Ghote felt a gradually spreading sense of depression. Why had the Sikh told him all this, unless it was actually the truth? Or was it just some of the truth? Some, but not the vital last piece? Had Amrit Singh detected that hesitation before he claimed that the police had evidence for the actual theft of the poison? And then had he invented this plausible tale?
‘That was a very interesting story,’ he said slowly.
‘Oh, Inspector,’ said the big Sikh, ‘you are not going to arrest me, a confessed gold smuggler?’
‘A confessed smuggler and not a confessed murderer,’ Ghote said.
‘You want a lot, my little inspector.’
Ghote urged himself on a step.
‘I have got good evidence,’ he said.
The Sikh smiled.
‘No evidence is good that is made for the occasion,’ he replied. ‘It may look good now, but after it has been dragged through the courts it will look different, I can tell you.’
‘We will see,’ said Ghote levelly.
Suddenly a deep glint of malicious humour appeared in the Sikh’s eyes.
‘And we will see how Krishna Chatterjee looks in the witness box,’ he said.
Ghote’s heart felt filled with lead. So Amrit Singh had somehow found out that shortly after his own visit to the dispensary the little Bengali had followed in his footsteps. And it was easy to imagine what a poor showing someone as timid, scrupulous and suggestible as Mr Chatterjee would make at the hands of the sort of lawyers Amrit Singh used.
In no time at all they would have him plainly labelled as a murderer. And they might well be right. After what the inspector had just heard from Amrit Singh he really believed at this moment that the almost painfully good social worker had for some reason seen Frank Masters’s death as a lesser evil and had put him out of this world from sheer excess of kindness. If only some clue to what that reason was would appear.
And yet, he said to himself, the man standing in front of me here is in real fact a killer. Jovial, happy-go-lucky, but proven in all but the processes of law a murderer.
Ghote let the waves of gloom roll over him.
And, quite unheralded, a flash of light appeared. One single, incautious phrase that the thickset Sikh had used came back into the inspector’s head. There might be a way out yet.
ELEVEN
It took Inspector Ghote some time to get away from Amrit Singh. The big Sikh offered him the pleasures of an evening at his speakeasy. Ghote found them easy enough to refuse. Amrit Singh suggested his house of ill-fame farther along the street. Ghote pretended to be shocked. At last he consented to take one drink, not from the bar room next door, but from Amrit Singh’s personal supply of guaranteed American bourbon.
He endured patiently a number of jokes about policemen drinking smuggled liquor in an illegal drinking den. And at last he got away.
By consent, nothing more was said about the murder of Frank Masters.
Ghote took a risk as soon as he got out of the Sikh’s house. He had an unpleasant feeling that the moment his back was turned Amrit Singh would slip out and disappear once more. So he went into the first likely shop he saw and asked if they had a telephone. He rang headquarters and in the most discreetly garbled way he arranged for a new watch to be put on the Sikh. As he had expected, the duty telephonist was incredibly slow to understand, and before the talk was finished it must have been plain to the listening shop man that Ghote was not the grubby passer-by he seemed.
Growing more anxious with every minute, he waited outside the shop till he saw a pair of constables, looking distinctly apprehensive, appear some way down the ill-lit street. Then he hurried back to the seedy corner-hotel, so tired now that he could hardly stand. Luckily the place also ran to a telephone. He called Protima and said briefly that he would not be home that night. She sounded sleepy. But before the latent anger in her voice had had time to spark out he rang off.
Something more to attend to when he had time. There was the matter of D.S.P. Naik’s game of hockey, too, if it came to that. He flopped down on the grimy bed, felt the pain in his left heel ease a bit and fell fast asleep.
He woke early next morning. As he had expected, he was pretty badly bitten by bugs. But nothing worse had happened. His clothes were still there. His pockets had not been rifled. His heel hurt much less. He bathed and dressed and went out.
He made his way as quickly as he could to the Masters Foundation and presented himself once more at Krishna Chatterjee’s little narrow book-lined office.
The Bengali social worker had his head studiously bent over a hectically jacketed American work. He looked up as Ghote came in and at once grew very serious.
‘Inspector,’ he said.
His face got steadily more sombre.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am ready to come.’
He stood up. For a second or two he searched over the cluttered surface of his desk and then he picked up a piece of white card closely covered with notes in black ink, underlined here and there in red. He put it down carefully on the open page of the wide-margined American book. Then he took it up again.
‘I suppose it will be no use marking the place after all,’ he said. ‘A gross superfluity.’
He looked down at the card with its close lines of neat hand-writing. His big, almond-shaped eyes seemed to fill with tears.
Ghote suddenly felt wretched.
‘It may be a long time before – before this whole affair is over,’ he said. ‘These things often take years even. Put in your bookmark.’
He coughed.
‘But nevertheless I must do my duty.’
‘Yes,’ said Krishna Chatterjee.
He stood silently by the crowded desk. After a moment or two he picked up the card of notes, slipped it hurriedly into place and slammed the book closed. Then he stood silent again, looking at the book-crammed larder shelves of his cubbyhole almost caressingly.
Ghote cleared his throat.
‘Perhaps you would prefer to tell here,’ he said.
‘Tell?’ said Mr Chatterjee. ‘What is there to tell?’
Ghote looked at him.
‘But it is necessary to make a full statement,’ he said. ‘If you want to confess.’
It was Mr Chatterjee’s turn to look surprised.
‘To confess?’
‘Yes. You said you were ready to come.’
Suddenly the round-cheeked Bengali’s face was transformed. From a picture of utter dolefulness it changed in an instant to one of helplessly lost, giggling merriment.
‘Good gracious me,’ he said. ‘Oh, my dear fellow, what a mistake I have made. A most comical error, most truly comical.’
Ghote felt a surge of irritation.
‘What error is this?’ he said sharply.
Krishna Chatterjee wiped his eyes with the back of a plumpish hand.
‘A quite simple error,’ he said, ‘but of major proportions, I assure you. You see, I was not offering to make a confession: I was saying simply that I thought you had come to arrest me, and that if I had to go I was ready.’
The simple misunderstanding appeared to break in on him again in its full ludicrousness. A new fit of high-pitched giggles assailed him.
Ghote looked at him.
And bit by bit his irritation succumbed. Abruptly a giggling laugh welled up in his chest. A moment or two later he had his arm round the Bengali’s bent shoulders laughing almost as heartily.
‘You were quite right,’ he said, drawing breath hard. ‘Quite right. A ridiculous misunderstanding. I came for quite another reason too.’
‘You did not come about the murder even?’ Mr Chatterjee asked.
‘Not directly about the murder,’ Ghote said.
‘Oh no, this is too much.’
Once more the plump little Bengali was reduced to helpless tittering.
‘What was it then?’ he asked, looking up at Ghote expectantly, as if whatever he said was bound to be even more ridiculously amusing.
‘Oh, it was nothing. A small thing only.’
Mr Chatterjee managed to subdue his giggles almost to silence.
‘Inspector, if there is anything I can do to help, you have to ask only.’
Ghote pulled himself together.
‘It is a small thing,’ he said. ‘But it is to a certain extent important.’
Into his mind came the line of hard thought that had led him here. The casual remark made by Dr Diana that she had hopes of reforming the boy Tarzan because they knew his home background, that he was from a fishing family. Adding to this Amrit Singh’s presence here at the Masters Foundation, and Amrit Singh’s interest among many other illicit occupations in smuggling. Tack on to this that Ghote knew, as every Bombay policeman did, that the city was one of the big routes for bringing gold from the Middle East, where a little tola ingot might be worth fifteen American dollars, into currency-starved India, where the same tola would be worth the equivalent of forty dollars. Then add one thing more. The incautious word that Amrit Singh had let slip the day before. The phrase about it being possible that gold had been brought into the Foundation without his own knowledge because the boy who was good at standing on his head was not also very sensible.
And now had come the time to play for all it was worth this hunch that Tarzan and his fishing family were a key link in the gold smuggling chain.
‘Just a small thing,’ he said. ‘I happened to hear that you know where the boy they call Tarzan lives. You know the boy? It would be most helpful if I could have his address.’
Krishna Chatterjee had stopped laughing too.
‘Certainly we have his address, Inspector,’ he said. ‘There is rather an unfortunate family situation there. The boy’s mother died and the father took –’
Mr Chatterjee looked the inspector full in the face.
‘Well,’ he said bravely, ‘there is no point in mincing words. He took a paramour.’
He sighed.
‘There was considerable ill-feeling, of course,’ he said. ‘But at least we have the facts to work on. Facts which I know on this occasion to be true. Yes, on this occasion.’
Again he sighed heavily and contemplated the difficulty of arriving at facts which would in the end prove true when dealing with the half-world of young vagrants.
Ghote coughed and looked pointedly at a cluster of card-indexes on one of the long shelves. Mr Chatterjee followed his glance.
‘Yes, quite so,’ he said.
He sat down at his desk.
‘Unfortunately, however, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I cannot let you have the address.’
‘But you said you had it.’
‘Quite so, yes. Yes, we have it. It is there in that index. Under “T”. We have been reduced to filing it under the name the boy prefers to use. Lamentably unscientific.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Ghote said. ‘But did you say I could not have the address?’
‘But of course I did.’
‘But why? Why?’
Krishna Chatterjee drew himself up on the little hard chair behind the cluttered desk.
‘Inspector, it is professional ethics.’
Ghote gaped.
‘But I must have that address,’ he said.
‘I am sorry, Inspector. But absolute confidentiality is the core of the social workers’ code.’
‘But I need that address. It will almost certainly result in the arrest of a major criminal.’
‘Inspector, I think you do not understand.’
‘I most certainly do not understand.’
‘Inspector, it is like this. We have to establish a relationship with our clients. It is of the utmost importance. Crucial, I might say. And to do this it is essential that they can give us their entire and complete trust. So, they must believe that we would not in any circumstances betray anything we have learnt from them.’
‘All right,’ Ghote said. ‘Let this boy believe that. Let him believe anything you choose to tell. But give me that address.’
‘No. Most regretfully, no.’
Ghote felt a pure, burning rage sweeping a clear path before it.
He turned without another word and strode along the narrow book-lined room towards the square of dull red cardboard indexes with their neat rows of little brass handles waiting to be jerked open. He could see the single letter ‘T’ down towards the bottom right-hand corner of the array.
As he reached out to it, the little Bengali’s plump hand banged hard across the front panel.
‘Inspector, I will not let you.’
Mr Chatterjee wriggled round till he was between Ghote and the wall. He stood upright. The sweat was gleaming on his forehead.
Ghote stood looking at him.
Then he abruptly turned away.
‘Very well, Mr Chatterjee,’ he said, ‘if you wish to impede a criminal investigation.’
‘Inspector, it is a matter of the utmost regret. But, I am sure you will appreciate that a principle is, alas, a principle.’
He stayed standing in front of the square of red indexes. Ghote, without another word, stamped out.
And, no sooner had the door of the little office swung to behind him than he took to his heels. On tiptoe he ran out of the big front door, past the corner of the house, through the wilting bushes of the shrubbery and round to the place where Mr Chatterjee’s narrow window looked out on to a prospect of greenery.
There he waited in the deep shadows, with the broad leaves of a hibiscus dappling the sunlight on his face.
He did not have long to wait. A bell sounded fiercely from inside the house. Mr Chatterjee, whose studiously bent back Ghote had been watching as if mesmerized, pushed himself back from his desk. He looked at his watch. Through the small opening between the two frames of the window Ghote could even hear him say to himself ‘Tut, tut.’
Then he got up and with complete unconcern waddled happily away.
Ghote let one whole minute pass while he considered the strain of almost wild determination Mr Chatterjee had so unexpectedly shown himself capable of. That and the ease with which the little Bengali could be deceived.
Then he strolled out of the bushes, put his nails into the crack between the two window frames and prised them easily apart. He swung his leg across the sill, ducked his head through and stood up.
He crossed to the set of indexes, reached out for the handle of the one marked ‘T,’ flipped through the cards and came across the neatly written name ‘Tarzan’ in no time at all. He read rapidly through the notes written underneath, keeping an ear cocked for noises on the far side of the door, and found that they told him nothing new. Except for the last item. The scrupulously printed address, the simple name of a coastal village and its nearest little town and the terse instruction ‘Hut nearest sea.’ He read this twice over and had it by heart. He closed the index, crossed to the window, slipped out, turned and pushed the two frames gently together again and dusted off his hands.
‘Nice work, Inspector.’
It was the voice of Edward G. Robinson. It could be none other.
Ghote wheeled round. The boy was standing among the bushes in much the same place that he himself had stood to watch Mr Chatterjee. He must have seen everything.
‘What – what are you doing here?’ he shouted.
The boy had the grace to look put out.
‘I can explain, Inspector. I can explain everything.’
Ghote breathed a secret sigh of relief. Perhaps the boy had not understood what he had seen. With luck he had even succeeded in putting the boot on the other foot. The boy was going to be the one to do the explaining.
Ghote advanced towards him with heavy tread.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Let me hear it, and it had better be good.’
‘I was making sure you didn’t steal anything, Inspectorji.’
Ghote dived forward, his hands reaching out.
And it was all he could do to save himself from falling head foremost into the soft earth clutching at nothing. From round t
he corner of the bungalow came a happy laugh.
‘And you did not steal.’
‘I would hope not,’ Ghote muttered.
‘When you could have had a good haul. Not very clever, Mr Inspector.’
Yet, some four hours later, approaching the place where the boy Tarzan had his home, Ghote reflected that perhaps after all he had not had such a bad haul. He had got the link he needed in the chain which might well in the end put Amrit Singh behind bars for a good long time on a gold smuggling charge. And that was more than a little.
With a faint frown of uneasiness, he recalled a certain Inspector Patel, a preventive officer of the Customs. He had met him some time ago at a conference on the very subject of gold smuggling, and he had a distinct feeling that he ought to have informed him of what he had learnt about Amrit Singh. This was the sort of thing that made for a lot of bad blood between a State service like the police and a Central one like the Customs.
He shrugged.
After all, it was vitally important to him to be the actual person who put the big Sikh away. Unless he could get him on a major smuggling charge, D.S.P. Naik would want to know why he had not charged him with the murder of the always enigmatic figure of Frank Masters. And doing that was something Ghote was still determined to avoid.
He looked round.
He had come a good distance, some twenty-five miles or more from the centre of Bombay, first by a slow, crowded suburban train and then in an aged tonga drawn by an aged horse. In front of him lay the sea, the wide sweep of the Arabian Sea stretching out into the far, hazy blue distance. Between him and the water’s edge was a length of muddy sand littered here and there with the debris of the ocean, shells, sea-smooth stones, the skeletons of fish. Directly behind him was a deep green tangle of lush vegetation, sucking rich life from the low swampy ground.
Ahead he had just made out the dark mounds of a number of huts clustered at the point where the sand gave way to the matted vegetation. They must be what he was looking for. In one of them Tarzan’s family would live, the oldish father, the woman Mr Chatterjee had called the Paramour and one other son, a young man of eighteen.
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