Seduced by Murder (27 page)

“I will think of something.”

“Great! My friend and I were just discussing that it would have to be a sixty six in case he decided to go down on you.”

“What?”

“Well, with his height he will always be a couple of inches shorter. So it must be sixty six instead of sixty nine.”

She stared for a moment, and then started laughing in her deep, resonant, husky voice. “Oh my god! That is so wicked. Come as soon as you see them leaving.”

It sounded like a terrible cliché, but I said it anyway, “The bulls are roaring to go.”

She got off the stool, blew me a kiss, and left.

Pranay said as soon as she left, “Charming, aren’t you?”

“Have you seen Leo yet?” I asked hoping he hadn’t come when I was conversing with Dia.

“Nope,” Pranay said. “What was the woman talking about?”

“It’s a swinging party.”

“Swinging, eh?”

“Yeah. The couples are here for swinging.”

Pranay looked around, then stared at me defiantly and asked, “Oh yeah? Where are the swings then?”

He repeated, “Well, where are the swings, wise guy?”

I placed my hand on my forehead and replied calmly, “Swinging as in couple swinging. Couple swapping?”

Realisation dawned in his eyes. He looked around and asked,

“You mean … they trade partners for sex?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck!”

I finished the contents of my glass, and was just about to request Johnny for a refill when I saw Leo. He had just entered and was scanning the room. I realised a bit too late that the area near the bar was illuminated. He spotted me before I could duck, and walked in a hurry towards the corner of the hall.

I got off the stool and followed him. Leo had entered a passage and taken a right that led to another room. I entered the room, just to see him open a door to the porch that led to a garden at the back, where he vanished in the darkness. I looked around for a light-switch, but found none. It was raining cats and dogs.

It was dark as a tomb outside. The rain had doubled in intensity since I had entered the bungalow. I couldn’t see a thing, and ran with my arms outstretched to avoid bumping into a tree. After a few seconds I stopped. I stopped because I could no longer hear the shuffling of Leo’s feet on twigs and broken branches. I stared in all directions, letting my eyes get accustomed to the darkness. I stared so hard that my eyes felt sore in a few seconds. I spotted a stationary shadow standing less than five feet away from me.

Suddenly, a spot of light hit the ground and then rose to my face. I covered my eyes instantly, but I had already seen Leo. He was smiling. I grasped the import of that smile, groaned, and tried to turn around, but it was too late. There was a thud, and my world came crashing around me.

I
woke up surrounded by a wet darkness, conscious of a throbbing pain at the back of my head. I wondered if I was dead. I decided I couldn’t be dead. Death wouldn’t be so painful. I lay there for a few seconds, waiting for the pain in my head to recede. I shook all my body parts. Everything seemed intact, yet I was aware that something in my clothing had been tampered with. I realized something was wrong with my posture. My right arm was stretched out, and the fist was wrapped around a solid object. I released the object, counted all five fingers, and used the other hand to bring out the mobile phone from my pocket.

I punched the keys arbitrarily, and used the light from the display screen to illuminate the ground. A body was impaled in a knife. I turned the light towards the face of the victim. Leo’s expression was frozen in terror. He was not breathing, and his heartbeat had ceased. His body still felt warm, so I couldn’t have been out for a long time. My body started shivering uncontrollably as I lifted myself off the ground. I had taken a few steps towards the porch when the lights were switched on. Pranay was standing there with a couple. I waved my hands to draw their attention. Pranay saw me wobbling and ran towards me. I leaned on him for support, and then sat down on the cold floor.

“What happened?” he asked.

My teeth chattered like a sewing machine needle and I stammered, “Wh … wh … were … we … were … you? Di … didn’t … fo … foll … follow me?”

“You didn’t tell me! I thought you were rushing off to the loo. When you didn’t return for five minutes, I decided to follow you. Johnny told me that the loo was in the other direction. So I ran here and saw the door open.”

“Mo … mor … mor … moron.”

The woman screamed, “Is that blood?”

The man standing next to her bent forward, scrutinised my damp T-shirt, and encored, “My god! Is that blood?”

Pranay gasped audibly as he inspected my T-shirt. “That is blood! You hurt? What happened?”

“Whi … whis … whisky.”

Pranay ran inside the room and returned with a bottle of whisky in two minutes. Jack Daniels. Sealed. I nodded my head in appreciation and broke the seal open. I took two sips, letting the alcohol warm my body. My teeth stopped chattering.

“Who are they?” I asked Pranay.

“Uh, they are the hosts. They own this place. Sangeeta and Vinod.”

I looked at them. “A torch. And an umbrella. Fast. Please.”

The man nodded to the woman, who ran inside the house. I turned to Pranay, “Call Babu. Tell him to come over.” Sangeeta came back with the umbrella and the torch.

Vinod passed them to me and asked, “Were you involved an accident?”

I took the umbrella and the torch from the man, and gave him the bottle. He would need some reassurance. I stood up
with some difficulty and said, “You may want to stay here. There’s a dead body in the garden. My friend has just called the police.”

They appeared shocked for a few seconds, and then attacked me with a deluge of questions. I ignored them, and leaning on Pranay, opened the umbrella, and stepped out in the rain again. The ground was slippery and my steps were unsteady. I bent to examine Leo’s body, while Pranay positioned the umbrella over us.

I switched on the torch and ran it along the outline of Leo’s body. He was lying on his back. His intestines were all over the place. The killer had stabbed him multiple times in the stomach and the chest, piercing the knife one last time near the heart. Immediately, I knew that this was a different murderer from the one who had stabbed Anil, or drowned Anjali. While Anil and Anjali had been murdered with minimal force, planned in detail beforehand, Leo had been stabbed with frenzied ferocity. Since the Kapoors were under house arrest, there could be only one man who would commit a murder like this.

We walked back to the porch, where the couple had lost their colour.

“Whose body is it? Is someone dead?” asked Sangeeta.

“Okay, Sangeeta and Vinod, I am Vishal. There has been a murder on the lawn.”

“Oh my god!” The woman swooned, falling into her husband’s arms.

The man snatched the torch from my hand, and pointed it in every direction, trying to spot the body. He was paralysed with panic.

“Murder! Whose murder?”

“The body is behind that tree,” I said pointing towards the direction of the corpse. “The victim is a man called Leo. You know him?”

He replied by turning away, dragging his wife inside, and shutting the door on my face. The lights of the porch were switched off in a few seconds, plunging us into darkness again.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“What happened to them?” asked Pranay.

“I think he thinks I murdered Leo.”

“What! Did you murder Leo?”

“No, but I’ll murder you if you don’t shut up. Let me think.”

They wouldn’t just leave us here. There were multiple exits from the garden. They would probably get help and come back.

The lights were switched on as abruptly as they had been switched off, and the door opened. Vinod was standing there with a gun pointed at my face. Sangeeta crouched behind him looking terrified.

“Hands up!”

This was the second time I had had a gun pulled to my face in one day. I groaned. “Relax, I need to clean up and get into some clean clothes. The police are on their way.”

“Hands up! I mean business.” He extended the gun forward by two inches, to show that he meant business.

I negotiated, “No one does hands up any more, man. Can’t I just freeze?”

“Over your head, you bastard!”

I was shivering due to the cold. He was also shivering, due to fear.

I walked towards the door and said, “Look Rambo, either pull the trigger, or let me clean up. I would rather die of a bullet than of pneumonia.”

The man took three steps back for every step I took forward, tripped over his wife, and both of them fell down to the floor. I waited until he had got up and pointed the gun towards me, and then turned to his wife.

“Can you guide me to a bathroom? I need to get out of these clothes.”

She was transfixed with fear. Pranay butted in, “It’s okay. We are private detectives. We have informed the police, and they are on their way.”

The man still looked at us in confusion.

“I hate to drip all over your marble floor. The bathroom?”

The couple exchanged looks, nodded at each other, and guided me to the bathroom. I could see that Johnny and the bouncer were busy escorting all the guests outside.

I entered the bathroom, and was overwhelmed by what I saw before me. The bathtub was bigger than my apartment – large mirrors, tiled floors, a television, a music system, gold faucets, and a sauna in the corner. I grabbed a towel from the neatly stacked pile of towels, and asked Sangeeta to get me some dry clothes.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror and grimaced.. All I needed was a pink snout, and I would fit right into a pigsty. I used the towel to wipe the dirt around my eyes, face, and shoulders. I opened the cabinet above the washbasin, took out some antiseptic, and dabbed it generously on my head where Abhijit had struck me. He could have done more damage, but our confrontation in the morning must have impaired his strength. Not to forget he must have been in a hurry. After
hitting me, he would have stabbed Leo, dragged me towards the body, taken the CD, and rushed to the parking lot. I was out for ten to fifteen minutes, so he didn’t have much of a lead on me.

The woman returned with some clothes, probably Vinod’s. I smiled and said, “Thanks. I will replace these.”

“Someone should call the police,” said the woman to her husband.

“My friend has already done that. They should be here in half an hour or forty minutes.”

Vinod asked me, “Who are you? How did you get in?”

I sneezed several times, and requested them for some privacy while I changed. Vinod lifted his gun again and said, “We are not budging till the police arrives.”

“Suit yourself.”

There is something about having a gallon of water in your underwear that makes you do away with modesty. I stripped to my underpants, and looked up at the woman, who turned a shade of beetroot. I raised my left eyebrow to show that I meant business. Neither of them made any movement to turn around. I stepped out of my underpants, making the woman blush, and leisurely put on the new clothes.

Pranay came back with the bottle of whisky just as I had finished changing. I was still shivering, and felt feverish. I took a few sips, and checked my wet trousers that I had just removed. My wallet was in the back pocket. I always kept it in the side pocket. I remembered the strange feeling I had had when I regained consciousness – that something had been tampered with. Abhijit must have taken my wallet out of the side pocket and planted it there? I opened the wallet and
went through the contents. A few wet notes, debit cards, and a driving licence. Everything looked intact.

I drank some more whisky and asked my hosts, “Did you know Leo, the man who was murdered?”

“No!” said the man promptly.

I looked at the woman, and she immediately averted her eyes.

“Okay. He had an invite, so he was definitely expected at the party. And I know what kind of party this is.”

The man lowered the gun and negotiated with better manners, “We don’t know half of the people in this room, okay? People get invites through friends. Every couple, who has been a member for more than six months, can take extra cards to invite new people. We don’t know any Leo.”

“All right. Do you know a man called Abhijit?”

The man paused, as if thinking about the name.

“No. Never heard of him.”

“What about you, ma’am?” I asked his wife.

“No. Never.” Her trembling lips belied her words.

“You must be an amnesiac. I remember seeing you in a CD, playing naked-naked with him. Your necklace gave you away. Green emerald. The CD was titled
S
.
S
for Sangeeta?”

The lady stared at me in disbelief, her jaw dropping open. The husband mopped his forehead.

“You have been very good hosts. I will make a deal. Okay?”

“What?”

“The cops will be here shortly. I see all your guests have left. They would want to know what I saw here. I am not interested in your promiscuous misadventures. I will not mention anything to them. All I want to do is ask some questions.”

The man said defensively, “It’s not promiscuous. It’s progressive.”