Film Synopsis - Scent of a Crime

 Synopsis #5

Title:    Scent of a Crime

Idea:    Nose for deceit

Plot:     Blinded mid-life acutely enhances sense of smell for fraud even when experts have signed off on the financial records

Genre: Thriller

Script Regn No (SWA): 35038

Membership No: 49484

The Background:

The story is inspired by Sanford “Sandy” Greenberg moving memoir remembering the support provided by his college mate and friend, Art Garfunkel of ‘The Sound of Silence’ fame when Sandy abruptly went blind.  

The Story 

Seg I

Karan and Kiran are classmates in at Yale Law School (YLS), New Haven, Connecticut. Karan while writing his third-year final exam in a four-year program experiences spot blindness. He stumbles down the classroom steps and submits the paper to the invigilator much earlier than the time given. When asked, why? He says he cannot see. 

The invigilator laughs and remarks that it is the first time that he has heard this excuse for leaving the exam hall early. Karan waits outside on the hallway bench. Kiran finishes her paper and rushes out to be with him. She takes him to the hospital where Karan is diagnosed with Glaucoma. 

Seg II

Karan never recovers his eyesight and drops out of college and into depression. Kiran persuades Karan to come back to college and convinces the college to let him complete the course with Kiran being his reader to help with his studies and exams. 

Seg III

Their friendship grows. They graduate from law college. Kiran joins a law firm. Karan always had interest in fraud investigations and does a post-graduation program in forensic accounting and sets up his own firm.   

Seg IV

When Kiran realizes that she will soon start working and will not be able to handhold Karan through the day she begins training Karan to be independent of her. They get a female Labrador Retriever just in case Karan needs protection from strangers. They call him Raider and he goes everywhere with them. He is so well-behaved that most people don’t mind having Raider around. When Kiran and Karan are in a restaurant the manager will usually lay out juicy bones for Raider. 

Seg V

Her training includes leaving Karan to fend for himself in dense and sparse settings in different part of the city which includes train and bus stations, restaurant and furniture stores, parks and gardens, in high street and poorly developed areas, in cabs, trains and buses – a good sampling of a city – witnessing its underbelly as well as the most classy areas. 

They go to theatres, movies, museums, churches, theme parks and meet different kinds of people and have two-minute casual conversations with complete strangers so that Karan can identify people by the work they do and where they come from. It is a romantic romp touring the city, its culture and its people - Prague or Paris - in an out. [One of the draws of the film]. 

Seg VI

Karan develops the ability to tell people and places just by his sense of smell. In fact, he can go from anywhere to anywhere just by following a trail of smell. He is so good at sensing that he does not need a cane (though he has one collapsed and folded in a neat pouch on his belt loop in case he has to ward of any attack – man or canine). 

He wears a smart watch that provides him the information he needs – locational, places, train and bus timings, QR code scanner, digital payment wallet which reads out the amount that he has paid in his earpiece, the distance Raider is from him, heat sensor to know how close someone is or when someone is extending his hand to shake his. Raider, in one sense is Karan with similar sense of smell and ear for danger and knows how far his boss is at anytime and if his needed in an emergency. 

Seg VII

Kiran who is a criminal lawyer with a reputable firm is retained by an industrialist to defend his son Varun who is an excellent chef and foodie. Varun is accused of killing his wife Vinita to benefit from Rs 100 crore insurance for which he is the nominee and beneficiary. The autopsy shows that the death has been caused by slow poisoning. 

Seg VIII

All evidence collected by the police point to his guilt and the court remands him to police custody for interrogation. There is also public clamour for his conviction with media spreading stories of this rich, spoilt brat, who for some time has been incurring business losses and the way out for him from persecution by creditors is to pay off the creditors with insurance sum he would collect from Vinita’s death.  

Seg IX

Kiran visits Varun in jail to get his side of the story. Varun tells Kiran how he and his partner, Vineet, from college days had set up a restaurant chain which was doing very well and they had been expanding at breakneck speed picking up high priced properties in high street and CBD areas and doing it up to match to match their brand image and proposition in the main cities of India and overseas to generate economies of scale that is so important in the a chain restaurant business. 

The had both put in their funds for the first three restaurants, in Varun’s case, money lent by his industrialist father. Based on the success his friend Vineet had suggested they get funding to expand at breakneck speed to make the most of a thriving economy. They are funded by a Private Equity for $100 million for setting up 100 upscale restaurant chain. 

Varun says he was focused on the cuisine development and the kitchen management while his friend Vineet took care of running the company including dealing with investors and money. They had a small accounting team who worked with Vineet. 

As they began to expand the burn rate was getting high but the revenue was also showing an upward trend. Vineet kept assuring Varun that there was nothing to worry. Every restaurant takes at 3 years to breakeven as it takes time to establish a foothold in High Street and develop a loyal clientele who bring in more of their own community. 

Seg X

When the losses started mounting, Varun did not have a grasp of where it was all going. He fell into depression. He began drinking and often was nasty to Vinita in public. Then one day Vinita collapses and is declared dead through slow poisoning. 

Seg XI

Kiran shares her growing concern with Karan. She tells Karan that the media has already convicted Varun and there is pressure from the partners of the firm to end the case soon as they too were being called into the limelight. 

Seg XII

Kiran arranges for Karan to meet Varun’s partner Vineet’s for a tête-à-tête. Karan has a friendly chat with Vineet. They discuss Vineet relationship with Varun and how they came up with the restaurant idea and about Vineet’s other businesses. 

Karan smells a rat. He senses that Vineet is being disingenuous. He sounds earnest and grief-ridden, but is not telling the whole truth. But Karan cannot quiet put his finger on which part is disingenuous. 

Seg XIII

Karan tell Kiran to have the company’s books examined by an audit firm. The company’s books are studied and all transactions are well accounted for. The audit firm gives the company’s account a clean chit.  Karan senses that it was far too much in order. Every book of accounts has some unexplained items but in these books they were none.   

Seg XIV

Karan asks to meet the accounting team as part of the investigation. He meets each member and clarifies different expenses and withdrawals in the books of accounts. All the accountants in their reply to Karan queries appear clean. Except one. Karan smells the nervousness of the person though to an onlooker the answers are suavely given. 

Seg XV

Karan tells Kiran to organize a private tap on the accountant. Rightly enough the accountant meets with Vineet in the evening and they have an agitated discussion. 

Seg XVI

Kiran asks for the accountant’s bank accounts to be examined. They find huge inflow and outflow. The outflow is to Vineet’s account. The accountant is taken into custody and spills the beans that Vineet has been fudging the accounts every time a property was bought and the interiors were being done. 

Seg XV

Vineet is arrested and he confesses that he has been poisoning Vinita’s drinks each time they met up on social occasions. That in his interactions with Varun he would say stuff that increased his anxiety and the possibilities of both of them serving a jail term. He tells Varun to ask his industrialist dad for funds. Varun says a flat no to Vineet. His dad too is upset with his son for running a good business to the ground. 

Seg XVI

Whenever Varun and Vineet met, Vineet would ensure that Varun left drunk each time. He insinuated that Vinita does not care for him anymore because of his failed business and was often seen with other men. Varun loved Vinita but increasingly he found that he did not want to be around her. His attempt to distance himself from her and the scene that followed look like a clear breakdown of their relationship.  

Through this immaculate set up of fudging the accounts and presenting Varun in an agitated state with Vinita, Vineet was sure that he had an iron-clad case in implicating Varun with the crime. The crowning manipulation was asking Varun to take a life insurance policy on Vinita for Rs 100 crore. When Vinita dies it is Vineet who releases the media storm. 

With the confession in hand, Kiran wins the case and makes partner in her firm. Karan asks her if they can visit Sicily and take in the ‘smells’ of the city along with Raider.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

NEXT EPISODE

 

Title: Scent of a Crime – Part II

 

Plot: 

Karan and Kiran visit Sicily. As they are walking along a High-Street, they hear a lady shout. Kiran sees that she is pointing to the man running toward them has snatched her bag. Karan’s thermal sensor provides him a sense of a man running towards them. Moment he comes close, Karan whips open the pouch with the collapsed cane and sinks it between the man’s running legs. The man goes sprawling on to the kerb. Raider hovers over him until the cops come and take the man in. 

The woman, Angelina Scalia is most thankful to Karan. She shares her card with him. Anytime he needs any help while in the city or any part of Italy, he should give her a call. She notes Karan and Kiran’s international roaming number too. She is with a top-notch legal firm in Sicily handling mafia cases in the courts. 

The incident does not go unnoticed by the Cosa Nostra. Soon enough Kiran is kidnapped by the mafia and Karan reaches out to Angelina Scalia. 

Karan helps both the legal firm and mafia to get Kiran rescued unharmed by cooking and un-cooking the books of account.

 

The story continues …