Farside by Jaishankar Krishnamurthy & Krishna Udayasankar

Author:Jaishankar Krishnamurthy & Krishna Udayasankar [Krishnamurthy, Jaishankar & Udayasankar, Krishna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354923579
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2021-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

19

It was evening by the time Anand arrived at David’s flat. Charu, who had been waiting in sullen silence, looked up at him with the last traces of optimism in her eyes.

Anand nodded, dashing her hopes. ‘Mehra’s death really was a suicide,’ he said. ‘I checked with the policemen at the local station.’

He walked over to a glass partition door that Charu had turned into a makeshift whiteboard to mark up the dates the videos had been filmed on and the events that had followed. He pointed and said, ‘For each of the shorter clips, there are longer videos—raw footage. These were originally deleted files, but Charu recovered them, using techniques I’m not sure I understand. Mirroring software, did you say?’

Charu managed a wan smile. ‘Yes, sir. The hard drive was created using a mirroring software—basically a software that creates a copy of the original drive, presumably Ravi’s laptop—on a new device or memory space. Deleted files that are on the original drive also get copied to the new one. Of course, these files are not easily accessible to the average user. We have twenty-six shorter clips named using a name-mobile number format. Each of these is about three minutes long. The longer, raw footage videos have default date-time names. We get a decent idea of what may have happened by looking at the dates and the length of the videos.

Anand nodded his thanks at her and said, ‘If we consider the dates on which each video was created, Mehra’s short clip is the most recent one. The original footage was filmed on a Tuesday, the short clip was made on Friday and the following Monday, he was dead. There are no more short clips dated after that. So, it seems logical that when Ravi and Mahesh realized that their blackmailing scheme could lead to someone’s death, they must have decided to stop. But what was done was done. Something in this whole mess caught up with them, regardless.’

Anand looked from Charu to David, waiting for one of them to say something, to react to his statement. David remained standing as he was, expressionless. Charu, however, got up and went up to the glass board with purpose.

‘So,’ she began, as though making a presentation. ‘Here’s what we have, so far. Mahesh and Ravi were most likely in on this together. They set up a hidden camera in cottage number 38 at Palm Grove resort. Mahesh used to arrange for escorts to visit the guests, targeting near-retirement, middle-class men, specifically those who seemed unused to availing the services of sex workers. The plan was meticulous and very disciplined . . .’ Charu trailed off as she saw marks of Ravi’s fastidiousness all over the scheme but then cleared her throat and continued.

‘No matter which day the video was taped on, the phone call asking for money was always made on a Sunday, possibly to catch the victims with their families. The drop-off was always on a Monday: the victims were told to carry cash in a black duffel bag without any design or logo.

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