I feel my mobile phone vibrating under me and wake up with a start. I see the caller name and groan in frustration. The clock on the wall opposite to my bed shows the time as 3 AM. Another early start. My partners will be furious when I go bang on their doors. I do not answer the call. I know he’d call me back – the Inspector was persistent, if not anything else.

I switch the mobile to loud, get out of my bed and walk naked into the kitchen for a glass of water. As expected, the mobile starts ringing again and this time it’s followed by a shriek. Again, as expected. I grin and return to the bedroom where Rani is scrambling to cover her modesty. I wink at her, open my wallet, retrieve a five hundred rupee note and fling it in her general vicinity.

She mutters a curse, drops the blanket with which she was covering her naked body and goes to pick the note. I stare at her for few seconds before gathering her clothes and dump them in her hands. She glares at me with unadulterated hate in her eyes as I brusquely ask her to leave. We both know that this will happen again, this was nothing new. She’ll be back, I know that. Somewhere, in the corner of our warped minds, I guess we like each other. But we have kept our relationship strictly professional till date.

I look at her retreating figure, sigh and make the calls to my partners. They are not happy, to say the least. We agree to meet at the Suicide Point in half an hour’s time. That’s what we do for a living – we retrieve dead bodies of the idiots who commit suicide by jumping off the famous Peace Valley View Point, more commonly known as the aforementioned Suicide Point.

Continue reading at L.E.R.T