Deadly incidents -2

Read part 1 - here

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‘I wouldn’t say they were the kind of couple that finished each other's sentences’ Mrs Bedi beamed while pouring the policemen tea, which looked far too milky for Pavil’s liking and he immediately made up his mind to dismiss it. 

‘I would say we are far more entertaining and jolly,’ she continued with a guffaw as a consequence to which her entire body jiggled. 

The portly couple eagerly waited for Pavil and Reyan to enjoy the hospitality they offered but on seeing no movements from their side they exchanged disappointed glances and fidgeted with their saucers, ‘but they were a near perfect couple who shared a beautiful marriage’ she finished with a more serious tone. 

‘We’ve never had policemen and detectives come to our house before.’ Mr Bedi exclaimed as a way of explanation regarding their excitement. ‘If you discount my uncle’s son, that is. he’s in the army and..’ ‘So you saw the husband, Anik, come home this morning?’ Pavil interrupted the chubby husband with some crudeness with the aid of his hangover.

‘Yes, well, we were coming back from a walk.’ Mrs Bedi immediately replied. ‘We met him downstairs, in fact right as we entered the compound. He was carrying a bag.’ 

‘He’d gone on a tour’ Mr Bedi ever quick to finishes sentences added. ‘He often goes on tours. If I’ve seen them kissing in the apartment corridor once, I’ve seen them a hundred times with his travel bag and her goodbyes. It’s sad she met with such a deadly incident.’ 

‘You know we got to know each other better in the gym, though I had to quit because I realized I didn’t like sweating as much, she never missed, going early every morning and coming back at nine. In fact it was a joke between us’ Mrs Bedi smiled sweetly ‘whenever we saw her coming back in her gym clothes we knew it had to be nine in the morning and time for us to go out for a walk, just as we knew it today’ she checked her smile and replaced it with a despondent pout.  

‘Who knew’ Mr Bedi sighed and exhaled dramatically.

‘So you saw Anik come home this morning’ Pavil continued ‘and saw him enter the house?’

‘Oh yes, around 10:15. That's when we come back from our walk. He keyed open his door and bid us a good day and we continued upstairs, but we had scarcely reached our house when we heard a scream’ Mrs Bedi clarified with a wide-eyed expression, almost theatrical in her fright and surprise. 

‘We ran down’ her husband continued in the spirit of finishing his wife's thoughts ‘and Anik was white as a sheet, he was screaming in the corridor, fumbling with his phone.’

‘The door was open and he was shaking like a leaf. Is she dead, she’s not moving, is she dead, he kept screaming and pulled my husband’s arm.’ 

‘I think he just wanted me to check and confirm if she was dead.’

‘But of course she was dead’ Mrs Bedi lowered her voice almost to a whisper, ‘there was blood on his hands and the way he was sobbing was evident enough.’

‘She’s not breathing, she’s not breathing, he screamed.’ The husband lowered his voice in affiliation to his wife’s whispers, ‘and he pulled me to come and check.’

‘But I wouldn’t let my husband near a dead body you know, nor will I see it. It’s so frightful and creepy.’ Mrs Bedi shuddered.

‘He was about to call the ambulance when we suggested he call the police instead.’ the couple chimed in unison and looked at each other endearingly. Pavil found his stomach threatening an ejection. 

‘And how long would you say you heard him scream after he bid you a good day?’  Pavil asked.

‘Moments, not even a minute. He’d entered, we climbed a flight of stairs and it didn’t even take a full half minute when we heard him scream.’ Mrs Bedi stroked her ample chin and retorted with a brooding recall.

Suddenly with a jump, her eyes narrowed and she looked astonished at the two men. ‘Do you think he killed her? oh, my god. That’s impossible. I mean it’s not even a possibility. He entered his house and came out half mad within seconds, moreover that man is practically a cow.’ 

Her husband nodded approvingly in the background. 

‘Also we’d have heard something. At least some noise, a thump or a crack.’

‘Hmm.’ Pavil pursed his lips. ‘do you often go out for a walk?’

‘As often as we can’ Mr Bedi replied with a grimace ‘though I think I’ve sprained my ankle and tomorrow..’ ‘Is there anyone else whom you might have seen come or go at the same time?’ Pavil callously cut off the man's complaints and stared at them with the annoyance of a hungover police officer.

The Bedi’s looked puzzled and didn’t know how to respond. ‘I uh..we..we..don’t remember seeing anyone.’ Mrs Bedi replied apologetically.

‘So no one who could have met Mrs Chowk this morning or hear anything?’

‘As I said, we both saw her from the balcony at nine when she came back from the gym, and the only other person who lives in this building apart from their family and ours is our neighbour, an extremely old man.’ She spoke with a sneer. ‘and I doubt he heard anything, so wretchedly old is he that it’s gross.’ 

‘That’s not nice sweety’ her husband said disapprovingly. 

‘oh come on, he’s impolite, rude and always complaints and smells of old people food.’ 

‘Right.’ Pavil and Reyan got up to leave.

Mrs Bedi looked at the untouched cups of tea with slight annoyance. ‘fat chance you’ll find him though. That decrepit lunatic leaves in the mornings to sit in the park and scowl at children or whatever it is that old people do.’ 

‘Or stay with his daughter when he’s not doing that.’ Mr Bedi finished her sentence.

The eager couple had been right. There was no answer to the constant ringing of his doorbell and the two policemen left with too many answers and too few questions. 

‘We might have to visit them again?’ Reyan inquired.

‘If the story develops any further then we might, though I hope this incident is only just that, an unfortunate accident.’

 Pavil felt the painkiller diminishing his headache and he left Reyan at the site to question around some more and talk to the old neighbour while he drove to the station to have a word with the grieving husband.

It’s always the husband, isn’t it? 

I could do with a good cup of tea. Pavil thought to himself and found the suffering man still looking as bewildered and broken as he’d last seen him at the apartment.

Deadly incidents

Pavil hesitated a fleeting moment before entering the apartment, trying to gather his thoughts, belying the hangover which continued to trounce with a vengeance he didn’t realize would haunt him after the celebration of his thirty sixth birthday which he’d celebrated in the placidness of his home just the night before, alone, with a bottle of vodka or maybe two, because the next thing he knew he was buttoning up his shirt while trying to fathom the existence of buttons when he was called to visit a scene not too far from his home, thank god for that, a routine inspection of an accident where a dead woman was found by her husband in their apartment. 

He was used to such mornings and only hoped that the dead body in question wouldn’t be the driving force behind a glorious purge that his stomach and head seemed near bent upon.

It was with some relief that he saw another colleague already at the premises ready to give an update.

The enervated grieving husband sat on the couch, his head in his hands with a blank expression on his face. He looked disoriented, even misplaced in these surroundings. A small travel bag lay near the entrance of the apartment and Pavil soon found himself in the bathroom where a woman lay dead on the floor.

Judging by runnels of blood pooling in the joints between the tiles on the floor and a little puddle of blood under her head the conjectures came easy. 

She was hit on the head by something hard and that was probably enough to kill her. 

Still dressed in gym clothing she looked like she was about to take a shower, Pavil deduced from the wet floor in the shower area.

‘Did you turn off the shower?’ he asked looking nowhere in particular but making sure he was heard by his colleague because Pavil knew his eyes were bloodshot and he’d hate anyone to come in the vicinity of his breath. 

‘No sir, it was the husband who did’ he said looking at the statement. 

‘The husband, right’ Pavil muttered to himself. Bending down he looked at the dead woman more closely. 

She wasn’t yet corpse-like. Her body which Pavil felt by touching her neck was still warm which meant the incident was far too recent. 

She must have been pleasant looking, Pavil thought. A life snuffed out this morning for whatever reasons. What a waste.

He looked around the bathroom and noticed something near the washbasin area which he saw by the twitch on his colleague’s face that it had already been seen. 

‘Sir, looks like she banged her head on this granite’ his colleague spoke with some brevity, Reyan his name was perhaps, Pavil tried to concentrate but a belch broke his stream of thoughts and he bid his colleague go on with his deductions and taken statements while Pavil inspected the washbasin area that looked like it might have been the culprit.

A large white porcelain washbasin where a few strands of hair lay scattered was inlaid in a massive black granite platform on which lay assorted cosmetics, toiletries, hairbrushes and its edge looked smeared in a thick splodge of what Pavil only hoped was blood, but his experiences taught him much about gore and he knew it wasn't just blood, moreover there were a few strands of hair stuck to it as well.

That the dead woman lay almost under it was confirmation enough for his colleague’s theory.

‘Reyan’ Pavil spoke with a wince and hope that he said the name correct ‘before I talk to the husband, tell me exactly what he had to say when you first came in.’ 

‘And that is it?’ Pavil asked with some skepticism. ‘You entered the house and found your wife dead? That’s all? You said here’ Pavil pointed at the leafs of paper in Reyan’s hand ‘that you immediately called the police. What prompted you to call the police instead of an ambulance?’ He asked purposefully doubtful.

As anticipated the husband looked rattled and his face that was devoid of any colour moments ago immediately dyed a rich red.

‘I..uh..well I was about to call for the ambulance but they suggested I should call up the police instead.’ He timidly swallowed to Pavil’s raised eyebrows.

‘They?’ Pavil sputtered.

‘The..uh, family upstairs’ Anik said raising his finger to the ceiling. ‘The couple that lives upstairs, our neighbours.’ His voice was shaky and it looked like he had difficulty bringing out the words. The man was obviously aggrieved and his tears had run down to stain the front of his shirt in large patches. 

This was the most miserable day of his life and the blackness of its bitterness ran through his features, for there were moments of annoyance in his visage that deformed to anguish, bewilderment and silent blubbering breaths all repeating themselves in no particular order.

‘Sir the couple upstairs are the ones who saw him come into the house this morning.’ Reyan ever quick with his information came to the rescue. 

‘Load the body into the ambulance and cordon off the area. 

Have all the pictures been taken? Good. Have the husband taken over to the police station. Lock this apartment Reyan and let’s have a small chat with, what was their name again?’

‘The nameplate said Bedi’s in unapologetic Joker font, exaggerated with colourful flowers crudely etched on the clay plate. It looked like a coarse DIY job more than artistic self-expression but Pavil finally having had a cup of tea, laboriously brought over by a constable from a tea stall nearby with a tasteless biscuit felt greatly refreshed even optimistic that this bit of formal questioning would soon be over with and he’d finally be able to deal with his hangover in peace, because if anything this looked mostly straightforward and the husband’s alibi seemed to be strengthening each moment.

A woman comes home from the gym, goes to the bathroom for a shower, slips, bangs her head on a granite slab, dies. End of story.

But how did she slip, or what did she slip on? 

Pavil tried erasing these thoughts from his head because they were probably unnecessary and was there any point to peeling into something so obvious? Nitpicking really. But there was a dead body, someone who could have been alive.

He was still trying to focus his eyes and tame his breath by furiously chewing a spearmint gum when the door opened to an overly excited couple who looked a bit on the corpulent side and much too eager to share their observations and dig in all the details about this whole incident.

This might take longer than I anticipated, Pavil thought to himself while suppressing another drunk belch. 

‘Tell the constable to get me some aspirins as well’ Pavil whispered to a very understanding colleague.