Devendra Patwardhan — Dev Sir, as Priya had called him for fifteen years — lived in a modest flat in Dadar. Two bedrooms, a small balcony crowded with potted tulsi and money plants, and a living room dominated by bookshelves stuffed with everything from criminal law textbooks to Marathi poetry. He'd retired three years ago after a career so distinguished it had become the standard others were measured against. Forty years. Two President's Police Medals. The respect of every officer in Maharashtra.
And, possibly, the architect of the most elaborate murder scheme Priya had ever encountered.
She didn't go to his flat. Not yet. Instead, she spent two days doing what he'd taught her to do: building the case before confronting the suspect. She pulled his phone records. His bank statements. His travel history for the past year.
What she found was a man in decline.
Dev Sir had been diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson's disease eighteen months ago. His wife, Suman, had passed away two years before that. He had one son, settled in the US, who visited once a year during Diwali. His pension was adequate but not generous. He spent his days at home, reading, watching the news, and — according to his phone records — making frequent calls to a small circle of former colleagues and one recurring number that belonged to Ajay Kulkarni.
Fourteen calls to Ajay in the last three months. Average duration: forty-seven minutes. These weren't check-ins. These were briefings.
The Archive Foundation's bank account told its own story. Besides Ajay's monthly payments, there were expenses: rent for a storage unit in Goregaon, purchases from hardware stores, a subscription to an online database of criminal case records. The total expenditure over eight months was roughly four lakhs — not a fortune, but enough to fund a carefully planned operation.
The storage unit. That's where it would be.
Priya obtained a warrant. She took Vikram and Rajan and drove to Goregaon on a Thursday afternoon, to a row of self-storage units on the service road behind a shopping mall. Unit 17. Padlocked. The facility manager confirmed it was rented under the name of The Archive Foundation.
Rajan cut the padlock.
Inside, Priya found her nightmares organized on metal shelving.
Every case. Every file. Photocopies of her personal notes — not the originals, but reproductions so accurate they included her margin scribbles and coffee stains. Crime scene photographs, witness statements, forensic reports. Maps of each crime location with annotations in handwriting she recognized — Dev Sir's. Neat, precise, the handwriting of a man who'd spent forty years writing reports that could send people to prison.
On a desk in the corner: a laptop, three prepaid mobile phones, a voice distortion device, and a printed timeline. The timeline listed all seven cases in chronological order, with dates for each "recreation" neatly pencilled in. Cases 1 and 2 were marked "complete." Case 3 had a date circled — five days from now.
"He planned the whole thing," Vikram said, his voice barely above a whisper. "All seven."
Priya picked up one of the phones. It was the phone that had called her after the Siddiqui scene. She could feel it in her hand like a cold stone.
