Category: Fiction
Rights: All rights available
When DCP Rita Ferreira and her team are assigned to the first murder, they have no inkling they are actually investigating the second. The first corpse, yet to be discovered, is already rotting elsewhere. Identical MO, the two men, over 50, have been hacked to death and decapitated. Both philanderers. But the lack of a cooling-off period between the two murders tells Rita it isn’t a serial killer’s work. Someone is exacting revenge.
Some old photographs reveal the killer is targeting six men.
Then, a tenuous financial link leads the team to the third man, but before they can investigate him, he is murdered. Whoever it is, they’re not giving the police much time.
The fourth man is murdered outdoors, on the seaside. The killer seems to be in a hurry to finish the job he started, and is getting bolder with every kill.
The police identify the fifth man, but—as Rita and the team discover—he has long died of a cardiac arrest. It’s panic time. If the killer gets to the sixth man before the police, it might be his final kill. He’s not left any clues, and could well disappear after the fifth murder, never to resurface.
For the first time, the Commissioner of Mumbai Police, Sanjay Saxena aka Sexy gives Rita an ultimatum: “You’ve got 48 hours…”
And all that Rita and the team have until now is that a young girl escaped her home in Amritsar, and a poor man once sought financial help from a philanthropist. Where did their paths cross?
The author: Vish Dhamija