Vol 2: Under The Skin - Prologue

‘I could use a drink,’ thought Omkar, staring at the small paper cup that he wished held something other than tea.

His focus before was concentrated mostly towards the bulletin board hung on the wall. Several photographs pinned on the red velvet, threads of red, yellow and green connecting them all. Well, mostly connected by red.

Thirteen photographs—six men, four women and three children.

All reported missing. All still missing.

All, except the five whose bodies, were found lying around cold and dead with a giant hole inbetween their eyes. Their loss was signified by marking a giant red X on their photographs.

Trying to calm his nerves, Omkar pressed his hands on his face, closed his eyes and felt the warm breath hit his face.

‘Just for a few seconds…’

A barely functioning fan, along with pulsating heat and a case that got more and more complicated as time went on, brought a certain lethargy on Omkar’s mind.

“You look tired,” a feminine voice interrupted Omkar’s open-eyed nap, “Aarav giving you too much trouble?”

Looking up, Omkar was met with the strong jawed face of Sub-inspector Nawira Bahmani standing in their usual Khaki uniform.

“No, he’s in his rebellious teen phase but not enough to give me trouble,” he said chuckling, squinting his eyes, trying to get the sleep out of them. ‘Oh well, tea will have to do,’ he thought, drinking the small cup of mildly hot tea in one shot.

“Really? Your kid in a rebellious phase? Hard to imagine…”

“Well, it hardly counts as rebellious. All he did was come home later than usual and not pick up my calls. I’m honestly a little disappointed. Makes me feel I failed to teach him how to have fun…”

“Tell me about it,” Nawira said as she pulled the chair in front of his desk back and sat on it, “Idris is doing the same thing. Late night practices, taking any excuse to just go out, barely returning my calls.”

“Hmm...do you think they are...you know?” Omkar raised his hands making a gesture of two bird beaks smacking against each other gently.

“What? No...I mean, I don’t think he plays for that side. Does Aarav?” Nawira inquired with a raised brow.

“No, not really, I think...” Omkar chuckled but felt a little embarrassed for not knowing something like that about his nephew. “I wonder if this is just their way of trying to deal with…you know, ‘that’?” Omkar asked for her opinion.

“After all this time?” Nawira said, doubtful at first but then a moment later shrugged at some sudden realisation, “Then again, that could be it. Heck, I’m not sure I’ve completely dealt with it…” She said, preparing to get the packet of cigarettes out before deciding against it.

She smiled a small smile, one that is used to lighten a blow, a harsh memory. But Omkar knew that some memories can’t be brushed off that easily.

And who to know that better than them? Two officers in the same room. Both acting as single parents, both still trying to move on from their past—his from his loss of family, her from her divorce.

Both, perhaps, failing at it.

‘Atleast I am,’ Omkar thought.

“Guess everyone has their own to deal with the emptiness, right?” Nawira voiced her thoughts, her fingers trying to defy her mind by getting inside her pockets, pulling out the small stick of smoke. Instead, her mind won and decided to rather make them busy by picking up the empty paper cup and throwing it in the dust bin near his desk.

“They do, indeed…” Hers was smoke, his was a glass of liquid that numbed his pain enough to not let him think about the day he lost his family. His brother, his wife. His unborn child.

Ironically, it was also the day he was thrusted into the role of fatherhood.

Each day he wondered if what he was doing was right or not. Whether he was failing his dead elder brother or making him proud instead.

With each gulp of liquefied amber he took, he hoped it was the latter.

“Well, that aside, you came here to tell me something?”

“Yes, I did. Although, unfortunately it’s not really good news…” Nawira said, handing him a file with a couple of pictures in it. All of them belonged to a black haired woman with dark skin and a skinny body with a gaping hole on her forehead.

Another one…

“Do we have a name?” Omkar asked, shuffling through the pictures taken from different angles of the crime scene.

No sign of struggle or damage except a palm sized hole in her chest right where her heart should’ve been.

“Nazma Daruwala,” Nawira said, “26 years old, worked in a tech company in the next town. Lived there too.”

Makes sense why she wasn’t on our list. “Let me guess, reported missing?”

“Yup, her fiancé was the one who reported her missing two weeks ago.”

Guessed correctly. Though Omkar wished it wasn’t correct.

“Who found the body?”

“Her father,” she said. “He found her on his way to work in the park near school.”

“God…” Omkar shuddered at the thought of seeing one’s child dead in their arms, a memory he was all too familiar with already. “How you talked to him?”

“Not in detail. He just said the usual. Good girl, smart and nice, everyone liked her, no enemies. She was a little low since her mother’s loss two months back but other than nothing unusual.”

“If no one had enemies, there would be no murders happening,” Omkar shook his head. Still, loss of a daughter after just 2 months of his wife’s death. Omkar knew how broken the man would be.

Over the past week, they had come up with five different bodies, all in the same condition—a hole in between their eyes.

Yet, except for their wound, these people had nothing in common.

They all had different backgrounds, different cultures and communities, no mutual friends, different ages—hell, one of them was just a little kid.

The only common factor between them was they all had gone missing over the past few weeks but that led them to nowhere too.

They had a serial killer loose in their town and they had no idea who he was or why he chose these people.

Adding salt to their gaping deep wounds, the hole was of a post-mortem nature. Added to the bodies after they had died.

Usually, that fact combined with no other wounds or defensive markings meant that the cause of death was some sort of poison.

A harder lead towards the killer but still, manageable with time.

Yet, even that wasn’t the case. Each and every victim died due to a punctured heart, one caused by a stabbing from a knife. An event that would be impossible without first piercing the chest!

It made no sense!

Closing the file, Omkar rubbed his forehead, trying to rub the headache out of him. Not that it worked in the slightest.

The only thing that would help him was catching this killer but at the moment, he had no clue as to where to even begin the investigation.

No matter what angle they conjured up and tried to follow, it all ended up in a bust, pushing them back to square one again and again.

“You okay?” Nawira asked, worry evident in her eyes but Omkar knew that she knew exactly how he felt. Afterall, she felt the same.

“No, and right now it doesn’t matter. Have you contacted the fiancé yet?”

“Yes, he’s on his way.”

Who was it?

Who was the sick fuck doing such monstrous acts?!

And why?!

‘I guess that’s my job, though, to figure out the who and why,’ Omkar thought.

A thought that sometimes made him hate his job.

“Okay. Till then, find out everything we can about her. Who she was, her friends, her enemies despite what her father says, where she went before her disappearance; everything,” Omkar ordered, closing the file and handing it to Nawira. “I’ll talk to her father in a minute.”

“Yes, Sir,” Nawira said, giving him a curt salute before heading off to do the task assigned to her.

Now alone in his cabin amidst shelves filled with case files and walls devoid of any photographs except the one of his family and the victims of this particular case, Omkar pulled open one of the lower drawers of his desk.

The one with a small bottle of whiskey inside it.

It was tempting to pick that up. Tempting to pour it in a little glass and fill that emptiness inside him, replace it with that red liquid. To forget and numb the memories.

Very tempting indeed.

But he didn’t.

He instead picked up the case files of previous cases and closed the drawer.

To not give a hundred percent of his focus was a disservice to the victims, a dishonesty towards the symbol he wore on his uniform.

Dishonesty towards his family and its values.

Opening the files he sighed. ‘Back to work,’ he thought, his eyes glazing past the closed drawer, ‘for now.’