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“Go ahead and explain how you managed to turn us into Inspector Sawant’s prime suspects,” I invited savagely.
“We didn’t know she had heard anything, DV. I gave her money first, just because she had a hard life. Her mother works, while her father drinks the money away. We were only trying to help a needy child,” explained Sona.
“And I gave her some more as a joke, in exchange for her secret. I thought it was going to be some first-grade gossip from school, not that she had heard Vishal Agarwal yelling at his killer,” added Tasha.
I shook my head in disgust. I knew their intentions had been good, but they had managed to escalate the Inspector’s suspicions a million times by one simple act. Now it looked as if we were trying to bribe the child to keep her quiet.
“Besides, she didn’t hear the killer answering. Vishal must have been screaming very loudly for her to hear him through the wall that connects their flat. So there’s nothing for us to keep quiet,” she insisted.
“Do you think the Inspector’s going to believe that? He will assume that our bribe worked, and that’s why the girl says she didn’t hear the killer. He will think she’s lying for our sake, and God knows how harshly he will interrogate her to get the truth out,” I replied grimly.
The police were known to be quite brutal to get the information they wanted. That poor girl was going to be badgered relentlessly until she gave him what he wanted, whether it was true or not.
“What do we do now?” asked Sona.
“Now, we wait until Inspector Sawant calls us in,” replied Samar.
He looked as furious as I felt. It was time I made the call, I realised. It was time to pull rank if we didn’t want the murder investigation to be derailed by Inspector Sawant’s conviction that we were responsible for killing Vishal. If his death was unrelated to the prank he played on Tasha, it was a different matter. But if it was directly related to his obsession with her, we had a much bigger problem than merely being suspects in the investigation.
Because if this was about Tasha, then her life was in danger.
CHAPTER17
TASHA
It was late in the evening when the police came to question us at the commune.
I was half expecting to be hauled into the police station in full view of the reporters waiting at our gates, but they came to us instead.
DV, Samar, Sona and I were waiting for them in my cottage, while Samar’s men made sure no nosy reporters tried to sneak in behind the cops.
“Why are they coming here? Surely they have enough cause to haul us in,” I said nervously.
“I made a call,” was DV’s brusque reply.
“To whom?”
I didn’t know why I was persisting in the face of his unwillingness to even look at me. But I wanted to know what was going on.
“I called my ex-boss at RAW, and he, in turn, made some calls to Inspector Sawant’s boss who made it clear that we weren’t to be harassed. If we can provide alibis for the time of the death, we are to be left alone,” he said grimly.
“Shit! That’s going to make him hate us even more,” I whispered, wringing the edge of my top into a tight knot.
DV pulled my fingers away.
“Don’t do that,” he said gently. “It will all turn out fine in the end.”
I felt awful about what I was putting them through. They had nothing to do with any of this and had all been dragged into it because they were trying to help me. Maybe my mother was right. I wasn’t worth the trouble I caused to everyone around me.
The Inspector strode into the room, looking like he was determined to hang us for this crime that we hadn’t committed. First, he interviewed Sona and Samar while DV and I waited in the bedroom. We didn’t speak at all. Or even look at each other.
Finally, it was our turn.
He sat at a table in the hall, and there were two chairs set across from him. They must have got the table and chairs from the community centre, to add some gravitas to the situation.
“Tell me everything from the beginning, Miss Tasha. And you,” said the Inspector, pointing a stubby finger at DV. “You stay out of it until I ask you to speak.”
A muscle jumped in DV’s jaw as he stared the Inspector down.
