Aditya parked the car, and they walked at a brisk pace towards the house. If ever there was a misnomer, this was it, he thought. For Paradise looked nothing like it.
The first floor of the two-storeyed house, oddly, was smaller in size than the ground floor. The entire building was constructed of cold, grey stone, intensifying the atmosphere of gloom that enveloped it.
A big plot of land lay on the right of the house. It was bare except for the visible remnants of an earlier structure that had been demolished or abandoned midway. Beyond the plot lay an arid, jagged stretch of uninhabited land. The elegantly paved, tree-lined Carter Road promenade seemed to merge with this desolate landscape and vanish, giving way to a local fishing village. To the left of Paradise stood a small single-storeyed cottage, painted bright white and yellow.
As Aditya approached the house, he noticed a set of tyre marks along the driveway, and traced them to a black Honda SUV parked carelessly near the wall. The car would have to be reversed out of the house, he thought, given that the driveway was not wide enough for it to make a U-turn.
Aditya also spotted a beaten trail branching out from the driveway. He walked down the path; it led to a small gate in the wall at the back of the house. Standing on tiptoe and peeping over the wall, he saw another vacant plot, which seemed to be an extension of the abandoned construction site next door. Behind this plot was a service road running parallel to Carter Road.
‘Aditya,’ Meera, who was two steps behind him, called out.
‘Yeah,’ he said, turning around.
‘I just saw someone ... behind those curtains,’ she said, pointing to a closed glass window on the first floor, directly above them.
Aditya looked up. There was nobody at the window now, but he had a feeling that someone was watching them. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said, and they walked back to the main entrance.
For some strange reason, his hand was drawn to his gun, and he was relieved to find it sitting snugly in the holster. With an eerie sensation that he was about to enter a mausoleum, Aditya rang the bell.