He was frustration personified when he learnt that the British Council Library was closed for renovation until next Tuesday. He had to wait four long yet treacherous days.
The rain and gloomy weather continued through the weekend going into Tuesday. Nandan waited anxiously outside the British Council entrance, feeling a bit jittery yet composed enough to focus on the discoveries and the potential trail. Everything else in life was of less importance to him. Sipping on the barista in one-hand and the heavy-set book that he had just checked out in the other hand, Nandan raced to find a place to sit, focus and scrutinize.
Nandan’s instinct urged him to vehemently flip through the pages. Not finding a tangible clue provoked resentment towards himself.
Was it the end of the trail? Was there nothing to it? Nandan thought as he made just one more desperate attempt to unearth something. The all too familiar blue post-it note stuck on page 566 read:
She flies, from Queen’s home to the Eagles’, bearing two digits of successive numbers.
You nailed it. 25. 1.
Nandan had never been more baffled and felt assured that the trail was leading him somewhere good or bad.
Minutes lead to hours, and hours became days. Nandan’s room resembled a typical research and analysis haven – books spewed all over, pasted notes in plentiful, thumb-tacked rip offs of print with multi-color highlights, scribbles of bullet points on white board. But nothing concrete came out it.
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