Once more an almost imperceptible pause.
“With the weapon he is saying.”
“Who is saying, Mr. Fardoomji? Who?”
“Mr. Lobo. Assistant Inspector ...”
“But what weapon was that? Is it the same that you yourself are saying? The one you were truly using?”
“I killed him.”
“What with? What with did you kill him?”
“I killed him.”
And though Ghote persisted for more than an hour after that, he got no more out of the anxious parrot than the repeated and repeated “I killed him.”
At last he had to admit defeat. If Rustom Fardoomji was not in fact the murderer of Ramrao Pendke, Mike Lobo had worked on him too well. Unless a miracle occurred, the fellow was going to go before a magistrate repeating his story, was going to repeat it in court, would perhaps deny it at last only on the day of his execution when no one would believe him. Certainly he was not going to go back from it now, when there was still the possibility that he would be put back in a cell and have A.I. Lobo enter it after him.
But failure with the frightened, brain-deadened man at the other side of the table only increased Ghote’s determination to find an explanation for the murder by other means. An explanation that would show up as bare-faced lies everything Lobo had claimed.
And, he thought to himself with satisfaction, he had at least now acquired, from that F.I.R. he had eventually succeeded in seeing and from elsewhere, a good many times and details. Now he could go, armed, to interrogate the man he saw as most likely to be the true killer of Ramrao Pendke, Raghu Barde.
He called a constable to take Rustom Fardoomji back to his cell and hurried out. At Kemp’s Corner he spotted the yellow top of a taxi, hailed it, and told the driver to take him to the T.I.F.R.
There might be trouble claiming the ride on expenses. But, if he had to, he was prepared to pay out of his own pocket. Every last paisa.
The paisas and rupees, in fact, mounted up a good deal faster than he had bargained for because the journey turned out to be slow indeed. With Mike Lobo’s borrowed, scarcely readable, copper-faced watch on his wrist, he had already lost the habit of frequently, unconsciously checking the time. So it had come as a surprise to find he was right in the middle of Bombay’s evening traffic jamboree. The taxi kept crawling forward a few yards, then coming to a stop and waiting, engine economically switched off, horn going furiously, till for no apparent reason the ice-jam broke and they were able to make a little more progress. Only to come to a halt once more and have to sit fretting, with the stink of half-consumed petrol floating in through windows it was too hot to close.
The hour of cowdust, Ghote thought. My God, it should be the hour of car fumes.
So it took over an hour for a journey which, even with ordinary daytime traffic, should not have lasted more than thirty minutes. From Kemp’s Corner and its huge fly-over, wriggling down to Chowpatty Beach. Then the sweep of Marine Drive, where at any other hour they would have zoomed along beside the sea fast enough to produce a wonderfully cooling breeze. Next, turning sharp left at the Air India building so as to work their way round Back Bay Reclamation, along Cuffe Parade. And finally, turning sharp right, rattling down the bare straight stretch of narrow road, like a country road with its dusty verges, that led at last to the Tata Institute at almost the very tip of downward-plunging peninsular Bombay.
By the time they had reached the gate at the T.I.F.R. Ghote had convinced himself that Raghu Barde would not be there. But, when he inquired, the security guard on duty put through a call to Barde’s room and, looking up, said grudgingly that, yes, he had answered. His was Room 342.
Leaving the taxi, Ghote made his way to the residential quarter of the big complex and found without difficulty Room 342. He knocked on its pale-wood blank door.
And, in response, from inside, causing him to jump back in alarm, there came a shriek of sudden wild fury. A moment later the door was flung wide.
Poised in the doorway Ghote saw, beyond doubt, the man he had come to question, young, very tall, and prematurely bald with a high-domed skull at the sides of which tufts of unruly curled black hair protruded. And contorted rage had seized in knots of locked tension every feature of the face beneath that peaked bald skull.
THIRTEEN
Ghote took a step forward toward the enraged figure in the doorway in front of him.
“It is Mr. Barde?” he asked, pitching his voice to a clear, quiet note. “Mr. Raghu Barde? They were ringing through to tell that I was coming.”
“I said. I told him. Not to be disturbed. Not. Not. I told the fool. No visitors. No visitors. Leave me alone.”
Ghote recalled that the securitywalla at the gate had been noticeably short in telling him that Raghu Barde had answered his phone. But the fellow had not passed on his name and rank. So Barde’s rage, which he thought now despite its violence had in it something of mere hysteria, could not be accounted for by fear of a police inquiry.
“Mr. Barde,” he said, doing all he could to infuse his voice with continuing calm authority, “I regret but I am not able to leave you alone. I am a police officer, Inspector Ghote by name, and I am here to ask you questions concerning one very serious matter.”
His tone appeared to have the effect he had hoped. Raghu Barde did not answer him and his body still retained its fierce tension. But he did at least turn sideways so that it was possible to enter the bright, hygienically furnished room behind him.
“Sit down, Mr. Barde,” Ghote said as the tall scientist closed the door.
He had made the words all but an order. After an instant of hesitation Raghu Barde went over to the narrow bed under its bright cotton cover, sat down on it, and tucked his bare feet up underneath himself.
“I—I am sorry, Inspector—Inspector—what were you saying that your name was?”
“Ghote. It is Ghote.”
“I am sorry, Inspector Ghote, I am afraid I was somewhat rude just now.”
More than rude, Ghote reflected. But he made no reply. With all the pent-up tension Barde had shown, this was, he calculated, one of the times when leaving a silence was likely to produce more from a witness than any number of direct questions.
And, sure enough, after the shortest of pauses, Raghu Barde spoke again.
“You see, Inspector, when you were knocking I was deeply engaged in a train of thought. I am a mathematician, you know. That is my employment here. I just happen to have a head for number. I do not at all know how I acquired such, but I have it. To an uncommon extent, though I say so. My father, you see, was altogether uneducated, a village weaver only. Perhaps, I am sometimes thinking, it was from weaving, which my family has done for many generations, my mother’s also, that I was developing some sense of number. I do not know. But I have it, and just now I was working, thinking. I did not expect at this hour of the evening to have any interruption. I imagine you have no idea how a person of my sort works?”
The spate of autobiography seemed to need a jolt forward now.
“You—you write down figures? Add them up? Or, no, multiply and divide, other things also?”
Raghu Barde actually smiled at this, a smile of unexpected warmth in view of the tremendous rage that only a short time before had gripped his whole body from the crown of his high bald head to the curling toes of his bare feet.
“No, Inspector,” he said. “It is not at all like that, I am assuring you. You see, for a person of my sort—and I admit that we are a rare breed—numbers are so much in our minds there is hardly any question of writing them down, let alone adding one to another.”
He leaned forward eagerly on the bright-patterned bed.
“Let me give you one instance,” he said. “Before I was beginning work just now, I was taking a short stroll, and I happened to see a handcartwalla. Now, being the sort of chap I am, I of course noticed the number burned on the side of the cart: seventeen-twenty-nine. Now, does that mean anything to you yourself?”
“It is the number on the cart,” Ghote answered guardedly. “By law it must be there.”
Raghu Barde smiled his warm smile again.
“Ah, yes, the police view. But what do you think those figures meant to me? You would never guess. But the moment I was seeing them I said: Aha, the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways. And, you know, if ever I am getting to marry, I suppose I will want a wife whose birth date comes to some number pleasing to me like that.”
“I see,” Ghote said.
And, although the mumbo jumbo about cubes and expressible meant nothing to him, and he could not help thinking that to choose a wife by number would be a much riskier proceeding than to let the astrologers choose one for you, he did dimly see what a different sort of life Raghu Barde lived from that of the common number-unencumbered man.
He thought he now saw, too, a way of getting to the business he had come here for without arousing immediate defensiveness.
“I am supposing you are always and always doing such tricks with numbers,” he said. “Each and every time you are looking at your watch, for example, you must be seeing some expressibles.”
Raghu Barde smiled again.
“Well, I might,” he conceded. “Though, as a matter of fact, I seldom wear a watch. When I go back to my native place, as I often do—it is a small village in Vidharba, almost into Madya Pradesh State—I leave my watch behind. Time is altogether different back there.”
As he spoke a light shone in his eyes far removed from the glare of rage that had blazed in them when Ghote had first seen him.
Ghote, however, was intent on his cunning strategy.
“But when it is that you are wearing a watch,” he said, “you are finding the times it says are meaning special things to you, isn’t it? For instance, if I was saying eleven-oh-eight a.m. . .
He waited, poised, for a reaction.
But Raghu Barde merely looked a little puzzled.
“a.m. or p.m., Inspector,” he answered, “it would make no difference to me. It is the numbers themselves only that I cannot help arranging in whatever mathematical patterns they happen to fall into.”
“Not even,” Ghote jabbed out, “if it was eleven-oh-eight a.m. on last Tuesday?”
A wary look did come into Raghu Barde’s eyes then.
“Ah,” he said slowly. “Yes, it was what was just passing through my mind when you were telling me you were a police inspector. It is the Ramrao Pendke murder, no? I was seeing Mr. Pendke last Monday, the day before he was killed. You must have found out that at the clinic where he was.”
“And what was it you yourself were finding out at that clinic?” Ghote hammered in. “Was it the time that Ramrao Pendke left each day for the exercise he was made to take? Was it the route he was given?”
For a little Raghu Barde sat cross-legged on the colorful bedspread in silence.
“I see what you have got into your head,” he said at last. “You must have heard also that I was losing my temper when I talked with Mr. Pendke, and you have decided that it must be myself who was killing him. At eleven-oh-eight. Yes, eleven-oh-eight. That is why you were asking that absurd question. I see it all now.”
Every trace of the warmth of his smiles had disappeared. In its place were ominous signs of another storm of rage.
“Never mind about absurd or not absurd, Mr. Barde,” Ghote said with enforced quietness. “What I am wanting to know is: Where were you exactly at eight minutes past eleven last Tuesday morning?”
He could see the mathematician thinking, even as he was putting his question. Was it only numbers that were running through his head? Or was he working out some lie?
“Yes, I can tell you that quite definitely, Inspector,” Barde answered after a moment. “On Tuesday morning there was a staff meeting here at T.I.F.R., and I was attending same. I was here and nowhere else.”
“I see. And when was this meeting taking place?”
“It began at eleven-thirty precisely, and since this is Bombay I was wearing my watch and took care to be there. So, you see, I could hardly have been at Kemp’s Corner—Mr. Pendke was killed near there, isn’t it?—only twenty minutes before the meeting.”
Ghote was constrained to admit that this was so. His taxi here from Kemp’s Corner had taken a full hour. But even in the middle of the night with no traffic the trip would take perhaps as long as twenty-five minutes, and in the mornings there was certainly plenty of traffic on the streets.
No, wait, he thought suddenly. The smashed hands on Ramrao Pendke’s fake gold Rolex. At the back of his mind there had been the nagging thought all along that somehow that crime-film clue must be more than accidental. And surely altering a watch’s hands was exactly what a mathematician might be expected to think of. Someone who thought always in figures. And was also somewhat impractical.
And then, with a thump, he realized that he himself was the one who was being impractical. And certainly nothing of a mathematician.
Because, if Barde had altered the hands of that watch before deliberately smashing it, all he could have done was to make the time of the murder appear earlier than it actually was. Advancing the hands of the watch before smashing it could only have been to risk the body being found before the hour the watch was showing. Putting them back would simply have spoiled the alibi he had just produced.
“Very well, Mr. Barde,” he said, attempting a show of grimness to cover his discomfiture, “I will of course be checking to one hundred percent that you yourself were at this meeting which was starting at eleven-thirty a.m. But otherwise it appears you are no longer figuring in my inquiries.”
“Thank you,” Raghu Barde said, visibly relaxing again. “And you have only to ask any other member of staff about the meeting. It was full house.”
“Very well.”
Ghote turned and left.
Only when he was closing the door behind him did the full force of what he had learned come home to him. If Barde’s alibi checked out, and it was surely likely to or he would not have put it forward so confidently, then his most promising candidate as the murderer of Ramrao Pendke was cleared. And Mike Lobo might be right after all.
As he walked despondently away toward the gate, his attention was caught by a young woman emerging from the building next to Barde’s. What it was that made him at once sure she was on the T.I.F.R. staff he did not know. But, despite her sex, her age—which could not have been past the late twenties—and her prettiness, which was considerable, he had no doubt she was a scientist working at the institute.
“Madam,” he called out. “Madam, excuse me.”
The girl stopped and turned.
“Yes?”
“Please, I am wondering if you can assist me. You are a T.I.F.R. staff member, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Achcha. Then can you tell me this? Were you present at a certain staff meeting that was taking place last Tuesday morning?”
A gleam of amusement appeared on the girl’s face.
“I certainly was,” she said. “Protest meeting at an administration directive.”
“Oh, yes? And it was taking place at eleven-thirty hours?”
“It was.”
“And, please, was it beginning exactly to time? Often a meeting is failing to start at advertised hour.”
“Very often. But we are scientists here and accustomed to precision. We measure time in nanoseconds even. So when we call a meeting for any particular hour, you can be sure it will start at that time. Unless it’s called by the administration.”
“Thank you, madam. And one last question only. You are acquainted with one Mr. Raghu Barde?”
“Raghuji? Of course.”
“And he was present at that same meeting?”
“Yes. I tell you, no one was going to miss it. There were going to be fireworks. And there were.”
“I see. Thank you. That is all I am wishing to know.”
He gave her a nod of
a bow and turned to go.
“Wait a minute. You are not saying why you wanted to know all this. Who are you anyway?”
“Oh, very regret. I am a police officer, Inspector Ghote by name. Making some routine inquiries.”
“Police? We all know about routine inquiries. What have you got against Raghu? He’s the sweetest guy. Is it his activities in his home village, helping the dalits there? I suppose you think anyone helping the downtrodden is bound to be some Naxalite terrorist?”
“Madam, madam, not at all. It is truly just only routine inquiry. I was wanting to know exactly where was Mr. Raghu Barde at eleven-thirty hours last Tuesday, and now that I am knowing I no longer have any interest in the said gentleman.”
“Oh, yes? Well, to be strictly precise, you have got your facts wrong, Inspector. Raghuji was not at the meeting at eleven-thirty hours, if by that you mean that exact minute. He came late. I happened to notice. He came in, puffing and panting, five minutes after we had begun. A little more perhaps. I suppose he had been lost in thought. These mathematicians. I am an engineer myself.”
Ghote drew in a breath.
“You would swear to that?” he said. “Please, what is your good name? This may be important evidence.”
He had been doing some rapid arithmetic. Given these seven or eight minutes extra, it was just possible perhaps that Raghu Barde could have left the Tick Tock Watchworks after smashing by accident Ramrao Pendke’s watch and have reached T.I.F.R. when this girl had said she had seen him.
“I am Miss Amita Modi. But, listen, I am not wanting—”
Ghote swung round and left her at a run. He needed a word with Raghu Barde. Urgently.
Somehow he knew, though, even as he thundered back up to Room 342, that Raghu Barde would not be there. And, sure enough, when he thrust open the room’s door he saw that it was empty. It even had an air of desertion.
He was at a loss to account for that impression, strong though it was. Then he registered that a large cotton shoulderbag, typical of a student or intellectual, jutting at the sides with the corners of books, which he had seen without seeing earlier down on the floor beside the bed, was missing.
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