‘No, no, Dadaji is at Sandbank.’
‘At the Sandbank?’
What on earth could Mishra be doing out there on the other side of the river? It was surely an altogether desolate spot.
‘Yes, yes. He is going in the morning every day now. He is retired, you see. Dada was a big-big inspector, but now he stays at home, and – and he is being very nice to me. Are you retired also? Do you have a little girl like me?’
The tiny thing’s mother succeeded in breaking into the prattle long enough to explain. Her father-in-law went almost every morning over to the Sandbank to join the exercisers there.
Ghote thanked her and hastily left. He had wanted to ask who or what the exercisers were, but he suspected he would get in reply a whole spate of information, from either mother or daughter, he by no means needed. Like father-in-law, like daughter. Like grandfather, like granddaughter.
The taxi driver, however, supplied him with the answer, shouted across his shoulder. Crossing the Ganga to the wide stretch of smooth sand on the far side to bathe, to perform exercises, or just to walk about in the open away from the narrow gallis of the city was the favourite pastime of every true Banarasi.
‘You must go also, sahib. I will take you to a very good friend of mine who will row you there. Almost nothing to pay.’
There was rather more than ‘almost nothing’ to pay the taxi walla’s good friend. But as the man took his boat further and further out into the wide river with mild, unhurried creaking strokes of his long bamboo oars, Ghote began to think that what he had had to pay was not bad value. It was wonderfully pleasant and cool on the water, and the leisurely style of their progress was little by little filling him with a sense of relaxation.
Idly he watched the shore they had left gradually recede. Yes, there was what must be the Dom Raja’s house, with those two larger-than-life, bright-painted tigers on the parapet, tails twisting high as if they had scented prey. The souls of sinners passing by? His soul even?
He refused to let himself think about it.
The great tall ghats clustered with temples rose up and up behind in intricate towers of red and yellow, with the gold of the dome of the Vishwanath Temple dazzling among them and the minarets of the mosque built long ago by Moslem invaders still dominating the skyline. Soon everything seemed to become hazed. The masses of bathers and pilgrims, tourists and touts, melted into one dust-lost shimmer of humanity.
He felt the lassitude of the softly lapping water seeping into every corner of his mind. The Banarasi life.
If any one individual there among those hazy crowds was by some chance the murderer he had come here to find, so be it. He would come to light later, or he would not. The itch of duty, the incessant inner demand to be doing the right thing, had fallen away from him with each soft splash of the boatman’s oars as he slowly lifted their heart-shaped blades from the water, slowly dipped them again.
A larger craft made its way past, the rows of tourists in it, American, French, German – who could tell? – staring dutifully at the ghats and their crowds. A boat no bigger than their own crossed just in front of them with at its narrow stern the lonely figure of a father holding the wrapped body of an infant below the age of being committed to the fire at the burning ghats. The boatman gave a signal and the wretched father rose to his feet, stood for a moment swaying in the gentle movement of the river and then let the little body with its stone weight fall into the water.
Now they were nearing the far bank. His melancholy calm began to leave him.
Mishra, would he manage to find him out here? And if he did would he be able to help? Or would he be willing to do no more than narrate the history of his city till he had exhausted every temple and palace in it? And the junky, even if they were finding him, would he really have something to tell that would lead to the strangler who had gone to Bombay from here? Might that man himself even be over here on the Sandbank in the way that so many Banarasis came day by day?
The boat nosed its way into the waterlogged sand at the river’s edge. He jumped out and looked around.
There were certainly plenty of men about taking exercise, most of them naked all but for gaudy cotton shorts or a little pouch round their private parts. Some stood energetically touching their toes, left then right, left then right. Others were pitting themselves in friendly wrestling matches, head to head, shoulder to shoulder, straining at each other minute after minute in widespread inverted Vs. With, he could not help noting, a simple joyousness shining in their eyes. Banarasi masti.
He began climbing the gentle incline, feet sinking into the soft sand, looking at each step this way and that in the hope of spotting Mishra. A man passed, coming down carefully dabbing at his wrists with a little cotton pad. He caught the swooning smell of the perfume he was applying, and shook his head in rejection. Too much of masti.
Now, further from the river where it was drier, there were parties of card-players, planking the cards down on the sand. Others were strolling idly here and there or sitting in happy parties passing from one to another brass tumblers, which from the gentle giggling laughter that rose up were doubtless filled with bhang-laced thandai such as Mishra had tried to make him drink at the Cantonment Station. Massage wallas were carefully anointing reclining bodies with odoriferous sandalwood paste.
Down at the water’s edge behind him there were people – almost all men – dipping garments into the stream to wash and holding them high while the water ran out of them. Near by, on flimsy improvised lines more garments hung drying.
And it was partly hidden by one of these lines of gaily multi-coloured clothes that he eventually spotted Mishra.
He ran over.
Mishra, naked all bar his shorts, was sitting idly combing his hair, his stout body still wet from bathing in the river. He looked up in mild surprise.
‘Ah, Inspector, so you have begun to learn our Banares way. You have come to the Sandbank to enjoy. But how did you know I would be here?’
‘It was your daughter-in-law— Or, rather, your little granddaughter who was telling me. That and other things also.’
‘Yes, yes. She is an altogether clever little creature. Just only three and one half years and talking, talking. She could read also, but for some reason she does not want.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Ghote found himself replying, ‘that was just the case with my son, Ved. When he was that age also. We knew he was able to read but he would not do it before us. He was afraid to do it wrong, you know.’
‘Ah, that must be the case with little Rukmini. She is always so concerned to be doing what is right. I am thinking she will end up as a member of judiciary itself.’
Ghote was put out by this friendly chat Mishra had somehow succeeded in luring him into. He would have liked to have barked out at once an urgent request for assistance. But it was only right to tell the fellow what a bright little grandchild he had.
‘But sit, sit,’ Mishra said now. ‘Take off your shirt and pant, let the breeze tickle you only.’
The fellow would keep him here all the rest of the day if he was not careful.
‘Inspector,’ he said sharply, ‘you were allocated to me for my assistance by the Senior Superintendent himself, and it is that assistance I am here now to require.’
Mishra’s big eyes blinked up at him.
‘Oh, you Bombayman,’ he said. ‘Never stopping. Never enjoying.’
Ghote drew in a tense breath.
‘Let me tell you what is situation.’
‘Please, please. But at least be seated first. Sand just here is dry and very soft. You will be comfortable.’
Grudgingly Ghote lowered himself. He would have to do whatever was necessary to make use of this lazy chap. No point in antagonizing. And, true, the sand made a comfortable sitting place.
He explained, rapidly and concisely as he could, what he had learnt, or almost learnt, from the junky.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mishra when he had finished. ‘I would not at all be su
rprised if that young man is knowing something. Rick. His name is Rick. He goes about everywhere, and he has the ears of a cockroach. Definitely.’
‘Yes, he certainly heard almost all we were saying when we were questioning those autorickshaw fellows. He is damn well knowing why I am here.’
‘Then we had better find.’
To Ghote’s surprise the full-bellied Banarasi jumped to his feet and began hooking a shirt, bright yellow today rather than pink, off the line that had hidden him from view.
‘Yes,’ he said once he was dressed, ‘there are a good many places where I have seen that boy. He would not be at Cantonment Station now. That is one certain thing. But where else is likely? Not at this time of day at the Manikarnika Ghat. His dealings there are night-time matters only when the real badmashes are roaming. Fellows, I regret to inform, who would murder you for just only two rupees. I tell you, when I had to go there late at night on duty I would feel my knees were made of butter only.’
He gave a little shudder. Then pulled himself together.
‘So where to go to find this cockroach?’
He lowered himself again on to the soft, footmark criss-crossed sand.
‘Now let me see. Thatheri Bazaar, I have noticed him there often. It is where they are selling very much of our fine Banares brassware. You know we—’
Mishra checked himself, and produced a brilliant, apologetic smile.
This was better, Ghote thought. The fellow is after all the police officer I had begun to doubt had ever existed. Police ways did not drop off from him when he retired, to be utterly replaced with Banarasi living, Banares praising. Banares narrating to whatsoever strangers come his way. Now we may get somewhere.
‘No, perhaps not Thatheri. If he is there we would hardly find. Too much of crowds. No, first, I think, the Chowk. Plenty of tourists there. What he is liking for his nefarious purposes. Then perhaps some of the ghats, the most easy to reach.’
He looked up.
‘But, you know, it is getting on in time. Have you eaten since the start of the day?’
‘Well, no. No, I have not. But I do not think this is the moment to be time-wasting with any meals. We should go to the Chowk straightaway.’
‘No, Inspector. Take some good advice. We may be having a long day in front of us. I cannot be guaranteeing we shall find our fellow just as soon as we look. But no need to take you to any of our fine Banares restaurants. We have Chinese, you know, even Continental, but best of all are our vegetarian. I wish you would come with me to the Solty in Godaulia or the Tulsi in Lohurabir.’
He put up a fending-off hand as Ghote drew himself up to speak.
‘No, no. I know we have no time now for such pleasures. Perhaps before you go . . . But just now what have I got with me?’
From a little hollow in the sand just beside where he had been sitting he produced, with a flourish he could not prevent himself making, a solidly large tiffin carrier.
‘Plenty here for two. I am always taking too much. Now, sit again and eat. We would not be too long.’
Ghote sat. Ate. Acknowledged that he was hungry, and would have grown very bad-tempered and impatient if he had attempted to go for the rest of the day without some food. Acknowledged that what he was eating was delicious.
Trust masti-loving Mishra.
And in a very short time they were climbing into one of the boats waiting to take people across again to the swarming city opposite. The craft slid rapidly backwards into the water, their boatman running at the prow and leaping nimbly aboard.
Off. Off on the hunt.
And, as the boatman with one lunged-at stroke of an oar swirled them round till they were pointing arrow-poised at the city itself, something just caught Ghote’s eye.
‘Mishra bhai,’ he said, ‘did you see who that was, just only getting out of a boat and striding away up the Sandbank. It was that fellow H. K. Verma I went to see last night. His face was like thunder itself. I wonder what was upsetting.’
8
H. K. Verma had been unable to endure the closeness of the city as, almost unseeing, he left the Hotel de Paris – Where had Jagmohan Nagpal gone? He could not remember – and told an autorickshaw walla to take him to his house. But, suddenly glimpsing a sort of salvation, he had re-directed the man to the Dasawamedh Ghat. Descending its steps in a series of heavy lurches this way and that, he had staggered into the first boat he came across. With a lumbering gesture rather than any words he had indicated the Sandbank.
The same black, bleak thoughts surged onwards in his head as he strode away after landing, blindly seeking some solitude. Murder. Murder. He had committed a murder. A murder. He had committed a murder for no reason whatsoever. Murder. Murder.
Everything in front of him seemed smashed to ruins. He had had till now a reason for living. This life at least had seemed to be mapped out for him. In the last few weeks the map had been brilliant with the promise of high, sunlit uplands ahead. All the good that he had tried to live by, ever since he had been able to know right from wrong, seemed to be coming to flower. Everything from the time he had begun to grasp what would earn a smile, what a slap. The best days lay in front, the days of justice, of doing good. And in one short jab of speech, there in the quiet garden at the Hotel de Paris, it had been shattered into fragments.
Yes, only one thing to be done now. To surrender himself to the law.
Unseeingly he strode over the yielding sand, careless of whom he brushed against, where he went.
A line of drying clothes, precariously supported from two lengths of bamboo, swung crazily to the ground as his onward-thrusting weight struck it. He failed even to notice, to hear the shouts of protest from behind.
How was he to set about it? About lifting from his shoulders the burden of his crime? Should he get hold of that Bombay CIDwalla and confess to him? But how could he find him among the crammed-thick gallis and streets and lanes of the city? The fellow might not even still be here. He might have given up his hunt. He might have thought it was useless.
So, go to the police thana at the Chowk? Go up to one of the constables lounging about there and say, I have committed a murder?
No. There were limits. He could not abase himself before a fellow of that sort, a man like those he had ordered about without a thought until today. Until today when the Lok Sabha member, the party leader, the person of influence, had been transformed, in a single instant, into a paltry murderer. Then go in through the thana’s great gate and seek out the duty inspector behind his desk? Or, better, report to the Senior Superintendent of Police out at Cornwallis Lines? He had met the fellow. A gentleman. He would understand.
But would he? How could anyone understand what had happened to him? What had entered into Shri H. K. Verma, Member of Parliament? How could anyone understand that he, H. K. Verma, had in a moment of blotting-out rage become a killer?
No. Certainly not the Senior Superintendent.
But who else? Even if he went back again to Bombay and sought out whoever was in charge of criminal investigations there, some Assistant Commissioner or other, even then what he had done would look just as ridiculous. To have killed for what had turned out to be no reason at all.
A laughing-stock. Better to be a murderer who had tried to get away with it than to be such a stupid, pathetic figure.
But why should he not get away with it? Get away with it still, despite there having been no reason to have done it. Despite what he had told himself and told himself again and again when at last after that night he had stepped down into the merciful waters of Mother Ganga. That his action was right-doing. That he had been taking up arms as God Krishna had advised Arjun was his duty before the great battle of Kurukshetra.
Well, that had gone. The belief, if he had ever truly had it, that it had been a good action to end Mrs Shoba Popatkar’s life. But let it go. He would strike out for himself now. It was time. For too long, for all his life, he had acted so as to bring good to others. He had tried to do right. W
ell, now it was time to do whatever had to be done for himself alone.
There was, after all, still nothing to link him to those disgusting few minutes in that bare little flat in Bombay. So why should anyone make the link? Why should anyone think that a man of his sort would do a thing like that? Very well, the little detective from Bombay had come to see him. But that had been for a reason that had nothing to do with a murder so many hundreds of miles away. Oh, yes, the man was investigating the case, and had even realized that there was some link to Banares. But he was still far, far from knowing anything that mattered.
And if the fellow did get some inkling . . . Well then, there had been what he had contemplated when he had gone to talk with Krishnakanta. That could still be done. If necessary.
Ghote, standing up high, clutching one of the pillars of the lace-like yellowy ironwork of the shopping arcade in front of the Satyanarayan Temple in the Chowk, peered hard into the mass of people going past. Mishra’s suggested starting point for their hunt had at first seemed a good choice. Tourists, foreign or Indian, crammed every yard of its pavements. The brown-sugar vendor Rick was as likely to be at work there as anywhere in the city.
But in the mass of people moving from little shop to little shop or emerging from the flower market with long brilliant fat orange marigold garlands or baskets of multi-coloured rose petals for worship at the city’s innumerable temples what hope, he thought now, was there of spotting that dirty white face? That clotted mass of blond hair? The traffic in the roadway in front of him passed in a dust-clouded, jammed, slow-moving blur.
Rick could have gone by opposite concealed by that couple in the overloaded cycle rickshaw, each clutching hard at a small scrambling son. Or he could, even at this very moment, be standing somewhere in the dark interior of the next-door shop, the one selling luggage, satchels and little rubber cushions. He could be there, peering out waiting to pounce, terrifying the shopkeeper with his wild looks.
Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote) Page 7