Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,104

cut my words short. “I think he lives near the Shaitani Adda. We should go there.”

It’s only a guess but that’s where the snatchings took place, so his house must be there.

“My children will go with you,” Bottle-Badshah says. “They’ll recognize him if they see him, won’t you?”

The children nod, but their faces don’t look so sure.

* * *

Quarter tells us he has called the police. They will bring JCBs so that they can move things around in the rubbish ground and check it properly. But JCBs are for destroying our homes, not for finding Runu-Didi. She isn’t in the rubbish.

“The kidnapper is from your party,” I tell Quarter before Ma can stop me. “You know him. He looks like a wrestler.”

“I doubt it,” Quarter says, and he says it calmly, but his fists are clenched, and his knuckles have turned white.

“He works at Golden Gate, but he lives in our basti,” I say. “He was at Thumper-Baba’s puja. I saw him talk to your father.”

“Lots of people talk to my father,” Quarter says.

“We’ll check around the adda, okay, Jai?” Papa says, almost as if he feels sorry for me.

“I’ll wait here for the police,” Bottle-Badshah says.

I look at the box in his hands. There are too many fingerprints on it now, and the kidnapper’s might have been wiped out.

“Shouldn’t you stay here?” Papa asks Quarter as he follows us with his gang-members. “The police don’t listen to us, but they’ll listen to you.”

Quarter waves his mobile in Papa’s face. “They’ll let me know when they get here. It will take them some time, especially as they have to call for JCBs.” With a hooked index finger, he beckons me. “What is this kidnapper’s name?” he asks.

“Don’t know,” I say.

I think he’ll punch me, but he lets me go back to Papa and Ma.

* * *

The people who live near the adda say there’s only one hatta-katta man in this neighborhood, and they show us his house. We knock on his door. A bicycle, black and speckled with mud, leans against the wall by a row of empty jerrycans. Wrestler-Man comes out, looking cross.

“It’s him,” I whisper to Papa.

“It was him,” the bead-necklace boy confirms with a vehement shake of his head.

“Arrest him,” Helicopter-Girl shouts. Then she looks at me sadly.

Quarter and his gang grab Wrestler-Man by the collar. He’s so strong that he shrugs, and they fall aside in a heap.

“What do you want with my husband?” screams a woman who rushes out of the house to Wrestler-Man’s side. Her sari is askew, and her bangles smash against each other as she clutches the sleeve of his shirt.

There are enough people in our patrol to form a cordon around Wrestler-Man. He can’t fight everybody off. Papa and me and Ma scramble into his house. Runu-Didi has to be inside.

The house is one room, just like ours, and Didi isn’t there. Ma stifles a cry and hobbles back outside.

Someone switches on the light. I look under the charpai, I drag out the vessels stacked there. Quarter’s gang-members open flour tins and empty their contents. Lids spin and clank; shelves nailed to the wall crash; voices circle me like trails of smoke. I slip on the sugar and salt on the floor, but I still crawl around, searching every inch for clues. Was Runu-Didi here? I can’t tell. Papa and someone else, it’s the press-wallah, they rummage through the clothes in the house, both washed and unwashed. Other people want to come in, but it’s too crowded inside the house. Aanchal’s papa asks some of us to leave so that he can look for his daughter’s belongings. I go out, Papa holding my hand.

The air is heavy like sludge with the weight of shouts and curses and swears. Quarter’s gang-members tie Wrestler-Man’s hands with a rope. His gold watch is on his wrist, and it’s broken. There’s a flurry of movement, hands curling into fists, muscles flexing, legs and hands slamming through the air to hit him. The sound of the thwacking is the same as the sound of bloody cleavers hacking meat at Afsal-Chacha’s shop in Bhoot Bazaar. My heart pumps blood into my ears too-fast.

Wrestler-Man’s wife screams and wails. A woman puts a hand around the wife’s throat and tells her to shut up or else. The bicycle I had seen earlier lies on the ground, its frame crushed, the tires slashed. I remember the scratch marks I had spotted on Wrestler-Man’s wrist at Duttaram’s tea shop.