Dead on Time

by H. R. F. Keating

  H.R.F. KEATING

  For over twenty-five years, mystery fans have been intrigued by H.R.F. Keating’s India—from the teeming streets of Bombay to the remote countryside unchanged by the passage of time. Here is the latest episode in what Time magazine calls “a delightful and convincing comic series.”

  Inspector Ganesh Ghote is once more handed a baffling mystery to investigate—and in this case, it’s also a political hot potato. Ramrao Pendke, heir to a massive country fortune, is in Bombay recovering from a kidney transplant operation. Out taking exercise, Pendke visits the Ticktock watchworks and is bludgeoned to death. The head of the Bombay police backs the prompt arrest made by a pet officer of his, Assistant Inspector Lobo—who has forced a confession out of Rustom Fardoomji, owner of the watch store.

  Ghote has doubts about the confession. He also agrees with the relatives of the accused: Fardoomji would have no reason to do away with a wealthy customer.

  In order to placate these influential relatives, Ghote is sent to the dead man’s home village—a slow-paced backwater the inspector finds maddening. But Ghote is utterly convinced that persistence, logic, and good police work will produce the real killer; in the course of his energetically pursued investigation he interviews an astrologer, the village barber, a boy Brahmin, and the dead man’s grieving grandfather. In the face of a 24-hour ultimatum, Ghote at last finds the essential clue that solves the most difficult case of his career.

  Printed in the United States of America First Printing: August 1989 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Keating, H. R. F. (Henry Reymond Fitzwalter), 1926-Dead on time / H.R.F. Keating.

  P*

  ISBN 0-89296-386-7 I. Title.

  PR6061.E26D44 1989 823'.914—dcl9

  88-37290

  CIP

  ONE

  "Dead on time, Inspector Ghote,” the Director General, Maharashtra Police, said.

  He tapped the watch on his wrist.

  “One of the new Tata Titan quartz jobs. An Exacto. Accurate to the second, always. Day and date also.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote dutifully answered.

  But why has the D.G.P. specially called me here, he asked furiously underneath. The head of the whole State police force did not usually summon a mere inspector by name. So why himself? For what?

  Thank goodness he had arrived at twenty minutes past eleven, sharp, as requested. That had made it all worthwhile: Checking for certain that his own watch, which seemed to be more unreliable every day, was exactly right. And, when that joker, Inspector Deshpande, seeing him dial 197, had said the speaking clock itself was often three minutes slow, even ringing Sahar Airport where they had video screens flashing up the time in seconds. By way of abundant precaution.

  And then, of course, after all there had been that long wait outside when he had arrived fifteen minutes—no, seventeen minutes—early. Idling all around the block. Along past the university to glance up at the big clock on the Rajabi Tower there. Across into Mahatma Gandhi Road, and a long pause there to use up more time by contemplating the clock on the wall of the Sassoon Library, unique made by MR.LUND IN 1858, with its twelve little surrounding dials giving the time in New York, London, Paris, Cape Town. . . . What a pity the whole thing had stopped at precisely 1:35 p.m. as long ago as he could remember. Then along Madam Cama Road, and back to the Oval Maidan and its tall palm trees.

  And the last-moment panic that he would after all be late when his arm had been seized, just outside, by that madwoman insistently thrusting at him the banana peel she had been chewing and calling him “Baba” . . .

  But in the end he had arrived, as the D.G.P. had said, dead on time.

  For what? Why had he himself and no other been ordered to report at this exact hour?

  The D.G.P. was still looking, in admiration it seemed, at his new watch, the sleeve of his shirt held back by the crooked little finger of his other hand.

  Ghote ventured on a very slight cough.

  “Ah, yes. Er—Ghote. Yes. You will be wondering why I have asked you to come at this time.”

  “Yes, sir. That is— Yes, somewhat I was wondering.”

  The D.G.P. rubbed his hands briskly together. In the quiet of the big room the sound of one dry palm on the other was startlingly loud.

  “It is like this, Inspector. There was a Section three-oh-two affair yesterday in a shop near Kemp’s Corner. Young man beaten to death by, it seems, the shop owner. Place called the Tick Tock Watch works. Now, of course that ought to be a matter simply for the local station, where it seems to have been dealt with in a perfectly satisfactory manner. The culprit made a confession, and though he has to make it again, of course, in the presence of a magistrate, as far as I’m concerned, the whole affair has been properly wrapped up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote put in, quietly respectful.

  The D.G.P. looked up at him. A tiny spasm of rage contorted his face.

  “Unfortunately, Inspector,” he said, making Ghote feel as if somehow, whatever the unfortunate circumstance was, he himself was responsible for it. “Unfortunately, the young culprit, though of the poorer classes, happens to be a cousin of the Dhunjeebhoy brothers.”

  Ghote began to understand.

  The Dhunjeebhoy brothers were one of Bombay’s great names, Parsi industrialists with a score of different concerns under their control, next in importance perhaps only to the Tata family, of the new Titan watches amid much else. So, from a small-time watchmaker who for some reason had committed a brutal murder, this cousin of the Dhunjeebhoys had leaped in an instant to become a person of influence, even if at secondhand.

  In consequence Crime Branch at headquarters was being called in, as it usually was when an offense that ought to be investigated by one of Bombay’s forty-five local police stations turned out to have social or political complications. Yet that could not be the whole of it. If in the ordinary way such a case had been brought to the D.G.P.’s notice, he would have simply passed it over to the Assistant Commissioner, Crime Branch. So why now had he himself been directly summoned?

  “Both brothers are coming to see me this morning,” the D.G.P. continued, with just the merest hint of uneasiness. “They are due”— he glanced once more at his Titan Exacto—“in precisely six minutes.”

  Ghote swallowed.

  “Yes, sir?” he said.

  “I can only suppose, er, Ghote, that they intend to claim that the young man’s confession was extorted from him by force.”

  Ghote wondered what to reply. Confessions were beaten out of culprits when an investigating officer was certain he had the right man. It was often the only way to achieve a result. Yet it was not a method endorsed by the Criminal Procedure Code. So should he produce an exclamation of shocked disapproval?

  On the other hand, the D.G.P., who must have risen all the way from Probationary Sub-Inspector to his present topmost rank, could not be ignorant of the way things were done.

  “Yes, sir,” he said eventually, attempting to get an absolute lack of meaning into the words.

  The D.G.P. looked at his watch again.

  How many seconds of those six minutes had already gone? And how much more needed to be said before the powerfully influential Dhunjeebhoy brothers appeared?

  “In the ordinary way, Inspector, hm, Ghote, I would have dealt with the Dhunjeebhoys myself, given them some reassurances and so forth. But ...”

  The D.G.P. paused long and long, in search apparently of a way to put some delicate point to an officer altogether too junior to be entrusted with such matters.

  Ghote thought of the new seconds that had ticked away.

  “Yes, sir?” he ventured.

  “Inspector, there is one damn difficult
y.”

  Another pause.

  “You see, er, Ghote, the victim of the murder was a certain—”

  One of the telephones on the D.G.P.’s huge, wide desk, the pink one, buzzed in sudden urgency.

  The D.G.P.’s mouth tightened in sharp displeasure. He consulted his Exacto once more, then reached across and picked up the pink receiver.

  “Yes?”

  An anxious voice quacked at the other end.

  The D.G.P. groaned out an infuriated sigh.

  “Send them up, then,” he said. “Send them up.”

  He turned to Ghote, putting the receiver down.

  “Early,” he said. “Damn it, four minutes and twenty seconds early. ”

  But already there was a clatter of footsteps on the stone stairs outside. Then a discreet knock.

  “Come in,” the D.G.P. called.

  He drew the sleeve of his shirt firmly across the face of his new Tata Titan Exacto.

  The two visitors ushered in by the D.G.P.’s peon were not in appearance the powerful industrialists Ghote had expected to see. Dynamism was not written all over them. Diffidence was.

  Both were tall and inclined to stoop. But, though clearly there was a family resemblance in their pale tobacco-leaf complexions, their deep-set saddish eyes, and fine hooked noses, they seemed in fact to differ considerably. The older one, who introduced

  himself almost shyly as Homi Dhunjeebhoy, was so fleshlessly thin as to make Ghote at once wonder how he continued to keep himself alive. The younger, bouncily adding that he was Bomi Dhunjeebhoy and at once appearing to regret the forwardness, though almost as lean as his brother possessed a little rounded paunch, which alone gave him an air of happy good living.

  The D.G.P. had jumped up from his wide desk as soon as they were shown in and, with much shaking of hands, smiling, and gesturing and offers of cold drinks, tea, and coffee, had got them seated in two of the sprawling leather armchairs that marked out his office as that of a very senior man. Ghote, standing discreetly in the background, he introduced almost with a single word.

  Then, back behind his desk, fingers steepled, he asked, “Now, gentlemen, how can I help you?”

  Homi Dhunjeebhoy leaned forward in his wide armchair like a delicate question mark.

  “Mr. Director General,” he said, “my brother and I are anxious not to take up any more of your valuable time than we have to—”

  “No, no, that’s just it,” Bomi Dhunjeebhoy broke in, almost hopping in his huge chair. “Time. We know yours is valuable, sir. We do not wish to take up more than one second of it that we do not need to. But—but—”

  “But,” said his brother, cutting sharply in, “we regard this as a matter, quite simply, of life and death.”

  “Yes, yes. Life and death. Exactly that. I mean, you see, after all, if—if this terrible business should result in—in—”

  “A verdict of guilty,” Homi Dhunjeebhoy declared hollowly from beside his brother, “then it would indeed be a matter of death. Of death by hanging for poor young Rustom Fardoomji, who is, after all, our cousin.”

  “Though we must admit that of late we have hardly seen the boy,” Bomi bounced in. “Remiss of us. Remiss. Family ties. We ought ...”

  He came to a halt, sadly contemplating, it seemed, the lack of family contact.

  His brother sonorously took up the tale.

  “Rustom must be held partly responsible,” he said. “The boy has no interest in family affairs. Otherwise—”

  “Yes, yes. Otherwise we would have made sure we saw him from time to time. Entertained. Inquired. Looked after. But— but—well, the poor fellow was obsessed. Not too strong a word,

  I think?” Bomi looked across at the scraped-thin question-mark shape of his brother.

  “Obsessed,” Homi gravely concurred. “With timepieces, Mr. Director General. Timepieces. He—”

  “Yes, yes.” Bomi hopped forward. “The young fellow can think of nothing else. Nothing but his watches and his clocks. Of tick and tock. If what makes the things go and what makes them—”

  “Stop.”

  For a moment Bomi looked at his elder as if he had been sharply ordered to hold his tongue. Then he realized that his sentence had simply been completed for him, and he tumbled into the fray again, regardless of his brother’s anxiety to say what had to be said as swiftly as possible.

  “Yes, yes. Clocks stopping, watches going. They make up the whole of that young man’s life. Not married, Mr. Director General. Thirty years of age, and not married. Except to his timepieces. Yes, yes, wedded to those. Wedded.”

  Homi Dhunjeebhoy leaned farther forward in his wide brown chair and put out a hand to restrain his brother.

  “And that is why,” he said, “my brother and I are completely unable to believe that young Rustom could have done the terrible thing he is accused of.”

  The D.G.P. seized this opportunity to produce his promised platitudes.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, rather more loudly than he might have done, “let me assure you that the officers of my force are men of considerable experience. None of them lightly brings a charge under Section Three-oh-two of the Indian Penal Code. And in this particular instance, let me remind you it has been done on the strength of a confession from the young man in question. A direct confession.”

  “But—” Homi Dhunjeebhoy interrupted weightily.

  “But—but—but—” his brother broke in, in a fine rubber-bouncing splutter. “In the newspapers, Mr. Director General.

  One has read . . . beatings, threats, humiliation. Torture even. I can give you instances. Let me see. Let me see ...”

  “Bomi,” his brother broke in, booming like a bell. “We are taking up too much of the D.G.P.’s time. He is a busy man, don’t forget.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. Busy. Quite, quite. Not one moment more than—”

  “Mr. Director General,” Homi came in again. “Let us be perfectly plain. We cannot but suspect that this confession was obtained from young Rustom Fardoomji under duress.”

  “Yes, yes. Duress. Duress. It is not too strong a word.”

  “Bomi—”

  “Oh, yes. Time. Your time, Mr. Director General ...”

  The D.G.P. once more seized the chance Homi Dhunjeebhoy had made for him. At more than a little length he explained how “the Indian Evidence Act, 1927, read with the Criminal Procedure Code, Section 164” made obtaining confessions by force altogether impossible, while refraining from any mention of the fact that such confessions were from time to time obtained. Then, without pause, he launched into a fearsomely detailed account of some of the triumphs of efficiency his force had recently achieved.

  “In one single day, gentlemen, no fewer than one hundred and fifteen goondas arrested, plus also eleven slumlords, plus again thirty-seven bootleggers detected and no fewer than ninety-seven thousand, two hundred and two liters of hooch destroyed. I have the figures before me.”

  He tapped impressively at one of the piles of papers on his desk. Ghote, flat against the wall in the background, suppressed the thought that the papers might contain no such figures.

  The Dhunjeebhoy brothers had been reduced to listening in silence, Homi bending at every moment into a yet more doubting mark of interrogation, Bomi excitedly tapping at his little rounded paunch with impatient fingers.

  Now Homi at last saw his chance.

  “Mr. Director General, I have no doubt all you say is true. However—”

  “However, sir, however,” Bomi popped in. “We have known Rustom since his childhood days. Yes, yes. And he was dreamy. That’s the word. Dreamy. A sweet—”

  “Mr. Director General,” Homi rode over his brother, “the fact is, we cannot believe the boy committed a crime of such savagery. ”

  “Yes, yes, savagery. That’s what we understand, sir. The body was savagely attacked. Savagely. Am I right?”

  The D.G.P. consulted for an instant another sheet of paper on the desk in front of him.

  “The
victim was severely battered, yes,” he said. “I have a detailed description here. It is not too much to say the attack was savage.”

  “And it is the considered opinion of my brother and myself,” Homi Dhunjeebhoy stated, “that our cousin Rustom is incapable of savagery. Let us not take up more of your time, sir. Let us state plainly that we have come this morning to ask you to make the most rigorous inquiries into this alleged confession.”

  “Oh, Mr. Director General, rigorous. Rigorous, rigorous. Not a stone unturned, sir. A stitch in time . . .Not a—not a—”

  “Bomi, we have made our point, I trust. Remember, the Director General has numerous duties.”

  “Good gracious, yes. Oh, forgive me, sir. I fear I have gone on. Gone on at length. But—but—but you see, Rustom means a great deal to us. The family. You understand, there are ties—”

  “Bomi.”

  “Oh, yes, yes, Homi. Yes, we must be going. Yes, indeed. Going.”

  Homi by way of agreement uncurled his long body from the deep leather armchair.

  “Mr. Director General,” he asked, “can I feel I have your assurance that the matter will be pursued?”

  “Pursued to the utmost,” Bomi hopped up out of his chair to add. “Any sign, sir. Any sign at all that that confession—”

  “Bomi, time.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. Waits for no man, waits not a minute. Going. We must be going. We are going.”

  Bomi Dhunjeebhoy’s voice trailed away as he went through the door that his brother was holding wide for him.

  It closed. Ghote came back to stand in front of the D.G.P.’s desk again, to receive his orders.

  “Sir,” he said, “you would be wanting me to follow the investigation till date on behalf of Crime Branch? To make doubly certain there were no irreg—”

  “No.”

  The D.G.P. chopped the word out like a blow from an axe. “No, sir?”

  “No, Inspector.”

  TWO

  "Ghote felt submerged in astonishment. Surely, he thought, the D.G.P. is not going to dismiss to one hundred percent a request from such influential people as the Dhunjeebhoy brothers. It was all very well to talk about “reassurances and so forth,” but for all the details he had produced about the 97,202 liters of hooch discovered and destroyed—and, now that he came to think of it, that was the exact figure, given in the newspapers even—and for all his careful quoting of the venerable Indian Evidence Act, the brothers had not been won over. They had left seemingly believing the confession that this Rustom Fardoomji had made would be inquired into, to the very bottom.