The next evening came wearing fog.
Not the thick winter kind that rolls off the Aravallis, but the thin, greasy haze that rises from too many idling engines and too few open windows. Ghat Gate Road looked like someone had breathed on the glass of the world and then tried to wipe it clean with dirty cloth.
Vicky didn't come alone this time.
Lalla drove. In the front passenger seat sat Munna—twenty-four, skinny as a street dog, eyes always moving like he was counting exits. Munna carried two phones: one for family, one for business. The business one never rang twice. Tonight it stayed silent. He was here to listen, not talk.
They parked fifty metres down from Gulab & Gangour, engine off, lights off. The juice centre's tube-lights made a perfect yellow rectangle on the footpath. Inside, she was there—same braid, same slow grace, same dupatta tucked into the waist of her salwar so it wouldn't trail in the wet mop water.
Vicky watched her pour sugarcane juice for two labourers who had just come off a night shift at the marble godowns. Their hands were chalk-white with dust; she handed them the steel glasses without flinching at the powder they left on the rim.
"She's careful," Munna said quietly. First words he'd spoken since they left the godown.
Vicky didn't answer. He didn't need to.
After ten minutes Munna slipped out. He walked past the shop twice—once pretending to talk on the family phone, once pretending to look for change in his pocket. Each time he came back he had one more piece.
"Name's Radha."
"Father runs a small paan shop near Tripolia Bazaar. Name's Mohanlal. No brothers. One younger sister still in school."
"Mother died three years ago. Cancer. They live in a rented room above the shop."
"She finishes here at ten-thirty. Walks home with the owner's wife most nights. Owner's wife is her mausi."
"No boyfriend. No rumours. Keeps to herself."
Vicky absorbed each fact the way dry earth takes rain—slow, complete, no questions.
Radha.
The name sat on his tongue like a sugar cube that hadn't yet melted. He rolled it once, silently, then let it dissolve.
At 10:28 p.m. the shutter came down halfway. Radha switched off the big grinder, wiped her hands forty-seven times on her dupatta (Vicky counted), then stepped out to lock the side door. The mausi—short, stout, fifty-something—waited with a steel tiffin carrier pressed to her chest like a shield.
They started walking toward the inner lanes.
Vicky waited until they turned the first corner.
"Follow. Slow."
The Fortuner crawled after them like a shadow that had grown too heavy to lift.
They didn't speak much on the walk. The mausi complained about her knees. Radha murmured something soothing. Once she laughed—that same small, surprised sound—and it reached the car like a thrown stone skipping across water.
They turned into a narrower gali. A single bulb hung from a wire above a paan shop whose sign read MOHANLAL PAN BHANDAR in peeling red paint. Upstairs, two windows glowed behind bars. One curtain moved—an old woman peering down, then disappearing.
Radha unlocked the wooden door beside the shop. Mausi went in first. Radha paused on the threshold, looked back at the empty street.
For a second her eyes seemed to find the black SUV parked at the mouth of the gali, half-hidden behind a stack of empty crates.
She frowned again—that same small crease between her brows.
Then she stepped inside and the door closed.
Vicky let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
Munna cleared his throat. "What now, bhai?"
Vicky didn't answer right away. He watched the upstairs window until the light went out.
"Tomorrow," he said finally, "you bring me Mohanlal."
Munna nodded. No hesitation. No questions about why, or how much pressure, or whether the old man would need convincing.
The Fortuner reversed silently, tyres whispering over wet stone, and slipped back into the larger veins of the city.
Inside the upstairs room, Radha sat on the edge of the string cot and unpinned her braid. Hair spilled over her shoulders like molasses poured from a jar.
She stared at the wall for a long time.
Then she whispered to the darkness,
"That car again."
Her sister, half-asleep on the other cot, murmured, "Which car?"
Radha didn't answer.
She only pulled the thin razai over her head and tried to remember why the matte-black shape at the end of the gali made her feel like someone had already written the next few months of her life in a handwriting she couldn't yet read.
(to be continued)