A MURDER AND A MYSTERY

Chapter 4: Williams takes the case

In cities like Mumbai, people die all the time. There are accidents, there are natural deaths and there are murders. Except for the police, the city does not know how many die each day. One may curse the police for inefficiency, but the truth is different. The cops have to contend with the huge logistics of crime and criminals. They are responsible for law and order in the city, a task which poses enormous problems. The citizens, though peace-loving on the surface, are never amenable to discipline. While some indulge in petty thieving and robbery; there are some who indulge in illegal activities, in fact many. There is this mass of people who indulge in rioting, arson, loot, rape, and other such activity and keep the law keepers busy. Then there was the underworld, an undefined space within the city, which constantly conspires to confound the police; last but not the least, there are politicians of every hue; seeking power, seeking fame, seeking publicity. The life of a policeman is stressful, to say the least. They are an impoverished lot and have to depend on external means of income for survival.

Most cases go unreported for the police do not have time or manpower to solve everyone's problems. They hate to write the FIR, which means a case on record which would require investigation and conclusion.

The case of the dead lady in Sebastian's flat was registered for investigation by the Bandra (West) police station. The investigations were handed over to one of the several investigators, one Mr Williams. Williams got chosen by chance, and not because he too was a Christian like Sebastian. He had a reputation, a decent one, of having resolved many a crime in his career.

No one can understand the mind of a murderer, for most murders are committed for reasons that defy logic. Williams knew one thing; an act of murder is motivated by three strong reasons; desire for money, passion and, to a large extent, survival.

Williams was yet to understand why any individual felt threatened to such an extent that he or she would want someone dead. True, there could be many criminals who went undiscovered or unpunished by law; yet punishment by law was not the only punishment. Most criminals suffer because of the crimes committed by them, whether they are caught or not.

Most murder cases are solved; the simple reason being the individual behind the crime is never smart. There is no such thing as a perfect crime, though we tend to view cases like the Boston Strangler as perfect.

Coming back to the file before him, he could see where the case was going. From what he had read, the girl was a commoner. She was yet to be identified but she would be identified soon enough. Someone, her husband or family member would have lodged a report somewhere unless she was an orphan. This is the first step for the police. He had already requested for details about persons, females, reported missing for the last month or so.

Sebastian; now, this was the mystery. What the hell was his role in the murder? He was not a registered criminal and by all accounts, he was a recluse. His background suggested that Sebastian had given up on life. He was not even aware that there was a body in his apartment for days! Rats, that is what he thought!

But the police cannot underestimate anyone, more so, people like Sebastian. There have been enough crimes committed by people whom you would swear were incapable of hurting a fly. This is what makes human beings so challenging to understand. One need not have a criminal mind to commit a murder. Anyone is capable of murder. There is more than sufficient violence in each of us.

The doctor had suggested that the actual scene of the murder was not at the flat; the girl was murdered or mortally wounded elsewhere and brought to this flat. Who can do this, unless one is well acquainted with Sebastian and his ways of life? Williams, therefore, made it a point to draw a list of all relatives and friends of Sebastian and interrogate them. It may not yield anything, or it may help him find the murderer. Williams knew that investigations were 95% labor and 5% luck. He had read stories about investigators who had spent years in gathering evidence only to find themselves staring at a dead-end; and suddenly, as if by magic, there would be a flash of inspiration, a piece of the jigsaw puzzle would fall in place and the case would be solved.

His profession demanded that he trust none and suspect everyone. You have to start with suspicion; he would not trust even the dead body; for bodies sometimes could tell lies. Many a time, forensic science had helped only to mislead detectives. Williams made it a rule to suspect everything and then rule out his suspicion one by one.

He looked at the photographs. The lady was stuffed up on a loft so that one would find it difficult to locate her. The killer knew that the body would stink and would then be discovered, but he would have bought time by them. It was always a matter of timing and time. Criminals make it as confounding as they can for investigators. The longer it takes to find the body or the weapon, the better are the chances that the killer would escape. Instances like the famous murder in Bangalore years earlier; the rich lady was the wife of a senior diplomat. She escaped the marriage to live in her palatial house in Bangalore, where she met a godman and fell in love with him. The godman killed her and buried her body in the house. It took years to find the body and more time to zero in on the killer. But he was caught.

He looked at the photograph through a magnifying glass and studied every possible detail. There were no gold chains around her neck, not even the mangalsutra, whose presence would have indicated that she was a married woman. She could have lost it in the scuffle before she was killed, or maybe it was taken out by her killers. It was possible that she was not married or even divorced. No rings either. Her clothes did suggest violence on her before she was stabbed.

He pushed aside the photographs as his thoughts once again centered on Sebastian. What a strange guy. Was he a deranged, demented man? If he was and indeed he had committed the crime, the courts would put him away in an asylum and forget his file.

His story about his departed wife fascinated Williams. He wondered how much of it was true; he believed in ghosts and apparitions, but as he had never encountered one, his belief at best was theoretical. He wondered if Sebastian could call his wife back again to testify. Maybe she knew, given the better abilities, who the killer was? He laughed at his idea; imagine a ghost testifying in a criminal case. There were movies where this happened, but in his long years of experience, he had never spoken to a ghost or heard of a ghost giving evidence in a murder case. He would nevertheless retain this possibility.