The alarm was raised, and the principal informed. Search parties were formed to look for her but by evening, it was obvious that Jo was nowhere on the campus and the local police were informed. A pompous inspector and two constables landed up at the bursar’s office and proclaimed that Jo must have run away with a boy. All that remained was to identify the miscreant. When they were told that Roy was her boyfriend, he was summoned and taken to the police station, despite all our protests.
Early the following morning, a retired army colonel was out on his daily walk in a wooded area abutting a lake, not far from our school, when he noticed something floating in the water. He went closer and saw that it was the lifeless body of a young girl!
Jo.
There was a furore after that, of course. The police swarmed over our school, interrogating both teachers and students. Roy was kept in the lockup for three days and then released for lack of any evidence or motive linking him to the crime. Jo’s widowed mother and elder brother came down from Chennai, shocked and inconsolable. A pall of gloom fell over our school.
It was no accident. Jo had been brutally murdered. Details were not revealed initially but we figured out that she had been slashed up badly with a knife. A night in the water meant that the body was not a pretty sight when they fished it out.
The incident made headlines in the local media, since nothing of this magnitude had occurred in our sleepy hill town in living memory. The usual crimes were petty theft and the odd property dispute. Different theories began to circulate, from a psychopath on the loose to a secret vendetta killing. In the meantime, security was tightened up at school and the boarding rules began to be strictly enforced.
The local police made no headway in their investigation. The public outcry refused to abate and pressure mounted on the administration. Finally, a state CID team took over the case and they went over all the evidence again.
It was established that Jo had been killed elsewhere, and her body dumped in the lake sometime in the middle of Sunday night. No one had seen anything. The autopsy did not throw up any clues either, except that the knife used was a particularly sharp one, like a surgeon’s scalpel or a butcher’s cleaver. The police had ruled that Jo’s death was not premeditated. In all probability, she had been at the wrong place at the wrong time; and had either witnessed something she was not meant to see or fallen prey to a sexual predator who had found her alone and vulnerable.
The CID systematically explored all angles—greed; jealousy; unrequited love; family dispute; inheritance; personal enmity. Everything came up negative.
There wasn’t even a suspect.
25
Neel
When we got back to the villa, Sara’s caretaker looked agitated. The police had landed up while we were out. They had asked us to report to the Panjim station immediately.
We had no option but to go, apprehension in our minds.
A sergeant told us we would have to wait. He pointed to a row of moulded plastic chairs in the lobby. We sat down and looked around. There was plenty of bustle and activity. Men in khaki were moving around busily. Standing near us was a group of youths, picked up for drunken misdemeanour. They loudly protested their innocence to the two constables guarding them. One of them leered at Sara. She gave him the finger.
D’Mello finally came out. He ushered us into a small room at the back of the building. It was illuminated by a single hanging light. And smelled of sweat and fear. There was a wooden table. A few metal chairs scattered around it. An interrogation chamber. I asked D’Mello if we were going to be treated like common criminals. He said that there was apparently no other place available for us to sit in. His tone was not particularly apologetic.
He opened the conversation with a warning. ‘Look, I want to tell you folks that I need complete cooperation. Don’t try to hide anything. If you have some information that might be useful, I need to know it.’
I said firmly, ‘I have no idea why you say that. We are law-abiding citizens and have no reason to keep anything from the police.’
Omar asked, ‘Why are we here?’
D’Mello said rather formally, ‘We’ve reopened the case of your friend Rachel Fernandes. It may not have been a suicide after all.’
I said, ‘Good. I hope you find out what really happened to her.’
He opened a small red diary. ‘Miss Fernandes was found hanging in her bedroom at her mother’s house here in Goa. An old bed sheet had been cut into two strips, which were tied together and used in the act. One end was looped around a fan hook in the ceiling and the other knotted into a crude but effective noose. A chair was lying near the body.’
‘Was it a quick death?’
‘It’s estimated that victims of hanging lose consciousness in anywhere from five to fifteen seconds. But it can take up to five minutes to die.’
There was an audible gasp from Sara.
D’Mello ignored her and continued. ‘Hanging is, by far, the most common method of suicide and accounts for half of all attempts. Whenever there’s a death by hanging, the first and obvious assumption is that the victim has taken his or her own life. So I can’t really blame Gomes for coming to that conclusion in Rachel’s case, especially as there was no primary evidence of foul play.
‘Occasionally, a person is murdered by hanging to make it appear a suicide. When that happens, there are often telltale signs which the police always look for. For example, the position of the ligature being under the larynx or the presence of scratch marks on it.’ He stopped and coughed heavily. ‘Rachel had neither.’
Sara exclaimed, ‘Are you saying that Gomes was right?’
He held up his hand. ‘It’s a moot point whether Gomes should have investigated further or not. After all, he didn’t have the benefit of the information we have now. He’s a good officer, you know, with an excellent record. A policeman’s biggest weapon is his nose but it let Gomes down on this occasion. If he had smelt murder, I have no doubt that the case would have been wide open by now.’
I sensed that D’Mello was about to come to whatever he was building up towards.
‘I went through the entire file again. The statement by Mrs Fernandes, who discovered her daughter’s body. Interviews of the neighbours, who evidently saw nothing. The description of the room where Rachel died, which was largely undisturbed by the event. The knotted bed sheet used in the hanging. And finally the post-mortem report.’
He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. ‘I almost missed it. In fact, I would certainly have missed it had I not been specifically looking for some evidence to prove murder.’
I asked, ‘What?’
‘The doctor who did the autopsy had done a thorough job and taken the effort to write a comprehensive report. His conclusions were largely consistent with suicide, except for one thing. There were faint ligature marks on Rachel’s wrists, a detail which had been buried under all the other findings. In fact, I picked it up only on my third reading of the report.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means that Rachel’s hands had been tied together before and during the hanging. The killer waited for her to die, then cut away the rope he had used around her wrists and took it away with him.’
Sara held my hand tightly. We tried to imagine the horror of Rachel’s final moments. In a choked voice, she asked, ‘Who…was the bastard who did this?’
D’Mello sighed. ‘I don’t know yet. But whoever it was…knew Rachel. He walked in through the front door.’
26
Omar
‘How do you know that?’ I asked.
D’Mello said, ‘First of all, there were no signs of forced entry. All the windows had grills. The front door had a deadbolt which could only be opened from inside. Breaking into that house in broad daylight was virtually impossible.
‘Secondly, Rachel was found in her pyjamas, over which was a rob
e. Mrs Fernandes confirmed that Rachel never wore that robe when she was alone at home, which meant that she had put it on for a visitor.’
‘Isn’t it possible that a stranger rang the bell, pretending to be delivering a courier or something? She may have opened the door, unsuspecting, and been overpowered by him…’ I offered.
D’Mello smiled for the first time. ‘The same thought struck me but then there was the mug of coffee.’
Neel said with some annoyance, ‘Sir, you really love to build up the suspense, don’t you! What mug of coffee?’
‘I had asked Mrs Fernandes if there was anything out of the ordinary in the house when she found Rachel’s body. After a lot of prodding, she remembered that there was a half-empty mug of coffee on the dining table…’
Sara completed the sentence for him. ‘…And Rachel didn’t drink coffee!’
‘Exactly.’
‘So Rachel made coffee for her visitor, who killed her soon after.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. D’Mello suddenly turned to me. ‘That bandage on your head—what happened?’
I replied evenly, ‘I was mugged outside the Marriott.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Mugged? We hardly have muggings in Goa. I hope this has been reported to the police?’
‘A police patrol found me lying on the road.’
A constable walked in, carrying tea in a chipped cup for D’Mello. He didn’t offer us any, nor did we expect him to. People sitting in our seats were generally given the third degree, not any kind of hospitality.
‘There’s a reason I’m telling you all of this.’ He took a loud sip of the tea. ‘You need to help me find the person who killed your friend.’
Neel said emphatically, ‘There’s nothing better we would like to do, Detective D’Mello.’
‘Now think carefully, which of Rachel’s friends or acquaintances might have had reason to kill her?’ He gave each of us a sharp look, as if we were suspects too, and I suddenly realised that maybe we were.
I wasn’t about to get intimidated by his police tactics. ‘I can tell you one thing, Officer. Knowing Rachel like we did, it’s quite possible for her to have offered coffee to a stranger. She was trusting and guileless in that respect. The coffee doesn’t necessarily mean she knew the visitor well.’
His face went blank, as if he was thinking of something.
‘It’s impossible to imagine Rachel having any enemies,’ said Sara. ‘Of course, she was a journalist and met a lot of people in the course of her work but the world of sports is hardly a dangerous one.’
It had been the perfect calling for Rachel. She loved travelling and was an avid sports fan, including of male-dominated games like cricket and football. She used her natural charm to get exclusive interviews with well-known sportsmen who were otherwise media-shy, but she also had to brave unruly crowds, lecherous security men and chauvinistic media colleagues to do her job.
Neel was speaking. ‘…brings us back to Anna Grishin, and the hypothesis that Rachel was silenced because she got too close to Anna’s killer.’
D’Mello looked at his watch and abruptly stood up. ‘I have to go now. Think hard about what I told you. If something strikes you, I want you to call me.’ He tore out a page from his diary, wrote his number down and handed it to Neel.
We rose to follow him out when he suddenly stopped in the doorway and whirled around. ‘I have a strong feeling that you three are hiding something from me. If I find out, you’ll be in big trouble.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Believe me, when I’m on a scent, I don’t stop until I catch my quarry.’
It was funny he said that because I got the feeling he wasn’t telling us everything either.
27
Sara
Writwik called me that evening. He said he had some information and wanted to come over but I put him off. I didn’t want to encourage any thoughts he might have had about getting into my pants again. As far as I was concerned, that one time was enough but men are men, always looking for some action!
We did have a chat on the phone though, and what he told me was intriguing.
Expectedly, Grigor’s murder had created a big flap and the police were in overdrive, trying to solve the crime. The murder of a foreign tourist always got a lot of attention but they were also hoping for some new clue in the Anna Grishin case. When I told Writwik about our two meetings with D’Mello, he started laughing.
‘That pompous ass has had his fat butt kicked big-time by the Commissioner, for having ignored Grigor earlier. To be fair to D’Mello though, he had brought the Russian in for questioning but the man refused to say anything and was eventually released. And as I was telling you earlier, in highly publicised cases like this, so many leads come to the police that it’s difficult for them to tell what’s real and what’s not.’
That explained D’Mello’s attitude towards us.
It appeared to be a contract killing, reinforcing the theory that Grigor had actually seen something incriminating that fateful night. The police had rounded up a number of suspects and were in the process of interrogating them. I remembered the room in which we had met D’Mello earlier in the day, and shuddered at the thought of the brutality that must regularly be taking place within its four walls.
Writwik felt confident that the perpetrator would be identified soon. He said that the police not only had an extensive database of history-sheeters but also a network of informants, which was very useful for cracking such cases. Whether that would lead them closer to Anna Grishin’s killer was anybody’s guess.
I asked him what his paper was doing to cover Grigor’s murder, and that’s when the discussion got really interesting!
The reporter who had interviewed Grigor had been grilled by Writwik himself. Unfortunately, he had forgotten his Dictaphone that day so all he had were some sketchy notes. Grigor had been very reluctant to talk but he was also quite drunk at the time so the reporter managed to get him to answer a few questions. It seemed that Grigor had told a couple of friends about what he saw but didn’t want to get mixed-up with the police, possibly because he had overstayed on his visa.
However, the news somehow reached D’Mello and he promptly had Grigor picked up for questioning.
The reporter had tried to piece together Grigor’s version of events from his incoherent ramblings. That night, he had been sitting at his favourite spot on Baga beach, away from the shacks and under an isolated palm tree. He wasn’t sure about the time but it was well past midnight. Though he didn’t mention it, it was likely that he was taking drugs as well, given the time and place. The beach was deserted at that late hour.
There was hardly any traffic on the narrow road which ran above and behind him so he was surprised when he heard a car stop, only a few metres from where he was. He saw two men get out, open the trunk and lift out a dark bundle. As they started to carry it across the sand and towards the water, Grigor realised that it was a human form wrapped in a black plastic sheet.
The men hadn’t seen him and he remained where he was, motionless. They went up to the waterline but it was too dark to make out what they did there. It took them several minutes and they came back without the body. He soon heard the car drive off.
That was pretty much it and Grigor had abruptly ended the interview after that, saying he didn’t want to speak anymore.
Naturally, the lack of specifics made the reporter highly skeptical of Grigor’s story. There was no proof that the body was that of Anna Grishin. In fact, upon further prodding, Grigor admitted that he couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure that it was a body in the first place, given that it was fully covered by the sheet. He was unable to describe either of the two men, beyond saying that they looked and were dressed like locals.
Writwik then told me with some satisfaction that the same reporter had managed to locate and speak to Grigor’s girlfriend a couple of days ago, even bef
ore the police could get to her. It had taken all his ingenuity and resources, for Grigor was a loner and there were few people who knew him. I guess inveterate drunks aren’t welcome even in the Bohemian tourist communities of Goa.
The woman was in her fifties and her name was Jennifer. She had befriended Grigor only a couple of weeks before his death. I presumed she had either taken pity on him or was just desperate for drugs, which he had in ample supply. During their brief relationship, they lived separately but hung around together on most days. Grigor had told Jennifer everything that happened on the night of Anna’s death. It had continued to disturb him deeply.
There were a couple of remarkable new details which weren’t known earlier.
After the car left, Grigor had followed in the footsteps of the two men to see what they had been up to. As he approached the waterline, he saw a pale, crumpled form lying on the sand just within reach of the breakers—it was a young girl, naked and bleeding!
Anna Grishin.
Grigor was so shocked that all he could do was turn around and run. Even in his inebriated state, he continued running until he was well away from the beach. It didn’t take him long to decide that he would keep quiet about what he had seen and not report it to the police. To salvage his conscience, he told himself that it was obvious the girl was beyond human help.
The second thing was that there was a third man. He remained inside the car while his cronies went to dump Anna’s body. Grigor only realised his presence when he stepped out briefly as the men were returning. He looked left and right, as if to ensure there were no witnesses, and got back into the car. Luckily, Grigor was missed by him too.
Writwik said that this man was clearly the boss and in all likelihood, Anna’s killer. I asked him if Grigor had described him to Jennifer—he hadn’t. However, he had told her with certainty that he knew who he was.
Second Lives Page 8