VICTIM TWO

Koregaon Park, Pune — 9:47 a.m.

The internet café was easy to miss — wedged between a DVD store clinging to nostalgia and a juice stall that still proudly bore a sun-bleached “Try Our Mango Fizz!” board from a decade ago. The street buzzed faintly with scooters, the smell of wet tar, and frying bread.

Inside, the air was thick with stale air-conditioning and forgotten logins. Booth dividers were streaked with fingerprints. Digital ghosts drifted through old tabs and cached cookies — half-sent emails, broken searches, memories that had never made it out into the world.

Detective Arjun Roy approached the counter. Behind it, a drowsy teenager in a wrinkled polo shirt rubbed his eyes.

“This number pinged from your network yesterday morning,” Mukesh said, showing the phone. Natasha D’Mello’s number flashed on the screen.

“No IDs required,” the attendant replied. “But we’ve got CCTV. Only keeps data for three days, though.”

The footage was grainy, but clear enough.

Natasha. Hoodie up. Face partially obscured by her scarf. She moved like someone who no longer trusted her own shadow. She entered booth #3, sat down, typed fast for fifteen minutes… then left. No prints. No emails. No physical trace.

Arjun slipped into the booth she’d used. The desktop hummed, recently formatted, but Mukesh dug into the autosave caches.

A document had opened and closed. The filename: MWF_Final.docx.

“She’s trying to finish it,” Arjun muttered. “But she’s scared it’ll be intercepted.”

Only a fragment of her writing survived in the memory cache:

He never needed to raise a hand.
Just edit the lines, erase the name.
Replace pain with structure, and dissent with praise.

It read like the start of a confession. Or a funeral.

12:15 p.m. — Roadside Café, Lonavala Highway

Natasha stirred her coffee until the foam was gone. She had dyed her hair, darker now, bluntly cut. Oversized sunglasses concealed most of her face, but not the anxiety pulling at her mouth.

She sat alone. The pen drive hung inside her jacket — not on a chain, but pinned into the lining, stitched like a lifeline.

Her phone vibrated.

One new message. No sender ID. Just a poem:

You carry flame, but forget the smoke,
Each line you hide is a line I choke.
The ink you guard can burn your skin,
So tell me, girl — where do I begin?

She deleted it instantly. Then looked around.

The breeze from the highway lifted a napkin. Somewhere across the lot, a car door slammed. Too far to see. Too close to ignore.

She didn’t touch her coffee again.

4:48 p.m. — Crime Branch Archive Room, Mumbai

The folder was dust-worn and nearly crumbling, labeled “Poetry Anthology Submissions: 2007.”

Inside were letters from poets still clawing at recognition. Among them, one stood out — aged paper, written in crisp ink.

A recommendation letter.

From Anna Sebastian.

For a young poet named Christopher Lobo.

Mukesh handed it to Arjun. “They knew each other. Long before she accused anyone.”

Arjun scanned the words. The last line caught his eye:

His words walk like whispers through fog. You do not see them until you’re already inside them.

Arjun froze.

“That line,” he said. “It was quoted at Lena’s crime scene. Almost word for word.”

Mukesh frowned. “She didn’t just accuse him later. She mentored him. Maybe even loved him.”

“He didn’t just steal her work,” Arjun said softly. “He turned it into a weapon.”

6:22 p.m. — Crime Branch HQ, Evidence Desk

The book arrived wrapped in brown paper. No postage. No address.

It was hand-bound, titled Orpheus and the Lie.

Arjun opened it carefully. Pages made from thick, grainy handmade paper. At the center, a photograph glued in like a memory that wouldn’t unstick.

Anna. Rohan Thakkar. Lena Mascarenhas. Smiling. All in the same frame.

Below it, a single handwritten note:

The Society met here once. The man without a face read last. He always reads last.

Beneath that: coordinates.

Mukesh ran them.

“Alibaug. Abandoned estate. Used to belong to a publisher. Now it’s empty.”

“Not anymore,” Arjun said.

11:35 p.m. — Alibaug House

The flashlight beam cut through cobwebs and cracked shutters. The colonial-era bungalow creaked as if protesting their presence. Shelves lined the walls, many of them collapsed, books spilling like broken teeth across the floor.

In a study, they found a circle of chairs — eight of them. One had fresh indentations on the seat.

In the center lay an envelope, crisp and sealed, placed with ceremony beneath the ruins of a shattered chandelier.

Typed words on the front: For the one chasing ghosts.

Inside:

She wrote of stars and bled in verse,
Now silence wraps her like a curse.
The manuscript you seek is ash,
But in her voice remains the clash.

Mukesh stepped back.

“He’s playing with us. But this — this is panic.”

Arjun nodded. “He thinks Natasha still has something he missed.”

1:14 a.m. — Vasai Safe House

It had taken a priest, a tracker stitched into a coat lining, and two weeks of blind alleys.

But they found her.

The door opened slowly. Natasha’s face was thin, eyes sunken, but alert. One hand clutched a taser. The other held a small steel pen drive like a crucifix.

“I told her they wouldn’t stop,” she said, her voice frayed but steady. “Anna knew Lobo would erase her. Not just her body. Her words. Her history. That’s why she made me record everything.”

“The manuscript?” Arjun asked.

She held it up. “Yes. But there’s more. She recorded voice memos. Conversations. Poems. Names. She knew no one would believe her unless they heard him.”

Arjun took the drive carefully, like a detonator.

“Then it’s time,” he said, “we give the faceless man a name.”

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