The crestfallen look on that long ago bony face hit at him. Oh, why, why, had he let himself be saddled with this forlorn firinghi, breaking in on him at every turn with his difficulties and disappointments? But he had. And he must do what he could for him.
‘But, listen, Axel,’ he jabbered on. ‘Listen, I would very much like your help and assistance this evening. I am going, if I possibly can, to see Miss Ivy Cooper at home. She may be the one chance I am having of getting near to Yeshwant and all his thievings. And— And—’
He thought hard.
‘And, yes, she is an Anglo-Indian, you know. And their English is not always too easy for me to understand. So to have someone from the West with me would be one very great advantage.’
It was nonsense. But it seemed to work.
Axel Svensson straightened his broad shoulders and looked up as if an enemy had suddenly sprung to life before him, waiting to be conquered.
‘So, you would be ready if I am coming to Taj at nine p.m. itself?’
‘Ganesh, I will.’
When shortly before nine that evening Ghote entered the huge Taj lobby, softly radiant beneath its chandeliers, its hostesses in their gorgeous saris tall and aloof behind their long counter, he found Axel Svensson already there, sitting alertly on one of the many deeply plump pink sofas.
‘Ganesh, Ganesh,’ his voice rang out, for every guest and visitor to hear. ‘Ganesh, have you found where Ivy Copper lives?’
Ivy Copper. Ivy Copper. Why cannot this damn Swede ever get any name right? And this is an English-sounding one, and he is meant to speak that language altogether as well as myself.
But I suppose I must be grateful that he has at least misnamed the suspect I am going to see. At least no one here in the lobby, where all the world, all the world of the rich at least, is at some time coming to sit, will have recognized who he was shouting about.
‘Yes,’ he said, going up to the Swede. ‘Yes, I have found Ivy Cooper’s address. It is in a colony out towards Andheri where many railway workers stay. You know almost all engine-drivers used to be Anglo-Indians, right from British days? Many still are.’
‘Very good, very good,’ Axel Svensson said, rising to his feet. ‘But how did you find her out so quickly?’
Ghote grinned.
‘Simple. I was thinking that her boss would insist she had a phone. I looked her up. And there she was. Are you ready to go?’
‘Yes, yes. You know, my friend, I am willing to bet you will bring your inquiry to a close well before your fellow officers on the Amjani case.’
No, Ghote thought. I must not let him get wrong every name he is uttering. Mr Pappubhai was bad enough, and Copper he will perhaps change for himself. But now is the time to say something.
‘Axel, my friend. You are making the same mistake you were making before. It is not Amjani: it is Ajmani.’
Something that might have been a blush showed itself on Axel Svensson’s ample cheeks. Quickly Ghote found a sweetmeat to offer to this baby.
‘But,’ he said, ‘I have something to tell about that case. When I was finding out that phone number at Headquarters I was learning also that Inspector Adik, over at Shanti Niwas—’
‘Shanti Niwas, that is House of Quiet?’ the Swede broke in.
‘It is House of Peace. Shanti is Peace. Peace.’
‘Oh, yes, yes. I will remember now.’
‘Over at Shanti Niwas,’ Ghote said, a touch coldly, ‘Inspector Adik has discovered the murder weapon. So we will have to be lucky-lucky if we are to find Yeshwant before Adik is putting his murderer behind the bars.’
‘But what was that weapon?’ the Swede said. ‘Is it really a good clue to the man who used it?’
‘It may not be a man,’ Ghote said, with a little laugh. ‘You see, the weapon Adik was finding – it was thrown into a fountain in the gardens there – was a fish knife.’
‘A fish-knife? A fish-knife? But that’s one of those things old-fashioned families in Europe use. Made of silver, from the days when steel knives gave a bad taste to fish. Quite blunt. No good at all even for cutting up meat.’
Ghote laughed again.
‘No, no. I did not know such things as that existed. But this is very much different. It is a knife for gutting fish. Very sharp. Used by fishwallis anywhere along the coast round here when their men are bringing in the catch.’
‘Ah, not a fish-knife, but a fish knife, ja.’
‘And if that is perhaps indicating who used it, it should be a woman. But, though those fishwallis are tough as one old boot and well capable of using their knives for nefarious purposes, getting into the heart of Anil Ajmani’s house was hardly a woman’s work.’
‘No, I suppose not. Not if the place is as doubly secure as you were saying the other day. So, perhaps we are first in the race after all. Let’s go then. Let’s go and see your Miss Ivy Copper.’
‘Cooper, Cooper.’
It was raining again when Ghote and Svensson arrived in Andheri, a faint almost imperceptible drizzle, quietly persistent if hardly penetrating. Their taxi had brought them to somewhere near the address Ghote had got for Miss Cooper. Somewhere near only. Being armed with an address in the huge sprawling, divided and subdivided city is seldom enough to get you precisely to where you want to go. So it was only after half a dozen inquiries that they had got even close.
But eventually they arrived at a small compound formed by four rows of two-storey buildings. It was in an Anglo-Indian area where Ivy Cooper’s flat ought to be located. It looked at first as if the whole compound was deserted, though the tinny sounds of Western pop music were coming from here and there in the surrounding buildings, and lights, yellow or blueish, could be seen in many of the barred windows.
But half under the shelter of an almost leafless gul mohar tree near the solitary street lamp in the centre of the compound Ghote spotted an old man, a typical Anglo-Indian, fairish complexion, white hair, dressed only in a torn singlet and khaki shorts. He was sitting in an ancient canework peacock chair, the wide fan of its back brokenly leaning to one side. In front of him, on a square of thick cardboard resting on an empty drum of vanaspati cooking-oil, cards were laid out for what looked in the feeble, rain-smeared light to be a game of patience.
Perhaps this man could point them at last to their destination.
‘Good evening,’ Ghote greeted him, noting that all the time he had been there not one of the greasy, tattered cards had been moved. ‘I am looking for Miss Ivy Cooper. Can you tell me where she stays?’
No reply.
Ghote tried again, repeating his own words in a much louder voice.
But the old white-haired Anglo-Indian simply sat, unmoving, looked down with apparent intentness at the cards on his sagging cardboard sheet as the faint rain gradually soaked it.
Is he hundred per cent deaf, Ghote wondered. Or has he like my father, and myself sometimes, retreated altogether into his Northern fastness?
Cautiously he reached forward and tapped the old man on his bare shoulder.
The action did produce a response. A hand reached out and moved a card from one pile to another.
‘Not there,’ Axel Svensson boomed.
He had been at Ghote’s elbow looking down at the spread of cards, and appeared to have worked out the rules of whatever game it was.
‘No, you should put the queen of diamonds there, not the queen of hearts.’
And it seemed that the big Swede’s loud correction had penetrated like a band of marauders right into the old man’s fastness.
‘Queen of hearts best, man,’ came a muttered growl, as if not the intruder but some fellow cards-player of years ago was being contradicted.
At least, Ghote said to himself, the fellow can hear, and speak.
He moved round to a point where under the lamp’s pale light his shadow fell across the sodden board.
‘I am looking for one Miss Ivy Cooper,’ he said.
He must at last have made his voice forceful en
ough to pierce, like Axel Svensson’s, through to the old man’s head. Because he looked up.
‘Miss Cooper?’ Ghote repeated, even more forcefully. ‘Ivy Cooper?’
‘Getting me dinner.’
Now Axel Svensson must have thought the time for his role as interpreter had come.
‘He is saying Miss Cooper is getting him some dinner,’ he whispered to Ghote, adding a less authoritative, ‘I think.’
‘You are related to Ivy Cooper?’ Ghote asked the old man, pushfully penetrating still.
No reply once more.
But two cards were moved in rapid succession, apparently with Axel Svensson’s approval.
But then the old Anglo-Indian did lift up his head and address Ghote directly.
‘Lazy cow’s dad, aren’t I?’ he muttered.
Ghote was more than a little surprised to hear Ivy Cooper, praised by Pappubhai Chimanlal as the woman whose business talents he relied on, described as a lazy cow. He wondered what the Gujarati jeweller would say if he knew he had confided his secrets to someone her own father could dismiss in this way.
And then he wondered something more. If Ivy Cooper really was a lazy cow, could it be that she had plans to ensure for herself in the end a long life of laziness by getting her share of Yeshwant’s booty?
The moment had come, he thought, to cease to be the bothersome stranger breaking in on an old man’s self-absorbed pleasure and to become the police officer making demands backed up, if need be, by the plain threat of the lock-up.
‘Mr Cooper,’ he banged out, ‘I am a police officer here in pursuance of duty. I am requiring to see your daughter, one Miss Ivy Cooper. Where will I find? Now?’
And memories of days of discipline, far, far away, seemed to make their way into the old man’s limited area of awareness.
‘Police,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody police … always …’
‘Where?’ Ghote snapped.
The old Anglo-Indian turned a little in his broken chair and pointed at one of the doors on the second-storey balcony, the finger at the end of his bare, rain-wetted arm a wavering up and down.
Ghote swung away and started out.
Behind him he heard Axel Svensson attempting to placate Ivy Cooper’s life-exhausted father.
‘Mr Copper … It is, I assure you, urgent business. Yes, urgent. And … and, please, try putting that queen of diamonds under the king of …’
But the old man had entered his own world again.
Axel Svensson just managed, going at a shambling run across the muddied-over compound and up the wooden stairs to the balcony above, to catch up with Ghote as he made a hard-knuckled fist and knocked a sharp tattoo on Ivy Cooper’s door. It opened, letting out a tangy, oily smell of frying.
Revealed in the intermittently flickering light coming from a defective tubelight, Pappubhai Chimanlal’s devoted secretary looked to be about forty. Her flat-chested, awkward frame was unbecomingly dressed in a brightly colourful flowered frock of the sort that most Anglo-Indian women carry off with more sexual swank. On her lightly pock-marked face, the bold ruby-red frame of a pair of spectacles was her sole attempt at adornment.
‘Miss Ivy Cooper? Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch.’
Had a look of alarm come on to that past-mending plain face?
Yes, Ghote thought, all those years ago young Pappubhai Chimanlal knew what he was about when he set out to give a taste of the delights of love to his new secretary whose chances of ever knowing them must have seemed small enough.
But, with the light, such as it was, coming from behind her, let alone the fact that the wide lenses of her spectacles were still misted over from her stove, it was impossible to detect what change if any had shown itself on her face at the words Crime Branch.
So, forcing her back into the flat’s hall, as the living room in such places was called, Ghote pushed his way in.
‘Madam,’ he said, striding across and ruthlessly switching off the TV burblingly issuing some science-fiction episode, all people with odd-shaped ears and mechanical-sounding voices, ‘I am making inquiries in connection with certain thefts carried out by one known as Yeshwant.’
Certainly now there was some reaction. Ivy Cooper’s pale lips tightened.
But was it actually because the name Yeshwant cut deep with her? Was she in fact preparing herself to deny ever giving anybody any information about Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co.? Or was she no more than aware, as perhaps Pappubhai Chimanlal himself had been all along, that each of Yeshwant’s thefts had been of something particularly valuable recently bought at the showroom? And had she simply wondered how this could have come about?
Ask. Ask directly. Break into any defences she has made for herself.
‘So, madam, I am asking: have you at any time described to any individual whatsoever items sold from Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co.’s showrooms?’
She jerked back.
‘No.’
The look from behind the ruby-red spectacles was all defiance.
‘Madam, I am suggesting that is what you have done. Who was it to? Madam, you have a brother?’
‘No, Inspector, no, no.’
‘I am able to ask your father out there in the compound, madam. No use to try any lies and lying. Do you have a brother? Even one who long ago left home?’
‘No. No, man. Why should I lie to you? I have no brothers. I never did have. You can ask my father, if he’s able to bring himself back from thinking he’s driving his old loco or checking his Hon. Sec. books of the retirees club. You can ask him all you want.’
‘Then, madam, you are having some cousin? Some cousin you are very much liking? Some cousin you are very much wanting to see become a well-off fellow?’
‘No, Inspector. No. What are you saying? What are you trying to say, man?’
‘I am saying and saying I know it all. Yes, you are having more than a cousin. You are having a lover. Someone living here in this compound is making love to you and asking and asking what is going on at Pappubhai Chimanlal and Co.’
‘Inspector, you must believe me. I’ve been working for Mr Chimanlal for more than twenty years, and I’ve never, never told anyone anything about his business. I couldn’t, Inspector. I couldn’t.’
‘You could not’ – out with it now – ‘because Mr Pappubhai Chimanlal was seducing yourself when you were first becoming his secretary and you have been worshipping ever since.’
Under the flickering tubelight hanging from the ceiling Ivy Cooper’s pock-marked face went even paler.
‘How— How did— I don’t—’
‘Madam, never be minding how I was finding out this. It is true, yes? Mr Chimanlal was seducing you, and you were ever since worshipping that man like a god itself. But, madam, what has happened just only a few months back? I will tell you what I am thinking. At last and at last you were meeting some fellow who, for second time only in your life, was speaking soft words to you. You have fallen in love with this fellow. You are no longer loving and loving Chimanlal sahib. You are hating him now for how he was spoiling your life, and you have been taking revenge by getting and egging on an individual by name Yeshwant to steal all the best Chimanlal jewelleries.’
‘No. No, no and no. How can you say such things? It isn’t true. It isn’t. It isn’t. Ask anyone round here. Have they seen me with a boy? Ask them. Have they ever seen me with a boy in all the twenty years I’ve been working for Mr Chimanlal? They’ll tell you they haven’t. They’ll swear it. Swear it in a court of law. Inspector, it isn’t true. It isn’t true.’
Behind him Ghote suddenly became aware of the big firinghi standing in the flat’s doorway blotting out the fine rain. And plainly appalled at this bullying of a defenceless woman.
Well then, he thought, let him ask himself if his Swedish police never question and question a witness till they have gone inside their very head and found whatsoever is in there.
But have I got inside Miss Ivy Cooper’s head?
He was beginning to t
hink he had. There was no look of defiance left on the face behind the ruby-red spectacles. So, was there nothing more she needed desperately to hide? To hide from myself? To hide from all the world?
Or was her most private dream still to be broken into?
Yes, he thought, I have not yet done enough. One more knife-plunge is needed. There is one more thing she may be concealing, concealing even from herself.
Plunge in. Plunge deeper.
‘Miss Ivy Cooper, very well, you may not have any lover. You may even have been worshipping Mr Pappubhai Chimanlal still. But what if, at some time, one day or one night, you were seeing the man you are worshipping for twenty years making love to some other woman? Not to his wife, but to some mistress he is having. He was seducing you even when he was just only married, so do you think he has never seduced anyone else? I am thinking you know he has. I am thinking you saw him with some woman. And I am thinking your loyalty to him was vanishing away then like water down a monsoon drain. Yes? Yes?’
‘No. Oh, Inspector, if you are thinking that, you just don’t know what it is to love a man. lb love him and love him, year in, year out. Do you think I don’t know he’s had mistresses? A man needs a woman. And, even if I’m not the woman he needs now, I can still love him. I can love him better than any woman he goes with for one night, or one week. I can love him more than that barren bitch of a Guju wife he has. I can. I can. And I always will.’
From the doorway there came a choked sound.
‘Insp— Ganesh, it’s enough. Enough.’
Ghote drew in a deep breath.
Yes, he thought perhaps it is enough. No, it is definitely enough. I am at last believing this poor deluded woman. She has spoken the truth. Under my utmost pressure she has spoken the truth. She told no one, no Yeshwant, no one, about the precious objects that have gone out of those showrooms into the homes Yeshwant has robbed.
‘Yes, Axel sahib,’ he said. ‘It is time to go.’
He turned and followed the bear-like form of the Swede down the slippery wooden steps from the balcony.
At their foot Axel Svensson gave a long sigh.
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