“Yes, Dadaji.”
Ved looked blankly crestfallen. But, though in the ordinary way the sight of him so distressed would at once have evaporated all anger, now it had no effect.
“I hope it is understood,” he repeated. “Home computer is a banned subject in this house. From now on. Cent percent.”
In front of the Assistant Commissioner, however, things went better than they might have done. He was, as he had known he would be, treated to a few harsh words about his failure immediately to have extracted from the Gup Shup office manager any damning evidence against its proprietor. But the Assistant Commissioner soon conceded that, with Freddy Kersasp in America, it was in fact not very practical to push the investigation any further for the time being.
“The damn fellow will be fully informed on the arrest of Shiv Chand by now,” he concluded. “So perhaps, with one piece of good luck, he will take it into his head to stay on in America once and for all. Then one damn business at least will be off my hands.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime, Ghote, you have other work, yes?”
“Yes, sir. Always plenty.”
“Good. Well, get on with it, then. Get on with it. And we will let your Shiv Chand stew in his own juices until it is clear whether Mr. Freddy Kersasp is or is not returning home.”
When ten days later he learned from the Gup Shup offices that Freddy Kersasp had apparently postponed his return for at least an extra week, he began to hope the Assistant Commissioner had been right. Warned by the failure of his employee’s piece of blackmailing, Freddy Kersasp was perhaps cutting his losses and establishing himself in the United States with whatever ill-gotten gains he had succeeded in smuggling out of India. Then, with luck, he would let Gup Shup close down, and whoever it was up there who had been made anxious could smile once more.
Somehow the relief Ghote felt extended in a mysterious fashion to his other, secret fear. He began to hope that Inspector Arjun Singh, whom he still continued to avoid, would never get on the trail of the murderer of Dolly Daruwala. Perhaps the black boulder that had seemed to loom topplingly in his mind was beginning already to be lost to sight.
When after another week he learned that Freddy Kersasp was prolonging his stay in America yet again, he went for hours without once seeing in his mind Dr. Commissariat standing over Dolly Daruwala’s body and his gupti sword protruding from her rose-pink sari. Only when tiredness overtook him in the evening did that vision come swimming back again.
But his state of increasing content was not to run on indefinitely.
On the day that fell exactly one month after Dolly Daruwala’s murder, he found, returning home in the evening, Ranchod once again waiting for him outside his door. The fellow was smiling ingratiatingly and squinting horribly. So, after all, he had realized that the possession of a secret gave a blackmailer more than one opportunity. Even if, from that forced smile of his, he had as yet acquired nothing of the iciness of Dolly Daruwala herself.
What was he to do about him?
He was plainly not yet in a position to send him about his business, if he ever was going to be. Arjun Singh might not have got any nearer knowing who had killed Dolly Daruwala, but Dr. Commissariat was by no means safe. Ranchod was still able, if his demands were not met, to start inquiries that were bound to lead eventually to the Parsi scientist.
Nothing for it, then, but at least to find out how much the fellow wanted.
“Well?” he barked out at him.
“Inspector sahib, good evening.”
“You are wanting something, yes?”
The fellow smiled more wholeheartedly then, the brown stubs of his teeth apparent.
“Inspectorji, I am thinking you are well knowing what I am needing. Bad needing, Inspector.”
Plainly another hundred rupees was going to be demanded, though why the fellow should feel he had to claim that his need was urgent was something of a mystery. After all, he was getting pay, boarding, and lodging from Mr. Mistry.
“All right. One hundred rupees. But for the last time.”
“Oh, yes, yes, Inspector. Very-very last time only.”
Luckily he had replaced their emergency cash within a couple of days of having paid Ranchod before. He tapped at his door and when Protima opened to him he told her he needed some money in a hurry. Without letting her see the hovering blackmailer, he went in, took the hundred rupees from its hiding place, and quickly stepping outside again, thrust the notes into Ranchod’s expectant hand.
“The last time,” he repeated ferociously.
Yet he suspected in fact this would hardly be Ranchod’s final appearance.
Then, just two days later, making what he had come to regard as merely a routine call to the Gup Shup offices, he was told that Mr. Freddy Kersasp was back. He felt a dull shock of disappointment. True, he had not allowed himself fully to hope that the scandal magazine’s proprietor would pass out of his life, and Bombay’s, altogether. But he had bit by bit got used to the idea that finding evidence against him was something he would never have to do.
However, long beforehand he had worked out what his first step should be if the Gup Shup proprietor should return. He would at once inform him that he had no objection to his visiting his employee held on a blackmail charge.
Either then Freddy Kersasp would back Shiv Chand, or he would disown him. If he did the former, then it would be a matter of trying in every way to link the blackmail attempt, for which they had such satisfactory proof, back from Shiv Chand to Freddy Kersasp himself. If, as he guessed was more likely, Freddy Kersasp attempted to sever all links with his office manager, then, with any luck, the Punjabi would begin telling whatever he knew to Freddy Kersasp’s discredit.
He got an inkling of what Freddy Kersasp’s attitude would be when, telephoning to give him this message, he failed to get through.
“But I am wanting to speak with him concerning his employee, one Mr. Shiv Chand, now under arrest,” he said.
And back came the answer.
“Mr. Shiv Chand is no longer an employee of Gup Shup Enterprise (Private) Limited. Mr. Kersasp’s instruction.”
He felt, on the whole, pleased.
Surely when he took that blank rejection to Shiv Chand the shark smile would be wiped from his face.
It was.
“Does he think he can be doing this to me also?” the burly Punjabi shouted. “I will be teaching him. My God, yes.”
“Then you are knowing matters to Mr. Kersasp’s discredit?”
“Matters I am knowing. One hundred, two hundred.”
“Well then, Mr. Chand, let us get down to details,” Ghote said, sliding at once into a much more friendly tone than in his previous dealings with the office manager.
Between them in the course of the next two hours they produced, not two hundred or even one hundred, but four recent clear instances, which Shiv Chand clamored to vouch for if he was permitted to turn Approver, of blackmail attempts Freddy Kersasp had conducted in person. Each one, Shiv Chand said quoting figures, would have netted a substantial sum for promised biographies in that ever-unprinted volume, Indians of Merit and Distinction.
With feelings of considerable satisfaction Ghote took his findings to the Assistant Commissioner.
“No good, Inspector.”
“Sir, no good? But—”
“Inspector, we are not dealing with some two-per-paisa hanky-panky fellow snatching a fruit from some handcartwalla. We are dealing with a man who once before has been up in court and has walked out from it. What we are needing are evidences that God Krishna himself could not laugh off.”
“Yes, sir. But what—”
“Inspector, take each and every one of these cases your Shiv Chand has given you, get to the people involved, and come away with their assurances, hard and fast, that they will come into court, Shri X, Shri Y, or Shri ABC, and back up what your fellow is saying. Do that, Inspector, and we would be in business.”
“Yes, sir
.”
As Ghote turned to go, there rose up in his mind, more vivid than ever before, that vision again of Dolly Daruwala lying dead in front of her safe full of secrets. If, he said to himself with bitterness, that vermin, snake, or pest had not been eliminated, however justly, it would be Inspector Arjun Singh and not Inspector Ghote who would be looking at one gloomy future.
SEVEN
In the days that followed, Ghote’s forebodings about his immediate future proved pleasantly accurate. None of the four people the Assistant Commissioner had ordered him to persuade into being Mr. X, Mr. Y, Mr. Z, or Mr. ABC were at all willing even to see him.
It took three days of repeated telephone calls, speaking to evasive secretaries, obstructive clerks, unhelpful servants, before he succeeded in securing an appointment with one of them. This was a Mr. Suresh Jesingbhai, a Gujarati stockbroker. According to Shiv Chand, Mr. Jesingbhai had paid heavily for his inclusion, at some vague future date, in Indians of Merit and Distinction rather than have it put before the world in Gup Shup, implacably appearing every two weeks, that he had once had a certain arrangement with a telephone operator. In the days before the Bombay telephone system had become automated, this lady had not only put through any urgent dealings for him at lightning-call speed, but had also seen that someone else’s bill was debited. Then, after the good times were over, she had eventually realized that she could make further extra income by selling the story to Freddy Kersasp.
When Ghote had at last got through to Mr. Jesingbhai in person and had discreetly hinted at the nature of his business, he had been given a reluctant appointment. It was for late in the evening at Mr. Jesingbhai’s office.
Tapping at the outer door, the dimmest of lights only behind its glass panel inscribed JESINGBHAI AND CO. in aged flaking black paint, Ghote thought what an unimpressive place it was that he had come to. But from his careful preliminary inquiries it was clear that, dingy though the office seemed, vast sums were made in it. The world of the Dalal Street brokers was notorious for the size of its wealth behind often the shabbiest of exteriors.
Mr. Jesingbhai, who came himself to draw back the several bolts on the door, fully lived up to that image. He was dressed in the traditional Gujarati mode, a white kurta with a thickly pleated dhoti hanging down from his ample stomach and a heavily sweat-stained black cap on his head. It was difficult in the poor light to see much of his face, but Ghote received a distinct impression of sullen suspiciousness emanating from thickly podgy features.
After responding to a grunted demand for identification, he was at last admitted. Following the bulky white shape of the broker, he was aware in the ineffectual light coming from a single low-powered bulb of clerks’ desks topped with cracked plastic, of folding chairs with thin rexine-covered seats, of a tiled floor pitted and uneven. A distinct smell of urine was seeping in from somewhere, and although he saw an air conditioner, it was hanging crazily from one of the small high windows plainly long awaiting repair.
At his own inner office Mr. Jesingbhai carefully closed the door and put his bulk firmly against it. Then he spoke.
“That girl is one filthy liar. She was telling what she did just only because I was refusing her money. Not one word is true.”
Ghote, reflecting that here was an unlikely believer in Duke Wellington’s advice to those threatened with blackmail, swallowed once.
“Mr. Jesingbhai,” he said, “please understand, as I was stating per telephone there would be no question of any prosecution for any illegal actions you yourself may or may not have committed.”
“Nothing I have done.”
“Well, let us not argue about that. But it is our information from a one hundred percent reliable source that you were making a payment of rupees ten thousand to one Mr. Firdaus, or Freddy, Kersasp for bio-data to be inserted in the book Indians of Merit and Distinction.”
“Proof. What proof are you having?”
“Sir, account entry itself,” Ghote boldly lied, reasonably certain that Shiv Chand’s information had been accurate.
In the better light from the single neon tube that hung over Mr. Jesingbhai’s desk, he saw the broker shoot him a look of sharp distrust.
“No prosecution? You were stating there would be no prosecution? You would give me your word? Your word of honor? On paper?”
“Sir, I will write it here and now only.”
Another darting look. But the broker did not appear to see the need to take him up on his offer.
“Very well, Inspector. But what it is exactly you are wanting? Of course, you are understanding I will aid and assist the police in every way within my powers.”
“Thank you, sir. I know I can rely on you as an honest citizen to do your duty.”
“Yes, yes. But what duty it is?”
Ghote wished he could have led around more carefully to the request he had to make. But Mr. Jesingbhai had put his question.
“Sir,” he said, “Commissioner sahib himself is wishing that you, appearing just only under the name of Shri X, would give evidence against Mr. Kersasp on the charge of blackmail.”
“Blackmail? Blackmail, Inspector? But it is not myself who has been blackmailed by Mr. Kersasp. It is that girl only who was attempting to blackmail me. If it is that one you are charge-sheeting evidence as Shri X, I would give and give. There is not going to be much of notice taken to one case like that.”
“And you are fearing that notice would be taken of a case involving Mr. Freddy Kersasp?” Ghote said. “But, sir, I can assure you the greatest precautions would—”
“Precautions nothing, Inspector. Come, you and I are well knowing that if that Mr. Kersasp is taken into court, entire Bombay would be wanting to know what about it all was. And would get to know also. Before you could be saying Chakravartyrajagopalachari.”
Too late for persuasion now, Ghote thought dismally. Only thing is some tough talking.
“Mr. Jesingbhai,” he said, “the fact of matter is that you have paid rupees ten thousand to Mr. Kersasp. What is that if it is not blackmail? You are knowing fully well something to your discredit was threatened to be printed in Gup Shup magazine. It is your bounden duty to give evidence when we are bringing the culprit to court.”
Mr. Jesingbhai gave him a look of sheer cunning.
“Inspector, evidence is it that I am paying for bio-data in that Indians of Merit book? But paying for that is something I can do if I am wanting, no?”
Ghote sighed.
“Sir, you and I are both well knowing that it is not at all truly likely any person would pay so much for such a return only.”
“But that is what I was paying. And for that only, Inspector.”
The broker stared at him with blank hostility.
Above, he was conscious suddenly that the neon tube hanging there was giving out a thin little buzz. And he knew he had come to the end of this road.
There were, however, still three more roads to follow. And, despite the Assistant Commissioner’s order to secure Shri X, Shri Y, Shri Z, and Shri ABC as witnesses, if in fact it turned out that just one of the four was prepared eventually to give evidence against Freddy Kersasp, they could then safely bring their case. But nevertheless he felt cold depression sliding over him.
As soon as he had sat himself at his desk the following day he rang, yet again, the next most likely Gup Shup victim on his list. This was a very different sort of businessman from the traditionalist Gujarati Mr. Jesingbhai. Ramesh Deswani was, he had learned from Shiv Chand, a self-made success, a pushful Sindhi, managing director of Despruf Waterproofing, selling a much-vaunted system for keeping monsoon rains from penetrating Bombay’s thousands of flat-roofed buildings. Shiv Chand, taking a quick look once at Freddy Kersasp’s well-hidden “true” account books, as opposed to those made up for the income tax authorities, had seen the Indians of Merit and Distinction entry for Ramesh Deswani’s payment of no less than twenty thousand rupees. Shiv Chand had not, however, managed to worm out of his employer befo
re he had left for America just what it was that Gup Shup would have printed if Ramesh Deswani had declined to accept the honor offered him.
The call to Despruf Waterproofing’s offices brought at least some luck. He did not, of course, succeed in speaking to Ramesh Deswani himself. But, talking with his secretary, he heard a voice in the background shouting in English, with a touch of hysteria, he thought, “No, not today. Tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow.”
He began to hope that he had found a possibly willing witness. First thing next day he would be on the telephone again.
In the meanwhile he conscientiously tried at regular intervals the other two names on his list, a retired Major-General Kalgutkar, whose son had done something that would have made a nice item for the innuendo-filled pen of Freddy Kersasp, and a lady who had recently been made Bombay’s Inspector of Smoke Nuisances, the first woman to hold the post. But he was not too dismayed when, first, the general’s servant answered that his master was “not at home” and then a clerk told him that the Inspector of Smoke Nuisances was “unavailable.” He still had the managing director of Despruf Waterproofing in his sights, and plenty of routine work to be getting on with.
Next morning he got an utterly unexpected hint as to what the trouble might have been that had put Ramesh Deswani into Freddy Kersasp’s power. Thinking when he had arrived in his office that it was really too early to make the call he hoped would now be accepted, he decided to take a few minutes to look at the Indian Post. And there the first thing that caught his eye was news about his potential witness.
“Bombay Firm Chief Leaps to His Death,” a headline read. Then followed:
New Delhi, Apl 21 (UNI). The body of Ramesh Deswani, 56, managing director of Despruf Ltd., Bombay, was discovered on the service floor of a newly constructed four-star hotel on Asoka Road here last night. The police said Deswani, who arrived here earlier yesterday, had checked in at the hotel and was lodged in room 703 on the seventh floor. His shoes were found on the sixteenth floor. The police said a suicide note was also discovered, which said: “I have committed serious mistakes and I feel I should destroy myself.” It was written in English.
The Iciest Sin Page 7
