The Girl in the Glass Case Read online

  DEVASHISH SARDANA

  THE GIRL IN THE GLASS CASE

  Keep Your Girls Safe.

  Boys Safer.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Prologue

  Day 1

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Day 2

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Day 3

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Day 4

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  Day 5

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  Epilogue

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  EBURY PRESS

  THE GIRL IN THE GLASS CASE

  Devashish Sardana is the author of the bestselling The Apple, which won the second prize at the Amazon India Pen to Publish Literary Contest in 2019. He also writes 100-word thrillers on 10x10 Thrills, a blog on both Facebook and Instagram, with 1.6 lakh followers. The blog reached over 1.2 crore readers in 2020.

  Devashish is a small-town boy from India who grew up with big dreams and an even bigger imagination. After graduating from IIM Ahmedabad, he sharpened his storytelling skills as a brand-builder in a Fortune 100 company for over ten years. Devashish lives in Singapore with his wife and college sweetheart, Megha. Before the pandemic, he flitted across the globe selling hope in a jar (beauty creams).

  To know more about Devashish, please visit devashishsardana.com. To read his 100-word thrillers, please visit:

  Instagram: instagram.com/10x10thrills

  Facebook: facebook.com/10x10thrills

  To Suman, the brave woman who raised me.

  To Megha, the fearless woman who raises

  me up to more than I can be.

  Prologue

  The Night of 2 December 2019

  ‘Shit, it’s cold!’ cursed constable Daya Pandey, as he stepped out of the police van.

  Gusts of chilly, unforgiving wind bit into his nostrils and rushed into his lungs, where they slashed his insides like jagged stones. His eyes watered due to the icy air. He rubbed his arms and stamped his feet as he moved around the vehicle in a bid to shake off the winter chill.

  He sniffled and pulled the muffler over his nose. The worn-out rag smelled of mothballs, the pungent odour of naphthalene prickling his frosty, sensitive nose. He gagged on the smell. Every year in February, the family stored all their winter clothing in a sea of mothballs only to retrieve them the following winter—free from moths but smelling like a goddamned embalmed corpse.

  Daya knocked on the van’s passenger window. His partner Ajay, half asleep, rolled down the window, but only enough to hear Daya’s voice. They couldn’t risk burdening the geriatric van’s overworked heater against the arctic blasts of the night air.

  ‘I’ll take a quick look round and be back. Don’t doze off again,’ said Daya.

  ‘Yeah, yeah . . .’ Ajay flicked his hand as if shooing away a pesky fly, rolled up the window and closed his eyes.

  Daya sighed and turned away from the van. He knew Ajay would already be asleep. It wasn’t surprising. It was 3.40 a.m. The city of Bhopal was fast asleep in its cocoon, enveloped in a heavy fog that made it impossible to see beyond ten metres but they still had hours before their night shift ended.

  Experience had taught him that if he took a little stroll, he’d feel more awake. So, Daya hunched, put his hands into his trouser pockets and sauntered into the side street—the ‘cursed’ street as the locals called it. The road ran along the high brick wall surrounding the deserted Union Carbide factory, the epicentre of one of the biggest industrial disasters in the world: the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984. The air around the factory always felt heavy with the weight of its historical significance, but tonight Daya felt it more strongly than any other night of the year. It was 2 December, the anniversary of the tragedy of that terrible, terrible night. Sixteen thousand deaths. Fifty lakh disabled. The government had made promises—from responsible disposal of the factory’s toxic waste and healthcare compensation for the survivors to provision of potable drinking water now that the groundwater was contaminated. The promises were never kept.

  The victims, their families and activist groups had staged dharnas earlier in the day, as they did every year. Lifeless placards lay strewn in the street, not to mention empty plastic bottles and crumpled foil containers stained with dried curry. The event attracted fewer and fewer participants each year. It was like trying to keep a fire burning while the winds of time threatened to destroy it. Now, at this ungodly hour, not a single protester was in sight. Only Daya and his partner remained: the unlucky ones on a night patrol.

  Daya heard hurried footsteps ahead. Someone was rushing towards him. He stopped, straining to peer through the smoky fog. He held his breath.

  A silhouette came into view.

  Daya gripped his baton, ready to strike if required. He waited.

  The silhouette came closer. A lone street lamp struggled to bathe in light the lopsided figure that seemed to be carrying a large suitcase in one hand. A woman, possibly in her late twenties emerged. Daya relaxed slightly. The woman was clad entirely in black. A chiffon sari draped over her slender frame beneath a cardigan. In contrast to her dark clothing, her lips were painted gaudy pink, the lipstick shimmering despite the dim light. The only other colour that stood out was the reflective logo—the white swoosh—on her Nike sneakers. Daya had rarely seen a woman wear sneakers with a sari. Maybe it was a new fashion trend. His wife would know about these things. His fashion sense started and ended with the khaki colour of his uniform.

  On seeing Daya, the woman averted her gaze and immediately wrapped the pallu of her sari around her face, covering every inch of her face except her eyes. As she emerged further from the fog, Daya realized that the box in her hand was one of those coolers meant to keep beers chilled, a rectangular blue box with a white lid. It was the size of a large suitcase. But noticing the ease with which she carried it, Daya knew the cooler was empty.

  Where is she taking an empty cooler at 3.45 a.m.?

  The woman met his gaze, slowed down and tightened the pallu that covered her face.

  ‘Kahan se aa—’

  Suddenly, loud, grating barks erupted behind him. He turned around. The sound echoed in the empty street before Daya saw five dogs charging through the mist towards him. He raised his baton. Good for non-lethal close combat but nothing special. Daya gripped the baton with clammy hands, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He pointed the baton at the charging dogs as if giving them fair warning.

  Strike only if needed, he told himself.

  Daya stepped off the tar road, retreating into a street lined with mushy shrubs and mulch. His back jammed against the rough brick wall that cordoned off the abandoned Union Carbide facility. His hands gripped the baton, shaking, poised to strike
. The dogs were almost upon him.

  And just when he thought the pack leader would pounce on him, the dogs ran right past him, completely ignoring his presence.

  Daya took a deep breath, relief pouring over him. Beads of sweat ran down his back. He heaved a deep sigh and lowered his baton. He pushed himself off the wall, and looked up and down the street.

  The woman had vanished.

  ‘Behenchod!’ he cursed aloud.

  In the distance, the dogs were barking like the whole city was on fire.

  Daya was relieved to have escaped the stray canines’ jaws, but he still felt uneasy. Something wasn’t right. The woman had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and carrying a cooler that didn’t fit. And now she had disappeared.

  Daya set off in the direction that the dogs had taken. If his senses were tingling, the heightened senses of the animals would be on fire. He quickened his pace, his beer belly wobbling like squishy jelly, his heavy breathing leaving behind puffs of white mist.

  The barking was incessant now. If it was loud before, the noise had risen to a clamour now, intent on waking the dead. As he followed the barks through the blinding fog, he knew from the rising volume that the dogs had stopped running. They had found something.

  Daya ran faster.

  He reached the Bhopal Gas Memorial site and slowed his pace. A single street lamp lit the famed sculpture by Dutch artist Ruth Waterman-Kupferschmidt: the sculpted figure of a mother crying, one hand covering her face and the other holding her dead child. Daya’s heart sank. It always did when he saw the sculpture. A multitude of melted candles stood scattered around the memorial.

  A screeching sound, like claws scratching on glass, pulled Daya’s attention away from the mournful figure.

  A few feet from the memorial sat a three-foot display case. The dogs were scratching, jumping and gnawing at the glass. Built-in lights illuminated flatteringly the contents inside the case, like display cases used to showcase diamonds at jewellery stores, casting an ethereal glow in the darkness of the night.

  Rather than priceless jewellery, inside the glass case stood a doll. A Barbie doll. She wore a hot pink tank top, a matching pleated miniskirt and white sneakers. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail, not a single hair out of place. Her caramel skin glistened as the light bounced off it, only to be reflected back by the glass. Her eyes were open and the edges of her mouth curled up as if amused by the futile efforts of the dogs trying to break through the glass.

  The dogs were relentless now, clawing and biting with their sharp teeth.

  Why are these mutts so interested in a doll?

  He moved closer to the glass case.

  And then it struck him.

  ‘Shit!’ he gasped.

  This wasn’t a doll. It was a dead little girl.

  Day 1

  1

  Simone Singh slammed on the accelerator. Her compact four-wheel drive, a Mahindra Thar, responded immediately, lurching forward with a growl. The cold wind rushed in through the half-open window, smacking her in the face. She liked it. She liked winter. She liked the cold. It was her favourite weather and her favourite emotion.

  She flicked her head and saw the dashboard clock: 6.10 a.m.

  ‘Idiots!’ she cursed aloud.

  The call had come ten minutes ago from the first responder. A brutal crime. A little girl. Encased and displayed. Discovered a couple of hours ago.

  Couple of hours? Two hours! Simone had screamed at the officer on the phone.

  She should have been called immediately. God alone knew what evidence had been compromised already. Fools! Such tardiness should not be acceptable but had come to be expected in a police force that was burdened with the image of laziness. An image built and strengthened by movies. And the movies were right. Mostly.

  Simone had just returned from her 10-kilometre morning run, energized and spirited, sweaty and sticky, when the call had come. She had showered quickly—two minutes. Put on her Indian Police Service (IPS) uniform—two more minutes. Grabbed the car keys. Shouted a quick goodbye to her grandmother, who was just tumbling out of bed, and ignored her pleas of ‘Have breakfast!’. One minute later, Simone was tearing through the deserted streets.

  Simone estimated it would take her ten minutes to reach the crime scene. She tried to relax but her body remained stiff, more from rage than the morning run. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, her knuckles white. She took a deep breath. Anger would not help. It was her first week back from suspension after ‘the incident’—an unwanted blip in her first year of police service.

  Simone had graduated at the top of her class at the National Police Academy in Hyderabad. The faculty and officers had high hopes for her; she had high hopes for herself. Her classmates had . . . well, they had wished that she would fall, and fall hard. And who could blame them? She was fearless and feisty but her social skills bordered on deficient—not her words but a former classmate’s. Simone hadn’t cared. But her classmates got their wish, for fallen she had, and far more spectacularly than they could have hoped for.

  She breathed deeply again, blinking away the humiliation of the last forty-five days of suspension and the pain of ‘the incident’. She was back at work now, she reminded herself. A fresh start. A new beginning. And anger would not help. Not with her wobbly social skills anyway. She needed friends and well-wishers, at the very least, acquaintances, who’d stand by her, support her or simply not curse her. That’s what her grandmother had said. Simone had to change. She had to make an effort. For them. Whoever they were.

  Simone unzipped her khaki jacket with one hand, while her foot stomped on the accelerator pedal again. She rummaged in the inside pocket, extracted her wireless earphones and plugged one in each ear. She plucked her mobile phone from the passenger seat, without taking her eyes off the road. Simone slowed for a fraction of a second, tapped the Audible app and pressed play. A serene voice immediately filled her ears, picking up where she had left off, reciting her current audiobook: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, the bible of self-help books.

  * * *

  Simone slowed the Thar to a crawl as she turned on to Chhola Road.

  The serene voice of the audiobook narrator whispered in her ears: ‘. . . when dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion . . .’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Simone muttered.

  ‘. . . creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity. Don’t criticize.’

  ‘What crap!’ Simone laughed in mock amusement. ‘If you don’t criticize people, how are they going to learn?’

  An outside broadcasting (OB) van of a national TV channel came into view. The channel’s crimson logo against the black background screamed for attention. Then, another news channel’s OB van came into view. And then another. Simone caught her breath and sat up in her seat. She removed her earphones. Alert.

  How did the media always find out so fast? She sighed.

  A police blockade was set up at the only sharp turn on Chhola Road, blocking traffic to the side street. A crowd had gathered around the blockade: a mix of inquisitive residents from the shanties that surrounded the defunct Union Carbide factory, curious passers-by who had stopped their vehicles in the middle of the road, and news reporters and camera persons who were trying to jostle past the traffic police who patrolled the blockade.

  What curiosity! thought Simone. The boon and bane of police work. Gets in the way, slows progress but also finds witnesses and leads when there should have been none.

  For a fleeting moment, Simone thought of parking her car at the kerb; the police could hardly pull her up for illegal parking—she was the police. But rules were rules, and they mattered to her more than most. She looked around for a parking spot. Despite the early hour, it was packed.

  ‘Damn these news channels!’ she gritted her teeth.

  Finally, when the only other
option was turning the car around and going back half a kilometre, an idea hit her.

  Simone drove straight into the crowd. She jammed her hand on the horn. The horn shrieked without pause. It caught the crowd’s attention. They noticed the oncoming car and scattered, parting the way for the beast intent on running them over. Simone smiled. She parked in the space right next to the temporary police barricade.

  The crowd spilled back in, filling every crevice around the Thar, like flies swatted away from food—gone one moment, back the next.

  Simone zipped up her jacket. She adjusted the rear-view mirror, which reflected her tonsured head—a self-inflicted reminder of ‘the incident’. She was pissed off. Furious. She didn’t want to forget the discrimination. So, she shaved her head in defiance of the unfair suspension order. Now she wore it like a badge of honour.

  Simone opened the glove compartment and took out a pair of rubber gloves and shoe covers. Maintaining the sanctity of the crime scene was her first priority, even if the foolish first responders failed to understand its importance. She slipped on the gloves and the shoe covers and then her peaked police cap. She slammed the door shut behind her. She was bristling as she surveyed the scene in front of her, her anger threatening to erupt any moment.

  ‘Kuch kaam-dhanda nahi hai?’ she shouted at the crowd.

  ‘Ma’am, do you know what happened here?’ said someone in the crowd as she jostled past them.

  ‘Move aside,’ Simone shouted.

  ‘Is it true, ma’am, that a little girl was murdered?’ said another.

  ‘No, I heard they found two dead girls!’ someone corrected.

  ‘Any comments for the camera, ma’am?’ a TV reporter shoved a wireless microphone in front of her.

  ‘Let me through!’ Simone was already regretting her decision to park in the middle of the crowd, even if it was a valid parking spot.

  Finally, a traffic constable saw Simone, recognized the assistant superintendent of police (ASP) insignia on her shoulders—three silver-plated metallic stars—and rushed to help. He flailed the baton in his hand, spewing warnings.