“Yes, maybe,” Kit replies gently.
In any event, it’s good to hear Hala sharing a little more. Her face softens as she thinks about Omar, although her eyes show how desperately she wishes they could see each other again. Caitlin pulls her into an impromptu hug before Hala smiles and pulls away, like she’s irritated, even though she’s not.
For a few, precious minutes, it feels like we are at a real family meal—all of us sitting together, not talking about work. But the pleasure of that doesn’t last long. Before we are even halfway through breakfast, Amber buzzes me a message to say she’s found some good information on Jingo’s hard drive. We pack up our uneaten food and head back to the hotel so we can call into Athena more securely.
On our video link, Amber looks exhausted, although her eyes are bright as she brings us up to speed. Li sits beside her.
“So, the same shell company that funded Imran in Pakistan showed up on Jingo’s hard drive,” she says. “But there’s no evidence of any money going to Jingo.”
Caitlin frowns at me. That’s a letdown.
“However, that shell company put shares in a medical company in Jingo’s name.”
“That could be a payment-in-kind,” Kit suggests. “But for what?”
Amber nods. “Thomas is looking into the medical company now. There are links to Chinese entities and illegal drug shipments, no surprise there. And they have a few laboratories under their umbrella, one of which is in Mumbai. I’ll get you the address in a second.”
“Well done, Amber,” says Kit.
“There’s more,” Li chimes in. “Encrypted on the drive were emails to Jingo from someone signing themselves X.”
“A link to Family First?” I ask, hopeful, but Li shakes her head.
“I doubt it. The emails are . . . personal. Intimate. Graphic,” she stresses. “Jingo appears to be having an affair. The most recent email was only two days ago.”
“We don’t know who the person is,” says Amber. “But we sent her a text offer in the style of social media ads she seems to have clicked on before. And she clicked, letting us install the app we needed to track her GPS.”
“And?” Hala asks, impatiently. “Where is she?”
“In a house around twenty minutes’ drive from Jingo’s home.”
The consensus is that going directly to that house is pointless: to create any kind of leverage against Jingo, we would need to catch him there. So Hala and Caitlin head over to Jingo’s home to keep tabs on his movements, and also to see if anyone interesting comes in and out. If Jingo was brazen enough to call Riya into his house to subtly bribe her, maybe there are others who might be summoned and who might give us the break in this case that we need.
In the meantime, I’m tasked with going over to the lab that Amber mentioned. The whole medical angle feels a bit out of left field, but it’s worth exploring. We’ve agreed that I can feed the Mumbai police the name of the medical company and some of the people that Amber found associated with it. But I’ll keep the lab address to myself for now, because we’d like to have a look around before the police go barreling in there. Of course, Riya has the same information from Jingo’s hard drive, but I imagine that, to get all the clues available from it, she will endure a much longer, more bureaucratic process than Athena’s. It’s very unlikely that any police team can work as fast as Amber.
As we all part ways to get on with our day, the first thing I do is call Riya, purely because I’m supposed to give her the name of the medical company; not because I’m wondering if that intense moment between us at the bar last night meant anything. Her phone rings, but she doesn’t answer. I try texting, just to request a call or a quick meeting. I wouldn’t want to put the information I have into a written message. While I wait for a reply, I collect Caitlin’s motorcycle since she and Hala have hired a car for the stakeout at Jingo’s place. Before I set out, I check the whereabouts of the lab that Amber gave us. The shortest route to it runs pretty close to the police station. Since there’s still been no reply from Riya, I decide to stop by her workplace, deliver the information I have for her, and then go on to the lab.
It’s insanely busy outside the police station in Juhu this morning. Several squad cars are parked outside, and people mill around, arguing with uniformed officers. Some of them hold placards. From my sweep of the local news this morning, it seems like election fever is gripping the city ahead of voting day, which is the day after tomorrow. Demonstrations and marches have been springing up. I’m guessing that the police have broken up at least one of these and that the bedlam outside is the result.
It seems intelligent to park my motorbike farther down the street, away from the chaos. I’m just removing my helmet, and about to take off my leather jacket, when I see Riya emerge from the police station. She slips on sunglasses, runs lightly down the steps, dodges the protesters and the barrage of traffic, and heads out to an unmarked car parked on the sidewalk across from the station. I hit redial on my phone, hoping to catch her before she leaves. But she just glances at her phone, declines the call, then gets into the car.
Well, that’s annoying from the perspective of the investigation, but it also leaves me with a depressing feeling of personal rejection. Was I imagining that there was some kind of spark between us last night? But now my phone pings. It’s Riya.
Stuck in meetings
Yeah, right. Putting my helmet back on, I zip up my jacket and rev up the motorbike. Before she leaves, Riya puts on a baseball cap—inside the car, where
