They did not go to the office above the sweet shop.
The Scorpio went the other way, past the flyover and the new metro pillars, through a gate in a long white wall, and stopped in front of a two-storey house with marble steps, a fountain that wasn't running, and three cars in the porch. A Fortuner, an Audi, and a red Honda City with a dent in the door. Someone had planted roses along the drive and someone else had let them die.
So this was home. Alex filed it away.
The man in the black T-shirt walked him inside. Two more goons were waiting in the hall, big men in tight shirts with gold chains, sitting on a sofa still covered in its factory plastic. The floor was shining white marble, and in the centre of it, on a huge brass plate, there was a statue of Ganesha with a red silk cloth around it. A TV was playing a cricket match with the sound off.
Vikram went upstairs without a word. Nobody stopped him.
Rajesh Malhotra was in the drawing room at the back, sitting in an armchair that had been made for a bigger man and was still too small for him. He was exactly like his photo. Thick moustache, three gold chains, a gold watch, and a white kurta stretched across a stomach that had eaten well for fifty years. He had a plate of cashews on the arm of the chair. Beside him, on a hard chair, sat a thin man in a black coat with a file on his knees. A lawyer. Alex could tell from the coat and the bored face.
Malhotra- " So this is the famous runner. Sit, sit. "
Alex sat on the sofa across from him. The goons stood behind it, one at each end, and the man in the black T-shirt stood by the door.
Malhotra- " You want something? Tea? Cold drink? "
Alex- " No, thank you. "
Malhotra- " Polite boy. Good. I like polite boys. My son is not polite. You noticed? "
He laughed. The lawyer didn't.
Malhotra- " Look, I'm a businessman. I don't like fighting. Fighting is bad for business. Boys fight, okay, boys are boys. My son tripped, he broke his nose, the whole internet is laughing at my family. Fine. It happens. But then I find out something interesting. "
He nodded at the lawyer. The lawyer opened the file and held up a page.
It was the stamp paper from the safe. Alex's father's name. Eight lakh. The house.
Malhotra- " Your late father, God rest his soul, borrowed money from me. A good man. Very respectable. But he borrowed, and he didn't pay, and now he's gone, and you're living in the house that is legally mine. "
Alex- " My father never borrowed money from anyone. He didn't even like taking a loan for the scooter. "
Malhotra- " Children never know their parents' business. "
The lawyer spoke for the first time, in a dry voice like dead leaves.
Lawyer- " Eight lakh principal. Interest at the agreed rate for the period is calculated at… "
He named a number. It was more than the house was worth twice over.
Malhotra- " But I'm not a monster. I have a son also. So here's what we do. You sign one paper. You say the house is mine. I give you one month to move out. And you go on the internet and say sorry to my son for spreading lies about him. Say it was fake, say it was edited, I don't care. And we forget everything. "
Alex- " And if I don't sign? "
Malhotra picked up a cashew and ate it slowly.
Malhotra- " Your friend with the ribs. He lives on the third floor, no? Old building. The stairs are very dangerous. "
There it was.
Alex felt the same slow heat from the hospital come up into his chest. The lights in the chandelier above them dimmed very slightly, then came back. One of the goons looked up at the ceiling, puzzled.
In Zaroth, a man who said that about Alex's people would not have finished the sentence. The old part of him wanted that very much. It wanted it so badly that his fingers were cold.
But this was not Zaroth. And a dead Malhotra would only be a mystery. A Malhotra who was alive, and ruined, and in a police van, would be a lesson for every Malhotra in the city.
Alex looked down at the paper in the lawyer's hand.
Alex- " Can I see the date? "
The lawyer glanced at Malhotra. Malhotra shrugged. The lawyer held the second page closer.
Alex- " My father signed this on the fourteenth. "
Malhotra- " So? "
Alex- " We cremated him on the thirteenth. "
The room was very quiet. On the silent TV, someone hit a six.
Then Malhotra laughed, a big comfortable laugh that shook his whole belly.
Malhotra- " Dates can be fixed, beta. Dates are just ink. You think a judge in this city is going to read the date? The judge is my cousin's son's father-in-law. "
Alex- " So it's forged. "
Malhotra- " Everything is forged if you look carefully enough. "
He nodded to the goons. The two behind the sofa put their hands on Alex's shoulders, heavy, the way men do when they want a boy to feel how heavy they are. The man by the door took out a pen and walked over and put it on the coffee table in front of him, beside the paper.
Malhotra opened a drawer in the side table and took out a revolver, black and oiled, and laid it on his own knee, almost lazily. He didn't point it. He just let Alex see it.
Malhotra- " Sign. "
Alex sighed.
He had come here to see three things. Whether Malhotra would admit the forgery out loud. Whether he would threaten John. Whether there was a gun. All three, in four minutes. It was almost too easy.
The phone in his shirt pocket had been recording since the Scorpio.
He reached up and touched the hand on his left shoulder, lightly, with two fingers. Then the hand on his right.
[Owner gate: send by touch · They return where they left]
The two goons vanished.
There was no flash, no sound. One moment there were two heavy hands on his shoulders and the next there was nothing, and the sofa cushion behind him slowly lifted back into shape.
The man by the door made a strange noise in his throat. Alex stood up, stepped over the coffee table, and touched his chest as he backed away. He vanished too.
Malhotra was fast for a fat man. He grabbed the revolver off his knee and pointed it at Alex's face and pulled the trigger.
Alex had already put his hand over the barrel.
The hammer came down on his palm, on a thin layer of hardened air, and stopped. He took the revolver out of Malhotra's hand the way you take a toy from a baby, opened the cylinder, tipped the six bullets onto the marble floor, where they bounced and rolled under the sofa. Then, while Malhotra watched, he bent the barrel upward with his thumb until it pointed at the ceiling.
He put it back in Malhotra's lap.
The lawyer had stopped breathing. The file had slid off his knees.
Alex counted in his head. Two minutes. Three.
At three minutes the three goons came back. They reappeared exactly where they had been standing, and all three of them fell down at once, as if their legs had forgotten how to work. One of them was crying. The man in the black T-shirt was on his hands and knees on the marble, breathing in huge gulps, and the front of his jeans was dark and wet.
Three minutes outside. Twelve minutes inside. Twelve minutes in a grey field with no sun, no sound, no echo, no door, and nobody to tell them whether they would ever come out.
The big one who had kicked John looked up at Alex with his face wet.
Goon- " There was nothing. There was nothing there, sir. "
Alex- " I know. "
He turned to Malhotra, who had pushed himself back in his chair as far as it would go. The cashew plate had fallen. His face had gone a strange yellow colour under the moustache.
Alex- " Here's what you do, Malhotra ji. You give every family their gold back. You cancel every loan that's been paid twice. You tear up my father's paper. You have until Friday. "
Malhotra- " Who… what are you? "
Alex- " A polite boy. "
He picked up the forged file from the floor, put it under his arm, and walked out through the hall. Nobody stopped him. On the stairs, he looked up and saw Vikram standing at the top, white-faced, holding the railing. He had heard everything.
Alex didn't say anything to him. He just nodded, once, and Vikram, after a long moment, nodded back.
Outside, the sky was going orange. Alex texted Sara.
Alex- " Done. All fine. "
It was 5:42. He had kept his promise with eighteen minutes to spare.
He didn't go home. He walked to the corner of the road and stood under a tree, and listened.
When he had stepped over the coffee table, he had left a small listening spell stuck to the underside of it, the kind a Zaroth spymaster would pin under a duke's dining table. It would last an hour. Through it, he heard Malhotra shouting at the goons, and the goons crying, and the lawyer saying he had urgent work and leaving very fast.
Then a door closed and the room was quiet, and he heard Malhotra dial a number with his thick fingers, breathing hard.
Malhotra- " Hello? Yes. It's me. "
A pause.
Malhotra- " Your Grace, sorry to disturb you. The boy came here. The one from your photo. Yes. That one. "