THE HIDDEN HAND

Crime Branch Forensic Lab — 9:10 a.m.

The hum of fluorescent lights filled the room like a quiet accusation. Every surface gleamed with sterility, but the object on the steel table was anything but ordinary. It lay there — sleek, black, innocuous — the dismantled remains of a Mont Blanc pen.

Dr. Dinesh Sharma adjusted his latex gloves and pointed to the cartridge. “This wasn’t just a writing tool,” he said. “It was a weapon.”

Arjun Roy leaned in, gaze unblinking. Mukesh stood beside him, hands in his coat pockets, face darkened with restraint.

Sharma held up a thin cylinder no thicker than a needle. “Cerbera odollam,” he said. “The ‘suicide tree’. Highly toxic. This reservoir? Hidden in the ink chamber. Contact-based delivery. Absorbed slowly, over days.”

Arjun muttered, “She chewed on the cap. Twirled it while she thought. Used it every day.”

“Exactly. The dosage wasn’t instant,” Sharma said. “It was intimate. Designed to seep through routine.”

Mukesh exhaled. “He didn’t just want her dead. He wanted her to write her own death.”

Interrogation Room C — 11:45 a.m.

The air was thick with sweat and dread.

Daniel D’Souza looked like a man disintegrating. Hair unkempt, shirt wrinkled, guilt pooled in the hollows of his eyes. He didn’t look up when Arjun and Mukesh entered.

Arjun placed a folder on the table. Slid it open. Photographs spilled out: the modified cartridge, the hollow needle, the print lifted from the internal casing.

“Your fingerprint,” Mukesh said.

“I know,” Daniel whispered.

“You gave her the pen,” Arjun said evenly.

Daniel nodded, shame dragging down his voice. “He gave me the cartridge. Told me how to insert it. Said it was just to scare her. Just… a warning.”

“Who?” Mukesh asked, though the answer was already carved into the silence.

Daniel’s lips trembled. “Christopher Lobo.”

Arjun didn’t flinch. “He threatened you?”

“He had dirt. Affairs. My wife, my job. Everything. Said Anna had gotten… dangerous. That she was going to ruin things. He said she needed… correction.”

“She didn’t get corrected,” Mukesh said coldly. “She died.”

Daniel pressed his palms to his eyes. “She trusted me. I gave her the pen thinking she’d write her next masterpiece. Instead, it wrote her last words.”

Natasha’s Safehouse — 2:40 p.m.

The room was quiet, save for the sound of a voice — soft, brittle, breaking through a speaker.

Anna’s voice.

“He came in smiling,” it said. “Said he missed my voice. But his eyes were all teeth. Left a gift on the table — my pen. Cleaned, he said. And for once… I believed him.”

Natasha sat cross-legged beside the open manuscript, headphones hugging her ears, jaw clenched.

Arjun stood by the window, watching the storm thicken.

“She recorded everything,” Natasha said. “Even the moment he planted the weapon.”

Arjun nodded. “We have her voice. The forensic match. And a confession.”

Natasha looked up, eyes burning. “Then let’s stop whispering. Let the city hear her scream.”

Literary Guild Plaza, Kala Ghoda — 3:32 p.m.

The plaza brimmed with people — poets, journalists, activists, students — every one of them damp from the monsoon but lit with purpose. Under the arched facade of the Poet’s Guild Hall, cameras blinked red, microphones reached like antennas.

Natasha stepped onto the makeshift stage. Her hair was damp. Her hands steady.

In one, she held the manuscript.

In the other, a folded poem.

“This city mourns Anna Sebastian,” she began. Her voice didn’t tremble. “But mourning is not enough. Truth demands voice.”

She held up the black-bound folder. “This is The Man Without a Face. Anna’s final work. A manuscript she never got to read out loud. It names her killer. It tells the story no one wanted to hear.”

She unfolded the poem and read:

They tried to erase me line by line,
But ink runs deeper than their spine.
So read aloud what once was hushed,
And let no poem turn to dust.

“These were her final words,” Natasha said. “But not the end. Today, the ink rises.”

The plaza roared — not in applause, but in revolt. Phones captured every moment. Newsrooms scrambled. The voice Anna thought would be buried had returned — louder than ever.

Lobo’s Bungalow, Malabar Hill — 7:48 p.m.

In the darkened living room, the television glowed softly, casting a pale light across Christopher Lobo’s angular face.

Muted, the press conference played in silence.

He watched Natasha raise the manuscript. Watched her read.

His drink trembled in his hand. He didn’t blink.

An aide stood nearby. “Shall we prepare a statement, sir?”

No response.

On screen, Natasha read the second stanza. Lobo raised the volume by a single notch.

He drained the rest of his glass.

Crime Branch HQ — 9:02 p.m.

The investigation board stood complete — no longer a web of theories, but a map of guilt.

Photos. Transcripts. Confessions. Audio waveforms. A blown-up image of the pen’s reservoir. Arjun stared at the wall like it was a shrine and a wound.

Mukesh entered, papers in hand. “Warrant’s signed. Every jurisdiction, every clearance.”

Arjun nodded.

Mukesh hesitated. “Do we wait till morning?”

Arjun didn’t answer at first.

Then he looked up at Anna’s photo at the center of the board — her eyes distant, a half-smile frozen in time.

“No,” he said.
“Not dawn.
We move now.
Before the ink dries.”

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