Dead on Time

by H. R. F. Keating

  But the bus starter, whether he had seen the pair of them or not, came meandering on.

  At last he was near enough to be spoken to, coming to a halt and staring—was it with horror or with some sort of longing?—at the watch shop’s closed shutter. Then, before Ghote had been able to decide what to say to him, his wild eyes fastened on Ghote’s own and there broke from his sores-disfigured lips the familiar words.

  “Time kya? Time kya?”

  The distended eyes were fever bright with longing, as if it meant everything to the fellow—what is his name, Ghote thought in sudden panic—to be told what exact time it was.

  And, as if an electric light had been clicked on in the darkened room of his brain, Ghote knew at that instant what he had to say to the wretched bedraggled creature in front of him.

  “Bhai, what time was it when you killed the man who had taken a piece of your body?”

  “Yes,” said the madman.

  Ghote leaned toward him. Almost on tiptoe. Did that yes mean what it ought to mean? Yes, I killed him? Or was it just a word, a word issuing from a madman’s brain? A word that might have been any other?

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He was Saturn. I had to put an end to him. What time it was? It was eleven o’clock and eight minutes after. Eight minutes, seven years. Seven years, eight minutes.”

  Ghote risked a quick glance across to D’Sa.

  And it was clear that he, too, believed he had just heard a confession to murder. It had even included precise detail, the exact time that the hands of the dead man’s watch had shown as they were smashed. But that hour had not been, in all probability, the time Ramrao Pendke had been killed.

  Carefully Ghote put another question to the demented creature in front of him.

  “Bhai, how were you knowing it was eight minutes past eleven when that happened? How?”

  “The watch, the watch,” the madman answered at once. “I saw it there. That is what it was saying. I had to stop Saturn’s march. I gave it one blow.”

  “Yes. And what was it that you struck that blow with?”

  “With—with—with that thing.”

  “Yes? What thing? Tell me.”

  “In the clock. In the clock on the wall. After I met him I was following him inside. And then—I saw it. The long heavy thing hanging under the clock. I took it. I hit and hit and hit. Hit, hit, hit, hit.”

  Again Ghote flicked a look at D’Sa.

  “The very weapon, D’Sa sahib,” he said. “A pendulum weight that is missing from a clock in the shop here. It is proof. It is truly proof.”

  “Oh, yes, young Ghote. You have solved your case.”

  Looking at it all now, Ghote could not see why it had not been evident to him long before that he had had the murderer under his eyes. The madman’s presence had run like a jutting thread through his life ever since he had begun his search for the true murderer of Ramrao Pendke.

  The fellow had been here outside the Tick Tock Watchworks, scene of the crime, when he himself had first come here. He had been there openly showing the long scar where his kidney had been removed, openly declaiming how he was cursed by Saturn. And kidneys. They, too, had kept coming into his mind. Time and again. At the clinic, where he had somehow been led to ask all those questions about transplants. And then, puzzling him all along until he had found that book of Ved’s and seen just where the little oil mills lay, there had been the question of where in the human body the kidneys were to be found. And again when Protima had lectured him about the yugas and he had exploded with fury at all he was expected to know about. Yugas, primes and expressibles, and the whereabouts of the kidneys.

  And the madman himself. Had not the thought of the fellow come into his head when he might least have expected it? Away in Village Dharbani when he had been trying to tease out sensible answers from that ancient, quarter-witted old soldier? Or when he had been striving to make conversation with the Patil’s astrologer and had in desperation, as he had thought, asked him about the terrible influence of the planet Saturn in an astrological house? And, once more, when he had at last got inside the Tick Tock Watchworks and had been struck by the silence of its stopped clocks and watches. The thought of the madman and his “Time kya? Time kya?” had come vividly to him then.

  It had all been there in front of him all the time.

  D’Sa, he saw now, was once again quietly moving round till he was in a position to grip a suspect from behind if it should seem necessary. But now, Ghote felt totally certain, this was a suspect who truly had committed the crime.

  The practicalities of what to do next brought him back to the present. What time was it?

  He consulted the many dials of his borrowed watch.

  Four minutes past one. Plenty of time to get to that 1419 hours meeting with the D.G.P., armed now with proof of who had actually killed Ramrao Pendke.

  But what about the proof? The word of a madman? Would the D.G.P., after all, refuse to believe in this fellow as the killer? Would he still insist on the validity of Rustom Fardoomji’s confession as being that of a sane man?

  “Right, Inspector,” D’Sa said, interrupting this swirl of pessimistic thought, “what we have got to do now is to get this fellow certified as legally insane. We would need two qualified medical practitioners. I have dealt with three-four cases like this in my time. It is one hell of a business, I am warning you. You know what doctors can be like, wanting always to make altogether one big meal out of whatsoever they have to do.”

  Ghote’s new-sprung pessimism after that moment of exhilaration when the madman had come into his hands swirled yet deeper. The thought of all they had to do weighed on him. First to take their prisoner to a secure place, preferably not the nearby station but to headquarters, well away from any interference from Mike Lobo. Then to find D’Sa’s two qualified medical practitioners. Next to get them to come without delay. Then, with time ticking out, wait during whatever lengthy examination they insisted on, as justifying some high fee.

  It all might take hours. And—once more he peered at his Ulhasnagar Seiko—he had exactly seventy-two minutes before the D.G.P. would decide, in his absence, that he had failed to produce any better suspect than Rustom Fardoomji.

  He could not let that happen.

  He felt himself as pressing with all the strength of will he had up against some yielding but impenetrable wall. A wall he ought to be able somehow to burst through but could not.

  Or could he ... ? Yes, by God, he could.

  “D’Sa, sahib,” he said in a flood of excitement, “we do not have to go through all that. We do not. Remember, all that I have to bring to the D.G.P. before fourteen-nineteen hours is just only better proof that someone else was murdering Ramrao Pendke than A.I. Lobo’s confession from Rustom Fardoomji. And this is how I could do it. I can get a letter from a medical practitioner holding degrees in psychiatry stating this fellow is definitely mad, and that he has also admitted to battering to death Ramrao Pendke.”

  “No, you are needing two doctors. I was saying.”

  “No, no. Two medicos can certify the fellow later. Just now one letter, if it is first-class level, will do. And I know where to get such. Dr. Mrs. Yadekar at the Shrimati Usha Yadekar Clinic. She is having American degrees in psychiatric medicine. I have seen same framed upon the wall at the clinic. D.G.P. sahib will hardly ignore that lady’s evidence.”

  D’Sa took a moment to consider.

  “Yes,” he said then, “you are right, bhai. Come on.”

  He took the madman’s arm in a firm hold. Ghote looked around, spotted a taxi at once, and summoned it to the curb. They bundled the madman in. He made no protest, and the taxiwalla did not make many. And in less than five minutes they were turning out of Altamount Road into the driveway of the Shrimati Usha Yadekar Clinic.

  There they found, to Ghote’s intense relief since as they had chugged up the hill of Altamount Road he had suddenly thought that Dr. Mrs. Yadekar might not even be at the clinic, that she was not o
nly present but was willing to see him without delay. His hurried, businesslike departure on the previous occasion he had seen her had evidently left still a favorable impression. Mounting the stairs to her office, with D’Sa propelling the madman along in his wake, he attempted to get himself once more into a bustling, American, no-time-to-waste frame of mind.

  But the moment he entered Dr. Mrs. Yadekar’s clinically bare office, followed by an aged if still brisk companion pushing in front of him a wild-eyed, bushy-bearded human wreck, he saw that he had in an instant lost whatever good opinion of himself the doctor had.

  “Inspector, what is this? Will you please tell me what you mean, bringing this—this creature in here like this?”

  “Madam,” Ghote answered at once, “are you not recognizing same?”

  “No. No, why should—”

  Then she gave a sudden quick frown and peered more closely at the shambling wreck in D’Sa’s grip.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Isn’t it . . .”

  She turned and tugged open one of the steel filing cabinets behind her, took from it a red-bound register, and flipped furiously through its pages.

  “Yes. Ram Bhavani, former kidney donor, paid forty thousand rupees plus diet allowances. Organ received by— Well, never mind.”

  “Madam, no,” Ghote said. “There is much to mind. This man—Ram Bhavani, you are saying is his name?—has now' confessed to the murder of Mr. Ramrao Pendke. That kidney he was selling was received by Mr. Pendke, no?”

  Dr. Mrs. Yadeker sat in silence behind her steel desk.

  “Inspector,” she said at last, “yes, you are correct in what you have stated. The implications are most serious.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  She sat in frowning thought for a little. And then looked up in puzzlement.

  “But what I do not at all understand, Inspector,” she said, “is why you have brought this—this individual here.”

  She gave Ram Bhavani a suspicious scrutiny. Under it he shifted uneasily from foot to foot in D’Sa’s grasp.

  “Madam, it is quite simple,” Ghote answered. “You must be knowing that the watchmaker in whose Tick Tock Watchworks the murder took place is under police custody. Madam, it is my duty to prove to—to—to the authorities concerned that it is this fellow and not the man who is being held who should be charge-sheeted under I.P.C. Section three-oh-two, or, in the event of his insanity being duly confirmed should be placed under proper confinement.”

  “Well, yes, Inspector, I understand all that. But what is it to do with me?”

  Ghote felt more than a little embarrassment in answering. But an answer had to made.

  “Madam,” he said, “I have been given until—until, shall I say, about quarter-past two o’clock today to produce such proof. Time, you see, is short. To get two qualified medical gentlemen to make their examination would perhaps be taking up too much of it. But you, madam, are having American degrees in psychiatry. So what I am asking is that you should provide me with a statement to the effect that you have examined this man and found him to be insane and know him also to be the murderer of Mr. Ramrao Pendke. That would be all I am needing until fourteen-nineteen—that is, until this afternoon, madam.”

  “Inspector, I cannot possibly do any such thing.”

  The abrupt refusal hit Ghote as if a solid edifice had suddenly moved forward in its entirety and banged up against him.

  It was just such a disastrous setback as he had feared coming up to the clinic in the taxi. But he had thought then that, if Dr. Mrs. Yadekar could see him, his troubles would be over.

  Involuntarily he snatched back the cuff of his shirt sleeve to see what the time was, how little remained of those seventy-two minutes he had had.

  It was 13:19. He had just exactly one hour. Not a second more.

  Not nearly enough time to find other qualified medical practitioners and let them examine Ram Bhavani.

  “Madam,” he said to Dr. Mrs. Yadekar, almost weeping with the urgency he felt. “Madam, you must do it. You must, you must.”

  He received in return a look of pure coldness, chilling as ice.

  “Inspector, I have my duties here. I don’t have the time for any such course as you propose. I simply do not have the time.”

  She had spoken with blank determination. American determination, Ghote felt.

  But the force with which she had banged out that last time had an altogether unexpected effect. On the wretched madman standing there in D’Sa’s quiet grasp, almost unheeded as they had discussed him.

  “Time kya? Time kya? Time kya?” he screeched out.

  “Inspector,” Dr. Mrs. Yadekar said, still icy. “Will you kindly remove this person? Take him to some place of safety and have two regular psychiatric practitioners certify him.”

  She rose abruptly from her chair by way of emphasizing her request.

  And the very abruptness of the movement must have sent some wild impulse through Ram Bhavani’s head, because with a single frenzied jerk he broke free of old D’Sa’s grasp and hurled himself on the white-clad figure who, weeks earlier, had questioned and examined him before agreeing to the sale of his kidney.

  His hands, dirt-encrusted and sinewy, were round her throat in an instant. His wealed and wounded body was taut across the steel desk. His eyes blazed with fear and rage.

  Ghote acted almost as swiftly. He ducked down, thrust his head and shoulders between the madman and the doctor, twisted, reached up, grasped the outstretched wrists, and, with all the sudden force at his command, wrenched them apart.

  Dr. Mrs. Yadekar fell back, tripped against her chair, clutched at her steel filing cabinets for support.

  Ghote pushed himself up, heaved the now flaccid body of Ram Bhavani to a standing position, and, with D’Sa, held him pinioned.

  “All right, Inspector,” Dr. Mrs. Yadekar croaked from beside her filing cabinets. “You no longer have to convince me this man is insane. What would you like me to say in any letter I give you?”

  So, while D’Sa took complete charge of the now perfectly docile bus starter, Ghote rapidly dictated a letter for the doctor to write on the clinic’s impressive notepaper.

  In less than three minutes he was urging D’Sa and his captive out of her office.

  Under the portico of the big white-painted house they had a brief consultation.

  “Listen, Inspector,” old D’Sa said, “time must be getting on. So let us take a taxi to headquarters, where I would easily see to getting this fellow safely behind bars. After all, I am still remembered there, I should hope. You then take the taxi on and report to D.G.P. sahib.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “You should have enough of time,” he said. “Even some to spare.”

  Ghote could only agree to the plan. He was not particularly keen on letting D’Sa take the madman into headquarters. The old boy might find himself much less remembered there than he believed he was. But time was, indeed, pressing and he could see no other way of making absolutely sure he got to see the D.G.P. before 1419 hours.

  It was possible, of course, that even if he was late in handing over his evidence, the D.G.P. would still rescind his order to Mike Lobo to take Rustom Fardoomji before a magistrate to repeat his “confession.” But it was not certain. It might not matter too much to someone as senior in the police hierarchy as the D.G.P. whether one person or another was seen to be guilty in a case that had attracted public attention. And Rustom Fardoomji, after all, was apparently prepared to stand trial, even to plead guilty, for a crime he had not committed.

  All seemed to go well as they set off. They found the same taxi that had brought them up to the clinic waiting only a few yards farther down the hill. The driver, having had no trouble with their tatterdemalion fellow passenger before, was happy enough to take them.

  He got through the traffic in fine style, too, and as Ghote looked at his Seiko Sports 100 after seeing D’Sa lead the mad bus starter into the headquarters compound, he found that
it read only two o’clock. Somehow the time falling so exactly on the hour gave him added encouragement, too. All was going to go as well as it could go from now on.

  “Oval Maidan, Mayo Road side,” he snapped out cheerfully to the taxiwalla.

  And from that moment every sort of complication set in. The traffic, which till now had been lighter than usual, began catching itself up in snarl after snarl. Peering ahead, bobbing and weaving, Ghote was never able to make out why. But twice they were held fast for solid periods of five minutes. After the first, Ghote simply sat with his sleeve pushed back, holding the Seiko Sports 100 in front of him and keeping a constant watch on its hands while, with the taxi engine cut off in the customary Bombay traffic-jam fashion, cars, buses, tempo trucks, and vans all around hooted hard and edged inch by inch forward to lock the next hold-up yet tighter.

  Then for some blessed minutes things began to go better again. They had reached the start of Marine Drive and were once more inextricably jammed up, it seemed, when they ought along that sweeping stretch to have been able to zoom away almost as fast as the taxi could go. But then, ahead, the stationary traffic, for no apparent reason, melted from its locked state. In a moment they were zipping merrily along. They sped around, unimpeded, into Churchgate.

  Hardly any distance to go now.

  Fourteen minutes past. They should do it. Just.

  And then, at the very top of the Oval Maidan, but just too far away to make a sprint along the pavement worthwhile, they came to a blocked halt again.

  Thrusting his head out of the window, debating whether by some Olympic sprinter’s effort he might yet cover the distance in time, Ghote saw that the trouble was caused by a particularly large excavation, one among the hundreds always to be found in the roads of Bombay. This, he saw, was on behalf of the Telephone Nigam, the new organization that had done not a little to improve Bombay’s once appalling service. But improvement had meant laying new cables, and that had meant digging new holes. Nowadays the Nigam erected beside each new excavation a smart metal notice stating when the work had begun and when it was due to end. Ghote, his taxi stuck where it was, was able to read clearly the notice for this particular hole. It said that it was due to have been filled eight days before.