4: Jaal

The dealings kept happening under the nose of the law — which was not new, because the nose of the law had been pointed in the wrong direction for seven years.

She sat behind her desk through all of it, listened more than she spoke, fixed a date and wrote it in her own notation on the corner of whichever paper was closest — a number, an initial, a mark that meant something only to her — and the person across the desk accepted this without requiring elaboration.

Razzak bhai came in the afternoon. He sat in the chair across the desk, looked at her for a moment, and then said what he had come to say.

"Woh naya officer — Rathod. Maine suna woh seriously kaam kar raha hai."

"Haan." She was already reaching for the cigarettes.

"Kothe mein bhi aaya."

"Aaya."

"Kuch mila usse?"

She lit the cigarette, drew on it once, and looked at him with the patient expression of someone explaining something obvious.

"Razzak bhai, agar kuch mila hota toh main abhi aapke saamne baith ke yeh pee rahi hoti?"

He exhaled through his nose. Not quite a laugh — the sound of a man who is reassured but not entirely satisfied with being reassured.

"Woh smart hai," he said.

"Haan." She tapped ash into the tray. "Isse pehle jo aaye woh bhi smart the apne hisaab se. Yeh thoda zyada hai — investigation ka tarika alag hai, woh pattern dhundhta hai, sirf cheezein nahi. Uske notes ka andaz dekh ke lagta hai ki woh sahi sawaal pooch raha hai."

Razzak looked at her carefully. "Toh?"

"Toh kuch nahi." She met his eyes. "Sahi sawaal poochna aur sahi jawab tak pohonchna — dono mein bahut fark hai. Woh abhi bhi andhere mein teer maar raha hai."

Razzak was quiet for a moment. Then he stood, straightening his kurta with the automatic gesture of a large man rising from a chair. He came around the side of the desk — she did not move, did not look up, simply sat — and put one broad hand briefly on the top of her, "Khayal rakhna khud ka," he muttered.

She nodded once, looking at the desk.

He left.

The evening before her warehouse meetings, she was in the store room behind the kitchen sorting through a consignment that had arrived an hour earlier — four pistols wrapped in oilcloth, checked individually, each mechanism worked and released and worked again with the quiet efficiency of someone who handles these things regularly and without ceremony.

The fourth one caught on something in its mechanism. She was working it loose with two fingers when the oilcloth shifted and the edge of the iron sight opened a clean cut on her lower lip.

She pressed her wrist against it for a moment, then went to the kitchen, tore a strip from a clean cloth, wet it, pressed it to her lip until it stopped. Then she wrapped a cloth strip around the lower half of her face loosely, covering nose and mouth, knotted it at the back of her head.

The men who came that morning accepted the covered face the way they accepted everything about her — without question, without comment.

A new man who introduced himself as Raju, came in at the end, said he had been referred by a contact in Meerut, and stated that he was interested in discussing a liquor distribution route through the eastern districts.

She indicated the chair. He sat.

She looked at him across the desk the way she looked at everything — level, unhurried, receiving.

"Meerut mein kiske saath kaam karta hain?" she asked.

"Farooq bhai ke saath. Woh purane hain is kaam mein."

"Farooq bhai ka poora naam?"

A beat. Small, but there. "Farooq — Farooq Ahmed."

She nodded as though satisfied. "Aur route kya soch ke aaye ho?"

He began to describe a route through the eastern districts. The description was plausible — someone had given him real information, or he had researched it himself.

"Tune Farooq bhai ke saath kab se kaam start kiya?" she asked.

"Karib do saal pehle."

"Kaunsa mahina tha?"

"March."

"Aur woh us waqt Meerut mein the ya Ghaziabad mein?"

"Meerut mein."

"Farooq bhai ne tujhe kis route se bheja — Ghaziabad hoke aaya tu?"

"Nahi, Meerut se seedha—" He stopped.

She let the silence sit.

"Tune pehle kaha tha ki woh us waqt Meerut mein the," she said, her voice entirely even. "Aur ab tu Meerut se seedha aaya. Dono ek hi baat hai."

"Haan — haan, wahi keh raha hoon."

"Toh Meerut se aaya — kitne ghante ka raasta hai?"

"Karib teen—" He stopped again. This time he heard himself stop. His hands, resting on his knees, had gone very slightly still.

She looked at him.

"Meerut se Lucknow teen ghante nahi hota," she said. "Paanch hota hai. Yeh tujhe pata hona chahiye tha agar tu wahan se aaya hota."

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

She stood. Came around the desk. He flinched back in the chair — she ignored this and reached forward and pulled the small recorder from where it had been taped inside his collar. She turned it over in her fingers, examining it with the same unhurried attention she applied to everything.

Then she set it on the desk. Picked up her brass kada from her wrist. And brought it down once, precisely, on the recorder.

He stood so fast the chair scraped back and he was already moving toward the door.

By the time Nikhil reached the hospital the man was already in a bed with a head bandage and a look of someone deeply committed to unconsciousness.

The doctor met him in the corridor — a tired man in his fifties who had seen enough accident cases to have an efficient vocabulary for them.

"Minor head injury. Woh girte waqt seedha sir ke bal gira. Koi internal bleeding nahi, CT clear hai — hosh aa jaayega."

"Kab?"

"Kal subah tak, shayad."

Nikhil looked through the glass panel at the man in the bed.

"Doctor sahab, aapko kya laga — kaise gira?"

The doctor considered. "Bhag raha tha kisi cheez se. Aisa lag raha jaldi mein tha, sambhala nahi." A pause. "Aur ek baat — jo nurse ne check kiya tab woh kuch bol raha tha, hosh aane se pehle wali halat mein. Darr wala bol raha tha. Jo log aise bolte hain — unhe koi dhamki mili hoti hai jo andar tak gayi ho."

Nikhil said nothing.

"Baaki main nahi keh sakta." The doctor shrugged the shrug of a man whose job ends at the body.

Nikhil stood at the glass for another minute, looking at the man in the bed — his informant, his thread into the kotha, now lying bandaged and silent and, by the look of him, likely to remain silent considerably longer than the injury technically required.

He turned and walked out of the hospital into the night.

At midnight his phone rang. He stared at it for one ring, then answered, "Kaun?"

"Jise aap dhoond rahe hain."

The room went very still. Nikhil sat up from where he had been lying on the bed, his feet finding the floor.

He kept his voice level. "Rao Saheb."

Not a question.

A brief pause. "Chaliye maante hain."

"Kahan se bol rahe ho?"

"Woh important nahi hai."

"Mere liye hai."

"Isliye toh main aapko nahi bata raha." A pause that contained, somehow, the suggestion of patience. "Rathod sahab, aap ek samajhdar officer hain. Yeh sab logon ne kaha hai. Isliye seedha baat karta hoon — is sheher mein aapka kaam khatam ho gaya. Wapas jaiye."

"Mera kaam tab khatam hoga jab tum mere saamne hoge."

"Bahut log yahi sochte aaye hain."

"Woh main nahi tha."

"Nahi the — yeh sach hai. Aapne ek hafte mein itna socha jitna pehle walon ne teen mahine mein nahi socha. Yeh qabil-e-taarif hai, Rathod sahab. Sacchi baat."

Nikhil said nothing. He was listening — not just to the words, to the voice underneath the words.

"Par taarif se kuch nahi milta," the voice continued. "Aap ek direction mein ja rahe hain. Woh direction galat hai. Aur jab aap yeh samjhenge tab tak bahut waqt nikal chuka hoga."

"Kaunsa direction sahi hai?"

"Ghar wapas jaana."

"Aur agar nahi gaya toh?"

"Tab jo hua aaj raat hospital mein — woh sirf ek shuruaat hai. Aur agla waala itni asaani se nahi bachega."

"Yeh dhamki hai?"

"Yeh suchna hai. Dhamki mein main apna waqt nahi lagata."

Nikhil stood. He was moving toward the door without thinking — the instinct of a man who wants to trace the physical source of the voice, even knowing it was impossible.

"Ek sawaal," he said.

"Puchiye."

"Jo log tumhare liye jaan dete hain — tum unke liye kya karte ho?"

"Main unhe woh deta hoon jo duniya ne kabhi nahi diya. Izzat. Jagah. Yeh kaafi hota hai."

"Aur kanoon?"

"Kanoon ne unhe kabhi nahi dekha, Rathod sahab. Main ne dekha."

"Isliye tum khud kanoon ban gaye?"

"Isliye kanoon ne mujhe ye karne pe majboor kiya."

"Rathod sahab, aapke bhalai ke liye bata rahi— raha hoon. Chale jaiye."

The call ended.

Nikhil stood in the middle of the room with the phone in his hand. He shook his head once. The slip could have been the processing. Could have been his own ear filling in sound.

He went to the door and pulled it open.

"Suresh." The constable posted outside came alert immediately. "Abhi ek call aaya — unknown number. Trace karo. Jitna ho sake utni jaldi."

Suresh was already on his radio.

Nikhil went back inside. Sat at the desk. Wrote the number from memory.

The trace came back forty minutes later: a SIM registered to a name that did not correspond to any person in any database, activated six days ago, last pinged from a tower covering a three-kilometer radius in the older part of the city.

And offline since two minutes after the call ended.

In her room, she poured two fingers of whiskey into the steel glass, sat back in her chair and drank. Set the glass down.

"Hazar koshishein karlo, Rathod, lekin Rao Saheb kabhi haath nahi aane wala — jab tak woh khud na chahe."

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