Arjun Mehta
Chapter 1 – The Final Departure
The storm came in without warning, the kind of Mumbai monsoon that split the city into islands of survival. Streets drowned, taxis stalled like dying fish, and yet the lifeline of the city—the suburban trains—kept moving, dragging weary commuters through sheets of rain.
At Churchgate station, the loudspeaker was already crackling about delays, though no one really listened. People had learned to treat delays like background noise, like the endless vendors selling umbrellas at triple their price. But on that night, when the rain lashed glass windows and lightning turned the platforms into photographs, a woman stood at the edge of the crowd, clutching her handbag tightly against her body.
Her name was Ananya Deshmukh, though in the coming days the city would remember her only as “the NGO worker who died on the train.” At that moment, she was just another passenger waiting for the last local bound north, a faint nervousness in her eyes that no one else seemed to notice. She checked her phone again and again, scrolling through messages that had no replies. Once, she dialed a number, listened to the ring, and then cut the call before anyone could answer.
The train screeched into the platform, its carriages smeared with rainwater and graffiti. The crowd surged forward, umbrellas clashing like weapons, elbows jabbing, voices rising in tired anger. Ananya stepped into the women’s compartment, almost relieved that it was nearly empty. Only two other passengers sat inside: an old lady asleep against the window, and a college student with headphones, nodding off.
The train lurched forward. The city outside blurred into streaks of neon and rain.
For the first few minutes, Ananya kept glancing at the doors, as if expecting someone to enter. Then, pulling her dupatta closer around her neck, she exhaled, almost forcing calm into her breath. She didn’t notice the shadow that flickered just beyond the compartment’s grill partition. A man, face hidden beneath a dripping hood, stood silently in the adjoining coach, watching.
By the time the train passed Charni Road, the old lady had woken, muttered something about the rain, and stepped off. The student remained, earphones glowing faint blue.
At Marine Lines, the compartment rattled violently as the train hit a waterlogged track. Ananya reached into her bag and pulled out a small plastic folder, flipping it open. Inside were printouts—photographs, documents, a few maps with red circles drawn in pen. She stared at them intently, lips moving without sound, as if rehearsing a statement she would never get to give.
The man in the adjoining coach shifted.
Ananya looked up suddenly, sensing movement. But when she turned, the coach seemed empty. Rain drummed louder on the roof. The train was speeding now, as if eager to reach the last station.
At Marine Drive, lightning struck close enough to momentarily blind the compartment. When her vision cleared, the student was gone. Ananya froze. She hadn’t even seen him leave. Only the echo of his dangling earphones swayed near the seat.
Her heartbeat quickened. She gathered her papers back into the folder, fumbling. And then—she heard it. A whisper of movement behind the grill partition.
She turned, and for the briefest second, two eyes met hers through the rain-streaked bars. Unblinking, cold, deliberate.
The train roared into Churchgate, brakes screeching against wet rails. Doors slammed open. Ananya clutched her bag and rose to her feet. She meant to run, to vanish into the crowd. But her legs hesitated—just a fraction too long.
The hooded figure stepped into the compartment.
What happened next would remain speculation. CCTV footage would later show the doors closing, the train shunting forward empty, only to return with her body an hour later. No struggle recorded. No scream. Just absence.
By dawn, Ananya Deshmukh was found slumped across the seat, head tilted against the rain-smeared window. Official reports would say drowning—though no one could explain how.
And when Inspector Vikram Khanna arrived at the scene that morning, stepping into the echoing silence of the empty compartment, his first thought was not about murder or suicide. His first thought was how unnaturally quiet a Mumbai local could feel when death had taken a seat.
The city never slept. But someone, somewhere, had found a way to make its trains carry secrets into the dark.
Chapter 2 – The Invisible City
Inspector Vikram Khanna hated the smell of rain-soaked metal. The police station at Marine Lines was full of it that morning—wet boots drying near the entrance, umbrellas dripping into steel buckets, damp files stacked on desks, and the endless sound of water hitting tin roofs. He had spent two decades in uniform, chasing everything from pickpockets to contract killers, but something about monsoon crimes always unsettled him. Rain washed away traces, blurred footprints, drowned evidence. It made killers invisible.
He stood at the window, sipping his bitter cutting chai, when the constable entered.
“Sir, body found in the last local. Churchgate yard. They’re asking for you.”
Khanna set the glass down without finishing. His instinct told him this wouldn’t be routine. He pulled on his raincoat, checked the revolver in his holster—not because he expected trouble, but because rituals mattered—and stepped out into the storm.
The train sat idling at the farthest siding of the yard, rain falling through broken glass into its empty carriages. Railway police were already there, marking the scene with chalk and half-hearted urgency. Khanna ducked under the caution tape and entered the compartment.
The body was still there.
A woman, late twenties or early thirties, draped awkwardly against the seat as if sleep had claimed her mid-journey. Her eyes half-shut, her hair plastered to her face with rainwater. The medical officer was muttering something about “possible drowning.”
Khanna frowned. “Drowning? On a train?”
The officer shrugged. “Lungs full of water. But no external injuries, no signs of struggle. It’s… unusual.”
Khanna crouched beside the body. He had seen enough corpses to know when death made sense and when it didn’t. This didn’t. He noticed her handbag neatly placed at her feet, strap unbroken. Wallet intact. Even jewelry still on her wrists. Not a robbery then. Something else.
He opened the bag, careful not to disturb more than necessary. Inside: a diary, some receipts, a packet of dry biscuits, and a few neatly folded documents sealed in plastic. But her phone was missing.
Khanna looked up at the railway police. “Who brought the train in?”
“Motorman, sir. Says the coach was empty when he parked it. Only saw her when he came back after a smoke.”
“So she wasn’t here when it stopped at Churchgate?”
The constable hesitated. “No CCTV footage of her getting down either. She boarded at Charni Road. After that…” He gestured vaguely, like words were failing him. “She just vanishes until now.”
Khanna stood, running a hand over the cold steel railing. Vanishes. That word would return again and again in this case.
By afternoon, he had a name. Ananya Deshmukh. Age thirty-two. NGO worker. Address: a modest one-bedroom flat in Dadar West. Parents deceased. No siblings. Neighbors said she kept to herself, often working late into the night.
He walked through her flat later that day. Small, tidy, with books stacked on the floor in uneven towers. Newspapers cuttings pinned above the desk—headlines about illegal construction, political scams, land grabs. In the corner, a computer, still running, with half-written emails open. One draft caught his eye:
Subject: URGENT – I have the documents. Meet tomorrow. Do not delay.
No recipient filled in. Just the message, abandoned mid-thought.
Khanna tapped the desk lightly. “What were you chasing, Ms. Deshmukh? And who didn’t want you to arrive?”
That evening, he returned to the station and called in his junior, Sub-Inspector Nair. Fresh-faced, eager, still believing in the nobility of the badge.
“Go through her NGO records. Call their director, staff, anyone who worked with her. I want to know what she was digging into.”
Nair nodded. “Yes, sir. Already started. Word is she was preparing a report against a developer linked to some big names. Land acquisition, shady tenders.”
Khanna’s jaw tightened. Mumbai was a city built on corruption layered like sediment—slums, skyscrapers, bridges, all mortared with bribes and blood. Whenever someone tried to scrape the surface, the earth swallowed them whole.
Nair continued, lowering his voice. “And sir… I checked old files. There were similar cases. Disappearances. Same stretch of track—between Charni Road and Churchgate. All during the monsoon. Four in the last seven years.”
Khanna looked up sharply. “And none solved?”
Nair shook his head. “Closed as missing persons. Or accidents.”
Khanna leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling fan creaking above. A pattern was forming, and patterns were dangerous. They meant someone was playing a game.
That night, long after the station quieted, Khanna stayed behind, poring over photographs of Ananya’s body. Something about her posture nagged at him. Not limp, not chaotic—almost arranged. As if someone had placed her carefully, wanted her to be found.
He remembered her half-closed eyes, the rain-drowned hair. Not a random killing. A message.
The rain hammered on the tin roof again, like the city itself was trying to remind him of its secrets.
Khanna muttered to himself, the words lost in the storm:
“Mumbai hides its dead better than any killer. But this time, we’ll pull the city apart.”
Two days later, he stood on the Marine Lines platform as trains thundered past, carrying thousands home. He watched faces blur—tired, blank, resigned. In that sea of humanity, one death meant nothing. Just another obituary in a city that forgot too quickly.
But Khanna knew better. He lit a cigarette, ignoring the no-smoking sign, and let the smoke drift into the damp air.
Somewhere between these stations, someone was hunting.
And if the city made them invisible, it was his job to drag them back into the light.
Chapter 3 – Echoes of the Past
The city is full of ghosts. They don’t haunt its crumbling bungalows or abandoned mills the way stories suggest; they ride the trains, linger at chai stalls, vanish into floods, their names lost in the speed of Mumbai. Inspector Vikram Khanna had learned that long ago. Still, there were some ghosts the city didn’t let go of easily.
He sat in his cabin late evening, the rain’s hiss against the shutters like static. Files spread before him, yellowing pages of missing-person reports, smudged ink from water-damaged archives. Nair stood nearby, reading from a notepad.
“First case, 2015. Male, age forty, journalist with a local daily. Disappeared while returning home on the last Churchgate train. Family filed missing complaint. Never found.”
Khanna tapped his pen against the desk. “Any history?”
“Was investigating an illegal sand-mining racket. Wrote a piece the day before he vanished.”
Khanna nodded. He didn’t need to hear more. In Mumbai, exposing sand mafias was like walking into the sea with weights tied to your ankles.
Nair flipped the page. “2017. Female, twenty-seven, law intern. Last seen boarding at Charni Road. Body found two weeks later in Vasai creek. Case marked suicide.”
“Was it?” Khanna asked.
Nair hesitated. “Her notes suggest she was working with an NGO on builder scams. Land-grab cases.”
“Suicide doesn’t keep documents in sealed envelopes,” Khanna muttered.
Nair continued. “2020. Male, mid-thirties. RTI activist. Filed dozens of requests on municipal contracts. Neighbors last saw him leaving for Marine Lines station. Never came back.”
Khanna leaned back, staring at the fan. Three cases already echoed the same note. Journalism, law, activism—people digging where the soil was too soft to stand on.
“And 2022?” he asked.
Nair sighed. “College professor. Civic activist. Reportedly had evidence of corruption in a redevelopment project in Girgaum. Disappeared after boarding a late-night train. File closed after a year.”
The inspector rubbed his temples. Each case was a stone dropped into the same dark water, vanishing with barely a ripple. And now, 2025—Ananya Deshmukh.
“Five in ten years,” he said slowly. “Always monsoon. Always the last local. Always connected to something dangerous.”
Nair shifted uneasily. “You think it’s the same hand behind them all, sir?”
Khanna’s eyes narrowed. “If it isn’t, then Mumbai has more than one ghost riding its trains. And that’s worse.”
Later that night, Khanna went to Churchgate yard again. The compartment where Ananya was found was still sealed off. He stepped inside, torch beam slicing through the damp air. He sat on the very seat where her body had been discovered, listening to the hollow silence.
Trains were meant for noise—for hawkers, gossip, quarrels, laughter. This emptiness felt staged. He imagined her there, clutching her bag, watching the stations blur, unaware the city had already marked her departure.
He leaned back, letting the steel vibrate beneath him as another train passed on the adjoining track. The sound was deafening, yet in that moment he thought he heard something else beneath it—an echo, faint, like water rushing where it shouldn’t.
He closed his eyes.
Drowning. On a train.
The doctor’s words rang again. Impossible. Unless… unless the body had been moved.
But then why leave her here, on display?
Because someone wanted her found. Someone wanted to send a message.
Khanna stood, restless. Outside, rain hammered the roof of the shed. He lit a cigarette, ignoring the moisture that instantly clung to his lighter.
“You’re not just another victim, are you?” he murmured. “You’re a pattern.”
The next morning, he met Ananya’s colleague, a wiry man named Sameer. They sat in a cramped NGO office near Girgaum Chowpatty, walls plastered with posters about housing rights. Sameer’s hands shook as he stirred his tea.
“She was scared, Inspector. Last week she told me she’d found something big. Proof of illegal demolition orders, links between a developer and a minister. She said if anything happened, her papers would speak for her.”
“Did she say where she kept them?” Khanna asked.
Sameer shook his head. “Only that she was carrying some with her. She wanted to meet a journalist, pass them on. But she never told me the name.”
Khanna thought of the missing phone. Whoever took it knew exactly what to erase.
Sameer’s eyes darted toward the window as if expecting someone listening. “Sir… you don’t know these people. They can make you vanish like you never existed.”
Khanna smiled grimly. “I know. That’s why I wear this badge.”
Back at the station, he spread the files again. Five names, five lives, five unfinished stories. He pinned their photographs on a corkboard, drawing lines between them with a red marker. Rain outside blurred the streetlights into liquid halos, like the city itself was weeping.
Journalist. Lawyer. Activist. Professor. NGO worker.
Khanna stepped back, studying the pattern. Not random. Systematic. Someone—or something—had been cleaning the city’s conscience for years. Using the local trains as their corridor of erasure.
Nair entered just then, holding a thin file. “Sir, I traced one more thing. In every case, the victim’s last known journey was on a late-night local that passed between Marine Lines and Churchgate. That stretch doesn’t have functioning CCTV inside the coaches. And… there are rumors among railway staff.”
Khanna raised an eyebrow. “What rumors?”
“That sometimes, at night, people see shadows in the last compartments. Men who don’t look like passengers. They say it’s bad luck to board the last local in monsoon if you’re traveling alone.”
Khanna smirked. “Superstition is how this city explains fear. But fear always has a hand behind it.”
He turned back to the board, eyes narrowing.
Five ghosts riding the last local.
And if he didn’t stop them, there would be a sixth.
That night, when the city drowned again in sheets of rain, Khanna drove slowly through Marine Drive. The sea was angry, waves crashing over the promenade, flooding the roads. Locals huddled under umbrellas, taxis stalled midstream, neon signs flickered.
The inspector parked near Churchgate, watching a last local thunder out into the dark. He imagined the eyes that might be watching from its shadowed coaches.
“Echoes of the past,” he muttered. “But this time, we’ll answer.”
Chapter 4 – Tracks of Power
The railway police had always been a strange breed, half watchdogs, half janitors of the city’s arteries. They worked in shadows, more familiar with drunks and pickpockets than murder. Inspector Vikram Khanna knew most of them by face if not by name, a fraternity bound by the monotony of running trains. But now their silence was gnawing at him.
On a drenched Tuesday morning, he stood in the dim staff quarters behind Churchgate station, rain dripping from rusted tin roofs, the walls blackened with decades of coal soot and paan stains. A line of motormen and guards sat before him, shifting uneasily under the inspector’s gaze.
Khanna tapped the file in his hand. “Five cases. Five people who boarded your trains and never returned. And every time, nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. You all expect me to believe the city’s busiest network suddenly goes blind after midnight?”
A heavy silence. Some eyes lowered, others darted nervously. Finally, an older guard, face furrowed from years of night duty, spoke.
“Saab… these things, they don’t happen in daylight. Last local is different. Less passengers, more shadows. People look away. Nobody wants to remember what they saw.”
Khanna’s tone sharpened. “And what did you see?”
The man licked his lips, voice low. “Marine Lines siding… maybe three years ago. I was closing the coach doors when I saw… two men dragging something heavy onto the platform. Wrapped in a sheet. It looked like…” He hesitated. “…like a body. But then someone from higher up called me away. Next day, I was told to keep my mouth shut. My transfer request was approved within a week.”
Khanna’s eyes hardened. “Who told you to shut up?”
The guard shook his head violently. “Saab, please. I have children. They watch everything.”
Khanna leaned back, letting the words settle. Fear clung to these men more than the dampness of the monsoon. Someone powerful enough to silence an entire section of railway staff.
He dismissed them, then turned to Nair, who had been scribbling notes. “Trace his transfer. Find out who signed it. Paper trails are like footprints. Even in this city, they leave marks.”
Nair nodded, eyes wide. “Yes, sir.”
Later that afternoon, Khanna visited the motorman who had driven the last train carrying Ananya. A wiry man named Ganesh, with eyes ringed from sleepless nights. His quarters near Parel smelled of kerosene and fried fish.
“I drove that train same as every day,” Ganesh insisted, rubbing his hands together. “From Borivali to Churchgate. Nothing unusual. Rain was heavy, but we reached on time.”
Khanna’s gaze didn’t waver. “And when you parked it?”
“I went for a smoke. Ten minutes only. Came back, she was there. Dead. Like she had been sleeping.”
Khanna leaned closer. “And you didn’t see anyone leave the coach? No one suspicious? No one waiting?”
Ganesh’s throat bobbed. “Saab, you know how it is. We don’t look too closely. Eyes invite trouble. Better to drive, park, forget.”
Khanna exhaled slowly. “Forgetfulness is how killers survive. You remember now, or you’ll carry more than smoke in your lungs.”
The motorman’s hands trembled. “There was… a man. Hooded. Standing near the partition grill between coaches. When I looked again, he was gone. I thought maybe he slipped off at Marine Lines. But… maybe not.”
The inspector’s jaw tightened. Confirmation of the shadow he already suspected.
That evening, Khanna stood on the Marine Lines platform himself. The storm had eased, leaving the city washed and gleaming, puddles reflecting neon. He walked the stretch of track where the guard had mentioned seeing men drag a body. His boots splashed through water, rats scurried into drains.
It was a blind spot: no CCTV, no public presence after midnight. The roar of the sea nearby masked sound, and the dim lamps flickered like half-dead fireflies. A perfect corridor for disappearance.
Khanna lit a cigarette, eyes scanning the rails. He imagined the scene—two men pulling a body wrapped in a sheet, sliding it into waiting vans, the city too drowned in rain to notice. The idea chilled him not for its brutality but for its efficiency. Mumbai wasn’t careless—it was deliberate.
Behind him, Nair spoke. “Sir, I pulled some files. Transfer orders, night-shift postings… they all trace back to one contractor.”
Khanna turned. “Which one?”
“Arnav Constructions. Handles railway maintenance for this stretch. Their name comes up in multiple civic tenders too.”
Khanna smiled coldly. “Tracks of power. And power always builds its house on other people’s bones.”
The next day, he arranged a discreet meeting with a contact in the Anti-Corruption Bureau. A tired-looking officer named Pinto met him in a café near CST, sipping tea with nervous glances around.
“Arnav Constructions,” Pinto said under his breath. “Front for a syndicate. Money laundering, land deals, political donations. And if half the whispers are true… disposal.”
“Disposal?” Khanna asked.
Pinto’s eyes flicked to the street. “Bodies, Vikram. They say the trains aren’t just for carrying passengers. They’re for carrying silence. You didn’t hear this from me.”
Khanna leaned back, the weight of the revelation pressing down. A syndicate using the city’s lifeline for more than transport. Ananya’s documents must have been a direct threat.
“Why hasn’t anyone touched them?” he asked.
Pinto smirked bitterly. “Because their money builds bridges and wins elections. You think one inspector can fight a syndicate tied to half the Assembly?”
Khanna stubbed his cigarette into the saucer. “One inspector can try.”
That night, he returned to his flat in Andheri, rain still tapping like restless fingers on the windows. He poured himself a drink, staring at the case board he’d carried home. Photographs of the victims, maps of the tracks, names of companies. Red strings connecting them like veins in a diseased heart.
He thought of Ananya, clutching her documents, boarding the train with determination only to vanish into statistics. He thought of the journalist, the activist, the professor. All erased, their stories smothered under concrete towers and political speeches.
The city was a machine. And someone had learned to feed it people.
Khanna took a long sip, then dialed Nair.
“Get me every file on Arnav Constructions. Land records, contracts, tax filings. I don’t care if you have to dig through archives with a spade. And keep your mouth shut—we’re being watched.”
“Yes, sir,” Nair’s voice crackled.
Khanna stared out at the rain-slick skyline, where towers glittered above the drowned streets. He knew the risks. But he also knew this: the tracks of power ran both ways. They could silence, but they could also betray.
And if someone was using the last local as a killing ground, then Vikram Khanna would ride it himself until the shadows revealed their face.
Chapter 5 – Whispers in Dharavi
The rain had turned Dharavi’s narrow lanes into streams of sludge, carrying plastic wrappers, betel spit, and stray sandals into choking drains. But life here never stopped. The workshops still hammered tin into toys, women still stirred vats of dye that steamed against the monsoon air, children still darted barefoot between puddles as if the flood was a playground. Dharavi had its own rhythm, and outsiders only came here when they had to.
Inspector Vikram Khanna stepped out of his jeep at the edge of 90 Feet Road, pulling his raincoat tighter. Nair followed, notebook tucked beneath his arm, eyes wide. For him, Dharavi was a world seen only in headlines and movies. For Khanna, it was memory. He had worked a case here years ago, chasing a gang of counterfeiters through these twisting alleys. The place had changed little—walls scarred with posters, roofs patched with blue tarpaulin, and an endless smell of damp cloth and frying oil.
“This is where her NGO worked,” Khanna said, pointing to a faded sign that read Shakti Women’s Collective. A narrow staircase led to a second-floor office above a tailoring shop. Inside, a single tube-light flickered, casting pale light on desks piled with files.
A young woman in a salwar-kameez looked up from her paperwork as they entered. “Police?” she asked nervously.
“Inspector Khanna,” he introduced himself. “We’re looking into Ananya Deshmukh.”
The woman’s expression clouded. “Didi was… she was brave. Maybe too brave.”
Khanna pulled up a chair. “Tell me.”
“She came here two weeks ago with documents. Proof that a builder bribed officials to clear slum demolitions. Families here were thrown out without notice. Some were beaten. She promised she would take it to the press.”
“And did she?”
The woman shook her head. “She kept delaying. Said she needed to confirm. Then last week, she told me she had a meeting arranged with a journalist. After that, I never saw her.”
Khanna leaned forward. “Did she mention names? Builders? Politicians?”
The woman hesitated. Then whispered, “Arnav Constructions. Everyone here knows their men. They send goondas when people refuse to vacate. And… there’s talk of bigger people behind them. People you can’t touch.”
Khanna’s jaw tightened. The same name again. He thanked her and left a card. But as he and Nair stepped back into the alley, he noticed movement—a group of men loitering near a paan stall, watching too closely.
They made their way deeper into Dharavi, questioning families displaced by demolitions. Stories poured out—bulldozers arriving at dawn, houses torn down while belongings were still inside, threats muttered in alleys. Everyone spoke of Arnav Constructions like a storm no one could stop.
One old man grabbed Khanna’s sleeve. “Sahab, they don’t fear the law. Police eat from their hand. You dig too deep, you’ll drown.”
Khanna patted his shoulder. “The sea may drown me, but it also spits up bodies. Remember that.”
By late afternoon, the rain had slowed. Khanna and Nair stopped at a roadside stall for tea. The boy served them in chipped glass tumblers, steam fogging the inspector’s spectacles. He was mid-sip when he noticed the silence. The crowd had thinned. The men at the paan stall were gone.
Then came the sound—a low revving of motorcycles.
Three bikes roared into the lane, splashing mud. Riders in black raincoats, faces half-hidden by scarves. One carried a metal rod. Another, a chain. They slowed as they approached, engines growling like a warning.
Nair froze. “Sir—”
Khanna was already moving. He grabbed Nair by the arm and shoved him against the tea stall’s wall just as the first bike swerved close, the rider swinging the rod. It whistled past Khanna’s head, smashing into the tin shutter with a deafening clang.
The inspector pivoted, his boot slamming into the bike’s rear wheel. The rider lost balance, skidding into a puddle. The second bike lunged, chain swinging. Khanna ducked, grabbed a chair from the stall, and flung it at the rider. The bike toppled sideways, sparks flying as metal scraped against wet concrete.
The third didn’t slow. The rider aimed straight for him, engine screaming. Khanna braced, ready to dive, when suddenly the boy from the stall hurled a bucket of boiling tea across the rider’s visor. The man screamed, swerving violently. The bike clipped a wall and crashed, skidding in a spray of sparks.
For a moment, the lane was chaos—bikes overturned, engines hissing in water, men scrambling. Then, as quickly as they came, the attackers fled into side alleys, limping, cursing.
Khanna stood breathing heavily, mud streaked across his coat. He looked at Nair, pale but unhurt.
“They’re watching us,” Nair said, voice shaking.
“They’re warning us,” Khanna corrected grimly. “And warnings mean we’re close.”
He turned to the tea boy, who stood trembling, bucket still in hand. Khanna pressed a hundred-rupee note into his palm. “For your courage. Remember—you saw nothing.”
The boy nodded rapidly.
Back in the jeep, Nair’s hands still shook as he scribbled notes. “Sir, this was an attack. They’re scared.”
Khanna lit a cigarette, rain dripping off his brow. “Scared men make mistakes. We’ll be there when they do.”
As they drove out of Dharavi, Khanna glanced in the rearview mirror. The alleys receded, swallowing their secrets. But one thing was clear: Ananya had struck a nerve. And the syndicate had noticed anyone who dared trace her footsteps.
The inspector muttered under his breath, almost to himself:
“You can silence a woman. You can silence five. But you can’t silence a city forever.”
The rain began again, harder this time, as if the sky itself wanted to drown Mumbai.
Khanna tightened his grip on the wheel. He knew the storm outside was nothing compared to the one waiting inside the city’s veins.
And somewhere between Churchgate and Charni Road, the last local was still carrying its ghosts.
Chapter 6 – The Syndicate
The rain refused to stop. It clung to the city like a fever, soaking billboards, stalling traffic, beating down glass towers and tin roofs alike. To Inspector Vikram Khanna, the monsoon was more than weather—it was camouflage. People disappeared more easily in floods. Files went missing. Blood washed away into drains.
And yet, under the roar of the season, another rhythm pulsed—the machinery of money. Mumbai’s syndicates had always worked that way, invisible but constant, like the hum of a train before it arrived.
Khanna sat at his desk, the corkboard before him crowded with photographs, maps, and red-ink circles. In the center: Arnav Constructions. He had underlined the name twice, hard enough to tear the paper.
Nair entered with a stack of files, damp at the edges. “Sir, I dug through municipal records like you asked. Land tenders, railway contracts, redevelopment deals. Arnav Constructions shows up everywhere.”
Khanna gestured impatiently. “Show me.”
Nair spread the files out. “They started small fifteen years ago. Road repair contracts. Then suddenly, 2012 onwards, they explode. Railway siding maintenance. Slum redevelopment. Even Metro station projects. Always winning bids—sometimes at prices higher than competitors. Which means… someone was pulling strings.”
Khanna leaned forward, scanning the names signed on approvals. Politicians, commissioners, bureaucrats. A carousel of power. But the company itself remained oddly faceless—directors changed every year, shareholders hidden in shell firms.
Nair tapped a page. “And look here. They’re linked to a logistics firm that controls container transport from Nhava Sheva port. That firm’s been flagged twice for suspicious activity—contraband smuggling, money laundering. Both cases vanished before trial.”
Khanna exhaled slowly. “A construction company that builds stations, maintains tracks, and moves containers. Convenient if you want to use trains for something other than passengers.”
Nair’s eyes widened. “Sir, you think they’re using the railway to move bodies?”
Khanna didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
That evening, Khanna drove across town to a crumbling Irani café in Byculla. His contact, an old informer named Yusuf, was already waiting, hunched over a saucer of chai. Yusuf had been a thief in his youth, a fixer later, and now survived by trading whispers for cash.
“You’re playing with fire, saab,” Yusuf said the moment Khanna sat. “Arnav Constructions isn’t just a company. It’s a door. Behind it is something bigger. They call it The Syndicate.”
Khanna kept his voice calm. “Names.”
Yusuf sipped slowly. “No names that matter. Fronts, shadows. Politicians who smile on TV, businessmen who cut ribbons. But the real ones? They don’t show their faces. They don’t need to. They build towers with one hand and dig graves with the other.”
Khanna slid a packet of notes across the table. “Rumors don’t help me, Yusuf. I need links. Something concrete.”
Yusuf hesitated, then leaned closer. “There’s a ledger. Kept by one of their accountants. Every payoff, every ghost payment for demolitions, every hand that took money. Last I heard, it was stored in a warehouse near Sewri docks. Hidden among shipment records. If you find that… you’ll find their spine.”
Khanna’s eyes narrowed. A ledger. Paper evidence. In a world where money flowed through invisible accounts, such a book was both a weakness and a weapon.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
Yusuf looked at the rain through the window. “Because sometimes ghosts whisper too loudly. People are saying the last local has become a coffin. That frightens even the syndicate’s allies. Balance must be restored.”
Before Khanna could press further, Yusuf stood abruptly. “Careful, saab. They already know you’re looking. The tea in Dharavi was just a warning. Next time, it will be bullets.”
He left, melting into the rain.
Two nights later, Khanna and Nair stood outside the Sewri warehouse. Trucks lined the docks, engines idling in the dark. Sodium lights flickered on oil-slick pavement.
“Sir, we should wait for a warrant,” Nair whispered.
Khanna shook his head. “By the time paperwork arrives, the book will vanish. We go in now.”
They slipped inside through a side door, torches sweeping over rows of crates. The smell of salt and rust filled the air. In a corner office, file cabinets stood stacked to the ceiling.
Khanna yanked drawers open, flipping through papers. Shipping manifests. Port clearances. Receipts. Then—tucked behind a ledger of cement deliveries—something heavier. A thick notebook, leather-bound.
He opened it.
Page after page, scrawled entries. Cash amounts. Dates. Names disguised as initials. But Khanna recognized some of them—corporators, railway officers, even an MLA. Alongside, cryptic notes: Marine Lines – drop confirmed. Last local – safe transit. Ananya – pending.
His stomach clenched. The ledger wasn’t rumor. It was a blueprint of murder disguised as civic work.
“Sir,” Nair whispered sharply. “We need to leave. Now.”
Because outside, footsteps echoed. Shadows moved across the high windows.
Khanna stuffed the ledger under his coat. “Back door,” he hissed.
They slipped into the rain, just as a group of men entered the warehouse with torches. Voices rose in anger. A gunshot cracked, echoing. Khanna and Nair ran, water splashing up their legs, bullets sparking against containers.
They reached the jeep, engines roaring to life. As they sped away, Khanna glanced back at the warehouse shrinking in the storm.
He clutched the ledger tight. Proof. Dangerous proof.
At the station, hours later, he flipped through the book again. Each line was damning. Ananya’s name marked among payments unsettled him most—it meant they had identified her as a target, logged her death like another transaction.
“This city isn’t being cleaned,” he muttered. “It’s being managed. By them. Like disease management. Keep it spreading, keep it profitable, silence the symptoms.”
Nair asked quietly, “What do we do, sir?”
Khanna looked at him, eyes hard. “We use it. But carefully. Because once they know we have this, they won’t stop until we’re also entries in the ledger.”
That night, Khanna barely slept. The sound of trains filled his dreams, coaches rattling endlessly through flooded tunnels. In every compartment, shadows waited. And on each seat sat a face from his board—the journalist, the activist, the professor, Ananya—all staring at him silently.
When he woke, the ledger lay open on his table. The last line circled in red ink: Final disposal – Churchgate sector.
The handwriting was fresh.
Khanna’s chest tightened. Someone had written this after Ananya. Which meant the next victim had already been chosen.
And the last local would ride again.
Chapter 7 – The Watchers
Mumbai’s mornings were deceptive. The rain-washed streets sparkled under pale sunlight, hawkers shouted at commuters, and the trains rattled as if nothing sinister had ever touched their steel. But Inspector Vikram Khanna had lived long enough in this city to know better. Mumbai wore its normalcy like a mask—and behind it, someone was always watching.
He noticed it first outside his Andheri flat. A white WagonR parked across the street, engine off, windows tinted. He had seen the same car two days ago near Marine Lines station, again yesterday trailing his jeep through Parel. Coincidence, perhaps. But in Mumbai, coincidence was often a luxury.
Nair confirmed his unease later that morning. “Sir, two men were outside the station gate yesterday evening. Pretending to sell umbrellas. They didn’t approach anyone, just kept looking toward your cabin.”
Khanna exhaled smoke through his nostrils. “The Syndicate has long arms. Now they want me to know I’m on their list.”
He tapped ash into his tray, eyes hard. “Good. Fear cuts both ways.”
The ledger lay locked in his drawer, but even in its absence he felt its weight. Each name in it was a noose around powerful necks. And if they suspected he had it, his life expectancy had shortened considerably.
“Sir,” Nair said cautiously, “should we move the book to ACB custody? At least it will be safe there.”
Khanna shook his head. “No. Files vanish faster in government vaults than in gutters. Here, I know where it is. Here, I can guard it.”
By noon, his phone buzzed with a number he recognized—Rafiq, an old informer from the underworld. Rafiq rarely called unless the ground was burning underfoot.
“Inspector,” Rafiq’s voice was hurried, tense, “they’re talking about you. In the bars, in the docks. Word is, you’ve stolen something of theirs. They want it back.”
Khanna didn’t bother denying. “Then they’ll have to kill me to get it.”
Silence on the line. Then Rafiq whispered: “They’ve already chosen someone else. Another name for the last local. Tonight.”
“Who?”
But the line went dead.
That evening, Khanna and Nair traced Rafiq’s usual haunts—seedy bars near Dongri, gambling dens in Nagpada—but he was nowhere. By the time they reached his rented room in Byculla, the door was ajar, the smell of damp plaster filling the air.
Inside: overturned chair, papers scattered, no Rafiq. Only one thing left behind, scrawled in chalk across the cracked wall:
“The last local is the last warning.”
Nair swallowed hard. “Sir, this is a message.”
Khanna stared at the words, his fists tightening. Not just a warning. A signature.
“They took him,” he muttered. “And they want me to know.”
On the way back, Khanna’s jeep was followed again—the same white WagonR, headlights dim in the drizzle. He didn’t mention it to Nair, didn’t slow down, just drove steadily toward the station. At the last signal before Marine Drive, he pulled the wheel sharply, cutting into a one-way lane. The WagonR hesitated, then reversed hastily into traffic and vanished.
“They’re getting bold,” Nair said.
“No,” Khanna corrected, “they’re getting careless. And that’s when we strike.”
At night, Khanna returned to Churchgate yard. The last local was already idling, coaches empty, rain dripping from their metal skins. He boarded, moving from compartment to compartment, torch sweeping over damp seats. He imagined the victims sitting there in silence, waiting for someone to erase them.
At Marine Lines, he stood by the window, watching waves slam the promenade. He lit a cigarette, the smoke curling into the humid air. Somewhere in this very stretch, Rafiq had been swallowed. Somewhere in this corridor, the Syndicate’s watchers worked unseen.
He whispered into the night, as if speaking directly to them:
“You’re watching me. But I’m watching you too.”
When he returned home past midnight, the envelope was already waiting. Slipped under his door, no footprints in the hall. Inside: a single photograph.
Ananya Deshmukh, alive, taken days before her death. Sitting at a café, folder in her hands, looking over her shoulder as if she knew the picture was being taken. On the back, a message in neat black ink:
“You can’t save them all, Inspector. But you can choose whether you want to join them.”
Khanna crushed the photo in his hand, heart pounding.
The watchers weren’t just following him anymore. They were inside his life, one step ahead, reminding him that every move was under surveillance.
But as he stared at the crumpled paper, one thought cut through the fear like steel:
If they wanted him to back off, it meant he was close.
Very close.
Chapter 8 – Between the Rails
The city’s heartbeat slowed after midnight. Traffic thinned, shop shutters groaned closed, and the endless tide of commuters ebbed away. But on the tracks, the trains still moved—fewer, slower, lonelier. To Inspector Vikram Khanna, it felt like standing inside a breathing beast, hearing its pulse weaken but never die.
Tonight, he wasn’t a passenger. He was bait.
The plan was simple in theory and suicidal in practice. Khanna would ride the last local from Churchgate to Borivali, alone in one compartment, while Nair and a handful of trusted officers spread themselves across adjoining coaches. Others would be stationed at Marine Lines and Charni Road, ready to intercept. If the Syndicate used this stretch as their corridor of disposal, then tonight, Khanna wanted to see it with his own eyes.
The problem was trust. Too many uniforms in Mumbai answered to money instead of law. So Khanna chose his team carefully—men who owed him favors from old cases, men whose loyalty was bound by scars, not salaries. Even so, he told them little. The less they knew, the less they could betray.
At 12:05 a.m., the train screeched out of Churchgate. The coaches rattled, neon lights flickering inside. Khanna sat by the window, coat collar high, revolver tucked beneath his shirt. The compartment was empty, except for shadows.
At Charni Road, the train slowed. Doors clanged open, but no one boarded. Khanna glanced across the partition grill—empty coach. Or almost. For a moment, he thought he saw movement. A figure shifting at the far end. Then the train lurched forward again, and the shadow melted.
Rain lashed harder, streaking the glass.
Khanna pressed the radio at his belt. “All units, report.”
“Marine Lines clear,” came a whisper.
“Grant Road clear.”
“Charni side clear.”
Yet the silence between voices unnerved him. He knew the Syndicate wouldn’t make mistakes easily. If they were here tonight, they were already watching him.
By the time the train screeched into Marine Lines, the tension had thickened. The compartment lights flickered, dimmed, then steadied. Khanna’s pulse quickened. Power failures were common in the monsoon—but timing was everything.
He stood, hand on his revolver. The station platform outside was deserted, lamps casting yellow pools on wet concrete. Then, as the doors slid shut, he heard it.
A scrape. Metal on metal. Beneath his feet.
Khanna crouched, torch beam stabbing the floor. The sound wasn’t inside the coach. It was under it.
His eyes widened. The undercarriage.
The realization hit like a blow. The Syndicate didn’t need to risk dragging bodies through platforms or past guards. They had carved out hiding places beneath the carriages themselves—false compartments welded into steel. A perfect coffin on wheels. The city’s lifeline turned into its graveyard.
Khanna radioed urgently. “Unit Three, check the undercarriage at the next stop. Do not engage without cover.”
But before the reply came, the compartment door slid open.
A man in a hood stepped in.
Khanna drew his revolver instantly, but the man raised his hands, smiling faintly. Not a killer. Not yet. His eyes glittered with something colder.
“Inspector,” the man said softly, voice muffled by rain, “you shouldn’t be here.”
Khanna kept the barrel trained on him. “Who are you?”
“A messenger,” the man replied. “The Syndicate doesn’t want your death. Not yet. But if you continue—”
“Rafiq?” Khanna interrupted sharply.
The man’s smile flickered. “Gone. Like the others.”
Khanna’s jaw tightened. “Then you can join him.”
But before he could act, the lights flickered again—and the man lunged, slamming his shoulder into Khanna. The revolver clattered to the floor. They grappled, boots slipping on wet steel. Khanna’s fist connected with the man’s jaw, the crack sharp in the echoing compartment.
The train thundered through the dark, neither man yielding. Finally, Khanna slammed him against the partition, breath ragged. “Who gives the orders?”
The man spat blood, grinning. “You already know. The last local doesn’t belong to you anymore, Inspector. It belongs to us.”
Then—before Khanna could stop him—he hurled himself backward through the open door.
Khanna lunged, but the man was gone, swallowed by the rushing night.
At Grant Road, Khanna regrouped with Nair. The younger officer’s face was pale. “Sir, we checked the undercarriage. You were right. False compartments welded beneath. Big enough for… for bodies.”
Khanna lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “They’ve been hiding their dead in plain sight. The city rides above coffins every night and never notices.”
Nair whispered, “And now they know we know.”
Khanna exhaled smoke, watching it curl into the damp air. “Good. Let them know. Because the next time the last local runs, it won’t carry their silence. It will carry their confession.”
Later, as the train rattled toward Borivali, Khanna sat in silence, revolver back in his grip, mind racing. The Syndicate wasn’t invincible. They had a system. Systems could be broken.
But the hooded man’s words haunted him: “The last local doesn’t belong to you anymore.”
It meant control. Ownership. The trains were more than transport—they were territory. And Khanna had just trespassed.
When he finally stepped off at Borivali, the dawn sky was bleeding gray over the wet city. He lit another cigarette, his reflection wavering in the rain-slick platform.
The last local had revealed its secret. But the Syndicate had revealed something else too: they were ready to fight back, and they were everywhere.
And if he misstepped now, the city wouldn’t just bury its ghosts in steel coffins. It would bury him too.
Chapter 9 – The Power Play
Power in Mumbai never announced itself loudly. It whispered in corridors, appeared in land tenders, and rode black SUVs with tinted glass. Inspector Vikram Khanna had fought thieves, killers, even terrorists, but the most dangerous enemy was always the one sitting behind polished desks with clean hands. The Syndicate didn’t need guns in alleys; it had influence in boardrooms.
And this morning, Khanna was walking into one.
The lobby of Arnav Constructions in Lower Parel gleamed with marble and glass. A waterfall installation gurgled softly behind the reception. The place reeked of legitimacy, the kind built with layers of blood scrubbed invisible. Khanna’s boots left wet prints on the floor as he strode past the receptionist, flashing his badge.
“Inspector, you can’t just—” she began, but he ignored her.
The elevator doors opened with a hiss, and soon he was stepping into the top floor, where glass walls framed the rain-drowned skyline. At the far end, a man in a tailored suit waited—Rajiv Malhotra, chairman of Arnav Constructions. Smooth-faced, hair slicked back, smile rehearsed.
“Inspector Khanna,” Malhotra said warmly, as if greeting a guest instead of an intruder. “I’ve heard of your… persistence. What brings you to my humble office?”
Khanna didn’t bother with courtesy. He dropped the ledger onto Malhotra’s glass desk. The thud echoed.
Malhotra’s eyes flicked to the book, but his smile never faltered. “Old files? You should be careful, Inspector. Paper can mislead.”
“Not this paper,” Khanna said coldly. “This ledger lists payments. Payoffs. Disposals. Even Ananya Deshmukh’s name. You’ve been using the railways to move your dead. You’ve turned Mumbai’s lifeline into a morgue.”
Malhotra chuckled softly, pouring himself a drink from a crystal decanter. “You make it sound poetic. Inspector, this city doesn’t run on morality. It runs on management. We manage space. People. Problems. Your friend Ms. Deshmukh—she was a problem. She didn’t understand that.”
Khanna’s knuckles whitened. “She was a citizen. Not a statistic in your balance sheet.”
Malhotra sipped, unconcerned. “And you, Inspector, are a brave man. But bravery without position is suicide. Do you really think one officer can bring down an empire that feeds ministers, builders, even your own seniors?”
Khanna leaned closer, eyes burning. “Empires burn faster than they rise, Malhotra. And I’ll light the match.”
For the first time, Malhotra’s smile wavered. Just a flicker. Enough.
Khanna turned and walked out, the ledger under his arm.
By the time he returned to the station, the retaliation had begun.
A courier delivered a sealed envelope from police headquarters. Inside: an official suspension order. Reason—misconduct, unauthorized investigation, and jeopardizing public confidence. Effective immediately.
Nair stormed into the cabin, waving a copy of the order. “Sir, this is madness! They’re cutting you off.”
Khanna lit a cigarette calmly. “Expected. When you dig too close to the roots, the tree shakes.”
“But sir—without authority, without backup—”
Khanna exhaled smoke slowly. “Authority is paperwork. Power is proof. And we still have proof.”
He tapped the ledger.
That night, sitting in his darkened flat, Khanna felt the walls closing in. Every phone call could be tapped. Every shadow outside could be a watcher. He poured himself a drink, staring at the city lights shimmering in puddles below.
Suspension was supposed to silence him, isolate him. Instead, it sharpened him. He no longer had to answer to chains of command. He was free to move, free to strike.
But freedom also meant exposure. And he knew the Syndicate wouldn’t wait long.
The phone rang. An unknown number. Khanna let it buzz twice before answering.
“Inspector,” a voice said smoothly—it was Malhotra. “You are a man of conviction. I respect that. But conviction without compromise is dangerous. Walk away, and we can forget this unpleasantness.”
Khanna’s tone was ice. “And if I don’t?”
Silence for a beat. Then Malhotra’s voice turned colder. “Then you’ll be riding the last local yourself. One-way ticket.”
The line clicked dead.
Khanna poured another drink but didn’t touch it. Instead, he stared at the revolver on his table, the barrel catching the dim light. He thought of Ananya, of the chalk message left in Rafiq’s room, of the hooded man who had thrown himself off the train.
The Syndicate thought suspension made him weak. They didn’t realize it made him untethered.
He whispered to himself, a vow carried by the hum of trains outside:
“The last ride won’t be mine. It will be yours.”
Chapter 10 – The Last Ride
Mumbai’s sky split open that night. Rain hammered the city with such fury that even Marine Drive seemed to vanish into the sea. Streetlights flickered, horns blared from stranded taxis, and the tracks shone silver in the storm. But one train would still run. The last local always ran.
And Inspector Vikram Khanna was waiting for it.
Suspended, stripped of authority, with half the city baying for his silence—he had nothing left but resolve. The Syndicate had turned the lifeline of Mumbai into its private hearse. Tonight, he would either stop them or become their final passenger.
He boarded at Churchgate at 12:05 a.m., revolver at his side, ledger tucked inside his coat. The compartment was empty, save for shadows flickering under yellow lights. Outside, Nair and the few loyal officers he trusted spread across platforms and adjoining coaches.
“Stay sharp,” Khanna told them on the radio. “They won’t come gently. Tonight they’ll want spectacle.”
The train jerked forward, wheels screaming on wet steel. The city blurred past, neon drowning in rain.
At Charni Road, doors hissed open. For a moment, no one entered. Then three men in raincoats stepped in, dripping water onto the floor. They spread out deliberately—one near the door, one by the partition, one pretending to check his phone.
Khanna’s hand tightened on his revolver. He didn’t move. Neither did they. The compartment filled with the electric silence of a duel unspoken.
The train lurched again.
At Marine Lines, the trap was sprung.
The lights cut out. Darkness swallowed the coach, broken only by lightning slicing the sky. Khanna spun, revolver raised. He heard footsteps, fast, closing in. A blow glanced his shoulder—metal pipe. He fired once, the flash illuminating grim faces, but they kept coming.
The fight exploded in the dark. Fists, chains, the crack of steel against bone. Khanna moved like an animal cornered, each punch born of rage, each shot deafening in the confined space. One man went down, screaming. Another tried to grab the ledger from his coat—Khanna slammed his head against the grill until he collapsed.
Then came the voice. Calm. Mocking.
“Inspector.”
The lights flickered back. At the far end stood Rajiv Malhotra, immaculate even in the storm, flanked by two more men. His smile cut through the chaos.
“You could have walked away,” Malhotra said. “But you chose martyrdom.”
Khanna raised the ledger high. “This book ends you. Every payoff, every body, every ghost your Syndicate buried—it’s all here. And tonight, the city will see it.”
Malhotra chuckled. “Do you think Mumbai cares for ledgers? People disappear every day. The city forgets by morning. You’ll just be another corpse in the flood.”
Khanna smirked. “Not if they’re watching.”
He reached for the tiny transmitter pinned inside his coat. Unseen, he had connected it before boarding. The entire operation—voices, threats, even Malhotra’s smug confession—was being broadcast live to a secured channel, relayed by Nair to a dozen journalists waiting online.
Malhotra froze, realization dawning.
Khanna’s voice rang in the rattling coach. “You turned the last local into a coffin. Tonight, it carries your truth instead.”
The Syndicate men lunged. The compartment became a battlefield—gunshots, fists, screams echoing against steel. Khanna fought like a man with nothing left to lose. One attacker swung a chain—Khanna ducked, fired, the man fell. Another tried to wrench the revolver free; Khanna slammed him into the glass window, which shattered, rain and wind exploding inside.
Malhotra, eyes wild now, tried to slip out the far door. Khanna spotted him, fired a warning shot that sparked inches from his head. “Sit down, Malhotra. The ride isn’t over.”
By the time the train screeched into Borivali, it was over. Three Syndicate men were sprawled unconscious or dead. Nair and his team stormed the coach, guns raised, eyes wide at the carnage.
Khanna stood in the center, coat torn, blood streaking his temple, ledger still in hand. Malhotra sat against the wall, his suit soaked, his mask of power shattered.
“It’s all live,” Khanna rasped. “Every word. The city knows.”
Malhotra glared, but for once, he had no reply.
Hours later, dawn broke over Mumbai. The news cycle roared—headlines screamed about The Last Local Syndicate, about bodies hidden beneath trains, about Malhotra’s arrest. Footage from the sting flooded screens: his words, his threats, his downfall.
The city buzzed with outrage, then shock, then the familiar shrug of survival. But this time, something was different. For once, ghosts had names.
Khanna watched the sunrise from Marine Drive, cigarette burning between his fingers. His suspension still stood. His future in uniform was uncertain. But none of that mattered.
He had won—for now.
The waves crashed, trains thundered past, the city stirred. And Khanna whispered to himself, watching the horizon blur into light:
“Mumbai never sleeps. Neither will I.”
End
