“I know,” Hala replies. “You can go in without me. I’ll wait outside in case you get into trouble.”
While she waits, Hala will update the team on the developments with Sunil. I’m doubtful that what we saw is enough to press charges against him. Who knows what extracurricular work a police detective can get up to in this city without consequences? But Sunil’s late-night bonfire still felt like it involved getting rid of evidence.
I chew on all this while Hala does the driving. Nighttime softens the edges of Mumbai. Small fairy lights wind around temples and trees. Naked lightbulbs illuminate men taking cups of tea or liquor at street stalls. Car headlights sweep past the prone bodies of the homeless lying under scraps of tent on the street. I look away. There never seems to be a time when the city is completely asleep, but it’s getting late enough that at least some of the main roads are not so jammed with cars. It doesn’t take long to reach Riya’s home—a long, thin apartment block in Andheri West. Hala pulls the car into a driveway that leads up to the block and parks up by the entrance to an underground garage that seems to serve its residents.
“Switch on your comms if you need me,” she tells me. “I’ll be here.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Keep your doors locked.”
“Are you afraid for me, or the idiot who tries to mug me?” she says, with a glimmer of a smile.
I smile back and close the door.
Coming into the building foyer, I find only a bored-looking porter downstairs. It’s easy to walk briskly past him and head into the elevators, where I follow Riya’s earlier instructions to go to the tenth floor. She opens the door almost as soon as I knock, as if she’s been standing around waiting. Behind her, the television plays some American superhero show. For a moment, I just take Riya in. In jeans and a soft green shirt, she looks fine, unhurt, not jittery. I feel the fear and tension that I’ve been carrying around all night drain out of me.
“Well, listen,” I say, coming inside. “Thanks for sending me over to a morgue while you hung out at home and binge-watched trash TV.”
I smile and she laughs but then winces, doubling over in pain.
“Don’t make me laugh,” she breathes. She straightens up, slowly, her face creased with pain.
“What happened?” I ask, shocked. “Riya?”
“I’ll explain.” Walking gingerly, she leads me into a galley kitchen, where a kettle is just starting to boil on the stovetop. She reaches up to get cups off a shelf, but she stops mid-movement—even that is too much for her. I grab the cups, switch off the stove to kill the insistent whistling of the kettle, and take her arm gently.
“What happened?” I ask again.
In reply, she lifts up her shirt and I flinch. Her stomach and torso are covered with red marks—early bruises, by the looks of them. I’ve suffered so many over the past year or two that I’ve gotten to know these marks intimately well. The bruises look like they were inflicted very recently, no more than an hour or two ago.
“Let’s get you to a doctor,” I say. “What if you broke a rib?”
She waves off my concern. “No, I broke a rib once. This is not like that. I think I’m fine.”
“Well, you need ice,” I tell her.
“I’ve been using the frozen veg,” she says, indicating a defrosting packet of sweet corn on the countertop. There’s a small freezer on top of the fridge behind me. I pop some cubes out of a plastic tray, wrapping them in a damp tea towel. She takes it and holds it under her shirt.
“Who did this to you?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I was home, and it was driving me crazy, being stuck here, not being able to question those men we arrested at the lab. Anyway—late in the afternoon, I called in to speak to Maneesh, one of my colleagues.”
She putters about while she talks, going for the kettle. I take it from her and make some tea, while she continues her story:
“Maneesh is a good guy, we get on. I asked him if these men had confessed anything. And he told me they were dead. Both of them. He didn’t know much more than that, so I told him why I thought it was important to the case. I asked him to find out more.”
She leads me back out to the living room, where I leave our cups of tea on top of a day-old newspaper that sits folded on the dark, polished coffee table.
“And then?” I ask.
“He called me back, right before I messaged you. He’d overheard Sunil taking a call from the police commissioner, and he thought Sunil was going to the morgue. And so I decided to go over there myself and find out what was going on. Confront Sunil if I had to. But I never made it. I sent you the location pin to start with, thinking that I’d call you on my way, to explain. But when I went down to the basement garage, as soon as I got near my car, two guys jumped me. One put a hood on me and held my arms, the other one punched until I collapsed on the ground.”
I feel sickened at the idea. “Did they do anything else? Hurt you . . . in any other way?”
“No, nothing like that,” she says, but her eyes don’t meet mine. It feels like she’s holding something back, but I plow on with questions.
“Did they say anything?”
“They warned me to stay off the case. Or I would die.” She shrugs. “That was all they said.”
“In English?”
“In Hindi,” she says.
“Did you see them?”
“No. I mean, the guy punching me had gray sneakers on—I could see his feet, looking down, where the hood opened.”
We both know that’s not much to go on.
“What happened at the morgue? Did you find anything?” Riya
