nodded. “Why is Crime Branch interested in these freaks? More to the point, what do they have to do with your task force?”
“That’s two questions, inspector. But if you come across anything that might be of interest to me on either front, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
The inspector looked at him, the bill of his uniform hat shaping the flow of the rainwater off his face. Then he nodded in turn, touched his hat, and drove away.
Kapoor and Dayal stood there, next to the latter’s car, in the relentless rain.
“That was staged for our benefit,” noted Kapoor.
Dayal nodded wordlessly.
“Kids these days. Seriously.”
Dayal had to agree.
“I think it’s time you called the Colonel.”
The path to Razia lay through a narrow alley that led off a busy road in south Delhi. There was a bank to one side with a line outside the ATM and a shop selling bodybuilding supplements in the basement. An outlet for Adidas guarded the other flank. The commerce of the main road ebbed and flowed around the parked cars. The pushcarts, cycle-rickshaws, and pedestrians, bent on their own business in the moist night, eddied around Dayal’s own car. He stepped out and lit a cigarette, looked one way then another, and moved into the alley.
This was one of Delhi’s urban villages and the alley was a tight one, along which ran close-packed houses. They were high enough and dense enough to cut off the sun at noon: at night, every person in these alleys was a ghost. Power lines snaked overhead, the myriad noises of soap operas and cricket matches came and went, and the smoke from the DCP’s cigarette floated up into the ephemerally electric night. The air was neon and then fluorescent, and once there was the silver illumination of a lightning flash, the blues and pinks of the streaming homes off to either side starkly vivid. Seconds later Dayal heard its attendant roar. But by then the alley, now meandering through the village, was dark again. A corner store that stocked cigarettes and paan masala and eggs and bread provided a beacon of light where Dayal stopped to ask for directions. The man looked at him, then away, and then looked again, and saw Dayal for what he was. So he pointed, reluctantly, in a particular direction. Dayal bought a cigarette and sauntered through the sodden lane.
The newer houses were built above little parking bays, where Dayal saw scooters and occasionally small cars. Once a cat walked along a boundary wall and sometimes a dog, surprised in his slumber, barked at the policeman. Dayal took no notice. A Northeastern woman hurried past in the opposite direction, her mobile phone at her lips, urgently telling a driver at the mouth of the lane to wait for her, that she couldn’t take the next ride because her shift was starting in Gurgaon in less than forty-five minutes. He reached the end of the lane and was faced with a choice, whether to turn right or left. He stubbed out his smoke and glanced around and was pleased to discover that, as with all such places, he was far from alone.
There were eyes on him from balconies and from windows, even from a little set of young men taking it easy on the street. He felt how anonymity and communality can coexist in the same place and time, and knew what it is to be both naked and secure. So fortified, he walked up to the wall in front of him and knocked on the door that he knew was there. It opened quietly. He stepped into the forecourt of a pleasingly large haveli and turned to acknowledge Razia’s spare, elegant adaab.
“Welcome,” she said simply, leading him through the little gatehouse into the haveli proper. There was a colonnaded courtyard, empty save for the remnant of a fountain. There was a sprinkling of furniture in the verandas off to the sides. She led him to one such alcove, where the mattresses and bolsters were already set up and the makings of both paan and cocktails awaited. Candles illumined their meeting and their shadows played along the whitewashed walls. Rain began to fall again, the quiet courtyard coming alive with the sound of fresh water on ancient flagstone.
“Nice place,” said Sajan. “Must be expensive to maintain.”
“You’ve no idea,” smiled Razia. “Do you know how hard it is to keep a place like this when everybody else is tearing them down?”
Sajan shrugged and asked her how she found it. She merely said she’d had it for a while. Her neighbors: did she like them? They’re good people, she replied. Old families of the area, young people from outside. The way Delhi’s always been.
“They look out for you, I imagine?”
“Always.”
Dayal nodded and sipped at the cocktail he knew would be excellent before he even tasted it. He closed his eyes and sighed, leaned back against a bolster.
“Long day?” asked Razia with sympathy.
“Long few months,” answered Sajan.
“May I prepare a paan for you?”
“In a moment, perhaps.”
Then they were both quiet, enjoying the night and the smell and the sound of the rain in the courtyard. But the moment didn’t last, for even though the idea of a companionable silence with Razia was a tempting one, and Sajan was glad for the respite, he had work to do.
“You know why I’m here?” he asked.
She inclined her head.
“Can you help?”
“What would you have me do?”
“He’ll come to you if you tell him where and when.”
“This is true,” she acknowledged.
“I’d like you to call him to you. Here.”
She indicated her acquiescence.
“I think I’ll have that paan now, please.”
Later, his head was both on the bolster and perilously close to her knee. She could have been inches away from stroking his hair and he could have been moments away from ecstasy. He thought that this indeed is the reward warriors should expect. The thought crossed his mind that the devious bitch had probably spiked his paan, but he brushed it aside as being of no consequence, for what, in this world or the next, did brave Sajan have to fear from beautiful Razia?
So he asked, in the delirium that follows in the footsteps of a quest fulfilled, why she hadn’t yet taken care of this pestilential finger-reliever.
“A number of reasons,” she answered as she finally began to stroke his hair, the long slim fingers with their polished nails parting and then bestrewing the strands, now black and further gray. “He hadn’t found me. You hadn’t approached me. And finally, you hadn’t asked. Until now.”
Sajan opened his eyes in agreement. “You can’t be seen to be involved, I imagine.”
“Exactly,” smiled Razia, and he noticed the warmth and the candlelight in her dark eyes.
He held her gaze and asked, “Would it have helped if I’d come sooner?”
Perhaps, she replied. But the point to remember was that her Sajan had come. The victims, the young vampire, the consternation of the city: what did it matter?
“Who are you?”
“I think you already know.”
“Surely you’re not a vampire?”
She laughed, a rich quiet burble both ladylike and real. “What do you think?”
“He certainly seems to think so.”
“He doesn’t matter. His head isn’t in my lap.”
“If I thought you were a vampire, my head wouldn’t be either.”
She smiled at him again and continued to play with his hair.
“I remember,” he said, “my father speaking of a home such as this. His own