The deceased was identified from a voter ID card found in the bedroom dressing table as Rohini Sharma, thirty-three years old, a UX researcher at a Bengaluru tech company. She had lived in Flat 12, Jasmine Towers, HSR Layout for four years. The time of death, pending post-mortem, appeared to be between midnight and three AM — the body had been cool when the first officer arrived and the room temperature was consistent with a Bengaluru June night, meaning the cooling was natural and not accelerated. Cause of death: visible trauma to the back of the head, consistent with impact on the corner of the nightstand, which had a small amount of blood on its lower right corner. It was possible she had fallen. It was possible she had been pushed. It was also possible something else had happened that he hadn't identified yet, and he had been careful not to move anything before Kaveri arrived.
Good first officer. She noted this — his name was Rajan, young, from the Indiranagar station, he had kept the scene clean and his notes were specific. She made her own notes.
What she had not been told by the first officer, and what she discovered upon entering the flat, was the woman in the living room.
She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and a notebook on her knee. She looked up when Kaveri came in and the expression on her face was one that Kaveri had some experience reading: not the expression of someone who had done something and was afraid of being caught. Not the expression of someone in grief. The expression of someone who was genuinely, completely lost — not performing it, not managing it, actually in the state of it.
"Who are you?" Kaveri said.
The woman on the floor looked at her and said: "I don't know."
Kaveri looked at her for a moment. She was in her mid-to-late thirties, she would say — dark hair that was loose and slightly dishevelled, the specific dishevelment of someone who had slept somewhere they didn't intend to. Grey salwar, no footwear. No phone visible, no bag. On the floor beside her, one notebook from the coffee table. A clean cup was visible in the dish rack in the kitchen — someone had washed something very recently, the rack was still damp.
"What do you mean?" Kaveri said. She asked it carefully — not dismissively, but the question needed answering precisely.
"I mean I don't know my name," the woman said. "I don't know why I'm here. I woke up on the floor about an hour ago and I found—" She stopped. She looked toward the corridor. "I found her. I didn't — I haven't moved her. I didn't touch anything except the notebook and the cup. I washed the cup." A pause. "I don't know why I washed the cup. It needed washing."
