Kiss and Die

Chapter 58

Shrimp stood opposite Kin Tak in the autopsy room. ‘Could this be the weapon?’ He took out the urumi and allowed it to slowly unwind to the floor.

Kin Tak coughed as a gasp turned to a phlegm rattle in his throat. He took the urumi from Shrimp with outstretched arms as if it were a baby. He laid it flat out on the counter and reached for his tape measure. He measured the strands of the urumi and wrote down his findings. He examined it under a magnifier. ‘I can say, without doubt, that this is the weapon. This is it.’

‘I have downloaded a demonstration from the Internet. It’s awesome,’ Shrimp said when he got back to the office. ‘This little baby has three one-inch bands of razor-sharp steel. It’s basically a flexible sword.’ Shrimp let it unravel slowly towards the floor.

‘It looks tricky to use.’ Mann watched, fascinated. He appreciated the centuries-old skill that had first dreamt up the weapon.

Shrimp went back to his desk and turned his monitor so that Mann and Ng could see. ‘It’s not easy. It was only given to the most gifted apprentices in Indian martial arts schools.’ Shrimp pressed the play button on the video link and two combating Indian men, practising urumi combat, came to life on the screen. They were sparring with the urumi and using a two-bladed knife to defend themselves. ‘You need some strength but it’s mainly down to agility and technique. This is the ideal weapon for a woman. You can tuck it into your belt or pop it into your handbag, and you can take out several opponents at once with this little baby. Someone knew what they were doing to be able to use it accurately. The damage it causes is easy to identify when you’ve seen it once. The speed with which it comes through the air, the razor-sharp edge of the three blades makes an unmistakable wound. It took Rajini’s hands off like a hot knife through butter. And it made a mess out of Max Kosmos.’

‘It’s a horrible-looking thing.’ Ng shook his head as he picked a Danish pastry apart; he didn’t share the others’ enthusiasm for weaponry.

‘You see how the metal coils are whipped in circular movements in the air and then cracked down on the opponent, blocked here by a sword?’

Mann peered in at the video. ‘Blow it up for me, Shrimp.’

‘It will lose definition but I’ll try.’

He clicked to enlarge the picture and Mann leaned across and pressed the pause button. The picture was a little blurred but still clear enough to see what Mann wanted. ‘Look what they have in their hands. It’s not a sword. It’s the same knife we found on Mahmud, the one used to stab Tammy. It’s the double-bladed one.’

‘Right, are you all ready?’ Mia appeared at the door.

Shrimp was busy typing in the knife’s details into a search engine. ‘Bundi knife. That’s its name.’

Mann picked it up from his desk. ‘let’s see if Mahmud knows what it’s called.’