Crime fiction: A documentary begins asking questions that four men thought had been buried forever

St Matthew’s Annual Day, 1993. The school auditorium transformed from a utilitarian space into something approaching magic by strings of coloured lights and hastily painted backdrops. Five hundred students, teachers and parents packed together on folding chairs, the air thick with anticipation. Backstage smelled of nervous sweat and rat droppings, the wooden floor sticky and dusty, both together, as if decades of spilled Pepsi and forgotten props had soaked into its grain.

16-year-old Ishaan adjusted the single sequined glove while Basab crouched beside a contraption of his own making, a modified overhead projector connected to coloured filters and small motors that would produce strobe effects during the performance. The suit Ishaan wore concealed Basab’s true masterpiece; sewn into the lining were tiny packets of flash powder and metallic confetti, a miniature pyrotechnic system triggered by a nearly invisible string at his wrist. Basab had spent weeks perfecting the entire system, skipping meals to work on the calculations, stealing parts from the physics lab when the teachers weren’t looking.

“You sure this will work, Genius?” Ishaan asked, nervous despite himself, despite being the boy whom nothing could touch.

Basab looked up, glasses sliding down his nose, a smudge of grease on his cheek. His narrow shoulders hunched over his creation, protective as a mother bird.

“Just don’t pull the string before the beat drops. The timing has to be perfect. Lights first, then the flash, then immediately into the moonwalk.” He had replied, the pride in his voice unmistakable.

From beyond the hastily erected curtain came the sound of Ranadeep making announcements, his perfectly clipped British accent in that slightly effeminate voice that had earned him so much mockery. The scuffling of shoes, the hushed whispers, the raw energy of hundreds of teenage bodies held in temporary check filled the air with crackling expectation.

Then there was Basab whispering something Ishaan didn’t catch, because the music had started, the unmistakable opening beats of “Billie Jean” flooding the auditorium, sending a current through the crowd. Ishaan stepped onto the stage, heart hammering in his chest despite his outward calm, and something electric passed between him and the audience.

A connection, a current of mutual recognition. They wanted to believe in magic, and he would provide it.

Each movement was perfect, each slide and spin executed with supernatural precision. The fedora tilted at just the right angle, catching shadows dramatically across his face. His body moved as if gravity had loosened its hold, feet gliding across the scuffed wooden stage as if it were ice. The kickball changes, the shuffle, the spin, executed with a precision that belied his age.

As the song built toward its climax, Basab’s strobe lights flickered to life, bathing Ishaan in pulsating blue and white. The crowd gasped, unprepared for this technical marvel in their modest school auditorium. Ishaan felt the music crescendo, counted the beats in his head, one, two, three, and pulled the hidden string at his wrist. What happened next burned itself into the memory of everyone present. The flash powder ignited in a controlled burst as metallic confetti exploded from his suit, catching the strobe light and transforming him into a creature made of pure light. In that exact moment, he launched into the moonwalk, his body seeming to defy physics itself, moving backwards while leaning forward, a human optical illusion.

The crowd erupted into near hysteria. Students leapt to their feet, screaming his name. Even stern-faced teachers abandoned their reserve, watching open-mouthed at the spectacle before them. This was not just admiration; this was worship. This was power; this was what it meant to be alive. To hold hundreds in the palm of your hand with nothing but your body and will. The roar washed over him in waves, each cheer and scream carving itself into his memory, into his very cells.

He finished with a flourish, the strobes catching his final pose, the last glittering confetti drifting down around him like metallic snow.

In that moment, he wasn’t a schoolboy in a homemade costume; he was transcendent. He was inevitable.

As he descended from the stage, sweat plastering his white shirt to his back, the crowd parted before him like the Red Sea. Boys clapped him on the shoulder; teachers nodded with rare approval. Girls from St Agnes reached out to touch his arm as if checking whether he was real. And there, standing in the centre of this human corridor, was Pramila in her school uniform, radiant against the sea of blue blazers and grey trousers.

Unlike the others, she didn’t reach for him. She stood perfectly still, a focal point of calm in the surging crowd. Her white blouse and navy skirt were precisely regulation, her hair pulled back with a simple band, yet she outshone the girls who had risked detention by shortening their hemlines or applying forbidden makeup. Something about her stillness drew him forward, a gravitational pull he couldn’t have resisted had he tried.

She took his hand when he reached her, her fingers cool against his stage-heated skin.

“You were incredible,” she whispered, her words almost lost in the continuing roar of the crowd, but her eyes spoke volumes. They were filled with stars, not just admiration but wonder, as if he had revealed to her possibilities she had never imagined. As if he had shown her a door to another world. Her gaze held something he had never seen directed at him before: pure, unguarded awe.

In that moment, he had known what he wanted: not just to be loved but worshipped. To see that same look in a thousand eyes, a million eyes. To never step down from the stage. To live forever in that breathless space between performance and adulation, where reality itself bent to his will. It wasn’t enough to be wanted or desired; he needed to be necessary, like air.

In twenty-five years of stardom, in the eyes of countless women who had been with him, one-night encounters with fans or relationships that had seemed serious at the time, he had searched for those same stars. But they were never quite right, too calculated, too transient, too easily purchased with his fame and wealth. Sometimes, in unguarded moments between sleep and waking, he wondered if he had imagined those stars in Pramila’s eyes. If memory had gilded what was merely teenage infatuation. But then he would recall the precise angle of her head tilted up to his, the small intake of breath before she spoke, the way her pupils had dilated in the dim light of the auditorium, and he knew, it had been real. And he had spent his life trying to recapture it.

He remembered Pramila again, captured in that moment in his memory, and he had looked down at her and said, “You will always be incredible.” Pramila looked back at him, and smiled, but there was something different now, the pinpricks of light had blown themselves out, replaced by the vacant stare of a drowned girl.

“You broke me.”

Pramila’s voice.

Ishaan’s fingers faltered. The silk slipped from his grasp. He steadied himself against the mirror, breathing hard, waiting for the vision to pass. His heart raced, a drumbeat of fear in his ears, as he dropped his head to his chest, scrunching his eyes to blot out the memory.

When he looked up again, only his reflection remained, older, lined despite the surgeries, fear lurking behind the practised confidence.

Excerpted with permission from The Bucket, Arnab Ray, Hachette India.