Day 3
I am completely appaulled and aghast at what they are saying. Are they joking?
"You mean...the same Lavanya...?" I ask, my brain refusing to believe this.
I have been so besotted with Lavanya from the moment I have met her, mesmerized by her beauty...and I had thought what we had between us was uniquely passionate....
All the while she has been two timing me? So every time I looked into those hazel eyes and got lost in them, she was being calculative and probably laughing at how she was fooling me?
But why? What for?
"Call her," Mukta says.
I am so shocked that it takes a couple of moments for me to register what she is saying.
I pick up my phone and dial Lavanya.
A robotic female voice tells me this number doesn't exist.
What the bloody hell?
"Lavanya took 1 lac rupees from Mayank, 50000 rs from You....".
"80....80000," I stammer.
"What?" Tushar asks, slightly taken aback.
"She told me yesterday that the blackmailer was demanding 30000 more," I say, feeling utterly ashamed of my stupidity.
Mukta shakes her head.
"We interviewed Mayank yesterday night. After we learnt all of this, we went to the address registered with the bank. That place is vacant. Has been vacant since long. She never stayed there. So we believe she is a con woman. Who joined your bank a few months back with the sole intention of seducing and trapping gullible foo...people like you," Mukta controls herself from saying fools. Which I guess I am!
"And when she realized she could get no more, she ran away with all that money. We think she must have duped a few more, and we also think she's not operating alone," Tushar says.
I am too stunned to say anything. And I am feeling like an utter halfwit. How could I not have seen through her?
"Do you think she has something to do with Navya's...?" I ask.
"No. We think this is a collateral finding. We are yet to know what happened to Navya," Mukta says, "which brings us back to her last night. So she crossed RS square, as Mayank has told in his statement. We believe she was proceeding towards the bus stop of Zinnia travels, from where she was planning to board the bus to Ahmedabad. But she never reached there. We have confirmed that. So whatever has happened has happened in that patch of road that connects RS square and the bus stop. Even as we speak, we have teams who are going through CCTV footages of all the possible cameras that can be found on that patch of road. The task is a bit difficult and daunting, as gaining access to the footage at such an early morning hour has been a bit tedious. Secondly, not all cameras are in working condition. But we are hoping that at least one camera must have captured something," Mukta says.
Before I can ask anything more, Tushar's cell phone rings.
He listens intently and gestures to Mukta. I don't understand what exchange goes on between them, but the urgency with which Mukta gets up to go has me on alert.
"Did they find anything?" I ask, getting up as they are about to leave.
"No. Not yet. We will keep you posted," Mukta says and they hurry out of the door.
*****
Tushar and Mukta drove back to the police station. Mukta could hardly wait for whatever it was that they wanted to show her.
Ajay was waiting for them.
"Madam, we were scanning the CCTV camera footages around the school where Navya works, upto four-five days before she disappeared, to see if we could spot any unusual activity, like you had asked us to. And we did find something. On the morning of the night she disappeared, around 10 am, Navya comes out of the school and goes into the public telephone booth in this square in front of the school. This is highly unusual, because she has her mobile, which she can use to call anyone, meaning that whoever she was calling, she didn't want that person to have her contact on the call records. So we sent a team to get the details of call logs on that day, from that booth. We just received the mail from the guy who retrieved the records for us. The number that was dialed on that day at 10 am belongs to someone in Ahmedabad".
Mukta and Tushar looked at each other. So they were indeed making progress!
"Do you have a name and address?" Mukta asked.
"Yes, we have a name. Mr R N Mehta. We wanted to ask you for further directives. Should we just call him?" Ajay asked.
"No," Mukta said, "If Navya was going to such heights to hide the fact that she was calling this home number, there has to be a really strong reason," she said, wondering how they could proceed from here. She realized they needed to very careful, they were walking on eggshells. Because if this house belonged to someone who had any role in Navya's disappearance, getting a call from the police would certainly alert them.
"Navya received calls from a public booth in Ahmedabad. And Navya dialed this house number from a public booth. So whoever it was that she was communicating with, both were taking great care that no one else should find out about it. I guess the second return ticket from Ahmedabad must be for this person, or for someone known to this person," Mukta pondered.
"Right. We can't just call that number," Tushar echoed her thoughts.
"Another thing," Ajay added as an after thought, "this house is in close vicinity to the public booth from where Navya had received calls from Ahmedabad."
Mukta thought for a moment.
"Let me call our counterparts in Ahmedabad," she said.
20 minutes later, Mukta had primed inspector Viren Kaushik from Ahmedabad crime branch about the case. We will find out and get back to you, he promised.
"What is the progress with CCTV footage from RS square to the Zinnia stop?" Mukta asked Ajay.
"They are still going through. It's a bit of a tough job, getting the footages from so many sources, but the team is onto it," he informed.
"One team is set up here. They are scanning the footages as and how we are receiving them," Sudhir added.
****
It was half past noon and still their teams were going through CCTV footages accessed from different cameras.
They had scanned one footage obtained from a square just before the Zinnia bus stop, for the entire night that she disappeared. There was no sign of Navya. So something had happened before she reached that spot. The distance was narrowing and Mukta was hopeful they would soon find something out.
"Madam, call from Ahmedabad police," Ajay called out to Mukta.
Almost impatiently, Mukta ran and snatched the ear piece from him.
"Viren here madam," the inspector said.
"Yes, Viren, what happened?" She asked.
Her heart raced in anticipation about what he had to tell her.
"The house you told us belongs to a Mr Mehta, but he rents it out, and currently a Rahul Verma stays there. We sent a patrol car and two cops for enquiry. This Rahul was very defensive and annoyed to see cops the first thing in the morning. They told him that there had been a few reports of burglaries in the area and they were conducting a thorough search of all houses. They also told him that this cooperation was voluntary. Rahul refused to co-operate and told them that he was the only person living there.The car then kept a watch on the house, from a hidden place, camouflaged adequately. Like you said, we didn't want to alert anyone. Rahul Verma stepped out at around 10 am for work. He left in his car. At 10:15 am, a woman, emerged from the house. She looked quite scared and was constantly keeping an eye around her, as she proceeded to the public telephone booth from where Navya had received calls. One more observation was, she had bruises on her face and body, very obvious ones."