“In case you turn something up,” Riya tells me. She glances down at the table for a long moment and when she looks back up at me, her eyes are dark and serious. “Those girls have had their futures taken from them, brutally,” she continues. “Their families will never recover from the loss. I want to do everything I can to find the people who did this and to make sure they don’t do it again.”
Across from us, an audible sob escapes from Jaya. I pass her a tissue and she blots away the tears in her eyes. I watch Riya, who looks younger now, even vulnerable. Her earnestness feels honest and it makes me like her more.
“Please know that I feel the same way,” I assure her. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have anything.”
7
IT’S NOT GREAT THAT THE maintenance man’s ID scan appears to be missing, but I’m hopeful that Amber might have found it somewhere, maybe misfiled on the hard drive. Or it could be that she’s tracked down the plumbing contractor and we can trace the guy from that. While I’m stuck in traffic on the way back to my hotel, I check in with Amber. She sounds animated, the way she does when she’s got something up her sleeve.
“Good timing,” she says. “I was getting ready to call you.”
“The police say the plumber guy’s ID is missing,” I tell her.
“Utter nonsense. I found it within ten minutes, sitting in a folder on the computer’s desktop, which has a hundred other pieces of crap in it,” Amber replies. “Someone was just too lazy to file it.”
“Why didn’t you call me earlier?”
“Because the ID is all but useless. The name on it is fake.”
That’s hardly surprising, but still, it’s a letdown and I sigh, looking out of the window. In the distance, row upon row of slums whip past as we drive by. Closer to me, blurs of color strobe, attracting my attention: clusters of women in technicolor saris walking along the road; massive billboards advertising the latest Bollywood blockbuster movie.
“However,” Amber continues, “the cell number the plumber gave the school, though no longer in use, was once connected to a social media account. And that account belongs to the man in the ID photo; so the same guy. I imagine he couldn’t resist checking his feed even while doing something dodgy. His real name is Hassan Shah.”
“Great! Did you find him?”
“Well, there’s good and bad news. The bad news is, Hassan Shah there is like the name John Smith here. There are hundreds of them in Mumbai alone.”
I get the impression, just from her tone, that she’s already cracked this problem, but the thing with Amber is, she delights in giving you every little detail of how she did it. I try my best to be patient.
“And the good news?” I ask.
“Our Hassan’s social media account shows that he has two kids. A fourteen-year-old son and a younger daughter. Now, the son’s got a social profile that geo-tracks him, you know, so his friends can find him when they go out. . . .”
“Yeah, thanks, I get how that works, Amber.”
“Well, within the past week, he’s also geo-linked to three places that he’s been with his family, including his father. So, I’m hopeful that the next time Hassan hangs out with his son, we’ll get an alert on the son’s social media.”
I smile. “You’re a genius.”
“Yes, it does feel that way, doesn’t it?” Amber says.
“And modest too,” I add.
“I’ll let you know when I have anything more,” she says, and hangs up.
I make it to the hotel just after Kit and Peggy have checked in. On the street outside the driveway, reporters and TV cameras jostle for position. I hope they are here waiting for some Bollywood superstar to emerge and not hoping to get pictures of my mother on her way to see the deceased girls’ families or the schools.
I stop in at Kit’s room. She greets me with a long, hard hug. It’s clear from her bloodshot eyes, shadowed with dark circles, that she’s hardly slept, and when she pulls back to look at me, her face holds a manic, strained energy that I haven’t seen in her since the days when she was drinking. When alcohol was the only way she felt some relief from the sharp edges of pain. It makes me very uneasy.
“Mum, are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“Are those paparazzi outside waiting for you?” I ask.
“Like vultures circling their prey,” she remarks, disconsolate.
“I’m sorry.”
She waves off my concern. “Here, give me a hand, Jess.”
She turns away and starts dragging a sofa across the polished wood floor. The hotel room that she has is miles bigger than mine, a suite really, with enough space to hold a small soccer match and possibly a stand for the audience too.
“Mum, not this again . . . ,” I plead. But I go over to help her.
Once Kit is happy with the placement of the sofa, she makes me help turn the desk around. She does this often when she travels—rearranges hotel rooms to facilitate the flow of chi, or positive energy. It’s a feng shui thing, and I’m not convinced it makes any kind of difference, but Kit looks so stressed out at the moment that I just keep quiet and help out.
Next, she starts unpacking. I help her hang up floaty shirts and printed jackets. Along with them are a couple of white shalwar kameez outfits—long tunics that go over fitted trousers.
“These are nice,” I say, trying to cheer her up, but it seems like I fail epically because Kit sits heavily on the end of the bed and just starts to cry.
“They’re for the condolence visits and the funerals,” she says, her voice breaking. Sitting beside her, I put my arm around her, but it feels pretty meaningless and not much help compared to the grief, or
