‘Madam, I have been attempting to interview a Mrs Gulabchand. But some difficulties are there.’
‘Mrs Gulabchand-Investments Gulabchand? But I know her well, Inspector. She has been in my column many times. She is giving some very, very high-class parties. If you have a problem there, I can get her to see you in one second only.’
Ghote did not feel as grateful as he knew he should. He had no doubt that Pinky Dinkarrao could secure in one second only with the lure of a mention in her column what all the authority of a Crime Branch officer seemed to be failing to obtain. But he wished it was not so. He knew it ought not to be so. He wished, too, now that he had been, as Axel Svensson had said he should have been, more determined in face of Mrs Gulabchand’s vague promise of allowing him to go over her apartment when the demands of her social life permitted.
But, whatever the difficulties, he must get as soon as possible a good long look at the scene of Yeshwant’s intrusion into the Gulabchand home, with Mrs Gulabchand there to question on the spot.
‘Miss Dinkarrao,’ he said, ‘you are most kind.’
‘I tell you what, Inspector,’ Pinky answered. ‘I will find out how soon Preeti can be free and then, if you give me your home number, I will ring you and we can meet at her place.’
‘Most kind,’ Ghote said.
He felt, however, that it was most unkind. Unkind of fate, if not of Pinky Dinkarrao. And there was, of course, worse to come.
‘And Mr Svensson,’ Pinky said with a flash of a smile on her intent features, ‘since, as Inspector Ghote was saying, you also are interested in Yeshwant’s activities, perhaps you would like to come. I am sure Preeti will be delighted.’
Ghote spent a frustrating afternoon devoted to trying to make his day’s report to Deputy Commissioner Kabir sound more productive than it should truthfully have been. Then he had had an evening keeping an uneasy truce between his wife and his son – Don’t be pestering always. Next morning he was, to his fury, almost late getting to the Taj to pick up Axel Svensson. From the hotel they were to go to Mrs Gulabchand’s Green Apartments at Worli Seaface where it had been arranged in no time at all they would meet Pinky Dinkarrao at eleven o’clock.
Seething with impatience, he had found himself, shortly after ten, outside Churchgate Station unable to advance a single step amid the press of people heading for their places of work, latecomers every one. As was the custom, the crowds pouring out of the trains coming into the station – one every three minutes, packed to their open doors and beyond – were being held up in favour of the cars zooming past, their occupants equally leaving it till the last minute to arrive at their destinations. A long rope, attached to a post at the kerb and held at the other end by a hefty constable, kept the tumultuous newcomers in check.
Damn the fellow, Ghote had thought. Why can’t he drop the bloody thing?
This, in spite of the fact that when by chance on other occasions he had been at this spot at much this time he had invariably thought to himself, Yes, we in the police do good sometimes. Crowds must be controlled.
However, at last the constable had let the rope fall and a thousand hurrying feet trampled over it to the far side, to surge into the chambers, offices and shops awaiting them. Ghote, pushing and elbowing with the best, managed to get over before the constable heaved up the rope once more.
In the event he reached the Taj at the exact time he had agreed with Axel Svensson. The big Swede was there in the lobby, wearing today in place of his white suit a smart blue shirt generously pocketed and decorated with innumerable buttons. At Worli Seaface, too, Pinky Dinkarrao, as ever carelessly wrapped in a highly coloured cotton sari, voluminous leather bag bumping at hip, emerged from a taxi just as they reached the tall, appropriately green-painted Green Apartments.
A servant opened the door to the ninth-floor flat at their ring of the bell. It was made abundantly plain then that this was a home where shoes were not worn inside. Once that had been explained to the looming, bear-like flringhi, they were ushered into the drawing room. Mrs Gulabchand, yet more imposing in a heavily hand-embroidered pink sari, was sitting supervising, beady-eyed, a man squatting at a low table re-stringing one of her pearl necklaces.
‘Come again tomorrow,’ she briskly told him. ‘Leave that now.’
But, once the fellow had scuttled out, tea and dishes of sweetmeats had to be dutifully consumed, and praised, before Ghote felt he could put any questions.
‘Madam,’ he began at last, ‘I was asking yesterday if I would be able to see exactly where was your valuable choker when this thief was laying hands on same.’
‘It was in my bedroom, Inspector.’
‘Yes, madam. So I may see the spot itself?’
‘But it is my bedroom, Inspector. You are proposing to go in there to poke and pry to your full heart’s content?’
Ghote blenched.
‘Madam, it is necessary.’
He saw Mrs Gulabchand draw herself up.
He could not help then casting a glance, even a beseeching glance, in Pinky Dinkarrao’s direction. And the journalist’s nose for a story – I See Mysterious Yeshwant Unmasked – overcame any shreds of politeness she may have had.
‘But, Preeti,’ Pinky Dinkarrao said, ‘you must be knowing that the police have to go here, there and everywhere. Into the slums, into brothels, into matka gambling and opium dens, everywhere.’
‘My bedroom is not a—’
‘No, no, Preeti. No one is suggesting that your bedroom, let alone this apartment, is anything at all like those places. I was just pointing out that the police get used to being in all sorts of homes. They take no notice. They look only for what they need to see. For clues.’
‘And you are thinking they will find clues’ – a wrinkled nose – ‘in my bedroom?’
‘Well, if they are to get hold of this terrible climbing thief they must first of all find some clues. Where better than in a bedroom of a home as well kept as this?’
The laid-on tribute to the splendour of the apartment, and its state of pure cleanliness, did the trick.
‘Very well,’ Mrs Gulabchand said.
Quickly Ghote got to his feet. Mrs Gulabchand indicated that her journalist friend alone should accompany him into the inner sanctum. They went.
And there was nothing to see.
Ghote re-examined the windows, now firmly closed to retain the big room’s air-conditioned atmosphere. Long before this, he realized, the ledges under them must have been swept free even of every tiny grain of the fingerprint powder. He traced out next the path from windows to dressing table which Yeshwant must have crept along, noiseless as a ghost, while Mr and Mrs Gulabchand lay peacefully beside each other in the big bed. But each surface the fleshly bhoot might have touched was shining now from the efforts of a servant’s duster-cloth.
‘No good,’ he said to Pinky at last.
‘Well, I will at least be able to describe the very spot in my column. With all details.’
They returned to find Mrs Gulabchand telling Axel Svensson about the problems of living in the city.
‘Believe me, Mr Svensson, whatever filth and dirt there may be in the road and even on the stairs in this block, I will not let it cross my door. Out there, filth. Inside here—’
Ghote ruthlessly interrupted. There was something he needed to clear up.
‘Mrs Gulabchand,’ he said. ‘In your bedroom I was observing all windows were closed. This was to preserve cool from the A/C, yes?’
‘Certainly, Inspector. Last year my husband was installing the very latest machines from Ajmani Air-Conditioning. They are most costly to run. So we are always keeping every window closed. It is shutting out noise also.’
‘But then, madam, how was Yeshwant getting into your bedroom to take your choker?’
But, sharply though he had put the question, Mrs Gulabchand was unfazed.
‘Of course, Inspector,’ she said, ‘at night, when it is quieter, I allow one window to be open. My husband is
a Number One fresh air fiend, like a real Englishman Pinky was saying in her column once.’
One more hopeful line run into the sand, Ghote thought. One more rich lady interviewed to no purpose, too. What point would there be in asking to question the servants? Mrs Latika Patel’s English-knowing guru had taught him that. There was no way any of them here could have informed Yeshwant that on just one occasion a valuable piece of jewellery had been left out of its safe, any more than there had been any way at the apartment at the top of towering Landsend.
Nothing else for it but to say goodbye. Taking Axel Svensson with him to put their shoes on again, he rang for the lift and descended, leaving Pinky Dinkarrao to extract from her friend some last morsels to enliven her column.
But it was while the two of them were standing in the lobby, bracing themselves to face the heat and noise of the city, that Axel Svensson said something that, in a moment, gave Ghote the lead he had almost lost hope of ever finding.
‘Ganesh, tell me something about Mrs Gulabchand. Do you think she was hoping to get from some insurance firm more than the value of her stolen choker? I was remembering, when you put a question to her just now, that she had said out there at Juju Beach—’
‘It is not Juju. It is Juhu. Juhu.’
‘Yes, yes. At Juhu Beach. I was remembering that she was trying to claim that the choker was worth more than – what was it? – two something-or-others. And you were quoting to her the exact description you had from Pappy Chimanlal and Co.—’
‘It is Pappubhai Chimanlal,’ Ghote said, scarcely checking his exasperation.
Then the sudden thought came to him.
‘Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co.,’ he repeated. ‘Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co. Do you know, Axel, my good friend, I think at last I have seen something that can pinpoint this Yeshwant for me. Yes, I think that I have.’
SIX
No sooner had Ghote had that moment of illumination which the words Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co. had brought to him than, outside in the sun-hammered street, he spotted the yellow roof of a taxi. He went at a run through Green Apartments’ heavy glass doors, calling back to Axel Svensson to come with him. What if Pinky Dinkarrao was to leave the flat on the ninth floor sooner than she might? What if she was to emerge from the lift – someone was jab-jabbing at a call button – while he was in the middle of telling Axel Svensson what had burst into his mind? If she got hold of the theory that had come to him about how Yeshwant operated, even though it was no more than an idea at present, she would seek to make it into a scoop for her column. Yeshwant would be warned. Then there would be nothing to stop him disappearing into the vast millions of India. The fellow must have made a huge sum already, even if, with the jewellery broken down and its gold settings untraceably melted, it would fetch no more than a tenth of its original value. But that would provide all the money any absconder would need, and more.
He succeeded in hailing the cab, and a moment later ponderous Axel Svensson, puffing more than a little, pounded up and joined him. They got in.
‘Crawford Market,’ Ghote ordered, thinking of all he might do at Headquarters to confirm the idea that had broken in on him.
Then, feeling he owed the firinghi an explanation, he risked being half-overheard by their Sikh driver. In as low a voice as he could he began accounting for what that spark of instant illumination had put into his head.
‘Axel sahib, kindly do not be shouting out about what I am going to say. But it is thanks to yourself mentioning just now Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co. that something has come to me about Yeshwant. It is this: I am thinking that each and every one of the thefts I have so far investigated, and that is now almost all of them, was of a single maha expensive piece, just recently bought from Chimanlal’s itself.’
‘All from only that single—’
Then Axel Svensson managed to check his roar of sudden understanding.
‘You are saying,’ he went on in a heavy whisper, ‘that Yeshwant is stealing only pieces of jewellery coming from this one place, Pappubhai and Co. And that means – is this what your idea is? – that Yeshwant has access to that establishment. He waits until he gets to learn that some customer there has just bought a truly magnificent piece, and then, perhaps watching their apartment windows over some nights, he seizes his opportunity, climbs in and takes it.’
Under the rattle of the taxi’s engine Ghote had not made out every word of the Swede’s spit-splashy whispering. But, as he had been half-listening, he had begun to be swept over by doubts. When the idea had first struck him it had seemed so right that he had not even tried to find any flaws. Now he could not help asking if it was not somehow all too easy.
One of those doubts, barely formed in his head, was now unexpectedly put into words by Axel Svensson himself.
‘But, listen, my friend. Something has just this moment occurred to me. Tell me, how is it that no one in all your Crime Bureau – your Crime Branch I ought to say – has not thought of this before? Perhaps you have not been told that inquiries at Pappubhai and Co. have produced some fact that spoils your theory.’
‘No,’ Ghote said, seeing what must have happened. ‘No, at least that cannot be so. When I was being given my orders by Mr Kabir, he would have informed. Definitely. No, what I think has happened is that it has not occurred to anyone that all the thefts are linked to Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co. because each of them up till I was put in charge was investigated by a different officer, most from local police stations, some in past few days only from Crime Branch. So no one has noticed this.’
‘Yes,’ Axel Svensson said brightening with every word. ‘Yes, you are right. That is how it must have happened. There can be no doubt about it. But— But what a piece of luck for you, my friend that you have been so clever as to think of it.’
‘Luck? What of luck?’
‘That the circumstances were such that no one else was able to see the plain fact you have just hit on. If they had, before you were even given the case they would have found out who Yeshwant actually is and have put him behind bars.’
‘Well, I am not altogether thinking that—’
‘But, yes, my friend, yes. Now everything is in your favour. You have only to go to Pappubhai and Co. and make some hard-pressing inquiries and the whole truth will come out. There must be someone there who is feeding information to Yeshwant. Unless— Yes, unless Yeshwant himself is an employee there. Yes, that is most probably it. Yeshwant is working at Pappubhai and Co. He is an employee. So, go there. Go and start asking questions. In five minutes or ten you will see a look on somebody’s face that will tell you straight away you can make the arrest.’
‘But, listen, Yeshwant may not at all be an employee at Pappubhai Chimanlal. He may be getting his informations just only from someone there, someone he is knowing. It may even be that this person is not at all realizing they are telling him what he is wanting to know.’
‘No, no, my friend. I am sure Yeshwant works there. Certain. It is the most obvious explanation. No, tell our driver to go not to your Headquarters, but straight to— Where is that shop?’
‘In Zaveri Bazaar. It is where all the big jewellers are.’
‘Right. So you must go to Pappa-whatsit this moment. Driver, driver, go to Whatever-Bazaar. Top speed. Top speed.’
Ghote thanked his stars that the Swede’s jumbled words had made no impression on the broad back and turbaned head of the Sikh at the wheel.
‘No, listen,’ he said urgently, taking Axel Svensson by the arm. ‘Listen, we should not be in so much of hurry. If Yeshwant truly is a member of the staff at Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co., provided we are not charging into that place like some buffalo escaping from the dairies in north Bombay and causing utmost confusion, he can be safely left. He must not be allowed for any reason to guess the police is near to him. And it is the same if there is only some jasoos, some spy, of his in there. No, no. There is nothing to be done there just now.’
‘But there is. There must be. You cannot disco
ver what you have, and then sit back and do nothing about it. You cannot.’
But this, Ghote felt, was intruding too far into his own domain.
‘I can,’ he said. ‘It is the right way to act. To do nothing whatsoever until more of certainty is there. And that is what I am going to do, to find out if what I have thought of is a certain fact.’
Axel Svensson turned away and humped himself into a large disapproving mass.
Ghote, when he had deposited his sulky companion at the Taj, realized that he could well be grateful that they had quarrelled. Now he could devote the rest of the day not to rushing like an invading horde into the calm of Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co.’s big air-conditioned showroom but, in Yeshwant’s footsteps again, to checking the last of the places he had robbed and confirming, or not, that his victims had bought their jewellery from that most prestigious of firms.
So who is next on my list? he asked himself. Yes, it is one Mrs Shobna Parulkar. Husband is that well-known barrister, the very first of Yeshwant’s victims.
Contacted on the telephone, Mrs Parulkar was happy to give him an almost immediate appointment. And, when he came to stand in front of the big old house off Cuffe Parade where the Parulkar flat was, he saw it would have presented no difficulty at all to climbing Yeshwant. The building was no more than five storeys high and its whole face was a mass of knobbly cornices and columns and balconies shaded by little sloping roofs.
Yes, he thought, even I would not have too much of a problem to climb up and up this old building to the top.
He went through the elaborate crumbling stone gateway. The chowkidar on his stool in the hallway was three-parts asleep in a state of faraway afternoon bliss. At a poke in the ribs, he blinked himself into a semblance of life and announced, with a grunt of malign pleasure, that the building had no lift.
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