The Tenants Of Shanti Villa

Chapter 6: A lot of Questions

The first job the police had done was to make sure to investigate the apartment of Mrs. Darshan, and flabbergasted they were, with the living conditions they saw.

With the local police giving him some hard looks, the landlord finally came to his senses and promised to install a few more bathrooms and make a separate latrine area at the rear of the building.

But this piece of happy news brought no such happiness to the people of Shanti Villa or the locality.
Everyone was in complete terror and above all, still unable to grasp what had skimmed past them.

Still reeling from the shock to see a woman like Mrs. Darshan shot dead, was definitely as hard thing or everyone to gulp, even Sridhar's mother Mrs. Gupta.

She has been trying to console Sridhar all this while from the trauma, but has failed to do so herself, falling into a state of blankness often. unnoticed.

Her normally kind ans warm eyes, now dull and lifeless. Her smiling animated face often becoming still and expressionless as the thoughts of the incident came to her.

Mr.Mittal's face seemed to have taken the outline of a tall tree battered of a storm.
He had never expected to be witness to a horrific incident like this in what was not, a very long tenure of stay at Shanti Villa.

But the one who had crawled himself back the most, was Sridhar. The scenes of Mrs. Darshan trying to run, supposedly to safety, on the road, made him realize she knew something bad was definitely was going happen to her.

Or was it?
Sridhar wondered.

If Mrs. Darshan knew that she was going to be murdered, or any action of similar impact, why would she not run to safety in the nearby residences, or even give shout, out in the air in an attempt to gather people around to scare the killer away?

But it may have been that she was too scared to call anyone out and the only thing in her mind was to somehow manage to safety.

Sridhar scratched his head, staring at the plaster faded wall infront of him, with a blank yet deep look in eyes. Something still was not quite adding up.

He has even informed the police about this thought of his.
But the police had just brushed it off as a "not too important a question at this time".

What the police seemed far more interested in, was definitely the apartment and along with it the evidences of tire marks they found on the trailing tracks of the biker in the nearby areas.

The incident, to no one's surprise, quickly found it's way in the local newspapers and soon became a very hotly disscussed topic all over the town.
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The bell rang. Mrs. Gupta pulling her saree upto the head and adjusting it around the corners, opened the door.

"Oh Mr. Mittal! Please come in, have some chai"

"No, thank you, not today" he replied, with a somewhat dry smile on his face.

In this whole ordeal of investigation, it has been his transfer which has been completely put on hold.

Poor man! To see his oppurtunity to a better career fleeting away just due to a very unfortunate incident like this must be really hard, Mrs. Gupta thought.

"Can you please send Sridhar please, I would like to have a few words with him regarding a few topics."

"Yeah sure, why not" Mrs. Gupta replied and then scurried back inside to let Sridhar know.

Sridhar had been sitting on the bed, reading stuff quietly, which is quite a surprise, as to how quiet the boy has become recently.

"Mittal uncle wants to have a chat with you, he says he has some topics to be disscussed with you" saying this his mother came and stood beside his bed.

Sridhar's face lit up a bit.

Within a few minutes, Sridhar was standing in the ground floor of the apartment. In front of him was Mr. Mittal with one of his hands on his chin as if in some thought.

"Well Sridhar, where did the did the strange man you found with the German Shepherd say he lived?"

"He did not say exactly where uncle, but he did mention that he was new to the colony"

"He did??"

"Yes, he most definitely did"

"Well, I asked around the colony today, and no one has seen him, or even his dog, so your experiences must have been one off"

"Or maybe he had other intentions..." Mr. Mittal dragged his words along as if trying to connect some invisible dots, his eyebrows furrowing as he continued to think.

And that is when Sridhar gaped his eyes in shock of what seemed to be a perfect understanding why the man would ever recognize and try to shoot him.