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carousel, when the attendant reached him with the preliminary report. He scanned it while hurrying downstairs. “You haven’t listed any cause of death,” he said to Baghai.
    “I could no more find a cause than a reason. I’ve removed the internal organs for laboratory analysis. It’s possible she died of sepsis. Infibulation generally is performed by a barber using the same filthy razor with which he shaves his male customers. Coarse horse hair is used for the sutures. Infection is the rule. Medical science can’t explain why someone would shoot a girl who is already dead, or why she had to suffer mutilation.”
    “When will the lab results be ready?”
    “In several days. Until identification is made, I’ll keep the body. I may want to look at her again.”
    “You’ve seen torture before,” Darius said. “Could she be one of theirs? ”
    “When the Komiteh learn of a new cruelty, they don’t hesitate to employ it. Lately, we are finding Coca-Cola in the lungs of people who have died of painful means. By shaking the bottle into a nostril they make the most laconic prisoner talk. But they can’t take credit for her. Let me show you why.”
    Darius averted his eyes as the coroner lifted the sheet.
    “You can look.”
    Baghai had exposed the girl’s feet and was stroking her arches. “Unmarked,” he said. “She hasn’t been subjected to the bastinado. Nor are there scars. The Komiteh may come up with the odd new trick, but they never forget the old.”
    Ghaffari was gone from headquarters, no one knew where. Darius went to the Avenue of the Islamic Republic, formerly Shah Avenue, to see the Revolutionary Prosecutor.
    Fayegh Zakir was a painfully thin man with an oversize head and blunt, swollen features that gave the impression he was feeding on himself. His office was next door to the men’s room, the air saccharine with disinfectant.
    It was a windowless cubicle furnished plainly with an old desk and chairs left by previous administrations. The trappings of modesty, Darius knew, fell away at the property line of his home in the posh north Teheran neighborhood of Africa, which he had purchased for cash equal to forty-seven years’ salary.
    Darius touched his perfumed tie to his nose, and went in with the preliminary autopsy findings. Zakir gestured to a seat in the cloying draft from the men’s room. “What is this?”
    The Revolutionary Prosecutor regulated the activities of the Komiteh, issuing the warrants under which they entered houses, seized property, and made arrests in questions of security and intelligence. Under the law, the Revolutionary Guards had little power without his authorization, and could be dismissed or jailed at his order. In point of fact, Zakir lived in fear of the Komiteh, whose grumblings about insufficient vigor had hounded the last four of his predecessors from office.
    “A fresh homicide.” Darius didn’t sit. “A girl was discovered by the Pasdar murdered at the new apartment complex on Saltanatabad Avenue below Niavaran. We don’t know who she is, or how she died. Baghai dug a bullet out of her head, but it was put there after death. There was evidence of sexual mutilation.”
    Although he was alerted to major crimes by the Komiteh, Zakir demanded a separate briefing from the police. The feeling of both agencies was that they were working at cross purposes, which often they were.
    “Fourteen rapists, plus eight killers were stoned to death last week at the Sports Stadium in Bushehr.” Zakir slid a Daily Kayhan from under the report, and tapped his finger against the front page. “You’d think that would put the fear of God into anyone contemplating murder. The crazy bastards don’t read the papers, though. What leads do you have?”
    “None.”
    “Is Ghaffari working with you?”
    “He inspected the apartment houses for witnesses.”
    “He is a capable officer. The investigation can be left in his hands without worry. There is a more pressing case I want