Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes

by H. R. F. Keating

  Ghote rang the bell, cursing himself for not having realised it was there before, and then retreated to the farthest corner of the narrow room while two other nurses and, soon, a doctor came on to the scene.

  He watched, caught in horrified fascination, while they worked to save the dying man. And thoughts, grim thoughts, ran through his mind.

  Ram Dharkar had been poisoned. He was sure of it if only from what he gathered from the terse questions and answers of the team round the bed. And if the fellow had been poisoned, then it was almost certain who was behind it. The Dada. The mysterious gang boss whose name he himself had counted on learning just a few minutes earlier. Somehow, he thought, word must have got back to this unknown master criminal that a Crime Branch Inspector had been closeted with the injured so-called informer for a considerable period. And the man had acted. Had acted with all the speed and decision with which the twenty-five bank dacoities he had planned had been carried out. He had, somehow, got poison into poor Ram Dharkar and, it looked, in time to shut his mouth for ever before he had spoken his name.

  But how? How on earth had it been managed?

  Then, suddenly, he thought he knew how it had been done. The nurses. The nurses with the wheeled medicines chest. They must have been bribed. Or substitutes must have replaced them and somehow, perhaps merely by the swiftness with which they had entered, they had tricked the old constable on guard at the door. And that single little white pill he himself had seen them administer, that must have been the poison. No wonder they had not taken away the Nil by Mouth notice. They had given the would-be betrayer all that was needed ‘by mouth’ to silence him for ever.

  Abruptly then Ghote thrust away his suspicions. Through the leaning, busily working bodies of the nurses round the dying man he had caught a glimpse of Ram Dharkar’s face. And his eyes, fixed magnetically on his own, seemed to be attempting to tell him something.

  Regardless of the urgent medical work round the bed, he advanced towards it. And, yes, as he did so he was certain that Ram Dharkar was responding. If a look alone could do it, he was saying, ‘Come, come, there is something I must tell.’

  He got himself as close to the head of the bed as he could without actually impeding the nurse there. Ram Dharkar’s eyes were, beyond doubt, begging him now to give him his utmost attention. Now, in all probability, knowing himself to be dying, knowing that he had been poisoned, he was at last determined to take revenge and name the Dada.

  But the only sound that came from his vomit-flecked mouth was a feeble croak. Ghote turned his head and strove to catch every nuance. The dying man croaked out a noise again. But this was yet feebler than before.

  Ghote felt a surge of pure anger. To have been defeated by his mysterious antagonist in this way. At the very last moment.

  He leant yet nearer to the dying goonda, willing him and willing him into one last spurt of life, a moment of vigour just long enough to pronounce the name.

  But not all his effort to hold Ram Dharkar in this world seemed to he helping. His eyes, clouded only until a few moments ago, now were plainly glazed over.

  Ghote’s mind raced. Perhaps after all he did not need to hear the name which, it was clear now, Ram Dharkar was never going to be able to speak. It was possible, surely, that the two false nurses, or the two bribed nurses, could be traced. Traced, arrested and interrogated. Interrogated, however toughly was necessary, until they squeaked. And if not able to name the mastermind Dada directly, be persuaded into giving enough information about who had given them their evil task, wittingly or unwittingly performed, for the trial to lead eventally to that mysterious lurking figure. It needed only one end of the thread to be in police hands and they could be sure, very nearly sure, of getting to the Dada.

  He was so pleased by what he had worked out, contemplating even leaving the little room and the dying goonda at once to begin inquiries, that he almost failed to notice a change that had come about in the man on the bed.

  But then he did notice.

  Plainly Ram Dharkar’s very last moments had come. A deep agitation was passing through him. But this final convulsion of energy was producing something that until now might have seemed altogether beyond him. He was jerking himself up into a sitting position. And, teetering precariously, he now flung out his right arm in a gesture of pointing. The forefinger was rigid as a rod of steel. And he was pointing, in a way that demanded compliance, at the narrow window of the little room, the window still open at the bottom from when Ghote himself had tried to bring in some cooler air.

  Ghote looked at the window, looked back at Ram Dharkar. And saw in the hope in the man’s now momentarily clearer eyes that he himself had begun to read correctly his last message.

  There was more of it, too. With a supreme effort, keeping his gaze fixed on Ghote’s face, the dying goonda made another gesture. He bunched the fingers on the hand that had pointed so dramatically at the window into a tight knot.

  A knot that at once reminded Ghote of something. For a long moment his mind battered against the answer like a dull fly battering at a window-pane. And then he had it. A leper. Ram Dharkar’s hand was unmistakably imitating the fingerless stump of a leper.

  A leper. The leper. The leper he himself had seen, and had discounted, squatting beneath that very window. No, it was not those nurses, innocent and kind-hearted, who had brought that swift end of Ram Dharkar’s life. It was this leper, or more likely imitation leper, who must have listened, keen-eared, to every word that had passed between Ram Dharkar and himself. The man who must have heard the promise of a drink of thandai and who, acting with speed and decision – why, yes, yes, he must be, he could only be the Dada himself in disguise – too had hurried off, obtained some cool drink that looked enough like proper thandai and had then swarmed up the drainpipe outside, in the way he himself had envisaged Ram Dharkar, if he had had full use of his legs, swarming down. Then, keeping his face averted, he had offered the drink to his half-conscious victim. The poisoned drink.

  So, yes, at last from the dying man he had learnt all that he had wanted to know. He had learnt it nil by mouth.

  Quietly Inspector Ghote withdrew from the poisoned goonda’s deathbed. Quietly he made his way over to the still open window. Carefully he poked his head out just far enough to catch one glimpse of the dried-coconut disguised head of the supposed leper, crouching there waiting to know whether his daring plan had been successful.

  The Dada himself. And not knowing one thing – that his disguise had been penetrated. That he was now dangerously exposed. That the arms of the law were on the point of being able to enfold him. The Dada. The mastermind.

  Quietly as ever Ghote climbed up till his hands were grasping the top of the window and his feet were on its bottom ledge. The gap would be just wide enough, he saw with grim pleasure, to slide his body through.

  He launched himself.

  1987

  TWELVE

  A Present for Santa Sahib

  Inspector Ghote put a hand to his hip pocket and made sure it was firmly buttoned up. Ahead of him, where he stood in the entrance doorway to one of Bombay’s biggest department stores, the crowds were dense just two days before the festival of Christmas. It was not only the Christians who celebrated the day by buying presents and good things to eat in the huge cosmopolitan city. People of every religion were always happy to share in the high days and holidays in each other’s calendars. When Hindus honoured Bombay’s favourite god, elephant-headed Ganesh, by taking huge statues of him to be immersed in the sea, Moslems, Parsis and Christians delighted to join the enormous throngs watching them go by. Everyone had a day off too, and enjoyed it to the full for the Moslem Idd holiday.

  But the crowds that gathered in the days before any such celebration brought always trouble as well as joy, Ghote thought to himself with a sigh. When people came in their thousands to buy sweets and fireworks for Diwali or to acquire stocks of coloured powders to throw and squirt in the springtime excitement of Holi, they made
a very nice golden opportunity for the pickpockets.

  He had, in fact, caught a glimpse just as he had entered the shop of a certain Ram Prasad, a well-known jackal stalking easy prey if ever there was. It equally had been the sight of the fellow, spotting him himself and turning rapidly back, that had made him check that his wallet was secure. It would look altogether bad if an Inspector of Crime Branch had to go back minus one wallet and empty-handed to the wife who had as usual commissioned him to buy a present for her Christian friend, Mrs D’Cruz, in return for the one they had received at Diwali.

  And he had another little obligation, too, on this trip to the store. Not only was there a gift to get for Mrs D’Cruz but there was a visit to pay to Santa Claus as he sat – voluminously wrapped in shiny red coat, a silky red cap trimmed in fluffy white on his head, puffy cottonwool beard descending from his chin, sack of presents tucked away beside him – in his special place in the store.

  Ghote was not actually going to line up with the children waiting to be given, in exchange for a rupee surreptitiously handed over by a hovering mother, a bar of chocolate or a packet of sweets from the big sack. Santa was an old friend who merited a word or two of greeting. Or, if not exactly a friend, he was at least someone known for a good long time.

  In fact Santa – his actual name was Moti Popatkar – was a small-fry con-man. There was no getting past that. For all save the ten days each year leading up to Christmas, he made a dubious living from a variety of minor anti-social activities. There was the fine story he had for any British holidaymaker he happened upon – his English was unusually good, fruit of a mission school education long ago – about how he had been batman to an Army officer still living in retirement in India and how he needed just the rail fare to go back and look after Colonel Sahib again. Or he would offer himself as a guide to any lone European tourist he could spot, and sooner or later cajole them into buying him potent country liquor at some illicit drinking den.

  It was at one such that Ghote had first met him. A visiting German businessman had complained to the police that, on top of being persuaded into handing over to his guide a much bigger tip than he had meant to give, he had also been induced to fork out some fifty rupees for drinks at a place tucked away inside a rabbit-warren building in Nagandas Master Road called the Beauty Bar.

  There was not much that could be done about the complaint, but since the businessman had had a letter of introduction to a junior Minister in the State Government, Ghote had been detailed to investigate. He had dutifully gone along to the Beauty Bar, which proved to be very much as he had expected, a single room which a shabby counter in one corner, its walls painted blue and peeling, half a dozen plastic-topped tables set about. Where sat a handful of men, white-capped office messengers, a khaki-uniformed postman delaying on his round, a red-turbaned ear-cleaner with his little aluminium case beside him, an itinerant coldwaterman who had left his barrel pushcart outside. All hunched over smeary glasses of clear fluid.

  But one of the drinkers seemed to answer to the description the German businessman had given of his guide. And, at the first sharp question, the fellow had cheerfully admitted that he was Moti Popatkar and that, yes, he had brought a German visitor to the place the day before.

  ‘Exciting for him, no?’ he had said. ‘Seeing one damn fine Indian den of vice?’

  Ghote had looked at the peeling walls, at a boy lackadaisically swiping at one of the table tops with a sodden heap of darkly grey cloth, at the two pictures hanging askew opposite him, one of an English maiden from some time in the past showing most of her breasts, the other of the late Mrs Gandhi looking severe.

  ‘Well, do not let me be catching you bringing any visitor from foreign to such a fourth class place again,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Inspectorji, I would not. In nine-ten days only I would be Santa Claus.’

  So then it had come out what job Moti Popatkar had every year in the run-up to Christmas.

  ‘And I am keeping same,’ he had ended up. ‘When I was first beginning, too many years past, the son of Owner, who is himself Ownerji now, was very much liking me when his mother was bringing him to tell his wishings to old Santa. So now Manager Sahib cannot be giving me one boot, however much he is wanting.’

  There had been then something in Moti Popatkar’s cheerful disregard of the proper respect due to a police inspector, even of the cringing most of his like would have adopted before any policewalla, that had appealed to a side of Ghote which he generally felt he ought to keep well hidden. He felt a trickle of liking for this fellow, however much he knew he should disapprove of anyone who led visitors to India into such disgraceful places, and however wrong it seemed that such a good-for-nothing should wear the robe, even for a short period, of a figure who was after all a Christian saint, to be revered equally with Hindu holy man or Muslim pir.

  So, visiting Santa’s store a few days later to get Mrs D’Cruz her present, he had gone out of his way to have a look at Moti Popatkar, happy-go-lucky specimen of Bombay’s riff-raffs, impersonating Santa Claus, Christian holy man of bygone days.

  There had been a lull in the stream of children coming to collect chocolate bars and breathily whisper wishes into Santa’s spreading cottonwool beard at the time, so he had stayed to chat with the red-robed fellow for a few minutes. And every successive year since he had found himself doing the same thing, for all that he still felt he ought to disapprove of the man behind the soft white whiskers. The truth was he somehow liked his irresponsible impudent approach to life and to his present task in particular.

  Only last year Father Christmas had had a particularly comical tale to tell.

  ‘Oh, Inspectorji, you have nearly seen me in much, much trouble.’

  ‘How is that, you Number One scallywag?’

  Moti Popatkar grinned through his big white beard, already looking slightly grimy.

  ‘Well, you know, Inspector, I am half the time making the baba log believe they will be getting what for they are wishing, and half the time also I am taking one damn fine good look at the mothers, if they are being in any way pretty. Well, just only ten minutes past, a real beauty was coming, Anglo-Indian, short skirt an’ all. Jolly spicy. And – oh, forgive, forgive God above – I was so much distracted I was giving her little girl not just only one bar of chocolate but a half-kilo cake of same. And then – then who should come jumping out from behind but Manager Sahib himself? What for are you giving away so much of Store property, he is demanding and denouncing. Then – oh, Inspector, I am a wicked, wicked fellow. You know what I am saying?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I am saying, quick only as one flash of lightning, “But, Manager sahib, that little girl has come with her governess. She is grand-daughter of multi-millionaire Tata, you are knowing.”’

  Ghote had laughed aloud. He could not help himself. Besides, the Manager, whom he had once had dealings with, was a very self-satisfied individual.

  ‘But then, Inspectorji, what is Manager sahib saying to me?’

  ‘Well, tell.’

  ‘He is saying, “Damn fool, you should have given whole kilo cake”.’

  And Ghote had felt then his Christmas was all the merrier. Mrs D’Cruz had got a better present than usual, too.

  So now he decided to pay his visit to Santa Claus before he went present-buying. But when he came to the raised platform on which Father Christmas was installed, his fat sack of little gifts on the floor beside him, he found the scene was by no means one of goodwill to all men.

  Moti Popatkar was sitting in state as usual on his throne-like chair, his bright red shiny robe as ever gathered round him, his floppy red hat with the white trimming on his head. But he was not bending forward to catch the spit-laden whisperings of the children. Nor was he rocking back and issuing some Ho, ho, hos. Instead he was looking decidedly shifty under his cottonwool beard, and in front of him there was standing the Store Manager, both enraged and triumphant.

  A lady dressed in a silk sari that must
have cost several thousand rupees was standing just behind the Manager holding the hand of a little girl, evidently her daughter, plainly bewildered and on the verge of tears.

  ‘You are hearing what this lady is stating,’ the Manager was shouting as Ghote came up. ‘When she was bringing this sweet little girl to visit Santa Claus there was in her handbag one note-case containing many, many hundred-rupee notes. But, just after leaving you, she was noticing the handbag itself was wide open and she was shutting same – click – and then when she was wanting to pay for purchase made at Knick-knacks and Assorted counter, what was she finding? That note-case had gone.’

  Instinctively, Ghote felt at his hip again. But thik hai, no pocket-maar had been light-fingered with his wallet.

  ‘But, no, Manager sahib. No, no. I was not taking any note-case. Honest to God, no.’

  Yet Moti Popatkar’s protestations had about them – there could be no doubting it – a ring of desperation.

  ‘I am going to search you, here and now only,’ the Manager stormed.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, I am saying.’

  And the Manager darted a hand into each of the big, sagging pockets of the shiny red robe one after the other. Only to withdraw from the second holding nothing more incriminating than a fluff-covered paan which Santa Claus had had no opportunity to pop into his mouth and chew.

  ‘Open up robe,’ the Manager demanded.

  Ghote stood watching, a feeling of grey sadness creeping over him, as Moti Popatkar, now dulled into apathy, allowed Santa’s robe to be tugged open and eager fingers to dip into shirt pocket and trouser pockets beneath.

  But they found nothing more in the way of evidence than the fluff-fuzzed paan already brought to light.

  The Manager, furiously baffled, took a step back. Moti Popatkar behind his spreading white beard – distinctly pulled apart during the search – had still not regained anything of his customary good spirits.