Deadly incidents -3

Read part 2 - here

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was warm that day, as warm as August can be and the husband was sitting alone in a small room at the station which seemed claustrophobic in the summer heat. Airless and stale as the room was, the man looked delirious and he was muttering something under his breath.

Pavil absorbed his entire story and it was a near echo of all that he’d heard since morning. There wasn’t the slightest diversion during cross questioning, his every word fitting in with his statement and with all information provided by the Bedi’s.

It was all rather simple really.

He’d come back from the railway station, reached home and found his wife dead on the bathroom floor. 

Anik had understood she’d hit her head on the large granite platform and kept hoping she’d move. 

Pavil realized with a sad startle that this suffering husband was still unsure if she was dead, and hoped that they’d have been able to revive her in the ambulance.

‘There will be an autopsy conducted today’ Pavil spoke with a wince and tried to divert his eyes from the man’s face that immediately burgeoned with grief. Despite his swollen eyes, reddened face and current dismal bearings, it wasn’t difficult to ascertain that he was a rather pleasant looking man if a bit on the plain side of the spectrum but that could be an added appeal since Pavil knew some women to like that aspect in men. 

He had a rather tidy appearance and Pavil liked that he looked so orderly despite his misfortune.

‘We were extremely happy together’ Anik had been saying. ‘This happiness wasn’t meant to be so short-lived. Is life really that easy to break? That you fall and die? This is ridiculous. An inanimate object can’t just kill someone. Perhaps she woke up in the ambulance.’ his face bore a sad hopeful smile and Pavil knew denial when he saw one.

‘Mr Chowk, life is frail and easily broken. I’m sorry this happened.’

Pavil immediately wanted to retract his every word. They came down so heavy-handed. It was a good thing he didn’t mention the statistics regarding bathroom accidents resulting in deaths, that would have been in poor taste perhaps, and he let these words slowly fade in that small room. 

‘Right’ Pavil suddenly spoke. ‘There’s nothing more for now, but we’d like to wait until the autopsy is done and you’re..everything is in the clear.’

Anik’s eyes suddenly widened but he understood what the policeman meant.  ‘Yes, uh, I understand.’ he spoke softly.

Pavil couldn’t help but notice a certain poise despite his distress, and a maturity far beyond his age. ‘You cannot go back to your apartment. Maybe you have a relative or friend?’

‘I have none. I will stay at a hotel until.’ he gulped and tried to keep the tears staining his cheeks again. 

‘I’d need you to visit again and inform us of where you’d be staying.’

‘Yes, I will. I..uh, I won’t be far away. Just anywhere nearby.’ 

The man was bereaved and Pavil found himself liking the fellow. He was probably the same age as himself and a bit of a loner.

It was well past noon. Over three hours since the body was found which was probably on its way to the autopsy lab or perhaps even laid down on Dr Chattur’s table. 

Pavil decided a purge would be good for his system because his hangover wasn’t relenting and it wouldn’t do him any favours to get sick in the hospital while the doctor monotonously prattled on about organs and intestinal matter.

‘Of course, I can’t give you the full report now.’ Dr Chattur’s clinical infection jarred Pavil’s ears as he tried to ignore the formaldehyde stench that overpowered the entire hospital.

The doctor had just finished painting a colourful picture of cadaver preservation and Pavil resented shaking the doctor's hands.

Avi’s body lay on the table looking more and more like just a body than a person that she had been few hours prior.  

Pavil rubbed the tips of his fingers at the recollection of lingering warmth on her neck which was long gone now.

Her face was ashen, and she looked far from ever waking up. 

She was still clad in her gym clothes and the doctor was mumbling inaudibly. His forceps were picking tiny hairs from her clothes and both the doctor and the policeman exchanged suspicious glances. 

Pavil avoided looking at Dr Chattur’s careful survey of her injury and instead concentrated on the dead woman’s hair that was rather long and most certainly unlike the short probably male hair found on her clothes. 

‘Well, she did bash her head on something hard and blunt.’ He finally spoke. ‘A hard, blunt edge, because this wound right here’, his gloved fingers pointed towards the thick gore slicked dent at the back of her head ‘would have looked a lot different had she fallen, say on the floor or some such surface and cracked her skull.’ He looked up at Pavil. ‘understand what I mean?’ 

'Yes’ Pavil frowned. 

‘So you’re saying this could have happened had a thick granite platform edge struck her head?’ 

‘Yes, perhaps, but I can be more precise once I’ve done a full autopsy. Until then, here is something you can play with.’ Dr Chattur pointed at the bagged strands of small hair. 

‘This would have to do for now.’ Pavil sighed and made to the bathroom.

Reyan didn’t have much information to offer, except that the watchman had the same details to relay and nothing much to say and that the old man hadn’t returned.

‘Most people have only good things to say about the couple and not once did anyone even consider foul play.’ Reyan added.

‘Also, this just came in for you’ he handed Pavil a thick envelope of photographs from the morning and left with the bagged strands of hair found on Avi’s clothing.

This was turning out to be a strange day. Pavil half wanted to begin drawing a chart and its flow of events to explain this incident better to himself but at the same time, he wanted to believe it to be just what it was. An accident. There had been countless such accidents. Accidents not murders and this one was too, wasn’t it? 

He perused each photograph from the morning. His memory drawing forth from the recesses of his mind every detail he’d spotted to cross check with the pictures as he remembered and there wasn’t anything amiss, except something looked wrong, or in fact, everything looked so right.

‘Goddamit’ Pavil muttered to himself and left for the apartment.

It wasn’t large, but not too small either. Well designed and minimal in its aesthetics that though efficient and pleasing lacked colour and some vigour. 

There were pictures of the couple dotted all over the lounge area in small frames and they did look happy, even wonderful. Their allure seemed symbiotic. Together they looked even better than they did individually. 

It was just an accident. 

The bathroom was functional and something out of an interior design magazine. Everything in its place, clean mirrors, sparkling porcelain. 

The dead body was found in the narrow space between the shower enclosure and the wash basin area, where also a bath towel hung on a rack.  

If someone were to slip and fall wouldn’t they grab onto something at least, like a bath towel?

Nothing seemed to have been dislodged from its place, even though they were at arm's length. A few innocuous cosmetics lay on the black granite but they didn’t look like they’d been displaced. 

Of course, it could also be that it all happened suddenly and she didn’t have time to react. 

A small cabinet had been constructed under the sink and Pavil checked all the drawers to find them filled with more toiletries, bath towels, face towels, candles and other perfumed items he didn’t recognize but knew them to belong to a woman’s bathtub vanity. 

He grunted as he bent down to check the floor under the cabinet and found a golden bullet which on further inspection turned out to be a lipstick of some sort that had been uncapped. 

He stood back up and scanned the granite platform to find something that might fit the golden body of the lipstick and sure enough amongst the strewn cosmetics he found the cap.

Well, how did you get down there then?