“Call xxxxxx_x_ _ after work is done. I Love You.” That’s roughly the lead the police have in 35-year-old Amritesh Kumar’s daylight murder.

The message is in Hindi, except for the I Love You bit. And three digits of the cellphone number are smudged.

Amritesh, head clerk of a nationalised bank, was gunned down on a bridge on December 13.

“CCTV feed showed two bike-borne men waiting near Rajendra Nagar bridge move after a phone call. Soon, they were tailing Amritesh. Near the GPO Roundabout on the bridge, the pillion rider took out a pistol from his pocket and shot Amritesh. When he took out the pistol, a piece of paper, too, fell out,” a police officer said. Kotwali police were alerted but they went looking next day.

“By then the writing, in a red sketch pen, was partly erased. It asked the intended reader to call up a certain number ‘after the work is done’. But the seventh, ninth and tenth digit could not be read,” the policeman said.

The ‘I Love You’ could mean the message was from a woman close to one of the killers. The police found many students’ certificates at Amritesh’s home. They suspect he was involved in a fake jobs racket. He might have promised a girl a job and she may have got him killed after he failed to keep his word.