Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes

by H. R. F. Keating

  But Roger Rajinder simply smiled in answer.

  ‘What for are you smiling only?’ Ghote burst out. ‘I am telling you that Miss Tigga is making up to Mr Shantaram Das. She has given you the push altogether. She is sure you are the guilty party. Damn sure.’

  Roger Rajinder smiled again.

  ‘In that case, Inspector,’ he said, ‘why do you think she is in Shalimar Associates offices at this very moment trying to find evidence that will get me off the hook? Oh, yes, I know about Shantaram. He’s a thoroughly naughty old man, and yes, Tigga did this morning allow him some liberties. She was upset. But when you let her come to see me she told me each and every thing that had happened between them.’

  Ghote thrust aside the fury he felt with himself for having so unwittingly strengthened Roger’s resistance. Something more urgent claimed attention.

  ‘Evidence?’ he snapped. ‘What sort of evidence is this that Miss Tigga is trying to find? Why did she not inform me of any evidence there is to be found?’

  Roger shrugged.

  ‘I think she doesn’t like you very much, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Nothing personal, just a general distrust of CID wallahs. So she means to get hold of her evidence first and tell you afterwards.’

  Ghote felt a sudden inward lurch of despondency.

  ‘What sort of evidence is this? I demand to know.’

  ‘Oh, I am not going to hold out on you, Inspector. I’ve learnt too much respect for you in the last twenty-four hours to want to do that, whatever Tigga feels. It’s just this: she has got it into her head that Billy may have been killed by a spy.’

  ‘A spy? A spy? What utter damn nonsense is this? Is Shalimar Associates a Secure Defence Area? What is it you are saying?’

  ‘Well, no, not exactly a spy of that sort,’ Roger answered. ‘But what you might call an industrial spy, Inspector. The advertising duniya is riddled with spies of that sort, you know. Chaps out to pinch good ideas and use them in their own firms’ campaigns. It’s a serious problem.’

  Ghote thought for an instant.

  ‘And what you and Miss Tigga are saying is that in the Shalimar Associates offices there is someone who is such a spy, and that Mr Billy Patel perhaps found him in the act and was killed?’

  ‘That’s what Tigga thinks certainly. And I can’t see any other motive for Billy’s murder. Can you, Inspector?’

  ‘Never mind what motive I am seeing or not seeing. You say Miss Tigga is searching the offices for evidence just now?’

  ‘She is, Inspector.’

  ‘Then I am going there myself, ek dum.’

  At the late hour of the evening it did not take Ghote long to get from the Crawford Market CID Headquarters to the almost deserted business area of Nariman Point, its tall unlit tower buildings huge and ghostlike in the darkness. But at the top of the tower that housed Shalimar Associates a light was glinting out.

  Possessed by a sudden inexplicable need to hurry, Ghote routed out the building’s chowkidar.

  ‘No lift working, Inspector sahib,’ the half-asleep sulky old Pathan guard said. ‘Stairs only. Many, many.’

  Ghote shook him off and set out at a rapid trot up the concrete steps winding behind the gleaming lift shafts of the tall building.

  Up and up he ran. But before long, his rapid trot was reduced to a steady plod. And before much longer that plod became yet slower. Sweat rich on his face and clammy round his body, he forced his weary legs on. With each step his sense of urgency had grown.

  Tigga Kelkar was alone in the Shalimar Associates offices. What was she finding there? What evidence could there be that there was a spy from some other concern on the staff? And that this person, whoever they were, had murdered Billy Patel? Yet unlikely though he thought the notion to be – a spy? To discover the secret of a new advertisement? What rot – somehow he felt that all might be not well, that all was not well up in the penthouse offices above.

  Mouth wide open, gasping for air, he pushed his lead-heavy legs into moving faster. And at last he was at the top of the building. The outer door of Shalimar Associates was standing wide open and, although the futuristic lights of the reception area were not on, a dim glow from somewhere further inside the offices did make it possible to see vaguely the whole of the wide brown-carpeted space.

  Then as he stood, head bent, deeply breathing, attempting to decide what to do first, there came a sudden thundering sound from somewhere on the far side of the broad reception counter, its huge vase of white flowers palely visible in the gloom.

  It was the sound of running feet, of feet running hard as they could along one of the wide corridors off which the various cabins lay.

  But was it the sound of just one pair of running feet? It was difficult to make out, but he thought it was not. Surely a second set of steps had been thundering after the first?

  He took a rapid, fiercely penetrating look all round. And, yes. Yes, there were the light switches. He darted across and with a single sweep of his hand caused them all to blaze out.

  The overpowering white glare of illumination sent searchlight beams down each of the wide corridors, and at the very end of the one nearest to him Ghote just detected a door swinging to and fro as if someone had held it for a moment while they ran round it and into a room beyond.

  He set off at a fast run again, energy from somewhere overcoming all his fatigue.

  There was silence ahead. Fleetingly he wondered whether someone, some enemy – or perhaps after all the spy, the killer spy – was waiting in the dark of one of the cabins listening, waiting. Listening and ready to attack.

  But he did not let himself hesitate. Tigga Kelkar was in the offices somewhere; that he knew. And there was someone else in here too. Someone hostile. That he knew too almost as certainly.

  Then, as he neared the end of the corridor where the light from the reception area hardly penetrated, he heard above the sound of his own thumping steps another noise. It was something like a squawk. A stifled scream. A sound of pain and desperation.

  He thought it had come from the last cabin on the right, the very one whose door he had detected swinging. He raced up to it. He flung himself in at the open doorway.

  The room in front of him was pitch dark. But by the faintest of lights coming from behind him he thought he could see something in a far corner. Figures. Two figures locked fast in struggle.

  ‘Stop,’ he called out, loudly as he could. ‘Stop. Police.’

  In the far corner the tense swaying movement of the struggle abruptly stilled. One figure separated from the other. It was, so far as he could see, that of a man. A tall, broadly powerful man.

  Then suddenly, with the force of a cannonball shot from a gun, the figure launched itself forward. Ghote crouched, nerving himself to receive the assault, determined to bear its brunt, to reach out, grab and hold on.

  But he had underestimated the strength and weight of his opponent. The man’s rush, for all his readiness to take it, simply bowled him right over. On his back in the doorway, he shot out a hand and grabbed at the fellow’s ankle. His frantic clutch did at least check the attacker, but in an instant his other foot came swinging hard back. A bare heel, hard as a hammer, caught Ghote fair and square on the nose.

  Pain dazed and dazzled him. He felt the ankle he had grabbed wrenched from his grasp. Struggling to roll over, get to his knees and heave himself up, he heard steps running furiously away along the corridor.

  Once up, he set out in pursuit. But his head was dizzy from the blow to his nose and he found himself swaying and stumbling hopelessly. He came to a halt, leaning up against the wall, almost sobbing from pain, exhaustion and anger.

  A voice came from behind him in the gloom.

  ‘Is it you, Inspector Ghote? You, you saved my life.’

  He turned, reluctantly opening his eyes wide.

  It was Tigga. In the half-light he could see that her kurta was ripped down half its length.

  ‘Miss Tigga,’ he said, his voice curious and cr
oaky. ‘Miss Tigga, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think I am. But he was strangling me, Inspector. If you hadn’t come at just that moment I would have passed out. I couldn’t struggle any more.’

  Ghote took a few deep breaths. His swimming head began to clear.

  ‘It was not your spy, was it?’ he asked.

  Tigga gave a short, ironic laugh.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it was some barefoot fellow who must have seen me coming in and followed me. I – I don’t know who it could have been, but … But he had only one eye, Inspector. I saw his face close to mine. It was horrible. Horrible. That one eye, glaring at me.’

  Ghote heard her crying in the half-darkness. He put a hand on her shoulder and patted it, comfortingly as he could.

  ‘Not to worry, not to worry any more,’ he said. ‘The fellow has gone now. And I think I know who it would be also. Was there a peon here once by the name of Budhoo, who had one eye only?’

  ‘No,’ the girl answered, catching back her sobs. ‘I don’t know— Wait, yes. Yes, there was. I joined here after he had been dismissed but I remember people talking about him. A horrible man, they said.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ghote, ‘a horrible man, and I am somewhat thinking the Cabin Killer also.’

  ‘The Cabin Killer, but …’

  ‘Yes, that is what I am thinking. You see, a peon in offices like this would get a very, very good idea where a Chivas Regal whisky was to be found, and as far as we have been able to make out the pilfering activities of his particular sort began about three years ago, which is just the time this Budhoo was retrenched from here. Mr Das was telling me also that the fellow is always sleeping beside that little garden in the front of the building, so I think he would not be too difficult to find and put behind the bars.’

  ‘Inspector, Inspector, that’s marvellous. That’s wonderful. Hey, I’ll never make rude remarks about the fuzz – the police – again.’

  With the resilience of youth Tigga was throwing off the terror of her recent experience like a puppy shaking off water drops after a run into the sea. Ghote heard her with pleasure.

  For a moment.

  Then a thought slid chilly into his mind.

  ‘Well, Miss Tigga,’ he said, unable to keep out of his voice the sudden sinking he had felt, ‘that may or may not be good. It is depending on whether Assistant Commissioner Dabholkar and his team can find this fellow, and whether he does turn out to be the man we were looking for when we have got him. But that is not at all the end of the matter, you know.’

  ‘Oh, a trial and all that,’ Tigga answered. ‘But no doubt you will get a confession, even if you have to beat it out of the brute.’

  Ghote ignored this turn-about in attitude. He had something much more unpleasant to say.

  ‘No, Miss Tigga, it is not about the Cabin Killer that I am thinking.’

  ‘Then what–’

  She came to an abrupt halt and fell silent.

  ‘Yes, it is the killer of Mr Billy Patel who still has to be found, isn’t it?’ Ghote said eventually. ‘Finding Budhoo here is not at all proving he was killing Billy Patel yesterday. I am supposing he was all along knowing how to get in here, and, when he was hearing about the murder, he was taking it into his head that now at night only was the time to come. It was one piece of bad luck for you, Miss Tigga, that you were deciding to look for some evidences of a spy at the same time.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I see all that now.’

  But Ghote had not finished.

  ‘And you were not finding those evidences, isn’t it?’ he went on. ‘You could not have done, when you are really thinking of it. No advertisement is so important that a person is going to kill for same, is it?’

  For a little Tigga made no answer, and when she did it was in a markedly subdued way.

  ‘Yes, you’re right of course, Inspector. Advertising isn’t that important. It’s never exactly a matter of life and death, even though here we sometimes act as if it was. But you’re right. It was never a spy who killed poor Billy.’

  ‘No,’ Ghote said, sighing heavily. ‘No. It was no spy. And so we are back to where we were at the beginning, holding your most good friend, Mr Roger Rajinder.’

  He had half-expected another blistering attack at this, even sharp nails reaching for his face. But Tigga accepted what he had said in silence. And it was in silence that he escorted her down to his waiting car and drove her to her home.

  ‘You are all right now?’ he asked as he left her at the door of the flat.

  ‘Yes. Yes, thank you, Inspector. I’m all right. Or, well, I will be after I’ve slept all night and a bit more.’

  ‘Yes. I will take a statement from you tomorrow.’

  He had not been able to think of anything more to say. ‘Good luck’ would have meant ‘I hope your Roger is not guilty’ and, though he did hope so, he knew that to voice even a hint of that would be to give the girl hope with little prospect of justification.

  Next morning – and, yes, there was one headline The Cabin Killer Strikes Again – summoning Roger Rajinder for yet another interview, Ghote felt exactly as he had done the night before. The girl Tigga was delightful, full of life, full of confidence, pretty as could be, and somehow deserving of happiness. Of happiness in love, in the full filmi way even. And Roger seemed in every way right to provide that happiness – except that he was, on such evidence as there was, a murderer. However little he looked or behaved like one.

  ‘Inspector,’ he burst out now, the moment he marched in. ‘Did you find Tigga at the office last night? Did she actually get hold of anything to show that a spy killed poor Billy?’

  ‘No. No spy,’ Ghote said.

  ‘Oh well, thinking things over in the night I realised that was pretty unlikely in fact.’

  ‘However,’ Ghote said, ‘thanks to that enterprising young lady we did somewhat advance matters.’

  He told Roger just what had happened at Shalimar Associates the night before, capping his recital with news he had just learnt himself – that the former peon Budhoo had been easily located, had put up a struggle when Dasher Dabholkar and his men made the arrest and had been found in possession of some of the Cabin Killer’s earlier petty thefts.

  ‘But Mr Rajinder,’ Ghote concluded, ‘I cannot conceal from you that all this leaves us in the matter of Mr Billy Patel’s death exactly where we were starting.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roger. ‘Yes, I suppose it does. And it’s no more use than it was before, I take it, me telling you that I simply did not do it.’

  ‘No. No more use saying only.’

  ‘So where were we, Inspector? Ah, yes. You were just trying to break me down by telling me that Tigga was accepting the attentions of our good friend Shantaram Das, and I—’

  He broke off.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said, after he had gazed into thin air for perhaps six or seven seconds. ‘Inspector, you dashed off to find Tigga before I had time to think about what you were saying. And, Inspector, now that I’ve thought of it again, I’ve remembered. At last I’ve remembered.’

  ‘What remembered?’

  ‘What I did with that badge, Inspector. What I did with that badge.’

  ‘Well, what were you doing with it? Speak up, man.’

  ‘Inspector, it was after the presentation for Cocopuffs. I went to Shantaramji to tell him I had seen everything cleared up, and I remember putting my badge down on his desk. I even made some joke about not needing it any more now we were sure the client had accepted our idea about Shivaji’s sword: Cut through the cackle, get to the truth, Cocopuffs cannot be bettered.’

  ‘You put the badge on Mr Das’s desk,’ Ghote said impatiently. ‘And what then?’

  ‘Then – and this is why I forgot all about it – Tigga came into Shantaramji’s cabin. He at once offered her a lift home in his car and she accepted even though she had earlier agreed to take a ride on the back of my scooter. Well, Inspector, I was so riled by this I burst out in anger,
and we had a huge row I walked out. It all put the badge right out of my head. We only made up after the murder. It was when you yourself came into the office as a matter of fact. She called to me, and I asked if we were friends again.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ghote eagerly. ‘I remember that.’

  He thought for a little.

  ‘And you swear now,’ he went on, ‘that you left that badge with your name on it on Mr Shantaram Das’s desk, and that you never saw it again?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector,’ Roger said. ‘That’s the absolute truth.’

  Ghote stood up behind his desk. Decisively.

  ‘I think I must talk once more with Mr Das.’

  But he found at the Shalimar Associates offices that the plump and poetical new boss was not in his seat. Tigga was there however, and she told him that Shantaram Das – together with almost all the firm’s staff – had gone over to Marine Drive where, for the start of the new Cocopuffs campaign, a huge hoarding was being erected with an immense Shivaji’s sword cutting through the cackle in a swinging arc going right across the wide, traffic-whizzing road.

  ‘It’s going to be the biggest hoarding Bombay has ever seen,’ she said, swept into momentary forgetfulness of the more serious things. ‘It’s terrific, really. Only someone like Billy Patel could ever have got all the permissions. The contacts he had were fantastic, just fantastic.’

  ‘And Mr Das is there now, on Marine Drive?’ Ghote asked sharply. ‘With all the other senior executives?’

  ‘Yes. Supervising the erection, and I imagine hopping about like a cat on hot bricks in case it doesn’t work.’

  Ghote turned to go.

  ‘Listen,’ Tigga said, ‘I’ll come with you. It can be quite a scene there, and I’ll be able to get hold of Shantaramji for you. What’s it all about anyway?’

  ‘It is just something I want to ask him only,’ Ghote said. ‘A matter of not much importance, but something I need cleared up.’

  Whatever he did, he was not going to give the girl any hope until he had something concrete to offer, even though he was ready now to consider Roger Rajinder no longer a suspect.