Dead in a Mumbai Minute (38 page)

‘Don’t thank me,’ said Shayak. ‘If I hadn’t known you for so long, I would have punched you in the face and advised her to hang you out to dry.’

Pratap laughed. ‘That’s a load of bull and you know it. Shayak Gupta stand by a criminal? Never.’

‘When the victim is pathologically incapable of keeping it in his pants, my standards are prone to change.’

The insult didn’t seem to affect Pratap one bit. He turned to me. ‘It wasn’t an accident that we met in the nightclub that night, was it?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why were you following me instead of my wife?’

‘Just testing a theory.’

‘Which was?’

‘Your wife was clearly not cheating on you. So why were you so keen to prove that she was?’

‘Hey, it turned out she wasn’t cheating on me – she was just plain cheating me!’

‘Anyhow, I’ll admit I was wrong. I shouldn’t have wasted my time following you. You were the client, and your motives were none of my business.’

‘That’s a rather noble admission. Maybe you should have continued following me for a while longer. Who knows, right?’ he said with a wink.

Shayak rolled his eyes. ‘Okay, Pratap. I think it is time you left now,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to sample Reema’s self-defence skills first-hand.’

Shayak let Pratap out. When he returned, his face was strangely haunted.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘It’s going to be dangerous, what we have to do in the coming months.’

‘I’m ready.’

‘No you are not. Before you begin we’ll have some fairly intense training.’

‘Bring it on.’

‘The stakes are high. Everything that Rishi and George have told us points to an outfit that operates much like a terrorist cell, using people who know little about the overall operation to get the job done. These are people who work smart, with deep resources and network. They’ll stop at nothing, and their intentions are currently far from clear. If you want to back down I’ll understand.’

‘Not for a moment. So I will be going undercover?’

‘We have a lot of work to do before that. We have to find out everything we can about George Santos before coming to any kind of arrangement with him.’

‘And we need to determine how the Daanish Alam murder and the warehouse shoot-out tie into this.’

He nodded. ‘It’s a long game.’

It was hard to contain my excitement. No matter what the danger, my moment had come. Till two months ago I had been playing at detective. Now I was the veteran of three murders and an attempt on my life. Finally it felt right – the risk and the sacrifice. This job was no longer what I did, it was who I was.

‘I’m in – on one condition.’

‘What’s that?’

‘No more boats.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I
would like to thank everyone who read, appreciated, critiqued and helped spread the word about
The Masala Murder
. I hope you stay with Reema for this, and all her future adventures.

The team at Pan Macmillan India, new and old. Pranav and Shiny. Saugata and Pallavi. Thank you for your hard work and commitment to make these books better.

My friends at
The Telegraph
, for some stellar support.

Finally, a shout out to Debjani, official first reader; Shradha, launch genie; Shabari, Lakshman, Maitri and Venky, the best customers ever!

Dead in a Mumbai Minute

Madhumita Bhattacharyya
wrote for
The Telegraph
newspaper in Calcutta for a decade, interrupted by a stint in the non-profit sector. She is currently working as a freelance writer and editor. After some fairly crazy hopping around over the past few years, she has landed in Bangalore with her husband, beautiful baby and manic dog. Her debut work
The Masala Murder
was published in 2012. This is her second novel, also featuring detective Reema Ray.

Also by Madhumita Bhattacharyya

The Masala Murder

First published in the Indian subcontinent 2014 by Pan

This electronic edition published 2014 by Pan Books

an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

Basingstoke and Oxford

Associated companies throughout the world

www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-8831-2

Copyright © Madhumita Bhattacharyya 2014

Cover Design: BLACKINNOVATION
Cover Images: SHUTTERSTOCK

The right of Madhumita Bhattacharyya to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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