X: The Hunt Begins Read online

  “What about all the people who said they'd seen Dolly leave for the baraat?” Shahid asked.

  “That was the other clue.” Aditya leaned back in his chair. “They all chimed in with their alibis for Ramlal. Like they'd been instructed to. And all were quick to tell us what a characterless girl Dolly was. They were all in it. The entire basti. It's impossible to hide your personal life with eveyone living on top of one another in a cramped space. When a group of people migrate to a city, they stick close together and hold on even more tightly to their traditional beliefs, no matter how regressive. They knew the girl had started seeing Sujeet. Maybe they believed the two had had sex. They saw it as a disgrace to the entire community's honor. They knew the father had killed her daughter, and for them the honour of the community was more important than the life of the girl. So they all arranged to cover up the crime. The empty water tank made for an ideal hiding place for the body at short notice. Brijesh brought the barrel of sulfuric acid from the factory where he worked yesterday. They only had to make you listen to a girl's voice, probably the daughter of their neighbour, the girl called Pinky. They planned to dissolve the body in the tank tonight. I imagine they were going to say the girl ran away if you ever showed up at the basti again.”

  There was a silence following the speech. Shahid contiued to study Aditya with a frown.

  “Did you get Brijesh?” Payal asked Virat.

  “Yeah, he's in lockup.” Virat said. “He panicked and came clean about everything. Said Ramlal knew Sujeet would go to the police, and so he cooked up this whole plan to divert suspicion. He's still going to jail for aiding a criminal.”

  “That poor girl.” Payal said in a low voice. “Her own parents. To think the only friend she had in her home was that little dog.”

  Aditya nodded soberly. “I know. Even after I sent the message to Virat, a part of me was hoping I'd be proved wrong.”

  “I should go.” Shahid said abruptly, rising to his feet. He hesitated for a moment, his eyes on Aditya. But then he turned without a word towards the door.

  Virat accompanied Shahid to the stairway outside the doorway. The inspector stopped at the top of the staircase and stood staring at the opposite wall for a long moment.

  “Your friend there.” Shahid said at last, turning to Virat. “That fellow Matthews. He solved a murder case by diagnosing a dog with depression.”

  Virat nodded, trying not to smile. “Well, yeah.”

  Shahid sighed, running a hand through his hair as he turned to leave. “There might be something to this psychology business after all...”

  Chapter 3 : The Selfie Killer

  Two months since moving to Delhi, Aditya had settled in comfortably at Virat's aparmtent. They had inspected several rooms over the weekends for Aditya, but the choices available were either too far away, or too expensive.

  It was the rare saturday when all three had holidays from work. Aditya was reading a comic while Payal sat at the table browsing through her facebook profile.

  “Anyone want to watch a film?” Virat asked, who was browsing the internet on his mobile. The three had agreed to pitch in together for wifi. “There's the new Akshay Kumar movie out this friday.”

  “And there'll be another one out in a month.” Aditya said. “He does like twelve movies a year”.”

  “So you prefer to sit at home reading a cartoon comic on your holiday?” Payal asked.

  “It's a Super Commando Dhruv comic.” Aditya said without looking up. “It's all I have until someone has the sense to make a live action movie on him.”

  “I'm glad you have such mature tastes.” Payal remarked, turning back to her laptop. “After all, the mark of a grown-”

  Suddenly Payal stopped talking. Virat glanced up at her. She was staring at the screen of her laptop with a look of shocked incredulity on her face.

  Aditya and Virat got up and walked over to the table. The screen of the laptop came into view. Payal's facebook wall was displayed on the screen. Amidst brithday greetings to friends and group invites from strangers was displayed a picture. Aditya and Virat leaned in closer as their minds tried to wrap around what they were seeing. The picture had been shared on Payal's page by one of her friends, and the comment section showed people from the world over reacting in horror to the gruesome scene.

  The background was that of a darkened room, vague and immersed in shadows. But the flash from the camera had lit up the two people at the center of the frame. A young man lay on the ground, his legs splayed out before him, his back leaning against the wall. There was a deep gash along his neck, and the front of his shirt was covered in blood. His vacant eyes stared sightlessly ahead. Next to him, with an arm around him, sat another person, the one who was holding the camera. He was looking directly into the lens, but his face was hidden behind a mask of the smiling moron often seen in internet memes. Payal felt a chill crawl up her spine as her eyes moved from the blank, expressionaless face of the dead man to the smiling, distorted features of the other person. Beneath the picture was the hashtag #WillYouTakeASelfieWithMe?

  The silence lasted for several moments as the three stared at the picture. There was something hypnotic about the gaze of the mask directed at the camera.

  “Is this real?” Payal finall spoke. “Or is it some kind of a hoax?”

  “Has to be fake.” Virat muttered, clicking on the picture to enlarge it. “Like those celebrity death newspieces that are always doing the rounds of facebook.”

  “I can make out the background a bit.” Aditya said, leaning in closer to the screen. “I think those are stairs there to the left.”

  Virat's phone rang. He went to answer it on the balcony while Aditya and Payal continued to study the photo. Two minutes later Virat emerged form the balcony, looking grim.

  “That was Shahid.” He said without preamble. “The picture isn't a hoax. They found the dead body outside an IT office in Nehru Place.”

  * * *

  Inspector Shahid Khan felt exhausted as he settled behind his desk at the police station. It was three in the afternoon the day after the selfie murder, and he had not had his lunch yet.

  “Thought you might appreciate this.” Virat said as he came over, holding a plate of samosas. Shahid gratefully siezed the plate and began to devour the food. “How does the case look so far?”

  “This was a nasty one.” Shahid said, leaning back in his chair with a samosa in hand. “And by nasty I don't mean brutal. The murder was carried out in a very neat and orderly fashion. That's what made my skin crawl. It looked like a butcher's shop window rather than a crime scene.”

  “Any leads on the killer?”

  “None at all.” Shahid frowned as he bit into a second samosa. “Victim was Bobby Singh, a college student who worked in his father's computer shop in the afternoons. Quiet, studious kid. No known enemies. No Demands or threats made on the family before the murder. Just the one night he stayed behind every week to put new supplies in order. The killer lured him out to the staircase outside the closed office one floor below and killed him.”

  “What's the press being told?” Virat asked.

  “Nothing that will satisfy them.” Shahid grunted. “This is the most publicised murder in the department's history. And that's before we found the body. They'll have a field day with this one.”

  The next few days proved him right. The news media siezed upon the Nehru Place murder with glee. The headline 'The Selfie Murder' graced the front page of every newspaper and breaking news report video. The victim was soon turned into a martyred symbol of youth snatched away in it's bloom, and the police's inability to discover the killer turned into a mocking exercise.

  “This thing just keeps blowing up bigger and bigger.” Payal remarked a week after the selfie was first posted as she surfed facebook. Someone had posted a picture of Bobby Singh captioned 'Never Forget. RIP'. “People from all over the planet are discussing the murder. They're calling it the most sensational murder in online history. The police
still hasn't found anything?”

  “Not a single lead.” Virat said. “There's no evidence of any kind that the kid had ever harmed a soul in his life. The media is making the police out to be incompetent buffoons, but there really are no clues to go on in the investigation.”

  “I don't think this was a case where the killer was someone from the victim's past.” Aditya commented, settling into the beanbag chair as he nursed a cup of tea in his hands. “Whoever did this was looking for some attention. That's why the selfie was posted online. And it looks like he got his wish.”

  * * *

  Three weeks later, the news about the murder began to subside. A lack of fresh clues, coupled with the press being unable to unearth any gossipworthy incidents from the victim's former life made conjuring up fresh newsbytes difficult. The victim had been cremated in a private ceremony. His photos had stopped appearing on facebook walls. A fresh scandal erupted concerning an actress and a politician that siezed the media's attention.

  And then, just as the storm over the picture seemed about to die down, another selfie surfaced on twitter. The scene was similar to the first, with the killer wearing the same mask while taking the picture, one arm around his dead victim. But this time the room was brightly lit. Symbols of facebook and other social media were scraweld on the floor around the victim and scrawled over. A picture of Che Guevara and Mahatma Gandhi had been morphed into a single picture and stuck in the wall behind the victim. Beneath the selfie was the hashtag #StayTuned. It was trending at first position in less than an hour.

  “Stay tuned.” Virat muttered as he stared at the picture shown in enlarged form by a slide projector. “That means there'll be more of these.”

  “Looks like it.” Aditya said. He and Virat were sitting in the police presentation hall along with several other officers for an emergency meeting called by the police chief. Inspector Khurana walked into the room and made his way to the wall where the selfie was projected as chatter among the audience died down.

  “This picture proves the first selfie wasn't an isolated event.” He said, gazing out at the room. “Just like the victim in the first murder, the woman who was murdered this time had no known enemies. We need all the help we can get in tracing this criminal. I want all the departments to pool their resources on the murders. Witness reports, forensic analysis, everything. This case is our number one priority at the moment.” Inspector Khurana stared around grimly at the room at large. “We have another serial killer on our hands.”

  * * *

  In college, they had been taught about viral marketing, where a product or symbol was made to penetrate the consciousness of the masses by relentless, round the clock ad campaigns. Every major brand, from Coca Cola to McDonald's used the stategies. With the advent of the internet, the term had taken a whole new dimension. The more your product was in the news, the more it was shared and liked and reposted, the bigger your brand.

  Even if that brand was murder.

  It hadn't been easy. Not at all.These weren't amatuer murders carried out by mindless dolts which could be easily traced. He had always had a strong taste for the macabre. He had seen dozens of films on the subject. He had spent many hours on internet sites dedicated to the lives of famous killers. He knew how murderers were caught. Only working within a specific area. Leaving traces of their personal effects behind. Getting spotted by passerbys.

  He was never going to be as stupid. He had prepared carefully for each of his projects. Stalking them for days. Staking out their workplaces. Learning their routines. Following them without alarming them. Learning ways to lure them to him. And then there was the actual execution of the project . The clothes to wear in order to blend in. The security cameras to avoid. The spare knife in his back pocket in case of an emergency. Planning what he wanted to say through each selfie. Setting up the picture to include all the details. It had all been very difficult. All except the killing part. That had been surprisingly easy. A tingling sensation in his arm as he gripped the knife, a quick slash through the jugular vein., and it was over...

  Nevertheless, now was not the time to let success go to his head. The campaign so far had been a major success. But he had lost the element of surprise. The police was on the lookout, and he would have to be doubly careful when he went out hunting again.

  * * *

  For the last few days Aditya had taken to disappearing from the station in the morning and getting back home late at night. Virat was too busy to check up on him. He was working with Shahid to question the personnel at the buildings where the murders had taken place. It was a slow,frustrating process. Witnesses were hard to come by, and the places where the murders took place were usually so crowded that it was impossible to pinpoint any one individual acting suspiciously.

  Virat returned home late one night several days after the second murder. Aditya was still out, and he went upstairs to Payal's apartment.

  “Did you get back late from the office, too?” He asked after she had let him in.

  “They've got us working overtime covering the selfie murders.” Payal said. “Where's Aditya? He didn't come back with you?”

  “He's been out all day.” Virat said. “He's allowed to work on his own time, so I'm guessing he's following leads on the case that the regular police can't.”

  Aditya returned to their apartment an hour later. Virat was sitting in the living room reading the newspaper when he came in and went straight to the fridge and took out a bottle of chilled water, taking several gulps before setting the bottle down on the kitchen counter.

  “Did you find anything useful?” Virat asked as he moved slowly over to the living room.

  “Mostly negatives.” Aditya said, sinking into his favorite beanbag chair. He leaned back with his eyes closed. “But they're important negatives. I'm trying to get an idea of just how deep his reach into the city's administration is.”

  “Who?” Virat asked, confused. “The selfie killer's reach?”

  “No, X's.” Aditya said. “He's got far more civil services men on his payroll than we'd imagined.”

  “So, wait.” Virat stared at him incredulously. “You've been looking for X this whole time?”

  “It's a convenient oppurtunity.” Aditya said, opening his eyse to stare at the ceiling. “Everyone's talking about the selfie murders, and that's where the police is concentrating as well. I don't need to tell you several police officers are on the mob's payroll. Its a good time to ask some innocuous questions without drawing the attention of too many people.”

  “And what about the selfie killer?”

  “What about him?” Aditya continued staring vacantly at the ceiling.

  “All this time, I thought you were working on finding the guy behind those pictures!” Virat didn't try to keep the anger out of his voice. “Everyone else is going crazy searching for the murderer before he kills again. You're the guy most qualified to deal with serial killers, and you're acting like you can't be bothered with it. In the Bhandipur case, we kept searching for Soura all over Delhi until we found him. And this time you're lying on your ass like you expect the guy to come to you by post!”

  A ringing silence followed the outburst. Aditya continued gazing silently at the ceiling. Finally, he spoke. “Karmath and Buddhijeevi.”

  “What?”

  “Meaning 'The one who works' and 'The one who thinks'.” Aditya translated, leaning forward at last to look at Virat. “There's a time for action and a time for thinking, and the're nothing to be gained from mixing the two. The selfie case is incomplete at the moment. We have very little data to work with. The police is running around Delhi, trying to find answers in the real world, while our killer has made his home in the virtual world. Right now, all we can do is delibrate on what we know, and wait for the killer to make another move. What this case needs at the moment is the Buddhejeevi.”