Keeping Secrets

Chapter 17

Once again, it was time to talk to Asad, who had been detained in another room. Gaurav had already asked his teams to start building the case and prepare for the arrest of both Raghav and Asad.

"Game's over, Asad. Your friend has told us everything."

This time, Asad's demeanour was different. He broke down like a man who had given up.

"Yes sir. It was me. I was really high that night. I left with Neil and Asad from the balcony after Debbie, and we had planned it like that so that I could go and meet Raghav for a fix, but as I was leaving, I saw Nikki alone in her room. The door was ajar. I knew Raghav was the one dying to confront her, and I had planned my trip to make sure he doesn't do something stupid, but Arushi and I had something I thought was real. I had too many questions and too much rage. I pretended to fall asleep when we stopped for a jacket near our room. On my way back to her room, I grabbed one of the bottles that had accidentally broken during the party and a spare blanket to cover my face, but I went in there just to talk to her. I swear I did, but seeing her face in that darkness, all I could remember were the times she had spoken to me like I was the only person in the whole wide world who understood her, or showed her any kindness. After all of that, she had lied to me and disappeared from my life overnight. Why had she done that? I was very angry, and the more I tried asking her, the angrier it made me. She had made me feel so deeply for a person who did not exist. She had continued to lead me on. What was she thinking? Nobody would accept her if they knew her reality. If I wanted, I could have destroyed her life. I could tell her friends. I could go and share our chats on all her real social media profiles. She should at least have been worried about that. I kept trying to ask her, but she just would not wake up. In my rage, I started stabbing her because the only truth about her was that she liked being hurt, and in my eyes at that moment, there was nothing she deserved more. In the dim moonlight, I could still see her beautiful, lying face, and that's what I went for first. I think I killed her in a single blow, because she never moved, or fought back, but I could not stop. I did not want to see any bit of her and kept going till there was not an inch that I could. Before I could leave, I heard her friends trying to open the door. They knocked once or twice too. I just sat there motionless till the hallway got silent again to make a run for Raghav's room. Actually, I can't remember much of what happened after. I just came back to my room and fell asleep as he asked me to.

"How could she have answered you while you were strangling her?"

Asad's bushy eyebrows furrowed at the mention of the word. "I... don't know what you're talking about."

"We have found a guitar string missing from your belongings, Asad. There's no point denying it."

"I... I don't get it. I killed her. I'm telling you I did, but there was no strangling involved. I was too angry and too intoxicated for all that. I saw the broken bottle, remembered the way she had just played with my feelings and conveniently lied to me too. The only thing she had ever been honest about was that she wanted to be hurt. She wanted me to tell her she was worthless and treat her like it. To me, she was just a big liar with perverse fantasies. I've never felt so much rage in my life. If I had at least remembered the drug we had slipped into her drink, I might have known why she wasn't waking up."

Gaurav was at the end of his patience. He stood up and angrily flipped his chair, sending it flying across the room before walking off.

This could only mean that Nikki was already dead when Asad was stabbing her. She had been strangled with Asad's guitar string. Gaurav could see no reason why he would confess to the murder but lie about how he did it.

He immediately called in each of the other members of the villa to cross-check Asad and Raghav's whereabouts on a fateful night. The story checked out. Nobody had seen Raghav, and Asad had passed out when they made a stop at their room. Neil had not bothered checking for Asad when he came back to sleep.

Gaurav instructed everyone to gather in the gazebo again. As he watched everyone assemble from a distance, he put another cigarette to his lips. When he reached out for his lighter, he found Nikki's phone again. Raghav and Asad's words about Nikki echoed in his head. Like them, he too was disillusioned. Like them, he too was struggling to make sense of this girl whose life and death made none, but their understanding still felt acutely flawed. He wondered why. Again, the image of that bubbly girl laughing and posing with her friends flashed before his eyes, and then he saw it again: Nikki putting on a mask and walking into that forlorn marketplace. He saw Nikki marking her flesh and making a show of it for a crowd filled with men who said things like what Raghav and Asad had said. This was not masochism. It was not the surrender of power for pleasure. He had found no evidence of Nikki deriving any perceivable pleasure from these chats. She seemed to be punishing herself for a crime he could not identify. How did Ryan or any of her other friends never see? How was she able to keep this half life up alongside the full life she was actually living? Was she really even living a full life in her own skin?

He saw the teenagers getting restless at a distance again. He pulled the unburnt cigarette from his lips and discarded it carelessly on the table before heading to the gazebo. His teams were thoroughly searching all the rooms again. This time, they knew what they were looking for.