And, besides, he felt furious at the way his pleasant cocoon of thoughts had been broken into.
But then he saw that the figure behind the tinted window – and, yes, he was wearing a foreigner’s white suit – was blundering along towards the front of the vehicle. A moment later its door slid open and its steel steps descended.
‘It is Mr Ghote? Inspector Ghote?’ a tremendously loud voice boomed out into the vibrant heat of the day.
But who …? Who in this huge tourist bus is knowing my name? And why? Why are they calling and calling at me?
He shook his head in bewilderment.
This big firinghi in the white suit, with his red-red face and – I am seeing just only now – those blue-blue eyes—
But—
But it is. It must be … It is Mr Svensson. Mr Svensson from Sweden, who was here making some UNESCO report years and years ago, soon after I was joining Crime Branch and was investigating that Perfect murder. That poor old Parsi, Mr Perfect, who in the end was being not so perfectly murdered but recovering under the first rain of the monsoons and living also some years more.
Mr Svensson here now.
So I must …
He went up to the shiny steps of the bus and reached forward, hand held out.
‘Mr Svensson, it is you? Here in India? But what for have you come? You are making a new UNESCO report, yes?’
‘But it is Axel, my friend. You always called me Axel. And I called you Gandhi. You remember?’
‘Well, it is Ganesh.’
‘Yes, yes. Ganesh. Ganesh Ghote, my old friend.’
But now the storm of violently irritated hooting from the whole stream of vehicles held up behind the huge tourist bus at last impinged on the Swede.
‘But— But we must not keep all these good people waiting behind. Come in. Step up. Ride with me. We are coming from the airport to the Taj Mahal Hotel. Would going there be too far for you? Otherwise we may never meet anywhere else.’
Ghote calculated quickly.
He had been making his way, unhurriedly, to the Bombay Hospital in Maharishi Karve Road, which he still sometimes thought of as Queen’s Road as it had been when he first came to Bombay. One of Climbing Yeshwant’s victims was now a patient there and he had hoped to discover when he would be able to see her. But that could wait. He was hardly likely to learn anything that would enable him to arrest the miscreant before the day was done.
‘Very well, Svensson sahib.’
‘But it is Axel. Axel, er, Ganesh. You must always call me Axel.’
The cacophony of hooting had grown even louder.
‘Come in, come in.’
The big Swede seized Ghote’s hand, dragged him up and in. The door swished closed behind him.
He felt at once an extraordinary coolness. The huge coach, he realized, was fully air-conditioned. No wonder Axel Svensson had been able to wave and shout so energetically. Without shedding one drop of sweat.
Stumbling along to the seat next to the one the Swede had occupied he felt as if he had been miraculously removed to another world. And it was quiet. The hooting of the vehicles behind could no longer be clearly made out. The roar and clatter of the huge city all around seemed to have been cut off with the sharp efficiency of a heavy steel shutter descending. There was space to breathe.
But hardly space to think. Axel Svensson was torrenting out questions.
‘So, Ganesh, what is it you are doing these days? You are still in the police? Have you risen above the rank of inspector? You are in command somewhere? Or are you still in— What was it called? Yes, the Crime Bureau.’
‘The Crime Branch. Officially even it is the Detection of Crime Branch of the Mumbai Police.’
‘Mumbai Police? Mumbai? But this is Bombay. I booked to go to Bombay.’
‘Yes, yes. This is Bombay. But these days it is being renamed Mumbai, the name they say it was having many, many years ago. So now I am finding myself a member of the Mumbai Police—’
But the big Swede broke in.
‘My dear Ganesh, I have to tell you some sad news. My wife, my dear wife of twenty years, is dead. A sudden illness. And I am left a widower. But your wife? I remember her so well. Parvati.’
‘Protima.’
‘Yes. Yes. And she is well. And children? You had a little son. Are there more now? Sons? Daughters?’
‘No, we were never having more of children.’
‘Well, my beloved Gosta and I did not have children. That is why when she was dying I felt so lost. I had nobody. Only my older brother, the very opposite to me in temperament, looks, height, everything. As short, you may say, as a dwarf. In the end I decided I must get right away from Sweden. And I remembered my time in India, so different from Sweden, so much sunshine and light, so much life. And how I had shared your investigation of the Perfect murder. I thought how much I would like to meet you again. And now, what a fine chance. Here you are, when I have not been one hour in Bombay. No, let me get it right. In Mummai.’
‘No, no, you should say Mumbai. Mumbai. And, look, Mr Sven— Axel, look. We are almost at the Taj.’
‘The Taj Mahal Hotel? Yes. Yes, I remember it from all those years ago. A fine building. And I had a magnificently comfortable stay.’
‘So, now I am knowing where you are, it would be very, very easy to ring you up and perhaps arrange to meet again.’
‘But, no. No, my dear Ganesh. I have a lot more to hear about your life nowadays. A lot more. We have scarcely begun. So you must come inside. It will not take much time, I think, to complete the formalities. And then you must have a good long drink, and tell me all about yourself and your family and your work. You are on some Number One priority case, ja? Something like the Perfect murder, eh?’
Ghote felt the questions and the demands entering his head like so many busy invading rats. With difficulty he contrived to answer the last one.
‘Number One priority, no. No, that is the Ajmani mystery. No, I have another case. Not altogether like the Perfect murder. But I will explain.’
TWO
Waiting with some impatience to sort out this newly arrived complication in his life, Ghote sat looking through the huge windows of the Taj’s Sea Lounge at the solemn arch of the Gateway of India, at dirty whitish launches chug-chugging off to take tourists to the wonders of Elephanta Island, at the repeated explosions of flocks of grey-winged pigeons disturbed at their feeding, at a passing vendor of long multi-coloured ribbons streaming brightly out from his high-held stick. At anything.
The process of showing Axel Svensson to his room seemed to be taking a good deal longer than he had expected. No doubt dealing with a large party of foreigners would produce problems. Some might speak rather poor English. More might understand India’s English with difficulty. But he wished it was not taking quite as long as it was. Voices in the big hotel were too brayingly intrusive for him to be able, in the words his schoolmaster father had quoted so often, to retreat to his Northern fastness, his happy state of cut-offness before that booming It is Mr Ghote? Inspector Ghote? had broken in on his cricket reverie.
A large upright woman wearing a richly coloured, heavily gold-bordered sari, a great roll of fat at the small of her back, was standing directing a large party to sit where she felt proper. ‘Mohan will go there. Brij must be here. Radha there …’ Then a spoilt child in a blue cotton two-piece, labelled Boston Red Sox, was staggering unchecked between the tables, the piled-high ice cream in his hand spilling blobs of sticky rose-red all over the floor. A party of young men and women were recklessly ordering Black Forest pastries and, the Sea Lounge speciality, Hearty Sandwiches.
Just the sort of young students, Ghote thought with a jab of bitterness, whose parents have flats big enough for them to be out of the way all the time. Far, far beyond what I am able to have.
Up on the dais at the far end, a suited, tie-wearing piano player tinkled out an unending stream of notes, passing seamlessly from one half-recognized Western song to another. Well,
Ghote acknowledged, at least here is someone who has managed to find a world of his own.
Then at last Axel Svensson came blundering in and loudly hailed him.
‘There you are, Ganesh, my friend.’
Ghote forced himself not to wince. But he hardly liked to think that he was being pointed out by name to everyone in the big room. If he saw more of his former friend, was his quiet going to be broken into like this time and time again?
He agreed, when the big Swede, seating himself, had noisily called out, rather too many times, ‘Waiter! Waiter!’ to drink a beer. Waiting for the order to come, he took a good look at his acquaintance of old. The years had altered Axel Svensson. He was still as tall and as broad as before, a looming presence, even if now a little stooped. But his once strikingly fair hair was a soft grey, and his face, which had been, as he remembered, bonily athletic, was altogether heavier, even ponderous. If it was ever a matter of full-out running, as it had been chasing a suspect during the Perfect case all those years ago, he would not last very long.
Mercifully, there was no possibility of that sort of collaboration now.
‘So,’ Axel Svensson came boring in, ‘tell me just what it is you are doing. Tell me it all.’
‘Yes.’ He gathered himself up. ‘Yes. Well, I am, as you guessed, still at Crime Branch. And still in inspector rank only.’
‘Ah, but soon you will be getting a promotion, yes? Perhaps from the case you are working at this very day. I am willing to bet on that.’
Ghote wished he would not.
‘Then I am afraid you would be losing your money. No, I know now that I shall end my career as just only inspector, and I am not at all minding. And certainly there is not likely to be very much of kudos for me in the case I am on.’
‘But how is that? Why isn’t it some top-priority affair? Like that— What was it you were mentioning? Some mysterious business? A name like Amjani? Why aren’t you on the Amjani case?’
‘It is Ajmani. Ajmani. Not Amjani. Mr Ajmani is – or he was – the head of Ajmani Air-Conditioning, one of the most important concerns in India.’
‘And he has been murdered?’
‘Yes. So you see, even if the circumstances were not highly mysterious, as a person of very, very much influence the case would be having the full attention of Crime Branch. Then also he has a past which was not very much of above board.’
‘Aha. Now, what was this past?’
Ghote would have preferred not to go into details. All right, Anil Ajmani was known to have achieved his great wealth by doubtful means. But nevertheless spelling out those means to a foreigner, a firinghi, was something he hardly wanted to do. But the question had been put, with all the force of a bulldozer advancing into a slum under demolition.
‘Oh, nowadays all that is well brushed away,’ he answered. ‘But in the Bombay of old it was not easy to get to the top in industry unless you already had much wealth, or unless you were prepared to pay some altogether unscrupulous people to do dirty works for you. People like the ones everybody is nowadays calling the bhai log. The how would you say, the Brother People.’
‘I see, something like the Mafia. And your Mr Ajmani used such people to build up this air-conditioner empire of his?’
‘Oh yes. It must be all in the files somewhere. If same has not kindly been misfiled after a good bribe has been paid. There would be some strike-breakings. Perhaps even one or two quiet killings of people in the way. By hired goondas. Not able to be traced. A matter of what is called paying for supari. You are knowing those little digestive chips of betelnut we like to eat after a meal? They are supari. And to pay for supari is to pay to have some awkward morsel digested.’
‘So not a very nice individual, your Mr Ajmani.’
‘No, not at all nice. Out at Madh Island two-three years back he was building himself a big new house, and he was calling same Shanti Niwas, that is House of Peace. That was because he had thought it necessary to build one very high wall round it and to install also each and every latest security arrangements. People said he was altogether wise, even now when he is a highly respected man, to have done so much.’
‘And his death, you were saying, was in some way mysterious?’
‘Yes. For the one and only simple reason that he was murdered in the very middle of that house of his. Despite his each and every precaution. No one should have been able even to penetrate inside that high wall. But so far no one has been able to see how it was done. But there, in the heart of his place of safety, in a room he was calling as his den, a room where no one was admitted without first knocking, not even his wife, Ajmani sahib was killed. Stabbed to death. A single blow.’
‘Yes, it would seem to be most mysterious. But why are you not the investigator, or, if the case is demanding the complete attention of your Crime Branch, why are you not on the team out there at Muddy Island? Why is that?’
Another boring-in demand.
‘Well, Mr Sven— No, Axel. No, first of all it is Madh Island. We are spelling it in English M-A-D-H. It is a place towards the Greater Mumbai Municipal Limit. Not strictly nowadays an island, though once it was. Now more some sort of peninsula. But very tranquil. Very quiet. Very much of countryside. With sea also.’
‘But you are not there, investigating? That seems to me a damn shame.’
The fellow never able to be diverted?
Ghote sighed.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘Deputy Commissioner Kabir, who is now heading Crime Branch, may not share the good opinion you have of myself. So what has happened is that I have been ordered to take up the inquiry which before the Ajmani murder was more or less a priority for Crime Branch.’
‘So, what is that? It was what you were investigating when, looking out of that bus, I suddenly saw you?’
The fellow was going to find out, to the last comma. No way to avoid it.
Another sigh.
‘It is like this. For many months past there has been a series of altogether daring jewel thefts in the city, each with the same MO. You are knowing MO?’
‘Yes, yes. Latin, modus operandi. You forget until I retired I was in the Swedish Department of Justice. I know about police work.’
‘Very good. Well, this badmash’s MO was always to get into the apartments he was raiding by climbing up to some open window. It was not mattering to him whether it was just only four-five floors high or twenty. So after a while the papers began calling him as Yeshwant.’
‘Yeshwant? Who is Yeshwant?’
‘I will tell. I am supposing you do not know anything about our great Mahratta leader, Shivaji Maharaj. Shivaji fought many, many successful wars in years 1640 to 1680. That is his statue with sword upraised down there beside the Gateway. Perhaps you remember seeing it from your first visit?’
‘I don’t think so. But I will take good care tomorrow to go and inspect this Mr Shivsati.’
‘It is Shivaji. Shivaji.’
Ghote could not keep the sharpness out of his voice.
‘Yes, yes. Shivaji. I will remember.’
At least fellow is sounding somewhat of rebuked.
‘Well, it was Shivaji’s habit to take with his army a ghorpad, what they are calling in English a monitor lizard. You know such creatures are very, very good climbers. On more than one occasion Shivaji was able to capture a high-up fort by tying a rope to his pet ghorpad, which he was naming as aforesaid Yeshwant.’
‘A very nice story. I like it very well.’
‘But not such a nice story for us in the police. Every child in Maharashtra has heard it, and with each and every paper taking it up this modern-day Yeshwant was becoming one popular hero. So Commissioner sahib was ordering full-out Crime Branch investigation. Every inspector, except only myself, stuck at Headquarters on paperwork bandobast duties, was investigating. Some of the previous inquiries may not have been one hundred per cent thorough, you know. However, nothing new was found out. But then came the Ajmani murder, and all Crime Branch inspectors were p
ut on to that, except I myself was given the Yeshwant case.’
‘Yes. I see that doing work that has already been done by others, going round in the hope you may pick up some scraps that have been neglected, is hardly going to get you promotion.’
‘Well, I am no more looking for that. But I would have very much liked to be out there at Shanti Niwas, with my share of Ajmani investigation. However, as I am not, I am content to be looking into Yeshwant’s activities in peace on my own.’
‘Yes, yes. I understand that. It is a great thing to be one’s own man. But tell me, have you yourself found any clue, even one, leading to this daring fellow?’
‘No. I must answer no. In the two days I have been on the case I have visited, let me see, twelve, no, it is thirteen, of Yeshwant’s victims. In all it must be some two-thirds of them. And it could have been almost the same story at each place. Yeshwant was climbing up to a window left for some reason open. He was getting inside in the darkest hour of the night. He was seizing only one piece of most valuable jewellery, such as something from that very, very famous shop in Zaveri Bazaar, Pappubhai Chimanlal. And he was climbing down again, not seen by anybody.’
‘But fingerprints? Was he leaving his fingerprints there? I believe the fingerprints of a monitor lizard would be very easy to see.’
Axel Svensson gave a donkey bray of laughter. Heads turned. Ghote wished he could, like Sita in the Ramayana, be swallowed up in the earth.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘The officers who had investigated before myself, even the fellows from the local police stations, had of course looked for fingerprints. When victims of a crime are people of wealth full procedures must be employed. But they were never finding prints that could be identified in police files.’
‘But footprints? Did you observe any footprints those officers had missed? A burglar climbing in like that must have left footprints.’
‘And in rich homes there are servants who, first thing, are sweeping all the floors. And in a rich home also no memsahib is going to be up very, very early in the morning starting to raise hell when she is discovering that the fine piece of jewellery she had just bought at Chimanlal’s was no longer where she had left it after some big party the night before.’
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