Epilogue: An incomplete recounting of shit that happened afterward:
Two hours after the emergency crews reached the warehouse, Stephen and Guhar were released from the hospital after a preliminary debriefing. Stephen complained bitterly, in a painkiller-addled mutter, about the bumpiness of the road, the idiocy of other drivers and pedestrians, Guhar's driving style, the fucking Mumbai traffic, the heat, the music on the radio and, once he realised their destination, the fact that Guhar was apparently under the impression that he could just take Stephen places all the time, the presumptuous little insect. Guhar nodded affably, smiled very affably, nodded some more when required, and took Stephen home anyway.
Three hours after Aasif Darr's second slaughter, a scruffily-dressed man with exceedingly shifty eyes turned up to investigate the lack of phone access to his comprehensively deceased buddies. He was promptly nabbed by the police, and used to lure the traffickers into a trap, setting off a miniature bowling alley of heads in several unexpected places. Tarware's investigation of Suresh Shankar became substantially easier with the capture of a half-dozen mooks who were all too willing to turn snitch, and eventually resulted in the carting off to jail of various street thugs, orphanage directors, fundraising managers, philanthropists (and one very displeased cook).
A week after his shoulder had been dislocated, Stephen went back to work, and - he claimed - to the privacy of his own home rather than have Guhar hovering over him and pouncing him alternately, which he declared very loudly was starting to get on his last fucking nerve. The fact that he still spent nearly every night at Guhar's did not deter him from sticking tenaciously to this version of events.
Two weeks after the warehouse explosion, all investigations into the incident complete, Gaish Shah, among several others, was declared missing and presumed dead. His bike, which a witness had noted him riding to the scene, was discovered in the bike stand at the Vasai railway station a couple of days later, presumably stolen. Gaish was assumed, based on Stephen's testimony, to have discovered evidence of the trafficking independently, and was given a posthumous promotion. No one collected his personal effects, though his badge was eventually claimed by a certain police naik as a memento. The names of Aasif and Nafiza Darr were not mentioned in any reports related to either the Backbay or Bandra warehouse incidents.
Eighteen months after his willing participation in the escape of the Backbay and Bandra killer, Stephen left the police force in favour of setting up the Irani-Gonsalves Detective Agency, with the financial backing - and indulgent amusement - of famously eccentric stock market genius Kamal Irani. Working with just the one partner sadly reduced the number of targets for his morning ire, but Guhar had discovered ways to defuse that anyway, the sneaky little fuck.
Twenty-six months after the last time Stephen had seen Gaish Shah alive, a postcard arrived in Guhar's mail. The image was of a stereotypical scene in Kerala, with a little two-bedroom houseboat on it, the kind that ferried tourists around the creeks and backwaters. White Dragon Tours was on the bottom in the same neat, precise handwriting that had penned the address.
The text of the card was just two words, written in a rather different, sloping script.
Hey, Anthony.
