Compass Box Killer Read Free Page B

wet, anguished eyes.
    ‘Mrs Akurle?’ he asked.
    The woman sighed and nodded.
    Inflecting his voice with the correct amount of sympathy, Virkar continued, ‘I’m very sorry to hear about Akurle saheb.’ He pulled up a chair next to hers.
    She wiped her eyes with the pallu of her sari. ‘I told him so many times to stay away from street-side vada paos. The oil is always stale. But he wouldn’t listen.’
    Virkar looked at her, nonplussed. ‘Vada paos?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, sniffing. ‘This morning he woke up with a high fever and started to vomit. He said it was because of the extra peg of scotch he drank last night…’ Mrs Akurle trailed off, dabbed her eyes again and continued, ‘…but I knew it was the vada paos. I told him to go to the hospital but he just wouldn’t listen.’ Tears welled up again in her eyes. Virkar swallowed hard, a little ashamed of his own addiction to street-side vada paos. His stomach churned involuntarily. ‘It’s just the beer,’ he told himself, hoping that the vada paos he had had for breakfast had been digested by now. He turned his attention back to the weeping woman. ‘Have faith in God, vahini. He will give you strength,’ Virkar said, bending down and touching her feet as a mark of respect.
    He rose and exited the room into the passageway, making his way to the swivel doors through the growing crowd of policemen. He noticed that many of them had covered their noses. Only then did the strong stench of vomit hit him—he had been too preoccupied to notice it earlier. Reeling, he bravely stepped inside Akurle’s cabin. The sight made his stomach heave again, this time so violently that the beer in his belly rose to his throat. Clamping his hand over his mouth and nose, he turned his full attention to what lay before him.
    Senior Inspector Akurle was seated in his oversized chair, his upper body sprawled across his desk as if he was taking a nap, except for the fact that his eyes were wide open. His mouth was gaping and the contents of his stomach were spread across the glass top of his table in a smelly, slushy, dirt-coloured paste. Mrs. Akurle had been right: small bits of semi-digested vada pao were spread generously in the slushy vomit along with flecks of blood.
    As he had been informed by ACP Wagh, the station’s Police Inspector in charge of crime (PI Crime), a sub-inspector from the detection unit and a government doctor were waiting for him inside. The sub-inspector saluted Virkar while the PI Crime picked his teeth with a steel paper clip that had been straightened to reach the deep recesses of his mouth. Virkar ignored him. The government doctor looked up at Virkar and said something that was muffled by his white surgical mask—all he could make out was ‘food poisoning’ . Virkar raised a curious eyebrow and said, ‘I’ve never seen such a severe case of food poisoning.’ The government doctor now took off his mask and spoke in a tone that bordered on condescension, ‘It happens. It’s because of the spurious oil used for frying the vada paos.’ The PI Crime added with a bored expression, ‘I have taken the vadapaowala into custody. He was using spurious palmolein oil. I have already sent it to the forensic lab for testing.’
    Virkar nodded distractedly as he let his eyes wander over the crime scene. ‘Glad to see that you’ve talked to Mrs Akurle and reached a quick conclusion based on what she said. I’m sure she will be happy.’ The sub-inspector nodded with pride while Virkar continued, his voice dripping with sarcasm, ‘Maybe you should also consider my point of view. I would like to put forth, for your consideration, the proposition that it was not food poisoning. Instead, in my humble opinion, some kind of poison was mixed in his food.’
    The PI Crime opened his mouth to protest but Virkar silenced him by raising his hand. ‘If it
was
the spurious oil used in the vada pao, we would have received other complaints of food poisoning by