SI Narmada Rayakwar didn't come to this posting looking for trouble. But the district she arrives in has a particular kind of quiet, the kind that has been practiced and maintained for a long time, and she is new enough to the job to still find that troubling rather than convenient.

What she finds is a pattern. At the centre of it, a male inspector whose own disappearance nobody seems especially motivated to explain. A posting that should have been routine starts pulling at threads that the district would very much prefer left alone.

She has no allies here. No local knowledge, no goodwill built up over years.