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6.

Tauber picked up his luggage from the conveyor belt and made his way outside.

He hired a taxi, and asked the driver to take him to a specific address. The regulator of the air-conditioner in the car had been turned to the maximum, for most visitors could not bear the humid climate of India. As the driver weaved his way through the crowded streets, Tauber thought about the case at hand.

He was taken back to the day when the Prime Minister had shown him a sheaf of papers, and he had leafed through them, disbelief growing with each flip. The five men who were killed were the entrepreneurs of a textile company in Israel, and had visited a bar that night for a drink. According to an eyewitness, a person had stormed into the bar, and, while pointing his gun at the people, had asked them to clear out. He, however, blocked the five brothers when they tried to go. Each one was swung at with the gun, and they lay on the floor, massaging their heads. Six people had retreated, but refused to exit the bar as they were enjoying their drink. One of them was the eyewitness.

"And then, sir," she said to Tauber, as he interviewed her, "that brute shook his head, and I swear I saw him smile. He pulled out a grenade and threw it at the five men. They tried to scramble away, but it was too late. The sound of the blast was deafening. There was shrapnel flying all around the room. Bottles broke and the spirits inside them caught fire, and we were trapped. Fortunately, the Fire Department put the fire out, and we were rescued, but my friend has severe burns, sir. The doctors say she may not survive. Please do something, sir. Please."

The lady broke down and started sobbing. Tauber clenched his fist and got up. The chair fell backwards. He helped the lady up, and, consoling her, called one of his subordinates and asked him to drive her to a restaurant where she could grab a bite first, and then the hospital. When she went, Tauber lifted his chair and threw it across the room. It broke, the wood splinters flying in all directions. He left the interrogation room and walked into his cabin. Her description of the man matched the same one whom he had lashed out at the other day. He would have loved to burn the same fellow alive at that moment, but the Prime Minister had warned him against doing anything drastic; besides, the case needed to be solved.

He picked up a picture from his desk. It was a piece of grenade shrapnel.

The grenade was a very interesting one. It evidently was custom - made, for its shape and texture was different from any grenade Tauber had used before; it also had a certain symbol carved on the inside of it. It was the Venus Symbol; the symbol used to represent feminism - a circle with a cross below it.

This had kept Tauber occupied the entire week; no matter how much he tried, he could not make head or tail of what that symbol signified in his case. The perpetrator was a man. Tauber supposed that the gang the killer was part of had a female leader. But that was just one of the many possibilities that raced through his head.

There were a few other symbols etched on the inside of the weapon, too. There were two irregular figures, one big and the other small, lying North-West - South-East to each other. An arrow connected the two figures, the arrowhead pointing towards the smaller one, which lay in the South-East.

There was also a face, with two eyes, two ears, a nose and an expression that seemed sad to Tauber. There was also what appeared to be a moustache between the nose and the smile.

These two symbols puzzled him to the point that he stopped sleeping at night and kept staring blankly at the shrapnel, trying to decipher what they meant.

There was another piece of evidence which he had to consider. The lady whom he had asked questions to earlier said the noise of the grenades exploding was deafening. Which meant she did not hear the attacker yell something out.