32-B

Ch-4. "Infinite riches in a little room."

KUNAL

Sometimes it's better to not question the ways of the world. Because you don't know what's going to happen next. But somewhere, someone knows. Sometime, long ago someone had written your life from beginning to end and you might think you can rewrite this story, tear a page or two. Start new, but you don't know. You will never know but your trying to rewrite, to change, has also been written and that all you are doing by struggling is playing into the hands of your fate. So now when you sit there, pretending to watch T.V in a house alone and the doorbell rings, you open it and you exclaim in surprise because what is he doing here? When he takes you by the throat and shuts the door behind, you know there is no point struggling, there was no surprise, because somewhere, sometime, the happening of all of this was already decided.

MAYA

THe decision to attend the gathering was mine. This much I admit. There were a lot of reasons for it as well so there was no spontaneous action involved, but even if you intricatly plan your next steps, something is bound to go wrong, fall out, make you fall on your face. I couldnt complain though, I was relying on this to find the real culprit, the scumbag who very conveniently slipped out and put us in the limelight. Well, he messed with the wrong girl. But I'll be lying if I said the decision was the right one. It was where the quicksand-like situation pulled us further in.

Speedwalking through the overcrowded hallways during the lunch break was extremely unproductive. I could have reached my destiny faster if the hallway was flooded, atleast all the annoying, sweaty students milling about, fighting for each other's lunch boxes would be taken care of. But instead I was now being grabbed and shoved from all directions, my untucked shirt extremely uncomfortable from-
"Maya." A sharp voice called me over. I flinched. Shit. I turned around. Neeraj ma'am was standing right behind me, hands folded neatly behind her back, making her small, salwar clad frame seem stiffer than wood. I smiled at her and started turning away. She roughly grabbed my arm and pulled me back to face her. "Miss, why is your shirt untucked?"
"Uh. Uh, umm. Well, ma'am I -"
"Is it because you are trying to be cool? Because let me assure you dear, the mumbling has already hurt the chance of that."
I wanted to really, really hurt her. Respectfully. "I'm sorry ma'am." I said, gritting my teeth. "Tuck it in." She said, hands still behind her back, challenging me to do otherwise. "I- uh- I can't ." I said, trying to quickly think of a reason. "Why?" She asked. "There is a stain. Yes! Yes, a stain." I said slightly happier than a girl in an embarassing situation should be. She narrowed her eyes "You have the accessories?" she asked. The subject had use of more code words than a Mossad operation. "Yep. Actually I was just headed to the washroom."
She gave a nod. I began making my way through the sticky crowd.

"Why are we here?" Karthik asked, sitting against the back wall of the senior secondary wing building. I rolled my eyes, teachers were patrolling the entire building. We didn't have time for this. "I thought we discussed this."
"What? Why we were meeting up? No we didn't."
"I meant we discussed how whenever we met you wouldn't ask stupid questions ahead of time."
"Alright Maya. Now that we're here, can you please tell us why." Sunaina said, she was standing opposite Karthik beside me. Our backs turned to the weed infested field which then led to the fence surrounding the school. I cleared my throat,"Well, I don't think I need to remind you how deep in shit we are. And also of the presence of the police in school."
"You don't. At all." Karthik said, he was beginning to say more but thought better of it. Sunaina nodded, her mouth a thin line.
" I hope we are also clear that we will get caught and even if we are innocent, it won't matter very much. Unless we find out who really did it. We find the culprit, turn them over with enough evidence and go about our lives like any of this never happened."
"Great. It all sounds good in theory but you do realise that we are just a bunch of sixteen year olds-"
"I'm seventeen." I said.
"Congratulations. As I was saying, how are we supposed to exactly do that? How are you going to investigate? Get access to reports and the crime scene and the body and the suspects? Once you get a game plan, let me know."
"Turn around."
"What?"
"Turn around and I'll get you your game plan. You too Sunaina."
They gave me puzzled looks "Look, please don't hit me. Violence isn't going to solve anything." Sunaina said. Me, not us.
"Just do it."
They did. I pulled up my untucked shirt a little and carefully withdrew a royal blue file. KUNAL RATHORE, was written in the middle with a smudgy marker. I ran my thumb over it and smiled a big smile. The action seemed alien. "This is our beginning. The lighter, the dam gate, the blank pistol. There you go."
They stared at me with open mouths for about two seconds before Sunaina smacked her forehead with her palm and Karthik sighed. He spoke"So...so you just waltzed into the interrogation room-"
"Room E."
"Room E, where they kept their files and decided to just pick it up. And you think this is going to get us out of trouble."
"And here I was doubting your intellectual capacity."
He clenched his jaw and breathed out through his nostrils like a frustrated bull. Eventually he sat back.
"What have you got?" Sunaina asked.
I sat down, Sunaina followed suit. Teachers would be here any minute. I put the file down and opened it. A dark picture of the body was stapled to the front. "Kunal Rathore," I read. "Age 17. Parent's name blah blah blah." My fingers skimmed over to the useful part. "Evidence. Reports. Awesome." I mumbled, eyebrows knit.
"Are you supposed to be this happy? I mean, the boy died." Karthik said.
"I'm sorry I'm excited about not going to juvie."
"Maya, look here,"Sunaina said. She was pointing at a report from the postmortem,"Time of death 3:00 pm to 5:00pm. He was alone in the house. Mother and father in Florida for some conference. Stabbed multiple times in the arm, stomach" she said, face contorted in anguish and then confusion ,"possible asphyxiation."
"In the arm." I repeated.
"Exactly." She said. Scanning over some other details.
"What?" Karthik asked "What's that supposed to mean." He looked at Sunaina expecting an answer. She kept reading. Whether she had heard him or not I couldn't tell.
"It means," I said,"that there is mostly just the one reason why someone would stab in the arm. The guy put up a fight and got it in the arm. So-"
"He didn't." Sunaina said quietly
"What?"
"A report from a neighbour says that no noise or anything to hint at struggle. It was quiet."
"Okay." Karthik said, "So what now? Why would he get stabbed in the arm?"
"No idea." I said, vaguely. My mind was zooming past all detective and murder shows I'd sit through when my mother watched them on our only T.V. Maybe to temporarily injure him? But that would mean the killer didn't have the strength to take him on without injuring him. I scooted over to Sunaina to get a look.
"There could be another reason." Sunaina said, biting her nail.
"What?" I asked.
"The killer really wanted him dead. Personally."
We let that sit in the air for a while. No evidence regarding the murder was found. No forced entry though. Still not enough. I recalled what the police officer had said about some chats or something being on the school computers.
I had a look over known contacts and kids in his class in the file. That could be a useful source. That's when it struck me. The gathering in St.Agnes for Kunal.
"Cancel plans for..." I recalled, "Thursday."
"I'm really getting tried of this." Karthik said.
"Hey, wait isn't that whe-"
"We're going to the gathering."
                              *
"Watch it!" I screamed at the blundering idiot who had run into me the second time this evening. The St. Agnes field was large but with the number of students milling about it seemed like a much smaller space. The boy turned around and smiled a lopsided smile. His hair were standing up like a wall on his head. He looked me dead in the eyes and his eyes then trailed down to my fist enclosing a pen drive "Okay." He said. I hurriedly tucked my hand behind my back and snarled "Get out of my way."
"If you say so."
I glared at him one last time and then returned to the task at hand. My hand was clutching the pendrive more tightly than before. If he noticed, other people may have too. I went to the edge of the field with students and teachers standing around without acknowledging any student-teacher relationship they have with one another. Going to the school gathering was not a school venture. I ran to the very edge of the field, the crowd began clearing and I could see the platform front and centre, the sun setting behind it. There was a podium on the platform and a full size picture of Kunal, none of which I could see from my place. A few chairs were set up front. I turned a corner wall and behind it stood Karthik and Sunaina. "Did you get it." She asked. I raised my hand and showed her the pendrive. "Give it to me. " She said and then took the pendrive from me and put it back in her little bag.
"Mm!Umm!" A noise came from the little brick partition beside me, Karthik gestured with his eyes for me to look. I peered and saw a small girl with short cropped hair was gagged and bound over behind. I turned to look at Sunaina and Karthik and raised my eyebrows,"Seriously?". Sunaina shrugged, Karthik shoved his hands in his pockets, "she wouldn't shut up." He said.
I looked at the little girl again. I then vaulted the wall and knelt down beside her, she had been tied up pretty lightly but she still struggled like someone wanting out of a straightjacket. You could have tied her up with a scrunchie and she still wouldn't be able to get out. I signalled Sunaiana for what I needed. She handed me a phone, I clicked it open to reveal a picture. In the picture, the girl in front of me is holding hands and walking with a boy. I showed her the picture "If you don't want this falling in the hands of your mother or all aunties in your neighbourhood you will keep quiet. I will let you go, just remember, at the click of a button I can ruin your life. Don't cross us."
I untied the shoelaces tying her feet and wrists and removed the ball of handkercheif from her mouth. She got up slowly, dusted herself and began blending into the crowd up ahead. I turned to my accomplices "Well, we got what we came for. Any luck with you guys?" I asked.
They glanced at eachother. I'd missed a patch up of sorts from the looks of it "We have a lot to tell you." Sunaina said,"We might actually be getting somewhere."
I smiled. I had been smiling a lot lately. "Then let's go pay our respects."
We left just as I once again saw the man who had been following us all evening.
We walked up into the crowd. The field was beginning to be lit against a setting sun. Candles and flourescent lights illuminated the field. For a minute I forgot about everything. All the police and police daughters and threats and dead people. I could just pretend that I was hanging out. With other people. People I could almost call my friends. "You are way too happy about this." Karthik said, disturbing my thoughts,"which is weird because you are not happy too often. And you know, there is like a murder and stuff."
"You can't see silver linings if everything else is bright too."
Sunaina was walking beside Karthik and smiling at nothing in particular.
"You're so weird." Karthik said.
I punched him in the arm. As he rubbed his sore arm we reached the row of chairs set in front of the platform. I took in the scene which I could see more clearly now. The people in the chairs, the spiky haired boy catching my eye and smirking, the candles lit on both sides of the platform, the podium and a grim faced woman preparing to speak on it and the huge picture of Kunal.
I froze. This didn't make any sense. The joy occupying my head was draining slowly and I felt dizzy. I looked over to Karthik beside me who had the same expression and then at Sunaina who was clutching her head with both hands and taking steps backwards.
My eyes met Karthik's. He confirmed it. We were in bigger trouble than we thought.