LEAD IS DEAD?

Crime Branch HQ, Mumbai — 9:06 a.m.

The city drowned in rain.

It hadn’t stopped for three days — monsoon hammering rooftops like an angry metronome. Inside a sealed chamber deep in the Crime Branch, the rain’s rhythm gave way to silence as Arjun Roy stared down at Anna Sebastian’s manuscript like it was a corpse awaiting autopsy.

The Man Without a Face lay open on the desk, newly decrypted, freshly printed, bound in matte black. But it wasn’t the book that held his gaze.

It was the four loose pages lying beside it. Unfiled. Untouched. Four titles, one word each:

Lament. Obituary. Betrayer. Oblivion.

Mukesh entered, wet cuffs rolled up.

“‘L-O-B-O,’” he said aloud. “An acrostic. She spelled it with the titles.”

Arjun’s jaw tightened. “She knew they’d bury the body. So she left the name behind.”

He spread them out. Each poem bore the same cold, calculated signature: double-spaced em dashes, inverted ellipses, that odd mirroring of syntax Anna had once called a literary fingerprint.

But it wasn’t just Anna.

“This isn’t only her voice,” Arjun murmured. “It’s his.”

Mukesh nodded. “She mimicked Lobo’s style. To force a comparison. For anyone sharp enough to see what he’d stolen.”

“She left a trail. One the killer couldn’t erase — because it was his.”

1:45 p.m. — Interview Room B

Daniel D’Souza sat under the soft hum of the overhead bulb, eyes ringed with exhaustion.

Arjun didn’t pace. He stood still, voice steady.

“Did you read his poems?”

Daniel gave a slow nod. “Back when he still pretended to be a poet. Lobo was obsessed with form. Nothing spontaneous. Every verse had to snap to his rhythm — even grief.”

“What kind of rhythm?”

“Double em dashes. Reversed ellipses. And something strange — he used two colons in his stanzas. One for a pause. One for a punchline. I told him it was overkill. Anna told him it was theft.”

Mukesh opened a red folder. “Every one of the murder poems has those quirks. They weren’t just anonymous threats. He signed them with style.”

Arjun’s voice dropped. “He wanted credit. But only after he was untouchable.”

Daniel looked up slowly. “He believed he’d written over all of them.”

3:18 p.m. — Literary Board Headquarters, Churchgate

The conference room smelled like coffee and old paper. Dr. Devika Pradhan, handwriting expert and literary analyst, pushed a binder across the table.

“I compared Anna’s early drafts with Lobo’s university-era poems.”

She pointed to a page filled with annotations — margins thick with arrows and symbols.

“Matching syntax, line symmetry, glyph usage. Even the kerning in old typesetters. The pattern match is over 89%.”

“Meaning?”

“In literary forensics?” Devika looked up. “That’s as close to a fingerprint as you’ll ever get.”

Arjun flipped to the final page — a scanned version of one of Lobo’s first published works.

“Then we have him. Not just in blood. But in ink.”

5:42 p.m. — Nariman Point, Outside Lobo’s Office

The city stood watching.

A crowd had gathered across from the mirrored tower where Christopher Lobo’s office sat mute and looming. Protesters pressed against barricades. Banners flapped in the wind:

Poets don’t die. They’re murdered.

#InkAndJustice

LOBO: The Man Without a Face?

Cameras rolled. Reporters waited for statements that never came.

Arjun and Mukesh stood in the rain’s curtain, faceless behind umbrellas.

“He won’t run,” Mukesh said.

“He doesn’t need to. Not yet,” Arjun replied. “He still thinks he owns the story.”

But the cracks had spread.

Lobo hadn’t been seen in public for 48 hours. His website was down. His media allies had gone quiet. Sponsors were distancing.

He was slipping.

“What’s the move now?” Mukesh asked.

Arjun pulled a page from the manuscript — the final one.

Anna’s last stanza.

And if he dares to breathe again,
Remind him verse can carry flame.
The final page is not yet turned,
But justice, like ink, must burn.

Arjun folded it slowly.

“We finish the story,” he said. “In court, in media… and in memory.”

8:30 p.m. — Natasha’s Apartment, Bandra Safehouse

The air was thick with old voices.

Natasha sat cross-legged on the floor, cassettes scattered like tarot cards. She slid one into the player — April 3, 2015 written in Anna’s hand.

The tape hissed. Then Anna’s voice, quiet and steady:

“He wanted me quiet. But he doesn’t understand silence isn’t absence. Silence is preparation. I’ve written the book. Now all that remains… is the reading.”

Natasha looked up at Arjun.

“Tomorrow, you take this to court,” she said. “I’ll take it to the crowd.”

He didn’t smile. Just nodded.

“You’re ready for what that means?”

She held his gaze.

“Anna died because she refused to stop writing. The least I can do… is read.”

10:12 p.m. — Arjun’s Apartment

The city outside was a soaked mosaic of neon and thunder.

Inside, Arjun sat alone — cigarette glowing, case board dimmed. He opened a drawer and pulled out a folded page. Yellowed with age.

A poem.

Anna had written it for him back when he was just a blunt-edged detective chasing ghosts, before literature made its mark.

You read me like a case file,
Your hands too steady for poems.
But I see the verse behind your eyes.
One day, detective, you’ll write.

He folded it again. Slipped it back into the drawer beside his badge.

“Not yet,” he whispered.
“First I finish yours.”

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