Omair Ahmad - Delhi Noir

They’d been hired to take pictures of a Kashmiri politician. A meeting had been arranged for him with a young woman. A classic honey trap, it was assumed that the politico would have one night of fun, and the government would have enough embarrassing photographs to make sure that he didn’t have any more fun afterwards. Except that he just wasn’t up to it. The government had a habit of overkill, and this politician had been worked over so many times in custody that, although he invited the nubile young thing to his room, he only wanted to talk. It was all rather pathetic, and Suhasini, in the next room with the video lead showing her the pointlessness of it all, had been overcome with a strange feeling. It was the only time she’d ever felt any sympathy for the militants.

“I’ll see you at 7 in the evening, Mr. Singh,” she said, and hung up. But after she put the phone down, the remark about Triloki came back to her. She located his number on her cell phone and was about to dial when a sense of caution stopped her and she set the phone down, again. Then she pulled out her second cell phone, the one that didn’t reveal her number on the receiving end, and called Triloki.

There were only two rings before someone picked up.

“Hello?” said a rough voice that wasn’t Triloki’s.

“May I speak with Jaidev Triloki?” she asked.

“One minute,” said the voice, and then there was the sound of muffled voices in the background.

“Hello, this is Jaidev,” said another voice, smooth, full of authority, and so confident that she almost answered despite knowing that it wasn’t him.

“Hello?” the voice said again.

“Mr. Triloki?” she finally asked.

“Yes, this is Jaidev Triloki,” the voice lied, smooth as an oiled snake.

She was so baffled that she did what she had always done as a child when caught by surprise: She lied. “This is Aparna, Mr. Triloki, from the Academy of Investigators in Vasant Vihar.”

“Yes?”

“We wanted to invite you to be one of the keynote speakers at our inauguration ceremony on February 17. The home minister has agreed to be the guest of honor.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll be out of the country at that time,” the man who wasn’t Triloki said. “But thank you for calling.”

Suhasini just stared at her cell phone for a while, trying to make sense of things.

At that moment her first phone started vibrating. The screen glowed, telling her it was Triloki calling.

She didn’t know what to do and watched the phone vibrate slowly across the table. Then she grabbed it, stabbing the cancel button. A moment later it started vibrating again, again from Triloki’s number. She canceled the call a second time and quickly text messaged him, In meeting. Problem?

There was no reply for a few minutes, and she told herself to relax. Maybe Triloki was in some sort of trouble and had asked a friend to answer his phone while he dropped from sight. Maybe he was just calling up to tell her that, and also to notify her about the package with Sunny. He’d served with India’s premiere investigating agency, after all. He knew what he was doing.

The message that came back from his phone shattered the idea: Are you attending inauguration of Academy of Investigators?

What’s that? she messaged, and there was no reply. She waited, watching the phone suspiciously, but even after a good quarter of an hour there was no reply. Whatever Triloki was involved with, he was in big trouble.

Picking up the phone, she called Sunny and received a suspicious “Yes?” for her pains.

“Where are you?” She was in no mood for his tantrums, and just wanted to get to the point. The brusqueness must have had its effect, and he replied tamely enough, “Nizamuddin.”

“I’ll be at the railway station in half an hour, at 5 o’clock. Meet me there. Bring the package.” She sensed him about to protest and added, “Sunny, it’s not a good time.”

It took her five minutes to lock up. The guard at the gate nodded to her and she asked, on impulse, “See anybody strange, Altaf?”

He shook his head, “No, madam. Nobody strange.”

“Keep an eye out, all right?”

He nodded back at her. Altaf and his brother, Abdul, had been hired by Triloki six years ago, when the agency had first opened. They knew what kind of people could come looking for private detectives.

There was very little traffic on the roads, and she was happy that it was a Sunday. It took her barely fifteen minutes to get to the Nizamuddin Railway Station but another five minutes to find a decent place to park. It was a long walk to the station, and the damned road smelled of piss. But at least the walk allowed her to make sure nobody was following her.

Sunny was already there, looking anxious and shooting suspicious glances at the policemen around him. She rarely met him like this. He was guaranteed to attract the wrong sort of attention. The policemen gave Sunny the once-over, and then her too.

“What is it?” she asked, and he thrust a grubby envelope toward her. “Just this?” and he nodded energetically. “Okay then,” she said. She wanted to tell him to fuck off but restrained herself from being stupid with anger again. “You’ll find the packet in the usual place,” she added, letting him know he’d be paid.

He nodded, scuttled off, and was lost among the crowd in moments. She thought about going inside the station to read Triloki’s letter and have a cup of tea. There was a certain anonymity to the crowds there. But Sunny’s antics meant that she could be assured of the policemen paying close attention to her.

Instead she strode back to her car, and then over the bridge. On a whim, she decided to walk into the alleyways of Jalebi Central, midway between Nizamuddin and Ashram. Itasn’t the sort of place you found women on their own, certainly not ones dressed like her in a shirt and jeans. Had it been later in the day, after the sun had gone down, she might have driven elsewhere, but she just needed to walk.

This had been a prosperous part of town at some point in time; you could tell from the bits and pieces of old buildings, the edges of bungalows now gone. It had become a refugee zone after Partition, and the construction had the hallmark of the era’s ugly structures. These places were to be lived in and nothing more, small boxy buildings with unfinished brick surfaces everywhere. Now it was full of pushy Punjabi families; large, loud, and boisterous. Usually she couldn’t handle it, but right now the shouting, the four-story buildings with barely any space between them, and all the hefty women somehow made her feel better.

Yet after a few moments the claustrophobia got to her, and she was relieved to finally make it through to a tea shop near Mathura Road, with Hotel Rajdoot looming nearby and the flyover to the Ashram crossroads just beyond it. It wasn’t that big of a building, but here, in the tropical jungle of alleyways and bylanes, it looked much larger than normal. Nevertheless, it still maintained a grubby air, as if the paint just couldn’t hold, or maybe the combined sweaty existence of everybody living in Jalebi Central somehow tarnished all the buildings in its vicinity.

Right next to the hotel was a bungalow which you couldn’t really see from the road. Purani Haveli, where Arjun Singh lived.

She ordered a cup of tea and tore the envelope open. The tea stall owner gave her a look — she wasn’t the usual sort of customer — but she ignored it.

There was only a single sheet of paper, with Triloki’s spiky handwriting.

Suhasini,

There’s no real point in saying sorries at this time, but I wish the thing with Suparna had never happened. I don’t know what came over me, she had so much money and here I was poor after so many years of work. Anyway, that doesn’t matter now, but maybe this case I’m working on is a penance of sorts. I know I’m not doing it for money. And that fucker, Arjun Singh, doesn’t even understand how things work. He won’t even give me the diary. If you take this case, get the diary. That’s your only chance, your only safety. I’ve got nothing, but I’m going to confront that fucking politician. My work with the IB will help. I’ve got to prove that there is some good in me. If you get the diary, though, I’ve told Ramdev, the police inspector stationed at Nizamuddin police station, about the case. His number is 98––. Don’t trust anybody but him. I’m sorry about everything. Remember me kindly.