Dehiwala is now a quiet place. This sort of thing doesn’t happen here.
Well, it has now, she thought.
Five stories below, the waves thump and hiss on moonlit rock. Their sound and crisp breeze pouring in from three large holes punched through the concrete wall.
She wasn’t sure if the tremble in the inspector’s voice and hand was from shock or awe. The man needs a good pipe of Ganja for his nerves.
Then smiled inwardly at the thought. She knew the inspector’s type. Upstanding, contentious, professional. Not the type who polluted a crime scene with state-subsidised Kingston Reserve. Even if the forensics people had cleaned up and left hours ago.
Her eye caught the glint of the Kandian war medal. Three wound badges. A survivor. The siege of Colombo wasn’t a fight where the wounded lived. So, not the squeamish type. Then why the nerves?
It wasn’t just the inspector who was nervous. The building was secured by a uniformed defence force unit. Serious looking fit men and women with fearsome belt-fed weapons and curved bayonets led by a silent Major in a Yamaka. Only state security can do that. But they were subtle types not prone to – well, panic like this.
Not subtle, is it? She whispered. What kind of thing does that?
The inspector took his time.
An antique, he said.
A pistol – if you can call it that – firing a bullet the size of a large cigar. Six rounds in the monster.
Used against the English during their last attempt at Balana Fort in 1923.
It chopped through their armoured cars, rock, concrete, their officers. You saw the stains on the ceiling.
Never used again.
Why?
The thing is so loud anyone who used it went deaf is they didn’t pad their ears.
Not a diplomatic weapon. Forces people to listen. They heard it in London back then.
She looked at the stains, her mind’s voices already worried.
So who is talking now? What are they saying?
Cerno 