The Inconvenient Wife - Chapter 93

He placed agents throughout the building. One took a job in the HR department. One set up a fruit stand about hundred meters away from the main office gate. He wanted to keep an eye on Vivek’s activities. He wanted to keep as many eyes as possible on him. But it was not easy. Vivek hardly ever worked with the people in his HR department.

All Sumit learned was that Vivek spent plenty of time meeting with Raj.

Now Sumit had to approach Raj to help him solve the case. Sumit was infuriated that Vivek tried so hard to evade the investigation. Why would he do that? It was unusual! His resistance stirred Sumit’s suspicions. Only people with something to hide would behave like this.

Sumit visited Raj at his home one night to brief Raj about his suspicions.

“Do you think Vivek could have done something?” Sumit asked, after he finished laying out the details of the information he had.

“I trust your intuition,” Raj said, the details of Sumit’s explanation coming together in his mind.

For Sumit, Raj’s response was like the last, and most important, piece of a jigsaw puzzle. For Raj, this was mind-boggling. How could he have missed it?

“I’ll do whatever I can to help, Sumit,” he said.

“Raj, I want you to strike a chord with him. You need to catch him off guard. The problem now is that he suspects we’re closing in and will avoid you in all personal matters. So, you have to keep looking for that moment where you can get him to reveal his intentions about you or Mala,” Sumit requested.

“Absolutely. I’ll try my best, Sumit.”

Raj became very regular with his work, spending hours in his lab, just waiting for the right moment. As he spent more time at the office, he worried about his children.

“You must never leave Ankur alone,” he instructed Sheila. “Never leave the house without him by your side and don’t let Sneha play outside.” The thought that his kids could be in danger made his gut writhe in pain.

***

“Why did I come back from Indonesia?” Vivek asked himself this question constantly. “I should have just stayed there! If I go back now, it’ll just make me look more suspicious. Relax, Vivek. I need to keep calm down and figure out my strategy. Why is that cop chasing me all of a sudden? Did anyone see me that day?”

He struggled to think. His stress grew greater with each passing moment. Even though Sumit’s superiors reprimanded him, Vivek knew that wouldn’t stop him.

Vivek drank more. He found himself thinking frequently of killing Raj and Ankur. But how would that solve the problems Sumit was creating for him? Winter started setting in and his adrenal glands were over-stressed. A fine layer of sweat constantly covered his body and he broke out in fits of panic constantly.

He had to do something to distract the media and the police.

A few days later, a newspaper vendor was found murdered near Raj’s apartment.

Sumit was baffled! This new development threw him completely off balance. Now, he had to dedicate precious time to investigating this new murder.

It didn’t make sense. The newspaper vendor was a harmless person who lived a dull, boring life, had a small family to support and had very few controversies surrounding him – but they were only minor things, nothing that would lead to his murder.

His wife said that her husband had gone about his business as usual that day, but never returned home. The police struggled to understand her between her sobs…