by Sweth Water
He sat on the couch, his hands on his head. From the table, he took a water bottle and drank some water. Everything was a blur. Surrounding was circling. Hand on the couch, he put the bottle on the table and leaned back. He took deep breaths and sighed.
Never in his wildest dreams had he thought that he would be alone in the world, without his wife. Some good moments of the past were still in his mind as if it happened yesterday. His life was wonderful. A great woman he had met to spend his life with.
He wiped the tears.
He took a warm bath and then brushed his teeth.
He filled a teapot with water and placed it on a burner. The sun was shining behind the wall of his neighbour’s house. His house was bigger than other houses. He remembered the time when they were looking for a new house. His wife and he had roamed almost every street of the city. And then they glued their eyes on this house.
It was a beautiful house. Three big bedrooms, a hall, an airy kitchen, almost everything was there including good neighbours and a supermarket.
After the accident, he wanted to get away from the house, but no-one was ready to buy it. So many ads he’d given on the websites and newspapers, no response. He was sure he would not get the response from anyone. The house didn’t want him to leave, making him stay in the house to live with grief.
In a white mug he poured the tea. He scratched his face where beard was grown. He liked bearded face. His wife told him it made him look manly. He smiled and finished his tea before getting out of the kitchen.
He’d spent days sitting on the porch, looking at the people going out for work, giving kisses to their children and hugging their spouses. He sat there in the chair, in silence, waiting for the moment to pass. How many days he’d spent here, remembering his wife and laughs that they’d shared and saying goodbyes, he just couldn’t tell.
They both had decided to have a child in their lives. They were trying, and thinking it would be conceived this time. The idea didn’t come to them to start the family with a child. His work took away most of the day, and sometimes he worked at night too when the case was so serious and the Chief needed his presence there.
He was a senior police officer. Only two people were above his rank, and he never listened to them. Sometimes rules should be broken to do the right things even if they are bad. He broke the rules many times and solved the cases. And the Chief didn’t steal his spotlight but told him not to do it again – breaking the law under his nose. Those really were happy days.
March was standing with her child. She had a wonderful daughter. Coal and his wife always visited them for a late-afternoon tea on Sunday and invited them for breakfast. She waved her hand and her daughter too to Wind, her husband. Wind worked in a small manufacturing company. Telling the truth, Coal never exactly got what he did for a living. It was not easy for police officers to understand every other person’s business.
She smiled and walked towards him.
“How are you doing?” she asked and bounced her baby to keep her calm. Yes, that was March. She would never leave her baby alone at home. Wind would go to the office, and she would spend her time with her daughter, Sun. Coal had asked her to look for a job. She would smile.
“Hard time.”
“You want to talk?” March’s fluffy hair swirled with the wind, and her eyes had sympathy for him.
Coal hesitated. “I don’t know.” His face was down. He didn’t want to look weak in front her; time was not very good for him. He had avoided the talk for a couple of weeks, now it seemed like he would have to face the truth. Truth that his wife was dead.
“Come, have something to eat. I made a good salad in the morning.”
“I ... I just had some tea.”
“It won’t make your appetite bad. Come. It has been weeks when you were in our house. We can talk over some salad.” She turned and bounced her baby again.
He sat there for few more moments and then stood. Maybe she was right. He should talk with someone, someone he could trust. And March and Wind both were nice people. Actually nicest people he ever met. They came to the city last year; March was pregnant of seven months then.
“What you had in dinner, Coal?” March asked. She closed the door behind her back. She put the child in the buggy and walked to the kitchen.
The house didn’t change a bit. Same curtains, couches, tables, paint, nothing changed but his life.
Windows in the kitchen were open and the morning air was coming inside. March took the plate from the shelf and kept on the big serving shelf.
“You here?” March turned her head.
“Yes, sorry. What were you saying?”
“What you had in dinner.”
“Couple of beers.”
“How many?”
“I lost the count, March.” He took the plate in his hands as she served the salad and sat opposite to her. It had been weeks when he talked with someone face-to-face. The Chief, Fog, called him after his wife’s death, and after that he talked with the bartender who gave him chilled drinks. These days Coal didn’t ask him anything, and the bartender gave the same half-filled glasses. “I am lost, March.”
“Eat something, you will feel better.” She ate the salad slowly. “You are not going to the job these days?”
“I am not up to it. I will do something crazy there. Some serious cases are going on. They called me one week back and I told them I wasn’t ready.”
“You should go, Coal. Sitting in the house and talking to no-one will not lessen the pain. Go to your job, come over here and eat with us. Wind misses you. He asked me several times how you were doing. He was not able to meet you due to his work. Sometimes we see each other after two days.” She sighed. “You should forget the past, Coal. We can’t do anything now. It was a bad day for everyone. Let it go now.”
“Let it go?” His tone was hard but eyes showed the calmness.
“I am sorry,” March said nothing for few moments. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay, March. I can understand. You are a good friend.” He ate the salad and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “I should start going to work. I can’t stay in the house forever. Will wait for few days and then go.”
“Good. Eat healthy food. Go for a jog in the morning. These things will help you.” March glanced at Sun. “How is Holl doing? I haven’t seen him at your house.”
“He came after the funeral. He stayed and we talked. He was broken. First he lost his parents and now his sister. I advised him to stay with me; his house is far away from the city and nobody is there. Some construction work is going on in there. They are demolishing the properties.”
“It’s bad. Illegal?”
“I don’t think so. He is such a good man. People with money can show any papers to you after bribing the authorities that sometimes you believe. I once searched one of those cases and found the paper legal. There was nothing against the law, but I had this feeling that the man was doing something illegal.” In his job, he’d met many of these kinds of people. The men who looked smart and innocent were not what he thought they would be.
“Our country needs some reformation in the law.”
“You want people to leave the rights that they have?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“Police should be severer than what they are now.”
“And then people will start protesting against their own authorities and government.” Coal laughed. It really felt good to talk to someone after days. He felt proud that he came here. “We haven’t had a civil war in our country. Making the laws severer can drastically change the minds of half of the population to commit the crimes, and our army and police might not be able to stop that.”
The child started crying. March left her food and picked the baby from the buggy. Coal saw the baby: her tiny legs and hands, small face, pink clothes she was in. She really was a sweet child. The baby girl saw him and stopped crying. March smiled and gave the baby to Coal.
“She wants to be with you, I guess. Can you hold her for few minutes?”
“I ... I never—”
“She will not be a problem for you. Sun, don’t create any problem for Coal, okay?” The child giggled as if she understood it.
March went to the back of the house where the garden was. She would do the laundry there, and kitty parties too. On his last birthday, he was given a birthday surprise there. He glanced at the back door of the house.
He lifted her up. She smiled and tried to catch his nose. She was a lovely child. If his wife were alive, he would have a child like Sun. He never had a child in his arms before. He was afraid that it would fall. But taking Sun in his arms, it was a different feeling that he never had. He was happy. Happy by holding the child in his arms.
He made her sit on the table in front of him, and finished his food. It had been days when he ate proper food. He’s famished. From the refrigerator, he took a water bottle and swallowed the rest of the salad quickly. When he was going to take Sun in his arms again, she smiled and tried to catch his nose, this time he allowed her to do so.
March returned after fifteen minutes, her hands were wet and face covered with beads of sweat. “Thanks for looking after her. Did she create any problem?”
“No, she is a perfect child.”
Coal’s phone rang.
It was Jo.
He had called him many times and Coal knew what he wanted from him. It was really a tough job. Solving the crimes was no easy task. His team had been in the office for days sometimes. He thought of not picking it up and then saw March’s face and remembered the conversation that they had. He answered reluctantly.
“Coal speaking.”
“Jo here, Coal.”
“I am listening.”
“We need to talk.”
Coal excused himself after putting Sun in the buggy and went near the window. “Stop calling me, Jo. You should take some other men. Tens of people we have in our department. Please.” he said slowly.
“I am not talking about that. It is more important for you than someone else. It will be good if you meet us in person. At the Headquarters?”
“What is it, Jo? Another trick?”
“It’s serious, you fool!”
“I will think about it if you tell me over the phone. If I have time to ponder upon what you said, I would come.”
“Idiot. You are a complete idiot. The problem with you is that you are a stubborn ass. There are people who really care for you. But you … never mind. Let me come to the point. You want to hear over the phone. Let it be then,” he sighed. “We believe that your wife was murdered; it was not merely an accident.”
Coal shuddered. “What?”
“Come to the office. We can talk here.”
“It is not the right way to do the things, Jo.” His tone was rude. Nobody had said something like this to him.
“Do you seriously think I will call you to make you do something by lying to you about your wife?”
Coal didn’t have any answer for that. His wife died in a car accident; it was no murder. What if he was proved wrong? He didn’t want to ignore the possibility of being wrong. With his fingers, he clutched the phone so hard that his fingers hurt a little. His breath was heavy with the guilt of leaving his wife in the car.
“I am coming.”
Chapter
3
Hundreds of times he’d passed these roads while going to work, but this time it all was different. For weeks he had been away from the work, and the reason to go to the office couldn’t be worse than what he’d heard over the phone. His wife was murdered! By whom?
She was a nice woman. She had enemies or she was killed because of him? Tens of enemies he had made in his life. This was what he did for a living. Many people hated him. He counted all the people who wanted him dead. Few names he recalled. Last year he’d put drug dealers behind the bars for supplying the drugs to the youngsters. Were they behind that?
No. They didn’t have any connection to the outer world, and all the people who were with them were outside the country. Interpol didn’t flag anyone coming to the country with a malice reason. RAAD (Regional Audit and Analysis Department) had the people doing the work for Interpol, and Interpol helping RAAD. No, they were not the people.
In twenty minutes he was outside the Headquarters.
The guards at the door saluted him and he passed them after swiping his card and signing on the papers. Didn’t matter for how many years you worked at the Headquarters, these rules were same for everyone.
On the ground floor, he found the same faces that he used to see every day. The tech team had the department on the left side where geeks would sit to hack into any system that he wanted to. It was illegal, of course, but everyone knew how good Coal handled the things if allowed. Fog didn’t know about it, and never will.
He passed sad smiles to the officers who met him in the lift lobby and took the lift to the second floor. Only three people were in the lift when it opened and five more entered including him. He saw the camera to the left side where the ventilator was. He smiled and remembered putting it there. Few of them knew about it. Fog was a strict person. He had ordered Coal and Jo to do everything in their power to make sure that an unauthorized person shouldn’t enter the server rooms. What type of information was stored there he was aware of that. It was good if only a handful of people had the access to it.
He got out of the lift on the second floor. Countable people were there, and the Chief, Fog, was in his cabin. His belly was so big that he could be seen from a long distance. Glass in front of his eyes showed some other people inside.
He opened the door. “Fog?”
“Welcome, my boy.” He told the three officers, “If you can excuse us for few minutes.” They left and Fog offered him a chair. “Sit.”
“How do you know?”
“You want to have some water, Coal?” Fog’s expressions changed when he said that. His double-chinned face was struggling with the words.
“Fog, please. I am here only to know the reason, and then I’ll think what to do. No, I don’t need water, but a reason will be enough now.”
“Your wife was involved with some bad people, Coal.”
“What?”
“Investigation is going on. We don’t have any solid proof to refute that, but our initial analysis found that she was a professional hacker associated with some very popular groups. The latest one was Anonymous. How she got to them and what crimes she committed we still don’t know. I thought we should talk to you about it.”
It is a lie. “On what basis are you saying this?” His tone was normal, but he was filled with rage.
“We arrested three members of that group. They were in the Department of Defence, hacking into the very restricted server. Even we don’t have access to that. What information they were looking for we have not found yet. Baldwin Berger is working on that, and I made it number one priority. They had some documents and hard disks and a laptop.”
“Where are they?”
“In the interrogation room.”
“I want to meet them.”
“Coal—”
“Now, Fog. It is related to my wife. I have all the rights to know the truth. These losers are trying to defame my dead wife. I won’t let them do that. She was a good woman. Hacking? No, they are liars. Or the documents that they had were fabricated.” His voice was loud. He was shouting more than he ever did in his life.
“You’ll have the truth, Coal, not now. They had the hard disks. I am not saying she was a criminal. It is just the initial analysis. I agree with you, it can be forged. But we will have to look at it from a different angle.” He disgusted the words coming out of his mouth.
“Do you even know how it sounds, Fog? We are talking about my wife!”
“That’s why you were told to meet in person.”
“Tell me more.”
“Many servers they were pinging simultaneously, might be doin
g a DoS attack. Your wife’s name they had on the list. She was contacted two days before she died. Interrogation is still going on. Will reveal more on that.”
“Who contacted her?”
“No information on that.”
Coal didn’t believe the words coming out of Fog’s mouth. His wife was the perfect example of a life partner that anyone wanted in life. She worked in a garment factory. Hacking? She didn’t even know how to open the websites to book air tickets. She was so naive that she deleted some of the emails from his laptop once. And when he asked, she said she was trying to shut the system down.
Without having any doubt, he wanted to hear what more Fog had or fabricated. Not once Fog was against the law. He believed in a verdict. The system where everyone had the rights to make their points and give the views, Fog had said this was how it worked in here. He lied though, Coal could have said that.
“Where are the laptop and devices that you collected?”
“In the store room.”
He could look at them to check the veracity of Fog’s words. “I want the access to those.”
“You are off duty.”
“I am ready to work. Especially after what I heard.”
“It is not personal, Coal. Emotions won’t give her justice. You have to work under the law.”
“I always did that.”
“I don’t remember when.”
Coal stood up and smiled. It was a genuine smile. Everybody knew how far he would go to get the things he wanted. If it’s related to his wife, people who killed her would wish they had killed him first. “Call them that I am collecting them from the store room. Have Baldwin look at the evidence that we have.”
“This is—”
He walked out of the room.
He took the stairs this time. The way was poorly lit. Using his hands, he descended the stairs and reached his cabin on the first floor. Next to his cabin was the store room where they stored evidence from different crime scenes.
He had never thought that he would be taking something related to his wife from the store room, even in an indirect way. Lilly was behind the desk. She joined the office two years back. She remembered everything from a needle to the computers stored there. There were other people too who were in the room, but they were not as smart as Lilly was.
