As for the ACP, he was all eyes and ears. Sometime earlier, he
had taken out his small black dairy in which he always made
detailed notes which helped him to get a clear picture and a strong
basis for his logical and analytical mind that would slowly but
surely come straight down to the heart of the matter.
That was
precisely the reason, why he had been such a successful cop till
date. All the legends about him were quite true; there was no
other cop in the Police force who was as detailed and painstaking
in his approach as ACP Himanshu Kapoor. Something that Desai
would forever be grateful to him for, because a lot of that systematic
approach, including making the most detailed notes, had rubbed
off on him as well.
The silence in the room grew longer, then even more so, until even
the ticking of the clock seemed to get on everyone’s nerves, simply because
they were so tautly stretched by then.
Then what seemed like ages later, but in fact was merely
ninety seconds, ACP Himanshu decided to move this whole thing
forward.
“So what happened next?”
In a voice that was by now so faint as to be termed inaudible,
Natasha replied “I don’t know... but what’s probably much worse,
is that I don’t remember ... until that particular moment that I
started walking fast on the beach, as soon as I realised that two
men were following me. I remember passing all the carts selling
chaat and other food items, feeling very scared about what those
men might do to me but I must have dealt with it, as I somehow
managed to find that lone taxi. The same one, whose driver is
here now.”
‘And so that,’ Desai thought a tad bit disappointed, ‘was that.’
But his disappointment was nothing compared to that of his
boss, who was trying very hard to mask it, but failing miserably.
Then she said something that almost stopped all of them in their
tracks.
“The blood ... so much of it...”