It’s a piece of fiction, my first attempt to write a crime drama. I will be publishing it in parts. The sections of this installment have been paginated for easy read. Hope you will like it.
IMr Basu awoke fairly early on Tuesday. It was not yet 7 in the morning and judging by the darkness outside the window it was going to be another cloudy day. He looked at the crumbled quilt that lay on his side of the bed longingly for one last time. He couldn’t afford to be lazy now. After two heart surgeries in the past two years he had learnt not to take his health for granted. So he shook his head and got ready for his morning stroll.Mr Basu lived in a spacious four bedroom apartment in a large housing complex in Pune. After spending most of his life working in the hustle and bustle of the city of Mumbai, he had sought a calm place to spend the rest of his life. After combing for over two years he had found this place that suited his requirement perfectly – set amidst the hills and scenic landscape tranquillity reigned throughout, yet, it was close enough for his children working in Mumbai to visit every now and then. The builders had aptly named it as Paradise. People who lived here were extremely well dressed, polite in their greetings and never raised their voices when they fought with their spouses. Mr Basu had never regretted his decision of moving here and these days, he was particularly happy because even though he didn’t like mingling he had made a steady group of friends with people he met during his morning walks. But that was until today. Mr Basu’s peaceful life was about to hit a turbulence. In fact, as if, a large stone was about to be thrown this morning into the placid lake of the residents’ lives, for, for a long time to come all that the residents of the housing society could talk about was what happened this morning. To know what terrible things awaited Mr Basu we would simply have to follow him for now.[next]
IIMr Basu came out of his apartment. He took a step toward the stairwell but then decided against it. Today was not one of those days when he felt energized enough to take the stairs instead of the elevator. He pressed the call button and waited. He cringed a little when a half asleep Mrs. Basu came strutting with his umbrella bickering about how forgetful he was becoming every day. He met his neighbor Mr Sharma, who was also one of his fellow morning walkers, in the elevator. Mr Basu exchanged friendly greetings and spoke about the weather.As they came out of the elevator, a cacophony of dozens of crows greeted them. Mr Basu looked uneasily around. It was not usual in this part of the city. Not much trash littered around here to attract such a big battalion of scavenger birds. And that too, so early in the morning! He took a tentative step and then another. The feeble sun was not having much success to penetrate through the cloud that cast an ominous shadow of doom around. Mr Basu felt the hair rising at the back of his neck. Something was not right. He could feel it in his gut. As he rounded the corner, the crowing got steadily louder punctuated by a rhythmic dripping sound. Was it water dripping from somebody’s A/C unit? Mr Basu wondered. But the sound was a lot heavier. With the worst kind of premonition Mr Basu peered through the semi darkness and found himself looking into a small pool of blood that was growing in size from the blood that dripped from somewhere above. Crows had gathered around the blood and were crowing madly. Looking up he saw a woman’s lifeless body – it’s impossibly bent upper half hanging outside a window on the ninth floor. There were many crows around the window too. Even though in various future occasions when Mr Basu recounted this particular scene to people who wanted to know, he put himself in a much braver light by adding few different colours to the actual happenings, currently he let out a yelp and did kind of a somersault and collided head on with Mr Sharma who seemed to be crouching next to him. Mr Basu felt something heavy crushing at his chest and his head felt vacant. His knees gave away and he felt the foggy morning go black.[next]
IIIWhen inspector Kausik Jha arrived at the scene of crime in a large housing complex, he was surprised. Usually crime scenes attracted a lot of curious people. But this one looked deserted. A woman was found dead inside her locked apartment and half of her body was hung outside the open window. The person who found her was a morning walker. When he raised the noise after finding her, one of the residents had tried getting into the apartment and finding it locked, peered from the roof top to get a closer look at the woman and seeing her dead pan stare called the police immediately. The apartment door had already been broken open by his team and now the forensic team was busy trying to gather the evidences they could find. As inspector Jha entered the apartment, he was taken aback. The apartment lacked even the basic furnishing required to live in. The living room had no TV, no table and no sitting arrangement apart from a red Nilkamal chair. The walls were bare except few rectangular dirt markings – caused obviously by frames removed recently. On floors too there were distinct markings of furniture. The kitchen was empty as well except a couple of blackened pots and a battered looking small fridge. A lone packet of stale sandwich bread lay inside the otherwise empty fridge. The uncomfortable barrenness of the apartment surprised him. Was she robbed? Was that the reason for her murder? He thought. But then he remembered that it was only minutes after the death that she was discovered. The blood was still dripping from her body. The robber couldn’t have gotten away. In the bedroom the body had now been taken down from the window and placed on the floor. Jha glanced over the dead body and then around the room. A thin rope ran the length of the room. It was laden with clothes – probably the only proof that a woman lived here. A mattress lay on the floor: its sheet was wrinkled in what seemed a violent battle, two pillows and a crumpled blanket lay haphazardly on it. A mirror hung from the closet door; opening it he found another heap of clothes dumped on the floor. Otherwise this room also, like the living room, was bare. It was almost as if this woman was preparing to leave. “So how do you think it happened?” Jha asked to no one in particular.“Blood’s very less. So the broken window didn’t kill her. She was probably dragged there after she’d already died. And we got few prints too” said one of the men who were working on the forensic team.Jha looked at the dead woman. She was young, maybe in her late twenties. Clouds of curly hair framed her heart shaped face. Her lips were bluish. Her hands were clawed. She was wearing a long maxi dress which was now soaked in blood and torn around her waist. But apart from that she looked without injury.Jha moved toward the window. It was across from the bed. The jarred edges of the broken glass of the window were smeared in blood. He narrowed his eyes in concentration. Few streaks of blood had formed lines sliding down the wall from the window. Apart from that there was no blood stain in any other part of the room. A theory was forming in his mind, but he would have to wait till the autopsy results came in. He was lost in all types of thoughts when suddenly he felt something. Years of working in this profession had made Jha’s instincts sharp. He looked up and out of the window, and felt, rather than saw, a shadow move across the window directly opposite to the one he was standing.
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Riot of Random
