Google And A Perfect Murder

As a murder (or not) goes it was not anything unusual about this one except that this was a double murder. A man and a woman were found dead in the man’s house. The juicy part was that the woman and man weren’t husband and wife as the police found when they soon established the identity of the man and the woman.

At the crime scene, it was seen that the man and woman were in various state of undressing lying on the bed. It seems they had ordered dinner using the Swiggy app and seems to have finished the dinner. There was also an unfinished bottle of Hitchcock whiskey, a small bucket of what must have been ice and two glasses. The death seems to have been by cardiac arrest for both of them as post mortem confirmed it. They were no other evidence of any crime at the scene leaving the police completely baffled. It had rained heavily that night as it always happens in crime novels and films. Rain by its nature seems to aid crimes.

Like all crime novels would tell you that the first needle of suspicion fell on the woman’s husband, who in fact filed a police complaint about his missing wife, and the man found dead was not married. Let us call the woman’s husband as Shashi for the sake of the story. The ASI, crime branch, grilled him. Shashi confessed that he knew of his wife’s affair. The man in question was an old crush of the college days. Shashi said that he knew of the affair for a few months only. He stumbled upon the affair when his wife had told him a lie about her whereabouts.

She had told him she was at the aunt’s place when he himself had seen her in a different locality in the city wherein he had gone to meet a client. Shashi was a lawyer by profession and at times he would call on the client if the case was big enough and worth his time. He himself was an avid reader of crime novels and was a fan of Sherlock Holmes, Poirot and the likes of them. Shashi had told the police that he was not there at the scene of the crime and he had gone to Mysore for the day for a temple visit.

Shashi had inserted a mobile spy to monitor his wife’s call in her mobile and was able to track all her calls. He had purchased this device in the city grey market by paying cash as that was the only way to purchase such a device. He had been monitoring her calls and of late the frequency of calls between the man and his wife had increased. He had gathered that the place of her death was her usual meeting point since the man owned that independent house near to where his client lived.

Shashi had also confirmed that his wife never had any heart problems. Shashi had produced as evidence the Volvo bus ticket to Mysore, the invoices for his meals, prayer ticket at the temple for the auspicious puja. He had further produced evidence of the Google Maps timeline giving details of his outstation visits as he was also an avid local guide who had reached level 6. 

Tracing the history of the man was found to be more challenging as the man was from Mumbai and he was essentially a loner. He was not employed anywhere but he seemed to be an active stock market player and he was endowed with a nice tidy sum left by his dad which he used to dabble in the stock market and made his living well. His flat in Mumbai was a two-bedded one neatly furnished but nothing lavish about it. At his desk was a photo of the woman who was now dead. This information was supplied to ACP, Crime Branch by his counterpart from the Mumbai police.

ASI, the Crime branch was a friend of mine and he narrated this story as they could not proceed any further. I told him the rest of the story. Shashi has a faithful valet and he must have been sent to Mysore on the day of the crime as Shashi would have known about the rendezvous of the twosome. It happened to be a Friday the day Shashi goes to the pub in the evening and returns home late, the day his wife goes to visit her aunt dutifully. His wife had agreed to the rendezvous using this habit of theirs. Since Shashi could monitor his wife’s call, he would have known that she had placed an order with Swiggy. Perhaps at the house itself, he must have taken delivery and he must have opened the food packet and added some Belladonna extract into the food. This would have triggered the cardiac arrest but the Belladonna poison is difficult to trace, especially in combination with alcohol.

As it was, the heavy rain must have wiped out all the footmarks. Shashi would have rung the bell and handed over the food delivery to the man. ASI rang up Shashi who confirmed he had a valet and was a patient of Down Syndrome. However, the law does not permit the interrogation of such a patient. ASI later confirmed to me that the Swiggy delivery boy had handed over the package to some man outside the door but could not remember anything about the face as it was heavily raining and it was dark. So, the case was virtually closed as the ASI got involved in cracking some other crimes, what with the city of Bangalore, never short of crimes.

A week later I happened to browse my page in storymirror.com where I had published such a crime story as above a few months ago. There was a message stating that a reader had left a comment. The comment read “a perfect recipe for murder.” Shashi.