When Nihar Ranjan Ray ( NRR), the hugely popular crime novelist, died, millions of readers in Bengal were stunned and saddened. After Byomkesh and Feluda, he had given Bengalis a fictional icon in the digital age.

He was seventy.

But only one fan thought that there was something more to his death than what was revealed in the press reports of the dailies.

Rumpled, round, middle-aged Arijit Tarafdar was a senior officer at the Special Operation Group, CID at Bhavani Bhavan, Kolkata. He had three passions other than police work: his family, his poetry, and reading. Arijit read anything, but preferred crime novels. He liked the clever plots and the fast-moving stories. That’s what books should be, he felt. Only last week he had been to a social occasion and people were talking about how long they should give a book before they put it down. Some people had said they’d endure fifty pages, some said a hundred.

Arijit had laughed. “No, no, no. It’s not dental work, like you’re waiting for the anaesthetic to kick in. You should enjoy the book from page one.”

NRR’s books were that way. They entertained you from the git-go. They took you away from your job, they took you away from the problems with your wife, from the constant reminders of due EMIs.

They took you away from everything. And in this life, Arijit reflected, there was a lot to be taken away from. His poems were part of his secret life, his life outside his public and private ones. He kept them to himself and wrote mostly on his travels.

“What’re you sulking about?” his partner, Shamik Biswas, asked, walking into the shabby office they shared on the corner of the south block of the old building on Belvedere Road, Alipore. “I’m the only one round here got reason to be upset. Thanks to the Black Queen yesterday. Oh, wait. You don’t even know who the Black Queen is, do you?”

“Sure, I love races,” Arijit joked. But it was a distracted joke.

“So?” Shamik asked. He was tall, slim, muscular, dark-the opposite of Arijit, detail for detail.

“Got one of those feelings.”

“Shit. Last time one of those feelings earned us a sit-down with the Commissioner. The wife of the Calcutta Mayor had definitely committed suicide when you came up with new fictions which could not be proved.”

But Arijit wasn’t paying much attention to their past wrong hunches. Or to Shamik. He once more read the obituary that had appeared in the ‘Times of India’ a fortnight ago.

Nihar Ranjan Ray, 70, author of thirty-two best-selling crime novels, died while on a hike in a remote section of Meghalaya, where he had a summer home.

The cause of death was a heart attack.

“We’re terribly saddened by the death of one of our most prolific and important writers,” said Sashi Bhusan Dey, CEO of Deys Publishing, which had been his publisher for many years. “In these days of lower book sales and fewer people reading, NRR’s books still flew off the shelves. It’s a terrible loss for everyone.”

NRR’s best known creation was Kaushik Sen, a down-and-dirty counterintelligence policeman, who travelled the country, fighting terrorists and criminals. He was portrayed as a man of around 35 with a tall (6″), athletic figure. Despite being a strongly built man adept in martial arts, Kaushik relies mostly upon his superb analytical ability  to solve cases. He is often accompanied by his colleague Atin Mitra. The plot is always woven around two prime suspects, with Atin often implicating the wrong one in the beginning.

NRR was not a critical darling. Intellectuals of Bengal called his books, “train time-passers,” “ Sunday time-pass,” and “junk food for the mind -superior junk food, but empty calories nonetheless.”

Still, he was immensely popular with his fans. Each of his books sold millions of copies and was translated to Hindi, Tamil and English. .

His success brought him fame and fortune, but NRR shunned the public life and was more of a recluse. Though a rich man, he had no interest in the celebrity lifestyle. He and his second wife, Mohua Ray, 42, owned an apartment in Sunny Towers, Ballygunje where she is a part-time photo editor for a fashion magazine. NRR himself, however, spent most of his time in his cottage at Smit near Shillong, where he could write in peace.

Nihar Ranjan Ray studied English literature at St Xaviers’ College and later at Jadavpur University. He later on took to writing in Bengali , drawing inspiration from his mother, Niharika Ray, a famous poet of the 60s and 70s. He was an advertising copywriter for some years while trying to publish literary fiction and poetry in both English and Bengali. He had little success and ultimately switched to writing thrillers in Bengali. His first, ‘Ke Bipasha r Swami ke Marlo ( Who killed Bipasha’s husband ?) ’, became a runaway hit in 1991. The book was made into a bilingual movie and went on to win some prestigious awards.

Demand for his books became so great that ten years ago he took on a co-writer, Arun Bagchi, 45, with whom he wrote sixteen bestsellers. This increased his output to two novels a year, sometimes more. His novels were a regular feature of the famed Pujabarshikis in Bengali.

“We’re just devastated,” said Bagchi, who described himself as a friend as well as a colleague. “NRR hadn’t been feeling well lately. But we couldn’t get him back to the city to see his doctor, he was so intent on finishing our latest manuscript. That’s the way he was. Type A in the extreme.”

Last month, NRR travelled to Spit alone to work on his next novel. Taking a break from the writing, he went for a hike, as he often did, in a deserted area near  Ward’s Lake. It was there that he suffered the coronary.

“NRR’s personal physician described the heart attack as massive,” co-author Bagchi added. “Even if he hadn’t been alone, the odds of saving him were slim to nonexistent.”

Mr.Ray is survived by his wife and two children from a prior marriage.

“So what’s this feeling you’re talking about?” Shamik asked, reading over his partner’s shoulder.

“I’m not sure. Something.”

“Now, there should be some evidence to go straight to the forensic lab. ‘Something.’ Come on, there are some real cases on our plate, brother. Put on your action cap. We need to meet our informer of Kidderpore today. The drugs from across the border are flooding the state.”

Half an hour later, Arijit and Shamik were sitting in a squalid tea shop, talking to a disgusting scummy young guy of indeterminate race and age, called Mohan. The snitch was giving them some boring information about the kingpins of marijuana supply from the Malda border.

But Arijit was remembering something. He rose abruptly. “I have to go.”

“I didn’t do a good job in this collection ?” Mohan called, hurt.

But he was speaking to Arijit Tarafdar’s back.

Mohua Ray herself  opened the door of the luxurious apartment at Sunny Towers. Close to five-seven, she could look directly into Arijit’s eyes.

The widow wore a simple dark blue salwar kameez , closely fitted, and her eyes were red like she’d been crying. Her hair was swept back and faint grey roots showed. Almost three decades younger than her late husband, he also recalled.

“Police.” Hesitant, of course, looking over his ID. She was thinking this was odd-not necessarily reason to panic but odd.

“I recognize you,” Arijit said.

She blinked. “Have we met?”

“In Puruliar Helipcopter. You were Monica.”

She gave a hollow laugh. “People say that, because an older man falls in love with a younger woman in the book. But I’m not a spy and I am not a mountaineer.”

They were both beautiful, however, if Arijit remembered the NRR novel correctly. But he said nothing about this, she being a new widow. What he said was, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. Oh, please come inside.”

The apartment was  luxurious as diamonds. Rich antiques, original art. Even statues. Nobody Arijit knew owned statues.

They sat and she looked at him with her red-rimmed eyes. An uneasy moment later he asked, “You’re wondering what a police guy is doing here.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Other than just being a fan, wishing to pay condolences.”

“You could’ve written a mail to the address given on NRR’s website. I oversee the digital marketing part.”

“The fact is, this is sort of personal. I didn’t want to come sooner, out of respect. But there’s something I’d like to ask. Some of us in the department were thinking about putting together a memorial evening in honour of your husband. He wrote about Kolkata a lot and he didn’t make us cops out to be flunkies. One of them, I can’t remember which one, he had this great plotline here in the city. Some Calcutta police guy helps out Kaushik Sen. It was about terrorists going after the train stations on the Sealdah line.”

“Krishnagar theke Sealdah.”

“That’s right. That was a good book.”

Arijit glanced at a photograph on the desk. It showed a half dozen people, in somber clothing, standing around a pyre. Mohua was in the foreground.

She saw him looking at it. “The cremation at Shillong.”

“Who’re the other people there?”

“His daughters from his first marriage. One is settled in Mumbai and the other one is a journalist here. That’s Arun, his co- writer.” She indicated a man standing next to her. Then, in the background another, older man in an ill-fitting Kurta – Pyjama. She said, “Sashi Bhusan Dey, his publisher.”

She said nothing more. Arijit continued, “Well, some folks in the department know I’m one of your husband’s biggest fans, so I got elected to come talk to you, ask if you’d come to the memorial. An appreciation night, you could call it. Maybe say a few words. Wait. ‘Elected’ makes it sound like I didn’t want to come. But I did. I loved his books.”

“I sense you did,” she said, looking at the detective with piercing eyes.

“So?”

“I appreciate the offer. I’ll just have to see.”

“Sure. What ever you’d feel comfortable with.”

Arijit said a mild ‘ Thank You’, refused tea and went back to his office.

Shamik was waiting, “ You are on to something. Give me particulars.”

“Okay. Well, she’s hot, NRR’s wife.”

“That’s not a helpful particular.”

“I think it is. Hot… and thirty years younger than her husband.”

“So she took her bra off and gave him a heart attack. Murder- by-boob isn’t in the penal code.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean she wanted somebody younger. So do I. So does everybody. Well, not you, because nobody younger would give you the time of day.”

“And there was this feeling I got at the house. She wasn’t really in mourning. She was in a plain dress, yeah, but it was tighter than anything I’d ever let my daughter wear, and her red eyes? It was like she’d been rubbing them. I didn’t buy the grieving widow thing.”

“You ain’t marshalling our legal evidence here, brother.”

“There’s more.” Arijit pulled the limp copy of NRR’s obituary out of his pocket. He tapped a portion. “I realized where my feeling came from. See this part about the personal physician?”

“Yeah. So?”

“You read books, Shamik?”

“Yeah, I can read. I can tie my shoes. I can fieldstrip a Glock in one minute sixteen seconds. Oh, and put it back together, too, without any missing parts. What’s your point?”

“You know how if you read a book and you like it and it’s a good book, it stays with you? Parts of it do? Well, I read a book a few years ago. In it this guy has to kill a terrorist, but if the terrorist is murdered there’d be an international incident, so it has to look like a natural death.”

“How’d they set it up?”

“It was really smart. They shot him in the head three times with a Bushmaster ACR Advanced.”

“That’s fairly unnatural.”

“It’s natural because that’s how the victim’s ‘personal physician’ ”-Arijit did the quote things with his fingers “-signed the death certificate: cerebral haemorrhage following a stroke. Your doctor does that, the death doesn’t have to be investigated. The police weren’t involved. The body was cremated. The whole thing went away.”

“Hmm. Not bad. All you need is a gun, a shitload of money, and a crooked doctor. I’m starting to like these particular particulars.”

“And what’s particularly interesting is that it was one of NRR’s books that Arun Bagchi co-wrote. And the wife remembered it. That was why I went to see her.”

“Check out the doctor.”

“I tried. He’s Khasi.”

“So’s half the state of Meghalaya.”

“He’s somewhere on the outskirts of Shillong and I can’t track him down.”

Arijit’s mobile buzzed. Truecaller identified the caller as Sashi Dey. He had left his card with Mohua. Information travelled fast.

“ Namaskar, Mohua called. She said you were planning some memorial service and we can meet to talk about it.”

“ Yes, I will call you back, Mr. Dey. Let me first discuss with my colleagues.”

Shamik frowned. “Memorial?”

Arijit turned back to his partner. “There’s more. An hour ago I talked with some officers up in Shillong. One of them worked with me couple of years ago on a case in Guwahati. They had sent a cop to the spot where NRR got the attack.It was a private ambulance which took the body away. After the ambulance left, one of the guys from a nearby resort saw somebody leaving the area. Male, he thinks. No description other than that, except he was carrying what looked like a backpack.”

Standing under the arch of a dilapidated old neo-gothic styled house in Shyambazar, Arijit Tarafdar rang the buzzer.

The large door swung open.

“Arun Baghci ? ” Even though he recognized the co-author from the photos he had seen in press.

“Yes, that’s right.” The man gave a cautious grin.

Which remained in place, though it grew a wrinkle of surprise when the shield appeared. Arijit tried to figure out if the man had been expecting him-because Mohua Ray had called ahead of time-but couldn’t tell.

“Come on inside, inspector.”

Arun, in his early forties, was in faded jeans and a plan tee, with hawai chappal. He was good-looking, with thick longish hair.

The house was one of those old ancestral ones. He was led through a corridor on to a modest drawing room.

Not an original piece of art in the place.

Zero sculpture.

And unlike the Mohua Ray’s abode, Arun’s was chock- a-block with books.

He gestured Arijit to sit. He picked a leather chair that lowered him six inches toward the ground as it wheezed contentedly. On the wall nearby was a shelf of the books. Arijit noted one: The Dinajpur Hotkarita. “ Nihar Ranjan Ray with Arun Bagchi” was on the spine.

Arijit was struck by the word, “with.” He wondered if Arun felt bad, defensive maybe, that his contribution to the literary world was embodied in that preposition.

And if so, did he feel bad enough to kill the man who’d bestowed it and relegated him to second-class status?

“That’s one of my favourites.”

“So you’re a fan, too.”

“Yep. That’s why I volunteered to come talk to you. First, I have to say I really admire your work.”

“Thank you.”

Arijit kept scanning the bookshelves. And found what he’d been looking for: two entire shelves were filled with books about guns and shooting. There had to be something in one of them about rifles that could be broken down and hidden in small backpacks. They were, Arijit knew, easy to find.

“What exactly can I do for you, detective?”

Arijit looked back. “Just a routine matter mostly. Now, technically NRR was a resident of the city, so his death falls partly under our jurisdiction.”

“Yes, I suppose.” Arun still looked perplexed.

“Whenever a famous person dies, we’re sometimes asked to look into the death, even if it’s ruled accidental or illness related.”

“Why would you look into it?” Arun asked, frowning. “Unless what you’re really saying is that you-or somebody-think that NRR’s death might not have been an illness at all. That it was intentional… But how could it be?”

Arijit didn’t want to give away his theory about the crooked doctor. He said, “Let’s say I know you’re a diabetic and if you don’t get your insulin you’ll die. I keep you from getting your injection, there’s an argument that I’m guilty of murder.”

“And you think somebody was with him at the time he had the heart attack and didn’t call for help?”

“Just speculating. Probably how you write books.”

“We’re a little more organized than that. We come up with a detailed plot, all the twists and turns. Then we execute it. We know exactly how the story will end.”

“So that’s how it works.”

“Yes.”

“I wondered.”

“But, see, the problem with what you’re suggesting is that it would be a coincidence for this ‘somebody,’ who wanted him dead, to be up there in the Ward’s Lake near Spit at just the moment he had the attack… We could never get away with that.”

Arijit blinked. “You-?”

Arun lifted an eyebrow. “If we put that into a book, our editor wouldn’t let us get away with it.”

“Still. Did he have any enemies?”

“No, none that I knew about. He was a good and a nice man. I can’t imagine anybody’d want him dead.”

“Well, I think that’s about it,” Arijit said. “I appreciate your time.”

Arun rose and walked the detective to the door. “Didn’t you forget the most important question.”

“What’s that?”

“The question our editor would insist we add at the end of an interrogation in one of the books: Where was I at the time he died.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“I didn’t say you were. I’m just saying that Kaushik Sen would’ve asked the question.”

“Okay. Where were you?”

“I was here in Kolkata. And the next question?”

Arijit knew what that was: “Can anyone verify that?”

“No. I was alone all day. Writing. Sorry, but reality’s a lot tougher than fiction, isn’t it, detective?”

“Yo boss, listen up,” the scrawny Mohan said. “This is interesting.”

“I’m listening.” Arijit tried to look pleasant as he sat across from Mohan. Before they’d met, Shamik reminded him how Arijit had dissed their informer earlier. So he was struggling to be nice.

“I followed Arun to the Starbucks on Park Street. And she was there, NRR’s wife.”

“Good job,” Shamik said.

Arijit nodded. The whole reason to talk to the co-author had been to push the man into action, not to get facts. When people are forced to act, they often get careless. While Arijit had been at Arun’s house, Shamik was busy pushing their legal cell to get an order from a judge for a record of phone calls to and from the co-author’s mobile. The record won’t give you the substance of the conversation, but it will tell you whom a subject calls and who’s calling him.

The instant Arijit had left the house, Arun had dialled a number.

It was Mohua Ray’s. Ten minutes after that, Arun slipped out from his front door and headed down in a cab.

And tailed by Mohan, who had accompanied Arijit to Arun’s house and waited outside while reading the mounted Ganashakti at the corner shop.

The gawky was now reporting on that surveillance.

“Now that Mohua Ray, she’s pretty-”

Arijit broke in with “Hot and sexy, yeah, I know. Keep going.”

“What I was going to say,” the snitch offered snippily, “before I was interrupted, is that she’s pretty tough. Kind of scary, you ask me.”

“True,” Arijit conceded.

“Arun starts out talking about you being there.” Mohan poked a bony finger at Arijit, which seemed like a dig, but he let it go-as Shamik’s lifted eyebrow was instructing. “And you were suspecting something. And making up shit about some police procedures or something. He thought it was pretty stupid.”

Mohan seemed to enjoy adding that. Shamik, too, apparently.

“And the wife said, yeah, you were making up something at her place, too. About a memorial  or something. Which she didn’t believe. And then she said-get this. Are you ready?”

Arijit refrained from glaring at Mohan, whose psyche apparently was as fragile as a thin bamboo shoot. He smiled. “I’m ready.”

“The wife says that this whole problem was Arun’s fault for coming up with the same idea he’d used in a book-bribing a doctor to fake a death certificate.”

He and Shamik exchanged glances.

Mohan continued, “And then she said, ‘Now we’re screwed. What’re you going to do about it?’ Meaning Arun. Not you.” Another finger at Arijit. He sat back, smugly satisfied.

“Anything else?”

“No, that was it.”

“Good job,” Arijit said with a sarcastic flourish that only Shamik noted. He slipped an envelope to the snitch.

After Mohan left, happy at last, Arijit said, “Pretty good case.”

“Pretty good, but not great,” Shamik replied slowly. “There’s the motive issue.”

“Okay, she wants to kill her husband for the insurance and property and a younger man. But what’s Arun’s motive? Killing NRR is killing his golden goose.”

“Oh, I got that covered.” Arijit pulled out his iPhone and scrolled down to find something he’d discovered earlier.

He showed it to Shamik.

Press Release by Deys Publishing

As per the will of NRR, his co-author, Arun Bagchi, has been selected to continue the author’s series featuring the popular Kaushik Sen character. Four of late NRR’s unfinished stories would be the first to be completed and published within the year.

Shamik Biswas said, “Looks like we got ourselves a couple of suspects.”

But not quite yet.

At 11:00 P.M. Arijit Tarafdar was walking towards his house in Bowbazar after being dropped off by the Police car on the main road. He was thinking of how he was going to put the case together. There were still loose ends. The big problem was the cremation thing. Burning is a bitch, one instructor at the Swami Vivekananda State Police Academy had told Arijit’s class. Fire gets rid of nearly all important evidences. Like bullet holes in the head.

What he’d have to do is get wiretaps, line up witnesses, track down the ambulance driver, the doctor in Meghalaya.

It was discouraging, but it was also just part of the job. He laughed to himself. It was like Kaushik Sen and his “tradecraft,” he called it. Working your ass off to do your duty.

Just then he saw some motion a hundred feet ahead, a person. Something about the man’s mannerism, his body language set off Arijit’s police radar.

A man had emerged from a car and was walking along the same street that Arijit was now on. After he’d happened to glance back at the detective, he’d stiffened and changed direction fast.

Who was this? A supari killer ? Arun Bagchi ?

And did he have the break-down rifle or another weapon with him? Arijit had to assume he did.

The detective crossed the street and tried to guess where the man was. Somewhere in front of him, but where? Then he heard a dog bark, and another, and he understood the guy was walking on the main road and disturbing the nocturnal indulgence of the stray dogs.

The detective pressed ahead, scanning the area, looking for a logical place where the man had vanished. He decided it had to be an alley that led to the right, between two jewellery shops, both of them closed and dark at this time of night.

As he came to the alley, Arijit pulled up. He didn’t immediately look around the corner. He’d been moving fast and breathing hard, probably scuffling his feet, too. The killer would have heard him approach.

Be smart, he told himself.

Don’t be a hero.

He pulled out his phone and began to dial his backup.

Which is when he heard a snap behind him. A foot on a scrap thrown on the road.

And felt the muzzle of the gun prod his back as a gloved hand reached out and lifted the phone away.

We’re a little more organized than that. We come up with a detailed plot, all the twists and turns. Then we execute it. We know exactly how the story will end.

Then the hand tugged on his shoulder slightly, indicating he should turn around.

Arijit did, slowly.

He blinked as he looked up into the eyes of the man who’d creeped up behind him.

They’d never met, but the detective knew exactly what NRR looked like. His face was on the back covers of a dozen books in Arijit’s living room.

“Sorry for the scare,” NRR explained, putting away the pen he’d used as a gun muzzle-an ironic touch that Arijit noted as his heart continued to slam in his chest.

The author continued, “I wanted to intercept you before you got home. But I didn’t think you’d get here so soon. I had to come up behind you and make you think I had a weapon so you didn’t call up another police guy or your forces. That would have been a disaster.”

“Intercept?” Arijit asked. “Why?”

They were sitting in the alleyway, on the stairs of a shop.

“I needed to talk to you,” NRR said. The man had a large mane of grey hair and a matching moustache that bisected his lengthy face. He looked like an author ought to look.

“You could’ve called,” Arijit snapped.

“No, I couldn’t. If somebody had overheard or if you’d told anyone I was alive, my whole plot would’ve been ruined.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on?”

NRR lowered his head to his hands and didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “For the past eighteen months I’ve been planning my own death. It took that long to find a doctor, an ambulance crew, a crematorium- which I could bribe. And find some remote land in North East , where we could buy a place and nobody would disturb me.”

“So you were the one the police saw walking away from where you’d supposedly had the heart attack around Ward’s Lake ? ”

He nodded.

“What were you carrying? A suitcase?”

“Oh, my laptop. I’m never without it. I write all the time.”

“Then who was in the ambulance?”

“Nobody. It was just for show.”

“And at the cemetery, an empty urn in the plot?”

“That’s right.”

“But why on earth would you do this? Loans ? Was someone after you?”

A laugh. “I’m worth thirty crores. And I may write about the criminals and spies and intelligence agents, but I’ve never actually met one… No, I’m doing this because I’ve decided to give up writing the Kaushik Sen books.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s time for me to try something different: publish what I first started writing, years ago, poetry.”

NRR explained quickly: “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think poetry is any better than commercial fiction, not at all. People who say that are fools. But when I tried my hand at literary work when I was young, I didn’t have any skill. I was self- indulgent, digressive… boring. Now I know how to write. The Kaushik Sen books taught me how. I learned how to think about the audience’s needs, how to structure my stories, how to communicate clearly.”

“Tradecraft,” Arijit said.

The author gave a laugh. “Yes, tradecraft. I’m not a young man. I decided I wasn’t going to die without seeing if I could make a success of it.”

“Well, why fake your death? Why not just write what you wanted to?”

“For one thing, I’d get my poems published because I was NRR. My publishers would pat me on the back and say, ‘Anything you want, NRR.’ No, I want my work accepted or rejected on its own merits. But more important, if I just stopped writing the Kaushik Sen series my fans would never forgive me. Look what happened to Sherlock Holmes.”

Arijit shook his head.

“Conan Doyle killed off Holmes. But the fans were furious. He was hounded into bringing the back the hero they loved. I’d be hounded in the same way. And my publisher wouldn’t let me rest in peace either.” He shook his head. “I knew there’d be various reactions, but I never thought anybody’d question my death.”

“Something didn’t sit right.”

He smiled sadly. “Maybe I’m better at making plots for fiction than making them in real life.” Then his long face grew sombre. Desperate, too. “I know what I did was wrong, detective, but please, can you just let it go?”

“A crime’s been committed. Pseudocide is a culpable offence.”

“Only falsifying a death certificate. There’s no insurance fraud because I cashed out the policy last year for surrender value. And Mohua will pay all the pending taxes. Look, I’m not doing this to hurt or cheat anybody.”

“But your fans…”

“I love them dearly. I’ll always love them and I’m grateful for every minute they’ve spent reading my books. But it’s time for me to pass the baton. Arun will keep them happy. He’s a fine writer… Detective, I’m asking you to help me out here. You have the power to save me or destroy me.”

“I’ve never walked away from a case in my life.” Arijit looked away from the author’s eyes, staring at the cracked asphalt in front of them.

NRR touched his arm. “Please?”

Nearly a year later Detective Arijit Tarafdar received a package from the publisher, Rupa & Company. It was addressed to him, care of CID. A book of poems written by somebody he had never heard of.

Arijit opened the thin book and read the first poem, which was dedicated to the poet’s wife.

Just then Shamik Biswas stepped into the office and before Arijit could hide the book, his partner scooped it up. “Poetry.” His tone suggested that his partner was even more of a loss than he’d thought. Though he then read a few of them himself and said, “Doesn’t suck.” Then, flipping to the front, Shamik gave a fast laugh.

“What?” Arijit asked.

“Weird. Whoever it’s dedicated to has your initials.”

“No.”

Shamik held the book open.

‘With eternal thanks to A. T.’

“But I know it can’t be you. Nobody’d thank you for shit, brother. And if they did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be eternal.”