two officers had been there since morning and had not touched anything after the first sweep.

the street was the kind that doesn't appear on the routes people take between places. narrow, uneven, the tar broken in long seams. no camera mounted on any wall or post. a few houses close together, a stretch of compound wall, then the two-story building at the end. the bottom floor was locked with a padlock through the latch. curtains inside, drawn. the upper floor had a separate staircase running up the outside of the building, steep, with a rusted railing.

grahan arrived at ten past eleven.

he came up the outside staircase and had to angle his shoulders slightly to clear the door frame at the top. inside, the flat was small. a single room that held a bed, a table, a ceiling fan, a window that looked onto the street. a kitchen alcove separated by a half-wall. a bathroom with the door left open. he stood in the middle of it and looked and did not say anything for a moment.

his constable, standing near the table, began.

the girl's name is yaatri. twenty-nine. works at a digital marketing firm in the city. parents both passed when she was a child. she lived here, renting from the family who owns the building. that family, the girl's uncle and his wife, they've been in singapore for the better part of six months. their son works there. so there was no one below, no one nearby who knew her well enough to check.

grahan looked at the window.

the firm raised the complaint, the constable continued. she hadn't come in for four days. phone going unanswered. they tried the address, got no response. that's when the complaint came.

when was she last seen.

neighbor's child. house just back down the lane. the boy was outside around seven thirty in the evening, five days ago. he says he saw her walking toward the building. he knows her by sight. he's nine years old and he was certain.

after that.

nothing. no one saw her leave. no one heard anything. the downstairs lock is untouched. this door was unlocked but closed when the first officers arrived.

grahan crossed to the table and looked at its surface. a charger cable coiled without a device attached to it. a pen. a ring left by a glass.

where is her phone.

not here.

laptop.

not here.

the constable paused.

there's nothing here that would tell you much about her. no diary. nothing handwritten beyond a grocery list on the fridge. no photographs, no letters, nothing stored anywhere. we checked the kitchen, under the bed, the bathroom cabinet. whatever she kept that was personal, that was hers in that way, it's gone.

grahan stood very still for a moment.

you're saying someone cleared the room.

it looks that way, sir. or she did herself.

grahan walked to the window and looked down at the lane.

the bed was made. hospital corners, tight enough that no one had slept in it after making it. the bathroom had a towel on the rail, folded. a toothbrush in the holder. a half-used bar of soap. the signs of a life stopped at a particular moment and not resumed.

so she came through that door at seven thirty, grahan said. and this is the room.

yes sir.

and nothing was broken. nothing displaced.

no sir.

he said nothing for a while. his constable understood this and waited.

we're looking at two possibilities, he said, and his voice had the flatness of someone laying something out only because it needed to be laid out. she was taken. whoever took her also removed everything that could identify her life. or she left on her own and took those things herself.

either way, he said. we pull prints. everything in this room. the railing on the stairs, the outside of the door, the table surface, the bathroom tap. get the team up here.

yes sir.

his phone rang.

he looked at the screen, stepped past his constable, and went out to the landing.

his wife's voice arrived already moving. the school had called again. the fees. it was two lakhs and the date was next week and if it wasn't paid the girl would not be permitted to sit. and also the man they owed money to had come to the house that morning, had stood at the door and said things in a loud voice, and she was asking him to find a way, she was only asking him to find a way.

i know, he said.

you keep saying that.

what do you want me to do right now. i'm standing in the middle of a crime scene.

i want you to find a way.

he looked out over the lane below.

it's always money, he said. with you it's always money.

his wife said something, or began to.

he cut the call and put the phone in his pocket.

he stood on the landing another moment before going back inside. the constable was looking at the bathroom door. doing him the courtesy of looking elsewhere.

grahan knew what people saw when they looked at him. a man that size, they assumed a certain weight of ease. that the body was a kind of answer. he had spent fourteen years knowing that was not true and not knowing what to do about knowing it.

the forensics team arrived twenty minutes later and moved through the flat with their kits and their careful attention. grahan waited.

sir.

the constable was at the door.

the team says they're done. they've got what there is to get.

grahan took one more look at the room. the charger with nothing attached to it.

he turned to his constable.

the family in singapore. they haven't picked up.

no sir. we've tried twice.

keep trying. report the situation. tell them to come back if they can.

yes sir.

and the neighboring houses. all of them on this lane. someone may have seen or heard something they haven't thought to mention yet. go through each one.

the constable nodded and wrote something down.

this street has no cameras, grahan said. but the main roads coming in will. whatever direction she came from that evening, there will be footage somewhere. collect what you can and get it back to me.

understood sir.

grahan looked at the room one last time.

lock it back up, he said. let's go.