Yethi lay strapped down, the leather straps biting into his flesh until his limbs throbbed with pins and needles. The pipe between his teeth muffled the raw sound he could barely make; the single swinging bulb above threw a thin yellow halo that did nothing to warm the room. On the metal trolley beside him instruments gleamed — not with the reckless flourish of a butcher but with the precise, clinical alignment of a craftsman. Every implement had a purpose. Every purpose had a penalty.
Menon moved like a man who had practiced cruelty until it was an art. His sleeve was rolled up; the khaki of his uniform had gone from official to utilitarian, stained with sweat and old, dried blood. He did not scream. He did not shout. He spoke slowly, each measured sentence widening the gulf between the two men.
"You'll tell me what I want," Menon said. "Or I'll take everything you are and leave you nothing."
He began with sleep. A small radio screamed static in one corner; for hours Menon kept the bulb bright and the sound low but unrelenting, forcing Yethi into the fog of exhaustion. When the man's eyes began to gloss, Menon switched tactics to fear: bags over the head, the smell of lubricant and fuel as Menon moved a canister close enough that Yethi could taste it, the suggestion of fire that should never be performed — a promise, not a deed. The point was to make the mind yield before the body broke.
When that failed to speed the unraveling, Menon turned to precision. He applied pliers and clamps — not to carve, but to immobilize — then tested the boundaries of pain with calibrated pressure. He snapped one brittle laugh at Yethi's frantic, choking breaths and, in a voice softer than the radio, began to peel a map of the city out of the man's memories.
"Start with the docks," Menon said. "Start with Muthuvel."
Against the blur of fatigue and terror, words came — halting, then clearer as if something in Yethi's brain finally opened to relieve the pressure.
"Muthuvel controls Dock 7 and 9 at Chennai Harbor," he croaked. "He has the stevedore bosses on payroll. Night shifts—two-to-four a.m.—are his. They import containers under false manifests. The covers: sacks of cashews, sacks of rice, boxes of textile samples. Inside: crates of AK-pattern rifles with serials filed off, boxes of detonators, and sometimes—people. He moves them out to warehouses in the Port Colony, then trucks to a dead warehouse near the Eastern Freight Line."
Menon held up a pen and a scrap of paper; Chandra, hands trembling, wrote each word as if transcribing a death sentence.
"Bombs?" Menon asked, as if the word itself were a leaden coin worth trading.
Yethi's eyes flickered. "Improvised charges," he whispered. "Timer circuits scavenged from cell phones, blasting caps shipped from Karachi. They come in on the same runs — hidden behind sacks of cumin, tucked into pallets of plywood. Muthuvel has a bomb maker—calls himself 'Kamal'—he uses naval-grade explosives ferried in small consignments. They package them into cylinders so they pass X-rays when labeled 'machinery parts.'"
Menon's face did not change. He prodded the map with a finger. "Routes. Names. Times."
Yethi pushed out names like poison. "Mumbai — warehouse near Dharavi, code name 'Unit 14.' Gujarat—little coastal hamlet, Kattupalli docks sometimes used as transshipment. Karachi runs labelled as 'spice exports' and flagged under shell companies — 'Sahara Traders', 'Taj Logistics'. Drivers use forged CIT permits; the contact for forged docs is a man called Rafiq. Trucks leave Dock 9 after midnight, convoy of three, plates swapped at the Palika turnoff. Payoffs to port security are standard — envelopes passed to a man called Arjun at the checkpoint. He pockets cash in the presence of the customs clerk Singh."
Menon closed his eyes as if tasting each syllable. He moved on, unrelenting. "And Maduraii Raj?"
A laugh bubbled out of Yethi that was more like a spasm. "Raj is the landlord of the whole operation," he said. "He's from Maduraii — not just the name, the place. He moved into shipping when somebody taught him the value of sea lanes. He owns warehouses in Maduraii, funds the labor unions, bribes a few police chiefs and judges—he pays for a silence that sounds like loyalty. He owns offshore accounts, holdings disguised as textile firms. Everything flows to him: weapons, bombs, the gold — that's the quiet money."
"Gold?" Menon's voice lowered, hungry.
"Gold's bulk. Smuggled in under diplomatic-looking consignments, melted down and recast on the other side. Gulf runs: Dubai consignments marked 'saffron' or 'handicrafts.' They come with customs-cleared papers thanks to a broker, Imtiaz, who uses a client list of religious charities to mask value. The gold gets refined in Maduraii's private refineries — jewelry shipped back into the city as 'bridal stock.' Raj keeps ledgers in his safehouse in Maduraii — a ledger with names, banks, amounts. He moves cash through hawala channels to the Gulf. People believe he's a philanthropist; he buys temples and votes."
Menon let the words settle into the room like sediment. He stepped away from the table then, letting the silence do the next work: the knowledge that someone was listening, recording, plotting from these details. He wanted the city's veins exposed.
"You speak of judges and the Director," Menon said quietly. "Names."
Yethi coughed blood and offered a list — a clerk, a junior judge with a history of dropped cases, a Director's assistant who'd been seen at Raj's compound during festivals. Small things, but enough to point Menon toward a network rather than a single man. Enough to begin the unwinding.
Menon did not relish the cruelty for its own theater. It served a purpose — a scalpel with which to reveal the anatomy of the crime. Still, in the way he orchestrated the night — the deprivation, the threats, the controlled infliction of pain — there was a clarity that chilled Chandra more than any confession. Menon wore the room like a second skin; his calm, his detached efficiency, made him look less a cop and more an agent of some darker civic justice.
When Yethi finally broke into names and times and receipts — warehouse numbers, container IDs, shell company names — Menon fed them to Chandra to get logged, phone numbers for midnight raids called in with a voice that betrayed nothing of the cruelty preceding it. The city outside was unknowing. Inside, a list grew: Dock 7 — suspicious manifests; Unit 14, Dharavi — hold and watch; Palika checkpoint — Arjun; broker Imtiaz — Gulf consignments; Kamal — bomb-maker; safehouse in Maduraii — ledger and ledgers' codebook.
Yethi's eyes, dull with fatigue and pain, watched Menon hand over pieces of himself in exchange for a promise that sounded like retribution and read like obsession.
"You think you'll take Raj?" Yethi rasped. "He's a ghost in suits. He buys time. He buries men."
Menon's smile was small and dry. "Then we'll dig."
He left Yethi strapped and broken in the cell as dawn washed pale over the city. Outside, Menon lit a cigarette, the tip glowing in the gray light, and called in favors — a warrant here, a midnight directive there. The list he already had would make men wake in cold sweats. It would also make enemies. Menon understood the cost. He had only ever counted it in terms of the ends.
The engines of power were old and oiled. Menon had thrown a stone. The ripples would reach Maduraii, and the water would not stay calm.