THE BUTCHER OF BENARES

by MAHENDRA JAKHAR

  Hawa Singh let the Dom Raja go with a curt instruction not to leave Benares and specifically not to speak about the incident to anyone. Not a word to the media.

  The body was being wrapped prior to being hoisted away when Ruby called out to them to stop. She had noticed a tattoo on the arm of the dead man. She snatched a torch and cast the beam of light on the tattoo. There was a numeral and, above it, was the shape of wings stretched out from a parachute. And right above them was a crown and a lion standing over it.

  She gave a soft whistle and looked in Hawa Singh’s direction. ‘He belonged to the British Paratroopers, one of the best combat forces in the world!’ she exclaimed.

  Hawa Singh came for a closer look. He was not proficient in the emblems of armed forces, especially those of foreign ones. Ruby pointed again to the tattoo. ‘This is the insignia of the British Paratroopers,’ she repeated. ‘The numbers, like the one here, are personal codes and the year shows that he was part of the 2003 war in Iraq.’ She shook her head in puzzlement. ‘The question is, what was he doing in Benares? And how the hell did this killer manage to kill an army commando?’

  Ruby made one more comprehensive check of the body. ‘There is no sign of poisoning, orally or by injection or dart gun—just as there was none in the other cases,’ she said. She checked in between the fingers, toes, the nape of the neck, all crevices, but there was nothing. Only when she was convinced that there was nothing more to look for, did she let them take the body away for post mortem at the government hospital.

  It was another half-an-hour before Pandit Vishnu Shastri arrived, with Sub-Inspector Gaya Prasad Sharma. Hawa Singh shook hands with him and apologized for summoning him at that hour.

  Vishnu Shastri saw the bloodstains and asked, ‘Has he struck again?’ Hawa Singh silently nodded.

  Vishnu Shastri paled and shivered—one could tell it was not from the cold. It was fear that had turned his face white. He gathered himself and said, ‘This is the perfect place, where astronomy meets astrology. This Jantar-Mantar was built to measure local time, the Sun’s declination, altitude, the declination of the stars and planets, and to determine eclipses. It incorporates multiple structures of unique forms, each with a specialized function for astronomical measurement.’

  Hawa Singh pointed to the place where the body was found. ‘The body was lying there,’ he said, rather more simply.

  ‘That’s the Samrat Yantra,’ said Vishnu Shastri. ‘Look carefully, it is a giant triangle that is basically an equal-hour sundial. It is 70 feet high, 114 feet long at the base, and 10 feet thick. It has a 128-foot-long hypotenuse that is parallel to the Earth’s axis, and points towards the North Pole. On either side of the triangle is a quadrant with graduations indicating hours, minutes and seconds. At the time of the Samrat Yantra’s construction, sundials already existed, but the Samrat Yantra turned the basic sundial into a precision tool for measuring declination and other related coordinates of various heavenly bodies.’

  Shastri paused for breath and went on. ‘There are other instruments here, just as precise.’

  ‘How is it all connected to the murders?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘Well, the main purpose of this Jantar-Mantar was to cast horoscopes.’

  There was a stunned silence. The night around them was surrendering to the rising sun, although the cold wouldn’t let up.

  Hawa Singh went into self-control mode and pointed at the floor of the terrace where the body had just lain. ‘Shastriji,’ he reminded the scholar, ‘you missed the chart drawn there. That, too, will need some calculations.’

  Vishnu Shastri peered hard downwards and, slowly, the lines stood out to be deciphered. He saw the numbers in the houses. He trembled at the thought of forecasting another horror.

  It took him a few minutes to make a few mental calculations, but they appeared to puzzle him. He looked up at Hawa Singh and said, ‘It’s the horoscope of a policeman.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Acoording my calculation, the birth date of the person should be 15 September 1974.’

  Hawa Singh looked at him aghast. ‘That’s my birth date.’

  ‘Well, according to the horoscope you are the next victim,’ said Shastri.

  *

  The man again struck a match that flared briefly in the surrounding fog. Hawa Singh had been observing him from the terrace on Man Mahal. The man had been there since they climbed up to Jantar-Mantar. It reminded him of Ruby’s theory that most serial-killers come back to the scene of the crime to enjoy the sight of police personnel desperately at work on something they knew nothing of. It gave them a perverse sense of power over others.

  The Ghost decided, once more, to vanish into mist. Only to re-appear at Dashashwamedh Ghat.

  He could again see the golden domes of Kashi Vishwanath temple reaching for the sky. The morning’s aarti was in progress. Shiva had made peace with Benares.

  The man was at a distance of about 100 metres when Hawa Singh took out his Colt and removed the safety catch. Then, he strode towards the figure.

  At that moment, the man turned and saw him coming towards him. He started to run. Hawa Singh chased him as he ran into a street and from there into a narrow drain. Hawa Singh never took his eyes off him, but all he could see was his fleeing back.

  The drain led to an open sewer. Hawa Singh hesitated. Something told him there could be a trap ahead. But he knew he had to jump into whatever lay ahead—if he wanted to catch the Butcher. He jumped.

  He could hear the footsteps of the man running ahead. Hawa Singh followed him as the sewer took many bends. Hawa Singh suspected that it would lead them directly into the river. He was ready for the fall.

  He heard a heavy iron gate flung open and his prey enter it. Hawa Singh ran after him.

  It was so easy to bait these policemen, the Butcher thought as he ran ahead, smiling. His plan was so simple, and working so beautifully. He could hear the footsteps running behind him and he led them directly on deliberately.

  Hawa Singh slowly realized that he was in the same tunnel that ran underneath the Ganges across its width. And he knew that the Butcher had planned for a long while to bring him there.

  Overwhelmed, Hawa Singh saw a giant wall of water rushing towards him. He turned and ran back, to see another wall of water approaching from the other direction. The Butcher had opened the sluices from both sides—sluices installed four hundred years ago to trap enemy forces—to let the water in. As they engulfed him, Hawa Singh lost his footing.

  He scrambled up against the force, but the water had already risen to his chin and soon would go over his head. There was only one thing that he could resort to, his .45 Colt. He raised it and fired at the ceiling of the tunnel. Loose plaster tore off it and the bullet ricocheted under water. He fired again, at another angle. The roof didn’t seem to budge. In fury, he emptied all the bullets into the roof.

  Nothing happened.

  The water crossed his nose and was soon over his head. He had spent all his firepower and was sapped of all energy. There was hardly any air left in his lungs. The darkness seemed to overtake him. He never thought it would be all over like this. A fleeting image of Kavita danced in front of his eyes. He closed them.

  The sound of rumbling came to his ears. The roof gave way and parted. The holy Ganges wrapped Hawa Singh in her arms and drew him upwards. He kicked his legs frantically, and broke the surface.

  He looked at life again.

  CHAPTER 26

  In the near distance, as he emerged, he could see a figure pacing about, and heard an agitated shouting. It was Fauja Singh, who was furious and tearful on seeing his son come out of the watery grave.

  ‘This police job is not a profession, it’s a curse,’ he cried. ‘We didn’t come to Benares to get caught in other people’s cases. This is not your job, Hawa. I don’t care whether I die or not, we’re going to leave this place!’

  By the time Hawa Singh had come out of the cold river waters, he was terribly tired and water
had seeped into his lungs. He fell unconscious on the ghat. Luckily, Fauja Singh, too, was there for his morning prayers, and he had called out to nearby policemen.

  Fauja Singh looked around at the police officers and shouted, ‘You all are useless! There is only one killer out there and none of you can catch him. Are you going to let my son die?’

  Hawa Singh looked up at him and Fauja Singh nodded in resignation. ‘Okay, do what you want,’ he said irritably. ‘I’m going to take my jal-samadhi in the Ganges.’ Having got that off his chest, and after making sure his son was looked after, he stalked off angrily.

  Hawa Singh sat inside the SSP’s office, sipping on dark rum. A medic worked on the reopened cuts on his chest and arm. Hawa Singh was wrapped in a dirty old blanket as they hadn’t found fresh clothes to fit his unusually large frame. His body still glistened with the cold water of the Ganges. He had finally had his holy dip.

  The SSP and several other officers stood around mutely, as if in a vacuum. Ruby was in a corner, caught up in an alien world, dismayed at the helpless faces she saw around her. There was only so much she could do. She knew in her heart and in her trained mind that if there was anyone who could stop the Butcher, it was only Hawa Singh.

  The sharpest knife couldn’t have cut through the statis in the room. Everyone there had lost all basic sense to think, look ahead and prepare. Failure held them in its grip.

  SSP Neeraj Thakur picked up a paperweight in his anger and threw it at the wall. ‘It’s all over,’ he raged. ‘The politicians and the media will roast me alive. I’m done for.’

  Hawa Singh and Ruby sought each other’s eyes at the same time. They had developed a common wavelength.

  Hawa Singh took another sip of rum. ‘Just like in the other murders,’ he said impassively, ‘the killer had premeditated my death in a cold and calculated way.’

  No one in the room reacted. It was like they all had fallen into a state of coma. They could hear everything, all right, but could not react to any comment.

  Do they have a term for mental paralysis? Hawa Singh asked himself. If there was, it would describe what he was looking at today. He tried to shake them out of their catatonia. ‘He has already attacked me once, with a knife, but this was unimaginable.’

  The SSP limited himself to nodding, in a worried way.

  Hawa Singh showed them a cigarette stub. ‘I found this on the steps of the ghat. There were at least ten similar stubs all around the ghat. I suspect the killer always smokes a rolled-up cigarette like this one. Only hard-core smokers smoke this stuff. It contains ganja.’

  Sub-inspector Gaya Prasad Sharma came out of his stunned silence. ‘Sir, ganja is very popular here in Benares. Most foreigners smoke it. The Naga sadhus, the Aghoris, the beggars and hundreds of other sadhus living close to the ghats smoke it.’

  Hawa Singh nodded in agreement. ‘The killer seems to be a chain-smoker. He won’t be buying ganja from street peddlers. We need to catch the big ones.’ The science of deduction, he reminded himself. One needs to look into the invisible and slowly retrace one’s steps. The links will emerge.

  The SSP paced the room. ‘What about this latest victim?’ he demanded to know. ‘Do we have any information on him?’

  He was all ears when Ruby replied, ‘The tattoo on the victim’s arm confirmed that he was a British Paratrooper. I checked with them, giving them the number tattooed on his arm and they mailed me some information on him. His name was Tom Barry and he took active part in the 2003 Iraq war. After that, he seemed to have gone through severe psychological problems. In 2008, he left the British Army and joined the Vatican Guards.’

  The very name of the Vatican revitalized the room. Hawa Singh gulped down the remaining rum in the steel mug. The art of listening: do nothing but listen. It is a process of gathering information, and then sorting it out to uncover the hidden.

  Ruby went on. ‘Just to tell you, the Swiss Guards are the oldest standing army in the world. Their main role is to protect the Pope. Tom Barry was offered the post of their new Anti-Terror Unit by the Chief of the Vatican Police Force, Camillo Cilsin, after two attacks on Pope Benedict during Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at St Peter’s Basilica in 2007. Tom’s role was clear. To prevent any further attacks on the Vatican and the Pope. He was working in close co-operation with the Interpol to catch the masterminds of the attacks on the Pope. However, no progress was made and they could not apprehend anyone.’

  ‘What was he doing here in Benares?’ shouted the SSP.

  ‘I have no idea,’ admitted Ruby. ‘His murder, too, was connected to the Vatican—just like those of the last two victims. Apart from that, there’s nothing more we know.’

  Hawa Singh wrapped the blanket closer around him and said, ‘These murders have a connection with astronomy too. The first victim, Eva, worked at the Vatican Observatory. Do we have something on that?’

  Ruby pulled out a file saying, ‘Only this morning, I received a dossier on that from the FBI. I will give you the basic activities of that Observatory.’

  She read out, ‘The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world. The Church has had long-standing interests in astronomy, due to the astronomical basis of the calendar by which holy days such as Easter are determined. For instance, the Gregorian Calendar, promulgated in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, was developed by the Jesuit mathematician, Christoph Clavius at the Collegio Romano, from astronomical data.’

  She looked around and continued, ‘In fact, Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and Catholic clergyman who was the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the centre of the universe. Later, in 1633, Galileo was convicted for grave suspicion of heresy for following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of the Holy Scriptures.

  ‘In the nineteenth century, as the Church came to face severe criticism for its stand from the scientific community, it turned Galileo into a hero. The Church came out with a declaration that supported Galileo’s theory that the Sun is the centre of our solar system and the Earth revolves around it.

  ‘The Vatican claims that many other Jesuits contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, and to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They spotted, for instance, in some cases before anyone else, the coloured bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings.

  ‘Pope John Paul II said, “Through the pursuit of a scientific understanding of the universe, something of the Creator of the universe is discovered. Faith and science are not irreconcilable. Faith and reason are the two wings on which the human spirit takes flight.”

  ‘Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed that, saying, “There is no contradiction between what we know through our faith and what we can learn through science.’

  Ruby looked up and saw that none of the police officers had understood much about it. The SSP was fuming. It all sounded like poppycock to him.

  There was one idea Hawa Singh latched on to: ‘Just like astrology and astronomy went hand-in-hand, the Vatican brought faith and science together. It was all a long-drawn battle to prove the authenticity of the Bible, and that God exists.’

  The Vatican.

  Benares.

  The Butcher.

  ‘Okay, so now the question is, why is the killer targeting all these people connected to the Vatican?’ he asked, at last.

  Ruby knotted her eyebrows. ‘It could be his deep-seated hatred for the Vatican, for Christianity. The use of the Holy Cross as a profane weapon indicates that.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘It could be his hatred for white skin,’ suggested Gaya Prasad.

  ‘What about the connection to the Vatican?’

  ‘There are many who come here to study the ancient scriptures,’ the SSP ventured. ‘It’s not unusual that many come from the Vatican. It was evident
in their interest in the Bhrigu-Samhita.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it could be that there is no connection to the Vatican. The killer just targets white Christians,’ said the SSP.

  ‘We still need to find all about Tom Barry. The place where he was staying and the places he visited in Benares. The people he met and everything he did here,’ said Hawa Singh.

  Ruby cleared her throat, trying to get attention, and said, ‘Let’s not forget that the hearts of all the victims were removed. It looked like a kind of ritualistic killing.’

  Hawa Singh was at once reminded of the cannibal. The heart functioned in spite of the brain’s death. The heart was controlled by something more major.

  The SSP turned to Hawa Singh. ‘What about that Dom who discovered the body?’ he asked.

  ‘I have spoken to him. He got a call from a public telephone about the body. Have we got any details on that?’ Hawa Singh looked around.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Gaya Prasad said with alacrity. ‘The telephone number has been traced to a public telephone at the railway station. We tried to speak to many passengers who were sleeping there, but they hadn’t noticed anyone in the booth.’

  ‘Don’t take this Dom at face value,’ cautioned the SSP. ‘These Doms rule the cremation grounds of Benares. They have a deep relation with the Aghoris. Many of the Doms are filthy-rich and drive Mercedes cars. They are shady people.’

  The loud ringtone broke the perfectly measured silence of the room. It was Gaya Prasad’s cell phone. He hesitantly took the call.

  Gaya looked up with an ashen face. ‘Sir, forensics have checked the fingerprints on the knife and the thumbprint on the axe.’

  ‘And?’ Hawa Singh looked up, attentively.

  ‘Both prints are of the same person.’

  Ruby’s mouth was half-open as she looked at Hawa Singh. The SSP and other officers seemed to have returned to their coma.

  ‘So the Butcher also killed Tailanga Swami,’ concluded Hawa Singh.

  ‘But why did he break the pattern?’ Ruby asked, still at a loss. ‘Or was it just to confuse us?’