She answered on the sixth ring, but there was a lot of static on the line.
'Mummy-ji, where are you?' he asked her.
'Chubby? So much interference in there, na? You're in an auto or what?'
'I'm very much at home,' he said.
'You've not yet reached home! So late it is? You've had your khana outside, is it?'
'I'm at home, Mummy!' he bawled. 'Where are you?'
The static suddenly grew worse.
'Chubby, your mobile device is giving poor quality of connection. Listen, na, I'm at Minni Auntie's house. I'll be back late. Just I need rest. Some tiredness is there.'
She let out a loud yawn.
'This line is very bad, Mummy-ji! I'll call you back!'
'Hello, Chubby? My phone is getting low on battery and no charger is here. Take rest. I'll be back later, na-'
The line went dead.
Puri regarded the screen suspiciously.
'Who is Minni Auntie?' he shouted to Rumpi, who was still in the kitchen.
'Who?'
'Minni Auntie. Mummy said she's at her house.'
'Might be one of her friends. She has so many, I can't keep track.'
Rumpi came to the door of the sitting room, wiping her hands on a tea towel.
'Who are you calling now?' she asked Puri.
'Mummy's driver.'
He held the phone to his ear. It rang and rang, but there was no response and he hung up.
'She's out there looking into the shooting-I know it,' he said wearily.
Rumpi made a face. 'Oh, Chubby, I'm sure she's just trying to help,' she said.
'It's not her place. She's a schoolteacher, not a detective. She should leave it to the professionals. I'm making my own inquiries about the shooting and will get to the bottom of it.'
'If you ask me, I think Mummy's a natural detective,' said Rumpi. 'If you weren't being so stubborn and proud, you might give her a chance. I'm sure she could be very helpful to you. It doesn't sound like you've got any clues of your own.'
Puri bristled at this last remark.
'My dear, if you want your child to learn his six times table, you go to Mummy,' he said brusquely. 'If you want a mystery solved, you come to Vish Puri.'
As her son had rightfully surmised, Mummy was not at Minni Auntie's (although such a lady did exist; she was one of the better bridge players among the nice group of women who played in Vasant Kunj); she was on a stakeout.
Her little Maruti Zen was parked across the street from the Sector 31 Gurgaon police station, five minutes from Puri's home.
With her was her driver, Majnu, and Kishan, the servant boy, whom she'd persuaded to come with her. She'd also brought along a thermos of tea, a Tupperware container packed with homemade vegetarian samosas and of course her handbag, which, among other things, contained her battery-operated face fan.
This had come in extremely useful when her son had called earlier. By holding it up to her phone, she had created what sounded like interference on the line, which helped her avoid having to give away her location. This was an old trick she'd learned from her husband, who had occasionally used his electric razor to the same effect.
During forty-nine years of marriage, she'd picked up a number of other useful skills for a detective and a good deal of knowledge as well.
Take red boots, for example.
Mummy knew that they were part of a senior police officer's dress uniform and were supposed to be worn only during parades. Occasionally cops were known to wear them for their day-to-day work when their other boots went for repairs.
If the shooter was indeed an officer-who else would wear such footwear?-then the most logical place to start looking for him was the local 'cop shop.'
Of all the stations in Gurgaon, the one in Sector 31 had one of the worst reputations. Stories abounded about police-wallahs arresting residents of the bastis and forcing them to cook and clean for them; of beatings, rapes- even murders.
'We might be here for hours,' moaned Majnu, who was always whining. They had been outside the station for an hour already and he was annoyed at having to work late.
'We have no other choice,' Mummy told him. 'Everyone else is being negligent in this matter. Some action is required.'
At around 10:40, a man in plain clothes emerged from the station. Kishan recognized him as the person he'd seen leaving the scene of the shooting.
'Madam, please don't tell anyone it was me who told you! The cops will kill me!' he said when he realized that the shooter was a police-wallah.
'Your secret is safe,' Mummy reassured Kishan, giving him a couple of hundred rupees for his trouble. 'Now go home and we'll take it from here.'
The servant boy did not have to be told twice. He hurriedly exited the car and rushed off into the darkness.
On the other side of the road, Red Boots got into an unmarked car, started the ignition and pulled into the road, heading west.
Mummy and Majnu followed behind. But the driver kept getting too close and she had to scold him more than once.
'There's a brain in that skull or just thin air or what?'
Twenty minutes later, they found themselves pulling up outside a fancy five-star Gurgaon hotel.
Red Boots left his car with the valet and went inside.
'I'm going to follow him. You stay out here in the car park,' Mummy told Majnu.
'Yes, madam,' sighed the driver, who was by now in a sulk.
Puri's mother passed through the hotel doors-they were opened by a tall Sikh doorman with the kind of thick beard and moustache that appealed to tourists-into the plush lobby. Red Boots had turned left, past the bellboy's desk and the lifts. Mummy saw him disappear inside a Chinese restaurant, Drums of Heaven.
Outside the entrance, she stopped for a moment and looked down at what she was wearing in alarm; her ordinary chikan kurta and churidaar pajamas were hardly appropriate for such a fancy place.
'But what to do?' she said to herself, continuing her pursuit.
Beyond a kitsch dragon and pagoda, Mummy was greeted by an elegant hostess, who looked Tibetan. Would Madam like a smoking or nonsmoking table?
'Actually I'm meeting one friend, only,' replied Mummy. 'Almost certainly she's arrived. Just I'll take a look. So kind of you.'
The hostess escorted Mummy to the back of the restaurant, where Red Boots was sitting with a fat-throated man in a white linen suit. They were both smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky.
Behind them there was a vacant table for two; Mummy made a beeline for it, sitting directly behind her mark.
'Must be my friend has yet to arrive,' she told the Tibetan lady. 'Her driver's always getting confusion.'
The hostess placed a menu on the table and went back to her podium.
Mummy pretended to peruse the dim sum section while trying to eavesdrop on Red Boots's conversation with Fat Throat, gradually inching her chair backward as close as she dared.
The Muzak and the general murmur from the other tables drowned out most of their words. So Mummy asked the waiter to turn off the music-'Such a headache is there'-and, after turning up her hearing aid to full volume, she
