I sipped my coffee while admiring the view from my new office. I had just been posted to a little known town in the hills. It was a perfect place for a vacation, with serene mountains and great views.
I knew I would get bored of this place in a while.
My previous posting was in the state’s capital. I had been disappointed when I was posted to this sleepy town. As a police officer, I craved adventure and action and I had said so to my superior, but he had just smiled indulgently and said “You are stepping on too many toes here..” I took it as a good sign that my work was making some top people uncomfortable but by moving me here, they had effectively cut me out of the investigation.
I had gone through the backlog cases for the town, it had been nothing but petty robberies and some domestic squabble calls. So you can understand why I wasn’t so excited when somebody reported a rotten stench coming from an isolated part of the town. I scowled at my partner, Sub Inspector Shammi Singh. He was a congenial man, probably very happy to be here. He was the kind of officer who was happier dunking doughnuts in his coffee rather than do some serious detective work. I didn’t know him too well, but I had read his file.
“Oh! Stop scowling and lets go.. Anyway we have nothing to do, I’ll show you that part of town.” He laughed at me. He just couldn’t understand how dramatically things had changed for me, from life in the fast lane to life on a narrow, winding road. Could it get any worse?
We were most probably going to stumble upon some truck load of garbage or some other nasty thing like that. Police work can get pretty gross at times.
The place certainly was isolated.
I wonder who had called about the stench; the place was too out of the way for anyone to be just walking around.
“So what is this place?” I asked Shammi.
“It used to a church, now its abandoned. No one goes there expect college students. We get complaints about them sometimes. About their rave parties, but by the time we get here, no one’s here..” Shammi complained.I suppressed a snigger. I was pretty sure Shammi had never bothered to check out the area. Somehow the idea of Shammi rushing to the church in the middle of the night, to investigate a rave party seemed quite alien.
As soon as the church came into the view, the stench hit us. Urghhh. It certainly was nasty. It was almost as though something had died there.. I felt my throat dry up as the thoughts entered my head. I pushed them out. Most probably a dead animal. Phew! I waved a hand in front of my nose to get rid of the smell.
Whatever it was, it had died some time ago.
