The Date

It was a bright and sunny Monday. The orange wildflowers blooming everywhere beside the highway heralded the arrival of autumn after the long gloom of the monsoon.

It certainly helped in raising Rohan’s spirit as he took in the scenery while cruising on his 350cc Royal Enfield on the way to his office.

A happy-go-lucky 27 year old Engineer, he wasn’t a fan of the monsoon. Akin to his personality, he liked his mornings bright and cheerful.

Of course, he had other reasons to be cheerful today. He was going to have his first date with Kiara this evening. The pleasant weather was another welcome omen to him.

He had joined his current firm 3 months back, so he didn’t have a large number of acquaintances there and most of them were from his own team. He had caught Kiara staring at him in the cafeteria a couple of times and finally worked up the nerve to talk to her. Usually confident around girls, he was unusually aware of his heartbeat when he first talked to her. She was beautiful with long brown hair and almond shaped eyes. Her voice was husky and she carried herself like royalty.

After getting over the initial awkwardness, he soon discovered they had a couple of common interests- reading and stargazing. This helped him in asking her out on a date to a book café. Much to his relief, she had blushed crimson and agreed.

He had been extra meticulous while getting ready this morning. Shampooing his hair and shaving took extra time and he was rather vigorous while brushing his teeth.

Fully dressed, when he walked in the living room, even his quiet and reserved flatmate Lalit raised an eyebrow at his crisp shirt and neatly pressed trousers, in place of his usual casual attire of Jeans and T-shirt.

“Meeting the CEO today, are you?” grinned Lalit.

Lalit was having breakfast at the dining table. He worked night-shifts in an automobile company and breakfast was mostly the only time they saw each other after Lalit got home from work.

“Wouldn’t have dressed this much for the CEO”, Rohan replied cheekily.” I have a date today”, he added.

“That’s great man! Have fun”, Lalit winked. He didn’t make any further enquiries.

This was one of the reasons Rohan liked having him as a roommate. Lalit mostly kept to himself and never intruded in Rohan’s personal space.

Rohan had moved into the city 3 months ago after a job switch and had been unable to find a roommate. Reluctantly he had rented a two-bedroom flat on his own and naturally was glad when Lalit had responded to the online ad he had posted a few weeks ago. On top of it, he couldn’t have asked for a better flatmate- Lalit was disciplined, considerate and cleaned up after himself. He mostly kept to himself in his room- which was perfectly fine in Rohan’s book.

Rohan slowed down the bike as he neared the gate of the office building, parked in his usual space, and proceeded towards the elevators after checking his reflection in the side mirror.

At his desk now, he started going over the day’s newspapers online.

As was his custom, he skipped the pieces covering the various crimes around the state and city — there were the usual articles on murders, rapes and disappearances. Rohan believed there already was a generous dose of crime in the content he consumed- be it Netflix thrillers or the crime novels he read, so he refrained from consuming it in his news.

He locked his monitor screen and got up from his desk. He started walking towards the lobby thinking of going up to the cafeteria to get a coffee & hoping to see Kiara. On reaching there, he scanned the sparsely populated cafeteria and quickly realized Kiara wasn’t there yet. She had told him she was attending a rock concert on Sunday night. “She’s probably having a lie in”, he thought.

He finished the coffee and got back to his desk to start the day’s work. After a couple of mind-numbingly boring meetings that could have been replaced with a couple of emails, it was finally 1 PM -which meant lunchtime.

Rohan got up from his desk and met up with his lunch group in the lobby.

“Ooh! What’s special today?” cooed Rashmi eyeing his outfit, and the rest of the group giggled. Rohan blushed and avoided the question. They took the stairs and arrived in the now-crowded cafeteria and sat at their usual table.

Rohan looked around and there was no sign of Kiara. They had been having their lunch together every day at 1PM for the last couple of weeks now, and she was always very punctual. This was primarily the reason he had convinced his group to have lunch at this time daily.

He dropped her a WhatsApp and was disappointed to see a single tick on the message. “She might have taken the day off”, he thought and called her phone but found it to be switched off. He decided to call her again after work and forced himself back to the present moment to listen to his friends’ conversation who were happily engaged in workplace gossip.

He started packing his stuff at 4:55 PM, and after fidgeting about for a few minutes at his desk, got up as soon as the clock struck 5:00PM and headed for the door, ignoring jealous looks from his colleagues who had punched in late and would have to stay for another couple of hours.

In the office parking now, he called Kiara again and to his dismay heard the automated voice telling him “The number you’re trying to reach is switched off”. He was certain now that she was sick and the date was surely cancelled. Dejected, he got on his bike and rolled out of the parking.

He was angry with himself for getting excited in anticipation of the date all weekend, and made a mental note to control his excitement in the future in order to spare himself the pain of a plan getting crushed. Immediately, he felt a pang of guilt for being selfish about a date when clearly Kiara was unwell.

Engrossed in his thoughts, he was astonished when he realized he had almost reached home.

“Good evening Sir!” he looked around and saw the security guard Santosh Limbu smiling at him. “Good evening Limbu Uncle!” he waved back. He was quite friendly with Limbu, mainly because Rohan regularly supplied him with a quarter of Old Monk rum or an occasional cigarette. In exchange, Limbu concealed the fact from his flat owner that he was sharing the flat with another person.

He parked his bike and walked up to his flat on the first floor. The absence of shoes outside the door meant Lalit was not home. He freshened up, curled up on the bed and had just started browsing through Netflix when he heard a knock on his door. This was strange as they didn’t have any visitors at this time and Lalit used his own key to come in.

He opened the door and was surprised to see four khaki-clad policemen standing outside. Limbu Uncle was standing behind them with an anxious expression on his face. “What’s the matter Limbu Uncle?” asked Rohan warily.

“Sir…uhh…where is Lalit Sir?” Limbu enquired apprehensively.

“I don’t know, he’s out”, replied Rohan.

One of the policeman stepped forward and held up a pencil sketch in front of Rohan’s face, “Does this man stay here?”

Rohan glanced at the sketch- Curly hair, a large forehead and a straight nose- although a bit caricaturized, it undoubtedly resembled Lalit very much. Thoroughly confused now, Rohan blurted out — “What’s going on?”

“I am Sub-Inspector Kamble, we need to search the premises immediately!” saying this, the cop holding the sketch barged in and the remaining three cops followed him inside. They started their search of the flat.

Standing in front of Lalit’s closed bedroom door, Kamble looked at Rohan- “Is this his room?”

Rohan nodded in reply. Kamble tried opening the door and found it to be locked. He called a particularly burly constable who broke open the door after a couple of well-placed kicks.

The room was completely bare except for some furniture- a single bed, a table and a chair, and a wardrobe attached to the wall. Rohan was shocked to see the room devoid of all of Lalit’s stuff.

“Where did he go, he had all his stuff here today morning” muttered Rohan. The burly constable opened the wardrobe door and Rohan’s jaw fell open. The wardrobe was almost completely empty, the horizontal slabs of wood that divided the space into shelves were removed and stood against the sides. There was a coil of thick rope, a single crutch, and what looked like blood on the bottom of the wardrobe. Inspector Kamble looked at Rohan — “Decent roommate you’ve got here, eh? We’ll need you to come to the police station with us”.

In a daze, Rohan accompanied the cops downstairs and got inside the police jeep. The flat had been sealed off for forensic analysis & they started for the police station. The cops ignored his questions and when he didn’t desist asking, ordered him to remain quiet rather menacingly.

Inside the station, they led him into a small room with cracked walls. Looking at the flickering lights over the pale yellow walls made him feel nauseous. Two Policemen who he hadn’t seen before marched in and questioned him for about an hour. They questioned him on his daily routine and his whereabouts during some particular days over the last few weeks. But mostly they asked him about Lalit. However, they didn’t entertain any of Rohan’s queries.

They left the room and Rohan started to grow increasingly restless. After some time, Inspector Kamble stepped into the room.

“Sir, can you please tell me what’s going on and why is the police looking for Lalit?” Rohan spoke in a rush.

Inspector Kamble gazed at him for a second and said in a hard voice,

“Son, we strongly suspect your roommate is behind the abduction and possible murder of 6 girls in the city”.

The words rang like thunder inside Rohan as he sat there, stunned at their impact.

Kamble continued, “We suspect the disappearances to be linked and the work of a serial killer. All of the girls disappeared from public places. Multiple witnesses have spotted a curly-haired good looking man who had some sort of injury- either had his arm in a cast or was using a crutch- talking to the girls where they were last seen. He approached the girls and apparently asked them for help in getting some stuff out of his car. Luckily, we were able to obtain CCTV footage from the place where the last girl disappeared and she can be seen entering the car of a suspect who was using a crutch. We tracked that same car to your housing-society and the security guard witnessed Lalit and a girl arriving in that same car last night. The guard further informed us that he was alone this morning when he took the car out and had two large suitcases with him.”

He paused and heaved a grim sigh, “You can take a guess on what must be in one of those bags”.

Rohan was horrified, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, “Lalit, a psychopath? A serial killer?”

“We pulled up the number plate on his car from the CCTV, and found they were forged. Did you ask for any ID when he moved in?” asked Inspector Kamble.

“No, the rent agreement has only my name. We were just sharing the rent”, admitted Rohan while swallowing a lump in his throat.

“Our preliminary investigation tells us that he brought a girl to the flat on Sunday night from a music event and the rope and the blood suggest that she was probably alive and kept tied inside the wardrobe. CCTV footage near your society shows that he waited for you to leave for office this morning before escaping.”

Rohan’s mind was reeling. He was not able to make sense of all this information, how could he not have caught a single clue that he was living with a psychopath.

And the thought of him being clueless to the fact that there was a girl imprisoned an entire night in the next room was unbearably painful to imagine.

Admittedly, they never went into each other’s rooms and hardly spent any time together, but Rohan simply attributed this to the fact that both of them were private and reserved people. On top of that, Lalit worked the night shifts so their timings didn’t overlap.

With a jolt, Rohan suddenly realized this may very well be false and everything that he thought he knew about his roommate was a lie as well. “He probably hunted at nights”, thought Rohan and immediately felt sicker.

“Hold On!” exclaimed Rohan as his mind did a double take. “You mentioned he picked up a girl from a music event on Sunday night. Was it a rock concert?”

Kamble narrowed his eyes, “As a matter of fact, it was”, he replied.

“Wh-What was her name?” asked Rohan trembling from head to foot.

Kamble consulted a sheet of paper and read out the name- “Kiara Shergill. Did you know her?”

Kamble jumped back as Rohan vomited violently all over the interrogation table.