Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Missing Servant

At around seven o'clock the Ambassador passed east on the toll bridge that spanned the Yamuna River.

Handbrake had recently overheard Puri bemoaning the fate of the holy river to someone. Apparently, he and his friends had swum in its waters when they were young. On summer weekends, they had crossed by ferry to buy watermelons from the farmers on the other bank. But now, as the terrible stink that filled the inside of the car attested, the Yamuna was a giant sewer-three billion liters of raw waste went into it each year.

On the other side, Handbrake found himself in unknown territory; he had never been to NOIDA before. He had hoped there might be "signage" to point the way to the golf course, but none appeared. Risking a telling-off, he told Puri he didn't know the way.

"Sir, any directions for me?"

Such honesty did not come naturally to Handbrake. His instinct as a former Delhi taxi driver was never to admit ignorance of an address. Partly, this was an issue of pride. Behind the wheel was the one place in the world where he felt like a king. And what king likes to show weakness?

But mostly it was because his former boss, Randy Singh, owner of the Regal B Hinde Taxi Service, and Handbrake's mentor, had always insisted that if a passenger didn't know the way to their chosen destination, then it was a driver's God-given right to fleece them royally.

This philosophy had been instilled in Randy Singh by his father, old Baba Singh, who'd made his fortune rustling water buffalo. Thus the Singh family credo ran: "They have it; why should we not take it?" Indeed, Randy Singh believed that it was the duty of every taxi driver to find ways and means of ripping off all his customers. In his office, he kept an up-to-date map of the current roadworks and diversions across Delhi. Every morning, he briefed his boys on the hot spots where they were sure to run into long delays. He also bribed the men from the Department of Transport whose duty it was to install the government-issued fare meters, which were meant to protect passengers from fraud, to charge an extra three paisa for every mile. This extra profit he split with them seventy-thirty in his favor.

Not surprisingly, Regal B Hinde Taxi Service received a good many complaints from its customers. But Randy Singh never showed remorse. And he prepped his drivers on how to react to disgruntled passengers. Play the dumb villager newly arrived in the big city, he instructed. "Sorry, sir! No education, sir! Getting confusion, sir!"

Handbrake's new employer saw things very differently. If you weren't completely honest and tried to bluff your way around; if you set off in any old direction hoping for the best and then stopped to ask the way from ignorant bystanders only to find yourself performing half a dozen U-turns, the detective was liable to get extremely hot under the collar.

"Oolu ke pathay! Son of an owl!" he'd shouted recently when Handbrake had pretended to know his way around Mustafabad and they'd ended up going round and round in circles in Bhajanpura instead.

Given the respect Handbrake was developing for Boss, such cutting insults hurt. But for all his great deductive powers, Puri was just as lost in many areas of New Delhi's newest suburbs. His map, which was the most up-to-date available in the market, had been printed two years earlier and did not include many of the roads and developments that had "come up."

It didn't help that, throughout Delhi, "signages" were rare. Or that the many "sectors"-which sounded like planetary systems in a Hollywood science fiction film-were just as mysterious as new galactic frontiers. A driver might reach Sector 15 expecting to find Sector 16 nearby, but to his frustration turn a corner and find himself in Sector 28 instead.

Recently, when Handbrake had been sent to Apartment 3P, Block C, Street D, Phase 14, Sector 17 in Gurgaon, it had taken him well over an hour to find it.

As for the Golden Greens Golf Course, Puri had never been there either. So when Handbrake came clean about not knowing the way, the detective told him to ask someone for directions. But not just anyone.

Migrant laborers were a no-no. According to Puri, they weren't used to giving directions because they came from villages where everyone knew everyone else and roads didn't have names.

"Ask them where anything is and they will tell you 'over there.'"

As for fellow drivers, they were not to be relied on, because half of them were probably lost themselves.

Puri sought out real estate brokers and bicycle-rickshaw-wallahs as good sources because they had to be familiar with the areas in which they worked. Pizza delivery boys could also be trusted.

Soon after turning off the NOIDA expressway, Handbrake spotted a Vespa moped with a Domino's box on the back and pulled up next to it at a red light.

"Brother, where is Galden Geens Galfing?" he shouted in Hindi to the delivery boy over the sound of a noisy, diesel-belching Bedford truck.

His question was met with an abrupt upward motion of the hand and a questioning squint of the eyes.

"Galden Geens Galfing, Galden Geens Galfing," repeated Handbrake.

The delivery boy's puzzlement suddenly gave way to comprehension. "Aaah! Golden Greens Galf Carse!"

"Ji!"

"Sectorrr forty-tooo!"

"Brother! Where is forty-tooo sectorrr?"

"Near Tulip High School!"

"Where is Tulip High School?"

"Near Om Garden!"

"Brother, where is Om Garden?"

The delivery boy scowled and shouted in an amalgam of English and Hindi, "Past Eros Cinema, sectorrr nineteen! Turn right at traffic light to BPO Phase three! Enter farty-too through backside!"

Some time later, Handbrake delivered Boss to the front door of the clubhouse and drove to the parking lot. He expected a long wait. But for once, he wasn't bothered and sat back in his seat to enjoy the view.

It occurred to him to take a few photographs of the manicured landscape with the new mobile phone Puri had given him. How else would he be able to prove to the people in his village that such an empty, beautiful place existed?

Puri was not a member of the Golden Greens Golf Course, although he would have liked to be. Not for the sake of playing (secretly he couldn't stand the game-the ball was always ending up in those bloody ponds), but for making contacts among India's new money, the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)-cum-MNC (Multi-National Corporation) crowd.

Such types-as well as many politicians, senior babus and Supreme Court judges-were often to be found on these new fairways to the south and east of the capital. In Delhi, all big deals were now being done on the putting greens. Playing golf had become as vital a skill for an Indian detective as picking a lock. In the past few years, Puri had had to invest in private lessons, a set of Titleist clubs and appropriate apparel, including argyle socks.

But the fees for the clubs were beyond his means and he often had to rely on others to sign him in as a guest.

Rinku, his closest childhood friend, had recently joined the Golden Greens.

He was standing in reception wearing alligator cowboy boots, jeans and a white shirt embroidered with an American eagle.

"Good to see you, buddy! Looks like you've put on a few more pounds, yaar!"

"You're one to talk, you bugger," said the detective as they embraced. "Sab changa?"

Rinku's family had been neighbors of the Puris in Punjabi Bagh and they had grown up playing in the street together. All through their teenage years they had been inseparable. But in their adult lives, they had drifted apart.

Puri's military career had exposed him to many new people, places and experiences, and he'd become less parochial in his outlook. By contrast, Rinku had married the nineteen-year-old girl next door, whose main aspiration in life had been to wear four hundred grams of gold jewelery at her wedding. He had followed his father into the building business and, during the boom of the past ten years, made a fortune putting up low-cost multistory apartment blocks in Gurgaon and Dwarka.