Breaking and Entering

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Now, look at that cupboard,’ Adik said. ‘What do you notice about it?’

  Ghote looked.

  ‘Nothing, bhai,’ he said. ‘It is an almirah. It is there. But I can see nothing else about it. Unless—’

  He thought rapidly.

  ‘Unless the murderer was all the time hiding inside?’

  Adik gave a contemptuous laugh.

  ‘With that guru, whose back you can just see at the foot of the picture, looking straight at cupboard’s doors?’ he said.

  ‘Well, no. No, I suppose that is not the answer.’

  ‘No, it is not. Look again.’

  Ghote looked. And thought he had it.

  ‘You are meaning the killer could have slid across that small gap between the top of the almirah and the ceiling?’ he said. ‘Yes, I should say the guru sitting cross-legged there would not, without lifting up his head by some inches, be able to see the top of the almirah.’

  ‘Yes,’ Adik said, not without a tinge of disappointment, ‘that was what I was working out. And that is how the murderer got into Ajmani’s private room.’

  ‘So it could, after all, be one of the servants?’

  ‘No, no. I have said the servants are in the clear, and so is Mrs Ajmani and everyone else in the house. I tell you, Inspector, we have done our work up there. All checked and cross-checked. The past of each and every servant, even the past of everyone ever employed at Shanti Niwas, right down to a fellow who was Ajmani’s PA six years ago. That far we have gone.’

  He gave a bark of a laugh.

  ‘It was easy to cross off former PA Mr Vincent Hinks. Job came to an end when he was stabbed to death in some brawl.’

  But Ghote took no notice of the casual brutality. Something about the figure at the foot of the photograph had suddenly struck him. Falling all the way down the guru’s back were half a dozen rope-like strands of yellowish hair. And he had seen a holy man just like that before.

  In the flat of Mrs Latika Patel.

  Good heavens, he thought, all the time I was in that flat trying to drag some answers out of that new mother so absorbed in her little daughter, I was not at all realizing that the lady was linked to the house where the Ajmani murder was taking place. She must be Anil Ajmani’s daughter, married to that upcoming politician and tea-time tempest maker, Mr R. K. Patel.

  Very well, just only one odd coincidence. But what a small world.

  And at that moment he became aware that someone was calling his name, in a noticeably commanding way.

  He looked all round.

  Then he realized the voice was coming from somewhere above him. In fact from the Crime Branch balcony where Deputy Commissioner Kabir had his office, and the man leaning over the balcony wall was none other than Mr Kabir himself.

  ‘Ghote, wake up, there. I am calling to you.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes, I am hearing. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Ghote, I want to know what progress you are making over this so-called Yeshwant business. Come up. Come up.’

  Entering Mr Kabir’s cabin, Ghote realized that he had in his hand the very report which might have calmed his boss’s fears. But he had written it too late, if only by some minutes, and now he must undergo Mr Kabir’s direct questioning.

  Unless, he thought, my careful account of inquiries I was never actually undertaking may still serve its purpose.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘in my hand at this moment I am having my report. Sir, perhaps if you were reading same it would save time.’

  He placed the sheets down among the handful of silver-shining initialled paperweights on the big semicircular desk.

  The Deputy Commissioner took them up, frowned slightly at a certain messiness.

  Ghote turned to go.

  ‘Stay,’ Mr Kabir barked.

  He read in silence while Ghote waited, standing at rigid attention.

  ‘Inspector,’ Mr Kabir said at last, his out-Britishing the British accent more to the fore than ever, ‘this tells me precisely nothing. So far as I can see all you have been doing since I entrusted you with this very important inquiry is to go trailing round duplicating work other officers have done before you. And you’ve taken your time about it, too. What have you been doing in the past two days? Missing out on everyone you ought to have been questioning. That’s what. It won’t do, Ghote. It won’t do.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then let me make this clear. Unless in another forty-eight hours you can come to me with definite progress, preferably to say you’ve put the handcuffs on our discriminating Raffles, then I shall take you off the case. And very probably I shall find some less onerous duties for you in some other branch of the service.’

  Ghote thought for one moment of saying, flat out, that he had in fact forced Yeshwant to finish with thieving, and that the climbing thief was not a man but a Gujarati lady of good family with an influential husband. But he knew he could not do that. His promise was his promise.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  He clicked heels and left.

  In something of a panic – forty-eight hours only to get Victor Masters’ secret out of him – Ghote hurried to collect his towering Swedish frightener at the Taj. And found his plans once again disrupted. At his ring at the bell Axel Svensson opened the door of his room, but it was plain he had risen from bed to do so, white-faced.

  Stomach troubles, Ghote instantly diagnosed. Bad stomach troubles.

  But it was worse.

  ‘Axel, my friend,’ he ventured. ‘You are not looking very much well.’

  ‘Oh, Ganesh, Ganesh. A terrible, terrible thing happened to me.’

  Another terrible thing, Ghote thought, his concern evaporating like a splash of water under the midday sun.

  ‘What it is?’ he enquired, trying to sound decently anxious.

  ‘I know that you suggested I ought to take the trip out to Elephants Island—’

  ‘It is not Elephants. It is Elephanta.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But yesterday I didn’t go. I was feeling rather miserable, and I stayed here in the hotel all day.’

  Ghote felt a small dagger-twist of remorse.

  Did I truly say it so firmly as that? Did I say ought to? That was hardly making just only a passing suggestion so as to get him off my head.

  ‘Go on,’ he said warily.

  ‘Yes. Well, I did mean to go on the trip today. I really did. But then I decided I would first have one more walk about the city. I know I got into trouble doing that before. Twice. But I thought, if I kept my eyes wide open, I should be safe this time.’

  ‘But you were not?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m afraid I was not. And, oh, it was horrible, Ganesh. Horrible.’

  ‘But you are not telling what it was,’ Ghote demanded, thinking, I need this man, I need him now.

  ‘No. No, you see, I hardly like to speak of it still. But— But I was strolling along Mahatma Gandhi Road— M. G. Road, is that what it’s called?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘And at the far end I stopped to watch one of those games of cricket on the OL Maidan.’

  ‘It is Oval.’

  ‘Oh, is it? Well, although I have spent some time in England, I have never been able to work out how you play cricket, and I thought that this time I would crack it. Yes.’

  Ghote remembered himself then, staring unseeingly at that earlier game on the Oval Maidan when a voice trumpeting, It is Mr Ghote? Inspector Ghote? had broken into his happy reverie, and all the disasters and complications that had arisen from that moment on.

  ‘Yes, you were watching some cricket?’ he prompted sharply.

  ‘Yes, yes. And a man came up and stood beside me. After a while he told me this was a festival day and asked if I would like to see a typical Hindu religious ceremony. Of course, I said I would. Something so colourful would be very interesting to me.’

  That is what he is calling keeping open his eyes. Falling for just only the same trick he was falling for when that idler caught him a
nd told him that nonsense story about the man having his kidney stolen.

  ‘So …?’

  ‘So he was leading me some little way, in the direction of the sea I think, and then he was taking me through some big gates. There was a sign above them, but it was in Indian writing. So I asked where this was. At first he didn’t reply. But when we were quite far inside, This is the Burning Ghats, he said. The cremation grounds, I asked. Yes, yes. Well, I was not too sure I wanted to go into such a place, but we were there and I thought he had been kind to go so far with me. So I stayed with him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote said, gritting his teeth, ‘we have had complaints from tourists about badmashes at the Burning Ghats before. They are taking tourists in there, going to some quiet corner and demanding money, with threat from knives also.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Axel Svensson.

  ‘But that was not what was happening to you?’

  ‘No, no. In a way, perhaps, it was worse.’

  ‘What of worse?’

  ‘Well, after a while this man was suddenly seizing my arm and saying, Come over here, over here. I went, though already I was beginning to feel quite uneasy. He made me join a little group, half a dozen people, standing round something. Soon he pushed me right to the front and I saw a deep hole had been dug there, like a shaft going downwards. And at the bottom of it there was— There was something, covered in flowers. Then, Look, look, that man said, they are burying a baby. You know, if a child dies before it has reached the age of nine months the body is not burnt but buried. It is our custom. I realized then that the people standing round were the child’s family, or rather the father and uncles, perhaps. There were no women there. Then I saw the slow tears that were trickling down the father’s face. And there I was, being made to intrude on his grief. I tell you, Ganesh, I felt as bad as if I was committing rape. I— I took out my wallet. I thrust at the man all the notes I had, and ran out of the place. I saw a taxi. I jumped in. Luckily I found I had just one more fifty-rupee note when I got here. And then I came up to my room, and fell on to the bed.’

  Ghote looked at the Swede. Now when he really needed him it seemed he would not be able to leave his room. It was plain he had been deeply disturbed, and, yes, rightly so. One foul trick to play on an innocent Westerner. He ought to be left to see what sleep could do.

  But there is no one else to come with me to where Victor Masters is lying asleep. And I must, I must, wake him and question. I must break into the hidden places of his mind and find out what is the secret he so much wants to keep. And then … then ask that key question: Who was it, when he also had found your secret out, who made you silence the dogs at Shanti Niwas?

  And I cannot ask that without back-up. Victor Masters, it is plain, is tough as any goonda in the slums. He will have no intention of letting his secret, whatever it is, come to light. All right, pull him into the Detention Room somewhere and keep him there all day and half the night with nothing to eat and nothing to drink, and the answer would come out soon enough.

  But now, at the very least, a man who looks as if he can use his fists is needed. And for Sam Marlowe no one but Axel Svensson is available.

  Yet, looking at the Swede, back sitting slumped now on the side of the big bed, he thought it was doubtful if he could get him even as far as Kamathipura. So how threatening would he look if Victor Masters started making a fight of it?

  But time is getting short. I must be back there by one p.m. I must. So, try. At least try.

  ‘Axel, my friend, I am not at all liking to ask you this. But you have said you very much wish fully to go back to those days when, as official observer, you were so much of help to me.’

  At these words the Swede’s big head did rise up a little.

  ‘Axel, let me tell you how things have been going since we left Mrs Pappubhai Chimanlal. I have succeeded to find, with somewhat of help from Miss Pinky Dinkarrao, where it is Victor Masters hides. It is in a room in Kamathipura red-light area. But I was feeling it would be one hundred per cent idiotic to tackle such a brute of a man with only a lady beside me. So I was leaving him there, hopefully still sleeping after his night on duty.’

  He had been avoiding looking directly at the Swede as he had spoken. But now he took a glance at him.

  He was sitting up straight on the bed.

  One quick look at his watch. Not far short of one o’clock before we get to Kamathipura, even if I persuade him on to his feet this moment.

  Risk everything.

  ‘Axel, will you come with me there now? I am needing somewhat of support.’

  The big firinghi stood up, went like a leaden-legged giant towards the door.

  But it turned out that Ghote’s troubles were not over yet.

  ‘Wait,’ Axel Svensson said as the lift doors opened on to the hotel lobby.

  ‘Yes, yes? What it is?’

  ‘Money, my friend. I was telling you, I spent every last rupee I had getting back here by taxi. I cannot come out without getting some more. It will take only a few minutes.’

  ‘But, Axel, I have money. If you need any I can let you have something.’

  ‘No, no, my friend. In a strange country I do not dare go about without a full wallet. I would not feel safe.’

  Ghote thought of arguing. All right, money in one’s pocket was like a riot shield if some unexpected assault happened, whether physical or an attack on one’s peace of mind. But it was not everything.

  Yet one look at the fixed expression on the Swede’s face and he realized it would be quicker not to argue.

  Only, the few minutes the Swede had said it would take to cash a traveller’s cheque were in the end a good deal longer than that. He had failed to reckon with the coils of bureaucracy.

  So when they got out of their taxi in Sukhlaji Street, it was already several minutes after one o’clock. Heartlessly, Ghote took the still pale-faced Swede at a run towards the narrow slime-running galli in which Victor Masters’ cement-walled refuge lay. Yes, the firinghi had had a mentally exhausting morning. But, if Masters was one of those people who needed very little sleep, he might wake up at any moment.

  They reached the galli entrance. Ghote swung round to look into it.

  And saw Pinky Dinkarrao sitting slumped in the inch-deep filth, her face as pale as the Swede’s had been.

  The wooden door of the room where they had left Victor Masters was swinging back on its hinges.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘Madam,’ Ghote called to Pinky Dinkarrao, ‘what has happened?’

  But he knew in an instant. The curiosity-consumed journalist had, of course, attempted to steal a march on him and had come back to Masters’ refuge early. Although he had himself attempted to get back to Masters an hour before Pinky, he still felt furious. He should have known. He should have damn well known. But somehow he had never been able to believe the extent to which anyone with a journalist’s prying itch would go in order to learn a secret.

  He turned now to Axel Svensson, standing gaping beside him.

  ‘Do not mess your shoes, and your trousers also,’ he said, ‘by coming into this galli. Go back down to Sukhlaji Street and find a taxi. Miss Dinkarrao will need same.’

  Then he plunged into the galli, telling himself he had in his day been in yet filthier places. In a few strides he reached Pinky Dinkarrao and pulled her, tear-stained, to her feet.

  ‘If you were being fool enough to leave the field open,’ she said, ‘I was not going to be so fair-play as to wait till you had got your answers before asking that devil my questions.’

  ‘Very well. But what answers were you getting?’

  She laughed.

  ‘A filthy wet behind, Inspector. That was all the answer I got. And I hope it pleases you.’

  ‘Well, I must consider you were paid out for your journalist’s trick. But tell me exactly what was happening.’

  He did not expect to learn anything that would retrieve the situation. But he felt he must at least try.

  ‘W
hat happened? Well, your fellow was not as much of a sleeper as you thought. By the time I had got here he had already packed up all his belongings and had an old scavenger woman clearing out everything left in the place.’

  That came to Ghote as another blow. Had Masters taken flight because he had seen that he was being shadowed? Had he given the fellow warning? But no. No, he had not been seen. He had been, if anything, too cautious in trailing him. That was why he had lost him yesterday. And earlier this morning, when he had been using Pinky, even less could Masters have suspected anything. So why then had he decided to leave the room he had been so anxious not to let anyone know about? No answer came to mind. But it was something to think about. Definitely.

  He turned and looked in at the room.

  It had been stripped down right to its flaking lime-washed walls. Everything that had ever been in it had been taken away with all the thoroughness of an invading horde cleansing a newly conquered territory.

  He stepped inside and gave those walls a thorough inspection. People wrote things on walls, telephone numbers, addresses, reminders. Victor Masters had written nothing. At every point all that came up was, once more, secrecy. Secrecy, secrecy, secrecy.

  He went back to Pinky, now standing at the end of the galli trying both not to touch any contaminated part of her soaked sari and to wring out of it every trace of the galli’s slime.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘we would put you in a taxi in two-three minutes only. But first finish telling what happened. There may be some clue there.’

  ‘No, there won’t. It was all over too soon.’

  She gave a wry smile.

  ‘The fact is that it was my fault from the very beginning,’ she went on. ‘I was not going to tell you this. But yesterday before I saw you I had some not very nice visitors to my office. They were what made me late coming to the Badshah, gentlemen very firmly pointing out that what I was writing about Yeshwant was, to their minds, insulting Shivaji Maharaj. I imagine you know where they came from.’