“Mr. Kersasp,” Ghote said, “let me assure. Enemies you have and are having. Let me speak one hundred percent frankly. I am not such a friend to you as I was giving myself out to be. You may say that I am one of those enemies. I would add only this. A great many people would be altogether happy if Gup Shup was no longer appearing and you were no longer staying in India.”
Freddy Kersasp turned his face away from the distant odor of dhansak.
“By God, that is blackmail,” he said. “You damn swine, you are attempting to blackmail me.”
“Call it whatsoever you are liking,” Ghote answered, finding in himself suddenly a tiny writhing of pleasure in the game he was playing. “Whatsoever you are calling same, it is not making anything of difference. The one fact is that if Gup Shup is continuing to appear, then investigation of crime at Zarina Baag will continue to be made. And I am promising evidence will be found to put you behind the bars once and for all.”
Freddy Kersasp stood where he was on the pavement. Past him to either side the citizens of Bombay—beggars and hawkers, businessmen in their cool suits, astrologers, coolies, sharp-smelling fishwallas in their gaudy, tucked-up saris, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Parsis—went by in all their variety. At last he spoke.
“Very well, Inspector. I have been at the game you are playing too long myself not to know when I am beaten. You, and those I do not doubt who give you your orders, want to see the back of Freddy Kersasp. Isn’t that it? Well, I suppose I must let you have your way.”
He lifted a hand to the black cord of his hearing-aid as if it no longer mattered whether he was able to keep in touch with the life around him or not. But even this gesture seemed in the end to be too much for him. His hand fell to his side.
Ghote, however, felt not the least spark of pity for the suddenly old man. Far from it. A sharp exultation seemed to be running in his blood.
“Well,” Freddy Kersasp said in face of the unmoved silence that confronted him. “I will see about shifting to New York or somewhere as soon as I can manage to wind things up here.”
“No, Mr. Kersasp.”
Ghote was almost surprised to hear himself saying the words. But something from deep within him had leaped commandingly into the saddle, and he could no longer control the onrush he felt.
“No, Mr. Kersasp,” he repeated. “You will go now, this instant, to Air India office and book one ticket for first available flight. I myself will communicate with the said office telephonically at 5 P.M. precisely, and if I am not hearing you have booked the flight I will set in train every possible investigation.”
Now Freddy Kersasp simply turned away. His shoulders were bowed. His shiny malacca cane trailed in his hand.
Ghote, watching him go, wondered to himself. He had blackmailed the fellow. There could be no other word for it. He had been in possession of a fact to Freddy Kersasp’s disadvantage, and he had used it to the utmost to force him to do exactly as he had wanted. Or exactly as he had been given orders to get him to do. But, he realized, the fact that he had been acting under orders had been no excuse. He had enjoyed doing what he had done. Yes, in the end he had enjoyed it. To see Freddy Kersasp humiliated and beaten had given him intense pleasure. Nor was the fact that Kersasp was a thoroughly criminal fellow any excuse again. Whatever the man he had had at his mercy had been, villain or one as much practicing “good thoughts, good words, good deeds” as Dr. Commissariat himself, he would have revelled in having him under his thumb. Squirming.
He thought suddenly of his schoolfellow of old, Adik Desmukh. Yes, he had for a time felt just such an icy pleasure in having big Adik wriggling under his knowledge of that stolen pencil. And he was feeling that pleasure still as he watched Freddy Kersasp walk away beaten.
But nevertheless he had done it. He had pulled it off. He had sent Freddy Kersasp—there could be no doubt of it—packing.
ELEVEN
By the time Ghote had returned to headquarters to report his success to the Assistant Commissioner, he had managed to push back into the deep recesses of his mind all the unpleasant pleasure that he had taken in blackmailing Freddy Kersasp. The Assistant Commissioner’s evident satisfaction at his news left no room in any case for anything but a feeling of rich contentment. Only briefly was a shadow cast on that by the notion that luck might have played some part in his triumph.
What if Freddy Kersasp had held out against me, he thought at one moment. How on earth then would I ever have succeeded to get rid of him and his bogus and spicy magazine? I could not have killed the fellow. I could not have turned myself into a Dr. Commissariat and eliminated a vermin, pest, and snake.
But the thought hardly impinged. Within seconds it was submerged by another great wave of pleasure in what he had accomplished. The Commissioner himself had indicated that it was time Freddy Kersasp’s nefarious activities were brought to an end. Someone up there, indeed, must have surely indicated as much to the Commissioner. Finally he, Inspector Ganesh Ghote, had been given the order. And, within hours, he had carried it out. Freddy Kersasp had announced his intention of giving up his game, and there was no doubt he would do it.
He buzzed with inner happiness.
It was a state that was to be deflated abruptly as soon as he reached home that evening.
Ranchod was the cause. He found the squint-eyed servant, as he had discovered him on occasion after occasion since the murder of Dolly Daruwala, waiting in the shadows outside his door. His first thought, as he realized the fellow was there, was that this visit was at an even shorter interval than any before.
This time I will damn well send him about his business, he thought. Dr. Commissariat must be safe by now. Months have passed, after all. Arjun Singh is on the tracks of altogether different no-goods and criminals. Now at last I must be able to give this damn fellow the true Duke Wellington answer.
He swung around to deliver it.
But Ranchod, sidling quickly up toward him, saliva drooling from the corner of his mouth, spoke first.
“Rupees one thousand. I must have it.”
Ghote could not believe what he had heard.
“What—what it is you are saying?”
Ranchod held out a filthy hand—how can Mr. Z. R. Mistry tolerate such a dirty fellow, Ghote thought—and advanced one more sidling step nearer.
“Rupees one thousand,” he repeated. “Give now, or I would tell and tell what I was seeing.”
Ghote hardly needed to think.
“No,” he said. “No, damn you, get out of my sight before I kick you down the stair.”
Ranchod gave him one look, a piteously imploring look he was to realize soon afterward, and then, without a word, he turned and at a shambling half run headed for the stairs.
For a little Ghote stood there without giving his customary tapping signal on the outer latch of his door.
Have I spoiled everything after all, he asked himself suddenly. Is my Duke Wellington answer sending the fellow even now to his nearby police station, going over in his mind just what he will say there? Was I wrong to think time has made Dr. Commissariat safe?
Has one angry word brought the end of that great man? And for me also? Will I, tomorrow or the next day, find a fellow from Vigilance Branch coming to my cabin, asking and asking questions I cannot answer? And Dr. Commissariat, will he find the handcuffs round his wrists? Be dragged into the cells? Come up for trial? Be hanged even? Is that what the Duke Wellington answer brings about?
A shiver of cold ran through him from throat to stomach.
But at once he told himself not to be foolish. Time had passed, and in any case Ranchod was not truly likely to go to a police station. It was difficult to imagine that drooling, jittery figure persuading a station house officer that he had such important information.
Then, in an instant of illumination, he realized why that was.
Yes, yes, he said to himself, a fellow so altogether lacking the guts to enter a police station, with so much of drooling and slobbering. He m
ust be an addict only. Yes, it must be brown sugar itself that has all along been his weakness. That has been the reason he has been making his demands more and more often, begging and beseeching. He has been more and more badly needing money.
For a moment he wondered whether he should chase after the fellow and make him say where he was buying his supplies. Might that lead back to the ring now making so much headway selling brown sugar on the streets?
But, no, he thought, there is not much hope of getting to the mastermind behind the gang through a fellow like Ranchod. They would take good care he is not even knowing the name of the man he is buying from.
With a sigh he turned and tapped at the door.
And in any case, he thought as he waited for Protima to come and draw back the bolt, with that habit of Ranchod’s tomorrow at this very time I would quite likely be finding him here again.
In that, he proved to be mistaken. Neither the next evening nor on any one after did the squinting servant put in an appearance, hand outstretched for brown-sugar money. Gradually as the days went by the black boulder that had loomed up in his mind as he had seen Dolly Daruwala fall with a thump dead to the floor receded further and further into the mistiness of time.
Nevertheless for weeks after rejecting that sudden and unexpected demand for a thousand rupees, as he arrived home each evening he continued to look with a touch of apprehension into the dark corner where Ranchod had been accustomed to lurk. But then one night he realized that he had not given that spot his quick, habitual scrutiny for the past two or three times. Once or twice in the succeeding days he remembered again to make his check. But even as he did so he felt sure he would not see in the darkness any hunched, stooping shape.
Eventually he decided, however, that finally to set his mind at rest, he would have to go and take one last look at Ranchod. He would have to venture to observe him on his home ground. At Marzban Apartments, at Mr. Z. R. Mistry’s flat.
He was not very happy at having even to go near the place. For one thing he feared a visit to the actual spot at which an event so overwhelming had happened to him would once again call up feelings he would find every bit as hard to deal with as he had in those moments he had stayed lying under Dolly Daruwala’s bed knowing he was letting a murderer go unchallenged. The black boulder, which he really believed had all but disappeared into the mists, might suddenly lurch horribly to the front once more. And there was the possibility, remote and even ridiculous though it might seem, that somehow his presence there would even now light a powder trail fizzing back at last to Dr. Commissariat himself.
But his niggle of doubt about Ranchod would not, despite these thoughts, vanish. So at last, carefully choosing an hour when he thought it most likely that Ranchod would be coming out of Mr. Mistry’s flat, duties for the day over, he set off for Marzban Apartments.
He turned out to be luckier even than he had hoped. No sooner had he hidden himself in the soft darkness outside the block—to his intense inner discomfort in the very place he had waited before breaking into the flat that night long ago—than he saw Mr. Mistry himself leave the building. He knew at once what he would do: ring at the doorbell of his flat and then rapidly slip out of sight. When Ranchod came to answer, if he was there, he would be able to get a good look at him, see whether he had been right about the brown sugar, see whether the fellow was still inclined to drool at the mouth, see if he looked contented with his lot once more. He would get one last good look at him. Then he would be able to lay these fragments of his fears to rest once and for all.
He came boldly out of hiding, nodded with assurance to the chowkidar on duty in the foyer of the tall block, and then went, while the man could not see him, and rang at Mr. Mistry’s familiar, unpleasantly familiar, bell.
No sooner had it rung than he darted back into the farthest corner of the lobby, where it was every bit as dark as he could have wanted.
After less than half a minute the door of the flat was opened and a beam of light shone out. But the servant who had answered was not Ranchod. Squinting Ranchod he would have recognized in an instant anywhere. This was an altogether different individual. Tall, stooping, suspicious-looking. But, clearly, Mr. Mistry’s servant. Dust cloth over shoulder, white or whitish uniform cladding his gaunt body.
So Ranchod was no longer in Mr. Mistry’s service. And the fellow was no longer making those rupee-requesting visits. Perhaps, the thought came to him, he had even died. Brown sugar claimed its victims all too often, all too soon.
For a moment he felt a twinge of pity. But Ranchod had, after all, been nothing but a blackmailer. He hardly deserved pity.
He took a deep breath where he stood in the dark and watched the suspicious servant close Mr. Mistry’s door with a grunt of weariness.
So it is over, he allowed himself at last to think. Ranchod has left the scene. Definitely. That nightmare at least is finished and done with.
As if to confirm his new-found relief, the very next afternoon he bumped into Inspector Arjun Singh, avoided for so long.
“Ghote bhai,” the energy-bouncing Sikh greeted him. “Days and days since I have seen. Where you been hiding? I was wishing to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” Ghote echoed stupidly, still wondering at the edge of his mind whether he ought to have kept out of Singh’s way in case the talk somehow got into the dangerous area.
“Yes, yes, man. I am shifting.”
“Shifting? It is that you are leaving Bombay?”
“No, no, bhai. I would not do that. Action is here. But job change I will take, both hands grabbing.”
Ghote by now felt on safer ground.
“What job change?” he said. “You have been in Crime Branch ten minutes only.”
“Two years, bhai. Two whole years. Time to move on, no?”
“Well, myself I have stayed here longer. But where to are you shifting?”
“Vigilance Branch, bhai. Not so far away. So one naughty move from you when I am there and I would be eating your head only.”
The big Sikh exploded into a roar of laughter.
For a moment Ghote returned to his fears that one day squinting Ranchod, not after all dead, would tell what he had seen on the stairs that now distant night in Marzban Apartments and a Vigilance Branch investigation would descend on him. But, as quickly, a different thought replaced that retrospective twinge of anxiety. If Singh was transferring to Vigilance Branch, it meant that he would no longer in any way be pursuing, lionlike, Dolly Daruwala’s murderer. The case, though no doubt still nominally under investigation, had in effect finally been allowed to be forgotten.
Breathlessly he shook the Sikh’s bear-paw hand and wished him “Best of luck only.” Then he sought the refuge of his office and, sinking into his chair, he wallowed for a while in luxurious contemplation.
Now at last Dr. Commissariat, for all that he had never known what danger he was in, could go about his good work safe from any menace whatsoever. Now I, too, he said to himself, can go about my work safe and sound, and not have to fight down any thoughts that each day may be the last I am allowed to do it.
In the days that followed the process of burying those last doubts was much helped because he had more than his usual piled-on amount of work to do. The Commissioner, relieved perhaps of his anxieties over Gup Shup with the departure of Freddy Kersasp for America—Ghote had had to go to Sahar Airport and actually witness him stepping into the plane—had some time before launched a tremendous drive against infractions of the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Bootleggers, and Drug Offenders Act. He wanted, so rumor at headquarters had it, to show up Bombay Police’s rival, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. Their success not long before in making a haul of 103 kilograms of brown sugar, valued at no less than thirty crores of rupees, from “a shop-cumresidence” in the suburb of Dadar had gained considerable newspaper notice.
Above all, the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner, Crime Branch, under him wanted a
stop put to the activities of a certain underworld kingpin who had recently moved from gambling and protection rackets into brown-sugar distribution, one known as Uncle, or Mama, Chiplunkar. And it was for the operation against him that Ghote had found extra duties by the dozen put on his plate.
Mama Chiplunkar had, embarrassingly, long been well-known for his activities to Bombay Police Intelligence Branch. But in spite of all the information they had succeeded in collecting about the gang he ran, nothing had ever been found to put him behind bars. It was said that this was more than likely due to Chiplunkar having a source somewhere inside headquarters, repeatedly tipping him off.
It was a fact certainly that the crime kingpin was able to go about Bombay—he described himself as a “social worker”—with, in the words of a Sunday Observer story highly critical of the police, “fanfare and impunity.” A short time before, however, he had in fact had a narrow escape in a raid on a beer bar managed by one of his right-hand men, and it was this that had perhaps made the Commissioner believe his moment had come.
So, though hours at work were long and arduous, life for Ghote became once again serene. It was even, he thought occasionally, an extra blessing that the drain on his finances made by his regular payments to Ranchod had come to an end. Every now and again he caught himself wondering how he might spend the savings he was making. His scooter had been giving him trouble—it was well past its first youth—and he let the vision of himself riding to and from headquarters on a brand-new one tickle the back of his mind.
But then one day another demand on his more comfortable resources presented itself. An unexpected demand. He had had a particularly hard twelve hours fruitlessly trying to track down a minor hanger-on of Mama Chiplunkar’s believed to be someone who if leaned on hard enough might prove a lead. “Each drop that is added toward positive results makes a milestone ultimately,” the Assistant Commissioner had said.
Coming home exhausted, he thought he detected in Protima a certain, well-hidden uneasiness. He decided, tired as he was and not sure how capable he would be of any tactfulness that might be necessary, to wait before he tried to find out what it was all about. But Protima spared him the trouble.
The Iciest Sin Page 13
