5: Wafadaar

A month into his posting, Lucknow had given Nikhil exactly nothing he could use in court.

He had routes without origins. Transactions without names. A letter in neat handwriting sitting inside his notebook's back cover and a midnight phone call he could still hear if he sat in the right kind of quiet.

He was at his desk on a Tuesday morning when he got a call.

"Sir, ek ladka pakda gaya. Raat ko. Sharaab ki supply kar raha tha — teen dabe, choti gaadi. Hamare log the wahin."

"Kahan hai abhi?"

"Station pe."

Nikhil closed the file he had been reading. "Aata hoon."

Within some moments he came inside the interrogation room and noticed the boy who looked too young.

Nikhil sat across from him. Said nothing for a moment.

"Naam?"

Silence.

"Kahan se aaya tha maal?"

Silence.

"Kiske liye supply kar raha tha?"

The boy looked up, "Mooh nahi kholna mujhe," he said. Simply. Like stating his name.

Nikhil leaned back. "Rao Saheb ke liye kaam karta tha?"

Nothing.

"Beta, tum abhi bahut chote ho. Iss umar mein — "

"Rao Saheb kabhi khoon nahi karta." The boy said it quietly, still looking at his hands. "Woh logon ka sochta hai. Main kuch nahi bolunga."

Nikhil studied him. The set of the jaw. The steadiness of the folded hands.

"Agar nahi bola toh police ke apne tarike hain," Nikhil said, keeping his voice level and low. "Dard hoga."

The boy looked up at him then. And smiled. A small, unhurried thing.

"Karo jo karna hai. Tab bhi nahi bolunga."

Nikhil looked at him for a long moment. Then he stood and walked out.

The corridor outside was narrow, with a single tube light that buzzed faintly. Three constables straightened when he came out. Head Constable Ramdin tried, "Sir, aap kaho to third degree—."

Nikhil looked at him.

The look lasted three seconds. Ramdin found something interesting to examine on the wall.

"Woh ladka athhara saal ka hain bass," Nikhil said quietly. "Aur third degree ka order mere bina nahi hoga. Samjhe?"

"Ji, sir."

"Usse paani do. Kuch khana hai toh woh bhi." He turned to the younger constable beside Ramdin. "Andar koi nahi jaayega abhi. Main soch ke aata hoon."

He had taken four steps down the corridor when the sound came from inside the room.

They were through the door in seconds.

The boy was sideways in the chair, one arm hanging. His eyes were half-open and already somewhere else.

"Medical — abhi!" Nikhil was already at the boy's side, two fingers at his neck. A pulse — faint, wrong.

The medical team arrived in seven minutes. It took them three to confirm what Nikhil already knew from the smell — faint, bitter, the smell that had been described to him once in a toxicology briefing.

"Potassium cyanide," the doctor said. "Tongue ke neeche chhupa ke rakha tha. Iss case mein kuch nahi ho sakta. I'm sorry."

The room was very quiet.

Nikhil stepped back. Let the constable do the necessary checking of the boy's pockets.

A folded paper. Small, creased at the edges from being carried.

The constable unfolded it. Read it. Handed it to Nikhil without a word. The paper read:

Rao Saheb ka raaz meri jaan se zyada keemti nahi.

Marna qubool hai.

Rao Saheb ka sach batana nahi.

Nikhil folded it back along its crease. Put it in his pocket.

He stood in the room for a long moment, the thought in his mind is that a person commanded a loyalty so complete that an eighteen year old boy had carried death under his tongue as casually as a bus ticket.

He walked out of the room without speaking to anyone.

Meanwhile:

That same afternoon, the kotha's third floor held a different kind of quiet.

"Teri baal aaj achhe lag rahi hai," Ananya said, reaching over and touching the end of a strand.

Kanak raised an eyebrow. "Kya — chhed rahi hai mujhe?"

"Nahi, sach bol rahi hoon."

"Bol toh aise rahi hai jaise —"

"Agar main mard hoti," Ananya said, in the same calm tone she said everything, "toh shaadi kar leti tujhse. Pakka."

Kanak stared at her. Then burst out laughing — the real kind, the unguarded kind, the kind that arrives before you can compose yourself.

"Paagal hai tu bilkul."

"Woh toh hoon." Ananya drank her tea.

"Aur agar main nahi kehti?"

A pause. "Uthake shaadi karleti fir tujhe aur kya."

Kanak threw a pillow. Ananya caught it without looking up from the tea glass.

The knock at the door came while they were still in the residue of that laughter — the room warm with it, the kind of warm that is rare in a room that usually conducts business.

"Aajao."

One of her men. He stepped inside, looked at Ananya, and said it without preamble because there was no good way to frame it:

"Chintu pakda gaya tha. Cyanide nigal gaya."

The warmth in the room changed quality. Not disappeared — changed, the way temperature changes when a cloud moves across the sun.

Kanak's hand went to her mouth. "Chintu —"

Ananya set down the tea glass. Her face had not moved the way Kanak's had moved. But something behind her eyes had shifted — something private, something that was not shown but was present.

She looked at her man.

"Uske ghar pe photo frame mein mala aur ek candle rakh dena," she said. "Mala main khud lagaaungi."

The man nodded and left.

Kanak was still with her hand at her mouth, her eyes bright.

"Woh sirf —"

"Wafadar tha," Ananya said. Quietly. Finally. "Bahut."

They sat in the silence of it.

After a minute Kanak wiped her eye with the back of her hand and looked away at the window.

The knock this time was softer.

"Aa, Suman."

She came in slowly. Stood near the door with her hands twisted together.

"Kya hua?" Ananya asked.

"Mujhe — mujhe ghar yaad aa raha hai." Her voice cracked on the last word and she held it back with the effort of someone who does not want to cry in front of this particular person. "Lagta hai shayad — shayad unhone maaf kar diya ho. Main wapas jaana chahti hoon."

Ananya looked at her for a moment.

"Ja." Simple. No weight on it. "Agar unhone sach mein maaf kiya toh bahut achhi baat hai."

Suman swallowed. "Aur agar — agar nahi kiya? Agar wapas nahi liya unhone —"

"Toh wapas aa jaana." Ananya's voice was the same. "Darwaza band nahi hota yahan. Kabhi nahi hua, kabhi nahi hoga."

Suman looked at her with the expression of someone receiving something they had not been sure they were going to receive. Then she nodded, pressed both hands together briefly, and left.

Kanak watched her go. Then looked at Ananya.

Ananya had already picked up the tea glass again. Looking at the wall.

That night Nikhil slept badly.

The boy's face stayed with him in the way that certain faces stay — not haunting exactly, but present, sitting just behind the eyes, patient.

He fell asleep late and the dream came from somewhere he had not been expecting.

The kotha. The third-floor corridor, the way it had looked on the morning of the raid — the narrow passage, the old wooden floors, the locked door at the end. But in the dream the door was open. And in the room, a window. And at the window, a silhouette he could not make out — only the outline, and the small orange point of a cigarette moving in the dark. And smoke rising.

The figure turned.

Eyes. Kohl-lined, wide-set, level. Looking directly at him with the expression of someone who has already seen everything and is entirely unhurried about this too.

He woke up at three in the morning with his heart going too fast and the ceiling fan turning and the neem tree outside moving in the dark.

He lay there for a moment.

Then he sat up and pressed his palms flat on his face and stared at the wall, "Bakwaas," he said aloud, to the empty room.

He got up. Drank water. Stood at the window.

He stood there until the dream finished dissolving, which took longer than he thought it should.

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