Then, if he is going further than Bombay Central, the next stop, Grant Road, may be very likely. Among all the narrow lanes of the red-light quarter there he may easily have a place where he stays in secret. Or then there is Charni Road and then Marine Lines – he thought for a moment of Punjabi Mrs Mehta’s filmi flat there and the apsara statue on its wall – or finally the fellow may leave at Churchgate itself.
But, provided I am succeeding to spot him if he leaves the train anywhere earlier, even if I am not shadowing him all the way today, tomorrow I can wait for him again. And if I am failing to track him home then, I will wait the next day and the next and the next. But in the end I will learn where this mysterious fellow goes. And then …
In the meanwhile, tucked into a recess in the wall of the station building, he watched each bus from the direction of Madh Island setting down passengers. People from there were bound to arrive in batches since they would first have had to take the little ferry across to Versova. With any luck, he reflected, I should be able to say to within six-seven minutes when he will come.
At a tea-stall opposite, the owner was lowering its wooden shutter. He longed to go across and get himself a cup. But he did not dare leave the spot where, hidden, he could take note of every person stepping down from the incoming buses.
Yes, he thought, if I could go across I would give myself the best of those four sorts of tea on that red-painted rates list. I would have a Special in a large cup, never mind it costing twice as much as the cheapest half-cup. Oh, and if in the end I am succeeding in finding out what secret this fellow has, and so get on to whosoever is the murderer of Anil Ajmani, then I would be entitled to a top-class, Taj Mahal Hotel-style treat.
But, at the thought of the Taj, his mind had veered away to his Swedish friend. Irritating though the fellow often was, had it been fair to have said firmly to him that he should amuse himself today by taking a trip to the caves of Elephanta Island? Would the sad man from Sweden find any happiness just only by getting on to one of the little boats at the Gateway among a crowd of everyday tourists and chugging off across the harbour? Well, it was what tourists did …
And then he looked up to find he had nearly missed Victor Masters. Instead of arriving by bus, the security in-charge had, in this almost rural area, taken an ekka. It was only when the red plume of its horse’s head had caught the bright early morning sunshine that he had seen that the man getting down from it was wearing a uniform. And, yes, he was markedly short in stature and hunched of shoulder.
So, he thought, Victor Masters must sometimes go to the expense of hiring an ekka if other guards from Shanti Niwas are waiting for the bus at Versova. So why, why does he need to keep secret from all the men under him where it is he stays?
Victor Masters, looking straight ahead, started off towards the station entrance at a pace so brisk it was almost a trot.
Ghote pressed himself further back into his nook.
He is coming straight towards me. Has he somehow …?
He flattened himself even harder against the slimy wall behind him.
No, no, he said to himself, I must stop myself thinking about the fellow altogether. If I do not, something may somehow go out from me to him and make him turn and give me one hard look. And then … Then he would recognize me again whenever in the next one hour or so I have to get close to him.
No, I must think to one hundred per cent of something else, anything else. But what? What? Try. Try. In seconds only he will be within two-three feet of me.
With all the power of his will he forced himself to think about— About his awkward son. Ved. Ved. Ved. Why is Ved these days so much of trouble? What it is? What? Ah, yes. Yes. It comes down to this: he is wanting more of space for himself. When he was just only a small boy he was not at all minding if we were telling him what he must do, down to his calls of nature. But now … now he is resenting whatsoever we are telling him, myself or Protima. Look at the way he will sit in front of the television, even if it is only the advertisements on Zee TV, blotting out every—
He became aware that Victor Masters, face hunched up as much as his body, dark complexion, low forehead, powerful lower jaw skewed markedly to the left, had, directly in front of him, come to a halt fumbling for his wallet.
Ved. Ved. Think about Ved.
And then, wallet shoved back, the man was gone, walking quickly inside the station building.
Ghote, flooded with relief, cautiously went inside in his turn and saw his quarry paying for a ticket.
No travelling Without Ticket for him then, he thought. No risking unwanted attention if without ticket he fails to barge through the far-end barrier. He patted himself on the back for having already taken the precaution of buying his own ticket, and one going all the way to the terminus at Churchgate.
He stayed where he was without following his quarry on to the platform. Time enough for that when he heard a train approaching. No point in letting Masters see any more frequently than he need a man in an old red shirt.
At last, judging his moment as the noise of the first incoming train rose to a squealing halt, he went forward.
And, yes, the hunched man was running fast along to the rear of the train to board just in front of the two last Ladies Only carriages.
Not so easy at that unoccupied end of the platform to get into the next carriage without becoming conspicuous. Where to go then?
He settled on the carriage two away from his quarry’s. It was almost empty and he had no difficulty stationing himself near one of the double-doors, kept open in expectation of the crowds joining later. In that way he could keep watch at each station as they came into it. He would be able to jump off quickly too. Masters, in his anxiety not to give away his destination to any of his men who might have just joined the train, might well leave getting down until the very last second.
So, as they drew into each station in turn, he took good care to lean out and watch the coaches behind. No one left the carriage next to the Ladies Only ones at Goregaon. No one left at Jogeshwari, though he thought he saw Masters poke his head out for a moment. But if it was him, when the train began to pull away he had made no attempt to jump out.
At Andheri, where Ghote found he was thinking about Miss Ivy Cooper and her old cantankerous father lost in his world of the loco he had once driven, of the club – what was it? – that he had been secretary of, Masters again looked out. And again, in the end, made no attempt to jump down at the last moment. At Vile-Parle Station Ghote, his stomach rumbling for lack of his usual hot fried breakfast puris, could not help thinking about much-advertised Parle biscuits. Nevertheless, he kept his eye fixed on Masters’ carriage. At Santa Cruz and at Khar Road there was no sign at all of his man.
But a good many people had been boarding as they had got nearer the heart of the city, and not only passengers but also the vendors who worked the trains. He had caught sight of a woman with a fluttering bundle of handkerchiefs at Khar Road. At Bandra a man selling gaily painted little wooden flutes had got into the next carriage, and, far along at the front he had caught sight of a bright floating bundle of balloons just vanishing with their vendor. At Matunga Road a little boy, holding in front of himself a round tin of cheap sweets, had joined the passengers who in twos and threes had been entering his own carriage. So when they came to a halt at Bombay Central there were plenty of people pouring out as well as those pouring in.
Ghote strained to watch. But, as the train slowly began to pull away and the hunched man in security guard uniform had still not appeared, he began to worry.
Oh God, fellow must have slipped away this time as soon as train pulled in. And I never saw him. He did. He must have done.
Yes, I was already watching. Or was I? Had my attention slipped for just only one moment? I might easily have missed a fellow as short as Masters. Get down myself now, while I still can? Run along towards station exit? Or …? Or risk staying where I am? Stay here, with the train coming to its last three stops, and no one answering
to Masters’ description anywhere inside?
But no. No, I must trust myself. I did keep a really good watch-out. I could not have missed him.
Or could I?
Now Grant Road. He leant out once more. If Victor Masters was still on board, this was perhaps the likeliest place of all for him to get off and disappear.
He thought of the fifteen separately numbered Kamathipura Lanes nearby, haunt of prostitutes by the hundred. First-class hiding-place.
Then he felt a tugging at his shirt.
What—?
He took a quick glance behind.
It was the little vendor of sweets.
‘Sahib, want? Cheap, very cheap. Good, good.’
‘Go away. Hut jao.’
But still the boy tugged and pleaded.
He turned back with vicious impatience while at the same time trying to crane out further.
‘Sahib, buy. Please, red-shirt sahib, buy.’
Again he swung round. He took hold of the thin clutching arm and began tugging at it.
And then, as he had twisted back again, out of the corner of his eye he saw his man. Hurrying away. Uniform jacket over his arm now, but those hunched shoulders under the white singlet he was wearing unmistakable.
The train began to move off. He let the urchin’s arm go, and hurled himself out.
In time. Yes, in time.
SIXTEEN
The fiery leap of triumph Ghote had experienced at not letting the wily Victor Masters outwit him died all too soon to ashes. Making his way off the platform, he had risked running up to within ten yards of that short, hunched figure. He had had no difficulty then, further back, in following him as he walked, illegally, across the tracks at the platform’s end. A good many other passengers, all presumably without tickets, were making off in the same way and he easily mingled with them.
As he took care not to trip on the rails, he puzzled over the manner in which the security in-charge was choosing to leave the station, since he had seen him at Malad carefully buying his ticket. But, he thought, the fellow must still be wary of any one of the other Ajmani Security guards being on the same train and perhaps following him out of thwarted curiosity.
Yet another sign of how strongly anxious Victor Masters was to conceal anything and everything about his life. And that must mean his secret is something he must at almost any cost keep from prying eyes.
Turning over and over in his mind what the secret could possibly be, Ghote made his way along behind his quarry. Dodging through the early morning crowds – the elderly men setting out to the bazaars with flapping empty shopping bags, the office workers on their way to their jobs clutching black plastic briefcases – he fell as far behind Masters as he had been at any time since the fellow had set off striding out along the straight road ahead.
It was then that the hunt came abruptly to an end.
Losing sight for a moment of the hunched shoulders in the white banian, Ghote had glanced down a narrow lane to take a quick check that the security in-charge had not taken a sudden dive into it. No sign of him. The lane deserted, all but for a pair of scavenging pi-dogs and a few late sleepers lying on their mats outside the narrow-packed, falling-to-pieces houses.
So where was Masters? Nowhere in sight.
Ghote set off at a scrambling, weaving run and managed to gain some ground. But then the pavement ahead cleared and he realized that there was no one in a white singlet anywhere to be seen. And there, a little way ahead, were other lanes to either side. Too many for it to be practical to check each one within a few minutes.
Without any particular hopes he decided, however, to go on as far as the next big crossroads and turn off towards crowded Kamathipura itself and its many tumbled-together houses. After all, it was the most likely place hereabouts for Victor Masters to have somewhere he could sleep during the day with no one to take more than a passing interest in him.
At the hospital near the Jewish Cemetery he turned and, still glancing continually from side to side, made his way into the fifteen Kamathipura Lanes. It was an area that, in its quiet mornings, on the odd occasions he had been there, he had always rather liked. The prostitutes, their night-time activities over, would sleep till late and then come and sit at ease on the charpoys they had dragged out into the daylight, garish make-up left off till evening, chatting, mending clothes, tending their babies, perhaps idly playing some card-game, relaxed and happy. They always seemed unanxious for any business, even resenting as an invasion of their few hours of relaxation the looks cautiously cast at them by the occasional youths walking by. Life went quietly on around them. A goat or two would be rooting about for something to feed on, a tuft of grass, a piece of blown-about newspaper. From a short distance away, where there was a batch of one-man metal workshops, there could faintly be heard the monotonous chinking and clinking of hammers. A scatter of sparrows or of tiny chattering seven-sister birds might be hopping and dodging about.
So, though keeping an eye out for the hunched man in the white banian, Ghote stayed now longer than it was conceivably worthwhile, feeling as he strolled about, at least for a time, content with himself and the world around him.
Then, at last, he had to admit there was really no chance at all now, nor had there been for the past half-hour, of spotting the man who possibly knew the name of the murderer of Anil Ajmani. But he did not feel particularly disheartened. He had done well to have followed the fellow for as long as he had. He knew now, he said to himself, at least to which area Masters went when he had ended his night on duty. He could pick him up again at Grant Road Station next day and with any luck get a little further along the trail. He might even reach its end, find out where Masters stayed, have some solid clue then perhaps as to why the man was so secretive.
On the other hand, he might not.
The problem is, he thought, that it is asking too much to shadow the fellow all on my own. If this was some regular policework, I could have half a dozen constables in plain clothes – one of them even in a burqua – at my command. Even if I had just only one other person with me, we could take it turn and turn about to keep within a few feet of Masters, rather than having to drop back as much as I did when I lost him. But who can I have to help me when I am not truly Inspector Ghote under orders to track down that notorious Yeshwant, but just only one imitation Sam Marlowe?
The Swede? In a burqua, a moving mountain of black cloth, he would attract a mob of street urchins before he had gone a dozen paces. Ridiculous. And almost equally ridiculous to entrust the task to him without a burqua, a tall Westerner doubly conspicuous in an area like Kamathipura. More practical, perhaps, to use one of the minor criminals, under some threat of blackmail, that we often take for this sort of business. Practical, certainly, but now for me impossibly dangerous. That sort of badmash can never be trusted. He would talk about what he had been asked to do and who had asked him, if only by way of boasting. And if he got to know I was working unofficially, he would be the one doing the blackmailing.
And then, as he heard a long ringing laugh coming from one of a group of girls sitting on a charpoy nearby, the idea came to him.
Miss Pinky Dinkarrao, journalist.
Pinky Dinkarrao would be quite suitable for the task, Ghote thought. With the bold coloured saris she so carelessly wrapped round herself and her always wild mass of grey hair, she could go anywhere and be judged as likely as not to be some sort of madwoman. True, Victor Masters would notice her if he happened to look back. But he would never think that someone looking so like a pagalwalli was actually shadowing him. And there could be little doubt that the writer of the Pinky Thinking column would jump at what he could tell her was a new move in the Yeshwant investigation. Only when, after some days, her phone would ring and a voice tell her all Yeshwant’s loot had been returned would she realize she had been used. And by then, if all went well …
But was there a problem?
Pinky Dinkarrao believed she had some right, the right of the journalist, to
poke and pry wherever she wanted. And, though Victor Masters was surely fair game, she might succeed in prying further into what was happening than he himself would like. Was he taking in his hand a snake that, grasp it hard behind its head though he might, would yet succeed in wriggling round to sink in its fangs?
But nothing else came to mind. So see Miss Pinky Dinkarrao, put the proposition to her.
He rang her at her office and suggested they should meet ‘to discuss something I am not wanting to mention per telephone’ at the Badshah Juice Bar. Nearly opposite Crawford Market Headquarters, the rendezvous would surely prevent her thinking what he would ask her was anything other than strictly police business. The thought that she might somehow worm out of him that he was, for the present, Sam Marlowe, private eye, was something he hardly dared contemplate. A headline like Two Sleuths for the Price of One or perhaps Public Servant/Private Eye in the Pinky Thinking column would be such exposure that he could see himself resigning on the spot.
But at least Pinky agreed to the meeting without asking questions. For once. She did, however, insist on an earlier time than he had suggested. And to that he, in his turn, had to agree. He had intended first to go into his cabin at Headquarters and do his best to concoct a report for Mr Kabir that would indicate he was busy hunting down Yeshwant.
If I am not doing that, he said to himself, before long Mr Kabir will be asking what I am doing. And if then it should come out that I am not his Inspector Ghote but just only Sam Marlowe …
He had had good reasons for choosing the Badshah, besides its advantages in giving his meeting with Pinky an official air. Its luxury air-conditioned upper room, free like few others in the city of the pervasive ashy smell of cigarettes, was in the afternoons almost always wonderfully quiet. But he was still not altogether happy about going there. A visit to the Badshah had always been a treat for him, though he seldom felt he could go to it at the expense of family commitments. When he did he invariably drank a Ganga-Jamuna, not because its ice-cold mixture of fresh orange juice and fresh lemon was particularly pleasant, although it was delicious enough, but simply because of the idea of it. Somehow its representing the confluence of the mighty Ganges and the holy Jamuna flowing past the all-beautiful Taj Mahal made him see the drink as something set apart. It seemed to be a prize only to be awarded to himself for some triumph he felt he could not openly boast about. But that it was a secret reward was something he kept locked in the deepest recesses of his mind. No one, not wife, not son, and certainly not Miss Pinky Dinkarrao, must ever know what it meant to him.
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