S.M. Motabhoy looked gravely across at him as he came to a stop.
Ghote was conscious that everybody in the whole room was staring at him, all the Board members, R.K. leaning now suddenly forward, even the shorthand writer and the orderly. And Mrs Ahmed. Mrs Ahmed, he felt almost sure, was looking at him with an expression of approval only just beneath the surface of her solid, time-lined features.
‘And you now admit to all this?’ S.M. Motabhoy asked. ‘What you are now saying is the truth and the whole truth?’
‘Yes, sir. It is. I was wishing, sir, to preserve an officer of A.D.I.G. Kelkar’s drive and efficiency to continue his work as a senior police officer, to continue to use his anger whenever dereliction and slackness were found to punish and harass the same. For that reason I continued to present to one and all the false account he had bequeathed to me, hoping also that I myself could stay as a police officer and conduct myself as he had, believing fully at that time that this was altogether the best way a police officer should conduct himself.’
S.M. Motabhoy sat in silence for a few moments. Then he asked a last question, his words full and plangent in the expectant air.
‘Believing at that time, Inspector? But is it that you still continue to believe this?’
‘No, sir,’ Ghote answered slowly. ‘I am believing that Mr Kelkar’s way is a very excellent way. But I see also now that there are other ways that first-class police work can be done.’
‘Yes.’
Another silence fell in the big, still sunlit room.
S.M. Motabhoy looked to either side at his fellow Board members.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I do not think that after this change of heart on the part of Inspector Ghote we can do anything other than find him guilty as charged.’
One after another four heads nodded in agreement.
‘Very well,’ S.M. Motabhoy said, ‘we find Inspector Ghote guilty.’
He sat looking down at the table in front of him, his face behind the moon-like spectacles showing for the first time some indication of tenseness, of a decision being painfully arrived at.
At last he gave a little puff of what might have been anger or suddenly gathered resolution, or sorrow that things were as they were.
‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘I have considered, in attempting to decide what punishment I should recommend, not only the failures in duty with which you were charged and to which you have, very properly, at last admitted. But I have also taken into account the reasons you have given us for doing what you did. And I may say that they are reasons with which I sympathize. They do you credit. I do not hesitate to say it.’
He paused and drew in a long breath.
‘Nevertheless,’ he went on, ‘I would be failing in my duty were I not to say that a penalty should be imposed, the most severe of penalties even. Your actions, Ghote, were in flagrant disregard of the rules of conduct laid down under police regulations. I cannot therefore suggest any punishment less than Dismissal.’
Ghote, at the word, sat plump down on to the chair behind him.
He had expected when he had found himself making his declaration that precise retribution, in so far as he had thought of consequences at all. He recognized that S.M. Motabhoy was being entirely just. But hearing the word said, Dismissal, it was borne in on him to the full what it meant. His life as he had lived it was now over. Finished. Done with. He was no more a police officer. He was nothing. There was nothing more for him.
As if through some thick smeary glass he saw S.M. Motabhoy stand up, put on his cap, turn and, accompanied by his fellow Board members, make his way towards the door. He was aware, too, as vaguely, that all the others in the room were standing up, collecting together their belongings, preparing to leave.
The Inquiry was over. It had done its work. It had elicited the truth. It had left him, as he deserved to be left, ruined.
Then something he had seen without at all taking it in struck him. S.M. Motabhoy had forgotten a duty. He had omitted to fill in the Show Cause notice stating the nature of the proposed punishment, that legal obligation which had to be completed within the period of the Inquiry. If this were not done the Board’s whole verdict would be completely nullified.
He almost jumped up, hurried over to the Board table, snatched up the stiff sheet, heavily printed in black, and ran after S.M. Motabhoy.
But he stopped himself, even before he had risen from his chair, confusion halting him in the course which all his training dictated.
Could it be … ? No, it was ridiculous. An officer of S.M. Motabhoy’s seniority would never … And yet …
Suddenly in front of him there came the scurry of a quickly moving figure. It was the shorthand writer. The fellow had darted across to the table, seized the thick sheet and seeing that S.M. Motabhoy was actually on the point of leaving the room had set off at a run towards him.
Slowly Ghote got to his feet.
S.M. Motabhoy had just moved out into the corridor under the crooked photographs of past Inspectors-General. One of his fellow Board members caught him by the sleeve and said something to him. Was it an invitation of some sort? Sir, my wife and I would be most pleased if one evening before your final retirement …
The shorthandwalla reached them. Ghote saw him thrust his head in between S.M. Motabhoy and the officer. He was saying something. Ghote made out an urgent Sir, please, sir …
S.M. Motabhoy could not but have heard. Yet he turned and, walking slowly and thoughtfully, went away along the corridor. The shorthandwalla stood there. In his hand, dangling, was the thick, blackly printed sheet.
*
Fat, creamy white clouds were lolloping across the deep blue sky. It was Nareli Purnima, Coconut Day, the fixed date on which the monsoon was held to be officially over. But there had, of course, been a shower that morning, and there might even be more to come.
At Chaupatti Beach, it seemed, half Bombay had congregated to immerse coconuts in the sea in traditional celebration. Inspector Ghote, about to leave to investigate a case at a university college some distance out of the city, had come with Protima and Ved to take his share in the festivities, Protima dressed in the new sari which Ghote, flush with his restored pay, had bought her.
They made their way slowly across the yielding sand through the packed crowd and the pressing vendors of ice cream and paper cones of tongue-tickling bhelpuri, of balloons and whistles and by the thousand of big green coconuts. Ghote stopped when he saw a really fat one and bought it for Ved.
Because that morning Protima had performed a long puja in front of her small statue of God Ganesha – Ghote had noticed that the fragrant smoking agarbati sticks she lit came from Ram Bhaskar Manufacturing Co. (Private) Ltd – they decided that this afternoon’s rite should be the sole responsibility of young Ved, delightedly eager to take his share in the rites.
They reached at last the sea itself, still churned and muddy from the threshing monsoon waves but no longer a danger to bathers. Hundreds of them, indeed, were already in the water, carrying out their coconuts till they thought they had reached the right place to set them down. Some of the celebrating pilgrims, more anxious or more pious, had even hired boats and were well out to sea performing the rite.
At a word from Ghote, Ved solemnly set forth into the sandy water, chappals left in his parents’ care and shorts rolled up as high as they would go on his long, slim legs.
Ghote watched him wade out, allowing the warm contentment he had felt at intervals ever since the Inquiry had ended to roll over him once more.
Twenty yards out, Ved lowered his head and reverently placed his plump coconut in the water. The outgoing tide took it, bobbing and bouncing, and wafted it away. For a little Ved stood and watched it.
Then, just as he was turning to come back in, half a dozen urchins, bare all but for ragged shorts, came in a whooping pack through the waves. Their leader seized the fat trophy and raised it high above his head in triumph.
It was a mistake.
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br /> Ved, mouth open in a yell of red rage, face dark with fury, shot towards him, knocked him flat into the water with a single butt of his head, recaptured the big shell and stood back grasping it and looking as if he was ready to brain any of the pack who thought of disputing its possession.
‘Ved,’ Protima called out in agitated remonstrance. ‘Ved, come away. Come back.’
‘No,’ Ghote said, ‘leave him. He is right to be in such a temper.’
Protima turned to him.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it is right to be in such a rage, is it? Then, please, Mr Police Officer, why were you not also losing your temper and rebuking those boys? It is what you were telling me you were wishing to do when you saw some other urchins blocking a drain before the monsoon was setting in.’
It took Ghote a moment or two to frame his answer.
Then he smiled.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it is best for me to keep my anger until a time when it will be truly needed.’
Out in the sea, Ved had waded further into the brown choppy wavelets. Reverently, once more he lowered his big green coconut. The strongly running tide took it swiftly away, ducking and dipping.
They watched in silence. Above them across the cheerful blue of the sky the puffy white clouds moved slowly on.
Ghote looked up at them.
‘Yes, do you know?’ he said. ‘I am thinking monsoon is definitely finished now.’
Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery Page 21