‘To Andheri,’ he said. ‘Where in Andheri?’
‘Inspector, I was not liking to ask. That man is not someone you ask his business. That I am knowing.’
True, Victor Masters, of the hunched shoulders, the hunched face, was not a person you asked unnecessary questions.
‘Andheri?’ he said. ‘Just only that?’
‘Yes, Inspector. I swear. I swear. Just only that.’
Ghote tossed the man’s knife down a few feet away and turned to go.
A grey-faced Axel Svensson was standing behind him.
‘Ganesh. My friend. You wounded him. You drew blood.’
Ghote sadly shook his head. The firinghi had a lot to learn about life in India.
‘Axel, a prick only. And the fellow told me something at least. Victor Masters must be somewhere in Andheri. Some luck I have had.’
Yet as, for the second time, Axel Svensson’s taxi brought Ghote just after nightfall to densely packed Andheri, he thought to himself that he had not had any great piece of luck. Yes, almost certainly Victor Masters was somewhere in the area. But it was a big enough area, almost a small town in itself. So how could he track the man down? And with eight hours or more of Mr Kabir’s forty-eight already used up.
‘Well,’ Axel Svensson said, with a cheerfulness Ghote found purely irritating, ‘at least this time when we are going to whatever this place is called it isn’t raining.’
‘Axel, the place is Andheri,’ he snapped. ‘Andheri. Where I told you the colonies for rail workers are.’
Rail workers, he thought suddenly.
Something else about rail workers and Victor Masters I heard somewh— Yes. Yes, that is it. Yeshwant told us the security guard she bribed said the fellow was always using the twenty-four-hour clock, and must have been in police, army or railways. No trace in army and police records. So can he be ex-Indian Railways? After all, an Anglo-Indian like many …
If so – his mind worked rapidly – if so, then it may just be possible he belongs, or has belonged, to that club for retired railmen where, yes, Miss Ivy Cooper was saying her father had long ago been secretary.
It was a chance. It was the barest of chances. But it was at least something to pursue.
‘Come along,’ he said to the Swede.
‘But where, Ganesh? Where to?’
‘To be finding, if I can, the railway retirees club. If Victor Masters was ever a member, they may have his address. And he may be at that place.’
A spark of joy, hunter’s joy, lit up the Swede’s big face.
But before long it was to be extinguished.
They found the club, in the way any address in the city is found, by asking and asking and asking. But when they reached it at last they saw a semi-derelict building. On its paint-flaked green door there was a faded yellowish card with written on it, in ink that had turned a dull shade of purple, just one word: Closed.
‘But— But what does that mean?’ Axel Svensson asked, peering at the word. ‘Does it mean this place is closed for today? Or for some holiday? Or— Or for ever?’
‘Look at the place, look at it,’ Ghote answered, with a sharp note of bitterness. ‘Does it damn well look as if it is going to open tomorrow? Or next week? No. No, it is closed for ever. For ever.’
‘But can’t we … Well, can’t we— But there must be something we can do.’
Ghote was about to let out a savage reply. But then a thought came to him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, we can go and see Miss Ivy Cooper. We can ask her father if there has ever been in the retirees club one Victor Masters. Or even any other Masters, who might be a relation to our Victor.’
‘Yes, but Ganesh …’
He left his firinghi friend trailing after him as he made his way rapidly back through the ill-lit streets to the compound where they had seen Ivy Cooper’s old father playing his solitary, locked-in patience in the drizzling rain.
But tonight no one was sitting in the broken-backed peacock chair under the dying gul mohar tree. As soon as Ghote saw this, he made straight for the stairs up to Ivy Cooper’s flat, with Axel Svensson coming bewilderedly behind.
Miss Ivy Cooper, he thought, will not at all be welcoming the policewalla who was giving her one hard time before. But she must give me her help with her father. Otherwise all I would be able to do is to go here and there about Andheri, perhaps for days, hoping to come upon the man who may hold the key to the Ajmani murder. And Mr Kabir’s forty-eight hours will be up long before then.
He knocked at the door of the flat. When Ivy Cooper opened it there wafted out, not the smell of frying but a distinctly unpleasant odour. Nor did she look as much in charge as she had been before. She looked, in fact, as if she was attempting to cope without success with some disaster. Ruby-red spectacles nowhere in evidence, the signs of tears easily to be seen on her desperately plain pock-marked face, sweat patches dark at the underarms of her floral dress.
No, Ghote thought in a swirl of rage against life. The old man is dead. It must be that. Her father. And in that man’s head, if anything could have been got out of it, all the names of the members of that retirees club. With among them perhaps the name, and address also, of one Victor Masters. My last hope.
‘Madam, Miss Cooper,’ he stammered, ‘what has happened? It is your father?’
‘My father? God knows where the silly old fool is.’
So he is alive. And hope also. But what is then the problem that is making her so upset?
‘But, madam, you are in trouble? What it is?’
His questions had scarcely been sympathetic, but evidently Miss Cooper was going to take them as being so.
‘Oh, Inspector,’ she wailed. ‘It’s that damn man from the flat below. He’s come storming and swearing in here, like some creature from Mars on TV, telling me my drain is choked and the filth is coming into his bathroom. And what am I to do? I know nothing about drains and drainage. Yet there he is, right inside my place, shouting and swearing.’
And no sooner had she said those words than from further inside the flat there came a torrent of abuse, loud as gunfire.
‘Miss Copper,’ came the voice of the Swede from the balcony, ‘perhaps if I was to say a word to that gentleman he would at least stop all that noise.’
No, no, no, Ghote thought.
He foresaw such complications in the clash of cultures ahead – the shouting man was using as much Marathi as English – that he would be kept here far into the night trying to extricate the firinghi, if not having to prevent actual violence.
‘Madam,’ he said quickly to Ivy Cooper, ‘kindly allow myself to deal with your problem.’
She stepped aside, with a promptness that perturbed Ghote. But there was no getting out of it now.
He entered the flat and went through the hall, where not long ago he had broken down the last barriers in Ivy Cooper’s mind in his efforts to make her confess to feeding information to Yeshwant. In the dark back quarter of the little flat next to what he took to be the bathroom he made out – the hall tubelight was still intermittently flickering – a small fat man with a dab of a moustache, wearing nothing but the dhoti he had wrapped round his little jutting belly.
‘Damn disgrace. Bloody Anglo-Indians. No idea of cleanliness.’
The words were still spouting out.
‘Bhai sahib,’ Ghote greeted him. ‘Try to be calm only. I am sure all this problem can be dealt with.’
The tubby little man whirled round.
‘Oh, you are, are you? Then bloody well deal with it. Before I am committing one murder, yes?’
And, pushing past like an escaping black-haired pig, he rushed straight through the hall, where Ivy Cooper was standing gibbering at a perplexed Axel Svensson, and out into the night.
Then Ghote realized that there was nothing for it, if he wanted some collaboration from Pappubhai Chimanlal’s usually efficient secretary. He would have to see if he himself could do what her irate neighbour from downstairs had
told him to do. Deal with it.
Gingerly he opened the flimsy bathroom door. And at once he knew he had found the source of the trouble. The unpleasant smell pervading the flat bounced out at him at double strength.
He put his hand to his nose and clamped tight his nostrils.
Then, in the light of the feeblest of electric bulbs hanging above, he looked more carefully into the cramped space in front of him. There was a tap protruding from the wall, and dripping incessantly. There was a three-legged wooden stool, dirty with long use. There was a red plastic jug resting on the stool. And the low whitish cracks-crazed earthenware pan that occupied the whole floor area was awash to its very top with grey gunge, in which were floating various fragments of vegetables evidently from the dishes that were washed there.
He looked round for some sort of stick with which he could probe about for the choked drain and halt the flow of filthy water that was leaking away though the pan’s overflow. There was nothing.
He gritted his teeth, closed his lips tight and rolled up his right shirt-sleeve as far as it would go. Then, squatting down just outside, he plunged his hand into the greasy greyness and felt around. The immediate result was a yet nastier smell rising up.
But eventually, after swishing to and fro in the thick grey liquid – a long brownish piece of tamarind had stuck to his wrist – he located the drain. It was in the furthest corner of the crack-marked pan. Face contorted with disgust, he managed to get his fingernails under the rim of the drain’s metal sieve. He pulled it out, slimy with long congealed soap.
With two dull plopping explosions a couple of large bubbles now erupted from the depths of the drain.
For a minute, squatting there, Ghote waited. Perhaps now all the foul liquid would run safely away.
It did not.
He allowed himself to stand up for a moment to ease the strain on his thighs. Then, clamping his mouth yet more firmly shut, he squatted back down and thrust his hand, fingers extended, into the drainpipe. What they reached was the slimy remains of what he at once knew must be a rat.
He could not prevent himself bringing his hand out as if his fingers had encountered a nest of needles. But then he sucked in a breath and went into battle again. It had to be done. If he was to get any sense out of Ivy Cooper, he had to accomplish this task. However foul.
Working his fingers round the soft body, he eventually got enough of a grip on it to be able to try a cautious tug. For a long moment nothing happened. Then at last he felt a slight upward movement. Gently he kept up the hauling pressure. Quarter-inch by quarter-inch the rat’s body came up towards him. At last with a sliding rush it slipped totally clear.
At once the stinking grey water in the pan began running away, forming in a couple of seconds a sluggish whirlpool. Ghote watched it, half-fascinated, the slimy rat still clutched in his fingers. When at last the pan was empty he rose to his feet and dropped the rat into Miss Cooper’s red plastic jug.
‘Madam,’ he called back. ‘No problem.’
TWENTY
‘Where’s me dinner?’ As Ghote came back from making plentiful use of the bottle of Dettol which Ivy Cooper had provided, he heard the words bawled out from just outside the flat.
The old man, he thought. The old man here just when I am wanting to ask about Victor Masters, possible early retired Indian Railways employee, probable victim of blackmail by the killer of Anil Ajmani. My good deed rewarded.
If I can get answers out of him.
Ivy Cooper had opened the door of the flat.
‘Dinner,’ she said sharply. ‘You’ll be lucky if you get even a banana to put down your old throat.’
‘What d’you mean? Banana? Aren’t I entitled to better than that? What did I bring you up for, you slut, if it wasn’t to get me me dinner when I want it?’
At least, Ghote said to himself, the old man is more alert and alive than when I was seeing him last.
‘Miss Cooper,’ he said, stepping forward, ‘there are some questions I would like to ask your father.’
‘Questions?’ Ivy Cooper snapped. ‘You’ll be lucky to get even one answer. He’s not always as smart as this, you know. Most of the time he’s so far away there’s never any getting him back.’
‘But it is about his far-off days I am wanting to talk. The time when he was, isn’t it, Hon. Sec. of railway retirees club?’
‘Well, he was that all right. But let me tell you, you won’t get a word out of him about those days that makes one anna of sense.’
‘But, madam, it is a matter of great importance,’ the hulking form of Axel Svensson put in.
‘Well, if you say so, sir.’
Ivy Cooper seemed more than a little impressed by this intervention from a white face. She reached for her ruby-red spectacles from the sideboard, put them on and loudly explained to her father that ‘the nice gentleman from Home’ was going ask him a few questions.
‘Mr Cooper,’ Ghote said, usurping Axel Svensson’s place as soon as they were settled round the stained old table in the middle of the room, ‘I am wanting to find one Victor Masters who may once have been a member of your retirees club. Are you recalling that name?’
‘No.’
Is the old man just only being obstinate, the way he was before? Or is he truly not recognizing the name Victor Masters? And if he is not …
But he tried again.
‘Mr Cooper, Masters is a good Anglo-Indian name. Are you sure there was no one called that in your club?’
‘What you want to know for?’
Ah, this is better. He is just only remembering I am a policewalla, and he is reacting the way he did before. Bloody police, he said when he was playing his game of patience down in the compound there and I was stating my rank. So, now get round this one obstacle, and end of tunnel may be in sight.
He gave Ivy Cooper a look pleading for help. And, perhaps thinking of what he had done for her, she came to the rescue.
‘Dad, this gentleman’s been very kind to us. He unblocked the bathroom drain.’
‘Put a rat down it,’ the old man said, with a cracked laugh. ‘Bleeding pest. But I got him. Caught him with me own hands and shoved the bleeder down there head first. That finished him off, that did.’
Ghote was afraid this would bring his daughter’s fury down on the old man to the exclusion of everything else. But, no, she managed to hold her tongue.
‘So, come on, Dad. Fair’s fair. Tell the gentlemen what they want to know.’
The old man give her a mutinous look.
‘If I can’t, I can’t.’
‘But, Dad, you can. You know the names of every one of those members. You’ve gone reeling them out to me often enough.’
‘Masters,’ the old man snapped out. ‘Did you ever hear me once say Masters?’
‘How can I remember when there are so many of them? Come on, Dad, think. Begin from the beginning, if you like. Alexander, Atkins … That’s how it goes, doesn’t it?’
‘What if it does? It doesn’t get to Masters. Not ever. I’m telling you that.’
Ivy Cooper looked at Ghote and shrugged.
‘I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere,’ she said. ‘And he’s as spry now as he’s been for weeks. For months.’
Ghote let despondency wash over him.
So near, perhaps. And so far. What chance is there now of finding Victor Masters? And in much less than forty-eight hours Mr Kabir will be telling me I am no longer a Crime Branch officer.
Axel Svensson, silent since they had settled round the table, suddenly leaned forward, remembering perhaps his previous role as interpreter to Ghote of Anglo-Indian speech.
‘Mr Cooper,’ he asked, painfully slowly and precisely. ‘Do you recall a certain Victor Masters?’
‘Told your mate, I never.’
‘But are you sure? A man with a funny twisted jaw and hunched-up shoulders?’
‘Oh, him.’
‘What? What? You know that man?’ Ghote could not contain
his excitement.
‘Course I do. That’s Victor Hinks, I’d know his ugly mug anywhere, twisted jaw an’ all. Everybody knows him. The bastard. Sacked from the railway, and then wanted to join the club all the same. We wouldn’t have him. Course we wouldn’t. I said to him …’
He lapsed then into silence and the faraway look came into his eyes, the look Ghote had seen in the dim rainy light of the compound and had all but failed to penetrate. He knew now that they had been only just in time. Old Mr Cooper was back in the retirees club, years ago, fighting an ancient battle. Lost to them.
He turned to Axel Svensson.
‘Well done. Well done, Axel,’ he said. ‘Shabash. We know now that Masters was never that man’s name. No wonder he was wanting to hide every fact in his life. He was going under alias. I am not at all able to think yet why he has done that. But it is certain that is what he has been doing. It is accounting for a lot.’
He broke off as he realized Ivy Cooper was sitting there beside her dreaming father, all ears.
‘You want to find that fellow?’ she asked abruptly.
‘You … you are knowing him? Knowing where he stays?’
The blood began to run through Ghote’s veins as swiftly as a Himalayan torrent.
‘Do I know where he lives?’ Ivy Cooper gave him an ironic grin. ‘I do, and I don’t. I know he deserted his wife and kids. Everyone talked about it. And as far as I know he hasn’t been seen or heard of from that day to this.’
Yes, Ghote thought. That fits. For some reason, some secret reason, the man has been living in that room in Kamathipura all that time. And for some time past he has been out each night at Shanti Niwas as Victor Masters, the in-charge of the security team.
‘But,’ he asked Ivy Cooper, ‘you are knowing his wife’s address?’
‘No. No, I don’t. I only knew her to talk to when we met in the market, or somewhere like that. She stays somewhere over towards Jogeshwari Station.’
With that Ghote had to be content.
As they went thumping down the wooden stairs to the compound, Ghote had intended to go looking straight away for Victor Masters’ wife. But, in the dark at the stairs’ foot, he decided, hot on the trail as they were, that he could afford to let pass perhaps another eight of the hours Mr Kabir had allowed him. The trouble he had got into at the Koli shop in Colaba when, as his old mentor Gross’s Criminal Investigation used to say, he had been ‘an expeditious investigator’ was still raw in his mind. And there was, in any case, not much hope of achieving anything till the next day.
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