Dr Viegas was telling me that he spotted you earlier today during your stopover at the fish market, where you were having a long-drawn conversation with some Koli fisherfolk. He said that it hasn’t been just about today. You’ve been regular with these visits; often, you don’t even buy fish. What’s all this about, Pheroze? Am I missing something?” Lady Flora asked. Always the quicker of the two to smell a rat, she wasn’t going to let this little development skip her hawkish instincts. She had set the tone of their late night walkthrough around Colaba’s bylanes that looked splendid in the moonlit-soaked glow.  

Sir PM was taken aback by his friend’s sharp investigative skills. Inwardly, he mumbled that Dr Viegas—who he thought was a friend—had gone ahead and ratted about his whereabouts. “Clearly, he’s taken sides,” he grumbled under his breath. It was bad enough that he didn’t get a good bargain from his morning visit to the fish market, for which he got a dressing down from the missus, and now this. He had to come clean; it was always the wise ploy when it came to his friend’s Spanish inquisition-like behaviour. “Okay, so if you must know…I was merely trying to understand their current plight. It was important to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, or in this case, the fish’s mouth. Hehe.” Sir PM tried his best to lighten the mood with his humour but it wasn’t working. “Pheroze, why would you simply chat up Kolis who’ve been there forever, and show keen interest only now? It’s not adding up,” Lady Flora prodded.