X: The Hunt Begins

by Unknown

  He looked eagerly from Virat to Aditya.

  “That's certainly an interesting theory.” Virat said at last. “We'll keep it in mind. Thanks for talking to us.” Suraj rose and left the room.

  There was another silence after he had left the room. Finally, Aditya glanced over at Virat. “So. Want to start rounding up all the suspicious looking black cats in the area for interrogation?”

  Virat burst out laughing.

  “And I think he was actually being serious.” Aditya continued. “It didn't seem like he was delibrately bullshitting us. He really believed what he said.”

  “How could a guy so dumb have landed a girl like Kavya?” Virat sighed. Aditya gave him a look. “What, like you haven't noticed both the sisters are knockouts? I saw you struggling not to say anything rude when Diya was telling us about her ESP. And then you were jumping around offering her the last carton of juice in the fridge.”

  “What about you?” Aditya countered. “You were pretty accomodating when she barged into the appartment without warning that day. You think you would've been that polite if it had been a fat middle aged guy with a toupee?”

  “I think we can both agree the sisters are easy on the eyes.” Virat said, rising from his seat. “And Kavya's boyfriend isn't very bright. But that doesn't get us any closer to the murderer.”

  The two made their way to the main office room, where Shahid sat waiting for them at his desk. “Are you done talking to the kid?” He asked. “Find out anything useful?”

  “Nothing much.” Virat said. “He was trying to distance himself from the whole thing. Said he and Kavya were just friends. Doesn't know that we're aware of the money he borrowed from her.”

  “Well, here's an interesting fact we dug up.” Shahid rifled among the documents lying on his desk and extracted a brief report from a file. “He was using the borrowed money to place bets on the IPL. Around sixty thousand rupees. And then he lost the money. All of it.” There was a short pause as he looked meaningfully at the other two.

  “That gives us a pretty clear cut motive.” Virat spoke up. “You think Suraj wanted Kavya silenced before she could go to the police?”

  “You haven't heard it all yet.” Shahid said. “Guess who was the one who placed the bets for him? The maid Laxmi's husband, Biru.”

  “Really?” Aditya leaned in. “So she isn't as innocent as she'd like to pretend. I thought she was crying a bit too much for it to entirely genuine.”

  “She could have been hiding something from you.” Virat said musingly. “Suraj might have warned her to keep her mouth shut.”

  “I've seen cases like these before.” Shahid said. “The boy borrows money from his girlfriend. He puts it all in a bet, and loses everything. The girlfriend keeps badgering him about the money, and eventually threatens to call the police if he doesn't pay up. The boy can't let that happen. Neither can the maid let her husband get involved. She sees the window frame has been removed and makes a plan to take care of Kavya. Or it could have been the boy who came up with the plan”

  “And the swamiji who put the evil eye on the house?” Virat asked.

  “A thick beard and a moustache can be a pretty effective disguise.” Shahid shrugged. “I'll tell you what, we're going to start looking for the maid's husband now. And when we do find him, I've got a feeling he's going to be tall and dark with a scar down his neck.”

  * * *

  Five days since the Rajan murder Aditya, Virat and Payal sat watching a film in Virat's apartment. The police had almost wrapped up the case. The hunt for the killer was still on, but the only hope lay in Diya recognising the killer among a gallery of criminals. Without a narrowing down of the list of suspects, the whole procedure would take too long. The police was also looking into the anonymous phones calls the sisters had been receiving prior to the attack.

  The maid's husband was also missing. Laxmi insisted he had gone to visit his family in the village, but Shahid thought it was most likely he had caught wind of the investigation and was staying away.

  “How about changing the channel.” Payal said to Virat. “I've seen this movie twice already.”

  “Lost the remote.” Virat said, lolling back in his chair. “You're welcome to get up and change it by hand.”

  Payal sighed and leaned back. “That's the problem with cable these days.” She complained. “They'll buy one hit movie and then play it everyday for a month. I've seen this film playing at some time or the other for weeks now. I used to like it before, but now I'm getting sick of it.”

  Aditya said nothing, because he wasn't really listening. His mind was still on the Rajan case. Was the one murder the end of the matter? Or was the remaining sister also a target? Was the danger still present over the Rajan house? Had the police learned anything new from the forensic report? All through this case Aditya had been conscious of a feeling of helplessness. They seemed to be gliding thorugh a morass of superstition and dead ends that made his usual tools of logic and reasoning inadequate. Sinister swamis, evil eyes and roving black cats seemed to be prime suspects. Then there was the grounds on which they had been introduced to the case in the first place. A girl who was convinced she could sense when her sister was in danger. And then that danger had turned out not only to be real but fatal.

  Virtually every person was convinced, at some point in their life, that they could see the future, a phenomenon known as Deja vu, which scientists still could not explain fully.

  Such was the case with ESP. Although he would never admit it, Aditya was beginning to wonder if there was some truth in the claim, after all. He was aware of the extensive history of research that had gone into ESP, from experiments carried out by the government of the United States to seances held in The UK. And perhaps it really wasn't even ESP, after all. There was the explanation Aditya had considered earlier.

  And again he felt a pang as he remembered Diya's corpse lying in a pool of blood. No matter what the explanation, they had already lost the case. The girl was dead, her sister was in shock, and the murderer lost in the mass of humanity teeming on the streets of Delhi.

  The murderer now. Aditya frowned as his mind focussed on the other angle to the case. What of the murderer? The old swami who had come calling on the house, and who had perhaps later broken into the house and attacked her sister. The tall, dark man with the beard and mustache, and a gold chain and the scar down his neck. Someone so outlandishly evil, it seemed as though he had stepped out of a movie. In fact , the villain in the movie they were watching seemed to match the description. Tall, dark, scowling and wearing a black kurta, daring the hero to come at him and his gang.

  Aditya continued to stare at the screen, and now he was conscious of a sense of deja vu himself. The villain onscreen really was the man described by Kavya. Tall. Dark. Prominent scar. He fit the description perfectly. But what did that mean? A character from a movie had emerged into the real world to commit murder? How did this strange new piece of information fit into the already baffling jigsaw that was this case...

  “What is it?”Virat asked, noticing the look on Aditya's face. He said nothing, but leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Virat knew that look. He had entered his buddhijeevi mode, and would be deaf to the outside world for as long as his eyes were shut and his mind turned inwards.

  Aditya's brain was racing furiously, facts tumbling one over the other in a barrage of impressions and inferences. Diya. Kavya. The tall, dark man with the gold chain. A voice crying on the phone. A black cat streaking across a path. Kavya. Diya. A swami baba. The servant Laxmi. A little girl falling down a well. The broken glass on the living room floor. Diya. Kavya...

  And suddenly the pictures stopped. The jigsaw untangled itself and fell neatly into place. A picture emerged that was as startling as it was undeniable.

  “I am such an idiot!”.” He whispered, springing to his feet.

  “What are you talking about?” Payal demanded.

  “No time.” Aditya said. He turned to Virat
. “Get the bike. It's time to close this case.”

  * * *

  The doorbell only rang once before Diya opened the front door of her house. Oustide stood Aditya and Virat.

  “Hey, can we come in?” Aditya asked.

  “Of course.” Diya moved aside to let them in. “You said you'd received some new information about my sister's murder.”

  “Yes, the police had been conducting some comprehensive investigations into the murder for the past few days.” Aditya said as the three made their way into the living room. Diya sat on a high backed chair, while the other two sat on the couch. “We got one of those results back this morning.”

  Diya's eyes widened. “About what? Do you know who the man with the scar is?”

  “No.” Virat said. “But that's becaue there never was a man with a scar.”

  “What?” The lines appeared again on Diya's forehead. “Then who killed my sister?”

  “You did.” Aditya said.

  The room fell silent. Diya's eyes did not leave Aditya's. He stared back without blinking as he continued to speak. “You'd never been close to your sister, and you wanted her dead. But you'd be the first suspect in case anything happened to her. I'm guessing the window grill being removed gave you the idea for this whole charade. It would give you an airtight alibi, and paint you in a sympathetic light. The bereaved sister who tried everything in her power to save Diya, and was sitting with an officer at the time that eveyone thought the murder occurred.”

  “Shall I tell you what really happened the day you came to us with your story?” Aditya asked. “You stabbed your sister in the bedroom when her back was turned. You disposed of the knife and took her mobile phone with you. Then you came to us and told us your story about being afraid for Kavya's safety. You spilled the juice on yourself and went to Payal's bathroom after making sure to leave your own mobile with us. You called us from Diya's phone and pretended to be her about to be attacked. But then Virat asked you to describe the attacker. You weren't expecting the question, but saw it as an oppurtunity to pin the blame on someone else. During an unexpected situaion, our mind finds it difficult to create new ideas, and we fall back on our memories for inspiration, sometimes unconsicously. You described a villain you had seen in a movie a few days ago. And it worked. All that nonsense about a tall, villainous dark man breaking into your house made for an excellent red herring for the police to chase after.”

  “After we got to your house and entered the bedroom you pretended to collapse on the ground in front of your sister's body, and slipped Kavya's mobile out of your pocket and onto the floor. Then all you had to do was play along while we fed the police the version of events that you had orchestrated for our benefit.”

  “How could you say such terrible things?” Diya cried, her eyes welling with tears. Äditya could not could not help but admire her histrionic ability. “Why would I want to kill my own sister?”

  “Well, the police is looking for a financial angle. Any money you'd inherit in case of your sister's death, things like that. But I've got a feeling it's something else.” Aditya leaned forward, watching her intently. “It's about Suraj, isn't it? The man who was your friend before he became Kavya's boyfriend, and who you've been keeping closeby ever since her death. You liked him, didn't you? But Kavya took his away from you.” For the briefest moment the tears on Diya's face stopped, and her expression hardened into something dangerous. Then the mask of tears and the trembling lip was back in place. But Aditya had seen enough.

  “You don't have any proof.” Diya spoke in a low voice. There was a pause, and then she added, “Because it isn't true.”

  “Öh, we've already proved it.” Aditya said calmly. “Yesterday I asked the team in charge of the investigation to try something normally done in cases of kidnapping and extortion. They traced the calls made from Kavya's mobile.” Aditya paused, watching as a hint of fear appeared on Diya's face for the first time. “The police did a scan of the last number dialled from it, and narrowed down the location of the call to within a few yards of our apartment. They now know the phone was with you, and not with your sister.” The color drained from Diya's face even as her tears stopped. She no longer looked like a grieving woman, but resembled a cornered animal, her eyes darting from Aditya to Virat. They met her gaze steadily. “That's why we were sent here. You're a murderer and a sociopath, Diya. A completely selfish person with no sense of right or wrong. If you ask me, Suraj made the right call when he chose your sister over you.”

  “He didn't choose her.” Diya said. The change in her appearance was unsettling. There was a sullen anger in her eyes that transformed her features, so that the pretty, wide eyed girl who had come to them that morning was suddenly replaced by a spoilt and petulant child, driven only by her own selfish passions. “She tricked him. She knew I liked him, and she flirted with him just to spite me. And then he fell for her, even though she didn't love him like I did. She was always taking my things. Every since we were little. I'd warned her. I'd told her I'd teach her a lesson if she ever stole from me again.”

  Aditya rose from his seat and turned to Virat. “I think it's time to call Shahid.” Virat nodded and rose as well, taking out his mobile.

  The rest of their stay at the Rajan house was spent mostly in silence, with Aditya keeping an eye on Diya while Virat phoned Shahid. A police car came laden with constables to collect Diya Rajan and transport her to the police station, while Aditya and Virat prepared to follow them on their bike.

  “At least we saved Shahid the trouble of hunting all over Delhi for a man with a scar.” Aditya commented. “Good thing Diya didn't realise the circumstantial evidence we had wasn't concrete enough for a conviction without her confession. Still, this case took a lot longer than it should have.”

  “And the blame does lie with us, you know.” Virat remarked as he started the engine. “We should've been on our guard more. We shouldvé known from the start the girl was playing us.”

  “There's a complex, psychological reason why we fell for her act that I've determined after much delibration and inductive reasoning.” Aditya said, getting on the bike behind Virat.

  “She was pretty?” Virat asked.

  Aidtya sighed and nodded as the bike moved onto the road after the police car. “So pretty. And both the sisters pining over a guy who thought a cat was a murder suspect..”

  Chapter 5 : The Man Who Wasn't Real

  “I am in need of assistance, officer.” The lean figured man with the nervous, eager face trembled as he stood in front of constable Sikander at the police station. “I have come to you because I am afraid for my life.”

  “Yes?” Sikander's brow was raised as he mentally scanned the man. Well dressed. Cultured voice. But obviously under considerable mental strain. The loud checked green scarf he wore wrapped around his neck was at odds with the rest of his sober clothing. Sikander gestured him towards the seat in front of his desk.

  “I wondered whether the police were the right people to talk to about the matter.” The man said as he lowered himself onto the chair. “But I had to talk to someone.”

  “What kind of danger are you worried about?”

  “Murder. I... I think someone is trying to kill me.” The strain on the face became even more pronounced. The man's eyes darted nervously around the station, as though expecting someone to attack him on the spot.

  “Let's go about this properly.” Sikander said, bringing out the FIR ledger.

  “Your name is?”

  “Aamir Shah.”

  “And what is your complaint regarding?”

  “I think someone is trying to kill me.” The man repeated.

  “Do you have the name and address of the person threatening you?”

  “No. He's not real.”