Club You to Death Anuja Chauhan (best ebook reader for ubuntu .TXT) 📖

He pauses for a moment, head cocked to one side, eyes beadily bright, face sober. ‘I think I was an incel for a while. But not any more. Now I’m gonna go to my stepdad’s office every day and do yoga with my mum and ask a nice lady to marry me, and she will say yes, because I’m nice now too.’

‘That’s very nice, Rakesh,’ Urvashi says softly, ‘but you’re interrupting the investigation. Shusshh now.’

Silence fills the room. Roshni Aggarwal has buried her face in her hands. Her narrow shoulders are shaking.

‘Arya?’ Bambi says apprehensively. ‘I know you’ve been low-key stalking me. I caught you looking at me through that peephole again yesterday … and I’m sorry I yelled at you … especially if it made you overreact like …’ She pauses, takes a shaky breath, ‘Like this! But I never thought—’

‘I liked you,’ Aryaman Aggarwal interrupts her sullenly. ‘You know that, Bambi Todi, I’ve liked you for years – right through school and beyond. And you can deny it till you’re blue in the face but you did hook up with me on the library roof that one time! I went through hell on the day of your engagement – Mom insisted on bringing me to the party, fuck knows why – you wore yellow and gold – and he … Wow, was that alpha-male bastard a prince of choots! Maybe I’m an asshole, but trust me, an asshole can spot another asshole faster than anybody else – he wore yellow and gold too. I couldn’t bear it – couldn’t bear watching him put his bulked-up ape arm around your tiny waist like he’d fucking bought you from your fat bastard of a dad or something. So I asked Ajay Kumar to get me some shit and I went out into the garden and snorted my brains out that night. I rejoiced when I heard the fucker died the next day – but I didn’t send you any letters and I didn’t kill Leo when I found out you’d been dating him – another asshole, by the way, who got killed by some other asshole … Why’re you such an asshole magnet?’

Everybody listens to this rambling tirade with horrified fascination; it is like watching a animal who has miraculously been granted the gift of speech. When he’s done, they all sort of blink in wonder collectively.

‘Arrey wah!’ Cookie Katoch says shakily. ‘So nicely you can speak, Aryaman beta, I haven’t heard you speak so many long sentences in years! Good boy!’

‘Thank you, auntie,’ he says dully.

Roshni looks up with naked, desperate appeal towards Bhavani. He nods and takes charge of the room again.

‘Aryaman, because of his drug dealer contacts, had access to as much Pinko Hathni as he liked. Things were looking very bad for him indeed and so he is fortunate that we soon found evidence that he was nat the person we were looking for …’

Roshni’s eyes widen. She steals closer to her son’s bed, and sits down by his feet.

‘We travelled to Kolkata,’ Bhavani continues, ‘where we spoke in the strictest confidence with Arihant Poddar who confirmed what you Bambi ji, and Mr Poddar’s own wife had always suspected. That the battered body that was identified and cremated as Anshul’s had nat been confirmed as hundred per cent his. There had been some room for doubt. And though the family had been in possession of Anshul’s DNA in the form of a lock of hair plucked out by the roots and fashioned into a locket for his mother on her fiftieth birthday, Arihant Poddar had nat used it to confirm if the body was that of his son. He had just relied on what he called his “father’s instinct” to identify the body. But perhaps he was relying more on a “husband’s instinct” and his driving motive was to protect his wife from the agonies of uncertainty and give her closure.

‘It does nat matter. The main takeaway from the meeting was that Anshul could very much be alive, at large, and the murderer we were seeking.’

There are gasps and murmurs from all over the room. Padam, standing by the door, braces himself, and discreetly touches the handcuffs buckled to his waist.

‘And now we started looking for Anshul in earnest. We spoke to people in Garhwal. Had they rescued somebody that day? Pulled a body out of the water? Given somebody a lift? We checked hospital records all along the route of the river.

‘At the same time, we checked if anybody had been stalking Bambi ji on social media. Instagram especially, where she was the most active, both on her own account and the account of the DTC. We checked Google search histories to see if anyone had been checking up on her steadily, compulsively. And slowly, a likely name started to emerge.

‘Nat Anshul Poddar, no. But somebody else. Somebody whom Bambi ji had known for years. Since she was six years old, to be exact. Whom she went to school with, whom she trusted, a regular visitor to her house. Somebody she had lost touch with for a while, but who had recently resurfaced and easily recaptured the place he had always held in her heart.’

He turns to look deliberately at the handsome young man on his left, who has been listening silently to him all this while.

‘Akash Dogra fit the bill exactly.’

Kashi looks up at that, utterly startled. ‘What?’ He stands up abruptly.

Padam Kumar surges forward at once, handcuffs clinking.

‘Stop!’ Bhavani’s voice is like a whip.

Padam halts.

Bhavani turns back to Kashi. ‘Vakeel sa’ab, please sit down.’

Kashi slowly retakes his seat, a thousand emotions flickering over his face.

‘Carry on, ACP,’ he says politely.

Bhavani inclines his head. ‘Very well. As we said, if Bambi Todi had a stalker, then Kashi Dogra fit the bill exactly. He had motive. His closest friends confirm that while he has a girlfriend who is perfect in every possible way, he is still emotionally invested in Bambi ji. Because of his constant,