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attitude towards him. Hadn't they all been taken for a ride by the crafty murderer in the infamous Bhendi Bazaar case? Why, then, isolate poor Jatin for his recklessness? He had, after all, been her other Man Friday. Taller than Rita, but shorter than Vikram, Jatin was five-feet-eleven, and he was always well dressed. In her mind, Rita thought of him as eye candy: an innocuous pleasure of life.
    He seemed irked. 'I'm very sorry ma'am. The flight was delayed.' he started.
    'It's OK, Jatin. As per usual protocol we've allocated the most horrible tasks to the absent member.'
    'Welcome back, ma'am.'
    'Thanks. You too. How was the vacation?'
    'Fantastic.'
    'Vikram will brief you on the case. And then we have this huge file to go through. I think we should get copies made for all of us, as we can't lose any more time reading it sequentially.'
    Vikram nodded, and in his usual manner jotted it down. He wrote down everything that Rita said. Sometimes she wondered if Vikram was as meticulous at home as he was here? Did he note down every task his wife asked him to carry out too?
    'Is there anything you want to discuss about the case?' She got up to indicate the meeting was over. 'Please give the original file back to me after you make the copies. I'll try to read the case file tonight. We should come in and discuss our summaries and strategy tomorrow afternoon. Depending on the task at hand I'll see how many people we need in the team to manage this investigation. Have a good evening, you two.'
    As she walked out and waited for the lift she observed that the phones rang more than they did before she went on medical leave or so it seemed. Maybe it was simple mathematics: there had been some redundancies in her absence and perhaps there weren't enough people to attend all the calls. She smiled at the irony. Not enough people to man phones in a police headquarters and here they were looking at a case that didn't even happen in their jurisdiction. Welcome to shit extraordinaire, she murmured.
    She had paged the driver and he brought the car around. A constable had carried the heavy file for her and was putting it in the boot as she stood there mulling over the day.
    Sishir Singh. Not a common name.

I t had been a long day. More than the case — though the case, Rita could tell, would turn out to be a real pig very soon — the routine of being in the office for long hours once again had drained her. Chugalugging a generous sip of Jim Beam from the bottle she went up for a shower.
    As she changed after the shower the images of blurry film footage that Victor had shown ran thought her mind. She had an eidetic memory. Nothing escaped her mind. Image. Sound. Names. Scent. She was born to be a detective. Something bothered her. Had she missed anything that could provide a clue to the person in the elevator? Sishir Singh was definitely an alias. One didn't need to be a Sherlock to tell her that. But that was logic, not evidence. No one would have given their real name at the hotel where they were about to steal diamonds. Which also meant that the perpetrator had access to fake documents. Not an impossibility either.
    Catching a criminal is like one side playing the game with ever changing rules. The police have to adhere to the guidelines, the criminal can change course any time: name, identity, MO...
    Jim was beginning to take the weariness of the long day away. It was only seven and the day was still bright. She thought of going out for a bite, but dropped the idea. She didn't know anyone close by to go out to dinner with, and sitting in a restaurant alone was not something she was in the mood for.
    She knew Jim, her best friend, was always there for her but she also understood that a few more intimate kisses from the bottle and he could easily become her worst enemy. She had seen her own dad — an alcoholic, though he never admitted it. Who does? — kissing the enemy to death. History, it is often quoted, had a penchant of repeating itself