It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good! (Part IV)

I have selected the story, It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good! (Part IV), for today. I had written this story for an educational course, I was taking in the 1990s.

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good! (Part IV)

Radha was about to leave the office, with Asha, that night. Both the girls stayed in the same hostel. Radha got a call from Syed. He sounded agitated. “Somebody is seriously interested in stopping me from doing this film. Radha, this time it is a computer printed message left inside my house.”

“Inside the house? Was it broken into?” she asked.

“No, that’s the most surprising thing.”

****

Radha and Asha reached his house in an hour’s time. By then, Syed was almost hysterical. He wouldn’t care less about Asha being there. Syed lived alone in the third floor flat of Millat Manor in Jogeshwari West.

“Obviously, the person knows you and has a key to your place,” Asha observed, looking at the letter.

“Then, how else can the message land on the dining table located in the kitchen on the opposite side to the door, like you say it did? The window wasn’t open, was it?” Radha was, by the minute getting suspicious of Syed, himself. Some people from the Hindi filmdom would play any kind of publicity stunt to get recognition, she’d heard.

“No,” he replied.

The girls left Syed’s home and caught a rickshaw to their hostel.

Once inside their room, Asha observed that her friend was thoughtful and asked her what was wrong. Radha told her about her suspicions about Syed.

Asha tried to put her doubts to rest. “But could he go to the extent of damaging his own work to do that?”

“He could, if it’s a team-work. Don’t you remember cricketers have manipulated the ball to win a match?”

“That maybe, but I feel, Syed is Ok.”

“Only this letter that I took from him will tell. There was no printer or computer or laptop for that matter in his house. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t hidden it somewhere else or used someone else’s device on the sly. The most accessible equipment to these technicians is usually at the producer’s offices, whose movies they are working on. First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll have to make rounds of those offices and check out the computers and the stationary papers.”

To be continued…