Chapter 13: Meghna / Naya Raasta (New Lead)

# Chapter 13: Meghna / Naya Raasta (New Lead)

Hemant listened to Manoj the way a doctor listens to a patient describing symptoms. Without interruption, without judgment, with the focused attention of a professional whose job required separating the relevant from the emotional, the facts from the feelings, the data from the grief.

They were in Devkishan's office. Manoj sat in the chair facing the desk. Hemant sat behind the desk. Meghna stood by the window, her notebook open, her pen moving.

Manoj told everything. The ₹35 lakh. The accusation. Bharat's expulsion. A mansarovar property. That Khandelwal hardware supply records. Nineteen years of silence. And finally, Bhoomi's words at the bar: "I'm done being afraid."

When Manoj finished, Hemant was quiet for thirty seconds. The office clock — an old mechanical clock on the wall, probably from the haveli's conversion in 1997, ticking with the persistence of a mechanism that had outlived its relevance in the age of smartphones but continued because no one had told it to stop — measured the silence in clicks.

"Ranjit Shekhawat," Hemant said. "Gautam's father. Where is he now?"

"Jaipur. That Bani Park house. He's — seventy-two. Retired. He ran the family properties until three years ago, then handed management to his son."

"His son? Gautam?"

"No. Gautam was in the Navy. Ranjit has another son. Kundan. Younger than Gautam by six years. Kundan lives in the Bani Park house with Ranjit and manages the properties."

Meghna's pen paused. Kundan. A name that had not appeared in any interview. A family member who was not at the wedding. Or was he?

"Was Kundan at the wedding?" she asked.

Manoj looked at her. "Kundan was invited. But he — Gautam and Kundan don't get along. They haven't for years. Different, everything. Gautam is Navy. Disciplined. Principled. Kundan is — "

"Kundan is what?"

"Kundan is Ranjit's son in the way that matters. He manages the money. He runs the properties. He's. Involved. In the family. In the finances. In everything that Ranjit built, including the things Ranjit built on Bharat uncle's ruin."

"Was Kundan at the wedding?" Hemant repeated, his voice sharpening.

"I don't; I didn't see him at the ceremony. But the guest list was two hundred people. I didn't see everyone."

Hemant picked up the phone. Called the reception desk. "Devkishan. The guest list for the Shekhawat-Mehra wedding. I need to know if a Kundan Shekhawat was registered. Check the rooms, the guest list, everything."

He hung up. Turned to Manoj.

"The Mansarovar property. Your father's supply records. Do you still have them?"

"My father kept records for thirty years. Notebooks. Steel almirahs full of notebooks. Every order, every delivery, every payment. If the Mansarovar supply record exists, it's in the Khandelwal house in Bani Park."

"I'm going to need those records."

"I'll call my father. He'll, he's eighty-one. He doesn't understand, but he'll find them. He keeps everything."

"Good. Call him now."

Manoj pulled out his phone. His hands had stopped shaking. The act of telling — the unburdening, the nineteen-year weight set down on Devkishan's desk between the room keys and the framed photograph of the 1952 haveli, had changed him. Not cured him. Not absolved him. Changed him. The way confession changes a person — not by removing the guilt but by distributing it, by giving it to the air and the room and the people in the room, by converting the private into the public and finding, in the conversion, a form of relief that was not freedom but was close enough.

He stepped into the corridor to make the call.

Hemant looked at Meghna.

"Kundan Shekhawat," he said. "If Kundan manages the family finances — if Kundan inherited the Mansarovar property, the shop income, the entire financial structure that Ranjit built on Bharat's frame-up — "

"Then Kundan has the most to lose if Bhoomi reveals the truth."

"₹35 lakh in 2007. Property in Mansarovar. Shop income from Johari Bazaar. In today's value, "

"Crores. Easily. That Mansarovar property alone, at current Jaipur rates, ₹2 crore minimum. Plus nineteen years of rental income, shop income, capital appreciation. "

"We're talking about ₹5-8 crore of assets built on a fraud. If Bhoomi tells Gautam, and Gautam believes her, "

"Gautam files a case. property is disputed. The family splits again; but this time, the law is on Bharat's side. Kundan loses everything. Ranjit faces charges."

"Motive."

The word sat in the office like a brass weight on a scale. Motive. The oldest question in criminal investigation. Not how but why. Not the mechanics but the engine. Why does a person take a knife to a wedding? Why does a person climb the stairs at 2:08 AM in a dark corridor? Why does a person cut the neck of a woman who was dancing twelve hours earlier?

₹5-8 crore. That was why.

---

She had been watching this light show for three mornings. Each morning was different. The first morning had been clear, the light arriving pure and unfiltered, the jali pattern projected onto the floor in sharp focus, the geometric shapes precise, the shadows deep. The second morning had been hazy, dust in the air (Rajasthan always had dust in the air; the question was not whether there was dust but how much, and the answer ranged from "some" to "you cannot see your own hands"), and the light had arrived softened, the jali pattern blurred, the edges of the geometric shapes bleeding into each other, the floor a watercolour version of the first morning's ink drawing.

This morning, the third, clouds. High, thin clouds that moved fast, the wind at altitude stronger than the wind on the ground, and the light arrived in pulses, bright and then dim, bright and then dim, the jali pattern appearing and disappearing on the floor like a heartbeat made visible, the room breathing with the rhythm of the clouds.

Meghna pressed her back against the stone. Cool. Always cool, even in Rajasthan's heat, the jharokha stone retained the coolness of the night and released it slowly through the day, a natural air conditioning system designed by architects who understood that comfort was not a luxury but a necessity and that the materials of a building were not passive containers but active participants in the experience of living.

Her phone buzzed. Bhoomi. A photograph: Bhoomi in the bridal lehenga, standing before a full-length mirror, the red of the fabric so deep it looked like wine, the gold zari work catching the light, the expression on Bhoomi's face a complex mixture of excitement and terror and something else, something that looked like grief but was probably the specific emotion that has no name, the emotion of becoming someone new, of standing at the threshold between one identity and another, of being simultaneously the person you have been and the person you are about to be.

How do I look? the caption said.

Meghna typed: Like someone whose caterer still hasn't confirmed the paneer.

Bhoomi's response: a string of laughing emojis followed by I'm serious.

Meghna typed: You look like a bride. You look beautiful. You look ready.

She did not type: You look scared. Because scared was part of ready. Because readiness that did not include fear was not readiness but naivety. And Bhoomi, for all her energy and opinions and fairy lights, was not naive.

Devkishan called back in four minutes. Meghna counted.

"Inspector. Kundan Shekhawat was not on the official guest list. However, " The manager's voice carried the professional discomfort of a man who was about to deliver information that complicated things. "We had a walk-in guest on Friday evening. The night before the wedding. A man checked in to room twelve. Second floor. Paid in cash. Gave the name K. Singh."

"K. Singh."

"I know. The most common alias in Rajasthan. But the ID he showed — I have a photocopy, as per regulations, was an Aadhaar card. The name on the Aadhaar was — " A pause. Paper rustling. ", Kundan Singh Shekhawat. Jaipur address. Bani Park."

Hemant's jaw tightened. Not visibly. Meghna wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't been watching his face with the specific attention that the last six hours had trained her to apply. The jaw tightened and then released, the micro-expression of a man who had been given confirmation of something he'd suspected and was now converting suspicion into strategy.

"Room twelve. Second floor. Is the room occupied now?"

"He checked out this morning. At seven AM. Before the breakfast. Before. Before any of this."

"Seven AM. That body was discovered at seven forty-five."

"Yes."

"He checked out forty-five minutes before the body was found."

"I — yes. I didn't, at the time, it was a normal checkout. Early, but some guests leave early. I processed it myself. He paid in cash. He was — quick. He had one bag. He signed the register and left."

"Do you have the register? His signature?"

"On my desk. In the leather book."

"Don't touch it. I'm coming."

Hemant stood. Looked at Meghna. The look contained everything, the confirmation, the lead, the next step, the understanding that this case had just shifted from a room full of suspects to a name, an address, a man who had checked into a hotel under an alias and checked out forty-five minutes before his cousin's body was found.

"Kundan Shekhawat checked in on Friday under a false name. He was on the second floor. Room twelve. He checked out at seven AM on Sunday. Between one AM and three AM, the window for the murder, he was in this building."

"The 2:08 AM figure on the stairs," Meghna said. "Small build. Going up. Didn't come back down via the main staircase."

"Could be him. Going up to the third floor. To room thirteen. And leaving via the service staircase."

"And the 12:47 figure? The dark kurta? Going up and coming down at 1:23?"

"Different person. Or the same person on a different trip. We need to check, " He stopped. Thought. "Room twelve. Second floor. The camera covers the staircase from the ground floor to the first floor. If Kundan went from the second floor to the third floor, he'd only appear on camera if he went down to the ground floor first and then up."

"Unless he used the service staircase to go up."

"The service staircase has no camera. He could go from the second floor to the third floor via the service staircase without appearing on any footage."

"Then the 2:08 figure might not be Kundan. The 2:08 figure was on the main staircase, going up from the ground floor."

"Correct. Which means, "

"There might have been two people on the third floor that night. The 12:47 person, going up and coming down at 1:23 via the main staircase. And Kundan, going up via the service staircase and coming down the same way. Never appearing on camera."

That puzzle was not getting simpler. It was getting larger. More pieces. More routes. More people moving through a three-hundred-year-old building in the dark, on different staircases, through different corridors, with different purposes and different destinations and the same dead woman at the centre.

"I need to find Kundan Shekhawat," Hemant said. "He's had a ten-hour head start. If he drove to Jaipur, he's already there. I'm calling the Jaipur police."

He went to the phone. The mechanical clock ticked. The office held its documents and its keys and the growing weight of a case that had started as a body in a room and was becoming a family saga — a Rajput family, a stolen fortune, an innocent man destroyed, a brave woman silenced, and a building that had seen it all through its walls and its mirrors and its three hundred years of holding the truth in its stones.

Meghna wrote in her notebook:

Kundan Shekhawat. Room 12. K. Singh. Cash. 7 AM checkout. 45 minutes before discovery.

Motive: ₹5-8 crore in disputed assets. Bhoomi's revelation would destroy the family's financial structure.

Method: Service staircase (no cameras). Dark corridor (no lantern). Room 13 (window end. Farthest from occupied rooms).

Question: Who was the 12:47 AM person? If Kundan used the service staircase, someone else was on the main staircase. Two visitors to the third floor. Two different people with two different reasons to be near Bhoomi's room.

She closed the notebook. The lake was visible through the office window. Unchanged, silver, holding its islands and its reflections with the indifference of four hundred years.

The answer was getting closer. But the closer it got, the more it looked like two answers, two paths to room thirteen, two figures in the dark, two sets of reasons, and Meghna understood, with the clarity of a librarian who had spent her life classifying and organizing and finding, that sometimes the hardest thing to find was not the missing book but the reason someone had hidden it.