Then, yet nearer home, he found that he had something almost as hard to bear as the depression that had flooded over him when he had first realized the full implications of his Duke Wellington answer. He had to go through the motions of living his ordinary life until the time Mama Chiplunkar chose to strike.
The time of waiting proved to be much longer than Ghote in his worst moments had envisaged. He had hardly expected that a team from Vigilance Branch would come gate-crashing into his flat on the very evening of his train escape from Mama Chiplunkar’s clutches. So that night he had managed to get through the hours until he could decently take himself off to bed without betraying—so at least he believed—too much of his anxiety. Mercifully, Ved as soon as they had eaten went around to the home of a friend until eight o’clock, the time Protima insisted he had to be back. So the subject of the home computer did not arise. But at work next day he found himself looking up from his desk every two or three minutes expecting to see the bat-wing doors of his office brushed aside by a hostile investigator.
However, the day wore on and no one appeared. By the time he was due to leave in the evening, he had worked himself into a state of terrible apprehension. Why had the blow not fallen? What was Mama Chiplunkar waiting for? He even found himself thinking that for some inexplicable reason the brown-sugar kingpin must have decided not to take his revenge. Then he thought that perhaps he was delaying deliberately. The cat playing with the mouse.
But his reason, asserting itself at last, told him that this was not really very likely. Every hour that passed without Mama Chiplunkar making a move must increase the chances of police action against him, even though he would take care now not to go anywhere near the Multiplex Chemicals and Drug Manufacturing laboratory. In fact, he thought, it was more than likely that instructions had gone at once to the in charge there to transfer all the incriminating evidence to some place of safety. But the loss of such a valuable asset as the laboratory would surely only have increased Chiplunkar’s rage, and his determination to pay out the person he must believe had been responsible.
Yet nothing had happened.
What could Chiplunkar be doing? Could he have met with some accident? Perhaps in hurry-scurrying away from Grant Road station yesterday he had slipped and fallen onto the line. Been killed. Been seriously injured.
But, no. Such miracles of luck did not happen. And besides, if the Commissioner’s current prime target had been swept from the earth, the news would have been all over headquarters in no time. Entire Bombay would have known even. Had the fellow so much as been taken to hospital, word would have spread. Mama Chiplunkar’s name appeared in the papers often enough as one of Bombay’s prominent gang leaders and “social workers.” Someone was bound to have recognized it, or him, and have run to a telephone to tell some reporter.
Almost hoping that, after all, at this last moment of his working day the blow would fall and the suspense be ended, he gathered up his papers, locked them in his desk drawer, and went to collect his scooter, left at headquarters the evening before with his sudden decision to go to Grant Road station. Once again, as the wretched machine proved the very devil to start up, he thought of how, if he had been a different sort of officer, he might even today be taking possession of a brand-new replacement at Mama Chiplunkar’s hands. Or of a car, even. One of those neat little Marutis. In return for services rendered. And to be rendered month after month, year after year.
What gifts, he wondered for the first time then, had that waddling old clerk constable, his predecessor as Mama Chiplunkar’s headquarters goinda, received? Pretty small ones, no doubt. Business-business Chiplunkar would not have paid out one paisa more than he needed to.
And if that old bumbler had not had his heart attack … if he was still alive … still feeding Chiplunkar with his tip-offs … then would none of his own present troubles have existed? Perhaps not. But the thought of life free from the crouching weight of the business-blackmailer, now despite his Duke Wellington answer heavier than ever, of a once-again carefree existence, was too much even to think about. Tears rose up behind his eyes.
He gave his scooter one more violent kick, and the damn thing sprang at last to life.
Two more days went by with two evenings at home before them. On each of them he had thrust aside the tentative inquiries Ved had made and ignored the looks Protima had given him. They were evenings spent in ghastly imitation of the evenings there had been in the days before Mama Chiplunkar had first come up to him. And still nothing had happened.
At headquarters he could barely refrain from asking anyone he met whether they had heard anything about the Commissioner’s target criminal. But he did not dare draw attention to himself. What if, by some unimaginable series of chances, his name was still not wholly linked to that of the gang boss? Perhaps then even the hint of an inquiry on his part would be all that was needed to set the dogs of Vigilance Branch on his heels.
And his work was suffering. He knew it. But he was simply unable to concentrate. There was a case he was meant to be working on—it had been with him, off and on, for months—the theft of an Arab visitor’s jewel box from one of the big hotels in North Bombay. They had arrested the culprit weeks before. But there had been difficulties because the visitor had returned to the Gulf and was slow to answer inquiries. Now, however, all that was needed was confirming that every item of connecting evidence was ready. But, finishing for the day, it suddenly came over him that, lost in speculation about Mama Chiplunkar, he had totally forgotten to enclose something in the file. Yet his mind was blank. He had no idea at all what he had left out.
He had had to go back and sit at his desk in the exact position he had been in before. Then, in a last-second, merciful, sweat-flushing burst of illumination, he had remembered. It was the statements of the panches who had witnessed the search of the thief’s quarters at the rear of the hotel. They were still in one of his desk drawers.
It was twenty minutes later as he was riding his scooter up to the compound gate—the bloody thing was jerking up and down beneath him as if it were some wild horse—that, above the bangs and judders it was making, he just caught his name shouted out aloud.
He looked around, throttling back a little.
And there, running toward him, frantically waving a hand, was Inspector Arjun Singh. Now of Vigilance Branch.
It has come at last, he thought. Yes, this is it.
He brought the scooter to a halt, nearly tipping it over in his anxiety.
He had never before, to his recollection, experienced the sensation of his bowels turning to water in alarm, not even when his life had been in actual danger. But now, with a gurgling rumble plainly to be heard with the shutting-off of the scooter motor, he became aware that something very much of this nature was taking place inside him.
Yes, he thought, they have been clever to put Singh on the job. He is knowing me. He has perhaps told them even that I have always been not quite able to take his aggressive manner. If they had any doubts, they will have calculated I would cave in to Singh before he had questioned me for one hour.
Well, I will not give them so much of satisfaction, he said to himself. I will just only fully admit right away that I have done wrong. And that will be the end of it. No shoutings and sneerings from Singh, no bullyings and browbeatings. At least I will behave with somewhat of dignity.
He braced himself.
Arjun Singh came up, broad, burly, head crowned with a massive, thickly bound pink turban, inescapably threatening.
“So, Singh sahib, it is you,” he said.
He was relieved to hear his voice was steady, even manly. In spite of what was happening down in the region of his stomach.
“‘Singh sahib’? ‘Singh sahib’? What is this formality, bhai?”
The joviality of that did what he had promised himself no amount of hectoring would achieve. He felt all at once puny. If Singh was going to do it all in a friendly, we-were-colleagues-once way, he did not think he could bear
it.
He felt within a tendency to weep, no less. To break down in sobbing tears.
He took a grip on himself. Dignity. Dignity. Would Dr. Commissariat grovel and blubber when it came to his turn? No, he would accept it, take it for what it was.
He squared his shoulders.
“So what is it you are wanting with me?”
“Wanting? Wanting? To say hello only. I have been seeing A.C.P. sahib, and coming out into the compound I heard a certain noise. At once I was saying to myself there is just only one thing in whole damn world making a racket like that: Ghote’s scooter. So I called and chased, and here I am.”
“It is that only?”
He could not help spilling out the remark.
“Oh, so you are not at all ashamed of the noise you are making each and every evening? Disturbing A.C.P. sahib in his cabin. Disturbing Commissioner himself even?”
“Yes. No. Well, yes. Somewhat I am ashamed, but …”
“But on our pay and allowances we are not going to be getting a scooter that is noiseless like a sewing machine, isn’t it? Not unless we are taking big-big bribes, yes?”
Ghote smiled. A pale smile, but a smile.
“So what for were you seeing A.C.P. sahib?” he asked, for something to say.
“Oh, it is this Mama Chiplunkar business. They were remembering I had been on that fellow’s tail before, and they were wanting to know if I am able to help now.”
“What help?” Ghote said, mystified.
Arjun Singh laughed.
“You are not hearing what has happened to Mama?” he said, plainly incredulous. “Bhai, you must be only damn officer in whole of headquarters who is not knowing.”
“But what has happened to him? What?”
Could it be that the fellow had after all been killed running from Grant Road station? Or been injured only? Badly injured?
“Damn scoundrel has gone to Ahmedabad,” Singh answered. “They were keeping shadow watch on him, you know. And then one afternoon—it was three days ago, no, four—they were suddenly losing him. Afterward they decided he knew all the time the shadowing fellows were there, so when he was wanting for some reason to do something top secret he was simply giving them a slip. It was by God’s grace only they were picking him up again. They spotted by chance. He was off to airport. Catching just only, five minutes to spare, plane for Ahmedabad.”
“Ahmedabad?” Ghote repeated stupidly.
He could not think why Chiplunkar, evidently panicked because of what had happened at that meeting at Grant Road station, should have gone to the Gujarat city.
Singh soon enlightened him.
“Yes,” he said, “nobody was knowing why Mama, who after all is from Konkan, a true Maharashtrian, should suddenly be off to Gujarat. But I was able to tell the A.C.P. Easy answer.”
By now Ghote was almost completely back on an even keel. He was aware that the trouble in his stomach had ceased, too, as quickly as it had begun.
“So what easy answer were you giving, bhai?” he said. “Trust you to be one ahead in game always.”
Singh gave a short appreciative laugh.
“Easy,” he said. “The fellow has a mistress in Ahmedabad. Sikh, I am sorry to say, though it was because of that I was hearing about the lady. Very much hot stuff. So, after all, Mama is just only having one little sex holiday. No more than that only.”
But Ghote secretly knew better. No doubt now that Chiplunkar had panicked at Grant Road station. Had been panicked by him himself. And that panic had lasted till now, as was reasonable enough taking into account the information he had given the fellow when he believed he would not live to take advantage of it. So he had gone to ground. Gone to ground with his Sikh mistress, very hot stuff, somewhere where he had a nice little flat in distant Ahmedabad.
But for how long would he stay there?
SIXTEEN
Ghote’s state of suspension, not relieved in the end by his encounter with Arjun Singh, continued next day almost unabated. Once more he fought to give to such work as he had on hand the concentration it required, and as time went by he even began to be more successful. Toward the end of the afternoon a whole hour passed, nearly, without him once thinking of the threat that hung over him. But then suddenly, for no apparent reason, it all came flooding back. That first visit from squinting Ranchod, the later, more urgent visits when the fellow had been drooling with the symptoms of drug deprivation, the terrible morning when as he had wrestled with his scooter Mama Chiplunkar had appeared at his side, to finally, their confrontation amid the straining, shoving home-going passengers at Grant Road station.
Then, as he was thinking it was nearly time to take himself back home, together with the threat of Mama Chiplunkar’s revenge that hovered always over his head like a lightning-filled cloud, the doors of his office were suddenly jerked open. A peon he recognized as none other than the Commissioner’s personal man stood there.
“Commissioner sahib is wanting to see. Now.”
It was an order as swiftly to be obeyed as if the Commissioner himself had barked it out.
Ghote rose up from his chair.
He felt perfectly calm. It was as if, he briefly thought, he was some piece of rough, new-molded metal that had been placed on the first section of a long conveyor-belt. He would proceed now at a steady, unvarying pace, and at intervals something would be done to him. A jagged edge would be ground down. A different surface would be flipped over to be given a rapid polish. And eventually he would be spewed forth at the end of the process. Spewed forth as what? As, surely, a former officer of the Bombay Police, disgraced, humiliated, rejected.
He gave himself a quick look in his little square of mirror. Hair neat. Well shaved, thank goodness. But his shirt … it was his oldest one again, the green with the wavy black squares he had been so pleased to find he had in the office here when he had wanted to look inconspicuous in his attempt on Mama Chiplunkar.
Well, then, there was a sort of justice in the shabby appearance he would make now before the Commissioner.
He followed the peon out and through the compound to the squarely impressive entrance to the Commissioner’s office building. With a gulp he climbed the wide stone steps outside, with their little, glintingly polished brass cannons to left and right. Once he had stepped across the threshold he became aware, with the sudden green and purple gloom that was all his eyes would register, that the sun outside had been beating down with its full force. No doubt sweat had sprung up all over his body in the short walk across. He would look even less smart than before.
But smartness no longer mattered. Or it would not do so in a very short time. A former police officer’s appearance was altogether unimportant.
Directly in front of him, where the grand, red-carpeted double staircase marched magnificently up to either side, heavy brass rods gleaming at every step, he made out as his eyes grew accustomed to the comparative dimness out of the sun, the statue of Stephen Meredith Edwardes. Pattern of Police Commissioners of the British days, unswerving guardian of Bombay’s peace, calm in white marble, epauletted, bemedaled. He straightened his shoulders.
Would that austere figure have thought for one moment of not returning the Duke Wellington answer to anyone who had dared to attempt to blackmail him? And what short shrift he would have given an officer of his who had had the unthinkable temerity to take the law into his own hands and let a murderer walk free?
Well, in two minutes only, he thought to himself, I would find out what today’s Commissioner is thinking of such an officer. And I suspect it will not be so different from the opinion of Mr. Stephen Meredith Edwardes.
Behind the trotting peon he mounted the right-hand wing of the staircase. The somber oil portraits of the Commissioner’s predecessors stared down at him.
At the top he presented himself to the havildar behind his little desk.
“Go in at once, Inspector. Commissioner sahib is waiting.”
Again he pulled his shoulders back.
The heavy double doors of the Commissioner’s own office were in front of him, ten feet of dark carved wood. He pushed at them, aware at once that his hand had left a sweaty patch on the immaculately polished surface. The heavy leaves swung open to engulf him.
The Commissioner, formidable in uniform ironed and polished to the last degree, sat upright behind his enormous desk, the desk at which Commissioner after Commissioner had worked far back into the British days. Ruling the force. Keeping the peace. Maintaining discipline.
He marched across, came to a halt, and clicked heels sharply.
“Inspector Ghote, sir,” he said.
His voice had not trembled, had not croaked.
“Ah, Ghote, yes. Now, listen. I was chatting this morning to Mr. Z. R. Mistry after our weekly conference, and—”
He stopped abruptly.
“Ghote,” he said, “the doors are still an inch or two open. Shut them, will you?”
“Yes, sir, yes.”
Ghote hurried back over.
How had he come to add this blunder to the tally of his wrongdoings?
Carefully he drew the heavy leaves together, heard the latch softly click, and turned around again to face the wrath to come.
But what could the Commissioner have learned from Mr. Z. R. Mistry? He himself, on that appalling night of Dolly Daruwala’s death, had been careful to tell the Additional Secretary an outright lie about what had happened. He had said, and Mr. Mistry had plainly taken him at his word, that he had found Dolly Daruwala’s body as soon as he had entered the flat. He had breathed not a word about Dr. Commissariat. So why was the Commissioner approaching the matter in hand in this way?
But no time to search for an answer now.
He crossed back to the huge desk and stood again at attention in front of it.
“Good,” the Commissioner said. “Can’t be too careful when security is involved.”
But what security? Security had been broken the moment on the telephone at the paanwalla’s stall he himself had muttered the words Multiplex Chemical and Drug Manufacturing.
The Iciest Sin Page 18
