The Manager turned to offer explanations to the complaining customer.
Ghote gave a deep sigh.
‘Look into Santa’s sack, Manager sahib,’ he said.
‘Ah! Yes. Yes, yes.’
The big sack was jerked wide. The Manager plunged to his knees.
‘Wait,’ Ghote shouted suddenly.
The Manager turned and looked up.
‘You should let a police officer handle this,’ Ghote said.
He stepped up on to the platform and knelt in his turn beside the gaping sack. Then, very carefully, he felt about inside it, easing his fingers past bars of chocolate, little bags of sweets.
At last he rose to his feet.
Between the tip of the forefinger of his right hand and its thumb he was holding a crocodile-skin note-case frothed at the rim with big blue one-hundred rupee notes.
‘Mine,’ exclaimed the watching lady customer.
Beside her, her daughter burst into tears.
‘Inspector,’ the Manager said, ‘kindly charge-sheet this fellow.’
‘Well, Manager sahib,’ Ghote replied, ‘I am thinking I should not do that until I have evidences. Fingerprint evidences.’
‘But … but we have caught him red-handed only.’
‘Are you sure, Manager sahib? Were you actually observing this Santa placing the note-case inside his sack? And, more, did you not observe his manner when you were accusing? He was not at all his usual chirpy self. Now, if he was thinking that by hiding himself this note-case in his sack he would altogether trick you because you would not look there, I am believing he would have found something cheeky to be saying. It was because he was not that I was suddenly realising what must have happened.’
‘And what was that, Inspector?’ the rich customer demanded.
‘Oh, madam, you could not be knowing, but just only as I was entering this store I was catching sight of one Ram Prasad, notorious pickpocket. And he also was catching sight of myself, and ek dum he was turning round and making his way more into the store. It was soon after, I am thinking, that he was dropping the note-case he had already lifted from your open handbag into this sack. This Santa must have spotted him doing that, but been unable to prevent and Ram Prasad will have had the intention of removing his loot when he had seen that I myself had left the store. I do not have much of doubt that it will be his fingerprints, which we have had ten-twelve years upon the file, that will be found on his very nice shiny crocodile-skin surface.’
And it was then that, behind the bedraggled cottonwool of his beard, Santa sahib gave a wide, wide smile.
‘Ho, ho, ho,’ he chuckled.
1988
THIRTEEN
The Purloined Parvati and Other Artefacts
The Assistant Commissioner was angry. Inspector Ghote could be in no doubt of it. That voice, he thought, so loud it must be heard through entire Bombay.
The ACP had thumped the glass-topped surface of his desk, too.
‘It is not good enough. Not good enough by one damn long chalk.’
‘No, sir. No, ACP sahib.’
‘The clear-up rate for Crime Branch has fallen almost to zero.’
Ghote thought of stating the exact figure which, if it was somewhat down on the year before, was still well above that zero. But he realised that putting it forward would hardly calm the ACP’s wrath. In fact, it might have the very opposite effect.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
‘And you, Ghote, are as much responsible as any. More even. More.’
Again Ghote was aware of a lack of precise factuality in the ACP’s charge. But this time he did not even produce a word in acknowledgement.
‘Look at the business of the Gudalpore Temple theft,’ the ACP stormed on, as unappeased by silence as he had been by sycophantic agreement. ‘How long is it since we were receiving the tip-off that the loot was held in Bombay for inspection by some damn unscrupulous foreign buyers? Two months? Three months? Four?’
Once more Ghote decided that silence was best. It was not.
‘How long? I am asking you, Inspector. How long? Three months, four?’
‘It is seven weeks, three days, ACP sahib.’
‘Exactly. Seven weeks, eight, and what results have you succeeded to get?’
‘Sir, it is not at all easy. We have had no more than that one tip-off itself. No hint even of where the loot may be hidden. No reports of any suspicious foreigners coming to camp in Bombay.’
‘No this, no that. What good are your noes and woes to me, Inspector? It is results I am wanting. A most valuable statue of Goddess Parvati was stolen in broad daylight and numerous artefacts also.’
‘Artefacts, sir?’ Ghote blurted the question out before he had had time to see it would be a mistake to display ignorance of what exactly the English word meant.
‘Yes, man, artefacts. Artefacts. Whatsoever they are.’
The ACP snatched the metal paperweight inscribed with his initials off one of the formidable piles of documents on his desk and began a scrabbling hunt through it. At last he produced a long list badly reproduced on mauvish paper, and slammed the paperweight back before the breeze from the big fan behind him could play havoc with the pile.
He began reading aloud.
‘One Goddess Parvati, tenth-twelfth century, sandstone, height 147 centimetres, seated upon a representation of a tipai in the semi-lotus position with the left arm resting upon the knee and the right in an attitude of blessing. Plus four God Ganeshas, terracotta, height 22 centimetres, 23 centimetres, 25 centimetres and 28 centimetres respectively. Plus one Goddess Sarasvati, bronze, 12 centimetres, tail of peacock partly missing. Plus two Krishnas, fluting, no heights stated. Plus eighteen other artefacts, various.’
He looked up.
‘Eighteen artefacts, Ghote, and you have not been able to locate even one.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, it is not good—’
The ACP’s observations were interrupted by the shrilling of one of the three telephones on his wide-spreading desk. He picked it up.
‘Horn?’
An urgent voice squeaked out.
‘No,’ the ACP barked back. ‘No, I am not able to see. Every damn foreigner coming here has some letter of introduction from a Minister and thinks they can bother me with their every least wish. I have appointment. Lions Club luncheon. One hundred per cent important.’
He slammed the phone down.
‘Ghote,’ he said, his voice much less furious than it had been a minute earlier, ‘there is some Professor Something-or-other wanting to make some complaint or protest or demand. Deal with it, yes?’
‘Yes, sir. Yes, ACP sahib. Right away, sir.’
Ghote clicked heels smartly and left, buoyed up with relief at the unforeseen rescue.
Fate, it soon began to seem, was to be yet kinder to him. The foreign professor turned out to his surprise to be not the venerable man he had envisaged but an English lady, stout of person, red of face, bristly of eyebrow and clad in skirt and jacket of some tough pale brown material resembling the sail of a Harbour dhow. She had no sooner announced herself as ‘Professor Prunella Partington, good day to you’ than she stated in a ringingly British voice that she had just seen in Bombay ‘a Parvati statue that ought quite certainly to be in its proper place in the temple of Gudalpore’.
Ghote could hardly believe his ears. Was this – this lady actually speaking about the very statue of Goddess Parvati, 147 centimetres in height, stolen from the Gudalpore Temple and hidden ever since somewhere in Bombay awaiting a foreign buyer? The very idol, together with other artefacts, that he had just been rebuked by the ACP for not having located?
‘Madam,’ he said, his heart thumping in confusion, ‘what, please, is the height of said statue?’
‘Height? Height? How the devil should I know?’
‘But you have stated that you have just only seen same, madam.’
‘Course I have. Wouldn’t come round to Police Headquar
ters fast as I could, would I, unless I had?’
‘But, then, the height of same?’
‘Oh, I suppose about five feet. Far as I remember when I examined it at Gudalpore ten years ago. Statue of Parvati, seated on a stool in the semi-lotus position. Sandstone.’
‘Madam, this is sounding altogether like one idol stolen from that same temple seven-eight weeks back, together with other art— art— other objects, madam.’
‘Well, obviously it’s been stolen from Gudalpore, and someone had better come along pronto and arrest the fellow who stole it.’
‘You are knowing who it is? Please, kindly state where he is to be found.’
‘In that appalling sham museum of his, of course. Where else?’
‘But, madam, you are altogether failing to name that appalling sham museum.’
‘Nonsense, my good chap. Course I named it. Look, here’s the place’s piffling brochure.’
From her large leather handbag, stoutly clasped, the professor – was she Professor Mrs or Professor Miss Prunella, Ghote wondered – produced a slim pamphlet printed in a shade of deep pink.
Ghote read.
Hrishikesh Agnihotri Museum of Indology. This Museum is serving the nation for the past two and a half decades playing an important role by displaying classical, traditional and also folk arts to fulfil aesthetic, scientific and practical aims. It is containing different specimens in various fields, viz. Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Chiromancy, Phonology, Anthropology, and Archaeology. The Museum may also organize from time to time seminars, lecture series, conferences and meetings for research and study on Mythology, Tantra, Yantra, Mantra, Astro-Geomancy, Physiognomy, Palaeontology, Gemology, Alchemy and several other arts and sciences originating in India in ancient and medieval times. Founded by Shri Hrishikesh Agnihotri. Chairman of the Board of Trustees: Shri Hrishikesh Agnihotri.
He looked up at the burly form of the British professor.
‘But this is sounding cent per cent pukka,’ he said, much impressed by all the -ologies and -ancies. ‘It is seeming not at all of sham.’
‘Poppycock, my good man. Poppycock. A hodge-podge like that? Fellow must be an utter charlatan. You’ll think so pretty quick when you see him. Come on.’
‘But madam,’ Ghote said, still reserving judgement, ‘in any case it is not possible at once to come on. If your detailed description of the idol of Parvati is correct, I am admitting there is a prima facie case against one Mr Hrishikesh Agnihotri. But if I am to nab the gentleman certain procedures must be followed.’
‘And in the meantime the fellow will take to his heels, accompanied by that dreadful dumb brute he keeps about the place.’
‘There is another miscreant also?’
‘I should jolly well say there is. Just as I’d spotted the Gudalpore Parvati this hulking creature came out of a little door just behind it. Well, I’d seen quite enough anyhow, so I came straight round here. I’ve got a letter from your Minister of Health, Family Planning, Gaols and the Arts, you know.’
‘Yes, yes, madam. And I am promising fullest cooperation itself. But, kindly understand, under Criminal Procedure Code it is necessary to have any arrest witnessed by two panches, as we are calling them.’
‘Independent evidence? Well, wouldn’t I be that?’
‘No, madam. Very regret. You would be witness for prosecution only.’
The professor drew her bristly eyebrows together in thought for a moment. Then she brightened.
‘Got just the chap for you,’ she said. ‘You could call him an expert on Indian art even. Staying at my hotel, as it happens. Name of Edgar Poe.’
Ghote felt a faint stirring at the back of his mind.
‘Edgar Poe?’ he asked. ‘It is the gentleman who is writing the famous story of “The Pit and the Pendulum”?’
‘Good God, no, man. Edgar Allan Poe must have been dead over a hundred years. This chap’s another kettle of fish. Dealer in antiques. As a matter of fact, it was because of him that I went to that appalling museum at all. Heard him talking to an Indian friend over breakfast this morning. Sitting at the next table. Mentioned the place, and I thought it might be worth a quick look-see. Suppose it was, in a way, since I spotted the Gudalpore Parvati. But Mr Poe and his friend would make first-class – what-d’you-call-’ems – pinches.’
‘Madam, it is panch. Panch.’
‘Never mind all that. Thing is, we could be round there in ten minutes if you get a move on, pick them up and get over to that place.’
‘No, madam, no. I am thinking that it is not altogether a fine idea. Your Mr Poe would be kept here in India perhaps many, many months waiting to give evidence. No, I would instead obtain some very, very suitable persons.’
The professor shrugged her burly shoulders.
‘As you like, Inspector, as you like. But do hurry up or our birds will have flown the coop.’
Resenting obscurely being put under this pressure, Ghote picked up his phone, got through to the nearby Tilak Marg Police Station – whose good offices he relied on in situations like this – and requested that an officer should come round as quickly as possible with two of their regular panches.
‘And, listen,’ he added, ‘do not send the sort of fellows you are using when it is just only a question of pulling in some chain-snatcher. This is a Number One important business. So find some panches claiming full respect, yes? This is a fifty-sixty lakh theft case. More.’
He got quick and complete agreement. Fifty-sixty lakhs was big money.
But when the two witnesses and a sub-inspector met them outside the little Press Room hut near the entrance to the Headquarters compound, Ghote saw at once that they were by no means the respectable citizens he had so carefully specified. One was a very old man with a mouth that hung slackly open to reveal a single long yellow tooth, probably a retired office peon to judge by the raggedy khaki jacket that covered his bare chest. The other, though much younger, was scarcely more presentable, a pinjari, one of the itinerant fluffers-up of cotton mattresses who go about Bombay advertising their services by loudly twanging the single taut wire of the harp-like instrument they use in their work. An object he was possessively clutching.
Nor was Sub-Inspector Jadhav more likely to impress the British professor, Ghote thought. He was a stocky, cocky fellow who at once attempted to take charge of the whole operation.
‘I am bringing four-five constables, Inspector,’ he said. ‘You were not requisitioning, but for a job like this you would be needing some fellows who know how to get a suspect ready to talk.’
‘No, I was not requisitioning,’ Ghote snapped out. ‘And let me remind you, I am in charge of this operation, SI.’
He turned to the little group of tough-looking uniformed men at the sub-inspector’s heels.
‘Report back to your station ek dum,’ he barked. ‘At the double, at the double.’
Turning, he bundled the two panches and the sub-inspector into the back of the jeep he had waiting, opened its front door for the British professor, scrambled in himself and told the driver to go as fast as he could under the professor’s directions to the Hrishikesh Agnihotri Museum.
The place proved to be a large dilapidated-looking house, heavy with ornate wooden carving in the style of Gujarati mansions of some hundred years earlier. They mounted the impressive steps and Ghote knocked thunderously on the solid wide door.
No answer came.
‘What did I tell you, Inspector?’ the professor snorted. ‘Flown the coop, both of them.’
Ghote, fighting off a sinking feeling that the culprits had indeed made off, hammered on the door once more.
‘Better I should go round the back, Inspector,’ SI Jadhav said. ‘You often catch fellows who are absconding that way. Pity we were not bringing some more men.’
Keeping half an eye on Jadhav to make sure he did not start to act on his own initiative, Ghote raised his hand to knock yet again. But as he did so, he heard beyond the thick door the slap-slap-slap
of someone approaching with feet in loose-fitting chappals.
A moment later the door was opened a cautious inch or two.
The man who peered out at them was plainly the Museum’s Founder and Chairman of Trustees. Learning and respectability were written on him from head to toe, from his wizened agedness, from the gold-rimmed spectacles half-way along his thin and inquisitive nose, right down to his mis-matched chappals, one pale brown leather, the other black.
‘Public admitted at a fee of rupees three per person,’ he said, apparently altogether failing to recognise the British professor he had seen little more than an hour earlier.
‘I am not at all public,’ Ghote returned sharply. ‘It is police. I am wishing to examine your premises for the purpose of ascertaining whether there is to be found upon same one idol of Goddess Parvati, together with various other— er— artefacts.’
Whether it was the production of this last impressive word or the explicit mention of a statue of Parvati, Ghote’s statement appeared to stun the museum’s Founder and Chairman. His mouth opened. And shut. He fell back a pace.
Swiftly Ghote pushed the heavy front door wide and stepped into a narrow entrance hall lined with a series of tall glass-fronted cupboards. He turned to Professor Prunella, close at his heels.
‘Kindly lead at once to wheresoever the idol of Parvati is to be found,’ he said.
Unhesitatingly the professor marched off. Following, Ghote took in that the tall cupboards to either side were crammed and jammed with an extraordinary variety of objects. One contained vases, of all shapes and sizes, china, brass, enamelled. Another was a jumble of clocks, elegant old European ones, cranky alarms, even a plastic kitchen-timer. A third was apparently filled with measuring devices, ancient sticks marked with notches, lengths of cord regularly knotted, rulers in bundles, even some round metal spring-loaded tapes.
On they went through an archway and into a series of tiny, floor-to-ceiling-filled rooms, each devoted, it seemed, to one or other of the many -ologies and -ancies the museum served the nation by preserving. The Founder and Chairman came clacking after them on his mis-matched chappals, uttering from time to time little squeaks of protest or dismay.
Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes Page 20