Mission Forensic
Part 18: Tracing the Badge
The photograph had been a seed of unease. The half-visible badge number—a few blurred digits, nothing more—was suddenly the only thread that bound the unknown to the known.
In the computer lab of NIFS Delhi, the four of them bent over glowing screens. The room was hushed, only the whir of cooling fans and the faint click of keys breaking the silence. Shadows gathered in the corners, the late afternoon light too weak to hold them back. It was the kind of space where truth often hid in plain sight, coded in numbers and lines of text.
Shawn sat forward in his chair, his shoulders tense but his fingers steady as they moved over the keys. Ahana’s face was serene as ever, her expression focused, almost meditative, as she sifted through search results with a meticulous patience.
Edward and Catherine shared a terminal. He leaned in close, brows drawn in that quiet concentration that always reminded Catherine of crime lab corridors—white walls, steel benches, silence stretching like a discipline. She sat beside him, her pen idle against her notebook, her attention pulled fully into the cold blue of the monitor. Their arms brushed from time to time, an incidental contact that carried the steadiness of familiarity, the warmth of being unspokenly together even here, in the middle of a storm they did not yet understand.
It was Shawn who broke the silence, his voice low but firm. “Got something. Badge sequence matches a block of temporary access passes. Three issuing institutions.”
Edward straightened. “Which ones?”
Shawn’s eyes flicked down the screen. “Ahmedabad Institute of Forensic Science. National Police Academy. And…” He paused, narrowing his eyes. “…a private forensic consultancy in Mumbai. No website. No staff profiles. Just a postal address and a phone line that hasn’t been answered in months.”
“Sounds like a front,” Edward said. His voice was calm, but the undertone was sharp.
Ahana was already pulling up another file. “The consultancy sent only one delegate. Registered as ‘Technical Observer.’ Name listed as K. Vohra. No first name.” She enlarged the ID image, and the screen filled with a blurred portrait—indistinct lines of a man, captured just beyond clarity.
Catherine leaned closer, studying it. “That could be him—the man in the windbreaker. But it’s blurred in that deliberate way. As if someone wanted him present, but never truly visible.”
The weight of the words settled over the table. For a moment, none of them spoke. Outside, rain began again, pattering against the high windows, thin lines of water chasing one another down the glass.
“We’ll have to confirm in person,” Edward said finally. “Vohra doesn’t stay a ghost forever.”
“Finding him won’t be the real challenge,” Shawn replied, shutting his laptop with a quiet snap. “The real challenge will be understanding why he got close enough to photograph you, and why he wants you to know it.”
***
By evening, the four had shifted their search to the library. The air smelled faintly of paper and dust, that scent of learning that clung to every surface. They chose a heavy oak table beneath an arched window. Outside, the banyan trees stood dark against the silvering sky, their leaves restless in the drizzle.
Catherine sat with the photo in front of her, the faint outline of the lanyard visible at the edge. She traced the line of it absently with her fingertip. “What unsettles me,” she said softly, “isn’t just that he got close. It’s how ordinary it felt at the time. Registration counters. Corridors. Crowds. He could have brushed past us a dozen times.”
Edward set his pen down, turning his hand over hers, grounding her with that simple contact. “Then we make sure that next time, he doesn’t pass unnoticed.”
Shawn returned from the archive stacks, carrying a manila file. Ahana followed, balancing two steaming cups of chai whose scent softened the air.
“Cross-checked Vohra against delegate records for the last five years,” Shawn said, laying the file flat. “He’s attended at least twice before. Always with the same designation—‘Technical Observer.’ Never more, never less.”
“Which means someone’s letting him in,” Ahana added. “Not just once, but repeatedly. He has sponsors.”
The words thickened the quiet. Catherine felt the hair at the back of her neck stir.
Her phone, face-down on the wood, buzzed once. The sound was sharp, cutting through the hush. She turned it over, thumb hovering before she opened the message.
No subject line. Only another attachment.
The screen lit with an image—the same photo from Ahmedabad Airport, but now paired with a second. A candid shot of them in the campus café earlier that day. Catherine leaning toward Ahana, Edward caught mid-smile at something Shawn had said. The angle was close, too close—someone had been watching them from within the room itself.
Shawn exhaled, long and low. “That was taken less than three hours ago.”
Edward’s gaze held the photo, his jaw tightening. His voice, when it came, was quiet steel. “He’s not in Gujarat anymore. He’s here. In Delhi.”
The rain pressed harder against the glass, the courtyard lamps flickering into life, their glow softened by the wet air. Catherine felt Edward’s hand find hers again, steady and deliberate.
When he finally lifted his eyes to meet Shawn and Ahana’s, his words carried the weight of resolve. “Then we stop being watched. From here on—we watch back.”
Comment for next Episode
