He jumped up from his chair, padded into the bedroom fast as he could make his heavy legs take him, flung himself in front of the mirror there. Deep-set eyes, heavily ringed round, sad-looking even. Large fleshy nose. Full lips, orator’s lips they had been called, more than once. Solid cheeks descending into a neck that was almost fat. No, definitely fat. Complexion, wheatish. Hair plentiful, softly curling, and half-grey. Yes, a man it was easy to recognize.
But the Bombay mongoose had not so much as hinted at the likeness this morning, and if the switch to Banares was reported in the Times of India he should have known by then.
But what to do? What to do?
No. Face it with calmness. Show you know how to cope up with emergencies. The right way to treat them.
After all, it may be some other clue that has come to light in Bombay. A clue pointing to Banares but not at all to myself. Or, even, it may be just only that the Bombay investigation has got nowhere, and in desperation they are giving out that they have switched to Banares because that little rat has taken it into his head to come here.
That could be all. Calm. Calm. See what happens, and act accordingly. Do not do anything in a hurry. Think of that Ramayana saying, There is no gain in strengthening the bund of the tank after the water has flown out.
But, in any case, what evidence can the Bombay rat get? What possible evidence?
He saw Rick. Suddenly. The boy must have slipped out of the Dom Raja’s house from somewhere in the deepest shadow. And now here he was, where the flooding moonlight made his white face and grease-clogged mop of yellowy hair stand out as if he was in some Filmi Nite spotlight.
Probably does not even know he was late coming. American watch long ago sold to feed his habit. Good-for-nothing.
He eased himself away from the wall where he had flattened himself in hiding and set off. An aged widow, little more than a bundle of white rags, sleeping in a corner woke briefly at the sound of his clacking shoes, cried out ‘Baba’ and lapsed into mumbling sleep again.
And then he was within two or three yards of the boy.
What to do? Grab him? Or greet him?
‘Rick. You have come.’
And the boy did not attempt to run.
He went up to him and without a word the fellow sat himself down on the broken step where he had been standing.
After a moment he decided he had better simply sit beside him. At least he could catch hold of him then if he tried to do what he had done on that compound wall.
‘Okay. You got what I want to know?’
He turned a little till he was squarely facing the boy.
‘But it is you who should be having what I am wanting to know.’
‘Stand-off, I guess. But you’re the one needs to know most.’
‘No, I do not think so. The Dom Raja would be one hundred per cent pleased if you had cleared out all nefarious substances before the time of this raid.’
‘It’s on then?’
Lie-telling begins here.
‘Oh, yes. It is very very much on.’
‘So when? Come on, give.’
‘No, no. You first.’
‘Heck, what I got for you’s scads better than anything you can tell me. And how’m I to know what you’re saying’s the truth?’
‘For that you would have to trust me. I am not at all a liar.’
‘A cop, and not a liar. You gotta be joking.’
‘No, no. I am not too much of a joke cutter.’
‘I guess.’
He saw the boy’s eyes coolly regarding him.
‘All the same I reckon you’re damn well capable of lying your ass off.’
Ghote wondered whether that was a compliment. Had the boy somehow recognized in him a narrow inner band of astuteness? It was a quality a police officer ought to have, the right way of going to work.
And, true, he was at this moment – what had Rick said? – lying his ass off.
‘Well, whether I am liar or not, you would all the same have to trust.’
‘Okay. But works the other way round, too. You gotta trust me.’
‘A drug-taker? Living from what he is getting for selling brown sugar, isn’t it? You say I must be trusting you.’
‘Sure I do. You just can’t do anything else.’
That was true. So hear from the boy whatever he had to say, and try afterwards to decide what of truth there was in it. If anything. And then give out his own pack of lies.
‘Very well, I will tell you at the least something. But then I will be expecting the same from you only.’
‘Go ahead, then.’
‘Well, as I was telling, this raid is one hundred per cent planned.’
He waited, hoping that this might be enough. What he had invented, sitting there at the hotel in the hours before he had come across that little news item Murder Hunt Move, had been the best he could contrive. But, knowing nothing about the Banares police – Mishra had been more eager to flood him with the glories of his time-battered city – he was by no means sure he had hit on bait Rick would swallow.
‘Heck, you don’t have to tell me a raid is planned. Don’t you think we haven’t seen those guys watching the house? Damn obvious.’
He grabbed at this piece of information.
‘Yes, yes. But we are knowing you would see our fellows watching, sooner or later. So steps are being taken.’
‘Right. Yeah. That’s what we need to know. Just what steps. You tell me that, I’ll give you the works about that H. K. Verma.’
The works about H. K. Verma. So has the boy really got something? About that man himself? Then I must, I must, learn what it is.
‘No. I have already told one thing. Now it is for you to tell what is pointing to Mr. H. K. Verma.’
‘You told me squat.’
But, the scent of success strong in his nostrils, time now – yes – to stop this ridiculous fencing.
He shot out a hand, clamped it on Rick’s thin-worn wrist, jerked the arm up and twisted the boy round till his face was hard up against one of the broken steps higher up.
‘Now, talk. Or you will find what bastards Indian police truly can be.’
He put a knee hard down on the boy’s back.
Here, if he had to do it, he could give the boy enough of a dose to get him squealing. No one at the half-deserted ghat was going to come and intervene. Not the bandarwalla, asleep now like his monkeys. Not, nearer, two half-naked men, stuffed to their necks obviously with bhang, and dancing to music they alone could hear. Not, at the far end, the boy with the shaven head and dangling tuft of a brahmin who was sing-songing out Sanskrit scriptures to an intently listening friend.
He would damn well get out of this drug-fixated creature underneath him whatever it was he knew.
‘Talk,’ he repeated, putting his mouth close to the boy’s dirt-encrusted ear. ‘Talk, or . . .’
‘Guy got himself flown down, Bombay,’ came a tight-throated voice.
To Bombay? Flown? In some aircraft? But who was this? Was it H. K. Verma himself? Was that possible?
‘More. Who it was who was flying?’
‘Guy I said. Verma.’
‘All right. But how was he flying? What Indian Airways flight? When? What time?’
‘No. Got himself – private plane.’
‘But when? When?’
‘Hell, I don’t know. When that Mrs What-you-call-her, one you talked about . . . Cantonment Station. When she was murdered. That’s when.’
‘How are you knowing? I am not at all believing.’
He gave the boy’s arm a small upwards jerk.
A squeak of pain.
Not the pleasantest thing to be doing. But if he was learning the truth, even in part, about the murder of a person like Mrs Shoba Popatkar, something altogether right to do.
‘Guy told me, is all.’
‘What guy? I am less and less believing.’
‘No, no. God’s truth. Let me go.’
‘What guy it is?’<
br />
‘The goop Verma’s grandson, or something. Guy called Vikki Verma.’
‘Oh, yes? And why should he be telling you such things?’
‘Feed him, don’t I? He’s loaded. Takes all the sugar I can get. He just let it out, is all.’
Ghote eased himself up a little. This needed thinking about. Was it likely? At least it was so unlikely as an invented story it must to some extent be true. So was H. K. Verma really—
But he had not been concentrating hard enough on the skeleton-thin body beneath him.
With a sudden sliding wrench the boy slipped sideways, at the same time tugging his puny wrist free. In an instant he was rolling away down the steps towards the line of burning pyres.
Ghote scrambled up, cursing, and set off, bounding down the crumbling steps. The boy had managed to get to his feet in his turn. But he was close enough to him still.
It was the crumbling steps that defeated him. He felt his ankle twisting under him. And fell with bone-jarring heaviness.
He rolled down a step or two and ended on his back, looking up at the moon-radiant sky. Knowing that now he had lost his man for ever.
13
No. Each time he dashed Ganga jal from his cupped hands on to his face, standing there with the water swirling round his waist, he felt a stinging inside. As if it was acid he was splashing against his cheeks. No, from the moment he had put one foot into the sacred river it seemed as if he was being delivered a mighty rebuke. You have done wrong.
At least he had not added another death to the death that had come from his own throat-gripping hands. At least he had not hired those wrestlers not so many hours ago at the Nag Kuan pit. In the end, thank Bhagwan, he had not been able to bring himself to do it. He had turned away. Walked off, striding hard in the heat of the sun. Putting distance between himself and those muscular oiled bodies, ready to do whatever he was willing to pay for. At least he had had that much of respect for the man he had believed himself to be.
But his other crime stood there still. A mountain ready to fall. No amount of prayers facing the sun as it rose over the Sandbank made any difference.
Arise! Life’s breath has returned.
Darkness has fled, light comes!
Dawn has opened the path for our lord, the Sun,
Now our days will stretch out before us.
Words only. Meaningless words. All that this ritual had ever meant to him had been wiped away like mist from a mirror. All of all the rituals’ echoing of the order of everything, of the way the world should be. Gone. Stretching out in front now nothing but a desert of despair.
And just yesterday he had been filled with resolution to defy everyone, everything. He had been as determined even first thing today. He had jumped up from his bed, seized his fresh clothes, marched down to the ghat. Defying anyone to say all was not as usual with his life. The life of Shri H. K. Verma, party leader. He had been sure beyond the least trickle of doubt that this was the right thing to do. If he was being hunted, he would do whatever was necessary to outwit the hunters. It was his right to do it. His right for himself.
And then, at the moment his foot had felt the touch of the water, that familiar cool embrace he had daily delighted in, all that resolution had melted away. No, not even melted. It had suddenly not been there. A blank screen on the TV.
How could I have lived, for even that short time between when Jagmohanji made his announcement and now, feeling I was entitled to defend myself in any way I could? As if that— That business— No, that killing. As if that killing had not even happened.
But it has happened. It has. No, worse. It is not that it has happened, as if some machine only jerked into accidental action. It is that I myself with my own hands – say it, say it – killed Mrs Shoba Popatkar. My own hands strangled her.
Ghote was woken before dawn after a bare two hours of restless, ankle-throbbing sleep. The Hotel Relax room-boys felt it only proper to knock at the door of every sunrise-dipping guest with as much noise as possible.
Lying there cursing them, he realized he was still as confused as when he had limped away from the Manikarnika Ghat after losing Rick. Had the boy been telling him the truth at all? A drugs-ruled creature like that, was he capable even of knowing truth from fantasy?
Yet what he had said did make some sort of sense. H. K. Verma could have been flown to Bombay on the evening of Mrs Popatkar’s death and then been back in time for his absence not to have been noted. If his grandson – what was he called? Vikki – was actually a pilot . . . If H. K. Verma even had a grandson Vikki, presumably Vikram.
But why would a respected party leader like H. K. Verma want to murder Mrs Popatkar? Yet on both occasions he had spoken with him the man had been plainly uneasy. All right, the questions he had put had been effectively enough brushed aside. But that had been when there had been no more to go on than the American junky’s mere mention of his name.
So go and see him yet a third time? But what to ask? Do you have a grandson known by the name of Vikki? Did you air-dash to Bombay on the night Mrs Shoba Popatkar was killed? Ridiculous. Impossible.
No, first I must at least find out if this Vikki Verma is existing. So, before anything else, Inspector Mishra. Mishra will know everything about a prominent Banarasi like H. K. Verma.
If I hurry I may get to him before he sets out to have his day of masti at the Sandbank. Autorickshaw time, if not taxi itself.
Why? Why? Why had he done it? Oh, yes, she had had to be made to keep silent. And, true, there in that flat he had soon enough seen no amount of pleading and persuading was going to make her hold her tongue. But, when she had made it so clear that for her the truth, whatever it was, must always be brought to the light, then— Then he should have bowed his head and accepted.
That would have been right conduct.
He knew it now. He had deep down, hidden away somewhere, known it from the very moment that frail body had become a lifeless nothing in his hands.
He felt the heat of the sun drying the water on his chest.
So why had he not let her go blurting out the truth? Yes, the chance to be Minister for Social Upliftment would have vanished in that instant. But he would have kept his belief in the rightness of his life. Why, why, oh, why?
He picked up his fresh kurta, dazzlingly white in the early rays of the sun, slipped it over his head.
It was Mishra’s little granddaughter, Rukmini, who blurted out the truth, for all that she had looked so shy, peeping round her mother’s sari.
‘Dada is doing his mal. You are not allowed to see.’
Her mother had blushed, broken into a fit of giggles.
‘Oh, excuse me. Why must children always come out with such things?’
And at that moment Mishra himself appeared.
‘Inspector Ghote, good morning, good morning. I am sorry. I should have answered when you were ringing at the door. But I was under the shower itself.’
Ghote suppressed half a dozen answers that came to mind.
‘I was hoping you had not left already for the Sandbank,’ he said.
‘Well, I was going soon. But if you are wanting to take recourse to my help . . .’
‘It is just only a few things I am needing to know.’
‘We could go to the Sandbank together? I am almost ready. I could tell you what you are wanting, and you could fully sample our Banarasi life. Before, you were hardly there.’
‘No, no. If you are able to tell me what I am wanting to know, I would have to go and see—’
Mother and daughter were still there. Little Rukmini with ears sharp as a squirrel’s.
‘I would have to go at once to see a certain person, if indeed he is existing.’
Krishnakanta himself came into the office downstairs. H. K. Verma thought immediately that he had not seen his son inside the house for years.
Then a snicker of cold ran through him.
Something must be wrong. Krishnakanta must have heard something. From Delhi perha
ps. His contactmen. But why should the first whispers about the imminent arrest of one H. K. Verma be the gossip of distant Delhi? Impossible. But then . . . Well, what could Krishnakanta be wanting?
He pushed himself up from his chair, totally forgetting he had been listening to the chairman of the panchayat at a village near the old family home. Some long, complicated tale about the landlord and the ownership of some fields.
‘Let’s go up.’
Krishnakanta followed him. He felt as if each loud step on the stone stairs behind him – Why does he have to be suited and booted always? What is wrong with good Indian kurtas, chappals? – was a separate stroke on the bell at a temple of Yama, God of Death.
Krishnakanta turned as soon as he had come in and shut the door firmly.
‘No one can hear outside?’ he asked.
‘You know that. You know the servants do not hear what is said inside this room. This was your home for twenty years.’
He had not meant to let anger spill from his voice. But he was too caught up with anxiety.
‘All right, all right. But what I have got to say must be kept secret-secret.’
So his worst fears were coming true.
‘Then say it. Speak.’
‘It is Vikki.’
Vikram. Then after all nothing to worry?
‘The boy is in some troubles? You should not spoil him the way you have. Giving so much. Car. Lessons in flying. Flying, it is ridic—’
Then he remembered.
‘But what is the problem? I can help?’
‘Oh, yes. You can very much help, Pitaji. A man as much respected as yourself.’
Not so encouraging. If Krishnakanta is talking about my status, they are going to call on me to use influence. To get something done. Something that should not be done.
‘Listen, my boy, I have told before. You cannot always be coming to me when you have put yourself in some awkward position. It is up to you always not to go too far.’
‘Yes, Pitaji. You have said. But I am your son only. And Vikki is your grandson. The last having the family name.’
‘Well, well. So what has he done now?’
‘Oh, not too much. But there are problems.’
Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote) Page 12