Penumbra

15

Rana was woken early by the chime of the doorbell. She fumbled her way out of bed, pulled on her wrap and moved to the speaker by the inner door of her new, spacious apartment.

“Who is it?”

“Security, Lieutenant Rao. Investigator Vishwanath sent me.”

“Oh… yes. Of course. Come on up.”

A minute later a spry Tamil sergeant stepped into the lounge carrying a case of equipment and a com-board. “A small matter—I’ll be no more than ten minutes,” he said. “First I’ll install an alarm pad in case of emergencies.”

She rubbed her eyes. “Emergencies?”

The Tamil bobbed his head from side to side. “Standard procedure,” he said. “We’ve got to protect our officers. I’ll make a sweep for bugs and other electronic surveillance apparatus.”

He set to work installing the alarm. “I’ll put it in here, behind this picture,” he said, in case of emergencies, all you need to do is press it lightly. This will activate alarms at the local station.”

Rana sat on the arm of a chair, watching him attach the small, flat rectangle to the wall behind the picture, a Chinese landscape inherited from the apartment’s previous occupant.

He replaced the painting and looked around the room. “Now I’ll sweep the apartment for electronic listening devices and suchlike.”

He opened his case and took out an instrument like a communicator, switched it on and turned in a circle, directing the device at the walls.

He examined the screen and frowned. “I’m getting something.”

Rana rubbed her tired face. “You mean the place is bugged?” She was unconvinced.

“No, not bugged. There’s a homing device in the apartment, a very crude affair. It’s…” Like a diviner seeking water, he moved the device back and forth. “It’s in that drawer,” he said, pointing to her desk.

Her only possession worth locking away was the soft-screen. She unlocked the drawer and lifted it out. Wafer thin, perhaps half a metre square, it was blank until pressed. Then it showed a fictional narrative set on some colony world, a drama featuring intrepid explorers battling through mountainous terrain.

“Do you mean this?”

The sergeant nodded. “Can I examine it?”

Rana passed him the softscreen. He turned it over, minutely examining the weave of the fabric. “It’s very old,” he said. “Perhaps a hundred years old?”

She nodded. “It’s an antique. It was… my father gave it to me when I was young.”

She could hardly tell him the truth, that she had taken the softscreen from her father’s safe, along with a few hundred rupees, all those years ago.

The sergeant was frowning. “It’s implanted with a primitive homing device. Did your father put it there, to trace it in case it was ever stolen?”

Rana shrugged. “I don’t know.”

But her father could not have known about the homing device, or he would have used it to trace her when she ran away from home…

The sergeant looked up. “Can I take it back to the lab, Lieutenant? I’d like to examine it more closely. The homing device is embedded very skilfully into the fabric of the screen. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’ll issue you with a receipt.”

“You’ll bring it back when you’ve finished with it?” she asked.

“I’ll bring it back in a week, Lieutenant.” He folded the softscreen into his case and wrote out a receipt.

“The rest of the apartment is clean?”

He smiled. “You’ve no need to worry, Lieutenant. I’ll be back in a few months to run another check.”

The sergeant packed his case and saluted as he left. Rana closed the door behind him, then made herself a cup of coffee and drank it slowly, sitting by the window and staring across the mist-shrouded Nehru park.

A week had passed since Rana had reported to Vishwanath about the Man in the Black Suit, and the killer from Madrigal whose computer-generated image was now with every police station in the city. She had expected, in her naivety, to hear about the apprehension of the suspect within days, but there had been no progress at all on the case of the crucifix killer. Vishwanath had counselled confidence, and told her to try another lead. He had praised her initiative so far, but told her that in all likelihood the black suit had been just another one of those lines of enquiry that resulted in a dead end. Homicide work, he said, was full of them.

Rana had worked on other cases, murders she had had no real involvement in, and therefore could not feel as enthusiastic about. She knew they had to be solved, and she worked hard on them, but they would never have the appeal of her first investigation.

The chime of an incoming call sounded in her ear. She clicked her jaw to activate the communication. “Rao here.”

“This is Lieutenant Nazeem.” His voice sounded loud in her ear. “Vishwanath wants you quick sharp.”

“What is it?”

“The crucifix case you’re working on.” He emphasised the “you’re’, as Vishwanath had reassigned him shortly after Rana’s arrival in the department. “Something’s happened.”

“What? Have they caught—”

But Naz had cut the connection.

She hurried from the apartment and caught a taxi to the police headquarters. She still had an hour to go before her shift officially started, so to be called early like this must mean that something important had occurred. She tried to control her excitement as she dashed into the building and rode the elevator to the eighth floor.

She unlocked her desk and retrieved her com-board, then made her way to Vishwanath’s office.

“They’ve caught him?” she asked when she got there.

Vishwanath shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Far from it, Lieutenant. That was forensic. It appears that our man has struck again.”

Rana felt as if a punch had knocked the wind from her. “But I thought we had extra patrols—”

He nodded. “We did. But he didn’t strike where we thought he might.”

“Are you sure it’s the same killer?”

“Forensic seem pretty convinced.” He picked up his com-board and stood wearily. “Shall we go and take a look, Lieutenant?”

She followed him into the elevator and then out into the underground car-park. They climbed aboard a squad car and accelerated up the ramp and into the street. The morning mists had lifted and sunlight filled the bustling streets with its harsh glare.

“Where did he strike, sir?”

“Somewhere in the Raneesh suburb.”

Rana accessed the city map on her com-board. “Below the left-hand crossbar of the crucifix. Do you know the identity of the victim?”

“One Raja Khan. He’s known to us—he’s a smuggler and extortionist. It would seem that the killer is continuing his moral crusade.”

Rana watched a food market flash by in a kaleidoscopic blur of reds and greens. She felt suddenly depressed at the thought of another murder, and it came to her that it was not the loss of life that was dispiriting—the dead men were, to a soul, evil-doers after all—but the fact that the killer could so easily get away with his crimes. Every new murder pointed up her department’s, and her own, inefficiency.

Raneesh suburb was a modern, rich residential area of habitat domes and state-of-the-art polycarbon structures. The squad car halted by one such, a building tastelessly styled on the pyramid foyer of the Louvre. Rana followed Vishwanath past the house and down a tree-shaded footpath.

The usual activity surrounded the scene of the crime. Officers had erected low-powered laser-cordons to keep away the gaggle of sightseers, curious children and rich citizens out walking their dogs. Crawlers scurried back and forth across the path like oversized beetles. A forensic officer knelt by the corpse, entering data into his com-board.

Raja Khan had been a big man in his fifties, his size emphasised by his voluminous shalwar kameez. He was lying on his back, arms spread in an accidental gesture of appeasement. The right side of his face had been charcoaled by a laser charge, and cut into his left cheek was the usual bloody cross.

“He died between eight and eight-thirty last night,” the forensic officer was saying. “It’s a quiet area—the body wasn’t discovered until this morning.”

Rana entered the data into her com-board. She looked up at Vishwanath. “All ten murders were committed between eight and nine, sir.”

“So perhaps the killer works regular office hours… though a big help that is.”

“There is a very interesting feature,” the officer went on. “The victim has obviously been shot twice, unlike all the other victims. The first shot narrowly missed his forehead—note the burned skin and hair. Then came the coup de gr â ce to the right side of the face.”

“You think he survived the first attack and tried to get away?”

The officer nodded. “Very possibly.”

“So the initial attack might not have happened here,” Vishwanath mused.

Rana asked, “Do we know Raja Khan’s address?”

Vishwanath passed his com-board to Rana and she downloaded the information. Khan had an address in an exclusive city centre apartment building.

“Sir, seeing as how the location of this killing doesn’t conform to the crucifix, I was wondering if this was perhaps a preliminary meeting set up by the killer to lure Khan to one of the four locations. But it went wrong. Khan got suspicious and tried to run. So the killer struck then.”

“Where does that leave us, Lieutenant?”

Rana shrugged. “Perhaps the killer lives in the area.”

“It’s a long shot. Contact Naz and have him organise a house-to-house in the district.”

Rana contacted headquarters and relayed Vishwanath’s order.

The forensic officer was downloading the data gathered by the crawlers into his com-board. He shook his head. “Nothing, sir. Lots of information, but precious little of any use.” He consulted the screen of his com-board. “There’s no correlation between data picked up here and that at the other crime scenes.”

Vishwanath turned to Rana. “I want you to compile the usual list of the dead man’s family, friends and acquaintances. Interview them all—you know the routine.”

Rana was staring at her com-board, and the crucifix pattern that overlaid the city map. “One thing, sir. Perhaps the location of this killing does conform to some kind of crucifix.”

Vishwanath regarded her down the stern length of his aquiline nose. “Do you mean something like the cross of Alsace?”

Rana shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Then why,” he said heavily, “isn’t the crucifix cut into the victim’s cheeks the cross of Alsace, Lieutenant?”

“Because it isn’t exactly the cross of Alsace. It’s… I don’t know… perhaps something that’s harder to carve.”

Vishwanath pursed his lips and finally nodded. “Ah-cha. It’s worth looking into, Lieutenant.”

“I’ll check it when I get back to HQ, sir.”

The corpse was lifted into the back of an ambulance, the lasers dismantled and the crowd told to disperse. Rana rode back in the squad car with Vishwanath. He sat in the passenger seat in silence, watching the passing scenes with eagle-eyed intensity.

Ten minutes later she sat down behind her desk and dealt with the incoming calls. She accessed the messages from duty officers doing the footwork on the Khan murder. They had searched his apartment and come up with a list of addresses. Rana downloaded them and, over the course of the next four hours, got through to over twenty citizens in and around the city. She went through a routine series of questions, establishing each individual’s connection with the dead man, and then made appointments to interview them face to face.

Raja Khan had had contacts in many walks of life, from characters with criminal records to well-positioned state politicians. It spoke volumes for the probity of elected representatives that they kept company with such low life, but then that was the way of the world. Often during her six weeks in the Homicide Division, Rana had wished she was back in the safer, simpler world of Child Welfare.

The monsoon deluge began on time just before five, beating on the windows with the percussive music of relief after another sweltering day. The sun was going down when Rana finished speaking with the last of the dead man’s listed acquaintances and sat back. Her next two shifts would be spent interviewing petty criminals and politicians. For the past two weeks she seemed to have done nothing but conduct fruitless interviews with reluctant citizens.

She remembered the pix of the suspected killer from Madrigal; the day before she had requested further visual enhancement from the computer division. She accessed the file and downloaded a dozen pix of the computer-generated image. These showed different versions of the same man, aged so as to appear in his forties. In one the passage of time had treated the man well: his face was flushed and well-fed; in another he was thin and worn. There were pix of him bald, and with hair in various styles and degrees of grey. Rana printed out copies of each pix and slipped them into the breast pocket of her shirt. She would take them with her when she conducted the interviews tomorrow.

She consulted her com-board and read through the notes she’d made at the scene of the crime. The more she considered her suggestion about the crucifix, the less viable the idea became. She wondered if she had been merely throwing out off-the-wall ideas in an attempt to impress Vishwanath.

Nevertheless, she accessed GlobaLink on her com-screen and entered the data bank of symbols and logos. She sketched a representation of a cross of Alsace, with a dozen or so variations, and gave the search command. As she waited, she knew that this would be yet another dead end, another hopeless lead she could forget.

Thirty seconds later the screen flashed with the message that half a dozen crucifixes resembling the image she had requested were ready to be downloaded.

Rana touched the command. Instantly, the six crosses appeared on the screen. Five of them resembled the cross of Alsace, to varying degrees. The sixth crucifix was of the regulation Christian type, but with a small circle beneath each arm. Rana sat up, suddenly interested. What if this was the cross the killer had scored on the cheeks of his victims, but he had been unable to carve a representation of the two small circles? Tenuous, she knew, but worth looking into.

She requested information about the crucifix. Seconds later the screen filled with text. Rana read the article, digested the information, then went through it a second time.

The crucifix was the symbol of a Martian Christian cult known as the Church of Phobos and Deimos, hence the stylised representations of the moons. The church had been founded almost one hundred and twenty years ago by French settlers on the red planet, when two young girls belonging to a traditional Christian order claimed to have seen the image of Christ on the faces of the orbiting moons. Furthermore, they said that they had been told by God to leave Mars and settle the newly founded colony of Columbus, Sirius III, which like Mars had two small moons. Almost a hundred years ago the Church of Phobos and Deimos had raised sufficient funds to expedite the venture. They had sent their disciples to the various space academies, and in time had the expertise to crew their own colony liner. Ninety years ago the entire church, some five thousand citizens in all, had boarded the starship New Hope and embarked on their God-given quest.

They had never arrived. The liner was reported missing, presumed destroyed, a month after phase-out from Olympus spaceport. No trace of the ship was ever discovered, either in normal space or in the void. The disappearance of the New Hope and its five thousand passengers remained a mystery to this day.

Rana sat back, digesting the implications.

She accessed GlobaLink and requested every last scrap of information concerning the Church of Phobos and Deimos, existing branches, chapters and off-shoots of the church, no matter how small or removed from the original doctrine of belief. A minute later she had a lot of information concerning the church’s dogma, but nothing at all about extant chapters. The church had effectively ceased to exist with the disappearance of the New Hope.

She sent a message to Vishwanath: “I’ve come across something to do with the Christian symbol, but I don’t know how relevant it might be.”

Seconds later Vishwanath emerged from his office. He pulled a chair up to Rana’s desk and stared at the screen, minutely going through the article about the Church of Phobos and Deimos.

He shook his head. “The very fact of the church’s demise would suggest that there’s no link to the killings.”

Rana shrugged. “What if there were some church members left behind? Their descendants might have secretly carried on the traditions…” She stopped, realising how far-fetched it sounded.

“I don’t know, but we can’t dismiss it out of hand. Check with the victims to see if they had any links with Mars.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of course, all this is pure speculation, based on the presumption that the location of last night’s murder was a part of this old symbol.”

Rana felt herself redden. “Yes, sir.”

“But I’ll put an extra patrol out in the area of the other side of the arm, where the second circle would be, just in case.”

Rana sighed. “I don’t seem to be getting anywhere fast, sir.”

Vishwanath gave a paternal laugh. “You’re doing fine, Lieutenant. You can’t expect instant success. Homicide work involves much unrewarded speculation. But speculation has to be worked through and dismissed.” He smiled. “Often the breakthrough comes from the most unlikely of sources. Keep at it, Rana.”

Rana, now… She smiled as she watched him stride back to his office.

Five minutes later her screen flashed. She accessed the call. The face of a receptionist stared out at her. “We have a private outside caller wishing to speak to you, Lieutenant.”

Rana frowned. She knew few people outside the force who might want to contact her at work. “Fine,” she said. “Put him through.”

She was surprised to see a street-kid’s frightened face fill the screen.

“Vandita—this is a surprise. Is everything okay?”

The girl was in a public com-screen kiosk, obviously unaccustomed to using the technology. Rana wondered if this might account for her cowed expression.

“Rana, I need to see you.”

“Vandita? What is it? Is something—”

“I need to see you. Please, will you come right away? I’ll be by the bridge.”

And without further explanation she cut the connection.

Rana tidied her desk, deactivated the com-screen, and locked away her com-board. She was due to leave in one hour, but Vandita had sounded desperate. She could always come back here and put in the hour when she’d talked to the girl.

She hurried from the building and took a taxi to the Howrah bridge.

Vandita was squatting on her heels by the railings, a tiny figure obscured by the passing crowds, when Rana climbed from the taxi. She pushed her way through the press to the girl, who looked up at her with a timid smile.

“Vandita… ?”

“We can’t talk here. Come with me.”

She stood and gripped Rana’s hand, pulling her along the street to the steel pillars of the bridge. Rana’s mind raced through the possibilities. She wondered if one of the kids had done something wrong, which might explain the girl’s anxiety.

Vandita kicked off her plastic sandals and climbed on to the timber platform, squatting on a mattress and not meeting Rana’s gaze. Three candles provided fitful illumination. The other children had not yet arrived home. Rana removed her boots and sat cross-legged before the girl. She reached out and took her hand.

“Vandita, please, what’s wrong? I’ll do everything I can to help. You know that.”

The girl was clasping her hands around skinny shins.

Her eyes finally focused on Rana. “Last night, Rana, someone I know… he saw a terrible thing.”

“Tell me,” Rana said.

The girl remained silent.

“Do I know him? Does he live here?”

Vandita shook her head. “He lives near the spaceport, in the old scrapyard. But last night he was somewhere else, in a rich area. He saw something and told his friends, and I found out.”

“Tell me what it was, Vandita. What are you frightened of?”

The girl looked pained. “This boy, I know him only slightly. He won’t be happy if police are involved.”

“What was he doing in the rich suburb last night, Vandita?” She squeezed the girl’s hand. “I can guess, but tell me.”

“He was stealing—robbing a house.”

“And he saw something, but was too scared to tell the police because of what he was doing? Vandita, if you tell me what he saw, I’ll ignore the fact that he was burgling a house, ah-cha?”

Vandita shrugged unhappily. “He won’t like me telling you.”

“There’s no need for him to know that it was you who told the police. Now...”

For long seconds Vandita looked at Rana, and at last she whispered, “He was robbing a house in the Raneesh district—”

Rana stopped her. “Raneesh?” She was aware of her hammering heartbeat.

Vandita nodded. “He was coming from the house when he heard two men talking on a pathway nearby. One of the men tried to run, but the other man fired a laser at him. The man fell over and the other man fired again, at his face. Then the man walked away. After a few seconds the boy followed the man, perhaps a kilometre, and saw him go into a house. Then he left quickly and went home to the scrapyard near the spaceport.”

Rana swallowed. She tried to marshal her thoughts.

“Vandita,” she said at last, “do you know where the killer lived? Did the boy say?”

Vandita shook her head. “I didn’t talk to the boy. A friend of his told me. He didn’t say where the killer lived, but the boy saw the house he went into.”

Rana was nodding. Shiva… after all the work she’d done, all the complex reasoning, she might solve the case thanks to the testimony of a chance eye witness.

“Vandita, this is important. Can you tell me the boy’s name? I swear to you that I won’t tell him who told me. You’ve no reason to be afraid.” She paused. “You’ve got to tell me. We’ve got to stop this man killing again.”

Vandita nodded. “Ah-cha. The boy is called Ahmed Prakesh. You will find him in the old Tata scrapyard.”

Rana reached out and stroked the young girl’s cheek. “Vandita, you don’t know how important this is. I’ll see you later.”

Rana left the makeshift dwelling beneath the Howrah bridge and took a taxi to the spaceport. She considered contacting Vishwanath about the latest development, but decided against it. She would have to be very careful in her dealings with the boy. The presence of more than one police officer might provoke Ahmed to flight. She would handle this interview herself.

The Tata scrapyard was a vast area of tangled carbon-fibre parts neighbouring the spaceport. The mammoth carcasses of decommissioned spaceships reared against the lights of the port, arranged like the exhibits in some forgotten museum. Rana paid the taxi fare and squeezed through a rent in the polycarbon fencing. In the glaring overspill of the spaceport halogens, the scrapyard was transformed into a landscape of dark shadow and highlighted carbon fibre. Rana walked between the sliced and sectioned remains of ships that had once proudly made their way through the void, sad chunks of machines bearing the faded livery of lines long defunct.

She halted, stood quietly and listened. The only sound was from the port itself, the roar of a tug as it hauled a spaceship across the tarmac to a blast-off pit. The noise faded, replaced by silence. To her right, Rana detected the faint sound of music. When her eyes adjusted to the dark shadows, she made out movement—the figure of a young boy or girl, running towards the source of the music, no doubt to tell his or her friends of Rana’s intrusion.

Rana walked towards the bulbous shape of a derelict space-tug. The music stopped. Rana imagined a gang of street-kids, holding their breaths, watching each other in alarm.

She ducked through the entrance hatch of the old tug. Before her, half a dozen big-eyed urchins sat around the bulky shape of an ancient radio. A defective glow-tube provided stuttering half-light. A drooping stick of incense filled the old cargo hold with a sickly sweet stench.

Rana squatted on her heels and looked about the group of boys and girls. She smiled at the chubby, frightened face of a small girl. “Amita? Is that you?” she asked in Hindi.

The six-year-old smiled timorously. “Officer Rao,” the girl said. “We thought it was a security guard!”

Rana smiled. “Aren’t you going to introduce me, Amita?”

She glanced around the group, trying to detect the boy called Ahmed from his guilty expression. The difficulty was, their suspicion of the police gave them all expressions of guilt.

Amita looked at her friends. “Officer Rao works with children,” she explained. “Last year she gave me rupees for a new dress.” She glanced at Rana, smoothed her palms down the front of a dirty blue smock, and smiled proudly.

“Who are your friends, Amita?” Rana asked.

“This is Nadeen, and this is Sumar, and Kal, and Ahmed, and Ashok…”

Ahmed… a tiny boy in shorts and a ripped T-shirt that once upon a time might have been white. He was no older, Rana thought, than six or seven. He stared at Rana, a rabbit mesmerised by a cobra.

Rana nodded. “The thing is, you see, I came here hoping that you might be able to help me. I have a hundred rupees to give to anyone who can tell me something.” She paused and stared at the children. Their eyes bulged at the thought of so much money. “Last night a terrible murder was committed in the district of Raneesh, three kilometres south of here. A man was shot dead with a laser.” She glanced at Ahmed. He was staring at the ground. “I need information about this killing. I need to know where the killer lives, so that I can lock him up and stop him from killing again.”

The children looked at each other. One or two glanced furtively at Ahmed. The others, clearly not in the know, looked disappointed that they would be unable to claim the rupees.

“If anyone can tell me where the killer lives, they can have…” She reached into her pocket and counted out five twenty-rupee notes, laying them one by one on top of the old radio. The children stared, transfixed.

Rana picked up the notes and slipped them back into her breast pocket. She stood up and said, “I’ll be waiting outside. If anyone can tell me what I want to know, come and see me and I’ll give them all the rupees, ah-cha?”

She looked around the group of staring faces one last time, before ducking out of the old spaceship and standing, heart hammering, in the dazzling glare of a halogen spotlight. She could hear the frantic babble of high voices from inside. Then silence.

A minute later, appearing timidly like some hibernating animal fearing the presence of a predator, Ahmed emerged through the hatch. He stood shivering in the humid night before Rana, staring up at her with massive eyes.

“I…” He could hardly speak for fear. He gulped “I know someone who saw the killing,” he stammered. “The boy… my friend, he told me where the man lives.”

Rana knelt and took his hand. “Can you remember what your friend said?” she asked. “Can you remember where the man lives?”

Ahmed nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Ah-cha. My friend said he lives on Allahabad Marg, near Raneesh.”

Rana nodded. “Can you remember the number of the house?” Allahabad Marg was a long street that stretched for over a kilometre through the exclusive western suburbs.

The boy looked crestfallen. “No… my friend, he cannot remember.” He brightened. “But the house, it’s strange. It looks like this.” He moved to the flank of the tug and, in the dust that covered a domed engine nacelle, drew the shape of the house with his forefinger.

Rana watched the collection of odd shapes appear in the dust, a series of almost semi-circular cowlings. It was not exactly an architect’s scale drawing, but she recognised the shape. In the rich suburbs it was fashionable to have one’s house styled in polycarbon after famous world buildings.

This one, she knew, was the old Sydney Opera House.

She felt her stomach tighten in excitement. From her breast pocket, along with the rupee notes, Rana took the dozen pix of the computer-aged Madrigal laser killer.

“Ahmed, did the man look anything like any of these men?”

She showed him the pix one by one.

Ahmed frowned and shook his head. “I think he had a thin face, and silver hair.” He stopped, realising his mistake, and looked up at Rana. “I won’t be arrested?” he pleaded.

“Ahmed…” She took his fingers and kissed them. “I promise you that nothing will happen, ah-cha? Look, here are the hundred rupees.”

He reached out, slowly, and took the red notes. He held them before his eyes as if disbelieving his luck. Then he darted back inside the ship, chattering excitedly to his friends.

Rana slipped the pix back into her pocket. So the killer was thin-faced, with silver hair. It could still be the Madrigal killer, she realised, though prematurely aged. He might even have been in disguise.

She resolved to go immediately to the house on Allahabad Marg that looked like the old Sydney Opera House. She would claim that she was conducting routine enquiries, question the man about the recent killing in the area, and assess his reaction.

As she left the scrapyard and made her way to the spaceport taxi rank, she wondered whether correct procedure would be to contact Vishwanath first. But, she reasoned with herself, he had given her permission to follow her own initiative. For the past two weeks she had conducted her own interviews, followed her own hunches. Why should this case be any different?

As she climbed into the taxi and gave her destination, she found it hard to believe that soon she might be confronting the man known as the crucifix killer.