Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,24
be your assistant or anything. No way.”
I’m sad Faiz won’t be my assistant, but a girl can be a good assistant too. Maybe. Papa told me about a detective show called Karamchand that came on TV a long time ago. Karamchand had a woman-assistant named Kitty, but unfortunately Kitty wasn’t smart and Karamchand had to spend the whole show telling her to shut up. It’s the kind of story that would make Pari furious. If I tell Pari to shut up, she’ll kick my shins.
“What should our secret signal be?” I ask Pari. “Detectives should have secret signals.”
“That’s the first order of business? A secret signal?” Pari asks. “Be serious.”
“This is serious.”
Pari rolls her eyes. We walk back to the classroom.
“If a child has been missing for more than twenty-four hours, the police have to file a case of kidnapping,” I say.
“How do you know that?” Pari asks.
“TV,” I say. “The police haven’t done that for Bahadur.”
“Didn’t read about this police rule in your books?” Faiz asks Pari.
“Most children in India are kidnapped by strangers,” I tell them. I don’t know that for sure, but it sounds about right to me.
OUR FIRST JOB AS DETECTIVES—
—is to interview Omvir. He will know more about Bahadur than anyone else. That’s the rule; our friends know the things we hide from our parents. Ma has no idea that before Diwali, the headmaster boxed my ears when I sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” instead of “Jana Gana Mana” at assembly. But Pari and Faiz do. They called me Twinkle for a few days and then forgot about it. Ma would never forget. This is why I can’t tell her anything.
Faiz, who’s not even part of our detective team, shoots down my interview-plan the second I suggest it.
“You should question Quarter first,” he says as we head home from school. The smog sloshes in and out of his mouth, making him cough. “Quarter is your No. 1 suspect, right, Jai? That’s why you talked to him yesterday.”
“What do you know? You think a djinn took Bahadur.”
I speak in a whisper. If djinns are real, I don’t want them to hear me.
“We can interview everyone,” Pari says. “Let’s stop at the theka and ask people about Quarter. If they’re drunk, they might tell us the truth.”
“Accha, now you’re an expert on drunkards also?” Faiz asks.
It’s my job to decide what we should do, but before I can protest, Faiz punches the black air with his rolled-up fist and shouts, “Theka chalo.”
He’ll be late for his shift at a kirana store where he stocks shelves and bags rice and lentils, but he doesn’t mind. He’s hoping he’ll run into his older brothers at the theka.
Muslims aren’t supposed to drink, and Tariq-Bhai and Wajid-Bhai are good Muslims who pray five times a day, but they also sneak out sometimes to share a bottle of daru. If Faiz catches them, they’ll pay him big money to keep it a secret from their ammi. Otherwise Faiz will ask their ammi to sniff his brothers’ faces closely that night. “Something black in the dal, don’t you think, Ammi?” Faiz will say pointedly.
He has done it before.
Faiz and Pari march into the lane that leads to the theka, not even waiting for me. My detectiving hasn’t begun and it’s already gone off track.
The lane is filled with suspicious people and smells. A nani-type lady with a marigold stuck behind her ear runs a beedi-paan stall, but when boys and men hand her money, she gives them plastic pouches packed with something dried and brown-green instead of cigarettes.
“Focus,” Pari hisses into my ear and drags me away.
Drunkards squat or lie on the ground outside the theka, singing and speaking gibberish. The loud beats bouncing out of the theka make the air tremble.
“We can’t talk to these idiots,” Pari says.
Faiz points to a man selling eggs and bread from his cart. “Ask the anda-wallah. He’s always here.”
We stand to the side of the cart because the anda-wallah has stacked egg cartons to the front; we aren’t tall enough for him to see us behind them.
“Quarter, you know him?” I ask. The anda-wallah is sharpening knives, and the clink-clank of it is louder than the music blaring out of the theka. He doesn’t look up.
“Quarter only wears black. He’s our pradhan’s son,” Pari says. Then she turns to Faiz and whispers, “What’s his real name?”
Faiz shrugs. I don’t know Quarter’s name either.
“Make it fast-fast,” a customer to the front of the cart says.