Nine days passed. Nine days of forensic dead-ends, witness interviews that led nowhere, and a white van that seemed to have materialized from thin air and vanished back into it. The registration plates — confirmed absent, not removed — suggested the vehicle was either newly purchased or deliberately unregistered. Either way, it had disappeared into Mumbai's ocean of identical white vans like a specific grain of sand on Juhu Beach.
On the tenth day, Priya's phone rang at 6:14 AM. She was already awake — she'd been awake since four, reviewing Farhan Siddiqui's case file for the twentieth time, looking for something she'd missed seven years ago. The coffee on her desk had gone cold twice. Her daughter was asleep in the next room, her school uniform already ironed and hanging on the doorknob.
"Ma'am." Vikram's voice was tight. "We have another one."
"Where?"
"Bandra. Sea Breeze Apartments, 4th floor, Flat 402. The body is —" He paused. "Ma'am, it's exactly like the Siddiqui case."
She was in her car in seven minutes, driving through the pre-dawn Mumbai traffic that was already beginning its daily descent into chaos. Rajan Khare — her assigned shadow — followed in a separate vehicle. She'd told him repeatedly that she didn't need protection. He'd responded each time with a polite nod and continued following her everywhere.
Sea Breeze Apartments was a mid-range building in Bandra West, the kind that housed mid-level executives and small business owners. Flat 402 belonged to one Nikhil Joshi, thirty-two, software developer at a fintech startup in BKC. He lived alone. His body had been discovered by his colleague who'd come to pick him up for an early flight to Bangalore for a client meeting.
The flat was locked from the inside. The colleague had called the building security, who'd broken down the door. Inside, Nikhil Joshi lay on his living room floor with a single stab wound to the chest. No weapon in sight. No forced entry. The windows were latched from inside. The balcony door was bolted. The flat was on the fourth floor with no accessible external structure.
A locked room. Exactly like Farhan Siddiqui.
Priya walked through the apartment with the focused intensity of a surgeon entering an operating theatre. She photographed everything — the angle of the body, the position of the wound, the state of the locks, the furniture placement. She checked every window latch, every door bolt, every possible point of entry and exit.
"The lock," she said to Vikram, pointing at the front door. "It's a deadbolt. Single cylinder. You can't lock it from outside without a key."
"Just like Siddiqui's flat."
"Yes." She crouched by the body. Same wound location as Siddiqui — left side of the chest, slightly below the heart. Same apparent angle of entry. Same absence of defensive wounds, suggesting the victim either knew his attacker or was incapacitated before the stabbing.
And there, in Nikhil Joshi's right hand — a folded piece of paper.
Case No. 2 of 7.
Priya sealed the note in an evidence bag, her hands steady through sheer force of will. Around her, forensics was setting up — dusting for prints, collecting fibre samples, photographing the scene. The building's security guard was being interviewed in the corridor by a constable.
"How did they get out?" Vikram said, more to himself than to Priya.
"The same way they got out seven years ago," Priya replied. "That's the whole point. They're not just copying the murders — they're copying the impossibilities. The locked room is the puzzle. They're showing me they can do what I couldn't explain."
