Free Murder in Bollywood by Shadaab Amjad Khan

seven who were the other guests at that card game, for it was an oath that we all took a long time ago when we buried a past in which one of us had spilt blood. But who that person was, none of us knew until Nikhil must have figured it out, which cost him and Mallika their lives. I wanted the police to succeed in unmasking the killer at any cost, because Nikhil meant the world to me. But when they failed and I couldn’t contact you, I hired the services of detective Mule to get to the bottom of this case. I even violated the oath and gave him certain hints about the past, in the belief that he would be smart enough to figure the rest out, after which he assured me that he would expose the killer come what may. Just a day before he was killed, he called me from Shimla and said that the matter was a lot more complicated than I had ever imagined, as it involved more than one past. And until he didn’t have all the pieces of that puzzle, he didn’t want to name the killer, whose identity he had uncovered by then. But he had asked me to look out for Rohan, Nikhil and Mallika’s adopted son, because he believed the boy wasn’t safe. That was the last I heard from him,’ Shobhit concluded and fell silent.
    ‘I want you to tell me everything about the past that you told Chandu Mule, and it’s absolutely essential that you don’t hold anything back from me,’ Hoshiyar demanded with some urgency.
    ‘And betray the oath for a second time? Never. I have already told you enough. If you’re as good as what people say about you, then you’ll have no problem figuring out the rest,’ Shobhit said belligerently, then got up from his seat to leave.
    ‘Shobhit, wait, listen to me,’ Hoshiyar called out, but the man dashed out of the confessional and made a bolt for the main door. By the time Hoshiyar came out after him, all he could see was the tail end of Shobhit’s shadow as he disappeared into the night, even as his final words echoed through the church: ‘Loyalty is everything. Disloyalty is death.’
    The following morning Hoshiyar met ACP Kashyap and told her about his meeting with Shobhit. They both agreed that if they were to investigate his claims regarding Nikhil’s and Mallika’s death, they would have to begin by investigating the murder of detective Mule, since considerable time had already elapsed between now and the passing away of the superstar couple, which meant that if they had been murdered, any trail leading to it would have long turned cold. But to undertake the Chandrakant Mule murder case was a near-impossible task for two reasons. Number one, the detective was killed a long way outside the SCS’s jurisdiction, and even if the SCS got the permission to step into another state and launch an investigation, the chances of the Himachal Pradesh Police welcoming them with open arms were slim, as interstate police cooperation didn’t really exist. Secondly, that particular winter was the worst that part of the country had seen close to a decade, leaving Shimla and its surrounding areas completely snowbound, meaning, no one could enter or leave until the weather settled down and the roads were cleared of snow. In fact, the situation was so bad that Mule’s body couldn’t be sent back to Mumbai, and the last rites had to be performed in Shimla itself, in the absence of his family, who had no way of getting there. So, taking all of this into account, ACP Kashyap and Inspector Khan reluctantly decided that the best course of action would be to keep the information given to them by Shobhit entirely a secret, and to tell Zagde to snoop around discreetly for any new leads or developments, on the basis of which they could investigate the Chandrakant Mule murder case effectively from Mumbai itself, or perhaps even have the Nikhil and Mallika case reopened. Another thing that they decided to do was dig up Mule’s cellphone records, to see if he had called any local numbers during his visit to Shimla, and to