‘The one boy only, sahib. He is aged about four. The mother died in giving birth, and two years ago Mr Desai married again. I believe the second Mrs Desai is younger than her husband. The burra memsahib is often saying Mrs Desai is like a daughter to her.’
‘I see,’ said Ghote.
Inwardly he felt a growing hollowness. Heavier burden than working directly for the Commissioner, it seemed he would be working directly for the Commissioner’s wife.
‘Did the Commissioner tell you any details about what happened at Mr Desai’s?’ he asked.
‘No, sahib. Commissioner sahib told only that I would be taking an officer to Desai sahib. I am to stop some distance from the block, and not to say a bloody word to anybody whatsoever, sahib.’
‘Quite right,’ said Ghote. ‘A business like this is invariably the work of a gang. It is well possible that they have a man, or more than one even, watching for signs of police activity. They threatened to harm the boy if any such steps are taken.’
‘And the tailor’s son,’ the driver asked, ‘would they harm him instead?’
Ghote had already thought about this, and he found that all he could say was that he did not know. What would ruthless kidnappers do when they discovered they had got the wrong victim? Would they just push him out somewhere to join the four thousand children lost in Bombay each year? Push him into the streets, like a fisherman who has caught a fish too small for anyone to eat? Or would they kill him?
They might. They all too easily might, if they believed he would be able to give them away. Because they would know that, once they had lost the hold that the possession of the son of a rich and popular man gave them, then the full might of the forces of the law would be out against them. One thing is vital in police work when a case of kidnapping occurs: to show that it does not pay. The actual taking of a child is seldom really difficult, so that, once the notion gets about that the much more complicated business of getting a ransom sum and remaining undetected can be achieved, then there will almost certainly be a spreading outbreak of this cruellest of crimes. So that it is a matter of the utmost importance to apprehend with speed any set of criminals who embark on the business. And such men would well know this.
Which meant that the chances for the little son of the tailor must be slim. But, on the other hand, kidnappers soon realize that it is bound to blunt the hunt afterwards if they keep strictly to their share of a bargain and return the victim promptly in exchange for the stipulated sum. And this means that they take every precaution to prevent that victim while he is in their possession from being able to tell where he is hidden.
If these men felt that they had taken sufficient precautions, perhaps the chances for the tailor’s boy would be reasonable.
‘I think this would be a good place to set you down, sahib,’ the driver said. ‘It is the penthouse in the next-after-this block of flats. Mount Greatest it is called.’
*
Stepping out of the steel-walled express lift that had swept him to the fifteenth floor of the upthrusting, pink-hued luxury block, Mount Greatest, Inspector Ghote hurried across a wide and well-cared-for marble floor to the front door of the penthouse, a rich span of glossy oiled teak. He put his finger on the bell-push that occupied its dead centre above a wide stainless-steel letter-box.
The door opened startlingly at almost the instant he touched the button. Ghote found himself confronted by a tall, broad-shouldered man with striking features, deep-set eyes, a wide mouth slightly parted to reveal large and even teeth, a crisply pointed, jutting chin and, most prominent of all, a thrusting, stallion-nostrilled prow of a nose. Only a touch of grey in the well-groomed, wavy hair and a thickening at the waist showed this was not a vigorous thirty-year-old but a man into his fifties. He wore European clothes, a silk suit cut with evident dash, a dazzlingly white shirt and a broad, flowing and colourful handprinted silk necktie.
And he grasped in a thrust-forward right hand a large revolver.
‘Mr Desai,’ Ghote said quickly, in no doubt this was the opulent, benefit-conferring inventor and manufacturer of Trust-X. ‘Mr Desai, I am police.’
Manibhai Desai kept the big revolver pointing still at Ghote’s stomach.
‘What is your name?’ he demanded.
‘Ghote. It is Ghote. Inspector Ghote, C.I.D.’
Abruptly the revolver swung round beckoning Ghote in. He stepped across the threshold and the proprietor of Trust-X promptly slammed the wide teak door behind him.
‘It is as well for you I had your name already,’ he said. ‘If I had thought you were one of the swine that tried to take my Haribhai I would have shot you down like a dog.’
‘But it is possible you would have shot some harmless visitor only,’ Ghote said.
‘They must not stand in my way,’ Manibhai Desai declared, his stallion nostrils flaring.
Ghote mustered all his authority.
‘Please, at least to put the gun in your pocket,’ he said. ‘It is most important at the present juncture to pay the utmost attention to any telephone calls incoming. And if there is a danger of firearms discharging that would not be possible.’
Mr Desai pushed the big revolver into the pocket of his dashingly cut suit as if it were red hot.
‘Please,’ Ghote said in alarm, ‘you must apply the safetycatch. Otherwise you would be in considerable danger.’
As vigorously as he had jammed the revolver into his pocket Mr Desai now yanked it out and feverishly examined it.
‘Perhaps you are not greatly acquainted with the use of firearms,’ Ghote suggested. ‘Kindly allow me.’
He reached forward and succeeded in removing the big pistol from Mr Desai’s dangerous grasp. He glanced at it. It was an Enfield .380. Not much to his surprise he saw that the catch had all along been in the safe position.
‘Why should I be a first-class expert on guns?’ Mr Desai demanded aggressively. ‘I am not a goonda. I am a businessman. I have worked my way in the world by providing fine quality service to my fellow men, not by shooting and killing and inflicting severe flesh wounds.’
‘No, no, of course you would not be expert,’ Ghote answered. ‘But perhaps, as you are not, it would be better if I were to retain this weapon while I am here on the premises.’
‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Mr Desai. ‘But if those damned swine show their faces, you will kill them, yes?’
‘You can trust me, sir,’ Ghote said, putting every bit of emphasis at his command into the double-sided declaration. ‘But please also show me at once where is your telephone. It is of the utmost importance I hear what these anti-socials have to say.’
‘There is a phone here,’ Mr Desai answered. ‘But there are others too everywhere in the flat. Will you listen on one extension while I am speaking on another?’
‘No,’ Ghote said. ‘I do not think that would do. It is important that I am beside you to give advice. We will have to act to our level best to make them supply details in full. The greater the extent of our knowledge, the better police would be able to deal with the fellows.’
Instantly at the mention of the kidnappers Manibhai Desai’s deep-set eyes blazed again.
‘The dogs and sons of dogs,’ he shouted. ‘They must be caught. Hung by the neck. To dare to try to take from me my Haribhai. To dare.’
‘They will not be caught unless I am hearing full details,’ Ghote said a little sharply.
The tall manufacturer of Trust-X subdued himself with an effort.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will tell. Everything took place first thing this morning. Every day my Haribhai goes down early to the garden beside the block to play. He loves to be in the open air. He loves to run.’
He jumped round with total suddenness and strode over to a far door, thumping on it sharply with his fist.
‘My Haribhai, my Haribhai,’ he called out with strident anxiety. ‘He is there? He is safe?’
A woman’s voice answered. Ghote could not catch what it was she said because of t
he thickness of the door between them. But, whatever it was, it seemed to reassure Haribhai’s father. He came back and flung himself down on to a round, squabby, modern-looking chair upholstered in a bright orange, that stood beside the table on which, Ghote saw, the telephone rested.
‘Today,’ Manibhai Desai resumed, ‘the tailor was here. We need new curtains. New curtains everywhere. The sun bleaches them so up here.’
Ghote glanced across at the large window of the hall through which indeed the morning sun was streaming, fresh and brilliant up at this height above the dust of the city. The curtains were of a rich, golden-yellow velvet. He was unable to see much sign of bleaching.
‘The tailor,’ he asked, ‘it is his son that they have taken?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Mr Desai answered, with a wave of his large hand. ‘That is the boy. The tailor, you must understand, visits often. There is a great deal to be done always. My wife is most insistent to keep right up-to-date. The most modern, straightaway. So very often it is necessary to have the tailor here. And he is a widower or something, I do not know. But in any case he has the habit of bringing his boy, who is aged about five, with him.’
‘The two little ones became friendly?’ Ghote asked.
‘No, no, no, not at all. Not at all. My son to be a friend for the son of a tailor only? It is not possible.’
‘But they were together when it happened?’
‘Yes, yes. Playing together. They were playing together.’
‘I see.’
‘No, no. You do not at all see. You do not understand what happened.’
‘But then what did occur, please?’ Ghote asked, blinking a little.
‘That is the bloody part about it. The two of them had changed clothes. When my son came screaming back to his ayah in the garden to say that some men in a car had driven away with Pidku he was dressed in Pidku’s clothes. I have had to have them burnt.’
‘Burnt? But they might have been of help.’
‘You can never tell with the clothes of the poor. There might have been disease, insects, anything. They had to be burnt ek dum.’
‘I see,’ Ghote said. ‘But tell me more, if you please, about exactly what happened. Your son had gone down to the garden to play under the charge of his ayah, and the tailor’s son was with him also. How did the boys come to change clothes?’
‘I do not know, I do not know. My little Haribhai would not want to wear poor clothes like that. An old T-shirt only, no doubt secondhand or even worse, with a picture of a ship at sea on it, and trousers that were torn in the back part. Always he has the best clothes, latest fashion, straight from the shops as soon as they come in.’
Ghote thought it was plain enough why rich little Haribhai had wanted to wear the T-shirt with a picture of a ship on it. In a few minutes he would have to get a description of the ‘latest fashion’ clothes that Pidku, the tailor’s son, had been wearing when he was taken. But Haribhai’s father would not be the one to ask for that. For a really meticulous description the ayah would be the one to approach.
‘The ayah?’ he asked now. ‘Why was she not watching your son? She has been questioned?’
‘Questioned she has been and tears she has wept. But she will say only the boys went a little way away as often they did. She is locked up now, and my chauffeur is guarding.’
There was a note of firm satisfaction in Mr Desai’s voice. Ghote decided that, with the telephone perhaps about to ring at any instant with the call from the kidnappers, the ayah could be left in her unofficial, and illegal, imprisonment for a little longer.
‘Did she say why she was not watching?’ he asked.
‘She says she was talking with the ayah of the Mehta family,’ Mr Desai answered. ‘They live in one of the flats down below. They have three little girls only.’
‘I see. And so the two boys wandered away. No doubt, if as a sort of joke they decided to change clothes, they would want to go somewhere where they could not be seen. Where was it that they went?’
‘There are bushes,’ Mr Desai said with dark gloom. ‘I will insist they are chopped down. Today.’
‘And your son? Has he been able to tell what happened?’
‘Yes, yes. He is a talker among talkers, my Haribhai. You should hear him order the servants. What a voice. I could not do better myself.’
‘And he said what?’ Ghote asked, with a touch of sharpness.
‘That two men came and offered sweetmeats from their car. My Haribhai went. I suppose because that little devil of a tailor’s boy was going. The men then offered ride in car, and again the same thing. Only a short way along the service lane at the back they stopped car and pushed my son out. Then they drove away. Top speed. And it might have been my Haribhai that –’
And then the telephone rang.
2
Ghote gave a convulsive start and flung himself on the telephone where it stood, a softly gleaming white instrument, on its table. He lifted the receiver and clapped a hand across its mouthpiece.
‘Say “Hello” only,’ he instructed Manibhai Desai, now sitting upright on the edge of his orange tub chair as if his tall body had been injected suddenly with a frame of steel.
Ghote held the receiver towards the manufacturer of Trust-X and carefully raised his palm from the mouthpiece. Mr Desai swallowed.
‘Hello,’ he said, hardly succeeding in choking the word out.
Ghote snapped back his protective hand. The two of them listened like hovering kites.
‘Is that you, Manibhai?’
The voice was unmistakable: the Commissioner.
Ghote handed the receiver over to Mr Desai and stood respectfully back. A sharp inquiry spluttered from the far end of the line.
‘Yes, yes, he is here. We are waiting for those swine to ring up –’
Another splutter from the far end.
‘Yes, yes. I will try. I will do my utmost to keep quite calm, but when I think –’
Splutter, splutter.
‘Yes, he is here beside me. I am handing over.’
Ghote took the receiver.
‘Inspector Ghote here, sir.’
‘Well, what do you make of it?’
It was almost a man-to-man inquiry. Ghote straightened his stooping back.
‘Here in the flat, Commissioner sahib, it is a question only of waiting for them to ring us. Everything must wait for that. But I have been worried by the problem of witnesses at the scene of the crime, sir.’
‘What’s the trouble there?’
‘Sir, the kidnappers’ approach appears to have been made via a back lane adjacent to the garden of the flats here. It is very much possible that there were witnesses to some stages of the proceedings at the very least. But it would be a matter of deploying a considerable number of personnel to locate such witnesses, and you can see the danger there, sir.’
‘Policemen all over the place, yes. No, Ghote, we must avoid that for the time being certainly.’
‘On the other hand, Commissioner sahib, witnesses will forget, and they will also add to what they remember with every quarter-hour that passes.’
‘True enough, true enough. But it is a risk we must take. My wife – I myself will not hear of Mr Desai’s boy being put in jeopardy if it can in any way be helped. You may say that you had my authority.’
‘Very good, Commissioner sahib. Thank you, sir. I will ring off now in case those fellows are wanting to call.’
‘Quite right, quite right.’
Ghote replaced the white telephone receiver on its rest with a sense of holy awe.
‘Well,’ he said to Mr Desai, ‘we must only wait and wait. But you have more to tell. There is, for instance, the note the miscreants left. Where is that?’
‘It is here, here.’
Manibhai Desai plunged his hand into his jacket pocket and produced a single sheet of coarse-looking, yellowy-white paper.
‘It has been in your pocket all the time?’ Ghote asked. ‘You have put it in and out? Have o
thers handled the sheet also? Was there an envelope? Where is that?’
As the implications struck him he felt a growing sense of shock. This was evidence, solid fingerprint evidence perhaps, that had been so carelessly handled. Manibhai Desai’s answer to his blurted questions confirmed his worst fears.
‘If there was envelope it has been thrown away. What good is envelope? It is what they have written here, here, that matters.’
And a long forefinger jabbed and jabbed again at the coarse sheet, adding no doubt two more well-defined, obliterating fingerprints to those already there.
‘How many others have read besides yourself?’ Ghote asked hollowly.
‘But many. Of course, many. Do you think my wife would not want to see what the swine have written? Do you not think that all those in this household who love my little Haribhai would not want?’
‘Then since the sheet is covered already with fingerprints,’ Ghote said, ‘I might as well just take also.’
‘Fingerprints, fingerprints,’ Mr Desai said, suddenly horror-struck. ‘Will they be saying I rubbed out the fingerprints of those sons of dogs?’
‘It cannot be helped,’ Ghote replied wearily, as he plucked the sheet out of Mr Desai’s hand and read the brief message written on it in crude capital letters of red crayon.
EF YOU WAT SEE YOR SON ELIVE DO NOT TEL PELICE – WET BY TELEPHONNE FOR MESEGE
And then at the bottom of the sheet again, in more urgently scrawled letters: DO NOT TEL PELICEWALAS
Ghote considered. Not much really to help there. Too few words altogether. Of course, they indicated that the men had enough education to be able to write, and that they knew a bit of English. But in Bombay almost anyone with daring enough to conceive a plan of this sort, and with the ability to select as a target a person like the proprietor of Trust-X, would have these skills. And down among the criminal classes there would be thousands, perhaps even as many as ten thousand, who would come into this category.
No, a lot would depend on the telephone message. When it came.
And it was plain, too, that the kidnappers, whoever they were, had been well aware in advance of what the police reaction would be. They must have realized very clearly that theirs was a crime that the forces of order could not let go undetected.
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart Page 2