Four months. It had been four months since the name Abhijit Singh had vanished from the nation's consciousness, replaced by the whispered legend of the 'Ghost of the CBI'. The world had tried to pull Neel Verma from the shadows, dangling reinstatement and medals like trinkets before a man who had seen the void. He had refused them all, retreating once more to his quiet, logical existence in the blue labyrinth of Jodhpur. The work was the same—finding lost things for lost people—but the man was different. The restless haunt of failure had been replaced by the quiet hum of purpose. The ghost was no longer running; he was watching.
The call came on a Tuesday, a day of searing late-October heat. It was from a number he didn't recognize, but the voice on the other end was anything but anonymous. It was crisp, educated, and stretched taut with a desperation so profound it vibrated through the phone.
"Am I speaking to Mr. Neel Verma?" the woman asked. "The one they… the one they call the Ghost?"
Neel sat at his rosewood desk, a half-assembled Swiss chronograph before him. The logical, predictable world of gears and springs. "I am Neel Verma," he replied, his voice a low baritone. "The stories you hear are usually exaggerated."
"I hope they aren't," the woman said, her voice catching for a fraction of a second before regaining its composure. "My name is Aditi Sharma. My father was Dr. Alok Sharma. The archaeologist."
Neel's hands stilled. He knew the name. It had been plastered across every newspaper and news channel for the past week. Famed Archaeologist Found Dead in Haunted Fort. The Curse of Nahargarh Strikes Again! The headlines were a circus of superstitious nonsense, but the core facts were intriguing. A body in a room locked from the inside. An impossible crime gift-wrapped in a ghost story.
"I read the reports," Neel said, his voice carefully neutral.
"Then you've read fiction," Aditi's voice snapped, the sound of a mind stretched to its breaking point. "They are talking about curses and vengeful spirits. The police have all but closed the case, calling it an 'unexplained event.' They are cowards, Mr. Verma. Hiding behind folklore because they are too incompetent to find a killer. My father wasn't killed by a ghost. He was murdered. And I need someone who believes in monsters, not myths."
The passion in her voice was a stark contrast to the quiet, logical world of his office. It was a disruption. It was, he had to admit, interesting.
"I am in Jodhpur," he stated.
"I will be there in four hours," she replied without hesitation. "Please. Just hear what I have to say. My father respected your work. The real work you did at the CBI. He followed your career before… before it ended. He said you were the only one who saw the patterns everyone else missed."
Neel looked at the delicate, intricate mechanism on his desk. A system. He looked out the window at the blue city, a system he understood. Now, a new puzzle, a new disruption, had arrived. He had told himself he was done with the grand, dangerous games. But the pull of an impossible problem was a current too strong to ignore.
"Four hours," he said, and ended the call.
Aditi Sharma was true to her word. She arrived not as a grieving daughter, but as a woman armoured in determination. She was in her early thirties, with intelligent, searching eyes that missed nothing and a posture that radiated a defiant strength. She sat opposite him in the visitor's chair, placing a thick file on his desk.
"This is everything the police have ignored," she began, her voice steady. "The facts, not the fables."
For the next hour, she laid out the case with a clarity and precision that impressed him. Her father, Dr. Alok Sharma, had been working on a controversial excavation within the royal suites of Jaipur's Nahargarh Fort. His work was based on a radical theory: that the official history of the fort's construction was a lie, designed to cover up the existence of a hidden vault containing a lost treasure of the Jaipur royals.
"He was on the verge of proving it," Aditi said, her fingers tracing the edge of a map from the file. "He believed he was less than a week away from finding the entrance. His work threatened a lot of powerful people. The historical trust, the tourism board, even a few old noble families who claim lineage."
Then, she described the crime scene. Her father had been working late, as he often did. The guards had locked and sealed the wing of the fort he was in at 9 PM. The next morning, they found the main door still locked, the seals unbroken. But inside, in his small, makeshift office within one of the royal suites, Dr. Sharma was dead. The room's only door, a heavy, ancient teakwood affair, was bolted shut from the inside. There were no other windows or entrances.
"And this?" Neel asked, pointing to a photo in the file. It showed a strange, spiral symbol, painted crudely on the wall behind the victim's body.
"The police are calling it a 'supernatural marking'," Aditi said with a sneer. "The media claims it's the symbol of the ghost of Nahar Singh Bhomia, the Rathore prince the fort is named after. It's nonsense. It's a stage trick. A performance designed to make everyone look at the ghost, so no one looks for the man."
She leaned forward, her eyes locking with his. The desperation she had held back was now visible, a raw, pleading fire.
"My father was a man of logic, Mr. Verma. He deserved a logical end. They have turned his life's work into a cheap horror story. I don't want revenge. I want the truth. I want the world to know he was right." She slid a cheque across the desk, his standard retainer fee, doubled. "Will you find it for me?"
Neel looked at the file. A locked room. A hidden treasure. A cast of powerful suspects. And a killer clever enough to use a city's most famous ghost story as the perfect alibi. It was a puzzle box wrapped in a myth. It was irresistible.
He pushed the cheque back towards her. "The standard fee is sufficient," he said, his voice calm. "Tell me everything you know about Jaipur, Ms. Sharma. And tell me everything your father knew about the ghosts of Nahargarh Fort."