The voice on the other end of Malhotra's phone was old and soft, and Alex knew it before it had finished one sentence.
Voice- " Calm down, Rajesh. Breathe. Tell me exactly what he did. "
Malhotra told him. He told it badly, jumping back and forth, the goons vanishing, the gun, the barrel bent like a straw. Twice he said I swear on my son. The old voice let him finish.
Voice- " Did he hurt you? "
Malhotra- " No. He… no. He said Friday. He said give back the gold by Friday. "
Voice- " Then do nothing. Don't give back anything. Don't send anybody near him again. Go to your office tomorrow like any day. "
Malhotra- " But Your Grace… "
Voice- " He came into your house, Rajesh. That means he is curious. Curious children come back. Let him come to us. "
The line went dead.
Alex stood under the tree for a long minute after that, listening to Malhotra breathe alone in his drawing room. Then the listening spell faded, and he walked to the bus stop.
Your Grace. He had seen that title before, written small in the stolen notebook beside a single letter, B. The man the Choir answered to. The one who wanted Riya.
And Malhotra was his money man. Or one of them.
It made sense, once he saw it. A church that needed cash with no questions. A loan shark who had cash and no questions. In the ledgers there was one line he had not understood on Monday night, repeated every month for two years. Donation. Fifty thousand. No name. Only a small sun drawn with a red pen.
So he had been right to wait. If he had broken Malhotra quietly, the Choir would have lost a wallet and found another. If he broke him in public, in daylight, with the whole city watching, the Choir would lose a wallet and a hiding place both.
He took the bus home, made Maggi, and opened the laptop.
He worked until three in the morning.
First the recording. Twenty-two minutes from the moment he sat down in the Scorpio. He cut it carefully. Every word Alex had said, he removed. Every shot of the room that showed the sofa where he sat, he blurred. What was left was Malhotra. Malhotra laughing about the date. Dates can be fixed, beta. The judge is my cousin's son's father-in-law. Your friend with the ribs. The stairs are very dangerous. Malhotra with a revolver on his knee. Sign.
Then the ledgers. Four hundred and twelve photos, sorted into folders by family, with his simple spreadsheet on top. Borrowed. Paid. Still owed. At the bottom of the spreadsheet he added one more column and called it Paid extra, and at the bottom of that column was a number with seven digits in it.
Then the forged file, scanned, with his father's real signature from an old bank passbook beside it for comparison, and a copy of the cremation receipt from the burning ghat with the date circled.
He made a new email account from a cyber café's wifi he could reach from his roof with a little help, because no one would ever check a cyber café. He sent everything to three places.
The Police Commissioner's public grievance email, which the papers said he read personally since the last scandal.
The crime desk of the biggest Bengali news channel.
And Ananya Roy, who ran an Instagram page called Kolkata Uncut with six lakh followers, and who had, two years ago, put a corrupt municipal councillor in jail by posting his WhatsApp chats one by one for eleven days.
He sent them at 3:10 AM. Then he lay on the sofa and slept for four hours, deeply, the way he used to sleep in Zaroth the night before a battle.
Ananya Roy posted at 7:02 AM.
She didn't post everything. She was cleverer than that. She posted forty seconds of the recording, the part with the revolver and the line about the stairs, and under it she wrote: Who is Rajesh Malhotra of Malhotra Finance? And why does a "finance company" need a gun? Part 1 of many. Tag anyone who has borrowed from him.
By 9 AM it had two lakh views.
By 10 AM, the comments had become something else. People were tagging their uncles, their neighbours, their maids. A vegetable seller from the old market posted a photo of his own Malhotra receipt. Then another man posted one. Then a woman posted a video of herself crying, saying she had sold her mother's gold to pay the interest and still owed more than she had borrowed. By lunchtime there were hundreds.
The news channel ran it at noon with the ledger photos and a red strip that said LOAN SHARK EXPOSED.
At 1:15 PM the police came.
They came properly. Not one jeep. Six. They went to the office above the sweet shop and to the white house with the dead roses, at the same time, and the news channel had a camera at both. Alex watched it on his phone in the college canteen, with John and Marina and Sara squeezed around the screen and the whole canteen behind them.
The police opened the Godrej safe. The camera zoomed in on the plastic bags of gold, each one with its little paper name slip, piled on the desk like vegetables at a market.
Then they brought out Malhotra.
He came down the stairs from the office with a policeman holding each arm. He had tried to cover his face with a white handkerchief, but the handkerchief was too small and his face was too big, and the moustache stuck out on both sides. At the bottom of the stairs, the lane was full. Shopkeepers. Rickshaw pullers. Women with their dupattas over their heads. The paan seller was there.
Someone started clapping.
Then everyone was clapping. The whole lane. The sound went up between the old buildings and the police had to push through it to reach the van. Someone threw a slipper. It missed. The police pretended not to see who had thrown it.
The canteen erupted.
John- " BRO. BRO. Malhotra sir's bill is paid! "
He was laughing so hard he had to hold his ribs. Marina was filming the TV screen with her own phone. Sara was not laughing. She was looking at Alex again, the same look as on the hospital steps.
Sara- " You said you wouldn't be in the newspaper. "
Alex- " I'm not in the newspaper. "
Sara- " Alex. "
Alex- " Read it carefully. I'm not in it anywhere. "
She held his eyes for a few seconds, then shook her head and looked away, and under the table, very quickly, she squeezed his hand.
At three, the police held a press meeting outside the thana. A tired-looking DCP with a grey moustache read from a paper. Malhotra Finance was sealed. Rajesh Malhotra was arrested for forgery, criminal intimidation, illegal moneylending and the Arms Act. Two of his men had been picked up from a hospital, where they had gone that morning complaining of panic attacks and saying something about a grey room.
The DCP didn't smile at that part. Nobody in the press crowd understood it. Alex did, and kept his face very still.
Then the DCP said the part that mattered. From Saturday, any family with a Malhotra receipt could come to the thana with an ID card, and the police would match the slips and return the gold.
The channel cut to the old market. A thin woman in a white sari was standing outside the sweet shop, holding a photocopy of her receipt in both hands like it might blow away. A reporter pushed a mic at her.
Woman- " My mangalsutra. My husband gave it. I thought I'll never see it again. "
She didn't say anything else. She just stood there and cried, and the reporter, for once, let her.
Alex knew her name. It was on page nine of the third ledger.
Vikram was sitting alone in the far corner of the canteen.
Nobody was near him. His two friends had moved to another table. Someone at the table next to him was playing the Titanic song on a phone, loudly, and three boys were laughing. Vikram was staring at his tea with his shoulders up around his ears.
Alex got up and walked over. The boys with the phone saw him coming, and the song stopped.
Alex- " Enough. "
He didn't say it loudly. He didn't need to. Since the race, people listened when he talked. The boys picked up their trays and went.
Alex sat down across from Vikram.
Vikram- " What do you want? To laugh also? "
Alex- " No. "
Vikram- " Then why? "
Alex- " Because you're not your father. You stood at the top of the stairs yesterday and you didn't call him for help. You didn't call anyone. "
Vikram looked up. His eyes were red.
Vikram- " He hits my mother. "
Alex said nothing for a moment.
Vikram- " He's been doing this my whole life. The gold. The men. I knew. I knew and I didn't… "
Alex- " Then do better from today. Start by telling your mother she can sleep tonight. "
Vikram wiped his face with his sleeve, angrily, like he hated it. Then he leaned forward and dropped his voice.
Vikram- " There's an old man. With a stick. He came to the house two, three times. Papa touched his feet. Papa never touches anyone's feet. "
Alex- " I know. "
Vikram- " You know? "
Alex- " I'm getting to know him. "
His phone buzzed on the table. A message from Serena. She almost never messaged him in the daytime.
Serena- " Saw the news. Papa saw it too. "
Serena- " He wants to meet you. Properly. He said bring the boy home on Sunday for lunch. "
Serena- " Alex, he has never asked to meet anyone before. I'm scared. "