Deadly incidents- 9

Read part 8 - here

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No reason for him to ring the old man’s doorbell, not like he desired any conversation or company with the old grouch, except perhaps a confirmation of the photograph he now had on his phone which he wished the old man would confirm as the ‘Hercules’ he’d often spoken about, except there was no answer.

‘He’s not home I think’ popped a voice from the house opposite and Mrs Bedi seemed to be stating the obvious.

‘Ah’ Pavil politely smiled and made to leave.

‘Probably gone to see his daughter’ she concluded with a smile. ‘Would you like to come in for some tea?’ she asked optimistically.

‘Uh, thank you. I need to be off. Umm’ he hesitated for a moment. ‘Do you have any idea when Mr Gor is likely to come back?’ 

‘Never is my hope’ the woman replied somewhat acidly. ‘Yesterday when my husband offered to help him climb upstairs because honestly’ she said rapidly rolling her eyes, ‘it’s excruciating to watch him walk so slow, that senile man actually guffawed on his face and made some horrid joke about elephant poaching. He’s a living tomb and it’s a miracle he can actually walk.’ She sneered. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t follow any routine as such and stays with his daughter often. Can’t really say when he might come back though. Umm..Can I help you with something?

‘The time of death has been established as anywhere between nine to ten in the morning.’ Pavil was talking, though he couldn’t tell if Khar was listening. 

‘She was seen coming back at nine from the gym so we know it to be after that and according to Mr Gor he heard a small noise, enough to vibrate his taps, If I’m to believe him, coming from that apartment some fifteen minutes past nine, which we can believe to be when the accident happened’ Pavil continued somewhat askance. 

Khar was looking at the pictures Pavil had clicked in the apartment and seemed almost amused. ‘Fifteen minutes past nine is a bit accurate.’

‘That’s the time he goes out for a walk.’ Pavil replied. ‘Khar you have to meet Mr Gor in this lifetime before he passes on that is, in case he already hasn’t’; Pavil made to point at the sky, ‘He’s not been home in two days. Anyways, you ought to meet him and see for yourself how someone can have a personality so caustic.’

‘I doubt I’d be interested in meeting someone so unpleasant. Talking of which,  how did the meeting with the husband go?’

‘Not good. I’ve never seen a more broken man. He didn’t know about the pregnancy and I wonder now if..’ Pavil let the words stay suspended because they were at this point hardly even a conjecture. ‘You know what they say about disgruntled husbands..’

‘I thought you liked the husband.’

‘You know what they say about disgruntled lovers.’ Pavil shrugged.

‘No, I don’t’

‘Well, they can be murderous.’ Pavil concluded.

‘That they might be, but how do you establish they were lovers?’

‘Oh come, Khar. Each time she invited “Toni” to her house, it had been at the same time her husband was away on tours for long periods. She meticulously specified the time for his visits and from all accounts it’s clear that he spent days living with her, often shifting in with his things and according to their last conversation a day before the, uh, accident she’d asked him to collect his “things” from her house before her husband arrived. Now, what does that mean?’ Pavil asked animatedly.

‘Just that’ Khar spoke suddenly coming back to life from the usual stance that sometimes made him look like a bored sculpture ‘if I had a lover, I’d not be sending her emails, and if I were, I’d make sure to delete them.’ 

‘But that’s the point, Khar. You don’t have a lover’ Pavil replied somewhat annoyed though Khar’s words had wormed their way in.

You know of that moment during sickness when you feel like your voice is congealed in your throat and you wish you could scream and somehow melt away the blockage that keeps you from talking; I wish I could feel that way right now, because I tried speaking, in fact, I tried screaming and nothing but a pitiful hiss made its way out which was immediately snuffed out by some sort of rag that was pushed inside my mouth till its tattered ends touched my raw throat. 

I’d heard a soft crunch that was probably my nose breaking under the blow of kick that met my face twice and I wished I could see something through the thin red film of blood that formed a burning membrane over my eyes. 

This feeling I felt was the sum of all the discomforts I’d ever known in my life, multiplied by all the aches. 

Lying prostrate, with a rose tint over my eyes to see everything bloody, unable to speak through the filthy rag, with the most insightful searing sensation beating through my throat which moments ago was being pinched to the front of my spine I looked a horrible mess, especially when I tried to haul myself up but was dragged through the hallway into another room which didn’t look like it had seen any light in months. 

I should’ve seen it but then I didn’t and another fat punch made itself vibrate through my ribs right to the part where I felt it send agonizing signals to my heart and brain alike and this time I screamed only to have my voice get absorbed in what I think was a torn off shirt sleeve balled to form a stuffing, but through all this my hearing worked absolutely fine and I heard Khar’s footsteps scrape on the welcome mat near the door. 

‘This doesn’t look like a very promising place to live.’ Khar spoke unaffectedly as he stood to survey a near battered down building with the pretensions of an office complex, or maybe at some point in its life it might have been a reasonably officious structure, but unkempt years of injury and damage had rendered it a bit of an eyesore in the corner of a bustling marketplace. 

Pavil surveyed Reyan’s message intently and followed Khar’s gaze. ‘This is where we might expect to find Toni.’ 

The two men entered the bruised architecture. One hoping to find more clues and the other knowing this to be a futile exercise.