Truth Amidst The Lies

Chapter 1

"What do we have?" Kelkar asked as he landed on the deck of an old tired boat. Suresh Talwar from the forensics team.

Suresh Talwar, from the forensics team, turned to look at him from where he was sat next to the body. "Dead male, 5' 10. Must have weighed around 80kg when alive," he titled his head looking at the body, Probably in his late forties, early fifties."

Kelkar looked at the body. Sea water had done a job on it. It had bloated significantly. The man was dressed in a suit, shoes still on. That wasn't common in suicide cases. He frowned kneeling down to take a closer look at the body

Despite degradation having kicked in, the man's hands looked well maintained. Gemstones adorned the big chucky gold rings on his fingers that now dug into the decomposing flesh. This man was well-off, probably affluent.

Kelkar's eyes moved to the man's face, twisting in disgust at what he saw. A lot of the face was missing. Fish and sea life had probably feasted on it. His dead eyes stared back at Kelkar, missing their eyelids. His curly black hair was greying in places.

Kelkar heard a gagging sound next to him. He turned to find Lobo practically covered his entire face with a handkerchief. Lobo was slender short man. There was nothing extraordinarily about him until it came to getting out hard to find information. The man had a knack of getting it out of the most insecure colleagues and toughest criminals.

Kelkar turned back to Talwar, "What can you tell me about the cause of death?"

"Nothing at the moment," Suresh shook his head, "The water and the fish have done a number of the body. We need to cut him open and run tests before I can tell you–"

"I need something to go on while you run the tests," Kelkar cut in.

"The body was in water at least for 26 to 30 hours."

"Any form of identification on him? Who was he?" Kelkar asked

Talwar shook his head, "No wallet, keys or credit cards. There were some signs of paper in his shirt pocket. But they were too far gone for us to figure out what it was. We also found a hotel key card. I will run it for prints, but I don't think we will recover anything from it."

"What hotel was that?" Kelkar asked

"One of the Grand Regal hotels. Their logo was on the key card," Suresh said.

"Let me see it," Kelkar ordered.

"Umm...Sorry," Suresh said tentatively, "Its already on its way to the lab. But, we will try to run the tests quick and hand it over to you."

"Anything else?" Kelkar asked firmly.

"There was a stone in his trouser pocket," Talwar scrunched his brows, "ruby or something ...I cannot be sure. I will run it past Dr Mohile and then get it to you," he added quickly.

Kelkar nodded. He walked towards Commandant Kishor Nawde. Dressed in his white coast guard uniform, he stood out amongst the gloomy atmosphere. The officer was watching them with stoic expression. Kelkar didn't blame him, they had started out on a bad note with a debate on jurisdictions the moment he landed.

"Where is the fisherman who found the body?" Kelkar asked.

"This way," Nawde said curtly. The hostility in his voice still sharp.

Without meaning to, Kelkar looked towards Lobo. Lobo seemed to have observed it as well. Kelkar shook his head and followed the Commandant into the engine room.

The engine room was small; really small. With the fisherman, his son, Nawde and the two of them, it was positively cramped.

"This is Jayant. He and his son found the body," Nawde explained.

The young boy who was probably just ten, looked scared and hid behind his father.

Kelkar turned to Jayant instead, hoping to end this ordeal for them quickly. "You found the body?" he asked

Jayant nodded but didn't say anything choosing instead to watch them with caution. Kelkar was used to people being apprehensive of the Police.

"Do you come fishing in the vicinity of this area daily?" Kelkar asked

"Sometimes," Jayant said, "I have been teaching Sundar, my son," he added glancing at his son, "to fish this week. We have mostly been fishing close to the coast, but the catch there has been poor. I had to come this far in hopes of better catch otherwise..."

Kelkar nodded. Fisherman like Jayant starved if they didn't take some risk and fished into deeper waters, away from the coast.

"Has anyone you know been fishing in this area in the past couple of days?" Kelkar asked.

Jayant shook his head, "It was full moon a couple of days ago. Catch isn't great around those days. Weather hasn't been kind either. We didn't try to venture to far from the coast."

"If anyone you know was fishing around here in the last two days and saw anything in connection with that body, give me a call," Kelkar said handing his card to Jayant.

Jayant nodded quietly putting the card in his pocket.

***

"Was anyone from your patrol doing rounds in this area?" Kelkar asked when they were back on the deck.

"If my team had seen anything, we would have known about it already," Nawde said.

Kelkar nodded. "You know the sea better than us," Kelkar said trying to appease Nawde, "Could the body have been here all this time or did it flow in from somewhere else?"

Nawde watched Kelkar quietly before answering, "It is hard to say, but my money would be on the body flowing in along with the currant. After 26/11, we have had to improve the way we monitor our waters. It is not perfect. Far from it really. But we are a lot better at it now," Nawde explained, "All the medium to big sized boats now have transponders. Some of the small ones and dhows have it too. So do private ships, passenger boats and yachts. Majority of the departure points have some way of tracking the number of people leaving it. If this man was travelling on any of the boats, we would have known."

"Would you be able to get some divers to check this area out?" Kelkar asked, "If the body was brought here, maybe some of his belongings might have as well."

"If any of his belongings did make their way here, they are long gone now," Nawde said, "Anything that is heavy enough would have been lost along the way long before reaching this point and anything light enough to float would have probably ended up inside some fish or in some garbage bin after being fished out."

Kelkar looked back at the deep sea as they jetted back to land.

"That was a big waste of time," Lobo complained.

"May be not," Kelkar mused.

"What do you mean?"

"Lobo, I need you to do something," Kelkar said.

Lobo crossed his arms and looked at Kelkar skeptically, "What?"

"Find out where the body entered the water," Kelkar said, "If he really didn't travel on one of these boats, he had to have entered from the somewhere inland."

"It could just be suicide," Lobo pointed out.

"Do you really think that?"

Thanks so much for reading this chapter. If you like it, do consider voting.  And I would never say no to comments. ;)