Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Miss,’ he said sharply once more.

  ‘Oh, grandpapa,’ the girl spluttered out. ‘You should be the one going home. Home to where you can be shutting your eyes to what the world is now like.’

  Grandpapa. Indignation bloomed in Ghote’s head. The impudent little wretch. Why, what she needed was a good hiding.

  And, as that notion flickered across his mind, he saw suddenly that this laughing, marching, demonstrating little creature was, change for change, just what his Protima had been all those years ago when they had been at Elphinston College together.

  The thought robbed him for some time of speech.

  ‘Autocracy murdabad,’ the shout rose in front and behind into the unresponsive dark. ‘Princi resign, resign, resign.’

  ‘Well, well,’ he brought himself to say at last, stepping out still beside this shimmering green young thing, ‘Perhaps you are not wrong to one hundred percent. I was, perhaps, speaking somewhat as a grandpapa. And, I am assuring, I am not so old as that.’

  Again the girl spluttered with half-concealed laughter.

  ‘Then, Mister Not-so-old,’ she said, ‘what is it you are doing talking to a young girl you are meeting in the night only?’

  A new wave of indignation rose up in him.

  ‘What I am – What I am doing?’

  He took in a breath.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, coming to a decision. ‘I will be telling you what it is I am doing. I am a police officer. Crime Branch. Inspector Ghote by name. And I have come out here to Oceanic College because it was from the chamber of your Principal that a certain exam question-paper has been stolen.’

  ‘And that is such a great crime that you come, ek dum, hurrying out here at – what were you saying? – ten o’clock in the night?’ the girl retorted. ‘Inspector sahib, you should be investigating into worse matters than this. There are many, many in this city robbing the poors by selling adulterated foods. There is slumlordism, altogether unchecked. There are people taking the fattest of bribes. Why, if you are able to deal just only with small affairs, there are plenty – plenty eve-teasers for you to be putting behind the bars.’

  She turned away to toss a quick ‘Autocracy murdabad’ up to the starlit sky.

  ‘When I am ordered to arrest some boy for molesting a girl,’ Ghote said, holding in with an effort a new spurt of fury, ‘I will do same. But for now I am dealing with the cognisable offence of theft, and I am thinking that you may be able to assist.’

  Then, before the scorn he had seen rising up could break out in words, he leapt in again.

  ‘To assist as is your citizen’s duty.’

  And it seemed that his appeal to the young person’s sense of justice, something he had clearly detected in the girl’s talk of the robbers of the down-trodden, had struck home.

  For the length of time that it took her to stride out another dozen paces she was silent, not rising even to a modest echo of a spate of ‘Princi resign’ coming from in front. Then she answered, and in an altogether less assured way.

  ‘Well, it is not right, I suppose, to steal even exam papers. But, Inspector, you should know that when so many people with influence and connections are getting the bad marks of their kins and kith here in college graced, as they say, then all must be fair in love and war.’

  Ghote pounced on the note of failing assurance in her claim.

  ‘Now, Miss, you are knowing better than that. Stealing is stealing. You know it.’

  ‘Well, all right. Bala should not have taken that paper. It is just only what you would expect from him, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Ah, yes? This Bala – Bala Chambhar, isn’t it? – he is some sort of a notorious badmash?’

  But this seemed too much for the girl.

  ‘You police,’ she shot out. ‘Always thinking because someone is one of the poors they cannot be doing good.’

  Her voice lifted in a defiant ‘Autocracy murdabad’.

  ‘But,’ Ghote replied steadily, ‘this fellow Bala – he is not a well-off fellow, yes? – was he always doing good only?’

  For another pace or two the girl did not reply. Once she essayed a muted ‘Princi resign’ but her fellow protesters had tired for the moment of shouting to utterly empty surroundings and her voice was the only one to be heard. Then she turned to him once more.

  ‘No, you are right. Although Bala is here at college on the minority rights list as a harijan, he is, true, almost all the time a liar, cheat and thief, a bully also.’

  ‘So Bala would know each and every trick of HB?’ he ventured.

  ‘HB? What it is?’

  Oh, young, young, young, Ghote thought. Too young and innocent even to know that HB is house-breaking.

  He explained.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. I knew really, only … But, Inspector, I cannot help you actually. I mean, I know Bala was, yes, a badmash. Everyone is knowing that. But what exactly he was doing he kept always to himself.’

  ‘No boasting?’ Ghote asked. ‘No telling how he knew a way of getting into one locked room? No wanting to be showing off to a pretty girl like yourself only?’

  But for that he got a renewed sharp look.

  ‘No, Mr Policeman. No.’

  Well, he thought in the deepest privacy of his head, when I was succeeding all those years ago at last to tell Protima she was pretty she was not at all objecting.

  For a vivid instant he saw her then as she had been in those distant days, at the very moment he had managed to bring out his compliment – he heard his own ridiculously strangled voice too – and saw the way she had quickly brought up the pallu of her sari to hide – to hide what? Blushes or simple delight?

  But it seemed the modern girl was not so easily moved. Or – the thought struck him – perhaps she would not dislike so much being told she was pretty if the words had not come from – from a grandpapa.

  However, he must not be put off. He had been lucky to have found someone who at least seemed to know more than a little about what went on at Oceanic College. He must work this mine down to its last half-kilo of ore.

  So as the procession straggled on along the dark, deserted suburban road, managing now a single ‘Autocracy murdabad’ only at rare intervals, he produced a stream of innocuous queries about the college, its life and routines. Eventually he calculated his pretty little informant, whose name he learnt was Sarita Karatkar, ought to be lulled enough for it to be safe to approach again the heart of the matter.

  ‘I was meaning to ask,’ he said eventually, ‘have you heard what has happened to young Bala? You know he is in hospital itself? In a deep coma? They are saying it is result of failed suicide.’

  ‘Yes,’ the girl said, concern swift in her voice. ‘Yes, we were hearing something like that. So it is true?’

  There was a note of plain doubt in her question. Ghote was quick to explore it.

  ‘You are believing something else?’ he asked carefully. ‘That it is, for instance, just only heat stroke that has put him into hospital? Yes, sometimes coma is resulting from too much exposure to sun, and certainly it is damned hot by day just now, but the doctor at KEM Hospital was stating it was definitely due to taking some poison.’

  ‘All the same,’ Sarita Karatkar answered, the placard she was meant to be bravely holding aloft dipping slowly forward, ‘I am knowing Bala quite well, however little I am liking him, and I would say he was not a person to be taking his own life.’

  ‘No? Not even when he was realising police were on his heels. CIB fellows going to come from Delhi itself?’

  The girl perked up, encouraged perhaps by an unexpected renewal of vigour in the shouts from the head of the procession.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Not everybody is so afraid of you policewallas. Even if you are mistreating and torturing.’

  ‘No, you must not be think –’

  But, ahead, the shouts had faded abruptly into silence.

  And the marchers were coming to a faltering halt, causing some of
those in the rear to bump into those immediately in front of them. Others were stepping aside on to the broken-down edge of the road, half to see what was happening and half, it was plain, with the intention of slipping away. Questioning voices could be heard. But they were subdued and plainly uneasy.

  Ghote left Sarita and walked on up till, in the light of the next distant street-lamp, he saw what had in fact brought about the tumbling halt.

  A police havildar accompanied by a constable, was standing blocking the way. Each was armed with a long steel-tipped lathi, the big havildar twirling his with evident enjoyment, the constable, barely half his size, attempting to do the same. And, some thirty yards distant, just out of the pale lamplight there was another group of constables waiting.

  Ghote felt a flicker of dismay. No police patrol on a quiet, deserted night road should be armed with lathis. They were issued only when trouble was expected. So had word of this demonstration got out? And had somebody who perhaps wanted the reputation of Oceanic College to be kept bright and shining contacted the local inspector and arranged for this unduly forceful police presence?

  And plainly the big havildar, at least, was ready to use his lathi at the slightest opportunity.

  ‘Get to hell out of this road,’ he suddenly shouted now in the general direction of the morcha.

  From the front rank one of the leaders, a tall young Sikh – turbaned, Ghote noted, but rebelliously without the uncut beard his religion enjoined – stepped forward, challenge in his bearing from jutting head to dancing heels.

  ‘You are preventing our citizens’ rights,’ he shouted full in the big havildar’s face.

  It was just what the fellow wanted. A delighted gleam came into his eyes. He took a quick step back, raising his lathi high.

  And down it came with a fearful whack.

  Except that the moment it came into contact with the tall young Sikh’s turban the whole weapon collapsed in a shower of rotten wood.

  The constable evidently felt he had now to come to his senior’s rescue. He raised his own lathi.

  Ghote thought rapidly. Unless something was done there was going to be an ugly and unnecessary confrontation. Blood would be shed. Arrests made on doubtful charges of rowdyism.

  He hurried forward, hauling from his pocket his ID.

  ‘Havildar,’ he said to the big fellow, still looking in dumb-ox amazement at the stub of lathi in his hands. ‘I am a Crime Branch inspector. I have been keeping an eye on these youngsters in the course of inquiries. You can leave them to me now. They would be going off to bed in two – three minutes.’

  The havildar glared back at him.

  ‘Resume patrol,’ Ghote snapped. ‘That is an order.’

  The fellow looked down at his heavy sandals. Then with a grunt he turned and moved off, resentment at being deprived of the entertainment he had evidently looked forward to plain in every hunched muscle of his back. His little companion followed like a rebuked puppy.

  Ghote turned to the morcha, which had already coagulated into a small close-crowding clump. He suspected, in fact, that not a few from the rear ranks had long before doused their torches and made off.

  ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘This has been enough now.’

  He stood facing the leaders.

  They glanced one to the other.

  ‘No one was damn well seeing us anyhow,’ one of them muttered.

  They turned to go. But Sarita Karatkar was not so easily to be tamed.

  ‘No,’ she shouted, striding up. ‘No, we are protesting against a full injustice. We have said we would march for one hour. We must do it.’

  Ghote sighed.

  He went up to her.

  ‘Miss,’ he said in a deliberately loud voice. ‘You have been altogether most helpful with police inquiries. I am wanting to thank you.’

  It was a nasty trick, he knew. But, as the girl herself had said, all was fair in love and war.

  And the trick had the merit of working, too. With plainly hostile looks Sarita’s fellow protestors began walking away from her into the thick, warm night.

  Ghote gave her a brief smile.

  ‘Tomorrow I would be here again,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I would be seeing you.’

  FOUR

  Inspector Ghote had realised, as he had trailed back home to a mercifully sleeping family, that the next day he ought to get out to Oceanic College as early as classes there started. At 7.30, as elsewhere. It was likely, so he had gathered from Sarita Karatkar that Dr Shambu Bembalkar would be in his seat at that time, if not earlier.

  ‘Princi is very much duty-bound, if nothing else,’ she had said.

  So he had had time only to learn from Ved that he had been elected captain of the Regals and to see Protima for no longer than it had taken to swallow a hasty breakfast.

  One way not to be told what to do in my own home, he had thought with a dart of dark and not unpleasing humour, is to be hardly ever at home.

  But the scene that greeted him at that distant academic institution was very different from the forlorn emptiness of the night before. After making his way past mile upon mile of industrial desolation, rolling mills, casting mills, soap factories, chemical factories, each lazily pouring out thickly oily smoke to settle sullenly on crouching areas of dank, mossed-over huts and shallow pools of deadened black water, he came upon a scene of lively, if disorganised, animation.

  Stretching from near the door of the blockish white building of the college right out beyond the tall gates and along the footpath, there was a deep, milling line of young people together with a good many agitatedly discussing parents. Just inside the gate a big blackboard propped on its easel announced Admissions to First Year BCom and FY BSc are full. Outsiders are requested not to see the Principal.

  The terse announcement affected him, oddly, almost as a personal blow. There was no question of himself, a police officer authorised to question, being considered an outsider from whom the college’s Principal must at all costs be guarded. But he could not help thinking of the time, not so far off, when his Ved would be going to college. Would he himself, as the next academic year drew to its end, have to wait hour after hour outside St Xavier’s Technical Institute on its admission day hoping to enter Ved? And perhaps be unlucky.

  So after all had Protima been wise, wiser than she knew, in her taking advantage of that chance meeting with the wife of the Dean at Elphinston, outrageous though what she had done was? And did that mean that after all there was no need …?

  Resolutely he put out of his mind all the complex of thoughts that this seemed to be leading to. He had more important things to do. He must tackle without delay jealously protected Principal Bembalkar from whose locked chamber that question-paper had vanished.

  He made his way rapidly past the long line of would-be students, with just the passing thought that there were far too many for them all to get places, whether in prized Bachelor of Commerce or Bachelor of Science courses or elsewhere. Doubtless, though, each one of the parents would be relieved of a certain number of rupees by way of a charge for an entry form. And in total those would make a nice sum for the college management.

  Inside, he spotted an arrowed notice Principal’s Office pointing to the wide staircase. He made his way briskly forwards, skirting a pair of angry parents being prevented from going up by a tall, green-uniformed, resplendently moustached security officer.

  But, just as he had got past, a sudden grab at his shoulder brought him to a sharp halt.

  He looked round. It was the security man.

  ‘No persons to see Principal,’ the fellow barked out.

  Ghote gave him a cold glare.

  ‘No persons,’ he said, ‘who are not police officers on duty. I am Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch CID.’

  For a little it looked as if the lanky security officer was not going to accept his word. But after a moment of unchanged hostility he abruptly backed down.

  ‘Sorry – sorry, Inspector sahib. Kindly go up.’

 
; At the top of the broad stairway he found a long balcony looking down on to the college’s inner courtyard. A little way along it there was a door marked Principal. He knocked and entered. Only to find Principal Shambu Bembalkar was protected yet further by an outer office in which there sat a secretary, Anglo-Indian to judge by her clothes, short skirt in severe black and a blouse in a fierce shade of red. Her name, Mrs Angela Cooper, was proclaimed in white-painted letters on a prominent little black triangular board on her desk. She looked up at him with a glance that was guardedly hostile.

  ‘It is Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch CID,’ he said, all the more briskly sharp from his encounter with the security officer below. ‘I am wishing to see Dr Bembalkar.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Imposs– But, madam, I repeat, I am a police officer. A most serious crime has taken place here. There are urgent inquiries to be made.’

  ‘Nevertheless you cannot see Principalji.’

  He drew himself up.

  ‘This is obstruction, nothing less. I must warn you, madam: it is an offence against Indian Penal Code, section 186.’

  Mrs Cooper looked up at him, her bright red blouse puffed out with fighting determination. He saw her, suddenly, as a rakshas, a demon breathing fire, remembered from the tales of the boy God Krishna that his mother had endlessly told him.

  ‘Inspector,’ the rakshas said, flames jetting, ‘if you are threatening with arrest I will take you to see Principalji. But let me warn you: you would not be welcome. Not welcome to Dr Bembalkar, and not at all welcome to Mrs Maya Rajwani.’

  ‘Mrs Maya Rajwani?’

  ‘The wife of Mr R. K. Rajwani, Rajwani Chemicals, and she is heading also Oceanic College Board of Trustees.’

  Ghote began to understand.

  Rajwani Chemicals was a familiar name. The firm was one of the more successful, up-and-coming enterprises in Bombay. One of its factories, indeed, had loomed out at him from the roadside not half an hour ago. Mr Rajwani would be a person of influence. By the sound of it, his wife was someone of almost equal influence. Interrupting her while she was in conference with the Principal of the college of which she was head trustee would be a considerably foolish action. And yet … If he was to find out just how that damned paper had been stolen and make a report that could be sent at top speed to the Centre he ought not to be stopped by any such obstacle.