Prologue

The story is set in south Calcutta.

Before the first light of dawn had peeped over the horizon, tea was already being brewed in the small tea shop that stood on a street corner diagonally opposite Gol Park. Hot, sweet tea that was served in small earthenware mugs. Biscuits to go with it were available on request. The clientele consisted mostly of taxi drivers, bus conductors and others of that ilk—in other words, people who had to get to work at the crack of dawn.

Among them was Phaguram, an old beggar. Having spent the night huddled in a corner of the pavement, he would get up at dawn and buy a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits from the shop before taking up his position on the street to beg for alms. Phaguram was quite old, and handicapped in the bargain. So, at the end of the day, his earnings amounted to more than a rupee.

That spring morning, the mist still hung heavy in the air. Phaguram had bought his tea and biscuits and arrived at his usual spot. Although there were people in the tea stall, hardly a soul stirred in the streets.

Phaguram was in the habit of facing the wall, his back to the street, as he settled down with his tea. He had just taken a sip from his mug and a bite out of his biscuit, when he felt a presence behind him. He turned to take a look, but before he could do so, a sharp pain pierced the spot below his shoulder blades. The half-nibbled biscuit dropped from his fingers and everything went dark.

There wasn’t much of a furore over Phaguram’s unnatural death. When the sun was up, pedestrians noticed his corpse sprawled on the pavement. They stepped around it and went their way. Then the body was removed. The news of the incident did appear in a corner of the daily, but that was simply because the murder weapon was so unusual. The victim had been stabbed in the back with a six-inch-long porcupine quill that had pierced his heart.

Those who had read the piece in the newspaper did indulge in some speculation over the issue. Who would possibly want to kill a beggar? Another beggar, perhaps? But why had a porcupine quill been used? There seemed to be no satisfactory answer to this enigma. The police did not trouble themselves over the matter for any length of time.

Nearly a month after the incident, however, memories of the beggar’s unnatural death resurfaced. Once again, the weapon was a porcupine quill. On a particular night, a labourer had been sleeping outdoors on a bench in the Rabindra Sarobar area, when his assailant stole up on him under cover of darkness and pierced his heart with a porcupine quill. By the time the corpse was discovered in the morning, it had turned stiff. The victim was yet to be identified

This time, the news of the death was allocated a space closer to the front page. It caused a bit of a fuss. What could it signify—the use of porcupine quills instead of knives or daggers? Was the killer insane? Eventually, the victim was identified. He was Mangalram, a common labourer. Without a roof over his head, he had been used to spending the night wherever he could. He had had no enemies, at least none who would want him dead. The police investigated the case over a few days and gave up when they found no leads.

The third incident occurred a couple of weeks later. Summer had set in. The days were longer, the nights shorter.

Gunamoy Das was an unhappy soul. He owned a small grocery shop and had inherited a tiny house from his father. He also had a shrew for a wife. He was forty years old and childless, with scant hope of fathering offspring at this stage of his life. His very existence had been drained of all joie de vivre and he had taken to drinking on the sly. It was said that when the joy went out of living, Madeira, the Maiden, rushed in.

At eight o’clock in the evening, Gunamoybabu had locked up his shop and started for home. He had no great desire to hurry back to Garia. On the contrary, his feet dragged at the very thought of the terrifying spectacle his wife would present when he arrived home. So, when the doors of a bar swung open right before his eyes, he slipped in without a moment’s hesitation.

An hour later, he left the bar and headed for Garia again. His feet were unsteady as he walked on and he realized that he had exceeded the quota of liquor he permitted himself every day. If his wife got wind of it, if she got a mere whiff …

After he had traversed some distance, the railing enclosing Rabindra Sarobar came into sight, running along to his right. The people on the streets were few and far between. The dim street lamps and the gloom of the lake nearby seemed to be engaged in some macabre dance that heightened the atmosphere of dark mystery.

Having reached a lonely stretch of road, Gunamoybabu paused and stood facing the lake. His hands rested on the fencing encircling the expanse of water as his owl-like gaze skimmed its surface.

A man had been following Gunamoybabu, maintaining a gap of twenty feet between them. The stalker had noticed the gentleman’s unsteady gait. Therefore, when Gunamoybabu paused at the railing, the stranger also halted some twenty feet away. Having gazed at his victim steadily for a while, he began closing in on him at a leisurely pace.

The prowler came up behind Gunamoybabu, unobserved. He looked around him and checked to see whether anyone was watching. Then he fished out a quill-like object from his pocket, gripped it firmly between his fingers and thrust it with full force into the