then,” said the DCP. “Where do we find her?”
“That’s easy,” said Smita’s colleague eagerly. “It’s Wednesday. She’ll be at the nightclub at the Babar Hotel.”
Smita nodded sagely.
The DCP looked at Kapoor, who nodded as well and said, “My nephew works there.”
“Would you,” the DCP formally asked Smita, “be interested in helping me with the investigation into the finger-snatcher case?”
“A table for two,” said Kapoor over the phone.
The night saw them heading toward the Babar Hotel in the DCP’s personal car. He thought that the young policewoman had hit just the right pitch with her choice of clothes, with the trousers a no-nonsense nod toward what was in effect a working dinner, while the straps on the otherwise discreetly chic blouse were meager enough to suggest that she wasn’t entirely unaware of the potential of a night out at Delhi’s current hotspot.
She asked him about Delhi’s vampires, when she felt the silence beginning to weigh. What about them? he asked back. Did the DCP believe there were such things? she replied.
He told her he’d thought about it all that day and had realized that he didn’t really know, one way or another, which surprised him.
Djinns are still invoked in Ferozeshah Kotla and in other places, he said as if to himself. There are shops in Dariba that have been empty for generations because the jewelers believe they’re cursed. There are madwomen on the Ridge and tree spirits in Mehrauli, and during the Uprising, armies dressed in green silk with their swords naked to the air were seen and then disappeared. In daylight.
“This city,” he said, gesturing out through the windows of his car at the agglomerations of squat ugly houses racing by in the land south of Safdarjung’s tomb. “It’s a giant necropolis. Entire developments raised on what used to be graveyards. Old villages gone, fields buried, their soil used for cement.”
The bare bones of householders and thieves, the spirits of lost cremation grounds, the stories of wanderers and village heads and warriors and all their women. Disinterred and then dispersed back into the dust. But at what cost? wondered the DCP.
“Would it surprise me that some revenant actually came knocking? Probably not,” he smiled. “Zauq couldn’t leave the streets and alleys of this city. Why should a ghost or a vampire or whatever be different?”
Smita digested this for a moment. “So what they say about you is correct? That you’re into Delhi’s history?”
“It’s where I’m from, Smita. Aren’t you?”
“I’m from here,” she replied, waving outside her window. “From this city that’s sprung from your necropolis. My grandparents were refugees after Partition. These new colonies are my home. I don’t even know who Zauq is. And I’d be surprised if the streets he’s talking about are the ones we’re driving on.”
The DCP looked at her in surprise, then inclined his head. “You’re right. Let me begin again. I am interested in Delhi’s history. Very interested. And my connection to Delhi predates Partition, as you’ve probably gathered. Are we . . . cool?”
Smita looked at him and smiled. “We’re cool. But who is Zauq?”
“An Urdu poet. Rather famous. He was writing around the time of the Uprising of 1857.”
“Really? A contemporary of Ghalib’s?”
An eyebrow, raised. “Quite right. But you’ve heard of him?”
“Who hasn’t?” she grinned.
They were pulling into the overly grand entrance of a hotel already famous for its lofty cuisine and tiny rooms and beautiful views of urban sprawl. The way ahead lay off to the side, where the entrance to the nightclub was.
The DCP, while not antisocial, didn’t make a habit of going out on the town. His famed incorruptibility militated against a regular enjoyment of Delhi’s luxury nightspots, the cost of which was equally legendary. But there was nothing self-consciously austere about his demeanor when he did get out and about, and he looked around, following in Smita’s self-possessed and evidently right-at-home wake, with real appreciation. He enjoyed the clubby little bar that also functioned as the entrance, the quite charming way the management had of dismissing those whom it felt were unsuitable, and was impressed with the uniform sullenness of the tight-shirted males who were waiting to get in and the equally invariable smiles of the women who had all, it seemed to his aging eyes, been allowed to escape their homes in their lingerie. It fit together. His innate sense of symmetry was pleased with the way the aspects of this ritual, arcane as it seemed, were being so closely observed.
A beautifully dressed young man detached himself from the bar and hurried toward him, his hand outstretched, just as the DCP was reaching into his pocket for his ID and cards.
“DCP Dayal,” he said with a smile, “what an honor. And this lovely lady is your date? It’s good to have you both here,” he said, leading the way into the temple, past the waiting line of the supplicants, the bouncers one step away from bowing and scraping. Then the older officer didn’t have any time to think at all, because the music, hitherto muted by the door, hit him in the chest.
He was glad in those first few moments of Smita’s company, of her comforting presence at his shoulder as the lights and the sound and the dense crush of people on the fringes of the dance floor threatened to overwhelm him. Kapoor’s beauteous nephew cut an apparently seamless path through the multitudes to the bar, where he set them up with cocktails which, at the DCP’s almost imperceptible nod, Smita accepted.
There, over the music, he told them the lay of the land. The first table over there, he gestured, behind the intricately wrought steel and wood screen, was the Colonel’s court. “It’s the quietest private booth we have. It has an unobstructed view of both the entrance and the dance floor. Would you like me to introduce you?”
The DCP shook his head and took a sip of his drink, raising it in appreciation to the younger man.
“And yours?” he asked Smita. “Is it to your satisfaction?”
“Entirely, sir,” she replied.
The DCP nodded and thanked Kapoor’s nephew and walked toward the Colonel’s table with Smita in tow.
She was ensconced on a purple banquette, a stemmed glass in front of her and laughing female acolytes to either side. A lone gent patrolled the outskirts of their party, there apparently to replenish drinks at his own expense. The DCP and Smita walked up to the table where, without preamble, the older officer sat down, inviting Smita to have a seat next to him. By a trick of the acoustic designer’s art, the table was a quiet haven, while still close enough to the floor that the officers could glimpse the sweat in the cleavage of the feverish dancers who threw themselves about a few feet away, beyond the almost diaphanous screen.
The Colonel looked inquiringly at the DCP as he made himself comfortable.
He then leaned across and said, loud enough that the young women to either
