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Depressing Discovery
While Simon took Kavya to the Chanchalguda Jail in his jeep, Dhruva drove Radha straight to Spandan in his Esteem, reaching which he collected the door keys from the guard.
Radha alerted him to a heap of burkas on the clothesline in the master bedroom’s attached toilet, and seeing him seemingly unenthused, she proposed that she might wear one of them to have a feel of it. Saying in jest that even that tent-of-a-garment might fail to hide the alluring features of her hourglass figure, he let her take him around the bungalow before he led her out of it. Getting into the car, she reminded him about the burkas, and thanked him for not having put her through the choking regimen, and as he remained silent, she became anxious and asked him what was bothering him. When he said pensively that he was only wondering how odd it could be when women wore kept mum thereafter.
Dropping her at home, Dhruva drove to the forensic laboratory, where he learned that while the main door key retained by Kavya had traces of wax on it; the other two retrieved from the bank locker were dry and clean. Beset with the mixed feelings the findings induced in him, he reached the Jubilee Hills police station to know what the original Godrej lock had to reveal. Revealing that the lock was unhampered, as Simon maintained that the very fact had tilted the needle of suspicion back towards Kavya, Dhruva told him that for the very reason he could see her un-involvement in the crime coming to the fore.
Over drinks that evening, Radha said that luckily for Kavya, the court didn’t reckon her motive to murder Shakeel though it was apparent that she didn’t take it kindly to the cop for having falsely implicated Pravar in the fake-notes case. Wasn’t it her wont to identify Pravar’s detractors as her enemies before Dhruva could clear her head ruled by the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’? Besides, having shed the Pravar blinkers was she not enamored of Dhruva, and were it not possible that she might have thought of erasing her past by eliminating Pravar and Natya to usher in a new romance in her life?
Dhruva said that she had to wait for the answers until he cut the Gordian knot to free Kavya under siege, and added in jest that in the meantime she better reined in her jealousy; turning coy, she told him that her own future seemed to be under siege by his empathy for her rival. He tried to make light of her remark but as she said she was afraid that she was no match to her rival, he told her jocularly that to keep up her spirits; he would like to keep her on high. She said that she was a game for that and turning away Raju whenever he came to fetch them for dinner Dhruva goaded her to get drunk. After dinner, seeing her in slumber, he wondered if he was excessively lenient towards Kavya and thought, in the same vein, whether he was unnecessarily suspicious of Radha. Torn between the woman he made his own and the woman he eyed, he resolved to see Radha’s place for whatever it had in store for Kavya’s fate. So as Raju kept a watch on her in 9, Castle Hills, Dhruva sneaked out of her bed and set out on his nocturnal mission with a bunch of assorted keys.