BAREFOOT AND DRESSED IN A SIMPLE but elegant Chanel black dress, Rachel Cellini, stared at her reflection in the length of display window that reached from floor to ceiling and offered a superb view out into the valley below. But the view of the soft lights twinkling in the gathering dusk didn’t hold her attention, but rather the stark drawn features that were her own. The eyes were deep set, tired and full of suppressed emotions. Strange mixed emotions that she still hadn’t managed to get a handle on. Her dark auburn hair was, as was her usual want, cut in a soft bob in at the nape. She ran a hand through the kinked wave, brushing the bang that always threatened to fall in her eyes. It dutifully settled back into place. Like her, dutiful. She gave a smile that was more a grimace.

Sanjay Gupta, a slight man of medium height, had Bollywood good-looks that could turn a girl’s head and coax a coy smile. He had soft, liquid brown eyes with uncommonly long eyelashes, sadly, Kalinda Dharma noted, he was also stone cold, and very much dead. She looked down at the man as he lay in repose in the rich loamy earth beneath her booted feet. He looked to all as if he hadn’t a care in the world, eyes wide open, staring up at the vaulted canopy above them. In the harsh glare of the sim-lites, however, it was clear Gupta’s once sallow brown skin was an unhealthy shade, as stilled blood—having pooled—gave the skin a mottled purple-red discolouration. Ignoring the group that surrounded her, Kalinda squatted down on her haunches and reached out to touch the body. One, because she wanted to see if the skin, when pressed, turned white. And two, to feel how cool it was. In the absence of a pathologist, coroner, or medical examiner, she was it. Not only was …