Chapter 6: Samaira Ki Khoj (Samaira's Search)

Mumbai, December 1978

Samaira Apte did not become a private investigator because she wanted to. Samaira Apte became a private investigator because the police did not do their job and somebody had to and Samaira was the somebody who could not stop herself from being the somebody.

The office was on Lamington Road, second floor, above a shop that sold transistor radios and that filled the stairwell with the particular hum of twelve radios tuned to twelve different stations simultaneously, the hum that was the acoustic equivalent of Lamington Road itself: chaotic, layered, the kind of sound that you either learned to ignore or that drove you out of the building within a week. Samaira had been in the building for three years. She had learned to ignore the hum. The ignoring was a skill — the skill that private investigation required: the ability to filter signal from noise, to hear the one relevant frequency in the twelve-station chaos.

The office was — small. The word "office" was generous. The room was three metres by four metres. It contained: a desk (steel, government-surplus, the desk that every government office in India had and that Samaira had bought from a government-surplus auction for forty rupees), a chair (behind the desk, also government-surplus), a second chair (in front of the desk, for clients, also government-surplus — Samaira's entire furniture collection was government-surplus, the collection being a monument to the Indian government's inability to keep track of its furniture), a filing cabinet (steel, four drawers, the drawers labelled with masking tape: ACTIVE, COLD, CLOSED, PERSONAL), and a window that looked onto Lamington Road and through which Mumbai's December light entered — the winter light that was not cold (Mumbai did not do cold; Mumbai did warm and less-warm, and December was less-warm) but that was — clear. The December clarity that made Mumbai's buildings sharp and Mumbai's streets bright and that was, for an investigator, the good light, the light that showed things.

On Samaira's desk: a file. The file was brown manila, the manila that every Indian government office used and that Samaira used because the manila was cheap and because the cheapness was the economy that kept the office on Lamington Road open, the economy of a woman who charged two hundred rupees per case and who solved approximately half her cases and who was, by every financial measure, barely solvent.

The file was labelled: JADHAV, LATA. MISSING. NAGPUR.

Samaira had received the file three weeks ago. The file had come through the network — not Bharati's network (Samaira did not know about Bharati's network, the not-knowing being the particular irony that the story would eventually resolve) but the investigator's network, the informal chain of private investigators and retired police officers and court clerks and journalists who shared cases the way doctors shared patients: when a case was beyond your geography, you passed it to someone in the right geography.

The case had been passed from a Nagpur investigator named Pradhan — Milind Pradhan, a retired police sub-inspector who had started a private investigation practice in Dharampeth and who had been hired by Vandana Jadhav (or rather, by Vandana Jadhav's brother, because Vandana herself was — the file said — "relocated, location undisclosed, emotional state: severe distress"). Pradhan had done the initial work: interviewed the neighbours (the gali that knew everything and that told the police nothing because the police had not asked and that told Pradhan everything because Pradhan knew how to ask), examined the house (no signs of forced entry — the door had been opened from inside, the opening suggesting that Vandana had opened the door for the abductor, the opening suggesting that the abductor was known or appeared trustworthy), and identified the timeline (Lata last seen by neighbour Mrs. Kulkarni at approximately 7 PM on August 26, 1978, when Lata was in the backyard; Lata reported missing by Vandana at approximately 6 AM on August 27, 1978, the gap between 7 PM and 6 AM being the window).

Pradhan had hit a wall. The wall that every Nagpur investigator hit: the police had classified the case as "suspected domestic incident" because Tushar Jadhav was in custody for domestic violence charges and because the police's working theory was that Tushar had arranged the abduction (the theory that was wrong, but that was plausible, and that the police preferred because the theory closed the case without requiring actual investigation). The police were not cooperating. The courts were slow. The witnesses were — the witnesses were the gali, and the gali had seen a white van (a Matador, the gali said, or maybe a Tempo, the gali was not sure about vehicle models, the gali was sure about the colour: white) parked three galis away on the night of August 26, and the gali had heard — nothing. The gali that heard everything had heard nothing on the night that mattered.

Pradhan passed the case to Samaira because Mumbai was where the trails went when the trails left Nagpur. Not because there was evidence pointing to Mumbai — because Mumbai was where everything went. Mumbai was the gravitational centre of western India, the city where people disappeared and where people appeared and where the distance between disappearing and appearing was the distance that private investigators covered.

Samaira read the file. The reading was — Samaira read files the way musicians read scores: with full attention, with the particular literacy that years of practice had developed, the literacy that saw patterns where others saw facts and that heard harmonies where others heard noise.

The pattern she saw was: this was not a domestic abduction. The pattern said this because the pattern of domestic abductions was different — domestic abductions (father takes child, family member takes child, known-person takes child) left traces. The traces were: communication (the abductor contacted the family, the contact being ransom or custody demand or threat), travel (the abductor used known routes, the routes being family connections, the routes leading to the abductor's own network), and motive (the motive being possessive — the abductor wanted the child because the child was theirs, the wanting being ownership).

This case had none of those traces. No communication. No ransom. No custody demand. No travel to known associates. No possessive motive (Tushar was in custody and had not arranged the abduction — Samaira was certain of this because Samaira had, on her own initiative, called the Nagpur central jail and had spoken to the duty officer and had confirmed that Tushar had been in custody since August 20, six days before the abduction, and that Tushar had received no visitors and had made no phone calls).

The pattern said: this was organized. This was planned. This was done by someone who knew the family's situation (knew about Tushar's violence, knew about his arrest, knew about Vandana being alone with Lata) and who used that knowledge to time the extraction. The word "extraction" was Samaira's word — not "abduction," not "kidnapping." Extraction. The word that military operations used. The word that suggested: this was not random. This was targeted. This was precise.

"Kaun karta hai aisa?" Samaira said to herself. Who does something like this? The question that was the beginning of the investigation and the beginning of the obsession, the obsession being the particular disease of private investigators: the question that you could not stop asking, the question that kept you at the desk at midnight and at the filing cabinet at dawn and at Lamington Road when you should have been at home.

*

Samaira's method was — Samaira's method was not method. Samaira's method was instinct refined by practice, the instinct that said: start with the person, not the crime. The crime was: a twelve-year-old was taken from her home. The person was: who takes twelve-year-olds from their homes?

Not pedophiles — the pattern was wrong. Pedophile abductions were opportunistic, quick, the abductor taking the child from a public space (the school gate, the market, the park). This abduction was from the home, at night, planned. Not pedophile.

Not family — already eliminated. Tushar in custody. Vandana's family (the brother who had hired Pradhan, the parents who were in Pune, the extended family that was the particular sprawl of a Maharashtrian joint family) all accounted for, all cooperating.

Not ransom — no demand.

The remaining category was: ideological. The abductor had a reason. The reason was not money and not desire and not family. The reason was — something else. The something-else that Samaira could not yet identify but that she could feel, the feeling being the investigator's instinct, the instinct that said: this was done for a purpose and the purpose was the key.

Samaira went to Nagpur. The train from Mumbai Central — the Vidarbha Express, the train that connected Mumbai to Nagpur in sixteen hours and that was, in 1978, the bridge between western India's financial capital and central India's geographic capital, the bridge that Samaira crossed with her government-surplus briefcase and her manila file and her instinct.

Nagpur in December was — cooler than Mumbai. The coolness that was Nagpur's December gift: the mornings that had fog, the fog that sat on the streets like a blanket and that lifted by ten AM and that left the air clean and sharp, the air that was the opposite of Mumbai's air (Mumbai's air was heavy, the weight of twelve million people breathing and cooking and living and dying in a city that was designed for one million). Nagpur's air was — Samaira breathed and the breathing was easier and the easier breathing was the first thing she noticed about Nagpur.

The second thing was Sitapur Gali.

Samaira went to Sitapur Gali because the gali was the scene and the scene was the starting point. The gali was — narrow. The houses close. The walls thin. The particular geography that Samaira had read about in Pradhan's file and that she now saw: the gali that heard everything.

She knocked on doors. Not three knocks at 11:47 PM — the daytime knock, the investigator's knock, the knock that said: I am here to ask questions and the questions are important and I am not leaving until the questions are answered.

Mrs. Kulkarni at number 14 answered. Mrs. Kulkarni was — Mrs. Kulkarni was the gali's memory. The woman who knew everything and who told everything to everyone except the police, the exception being the particular mistrust that Indian neighbourhoods had for the police, the mistrust that was earned and maintained and that was the reason that Pradhan (retired police) had gotten more than the active police and that Samaira (private investigator, not police) would get more than Pradhan.

"White van?" Mrs. Kulkarni said, offering chai (the chai that was — Mrs. Kulkarni's chai, the chai that was not Vandana's chai and not Keshav's chai but the gali-chai, the chai that was the social lubricant of Indian investigation, the chai that said: I will talk to you because you are drinking my chai and the drinking is the contract). "Haan, white van thi. Teen gali door. Main ne window se dekhi thi — bathroom jaate waqt. Raat ko gyarah ke baad." Yes, there was a white van. Three galis away. I saw it from the window — going to the bathroom. After eleven at night.

"Aur kuch dekha?" Did you see anything else?

"Ek aurat. Van ke paas. Lambi nahi, chhoti nahi. Normal. Lekin — jaldi mein thi. Jaise kuch karna ho aur time kam ho." A woman. Near the van. Not tall, not short. Normal. But — in a hurry. Like she had something to do and not much time.

A woman. The abductor was a woman — or one of the abductors was a woman. The detail that Pradhan's file had noted but that Pradhan had not emphasized, the detail that Samaira's instinct said was important: a woman taking a child from a home where the father was violent. A woman who knew the family's situation. A woman who was organized.

"Social worker," Samaira said to herself. On the train back to Mumbai. The Vidarbha Express rocking, the rocking that was the particular rhythm of Indian Railways, the rhythm that made thinking easier because the rhythm was steady and the steadiness was the thing that thinking needed. "Social worker ya koi jo system se bahar kaam karta hai." Social worker or someone who works outside the system.

The hypothesis. The hypothesis that was correct — the hypothesis that Samaira would spend years confirming, the years being the investigation that became the obsession that became the life, the life that would eventually bring Samaira to the woman she was looking for and to the child she was looking for and the bringing being the convergence that was still years away.

For now: the file. The manila file. JADHAV, LATA. MISSING. NAGPUR. The file that Samaira put in the ACTIVE drawer and that would remain in the ACTIVE drawer for years, the years during which other files would move from ACTIVE to COLD to CLOSED but this file would remain ACTIVE, the remaining being the obsession, the obsession being: a twelve-year-old was taken and the taking was done for a reason and the reason was the thing that Samaira could not let go.

The reason was the key.