© Salil Desai

Prologue

Javed Tirkhey scoured the dark, silent street. The car had been standing there for nearly two hours now. Experience told him that if no one came for it a little while longer, he could safely assume it had been parked there for the night. Between 2.00 and 4.00 am the world was truly asleep, and he could make his move.

He waited. Earlier in the night he had already ascertained that it had no central-locking alarm, when he had walked across for a quick reconnaissance.

Half an hour later Javed decided it was time for action. Swiftly, he reached the car. Darting a quick glance around, he unlocked the car, started it, and was soon gliding away along the deserted road. It was as smooth an operation as any, and he exulted like a batsman after executing a sweetly-timed shot.

So far so good. He opened the glove compartment with his left hand to look for car papers, and was delighted to find them there - registration documents, tax receipt, insurance policy, pollution-check certificate. Law abiding citizens were so rare and sweet, making life really easy for your hardworking car thief! The car too seemed to be in good condition. Javed ran a practised eye over the nice upholstery as he drove further away, and even managed to take a quick peek over his shoulder at the decor in the rear.

It was also the very moment when he discovered in the rear-view mirror that along with the car he had also stolen the lifeless body of its owner, who was lying dead on the back seat in the blind spot right behind the driver.

Overwhelming panic suddenly enveloped him, for he was not used to finding corpses in cars. Corpses were trouble - that much he knew - and he slammed down hard on the brakes. The car wobbled wildly like an out-of-control rollercoaster, and screeched to a halt.

His heart thudding, Javed whipped out a handkerchief and started wiping the steering wheel and the glove compartment furiously. God, what else had he touched! He cast a hasty glance behind, and noticed that the dead body had shifted position. It had slid into the leg space of the back seat, probably when he had applied brakes all of a sudden. The eerie proximity of death now unnerved him completely. Javed grabbed the papers and jumped out of the car, shaking with nervousness. Like a man possessed, he wiped the car door and the handle, and fled into the dead of the night.

Later, when he was calmer, he burnt the papers. Javed only hoped he had wiped off all his fingerprints for, somewhere, buried in some police computer, existed a clean set of his unique pattern of whorls, loops, and ridges that could be matched with fingerprints found on a crime-scene.

The car and its unfortunate occupant lay undisturbed thereafter. Neither the cool stillness of the night nor the first stirrings of dawn possessed the magic to wake him up from his eternal sleep.

The world began its business for the day. Newspaper boys and milkmen rode past the car, while morning walkers ambled along on the pavement beside it. The rest of the city soon joined in, milling around relentlessly, oblivious to a gruesome fate right in its midst. The car kept its secret well within the tinted films on its windows, guarding the privacy of its owner inside.

Of the hundreds who walked by, no one gave it a second glance and, even as the day wore on, none of the shopkeepers or vendors on the street wondered what an unfamiliar car was doing there all day. The traffic police too didn't tow the car away since it was parked on the P1 side on a P1 day.

By evening it had successfully merged with the street's landscape, as if it had always been a part of it. But every now and then passers by were startled to hear rings from a mobile phone inside the car. As darkness descended, the rings became more frequent and urgent.