‘Hoi, Mr Inspector. A moment only.’
In the hall now. Only a few yards ahead, the big front door of the house. And beyond it the vehicle. Police territory.
‘Hoi, Inspector, what’s the hurry purry. Listen, I have got a good joke to tell you. A joke about the policias.’
Perhaps it would be better not to arouse the old man’s suspicions by ignoring him when he was almost on top of them.
He turned.
‘A little later, sahib,’ he said.
A sop flung out behind.
‘But, Inspector detector, it is a good joke.’
Inspector Ghote felt the old man’s pudgy hand close on his elbow with unyielding insistence.
He turned round again.
The two little pig eyes in the broad expanse of fat face gleamed.
Lala Varde put both hands on the inspector’s arms.
‘Such a good joke. Listen,’ he said.
‘No, I can’t. I am –’
‘Run, Prem, run. Run off from the dirty policias.’
The old man’s bellowed order worked like a galvanizing shock on his son. In a moment the boy had slipped from the inspector’s hold, had flung open the wide front door, was tearing down the steps to the street.
The inspector felt the two pudgy hands clamp like crab claws on to his elbows.
With a ducking lunge he broke free.
‘Stop him, stop him,’ he yelled to the truck driver as helter-skelter he rushed down the steps after Prem.
The driver, hands folded across his pot-belly, took no notice. Inspector Ghote fixed his eyes on Prem’s flying back and ran. Behind him, he heard with a flicker of relief the pounding steps of the big Swede.
In a few moments the Swede had caught up with him, and then he began drawing ahead, closing the gap between them and Prem. His long white-trousered legs reaching out over the ground.
With less than three yards to go, just as they reached the end of the street, a big shiny bus came by. It was not going fast because of a tangle of traffic ahead. Prem stretched out and caught hold of the rail by the door. He swung himself forward, and managed to get first a foot and then his whole body aboard.
Axel Svensson pounded after him.
A coolie with a big basket of building rubble on his head walked blindly into the Swede’s path. Leaving them in a welter of legs and arms and with the squeals of the unsuspecting coolie ringing through the air, Ghote hared on after the bus. But the traffic had untangled, and the bus driver seeing a chance to make up time put his foot down. The bus shot away. Inspector Ghote was left, winded till he thought he was going to be sick, bent almost double watching the brightly painted shiny back of the bus vanishing into the crowded street.
He felt hot, dry tears in his eyes.
And then behind him came a voice. Axel Svensson’s.
‘Quick, my friend. Look, another bus.’
Sure enough, as is the way with public transport, a second bus of the same number was hot on the heels of the first. But it was not as yet going as fast. Inspector Ghote gathered himself together and darted forward. He caught hold of the rail. For a moment he thought it was going to slip out of his sweaty hand. But then he managed to grip it and haul himself up. He felt the big Swede’s body come up behind his and glimpsed the huge pinkish hand with the covering of golden hairs wrapped round the rail above his head. He pushed his way further on board.
The bus was packed tight with passengers but Ghote managed to push and wriggle his way through them to a place where he could both see the bus ahead and be ready to jump off if he spotted Prem getting out.
He leant at his look-out post thankful that for a few minutes at least he did not have to move any more. The heat was if anything heavier and more oppressive. It brought out every smell in the bus – people, diesel fumes, hot metal, spiced breath, rubber slowly cracking and perishing – and mixed them up and inflated them till they seemed to make such an assault on the nerves that screaming point could not be far off.
To the inspector’s savage joy his bus was gradually catching up on the one in front. It was even possible that it would overtake it in some traffic jam and he could surprise Prem by getting off ahead of him and halting the escape bus.
At Kemp’s Corner the traffic lights turned red just as the inspector’s bus reached them. The driver came to a sharp and obedient halt. Inspector Ghote cursed him.
A moment later he felt Axel Svensson tapping him on the shoulder. The big Swede was too far away from him to be able to talk effectively but he had managed to reach his long arm out to attract attention. Now he turned and pointed back. The inspector looked in the direction indicated. A policeman was standing looking at the traffic and waiting to pounce on any offender.
Inspector Ghote swung himself half off the bus and shouted at the man.
If he could get a message to headquarters it would be a simple enough matter to arrange to intercept Prem.
The policeman peering intently at the waiting cars, taxis, buses, bicycles took no notice. The inspector shouted again. The constable was not far away, but he was so totally lost in his waiting game with some potential offender against the traffic laws that he might have been far out on Elephanta Island in the bay beyond the city.
The bus jerked forward as the lights changed. Inspector Ghote looked ahead. Prem’s bus had gained a considerable advantage.
But once more they slowly caught up. As Prem was on the leading bus there were longer delays for him at each stop as passengers pushed and fought to get aboard. Yard by yard the gap was reduced.
And then at Crawford Market the inspector saw Prem leap from the bus ahead and plunge into the shelter of the great iron-roofed edifice. He signalled to Axel Svensson to warn him. Their bus made reasonable progress and, less than a minute after Prem had got off, the inspector and the big Swede in turn entered the comparative cool of the great market.
Inspector Ghote looked up and down the long alleys of highpiled stalls on the great flagstones of the fruit section where Prem had entered. At first he could make out nothing but a jumble of soft-coloured fruits and the medley of sauntering buyers of every sort and kind strolling up and down choosing their purchases. And then a different sort of movement at the far end of one of the alleys caught his eye. It was the running figure of Prem Varde.
Hardly pausing to gesture to Svensson to follow, the inspector set off in pursuit, weaving his way through the leisurely shoppers, dodging and ducking. Past massive piles of bananas, yellow, pinkish, red, long and thick, short and stubby, past heaps of oranges, past mounds of grapes, past pyramids of luscious mangoes, past papayas and pineapples.
And then Prem suddenly chose to look back. The inspector skidded to a halt and crouched down by a stall replete with glossy figs, but the towering form of Axel Svensson could not be blotted out as easily. Prem must have spotted him at once because he dodged abruptly to one side and began running down a cross-alley with redoubled speed.
The inspector and Svensson set off in pursuit again. They were just in time to glimpse the boy leave the market for the bustle of Carnac Road again, and, with a new burst of speed, saw that he had plunged straight across the road and was making his way into the jumble of narrow streets and tortuous by-ways on the far side.
Straining and panting they followed. Luckily, Prem became involved almost straight away in a fracas with a couple of acrobats entertaining a small crowd in the middle of the alley-way he had chosen to plunge into. Just at the climax of their act the boy had burst through the surrounding onlookers and had tipped over the more delicately poised of the two entertainers. The other promptly seized him, held him close to his naked chest and subjected him to an intensive stream of incestuous abuse.
The inspector and the Swede were able to get well within sight before Prem gave a desperate wriggle, slipped from the acrobat’s grasp, wheeled abruptly and flung himself into a small bazaar just off the narrow by-way.
They tore after him.
The heat and the sm
ells and the noise were utterly over-powering. Stallkeepers called and yelled, buyers jabbered and objected, each point of purchase was an explosion of shouting, expostulation and argument. Ancient gramophones wailed and clicked, brand-new radios pumped out speech and music in half a dozen different modes. Beggars, their painted sores treacle-dabbed to attract the flies, implored and commanded. Children fought and screamed, chickens running hither and thither squawked and screeched.
A score of opposing odours struggled for dominance. Cooking pots poured out the smells of richly luscious spices, little fires of dried cowdung added their acrid tang, other fires of wood strove to outdo them. Copra and drying fish sought to go yet one better than either. The very dust, puffing and eddying at the tramp of pair after pair of feet, shod and unshod, had its own penetrating aroma.
In the dense confusion of insane movement and wild hues it was no longer possible, as it had been in the staider aisles of the Crawford Market, to pick out a running figure. Clash and colour assailed and blinded the eyes. Cloths of every bright shade imaginable swayed and dangled, brass and copper gleamed and glinted, bright balloons swung to and fro on their tugged strings, great chunks of raw and bloody meat hung glaring and motionless, hawkers with little barrows of multi-coloured towels or children’s bright red slacks darted out into every eddy of the crowd, coloured and gilded pictures of gods and saints jostled each other for prominence, high-piled bottles of garish liquids tempted and repulsed.
And Prem was not to be seen.
Desperately the inspector plunged into the crowd, trying to progress on tiptoe so that he could crane over shoulders jerking and heaving ahead of him to catch a glimpse of his quarry. Unable to look where he was going, he failed to duck one of the dozens of burning tarry ropes hanging from the roofs of stalls for the convenience of passing smokers. Its red-hot tip drew a stinging line across his cheek. Tears came into his eyes. He halted for an instant to brush them away, and spotted Prem.
On the far side of a stall laden with a myriad tiny bottles of scent the boy was creeping back in the direction he had come. Ghote darted looks on either side to see if there was a passageway between the scent stall and its neighbours. But both sides were immovably blocked by tall piles of packing cases.
He looked at Prem again. The boy was making good progress towards the street.
Taking a deep, hot, stinking breath the inspector dropped to his knees and pushed his way under the loaded trestle of scent bottles.
In front of him the astonished proprietor gave a loud scream, seized his hanging placard lauding the aphrodisiac qualities of his wares, and brought it down with a splintering crack on the inspector’s skull just as he emerged from under the trestle.
Ghote, his head jabbing and darting with pain, staggered to his feet. And, with a noise like a high-pitched landslide, the hundreds of little bottles on the trestle cascaded to the ground and shattered into fragments. Their scents, their erotic stimulus guaranteed by the power of their aromas, sent up a great waft of smells so rich and sweet they brought tears to the eyes.
Inspector Ghote, careless of everything, flung himself out of the debris and pounded after Prem.
The boy had halted for a moment, distracted by the enormous noise of the crash and the immediately following explosion of every conceivable sort of sensuous odour – rose, jasmine, Queen of the Night, khas, sandalwood, lilac. So Ghote was able to get to within four or five feet of him before, suddenly seeing his danger, he leapt forward again.
The inspector hurled himself grimly after.
But he was dizzy from the blow with the scent placard and bit by bit Prem began pulling away from him. He risked a glance back. His faithful Axel Svensson was embroiled in a fearful argument with the scent stall man and was lost to him. Black despair coiled up and gripped at his heart.
And then Prem put his foot on a discarded strip of mango peel in the dirt and dust of the ground and fell headlong.
With a final painful effort Inspector Ghote dived forward, arms outstretched. A sense of dull joy came over him as he felt his hands close firmly on Prem’s young flesh at last. He gripped and held.
21
For perhaps two minutes Inspector Ghote and Prem lay on the dirt-strewn ground of the bazaar without moving. Prem had tried once to wriggle out of the inspector’s grasp, but when he had found that this was quite impossible had given up. He must have been almost as exhausted and out of breath as Ghote, and was quite content to lie inert and wait for what was to happen next.
At last the inspector was conscious of someone kneeling beside him. He looked up.
It was Axel Svensson.
‘Are you all right, my friend?’ the Swede said.
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Ghote.
‘I have given some money to the man at the scent stall,’ Svensson said. ‘Rather a lot. I hope it was all right?’
‘Yes. Yes, thank you,’ said the inspector.
He let his head flop back on to the foul ground.
The Swede waited patiently. But at last he could be silent no longer.
‘My friend,’ he said, ‘do you think you could stand now?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Ghote.
Still keeping a dug-in hold on Prem, he allowed the tall Swede to help them both up.
Then he faced the boy.
‘Why did you do it?’ he said. ‘Was it just because you thought Mr Perfect was the one behind your father wanting you to go into office?’
Prem’s frightened eyes took on a puzzled look.
‘Mr Perfect was against office,’ he said. ‘He thought I would do harm if I went in.’
The inspector looked at him.
The quivering lower lip, the wide puzzled eyes, the bright blue and orange bush-shirt dirty and torn.
‘But why then? Why?’ he asked.
Prem looked even more bewildered.
‘I went into the room by the house door,’ he said slowly. ‘I looked all round. I saw the candlestick.’
He stopped.
‘And then,’ said the inspector, ‘you took it up and hit Mr Perfect. I know. But why?’
‘No, no, no.’
Prem’s head shook in violent disagreement.
‘That wasn’t on the night of the Perfect Murder,’ he said. ‘Then I was in my room as I told you. This was the next day only. I just held the candlestick because I thought this must be the murder weapon.’
Inspector Ghote turned and looked at the tall Swede. It was plain that, even through the wild jabber of the bazaar, he had heard what Prem had said.
‘This would account for the fact that there was only one set of prints on the candlestick,’ the inspector said. ‘That had been worrying me a little. If the candlestick was the murder weapon, it ought to have had more than one set of prints and some smeared.’
‘Quite so,’ said the big Swede.
He sighed.
‘So the problem remains,’ he said. ‘We are back where we started.’
*
Sitting later in his office, Inspector Ghote could hardly bear even to look across at the tall, bony form of Axel Svensson.
He sat at his familiar desk with his chin cupped in his hands. He had not bothered to switch the light on and the little office was so gloomy under the pall of heavy clouds that pressed down on the sweating city that the inspector could scarcely make out the familiar shape of the old blue volume of Gross’s Criminal Investigation adapted from the German by John Adam, M.A., sometime Crown Prosecutor, Madras, and J. Collyer Adam, sometime Public Prosecutor, Madras.
He felt that this was perhaps a good thing. In the full glare of the light overhead the book would have seemed to reproach him with his failure.
Or, he hardly dared formulate the thought, would he have to reproach Doctor Gross? After all, the case had been conducted strictly on the methods laid down …
Ghote groaned.
He knew he ought not to be just sitting like this, but he felt too depressed even to think of the possible steps he co
uld take to get a fresh angle.
The air around him seemed thick as a heavy liquid. He lacked the vital force to fight his way through it. Outside everything was unnaturally still and tense, waiting for the sudden breaking relief that would come with the rain of the monsoon. Rolls of quickening thunder seemed to be the only sound able to penetrate the weight of the atmosphere.
But it could not be long now till the tension would break. Moving his dry tongue in his dry mouth, the inspector could taste the rain waiting to come like the tang of the brass of that cursed candlestick.
The thought of the candlestick with its shiny surface wiped clean of all clues to the identity of the person who had wielded it, almost as if they had stuck their tongue out at him and his doomed efforts, sent his mind back to Mr Perfect with the inevitability of a drug addict returning unresisting to his habit.
Once again he imagined the old Parsi lying on his sagging charpoy with the well-paid, indifferent nurse sitting in the room but scarcely giving him a glance. He saw the battered drained face under its heavy cap of gleaming white bandages and, spreading down from under the chin on which a grey stubble had slowly appeared, the less-than-white atchkan and its still untouched little pink stain of ball-point ink.
How could those feeble breaths fight their way through the thin dried lips in this terrible heaviness all around them? How could the debilitated body resist the tension and the pressure of the hot airlessness under the great, grey, grumbling clouds above? How could Mr Perfect go on living, unless the rain came?
And the inspector knew, with iron-pressed certainty, that for all the taste of rain on his dry tongue, it might not come before nightfall. It might not even come for all the next long, tense, intolerable day. The experience of the past told its lesson. There had been other years when the monsoon had hovered and waited like this, the same thing could happen this time.
And if it did, it would kill Mr Perfect as surely as if at this moment he himself was putting his hands round the old man’s scrawny neck and choking the flicker of life out of him. And then: black failure. The mark always pursuing him. Nothing to set against the weight of prejudice and distrust he had willy-nilly accumulated in the past few days. No progress, no reward for patient toil rigorously applied. Perhaps demotion, financial hardship, an embittered family life.
The Perfect Murder: the First Inspector Ghote Mystery Page 23