In these difficult financial times, everybody and anybody needs to outsource. Even the chaps who traditionally were the recipients of the outsourced jobs found they needed to hire smaller and cheaper enterprises (without compromising the quality of work, that goes without saying of course) to keep things moving. And affordable. The police force wasn’t immune to this either and had, for a year at least, been outsourcing the investigation of bodies at crime scenes to a pair of private coroners based in the suburbs.
Mr. and Mrs. De Souza had been attending a wedding themselves (it was the season for Indian weddings) and arrived at the scene of Aarav and wife’s deaths dressed in stylish and traditional kurtha and saree. They got the policemen to clear the hall and got down on their hands and knees, quite nimbly for people their ages, beside the bride and groom, opened their tool cases and proceeded with the examination. The bullet wounds were examined, the couple’s hands, necks and faces were scrutinized with a magnifying glass, and the police photographer, who thought he’d done his job, was recalled and asked to take additional shots as instructed by the De Souzas. Liquid samples were taken with syringes from the edges of the groom’s mouth. Likewise with the bride. The wedding rings were rotated around stiff fingers and photos taken.
As they completed their work, the De Souzas were told that Regalia was the investigating officer but he was out of sight. They had information that they wanted to share with him as soon as possible, instead of waiting for him to be informed the day after, once the formal post-mortem was completed. They figured he was in some back room interviewing witnesses in a roundabout and pointless-seeming way or possibly, out on the verandah with a drink in hand, reeling off anecdotes to listeners, who were either amused or alarmed. They’ve seen him do both in their time supporting the police force.
The junior Inspectors who came after him had gone past him, if you looked at pay-grade, recognitions, opportunities given to work on high profile cases and to hob-nob with the self-important big-wigs in the organization.
He was the least formal among the Inspectors at the station, the one who was also the least aggressive with his career, the last one to be considered for promotions and the last one to actually do things with an eye on such promotions. The junior Inspectors who came after him had gone past him, if you looked at pay-grade, recognitions, opportunities given to work on high profile cases and to hob-nob with the self-important big-wigs in the organization. But when it came to passion for one’s work, or at least being sincere in doing what had to be done, especially when no cameras were present and no rewards were at stake, Jan (short for Janu) and George De Souza had never witnessed a better policeman than the good Inspector Regalia.
The De Souzas sent word to the Inspector through the policeman who was attending to them, and waited.
Regalia would be pleased to find out shortly that his jokes about death by caking would hold some water after all.
To be continued…
photo from unsplash.com by Zoriana Stakhniv
