My First Story - Who killed Amu's son?

A loud scream pierced the silence of the night and sent a chill down my spine. I heard someone crying in the neighbor's house. The clock shows the time at 12.45 pm

I was enjoying a long vacation here at my aunt's house. After my final year degree exam.

I knocked on my aunt's door, knowing that she would be in a deep sleep after taking the medicines.

My aunt looked worried and nervous as she opened her door.

"I heard some screams from the neighbor's house. I think there is some problem.

I'm going to inquire there" I said

She said that she would also come as she did not want me to go alone.

It was hot and humid outside. We started walking towards the house in the dim light of the street, amid the cries of the clouds of night insects around us.

My aunt lived in a small beautiful village in Kerala which was just an hour away from the city.

Her only son had moved to Canada a few years ago and wanted my aunt to come with her but she always refused saying that she was happy in her small village, surrounded by friends and relatives and didn't want to be uprooted .

The distance from the neighbor's house was not much. All around were paddy fields surrounded by huge coconut trees which were swinging in the light breeze.

It was a huge house away from all the other houses with a long narrow road connecting the main road ahead.

The house belonged to 'Amu', a 70-year-old widow who had suffered a paralytic stroke a few years back, spending most of her time in a wheelchair since then.

Omna, a middle-aged woman was hired as a nurse cum companion to take care of her and lived in the same house with Amu as she had no family of her own. There was a cook and a maid who used to come in the morning and leave in the evening.

The lights were on in all the rooms and the main door was open. We saw that Amu was crying in a wheelchair and Omna was standing beside him.

As we entered Omna came running to my aunt, she was crying, her face distorted with fear, not saying anything. My aunt pacified him and I went to pacify Amu who was in a bad condition.

From their sobs, we came to know that Amu's son was lying dead in his room upstairs and that someone seemed to have strangled him.

My aunt was too shocked to react and didn't know what to say or do. We stood there watching Amu and her nurse clinging to each other and sobbing.

By then some other neighbors started walking after hearing the commotion. My aunt told them what had happened and one of them called the police.

The police immediately came with a doctor, who examined the body and declared it brought dead.

He took the body in his possession and looked around for fingerprints and other clues, there were no fingerprints as if the killer had erased everything after committing the crime. An ambulance was called and the body was taken to the hospital for postmortem.

The police came to question Amu and the nurse.

Omna said that around 12 o'clock he heard Dev, Amu's son enter the house as he had his own set of keys.

He heard some voices, the son was talking to someone, but he didn't think much of it because he was in the habit of bringing his friends home and they had another round of wine that lasted until the wee hours of the morning.

He and Amu went to sleep again. Omna always slept in Amu's room as she needed some assistance at night.

After a while he got up with a loud rumble and heard footsteps going down the stairs.

By the time Omna came out, the intruder had gone a long way. He saw that the main door was open. Sensing the trouble, she called out to Amu's son, but he did not answer and so she went to see him.

All the lights in his room were turned off except one night lamp. He was lying unconscious on the floor. She went to him and saw some ligature marks on his neck. Being a nurse she recognized those marks. When she checked her pulse, she did not know… she ran down screaming.

Amu was broken on hearing the news and was crying since then. The police turned to her to record her statement but she was not in a position to say anything.

They said that they would come again to interrogate Amu. He sealed the room and warned that no one should enter the 'crime site'.

"It's going to be a long night, so you can go home and sleep", said my aunt. I told him that I was fine because I wanted to be with him.

We stayed with Amu the whole night..she was crying and calling her only child.

A doctor was called who gave him a sedative which soon took effect and Amu fell asleep.

It was almost 5 o'clock when we returned home and neither of us could sleep anymore.

My aunt served us coffee and we sat down at the long wooden table in the kitchen to discuss the turn of events. She looked upset. This is the first time such a horrific incident has happened, he said.

The village was very secure and they all lived like one big family. I knew about it because I always used to visit him during my school and college holidays and it was a second home for me.

Amu's husband was a wealthy landowner and owned about a quarter of the total land in the area. Amu was a very pious lady who always helped the poor and no one returned empty handed from her door.

There was an orphanage for destitute children and a home for senior citizens which was fully funded by Amu. She had several paddy and rubber plantations from where she earned all the income.

His only son Dev turned out to be a lazy scoundrel. I never got along with him because he was always arrogant and rude even as a school kid. He never helped in the family business. He lived in bad company and often quarreled with the villagers and sometimes even misbehaved with the women of the village.

People tolerated him because of Amu, otherwise he would have been in jail for some time.

He had raped a poor innocent girl 'Meenu' from the village, who eventually committed suicide and Amu put the matter to rest by paying compensation to the girl's family by asking them to leave the village.

Everyone in the village hated Dev.

Being the "only child", Amu had spoiled her a bit. She was blind to her faults and joined him by fulfilling all his demands and this led her to the path of destruction. The result of his indulgence on Amu came very late.

Now she was keeping a clenched fist on her money which made the son even more angry and there were many instances where he raised his hand on his old mother for money.

Once she had hit Amu so badly that she had to be hospitalized for her injuries but she told the doctors that she collapsed in the bathroom.

He always treated Omna as a minion and left no chance to reduce him which he simply ignored for the sake of Amu.

The next day the police came to question Amu. He said the postmortem report showed that the blood alcohol level of the victim was very high and he did not show any resistance to the killer.

He asked Amu if he had any doubts. He said that he had many enemies and it was difficult to identify any one person.

"Is there any valuables missing.?" asked the policeman.

Amu said that he had kept everything in the bank except a small amount for his personal expenses at home.

The police dismissed the robbery as a motive and felt it must be some personal enmity. They also checked his call details but found nothing suspicious.

Amu's son was cremated the next day. Amu was sitting there with a rocky mouth and dry eyes. Due to the respect for Amu's son, the whole village had gathered for the last rites.

The police called his son's friends for questioning. He told the police that they were all drinking together in the bar and after sometime all left for their respective homes, their call records were checked, their family questioned but no incriminating evidence was found against them .

All the goons and miscreants of the village were surrounded for questioning, but the police did not find any concrete evidence against any of them and they were let off as all of them had made an iron excuse.

He questioned all the people of the village including my aunt and me.

The investigation went ahead but nothing special came out.

The police returned after two weeks and told Amu that they had not found any leads to conclude....it was the work of an outsider. They wanted Omna to interrogate the cook and the maid again..

The cook and the maid said that both of them had left the house in the evening. Omna repeated her same story backed by Amu.

The police didn't argue much and went away saying that they would continue the investigation and if they got any more information they would let it know.

Soon a month passed and it was time for me to return home.

I booked my flight for next Sunday at 10 pm. I wanted to go and meet Amu, but she was still in a state of shock and was not meeting anyone. My aunt felt bad that I had to witness this horrific incident but I assured her that I was fine.

At 8 pm the cab driver called to say that he was waiting at the end of the road to avoid potholes and asked me to walk to the cab.

I didn't mind as I only had one bag and it was not far away. I said goodbye to my aunt and promised to meet her soon and started walking down the street.

I passed Amu's house, which was dark except for a night lamp in the living room. Amu used to sleep early at 8 pm and when she went inside no one was allowed to disturb her

Bed.

I heard some voices from his living room. Thinking she was still awake, I peeped through the window and shouted the final "goodbye".

The sight inside made my bones cold. Amu was walking towards the stairs without any support. She climbed the stairs and disappeared inside the room in no time. Omna was reading a book sitting near the lamp.

I was too afraid to move or speak and I stuck to my place.

I managed to reach the cab and literally fell on the seat.

Throughout my journey, that scene haunted me.

Could Amu "walk"? Why was she hiding this fact?

Was she the one who strangled her son by climbing up or was it Omna?

Did he lie to the police that he had heard Dev talking to someone on the night of the murder?

I was puzzled by all these questions and didn't get any answer.

I arrived at the airport at 8.30, checked in and sat in a corner, lost in thought.

"Mr. Roy! Mr. Roy!" Someone was shaking me mercilessly.

I saw three policemen standing in front of me.

I was wondering why they are calling my name

One of them said aloud, "You have to join us as you are being arrested for the murder of Amu's son Dev." Before I could understand anything, he handcuffed me and made me sit in his jeep.

My aunt was already crying in the police station and looking at me in disbelief.

"How can you arrest me"? Do you have any proof? I screamed.

The inspector looked at me with a gleam in his eyes and asked me.

"Do you deny that you know Meenu? Girl who committed suicide after rape"?

"Didn't you love her"?

"Isn't it true that when you found out that Amu's son had raped her, you wanted to kill her?"

"Didn't you come up with a plan to kill Dev?" He was throwing questions one after the other without waiting for an answer.

The inspector said that after questioning almost everyone in the village, he was shocked as he could not find any evidence against anyone. So, on a hunch he went to meet Meenu's father, who lives in another district. The father was still mourning the death of his daughter. He told the inspector that his daughter was a gifted artist and had got a scholarship from a prestigious art college which was his dream.

He proudly showed all his paintings to the inspector. One of those pictures was mine which the inspector immediately recognized.

He asked the father about the picture. The father told him that his daughter is in love with this boy. And at that moment the inspector came to know that it was me..

She said that that night I left the house when my aunt fell asleep, knowing that she took sleeping pills and didn't wake up until morning. I waited for Dev outside his house and persuaded him to invite me on the pretext of discussing something important. As soon as we entered his room, I strangled him.

I pleaded with him that it was all a bunch of lies and false implications. I can never kill anyone but what I said was in deaf ears.

I wanted to tell him about 'Amu's secret' but no one would believe me.

My mind was numb. I was trying to remember the events of that night before I heard the piercing scream but everything was blank. I couldn't remember anything.

Was it possible that I had killed 'Dev'?

I felt an icy grip squeezing my heart.