Prey on the Prowl - A Crime Novel, BS Murthy [best contemporary novels .txt] 📗

him altogether, it would amount to her rescinding his vakalat, and with Shakeel braying for his blood, wouldn’t that mean throwing him to the wolves? Why abandon him after all the hard work and on the verge of success? However, to overcome her predicament, she thought of putting sense into his deranged head that it was not proper to covet a woman old enough to be his elder sister. Though she strived to put sense into his head to put an end the nonsense, he reiterated his resolve to end his life if she were to fail to yield to his raging passion that was killing him any way.

Thereby, Kavya saw no way out to save her honor but by cold-shouldering him, hoping that he would get over his obsession for her in time, and so kept away from him, but soon as her unrelenting lover faked suicide yet again, she was thrown into a dilemma - if she gave in to him, she would be unfaithful to Ranjit, but should Pravar take the plunge, that would fail her mission. What with her obsession for justice coupled with her empathy for him tilting the scales, she could hold no more, and as he began to overwhelm her with his youthful urges, she felt as if her life was under siege in their liaison. Soon, as Pravar tended to ignore Natya, she insisted parity to make it an equitable love triangle, but with his ardency for her ever on the raise, he began pestering her to leave her man to make it a ménage a trois for them.

As that’s how things stood as per Natya’s brief, Dhruva blamed himself for Kavya’s fall, and Radha felt the only way to rescue her was to nab Pravar, he said that he would talk to Shakeel to handle him. So, as he reached for his mobile, he received a call from him, by then shifted to the Jubilee Hills Police Station.

The cop said that around six in the evening, he received a call from Kavya, informing him that Ranjit lay dead at home; so he rushed to Spandan to take stock of the situation. He learned from her that Ranjit had left for his office at ten and, as was her wont, she too went out after lunch, but on her return, finding him dead in his bed in the master bedroom, she felt it could be a cold-blooded murder. However, he saw nothing amiss in the house and there were no injuries on the body, all of which pointed out to a possible heart attack, but yet he moved the body for post-mortem, and sounded his informers to pick up in the grapevine.

While Dhruva became pensive, Radha said that she knew for long that it was in the coming; after all, didn’t Natya tell her that Pravar was hell-bent to have Kavya all for himself? Surely, adept at the art of poisoning, he would have done in Ranjit to gain Kavya’s undivided affections. However, Dhruva told her not to jump the gun; for all he knew, he could have as well committed suicide, unable to bear the ignominy of being a cuckold or for that matter, he might have died even of heart attack, stressed as he was by his wife’s infidelity. But as Radha insisted that it could have been Pravar’s way of grabbing Kavya and her property as well, Dhruva maintained that time only would tell whether there was a foul play and they better waited for the post-mortem report.  

Next evening, Shakeel came to tell Dhruva that by all indications Ranjit’s death was owing to poisoning and that Kavya got an anticipatory bail for herself making him wonder whether she had a hand in the sordid affair. Then Dhruva told him that she was no fool to soil her hands with her husband’s blood, as it won’t be beyond her to know that she would become the prime suspect in the case that too given that she had a paramour to boot. But Radha maintained that it was apparent that Pravar, keeping Kavya in the dark, would have poisoned Ranjit, and it made sense to apprehend him forthwith for extracting his confession and be done with it.

Then Shakeel, as if as an afterthought, said that of late, whenever Kavya was away, a burka-clad woman was seen visiting Ranjit, which made Dhruva say whether it was a woman in burka or women in burka. At that the cop said that he thought as much, but the neighbors were certain that it was only one woman that Ranjit was receiving for some time then. When Radha interjected by saying, what if the woman in burka was Natya, Pravar’s red herring, to mislead the police; Shakeel said that it was not a bad line of investigation. However, Dhruva cautioned him not to oversimplify matters but wide-scan Ranjit’s present and deep-delve into his past as his death by poisoning that pointed towards Pravar’s hand raised the possibility of a hidden hand behind his murder.

At that Shakeel said that the foolhardiness of the criminal impulse always puzzled him but Dhruva reasoned that even as the calling of crime clouds reason, its execution itself impairs caution, imperiling the cover up. As for the victims of crime, he said, what one would say about the credulity of a cuckold, who would have thrown caution to the winds by indulging in a drinking binge with his wife’s paramour? Or can any explain the stupidity of a philanderer who walks into his death trap laid by the man he has been cuckolding? How such dig their own graves!

Though Shakeel wanted him to make it to the Spandan along with him, Dhruva felt that his premature association with the investigation of the case would jeopardize his future involvement in it. However, while the cop saw merit in what the detective had said, as Radha insisted that their strip to the crime spot might yield the keys to Pravar’s tricks, Dhruva said that they better stayed on the sidelines as Shakeel kept the main course. But after seeing Shakeel’s back, as Radha wondered whether the cop was equal to the task, the detective hoped that by dawn, they might yet see the case in some fresh light for there may be something more to that than met the eye. 

 

Chapter 17

Murders to Mislead

 

Next morning, after Radha had gone out to meet Natya, as Dhruva was wondering how Ranjit’s death might have affected Kavya’s relationship with Pravar, Raju informed him that a woman came to see him; irritated though about the intrusion into his reverie, he, nevertheless, headed towards the anteroom.

Seeing Kavya seated therein, even as he was immobilized at the threshold, struck by his enamored demeanor, she stuck to her seat; but when he walked up to her, as if out of trance, waking up to the reality, she got up in greeting, and as he gesticulated at her to be seated, she reposted herself confusedly. Though he readily sensed the import of her visit and the possibilities it portended, yet he acquired a questioning look, and pulling out his call letter from her handbag, she held it out to him.

Perusing it as a ruse to hide his excitement, when he told her in the end that they could begin the interview, she said that the purpose of her visit was to seek his assistance but not to offer her services. While he feigned surprise at that, outlining the circumstances that brought her to him, she sought his help in unraveling the mystery of her husband’s death. When he wanted to know if she had any suspect in mind, she said that if it were the case, instead of coming to 9, Castle Hills, she would have gone to the Jubilee Hills police station. Bowled by her sense of humor, he said that he wished he had half her wit, and thanking him for the compliment, she said she banked on her gut feeling that he could outwit the killer.

Seeing his inclination, when she offered to take him to her place in her car, reckoning that with her at the wheel, he would be able to assess her better, he went with her idea, and on their drive to Spandan, watching her closely all the way, he came to the view that her visage suggested that she could be innocent. As if reading his thoughts, she asked him if he really believed that she was not involved in her husband’s murder as the cops thought she was. Pleased with her forthrightness, he said that though personally he believed she might not have had any hand in the murder, he would not be worth his salt as a detective if he took her at the face value. Satisfied with his approach but yet wanting to test his mettle, she asked him if he cared to tell her about any intriguing murder that he might have solved. Sensing her intention, he said that her query made him recall a case in cracking which, Mithya, his late wife, played a prominent role. But as she acquired a grave look for form’s sake, he said that it was her sudden death a year back that prompted him to release that ad.

At that, she wondered whether he would have selected her, even if she had called on him at the right time, he said that, if only she were inclined, time still beckoned her. While she kept quiet, as a prorogue to his narrative, he asked her if she could recall the serial killings of some middle-aged women in the Langar Hauz area that shook the Hyderabadis five years back. Nodding her head in the right direction, she said that she was aware of the intriguing murders but there was no news about it later.

Mithya viewed those mysterious murders from the kaleidoscope of liaisons; he began to recap; so she rented a portion in the Langar Hauz as an estranged wife and gathered the details of the cheating husbands and wives through the grapevine. But as he was disinclined to pursue that investigative course for the list didn’t carry the nerves of a killer, shifting her gossiping gear to reach the abused women, she came to know about the peculiar relationship between Ramya a young woman and Haritha, her middle-aged step-mother owing to the unusual will and testament that bound them. 

Shortly before his death that was twenty years back, Ramya’s father bequeathed his entire property to her, five-years then, and made Haritha, his childless second wife, her guardian. Besides adding insult to his wife’s injury, he stated in his will that if his widowed was to wed again, she would cease to be his daughter’s guardian, and all that goes with it. Further venting his apathy towards his young wife, he willed that as and when his daughter becomes a mother, his widow would be only entitled to a meager pension, and should his daughter die barren, then the orphanage he named gets it all. Finally, as if to protect his progeny from his wife’s presumed ill-will, he willed that if his daughter and her heirs were to die before his wife’s death, for whatever reason, all his assets would then go the said orphanage. Well, as that Will underscored mistrust and spelled malice, Mithya cultivated the young Ramya, who in a moment of weakness made her privy to the untenable arrangement her father’s will ushered in her life.

Widowed, at barely thirty and seeing the death-knell of a will, Haritha was seethed with a hapless rage, but in time, applying her mind to browbeat the imposition, she thought of an ingenious solution to bypass its nefarious proposition. Accordingly, she convinced Ramya, six then, about the need of a male in the house for their protection, and got her married to the sixteen-year old Rahul, however, with an eye on him. However, having come of age, when Ramya, realized that her man was her stepmother’s