Dead on Time

by H. R. F. Keating

  How now will I be able to obtain her cooperation? he asked himself with sudden bleakness.

  But then the tiny hesitation in what she had said came back at the last second into his mind. Did it indicate a weakness? He probed.

  “The recipient is always unaware?” he asked. “Is it never happening that a man who has been paid to give up his one kidney finds out who is getting same?”

  Dr. Mrs. Yadekar shot more upright on her tubular steel chair. She darted at Ghote a look of frosty inquiry.

  “Have you been questioning my servants?” she said. “The man who admitted you?”

  “No, madam, no.”

  “He didn’t tell you about the clerk I dismissed? Come, Inspector, I have a right to know.”

  But Ghote had recovered enough now to speak with some cunning.

  “This clerk,” he said, “why exactly were you dismissing?” Dr. Mrs. Yadekar tightened her lips into a fierce line.

  “The man had no legitimate reason to object,” she said. “He quite needlessly allowed that donor to know who was to benefit from his surgery.”

  “And this man, this clerk, he was very much upset by his dismissal?”

  Dr. Mrs. Yadekar smiled coolly.

  “You would hardly expect him to be overjoyed, would you, Inspector?”

  “No. No, I am supposing not.”

  Ghote thought of putting one more question about this possibly embittered clerk. But from the doctor’s continuing expression of lofty amusement he doubted if he would get anywhere. And he was urgently aware, too, of how much more of his alloted five minutes had already gone by. He reverted instead to the prime object of his visit.

  “Madam,” he said, “kindly be telling. Mr. Ramrao Pendke, at what exact time of the day of his murder did he leave this clinic? Was it with or without permission?”

  “It was with permission, Inspector,” Dr. Mrs. Yadekar replied, in tones a great deal less haughty. “Exercise is indicated for patients after surgery. Mr. Pendke would have left here at ten a.m. precisely. That day he was to walk down to Kemp’s Corner, then along to the August Kranti Maidan, to go around that park once, at a steady pace, and then return. He should have reached here before twelve noon.”

  “And when he did not, you were taking some steps?”

  “Yes, yes. We called the police station. Eventually they called back to say he had been attacked and killed. Eventually.”

  As much to restore the image of police efficiency as anything, Ghote asked a different question.

  “And what visitors was Mr. Pendke having in the time immediately before his decease?”

  Dr. Mrs. Yadekar, without a word, swiveled around in her chair, pulled open a filing cabinet, extracted a black-bound book, and flipped rapidly through its pages.

  “Yes,” she said, “he was visited on Monday last, that is the day before he was attacked, by, one, his cousin Mr. Ganpatrao Pendke, accompanied by an uncle, Mr. Jambuvant Dhoble.”

  “And by number two, who, please, madam?” Ghote asked, tucking away the confirmation that Ganpatrao and the Sarpanch had seen Ramrao so soon before his death.

  “By, two,” Dr. Mrs. Yadekar answered, “a Mr. Raghu Barde. I remember the occasion particularly since, as we do not normally permit two visits in one day, I gave my personal agreement. Something, I may say, I regretted almost at once. I understand some sort of quarrel took place, a rather violent quarrel. An occurrence that might well have retarded recovery.”

  Ghote felt a flame of elation. So, not only had Ganpatrao and the Sarpanch been here to see Ramrao, but Raghu Barde had actually seen him, too. Barde, the man who believed it was vital—Sitabai the steno’s word of English came back to him— that his fellow villagers at Khindgaon should achieve modest prosperity by their own efforts and not as the result of the monster manganese mining operation that Ramrao had planned. Barde had met Ramrao here, and there had been a violent

  Then there was the fact that, if he himself had easily learned Ramrao’s precisely timed pattern of exercise, so could Barde have done. Have learned of it and known then how to follow his victim until an opportunity to strike occurred.

  With a little more luck it should not be long before A.I. Mike Lobo had something else to think about besides palming off unwanted watches.

  “Please, madam,” he said, hardly able to conceal his excitement, “what like was looking this Mr. Barde?”

  “It’s odd you should ask that, Inspector,” Dr. Mrs. Yadekar replied. “Because he had a rather strange appearance. He’s pretty young, in his early thirties, no more, but he’s almost completely bald. Coupled with him being very tall, well up to the two-meter mark, he’s not anybody you’d forget you’d seen.”

  Another piece of luck coming from an inquiry he had made in wanting every last piece of information. A man as curious in appearance should not be difficult to trace from witnesses at or near the murder scene. From anywhere along the walk that had led Ramrao Pendke to his death.

  “Madam, excuse, please,” he burst out. “I must at once leave. Highly important business.”

  “Well,” Dr. Mrs. Yadekar said, “I’m glad to see someone in India’s got some idea of prompt action.”

  ELEVEN

  Ghote hurried down the hill from the Shrimati Usha Yadekar Clinic, head buzzing with an excitement he found hard to keep decently in check. He had in his hands now a line of investigation that looked better and better with every passing moment. And, he added to himself with an inward smile of pleasure, he had also succeeded in securing from efficient, America-returned Dr. Mrs. Yadekar more than the strict five minutes she had stated she could spare him.

  He decided to make straight for the farthest point on the round of exercise that had been prescribed for Ramrao Pendke, the August Kranti Maidan. It was a place he knew well from when he had had to investigate a rather sordid blackmailing case involving a girl who had lived in one of the hutments in the nearby Papandas Wadi. In the park, he calculated, where all day long idlers sat or played, he would stand his best chance of finding someone who had seen that tall, noticeably bald young man, Raghu Barde. Possibly someone who had noticed him following Ramrao Pendke.

  He arrived, out of breath and feeling his sore side, at the wide stretch of scorched grass and looked about. Half a dozen games of cricket were simultaneously being played by a variety of youths, mostly dodging school, he guessed. A ten-year-old equipped only with a massive, man-sized pair of ancient keeper’s gloves, crouched with an air of immensely serious professionalism well back from a tottering pile of bricks that did service for a wicket. At the other end of the scale were young men dressed in proper, if dirtyish, whites, playing with as much intentness. Then there were schoolgirls, in the neat uniforms of the New Era School opposite, enlivening their strictly allocated play period with a game that appeared to consist of nothing but the repeated English question “May I?” and the scornful, invariable retort “No, you may not.”

  No likely witnesses here.

  Perhaps, he thought, he would have done better to have stopped in his race down here and questioned the urchin he had seen out of the corner of his eye squatting on the pavement selling a basket of far-from-fresh prawns. Their sharp smell had just alerted him. There would have been a witness with time in plenty to take note of any passing oddity. Should he go back?

  Then he remembered that on the far side of the maidan there was a hedged-off area where old men were always to be found sitting hour after hour whiling away the time. They would be yet better witnesses. Dr. Mrs. Yadekar had told Ramrao Pendke to walk round the whole maidan. If he had obeyed his instructions, as with someone as fiercely precise as the doctor he could scarcely have failed to do, he should have been seen by at least one idly watching observer there.

  He hurried over.

  And struck lucky at once. Only he was not sure whether his luck was wholly good.

  A voice had hailed him at almost the moment he set foot on the wide path round the enclosure.

  “Ghote! It�
��s young Ghote, by Jove.”

  He turned to see, sitting sedately on one of the pink-colored stone-chip chairs surrounding the enclosure, hands clasped over the knob of a stick, his former colleague, Inspector D’Sa, now long retired, one of the last of the band of Anglo-Indians and Indian Catholics who had once dominated the Bombay police officer corps.

  His immediate reaction was leaden dismay. D’Sa had been a tremendous bore even in his last days in the service. Immediately after he had retired he had been worse, always drifting back and descending on anyone he could persuade to listen for long sessions of past-regarding gossip. What would he be like now?

  But then a second thought had come to him. D’Sa was, after all, a trained police officer, and now, as well, someone with time in plenty on his hands. In short, an ideal witness to have taken notice of the suspicious circumstance of convalescing Ramrao Pendke being secretly followed by tall, young, bald Raghu Barde.

  There was a vacant stone chair next to him. Ghote lowered his bruised frame carefully onto it, wincing as the stored heat penetrated his cotton trousers.

  “Well, well, D’Sa sahib,” he said, making himself sound as friendly as he could. “How goes the world with you these days?”

  D’Sa shook his head sadly.

  “Badly, young fellow. Damn badly. There are you, I suppose, looking forward to your retirement. To easy days, to no more duties, no more consorting with riffraff. Less ulcers, you think, less heart attack. But, I tell you, retirement is not at all like that. Retirement is: What to do today? What to do tomorrow? Same as yesterday, same as the day before. You know what I am reduced to doing, young Ghote?”

  “No, D’Sa sahib. What is that?”

  “To checking up the times letter boxes are cleared. Yes, just that. You know it states on each box at precisely what hour they are to be emptied, such as 17:38, etc.? Well, I keep watch on a few boxes round about and see if it is done to time.”

  “And—and is it?” Ghote asked, failing to find anything else to say.

  “Never. No, it is not. Look, I keep notes.”

  The old boy tugged out of his shirt pocket a tattered little spiral-bound notebook. He flipped it open, revealing that it was called a “Sweety Pad.” Line after line of meticulously entered figures filled its pages.

  Ghote seized his chance, such as it was.

  “Highly remarkable, D’Sa sahib. Most. I see you have lost nothing of your old skills. I bet, for example, there is not one single person passing through this part of the maidan that you are not noting also.”

  D’Sa made a deprecating face, but not much of one.

  “It is true I have still got eyes in my head,” he said. “We were taught how to do things at Police Training School in my time, not all like you youngsters of today.”

  Ghote swallowed the insult with entire happiness.

  “Well, tell me, D’Sa sahib,” he said, “for example, were you observing any strange activities here in the maidan, shall I be saying, on last Tuesday?”

  “Ah. So the Tick Tock murder has been given to Crime Branch,” old D’Sa answered smartly.

  Ghote managed a grin.

  “You are cent per cent right,” he said. “As always. Yes, I am here on duty. So can you be helping me? I am thinking one A.I. Lobo, at the station up there, has been too quick to nab the suspect. So I am tracing out the walk the victim was taking on the morning of his death with altogether a different culprit in mind.”

  D’Sa nodded sagely.

  “I always said, Inspector. Slow but sure. Slow but sure is the way to handle a case.”

  And, yes, Ghote thought with a pleasant revengeful swirl of inner malice, very slow and not too much of sure. That was why you ended your days as in-charge for the Vegetable and Flower Show, you old fool.

  “And were you seeing the Tick Tock victim here on Tuesday?” he asked politely. “Was someone perhaps following him only?”

  “Yes. Yes, I saw him.”

  “You did?” Ghote forgave in an instant all D’Sa’s ponderousness. “You are one hundred percent certain?”

  “Oh, yes, Inspector. I noticed the fellow. He was not walking fast, and he was stooping, although he was only a young man. I deduced he had been suffering from some illness. Then, after the murder, I saw his photo in the Mid-Day.”

  “Very good,” Ghote said, meaning it to the last syllable. “But, tell me, D’Sa sahib, did you not observe also that this victim was being followed?”

  “Inspector, if I told you I had, I would be telling one damn big lie.”

  Ghote experienced a jab of disappointment. And could not refrain, though he knew he should not, from prompting his witness.

  “Are you sure you were not seeing a young man, almost cent per cent bald, very tall also, who was following with evil intent?”

  D’Sa laughed. With prolonged enjoyment.

  “Oh, you young officers. Always wanting what you cannot have. Inspector, have you ever gone through the work of the great German criminologist, Dr. Gross, as adapted by J. Collier Adam, sometime Public Prosecutor, Madras?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “If you had, Inspector, you would know what is meant by the term ‘expeditious investigator.’ It is an officer who jumps to conclusions, my friend. A jumper to conclusions.”

  Despite the stinging rebuke, Ghote felt obliged to make certain beyond all possible doubt that tall, bald Raghu Barde had not been under D’Sa’s eye that morning.

  “You were not at all observing such person?” he asked. “Not even at some distance from the victim?”

  “Inspector, he was not here. Take the word of an old police officer who has had his successes in his day, more than some know. ”

  Ghote rose silently from his stone chair.

  And, almost by way of farewell, asked one more question. “D’Sa sahib, what time was it you were seeing Ramrao Pendke here? I would like to have that exactly.”

  “It was at precisely eleven-twenty-seven a.m., Inspector.”

  For a moment Ghote did not take in what old D’Sa had actually said. His had been merely the politest of parting inquiries, and he had hardly been ready to take any particular note of the answer. But then that time, so exactly stated, impinged on his mind.

  D’Sa had said 11:27. But there was the evidence of the smashed watch that the murder had taken place at 11:08. The old fool must be completely wrong about the whole business. He must never have seen Ramrao. He must have seen someone looking somewhat like him.

  “It was at just exactly eleven-twenty-seven?” he asked mechanically.

  “Inspector, I take good care to keep my old timepiece accurate to the minute. How else could I catch out those postwallas late in clearing their letter boxes?”

  Ghote turned away.

  He ought, he knew, to go around the maidan looking for idlers similar to old D’Sa. But he would have to do that under D’Sa’s eye, feeling him every minute thinking “There goes one expeditious investigator.” He could not face it. It had been bad enough realizing under Dr. Mrs. Yadekar’s cold gaze that he did not actually know that there were two separate kidneys in the human body or whereabouts they were to be found. Ved had a book at home, The Human Body in Pictures, something like that. He must look for it. But it was worse, coming from old D’Sa, to be thought of as not even having read the book of Dr. Hans Gross—he himself had probably lent it to D’Sa in the first place—and to be ignorant even of what constituted expeditiousness.

  Then he asked himself, wildly picking at excuses, whether D’Sa could after all be right about the time. What if somehow that smashed gold Rolex on Ramrao Pendke’s wrist, the gold Rolex Mike Lobo had claimed was no gold Rolex but a cunning fake, what if its hands had actually been altered? Altered like something in a film?

  But if they had, what could possibly have been the object? If Ramrao Pendke had died later than had been thought, who could benefit from such a trick? No, for a made-up alibi the hands would have had to have been put back, not forward. If they had be
en put forward, a murderer would simply risk the body being found before the murder was supposed to have been done. There was almost certainly no fixed time for Mr. Saxena to come to the Tick Tock Watchworks with his case of H.M.T. samples.

  Or was there? Perhaps the First Information Report he had yet to see would say something about that.

  And, yes, surely that was what he ought to be making his first priority. Going around the maidan looking for possible witnesses under D’Sa’s knowing eye was not the most important thing just now. Certainly not.

  And, by God, A.I. Lobo had better not put any difficulties in his way about seeing that F.I.R. By God, no.

  He marched back to the police station as if he was God Hanuman leading his troop of fellow monkeys to rescue the beauteous Sita from the wicked demon Ravana.

  He had half expected to learn that Lobo had absented himself without leaving behind, as he was duty bound to do, details of where he had gone. Which would, he thought savagely, most likely be down among the gay girls of Kamathipura, if it was not so early in the day. But, no, the fellow was there, sitting as he had been the day before on the corner of the big central table—why did he have to sit like that when there were chairs available?—idly swinging a leg and joking with a couple of fellow officers.

  “A.I.,” he barked out at him, “I am wishing to see the F.I.R. in the Tick Tock Watch works case.”

  “Yeah, sure, Inspector. It’s about somewhere, with all the other stuff, photo of the victim, case diary, you be naming it. I’ll dig it out for you.”

  But he made no move to get off the table and go.

  “Now, A.I.,” Ghote snapped. “At once.”

  Mike Lobo looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  “Okay, okay, Inspector,” he said.

  And he simply shunted round on the table, pushed aside one or two piles of papers, and extracted from under a third an F.I.R. book. He flipped through its carbon-copy pages, put in a thumb to keep the place, and handed it over.

  “Thank you, A.I.,” Ghote said grimly.

  He pored over the faint blue-carbon writing as he stood there. But, if he had hoped to gain from the report any relevant details that A.I. Lobo had overlooked, he was disappointed.