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

the daughter closed hers for an embrace of solace. Amidst their myriad emotions in their state of closeness, as the ethos of motherhood came to the fore, the mother savored her daughter while the daughter thought of her own daughter. As the spasms of her daughter’s heart conveyed her resurgent craving for her child, the mother, in that moment of self-fulfillment, felt that her daughter too should experience the same. However, even as the daughter’s craving to hug her own daughter had increased, the mother turned skeptical about the chances of finding the girl sixteen years after she had abandoned her. Whatever, as the mother wanted to take her to the orphanage, where her daughter was left, the daughter felt that it would be far better for her mother to first befriend the girl, and then prepare her for the reunion before she herself took her under her wings.

So, Mithya hoped that once her mother rediscovered her daughter, she would redeem herself by adopting her own daughter, but shortly after her return home, when her mother informed her that only the previous month, her girl had left the orphanage without a trace, Mithya was truly devastated. But after he came into her life, stirred by the resurgent maternal impulses, she wanted to have children, but, sadly, her two conceptions ended in miscarriages. Wondering why Mithya never showed her daughter’s picture to him that Radha laid her hands on, he said, maybe, by then having learned to get over her past, she had put her daughter’s memories too on the back burner.

So, as he finished that recap of Mithya’s disturbingly fascinating life, Kavya said that while every life was unique in its own way, as Mithya’s reveals, some were more unique than the rest. Agreeing with her, he said that the way Mithya came into his life would only illustrate the truism of that, and, anyway, that was for some other day, but for that kidnap maybe she herself would have discovered Natya’s photograph, and that would have been a different story altogether. Well, if only Mithya had made him privy to the poison in the bosom of their home, maybe, Natya would have still been alive, for Radha would not have come into its possession. That Mithya kept him in the dark about the deadly thing would only prove that even in the closest of relationships, there was a limit to the openness, and as Radha’s ruse to trap Kavya showed, there was no end to the mischief, the sense of insecurity could ensue.

Then, he recounted his tryst with Rani, and said that if only he had allowed her to accompany him to the Tank Bund that evening; she would have recognized Ranjit and spilled the beans on Radha as well; and maybe that would have enabled him to nip Radha’s urge for revenge in the bud, which would have saved her soul besides the lives of all those; and also how fate had played hide and seek with Ranjit’s life again as he visited 9, Castle Hills, when Rani was there! Had he insisted that she met him, what a difference it would have made to him and the rest of them! But it was not to be.

When Kavya lamented that Radha’s paranoia of losing him to her should have undone Natya, he said that her apprehensions were not unfounded after all; as she glowingly took him into her arms, smug in her embrace, he confessed to her that he loved her like none else. At that, as she told him that she would ever think aloud with him, he said, in jest, that his ears would forever be wide open, and she crooned into them that she came to love her rival too, and added that as and when she came out of the cage, he should let her nestle at 9, Castle Hills, in their ménage a trois.

Then, even as he was reaching for her lips that uttered those words after his heart, as if to remind him that it was a public place, Prativadi was about to reach them with the vakalat, at which, pointing at the last lines of Radha’s letter, Kavya said coyly that if he chooses to take her to the altar, she would be coming with the Oasis Builders for a dowry. Then, even as the lawyer came in the earshot, he said to her ears only that he hopes to have their heirs in time to 9, Castle Hills and Spandan as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Imprint

Publication Date: 01-27-2015

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
"It is not the aim of this painful confession to earn sympathy or reprieve for myself as I am looking forward to the gallows to end my burden of living. after my ventures into those adventures, surely an act of murder is no mean an adventure, now I seek death that deals with the unknown as it is the biggest adventure of life," so says the arraigned to the magistrate. Who could have poisoned Ranjit the realtor, Shakeel the Inspector, Pravar the criminal and Natya his accomplice? Well the needle of suspicion tilted towards Pravar that was till he perished with his mate, but then who was the one? Could it be Radha under the scanner for her role in the death of her husband Madhu and his mistress Mala, Pravar's sister? Or was it Ranjit's spouse Kavya, who owing to Stockholm Syndrome, takes to Pravar her kidnapper. As these deaths by poisoning puzzle Dhruva, Radha, who worms her way into his life, avers that Kavya had the motive and the means to kill her spouse, her paramour and his wife