The 5 Plots

Khush Walia

Email: [email protected]

Mobile: +91-9825547336

Copyright © 2015 Khush Walia

All Rights Reserved

Author page: https://www.facebook.com/Khush-Walia-1449969885303269/timeline

ISBN: 9781311708601

Cover design: Jassi Walia

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION

To my family, for believing in me

And especially to you, Jassi, my sister

I know you love suspense and murder mysteries.

QUOTES

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (from -The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes)

The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.

-Agatha Christie (from- The Murder of Roger Ackryod)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Plot 1- The Woman in the Cemetery

Chapter 2: Plot 2- The Formidable Adversary

Chapter 3: Plot 3-The Stupid House-Wife

Chapter 4: Plot 4- Mystery of a Soul

Chapter 5: Plot 5- Who Murdered Shuhul?

Author's Notes

Glossary

Introduction

I had been reading several books on mystery and suspense and had had often found myself wondering, do really such stunning crimes occur? Are really such astounding plots devised?

After reading such books, I used to ponder that was this all really a narration of fictitious fables to extol the author’s magnificent grey cells (a favorite term used by one of my favorite, Hercule Poirot, a fictional detective of Agatha Christie’s)?

Or was this really pointing towards some real life facts, albeit indirectly, describing the spectre residing deep down somewhere in the dark alleys of the human soul?

I never thought that such ridiculous plots, designed and shaped cleverly by my brainy authors could really even be imagined by the actual criminals out there.

But I was wrong.

They had more bizarre plots than the ones I had read in such novels.

Of course, many of them were apprehended. But the powerful ones are still at large, roaming and blatantly walking on the grounds of the Earth.

I happened to read articles in the news papers like a gruesome murder of a certain television executive by his liaison and her boyfriend, a certain lieutenant in 2008.

The plot of this cold-blooded murder and its subsequent events shook my heart. Although the culprits were convicted but still, the atrocious methodology adapted by them, confounded me.

Then again one day, I read a piece of news about the murder of a 14 year old girl, somewhere in Noida, again in 2008. Also, her forty five year old domestic’s body was found a day after, in her house’s terrace.

I followed the story which cornered her parents being the culpable. The fact that parents could murder their own child was not at all digestible by my middle class mind. And I was sure, that there must be a mistake somewhere.

This astounding story ran from 2008 till 2013.

Amidst the most sensational of events comprising of turning of witnesses, allegations, tampering of evidences, drama by media, fabrication of the suspects’ stories etc. al, I still clung to my hope of proving the parents as innocent.

I was still living under a rock I guess as I was under the old impression that all the parents were considered as the protectors of their child, and would never even think of as heinous a crime as filicide.

But in the end, I was proved wrong.

The parents were found guilty and were convicted. This was like a whammy to me.

My entire traditional assumptions were cruelly mutilated and I was watching their tortured soul in front of me.

The transgression of the human mind from a state of clemency to a severe state of redress, so as to exterminate the very source of their anguish or dolour, baffled my stabled and prejudiced mind.

‘The 5 plots’ was in my mind since long after 2013, but I had never decided to pen it down.

But one day, I read a piece of news about a big diplomat and a politician being probed on the grounds of suspicion related to uxoricide.

I was not sure if he was culpable, but most of the points were leading towards him. Was he being framed? I asked myself.

But then I studied some past points like him having an illicit affair with a girl from a neighboring country and his wife getting to know about it, his deceased wife’s involvement in a big controversy etc. And there were some points like the police finding the death of his wife being unnatural though, it was declared as a suicide by the doctors.

Well, guilty or not, I was confident of one fact and that being the murder of his wife, and not suicide.

But what kind of a stunning plot might have been devised that had made the murder look like suicide? That thought boggled me. And very interestingly, this was not any novel I was reading.

This was a real incident.

Sometimes later again, I got a similar piece of news about a very intelligent and reputed IAS officer committing suicide.

The media and the people vociferated ‘murder’, but the law and the high political officials had a different story to tell.

The points were again very conspicuous about a suicide – man being found hung on a rope in his room and after making some private calls to his illicit affair. But there were many questions related to the bizarre circumstances in which his suicide occurred, unanswered till date.

I pondered that what makes human being murder and then wrap the atrocious act of her/his by using her/his powerful encephalon - a gift given to us by God to create a better mankind.

And then, I tried to find some answers to my own questions by penning down, ‘The 5 Plots.’

So in this short piece of work, comprising of some five short plots, I have described this most heinous of the human being’s spectre – crime. I say ‘spectre’, because like the ghost, it has subjugated the human being’s soul. This is actually the major spectre, thriving on pains like torture and injustice.

I will never be thankful to the dastardly events that I have mentioned above, which made me convert my own pains into these five stupendous plots and made them spill themselves on a piece of paper.

But I will be thankful always to God above for making me remain the human being I am and diverting my inner pains to an entertaining and a fictional zone, and converting them to stories which can make a voracious reader spellbound, hopefully.

Khush Walia

(M.Sc-Statistics)

Plot 1: The Woman in the Cemetery

I don’t like cemeteries. I know, it sounds stupid as who does? But I guess one does. As I seen one lurking many-a-times here, without any reason.

I always saw that one standing near a tombstone, looking melancholy, fatigued and expressionless towards a new grave being dug.

No smile. No pain, but, just a stare. Not cold, but still, a stare.

I saw her some, what, two times? Yes. Two times it was. First was during my visit here to pay regards and condolences to Father James D’ Souza, God bless his soul. Nice bugger he was. Always listening quietly to my confessions in that small room where I sometimes used to suffocate. Not due to breathlessness, but due to the account of sins which I used to narrate with my trembling mouth.

He used to listen patiently.

But sometimes I could bet a 1000$ that he cussed. Due to ennui or inundate, not sure. But he had cussed.

I had ignored his cuss and had continued with my episode of profanity. And finally, he could do the usual- try to refine me or purify me and all that.

But, all of that usually went in vain.

The woman in the white dress, a gown or something, sat on the slab of the tombstone, and watched the proceedings as if watching a dull and a repetitive rainfall. I did not regard her much that time, as I was too busy with my own empathies.

But when I saw her again during the burial of Timothy’s, I was somewhat confounded.

What the hell is she doing here again? I had nearly jumped in a frantic startle.

She was still sitting on that same tombstone. This time the distance was somewhat farther than James D’ Souza’s grave.

I didn’t like Timothy, but he was my friend. He was into stocks, but a notorious sort. I heard he had swindled a lot.

Ah, money is easy come, easy go my friend.

That was his motto in life I guess. But I never knew he was talking about other people’s money when he referred the ‘go’ part. I came to know about this after a recent upsurge in the stock markets.

He was culpable.

So it came to no surprise when they said that he was found dead in his bathtub, in the middle of the night, with a knife struck deep into his heart.

He was survived by an aging mother, who was inconsolable today. He was not married, but had some liaisons, which proved unsuccessful after some months.

But I could not understand the expressions of that woman in the cemetery today.

She seemed to be in mirth.

She was sitting cross-legged and had placed one of her wrists on the knee of the raised leg. The other hand was holding a support on the slab. The horrified mutilated face of hers, with red eyes, was bent forward. Her smile on that pained and wrinkled face looked like someone had placed a small rose amongst a lot of thorns.

The proceedings went on as usual, but my gaze was on that white dressed woman on that tombstone, smiling cheerfully and shaking her foot, dangling from the knee of the other’s.

The cries and tears of the poignant attendees there, made her smile wide. She seemed like an evil pathetic, enjoying the misery.

I could not control any longer and glared at her.

Yes, so what if Timothy was a devil, but still there must be some respect shown for the dead. Respect for the soul, who had now departed, should be there.

Even for the soul which had been always disabled, when its owner breathed.

But I was surprised to find a hysteric giggle in response to my irate glare. She had stood up from the tombstone and was laughing like insane. Her hair was scattered all over and flying hither and thither.

To me, she looked like a witch, rejoicing her first kill or so.

A bloody blood sucking witch!!

What a disgusting creature, I mumbled with rage.

What are you saying? Dorothy nudged me with vexation.

What? Can’t you see that insane of a woman in a white dress there? Laughing shamelessly? I tried to defend my incredulous behavior at this time, and looking at Dorothy’s dark goggles, pointed out towards that hysterical creature near the tombstone ahead.

But to my surprise, when I turned my face back in the direction of that witch, I found myself staring at some more tombstones or graves lying peacefully in the green grass ahead.

No witch. No hysterical woman in a white dress.

I gaped at the tombstones and found myself suddenly being converted into an effigy. I was in state of a tremendous stupefaction and the only thing that got me out was Dorothy’s pinch.

Dorothy was a nice friend. I relied to her whenever I needed some advice or so. The fifty year old girl had been my friend since I had joined her new and small publishing house, last year.

I am a proof reader or so, as they mention in my job profile, but actually I am bored with it. I want to change this title to ‘author’ or a ‘writer’.

You wanna be a writer? Are you nuts? You don’t know what it takes to be a writer. I was now getting used to such kinds of epithets