Chapter 47
958 Words
"Show us what you have got?", I sipped my cup of hot latte chai and spoke to the officer in front.
After ruminating about my past in my house, we straight away went to the nearest police station. There we were welcomed by Mr. Ma Dong, the inspector of Damyang. He was a short man with a puckered nose and a huge belly bulging from his waistcoat. He looked more of a festive cartoon than the police in charge. We were provided with some refreshments and then I broke out the whole story. He was an attentive listener and he promised to provide all the help that will be needed in solving the crime.
I asked for all the details regarding the blast that took place twenty years ago. We were taken to the archives where a whole lot of dirty grime files were covered with a deep layer of cobwebs stacked in bundles on all the shelves. It was a dimly lit room. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I scanned the room as fast as I could. Stacks of files towering the tall ceiling and even more covering every inch of the shabby old shelves. By the looks of it, they had been all sitting there for quite a while, more and more thrown haphazardly on top of each other like a game of Jenga. It looked like the whole place hadn't been touched for a decade maybe or more.
"You know better than me Michael, about this situation. There was no proper mechanism twenty years ago to update the files or anything. They are all lying here as it was in the back. You have to find it, the one you need."
I nodded. Every police station is just the same. Stacks of files here and there. Dust and dirt accumulated our lives as long as we were in service. The struggle began.
We divided the room into two halves, one for me and another for Jasmine, and began reshuffling the files. Topaz Uncle had already left, for the hotel.
"Michael, what do you think of this Topaz Uncle? Weird name and weird behavior, I must say", said Jasmine from her corner.
I was too thinking the same thing. I may have forgotten details of my family due to the trauma and temporary audio impairment, but how could I forget a whole person’s identity, if he was so close to me?
"You are right. We can't trust anyone, the way things are turning up. It's better to keep an eye upon him."
Files after Files, memos FIR and so many other documents pervaded the entire room. Nothing was sorted, nothing was ever cleaned, everything was piled up. Irritation started to boil inside me. As time passed, my anger started to pent up. Jasmine on the other hand was extremely patient. She carefully sorted out the files according to their years and dug up most of the piles.
It was already evening when we found out mine. An old chewed up a file whose pages were red and brittle. The name Ting on the label was faded. I opened it up. There was a photo of my parents and a summary of the incident that took place on that day. The post mortem reports for both of them said that they died in cylinder blast. Nothing else.
"All this hard work is for nothing", Jasmine grumbled and sat down on the heap.
" Nope", I said. "I have found something else which can be of some help."
-" What? "
-"Let's go from here at first."
While we were talking, suddenly the door opened and inspector Ma Dong entered.
" Did you find what you needed? ", he asked.
I nodded. " Yes, I think I have found something worth investigating."
-" What is it? " His eyes hovered all around us as if to grill out pieces of information from the heaps of useless files of the ancient period. He looked a bit inquisitive about our research. Why? I wondered.
" The post Mortem reports of my family".
-" I am glad you have at least found something relevant for your investigation."
-" Yeah. I guess so. I don’t understand one thing though."
-"What is it? ", he looked a bit puckered.
-" In the report, it is mentioned that they both have died from inhalation of poisonous gases. The names of the gases are mentioned here, which I am not going into detail about. The only thing I remembered was that, during the blast, my dad’s head got severed by the impact and he laid all headless beside my mom who was equally in dismembered shape. How the f**k anyone can inhale any f*****g thing if there is no head attached to the body? "
The inspector looked at me with a wide-eyed expression.
-"Ummm... Michael, I have no idea about these. I wasn’t present at that time. The inspector who collected these reports have died long ago. You can't dig up anything after such a long span of time."
I was confused. Anyone can clearly say that the report was all a bunch of lies. All fake and made up. But why?
Jasmine came up and touched my shoulder.
"Let us go from here. There is nothing left for us to see or know".
I nodded and together we came out of the police station.
"What was it that you mentioned earlier? ", she asked.
" Well, I found an FIR report in that heap too."
-" What FIR? And from whom? "
I pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from my sweater.
" My Mom had written an FIR against Francis and his mother just two days before the blast."
- Writer
