The air outside was cool and clean after the rain. Neel Verma zipped through the sparse late-night traffic of Jodhpur on his old, but meticulously maintained, Royal Enfield. The journey from the cramped, ancient heart of the old city to the planned, quieter lanes of Ratanada was a journey through time. He left the world of spice merchants and tangled wires for a world of neat apartment blocks and sleeping parks.
Anjali Sharma lived on the third floor of a modest, respectable-looking building. There was no guard, just a clean entryway and a single, flickering tube light. As Neel climbed the stairs, he noted the absence of noise, the neatly placed doormats, the scent of antiseptic cleaner. This was not the den of a common criminal. It was the home of a disciplined artist.
He stopped outside apartment 3B and listened for a moment. He heard nothing. He didn't knock like the police would, with heavy, authoritative thuds. He knocked twice, a light but firm rap-rap, the knock of an expected guest.
The door opened a moment later.
The woman who stood before him was not what most would expect. She was in her late twenties, with the lean, powerful physique of a dancer. Her hair was tied back in a simple bun, and she wore a plain cotton salwar kameez. There was no fear in her large, intelligent eyes. Only a calm, questioning curiosity. She looked at Neel, taking in his simple black coat and his weary, academic face.
"You are not the police," she said. It wasn't a question.
"No," Neel replied. "My name is Neel Verma. I'm a private investigator."
Anjali Sharma's expression didn't change, but a flicker of understanding passed through her eyes. She had been expecting someone, eventually. She just hadn't expected him.
"May I come in?" Neel asked.
She held his gaze for a long second, then nodded, stepping back to let him pass.
The apartment was as neat as the hallway: sparsely furnished, with a small puja corner, a shelf of books, and a large, open space in the main room, the floor scuffed with the marks of countless hours of practice. The stolen sitar was nowhere in sight.
"It was a remarkable performance," Neel began, turning to face her. "The use of the ventilation system was inspired. Most people see a locked room and think of the door. You saw it as a stage, and you chose to enter from the heavens, like a goddess in a folk tale."
Anjali remained silent, her posture poised, her hands clasped loosely behind her back.
"The high-grip polish to cushion the landing," Neel continued, "the flickering light to mask your shadow, the mogra in your hair leaving a scent that would be dismissed as ambient... the details were exquisite. And coordinating with your brother to create the electrical 'glitch' at the precise moment was a masterstroke of timing."
He paused. "I'm not here to arrest you, Ms. Sharma. I'm here because I'm curious. A simple smash-and-grab would have been easier. More profitable, even. You could have stolen a dozen other things. But you didn't. You only took the sitar, and you did it with the grace of a dance. I have to know why."
For the first time, an emotion surfaced on Anjali's face: a faint, sad smile.
"Because it was never his to begin with," she said, her voice soft but clear as a temple bell. "My great-grandfather, Shambhu Prasad Sharma, was the musician who commissioned that sitar. It was his masterpiece, his 'Nad-Brahma'. He was a genius, but a poor one."
She walked over to a small, framed, black-and-white photograph on her bookshelf. It showed a proud man holding the very same instrument.
"During the famine of 1943," she continued, her voice tight with an inherited grief, "Pandit Uday Mahesh's grandfather, a wealthy moneylender then, forced my great-grandfather to sell it to him for a pittance to feed his family. It wasn't a sale. It was an act of cultural theft, a story our family has passed down for generations. Vikramaditya Narayan didn't just offer me money. He offered me a chance to reclaim a piece of my family's soul."
Neel looked from the photograph to the young woman standing before him. The case had just turned inside out. The clean lines of his deduction had dissolved into the messy, complicated tapestry of history and justice. He had come here expecting to confront a thief.
He had found an heiress.
He now had the truth, a truth far more complex than a simple police report could ever contain. He was faced with a choice. Turn her in and uphold the letter of the law, which saw her as a criminal? Or walk away, allowing a historical wrong to be, in some small way, righted?
The sigma, the lone wolf who operated outside the system, was now caught in a dilemma that the system had no elegant answer for.