Sibling Love
He’s been sitting there for a while now. It’s 11 a.m and this roadside cafe is almost empty. He’s buried in some deep thoughts. Tea is getting cold but he didn’t seem to care.
He is a middle-aged man with mysterious eyes. He keeps on tapping his finger anxiously on the table. I noticed him looking at his watch from time to time as if he was waiting for someone else to join.
I am observing his every gesture while sitting at the corner table. He came here by 10 a.m, order two cups of tea, sat there at his fixed place, do nothing, and then leave after the exact two hours. It’s been a few days since I’m working on this new assignment and his routine has been the same since then. While reading an article, I ordered another cup of tea.
“I am still clueless as day 01. Maybe Ahmad was wrong! He might not be the culprit” I thought to myself.
It was then when his phone starts ringing.
I couldn’t hear a word and his expressions were subtle.
He is walking as fast as he could and I am chasing him from a safe distance. After 10 minutes, he stop at a hotel and start dialing a number.
Then he wave at someone and start having a chat. The way they were talking and laughing, it was obvious that they know each other well.
Then they left and I stay there to ask the hotel recipient about them.
Ahmad is a dedicated police officer and me, being his best friend and a crime analyst, often helps him in cases.
I met Ahmad at lunch that day when he told me about this case. It revolves around a girl and her brother. They had an accident on their way back home in which their car got engulfed in flames. The girl died at the moment and her dead body was not found while her brother was saved miraculously.
Ahmad claims it to be a “murder”. He was like that; getting too much involved in every case. Anyways, I believed that he was just being skeptical. He was surprised that how her brother got only few bruises on his hand. Even though I knew it was hard to swallow because it was nearly impossible for someone to survive that accident considering how ‘bad’ it was.
Ahmad investigated about the incident and talked to the girl’s brother but he wasn’t satisfied at all so he asked me to keep an eye on him.
In the beginning, I was a little excited about this assignment. But he was such a naive man since I’ve never found him doing anything suspicious except spending two hours on cafe daily. He was leading a simple life and I was losing interest in this assignment so I decided to tell Ahmad that what he believed was not right.
But later that day, I followed him to the hotel.
I met Ahmad in the hallway the other day. We had a pact that while working on an assignment, we won’t see each other unless it’s something important. He looked at me and said:
“Today, an old man came to the police station insisting that his daughter was kidnapped a month ago”
“And?”
“That was the same girl who died in that accident”
“Ahmad! You better go and take some rest!” I laughed at him.
“No. He brought a family photo album with him. He said that he lives in another city and got back yesterday as he was unable to contact her. When I opened the photo album, he was right. It has all the photos of her daughter at different occasions with her family.”
“A photo album?”
“Yeah. He also has a birth certificate and few other documents. He added that her daughter had a middle stage Alzheimer and she lived here with her cousin and aunt.”
” And you know he didn’t even received her dead body because her “brother” has buried her already”. Ahmad continued. “The strange thing is that man had only one daughter and no son. So, I believe we’re going in right direction plus we need to contact her cousin too”.
Next day, I meet the girl’s father and ask him to bring that album. While looking at the photos, i notice a thing so i ask him about it and he said he didn’t know.
To which i said in despair that the same person appears candidly in the background in all your old family photos. You don’t know who they are. How’s that possible?
But the fact that her daughter just died so I decided to leave now and come back later. This assignment wasn’t as simple as I thought it to be.
Then another strange thing happen that he haven’t come to cafe today. I wait there for two hours.
By noon, I went to the hotel and there he was sitting in the lobby with the same person that he met yesterday. I cover my face with a newspaper and after almost 30 minutes, they left. Should I mention that I followed them again?
This time their car stop at the grocery store. Then they continue their journey for 45 minutes until they reach their destination – an under-construction plaza.
I prefer to wait outside and as soon as they left around 5 p.m, I enter the plaza.
It was dark inside. I made my way through the flashlight and I checked everywhere, there was not a single person inside.
“If there’s no one here, why did they stop at grocery store?” I whispered to myself.
I look everywhere except basement. In the basement, There’s some weird smell like that of a rotting corpse. I run towards it only to find her cousin’s dead body and the same girl was lying unconscious on the floor.
I hide behind a pillar upon hearing some footsteps. Then, get myself out of the plaza as it was getting harder for me to breathe in there and immediately called Ahmad to tell him everything.
________________
So next week, Ahmad and I are here at the hospital to record that girl’s statement.
“Samiah and I were going to a hospital for my daily checkup when the car brakes failed”.
“I barely remember anything else”.
But we have done our job well. Her so-called brother told us everything. He was taking his father’s revenge. Yeah, his father was the same person who appears in photos repeatedly. He kidnaps her daughter for his father’s revenge. His father died working as a cook in girl dad’s house. He worked there and was severly ill in his last days and ask for money for his treatment. The girl’s dad kicked him out of job and he believed he lead a terrible life because of girl’s dad and he wants to hurt him.
He knew about disease so he often visits her claiming to be her brother. He knew that every Thursday, she went for a checkup with her cousin and planned her kidnap He burned their car and make it appears as an accident. Everything went according to the plan, but that photo album ruined it all.
Anyways, the mystery is solved successfully and I couldn’t be more proud of Ahmad. His gut feelings are mostly right. I never admit that in front of him but I’ve always admired his work.
And I bet he know that.
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