lives, so that I can lock him up and stop him from killing again.’

The children looked at each other. One or two glanced furtively at Ahmed. The others, clearly not in the know, looked disappointed that they would be unable to claim the rupees.

‘If anyone can tell me where the killer lives, they can have . . .’ She reached into her pocket and counted out five twenty-rupee notes, laying them one by one on top of the old radio. The children stared, transfixed.

Rana picked up the notes and slipped them back into her breast pocket. She stood up and said, ‘I’ll be waiting outside. If anyone can tell me what I want to know, come and see me and I’ll give them all the rupees, ah-cha?’

She looked around the group of staring faces one last time, before ducking out of the old spaceship and standing, heart hammering, in the dazzling glare of a halogen spotlight. She could hear the frantic babble of high voices from inside. Then silence.

A minute later, appearing timidly like some hibernating animal fearing the presence of a predator, Ahmed emerged through the hatch. He stood shivering in the humid night before Rana, staring up at her with massive eyes.

‘I . . .’ He could hardly speak for fear. He gulped ‘I know someone who saw the killing,’ he stammered. ‘The boy . . . my friend, he told me where the man lives.’

Rana knelt and took his hand. ‘Can you remember what your friend said?’ she asked. ‘Can you remember where the man lives?’

Ahmed nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘Ah-cha. My friend said he lives on Allahabad Marg, near Raneesh.’

Rana nodded. ‘Can you remember the number of the house?’ Allahabad Marg was a long street that stretched for over a kilometre through the exclusive western suburbs.

The boy looked crestfallen. ‘No . . . my friend, he cannot remember.’ He brightened. ‘But the house, it’s strange. It looks like this.’ He moved to the flank of the tug and, in the dust that covered a domed engine nacelle, drew the shape of the house with his forefinger.