UNKNOWN SENDER

Bandra, Mumbai — 6:42 a.m.

The city stirred under a veil of mist, reluctant to wake. Bandra’s quiet lanes, usually alive with honking rickshaws and barking strays, felt suspended in time. Wrought-iron gates dripped with dew. Bougainvillaea vines sagged under the weight of yesterday’s rain.

Detective Arjun Roy stood alone outside the hollow shell of Natasha D’Mello’s bungalow. The air was damp with the kind of silence that didn’t ask for answers — it warned you not to question.

The front door remained sealed. No forced entry. No footprints on the porch tiles. Nothing moved, except a single petal from the tree overhead — pale, delicate, and deadly. Arjun bent, gloved fingers collecting the Cerbera odollam bloom. He bagged it, sealed it, then crouched to photograph the area.

“A suicide tree on your front lawn,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. “You weren’t just hiding, Natasha. You were terrified.”

He stepped back, flipping open his phone. Natasha’s call logs had yielded only one irregularity — a landline dialed close to midnight. Arjun had traced it to a small poetry bookshop in Byculla. Registered under the name of Father Peter Almeida.

A priest. A bookstore. A midnight call.

Arjun dialed. “Mukesh, meet me in Byculla. We’ve got a priest who loves poetry. He may be our next chapter.”

10:18 a.m. — Almeida Book Haven, Byculla

Dust floated through beams of morning light like old secrets. Shelves bowed under the weight of leather-bound volumes and forgotten chapbooks. The scent of brittle paper, fading ink, and incense created a cathedral of language.

The bell above the door chimed gently as Arjun stepped in.

Behind a modest wooden counter sat Father Peter Almeida. Thin, silver-haired, with hands that trembled only slightly as he marked a page. His eyes were parchment brown — aged, weathered, but unflinching.

“You must be Arjun Roy,” he said, lifting his gaze with a faint, knowing smile. “She said you’d come.”

“Natasha?”

He nodded, setting his book aside. “Two weeks ago. She looked like a ghost fleeing its body. Said she couldn’t trust the police. But she trusted Anna’s instincts. And Anna had told her: ‘If anything happens to me, find Arjun Roy.’“

Arjun blinked, caught off guard. “Why me?”

“She never said. Only that you once understood her silences better than most.”

From beneath the counter, Father Almeida retrieved a sealed brown envelope.

“She left this behind. For you. Said you’d understand.”

Arjun peeled it open. Inside: a stack of typed poems. Unpublished. Raw. One had been marked with a red dot.

A voice once bright now fades to dusk,
The ink runs thin, the blood too brusque.
He hides behind the critic’s chair,
But leaves his name in every tear.

In the bottom corner, typed faintly — a single word: Orphic.

Arjun’s eyes darkened. “The Orphic Society?”

Father Almeida exhaled slowly, as if invoking a ghost.

“A private circle of literary elites. It began noble — a collective to preserve language and uplift verse. But like all exclusive power, it turned inward. Secretive. Corrupt. Anna was invited once. She declined.”

“Why?”

“Because she saw what they were becoming. She believed poetry should liberate. The Orphic Society weaponized it.”

Arjun tucked the poem into his coat.

“Did Natasha say where she was going?”

“She mentioned a convent in Pune. A shelter, run by nuns. She left the name with me… only she asked me not to write it down. She was certain someone was watching.”

Arjun looked at the old priest. “We’ll find her.”

3:05 p.m. — Crime Branch Lab, Mumbai

Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as a young forensic technician handed Arjun a fresh report. Mukesh leaned over his shoulder, chewing gum with a slow rhythm.

“No conventional poisons,” the tech said, “but we did find trace elements of cardiac glycosides in her blood.”

Arjun frowned. “Where would that come from?”

“Plants, mostly. Digitalis, foxglove… or Cerbera odollam.”

Mukesh snapped his fingers. “The suicide tree. Like that flower on Natasha’s porch.”

The tech nodded. “Absorbed in small amounts through the skin, it can trigger cardiac arrest. Clean. Subtle. Especially hard to detect if you’re not looking for it.”

“Delivery method?” Arjun asked.

“Could be skin cream. A necklace. Even a pen.”

Arjun stiffened. “Mont Blanc. She was twirling it when she died.”

“We’ll run tests,” said the tech, already pulling up the next form.

5:12 p.m. — Daniel D’Souza’s Office, Fort

Perched in a glass high-rise that overlooked the Arabian Sea, Daniel D’Souza’s office looked like the kind of place where art was sold in whispers and favors. Books adorned the shelves more for their covers than content.

Daniel himself wore a smile too perfect to trust. A patron of the arts. A charmer. And a man whose name kept surfacing like an unwanted motif in Anna’s final days.

“She pushed people away,” he said, pouring himself a whiskey. “We had creative disagreements. I asked her to collaborate with sponsors. She called it selling her soul.”

“But she still accepted your funding,” Arjun pointed out.

Daniel’s smile flickered. “She needed it. At the time.”

Mukesh opened a folder, always the bulldog to Arjun’s scalpel. “Security footage shows you entering Palmview Towers. Three days before her death.”

“I dropped off a gift,” Daniel said casually.

“A pen?” Arjun asked.

Daniel nodded. “It was hers, actually. I had it refurbished. Thought she’d appreciate it.”

“Where was it refurbished?” Arjun asked.

“A collector friend. Delhi. Why?”

Arjun pulled out the petal photo and slid it across.

Daniel stared at it. “What the hell is that?”

“You tell us,” Mukesh said, leaning forward. “Because if that pen was laced, you didn’t just send a gift. You delivered the method.”

Daniel went quiet.

Later That Night — Arjun’s Apartment

The board was filling up. Timelines. Names. Photos. Scrawled notes that bled into each other. And along the top edge, tacked neatly in a row — the poems. Each one a signal fire disguised as a verse.

Arjun sat at his desk, flipping through Anna’s Dark Ink, Bright Bones anthology, this time with a red pen. He circled lines. Marked symbols. Paused at the margins.

Then he saw it.

Three consecutive poems on the quite last page whose titles whispered something in sequence.

Masquerade.
Witness.
Fugue.

“MWF,” he muttered.

A post-it fluttered to the ground as he moved Anna’s ribbon box.

On it, in her handwriting:

He writes like fire walks. Elegant. Deadly. We used to share metaphors. Now we share fear.

Undated Poem — Delivered to Arjun, Postmarked from Pune

You chase the verse, forget the flame,
The author hides, but ends the game.
When ink meets blood, the truth will rise,
And burn the mask beneath the lies.

Arjun read it twice. A chill slid down his spine.

The ink was darkening.

Next Morning — 10:22 a.m.

Arjun’s phone pinged. A trace. Natasha’s number had registered at a women’s shelter near Kothrud, Pune.

He called out to Mukesh, already zipping up his overnight bag.

“She’s alive,” Arjun said. “For now.”

The second verse was unraveling.

And the author’s hand had only just begun.

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