boys unless they’re at least ten years older than your friend here,” an auto-driver says, pointing at me.
“Did she take an auto last Saturday?” I ask.
“That was the day she vanished,” Pari adds.
“She doesn’t need an auto-woto. She’s a princess with her own chariot,” a driver says.
“With a bearded man as her charioteer,” another says, laughing.
“The TV-repair chacha?” I ask. “Is his beard orange and white?”
“Mullah-type fellow, but young,” the driver says.
Then they talk about Aanchal’s papa as if we aren’t standing there.
“I told him just last week to have a word with her.”
“His daughter is making her own money. He doesn’t provide for her. What does she care what he thinks?”
The other drivers make sympathetic clucking noises.
“Aanchal’s papa still drives an auto?” Pari asks.
“He hasn’t worked in years. Too ill,” a driver says, shaking his head. “Poor man. There he is.”
An auto has joined the others at the stand, and a man with straggly hair steps outside. He’s wearing a full-sleeved cream shirt with black stains around the cuffs.
“No luck today?” someone asks as Aanchal’s papa pays the auto-driver, and he says, “She isn’t in any hospital. I went to the city today to check.”
“Have you talked to Aanchal’s mullah-boyfriend?” I ask. “She could be with him.”
A blanket of quiet falls on our group, turning up the whirring noises made by the vehicles on the highway. Then Aanchal’s papa raises his hand and leaps toward me, his eyes almost bursting out of their sockets. I pull up the strap of my school bag, preparing to run. But a cough racks Aanchal’s papa and he has to stop to take deep, loud breaths. I make my escape, Pari next to me.
“You fool,” she hisses as she overtakes me.
* * *
Policemen have police stations and detectives have fancy theka-type places where they can sit and chat about their suspects. But Pari and I have to hold our meetings outside the toilet complex or at the school playground. Today, though, my house can serve as the office of my Jasoos Jai Agency, at least until Runu-Didi gets back from training. Pari and I are going to swap case notes about what Aanchal’s brother Ajay just told us. I don’t have actual notes. They are in my brain.
Pari asks if I have newspapers at home, which we can check for fruit-veg photos for her school presentation. I don’t even bother answering.
Shanti-Chachi sits on the charpai outside her house, combing her hair. I can tell she dyed it today because it looks blacker than it did in the morning, and it’s also blacker than Ma’s not-dyed hair.
“You should have got home a lot earlier,” chachi tells me.
“It’s not that late,” I say.
Inside my house, I tell Pari that we have to interview Naina, Aanchal’s beauty-parlor friend, and keep under observation our three suspects: Quarter, the TV-repair chacha, and Aanchal’s papa, a hot-tempered, shameless man who lives off his wife and daughter. Of course, djinns are still my main suspects, but I can’t discuss them with Pari.
We talk about what Ajay told us.
“This case is tough,” I say, “because we aren’t one hundred percent sure there’s a crime and a criminal. Aanchal could have run away. Bahadur and Omvir too.”
“The man who answered Aanchal’s mobile, he could be a criminal,” Pari says.
“But what’s he doing with Aanchal?”
“Don’t you remember what the Children’s Trust fellow told us?” Pari asks. “Haven’t you seen it on Police Patrol ? People use children and women for all kinds of bad things, not just cleaning toilets and begging.”
I imagine someone making me clean our toilet complex and shudder.
Runu-Didi gets back from training. Pari asks her how it went.
“Didi goes to school only so that she can train,” I say. “Not even for the midday meal. Definitely not for studying.”
“Nobody asked you,” Pari says.
Didi’s clothes are dusty and bloodied where she fell down and stones grazed her skin, but she doesn’t seem to be hurting. She says she’s going to the toilet complex for a bucket-bath. She looks for coins to pay the caretaker, under the pillows on the bed, in the pockets of Papa’s trousers hanging on nails, and on the clothesline inside our house. She doesn’t touch the Parachute tub. Then she turns to me.
“Ma gives you extra money to pay for baths and I know you don’t even wash your face,” she says.
Pari looks embarrassed for me.
The water in the toilet complex is too-cold in winter, so sometimes I don’t touch it and come out pretending