Sukumar did not believe it. Not for a single moment.
He knew where his brother had been. The evening before, the two of them had travelled together to the Kaleshwara temple at Kalasa, nearly seventy kilometres distant. The rains had kept them on the road, and they had come home very late. They had been side by side the whole evening and the whole night that followed. There was no hour in which Dinesh could have raised a hand against Gulabi.
But the police had their evidence — the blood, the jewels, the shirt. Two days went by. They questioned Dinesh hard, and he could tell them nothing, for he knew nothing. Then the forensic report came back, and it carried one cold line: the blood upon the shirt was Gulabi's own.
It was that line that troubled Sukumar most. If the blood was truly hers, then someone had wished it found upon his brother. Someone had arranged it — someone who had known the brothers would be far away at Kalasa that night, seventy kilometres from home.
Sukumar began to look back over the days before. Who had known of their journey? Who had stood near them when the temple was spoken of?
One name rose to the surface. Babu.