Under the Light
by @mimsqueen
Nazneen...
The light above Nazneen’s head buzzed faintly, its white glare flattening her face into sharp angles. The room smelled of disinfectant and stale air, one of those rooms where time stretched thin, like a thread ready to snap.
On the other side of the metal table sat Inspector Khalid, jacket off, sleeves rolled. He had that rare stillness that made even silence feel like an interrogation.
A file lay open in front of him. Nazneen’s ID photo stared back up from the paper, frozen, polished, confident. Nothing like the woman sitting here now.
“Miss Mansur,” he began, voice low and even, “I want to understand what happened tonight. Let’s start from the beginning. Why were you at the Grand Orchid Hotel?”
Nazneen swallowed hard. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. We just… we went there to talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“Work. A project.”
Khalid’s eyes flicked up from the file. “At midnight?”
She hesitated. “It was the only time he said he could come.”
He leaned back. “You mean Mr. Abdur-Rauf?”
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment at the name, then opened slowly. “Yes.”
“Were you in a relationship with him?”
Nazneen’s throat tightened. “We knew each other a long time ago.”
“Define long.”
She stared at the table. “Since our childhood.”
Khalid let the silence stretch. The hum of the light filled the gap. “And what about the deceased? Sofia Rauf?”
Nazneen’s jaw trembled. “She worked under me. I didn’t mean she came there, I don’t know how...”
“You don’t know how she ended up in the same room?”
“She must have followed him. Or me. I swear, I don’t know.”
Khalid’s expression didn’t change. He simply reached over, slid a photo across the table... the hotel room frozen in a glossy rectangle. Sofia is on the carpet. The wine bottle. The blood.
Nazneen covered her mouth, tears threatening again.
“You called her your colleague,” Khalid said softly. “So why was there blood on your hands?”
“I tried to help her!” she cried out suddenly. “I tried to wake her, but she wasn’t breathing!”
The outburst echoed, then faded into trembling breaths.
Khalid waited a few beats before speaking again. “Miss Mansur… do you love Mr. Abdur-Rauf?”
The question landed like a knife. She stared at him, unsure if she’d heard right. “What does that...?”
“It matters,” Khalid said simply. “Because everything starts and ends with motive.”
Nazneen’s shoulders sagged. “I loved him once. When we were younger. Before everything broke.”
Khalid wrote nothing down. He only nodded slightly, as though he already knew.
“Did Sofia know about that past?”
“I think so. Everyone did.”
“Then maybe it wasn’t about work at all.”
Nazneen looked up sharply, but Khalid’s face gave away nothing.
He stood slowly. “We’ll continue later. You’ll be held overnight.”
As he reached the door, her voice followed, cracked and desperate. “Inspector… he didn’t do it. Whatever happened, I know he didn’t.”
Khalid paused, hand on the handle. “Then who did?”
Nazneen’s silence was its own confession.
Elsewhere — Interrogation Room B.
Ajeed blinked under the same merciless light, head wrapped in gauze. His breath came unevenly through split lips.
Khalid entered quietly, closing the door behind him. “Mr. Abdur-Rauf,” he greeted.
Ajeed’s eyes narrowed, the confusion in them raw. “Where am I?”
“You’re at Kano Central. You were found unconscious beside a deceased woman.”
Ajeed frowned, shaking his head slightly as if trying to clear it. “Deceased?”
“Yes. Sofia Rauf.”
His eyes widened. “Sofia… dead?”
“And Miss Nazneen Mansur. You were with her.”
Something flickered in his gaze, an instinct, maybe a memory, but it vanished just as quickly. “Nazneen?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t… I don’t remember much.”
“Try.”
He pressed his temples. “There was wine. Music. Sofia arguing. She said something cruel to Nazneen. I stepped between them and then… everything went dark.”
“Did you touch the weapon?”
“I didn’t even see one!”
“Do you know how Sofia got the wound?”
“No.”
Khalid’s voice stayed calm, but his eyes missed nothing. “You were found with scratches on your hand and blood on your shirt.”
“Her blood,” Ajeed murmured. “Not mine.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I… I tried to lift her. I remember shouting her name.”
Khalid jotted something on his pad, then looked up. “You and Miss Mansur, what’s the nature of your relationship?”
Ajeed hesitated. “It’s complicated.”
“That’s my favorite kind,” Khalid said dryly. “Start explaining.”
Ajeed’s jaw clenched. “She was my neighbor. My friend. My…” He stopped, then finished quietly, “She was everything once.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know what we are anymore.”
“Lovers?”
Ajeed looked away. “Not like that. Not anymore.”
Khalid leaned forward slightly. “So why meet her at a hotel?”
Ajeed’s silence answered for him.
After a long pause, Khalid rose. “You’ll both stay under observation. Forensics will tell me what your memories won’t.”
He turned to the officer by the door. “Keep them separate. No contact.”
As he stepped out into the dim hallway, he saw Nazneen being escorted toward the holding cells. She looked smaller under the harsh lights, her wrists still cuffed.
Ajeed, from inside his room, turned his head just in time to see her through the glass.
Their eyes met briefly, fragilely, electric.
For a heartbeat, the noise of the station fell away. The world shrank to that thin pane of glass between them, two souls bound by something the law couldn’t name.
Then a guard moved between them, and the moment was gone.
Later that night.
The media had the story before midnight. Screens across Kano flashed headlines:
“HEIR TO LAWAN EMPIRE LINKED TO HOTEL MURDER.”
“LOVE TRIANGLE TURNS DEADLY.”
“FASHION ICON NAZNEEN MANSUR IN POLICE CUSTODY.”
Khalid watched the news from his office, cigarette burning low. His phone vibrated with calls from higher-ups, journalists, lawyers, but his eyes stayed fixed on the screen, on the images of two faces side by side.
Nazneen, pale but defiant.
Ajeed, dazed and bruised.
He murmured to himself, “One of them’s lying.”
But the truth, he suspected, was far messier because sometimes love doesn’t lie. It just forgets which side it’s standing on.