Episode 4 – Catastrophism 

Joy had sent forensics back into the Folklore parking garage at midnight with one specific instruction.

Not a general sweep. A targeted one. They knew what they were looking for.The lion, the paw, the sword….THE RING

At 7:43 AM his phone rang.

“Sir,” the forensics officer said. “We got it.”

The parking garage at Folklore smelled of petrol, damp concrete and expensive car leather. The kind of place that existed purely to store vehicles worth more than most people’s apartments, which said something about the city that Joy had stopped finding surprising a long time ago.

The ring was lying half hidden under the shadow of a concrete pillar, catching the forensic torch beam at an angle that made it look almost theatrical. Gold. Lion with one paw raised. Sword behind. Family initials at the base.

Exactly where Rhea said the attack had happened….

Exactly the ring she had described.

Joy crouched over it without touching it.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he looked at the ground around it. At the chalk outline marking where Rhea had been found by the valet.

Four feet….Joy noted it.

He stood up.

“Good work,” he said.

“That’s it?” the officer said. “Good work?”

“Would you prefer a certificate for doing your job, Genius?” Said Joy, his voice edged with anger as he walked back to the car.

Johns was at his desk when Joy got back, surrounded by what appeared to be the physical manifestation of a nervous breakdown in paper form. Files everywhere. Printouts connected by lines in three different coloured pens, lines that suggested either brilliant detective work or the early stages of a midlife crisis…

“Rohan Mirchandani,” Johns said without looking up. “Twenty eight…London….Masters in finance, distinction, glowing references. No debt, no legal trouble, no parking fines, no unpaid library books, nothing.” He finally looked up. “Joy, this man’s record is so clean it squeaks when you look at it…it’s suspicious… Normal people have at least one embarrassing thing. Something…”

“Pull his travel history, what’s the latest?” Joy said.

“Already pulled.” Johns slid a page across the desk. “London, two years, came back four years ago. Return flight dated…”

Joy looked at the date.

“Pull Nadia Ferreira’s travel records, when was her last travel?” he said.

Johns pulled them. Looked at them. Then looked at Joy.

“Same week,” Johns said slowly. “She moved back from Mumbai. Four days apart.”

“Yes. What else do we have on them? Anything that connects them??”

“Nothing much…. but one minor deviation,” he said. “In two years of London. One flight where Rohan’s destination wasn’t Velmoor.”

“Then?” Asked Joy..

“Mumbai,” Johns said. “Six days. Three years ago.”

“Pull Nadia’s Mumbai records for the same period.”

Johns pulled them. She was there. Same six days. Same city.

“That’s not a coincidence,” Joy said.

“No,” Johns said. “But it’s also not evidence of anything except two people being in the same city at the same time.” He paused. “I need something more concrete.”

“Then find it.”

Johns found it the way he found most things. Through sheer stubborn volume of effort and a contact list that suggested he had at some point befriended approximately half the city.

He spent three hours on the phone. Called two of Rohan’s London college alumnus, who confirmed what everyone apparently knew but nobody had said officially. Rohan and a girl named Nadia from his hometown…. Quietly but seriously together. Letters, visits, the whole thing.

Then as per Rohan’s Facebook check-in’s as on the dates of his visit to Mumbai, John’s called a contact at a restaurant group in Mumbai, asked for CCTV archives from the six day window. Gave them the dates. Waited….

The image came through at 2 PM.

Johns looked at it for a moment.

Then he walked it over to Joy’s desk without saying anything.

Just set it down.

Joy looked at it…..

Johns smiled…

Johns sat back. “I went through four years of his social media last night. Four years Joy. Do you know how many photographs that is?”

“How many.”

“Too many. My eyes feel sandpapered. I need you to appreciate that.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You don’t look like you appreciate it.”

“This is my appreciating face.”

Johns stared at him. “It looks exactly like your other face.”

“I know. What else did you find.”

Johns looked back at his notes. “Two people from the same circles, the same city, rumored to be dating, returning within four days of each other, and not one photo together across years of parties, galas, charity events and foundation dinners…..” He paused. “That’s not coincidence….That’s discipline….”

“Or love,” Joy said.

Johns looked at him for a long moment.

“Did you just say love.”

“I said ‘or love’. It was a hypothesis.”

“You said it like someone who has never personally experienced the concept.”

“Ah….shut up! Get me the tox screen,” Joy said.

Johns got the tox screen.

Joy read it once. Set it down. Read it again.

Scopolamine!

He called Johns into the office without explaining why, Johns had learned that this meant something significant had arrived and Joy needed a witness before he said it out loud.

Johns appeared in the doorway with his coffee, read the report over Joy’s shoulder and was quiet for a full thirty seconds which was, for Johns, essentially a meditation retreat.

“What is scopolamine,” he said finally.

“Derived from a plant called Datura. Prescribed medically for motion sickness, inner ear disorders, certain surgical procedures.” Joy paused. “In higher doses it does something very specific. It doesn’t sedate you. It doesn’t knock you out. It makes you compliant. You remain conscious, you can walk, you can speak, but your capacity to resist or think independently is almost entirely removed…”

Johns set his coffee down.

“So…wait….can this mean….Nadia walked to that corridor herself,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Because the drug made resistance feel impossible.” Said Johns….

“Yes.”

“Someone put this in her drink at the party.” said Johns

“At least forty minutes before she died, That’s how long it takes to reach full effect. Which means during those forty minutes our killer was back in the ballroom. Talking. Laughing. Being seen.” Joy closed the report. “Building an alibi in plain sight while the drug did the work.”

Johns was quiet again. The second meditation retreat of the morning.

“Scopolamine,” he said. “The specific form in the tox screen….What form is it? A pill? Or an Injection?”

Joy looked at the report. “Neither….Transdermal. Patch form.”

“How do you even get that.” Asked Johns

“Many ways….Medical suppliers, Pharmacies, Senior Government Officials, Private patient prescriptions for chronic motion sickness conditions. It’s more accessible than you’d think.” Joy paused. “Interestingly it was tested as a truth serum by intelligence agencies in the mid twentieth century. Multiple countries. They eventually abandoned it.” Answered Joy…

“Why.” asked curious Johns

“Too unpredictable. The subject would talk but not necessarily about the right things.”

Johns looked at the ceiling. “Someone used a failed truth serum to silence the one person who was trying to tell the truth.”

“Yes.”

“Damn…..that’s cruelty….. with a sense of humour, of course…” Said Johns

“So we are looking,” Johns continued, “for someone who either has a medical connection, a prescription of their own, or access to someone who does.”

“I’ve put the procurement request in. Every supplier, every pharmacy, every private patient prescription connected to anyone on that guest list.” Joy said

“Two hundred and fourteen people.!!???”

“Yes.”

Johns picked up his coffee. “I’m going to need significantly more of this.”

“You’ve had three already.”

“This is a three scopolamine kind of morning. We’re not even at lunch.”

Rohan Mirchandani arrived at 3 PM.

He walked in with the ease of someone who had decided before leaving home that he had nothing to be concerned about. Well dressed, unhurried, the particular confidence of a man who had grown up being called exceptional often enough to half believe it.

No lawyer.

Johns wrote in his notebook without looking up, no lawyer, innocent, overconfident, or smart. possibly all three.

“Mr. Mirchandani,” Joy said. “Thank you for coming in.”

“Of course,” Rohan said. “Anything I can do.”

The anything of someone who meant those specific things, that cost them nothing.

Johns looked up pleasantly. “Can I get you anything. Tea, coffee, the truth?”

Rohan looked at Johns.

Johns looked back with the expression of a man who had said something completely normal…

“I’m fine,” Rohan said carefully.

“Wonderful,” Johns said. “Let’s start with the gala.”

“You were there Friday night,” Joy said.

“Yes.”

“Did you know Nadia Ferreira personally.”

Something moved across Rohan’s face. Quick and private.

“We knew each other,” he said. “Socially. Same circles.”

“Just socially.”

“Yes.”

Joy opened the folder and placed the photograph that came in earlier at 2PM on the table without ceremony. Rohan and Nadia at dinner, close and comfortable, the body language of two people who had forgotten completely that the rest of the world existed outside that table, it was from that one time when Rohan had visited Mumbai…to meet Nadia.

Rohan looked at it.

He looked at it for a long time.

The room was very quiet.

“Anonymous source,” Joy said. “Would you like to revise your answer?”

Rohan sat back with the exhale of a man releasing something he had been holding for a long time at a very specific angle.

“We were together,” he admitted. “Almost two years. Quietly.”

“Whose idea was quiet,” Johns said.

“Both of ours equally. She said the moment people knew it would stop being about us and start being about our families.” A pause. “She was right.”

“She usually was?” Joy said.

Something crossed Rohan’s face then. Not guilt. Something older and sadder than guilt.

“Yes,” he said simply.

The room held that for a moment.

Joy let it hold.

Johns looked up from his notebook. “How long had you known her. Before the relationship.”

Rohan was quiet for a moment.

“Since we were twenty two,” he said. “She was in Mumbai. I was in London. We wrote to each other for almost a year before either of us came back.” A pause. “Actual letters. Not emails.”

Johns stopped writing.

“Letters,” he said.

“She said emails felt like talking to a wall. She wanted something she could hold.” Rohan looked at the table. “I kept every one she sent.”

“She was different that way….” Rohan continued.. “ In a world that rushed past everything, she still chose to pause. She had the patience to write, the grace to truly listen, and beyond all of that, the rare gift of understanding what was never quite said.”

The room was quiet.

“We came back the same week,” he said. “Different cities, same week. People thought it was coincidence.” He almost smiled. It didn’t quite make it. “It wasn’t…”

“When did it end,” he said.

“Three months ago. She ended it.” Rohan looked at the table. “I wasn’t ready. I handled it badly. Too many calls. Went to her apartment twice. She didn’t open the door.” A pause. “I’m not proud of that.”

“Your father,” Joy said. “Did he know.”

The pause before this answer was different from the others. More deliberate. Like a man deciding not which truth to tell but how much of it.

“Yes,” Rohan said. “About a year in. He told me to end it.”

“And you said.”

“I told him it wasn’t his decision.” Rohan’s jaw tightened slightly. “My father is a man accustomed to things going the way he intends. When they don’t he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t raise his voice.” A pause. “He waits. He is extraordinarily patient.”

“Sounds peaceful,” Johns said.

“It isn’t,” Rohan said flatly.

“No,” Johns said. “I didn’t think so.”

Joy looked at Johns briefly. Johns was writing something in his notebook with the focused innocence of someone who had said nothing provocative whatsoever…

“The last time you spoke to Nadia,” Joy said. “When was it.”

Rohan thought. “About a month before she died. She called me. Which was unusual. After the breakup she had been very clear about distance.”

“What did she say.”

“She sounded tired. Not upset. Just tired in the way people sound when they have been carrying something alone for too long.” Rohan paused. “She said she had found something. In the foundation accounts. She said someone close to her, someone she and everyone had trusted completely, had been working against her quietly for a long time.”

Joy said nothing.

“Did she say who,” Johns said.

“No. I asked. She said she wasn’t ready to say it out loud yet.” Rohan looked at the table. “I assumed she meant her father. They had a complicated relationship around the foundation.” He paused. “I didn’t push. Maybe I should have.”

Joy filed that sentence in a specific place and moved on.

“Where were you between 10 PM and midnight the night of the gala,” he said.

“At the gala. I can give you thirty names.”

“We’ll need them.”

“My father’s lawyer will send the names.”

Joy placed the evidence bag on the table.

The ring caught the fluorescent light and held it.

Rohan looked at it. His expression moved through several things in quick succession.

“We recovered this from the site of the second attack,” Joy said. “The Folklore parking garage.”

Rohan stared at the ring.

“That’s my father’s,” he said quietly. “Not mine. Thirty years he’s had it.” He looked up. “How did it get to a parking garage.”

“That’s what we’re trying to understand.”

Rohan looked at the ring for a long moment. Something was moving behind his eyes. Not guilt. Something closer to the specific dread of a man beginning to understand that the people around him are not who he thought they were.

“Your father,” Joy said. “Did you see him between 10 PM and midnight.”

Rohan was quiet.

“He said he had a headache,” he said finally. “Stepped out for 40 minutes to an hour maybe. I assumed he was at the hotel rooms we had booked.”

“You didn’t check.”

“No”

“Did anyone see him.”

Rohan looked at the ring.

Said nothing.

Didn’t need to.

Outside the interview room Johns exhaled.

“An Hour. Ring at the scene. Knowledge of the relationship. A son who just described his father like a man describing a natural disaster he’s been living inside.” He paused. “That’s four things.”

“It’s three,” Joy said. “The last two are the same thing.”

“Fine. Three. Three is still three.”

“It’s too clean.”

“You always say that.”

“Think about what Rohan said…..” said joy “Someone close to Nadia. Someone she trusted completely. Working against her quietly.”

“He assumed the father.” Said John,

“He assumed,” Joy said. “Nadia didn’t say.”

Johns stopped walking.

“Someone close to her,” he said slowly. “Someone she trusted completely.” He looked at Joy. “That’s not Vikram Mirchandani, she barely knew him….or what if…”

“No,” Joy interrupted “It isn’t.”

They looked at each other.

Neither said the next thing out loud.

Neither needed to.

They spent the afternoon waiting for the accounts and saying very little. Some cases made you want to talk. This one made you want to think.

The foundation accounts request came back at 7 PM.

Joy and Johns went through them together at the office with the particular focused silence of two people looking for something they couldn’t name but would recognise immediately if they saw it..

They found it in forty minutes.

Eight years of irregular transactions. Money arriving from shell companies, processed through the foundation’s charitable accounts, and exiting through a series of legitimate investment vehicles. Clean on the surface. Architectural underneath.

Someone had built this over eight years with patience and expertise and a very detailed understanding of how charitable financial structures worked.

“This is laundering,” Johns said quietly. “Someone has been using the Ferreira Foundation to clean money for eight years.”

“Yes.” Replied Joy.

“Vikram.” Said Johns,

“The shell companies trace back to holding structures connected to his businesses. Yes.” Said Joy

“Sunaina….??”enquired Johns

“Her name doesn’t appear in the accounts. But she was on the founding board. She understood the structure from the beginning.” Joy paused.

Johns sat back. “Nadia found this.”

“Eight months ago. She removed Sunaina from the board quietly, without explanation.” Joy looked at the accounts. 

“But the laundering didn’t stop after Sunaina’s removal. It continued. Which means Sunaina wasn’t the only one running it.”

Johns looked at the signature line at the bottom of every major transaction.

Daniel Ferreira, Nadia’s Father.

“His signature is on everything,” Johns said slowly.

“Yes.”

“Did she know about her father?” asked Johns

Joy looked at the records for a long moment.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I think that’s exactly what she was trying to find out.”

“She went to someone else..” Joy said.

He reached into the folder and placed a printed phone record on the desk.

Nadia Ferreira’s recovered call log from the night of the gala.

Two outgoing calls….

The first at 10:14 PM. To her father. Duration eleven seconds. Unanswered….

The second at 10:31 PM. To a number Johns didn’t recognise. It rang twice. Then cut.

Sixteen minutes before her estimated time of death.

“Who is that number,” Johns said.

Joy had already traced it.

He picked up his phone and dialled.

It rang twice.

A man answered immediately.

Like he had been waiting.

“I wondered…” the man said, before Joy could speak, “how long before someone called this number.”

Joy said nothing. Let it continue.

“My name is Kabir Anand…” the man said. “I’m a journalist. And Nadia Ferreira has been my source for eight months.”

He continued, “She told me if anything ever happened to her, the person who would eventually call this number would be a detective named Joy.”

The office was completely silent.

Johns was staring at Joy.

Joy kept his voice steady.

“Mr. Anand,” he said. “We need to meet.”

“Yes,” Kabir said simply. “I’ve been sitting on a story for seven years waiting for exactly this phone call.”

Joy looked at Johns.

Johns looked back.

Two people had told someone to find Detective Joy if anything happened.

Nadia had told Rhea.

And Nadia had told Kabir.

Which meant Nadia Ferreira had been preparing for her own death for longer than anyone knew. Had been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs across the city, pointing toward a detective she had never met, trusting that eventually someone would follow them.

She had done everything right.

Built every exit.

Covered every angle.

And still ended up in that corridor.

Joy stood up and reached for his jacket.

“Where are you,” he said into the phone.

Kabir gave an address.

Joy wrote it down.

Then Kabir said one more thing, quietly, almost as an afterthought.

“Detective, The evidence Nadia had….the documents, the full financial trail, everything that would have put this in court……She had it with her the night she died. On a drive. She was bringing it to me.”

Joy stopped moving.

“We never received it,” Kabir said. “Which means whoever killed her took it. They were there in that corridor. or knew exactly who to take it from….”

The line was quiet.

“Which means,” Kabir said, “they still have it….”

Joy put the phone down.

Johns looked at him. “What are you thinking.”

Joy looked at the case board. At every name. Every thread. Every person who had been in that corridor or near it or connected to it.

“I’m thinking,” Joy said slowly, “that we have been assuming this started the night of the gala.”

“And?”

“What if it started much earlier. What if the gala wasn’t where it began……..what if it was just where it ended…..”

(Nothing warned them… because nothing was meant to. Like Catastrophism, the truth didn’t unfold, it arrived all at once, and left nothing the same….)

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