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“Sorry for the slip.”
“Don’t I see you’re enamored,” she said winking at him.
“I will wait for you at the Gandhi Hospital at ten in the morning,” he said in embarrassment.
“Thank you for being a considerate cop.”
“Maybe you could’ve revealed more.”
“How unfair to say that without giving any scope for that?” she said feigning to be offended.
“You’re impossible; see you at ten in the morning.”
While she waved at him amorously, perplexed at her audacity and perturbed by his attraction, he left her half-heartedly.
‘Stabbed in the abdomen, as Ashok lay dead in the sofa, how it was that Dilip’s medulla oblongata hit the edge of the chair opposite!’ Dhruva began reviewing the murder scene on his way home. ‘Won’t the empty Bagpiper bottle, broken glasses and the scattered bhujiya indicate a drinking brawl, possibly over Mithya that led to their killing each other? But was it as simple as that? Was there Mithya’s hidden hand behind all that? Why not take her finger prints?’
The next day as Mithya reached the mortuary, Dhruva obliged her to leave her finger prints, having which, he was lost in the elegance of her slender fingers that was not lost on her; pleased with herself she turned coquettish and said how she wished that he would let her put them for better use in time. Distracted though by her seductive ways, yet he was able to discern that her demeanor turned cold as she saw Dilip’s body, and that she looked contemptuously at Ashok’s corpse, which made him think that she had no love lost for either of them. Moreover, when he noticed the steadiness of her hand as she recorded her statement and the coolness in her face as she was all set to take away Ashok’s body in the ambulance, he felt that she had the nerve of a killer. When she told enticingly that she knew he would visit her again in vardibut he was welcome even in mufti,he was amazed as well as irritated by her audacity. While getting into her sedan that followed the ambulance as she winked at him invitingly, seeing in her a femme fatale of the first order, he waved her off wondering whether she was the murderess after all; and as if to chase his thoughts, leaving the chores of handling Dilip’s body to Appa Rao his deputy, Dhruva headed straight to the forensic laboratory.
The post-mortem report confirmed the instantaneous deaths of both men and Mithya’s fingerprints were found all over the place and that put Dhruva in the contemplative mode: ‘Stabbed in the abdomen by Dilip if Ashok died instantaneously, how he could have pushed away Dilip with such a force that his medulla oblongata took the hit? Even assuming Ashok had extraordinary reflexes, still as he was pushed out, Dilip’s grip on the knife would have ensured that it was pulled out of Ashok’s frame, which was not the case. Were it possibly that Mithya murdered Dilip in cold blood after abetting him to stab Ashok to death? Was not the informer an anonymous woman! Was it all Mithya’s handiwork?’