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could have happened.' Victor raised both his hands animatedly in despair.
    Rita waited till he stopped. 'Somehow the crime scene does not add up to a premeditated killing. Of course, the perpetrator or perpetrators knew about the diamonds — why else would someone break into a hotel room of all places? — but cold-blooded murder is an altogether different crime. Most human beings do not plan to kill another unless there is an agenda.'
    'Then why murder Jogani?'
    Rita had anticipated the question.
    'At the end of the runway the pilot only has one choice — unless of course, he wants to commit suicide and take all passengers down too — and that option is to go airborne. If Jogani had seen the killers or intercepted them, they had no option but to off Jogani.'
    'Interesting way to put it,' Victor said.
    'But it's still a theory and it's still one big if ...' Rita surmised. 'But then, all investigations have to begin with a theory. In time the theory could be proved correct. Then again maybe the evidence could cite that the direction was totally wrong. But we need to start somewhere.'
    Victor nodded at the rationale.
    'So, Mr De Smet…'
    'I think we should let go of the formalities. Call me Victor.'
    'Likewise Victor.'
    'So, how, after over three months and change, did the Belgian police determine that Jogani's killer could be in India?'
    'Very good question. In fact I was expecting it sooner. We got video footage from the hotel. You see, whoever masterminded this had planned for everything. They froze almost all the hotel cameras connected to the main control room and ran a film that was basically from the night before. When we juxtaposed the two footages they were identical…'
    'Then how did you get this footage?' Vikram sounded interested.
    'As I said almost all, there was a concealed camera in the elevator that wasn't connected to the control room. In fact even the hotel personnel didn't know about it. But the hotel chain's central office that had implanted it released it to us. We've been analysing it for weeks now. I'm carrying a copy, should we play the footage?' Victor took out a CD from his bag and handed it over to Vikram who put it into the computer and tilted the screen a bit so all three could see.
    A camouflaged reminiscence of George Eastman's invention, albeit in moving frames, had done the trick in the elevator. The surveillance camera was obviously placed high and most of the shots were a bit blurry, grainy. The time count on the camera proved the pictures were in the time frame that the Belgian police had ascertained as the time of the murder. The Belgian police had done a professional job of cleaning it up, zooming and enlarging to make one perfect 6 x 8 candid-shot from one of the frames.
    However, if you showed the picture to a hundred people only fifty might have agreed that the guy was an Indian.
    Rita and Vikram looked at the picture.
    A strikingly handsome man from what Rita could see.
    A photograph would help in identification. But you've got to find the person first to identify him. Who was it? Rita's mind was already churning.
    'Our intelligence — and our government's sincere apologies that we didn't follow protocol and carried out investigation without proper authorisations from the Indian government initially — has not been able to track down the individual, and hence we need your help. Our experts estimate the person in these photographs to be male, height 6'2 or 6'3”, about a 100 kilograms, a head full of straight dark hair — the pictures are too grainy to discern the exact hair colour but who knows if he wasn't wearing a wig?'
    'And he carried a Blackberry.'
    'I must compliment you on your sharp eyes, Rita. Yes, that is a Blackberry he has in his hand.'
    'Thanks Victor. However, looking at this footage alone, there is no certainty this man is an Indian. I mean… he could be anyone from Southern Europe, Northern Africa or even from the Middle-East.'
    Recognition across races is