Nigel then leaves his house and on the corridor of the apartments, he sees Gerard. As Gerard sees him, he runs away. Nigel gets suspicious on him and follows him walking faster. But it was late now, as he had lost Gerard somewhere downstairs.

As it was early evening, therefore, Nigel decided to go for a walk at a park. But while he was walking outside thinking about the assailant and offering him money, he gets a phone call from his university professor. Nigel gets a little surprised that why he was calling him, but he realises that he must be calling for his father’s death. Nigel answers his call,

‘Good evening, Professor!’

‘Good evening Nigel, what’s up?’

‘Nothing special, I’m glad and surprised that you called me today.’

‘Nigel there’s something very important that I have to tell you,’ professor replies, ‘but before that I need you to come here at my place.’

‘Why? Okay, no problem. I’ll be on my way soon.’

Nigel gets a little worried and cautious thinking why he was being called so unexpectedly.

An hour later, Nigel reached his professor’s home and was sitting with him outside at the garden. After talking a little bit about his father, his professor comes straight to the point,

‘Nigel, I called you here to tell you that someone is coming to my house since last two nights and working on this.’

His professor takes out his typewriter and shows it to him. Nigel gets an immediate idea in his mind that it could be no one other than Wilson Rodger himself or his assailant. Nigel asks the first question that came into his mind,

‘What does he look like?’

‘Well, he wears white clothes and blue sunglasses.’

‘That’s it!’ Nigel says excitedly, ‘it’s him we got him. My uncle told me about the same description of that guy who came that night.’

‘Which night?’

‘The night my father was assassinated… 23rd July, after twelve o clock.’

‘Oh…so now what you will do, I’ll catch him today.’

‘Do you know how I caught him?’ professor asks. ‘I read his letter secretly, without letting him know.’

‘Good, now, I just have to catch this assailant.’

‘Don’t you see what a coincidence it is?’

‘It’s not a coincidence,’ Nigel replies, ‘Mr Driscoll was right, Wilson Rodger is playing a game with me. That’s why, he chose you and your typewriter.’

‘But he used to bring his own yellow papers.’

As the sun goes down and sky gets darker, Nigel hides outside his professor’s home and waits for the assailant to come.

The Chase

Nigel keeps on waiting for two hours outside and away from his professor’s house until he receives a call from Uncle Simon he answers the call,

‘Hello Uncle, I’m sorry but I can’t talk to you right now.’

‘Wait Nigel, I just wanted to tell you that I finally got the video clip of that night.’

‘Really? That’s good!’ Nigel says getting even more excited. ‘Can you send that video via MMS?’

‘Yes I can, but it might take a while…’

‘No problem, just do it…thank you.’

He ends his call and continues watching outside the gate.

Half an hour passes. Nigel walks around for while keeping an eye on the road leading to the gate. He receives an MMS in his mobile, he checks the video clip, and sees that it was a very blur video of black and white print. The time shown was 12:09 in the video, two men were standing at the streets of Burlington outside his uncle’s house. One of them was wearing white clothes and the other one was wearing ordinary dress. A strange memory comes in his mind, as he sees his uncle coming to see outside the gate, the man with white clothes puts a cloth on his uncle’s face.

Nigel hears a voice of footsteps approaching. He gets very vigilant seeing someone standing afar with white clothes. He silently keeps his cell phone in his pocket and slowly walks towards him. The guy with white clothes turns around and sees Nigel. He picks up a pebble and throws it towards Nigel. Nigel dodges it and sees him running away. Nigel runs as fast as he could and follows the assailant.

Nigel chases him as far as could until the assailant takes out his pistol and shoots him. He misses the shot. Nigel still doesn’t give up and keeps on following him until he gets tripped by a rock, and fells on ground. The assailant escapes safely. Nigel’s elbow gets injured.

After a minute, Nigel hears a very loud gunshot. He stands up and goes back realising he had missed a perfect chance of catching the assailant alive.

The Culprit is Found

Next day, early in the morning, a call on Nigel’s cell phone disturbs his sleep. He answers the call,

‘Hello, who’s it?’

‘Were you sleeping?’ the detective replies.

‘Good morning, sir!’ Nigel says as his sleep goes off. ‘You’re not going to believe what happened last night.’

‘Well, you’re not going to believe something as well.’

‘What is it sir?’

‘Within one hour come to my home, I’ll tell you…’

‘You always say that, anyways, I’ll get ready…’

Nigel ends the call and gets dressed up. He does his breakfast and leaves his home immediately.

As he reaches detective’s home in his car, he sees Arthur standing outside with that horrifying mask on his face. He walks towards Arthur and he allows Nigel to enter inside. As they were walking inside, Arthur says,

‘I have a good news for you.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it, what is it?’

‘Wilson Rodger, I mean your father’s culprit is now in my custody.’

‘Really? How come?’ Nigel asks getting surprised and excited. ‘I mean how did you get hold of him? Is he dead or alive?’

‘Now, that’s a good question, alive or dead. So, I would tell you the truth that he is dead.’

‘Dead? What the hell do you mean?’ Nigel says angrily. ‘If he’s not alive, then how will I find the assailant?’

Arthur silently walks towards another room. Nigel follows him. They stop as Arthur points a dead body with a gunshot on his waist and his face covered with blue handkerchief. He had worn white clothes. Something comes in Nigel’s mind as he sees that the hair of the dead body was a mixture of red and black. Nigel asks him,

‘So, it means that Wilson Rodger and the assailant were the same persons?’

‘Maybe not…’

Nigel uncovers the face by removing the handkerchief. He sees, it was as expected Mr Oliver.

‘I knew it; I swear to God I knew it!’

‘Last night, while you were chasing him, I was also following you guys. As you tripped and fell on to the ground, I ran towards him and shot him on his waist.’

‘I heard the gunshot,’ Nigel says remembering last night, ‘so, you killed him at that moment.’

‘Yes…but as I brought him home, I examined one thing that the foot prints on that knife which killed your father, were not his, I mean they were not matched by Oliver.’

‘You know something; I can answer this mystery.’

He takes out his cell phone and shows the MMS video clip to him. The detective watches it very carefully and then says,

‘So, according to this video there were two men, one was Oliver I mean Wilson Rodger and the second one was somebody unknown.’

‘And that somebody, unknown, stabbed my father.’

‘Exactly,’ Arthur replies, ‘but do you know why he did this, because he must be told to so by Wilson Rodger.’

‘So, now we’ll find that assailant right?’

‘The case is actually resolved Nigel, but still we have to find him.’

Nigel sees Oliver’s dead body angrily and kicks it on chest.

‘Nigel can I ask you a question?’ Arthur says to him. ‘Tell me why did Wilson Rodger kill your father?’

‘Because my father fired him from job.’

‘No…’ detective says showing him a diary, ‘the actual reason is in this diary which I found in his pocket. It says that before his marriage with Jill, Jill was in love with Mr Steve Dahl, who refused to marry her leaving her heartbroken. She committed suicide one day until she couldn’t live on like this being married to someone else.’

‘Someone else? You mean Wilson Rodger.’

‘So, Wilson Rodger had only one purpose left in life after Jill’s death, and that was to kill the person due to whom his wife committed suicide. So, he did it!’

‘He got my father killed because his wife died because of my father?’

‘Well, that’s a fact, but he himself is dead now.’

‘Next thing, I’m going to do is that I’ll find the assailant…’

Arthur goes to his room and brings the dagger that had killed his father. Giving the knife to him he says,

‘Take this along with you. I’m giving the remaining case to you.’

‘You’re not working on this case now?’

‘I’m sorry but I have another pending cases, but I assure you that the assailant won’t escape, he will be caught.’

Nigel smiles and leaves his place shaking hands with him.

The Video Clip, the SMS and the Dagger

That evening, Nigel is wandering in his home. He has that knife in his hand and his father’s cell phone on a desk, but he is not looking at these things carefully. He takes out his cell phone and watches the MMS video clip again. This time he watches it more carefully and discovers something very shocking. He sees that the guy other than Wilson Rodger who was wearing ordinary clothes, had a name printed ‘DAHL’ at the back of his shirt. Nigel gets very much surprised thinking who must have stolen his shirt or was that assailant wearing any other shirt like his, to play tricks with him. He also remembers that on night of assassination, he himself wore that shirt, so how come anyone would steal it. Then, Gerard comes in his mind but he avoids suspecting him.

A minute later, he picks up his father’s cell phone just to check all the names in contact list. However, as he switches on the cell phone, he goes to mailbox folder and sees a very unexpected SMS. The last and unread message was sent by him, as the name Nigel was labelled over it. He read the message and got even shocked, as he didn’t remember when he sent this message to his father. The SMS was saying: ‘Father, I’m Coming to Kill You.’

Nigel gets very much confused and puzzled thinking why would he ever send this message to his father. And he sees other details of SMS, which had the time 11:30 and date 23rd July. Nigel thinks for a while that why was he feeling as if he himself was the assailant. Because in the video clip it was his shirt worn and his number sent the SMS according to which he was coming to murder his father.

He tosses his father’s cell phone away and looks at the dagger, the dagger was giving him some old memories, but when he carefully concentrated on them, he realised that he was seeing his own hand stabbing someone on chest.

Now, all the strong clues were accusing him for being the assailant. Therefore, he immediately leaves his home and drives straight back to detective’s house in Oakville.

The Answers to Entire Mystery

Several minutes pass, and Nigel reaches Oakville. He rushes towards detective’s bungalow and finds the main entrance door left open. He feels as if something is fishy because according to him the detective couldn’t repeat that mistake of letting the door open for anyone to enter inside.

However, he steps inside and slowly begins to walk. As he walks further, he sees someone aged forty, tied with ropes on a chair. The person’s both arms were tied with the chair’s arms, as were his legs. This person could hardly move but easily talk, as his head’s portion was not tied.

First thing that comes in Nigel’s mind was that this guy could be the assailant, caught by Arthur. So, Nigel asks him:

‘Who are you?’

‘Not someone you’re thinking,’ he replies, ‘I’m not the assailant you were looking for.’

‘How do you know that I’m looking for the assailant? Anyways, where is Arthur Driscoll?’

‘What do you want from him?’

‘I just want to tell him,’ Nigel says seeing a disc on another chair, ‘that strange memory is coming in my mind making me feel that I myself am the assailant.’

‘The answer to your entire mystery is in that disc.’

Nigel picks up the disc and inserts it inside the DVD player in the room. On the menu of screen of the television, two options are shown both having a particular video clip. He plays the first option and sees the video clip:

“The camera was showing Nigel’s entire room and the scene was of the date 23rd July and the time on room’s wall clock was 10:44…”

Nigel remembers this moment and realises that the video was taken after the moment when Gerard had insulted him.

to be continued...