Amal Shukla
Part 1
It was just past 3 AM when the neighbors in Versova’s Sea Breeze Heights heard the gunshot. A loud, sharp crack that echoed through the tiled corridors and bounced off the closed windows of sleeping apartments. No one called the police. In Mumbai, people had learned to let things pass. Besides, the rains were hammering down, and it was easy to believe the noise was just thunder.
In Flat 9C, Rajiv Mehta lay sprawled on the Persian carpet of his study, a bullet hole clean through his forehead. His right hand was still resting on the armrest of his leather chair, and his laptop screen blinked with a half-written paragraph of his upcoming novel, the one rumored to be his most controversial yet. Blood trickled down his temple, collecting at the edge of the rug in a widening halo.
Rajiv was no ordinary writer. At forty-two, he had topped bestseller lists across the country with a string of crime thrillers, each more brutal than the last. His fans adored his unapologetically dark narratives. Critics hated him. But publishers couldn’t get enough. He had money, influence, and enemies. A lot of enemies.
At 7:46 AM, when his housekeeper Meenakshi arrived and opened the door with her spare key, she found the body. She didn’t scream. She dropped her bag, staggered back, and collapsed in the hallway. It wasn’t until 8:12 AM that the police were finally alerted.
Inspector Ashok Nair, who had handled more celebrity cases than he cared to remember, reached the scene in record time. He stepped into the flat with a quiet detachment, his sharp eyes scanning the study. He didn’t go near the body at first. Instead, he stared at the laptop, still open, the paragraph still incomplete.
“The ending was too close,” he muttered.
The forensics team began their work. No sign of forced entry. The CCTV footage showed no visitor past 10 PM. Rajiv had apparently come home alone after a book event at the Taj Mahal Palace. There were handshakes, selfies, some champagne. The last known image showed him entering the lift alone, adjusting his collar.
“What do we know about who he met at the hotel?” Nair asked.
“A list of twenty guests, mostly industry types. One unknown woman who left before midnight,” replied Sub-Inspector Anjali Rao, flipping through her notes.
“Unknown?”
“No name. No ID. Slipped past the registration desk. Blonde wig, oversized sunglasses. We’ve got footage but it’s grainy.”
Nair stared at the wall behind Rajiv’s desk. A bookshelf lined with hardcovers. All his own titles. One had fallen off—Death By Design. He picked it up. The story was about a bestselling author who gets killed by a fan-turned-stalker. Predictable. Or prophetic.
“Check his emails. Messages. Look for threats. Look for anything that doesn’t smell right,” Nair said.
Anjali nodded and got to work.
By noon, the media had the story. Bestselling author Rajiv Mehta found dead in his apartment. Suspected foul play. The news cycle exploded. Fans lit candles outside bookstores. Conspiracy theories flooded Twitter. One theory gained traction fast: Rajiv had hinted in recent interviews that he was going to name names in his next book. Big names. Political. Criminal. Bollywood. He’d joked about needing police protection. No one laughed.
By evening, Nair had a list of fifteen people who might have wanted Rajiv Mehta dead. A former editor who sued him for defamation. A jilted lover from Delhi. A rival writer whose plot Rajiv had allegedly stolen. An anonymous troll who had been threatening him online for months.
But it was the woman in the blonde wig that bothered Nair the most.
Who was she?
Why was there no trace of her leaving the building?
And why did Rajiv’s last sentence, half-typed on the laptop, read:
“She told me the truth would get me killed, but I said—”
Part 2
The room was cold despite the humidity. Inspector Nair stood motionless, re-reading the unfinished line on Rajiv Mehta’s laptop.
“She told me the truth would get me killed, but I said—”
Said what? The cursor blinked like a pulse. Taunting. Beckoning.
“There’s more on this machine,” Anjali Rao called out. She had unlocked Rajiv’s email. “He sent himself a file at 2:36 AM. Subject line: ‘For insurance.’ Attachment: truth.docx.”
Nair walked over. The document was encrypted. Password-protected. “Get cybercrime on it.”
Outside, a small crowd had gathered beyond the yellow tape. Camera crews, news vans, fans with posters. One of them held up a sign: Justice for Rajiv. Finish the book.
Back inside, Nair paced the hallway. The flat was minimalist and spotless. A sculpture of Ganesha by the door. Framed awards on the walls. But something felt curated, artificial. Even the chaos of death seemed arranged.
At 3:22 PM, they found a torn piece of paper inside Rajiv’s trash can, behind the kitchen. It was stained with whiskey and ink. The words barely legible:
“—didn’t kill her. She knew what she was doing. I only wrote it down. If they find this—”
The sentence broke there.
“Who’s ‘her’?” Anjali asked.
Nair didn’t answer. His mind had already leapt ahead.
He called headquarters. “Get me everything Rajiv wrote in the past year. Drafts. Deleted chapters. And I want his publisher, Neelam Banerjee, in for questioning.”
Neelam arrived at the station with dark glasses and a silk scarf, visibly shaken. She had been Rajiv’s editor for seven years. Helped make him a star. They shared a complicated rapport—professional respect laced with personal bitterness.
“We had a fight two weeks ago,” she admitted. “Over the new manuscript. He said I was being a coward.”
“Why?” Nair asked.
“Because I told him we couldn’t publish it. It was libel, Ashok. He had real names. Politicians. Cops. People in Bollywood. There was even a chapter that sounded like… you.”
Nair raised an eyebrow. “Me?”
She leaned forward. “He thought someone in your department was leaking info to crime families. He never said who.”
“And did you agree with him?”
“I told him to rewrite. He threatened to publish it online instead.”
Nair stared at her. “Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
Meanwhile, the forensics report came in. Rajiv had been shot at close range. No signs of a struggle. No fingerprints on the weapon—his own registered revolver. Suicide wasn’t ruled out, but it didn’t fit the scene.
The woman in the wig became more crucial by the hour. Cybercrime finally enhanced the hotel footage. She never left through the front door. No sightings in the corridor cameras after Room 703. A check with the housekeeping logs confirmed the room had been booked by a shell account.
“She vanished,” Anjali whispered.
“Or she never left,” Nair replied grimly.
He ordered a sweep of the hotel, floor by floor. Room 703 was empty, but the cleaning staff recalled a single odd detail. “There was no trash,” the maid said. “Not even used towels. It was like no one stayed at all.”
At 10:47 PM, Nair sat down again at Rajiv’s laptop. The blinking cursor still waited. Anjali brought him tea.
“Sir,” she said, hesitating. “I think the document Rajiv sent himself—the encrypted one—I think I know the password.”
He looked up.
“What is it?”
“‘Apurva.’”
They tried it. The file opened.
Inside: 12 pages. A confession. Or a story. Maybe both.
It began:
“I met Apurva on the night I was meant to die. She said she wasn’t real. But she knew everything about me. About what I did. About what I wrote. She said I stole her life…”
Part 3
I met Apurva on the night I was meant to die.
Inspector Nair read the line aloud as the silence in the station deepened. The pages of the document were filled with paragraphs that blurred the boundary between fiction and confession.
According to the manuscript, Rajiv met Apurva in Goa three years ago. She was a small-time writer, a blogger with a niche following for her dark poetry and unpublished novellas. They shared a few drinks at a literary festival, exchanged ideas. Rajiv offered to mentor her. But she vanished soon after.
Two months later, his bestselling novel Burnt Petals hit the stands. A brutal story about a woman whose past is manipulated and erased by a man she trusts. The book earned him awards, a film deal, and a flood of admirers.
In the document titled truth.docx, Rajiv wrote:
“It was her story. Word for word. I didn’t even change the name in the first draft.”
Nair leaned back in his chair. “So he stole her work.”
Anjali frowned. “But why confess now?”
The next part of the document offered a clue.
“Last month, she came back. Blonde wig. Dark glasses. She told me she had no fingerprints anymore. That the world thinks she’s dead. She said she wrote something I would never dare publish. And now she wanted her life back.”
The writing was uncharacteristically emotional for Rajiv—erratic, rushed, unedited. It wasn’t just guilt. It was fear.
Nair rubbed his eyes. “Did you find any files authored by Apurva on his system?”
Anjali nodded. “Yes. One PDF. Just one.”
She opened it. The cover page was blank, except for the title: The Plagiarist.
Nair scrolled through. It was a novella. A fictionalized account of a man who becomes famous by stealing the soul of a woman through her words. The prose was sharp, lyrical, and laced with venom. By the final page, the woman burns the manuscript in front of the man—and then vanishes.
The timestamp on the file showed it had been copied onto Rajiv’s computer just two days before his death.
“Where did she go for three years?” Nair murmured. “And what kind of woman erases her identity and returns as a ghost?”
That night, Nair couldn’t sleep. He kept returning to the footage of the blonde woman at the hotel. Her gait was familiar. Almost performative. As if she knew she was being watched.
He had it slowed down, frame by frame. Her reflection in a glass panel at the lift’s edge revealed something strange—beneath the blonde wig, dark roots were visible. Her jawline looked… altered.
“Plastic surgery?” Anjali offered the next morning.
“Maybe. Or stage makeup.”
They ran a facial reconstruction algorithm, stripping away the wig and glasses. The program generated several matches. One stood out.
Anjali’s breath caught. “Sir… we have a hit.”
Nair looked at the screen. The name flashed beneath the face.
Apurva Tandon
Status: Deceased
Died in a car accident, 2021. Pune-Mumbai Expressway. Body unrecognizable. ID confirmed by dental records.
“She faked her death,” Nair whispered. “And came back to haunt him.”
It was a theory, but a fragile one. There was still no proof she had killed Rajiv. No weapon, no prints, no camera evidence of her leaving the scene. But if the story Rajiv left behind was true, then Apurva had engineered something poetic.
Murder disguised as narrative closure.
The final twist came when Anjali dug deeper into Apurva’s past. She had once been a theatre artist. Specialized in impersonation, disguise. Toured with a feminist street theatre group called Reclaim. Known for performances that blurred life and performance.
And then, she disappeared.
“Maybe she never wanted justice,” Anjali said. “Maybe she just wanted her story back.”
At 4:13 PM, Nair received an email from an unknown account. No subject. No body. Just one attachment: a high-resolution photo.
It was a picture of Rajiv’s study, taken from the bookshelf’s POV. Clearly from a hidden camera.
In the frame: Rajiv sitting in his chair. A woman standing behind him. Her hand gently resting on his shoulder.
She was smiling.
Her wig was off. Her hair was black.
She was very much alive.
Part 4
The photo was chilling in its quiet intimacy. A killer rarely smiles. But here, Apurva—if that was still her name—looked almost serene, like she’d already won. Inspector Nair stared at the image long after his team had crowded around and murmured their theories. The timestamp on the image read 03:01 AM, minutes before the estimated time of Rajiv’s death.
She wanted them to see it.
He leaned back in his chair. “She planted a camera in the bookshelf. Why?”
“To document it. Or to send a message,” Anjali replied. “Like a final chapter.”
Nair nodded. “We need that camera.”
They returned to the flat. The bookshelf had already been dusted and catalogued by forensics, but Nair went through it himself now, tapping each hardcover, checking behind framed awards. He found it tucked behind a first-edition copy of Fahrenheit 451—a tiny spycam, battery removed, lens still pointed at the chair where Rajiv had died.
The irony wasn’t lost on him: a camera hidden behind a book about censorship and destruction of knowledge.
He handed it over to the lab.
That evening, a second email arrived. Same sender. This time, it contained a short video clip—footage from the camera itself.
The screen lit up with a grainy image of Rajiv pacing in the study, phone to his ear.
“Neelam, I’m telling you, I’m not paranoid… She’s here. In Mumbai. She knows about the new book… No, she didn’t threaten me. She just said it’s her turn now.”
He hung up. Sat down. Opened his laptop. Began typing.
Then the door creaked. A shadow crossed the room.
She entered frame slowly, wearing the blonde wig.
“You’re not real,” Rajiv said. “You can’t be.”
“You wrote me into fiction, Rajiv,” she whispered. “Now I’ve written you out of reality.”
Her voice was calm. Almost affectionate.
Then: a gun. His own.
He didn’t resist. He stared at her with what looked like… regret.
“You’ll never get away with it,” he said.
She smiled.
“I already have.”
The screen went black.
Back at headquarters, Nair sat in silence. “She wanted this seen. She wanted the truth known. But not by the world. Just by us.”
Anjali frowned. “Why? Why not disappear again?”
“Because that was never the point.”
“She didn’t want revenge?”
“No,” Nair said. “She wanted authorship.”
They traced the emails to a signal that bounced through three proxy servers. The last IP was routed through a closed cyber café in Uttarakhand. Dead end.
By now, the press had gone wild with speculation. The official report still listed Rajiv’s death as “under investigation.” No suspect. No motive. The leaked rumors about a mysterious woman were already spawning documentaries.
Nair refused to hold a press conference. “We don’t owe them a story,” he said. “Not this one.”
Three weeks later, a slim paperback appeared anonymously in independent bookstores across Kolkata, Pune, and Delhi. No author. No publisher’s name. Just a red cover with the title in bold:
“I Didn’t Kill Him. I Just Finished the Story.”
Inside: Apurva’s novella. The Plagiarist. Followed by Rajiv’s final confessional pages, and a transcript of the video. The last page carried a single line:
“There are many ways to write a murder. Some are just more memorable.”
It sold out in two days.
Part 5
The pirated book was a bombshell. No barcode, no ISBN, no metadata—yet it had somehow slipped past publishing norms and ignited a literary firestorm. Literary circles debated whether it was a posthumous collaboration or a deranged prank. Writers whispered about underground authorship. Readers queued at footpath stalls for xeroxed copies.
But Nair knew the truth.
The narrative wasn’t a confession. It was a curation—meticulously designed to strip Rajiv Mehta of his legacy and reassign authorship to the woman he had erased.
Anjali slammed a handful of news clippings on Nair’s desk. “Sir, look at this. The street play group Reclaim—the one Apurva used to perform with—they resurfaced last weekend in Shimla.”
Nair raised an eyebrow. “They disbanded years ago.”
“Exactly. But now they’re staging a new piece. A solo show. No title, no credits. Just one woman in a mask, performing a silent piece about a writer who steals lives to feed his fame.”
“Apurva.”
Anjali nodded. “It’s her. The voice, the movement. One of our informants recorded a snippet on his phone.”
They watched the blurry footage. The actress onstage moved with deliberate grace. She typed furiously on an invisible keyboard, then mimed pulling a mask off her own face. The crowd burst into applause.
“I think she’s daring us,” Anjali said. “She knows we’re watching.”
“No,” Nair murmured. “She’s not performing for us. She’s performing for history.”
A week later, a second body turned up. This time in Lonavala.
A man named Mohit Suri—former professor of literature, dismissed under murky circumstances. He had once mentored Apurva at university. A single gunshot wound to the chest. No forced entry. A copy of The Plagiarist lay on his nightstand, pages marked in red ink.
Nair scanned the report with rising dread. “She’s tying up ends. Anyone who tried to silence her, anyone who doubted her voice.”
“But is she a killer… or just a storyteller?” Anjali asked.
“Does it matter?” he replied.
They released an unofficial statement to media: “We are investigating the deaths of Rajiv Mehta and Mohit Suri in connection with a literary manuscript circulating without accreditation. We urge the public to avoid unverified versions.”
It backfired.
Within hours, PDFs of the book flooded WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, Reddit threads. Every copy became an act of rebellion.
A message on page one began appearing in newer versions:
“If you’re reading this, you’re part of the story now.”
Nair’s obsession deepened. He barely slept, barely left the station. Every day brought a new letter, email, or message. All unsigned. All poetic. All cryptic. Some came written in lipstick. One arrived carved into the cover of an old copy of Burnt Petals.
They all said the same thing, in different words:
“Stories don’t die. Authors do.”
Then, one night, Nair came home to find a book on his pillow.
His own name was on the cover.
Ashok Nair: A Case File
No publisher. Just the subtitle: A man who thought he was outside the story, until the story turned on him.
He opened it, hands shaking.
Chapter One: He knew she was coming. He just didn’t know when.
Part 6
Nair didn’t sleep that night. The book lay open on his dining table, its pages disturbingly accurate. It knew things—conversations he hadn’t recorded, thoughts he hadn’t spoken. His doubts about Rajiv, his quiet admiration for Apurva’s mind. Even the name of the woman he hadn’t spoken to in years.
How did she know all this?
The manuscript was written in the second person. Every line a mirror:
You think law is a line. She thinks it’s a loop.
You think you’re hunting her. She thinks you’re becoming her.
By morning, Nair was no longer sure where the case ended and the narrative began.
At CID headquarters, Anjali met him with breaking news. “Another copy of The Plagiarist surfaced—hand-delivered to a literary critic in Kolkata.”
“And?”
“The critic collapsed hours later. Cardiac arrest. But not before he told the police, ‘She came. She told me I was a ghost in her book.’”
Nair stared at the map. Each new sighting of Apurva—if it really was her—created a trail across India. Mumbai, Shimla, Lonavala, Kolkata. The arc was intentional. Like she was drawing a shape across the country.
Not a hiding pattern. A signature.
That afternoon, Nair did something unthinkable: he visited Rajiv Mehta’s old writing studio.
It had been locked since the murder. The landlord, an old Parsi man, let him in without a word. The space was dim, dusty, untouched. Rajiv had rented it for years but rarely used it—according to Neelam Banerjee, he did his real writing elsewhere.
Yet something about the room called to Nair.
He walked to the desk. It was bare except for a sealed envelope addressed to “The Reader.”
He opened it. Inside was a single page:
If this is being read, then she has already won. Don’t chase her. She’s not a person anymore. She’s the version of the story I buried to stay alive. She’s the truth I edited out. She’s what happens when fiction refuses to stay on the page.
Nair read the words three times. The implications were clear. Rajiv believed Apurva had become something larger than real—a myth, a metaphor, a reckoning.
Or maybe he knew she’d never stopped writing.
When he returned to his car, a folded sheet of paper was tucked under the wiper.
Typed, neatly, in red ink:
“Inspector Nair, you’ve followed every thread but missed the seam. You think the book ends with a death. But real stories? They end with inheritance. Who’s writing this story now?”
That night, Anjali called. Her voice was tight.
“Sir… the street theatre group performed again in Jaipur. Same silent show. But this time, at the end, the actress took off her mask.”
Nair held his breath.
“She looked right into the crowd and said, ‘Ask Inspector Nair if he enjoyed the book I left him.’”
Then she vanished before police could reach the stage.
No video this time. Just word of mouth.
Back in his flat, Nair stared at the manuscript again. Ashok Nair: A Case File.
Chapter Two had appeared. He hadn’t seen it the night before.
He was beginning to wonder if chasing a ghost had turned him into one.
Part 7
Chapter Three of the book hadn’t been there before. Nair was sure of it. He hadn’t turned past page 18. But now the manuscript on his table had grown. Fifty-seven pages. New chapters. The same title on every page footer: Ashok Nair: A Case File.
Chapter Three opened with:
He no longer solved murders. He just read them.
It was more than a taunt. It was accurate. In the past month, Nair hadn’t closed a single new case. He’d turned down two promotions. He barely spoke to his daughter anymore. His world had shrunk to a file, a face, and a voice that echoed from book margins and back alleys.
Apurva—or whoever she had become—was changing her methods. The sightings were growing stranger, more symbolic.
A graffiti mural in Bangalore: a silhouette of a woman holding a burning quill.
A QR code posted on a lamppost in Kochi—scanning it led to a 30-second audio clip of a woman whispering, “Stories don’t wait for permission.”
A viral AI-generated animation surfaced on the dark web: Rajiv drowning in a pool of ink as typed pages covered his face.
Each act was traceable to no one. Yet all of them carried her unmistakable rhythm.
And then came the most terrifying development.
A young crime novelist in Delhi, Aarav Bhagat, announced an upcoming release: a thriller titled The Ghost Editor.
His promotional pitch?
A novel about a detective investigating a series of killings where each murder is followed by the release of a new chapter in a book that seems to know him better than anyone else.
It was the same premise.
Word for word.
Nair called his publisher personally. “Did he submit a draft?”
“Of course. Six months ago.”
Six. Months. Ago.
Before Rajiv’s death.
Anjali burst into his office the next morning. “Sir. You need to see this.”
She dropped a small, battered notebook on his desk.
“Where did this come from?”
“Recovered from the body of a woman found floating near the Ghodbunder creek. No ID. No fingerprints. Face disfigured. But…”
Nair opened the notebook. It was handwritten.
And on the first page: Property of A.T.
“Apurva Tandon,” Nair said softly.
But it wasn’t a diary.
It was a script.
Each scene was described like stage directions.
INT. POLICE HEADQUARTERS – NIGHT
Detective reads note. Looks broken. Window open. Rain outside. Thunder.
He looked up. It was raining. His window was open.
Scene after scene described moments from his own investigation. Some hadn’t even happened yet.
Near the end of the notebook:
EXT. POLICE STATION – MORNING
Detective hands over resignation letter. Says: “This isn’t my story anymore.”
Nair stood in silence for a long time. He felt it now, like a weight in the air.
He was no longer in charge.
He wasn’t solving the case.
He was inside it.
And that night, Chapter Four appeared in the manuscript beside his bed.
Typed cleanly. Unmistakably hers.
He thought he had walked into a mystery. But he had walked into a manuscript.
And someone else had the pen.
Part 8
It began with a phone call at 3:17 AM.
Nair didn’t recognize the number, but something in his bones told him to answer. He didn’t speak. Just listened.
The voice was distorted—deliberately slowed and pitched down. A woman’s voice.
“You were never chasing a killer,” it said. “You were chasing a rewrite.”
Then the call ended.
At 10:00 the same morning, news broke that Aarav Bhagat—the Delhi novelist who claimed to be writing The Ghost Editor—was dead.
Self-inflicted, the reports said. No signs of foul play.
But Nair knew better.
Aarav’s final draft was never submitted. But someone leaked the manuscript anyway—just twenty pages long, each page a transcript of Nair’s own case notes. Word for word. Observations he had written in private.
There was only one way someone could have accessed that information.
She was inside the police system. Or beyond it.
She was in his head.
Nair snapped.
He asked to be taken off the case. Chief DCP Malik denied the request, calling it “an emotional reaction.”
So Nair did the unthinkable.
He walked into a press conference at the Mumbai Press Club, stepped up to the podium, and said:
“Apurva Tandon is alive. She is not hiding. She is publishing.”
Journalists froze.
“She is telling a story the system refused to believe. And every time we try to shut the book, she writes another chapter.”
He left without answering a single question.
That night, the city exploded.
On Instagram, TikTok, and Threads, videos appeared of masked women reading excerpts from The Plagiarist. Street performances erupted in Pune, Lucknow, Hyderabad.
A new account named @SheWritesBack began posting ominous quotes:
“Justice isn’t legal. It’s editorial.”
“Truth isn’t evidence. It’s revision.”
Even the Commissioner’s teenage daughter reposted one with the caption: “ICONIC 🔥✍️ #ApurvaTandon #TheLastChapter”
It had become something more than a case.
A movement. A mythology. A manifesto.
Anjali, looking pale and shaken, came to Nair’s apartment.
“She’s hijacked our entire narrative. Even I’m beginning to question… what if she’s not the villain?”
Nair didn’t respond. He simply handed her the latest update to Ashok Nair: A Case File.
Chapter Five.
He thought justice was a gavel. She thought it was a pen.
He thought closure came at the end. She thought it came at the start of every new reader.
And the final line:
“He wondered when the book would end.
She knew it never would.”
The manuscript had now grown to 104 pages.
None of them written by Nair.
None of them printed by any known press.
Every word felt like prophecy.
And in the silence of his study, he understood something:
He was no longer part of an investigation.
He was a character.
And the author was still writing.
Part 9
The story had metastasized.
No longer confined to murder, no longer bound by police reports or media leaks. It was now spilling into academia, protests, literature festivals, underground zines. There were university courses called “Apurva: Between Myth and Manuscript.” There were podcasts breaking down each chapter of Ashok Nair: A Case File as though it were a sacred text.
Nair watched from the outside now.
He had stepped back from official duties. Not fired. Not suspended. Just… written out.
Even the station had stopped expecting him.
One evening, he visited a small, independent bookstore in Bandra where a pop-up reading of The Plagiarist was being held. No one recognized him. He stood in the back, arms folded, listening to a young woman in a denim jacket recite Apurva’s words like scripture:
“You can kill a woman.
You can bury her book.
But you cannot delete the story she planted in your throat.”
The audience snapped their fingers in approval. Someone shouted “Author goals!”
Nair left before the reading ended.
Outside, taped to a lamp post, he saw a flyer:
“THE LAST CHAPTER IS YOURS.”
No author. No contact. Just a blank space beneath the line, like an invitation.
That night, he came home to find a couriered package waiting.
Inside: a book.
No cover design. Just a white dust jacket with embossed black letters:
“The Last Chapter”
By Ashok Nair
His fingers trembled as he opened it.
It began with a dedication:
To the woman I chased until I became her.
Chapter One: A man loses a case, but gains a voice.
Each page unfolded like a confession, but not of a crime—of a transformation. It documented everything: his pursuit of Apurva, his breakdown, his loss of faith in systems, in law, in linear truth. It read like a diary written in third person.
And the final chapter?
He realized he was never chasing her to arrest her. He was chasing her to understand how stories survive silence. And now, she was handing him the pen.
Tucked into the back cover was a letter.
Typed. Signed only with an A.
“You’ve read enough. Now write.
This is the last chapter only if you stop.
Otherwise, it’s just the next page.”
Nair sat at his desk long after midnight. Outside, the city murmured, unread and restless.
He picked up a pen.
And wrote:
Chapter Ten.
The detective sat in silence, a book before him, a city behind him, and a voice that no longer belonged to just one woman.
It belonged to all the women who were told their truths were too sharp to print.
But stories—
they don’t bleed quietly.
Part 10
It began to rain that evening—the kind of rain that washes Mumbai clean yet somehow leaves the city feeling heavier. A relentless monsoon drizzle pattered softly against the windowpane of Ashok Nair’s modest apartment, blurring the lights of the city into scattered stars. Nair sat quietly in his worn armchair, the weight of months pressing down on his shoulders. The case that had consumed his life—the case that had blurred the lines between reality and fiction, justice and vengeance—was no longer just a file on his desk. It was the very air he breathed.
He hadn’t returned to the police station. Not since the manuscript had changed again, not since the last message appeared in his private copy of Ashok Nair: A Case File. The words had haunted him, and yet there was an odd comfort in their presence, like a compass pointing to a destination he hadn’t dared to imagine.
“You are now the author.”
Those words repeated endlessly in his mind.
Two weeks ago, the literary world had been set ablaze. The Plagiarist—the mysterious novel that had been circulating anonymously—was shortlisted for the prestigious international literary prize, the Vermeer Award. The nomination sparked a frenzy of speculation. Who was the author? Was it Apurva Tandon, who had been presumed dead? Or was it some new literary phantom?
The prize committee declined to name an author, saying only:
“This work transcends the identity of a single writer. It is a tapestry woven by many voices—by the invisible, the silenced, the forgotten. It is a story that belongs to us all.”
Nair found himself strangely unmoved by the accolade. The prize meant little to a man who had lost track of what was real and what was narrative. Apurva Tandon had become something larger than life—a symbol, a myth, a reckoning of all that had been swept under the rug.
That evening, a knock at the door startled him from his reverie. He wasn’t expecting visitors. He opened the door cautiously.
A young woman stood there. No introductions. No flourish. Just a quiet presence. She wore a charcoal gray saree, her hair tied back simply, her eyes steady but kind. In her hands, she held a small box wrapped in brown paper.
Without a word, she extended it toward him.
Nair took the box, the paper crackling softly in the silence between them.
“What is this?” he asked.
She smiled softly. “Truth.”
He lifted the lid carefully and found inside several pristine, first-edition copies of Burnt Petals—Apurva’s original novel, the manuscript Rajiv Mehta had edited mercilessly, the story the world had never been allowed to see.
“These are the real versions,” she said. “The ones that were buried. The ones that make the noise.”
Nair’s fingers trembled as he traced the embossed letters on the cover. “Why are you giving these to me?”
“Because the story isn’t over,” she replied. “Not for you. Not for anyone. The narrative you chased was only the first draft. Now it’s time to write the sequel.”
Before he could respond, the woman turned and walked away into the rain, her silhouette dissolving into the misty streets. She didn’t look back.
That night, Nair sat at his desk. The manuscript of Ashok Nair: A Case File lay open before him, glowing faintly from his laptop screen. The file had updated itself again. There was a new section: an epilogue.
He read the words slowly, the weight of each sentence settling deep inside him.
“The detective never caught the criminal because there was no criminal.
There was only a woman who wrote herself back to life.
And a man who learned that justice doesn’t always wear a uniform.”
Nair swallowed hard, then read the next lines.
“He didn’t solve the case.
He published it.”
Beneath the epilogue, scrawled in red ink, was the final message:
“You are now the author.”
For hours, Nair stared at the screen. The rain outside had ceased. The city seemed to hold its breath.
He realized then that the story had never been about catching a murderer. It had been about rewriting history, reclaiming voices lost to time and silence, and reshaping what justice could mean in a world that so often dismissed the vulnerable.
He wasn’t just a detective anymore. He was a storyteller.
A custodian of the truth that refused to be silenced.
The following morning, Nair walked into the police headquarters and handed in his official resignation letter. The Chief, DCP Malik, barely glanced up from his papers.
“Why now?” Malik asked.
Nair looked him in the eye, calm and resolute.
“Because some stories need to be told differently. Because I’ve spent too long chasing shadows in a case where the real culprit was silence itself. I have a book to finish.”
Malik shrugged. “The force will miss you.”
Nair smiled faintly. “Maybe. But stories never die. They just wait for someone to listen.”
Days later, the literary circles buzzed with excitement and controversy. Nair’s newly published memoir—The Last Chapter—was receiving critical acclaim. It was part true crime, part confessional, and part manifesto. The lines between investigator and author blurred throughout its pages, weaving a complex narrative about the power of stories and the shadows that haunt them.
Readers from all over the world sent letters, emails, and messages. Some thanked him for shining light on hidden truths; others questioned the reality of the entire saga. But every response reaffirmed one truth: the story had touched a nerve.
And somewhere, perhaps watching quietly from the shadows, Apurva’s voice remained alive—not just as a whisper in the pages of a book, but as a roaring flame that refused to be extinguished.
Her legacy wasn’t the murder that had ignited the search. It was the story she wrote with her absence, the chapters she left behind, and the lives she changed by simply refusing to be forgotten.
Nair closed his eyes and breathed in the quiet of his apartment. A new chapter awaited—one he would write with purpose, passion, and the courage to face whatever truths lay ahead.
Because stories don’t end.
They only wait for the next reader.
And now, the pen was in his hand.
THE END
