Depressing Discovery

While Simon took Kavya to the Chanchalguda Jail in his jeep, Dhruva, in his Esteem, drove Radha straight to the Spandan, reaching which he led her in after collecting the door key from the guard on duty.

Though she alerted him to a heap of burkas on the clothesline in the attached toilet of the master bedroom, seeing him seemingly unenthused, she proposed that she might wear one of them to have a feel of it. Saying in jest that even that tent-of-a-garment might fail to hide the alluring features of her hourglass frame, he let her take him around the bungalow before he led her out of it.

Getting into the car, though she reminded him about the burkas on the clothesline and jocularly thanked him for not having put her through the choking regimen, as he failed to respond, she became anxious, and asked him what was bothering him. However, he merely said that he was wondering how breathless women could be in a burka before they get habituated to it, and kept mum pensively thereafter.

Dropping her at home, he headed towards the forensic laboratory, where he learned that while the main door key retained by Kavya had traces of wax on it; the other two retrieved from the bank locker were never in usage. Beset with the mixed feelings the findings induced in him, he then drove to the Jubilee Hills Police Station to know what the original Godrej lock had to reveal. Revealing that the lock didn't show any signs of tampering, when Simon said that the very fact had tilted the needle of suspicion back towards Kavya, Dhruva told him that for the very reason he could see her

un-involvement in the crime coming to the fore, and though probed further by the cop, the detective preferred to keep his cards close to his chest.

However, over drinks that evening with him, Radha said that luckily for Kavya, the court didn't reckon her motive to murder Shakeel though it was apparent that she didn't take it kindly to him for having falsely implicated Pravar in the fake-notes case, and owing to the Stockholm Syndrome, wasn't it her wont to identify his detractors as her enemies. Besides, aided by Dhruva, having shed the Pravar blinkers, and being enamored of him in turn, were it not possible that she might have thought of erasing her past by eliminating the couple to usher in a new romance in her life?

Saying what if her theories emanated from the Rival Syndrome, he told her that she might as well wait for the answers until he cut the Gordian knot to free her rival under siege, and added in jest that in the meantime, she better reined in her raging jealousy. At that turning coy, she told him that her own future seemed to be under siege by his empathy for her rival, and as he made light of her remark, she said that she was afraid she was no match to Kavya in every which way. Then he told her jocularly that to keep up her spirits; he would like to keep her on high, and as she said that she was a game for it, turning away Raju whenever he came to fetch them for dinner, he goaded her to get really drunk.

However, later seeing her in slumber, he wondered if he was far too indulgent towards Kavya, and thought, in the same vein, whether he became untowardly suspicious of Radha. Thus torn between the woman he made his own and the woman he was enamored of, he resolved to see the former's place for whatever it might have in store for the latter's fate. So, sneaking out of Radha's bed and asking Raju to keep a watch on her, Dhruva set out on his nocturnal mission to her Red Hills house.

Having gained entry into her house with one of the assorted keys he carried and opening the cupboard with another one, he rummaged through its contents and found her old photograph with a teen that seemed to be Rani his child bearer, staring at which, he turned nostalgic. However, as he broke open the locker of her steel almirah, he was depressed at finding a bottle of some potion along with two crudely made keys resembling those of Spandan's Godrej lock. Not able to believe what he had seen, he looked for burkas, just in case, and finding none, he left the place with those keys and a sample of the potion.

Thus, reaching home in a dilemma as to how to handle Radha, he relieved Raju from his vigil on her, and having secured the evidences and sneaking into her bed, as if to read her mind, he began espying her in a serene sleep. Maybe, she had a reason to see Pravar's end, but didn't she seem to be fond of Natya? Surely, she bore a grudge against Shakeel, but was it Ranjit who had jilted her then? Was it really the case? If so, won't these bits and pieces jell well to form an inimical whole? Bogged down by myriad thoughts about his companion's motives for those murders, he had a disturbed sleep.

Next morning though as she served him bed coffee, seeing her demeanor, he found it hard to picture her as a murderess, but during their breakfast, he saw a change of color in her when she received a call on her mobile. Saying that her friend had a tiff with her husband, as she left in a huff so as to rush out to help, it was clear to him that it was the anticipated call about the burglary in her house; after all, didn't deliberately keep the main door ajar for some neighbor to smell the rat.

Thus, with the ever-expanding 'volume of evidence' against her, he rushed to the forensic laboratory with the keys and the sample potion he collected from her house, only to return forthwith to wait for her return.

Shortly thereafter, when she returned, regaining her composure, he asked her what came out of her counseling, and she dismissed that as a false alarm as her friend's husband was a regular wife-beater, and added in jest that he only thrashed her a little more than usual. While she said that she was at a loss to see her friend was averse to divorcing him, he said women in an abusive relationship tend to perceive themselves as martyrs, and so it's very hard to pull them out of their self-defeating groove into which they willy-nilly push themselves so as to live in a psychic state of bliss.

That evening, when Dhruva reached the forensic laboratory, he was informed that the potion was indeed a slow acting poison like the one that caused the deaths under investigation and those keys were but crude imitations of Spandan's Godrej door key. What with the incriminating evidence in hand, he felt like confronting Radha with it, but, on second thoughts, he realized that she was bound to dismiss them as his plants to implicate her for saving his Kavya. Besides, there was no way to link her to the murders without a compelling motive to kill each one of them; after all, the public prosecutor had failed to persuade the court for Kavya's custody, notwithstanding mounds of circumstantial evidence against her, backed by irrefutable motives to kill Ranjit and Pravar, if not Shakeel and Natya. What was worse, the court might infer that Kavya, even in judicial custody, was trying to influence justice by aiding and abetting him; as that won't do any good for her cause; it's better to bide his time till he collected the missing links to complete the chain of evidence against Radha.