The Case of the Love Commandos by Tarquin Hall

Author:Tarquin Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

“The report says the car, an Indica, skidded off the road,” said Puri’s contact in the Agra police department when they spoke on the phone soon after Puri was ejected from ICMB. “Dr. Basu sustained a head injury and drowned.”

“What time the accident occurred, exactly?” asked the detective.

“Two in the morning – last Thursday.”

“Any sign of foul play?”

Puri knew he was wasting his breath with such a fundamental question. On average, fourteen people died and fifty-seven others were injured on the roads of India every hour. Even if the police had wanted to investigate each incident, there wasn’t the manpower to do so. Uttar Pradesh alone was short of nearly a quarter of a million civil and armed police. And its serving officers were essentially uniformed bribe takers. Most raked in several lakhs per month from truck drivers alone, a goodly percentage of which ended up in the pockets of their superiors and political masters.

Puri put the odds of the scene of Dr. Basu’s accident being professionally investigated at about ten billion to one, give or take the odd billion.

“That’s an accident-prone zone,” was the predictable response from his contact. “Cars are always overtaking and turning turtle.”

Puri thanked him, ended the call and told his driver to take him directly to the bridge.

It spanned the Yamuna River beyond the Babarpur Reserved Forest, a few miles to the northwest of Agra. A quarter of the way across, a section of the barrier was missing.

It took the detective little more than three minutes to conclude that the ‘accident’ had been nothing of the sort.

Such was his incredulity that he found himself sharing his reasoning with his driver. The fact that the sum total of the man’s English vocabulary was ‘left side’, ‘right side’ and ‘backside’ mattered little. Puri was hardly seeking a second opinion.

“Number one, there is no way a little Indica could tear through the metal – must have been a truck at least,” he said. “Second, no red paint is in evidence on the severed section. Nonetheless a buildup of rust is there. Thus we can conclude the damage was done some time back, only.”

The driver looked on nonplussed as Puri stepped away from the barrier and indicated the black skid marks on the asphalt.

“These are by no means fresh,” he said. “Most probably they were made some weeks or months back, also. Without one shadow of a doubt, their thickness indicates the wheels belonged to a truck – in all likelihood the one that plowed through the barrier in the first place.”

Puri took a step backward. “What all a young PhD female was doing at two in the morning on a road leading through a forested reserve into the middle of nowhere?”

The driver recognized this as a question but could only offer a shrug in return.

“Getting knocked on the head, placed behind the wheel and pushed off the bridge – that is what,” Puri answered.

The two men stood looking down into the churning, polluted waters of the Yamuna below, grimacing at the stink.

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