A Leap In Deceit - Think again before you trust what you know

A Leap In Deceit

Think again before you trust what you know

“It was a rather handsome winter morning with just a little broom of bright rays of sunshine penetrating their way through the otherwise shady canopy from the sleet of a few tens of noticeable foamy clouds floating a few miles above the beautiful, modern and sophisticated residential apartment complex of three brick red, ten storeyed, residential buildings with snowed rooftops and coaled chimneys complemented by a play area for kids in the middle with a blue wooden see-saw and a slide among the others in the pile of grass, sand and mud layered with snow from the crowd constraining whiteout that the night before this translucent morning had endured, and it was circumscribed by a rocky boundary of a concrete walking path for the elders to get their muscles moving, which was enhanced with a flowery little garden home to a couple of hoary benches.

Just as the petrichor was weakening against the rays peeking through the curtains in the sky, a fresh and strong aroma with a gratifying combination of the novel tea from the hills, a tincture of honey, some fine ginger, a dash of lime and a flavour of mint leaves with the added hint of cloves and cardamom that soothingly provided an ambiance that incorporated the impression of the mountains one hopes to meditate in, including the cold springs and the pine trees alike, entered the air shared by a couple of sixty-two-year-olds, Mahesh and Payal and a couple of sixty-three-year-olds, Kunal and Diya sitting in the balcony savouring a fine morning relaxing on their teak-wooden set of chairs. It was a fresh morning to this old little family living in a three-bedroom flat on the seventh floor of the first block of a moderately old apartment complex in an accessible and developed yet nature-cherishing part of the city with an eye-nourishing view of the most beautiful range of snow hills a city could ever hope to dwell in the periphery of.

“That almost reminds me of the tea you used to make, Kunal. It was one of the things that kept me sane every time I had to wake up at an odd hour due to some random emergency.”, was a well-deserved acknowledgement by Diya Sharma, the glamorously aged emeritus lady with a red woollen shawl wrapped around a thick yellow sweater worn over a leafy night suit complemented by a pair of white spectacles and a long braid of dark hair. “We barely had a fixed sleep schedule, did we, Diya? Whenever we used to even think about getting into bed, the phone would ring telling us how some self-acclaimed genius thought he’d pulled off a perfect crime.”, Payal Shukla, the retired yet athletic and energetic lady with a thick, violet, woollen robe with long and open peppery hair, began reminiscing her old work days with her partner sitting right beside her sipping tea nodding to every bit of what was being said.

“Well, ‘the sharpest sheds in the tool’, these two here were often considered, in their team.”, Kunal Sharma, the pensioned chemist with a maroon robe spoke up, “Erm, ’tools in the shed’, I mean, of course.”. “Such an enchanting aroma, courtesy to the new neighbour, Dr. Chaudhary. Great Tea, sir. I hope it tastes as good as it smells.”, Mahesh Shukla, the veteran physicist with a black woollen pyjama suit and a hat, raised his hand with his thumb stuck out, to which their neighbour on the adjacent balcony, the revered psychologist with a long green overcoat, Dr. Chaudhary, waved back with a friendly “Thanks a lot, sir. You’re welcome to have some anytime” while sipping on appraised tea with his left ankle on his right knee sitting on an oak-wooden chair.

It was as typical as a Sunday morning could get for a middle-class family with a couple of retired couples in an apartment complex. Or as it seemed until the absolute atypical, unexpected and unimaginable was about to be witnessed that would seem, even to the sharpest, wisest and the most experienced minds in the city, practically inexplicable.

Just as the last sip of tea was consumed, Payal noticed that Ramesh, one of their neighbours came walking into his balcony with a wide-open smile coupled with lifted eye brows and exposed eye balls that hardly seemed to succeed in his apparent attempt to hide an obvious excitement. “What is he so happy about? He almost looks in disbelief. And it’s looking like it must be something he wants to play close to his chest. He doesn’t want us or anyone noticing him, he’s trying to hide it, with his deep breaths and looking around once every couple seconds.”, Diya said.

Mahesh Shukla followed their gaze and saw Ramesh, “Oh! Look how happy he is! Some good news he must have heard. Starting a day with such joy is one of the most beautiful feelings of all, I always say. I wish I’d have such starts to any of my days.”. As soon as the sentence was finished, Ramesh started stepping up on the railing of the balcony and before anyone could say anything, he looked around, raised his arms a little and jumped off of from there. Every single eye in the backdrop of this take-off tracked the rocket man as he plummeted down to the snow metre by metre and quite literally crashed on a billion flakes of frosty snow, a million grains of sand, a thousand leaves of grass, a hundred little chippings and few pebbles starting from the head damaging most or possibly all of his vital organs,  bones and muscles one by one within a fraction of a blink as the red brooks flowed from at least a dozen wounds on his body including his fractured skull, shattered ribs and pretty much splintered limbs until a point when one could evidently conclude there’s not much left in him that might need the blood running anymore anyway.

As the eyes and jaws remained open, not a single word was uttered for a good minute or two. “I take that back.”, Mahesh broke the ice. “He was smiling! He was joyed! He seemed excited, as excited as anyone could possibly be! This doesn’t seem right.” said Payal with a gust of air from her nostrils as her eye brows marched towards each other after they fell from the peak of her lower forehead, as she had never experienced throughout her entire career in the crime department. “I don’t recall any such case in our time, do you?” asked Diya. “No, that’s what I mean. This is outlandish.”, her partner. “Am I dreaming, or … what exactly did I just see?”, the mentalist himself had his mind paused apparent from his eyes open limitlessly wide and his jaw anchored down as he sprung off of his chair.

“Why, in what sort of mind-state or circumstantial demand would one do such a thing?”, an eye-flinching Kunal was trying his best to contemplate what had happened instead of fixating on the shock of the moment. Only he didn’t realise that the moment of shock was far from being over. “How about asking ‘why would two do that?’ then?”, Mahesh said watching the balcony of the house left to Ramesh’s. “What?”, “Is it just us or is Mihir sort of acting roughly the same? Wait! Is he going to jump as well?”. And as was suspected, he vaulted off of his balcony as well, following which was another description beyond elaboration.

Witnesses, basically anyone who was out in their balcony or basically anywhere in a position of observing what was happening was flummoxed. And the worst part of it was that it was still far from over. Just before anyone could gather themselves back from the series of events that unravelled in front of them, they had to witness another dive from the building, this time it was a woman. It was Nisha from the house to the right of Ramesh’s. She looked just as happy and voluntarily participating in the act of her own execution as her predecessors did. And to the horror of the audience, the show did not even end there. Three more people with a gap of a few minutes each, followed. Two more women, Sapna and Ashriti and another man, Karan, all in the exact same fashion. They were all residents of the same floor of the same block of the apartment complex. There are six houses on each floor of this building. And hence, the entire floor of this building now had homes with someone who had committed suicide.

The rest of the residential complex, by this time had everyone out and witnessing what had happened, people of all ages and mental maturity and health, people of all professions, people of all backgrounds and beliefs, people just ending up being people, human beings. There are different schools of thought to this but on an average, the usual reactions of human beings, and even most animals at something frighteningly and inexplicably peculiar occurring in their vicinity is broadly categorised into three major styles, ‘fight, flight or freeze’. And so, we usually see people reacting in one of these ways. And so, in a large group of people, all of these things are noticed. Some rush to the location to see what they can do so as to deal with the situation and solve it, some run away from the location in order to have the sense of security by being physically away from the place of dangerous activity and finally some doing absolutely nothing whatsoever as they’re just not sure if they even comprehend what’s happening, let alone decide what to do next. However, the nature of the incident at hand at the moment was such that even the ‘fighters’ and ‘flighters’ were frozen to the last muscle and nerve in their bodies. The incredulity on the faces was dauntingly evident as flies could pass in and out of their mouths for minutes together and tea cups, biscuits, newspapers and pens couldn’t hold on for long as their grips loosened from the stiffening fingers.

As a few more minutes passed and no more flyers were landing, the watchmen and the security staff finally decided to make a move after recovering from the stun. A few further more minutes passed and people started moving. Some began gathering, some scattering. Some went on with their daily tasks, some forgot what they had to do to begin with. Diya and Payal, being retired detectives, couldn’t just carry on sitting on their chairs sipping tea after such an event had transpired right in front of their eyes. They went down to the kids’ play area where the six eagles had landed. The police were called and everyone was advised not to come to the scene or touch anything nearby.

“We literally saw all of them voluntarily jump off and they didn’t even look like they were sleepwalking or anything of that sort.”, Payal spoke up. “I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you to step aside, please madams.”, an assertive voice came in from a young woman walking towards the crime scene as steps with boots on snow. “Oh! Madam, it’s you! And you! Good morning, ma’am. How’ve you been doing? Also, I thought you both retired a year or two ago, if I’m not wrong. Did they call you too because there was something, to quote the person on the call, ‘completely irrational’, about what happened here? Huh, the descriptions these people give on phones.”, it was none other than Chief Detective Ms. Kirti Reddy from the Crime Department. Kirti was a tall young woman in her early thirties with straight, black, long yet often tied hair wearing a dark long coat over her purple shirt and denim trousers.

As peculiar as it all seemed, it was after all a bunch of suicides at the moment. Diya and Payal were hence, surprised to see a detective, that too the very chief detective from the Crime Department walking in even before the police arrived. “A couple of years ago, yeah. Hi, Kirti. Why are you here already? Aren’t the police supposed to come and see and decide if it’s possible that this is a crime instead of just suicides and only then inform you? We are here because we live here. This is our apartment complex. These people are our neighbours. We literally saw them jumping off their balconies. I didn’t think the crime department would be here, especially before the police, though.” Diya asked. “Yeah ma’am, as I was saying earlier, the police called me as I live nearby anyway and the way these people who called them describe what happened, they wanted the crime department to be involved from the beginning. And the police would be here anytime now, anyway.”, Kirti explained in response.

“In the meantime, as two of the best detectives this city has ever had, do you think there is something worth treating these suicides as crimes, possibly mass or serial homicides?”, Kirti asked. As she one of the firmest detectives to work in the city, it was soothing to see she let the rules bend for a few of those moments allowing Diya and Payal to examine the case, even without touching anything until the police arrives. “Huh, we can’t say for sure yet. But obviously, six people, relatively close to each other, neighbours, co-workers and family friends all committing suicide at roughly the same time does sound strange, but not completely implausible. It’s possible that they might have an illegal secret they share, you know, something they might have done that’s on the verge of coming out that can ruin their lives in some way and they just ended up deciding to take their own lives instead, out of either guilt or fear of consequences. Those kinds of things have happened before.”, Payal commented.

“Do you know them? How do you know they’re family friends and even co-workers?”, Kirti inquired. “Our son, well, my son, and her son-in-law works with them, there office isn’t that far away, too. He mentions it every time he comes over here and also, if possible, visits them. He hasn’t visited here for a while, now. But we were on call yesterday and he mentioned he met them yesterday in their office, too, like they do, almost every single day.”, Diya explained.

“Yeah, the implausible part is something else. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we actually saw each one of them jumping off of their balconies. And what we saw was quite unfathomable even for us with our experience. They didn’t look like they were sad or feeling down in any sort. Instead, they looked happy. They looked excited, and I’m not exaggerating when I contextually use that word, however weird it may seem and sound. It seriously didn’t look like they were coming out to the balcony from their respective bed rooms or wherever, to commit suicides, or in other words, end their lives. They seemed as if they’d either received some great news or were extremely excited to have accomplish a task they’d been attempting at. The only other little thing, however, is that they looked like they were trying to hide it. I know I’m probably being a little too presumptuous about their possible thought processes based on just afar observations of their facial expressions, but that’s what we do. You understand.”, Diya added.

“Hmm, oh, so it is somewhat ‘completely irrational’-ish, then. Okay. Let’s see what we can do. I think we maybe need to think about where and how to start investigating, given such an unorthodox case. Right now, I guess we need to wait until the police and my team arrives with a little forensic help. And by the way, I’m surprised to see you were able to keep their families off the scene. I didn’t expect the area to be so uncontaminated with such an apartment complex and victims with big families. That is what I thought I’d have to spend my time doing until the police arrives. But fortunately, we have you two here.”, Kirti said. That’s when it struck Payal and Diya. “Wait, Yeah. You’re right. No, we didn’t control anyone. None of their families came down in the first place. What in the world?! Are their families even home? Are they alright? Do they even know? We need to go to their houses and knock on their doors, first.”, Payal began to reflect on the added absurdity of the event everyone had failed to notice before.

They then quickly rushed to the seventh floor of the second block of this compact residential complex amidst the snow navigating through the fog and knocked on all the doors as soon as they could. There was no answer, on any of them. “Are they all not home at once? Someone, call them and confirm. Payal, call Rahul and ask him to call Himanshi if he has her number, or anyone’s.”, Diya suggested. And the detectives and a few other neighbours lingering around, all waited eagerly for Payal to finish her phone call with Rahul and give the next status update. “Well, Thanks for that. Yeah, tell them to come back and meet us here as soon as they can. The police would want to question them, too.”, Payal completed the phone call, and said “There was a little weekend getaway to some resort outside the city that all these people had planned, apparently. It seems that all of them, along with our divers here, were to go, but all six of them had to work a lot this week and hence, asked their families to go ahead without their attendance, as they had been planning this for months. They have been gone since yesterday morning, and they are to return by nightfall today.”. “Six families, all of them together, plan a weekend getaway and all six of them go through with it after months despite the main glue holding the families together, the co-workers, all of them not being available due to nothing much but ‘had a busy week’? I have neighbours, I have co-workers, I have friends, I have best friends and I have a family. Nothing comes close to the commitment towards weekend trips these people are showing.”, Diya commented.

“Well, we’ll question them along with the police, ma’am. Although, regarding that, I think you should get your old ID badges or something if you still have them, or the police won’t allow you at the crime scene. I fortunately have been hearing about you two since I was very young and I grew up idolizing you two in a way. Otherwise, I myself wouldn’t have been so acceptive of your participation.”, Kirti reminded them. “Haha, you’re right. We should get some sort of IDs or proofs that we are retired detectives and could actually be useful. We shouldn’t expect to be tolerated at a crime scene without that, those are the rules. But don’t worry, trust me, if the officer assigned has even the slightest of experience solving crimes in this city, he’d recognise us, just like you did.”, Payal remarked.

Nevertheless, the two veterans went back to their home to get their old ID badges and better set of outfits to withstand the cold and frankly be more professional. Taking their time, and freshening up a little followed by a change of clothes and quick short breakfast, and a mandatory “sorry, we can’t share any details now” to their husbands and the neighbour, they got up to come back to the crime scene. Diya had taken out her symbolic purple shirt while Payal had taken out her iconic red full sleeved t-shirt above their denim trousers, over which they took out their trademark blue and brown long overcoats from back in the day and finished the top up with classic black snow-tolerant boots.

By the time they got down to where the bodies were, they saw Kirti welcoming the police team with a tall man in the prime of his health and physical life, wearing the classic police uniform under his thick brown leather jacket, who was none other than Chief Inspector Satya Balachandran, leading them from the front finding their way through the fog on the slippery snow. Satya was a firm policeman in his early thirties known to have the toughest scowl in the department, but as his smartness and productivity spoke for themselves, no one seemed to bother editing a bit of a facial expression.

He had arranged a team with the quickest and sharpest at his station, them being three of his most trusted subordinates, Ali, Tanya and Robert. The three of them were batchmates in training. Even four years after their training, they had remained in touch and were pretty close friends themselves. In their late-mid-twenties, they were at a unique crisp of their careers where they had gained enough experience to understand the ways of the department but had still maintained the rebellious mindset to address anything that needed to be changed. Especially, with Satya as their lead, they quickly gained the name of being three of the brightest youngsters in the department.

Unsurprisingly, Satya recognised and greeted Payal and Diya but asked them to keep their ID badges on them just in case. “I thought the forensics were supposed to be here by now.”, Satya looked around. “Yes, and we are. Grow up, I’m just a couple of minutes late, you robot.”, entered the second of the only two voices in the city that could get away with such a line towards Satya. The department’s most reliable forensic expert, Dr. Pavan Chatterjee, an averagely tall, considerably healthy-looking gentleman in his early thirties with relatively greyer hair, a pair of thick black framed spectacles, walked in with his standard white lab coat over an otherwise casual denim outfit strangely complemented by a blue sweater vest along with grey rubber gloves and a bunch of little zip-lock bags to collect evidences to test in the lab until the bodies arrive there. Dr. Pavan was one of the better chemists in the city among those who had ever chosen to dedicate their research to the forensics department. Kirti, Satya and him were childhood best friends who grew up watching and idolising detectives, the police and the forensics. It was no surprise that they collectively decided to choose the respective departments of the crime solving field and were posted in the same city as they were great as individuals and just straight up perfect as a team.

Dr. Pavan had a couple of subordinates to assist him as well. Manish and Clara were new relatively new recruits at the forensic lab but they were academically excellent and very well recommended. So, despite their young age, as ‘late twenties’ is considered relatively young in the field of applied scientific research, they joined Dr. Pavan’s lab a few months ago.

“To all the youngsters, I feel really old saying that, I myself am really excited to be in the presence of, and I’m glad to introduce to you to, the best detectives the city has ever had, my personal idols, recently retired chief detectives Payal and Diya. I know, they’re technically retired but we can use their valuable insight, so I personally requested them to stay with us. Satya and Pavan know them as well. I request you people to keep the fact that they’re retired, confined to us for the time being. They have their old badges if anyone asks. I hope it’s clear.” declared Kirti. “It’s an honour to work with the both of you, madams.”, added both Satya and Dr. Pavan.

“Hello, everyone. Thanks for the introduction, Kirti. And, Satya, Pavan, Kirti and all of you. We know it’s your case. You’re absolutely in charge, and we’re not here to interfere in anything at all. We’re just here to help. Also, because we clearly love it.” Diya addressed the team. “She means, we love, not the fact that all these people died, the fact that it looks like a pretty interesting case. Please let us know anytime you think we should lessen our participation and we will, right then.”, Payal added.

“Alright. So, now, as all the pleasantries have been accomplished, I think we should get to work. There are six people here, all of whom have jumped off their balconies.”, started Satya, “Pavan, start with your basic sample collection of their hair, blood, cloth-strands, etc. etc. as I don’t really think there’s anything else in particular on the outside. Try to get the post-mortem report a bit quicker than that hacker’s case we had about a month ago.” “Oh, would you let that one go? It was once, and it was just one day late. It was a high-profile case, I just wanted to double check everything.”, replied Dr. Pavan.

“How long did the families say they’ll take to get here, ma’am?”, Satya asked. “Well, Rahul told me that she said she’d start as soon as possible. And the place is about a couple of hours away on road. It’s been around half an hour since the phone call. So, I’d say an hour and a half at the very least, and if there’s traffic, possibly a couple of hours.”. “Erm, I’m sorry I’m having to ask this of you two, but, as there’s no one else here who knows them better, after checking the CCTV footage, would it be okay if we talk to Rahul regarding their recent behaviours or anything odd that he noticed, basically try to see if he knows something that might not strike as anything to him but it might probably be useful for the case?”, asked Kirti. “Yeah, no problem. I actually was just about to suggest that myself. We don’t like wasting time, either.”, said Diya.

“The CCTV footage shows no one entering or leaving their flats since yesterday morning.”, Tanya, Ali and Robert came back from the supervision room a few minutes later through the planted corridor of scented Hyacinth and joined Kirti and at the Petunia decorated elevator area guided by the fragrances within the fog as they followed Payal and Diya back to their flat. As they reached the corridor, they saw a few anxious neighbours with periodic breaths of great amplitudes as their next-door neighbour finally took the initiative to represent the little group of whisperers and asked for updates regarding the case and their safety in general. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I completely understand your concern as well as your curiosity but we can’t tell you anything until the investigation is complete.”, Kirti conveyed to the old psychologist.

As they went past the crowd and entered the old detectives’ flat, they arranged for a video chat with Rahul, who then appeared on the screen to address them with the subtlest that eye brows can rise and nostrils can expand. “Son, this is Chief Inspector Satya and this is Chief Detective Kirti. As their families aren’t here yet, they thought we might ask you if you’ve noticed anything particularly strange in their behaviour or anything of any sort recently. Instead of wasting time until their family arrives and further time until the forensic reports come along, they thought they can do this, instead. And Payal and I are sort of working with them, too, I mean, just to help. But it’s their case. So, please cooperate with them and answer anything they ask and anything you know, whichever answer is relevantly more informative.”, Diya advised.

Rahul was a short young man who seemed to have just begun putting up a little weight, and his sharp mind was put to good use as he was one of the lead engineers at the head branch of one of the country’s best automobile manufacturing companies where the recently died neighbours were six of the leading accountants. He understood the gravity of the situation along with the expectancy of his extent of knowledge and was willing to provide anything that he could for the betterment of the case. “Sure maa, Rahul here, nice to meet you, Mr. Satya and Ms. Kirti, hope I could be of any help.”, he expressed. “They worked in the accounts department, not really that close, but yes, I did know them and I have interacted with them a few times recently, just as briefly as I am used to doing pretty much daily in the past couple of years that I’ve known them.”.

Kirti and Satya asked Rahul regarding when he last saw any or all of them and how the interactions went. Rahul described a usual meeting of theirs in the coffee break on Friday in the evening at the cafeteria in their office. It had gone pretty ordinarily according to what he remembered. “Yeah, and to be fair, they did agree to have had a pretty tiring week and a wished to cancel some sort of a group plan they were planning to do. They weren’t completely sure of cancelling it then. They said they’d decide that later. I didn’t know what the plan was and they weren’t letting any details out, so, I didn’t try to poke them too much with it. Maybe they weren’t comfortable telling me as they probably didn’t want to invite us. But yeah, other than that, it was very basic. I didn’t notice anything particularly strange as it always has been pretty similar, our meetings in the cafeteria. Actually, that is sort of the reason I know them despite not really being in their department or anything. I sort of need this little break in a day to not see my team members and subordinates for a few minutes. And these people were always welcoming in a very comfortable way that was neither too curious and invasive nor too cold and distant. It was in a way established that I was an acquaintance, not too close, but close enough to stay back for a cup of coffee and a little weather or market condition chat, and sometimes maybe even about how that apartment complex is doing, in general, so, we’d know if there are any problems that mom, dad and my in-laws might come across, you know, like checking up on them. I mean, that’s where they’re supposed to go off to, a couple hours later.”

“I understand that just asking if you noticed ‘anything weird’ without properly defining what constitutes as ‘weird’ for us contextually, can be relatively odd to comprehend in a moment, despite being Diya madam’s son. Please do let us or at least your mother know if you remember anything anytime soon. Just try to walk yourself through the last, and yes, when I say last, it doesn’t necessarily mean to just be the exact one last time you met them, any number of times you met them in the past whatever time, any one or more of those times, if there’s anything out of the absolute ordinary, the information might be useful. So, well, I mean, at least till their families arrive, I’d have to just ask you to keep thinking. We don’t want to break the doors to go into their houses when we know the families are about to come in an hour or two at most and there’s no movement there and we have security placed in front of their doors if there is some, as well. So, this is almost all that we have right now, to do. So, just think and let us know if there’s anything at all.”, Kirti added.

“Well, there’s one thing I noticed about a week ago. I don’t know how important you might find this. They all have apparently started to take some more time out after their breaks. We usually disperse and they tend to go their way at 4:30 pm sharp but it seems that from around a month or so, they have been taking some 10-15 more minutes after that and then go. I had forgotten my phone on the chair and I’d gone to take that back. And I saw them there. I’d have just thought it was that once, but I overheard them talking about how their team manager was getting irritated because of their regular delays for over a month.”, Rahul recollected. “Alright, there you go. That’s something. Good. Anything you know about that? Were they going anywhere else for those extra few minutes or just staying back right there?”. “Well, the day I saw them, they were just a few tables apart, and also, I don’t think there’s really that much time to go somewhere completely different. The company’s usually pretty strict about breaks and time theft.” “So, they want to talk about keeping from you at that exact time every day for about a month. Could it just be planning this weekend trip thing? They were at it for a while, weren’t they?”. “Yeah, that’s possible. But they usually mentioned that they used to do the planning after they were back home, along with their families. Also, that was something that neither started just a month ago, nor was a literal daily thing. Apart from the day they made the bookings, the ‘planning time’ was usually pretty spread out in about four months and in their floor’s corridor.”. “Hmm, okay. So, they do have something they just want to keep to themselves, possibly not even mentioning to their families if they’re taking extra time daily at the office instead of just talking back here. They probably don’t want to risk their families overhearing. Good, that’s a lead. Even if it isn’t something new, it at least was a confirmation of a plausible suspicion. Thanks, Rahul.”

Some more time passed with some more questions. However, nothing much important and relevant came to light from it. And eventually, as the day progressed an hour further, the sound of a few cars coming in at once was heard. So, they all went down near the bodies first. Dr. Pavan and his team was done by then and was about to start back to the lab but just decided to hold back until the families and the investigating team came down there in order to provide the families of the deceased, the courtesy to view their bodies.

Rahul was told not to inform them about the exact incident, and just ask them to arrive for questioning regarding a vaguely mentioned emergency. Payal and Diya insisted it so as to view the natural reactions of them on the news, because as a suicide with happy face indicated some irrational state of mind and as no one was present there anyway to divert suspicion, the family members being the obviously closest and most influential to the victims, were clearly suspects despite not being present at the actual moment.

As the families arrived, they were informed of the events that had transpired in their absence, to kick things off. As the perplexingly distressing incident was being narrated, the more the situation and its details were explained, the wider their mouths opened contracting the tongues while the teeth both hid and exposed themselves in quick succession complementing the cheeks that compatibly tickled up and down with the source of the salty little streams in their sockets comparably expanded and contracted as it was the most cruelly periodic way the impactable information could be received. After a reasonable amount of time spent in narration, observing the primary reactions, showing them the bodies and giving the families the courtesy to mourn, the questioning began. Surprisingly, not a single person in all six of the spouses had the slightest hint to something even remotely related to what had been going on in the heads of the dead.

“At least, as of now, if you ask me, they do seem like they’re telling the truth. And their expressions look genuine. They don’t know a thing, neither about the them trying to spend some extra time to plan something different recently, following up Rahul’s information nor anything regarding their basic mind state lately, being either psychoneurotic or suicidal. This is almost a dead end, the whole time spent in both waiting for them and questioning them hasn’t really helped much in the case.”, Satya remarked. “We can’t just call them suicides and shut the case. Even if they are, we need to find out why they did it. Let’s just go to their houses. Apart from the regular search, I also want to check if there’s a note or something. It doesn’t seem likely in this particular case, but there are chances. You brought the search warrants, didn’t you?”, Payal asked. “Yeah, that’s why I took the extra time after being informed of the case details on the phone.” “Alright, then. Pavan and his team just left with the bodies and the spouses’ collected finger prints, he’ll try his best to get at least one important report by tonight or tomorrow to start things off. But until then, we need to find things out here.”

All of them went up the aromatic corridors towards the floor of the six houses again, this time with the families, opened the locks to the doors but they were also obviously bolted from inside. “So, we have to break some of it anyway.”. “Yeah, but getting a bolt is much easier than getting a new lock and door if we’d have broken down the whole thing.” So, after getting in, the houses were searched. Every single house was as clean as it could be. Everything was arranged in the most organised manner. “These are sure pretty coordinated people when it comes to setting up the furniture and other stuff. And again, all six of them.” Payal commented. “Well, they’re accountants. They have to be.”, Diya added. The search went on for a while.

“This is almost unnaturally neat. Did all of these people have OCDs? I can’t see a single teaspoon left in the sink, a single piece of useless paper or a pen lying around their workspace tables, not even their mobile phones have smudgy fingerprints. Do they never make a mess or get late for work or something?” “Apparently, they didn’t care so much about time as much as they did about the furniture and crockery. This clock is the most useless thing I have ever seen in my life. It doesn’t have any needles, what is it even for?”. “Look closer, it does have hands. They’re just of the same colour as the dial and the face. But why would someone buy such a clock? It’s so difficult to tell what the time is unless I see at an oblique angle, and that too, only after going awkwardly close to it.”.

“Okay, for once, is it the one thing different in this one house or do the others have such clocks as well?”, Payal spoke up. Ali, Tanya and Robert quickly ran to the other houses and checked for the clocks and came back in a couple of minutes. “No, ma’am. The others have similar clocks as well. In fact, they’re the ‘same’ clocks, not just ‘similar’. The same model, same size, same foggy grey colour.”, was what the three young cops noticed. “Of course, they are. I’m not surprised at this. This has crossed the borders of coincidences for a while, now. This is all just absurdly well put together.”, started Diya, “This is neither planned nor matching interests of these people. Someone had made sure that all these things are there this way. Not just the clocks or any other things in the houses, all of this. Them waking up and happily jumping off their balconies, the families all being out at the right time, everything.”

“Also, did anyone find any note?”, Payal asked. “There are notes. Again, six notes, six suicide notes. They are in different handwritings though, and in each is in their own handwriting. They were all inside the pillow cases and the handwriting in each of them matches with the ones in their notepads on their respective desks.”, Ali informed. “You’re telling that now? Well, what do they say?” Satya asked. “It’s extremely vague. It’s just about how they were too stressed in their lives in general along with something they were apparently feeling guilty about and how they can’t deal with all of that and the stress of it lately.”, Tanya responded. Nevertheless, Robert handed the notes to Payal, Diya, Kirti and Satya.

“Except for the one little thing, Tanya. Even though they are not all word-to-word similar, there are roughly the same in all other sentences except for one thing. They all happen to mention something they have done in the past that fills them guilt. And the dodgy part is that this one part of the notes is what sets these notes apart from each other. They don’t let anything out about the what it is they did that they were feeling so guilty about, but it seems all six of them either did six different things or they at least played six different roles in a single act. That one part of each letter is different from the other five.”, noticed Payal.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. The one I now have says that he couldn’t sleep so well as the bed panics him in a way, the previous one said it doesn’t let her even walk freely in her neighbourhood street as she doesn’t feel comfortable on her street anymore. And the one before that said that he can’t eat properly because he can’t seem to swallow it with the heavy chest that he has.”, Diya added. “Exactly, and the one I have now says that she’s unable to drive safely as it haunts her to do so for a while. The one Kirti is holding now said that he couldn’t exercise to his full potential since he doesn’t get the motivation anymore because he’s disgusted by his basic desire to even maintain physical strength anymore. And finally, the one that Satya is holding now said that she isn’t able to concentrate on her work properly as she is somehow constantly reminded of what she did while doing so.”, Payal added further.

“So, which one would you want us to start with?”, asked Satya. “Ask the families regarding these things in particular, ask them if they’ve noticed any discomfort in them during all the aforementioned chores in the past few days.”, Kirti suggested, “Also, while you’re at it, ask them about the clocks. When did they buy it, and why did they buy those ones with the hands of the same colour as the face, and everything?”. Ali, Tanya and Robert went towards the families in the corridor to begin the second round of questioning.

Noticing the families gradually beginning to talk, Payal calmly walked towards them and put an ear out in the hope of getting a confirmation of the guilts mentioned in the notes. “He … left a note?”, Lata gathered herself from the sob of her life with a squeaking stutter tone, “Can I see it? Please.” “I’m sorry madam. It’s evidence. We’re in fact, just about to send it and the other five to the forensics.”, Robert replied. The other five necks bent back upwards listening to this and the understandable and expected “Can we at least know what she wrote, could you at least read it out?” request was placed by the grieving husband Nisha left behind. Every single note was read out to each spouse individually. Diya and Kirti joined Payal, by then, to observe how it would go.

“Yeah, he did have a problem swallowing bigger chunks of … well, anything. He usually eats more of softer food items that don’t need much chewing or are at least easily chewable despite being inherently brittle. It’s a problem he has had for a while now, and it has gotten worse lately. Something with his throat and food pipe, it hurts him in the upper chest, feels heavy, you know, like we sometimes feel when we eat too fast.”, Karan’s wife, Aarti confirmed.

“Yes, she didn’t like the main street leading to our apartment complex since the other day. The thing is, a few weeks ago when her father passed away due to a chronic illness, she was at that street when she got the news that due to a sudden complication, the doctor said he didn’t have much time left and the phone call was for her father to say her a last goodbye, just in case she wouldn’t make it in time back to her parents’ place, which was what eventually happened. Apparently, not being able to take it all at once, she dropped her cell phone in the whole panic of the moment. The phone went down a sewage gutter beside the footpath and she couldn’t listen to her dad’s voice for the last time as by the time she got home and called again, her dad went to sleep and never woke up the next morning.”, was what Sapna’s husband, Keshav had to inform.

“The bed, of course. He has … well, he had a back-ache problem. He can’t sleep once any mattress gets even slightly old. He likes the surface to be extremely malleable to his back shape. No number of mattress changes could really help him in the long run. He has had that for years now, but recently it really has been very severe and impactful. So, he has a habit of getting some sleep on the couch, on his chair in his seating position. But I kept suggesting him to try the bed as lying down is required and sleeping in the weird seating positions that he used to, isn’t that healthy. And he hated that we argued over this so often.”, Mihir’s wife, Lata clarified.

“Oh, yes. She did mention how her work was being affected for a while since the day she made this mistake in some spreadsheet or whatever, but she ended up costing her sub department a lot of money as she misrepresented the surplus to the investors, or something like that, I’m not sure. But yes, she said that her team had a lot of plans with the amount and they all hated her for that since then, and she had been having a rough time working from that day onwards.”, was the input given by Ashriti’s husband, Chaitanya.

“This is so … I kept telling him how he shouldn’t think this was actually his fault, but he was so affected by it that he just wouldn’t let it go. A few weeks earlier, while lifting weights at the gym, a teenager joined the area and just to have fun, they sort of engaged in a friendly competition or something for the moment. I don’t exactly know which dumbbell was the last and triggering one but apparently the kid had a weak left wrist and he ended up having a hairline fracture or a dislocation or something. And he blamed himself for acting childish enough to involve a kid in his little game and costing the kid his wrist and everything that followed, as even though, the kid is almost completely fine now, physically, he apparently lost some important sports team selections and exam writings, among other things.”, Ramesh’s wife, Himanshi explained.

“She had a road accident. She hit a couple on a motorbike with her car and they suffered a lot of injuries along with the obvious money loss on both sides for both medical aid and vehicle repairs. She was at an early stage of adapting to driving independently and this whole event got stuck in her mind and she never felt comfortable enough to drive since then for the weeks that followed.”, was what Nisha’s husband, Jai revealed.

“Alright, I understand these things. But they don’t seem reason enough to commit suicides on their own. Maybe these things were masquerading as some crimes they’d committed. Maybe all these things that they are stressed out about are actually about something else and they disguised it with these known and expected issues.”, Kirti reacted. “None of the letters actually indicate anything regarding a possible intention or plans of actually killing themselves, neither literally nor metaphorically. People about to commit suicides have no fear of confessing as they’d have already decided to end their lives themselves.”, Diya added. “Exactly. Why use these vague phrases and hints of things they did instead of just admitting it in direct words? What’s the point in leaving a note if you don’t even confess in the note? If they just kill themselves, it’s not like the family won’t know they did. Suicide notes are usually a mode of getting things off the chest to either admit guilt or blaming someone/something for how you can’t live because of that person and/or thing and escape the consequences.”, Payal added further. “These notes are utter rubbish. They’re fake.”. “Also, they look old, well preserved, I’ll admit. But nevertheless, old.”.

“I can see why you’re saying that, madam, especially as you explained why you think so, too. But I’m afraid we’d have to consider the possibility of these things actually leading to something they’d actually done and were telling us through this. As you yourself can see as well that the notes seem old, we can’t tell what kind of external pressure or supervision these notes were written under. It might be possible that they had to cloak them with these personal issues as analogies to somethings that they did. I really think we might miss the chance they themselves gave us if we’d ignore that.”, Kirti asserted. “I understand. This is just our gut feeling based on our experience. The procedure is to investigate the notes. Alright, what can we do, then?”, asked Diya. “I think we should talk to the family of the kid who broke his wrist at the gym competing with Ramesh, the couple on the bike at the accident by Nisha and Ashriti’s team members at work who suffered financial losses, to start things. One of them probably might have held some grudge.”, Kirti suggested.

“Do you have any contact with the kid or his family?”, Satya had walked in to the conversation by this time. “Yes, he lives in the second block, fifth floor, third house from the staircase.”, Himanshi informed. “Do you know how to get in touch with the couple on the bike?”, the policeman asked. Jai gave him a phone number. “And while we’re at it, do you happen to know any of Ashriti’s team members or anyone?”, he enquired. “I think Ashriti kept a list somewhere.”, following this, a little search going into their and coming back after a minute, Chaitanya handed out a piece of paper titled office emergency contacts that included the contact numbers of the other five deceased and then five more names and phone numbers. “Karan’s and Mihir’s doctors’ contacts?”, the cop asked, following which their wives shared the contact numbers of the doctors. “Alright, we can start from here. Ali, first call Karan’s doctor, ask how serious this issue of his is, and once you’re done with that, call the road accident couple, if they’re available, go to their house. Tanya, call Mihir’s doctor, and then go to the kid’s house. Robert, try these numbers one by one and see what happens.”, Satya began the next sequence of investigation.

“Meanwhile, I think they forgot to ask you. I wanted to know more about those clocks surprisingly you all have. I don’t know how close you people are. But it is seeming very strange to us that all six families have the exact same type of clocks. How did that happen?”, asked Diya addressing the group of spouses. “Actually, the six of them got them from work, around New Year’s Day this year. Sapna, and apparently the others insisted on keeping them as they valued the fact that it was from the office. We didn’t argue much to take them down and buy another, as these days, we can check the time on our mobile phones, so, it doesn’t really matter as much to us and as it seemed it did to them, we didn’t want to fight all day every day for such a petty issue.”, Keshav explained as the others nodded. “It has sort of been a running joke since they’re here about how 9 pm looks pretty much the same anywhere on this floor. It never really got any serious, though.”, added Lata.

“Ashriti’s subordinate team members, Derek, Meena, Fatima and Harvinder, are all in this newly established restaurant not far from here. They met for a brunch, apparently. We can go and talk to them, now if we want to. I’ve requested them to be there. And yes, the contact numbers in the list are of them and one more, which is of her ex-boss, Ridhima, a relatively elderly woman, who’s also, obviously, all the other five’s boss, but that lady had left the office a month ago due to some health issues and they haven’t had a boss since as they’re still in the recruiting stage for that position, I spoke to her husband, Shubham, this sweet old gentleman.”, Robert informed once he put the phone down.

“Some of us can go to the couple’s house Nisha had an accident with, too. I just spoke to them and they said they’d be glad to help. Tenzing and Raima’s house, if I understand correctly, is actually near the restaurant I think Robert is talking about.”, Ali added “And also, I spoke to Karan’s doctor, Dr. Catherine and she mentioned that he does have a problem, but neither was it too serious in general, nor did it recently increase in any way.”.

“We can divide and make these little trips and be back by the time there’s any proper input from the kid’s house. Any one of you can come with me and Robert while I go the restaurant and the other two can go with Ali to the couple’s house. It’s your call.”, suggested the inspector. “If you’d like us coming along, then yes, we’d love to. Diya can accompany Kirti to the couple’s house, she’s the observant one. She’d be better if you’re going to their house. I’m better at talking at getting information out of people between the two of us, so, I can come with you to the restaurant to talk to Ashriti’s team members.”, Payal responded. And so, Payal joined Satya and Robert in their police jeep as Diya joined Kirti and Ali in Kirti’s car and both of those vehicles disappeared in the relatively clearer fog within a blink of an eye.

After an hour and a half, they arrived back at the apartment complex’s crime scene area drifting through the sleet of ice on the road leaving some bold tyre marks on the snow in the otherwise neat and shining in the freshly joined new and brighter rays of sun as noon kicked in, a maple fragrant parking area where Tanya was waiting for them. “Anything from the kid’s family?”, asked Satya getting down from the jeep stepping upon the snow slowly dissipating into the mud. “Nothing much, sir. Little Ishaan is fine, now. The family has in fact focused on not letting him remember the whole thing as impactfully as you might think, so that he’d be able to move on from the team selections he couldn’t make it to, due to the fracture, and I guess, rightly so. They hardly ever even talk about it at home, except of course, not letting him start the gym already. Also, I really don’t think anyone from his family held any sort of a grudge on Ramesh, they hardly even remember his name. They actually made sure that the kid understood that it was his own fault to take part in such immature events, so he learns a lesson not to do such things again.”, Tanya explained, “And yeah, before that, I spoke to Mihir’s doctor, Dr. Ashraf, and he mentioned that he does have a relatively, slightly ill-postured back that makes it a little tricky to sleep, but like what Ali mentioned Karan’s doctor saying about his issue, even Mihir’s doctor believed that neither was it too serious in general, nor did it recently increase in any way”. “Nothing here as well, then. Great.”, sighed Kirti. “Maybe they are suicides, then.”, Satya suggested bringing back the unspoken consideration.

“Wait, so, you didn’t find anything from both Ashriti’s team members and Nisha’s Road accident couple?”, Tanya asked. “Almost none”, Satya replied. “Except one little thing. Ashriti’s team members didn’t really seem to consider the recent work days to have been particularly any busier than any previous times. As in the accounts department, they all knew all six of them despite being only under Ashriti professionally. And so, they said that they were pretty sure that the past, almost a month, has in fact been relatively loose. Some people have been leaving early or even taking leaves. And yes, Ashriti’s mishap cost them a lot of financial loss as a deal and a bonus, but they said they didn’t really have much hope of getting that bonus to begin with, even if the data presentation was successful and hence, they didn’t think it was that big a deal, and they certainly weren’t upset by their team manager for that one thing.”, Payal mentioned. “Even we didn’t find anything great at the couple’s house.”, Kirti joined in. “Yes, and nothing in the house seemed particularly interesting. But again, except just one thing, we had a sort of similar experience talking to the couple. They didn’t seem to endure any injuries as severe as you’d expect, from what Jai told us while explaining what Nisha told him regarding the accident. And again, I don’t think the couple even remembers it all that well, leave alone holding any grudge against Nisha.”, Diya added.

“What do you two mean?”, asked Kirti. “We mean, they’re not as big a deal as they were presented to be. What did you notice from the three little meeting we attended with these people and the conversations we had with them?”, Diya raised the question. “What?”. “That leave ‘being reasons for suicides’, the incidents barely qualified for something even an overthinker would think about for more than a week or two. But they’re being presented to us as suicide notes. These aren’t reasons for suicide. They’re mere expressions, just writing down about a recent issue/incident that they were troubled by and probably had some guilt. It’s almost like a relatively gloomier page out of their diaries, if they kept any.”, Diya explained, “They’re either disguises for some other things, like what Kirti was suggesting, or more plausibly, just straight out fake, a diversion, as we earlier suggested.”. “I think we should spend some more time in the houses if the families won’t mind. Somehow, I think that there is something we’re missing.”, Payal proposed.

They all walked back to the houses with the breath-taking mountains with their snow-capped pines as the backdrop behind the residential buildings on the path from the parking area as the majestic ball in the sky finally showed up in his true might after noon, and when they reached the corridor, they saw all the family members outside the houses on the corridor with their clocks in their hands. “What’s going on?”, Kirti asked. “There’s something wrong with these clocks.”, Lata spoke up. “Well, Good Morning.”, said Satya, with a nod and a sudden little puff of air coming out of his nostrils. “We did already ask you about them saying that they’re odd looking, but you people said you were aware of it and it was in fact a running joke among you people apparently, didn’t you? Why are you freshly pointing this out now?”, Diya inquired. “We never said that we’re aware of them looking odd. We just agreed to the fact that all six of them are the exact same types of clocks and we had to put them up.”, Keshav added.

“So, then, what are you saying, now? These clocks look different than you know them to be?”, Payal asked. “Yes, we can hardly see time in them, now. The hands of the clock are of the face’s colour too, which wasn’t the case.”, Aarti replied, “And, there’s something more. It’s looking better now, we can still see some time, compared to earlier. It’s slowly getting back to normal. We have no idea how.”. “Wait, so, someone painted the needles? And you don’t know who, how and when?”, the first time in this case where Kirti joined her eyebrows flaring her nostrils looking at all six of the spouses. “Ali, quick, go to Pavan at the forensic lab with these clocks and ask him to examine these right now.”, Satya quickly turned to his subordinate, “If they’re getting better, it means the kind of paint used on them fades away on its own after some time. Ask him to do this as quickly as possible, make these the first priority.”.

As Ali left, “until he gets back, or we get to know anything from those, we wanted to talk to you people regarding your houses and your furniture, crockery, anything at all. Did you think, apart from those clocks, anything was different, or if anything was kept, placed in a different way than you expected it to be?”, Payal posed the question addressing the six of them at once. “Yes”, “Yeah”, “Everything, in fact.”, “Anything?”, “So many things.”, “Actually, yes.”, a sudden surge of six simultaneous voices charged the corridor. Literally every person looked at every other person with the classic eyebrow lift with the most reflexive of minor head turns. “Finally! Something! Please let this be something good.”, Diya flexed her wrist with the slightest jerk in the air while tilting her head a tad upwards and having a big smile on her face, “What is it? What are they, in fact? Tell me. Tell us, everything.”, Diya asked. “Okay, one by one.”, Kirti proposed.

“Almost every third object in the house is placed in a different way than it should be. It’s not like it’s untidy. As you saw yourselves, the house looks very neat and organised. But, in a different way. For example, the television remote and the air conditioner remote have their places exchanged. The books on the workspace table are all stacked up to the left side, instead of the right side where he used to keep them. The sofas are about couple feet off and the one-seater and two-seater sofas have exchanged their spots. The dustbins of the individual rooms are exchanged. The stickers on the refrigerator are all not in the actual order. I could go on and on. I know they’re all small things. But the point is, they never used to change. Especially in the past few weeks, Karan has been very strict about how everything should be organised and all these things matter so much and all that kind of lectures.”, answered Aarti.

“Actually, that sort of sums it up. All these little items are placed differently, and we felt it was weird as for the past, almost a month, this suddenly increased habit by the six of them of keeping everything compulsively organised, has also been sort of a running joke, along with the clocks. That’s what we were all discussing when you came in.”, Keshav said as they all looked at each other once and collectively nodded looking at the investigators.

“I don’t understand. Did they do it themselves? Did someone else do that? And whoever did it, what can really even be the point in doing that?”, the cheeks ticked upwards as the wrists rotated outward, Kirti and Satya realised the awkwardly peculiar nature of this case and turned to the experienced members of the investigating team as they stepped away from the families to the other side of the corridor.

“We still obviously don’t know who made those changes as it’s hard to believe they did them themselves given how much they liked to keep things particularly organised.”, Diya said, “So, let’s assume someone else did it. And we also don’t know exactly when this was done, of course between yesterday morning and today morning, but when in that time, we can’t say. But the ‘why’ of it, I think, is to make them notice, and it probably would’ve been purposely done to make them uncomfortable and feel out of place. A nicely but wrongly systematized set of personal items, to some compulsively organised people, makes it more uncomfortable than usual chaos does. But the further ‘why’ of that is the actual question. What sort of confrontation or argument or discussion would require purposefully inducing discomfort by these psychological cheap tricks?”.

“And also, some of the changes are furniture positions, this requires strength and time.”, Payal added, “And the other thing is, if not for the families, we wouldn’t have known of this and it’s because whoever did these, made sure they’re not chaotic in general. Instead, as Diya was saying, they’re very well arranged, just in a different way. This is a planned attempt to make the victims either feel like they’re at an uncomfortable disadvantage or feel like they’re out of place, at the very least. By the sheer number of things that are tweaked, it’s more than evident that this whole thing is done to make them notice it anywhere they go, in the house.”.

“But why paint the clock needles?”, Satya brought up, “Even that, just to make them uncomfortable? I mean, it’s done pretty carefully and using some specific type of paint. To go to such lengths, just to win a … I don’t know, an argument?”. “You’re right. There might be another reason to that, or maybe even to all of this. But at the very least, it was for them to feel some sort of a difference from their usual setting.”, Diya replied.

As the evening was approaching much clearly evident from the subtle yet noticeable gradual invasion of fog coupled with the sun dropping its height and bright, the cop noticed his cell phone ring and answered it, “Ali, Hi. Any news?” followed by a good minute or two of nodding and making affirmative puffs of air come out of his mouth and nose alike, at the end of which, Satya said “Alright, then. Come back.” And kept the device back in his pocket.

“Pavan began his examination. He obviously didn’t complete any of the post mortems already, but he says that by what he has done till now, he can conclude that there’s no drug after-effects of any kind. They were not under any intoxication or any form of chemical effect.”, Satya explained, “And he apparently knows that paint on the clocks, so, he didn’t have to examine it that much. He says it’s usually available only in smaller sprays, and automobile repair and point shops tend to have those, as they mark places where they want to apply another paint or something for which they use this instead of scratching on the metal. It stays for about a day once you spray it and then slowly evaporates, doesn’t disappear completely, but becomes unnoticeable.”. “Is there no way to narrow it down? If it can be bought out at any random garage anywhere, it’s practically impossible to check any recent external buyers. There are either no proper leads or if there are, they’re just becoming dead ends on every turn we’re taking, going forward.”, said Kirti with a kink her neck and a drop in her shoulder level. “Precisely”, Satya sighed over the situation.

“I can’t believe I’m the one suggesting this, and I assure you that I want to find all the answers as soon as possible, myself, as much as everyone else here does.”, the policeman started rubbing his forehead with his right hand while his back supported his left hand, “But as we can’t move any forward from here just with what we have, and it’s already dark anyway, should we resume this tomorrow? We’ll get at least one or two full post-mortem reports and other forensic results by tomorrow morning or noon at most. It’s better to start fresh with better information instead of exhausting ourselves today, isn’t it?”. “Yeah, okay. I guess you’re right. Let’s all meet downstairs tomorrow by 9 in the morning.”, said Kirti as the team dispersed for the night after letting the families know that they can carry on with their day now and the investigation would be resumed the next morning.

The police team boarded the jeep and the chief detective started her car, as both the vehicles contributed a bit of smoke and gas to the mist of the evening. Seeing them off, Diya and Payal walked back to their flat as their lavender fragrant corridor relaxed the case day’s exhaustion, following which they knocked on the door. As they waited to get in, the elderly friendly neighbourhood doctor opened his door with a “hope the investigation is going well, just let us know if there’s anything we could do to help your busy day”, to which the ladies nodded with a gentle smile as they didn’t have the mental strength left to engage in a conversation. Just after which, a couple of weary old chubby men with almost identical taste in fashion, a constant thin white beard and a mid-partitioned chin length hair, came up in their favourite pairs of pyjama suits and opened the doors and said “quick, get in fast. Close the door, quick, it’s cold outside and we don’t want a change of clothes, we’re in the middle of watching a movie.”.

Walking into the house and closing the doors, “for a couple of scientists, it’s surprising how you don’t get how mentally tired your own retired wives must be from a day full of serious detective work.”, Diya commented, following which, Payal and her went and freshened up and got a change of clothes to their own set of pyjama suits. “So, want to tell us anything about the case? How’s it going? Find anything yet? Wait! My bad I asked now. Tell us a couple minutes later, this scene is pretty good.”, Kunal swiftly turned back towards the television regretting the few milliseconds he lost while he turned to the veteran detectives.

“We’re not going to tell you anything until the case is solved. We’re not liberty to share these things. Seriously, you’ve lived with us and seen us go to work and heard us say these exact words every single time we come back from work and you ask this in the past thirty years, but this never stops.”, Payal rubbed her forehead with her right hand and placed the left one on her back, pretty much like the policeman did a few minutes ago, but with a different sort of exhaustion. “Okay, never hurts to ask. Some of the cases you work at turn out to be pretty interesting sometimes.”, Mahesh said. The four of them started watching the television to complete the movie before it was time for dinner.

“These kinds of cults are so living off these gullible people, it’s disheartening, sometimes.”, said Kunal, watching a particular scene in the movie they were watching, slightly pointing his finger towards the television, followed by an outward twist of his wrist, “Look, this man got convinced that it’s not his car at all, just because they edited and rearranged some decorative items and removed the car perfume. And he really sprang off the car handing the keys to that old man, who he thought would ‘return to the original owner’. This is unbelievable. You know what, like Dr, Chaudhary next door, was saying the yesterday, I too feel these people need some sort of a counselling or therapy or something, to be trained to be less gullible.”. “Or at least give that car to us, HaHa!”, Mahesh added. They continued to watch the movie for an hour, following which, they had a soothing dinner that the gentlemen had prepared in the detectives’ absence.

The night gradually became as exhaustive mentally as cosier physically in the comfort of the thick armchairs beside the fireplace. The beds lay inviting but the minds just didn’t accept the night without a conclusion to this inexplicable event they woke up the same morning with. “No matter how many times I think, I can’t understand what it is that we’re missing.”, Diya claimed with a shawl wrapped around her as she sat on the armchair with her right foot on her left knee and her arms rested on the arm supports and her hands below her chin with a tiny puff of air coming out of her nostrils and her eye-brows dunked and joined each other. “A recap, tomorrow morning, with the others. That’ll get the ball rolling again. We might think of something now, but it’ll either be incomplete or pointless as action would be taken tomorrow morning anyway. So, don’t stress yourself. We’ll figure something out.”, responded her partner with an assuring nod as the rest of her body hid under the thick woollen rug. The ladies gradually shut their eyes as the comfort of the warmth in the air took over the mind when the night grew darker and colder outside.

The next morning, they woke up, freshened up, got their attires set and hurried down to re-join the investigation. They all gathered back at the crime scene area with a fresher but thinner sleet of frost, rarer fog and a comparatively sunnier morning extravagantly portrayed by the mountains’ gold shine from the earl morning sun bouncing off the snow. “Anything important from the forensics?”, Payal asked. “Not yet, Pavan said he’ll be ready with something by noon.”, the policeman replied. “Okay, until then, let’s have a recap of what we know till now.”, Payal proposed “I’m going to start, whoever wants to carry it forward would be welcomed.”. After a quick nod by everyone, they started.

“So, six people, one by one, with gaps of few minutes each, come to their balcony looking very excited but trying to hide it and for some reason, jump off falling to their deaths.”

“All of them were alone at their respective homes when it happened and roughly an entire day before that.”

“And even after the families arrive and we ask them, no one we know actually knows why, and everyone including their families and co-workers denies noticing anything either suicidal or neurotic in any of them lately. And we also know that they weren’t drugged, now.”

“We find notes that are supposedly suicide notes with individual personal issues mentioned, half of which were health problems and the other half were accidents, both of which apparently troubled them.”

“And their furniture and several other objects are rearranged. And then the clocks, with the painted needles.”

“The families don’t know anything about the clocks either.”

“And the accident victims and that one woman’s work team members, the doctors, no one seems to think of the events to be as impactful and memorable as the families are made to believe.”

“Wait a minute. For how long were they delaying going back to work from their office breaks, as per Rahul?”, asked Diya with a couple of hooks on her eye-brows and her right index finger extending being as stiff as the rest of her hand was. “About a month. Why? Oh!”, Payal caught up.

“Exactly! They were hiding this from their families on purpose using all these issues for the past month.”, Diya explained, “Remember what Rahul said while telling us when they meet? While telling us that they sometimes talk about checking up on us, he mentioned how they ‘go off to, a couple hours later’, and later he mentioned that their break ends at 4:30 pm. And later, when we discussed about the clocks, the family said that it was a running joke how ‘9 pm looks pretty much the same on the entire floor’. Their office is about half an hour away from here, an hour at most. If they usually start at around 6:30 pm, that it a couple of hours after their break, they should come home by 7 pm, 7:30 if there’s traffic on the road, 8 pm in the absolute worst traffic case scenario. But they were getting back home by 9 pm according to the families. Now, they made this whole charade of ‘extremely busy week, ‘very busy few weeks’, ‘pretty busy month’ in front of their families, when in reality, as Ashriti’s team members said, their work hasn’t really been that busy lately. This was so they don’t question the extra time they’re taking, especially when all six of them are doing that together. It’s all been going on for a month. Everything, Nisha’s Road accident, Sapna’s little incident on the road when her dad died, Ashriti’s work mishap, Ramesh’s gym show-off, the apparent sudden increment in the severity of Mihir’s back ache and Karan’s throat problem as well. Everything, either something they did or started doing, began a month ago, or something happened a few days before that and the planning to hide that began a month ago.”.

“Ahh”, “Okay”, “Yeah”, “Right”, “Yes”, “I get it.”, the necks and shoulders went back to their levels after a nod each.

“Don’t be too quick to celebrate, yet. This is just the beginning of understanding what’s going on. Apart from the obvious questions like what it is that they were hiding and what happened later, there are a few other things that still don’t make any sense as per now.”, Payal expressed, “First, what is it with the clocks and rearrangements of all their household items? Second, if they were taking that roughly an hour more after work every day anyway, what did they need those extra 10-15 minutes after their break, for? Third, something I’m still not able to forget, why did they look so excited and happy, before they jumped off? And not just that, they looked like they were trying hide that excitement, they were home alone, why hide it?”.

“I forgot to mention another little detail. Among that list of the things that happened a month ago, I ignored something thinking it might not be as relevant. But now that I think about it, after knowing what we now know, I think we should try to find out more about that.”, Diya joined back in with the stiff hand and the tilted head and a foot stomped over the muddy snow facing the team, “Their ex-boss. Their ex-boss left a month ago, too, didn’t she? So, everything sort of began right before or right after she left.”

“Robert, I forgot, whom did you speak to, when you found out that their ex-boss left a month ago?”, Satya quickly turned towards his subordinate. “It was her husband who picked the call up, she apparently wasn’t well enough to talk. He was the one who told me that he recognises the names and that she was their ex-boss and that she left that office a month ago due to some health issues, she basically retired, is what it sounded like.”, Robert said.

“Retired? How old is she?”, Kirti enquired. “I don’t know. The man who spoke to me on the phone call sounded old enough, probably in his early sixties.”, Robert replied. “A sixty above couple, okay. Let’s just go to their place and see, maybe.”, Kirti suggested. “Okay, let me call them again and find out where they stay.”, Robert grabbed his cell phone and called them. “Ohh, Okay, I can understand. Our chief detective would like to ask a few questions on call, now, if you have a few minutes to spare. I hope that’s okay. We need to talk to you regarding your wife’s ex-employees and their untimely death this morning.”, following which Robert put the hold for a second while he explained “They’re actually at the hospital right now. They’re up for a check-up for his wife. They’re waiting for their turn and it’ll take a while, apparently, so, he can talk to you now.”, he gave the phone to Kirti. “Okay … Alright.”, with a subtle shrink in her face, Kirti reached out to her hand, took the phone and put it to her ear.

“Hello, Sir. Thanks for cooperating with us. I understand you’re in a serious situation. I’ll keep it short.”, Kirti began the questioning “First of all, how’s your wife? Is it not possible at all for her to be able to talk to us, even for a few minutes? What exactly is the problem that she has? And since when does she have it?”. With a much noticeable raise in her eye-brow level maintained for about a minute, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope she recovers soon enough.”, is what Kirti could manage to say with the deep breath she took the information with. “And do you know anything about these six people other than just their names and that they were your wife’s ex-employees?”, she asked, “Wait, What?!”. The sudden raise in the volume of her voice made the others point an ear each a bit closer towards the phone. “So, those were!”, the stiffness in her throat increased the pitch of her voice, leading to the people around getting on their toes and leaning towards her, as she continued to listen for about a couple more minutes.

“Huh, this was a great help. Thanks a lot, Dr. Shubham.”, Kirti resumed her earlier tone to conclude the call, but ended up hearing the beep first, “The call got disconnected. Robert, call him after a while, when maybe they’re out of the hospital, and ask their address. We can go talk to them later if we need anything.”, after which she looked at whole group eyes gazing at her and ears reached out to be filled, took a deep breath and said, “We almost have half the answers we need. We probably should have questioned them sooner. Well, I mean, to be fair, we didn’t know this. No one knew this.”.

Just as the investigative team members’ leaning angles increased, Kirti started explaining, “okay, so, first things first, the lady, their ex-boss suffered from some sort of an accident about a month and a half ago, she was found with an injured head, a few sprains here and there and a hairline fracture on her foot. She was thinking of retiring anyway when this happened, and so, she applied for it as soon as she could manage to do any task, which she initially could, as earlier it was only the fractures and sprains and the head injury post-effects hadn’t kicked in. She completed the resignation/retiring process by the following fortnight. But a few days later, she started having post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD episodes like anxiety attacks and flashbacks from the accident along with reduction in memory among other issues like irregular reception and reflexes and lack of attentiveness. So, the doctors did some tests and found out that she had suffered a brain damage due to the trauma coupled with the head injury.”.

After a few seconds of silence and people getting back to their postures, “Oh, that’s sad to hear. May she get better soon.”, Satya responded, “I’m sorry to react this way but the time is actually running. So, what was it you meant when you said we have half the answers now? As sorry as I am for them, I don’t think this was our primary concern.”. “I said ‘first things first’, didn’t I? Patience.”, she glared at her cop friend, “I’m getting there.”. “Okay, yeah, go ahead.”, he said.

“The person I was talking to wasn’t just their ex-boss’s husband. He was their therapist.”, Kirti revealed. “They took therapy?”, Payal asked. “Yes, ma’am. That’s the secret. That’s the thing that they’ve been hiding from their families. That’s what they did for the extra hour every day, for the past month. Every day, they used to call him to confirm his appointment and check up on the unwell lady, after their break, and go to their house for their sessions. Their house instead of his clinic at the hospital, for two reasons. First being, since his wife isn’t well, he’s not attending the hospital for other patients as he’s constantly trying to get his wife to have therapeutic atmosphere, so, she gets better quicker. And the other reason is that as they know them well, they’re welcome at their home to talk. They purposely chose him as their therapist, so, they can visit her everyday as well. And it’s kind of group therapy sessions, so they all go.”, Kirti replied.

“Okay. That makes better sense, now.”, said Diya. “There’s more, ma’am.”, Kirti looked at everyone in an attempt to gather the attention back for the next piece of information she had to reveal, “The notes we found were actually notes from one of their initial therapy sessions. He asked them to write whatever their primary troubling concern is on a piece of paper, for some reason, I don’t know how exactly that helps, but yeah, as a part of their therapy. They wrote those almost a month ago, as a part of their therapy. Ma’am, you were right. Those are far from suicide notes. As you suspected, they’re just notes about the things they were feeling troubled by.”, she clarified.

“Hmm, Okay. Yeah. Okay, this is actually much better than the previous state of affairs. I know we still haven’t really solved it yet, but this is far better.”, Satya stated, with a nod.

“I don’t want to ruin the moment, but what were they taking therapy for? The notes weren’t only ‘not suicide note worthy’, it’s hard to believe they were even ‘therapy worthy’, to be honest.”, Payal spoke up, “I mean, I don’t want to sound judgemental, but therapy for a back ache, a throat problem, never heard of it. Sapna, for her dad’s demise and not being able to listen to his last words, that makes sense, I admit. But the others, okay, if the road accident was much bigger, or the office mishap was much costlier, or if the gym thing was much more serious and directly his fault, I’d probably have considered it.”.

“Exactly. There’s a chance that both of us were right, Kirti.”, Diya added, “The notes probably aren’t suicide notes, yes, but they probably are guilt notes set in disguise, too. There’s a possibility that they might have admitted to what they actually felt guilty about, you know, as it’s therapy, but at the same time, they couldn’t actually reveal what it was, because, yes, there’s a code that therapists can legally keep their patients’ criminal confessions a secret, but who’d trust that, practically.”

“Yeah, I can see that being the case.”, Kirti joined, “Also, I now realise that even though we just got a half of our answers and now we know a lot more than we did before, but haven’t we reached a dead end? We don’t have anything to go on with, anymore. We do have some important questions left unanswered, but how are we going to investigate them, now? No new phone numbers to call, addresses to go, people to talk to. We just got to know about a little change in their schedules that started a month ago. We’re nowhere close to their deaths.”.

The spouses just arrived at the area, six thirty-something-year-olds widowed a day before, they looked in the worst of conditions wearing the same clothes they had before, and their eyes had dried out but left the tear stains on their crimson cheeks and noses. “Good morning, officer. Any news on why or how they left us?”, Jai reached out to the policeman to shake his hand. “Well, there is news. I don’t know how much you’d like it. We don’t know everything yet. But we got to know something that was kept hidden from you by your spouses.”, the copper began, noticing the shrink in each spouse’s face, “They didn’t have any busy days at work this month. In fact, they haven’t had any busy days at work for a while, now. This past month, almost every day, they had been taking therapy, group therapy sessions. We don’t exactly know why, but the notes we found yesterday were actually something their therapist asked them to do, to express things they were troubled by.”.

The six of them looked at each other for a few seconds with dipped eye-brows, a tad flared nostrils and cheeks ticked upwards rolling their eyes holding at every other member for a second each until the circle completed and each was convinced that everyone was equally in the dark regarding this development. “Therapy? Why? What? And where? Can we speak to the therapist, at least? We’d like to know what led to their suicide.”, Keshav requested.

“Do you people know their ex-boss? Mrs. Ridhima, the lady who left the office due to some accident or something about a month ago, retiring early? It’s her husband, Dr. Shubham.”, Kirti informed them.

“Yeah, we know them. He’s not a therapist. He runs this cult sort of thing, now. We should’ve guessed that he must’ve been involved and informed you that we suspect him, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, exactly, he has this whole group of people he runs these sessions with, where he addresses them and keeps feeding some or the other non-sense in the name of motivation.”

“Exactly, and we always asked these people to stay away from him. Their boss used to invite them and sometimes us too, for dinners.”

“He is definitely not a therapist. He has a doctorate in psychology and I’m not entirely sure but I think he might have a license to practice therapy, but he was a mentalist by profession until he retired last year, and since his retirement, he has been running these so-called ‘healing’ sessions, like the ones you see on the internet, those videos where some main person motivates everyone who is about to give up on their life and suddenly when the person says something, even extremely generic like ‘don’t give up, you can do this’, they suddenly seem to recover. It’s visibly fake, and that’s exactly the kind of thing he’s been doing.”

“Also, he has some weird psychic sort of an angle to it as well. Seriously, we told them so many times not to get involved with him.”

“So, he told you those were ‘group therapy sessions’ what he did with them? Maybe he’s the one who got them thinking into something like ‘true liberation’ or that kind of rubbish.”

Seeing the six of them erupt at once with information so contradicting from what they just got to know, the investigating team was completely taken aback. The three tall and healthy men with a blue, a black and a brown jacket each, on their denim jeans stomping the snow with their leather boots as the enunciated every syllable coupled with their fists stiff as rocks along with the three strong women in a red, a green and a yellow sweater each, on their brown corduroy trousers marching a step forward at every other word with squeaks in their voices while they described the person while the sun finally rose to a reasonable height in the now, clear, sky as the trees finally began slipping off some snow and letting the flowers breathe, was something that finally seemed like a confident lead towards a result in this case.

“Okay. Let’s go to their place, then. Because there’s no point calling them again just to ask if he runs a cult, and he’ll obviously not tell us on the phone that he manipulated them.”, the inspector asked. “Would you mind, if we come along, sir? We want to talk to that man and ask him first-hand what he said to them. We promise we won’t take the law into our own hands and do something harmful. We’ll just talk.”, they requested. “Okay, where is it?”, Satya asked, and before he could get the answer, his cell phone rang.

He reached out, picked it up, “Yeah, Pavan. Ohh, Okay. What? Are you sure? Well, okay, I see. Okay, yeah. Alright.”. “What is it?”, the detective on duty asked. “A couple of things. The paint on the clock isn’t as common as we thought. It’s not the type that’s used in random garages. It’s an extremely expensive one, and it’s a bit rare, too, especially to find one with the colour of the clock’s background. We might be able to find something from that. And secondly, they found a couple more types of fingerprints on the clocks that weren’t of any of the twelve possible people, six dead and six alive.”, the policeman informed.

“That’s it. They must be of that sleazy old man. He must have come while we were gone and done something.”, Lata said with a squeaky voice as she broke into tears again, “He always held them responsible for her accident.”. “Ridhima’s, their ex-boss’s accident? He thought your spouses were responsible for it? How? What exactly happened?”, Payal intervened to enquire more about the latest drop of information dropped into the investigation.

“It happened a month and a half ago. All six of them and their then boss were outside the main gate, on the street.”

“Nisha was in her car, finding some documents she had to give to their boss, Ridhima regarding the mishap that happened at work with Ashriti and his team.”

“She was standing behind the car and the while Nisha accidentally hit the handbrake down and as it was on a slope, the car drifted back and ran over Ridhima’s foot.”

“She, in pain grabbed onto her foot, lost balance, and fell onto some rods kept by the construction workers working on the next street.”

“One of the main rods, hit her on the back of her head and a few fell on her. Ramesh tried to pick the rods up assuring her that he’d be able to get her out of danger. But as the rods were long, he could only lift one end and the other end of those rods got drifted onto the snow and he couldn’t handle it and the rods fell back on her, making it worse, inducing more injuries to her.”

“Karan and Mihir say they could’ve helped carry the rods but they didn’t know as the apparently had gone to the other side of the street where Mihir was looking for new mattresses to buy compatible with his back ache issue and Karan accompanied him to get something to eat on the way.”.

As the six of them tried to paint a picture of the event that got the early retired lady into the condition she is in, now, “Well, that explains the guilt notes and why these people went to check up on her every day.”, Diya pointed out on behalf of the investigators. “Yeah, but it’s so lucky that all these other accidents took place right at the same time, for them to blame those instead of the real thing. Also, the other obvious oddity of this is the fact that they were taking therapy from the husband of the woman they accidentally injured which is the whole reason of their guilt and whatever other reason they had to get therapy.”, Payal added. “Exactly! Now, do believe when we saw that it couldn’t have been therapy? Who’d take therapy from and at the source of the guilt they need therapy for? It wasn’t therapy! He was manipulating them into something.”, Aarti jumped in.

“Alright, then. Let’s go talk to the doctor. Where do the couple stay, anyway?”, Diya asked. “Wait, seriously?”, asked Chaitanya as the other five spouses along with him stretched a bit of head tilt and with close eye-brows, converged their sight towards the couple of emeritus detectives, “You don’t know who we’ve been talking about, this whole time?”. Payal and Diya looked at each other as the rest of the investigating team looked at them following which the gaze went back to the spouses of the departed. “Are we supposed to know them? Is he famous or anything?”, Diya asked.

“It’s Shubham … Dr. Shubham … Dr. Shubham Chaudhary we’ve all been conversing about for the last hour.”, said Keshav with a forwarding nod. “Wait, you mean … our neighbour, Dr. Shubham Chaudhary? The old couple who lives right next door from us? They are these Shubham and Ridhima? They just moved in last m… Oh, God!”, Payal exclaimed with her hand on her forehead, “The wife did look a little unwell once in the elevator a few days ago when I saw them both. It all makes sense. The husband, I did think looked pretty stable and fit for his age. It’s getting clearer, now. And yes, they do seem to have guests over almost every night. It was right here all along.” “Well then, shall we go talk to your neighbours, then?”, Satya had to interrupt the moment of enlightenment for the sake of moving ahead in the case. “Yeah, we’re sorry. Let’s go.”, Diya responded as her partner and she quickly recovered from the relatively unanticipated news they just received.

The investigative team along with the spouses of the late co-workers rushed up to the officially retired yet apparently still functioning, mentalist. The sixty-three-year-old man with the peppered hair and beard groomed over his baggy black trousers and silky green shirt under his signature long purple coat, opened the door and “Detectives, yes. How’s the case going? May I be of any help to you?”.

“Why, you!”, Jai sprung onto the man of the hour and grabbed his shirt collar. “They did not” harm your wife on purpose, it was an accident!”, Lata went ahead. “And you exploited their guilt to make them commit suicides, you sick old manipulator!”, Aarti joined in with flaring eyes with tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Alright, Alright! This is a formal investigation, and it will be conducted in a civilised manner.”, Satya intervened with his stick and unglued the agitated young group from the tired old man. They all walked into the flat and Dr. Chaudhary stood in the middle of his living room as his wife, Ridhima Chaudhary, the sixty-year-old lady in a wheelchair with long spread grey hair attaching a bifocal pair of spectacles on her wrinkled face wearing a yellow saree, was watching her husband defend himself against an investigative team and the spouses of her ex-employees who had jumped off their balconies to end their lives the previous day.

“Dr. Chaudhary, due to some recent developments in the investigation, I’m afraid I’m going to have to declare you our prime suspect in the case. And it’d be much better for you and for all of us, and it’d also save us all a lot of time, if you start telling us the truth right away.”, Diya started, “First things first, we have been right in front of you since the very beginning of this case yesterday morning. Why didn’t you mention even once, to us, that you, not just knew the six people you and us saw together, jumping off of their balconies, but also that you’re the one they have been coming to therapy for, for the past month? You spoke to Kirti when you yourself told her that they came to you for therapy, didn’t you think you could’ve mentioned your full name and the fact that you’re the same Dr. Shubham Chaudhary who’s been living right next to us this whole time?”, asked she with a kink on her neck leading to a head tilt accompanied by her stiffly dunked eye-brows and flared nostrils, with both her hands on either side of her waist.

“I request everyone to hear me out. I admit to hiding the fact that I have been giving them therapy sessions, initially.”, the old mentalist began stretched out both his hands and exposed his palms with stiffed fingers, “But that’s solely because I was respecting the decision of the dead. They asked me to keep it a secret, and I did. But I still was hesitating and fluctuating, which is why I was approaching you people every time I saw you, but I couldn’t gather myself to break the promise and tell you. However, this morning when the on-duty detective called, I could somehow let it out. As it was on a phone call to a stranger and wasn’t face to face with my neighbours, I could overcome my discomfort. However, I still thought, as I informed everything necessary, there’s no reason I should unnecessarily mention that I live in a flat next to the retired detectives trying to help the case. And it would’ve been less awkward for us that way.”, he explained.

“Is the reason for considering me a suspect, only the fact that I hid this?”, the mentalist enquired. “Well, that is reason enough to suspect you, Dr. Chaudhary.”, Payal responded. “Not to mention that you’re a retired mentalist who spent the last whole month giving secret therapy to the people who ended up committing suicides yesterday morning. What sort of a therapy did you give? Isn’t the whole purpose of professional therapy to help people who might have suicidal tendencies, to get rid of those thoughts? It’s almost seeming like they in fact increased in the past month, according to their spouses, here.” “Well, I tried my best. I was more shocked than anyone, as I was extremely disappointed to see that I had failed so miserably. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t do my part. Their guilt was seemingly far more dominant in their brains than my thought inflictions.”, the old psychologist said, in his defence.

“Their guilt, or your blame? It was an accident, what happened to your wife. But you always blamed them.”, Keshav spoke up, “I’m incredibly sorry for what happened to you, ma’am. Trust me, we all are. And more than anyone, our spouses were. They always felt extremely sorry for you and even guilty of what happened. But as you know yourself, the truth of the matter is that it was an accident. Your husband here, has always blamed them saying they did it on purpose. Please explain to him otherwise. And also, we think, that, because of that suspicion, he might have had something to do with them dying. Please let us and the detectives, know if you know anything useful. We’ve always respected you. This man is a criminal, don’t let him drag you away with him.”, he pleaded, to which, the old unwell Ridhima barely moved a few tiny muscles on her face.

“Alright, before anything else, Dr. Chaudhary, we’d want yours and your wife’s fingerprints, please.”, Satya asked, following which, Ali walked up to them with the pad and took their fingerprints and left to go to the forensic lab.

“And I’m done with these people shouting and blaming, by the way. I didn’t do anything illegal or even morally wrong, at all. It is in fact, these people and the other six who left the mess they created, who actually are involved in something notably illegal. There’s another reason I was wanting to come and talk to you two, ma’am.”, the prime suspect began.

“I never blamed those six dead for what happened to my wife. I have always blamed these six alive, and it’s not for nothing, I didn’t misunderstand any accident. They did purposely hurt her, and I’ll tell you why.

All twelve of them have been involved in international drug smuggling. And my wife caught them in the act.

The other six didn’t initially intend to hurt her as she was their manager at work and they respected her. They just requested her to keep her mouth shut with a promise to leave all that activity if she didn’t turn them in.

It’s actually these six, who stepped in and tried to kill her, and ended up injuring her, and those people took the blame for it, almost each individual taking the blame for what their respective husband or wife did.

Since that day, they stopped all their illegal activities as they promised my wife, and checked up on her everyday as they took informal therapy from me to try and stay away from the urge to get back into that world while fighting the pressure these people, their own spouses kept them under.

These people were never satisfied with leaving her alive in the first place, and lately, they’ve not been liking the idea that their spouses haven’t been taking their side and not cooperating in their deeds.

I, in fact, strongly suspect that it is in fact them who’ve probably done something leading to their deaths. The reason I didn’t say anything yet is that I didn’t have any proofs and I didn’t want any trouble before we could fly to the capital tomorrow evening for my wife’s treatment in the home branch of the hospital.

But their spouses, the now dead, my wife’s ex-employees or my therapy patients, have personally told me this. Again, I didn’t say anything yet as I respected the promise I made to them that I won’t expose them or their spouses, at least until the therapy was done. But the water is over my head, now.”, he explained.

The room went silent for a good twenty seconds. The other half of the group accused for smuggling looked at each other in quick succession with their noses, eye-brows and cheeks shrunk as their mouths opened up saying, “I’m sorry, what, now?”. Kirti and Satya looked at each other in a comparably similar fashion. “What do you mean you didn’t have any proof? Do you, now?”, Diya asked, after taking a minute fathoming in what was just laid out. “I think so. I don’t have anything with me now, but I think I know where you might find some.”.

“Ma’am, this is utter non-sense. We have no idea what he’s talking about. We’re not any drug smugglers or anything, and nor were our spouses, at least not to our knowledge. Please don’t listen to him. He’s good at manipulating people. That’s what his whole life has been. Don’t listen to his stories. He’s making it all up right now.”, said Himanshi.

“I have the notes from the therapy sessions from each day for the past month, you can check.”, Dr. Shubham showed his notepad, and continued, “Ma’am, they went to this forest to hide their supply, yesterday or the day before. That’s what their stupid trip was about. Otherwise, when or where have you ever heard that six families, all of them together, plan a weekend getaway and all six of them go through with it after months despite the main glue holding the families together, the co-workers, all of them not being available due to nothing much but ‘had a busy week’? The other six told me themselves, that they convinced their spouses to at least not pressure them to get back into that world anymore, and so they apparently decided not to store anything in their houses anymore. Hence, to change the location, they first needed to hide the supply before they could find some place new. But I guess it was all a charade, they must’ve decided to kill their spouses and use the supply hiding plan to not get caught in case of a house search.”.

“This is clearly a bunch of lies, a whole story this man is creating, probably on the spot. This is straight out a lie. We don’t have anything hidden anywhere. We just went to the resort outside the city. Yes, we did hike in the morning, but we didn’t hide anything anywhere.”, Jai intervened.

“All six of them told me that near the resort, on the way from its back gate to that popular wooden bridge over the river, about some fifty metres on the side of the river, under some noticeably big tree formation shaped like the letter ‘A’ of the English alphabet, formed by a couple of trees inclined towards each other, there should be a regular cabin sized brown leather bag buried about a metre or two deep. Every single one of your dead spouses agreed to this information. They’re going to dig that place and they’re going to find your bag and probably your fingerprints on it. Now, shut up and surrender, you criminals.”, the old man biting his teeth pointing his index finger out towards the group with his stiff hand and stretched elbow while having his feet glued to the floor, “Ma’am, you can ask someone there to have the place checked and let you know, right now. I’d suggest you not to all go from here with or without these people. If you go with them, they’re cunning and they know enough about that area to lead you to some other similar looking spot and have you dig at the wrong place. If you leave them ang go, they’re six of them, they’ll find a way to run away from here, to somewhere out of your jurisdiction before you’d be able to do anything about it, they’re international smugglers, they know how to escape.”.

“This is insane.”, Chaitanya budged in, “alright, let them do that. They won’t find anything. And in the meanwhile, they’d find out that the fingerprints on the clock were yours.”. Satya called the police station near the resort area and requested a search party. “Alright, we’ve heard both of you, and we’re investigating all the possible outcomes. No one leaves the apartment until everything is done.”

The wait for the phone to ring with any piece of information that could help the team choose one of the two paths laid out in front of them, was getting on their nerves as the sun gradually began its decent outside the window and the cold breeze entered the room starting to make everyone reach for their coat buttons or sweater borders and rubbing their palms against each other.

After about half an hour, the phone finally rang. “Hello. Yeah, so … What? Are you sure?”, the policeman answered, “Well, if not, then … who … What?! Is that supposed to be a joke? Wait, you’re serious, aren’t you? Okay, Okay. Wait, there’s another call coming. Yeah, I got this, call me if you get anything new.”, he ended this call and picked the other one up, “Yeah, hello inspector. Any news? You did? Okay, okay, what? And you already, oh, okay. Well, that’d be enough. Thanks a lot, Sir. Great help.”.

“Hands up, all of you. You’re under arrest.”, the cop turned towards the spouses of the six people who died the day before, “Robert, handcuffs, now! You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can be used against you. And for your own safety, I’d have to request you to cooperate, or I’ll be forced to use my gun.”, he rushed towards them as he and his subordinates started handcuffing them one by one. “What is it? What’s going on? What did they say, on the call?”, Kirti asked with an expanding face.

“The team that went to the forest near the resort found the bag exactly where the old man said they would. And as they have their own department of forensics and the new digital fingerprint equipment directly connected to the main server where Pavan had uploaded these people’s fingerprints yesterday, they verified them. They indeed were of these six people, all of them.”, the policeman clarified, “And yeah, it has around three kilograms of illegal drug supply in them and a tag to indicate it’s going to fly international a week later. And on the other hand, Pavan just let me know that the one other set of fingerprints on the clock was not of the old doctor. It was roughly a day-old fingerprint of, well, the assistant of, none other than the most wanted drug cartel runner in the country whose real name is still unknown but is commonly known as ‘The Cracker’. The assistant was caught last year but he escaped the jail somehow and hasn’t been found since. But now we know that he visited these people’s homes at least once yesterday and used at least their clocks if not anything else. And also, by the way, another interesting thing they found in the bag, was a bottle of the spray used on the clocks, which again had their fingerprints. They had already contacted Pavan to verify the spray’s chemical composition to the traces found on the clocks’ needles.”.

“So, it’s all that true, what Dr. Chaudhary just said.”, Kirti said, “But how did you convince your spouses to kill themselves the day you left? I don’t understand.”. “We didn’t!”, Jai screamed out loud trying to avoid the handcuffs, “We’re being framed. We don’t know anything about all this, trust us, please.”.

“I’m not entirely sure, but I think I can answer that, detectives.”, the doctor said. As I mentioned them feeling pressurised by these people to get back into the game, I got to know something else, too. But not just that, I believe these people had been threatening them too. Apparently, some big and popular drug cartel runner doesn’t like people who work for him to simple leave, as he can’t trust if they’ll turn him in or interfere in any future projects. And also, the attempt had always been to make them more and more uncomfortable and intimidated by even using some cheap tricks to make them feel alienated, you know, like, irritate them with rearranging some objects or even furniture and sometimes misplace things. You see, all six of them had, to a lower and diagnosable yet mentionable level of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. So, these little things irritated them and made them feel uncomfortable. And they used to do these things on purpose, to use their discomfort to their advantage.”

“All six of them?”, Diya asked, “It’s a little hard to believe, both the facts that all six of them had it and they could all be intimidated by all six of these spouses in the exact same manner.”. “Isn’t it? Doesn’t it all sound too easy and hence, sort of superficial? All of this must be his thought-out plan, just not very well thought out, apparently.”, Keshav spoke up, “Madam, you’re right for thinking this sounds as if all the dots have been implausibly well connected, while on the other hand, the explanation that connects them, sounds unlikely in the first place. I only request you to follow your intuition.”, said he while walking away from the room being escorted out to into the police jeep along with the other five of the accused.

“What about the clocks? Why spray paint on them? Also, a part of the whole generating some discomfort plan? Did they used to get uncomfortable with that as well?”, Payal raised the forgotten question. “I don’t know about the clocks, detective.”, the doctor said, “I assume it might be. Sometimes, people don’t like such kinds of irritating and/or confusing sights like looking at the clock and not being able to tell the time. But I never heard about clocks or anything of that sort from them in their therapy sessions. It must be another one of these people’s tricks, or maybe the spray has some kind of gaseous drug mixed to mess with their brains or something, you never know.”

“Anyway, doctor”, Diya said, as she started walking towards the door with the rest of the investigating team, “as it was their fingerprints that were found on the drug bag, and the clocks had fingerprints of the Cracker’s assistant, and you are the one who in fact guided us to all this, and because you already had older notes from your therapy sessions describing what they said, I guess we’d have to stick with just arresting them and considering you out of suspicion, and hope we get their final confessions and we for once, get to know how exactly they pulled it off and everything else. All the best for your wife’s treatment in the city, I’m afraid we can’t legally ask you to stay anymore anyway as the required evidence for the case to be solved has already been acquired and so, you’ve not officially a suspect anymore.”, she said as she stepped out of the flat leaving the misunderstood mentalist and his unwell wife back to each other’s company.

As the dusk settled on the city by the time the case file finally shut, they all gathered down at the snow clear parking area where the accused were handcuffed and made to sit in the police jeep as they asked for lawyers and pleaded not to rest the case and consider them guilty just yet, for as long as they had the energy to. “I can’t even begin to thank you, madams, for your expertise and support in this case. It was the best working alongside you, it was like a dream come true. I’ll let you know if they confess to it and how the case goes. Thanks again, for your help is what helped it get solved quicker than we thought it would.”, Satya said as he shook their hands and started getting into the jeep. “I couldn’t agree more, madam.”, Kirti added, “and yes, we will let you know how it ends.”.

“Oh, don’t bother, we love to do this. It was never a favour or a help, honestly.”, Payal responded, “the only two things, however, that I still think we’re missing, are that they seemed excited before they jumped and the clocks thing. Make them confess the whole thing, including these two points. I don’t know, maybe we’re just like that, but we can’t really rest until we know everything, HaHa.”, said Payal with a hand on her back and the other hand on her forehead, “Do let us know what exactly they did once they confess. Also, while we have someone who’s worked with the Cracker’s assistant, try to get to know something about him, maybe we can get some clue to get hold to that man. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from him”.

“By the way, may we take a little lift to the café on the next street?”, Diya requested, “we’d like to have a little hot chocolate before we go back home. We’ll walk back home, but at least one way, we’d like to avoid the strain.”. “Sure, madam. Of course.”, Kirti replied, following which the cars rode away into the sunset. An hour later, the veterans returned back to their flat as their husbands were awaiting them with some dinner, “The case still not over? We can usually tell that by your face, HaHa.”, they said as they served the meal. “Again, with this.”, once again having to have a hand at the back and another on her forehead, Payal replied, “Well, this time, you’re wrong. The case is over, …”, she went on to explain the events of the day. “Dr. Chaudhary, and his wife? Oh, are they free of suspicion, then?”, “Well, yeah. The evidence all points towards the spouses and the doctor had therapy session notes that really seemed to range from the past month to a couple of days ago So, it does seem like they really did say all those things to him in the therapy sessions, as the story matched with the expected evidences. So, yeah, the case is over.”.

After having the post solve dinner, and an hour or so of television in front of the fireplace, they finally had their well-deserved shut-eye as the night went dark and the white-water crystals began covering the city again in its blanket. After a night of comfortable rest, the mentalist and his wife left for the capital the following morning.”

“Yeah, but ships don’t fly and noon isn’t ‘evening’, Dr. Chaudhary. Also, when you said you were going to the capital, you should’ve mentioned that it’s the capital of another country, because the usual implication is different. But obviously, that was intentional, too.”, a recently accustomed voice entered the deck of this ship where a well-acquainted old couple were sitting with a child facing the sea as the railing moved up and down with respect to the horizon as the splashing waves were ridden by this giant vessel one by one, heading perpendicular to the rise of the sun.

The couple of retired detectives with each an attire appropriate in their own sense of oceanic fashion understanding, sat down beside the family. “Detectives, I was hoping you’d show up.”, said the bearded old man in his black trench coat sitting with his wife, a familiar lady on a wheelchair, both accompanied by a recognisable, early teenage boy with a chocolate bar in his hands, swinging his legs suspended by the chair, absorbing the majesty that the sight of the ocean really is, and a nod with a stretch of his mouth. “Just listening to your story.”, said Diya, “Such an interesting ride it all was. We worked on all sorts of cases in our career span, but I must say, this has to at least be in the top five of ours, all time.”

“Yes, indeed, ma’am. Although, I don’t think it recreated the tension you must’ve felt when you first caught my son and were so close to catching me, but he slipped out right through your fingers, like sand in a fist.”, the old man said with a smile on his face and a hook in his eye-brow. “You taught him well.”, said Payal. “Well, yeah. But it’d have been better if he hadn’t got caught in the first place. In his defence, though, he was only a kid back then.”.

“So, which actual clue did find first, detectives?”, the old man said as he took a sip of tea from the cup on the table beside him. “Well, we actually went backwards. We had all these little intuitions because of the things we’d been hearing, but couldn’t point at any particular direction.”, Payal took her coffee travel mug out, “We saw your tickets to the ship on your table yesterday and we started doubting why you’d tell us that you’ll be flying in the evening instead of sailing off at sunrise.”

“Yeah, that’s right. How sloppy of me, dropping things here and there.”, he put the cup back on the table and stared back at the horizon. “Which, first of all, reminded me of a few things you said, to us when we came to you, which at the moment, I thought was strange but could’ve been coincidences.”, Diya took a sip of hot chocolate from her own travel mug, “some things, like when you pointed out the oddity of all the six families going to the resort without the remaining six, or, what you said about the furniture rearrangement in those houses … what you said was an almost word-to-word of what I’d said. It’s almost like you knew what I’d said. Or rather, it was almost like you’d heard what I said. And you’d always either already be coming out of your door, or at least be ready to, judging by, for an old couple, how your shadows could always be seen through the door as if you just walked up to it, right when we reach our home, every single time. Again, it was like you could see us coming, not metaphorically, literally.”.

“Dear god, why would you say that?”, the doctor picked his cup again, “Why would you think I see you coming, hear you talking, know everything going on, what is all this? You almost sound as if you’re accusing me of having some cameras and voice taps installed all over the apartment complex and have been manipulating the whole system of cameras all over the place.”. “That part was crystally clear when the report fingerprint report said that your son’s fingerprints on the clocks were a day old.”, Payal took a sip of coffee, “We’d already checked the CCTV footage of the entire previous day and absolutely no one entered or left their flats, in them. So, the officially available footage had to be wrong, which meant that whoever was watching and listening to us, which in this case was probably you, had been doing more than that.”

“So, the one thing I didn’t understand. How did you communicate about that right under my nose?”, the he took another sip of tea. “I thought you knew. I guess there still are a few things you don’t know. How even the cleverest of the lot miss the most obvious of hints, is beyond me.”, Diya kept the coffee mug down at the table and put her hand on her back, and another one on her forehead. “Ahh, I did wonder why you did this gesture a lot.”, the retired mentalist said, “I ended up thinking you might just be a little melodramatic as I couldn’t see where it was going. Well, now that I think about it, every time any of you did that, it was always the last anyone would speak of the case for the day. I should’ve caught that. I guess I’m ageing.”.

“So, then, I’d say after doing this, when you went to the café yesterday, that’s when you told everyone you suspected me and you can’t talk about it in the apartment complex and you’d need to get to this ship in the morning, starting right after I left, among everything else? Who else is here, then?”, the doctor asked, turning his neck around. “No one. It’s just us both. The others are taking care of the rest of you back home. A big group, you had there, almost when we were about to give you the credit of being the one man behind the entire event.”, Payal kept the mug back on the table, “That part, your past, everything related to that, all that, we admit, we never really considered the possibility of that sort of thing.”.

“So, what did finally let the cat out of the bag, then?”, turning his neck back around to the front, he enquired. “Another of those things we thought was strange from the beginning, but didn’t think much of it, but later decided to.”, Diya picked her coffee mug up, holding it with the rest of the fingers while pointing her index finger back at the doctor, “The outlandish bond between the six of them. It was getting more and more bizarre every time we got to know any new information about them. Everything was always in sixes. Almost nothing, except probably their literal individual experiences at a few rare occasions, everything came in sets of sixes. You know, ‘the six of them did this’, ‘the six of them did that’, ‘the six of them even felt this or felt that’ and ‘the six of them, all even had the same mental health issues and can be manipulated in the exact same way. They all worked at the same place, same department, lived at the exact same place occupying all six of the houses on the floor living together. As you’d probably have heard when I said that first, nothing comes close to the commitment these people had towards trips planned together, too. So, anyway, that is what they investigated about, their past, how’d they get so close, also, your past. Yesterday, whole night, they were on it.”.

“See, this is your problem. You do find things out, but it’s either incomplete or late, or both.”, Dr. Chaudhary started turning around, “Now what exactly is the rest of your investigation team doing there in the city, looking for my subordinates? If so, then, who’re these people, here?”, he pointed at a group of people inside the restaurant area on the deck behind the viewing area where the case discussers sat in the presence of the oceanic view. This is when the kid sitting beside listening to the old man’s earlier narration, ran towards, as soon as he saw.

“Raima? Tenzing?”, “Meena, Derek, Harvinder and Fatima?”, “So, the kid must be Ishaan? And the other couple, his parents?”, “They’re here?”, the couple of retired detectives spoke up in quick succession as their eye-brows were hooked upwards and their eyes open as wide as they could and their fingers pointing towards the familiar group of people they’d just encountered in the investigation, “I knew it was unbelievably coincidental that those two-three accidents took place right at the time they needed a diversion, and I did deduce that the accomplices must hence be these people.”, “Exactly! Didn’t we check all the known names that had come up in the investigation already, for the tickets on the ship? Well, of course, the names were fake. What were we thinking?”. “Yeah, speaking of that, why didn’t you check for those people’s identifications?”, Dr. Shubham turned back around, “You’re getting so lazy, we worked hard for the fake identification cards. None of us is really that great at editing softwares like your daughter, Tara. Anyway, so, yeah, as I was saying, either incomplete, or late.”.

“By the way, you haven’t mentioned about the elephant in the room. Did you figure it out yet?”, the old man took another sip of his tea, “The tea’s getting colder, be quick about it.”. “Not really. We did have a few theories, but I don’t know, nothing explained the weird, but at the same time, identical reaction on all of those faces, that excitement, and the attempt to hide it.”, Payal said, “We obviously didn’t buy into your explanation. It just couldn’t simply be that they were driver insane by some kind of pressure and they killed themselves. There were a number of things that would’ve been different if that were the case. Anyway, that’s the primary reason we boarded the ship and sat down behind you all this time in disguise and listened as you narrated the story to the kid, well, Ishaan, as we now know, or whatever his real name is. But we still didn’t get it. How did you do it, anyway?”

“People died, detectives. Don’t you want to know why, first? Have some humanity.”, the mentalist kept his cup back on the table. “To stop your whole secret vigilante mission from getting exposed.”, Diya placed her coffee mug back on the table as she put her right ankle on her left knee, “How dare your own old children try to let your big secret out after enjoying their fair share, and in that process, even injure your wife? They had to be stopped by their guardian, Warden Shyaam.”. “Ahh, so you do know about that. But then again, a little too late.”.

“Little infants, when someone left them at my orphanage’s doorstep, more than thirty years ago. I saw them as my own kids, those little runts, always pulling my hair. I raised them until they were about to enter their teenage, and sent them off to good schools, the initial tuitions of which, I paid myself.”, he took his wallet with an old dusty photograph that had a young Dr, Chaudhary with around a triple dozen young kids, “Thirty-eight kids, I raised, apart from my own son, of course. And I chose those six, as my brightest and probably most loyal, to join my covert service to the nation. How wrong I was. Perhaps, we all are slightly wrong and slightly late to recognise that, sometimes.”.

“The number of people saved, from a life of addiction, could’ve kept on increasing, if not for those greedy bunch of idiots. They were pests, detectives. They had to be removed.”, the doctor kept his wallet back in and picked his tea cup, took a look and had the last sip, “I’ve been the most misunderstood person despite being anonymous altogether. Everyone thinks I’m this huge drug smuggler and that I run a drug cartel. But you don’t.”. “We don’t.”, Payal responded, “We understood the pattern several years ago. Almost from the second or third time we heard about one of your activities. Although you must have made quite a bit of money on your way.”.

“I mean, technically, you do ‘smuggle’ the drugs out of the nation. But you never smuggle them in and it was you who raided and shut almost every single drug manufacturing farm and workshop in the past, I don’t even remember, how many years, by filtering into the network.”, Diya said, “Speaking of which, your son, or your assistant, didn’t escape. We let him go, in secret. Even he didn’t know. He thought he found the opportunity to, but we created the opportunity for him. The two of us are the only ones in the department who knew what you were doing was increasing export, decreasing and eventually stopping import and cutting the supplies at the root, all at the same time. So, we decided to let you continue. Most people in the department just think we either failed to catch, or just ignored, a criminal, and has gone down in records as one of the rare criminals we did pursue but couldn’t catch. But the nation’s betterment was far more important, so, we let it go.”.

“I’d have to admit, I didn’t know you let my son go on purpose. Thanks for that.”., said he, “Or, maybe he should thank you himself. Who do you think ‘Ishaan’ ran towards?”. “Ishaan’s parents?”, Payal gasped and turned around, “Your son and daughter-in-law, this whole time? I can’t believe ‘The Cracker’ ‘s assistant, who was once caught, too, whose fingerprints we had, as well, was right there all along.”. “Again, the identifications, so hard, we worked on them. None of us, especially not my grandson, is really as gifted in the arts and crafts department like your granddaughter, Akira is.”. “You know our granddaughter too?”, the ladies raised their eye-brows as their right ankles detached from their left knees and they looked towards the man with the empty tea cup. “Is that really that much of a surprise? Really?”, asked he.

“Anyway, so, before we grow even older and eventually die, we’d like to know how you did it. You owe it to us, for letting your son go and back then, and leaving everyone else back in the city.”, Diya said, “Yes, we both knew that any confidantes you’d have, must already be on board here. What we told you a few minutes ago is what we told them, not what we believe. The only surprise was that your accomplices were these people we already talked to.”.

“Yeah, it’s just losing the grip, now. You shouldn’t overdo the suspense drag.”. said Payal, with a shake of her head. “Alright, I’ll tell you how the whole thing actually went.”, the old psychologist finally began narrating the series of real events.

“Everything was going fine until around a couple of months ago, or so I thought. That was until I found out that those six were retaining a few shares of supplies from every export and selling them internally for bigger profit.

The one person who had been closer to them than even I was, was Ridhima here. We were like parents, to them. But when she caught them in the act, they tried to kill her.

Also, another interesting thing, it turned out, they’d told their spouses about our activities, and it was their idea to sell some of the supplies internally, and possibly, even stop a few farm raids.

The only thing they didn’t tell their spouses yet, was who exactly they worked for. So, they don’t know me or my wife or any particular person by name who runs the organisation or works as a part of it, because of which, they had already begun suspecting their closeness with their boss, or my wife, Ridhima, and their earlier frequent visits to our place.

And after the incident happened, Ridhima started losing it. By the way, that part, I never lied about, she really does have trauma and we indeed are going for a treatment once we go there, and that’s the reason I’m leaving all this, everything settled. Anyway, she does have trouble speaking freely but she didn’t become completely mute, she can still speak. And that’s what they misunderstood. They thought she’s completely silent and that’s why they used to come check up on her every day, to make sure she’s not speaking again. But little did they know that she’d told me what happened and what they did, the very same day.

Another thing they forgot was, I’m professionally a mentalist. I know how to make people believe in something they didn’t even have the idea about to start with. So, I told them that I observed them being stressed out lately and I suggested I’d give them stress relieving seminars like I used to conduct when I was working, which will also include plans of coming tasks and at the end, I’ll let them know how I’d have trained for the next, one of the most important, deal we’d ever done.

So, every evening they came to me to have a, well, not exactly therapy, but sort of, sessions. Although, I wouldn’t call it a cult like they did. That’d be relatively demeaning to what I do. Initially, it was just like a regular therapy session, I asked them to write about their stresses, and they were convinced enough to confess the guilt, but not the details. So, they wrote the notes in that vague manner.

I read the notes, I thought about what kind of things could they also mean, to form a distraction. Three of them, I just slipped their existing health problems into random conversations for them to make a bigger deal out of them than they really were. For the other three, I had to stage the accidents, to make a big deal out of, with the help of, by the way, you don’t know how I know them, do you? As I already told you, Ishaan is of course my grandson, Dhruv is my son and Garima, my daughter-in-law. The others, Tenzing and Raima were my assistants at my clinic back when I was working, and the other four were my interns. Those people don’t know the whole picture, by the way. Only my family knows.

And once all that groundwork was laid, I began the main part. What I used to talk to them about, while they lay on the couches semi asleep, was how dreams are the key to understanding the subconscious mind’s power, wants and needs. And once they got familiar enough with the concept, I increased the intensity of imparting the unidirectional knowledge. And when I thought they were ready, I finally slipped in the big shot. I introduced them to the concept of ‘Lucid Dreaming’. It’s the condition in dreaming where you know that you’re in a dream. It’s otherwise very difficult to tell, but sometimes, you can tell, and when that happens, it’s called ‘Lucid Dreaming’. I told them it is the key to understanding one’s true self.

And subsequently, I made them believe that the natural reflex at every other moment, especially, when one wakes up, for one, should be to check the reality of it. I convinced them that you should always keep checking everything around you. If everything is as it should be, or not. Not just the surroundings being completely outlandish, if the surroundings seem realistic, one should look for little clues, like objects of possessions, furniture or architecture, if they are where and how they’re exactly supposed to be, or not. And I told them that for some reason, you can’t tell the time when you’re in a dream. So, one should always check on the nearby clocks to verify that.

And finally, I convinced them that the first thing one should do once they confirm the fact that they’re lucid dreaming, is to try flying, because it is the most liberating and stress relieving feeling in the world and it’ll help them clear their mind and reduce stress and make them sharper, too. But before that, one should try to supress the excitement that one would experience, as that would wake them up.

It’s neither as easy as it looks in the movies, nor is it a completely impossible thing to be called some sort of a conspiracy theory, convincing people to do things by talking to them when they’re in a semi-sleep state. It works, I’ve made a living out of it. But yes, it is difficult, I tested them several times. Only when I was completely sure of this happening, did I actually try to execute it.”.

“So, you convinced them to have this weekend getaway and let the spouses carry on with it while you held them with some excuse. You gave the spouses the bag you wanted their fingerprints on, and one of your accomplices stole it from them at the resort, planted the drugs and buried it where you wanted it to be.”, Diya joined in, picking up her coffee mug, “Meanwhile, Dhruv calmly went to these people’s houses to visit them and sprayed the clocks blur and re-arranged the furniture. And some other person from your little team, adjusted the CCTV footage with a video loop while giving you the constant real footage.”. “It might sound like a cliché father complaining about son’s mistakes, but who forgets to wear gloves for something like this, especially in winter when you almost wear them for everything anyway.”, he said.

“Anyway, so they woke up that morning, checked everything as usual, noticed that the objects in the house were all different and noticed that they couldn’t see time on the clocks, inferred that they were lucid dreaming, got excited, tried to control it and jumped off to fly, fly for the first and last time in their lives.”, said he, as they all sailed towards the horizon, with the skies turning clearer by the mile.

- M. P. Raghav