He followed the boy then through long clackingly shrill corridors, up one wide-stone-stepped staircase and down another to a nursing station where he had been handed over to the starchy Sister who had taken him to Cabin No. 773 and Ram Dharkar, Ram Dharkar surely ready to talk, lying helpless on the bed within.
‘Well, Ram,’ Ghote said to him, ‘you and I know each other of old, isn’t it?’
The goonda on the bed made no reply, eyeing Ghote sullenly though wakefully.
‘And how are you feeling?’ Ghote asked, showing as much friendly concern as he could. ‘The knee, it is giving pain, no?’
Again Ram Dharkar did not respond.
Ghote pulled up a sagging-seated grey canvas chair he had spotted in a corner by the little room’s sole narrow window. He sat himself down and leant towards the injured man, who was, true enough, looking as if he was in not a little pain.
‘Right then,’ he said, ‘let us be getting down to business. The Dada of your gang decided you were betraying one and all, isn’t it? Well, we are damn well knowing such is not so. And the Dada, whoever he is, ought to be knowing as much also. Ram Dharkar was never a kabari.’
He looked for some sign of stirred pride in the goonda’s lined face.
But there was nothing. Only that same sullen single expression.
He cleared his throat a little.
‘No,’ he said, feeling the falsity of the note of cheerfulness he was endeavouring to inject into his voice. ‘No, that fellow should have known you better, Ram bhai. And look what he was doing to you instead. They tell me that however well is going the operation you are soon to have, you will find difficulty to walk for the rest of your life.’
No reaction.
Ghote sat and thought.
This he had not expected. The situation had seemed to him quite straightforward. The Dada behind the bank dacoities had made a mistake, his first and only mistake, but a big one. He had had Ram Dharkar cruelly punished for something he had not at all done. So, surely, Ram Dharkar would be avid for revenge. And revenge was there. He knew, he must know, who the Dada was and where he could be found. He had only to say and his chance to pay back the man who had had him crippled would be one hundred per cent secured.
But here the fellow was, obstinately silent. Saying nothing.
Ghote’s glance fell again on the bed-head notice. ‘Nil By Mouth.’ Yes, that was what Ram Dharkar was so unexpectedly giving him himself, nil by mouth. Absolutely nil.
Why? Why?
And then he thought he had it.
‘You are afraid?’ he asked the goonda abruptly. ‘Afraid, if you are talking, the Dada will finish off the job he was beginning?’
Ram Dharkar still did not reply, but his expression of stony nothingness changed. His eyes said, ‘Yes’.
‘But that is not so,’ Ghote assured him eagerly. ‘Think man, where you are. You are in one of the biggest hospitals in Bombay. You are in a cabin on your own. There is a constable on guard just outside that door. He has orders to let in just only two nurses and one doctor. You cannot be more safe.’
He thought then, from the faintly pensive expression on Ram Dharkar’s face, that he had taken all this in and was at least considering it.
‘Inspector, I do not dare.’
The words were croaked out. Yet Ghote took heart from them. At least the fellow was communicating. With patience and luck, he might be persuaded before long that it was safe to take the revenge that lay so easily in his power, as surely it was. The chances of any gang executioner sent by the Dada getting to his possible betrayer were one hundred-to-one against. More even.
And almost at once Ram Dharkar showed that he had committed himself to more than that one negative sentence.
‘Inspectorji,’ he said, his voice a little stronger. ‘Get us a drink, no? I am thirsty-thirsty like hell.’
Ghote looked at the Nil by Mouth notice.
‘Oh, I cannot do that, man,’ he said. ‘You are having operation soon and it is medical advice that you must take nothing before.’
‘But a drink only. A little water. Inspectorji, it is damn hot in here. I am wanting just only one swallow of water. That cannot be doing any harm.’
Ghote wondered whether this in fact might not be true. Surely a single gulp of pure water would not make the operation due in five hours’ time altogether dangerous?
He looked around the narrow cabin. But there was no jug of water or earthenware chatti to be seen. And, sure enough, the little room was appallingly hot.
‘Well,’ he said, glancing at the door, ‘perhaps—’
But at that moment the door was pushed open and the two nurses presumably permitted to enter came in, wheeling a small trolley consisting of a padlocked metal chest on a stand.
‘Dharkar, Ram,’ said the more senior of the two. ‘Medication has been ordered.’
She took a key from the bunch at her waist and solemnly unlocked the metal chest. Ghote saw that its interior was lined with pill bottles and jars by the dozen. The nurse consulted a sheet of paper and then selected one of the bottles.
‘Excuse me,’ Ghote said, prompted by a lingering resentment at the way the medical staff assumed that they and they only had a god-given right to do what they wanted when they wanted. ‘Excuse me, but isn’t it that this man is in Nil by Mouth condition?’
The nurse turned towards him, eyes sparking.
‘Are you saying we do not know our duty?’ she snapped. ‘Tests have been carried out. Patient is not fit for immediate operation. The heart rate must be brought down.’
She turned to her colleague, showing her the label on the pill bottle.
‘Digoxin 250 micrograms,’ she said.
‘Digoxin 250 micrograms,’ the other nurse confirmed.
‘One every four hours.’
‘One every four hours.’
The senior nurse poured a little water from a vacuum flask in the medicine chest into a small plastic glass, handed Ram Dharkar a single white pill and the glass and watched him swallow the pill down.
When the pair of them had left Ghote turned to the injured goonda again.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you have had your taste of water after all.’
‘And it is making it bloody worse,’ Ram Dharkar responded. ‘It is like giving a starving man one corner of a sweetmeat only.’
‘Well,’ Ghote answered, ‘I suppose you must endure it. They did not take away that notice above your head.’
‘But, Inspectorji, it is hot-hot. Feel only how hot I am.’
Ghote bent forward and took the goonda’s calloused hand. It was thickly wet with sweat.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, you are hot. Even I am also.’
He glanced round the little room. Not even a fan to be seen.
‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I would see if I can open that window.’
He got up and went across to the narrow opaque-glass affair. For a moment he wondered whether he had been sensible to make the offer. With the window open could Ram Dharkar, afraid for his life, make his escape through it should he himself have to leave the guarded cabin before he had finally got hold of that name? The fellow might think of it. He might. And then they would have lost their one golden opportunity.
But that was nonsense. Dharkar with his smashed kneecap would be totally incapable of getting through a window as narrow as this.
He thrust up its lower frame.
Nevertheless, having done so, he could not prevent himself putting his head out and making a careful survey of the escape possibilities.
No, he decided after a long look round, it really was safe enough. True, the window did overlook a lane inside the huge hospital compound. But, though technically at ground-floor level, it was in fact quite high up. A beggar, or some such, sitting crouched against the wall below, a piece of gunny laid out beside him to collect alms, looked from above quite small, his dirty-haired head like a dried coconut with the stump of one out-thrust leg – the fellow must be a l
eper, perhaps a patient from another department – looking like one of the flat bats dhobis used to beat washing clean. There was, certainly, a drainpipe running up the wall nearby, and an active man could probably scramble down that to the ground. But Ram Dharkar was the very opposite of an active man. No, it was safe enough.
Ghote turned from the window. Air less humidly hot than that in the room did seem to be drifting in.
‘Better, heh?’ he said to Ram Dharkar. ‘Cooler, no?’
The goonda grunted unwilling assent.
‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I am wanting-wanting something to drink.’
‘Well, we would be seeing about that perhaps later.’ Ghote answered with vague helpfulness. ‘But now. Now let us talk about the man who had that done to your knee.’
‘No.’
‘But—’
‘No, no, Inspectorji. I tell you he is not a person to be playing with, that one. If he had one idea only that I had given his name, or that I was thinking only – why, if he knew I was just only talking with you now – then it would be the finish of me straight away.’
‘But think, man. How could he do that? When you are here, police guarded, in this hospital?’
‘I am not knowing how. I am just knowing that he would do it.’
‘But revenge. You could be taking revenge for what he has just done. Give us his name only, and where we could find, and in one hour, in one half-hour, he would be behind the bars and you would be here laughing.’
But Ram Dharkar merely turned his head away and lay silent.
Ghote sat on his uncomfortably sagging chair beside the bed and tried to think of some new line to take. But he felt that with every passing minute his chances of catching on to the injured goonda’s desire for revenge – and, surely, surely he had that – were getting less.
At last the fellow stirred and gave a weary moan.
‘So hot,’ he said.
‘Yes, it is hot. And if it had not been for your Dada you would not be here sweating it out, in pain, and on a crutch for the rest of your life also. So what is his name, man? What is his name?’
‘A drink. I would give anything for one good, long, cool drink. Thandai, Inspector. You are knowing thandai?’
‘Oh yes,’ Ghote answered, trying for a new bond of sympathy. ‘When I was a young man often I was taking thandai at that place at Kalba Devi where they are making specially. And very good it was, that milk, the ice crushed in and the mixed flavours, almond, pistachio, rose water, melon seeds.’
‘And, Inspectorji, something else also?’
The injured goonda’s voice had taken on a note of girlish coyness.
‘Ah,’ Ghote said, with a little laugh. ‘The bhang that fellow is putting in sometimes, eh? The stuff that sends you into a nice, nice dream.’
‘That is it, Inspector. That is it. Ah, what would I not give at just only this moment for a long, long drink of bhang thandai.’
And then an idea came into Inspector Ghote’s head, an altogether wrong idea. But an idea of insidious appeal.
For a while he fought it down. He tackled Ram Dharkar once again, putting to him again all the arguments he had offered before. He could think of no others. But all his efforts seemed to be wasted. The goonda lay there on the bed, his face blankly inexpressive, occasionally letting out almost against his will a groan of pain and frustration. Then, right in the middle of one of Ghote’s most complex, and most persuasive, sentences, the fellow brutally interrupted.
‘Oh, shut up, shut up. What for are you going on and on? There is one thing only I am wanting, that bhang thandai. That only.’
And Ghote succumbed.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If I am going out and smuggling in for you as big a drink of thandai as you have ever seen in your life, will you in exchange give me that name?’
The offer certainly got to the injured goonda. Ghote could positively see him swallowing down in anticipation that long, cool, refreshing and peace-bringing drink.
And, he thought, damn it all, that nurse said the operation had been delayed. So what real harm could there be in letting the fellow have something solid to drink? They must have left that Nil by Mouth card up there by mistake. He was not really endangering the man’s life by letting him have his thandai.
And, when it came to it, he could always get the name out of him first and then throw the drink out of the window.
But would the fellow accept the offered bribe? Would he?
‘Big-big? Double size?’
The bait had been taken. Right or wrong, it was to be done now.
And, perhaps, when he got back – getting the stuff was going to take him some little time – that notice would have been removed from the bedhead and Ram Dharkar would be able to have as much ‘by mouth’ as he liked. And if bhang would hardly be permitted by the hospital authorities, it would not do the fellow much harm. Might even do good, ease the pain.
‘All right, my friend, I am off now. About half an hour, a little more perhaps. And you be thinking what you would be telling, no? Every detail you are able to remember. Then there will be no mistake in nabbing that Dada of yours.’
In fact, it took Ghote rather more than an hour to complete his errand. He realised first that he would need a good container to get the stuff into Ram Dharkar’s cabin unobserved, something that would fit into his own briefcase. That took him some time to find amid the high-piled shops of Lohar Chawl with their heaps of crockery and glassware in orderly mounds, their bright plastic buckets piled in man-high towers, their steel or aluminium glasses in carefully constructed pyramids, their electric hot-plates and toasters tempting the middle classes and the pushing, gawping crowds buying and not buying, beating down prices and paying too much.
But at last he found a flat plastic flask with a screw top that looked as if it would hold a really sizeable amount of cooling thandai. Then he had to hurry down to Kalba Devi where the specialist in thandai had his stall. And there, since the day was scorchingly hot, he found a long, slow-moving line of customers waiting to be served, and had patiently to stand in it till he reached its head. He even had some trouble then persuading the thandaiwalla, cross-legged on a small bench beneath his cupboard-like, bright pink-painted stall, to pour the concoction into his plastic container, though one quick whispered word and the sight of a twenty-rupee note had sufficed to get him a mixture well laced with bhang.
Hurrying back to the hospital, Ghote began to worry that he might somehow be too late. Of course Ram Dharkar must still be there. That was one certain thing. The fellow could not move. But might he have somehow changed his mind? Might some thought of how the mysterious Dada could get at him despite all precautions have made him determined after all not to say one more single word?
Or could he, in the past hour, somehow have received a warning from the Dada? But how? No, it was impossible. A vision of a paper dart being flown in through that narrow open window momentarily crossed his mind. But that was ridiculous. Utter fantasy.
The constable on guard at the cabin’s door being bribed to let someone in just long enough to deliver a threat? Well, it was possible. But he himself knew the fellow, a man near retirement, two yellow long-service stripes on his sleeve. As trustworthy as anybody in the force.
Nevertheless, entering the noisy, crowded entrance hall of the hospital – ‘OPD Case Notes’, the letters must stand for Out-Patients Department – he could not prevent himself from breaking into a walk not far short of a trot. Luckily he remembered how to get to Cabin No. 773, along one high, white-tiled corridor, his footsteps tapping out, up a wide set of stairs, along again, the white tiles here cracked and sometimes splashed with rust-red betel-juice stains, down another staircase, past the nursing station, briefcase with its illegal guggling flask inside, a quick nod to the Sister on duty and there he was, outside the cabin, the grey-haired long-serving constable squatting beside its door scrambling up to salute him, alert as ever.
‘No trouble, Constable?’
And in. And there was Ram Dharkar lying on the bed, looking as if he had hardly moved in the past hour.
Looking, in fact, a good deal worse, Ghote thought, than when he had left him. But an hour more of pain, that would probably account for the clouded eyes, the yet greyer complexion. And the sight and smell of refreshing thandai – it ought still to be noticeably cool – should surely revive him.
‘Well, man,’ he said, infusing his voice with enthusiasm, ‘thandai I have got. A big-big lot, more than you have ever had before I am betting.’
He unscrewed the top of the flask and held it just under Ram Dharkar’s grey, unmoving face.
And got no response. No response at all.
He swirled the scented pink liquid in the flask and held it near the sick man again.
‘Take, take,’ he said. ‘Take one good drink and then be telling me that name.’
But Ram Dharkar lay unmoving.
Damn it, had the fellow gone right back to the beginning again? Had he, in that past hour, decided once more that he dared not speak? Not despite every precaution taken to guard him? Not despite his own promise to have the Dada nabbed within half an hour of learning his name and whereabouts? Not despite this offered illegal bribe?
Now suddenly, without warning, the goonda lying flat on the bed began to vomit.
Ghote was appalled. This was something he had not at all expected. And the fellow, he realised now, looked desperately ill. On the point of death even.
He tore across to the door of the little room, flung it open, saw with relief the Sister who had first shown him where the cabin was trotting down the corridor outside and shouted to her that Ram Dharkar was very, very ill.
In a moment she was beside the vomiting goonda’s bed making a quick, professional analysis.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he is serious. Very serious. Ring that bell, Inspector. We are going to need much more of help if he is not to expire.’
Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes Page 18