MISSING PIECES

Pune — 7:08 a.m.

The rain had lightened, but the sky still sagged, bruised with monsoon weight. The garden outside the convent was quiet, disturbed only by the soft rustle of palm fronds and the practiced hands of nuns stringing clothes on lines between trees. Each clothespin clipped with the same gentle reverence they seemed to offer the world.

Detective Arjun Roy stood at the edge of the lawn, hands in his pockets, shoes damp with dew. He had grown used to searching in places that looked like peace but reeked of stories buried in silence.

“She was here,” a nun finally said, approaching him with guarded eyes. Her voice was thick with certainty and caution.

“Natasha D’Mello,” Arjun clarified.

The nun nodded.

“She came here a few nights ago. Said she needed rest, not sanctuary. Carried nothing but a duffel bag and a small pouch around her neck. Wouldn’t take it off — slept with it, bathed with it. Said it held something important. Something someone might kill her for.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“She left before sunrise yesterday. Told me she had to finish a story before it finishes her.”

Arjun looked past the sister at the convent’s modest chapel, where flickering candles burned inside. A story before it finishes her. It wasn’t just paranoia — not anymore.

Mukesh appeared at the garden gate, holding up his phone.

“Her mobile pinged this morning. Somewhere near a used bookstore in Camp. If she’s running, she’s not running blind.”

“No,” Arjun said. “She’s constructing something. Page by page. A final chapter.”

9:40 a.m. — Crime Branch HQ, Mumbai

The envelope was plain, as always. No return address, no smudges, no edges out of place.

Arjun sliced it open with care, like a surgeon approaching a live wire.

Inside: a photograph. A poem. Both typed on Remington-grade paper.

The photo was candid — Anna Sebastian at a dinner table, surrounded by pages, laughter, and the faint blur of wine. Her smile looked real, which was rare in all the photos Arjun had studied. Beside her sat another woman, face turned slightly, looking over Anna’s shoulder as if guarding her.

On the back of the photo, a typed line:

To the one who knew the truth but feared the chorus.

Beneath it, a four-line verse:

She held the flame and still she froze,
Beneath the weight of borrowed prose.
The face is gone, the lines remain,
A tale of power, ink, and shame.

He pinned it beside the others — the murders, the threats, the cryptic verses. The board was filling up, inch by inch, poem by poem.

And once again, the thread curved back toward Natasha D’Mello.

2:03 p.m. — Interview: Joseph Mathew

The bungalow overlooked the sea, its interior cluttered with stacks of old books, classical vinyls, and the faint perfume of aging wood. Joseph Mathew welcomed them in wearing a wool cardigan and a thoughtful frown. A professor in retirement, he had once hosted open-mic nights and mentored half of Mumbai’s modern poets.

“You’re here about Anna,” he said without preamble, voice wrapped in memory.

Arjun nodded. “You knew her well?”

“She trusted me with her rough drafts,” he said, easing into an armchair. “That wasn’t something she did lightly.”

“Did she ever talk about someone she feared?”

Joseph’s eyes lost their twinkle.

“There was a man,” he said finally. “Someone older. They had a… connection. She once thought he was helping her career. But over time, she realized he was lifting pieces of her — lines, metaphors, phrases buried deep. He said it was homage. She said it was theft.”

“She name him?”

“No. But she said he was on the rise. Both in literature and politics. If she named him, she told me, she’d disappear.”

Arjun pulled the photograph from earlier and slid it across the coffee table.

Joseph squinted behind his bifocals. “That’s not him. That’s Anna with Natasha D’Mello. They were closer than Anna let on. Closer than most people knew.”

Mukesh leaned forward. “You think Natasha knows who the man was?”

Joseph nodded slowly. “I think she knew everything.”

5:45 p.m. — Arjun’s Apartment

The call came without warning. No caller ID. Just static.

Arjun answered anyway.

The voice on the other end wasn’t human. It was distorted, mechanical — like a computer whispering into an abandoned well.

Then the poem began:

You chase the verse, forget the flame,
The author hides, but ends the game.
The past is inked, the present bleeds,
But only silence truly feeds.

Then — click.

Silence.

“He’s watching us,” Arjun murmured. “He’s feeding off the noise we make. Staying just behind the echo.”

8:14 p.m. — Rohan Thakkar’s Apartment, Santacruz

The door was unlocked.

Inside, the television muttered a muted news ticker. A ceiling fan spun idly. On the floor, sprawled beside an untouched coffee mug, lay Rohan Thakkar — young, brilliant, and now forever quiet.

His laptop remained open on the desk.

The screen displayed the unfinished draft of the article he had worked on for weeks:

‘The Poet’s Hidden Enemy’ aims to trace a pattern of plagiarism, manipulation, and silencing tactics used by prominent members of a literary-political group known internally as The Orphic Society…

The paragraph ended mid-sentence.

A single printed page lay beside the keyboard.

He asked too loud, he wrote too near,
So now we trade his ink for fear.
Let this page be blank instead,
Another writer, silent, dead.

No sign of struggle. No forced entry. Only a meticulous arrangement — a calling card of silence.

Arjun crouched beside the body. “He’s mimicking Anna’s death. Lena’s. But it’s louder now. Bolder.”

“Each poem,” Mukesh said, voice tight, “a weapon.”

Arjun nodded. “And each kill, a stanza.”

10:37 p.m. — Orphic Records

Mukesh dropped a scuffed USB drive on Arjun’s desk. “Got this from an old contact in publishing. Said it was deep archive stuff. Off-the-books. Real hush-hush.”

They plugged it in.

Inside: membership logs. Memos disguised as newsletters. Rejection letters marked with symbols instead of names. Patterns no outsider was ever meant to see.

One term repeated with eerie consistency: MWF.

“Man Without a Face,” Mukesh said. “Tied to everything — payments, anonymous edits, backdoor publications.”

Arjun leaned forward. “Anna wasn’t paranoid. She was hunted.”

He opened Lobo’s early poetry archives next to the Remington threats. Double-spaced em dashes. Inverted commas. Unusual ellipses. The typography matched.

Same quirks. Same structure. Same voice — in disguise.

1:04 a.m. — Koregaon Park, Pune

A signal pulsed across their system.

Natasha’s phone — silent for days — had pinged again. A brief burst of life from an internet café in Koregaon Park.

“She’s still in Pune,” Mukesh said, strapping on his holster.

“Still moving,” Arjun added. “But she’s not just running anymore.”

“She has the manuscript?”

“She has more than that,” Arjun said. His voice had a finality to it, like someone seeing the last piece of a long-lost puzzle.

“She has everything we need to bring him down.”

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