‘Inspector. What a suggestion.’
And the lady was supported by a new chorus asserting her public-spiritedness on numerous occasions, and explaining that they were a group on a tour of India specially designed for ladies with ‘inquiring minds’ and that they were not due to leave for Agra and the Taj Mahal for another three days.
But Inspector Ghote’s countenance remained unmoved.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It is no good your hearts becoming pools of tears. I must hand the culprit to some passing constable to be kept in custody until his appearance before the Magistrate. Yes, definitely.’
And indeed, as if by magic, at that moment a constable hove into sight, not at all Bobby-like in his floppy blue uniform and little boat-shaped blue and yellow cap, but a formidably tough-looking figure for all that.
Ghote led his captive away. By the ear.
But, somewhat to the surprise of the British ladies, after speaking to the constable for a minute or so he returned still gripping the little chubby bag-slitter.
‘That fellow was not at all suitable,’ he said, jerking his chin in the direction of the departing policeman.
And then, apparently thinking it was not quite the proper thing to imply to these foreign visitors that any of the Bombay police force was not ready for whatever task they were called on to perform, he added hastily, ‘He had many, many other important duties at this time only.’
So they waited, a fairly silent little crowd, while the dabbawallas in the roadway completed their sorting-out, swept up their long wooden racks on to their heads and departed briskly for where lunchers waited at their desks. Once or twice one or two of the group tried suggesting again that the little thief, now looking doubly appealing, should be let off after all. But one glance at Ghote’s stern face shrivelled their pleas half spoken.
‘What is your good name, please?’ he inquired firmly of the theft’s victim.
‘And at which hotel are you staying?’
Name and address were supplied, and once more silence fell. But before long another constable came into view, a stout old veteran by the look of him. Ghote called out sharply and the man broke into a slow, dignified trot, only to arrive puffing and panting.
The little thief was handed into his custody. He grasped him by the arm and set off at a ponderous pace. Ghote took a rapid farewell of the assembled British ladies and departed, rather hurriedly, in the direction of the distant tumble of pavement-dwellers’ huts.
The visitors stood where they were, watching the sad little thief being led off and clucking in helpless dismay at his fate. But he was hardly fifty yards distant when, with a swift wriggle and a sharp jerk, he slipped from the grip of the puffing old veteran constable, whirled round and headed away in the direction he had first made off in, weaving through the crowds on the pavement and in the roadway like a tiny tadpole slipping between slow-moving carp.
‘Well, I never,’ exclaimed the lady with the ruined blue handbag.
But time was getting on. There were other items on the group’s morning itinerary, more for ‘inquiring minds’ to see and assimilate. The hire cars that had brought them to Churchgate Station were waiting with the guide that the tour operator had supplied.
‘We are now going to Victoria Gardens Zoo,’ he announced. ‘It is very, very interesting.’
Some of the ladies appeared to doubt this. They looked as if they felt Bombay ought to provide something meatier for their inquiring minds than a mere zoo.
But they were destined to see a sight that would provide them with plenty of mental fodder, and plenty to talk about, well before they reached Victoria Gardens.
In fact, they had gone less than a quarter of a mile on their northwards journey before, with their cars stuck in a minor jam, they had the unexpected sight of Inspector Ghote once more.
He was loping along on the far side of the road, looking somehow simultaneously intent and uninterested, but moving all the time with tremendous purposefulness. And then – there, only some ten yards ahead of him – the keener-sighted of the touring ladies spotted the little chubby escapee pickpocket.
They had better luck than that even. Before the bullock pulling a little kerosene-tank cart that had been holding them up had been persuaded to move on, the craning ladies actually saw the boy dive into one of the pavement shacks, a desperately slanting affair of sagging bamboo poles, pieces of rusted corrugated iron, stretched gunny sacks and odd lengths of soiled plastic. A moment later Ghote plunged in after him to emerge grasping this time, not the chubby eight-year-old but a tall, hangdog individual in a greasy European-style suit.
Then, surprise on surprise, who should come running up from behind but the very constable Ghote had not handed the little thief over to, the tough-looking one who had had ‘many, many other important duties’. And in a trice a pair of handcuffs was round the wrists of the man in the greasy suit and the constable was marching him off, a grin of triumph on his face.
‘How very strange,’ one of the ladies in the first car said.
‘It certainly is,’ another echoed.
‘I wonder what’s happened,’ said a third.
The next day, after a letter had been delivered to the hotel summoning the victim of the bag-slitting to the Esplanade Police Court, the ladies of the tour, accompanying her en masse, had their inquiring minds happily satisfied.
First, the summoned witness had had to give her evidence. Then Inspector Ghote had recounted how he had followed the absconding thief and had tracked him down to a pavement hut in Maharishi Karve Road where he had found the accused in possession of numerous articles stolen on such-and-such dates. And finally the man in the greasy suit, which was looking even greasier for a night in the lock-up, had been sentenced to six months Rigorous Imprisonment.
As soon as the ladies had their chance, they surrounded Inspector Ghote on the courthouse steps, demanding the full story in their pink-faced clucking voices. And Ghote, with a deprecating wag of his head, eventually obliged.
‘You see, ladies,’ he said, ‘it was like this. I was not wishing for that boy to be too much punished. He was after all seven or eight years of age only. But I was thinking that it would be a very, very good thing if we could put behind the bars the blacksheep who was making him commit those acts of thieving. As you know the golden opportunity never knocks twice. So I was wanting the boy to escape, hoping he would go straight back to the boss of his gang.’
‘And that was why you handed him over to that fat old constable and not to the other?’ said the lady with the most inquiring mind of them all.
‘Oh, yes, madam, you are seeing that straight away. It is most sagacious of you. Very, very sagacious indeed.’
‘So, when you had that little talk with the first one, you were telling him to back you up when you started to follow the boy?’ asked another of the ladies, not to be outdone in the sagacious line.
‘Very, very correct, madam.’
‘And the boy?’ asked a third lady, not perhaps as sagacious but very tender-hearted.
‘Well, madam, I am thinking that finding himself caught in the act would scare him to the bones, especially when he found in the end he had not escaped so jolly easily. So I am letting him go with one cuff on the head only.’
‘Oh, the poor mite,’ exclaimed the tender-hearted lady.
But she was alone in her tenderness. ‘No more than he deserved.’ ‘He’ll have learnt his lesson.’ ‘A bit of cuff does ’em no harm.’ That was the chorus.
‘Well, Inspector,’ said the lady who had stood in the witness-box and delivered her testimony with assurance, ‘it’s not far off lunch-time, and I think all of us would be delighted if you would join us at our hotel.’
But Inspector Ghote shook his head.
‘Very regret, madam and ladies,’ he said, ‘I am still having to give evidence in a case here. You see, yesterday after we had met I was arresting the son of a certain very, very wealthy watch-maker. The boy had stolen a large sum from t
he house of his parents itself and, whatever they are feeling and whatever they are saying to anybody influential, it is right only that the young fellow should receive some kind of shock treatment. So good day to you, ladies. Good day, please.’
1984
EIGHT
Murder Must Not At All Advertise, Isn’t It?
The Cabin Killer Strikes Again. Inspector Ghote, getting out of the police car and looking up at the sky-zooming building in Bombay’s tower-jostling, rich-to-bursting Nariman Point area, found the phrase, in just those English words, pulsating in his mind.
The Cabin Killer. It was what the more sensational papers had taken to calling the fellow whose modus operandi appeared to be entering well-equipped offices, making away with the prize pickings from the boss’s own cabin, and if disturbed not hesitating to attack. And just because the Press had seized on this particular criminal among all Bombays hundreds, orders had come down to the CID from the Minister for Home himself to make the case their Number One priority.
So when a jabbering voice on the telephone had reported that ‘the Cabin Killer has struck again’, yet one more officer had been taken off all other duties. Himself. And since Crime Branch’s top investigator, the renowned Assistant Commissioner ‘Dasher’ Dabholkar, in charge of the inquiry, was already out in the field elsewhere, he had been sent to the offices of Shalimar Associates, the big advertising firm, whose boss – so the report had said – was the Killer’s latest victim.
The Cabin Killer Strikes Again. Ghote tried to shake the headline words, soon no doubt to be seen once more, out of his mind. They were nonsense only, he told himself. The man was hardly a killer. He was a common thief only, if one with something of a new angle. No one else, so far as the clacking mechanical files in Records could turn up, had hit on the trick of making for the top man’s room itself when slipping into a set of offices, at a time few people were about, intent on quick robbery. It was usually simply an unguarded typewriter that was taken, or any other obviously sellable object.
But this fellow had certainly gone one better. Somewhere he must have come to learn that in the boss’s cabin of most of the posh firms in areas like Nariman Point there would be a bottle or two of the best. Generally Chivas Regal whisky. Generally in the bottom right-hand drawer of the big glossy desk.
And twice, just twice, in a career of crime that Dasher Dabholkar had had traced back over nearly three years, the fellow had been caught red-handed. And once, once only, when he had snatched up a heavy object and lashed out, his victim had died from injuries received. The second attack victim, in fact, had suffered no more than a cracked jawbone and a nasty bruise. But for some reason the papers had decided to blow up the perpetrator as ‘The Cabin Killer’.
Who now had ‘struck again’? Or perhaps not. You never could tell with excited witnesses phoning in. Someone had said something about a sword, too. That the Cabin Killer had used ‘Shivaji’s sword’.
Well, that was nonsense too. The sword reputed to have been wielded in times long ago by the hero of all Marathi-speaking Bombay, Shivaji the Great, was – it was well-known – in British hands. In some museum or other in London. And all attempts to get it restored to India had so far failed. So how could the Cabin Killer have used Shivaji’s sword?
Ghote heaved a sigh.
Ah, well, better get up there and sort it all out.
At the penthouse offices of Shalimar Associates, whisked smoothly upwards in a steel-walled lift, he began to have doubts about how easy that sorting-out would be. The place was Western, very, very Western. Even the reception area was covered in one vast layer of carpet, a dark brown unblemished surface that seemed to proclaim ‘No chappals here. Shoes only.’ Above, from a huge expanse of ceiling broken into different panelled areas all in immaculate white, there hung curious futuristic lights, each lit even though outside the sun was beating down in its usual bleaching blaze. The closed slatted blinds in dark brown plastic were, however, taking care of the sun.
And, as if all this was not daunting enough, there were the people. There seemed to be dozens of them, almost all dressed in smart Western clothes, girls in hugging jeans and most of the men too. And all of them chattering in English, jabbering, gesticulating, and paying no attention at all to himself, a lone figure, ahead of the fingerprint and photography team, dressed – he became acutely conscious of the fact – in simple shirt and pants, a good deal the worse for a long morning in dirty, sweat-springing Bombay.
But this would not do. There had been a murder here. Or so they said. And he had come to investigate.
He marched forward over the smooth brown lake of carpet and up to the nearest person to him, a young woman – seemingly even more animated than anyone else – wearing a deep red thin silk Lucknow kurta above the obligatory jeans.
‘Madam,’ he said. ‘Excuse me. It is CID. Inspector Ghote. A murder has been reported, isn’t it?’
The girl turned.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s the fuzz. At last.’
Yet, unwilling as he was to accept this form of address, Ghote could not help responding to the cheerful smile that went with it.
‘Who is it, please, I am speaking with?’ he asked, less reprovingly than he had intended.
‘The name’s Tigga,’ the girl answered. ‘I’m a copywriter here.’
‘Very well, Miss Tigga. Now, where is the deceased?’
‘Yes, the deceased. I’ll take you to his cabin. He’s … He was—’ Unexpectedly the girl choked back a sudden lump in the throat. ‘He was our Creative Director. Managing Director, too. The boss, in fact. Mr Patel. Known everywhere as Billy Patel. He was … Inspector, he was always so alive. Such a go-getter.’
‘Yes, yes. I understand. But, Miss Tigga, we must please proceed to the cabin in question.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. This way.’
She began to lead him through the still jabbering throng of people, all young, all still highly excited.
After a moment she turned back to him.
‘By the way, just to get it straight,’ she said. ‘It’s not Miss Tigga, actually. It’s Miss Kelkar. Neeta Kelkar. But I’m always known as Tigga. I was called it after Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh books, you know.’
‘Yes,’ said Ghote, who did not know.
‘I ought to have one of those name badges we always seem to get given at conferences and seminars and things,’ she went on breezily. ‘Then no one would have to ask, and no more long complicated explanations.’
‘No,’ said Ghote.
They had passed through the glossy reception counter, adorned with a huge vase of white flowers, a white telephone and nothing else, and were heading for one of the wide corridors behind it. But abruptly the ebullient Tigga halted again.
‘Roger, Roger,’ she called out.
A young man with a trim beard, wearing the inevitable close-fitting jeans and a crisp shirt that put Ghote’s sweat-saddened one to shame, came up beside them.
He gave Tigga a wary glance.
‘Friends?’ he said.
‘Friends,’ she answered decisively.
She turned back to Ghote.
‘This is Roger Rajinder, youngest account executive at Shalimar Associates,’ she announced. ‘Oh, wow, another name complication. Naresh Rajinder, I should have said. But known to all as Roger, on account of a tremendous resemblance to a certain British film star. Roger, this is the CID Inspector.’
Roger Rajinder gave her a mock glare of rage before turning to Ghote.
‘Don’t mind this dreadful girl, Inspector,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you? You’re on your way to poor Billy’s cabin?’
‘Yes, yes. But, tell me please, what is this about a sword? Was the killing committed with a sword only?’
‘Shivaji’s sword, Inspector, no less,’ Roger answered. ‘Or, in point of fact, a mock-up of Shivaji’s sword we had made for our new Cocopuff biscuits campaign. It was on Billy’s desk, and it seems when he came back for something or other dur
ing the lunch break he disturbed this fellow who must have picked up the sword and stabbed him. It’s a terrible thing.’
He glanced at Tigga as he said these last suddenly saddened words and received from her an answering look. Ghote felt a dart of warmth. These two young people were in love. He knew it as surely as if it had been written on a matching pair of the name badges Tigga had talked about. They were in love – despite that query about being friends – and out of nowhere death had entered their lives. Violent death.
But he was a police officer, sent to investigate an offence under Indian Penal Code Section 302.
‘Take me to Mr Patel’s cabin please,’ he said.
They found two other people in Billy Patel’s cabin, standing over the body from which, sure enough, a wide-bladed curving sword protruded. Roger Rajinder introduced them, with unexpected formality.
‘Inspector, this is Mr Shantaram Das, our senior account executive – and, I suppose, now in charge of things – and this is Mr Tarlok Singh, our accountant.’
Shantaram Das was immediately pleasing to Ghote. To begin with, he was not a young man. Not young and, Ghote added to himself, irresponsible. Instead he was a dignified figure of perhaps fifty, weightily plump. And then he was not dressed in jeans. Indeed, he was almost at the opposite extreme, in flowing white kurta and calf-clasping white churidar, the very picture of tradition. The Sikh accountant, on the other hand, was as glossy as everyone else Ghote had seen, down to his wide maroon necktie exactly matching his neat maroon turban.
Ghote decided to ignore him and address himself exclusively to the dignified Mr Das.
‘Tell me, please,’ he said, ‘the exact circumstances of the matter.’
‘Certainly, Inspector. It was, in point of fact, Mr Singh here and myself who found poor Billy. We came into the cabin here to tell him about some clients we had been lunching, and there he was as you see him now. Dead. Dead on the floor and with Shivaji’s sword buried deep in his back. Of course we knew at once who had done it. The Cabin Killer. We sensed that, didn’t we, Tarlok, even before we saw that Billy’s new desk-computer was missing?’
Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes Page 12