The Detective Dilemma - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Swift Dzire smelled of stale Parle-G and yesterday's humidity. Arjun had been parked on Senapati Bapat Road since seven, the steering wheel warm under his palms, his lower back already protesting. The Land Rover sat thirty meters ahead in the glass tower's executive bay. Rohan Deshmukh's black HSE, gleaming like polished obsidian even under Pune's hazy January sky. The architect had arrived at eight-forty, coffee cup in one hand, phone pressed to his ear with the other. Arjun had photographed it all. The phone stayed pressed to Rohan's ear through the lobby, into the elevator, gone.

By eleven, Arjun had circled the tower twice on foot, checked the basement parking exits, and logged the Land Rover's MH-12 plates. By one, he'd followed Rohan to a Korean barbecue place in Viman Nagar. Three men in sharp suits. Rohan doing most of the talking. Then the moment that mattered. A manila envelope slid across the table with the banchan, and Rohan's wedding ring caught the grill's orange light as he took it. Arjun photographed both.

By four, back in the Dzire's cage, he was cross-referencing shell companies on his laptop. The AC wheezed. His shirt clung to his spine. Rohan Deshmukh, partner at Deshmukh & Paranjpe Architects, lead designer on the new Smart City residential complex out near Hinjewadi. And somewhere in the tender documents, the contractor invoices, the approvals stamped by men Arjun already had files on, somewhere in that clean glass tower, money was bleeding out of public coffers and into private hands.

No infidelity. No mistress. No woman waiting in a Koregaon Park apartment with the curtains drawn.

Arjun lit a cigarette and watched the Land Rover through the smoke.

The sweat on Arjun's back had gone cold by the time Rohan Deshmukh emerged from the construction site.

Rohan Deshmukh moved through the site the way a peacock moves through a chicken coop. White linen shirt, top three buttons undone, a gold chain catching the late-afternoon sun. He clapped a laborer on the shoulder too hard, laughed at something no one else found funny, his teeth too white against his sunburned face. Arjun watched him check his reflection in the window of a parked JCB, smoothing his hair back with both palms.

This was the man Maya Deshmukh had married. A builder with a taste for brass and loud laughter, the kind who used "bro" with strangers and drove a Fortuner that had never seen mud. Arjun lit a cigarette and let the smoke fill the car. The ashtray was already overflowing.

No woman. No furtive phone calls. No hotel check-ins. The man was flamboyant, indiscriminate with his charm, careless with his money. A philanderer's résumé. But Arjun had found no philandering. Not yet.

The Deshmukh residence sat at the end of a quiet lane off North Main Road, behind a sandstone wall and a gate that opened without sound. Arjun parked the Dzire fifty meters down and walked the rest of the way, his footsteps loud on the cobblestone driveway. The house rose up white and immense. Colonial bones with modernist extensions, floor-to-ceiling glass on the ground floor, bougainvillea spilling purple over the veranda's edge. A fountain murmured somewhere. The air smelled of wet earth and something floral, expensive.

She'd told him to come at seven. Arjun stood before the door and pressed the bell.

The door opened ten seconds late. Not enough time to be natural.

Maya Deshmukh stood in the gap. She'd answered the door half-dressed. A bottle-green blouse, sleeveless, unbuttoned at the throat. She was pulling the pallu of her sari over her shoulder with the deliberate slowness of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing. The silk slid across her collarbone, but not before Arjun had seen what she'd wanted him to see: the swell of her breasts pressed against the blouse's thin fabric, the shadow between them, the way the material strained at the side seam where the stitching pulled tight.

"Mr. Khot." She stepped back, letting the door swing open. The flat behind her was dim, the curtains drawn against the evening light. "You're punctual."

He stepped inside. The air was thick with her perfume. Something dark, sandalwood and rose, the kind of scent that settled in the back of the throat. She led him into the living room, her hips shifting beneath the silk with each step, and gestured toward a low sofa. She didn't sit. Instead she walked to the sideboard where a decanter of whiskey waited, two glasses already poured.

The living room alone could have swallowed his entire home. Double-height ceiling, a chandelier that looked like frozen rain, black-and-white marble underfoot. Arjun's shoes left faint dust prints. A leather sectional that cost more than his quarterly rent. Art on the walls. Not prints, originals, the kind that came with gallery receipts in crisp white envelopes. And photographs. Silver frames clustered on a console table. Rohan and Maya at what looked like Lake Como. Rohan and Maya at some award ceremony, Rohan holding a plaque, Maya in emerald silk. Rohan and Maya on their wedding day. Younger, softer, her face turned up toward his, his hand at the small of her back. Ten years ago, maybe more. The frame was heavy. The glass was spotless.

"I took the liberty," she said, handing him one. Her fingers brushed his. She let them linger.

Arjun drank. The whiskey burned going down, and he was grateful for the heat because it gave him somewhere to focus his attention besides the way her sari had slipped again, the pallu falling from her shoulder, and the fact that beneath the blouse, her nipples were visibly hard against the silk.

"Your husband spent the day at his office," he said. "Lunch in Viman Nagar with business associates. No other meetings. No detours."

Maya's smile barely touched her eyes.

"You sound disappointed."

"I found other things."

He told her. The shell companies. The transferred funds. The names of men who shouldn't have been anywhere near a public tender. He laid it out flat, watching her face, watching for the flinch when he said the word embezzlement.

She didn't flinch.

Her eyes traveled to the wedding portrait on the console. Twenty years. Her jaw tightened, once, then released.

"That's not what I hired you for."

"No. It's what I found."

"Two more days," she said. Her voice had gone quieter, but not softer. "I want the rest."

"When he's still at his office," Arjun said, "I doubt the rest involves another woman."

Maya listened to him giving the full daily routine of her husband without interruption. When he finished, she tilted her head, the corner of her mouth lifting. A smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"And?" she said.

"And nothing. He's a man who enjoys himself, but I haven't caught him with anyone. If he's cheating, he's careful."

"Or I'm wrong."

"That's possible."

She laughed. A short, low sound. Then she turned and walked toward the hallway.

"Excuse me a moment. I need to change. This sari is suffocating."

She didn't close the bedroom door all the way.

Arjun knew he shouldn't look. He knew she'd left it open on purpose. He knew every step of this dance, could diagram it like a crime scene: the half-dressed entrance, the brushed fingers, the whiskey, the open door. She was setting a trap, and he was walking into it with his eyes wide open.

He looked.

Through the crack of the door, maybe five inches wide, he could see the bedroom mirror. And in the mirror, Maya Deshmukh, her back to him, the blouse already discarded on the bed. Her bare shoulders, the long curve of her spine, the dark hair spilling down her back. She reached for the sari's ties at her waist, unwinding the silk with slow, practiced movements. The fabric pooled at her feet.

She was wearing nothing but a pair of black panties, high-cut, the elastic cutting into the generous flesh of her hips.

Arjun's breath stopped. His hand tightened on the glass. He watched her stand there, in front of the mirror, examining her own body with the same slow deliberation with which she'd answered the door. She knew he was watching. She wanted him to watch. Her breasts were full and heavy, the nipples dark against her fair skin, and when she turned slightly, just slightly, to reach for something on the dresser, he saw the weight of them shift, the way they hung when unsupported. She was thirty-five, maybe more, and her body had the softness of a woman who'd lived. The slight curve of her belly, the fullness of her thighs, the stretch marks faint silver lines on her hips. She was real. She was flesh. She was the kind of woman who haunted rooms long after she'd left them.

Arjun's cock was hard. He pressed the heel of his hand against his thigh, trying to think of anything else. The case, the file, Rohan's loud laugh. But his mind was full of her. The smell of her perfume. The sound of her breathing through the door. The knowledge that she was standing six feet away, nearly naked, waiting for him to break.

She didn't come out for another five minutes. When she did, she was wrapped in a silk robe, loosely tied, the V of it dipping low enough to show the beginning of her cleavage. She poured herself another whiskey and sat down across from him, crossing her legs. The robe fell open slightly, revealing a stretch of thigh.

"So," she said. "What do you suggest, detective?"

He drained his glass. His hand was shaking. A fine tremor that she definitely noticed.

"I suggest I keep tailing him. Give me three more days. If there's something to find, I'll find it."

"And if there isn't?"

"Then I'll tell you that too."

She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting on her linked fingers. The robe gaped. Arjun fixed his eyes on her face.

"You seem like a man who finds things," she said. "Even things people try to hide."

"I'm good at my job."

"I'm sure you are."

She smiled.

"Three more days," she said. "I think you're looking at the wrong crime, Mr. Khot."

"Meaning?"

She smiled again, smaller this time.

"If I meant to explain it, I wouldn't have hired you."

The Swift's engine coughed twice before turning over. Arjun sat in the parking lot for a full five minutes, his forehead against the steering wheel, his cock still aching, his mind a chaos of images: the door crack, the mirror, her breasts, the black panties, her smile. He knew she was playing him. He knew she'd hired him for reasons she hadn't shared, that the infidelity story was a cover, that he was a pawn in a game he couldn't yet see. And he knew that none of that knowledge was enough to stop him from wanting her.

He drove back to the office in a fog. The streets of Pune blurred past, the neon signs and roadside vendors dissolving into a smear of color. His hands were tight on the wheel. His jaw ached from clenching. He hadn't felt this way since. He couldn't remember. Maybe never. Not like this. Not this mixture of suspicion and hunger, of knowing he was being used and not caring.

The office was dark when he arrived. Priya had left the small lamp on her desk burning, the one with the tasseled shade that cast soft shadows on the wall. She was sitting in her chair, waiting for him, a cup of tea gone cold at her elbow. She'd changed into a fresh salwar kameez. Deep blue, the fabric crisp, the dupatta draped neatly over her shoulders. She looked up when he entered, her eyes moving over his face, reading him the way she always did.

"Did you eat?" she asked.

He didn't answer. He crossed the room in three strides, took her face in both hands, and kissed her.

It was not a gentle kiss. His mouth crushed against hers, his tongue forcing past her lips before she could draw breath. He tasted the tea on her tongue, the faint sweetness of sugar, and beneath it the familiar taste of her. She made a small sound. Surprise, then submission. Her hands came up to grip his wrists.

He pushed her back against the desk, his body pressing her into the edge, and his hands moved down to her breasts, kneading them through the stiff cotton of her kameez. He was rough. He knew he was rough. Her breasts were smaller than Maya's, firmer, fitting into his palms like fruit, and he found himself imagining them larger, heavier, the nipples darker. He closed his eyes and saw Maya in the mirror. Priya gasped against his mouth, and it was Maya's gasp he heard.

His tongue pushed deeper into her mouth, exploring, claiming. She yielded, her own tongue moving against his with a desperate obedience. He bit her lower lip. Hard enough to make her flinch. She didn't pull away. She never pulled away. That was the thing about Priya. She'd take whatever he gave her and ask for more.

He pulled the dupatta from her shoulder. He unfastened the kameez with shaking fingers, buttons scattering on the floor, and pushed the fabric down her arms. Her bra was plain white cotton, practical, a secretary's bra. He unhooked it with one hand and let it fall. Her breasts, freed, rose and fell with her quickening breath. Her breasts were full, dark-nippled, the skin soft and warm under his palms. He lowered his mouth to her left breast and sucked. Hard. Harder. Until she gasped and her fingers dug into his shoulders. He felt her nipple stiffen against his tongue, felt the give of flesh as he pulled at her, mouth working with a violence that had no name. She whimpered. He moved to the right breast, teeth grazing the skin, tongue laving where the teeth had been. Priya's back arched. Her legs wrapped around his waist.

"Arjun," she whispered. That was all. Just his name.

He didn't want to hear his name. He kissed her again, harder, silencing her, and his fingers hooked into the waistband of her salwar. He pulled it down over her hips, her thighs, taking her panties with it. Plain white, like the bra. And when the fabric resisted, he tore it. The sound of ripping cotton was loud in the quiet office.

He lifted her onto the desk. The wood was cold beneath her thighs. He could feel her shiver, her skin pebbling. But she didn't protest. She looked up at him with dark eyes, her lips swollen from his kisses, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. She was wet. He could smell it, could see the slickness glistening on her inner thighs in the lamplight.

He took out his cock. Eight inches, rigid, the head already slick with pre-come. He didn't wait. He pushed into her with one thrust, burying himself to the hilt, and she cried out. A sharp, broken sound. As her body stretched to take him. Her cunt was tight and hot, clenching around him, and he began to fuck her with the same desperation he'd felt since leaving Maya's flat.

The desk scraped against the floor with each thrust. Papers slid off and scattered. Priya's hands gripped the edges, her knuckles white, her head thrown back, her mouth open but silent except for the ragged rhythm of her breathing. He leaned over her, his teeth finding the curve of her shoulder, and bit down hard as he drove into her. She whimpered. Her face beneath his, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open, every thrust pushing a sound from her throat that was half pleasure and half something else. Something he didn't want to name.

It was Maya's body beneath him. He closed his eyes and it was Maya's cunt tightening around his cock, Maya's breasts bouncing with each thrust, Maya's gasps and whimpers filling his ears. The door crack. The mirror. The black panties. The dark nipples. He fucked into the image, thrusting deeper, harder, his rhythm growing savage.

He put his hand around her throat. Not squeezing. Just holding. The way he wanted to hold Maya. The way he wanted to mark her, to prove something, to burn himself into her flesh so she'd know she wasn't the only one who could make someone lose control. Priya's eyes met his, and for a second he saw confusion there. A flicker of something unfamiliar. And then it was gone, replaced by the same yielding softness she always gave him. He looked down at her face, and it was Priya's face. It would always be Priya's face.

His hands found her hips. He pulled out, flipped her over. The table was wide enough. Her breasts pressed against the wood, her back a long curve of brown skin, shoulder blades sharp under the neon's blue wash. He entered her from behind, harder now, his fingers gripping the flesh of her hips, pulling her back onto him with each thrust. The table legs scraped against the floor. Priya's hands braced against the far edge, knuckles white. The sounds she made were muffled against the wood.

He fucked her until his thighs burned and his breath came ragged and the neon in the window seemed to pulse with the blood behind his eyes.

When he came, it was with a groan that tore out of him like something wounded, his body collapsing over hers, his forehead pressed to the space between her shoulder blades.

The neon buzzed.

The silence settled.

He pulled out, stood, his legs uncertain. Priya slid off the table and lay down on the floor, on the worn rug where the dust gathered in the corners. She lay on her back, one arm flung over her eyes, chest rising and falling. The blue light pooled in the hollow of her throat.

Arjun lay down beside her.

On the floor.

Not touching.

Priya reached for his jacket, hanging on the chair, and pulled out his cigarettes. She lit two, handed him one, and they smoked in silence.

Her voice, when she finally spoke, was calm.

Too calm.

"You were thinking of her."

It wasn't a question. He said nothing.

"The woman from yesterday. The client. Maya."

He drew on his cigarette. The smoke burned his throat.

Priya turned her head on the floor to look at him. There was no anger in her face. No accusation. She looked at him the way she'd looked at him for three years. With a quiet acceptance that was worse than any rage.

"Was it her you were fucking?" she asked. "Or me?"

Arjun stared at the ceiling. The fan turned. The shadows turned with it. He thought about Maya Deshmukh's knowing smile and her open door and the way she'd sat down across from him with her robe falling open, already calculating the damage she'd done.

He said nothing.

Priya finished her cigarette, stubbed it out on the floor, and closed her eyes.

Arjun stayed awake, staring into the dark, the case turning over and over in his mind like a key in a lock he couldn't find.

Unknown number.

This time.

He answered.

A man's voice.

Low.

Urgent.

"You've been following Rohan Deshmukh."

Arjun's body stiffened.

"Who's asking?"

"Stop looking for his mistress."

Silence.

Then.

"Look for the dead accountant."

The line went dead.

Arjun stared at the phone.

Blue folder.

Balewadi.

Municipal file.

Disappears.

He was no longer investigating a cheating husband.

Somewhere in Pune, an accountant had vanished.

And someone knew Arjun had been watching.

..