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Crime, and punishment. How many times had I heard or thought that phrase, that echo of Fate’s laugh, in the last few days? How many times does it take?

‘I don’t see a place for me in that set-up, Karla.’

‘You’re a silent partner,’ she said. ‘Like me.’

‘I am?’

‘The silenter the better.’

‘Silenter?’

‘You talk to people that Didier and Naveen can’t reach. If we have to talk to those guys, who’s gonna do that but you, or me? Why not you and me together?’

‘Karla,’ I smiled, wanting to take her clothes off, and my clothes off, and stop talking. ‘I can’t move from committing crimes to solving them. My skill-set is on the villain side.’

‘We’re specialising,’ Karla said, taking another sip from the flask, ‘in missing persons.’

‘Karla,’ I laughed. ‘You and me, we are missing persons.’

She laughed again.

‘Cases that the cops have given up on,’ she said.

‘If the cops gave up, there’s probably a good reason.’

She selected a joint from the brass case, and lit it.

‘Not necessarily. Sometimes they just want the case to go away, and a case that could get solved goes unsolved. And sometimes they’re paid to look the other way. Runaway husbands, missing brides, prodigal sons, we’re the office of last resort, for lost loves.’

‘I don’t see any money in it, Karla. I’d be living on your dollar, it seems to me.’

‘There probably won’t be any dollars. Not yet. It’ll cost more than it makes. But private security and private detection will boom, in this country. It’s a good bet. And fortunately, I’ve got enough chips to play the game, for a while. If it bugs you, keep a tab, and pay me back when the business takes off.’

‘Speaking of missing persons, any word of Ranjit?’

‘Not yet. There was a rumour he was seen on a yacht, in the Maldives. I’m trying to check it out. For the time being, his proxy vote makes me a serious player. Good thing he was a lousy boss, and I wasn’t. His entire news service is helping me track him down. Ironic, ain’t it?’

‘Are you still at the Taj?’

‘Yeah. It’s okay, for now. They’ve got good security downstairs, and I’ve got better security upstairs.’

‘Have you seen Didier?’

‘He’s been hanging with me. He’s pretty spooked about the acid throwers. You know how vain he is.’

‘He doesn’t call it vanity. He calls it good taste, and I think we both agree.’

‘One way or another,’ she said, ‘I’m gonna remove that woman from my harm’s way.’

She shoved all the things aside and lay back on the blankets, one hand behind her head.

‘So, Shantaram, now that you know my plans, are you in?’

Fate leads you to what you desire, and Time makes sure that it’s the wrong moment. Was I with her, in her lost love detective agency plan? No. I couldn’t work with the cops, and I couldn’t turn anyone in to the cops, which made me a lousy detective.

She knew it. She saw it in my eyes, and in my breathing: the heavy breath of worry that we weren’t on the same path away from the mountain.

‘Stop thinking,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow is just like you. It’s never on time.’

The wind in moonlight, painting leaf-shadow lace on her skin. Love in all the past lives, every time we’d loved each other and lost each other: starlight on her sleeping face. There was no star in my sky that night: no light to guide me on that sea of what we were, and what we weren’t. But I didn’t care. She was asleep, in my arms, and I was already sailing home.

Part Eight

Chapter Forty-Six

I didn’t throw in with Karla, Naveen and Didier in the Lost Love Bureau. Call me stubborn. Naveen did. Call me crazy. Didier did. Call me a free spirit. Karla didn’t. She didn’t speak to me at all. She didn’t even respond to my messages, but sent a message of her own, through Naveen, to stay away until she cooled off. I got hotter, instead, and bought Didier’s black market crime portfolio. He’d become a legitimate businessman, a partner in the Lost Love Bureau, two doors down from my own, and decided to turn his back on black business. I let his drug and callgirl rackets slide, and focused on his money changing operations. It took me a while to sort out the details. I was buying white money that had become black money, making it white again through a black bank, and figuring small weekly margins on a high daily turnover: make or break. It was like the stock market, without the lies and corruption.

When Karla finally responded, late in the second afternoon after coming down from the mountain, I raced to meet her at the sea wall in Juhu where we’d talked of Lisa, our own lost love, weeks before.

And as evening strollers passed us, smiling happily, and the sun began to fall, Karla wept and told me she wasn’t angry with me: she was troubled by Ranjit and Lisa.

‘What was Ranjit doing there with Lisa that night? What was she doing with him? Since I came back to Bombay, I can’t stop thinking about it.’

She cried into my chest, and then stopped crying, as I held her.

‘Why don’t I understand it, Shantaram?’