Dead Water by Simon Ings Page A

and caresses, Roopa knows that she has always known.
    Roopa retires to her mother’s house in Thane and for a few weeks she tries to knit herself into the old solid, suburban life.
    Her mother is sympathetic. Her daughter’s disgrace is, in some halfacknowledged way, an opportunity for her. A chance to exert some authority. She schools her daughter in the art of managing shame. For Roopa, it is like being buried. With no work for her to do, and no husband to look after, she is bored out of her mind. But staying with Hardik is impossible.
    ‘You can stay here as long as you like, dear.’ Long enough for the city to change its name, and every street and every street corner. When Roopa finally returns to work she feels as though she is visiting the city after an absence of years. She arrives at the ACB to find that her phone is gone, her office is gone, her clerical help has been reassigned. Kala Subadrah calls her into her office. ‘I’m sorry, Roopa,’ she says, ‘it’s out of my hands.’
    ‘Then why –’
    Kala throws up her hands in exasperation. ‘Yash Yadav has resigned from the Central Bureau of Investigation.’
    ‘
What
?’
    Kala hands her the file.
    Yash Yadav has secured a transfer to Uttar Pradesh. A paper promotion, and a whopping cut in salary. Why has Yash Yadav abandoned his CBI career just to run anti-terror in
Firozabad
, of all places? Why rise so effortlessly through the ranks in Bombay only to return to the provinces?
    Roopa knows. Long before she was copying out chalkboard diagrams in the classrooms of Marol – ‘Assets disproportionate to known sources of income amassed by a Public Servant’, ‘Public Servant obtaining valuable thing without consideration from person concerned in proceeding or business transacted by such Public Servant’ – Daddy explained to her, without all this verbal hoopla, how saffronist mafias tick. Yash Yadav’s appointment as Firozabad’s anti-terror tsar leaves him plenty of time to take up the reins of the family’s regional business interests. The construction work. The haulage concern. ‘Ma’am, Mumbai has been an apprenticeship for him! The family doesn’t need him in Mumbai any longer. They need him in Firozabad. They’re putting him to work!’
    Police Superintendent Kala Subadrah sighs. ‘Write it all down if you must, but I can’t promise you anything.’
    Roopa writes it down all right. Every nuance of the case she’s so far amassed against Yash Yadav. Stated baldly, and without the circumspection of a legal document, her argument against Yadav is a thing of pure spite. Roopa assumes this is an exercise of sorts. A way of keeping her occupied while she adjusts to her disappointment.
    On the contrary, her investigation into Yash’s too-perfect record and too-healthy bank balance have won her more friends than she knows. Kala takes Roopa’s ‘exercise’ to meetings at the highest level and when eventually a decision is made to send someone out to the sticks to keep an eye on Yash Yadav, they call on Roopa Vish.
    ‘In Firozabad you will be tackling women’s issues,’ Kala tells her. ‘Errant husbands. Domestic violence.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘The hours will be long.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Plus, they don’t have much experience of women officers.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘If it goes badly for you we can’t help you. The ACB has no jurisdiction outside Maharashtra.’
    ‘I understand.’
    ‘This is not an official posting. It will not appear on our records.’
    Roopa can barely contain her excitement.
    It is a new beginning for her. From her mother’s house, and with her mother by her, squeezing her hand, she phones Hardik and tells him what she has decided to do. She asks him to come with her. She wants them to try again. Hardik is her husband, after all.
    ‘What the hell is there for us in Firozabad?’ he complains. ‘We should have talked about this!’
    Nonetheless, he follows her.
    Firozabad: city of ovens and cutting wheels, city of fires