A murder mystery

A random beginning of a random murder mystery. Might turn into something...

One step inside the house and I knew that the news was seriously bad. There was a darkness in the house - not the palpable black, not the absence of light - just a lingering darkness. I could even sense the inspector's uneasiness. The lights were on - yellow lamps set at artistic intervals so that the place seemed to be lit by glowing torches rather than electric lamps. Right then, the effect was to amplify the shadows, to make them appear like savages dancing around a corpse.

One of the shadows belonged to Ruchika, Guru's wife. Her tall and usually-beautiful frame showed signs of agitation and shock. Her eyes met mine and for a second, I could sense her need to have a friendly soul near. But that was not to be. The inspector was interested in ushering me out of the hall and into the bedroom.

This was the scene of the crime, no doubts about it. It reeked of death, just in the neat arrangement of the room. Everything here was morbidly clean. The books were at right angles to the edges of the table, the clothes hung like extremely well-behaved gentlemen in a cannibal's butcher shop and the drapes refused to sway inspite of the heavy rain and winds outside. It is in a room like this that church organ music would usually rise to a crescendo. But there was no sound. Even the rain seemed muted from this room. Of course, all this were perepheral observations. What struck me as soon as I entered the room was the rather unusual angle Guru's corpse was making with the wall.

The scene was not particularly grotesque. Atleast, not in the way usually murder scenes are. There was something artistic about the way the kitchen knife was sticking out of Guru's forehead - like an evolution of Rodin's Thinker. The final outcome of the inner struggle in the form of a knife through the brain. What was scary about the whole thing was that the eyes did not look lifeless. There was nothing glazed about them. They still had the powerful, penetrating vision. Guru was intensely frowning at me while pondering upon a knife.

Another curious thing was that the room did not smell. There was nothing in the room to suggest a corpse but the corpse.

"Inspector, when did the murder take place?"

"About fifteen minutes ago."

Fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes ago a brutal randezvous had taken place right here. The time felt so near, almost as if I could just reach out and caress that moment. Just one step backward and I might be able to see it.

"Who-"

"That's what I am here for, sir. I would like it if you could answer some questions."

"What? Here?"

"Why not?"

I hesitated. It was not fear. It was something else. That creepy feeling of being watched. By Guru. No. Not Guru. The corpse.

"Can you tell me where you were fifteen minutes ago?"

"I was in my apartment!"

"How long had you been there?"

"What's the meaning of this? Are you suspecting me?"

"I have to suspect everyone. That's my job. Now, how long had you been there?"

"Not for long. I had been to my agent to discuss business. He lives in Benson Town and he can verify to this."

He had only started suspecting me and I was already giving alibis. His gaze was accusatory but I supposed that must come with the job. Or may be, it was one of the requirements of the job.

"I will see to it," he said, and his tone was such that I could make no mistake that he would see to it. His eyes were like steel, heavy and hard as he seemed to scan me. "How do you know the victim?"

"Guru? Me and Guru are good friends. Were. We used to work together at Wipro before I quit the place two years ago."

"Why did you quit?"

"How does that matter?"

"Just curiousity."

"I quit because I was getting tired of the mundane existence. I took up a career in writing and I have published one book." My one book. From the way things were going, a second book did not seem likely. I was degenerating with the failure of that one book.

I didn't expect him to pursue that line of questioning further. To a policeman like him, any information that is about books and music cannot have anything to do with a murder. I should have enlightened him on Munch and Gogh. On Dali and da Vinci.

"Do you suspect anyone?" he asked me.

"No. I don't. I mean, this is way beyond my everyday grasp of things. Something this surreal only happens in my stories. I have no idea what to do right now." My words were getting dumber and faster. I could sense my grasp of events go beyond my control. I knew I was panicking because I was not being articulate.

"How well do you know Ms Ruchika?"

"She, uh, she is a good friend of mine. I met her through Guru. All three of us regularly hang out together, you know. We keep meeting almost every other day."

It felt like talking to one of the really old computers that took forever to come up with an answer. The inspector seemed to carefully dissect every syllable and read what he could from them.

"Okay. Please do not leave this house until I have clarified further things. Till then, you can stay here."

For a minute, I thought he was going to force me into staying in that room with the corpse. At that time, the possibility did not seem laughable. Till a few minutes ago, he was Guru. Now, it was the corpse that could turn into a zombie and kill me. All my childhood hallucinations of monsters under the bed were reborn in the form of a Guru dressed in clown clothes and coming towards me slowly in that dimly-lit room, with the knife sticking out of his forehead and the inspector urging him on and laughing at my whimpering. I then realised that he was referring to just my physical presence in the house. I turned to go.

"One more thing." I stopped dead in my tracks. "What was your first book about?"

"It was about travel. About the inner journey of the soul. A travel-fiction. What does that have anything to do with this case?"

"Even the most bizarre, seemingly unconnected events can have a bearing on this murder, sir."

"Right." I walked out of the room and headed towards the bathroom.