Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,115

isn’t here,” he promises Ma. He calls her every half hour, or she calls him. “Nothing,” he says each time. “I told you Runu isn’t here.”

The police have formed cordons around the sections of the rubbish ground that the JCBs are plowing. They don’t let anyone in, not even the scavenger children and the people who want to do No. 1 and No. 2.

“If there were bodies in the rubbish, one of my children would have seen them by now,” Bottle-Badshah tells anyone who will listen.

Aanchal’s papa turns up to taunt the policemen. “You said my daughter ran off with a boy, haan, and see what’s happened. Are you happy now?” he asks.

“Thumper-Baba didn’t bring your daughter back,” I tell him. “You thought he would.” I don’t care if it makes him angrier.

“I won’t let that fake baba set foot in our basti again,” he says. “I should have never listened to him or the pradhan.”

Papa asks a cop we have never seen before if what we heard on TV is true. “They said he hid the children in drains, but the stench itself, people would have noticed?”

The policeman says they have already located a bag behind a mall that has a 4D cinema on the top floor, but it’s too early to tell whose remains it holds. The bag was found in the exact place where Varun Kumar told them it was, which means he’s speaking the truth.

“And the state of our drains?” the policeman says. “All of them stink of death. Ever seen anybody clean one? Look at how our roads flood when there’s even a single shower.”

“Why would a man like Varun confess to the snatchings?” Papa asks.

“The investigating officers must have used truth serum on him,” the policeman says. “One injection and you can’t lie for hours. Two injections, and he won’t be able to shut up until he tells us where every child is buried.”

I saw something about that injection on the news or maybe it was on Live Crime, but I didn’t think it was real.

“Is it true,” Aanchal’s papa asks now, “that the Mehra woman brought strange men into her flat late at night? I heard there are eighty flats in that building. Nobody in those eighty flats saw or heard anything?”

“The police need time to question all the residents and find out what they saw and what they didn’t,” the constable says. “Not just residents, but also maids, gardeners, sweepers, watchmen. Trust me, we’re doing everything we can. We’re checking their mobile-phone records, finding out who the madam and her manservant talked to.”

“But what the TV is saying about Mehra’s male friends, that they were surgeons brought in to harvest the children’s kidneys, that just can’t be true, can it?” Aanchal’s papa persists.

“Who knows,” the policeman says. “The rich think they can buy anything, even us.”

“The problem,” Aanchal’s papa says, “is that policemen like you are suspicious of maids and carpenters and plumbers, but when you see a hi-fi madam or sir, you bow your head, you jump out of the way.”

The policeman laughs but it’s a bitter laugh.

“If you bring sniffer dogs,” I tell him, “you can find the missing children faster.”

He shakes his head as if he has had enough of us and starts to walk away. But then he stops. “The top brass believes this is a clear-cut case,” he says. “There’s enough evidence to prosecute those who have been arrested. Besides, a dog won’t be able to track a single smell in a dump like this.”

Nothing of note is found in the rubbish except for scraps of school uniform and cut-up children’s shoes. The police seal these for testing in case they belong to the missing children; I wonder if Samosa brought me here because he knew what was buried in the trash. Maybe he can do things that police sniffer dogs can’t.

In the evening, when the JCBs go quiet, Papa takes me home and asks Shanti-Chachi to watch me. He says he’ll be back soon.

Chachi sits right next to me, as if to make sure I won’t go anywhere.

Where will I go now? I’m not a detective. If I had been one, I wouldn’t have let anybody snatch Runu-Didi.

“Your didi is fine. I know it. I feel it,” chachi tells me.

I know nothing. I feel nothing. Sometimes, like right now, everything inside me goes numb, even my brain.

* * *

Ma gets home early. Shanti-Chachi tells her she doesn’t know where Papa is, and Ma says,