Robin Cook - Foreign Body

“See what I mean!” Neil whispered back. “The poor guy’s probably under arrest.”

“You really think so.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“It looks to me as if that short guy is in charge. What do you think?”

Naresh Prasad was talking to several other uniformed police officers standing near the body.

“He must be some kind of plainclothes detective or something.”

“You really think I shouldn’t talk to them?” Jennifer asked.

“Put it this way: What do you know? Nothing. You don’t even know if this guy followed you from the Amal Palace, or just saw you here and said there’s a millionaire Westerner.”

“Get out of here!” Jennifer said.

“There’s no way for you to know. That’s the point. They don’t know, either. If you insist on getting involved, you’re not going to learn anything and you’re not going to add anything, and it will possibly cost you some money. Besides, if you change your mind, you can tell them tomorrow, or this afternoon for that matter. No one is going to fault you for getting the hell out of here under the circumstances.”

“Alright,” Jennifer snapped. “You’ve talked me out of it, at least for now. Let’s get back to the hotel. I think I need a drink or something. I’m still shaking.”

“Good choice!” Neil commented. “What we can do is head over to the American embassy at some point either today or tomorrow and get their take. If they think you should file an FIR, we’ll do it, because then they will be involved and there won’t be any screwing around.”

“Fair enough,” Jennifer said.

The crowd near the killing blocked most of the galis. On one side, several policemen were keeping a narrow right-of-way open against the far wall. To create it, the police had required the local merchants to clear the street of merchandise. Jennifer and Neil again had to walk in single file.

As Jennifer passed, she looked back at the cycle rickshaw still lying on its side. She could see where in the street she’d fallen. She glanced briefly again at the driver. He’d not been allowed to move, which tended to give further credence to Neil’s point about not getting involved unless there was some compelling reason. Her eyes also briefly passed over the short plainclothes policeman as they came abreast of where he was standing, causing her to do a double take. The officer was looking at her.

For several beats Jennifer and Inspector Naresh Prasad’s eyes locked together before Jennifer self-consciously looked away.

“Don’t look now,” Jennifer said in a low voice over her shoulder at Neil, “but that short policeman was staring at me.”

“Let’s not get paranoid.”

“Really, he was. Do you think he recognizes me from being in the cycle rickshaw?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Stop and turn around. Let’s see what he does. I mean, if he recognizes you from being involved, \we don’t have a lot of choice. We have to talk to him.”

Jennifer stopped but didn’t immediately turn around. “I feel nervous,” she said.

“Turn around!” Neil said under his hand to keep from being overheard. They were only about twenty feet from the policemen. If the bazaar hadn’t been quite so noisy, they might have been able to hear parts of the man’s conversation.

Taking a breath, Jennifer slowly turned. At that point it was not a clear line of sight between herself and Inspector Prasad. When she and Neil had abruptly stopped, they had blocked the right-of-way, and people trying to pass were backing up. Still, Jennifer could see the side of the policeman’s face, and if he turned his head only ninety degrees, he would be looking directly at her. But he didn’t turn his head, nor did he interrupt his conversation with the uniformed officers.

“He’s not looking at you,” Neil said.

“He doesn’t appear to be,” Jennifer agreed.

“Let’s get out of here before he does,” Neil said, grabbing Jennifer’s arm and giving it a tug.

As the crowd thinned, they were able to pick up the pace and soon emerged from the shadows and tunnel-like atmosphere of the bazaar. The enormous Jama Masjid was now in front and to the right. Jennifer slowed and glanced back over her shoulder into the depths of the bazaar, although she couldn’t see far.

“I feel more exposed out of the bazaar than in it,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I’m with you,” Neil agreed.

They both started to run, but as they did so, Jennifer kept glancing back over her shoulder.

“You’re really becoming progressivly paranoid, I’m afraid,” Neil commented between breaths.

“You’d be paranoid, too, if someone pointed a gun at you and got killed in the process.”

“I can’t argue with you there.”

Around the front entrance of the mosque they had to slow with the crowds of tourists and those who preyed on them. Jennifer continued checking over her shoulder, and as they neared the parking area, it paid off.

“Don’t look!” Jennifer said, continuing forward. “But that short plainclothes policeman is actually following us.”

Neil stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Where is he?”

“Behind us. Come on! Let’s get out of here.”

“No. Let’s see if he approaches us,” Neil said. “Hey, I’m responsible for you leaving the scene of a crime. I don’t want you getting into trouble for it.”

“Now you’re saying conflicting things.”

“I’m not. Really. As I said, if he recognizes you as having been in that cycle rickshaw, we need to talk to him. Can you still see him?”

Jennifer turned around and scanned the crowd. “No, I don’t.”

Neil turned around and looked. “There he is, moving away from the mosque. Another false alarm.”

“Where?”

Neil pointed.

“You’re right.”

They watched as Inspector Prasad disappeared up the street that butted into the Jama Masjid.

Jennifer glanced at Neil and shrugged. “Sorry!”

“Don’t be silly. Until he turned up that street I would have thought he was following us as well.”

Jennifer and Neil continued on, entering the parking lot. Neil, as the taller one, was able to rise up on his toes and see over the sea of cars. The first black Mercedes they saw was not the Amal Palace car, but the second one was. Then it took the parking attendants almost twenty minutes to move all the cars boxing it in. Five minutes after that Jennifer and Neil were back on the main road heading south toward the Amal Palace.

“I thought you were going to go to Karim’s,” the driver said to Jennifer, while glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

“I lost my appetite,” Jennifer called from the backseat. “I just want to go back to the hotel.”

“Have you seen any sights here in Delhi?” Neil asked Jennifer.

“None,” Jennifer said. “This was to be my big attempt. Unfortunately it was a bust.” She held out her hand. It was trembling, not as much as it had been right after the shooting event but grossly shaking nonetheless.

“Despite this disaster, I gather you are doing much better dealing with your grandmother’s issues than you thought you would be able to do.”

Jennifer took in a deep breath and let it out through partially pursed lips. “I guess I am. I didn’t realize how much of a separation I would be making between my grandmother’s body and her soul or spirit. I don’t know if it is a side benefit of going to medical school and having worked with cadavers or what. Of course, when I looked at Granny’s body the first time, it got to me. But since then, I’ve been thinking of it as just a used body, and what it can tell us about how she died. At this point I really want there to be an autopsy.”

“Are they going to do an autopsy for you?”