An excerpt from my new book 'Point of No Return'

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...”