#whodunnit

It was two in the morning when Rehman got the call. 

He was dressed and inside his car within minutes. He hadn’t woken up his cousin. This was not something Uzair should have to deal with at the ass crack of dawn. Or rather, it wasn’t something that he should have to deal with at all. 

It was just him and three of his most trusted guards who reached the scene. The police were already crawling all around the property. The palatial mansion on Clifton street, which belonged to one of the most respected businessmen in the city. One of the PAP’s biggest donors. 

The constables stationed at the gates didn’t even try to stop him as he strode in, flanked by Donga, Siyahi and Hamza. 

Rehman took in the surroundings with the scrutiny of a hawk searching for a hint of his prey in the wilderness around. The gates had very visible three sixty degree state of the art surveillance cameras, the security guards carrying speciality weapons were being questioned at the side. 

Rehman barely acknowledged Maqsood who was getting yelled at by someone on the line, right in front of the main doors of the mansion. Probably, his superiors who had been woken up in the middle of the night as well. 

The SP gestured inside, with a hand and Rehman turned towards the room pointed at. He had already taken in the lobby and the winding staircase. There was no hint of a struggle, the marble polished to a shine and everything right at its place. No lingering scent of bleach or any cleaning material, as well. 

“Wait”

It was a whisper but his men stood still immediately, hands hovering towards their guns. Rehman could figure, there was something strangely unnerving in the air. A certain rankness which felt like oil against skin. He had been deliberately ignoring it. But by the pallour on the faces of the policemen and the security of the house it was evident that they had felt it too. 

Rehman bent down fluidly in front of what looked like a heavy teak table kept against the wall directly opposite to the entrance of the study room. An expensive looking vase with a colourful croton was placed over it. 

“Bhai—”, Donga started and shut up when Hamza shook his head sharply. 

“Rehman, thank god! I was—”, Jameel Jamali had come out of the study by then and was approaching them hurriedly but stopped short at Hamza’s hasty gesture. 

Rehman seemed to be inspecting something underneath the dresser table. He scratched at something on the floor and held the finger up in the light. 

“Donga, Siyahi! Move this”, Rehman stood up barking at his men who jumped at the sudden order and then hurried to follow through. 

“Wait, you can’t just move around stuff here—”, Maqsood who had finished getting yelled at, tried protesting weakly but a single look from Rehman had him shut up. The SP had to at least try and look a little bit like he was the one in control. 

Alas, everyone in Lyari knew who was always in control here. 

And it certainly wasn’t their police chief. 

The dresser was moved with a loud scratch and everyone gasped at what was revealed underneath. 

A weird symbol was drawn on the marble flooring with what appeared to be some dark rust coloured ink. It hadn’t caught anyone’s eyes because of the table kept over it and would have escaped Rehman too had the light from the chandelier not hit one of the glass windows and fallen on a single reddish line extending from the symbol visible underneath it. 

“What in the world?”, Jamali asked. 

What in the world, indeed. 

Rehman scrunched his eyebrows. He had never seen such a symbol anywhere before. It didn’t have any particular symmetry which usually ritualistic drawings would have. The shape was distorted, like focussed through a kaleidoscopic mirror reflected on the surface. The only shape he could figure was a semi circle.

It almost looked like a child’s doodling. 

An unfinished doodle. 

But that wasn’t what was troubling him. 

It was what the symbol has been painted with that was shocking. It wasn’t paint, like he had thought before. 

The scent was decidedly copper. 

“Rehman, you have to see this. It is unbelievable”, the PAP politician was at his elbow now, wiping the sweat off his glistening forehead with an embroidered handkerchief which probably cost more than Rehman’s entire wardrobe. 

Rehman turned around and followed Jamali into the room, eyebrows still hunched in thought. He had checked the ground floor windows while walking in. None seemed to be broken. And it was nearly impossible to enter from the second floor— scaling the wall with a hundred CCTVs and a rotating guard shift every minute.

Then how had the intruder entered the house?

The sight which met him inside the room would have had anyone falter, hardened bloodthirsty gangsters included, but Rehman didn’t even bat an eyelash. His men on the other hand had taken a very audible step back, their faces dropping six shades simultaneously. 

Afsal Siddiqi was pinned to the wall of his study like a macabre display of a butterfly on the board of a sadistic lepidopterist. His completely naked body was stretched like that of a starfish on the wall, palms and feet hooked into the brick, mortar and plaster with iron nails. 

The most grotesque sight was the way he seemed to have been literally ripped in two from his butthole to his navel and his intestines were hanging out like the bloodied branch roots of a nightmarish banyan tree. 

The foul smell of bowels, blood and rigor mortis was a thick gag inducing odour in the room. 

Jamali was standing with his hanky pressed to his nose, looking anywhere but at the corpse. 

Rehman hadn’t even shrunken his nose in disgust. It was an unsettling look of consideration on his face that was almost slightly uncomfortable to look at. 

Does nothing affect the man’s almost chilling calm?

The room looked untouched from any kind of violence other than the body. Did Afsal not struggle to survive? The blood collected at the floor was a thick dark viscous pool directly below the corpse. Other than the rivulets escaping the puncture wounds on the dead man’s hands and feet and the entrails hanging out, there were no blood stains on the walls. 

That meant the body had to have been sliced open first and then hung up on the wall. 

But that means, there should be a blood splatter somewhere else on the floor. Rehman walked around the room, trying to spot any place that might have been recently cleaned. Nothing stood out. It was spick and span. 

The head was hanging low on that still chest. 

“Did the ME set a preliminary time of death?”, Rehman asked. Jamali coughed and looked apologetically at him. 

“I don’t think the doctors have arrived yet—”

“What you mean to say is that the Karachi police doesn’t have a budget for a separate forensic team. Are they coming from Islamabad right now?”, Rehman bent down over the desk and inspected the polished teakwood surface carefully. 

Not even a dust mole. 

The pulsating wrongness of the situation was still smarting at his skin. The entire thing looked too clean. Too staged. Like a theatrical warning issued for someone that none of them could catch. 

“Arre tu toh jantaa hi hain, abhi halaat aise he ki—”, Jamali’s voice drained at the end. 

“Zarvari sahab se boliye agar unhe iss masle ka hal elections se pehle chahiye toh police ke resources badhane padenge.”

But before Jamali could respond to it, a new voice answered him, instead. The baritone hit the room like muslin and honeyed syrup dipped in poison. This was the voice of a man used to being deferred to. 

“I think we both know the Karachi police won’t be able to solve this case, Badshah-e-Lyari”

Rehman didn’t snap his head to the voice immediately like everyone else evidently had. He could feel his men raise their guns immediately, bodies locking in a diamond like protection around him before he could even straighten from his position hovering over the study desk.

“Major Iqbal. Fancy seeing you here”, Rehman said, leaning against the corner of the desk, hands crossed against his chest. 

The other man was standing at the entrance door, eyes hidden under black shades, his muscled and tall silhouette wrapped in a midnight blue kurta, vest and pathani. Almost like the man had just walked off a high profile business meeting in the middle of the night and entered into the absolute chaos that Siddiqi’s mansion had turned into. 

He was like a solitary exception, existing in a void around which the world was revolving.

Rehman had rarely met men who could command the room through mere presence itself. The rangers flanking the other man had their AK-47s pointed at his boys, faces stony and fingers curled around the triggers. 

One wrong move and the entire room could turn into a blood bath. 

Jamali might have realised that as well as he was slowly slinking towards the wall that led outside. 

“Arre arre, Major sahab, aap itni raat gaye, yahaan? Zarvari sahab ne toh mujhe iqtelaah nhi kiya ke aap khud aane walein hain—”, the pudgy politician asked in his honeyed consolatory tone. 

Iqbal hadn’t even looked at the corpse hanging behind Rehman. His sight seemed to have been laser focussed at the gangster king and refused to move even a slight fraction away from him. 

“Jameel sahab, mujhe kahi jaane ki permission Zarvari sahab se lene ki zaroorat kahaan hain”, there was a slight mocking edge to his almost pleasant response that irked Rehman immediately. 

The man may have told this to Jamali but Rehman knew it was really him to whom that particular piece of information was given to. 

So this was the game he was playing tonight. 

Good. 

“Why is the ISI interested in the murder of a mere businessman?”, Rehman asked, almost bored. 

“Don’t play obtuse, Sardar. It doesn’t suit you. Afsal Siddiqi has funded many of our operations and you know it”, Iqbal entered the room and finally moved his gaze from Rehman and slowly approached the corpse hanging on the wall, seemingly unbothered about the guns being levelled at him. 

“Tell your boys to put their toys down before anyone gets hurt”, he said dismissively, poking at the dead man’s arm like he was the most disinterested at the situation at hand. 

“You first”, Rehman countered and picked up a card that had seemingly fallen and gotten stuck under a table leg and slipped it inside his pocket. 

Iqbal huffed but gestured at the rangers who reluctantly put down their rifles. Donga, Siyahi and Hamza followed but they were glaring daggers at the men. 

Rehman could empathize. 

It was common news that the Balochi mafia and the ISI have never been very good friends. All thanks to the latter’s varied cruelty being levied on Balochi rebel factions and even innocent Balochi civilians all in the name of protecting national interests. 

If it were up to Rehman, he would shoot the motherfucker in the face but he had bigger problems to deal with than playing whose horse is bigger with the Major right now. 

“What do you think?”, Iqbal suddenly turned towards him and asked, hands spread like he was the ringmaster of a play. 

Rehman raised an eyebrow. 

“I know Siddiqi was one of your golden geese but the ISI has many of those stashed all over the country and even outside. Was he that high in the totem pole that they sent Iqbal Kashmiri to investigate?”

The Major laughed. It was a strangely warm sound, not that raucous superficial hyena laughter that Rehman was used to getting. 

“So they were right about you, Rehman Baloch. You are sharper than most give credit—”, the taller man leaned against the other end of the desk, arms crossed against his chest, mirroring Rehman’s stance perfectly. 

The words would have infuriated him had they sounded condescending. But there was something acutely curious in the Major’s voice. Like he was genuinely surprised. Rehman shoved it down at some corner of his mind and stared at him piercingly. 

They were like two predators appraising each other. 

Should they bite or show their hand?

Surprisingly it was Iqbal who broke the stalemate. He sighed and took off his glasses. The man had a razor edged gaze. Those twin irises seemed to bore through everything they landed on. 

“Fine. I shall go first. Siddiqi was working on a new project for us. It would have helped the government gain access to state of the art weaponry from Iran. Just before the deal was to fall through, he is murdered inside his own home. Seems a little too convenient, don’t you think?”

Rehman cocked his head at the side. 

It seemed like there were things he still had no idea about. He had to increase his network somehow. But for now, he at least had a motive to work on. But the probable suspects were seeming a little above his pay grade. 

“So, you are thinking, Mossad?”, he asked. 

“If the Israelis got wind of the deal. It is very probable”, Iqbal said.

Rehman looked around. 

“It doesn’t fit their MO. They would have done something quieter. Not this…loud. This feels more personal. Look at the body”, he walked closer to the corpse and picked up the head by his hair. 

“Ya Allah!”

Rehman didn’t know who exclaimed but the reaction had been immediate. Iqbal had a frown on his face and the other men in the room had instinctively taken a step back. 

The expression on Afsal’s face was frozen in an ugly contorted rictus. His eyes were wide open and his mouth parted almost in a silent scream. The terror on his ashen face was a horrifying thing to behold. 

He had seen it first when he had been inspecting the desk. The polished surface had reflected the man’s face where it had been hanging at his chest, hidden by the hair. 

It was evident no one else had bothered to look at the man’s face before he had arrived. 

“It almost feels like he had seen something horrible right during his death. This is a spectacle. Hanging eagle-spread on nails, the odd disembowelment. There is not a single evidence of a struggle in the room. The CCTV caught nothing. What does that tell you?”

Iqbal had a hand on his chin, now. 

“That Afsal knew the man who killed him.”

Rehman nodded and dropped his hold on the head. 

“Or the woman.”

Iqbal grinned, “Come on, Rehman. You don’t think a woman did this? Their choice of weapon is usually a more convenient one— and how would she single handedly kill a man so gruesomely and then hang his body up on the wall?”

Rehman shrugged. 

“The visitor’s log book had no entries made. The CCTV at the main door is wiped at a specific time period everyday. Afsal not only sent his entire family out of the city for the night but also gave all his servants a leave. The only way anyone could have feasibly entered the haveli on their own free will was if Afsal had brought them in himself. And there is literally no evidence of any struggle anywhere in the house—”

Iqbal was staring at him strangely. He felt that look annoyingly against his skin. It was like being scratched by a street cat. 

“So you think it could be a disgruntled mistress?”, Iqbal remarked more than he questioned. 

“Or a mister”, Rehman drawled. 

Jamali started coughing so badly, Donga almost tried patting him on the back. Iqbal only smirked like a dragon having caught a sparkling emerald. It was slightly unnerving to look at. 

“And what do you think of the strange symbol outside?”

“So you have seen it.”

“Hard to miss.”

“Looks like a prank. Maybe a child’s scribbling.”

“With blood?”, Iqbal continued, raising a sharp eyebrow. 

Everyone was visibly startled at that. Maqsood, who had entered the room by then, exclaimed a frustrated curse and went out again, seemingly to check it. 

Rehman was staring at the body. He sighed and leaned back. Nothing was adding up. 

“I am no doctor but I have had enough experience with dead bodies to know that this man has been dead for more than a few hours. The rigor mortis clearly shows that. The bleeding should have stopped by that calculation. How is he still bleeding then?”

Iqbal hummed looking similarly thoughtful as he unhesitantly swiped at the blood from Afsal’s icy frame and sniffed at it. His eyes widened and he straightened up. 

“It can’t be…”, he muttered and started inspecting the blood pooled at the floor beneath, more closely by kneeling beside it, “see this—”, he beckoned Rehman. 

He kneeled beside Iqbal and got a strong whiff of his weirdly pleasant musk. Or it could be his nose had been getting assaulted with the foul smell of a decaying human for so long that any fragrance would be welcomed right now. 

It wasn’t that he had automatically gauged the clear scent of forests and earth and a hint of marjoram from the Major’s expensive cologne at the clear proximity. 

“Smell this”, he held up his finger, dripping with the dark blood coagulated at the floor. Rehman looked sceptical but acquiesced. The moment the smell registered he almost staggered back with a jerk. 

“But..this is impossible”, he hissed. Iqbal was busy inspecting the drawers of the desk by then. 

“What..what happened?”, Jamali, whom Rehman had forgotten was still in the room, asked curiously. 

“This is not human blood”, Rehman said mystified as he straightened to stare at the body, this time feeling the oiliness in the air somehow intensified. 

“What? Whatever do you mean? Isn’t that Afsal’s blood?”

“Bhai, it is flowing from his wounds…how?”, Hamza asked, opening his mouth for the first time since they had entered the house. 

For the first time in his life, Rehman really had no answer for his lieutenant. He couldn’t unsee the horror struck expression the dead man’s face was set into. The scribbling in blood outside the room, the unsettling way the body was positioned and now this—

Who had killed Afsal Siddiqi and was there a bigger conspiracy afoot than he had previously thought?

_________________________________

“Bhai, why didn’t you wake me up? And why the hell are we working with the ISI, again?”

Uzair had almost taken Rehman hostage when he had entered the haveli, after having spent the rest of the night going over the security footage trying to spot any anomaly with the police in the Siddiqi mansion. 

Major Iqbal had been strangely preoccupied after they had discovered that the blood flowing from Siddiqi’s wounds was not human at all. He had instructed his rangers to accompany Rehman and his men around, taking note of their investigation. 

“I don’t appreciate being babysat, Major sahab”, Rehman had protested chillingly. 

“Apologies, Dakait sahab, I would have personally accompanied you but I have to meet with a few other buyers before the weapons hit the bidding market. You know how it is. My rangers wouldn’t impede you or your boys. They would simply give me updates”, the other man had responded, quite unassumingly. 

Rehman had been almost nose to nose with him, only that Iqbal was taller and had leaned into that, almost looming over him. But if he thinks that either his physical dimension or the size of his influence is going to frighten Rehman into subservience, he has another thing coming. 

The Baloch leader had snarled at him, eyes flashing murderously in a way that would have had any sane man stepping back.

“You may have Zarvari sahab’s ear. But do not forget, this is my backyard you are standing on. Your power is only good for the meeting rooms your ilk love to sequester yourselves in. This is Lyari, not Islamabad. You would do well to remember that—”

Jamali had almost had a conniption. 

Rehman should have been wise enough to not openly antagonize the ISI but then Iqbal should also have been wise enough to not make an enemy of the man who ruled the streets his men would get slaughtered on for even momentary misstep. 

Iqbal’s teak eyes had a spot of green in them that Rehman hadn’t observed before. His face had carved into a frightening mask at that moment. This was the face of the devil, they talked about and Iqbal Kashmiri’s tales of torture was a legend in the Balochi rebellion. He had straightened to his full height and seemed to almost increase a size broader as well.

But it was that dangerous aura around him that had called to Rehman almost like the tongs of a flame does to a moth. He had always been attracted to things that could kill him in a weird, twisted almost suicidal way. 

Iqbal had grinned at him like a shark scenting blood in the water. It had been all teeth and one of the golden replacements had sparkled in the stark lighting of the room brilliantly. 

“You might be the king of your jungle, Baloch— an apex predator. But don’t forget that there is always something with bigger teeth.”

He had whispered the words almost over his face. 

If Rehman had been more fanciful, he would have felt the air thin around them and yet crackle with electricity. The tension in the room could have been cut with a hacksaw. 

Jamali had ingratiated himself between them again, somehow, his sweet poisonous words weaving webs of alliances and temporary truces and subtle warnings about the political consequences of a civil war breaking out during election season. 

Rehman had had to acquiesce, though under a lot of duress, that Iqbal would be poking his rather aquiline nose into his business till the murder was solved at least. 

“You were sleeping and it wasn’t something you could’ve helped with anyway. Also the decision regarding the truce with Major Iqbal was taken out of my hands. You know how Jamali gets during election season”, Rehman had consoled his hyper cousin somehow and had sent the latter on some nondescript errand that was almost an excuse to blow off some steam with Hamza. 

The two seemed to be thick as thieves nowadays. 

The office was empty for some time and he had a call to make, but before that—

“Donga!”

“Haan, bhai?”

“Go to the docks and ask around about any bounties that might have been put on Afsal Siddiqi. I need a name by evening.”

Donga was like a bloodhound. He would sniff out the man, if there was any, by hook or by crook. Though he didn’t quite believe that it was a contract killing. Like he told the Major, the murder looked personal. But it wouldn’t hurt to check all avenues. Maybe the killer had deliberately set it up like that to throw them off his scent. 

Rehman dialed the number in the single burner he kept locked inside his desk while flipping over the card he had nicked from Siddiqi’s desk, in one hand. 

The line caught with a beep. 

“It is a nice day, isn’t it?”, a female voice, this time. 

“I could care less about the weather”, Rehman responded. 

There was another beep and a few seconds of silence before the line was connected to the man he actually wanted to talk to. All these smoke and mirrors would give him a serious headache one of these days. 

“Rehman”, the man said. Just his name. And yet it felt like he had already been admonished for some god forsaken reason that he had no idea about. He hated dealing with this man on a good day, let alone a bad one. 

But an enemy’s enemy is thy friend and all that shit. 

“Did your guys kill Afsal Siddiqi?”

The line was silent for a beat. 

“Afsal Siddiqi is dead?”

Well that was something. The spymaster extraordinaire didn’t know, yet. Points to him. 

“Don’t play games with me. I know he was about to sell state of the art weapons to us. Was it you or not? The ISI is sniffing around and I would rather like to not get blindsided. Major Iqbal is infamous for pulling out one’s organs through their assholes”, he drawled into the phone. 

“Illuminating imagery. Thank you for that. But no, we didn’t have anything to do with this. Yes my boys were on his trail and would have killed Siddiqi had he gone ahead with the arms deal.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that your man changed his mind. He wasn’t going to broker the deal with Iran for Pakistan. He got a better offer.”

Rehman raised an eyebrow. He hated the man but one had to marvel at the sheer ingenuity he worked with. 

“You paid him?”

“It is strange, isn’t it? People are so ready to throw away their ideology for a few more bucks.”

“Money is the ideology, Sanyal sahab. And anyone who thinks otherwise is either brainwashed, naive or hasn’t felt hunger pangs ever in their life.”

Ajay Sanyal was quiet. Rehman could practically hear him rolling his eyes all the way from Raisina Hill. He flipped the card in his hand again and brought it closer to the light above. 

“But unfortunately for both of us, Major Iqbal is not a man who would sell his ideology. He is a proper fanatic. A zealot. And if he heard that Afsal was selling to India, he might have arranged to have him killed himself and then pretended to have him investigated.”

“Seems too much work for a man of his stature. He could have just announced that Siddiqi was a traitor and had him publicly executed. No one in your government would have even batted an eyelash. In fact Zarvari probably would have won the next term as well.”

Rehman sat up straight. 

“What do you mean, ‘probably’?”, he hissed into the phone, “Are you planning a regime change here—”

Sanyal cut him off before he could launch into a tirade, “Even if I were, I wouldn’t tell that to you so relax”. 

Rehman leaned back, trying to swallow back the temper. He had to play this coolly. He couldn’t afford to antagonise Ajay Sanyal of all people. He had enough enemies to deal with. 

“I need a favor”, he spat through gritted teeth. Sanyal’s words made sense. If Iqbal wanted to kill Siddiqi, he would have just gone ahead and made an open spectacle of it. He doesn’t need to hide. 

No, this was someone else. 

If not the Israelis or even the Indians. 

This was not about the weapons at all. 

“Well, I do owe you one”, Sanyal drawled almost a tad lethargic. 

“Does the name ‘Lezaz’ mean anything to you? It could be a company, an organization or a clinic”, Rehman saw the embossed word on the card clearly. 

There was only the word, Lezaz scripted on a blank white card, an upside down triangle inscribed behind the word. It was designed as a plain black logo. 

There was nothing else on the card. 

No number or any contact details. 

“Lezaz…can’t seem to get it off at the top of my head. Give me a day. I will have the information sent to you—”

Rehman was about to cut the call when Sanyal stopped him, “And Rehman—”

He waited. The line crackled for a moment before the spy chief spoke again. There was an odd note of amused warmth in his voice that had always irritated the mobster. 

“Be careful. Iqbal Kashmiri, is not a man to be trifled with. And I would rather like your organs to be where they are at present.”

Rehman scoffed. 

“Aww, Sanyal sahab, so you do care—”, he taunted the older man, slipping the card back inside the pocket of his kurta. 

“More than you would ever know, kid.”

The line cut before Rehman could snarl something back. The man never let him have the last word. 

Smug ass fucker. 

The light from outside made a strange pattern on the ceiling yet Rehman couldn’t focus on it. That disgusting feeling of the dank heaviness seemed to have followed him back from the Siddiqi mansion. 

And there was a faint sensation layered on top of it that was creeping him out a little. 

It felt like he was being watched. 

Constantly. 

Maybe he was overworked. He needed sleep. The murder investigation could wait for an hour or two. 

Rehman stretched and got up from his seat and switched off the lights of the office and walked out into the bright afternoon sun. He didn’t see the shadows that had gathered in the corners of his office slither almost akin to live snakes along the walls. 

A strong scent of burning flesh and pungent marjorams thickened into the room almost dizzyingly. 

_______________________________

Rehman was ushered inside the factory by a short heighted man wearing owl rimmed glasses. He had a nasally accent that grated at his ears. 

“Just right here, Rehman Bhai, Major sahab is awaiting you, most eagerly”, Sajid Mir, a supposed commander for the LeT and Iqbal’s right hand walked beside him. 

Hamza hurried in front and opened the door for him and Uzair as they walked inside. 

Iqbal was sitting behind the desk, looking over what looked like enlarged photographs of the Siddiqi crime scene. Rehman could see the whiteboard behind him pinned and threaded, straight out one of those English whodunit movies that Hollywood churned out by the droves. 

“Ahh, Rehman, come come. I see you have brought your cousin along, this time”, Iqbal shook his hand and appraised Uzair with that strangely blade-like stare. 

“You wanted updates. I thought you would rather like to hear from me than those incompetent idiots you have sicced at my men. They are quite conspicuous, Major sahab.”

Iqbal stared at him for a few seconds before laughing in that loud boisterous way that seemed to come straight from his chest. 

“I should have known better than to spy on you, I admit. But can you blame me? Yesterday, you rather eloquently made your dislike for me known”

“Come on, Major sahab. Now you are being obtuse. Your dislike for the Balochi community is well known. Let's just focus on the case instead of these mind games. We want the same thing— to catch this lunatic.”

Iqbal smirked and handed him a file, “As you wish, Dakait sahab, but at least let me clear your misconception. I might dislike the BUF, yes, but I have no complaints against your qaum. Politics makes us do horrible things sometimes as you might know well”

Rehman had no idea when the taller man had closed the distance between them but he was right beside him the next moment, their shoulders almost touching, the air again coming alive, almost scorching him in the major’s proximity. 

“And you…in particular”, the words were almost a whisper in his ear, “you, I don’t mind at all.”

Rehman cleared his throat and moved almost nonchalantly towards the board, opening the file in his hand, opting to ignore the open flirtation. 

“The ME’s report came this morning. You were right. Afsal was dead for too long for his blood to have been flowing still—”, Iqbal continued, his voice now back to its normal unassuming cadence. 

Rehman frowned at the papers, “Goat blood?”, he asked. 

“Fascinating isn’t it? The man had apparently had goat's blood flowing through his veins.”

“Wait.. you mean he was first drained off his entire blood and then somehow injected with a goat’s blood to circulate through his..but his heart had stopped. How can it even be— forget technicality, this is biologically impossible!”

Rehman exclaimed, frustrated and threw the report on the table with a smack. 

“There is something else—”, Iqbal handed him a page with Siddiqi’s call records. There was one number continuously highlighted on the page. 

“This number cannot be traced. We have our best guys on it but the trail gets disconnected in the middle. There are no more suspicious activities that I can figure out.”

Rehman gave the page to Uzair who pocketed it immediately. 

Iqbal raised an eyebrow but didn’t counter. 

Rehman saw the photos on the board. The angle shots of the dead body, the blood pooling on the floor and almost nothing else. Because there simply had been no other disturbances in the room. 

“There is no forensic evidence on the body, forget the room”, Iqbal continued. 

Rehman was staring at that strange inscription on the floor that had been hidden beneath the desk. He felt like there was something at the background of his thoughts that he couldn’t access. A fog which he couldn’t see through. 

“I had my men search for any local or international contracts that could have been levied. Nothing. So it had to have been personal”, he muttered and unpinned the photo of the drawing on the floor and handed it over to Uzair as well. 

“Why kill in such a horrific manner? What was the method? And more importantly what was the motive and who had the opportunity?”, he mused almost to himself. 

He hadn’t noticed when the Major had come to stand right beside him, yet again. The man’s gait was as silent as a cat. Or maybe he was too preoccupied. So when he spoke, that smooth baritone was right at his ear and it took everything in him to not leap back. 

His instincts always started roaring at him whenever Iqbal would graze close. Like a warning signal blaring at full volume. 

“You know, I used to know this Shaman once upon a time. He had these fantastical notions on the occult.”

“Djinns and fairies Major sahab? I thought you were a man of rationale and science—”, Rehman scoffed. 

“How little of the universe have we even explored yet, Dakait sahab. We believe in Allah, don’t we— an all powerful being. Are monsters too much of a stretch from that?”, there was a strangely absentminded note in the other man’s words. 

Rehman suddenly felt a chill run down his spine and it had nothing to do with the eerie kind of feeling of being watched that he just couldn’t shake. 

Looks like the power nap hadn’t helped at all. 

“Men are monsters enough, Major sahab. I don’t need to believe in mystical beings for that”, he said coolly and walked around the desk to keep it between him and the other man. 

“Look at that corpse and tell me you don’t think anything about this is ritualistic”, Iqbal insisted. 

“I never said it isn’t. My point is, I believe a man made of flesh and blood has done it and I am going to catch him, one way or another.”

“Don’t we all”, Iqbal smiled, almost a touch too condescending for Rehman’s liking. 

“I shall contact you again if we have more updates. Call off your hounds. My boys get angsty during turf wars and trust me you don’t want to go to battle with me in my playground.”

Rehman didn’t wait for a response and practically stormed off. His mind was too much of a mess for playing power games with the other man. He couldn’t get that symbol out of his mind. 

He hadn’t seen it on the floor the previous night but now under the clear lighting of day, he could gauge certain outlines of identifiable silhouettes. But together, it didn’t make any sense. 

Or maybe he was just making things out of smoke like children created imaginary shapes and objects with the clouds in the sky above. 

__________________________

“Bhai, why didn’t you tell the Major about the news I got on the docks about that antique dealer?”

Donga asked him the moment they had exited the factory, his signature red chevy tearing out into the street followed by his security in the SUV behind. 

“You don’t show all your cards in the first round itself, Donge”, Rehman muttered around the cigarette dangling from his lips. 

Donga had indeed gotten no concrete news about any bounty but he had heard a rumor that there was a disgruntled antique dealer who had been cribbing about Afsal Siddiqi cheating him out of his fair price for an item he had procured for the business mogul. 

It was his shop they were heading to next. 

He had to assume, Iqbal’s men would be following him. So he would get the news either way. But he could get to it before the ISI chief at the least. 

____________________________

“What was it that Siddiqi asked you to bring for him?”

Rehman asked Ismail Sheikh, supposedly the most notorious antique dealer and smuggler on this side of the coast. The man was practically shivering out of his boots for the past five minutes when he had seen him enter his office— his mousey face slicked with sweat. 

“Bhai..woh…main..”

“Mujhe tere dhande se koi masla nhi hain, Sheikh bass jo pucha uska sahi jawab dena. Agar pata chala tune mujhe jhooti information dii hain…phir..tujhe toh pata hi hain Rehman Dakait ke saath dagaabaazi karne ka asal kya hota hain”

Rehman was inspecting a thirteenth century broadsword that according to the plaque kept in front belonged to Genghis Khan. 

It would look nice on the wall in his living room. 

“I..I really don’t know what it was, I swear on my life, sir. A Turkish collector was looking to sell a highly priced item but he hadn’t revealed what it was. Afsal Siddiqi just asked me to bring it to him for that price and I would get a twenty percent commission. So I bought it and handed it over but the bastard refused to give me the entire amount so—”

“And throughout the process, you hadn’t even thought of taking a peek? You really expect me to believe that?”

“Sir, it was a sealed and locked box. Even if I could have broken the lock, the wax sealing the edges was old enough to be a hundred years old, and I couldn’t recreate it that way so I couldn’t open it.”

“Give me a picture of the box if you have it and the contact details of the Turkish collector”

______________________________

Ismail didn’t have a picture but he remembered the dimensions of the box. It had been a large rectangular box made of heavy teak wood and a gold embroidered frame with an iron lock and supposed beeswax sealing. 

Rehman had asked Uzair to head home. He needed to clear his head a little. A walk down the old alleyways of the town had always helped calm him. 

“Bhai, at least take one guard with you—”, his brother, always the worrywart, had tried convincing him but he had refused. He needed to be alone for some time and who in their right mind would dare attack Rehman Dakait in his own home?

Night had fallen gently over the town today. 

There was some event happening in the distance and Rehman could hear the singing and the cheerful noises of a gathering filtering in the balmy air. 

He took out his phone and dialed the Turkish collector’s number. 

“Hello?”, the line connected to a waspish voice.

Thank god for small mercies that the man happened to know English or else he would have been stuck and he would rather not want to involve an interpreter right now. 

“Mr. Birkan Demir?”

“Yes, I am Birkan Demir. Who is this?”

“Hello, sir. I am speaking from the Tel Aviv police department. We have apprehended a Mr. Ismail Sheikh in the airport trying to enter the country with a fake passport. He told us that you know him?”, Rehman lied smoothly. 

“Oh God! I thought he was legitimate. I had no idea—”

“Oh you don’t have to worry, sir. You are under no threat from us. But if you would be so kind as to tell me what exactly you have sold to Mr. Sheikh so that we can corroborate his story. It would help us in the investigation and save us a trip to Istanbul as well.”

“Oh yes of course. It is a book. It is kept inside a wooden box sealed with beeswax and locked with an iron lock”, the man said hurriedly, relieved to have found a way out of the situation. 

No sane person wanted to be in the sights of the Israelis. 

“And what book would that be, sir?”

There was an uneasy silence on the line following his question. 

By then Rehman had entered a narrow strip between two buildings. There was no street lamp nearby but the full moon had casted a silvery glow that made everything quite visible even in the pitch darkness of the night. 

“Sir?”

The line was still crackling when Rehman felt a strong shift in the air. The heavy humidity of the night had suddenly turned into an uncharacteristic chill. It felt weirdly icy on his skin. The kind of cold that burrows into your bones and wraps around your heart. 

The hair at his nape had stood up. 

The feeling of being watched was a physical pressure on his body. Rehman’s hand hovered at his hip, just near the concealed gun under the folds of his kurta. The hand holding his mobile at one ear, had white knuckled the device so tight he could feel its individual ridges tattoo on his skin. 

He stopped midway and turned back once. He couldn’t spot anyone. 

Had Iqbal’s men caught up with him?

“Hello, Mr. Demir, are you still there? What book is it?”, he asked again, squinting at the mouth of the alley, his makarov trained straight at the darkness collected there. 

“I am sorry mister. I can’t take its name. No one who has ever taken its name has been spared. No one in a century has taken its name—”, his voice suddenly seemed to distort like there was a bad connection. 

“Hello..sir..? Mr. Demir…hello..shit! Fuck—”, the line disconnected sharply. 

Rehman brought the mobile down from his ear. 

“Who is it?”, he barked sharply at the silhouette slowly materializing at the space his barrel was pointed at. 

The silver of the moon above was casted into strings of glitter and shadows as the shape came into being, almost like smoke being recasted into something solid. 

It was an old man. His bald pate was glimmering in the moonlight and he had a distinctive limp, as he supported his skeletal figure against a cane. White hair crowned his shoulders from the back of his skull and as his face became clearer, Rehman could see he was blind in the right eye. 

A beggar then. 

But why couldn’t Rehman put his gun down? It was like his body had locked into that position. The old man had deep wrinkles on his face, so lined that one could barely see his features clearly. His chin sported a scraggly beard. 

He was smiling. 

And it was strangely unsettling to look at.  

That smile couldn’t belong to a normal person. That rictus of a curve, showing a hint of broken yellowed teeth. It was a smile unlike any other Rehman had ever seen. 

He had never felt true fear before. Not even in front of actual death standing in front of him, not of anything. 

But tonight, standing in this alley, an old unarmed beggar leaning against a cane in front of the barrel of his gun, just a few meters ahead and Rehman could feel terror coagulate into the edges of his bones like wet cement. 

It made no sense. 

This completely irrational fear. 

But his throat had completely dried up and his hand was shaking. 

Rehman Dakait and his impeccable aim. Wavering like a leaf stuck inside a tornado. It felt like the shadows surrounding them had almost gotten a life of their own.  

“Who..who the hell are you? What are you doing here?”, Rehman spat, but his usually gravel silk voice was fractured. Sweat pooled at the back of his kurta making it stick to his skin uncomfortably, even in this chilling icy draft that refused to leave him alone. 

“Answer me! Do you know who I am?”, he continued but the man refused to utter a single word, only smiling at him eerily. That one eye trained like an endless gaping maw of a monster poised to swallow him whole.

A sudden sharp ringing almost made Rehman’s skin jump in shock. It was his mobile. 

And the man had suddenly vanished into nothing. Rehman gasped and dropped his armed hand down, shoulders aching with the strain of holding it up for so long. 

He could suddenly breathe again, the thick syrupy feeling in the air had vanished. 

Where had the beggar run off to?

Was he hallucinating him?

No..he was real. But then where did he go? The sharp ringing stopped and then started again almost immediately. Whoever was calling him seemed to be in desperate hurry to catch him.

Rehman wiped the sweat that had somehow gathered at his forehead and answered the call. 

“What!”, he barked annoyedly at the line, not even seeing who it was. 

“Rehman”, Iqbal’s usually teasing tone was completely changed into an icy stern cadence that was completely unfamiliar to Rehman. He almost straightened as if on cue.

“What—”, he began only to get cut off. 

“There has been another murder. I will text the address. Get here, fast.”

Well fuck. 

_______________________

Iqbal was smoking at the entrance of the house. 

Rehman walked up the stairs to reach him and got a plume of smoke blown directly on his face for his troubles. Iqbal took the cig from between his lips and offered it to him. 

Rehman cocked his eyebrow sharply at that. The taller man looked unabashed, mahogany gaze twinkling with repressed mirth and something like a challenge. His usual stubble seemed to have thickened a little since the past day. 

He was wearing maroon today. The color of dried blood. The sleeves rolled up to show his veined forearms nicely. 

How was the man always so impeccably dressed all the time, not a single hair out of place? Rehman always felt oddly scruffy in his presence, despite how suavely he would dress on most occasions. 

He took the smoking cigarette and put it between his lips, taking in a drag, keeping his eyes on the Major’s classically handsome face. It burst with an oddly rich tangy flavour on his tongue. 

“Strawberry?”, Rehman asked, feeling a little high on the unique taste and the moonlight and that faint yet expensive fragrance of the Major’s cologne. That irritating strand of hair which never seemed to obey him had fallen over his eyes yet again. 

Iqbal smiled at him, full toothed. It was a strangely boyish grin for a man of his gravitas. It made him look younger and reminded Rehman of all the warnings the holy books gave about the Devil and his ways of temptation. 

“When I said fast, I didn’t mean physically run all the way. You look like you’ve sprinted a marathon or seen a ghost”, Iqbal said, giving him a once over. 

Rehman felt the sudden chill run down his spine again at the thought of that darkened alleyway and that aged vagabond and especially that acute feeling of wrongness that had gripped his very being.

He pushed the feeling down forcefully and rolled his eyes. 

“Where is the body?”, he said instead. 

Iqbal beckoned him inside. 

The lobby gave way towards a lavish seating area with an eighty four inch flat screen. The body was pinned in the similar starfish position on the opposite wall to the television, palms and toes hammered into the wall with iron nails— torn up and split open till the navel with his entrails hanging out. 

The same pool of blood at the floor directly below the body, the man’s head hanging low on his chest. 

Rehman lifted the corpse’s  head and saw his face was frozen in a horror stricken expression, eyes blown wide and mouth parted in a silent scream.

Bilal Qureshi. 

A criminal defence lawyer of great repute in the city and one of the most influential men in Karachi’s high society. 

“Have a look at this—”, Iqbal called him from the other end of the room. 

Rehman walked over and saw what he was pointing to. The same symbol painted on the polished marble floor, rust red.

“The blood?”, Rehman asked, bending down to inspect the symbol closely. 

“Not a human’s— of that I am certain”, Iqbal answered. 

“And the security didn’t see anyone entering or leaving?”

“No. But fortunately for us. This time we have a very narrow time of opportunity for the murder.”

“How so?”

“Bilal had been entertaining guests tonight. The security saw them leave at ten forty five. Then they were alerted exactly twenty minutes later by his daughter about the murder.”

Rehman looked at him, startled. 

“Wait, his daughter was at home? She saw the murderer?”, he asked, trying to suppress the hope in his tone. Iqbal shook his head, frowning at the body. 

“No, sadly not. She had come down hearing a noise. She just witnessed her father like this and screamed the house down, which alerted the guards outside.”

“You mean to tell me, someone entered the house, unseen by the security or caught by the cameras, managed to not only split Bilal Qureshi open and hammer him to the wall without the man making a single noise, draw an elaborately weird symbol on the floor with blood then escape unnoticed, within…”, Rehman checked his watch, “twenty minutes?”

“I know how it sounds, Rehman but that is exactly what happened. He was alive till ten forty five, he was seen by his security bidding the guests farewell. Then his daughter came down around eleven after hearing what she describes as a thudding noise”

Rehman threw his hands up, half in frustration and half in disbelief. 

Iqbal was leaning against the back of the sofa, those veiny forearms crossed against his chest, the bulge of his biceps showing clearly against the taut silk of his kurta. There was a brooch pinned on his maroon vest that Rehman hadn’t noticed. 

It was a wolf, jaw opened, as if taking a bite out of his prey. 

It was gold inlaid and had rubies for the eyes of the creature. 

“What if he was sedated? That is why he didn’t struggle”, Iqbal continued but Rehman shook his head. 

“Didn’t you read the ME’s report? No sedatives found in the blood stream…”, he stopped and then turned, eyes wide, “but the blood found was not a human’s. Did the assassin sedate the victims, kill them and then drain all their blood and inject goat’s blood into their entire arterial structure and then what—”

Rehman growled and pinched in the bridge of his nose. 

None of it was making sense. He could feel that the Major was similarly bamboozled. 

“Even if such a procedure is theoretically possible with the help of a high end mechanism, it couldn’t have been done within twenty minutes.”

They were quiet for a long time after that. Lost in their own thoughts. 

Iqbal had walked with him outside the hall now. 

The forensic team had come and the police were already crawling all over the place. Rehman needed space to breathe without being bombarded from all directions. He was glad, at least Jamali hadn’t reached the scene yet. 

They were standing in the garden. 

Rehman had taken out one of his signature Marlboros now. Iqbal offered to light it which was odd but not as insane as his life had suddenly become. 

For some reason, Birkan Demir’s book wouldn’t leave his mind. And why did the man, so cooperative, suddenly clam up when he wanted to know the title of the book? 

He had already set his men to search for the book or the box in Afsal’s mansion. Hopefully they'll find it and maybe that could point him to some direction or help him build some logic to this absolutely insane shit happening. 

“I can’t afford Lyari to fall into panic because of this lunatic, whoever he is. One murder could be contained, but two? Within a day’s difference. What is the connection between Siddiqi and Qureshi anyway?”, Rehman mused aloud. 

“They walked in the same circles. I heard a rumour that they were golf buddies. No other relation”, Iqbal said between the cigarette clenched between his teeth. 

The quiet was almost comfortable between them. 

Before Iqbal broke it again, he turned towards Rehman fully, as if wanting to observe his every minute reaction under the silver of the moonlight. 

“Tell me the truth. Do you also feel it?”

The hair on Rehman's nape stood up immediately. As if verbalizing the feeling had suddenly intensified it a hundred fold. Rehman wanted to deny it immediately because it was foolish. 

But then why would Iqbal feel it too? 

Rehman has never denied his instincts, however irrational, before. 

“There is something evil in the air. I can sense it watching us. Breathing down my neck, as if observing my every move.”

Was Rehman imagining it or was there a distinct note of unease in the Major’s voice as well.

“I don’t know. It is hard to say, but I do feel something unsettling about these killings. Can’t yet put my finger on it but there is something amiss, something not exactly normal.”

There, now he has said it aloud. 

Iqbal hummed in agreement but didn’t say anything. 

The moon seemed to almost mock them both as they stood smoking quietly for the rest of the night. 

_________________________

“From what we could gather Lezaz is a privately owned security firm in Turkey. The owner is hidden behind a matrix of shell corporations making him very difficult to sniff out.”

Rehman frowned into the distance where he could see Uzair and Hamza play a weird amalgamation of tag and football with the rest of the boys. 

Sanyal was still speaking through the line. 

“I heard about Qureshi.”

“What I can’t figure out is why would Afsal Siddiqi need private security?”

“Him and Qureshi both—”

Rehman sat up straight, excitement surging up his veins. This was the adrenaline spike a hunter got when finally catching the scent of its prey. 

“Bilal contracted the same firm”, Rehman muttered aloud. 

“Sure did. Your hunch hit home. We compared that apparent dead number on Siddiqi’s call records that you sent over and took out Qureshi’s call records—”, the older man drawled and Rehman held the card to the light above, trying to find any other clue from the fairly minimalistic embossing over it. 

“I don’t even want to know how you did that..”, he muttered absent mindedly, cutting across the RAW chief. 

Sanyal ignored him with flourish as always. 

“...As I was saying, Qureshi had called that same number a few times over the past month. That we connected to Lezaz.”

The pattern was foggy but it was forming nonetheless. Rehman hadn’t realised that the older man was still on the line. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he almost jumped when a cough wracked from the phone in his ear.

“Well, do you want to know the name of the owner?”

“Didn’t you say it is difficult to find that out?”

“I said ‘difficult’. Not impossible.”

Rehman was impressed. But he would rather swallow his own foot than admit that.

“Well, go on then”, he prompted. 

“A man called Birkan Demir.”

Rehman swore so loudly he could see the boys startle as they gawked towards him through the office glass. 

He got up from his throne, cut the call and threw the burner inside his desk and dialed a number on his mobile furiously. He could sense that heavy slippery feeling in the air all of a sudden. 

Did the lamps dim on their own? 

This case would drive him mad. 

The line connected sharply. 

Rehman didn’t waste even a breath on empty greetings. 

“We need to find out everything about a man called Birkan Demir. He is from Turkey and runs a private security firm where I believe both Siddiqi and Qureshi were clients.”

“Hello. Good evening to you too, Dakait sahab. Also, nice to see you are finally cooperating”, Iqbal’s tone was slightly amused as per usual but equally warm. 

The man always sounded pleased to talk to with him which would have been slightly creepy if Rehman was any less fucked up than he actually was. 

“The time for pleasantries is long past, Major sahab. This is not a game anymore”, Rehman retorted, pinching the bridge of his sharp nose as a headache began to bloom beneath his tightly shut eyes. 

“I completely agree. Which is why I was just about to call you and let you know that the police have found a large wooden box in Qureshi’s home. Now I don't know what exactly you were searching for in that antique shop yesterday but—”

Rehman didn’t even acknowledge that he had been followed. His hands had started almost trembling with nerves. 

“Is it—?”

“It is empty. Still I thought you might like to see it for yourself.”

Rehman sighed and saw Uzair approaching the office with slow uncertain steps. There was a worried crease in between those beloved eyebrows. 

“Where?”, he asked finally. 

___________________________

It was one of those rare five star hotels that actually looked straight out of a Hollywood dream.

The city’s most powerful and elite were frequent guests here and Rehman had already spotted three politicians, one retired army general and a filmstar in the few tables positioned a good distance away. 

They were seated at the balcony. 

Prime location. 

Karachi was a mass of twinkling lights behind. The chandeliers above casted an almost dreamy glow around the milk white table cloth and pearlescent dinnerware and crystal glasses. 

The full bottle of the whiskey probably cost more than what Rehman made in a quarter. 

The taste had a strangely floral hint which left its mark at the back of his tongue as the more dominant flavors of rich malt and bitter liquor slid smooth as velvet down his throat. It was some Japanese brand he had never heard of. 

Sometimes Rehman was a little blindsided by how the other side actually lived. 

Iqbal looked completely comfortable, lounging in the chair opposite, slicing his dinner into neat strips with the fork and knife expertly, so efficiently handling the cutlery with those long fingers that it was almost hypnotising to watch. 

He was wearing olive green, the shade almost shimmeringly dark like the skin of an anaconda wrapped around those lithe muscles. Not a hair out of place as usual. The ruby on his signet ring flashed in the lighting above. 

He had shaved. A neat stubble left to expose the chiselled lines of his sharp handsome features. 

“When you said, you wanted to go over the crime scene photos again—”, Rehman crushed his cigarette in the polished graphite ashtray in front, “this was not what I was exactly picturing.”

Iqbal smirked in that half infuriating, half striking way of his. 

“A man has got to eat, Sardar. You should try the kebab, Zaheer has assured me he has poured his entire soul into it”, he pointed at Rehman’s plate with a fork before going back to his own food. 

“Of course you know the chef by name”, Rehman muttered but ate a piece anyway. The flavors burst inside his mouth as the meat almost melted on his tongue. If he were a lesser man, he would have moaned. 

The man had taste, if anything. 

Something must have shown in his eyes because Iqbal’s smirk changed into that equally infuriating grin that lit up his whole face. 

“Where did the police find the box—”, he started only to get cut across by his apparent partner’s protests. 

“Ahh..ahh, dinner first. Business after”, the taller man said. 

“If I were a suspicious man, I would think you are trying to distract me, sir”, Rehman said, picking at the food, the silver of his fork glinting against the gold inlaid plate.

“If you were a little less oblivious, you would realise I am trying to seduce you”, Iqbal said nonchalantly and wiped at his lips with the given handtowel. 

The kebab went the wrong way and Rehman started coughing violently. 

Iqbal tsked apologetically and waited patiently till the latter had managed to compose himself enough. Rehman drank the water from the crystal glass carefully, wiped his hands on the towel in front, fidgeted with his fingers because he didn’t know what else to do and then finally locked them together and placed them on his lap. 

Yet the flush that had risen to his cheeks refused to fade and he was sure it was visible even through the dim lighting of the restaurant and the darkness of the night. 

Iqbal was silent, those dark eyes observing him keenly, face set perfectly neutral as if he hadn’t just propositioned him openly. 

Rehman cleared his throat and opted to look at a point beyond the other man’s shoulder. 

“I am usually more suave than this”, he muttered, annoyed at himself, desperate to fill the awkward silence with something. He didn’t mean to blurt that out though. Only maybe a salacious tease or a sarcastic joke that would have lightened the mood. 

Iqbal cocked his head at one side, a lazy smile spreading across his face. He looked suspiciously pleased about Rehman’s confession. 

“And I am usually a little less forward than that. Forgive me but I have always had an affinity for exquisite looking things. 

What in the world was even happening? 

Weren’t they supposed to discuss murders and strange Turkish men and strange empty boxes that should have had strange books inside them?

Rehman raised an eyebrow but one could look only so nonchalant when their face was half red. He could feel the blush spread to his ears instead of lessening like he had expected. 

“You are a terrible flirt, Major sahab”, he conceded and quickly slid up from the table, opting to turn his face towards the exit, nerves suddenly alight in hypersensitivity. He could feel Iqbal’s sigh travel down his own body with how loud yet growly it was. 

“I think dinner is over. Lets go—-”, Rehman completed. 

“And here I thought, we could get dessert”, the voice was right at his ear, again and it took every bit of his willpower to not inch away from that tempestuous proximity. 

Danger was a drug Rehman was hopelessly addicted to. 

And no one could deny the danger the taller man possessed. 

It was a heedy feeling. To be wanted. By a man who could rip your throat out and yet looked at you like he wanted to devour you whole instead. 

Iqbal’s arm came around his waist and Rehman couldn’t stifle the gasp which escaped him. The weight was warm and almost grounding around him. There was nothing innocent about that touch, nor about that arrogant expression on that handsome face. 

For a moment he had completely forgotten about murders, macabre myths, and strange old men scaring the living daylights out of him. 

“And if I say, no?”, Rehman whispered, standing rigid yet letting the taller man keep his arm around his waist, his hand now curled almost possessively on his hipbone, spanning across his lithe frame like a wing of a bat. 

“I would let you go, yes”, Iqbal bent towards his temple and practically kissed the words into his temple, “but remember, I always get what I want, today or some other day”

It was a threat woven lyrically into an illusion of a choice and Rehman must have not completed his quota of reckless insanity for the month because all he could feel was his blood roaring southwards. 

He turned his face and looked upwards at the man, his eyes growing a little heavier on cue. 

“Promise?”, he snarked, a smirk twisted at the corner of his lips. 

A fire suddenly lit in the Major’s eyes and Rehman heard him mutter a sharp, “fuck it” and then he was being dragged towards the exit, right through the lobby and into the closest elevator.

This was definitely circulating in the Karachi high society come tomorrow morning. He should think about Jamali and then Zarvari yelling at him. 

But Rehman’s mind was full of cotton wool right now. All he could sense were all the points of contact between the major’s body and his own. 

Fuck it, indeed. 

Iqbal smashed at some button on the elevator and they were going up. Rehman couldn’t see the floor number because he was suddenly crowded against the elevator wall, Iqbal covering him from the front, those ripped arms bracketing him on both sides. 

“You fucking brat, acting so high and mighty with your little side quests and spitting your little threats on my face”, he snarled and Rehman gasped, feeling the hands suddenly grip his waist and almost smash him with the body in front. 

He couldn’t even respond to the words as his mouth was suddenly sealed. The kiss travelled like lightning from his face to his toes, making him almost tremble in the other man’s arms like some stupid teenage girl. 

He has been kissed by men before. 

But never like this. 

Like Iqbal wanted to tear a layer of his mouth and swallow it whole with his tongue. He was everywhere all within a few seconds, his own hands were scrabbling at the major’s back, almost lifted on his tiptoes, as he tried to fight for dominance. 

But to no avail. 

Rehman only got seconds of breaths in between almost violent kisses and could do nothing but moan helplessly against the assault, hanging on for dear life. He tasted the whiskey on his tongue and that smoky tangy aftertaste of those strawberry cigarettes and something sweet. 

The elevator came to a stop with a ding and the doors opened and thank god for small mercies, there was no one in the corridor. 

Iqbal pulled him out. 

They stumbled together, lips barely separating from each other, the taller man kept pushing him towards a particular door and Rehman got banged against it, his head hitting the wood hard. For a moment he saw stars. 

“Fuck”, Iqbal searched desperately for his keycard and lifted Rehman literally off the ground with an arm and if he hadn’t been hard since his mouth had gotten ravished, he would have definitely been in seconds, from that single motion itself. 

They entered as the card opened up the room and Rehman wrapped his legs around Iqbal’s surprisingly powerful hips as the latter kicked the door shut behind him. 

Like this, he could almost feel the heat and the hardness of Iqbal’s cock press against his stomach through the layers of fabric both of them had and it only made him whimper around those insistent, relentless kisses.

He hadn’t even realised it when they had reached the bed. 

He was suddenly dropped on the mattress, and Iqbal was over him the next second, hands tugging at his black vest and kurta. Rehman helped him unbutton it and by then Iqbal had crowded him so close to the other edge, his head was almost hanging off the bed. 

They were lying horizontally on the bed, Rehman could feel his toes curling into the sheets with desperate anticipation. 

“Fuck you are beautiful”, the Major exclaimed as he pulled open his kurta leaving his torso bare for his appraisal. 

Rehman moaned, feeling his lips on his throat next and those huge warm hands were squeezing his sides. Iqbal left open mouthed kisses and teasing nips and sucking bruises down his chest till his abs. 

Regman closed his eyes, lips parted in a silent scream, tugging at the other man’s thick luscious hair as his lips wrapped around his nipple, sucking furiously on it. The wet hot suction was suddenly interspersed with a quite hard bite. 

“Ahh”

Rehman jerked and cried out at that and panted as Iqbal repeated the ministrations on his other nipple. 

He had opened his eyes with much difficulty, eager to see what Iqbal was planning to do to him next when suddenly his gaze fell on the glass panes in front, his head was hanging off the mattress’s edge so he could see their faint reflections on the surface in front, only upside down. 

And it was like thunder striking him. 

Rehman gasped and leaped up on the bed, almost kneeing Iqbal in the balls as the other man fell back with a surprised squawk, holding his nose where he had banged it on the former's sternum. 

“The fuck Rehman!”, Iqbal growled, clutching his face and sitting up on the bed. But Rehman was already pulling back his kurta over his head, excitement clearing off the fog of lust from his brain like sunlight being poured out from between the clouds after a downpour. 

“I have been so blind! It was right in front of me!”, he shouted and started searching for his vest, much to Iqbal’s shocked disappointment. 

“What are you even doing..why..what are you saying?”

“Iqbal, it was right in front of us! And we didn’t see it. That fucking symbol! We have to go to Siddiqi’s house, right now!”

“What? Now?”, Iqbal looked so befuddled, Rehman almost felt sorry for him. 

“Yes, right now, And tell someone to get the crime scene photos”, Rehman picked up Iqbal’s kurta and threw it at the Major’s frustrated face, unabashedly. 

“Can’t we go tomorrow morning, We were doing something right now, if you have forgotten—”

A grown ass man shouldn’t look this endearing whining like a kid whose candy has been snatched. Rehman dragged the kurta over the taller man’s head, making him wear it despite the protests and kissed him once firmly on the mouth. 

“Hush, let's go catch a killer. And then you can fuck me whenever you want, wherever you want.”

Iqbal’s eyes flashed with such naked hunger, Rehman almost dragged him back to the bed, murder investigations and sudden clues be damned but he restrained himself with a sisyphean effort. 

“I shall hold you to that, Dakait sahab”, the Major drawled lasciviously as he followed him out. 

___________________________

“So see this—”

Rehman was standing, close to the wall, facing the office entrance, inside of which they had found Siddiqi’s corpse. 

“We have been looking at the symbol from the opposite side. If we stand facing the office door, the symbol is—”

“Upside down..”, Iqbal completed for him as he frowned down on the floor. 

“You see the pattern? At first I dismissed it as a child’s scribbling. But if you look closely you can find the shapes of a curved ram’s horn and—”

“Hands!”

Iqbal exclaimed as realisation sparked over his face. 

“And remember, when we saw this exact symbol drawn on Qureshi’s floor, we had entered the room from the same direction, thus we thought it had been flipped. But actually it was always supposed to be an exact hundred and eight degrees from the bodies.”

Rehman kneeled and put the enlarged photos of both the symbols side by side on the ground, only this time, he had flipped the one from Siddiqi’s house. 

Iqbal drew in a sharp breath. 

It was a circle inside of which a ram’s head was positioned in the centre and it had a pair of arms on each side, snakes creeping around them like vines. 

“See, the triangle formed? These are actually two triangles, overlapping each other into a star inside the circle. We can’t see it properly because of the horns inscribed over it”, Rehman pointed out and then got up and darted into Siddiqi’s office. 

Iqbal followed him inside. 

The police had taken the body to the morgue, obviously for the autopsy and processing before releasing it back to the family. But they had marked the area on the wall where the body was pinned with a shape.

“Do you have a marker or something?”, Rehman asked. Iqbal cocked an eyebrow and gave him a pen out of his breast pocket. It was Montblanc of course. Rehman gave him an unimpressed look but took it. 

Then he went to the marking on the wall and started drawing lines, connecting the position of where the hands and the feet of Afsal Siddiqi was pinned according to the drawing. 

“What the—”, Iqbal whispered as Rehman completed his drawing by encircling the star that had formed after joining the lines. 

“Yes. It is a pentagram. Just like that symbol split into two and drawn on both the mansions. Both Siddiqi and Qureshi were hung in this position”, he completed with flourish and handed his startled partner, his fancy pen back. 

They were staring at the drawing when the air felt heavier to Rehman as that distinct smell of marjorams increased. Only this time there was also a very sharp coppery tang to it. 

Which was weird. The house should have smelled of disinfectant.

This herbaceous spicy fragrance that he had assumed was a part of the Major’s perfume seemed wrong now. He had been kissing the man just an hour ago, there was that heady scent of earth and musk and citrus, like rain drenched woods but no spice. 

Yet suddenly why…

“Did you get a weird spicy smell in Qureshi’s house, as well?”, he asked. 

“How did you get any smell except that of blood and shit?”

“Major sahab, I thought you of all people won’t be affected by the scent of gore. Isn’t it your usual scene, most days?”, Rehman said almost teasingly. Iqbal rolled his eyes but there was a hint of a smile on that chiselled face. 

“You have bought into my legend, Dakait sahab. This is unexpected”, he chuckled. 

“Can you blame me? Where there is a lot of smoke, there has to be a flame somewhere”

“Touche.”

Rehman was getting distracted again. Focus. The vase. Where is the vase?

“There was a vase over the desk under which this was hidden. Where is it?”

He looked around and found it. The dresser was kept in a separate corner of the hall. He walked over to it and found that the vibrant yellow spotted violet hued croton that he had seen inside the vase the day of the murder, had withered into decay. 

This within three days? 

He had heard that death in any place usually left a certain necrophilic aftereffect over every living thing. 

But to die so fast?

He dug his hands into the earth inside the heavy stone vase and rummaged around the roots of the plant. His fingers touched something metallic and he brought it out. A small dark metal box. He opened it and almost dropped it in shock. 

“What is it?”, Iqbal peered over his shoulder. 

There was a charred piece of bone nestled in what looked like a mixture of sand and dried herbs. Thus that burnt tangerine odour of marjoram, he had gotten that night. 

“What the hell is this, now?”, he hissed. 

“Rehman—”, Iqbal whispered uneasily. 

“What?”

“Do you know what this drawing means?”

The Major was back where the pictures laid side by side on the floor. He was staring at them, face twisted in thought. 

“Symbology from ancient Arabic texts have this inscription in their earliest documentation of the twelfth century book, Ajaib al-Makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat, also called the ‘Marvels of Things and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing’ compiled by Zakkariya al-Qazwini. This is the oldest iteration of Iblis.”

Iblis. 

Shaitaan. 

Or as the Christians had adapted him— Satan. 

The Devil. 

“A dead man nailed to the wall, his blood replaced with that of a goat, the symbol of the Devil drawn near the body— and now we have a box filled with bone and strange substances..”

Rehman huffed and crossed his arms. 

“Please don’t tell me you are thinking about black magic, right now”, he asked incredulously. 

“You said it yourself. There is no way one man could have murdered Qureshi, strung him up like a carcass, replaced his blood with that of an animal and then vanished into the air within twenty minutes. But do you know who can do it?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”

Rehman stormed out of the room because irritation and a slowly rising fury was making him want to do something idiotic like punch the other man in the face. Well, that won’t blow over very well. 

Has Donga somehow gotten into the Major’s head?

“Do you want to see the box we got from Bilal’s house?”, Iqbal called after him, as if to console him. That made him stop his infuriated march. 

“It's in the car”, the other man walked past him towards the boot of the Maybach they had used to drive here. 

“I activated my assets in Istanbul, after you called about Demir and his private security firm”, Iqbal began as he pulled out what looked like a mini suitcase but was actually quite a large wooden box. Rehman flashed the torch over it to see better in the dark. 

“Oh so you were listening?”

“I am always listening. Anyway, my boys found out, this security firm he is supposedly running is just a front. Lezaz is a syndicate. A very small, highly protected group of people who dabble in the dark arts.”

Rehman was busy inspecting the strange engravings on the wooden surface of the box under the flashlight. They almost looked like creepers made out of iron chains lining the edges of the rectangular lid of the box. The lock was broken. 

He leaned down more and smelled around the edges. 

“You mean, they are a cult. Why would Siddiqi and Qureshi call a Turkish cult?”, he asked absent mindedly. 

“You said Demir told you there was a book inside this?”, Iqbal whispered from beside as Rehman opened the lid and peered into the empty space inside. 

“That is what Birkan Demir told me. But he refused to tell me what book it was and now I am wondering how did Qureshi get the box? Where is the bloody book anyway?”

Iqbal suddenly pulled Rehman off from where he was bending over the box by the back of his kurta and slammed the lid shut sharply. 

“What the fuck! Are you crazy?”, Rehman shrugged him off and glowered at his sudden assailant. 

Iqbal slammed the boot shut and was he muttering a prayer under his breath? 

“What are you—”

“Rehman. I know you don’t want to believe in all this, but if it is the book I think it is, then we cannot deal with this the normal way. This enemy won't be deterred by either of our reputations or our guns.”

“I don’t understand. What book do you think this is!”

“My men are seasoned players of this game. They have broken mossad agents before but they couldn’t break this one paltry Turkish businessman. He refused to even utter the name. Two men who have seemingly come in contact with this book are dead. There is the symbol of the Devil carved into their houses.”

Rehman was sure he looked as perplexed as he felt. Iqbal tugged at his hair in a completely uncharacteristic display of helplessness. 

“Have you heard of the Shams al-Ma'arif?”

Also called ‘The Sun of Knowledge’,  the Shams al-Ma’arif was written by the Algerian Sufi scholar, Ahmad al-Buni in the thirteenth century. The ultimate grimoire of the Arabic mystics. They believed one could call upon creatures from another world by performing the rituals mentioned in this book. 

Banned from most Islamic states, even taking its name was a blasphemy. 

“Djinns. That is what we are going with? Monsters and fairies? The Devil. Banned books and plain superstition?”

Yeah, he wasn’t buying into this. Even if he had immediately felt that ever-seeing invisible eye bore into his vulnerable nape the moment the words had left the other man’s lips. 

“Iqbal, someone is playing with us. Distracting us from the actual truth by blindsiding us with this voodoo and magic shit.”

Iqbal shook his head but didn’t protest anymore. 

“Whatever it is, we need to find it before there are more unexplained murders and our bosses leap for our throats. Stay here, I will go get the photographs from the house”, he said and walked back into the haveli. 

Rehman lit a cigarette and leaned against the boot of the car. 

His mind was a right mess. The moon was absent tonight yet his eyes had adjusted to the darkness well. What did they say about nocturnal predators and their ability to see perfectly in the pitch blackness?

He had taken out the card from his pocket and was flipping it over in his hand. 

Lezaz. Lezaz. Lezaz. 

Private security with a hidden fetish for witchcraft. 

Well at least he got one thing he could rub in Sanyal’s face. RAW couldn’t find what the company actually does or maybe the notion itself is so ridiculous they didn’t bother to discover it. 

Lezaz. Lezaz. 

Lez—

Wait. Rehman straightened from his slouch, the smoke from his cigarette had blown over the white expanse and suddenly the letters seemed to jump in front of his eyes. 

What the hell.

That upside down triangle that he had thought was the logo, if he flipped it over and joined it at the end of the word, the straight line that seemed to cut across the letters would bifurcate it and it would resemble the letter ‘A’. 

That would make the word, ‘Lezaza’.

Huh?

What in hell was Lezaza?

He was turning mad. Rehman dropped the card back into his pocket and leaned back against the car again. 

What was taking the Major so long, anyway?

The end of his cig suddenly reflected off the rearview mirror of the car, catching the edge of his vision. It almost looked like the end of a burning cherry. 

Wait. 

Rehman took out the card from his pocket again and held it in front of the side mirror. 

Lezaza, the letters from left to right if read from right to left, becomes—

Azazel. 

Azazel, the angel of death as coined in Christianity. But in Islam, Azazel is Azazil, the angel who was the master of all the other angels— the strongest one before he fell from grace. 

Azazil is Samael in the Bible— or Lucifer as he came to be known, later. 

Azazil was the name of Iblis before he became the Fallen— the Devil.

A sudden crackling noise had Rehman turning with a whiplash. He had dropped the card in the movement. There was a bend in the road at the end where the darkness had collected almost like a shroud. But he could see a faint silhouette. 

“Who..who is it?”, Rehman barked, gun already out in his hands, but his throat had run dry. This was the exact feeling he had got in that narrow alleyway last night. 

The shape materialised into a limping figure. 

That same wrinkled face stared out from the shadows, those cracked darkened lips stretched in a ghastly rictus of a smile. His right eye was milky and felt like a bullet through his throat. 

“Rehman Baloch”, he hissed and it sounded like rattle snakes coiling and slithering against each other. His white hair fell from behind that bald head down to his waist matching that beard tangling from his chin. 

“Stop! Who the fuck are you?”, Rehman snarled, wrath overtaking his fear and he forced his frozen feet to move towards the shadowy figure in front. 

The beggar turned and started walking into the darkness behind the curve and Rehman sprinted, gun gripped tight in one hand. 

“Wait motherfucker!”

Rehman knew the man had followed him here. He was certain, he knew something about the murders. 

He was just electing to ignore the fact that this was perhaps the only man who had ever managed to terrify him into absolute inaction. And that the air around him had started feeling so heavy, it was almost like sludge. 

He could barely breathe and his lungs were burning. He still dashed behind the strangely quick cripple, determined to catch him one way or another. He had had enough mystery and games to last a century. 

Suddenly just as he was over that grey covered shoulder, the beggar turned and Rehman slammed to a stop. That one eye that had bored into him with the intensity of a fathomless abyss had transformed into a bloodied sea. 

A red moon. 

Fire. 

A hand came and gripped his wrist. The contact scorched and Rehman gasped as he realised he didn’t have enough breath left in his lungs to scream. His muscles had locked up again and there was this insistent pull inside his core like his soul will get ripped out of his body. 

His blood poured down like an avalanche through his veins. 

Agony was a wildfire blazing white across his chest.

Those fingers suddenly seemed mile wide, tangling around his entire arm like creepers. That bent, crippled almost skeletal frame had blown up, to a gigantic shape. That head was getting distorted, like there were a pair of branches trying to break out of either side of that skull. 

It was a horrifying sight. 

Was he dreaming?

He couldn’t even scream. 

“Rehman!”

The trance broke and he was alone. He could breathe again and his blood felt like a roaring wave down his frame. The beggar…the creature had vanished into the mist. But he could still hear that eerily hyena-like laughter scatter into the wind. 

Iqbal was at his side suddenly and he didn’t know when his knees had almost buckled and he would have crumbled into the ground if not for the other man catching him. 

“Rehman, what happened?”

Iqbal’s arms were the first source of heat after what felt like running through a blizzard. Rehman didn’t have any strength left to preserve whatever was left of his dignity. He leaned into the embrace fully, letting the other man hold most of his weight. 

All his power seemed to have been sapped in that deadly grip. 

His wrist was on fire. 

He tried speaking but it came out like a garbled meek whimper. The Major held him a tad tighter or was that just his exhausted mind conjuring up false comfort?

He didn’t care. 

“It's fine, meri jaan. You will be fine”, Iqbal muttered, rubbing his back with those large palms and oh, he was trembling, wasn’t he?

The wind seemed to howl like a crying wolf.

Rehman felt his mind finally give way and a blessed oblivion wrapped him up.

He may have heard a very faint, ‘shit’ and then there was nothing.