Within Her Threads- A Murder Mystery

Chapter 5. A hand in the dark

I was sure that nothing would shock me anymore, not after Shuchi's ethereal appearance and her death. But I was wrong. My mouth was wide open as I sat stupefied. Shuchi, killed? Killed as in murdered?

'Last month when I was transferred here, I came to your home to meet Shuchi. She looked a bit preoccupied...but overall fine. When I asked about it, she said it was something regarding you.' Bhaskara glanced at me as I flinched. 'We didn't meet thereafter because of my work commitments. And then on Friday evening, I received this frantic call from her.' Bhaskara took out his phone and opened the recorder app.

'Everything in my phone gets recorded-,' he said, '-just in case.'

'Bhaskara,' I leaned in as I listened to my sister's panic-stricken voice, 'Bhaskara, I have very important information for you. For few days I've been after-,' (terrible noise disturbance!) '....masked....,' (noise follows!) '....I might be in danger...I'll call you again at nine.' Click!

'I missed her call that night because I was engaged in another confidential operation. But this call...she was on to something,' said Bhaskara, as I sat stunned. 'Because the same night her jeep drowned in the river.'

I was silent as a scene. A familiar numbness was engulfing my mind once again. Shuchi was in danger. What kind of danger? What was she dealing with? Who was after her? Did someone really kill her?

'I know it's futile. But do you know anything about this?'

I shook my head, ashamed. No, I don't know anything about my sister's life of last two years.

'Hmm... I should have done the post-mortem on her body.'

I remembered his suggestion very well. When he proposed a post-mortem, my mother blew into a full combat rage. 'NOBODY, NOT A SINGLE PERSON WILL TEAR APART MY DAUGHTER'S BODY, my baby...' Bhaskara was not just a police officer but also very close to our family, so he didn't stress the point but now...

'The thing is her jeep showed no external damage and the tests detailed that it sped on its own accord out of the bridge; also there were no signs of physical assault on Shuchi's body, therefore our team ruled that it was death by accident but when I heard this recording...'

'When did you hear it?' I asked.

'Last night, when I was going through back up file. You see, a few weeks ago, the memory card got corrupted; it was recording the calls but was not playing back to me. My tech guy went through a lot of trouble to recover the whole data of last three years. I was scanning it one by one, deleting the irrelevant records when...'

Ah! I released a sigh as I felt pressure building inside my head. Shuchi was in danger; she could have been saved had Bhaskara heard her call for help. Was that simply bad luck?

'In that case you don't know what she did a month ago?'

My head was too heavy to move in dissent. All I could manage was faint movement of lips with a feeble- 'No.'

'Yesterday I found that Shuchi bailed out a man known as- Raghav, a month ago; two weeks before I joined the chowkey.'

'Doesn't ring a bell! Who's he?' I asked, running my hand over my head in exasperation.

'Wait, there's more. Raghav was arrested under the charge of stealing a mobile phone- complainant being- Shuchi Sharma and was....,'

'Bailed out by Shuchi?'

'A month after...Yes. First she made him arrested and then she bailed him out.'

'I don't understand,' I said perplexed.