So he had taken Axel Svensson back to the Taj, thanked him two or three times for his intervention that had at the last moment produced the true name of Victor Masters, promised him he would take him to Andheri the next day and at last had made his way home.
To find, once more, his wife and son sitting glaring at each other with the TV, evidently once more a bone of contention, switched into silence.
He had known he ought to play the peacemaker. But, his head full of his new-made discovery, its implications whirring round to the exclusion of everything else, he just managed to grunt out, ‘Tired, going to bed,’ and had left them to it.
But next morning, accompanied by his Swedish shadow, he was back bright and early, not in Andheri but in nearby Jogeshwari. And with an idea in his head, the mysteriously arriving product of the thoughts trapped there during the night. Ivy Cooper had mentioned that Victor Masters had left his wife and kids. But those kids would, in all probability, go to school, and there was a school near Jogeshwari Station. So it should be possible to find them. Then he should be able discover where precisely they lived. And, with luck and patience, whether their father had reappeared at home as suddenly as he had left his hideout in Kamathipura.
Patience he was in full possession of as they arrived by train at Jogeshwari. Luck, it seemed, was another matter. At the school Ghote’s immediate inquiry revealed that the Hinks children, Albert, six, and Gloria, seven, were, yes, pupils there. But both were absent.
‘They must be ill,’ said the deputy headmistress, solid of face, heavy hornrims, good-quality cotton sari. ‘Tomorrow they will bring the mother’s letter.’
‘Then can you let me have their address?’ Ghote asked. ‘It is the mother I am wanting to see.’
‘It is our policy not to give out addresses.’
Ghote bit his underlip.
‘But the children’s teacher?’ he asked. ‘Is one lady teaching both of them? Perhaps I would be able to see her.’
‘At this hour she should be in her classroom. You cannot go breaking in there.’
Ghote was on the point of flourishing his identity as a Crime Branch officer, hesitating only because he knew he was still Sam Marlowe rather than Inspector Ghote. But then the deputy headmistress relented.
‘However, I remember now Mrs Phanse is also absent. But you may find her at the hostel where she stays. She is in fear of a drunken husband and is often subject to fits of – what shall I say? – of withdrawal. But she is an excellent teacher, and so when she is struck down in that way we send her back to the hostel where she stays. You may be able to see her there.’
The hostel address, apparently, was not a closely guarded secret. Ghote, with Axel Svensson slogging along beside him, reached the place after a ten-minute march through the now crowded, sun-battered streets. The door was standing open and they advanced into the dark hallway beyond. Cautious after his last venture out of the sun and into a dim interior, Ghote hesitated. But in a moment he had made out that no danger faced him. Instead, he saw at the far end of the hallway a peon sitting at a rough wooden table deeply absorbed in some task.
It was only when he had gone forward a step or two more, still peering in the comparative darkness, that he made out what the absorbing task was. The various objects that were the peon’s tools of his trade, a paste-pot for doubly sealing envelopes, a tobacco tin holding mixed pins and paperclips, three fat office pencils, a hank of cotton for wrapping small parcels, an ink-bottle, had been arranged as a sort of obstacle course. And running this course, or rather struggling along it, was a fat brown cockroach trying to reach what looked like a piece of cooked carrot being dangled by the peon from a short length of cotton.
Something about the carrot dangler’s faraway absorption kept Ghote, and now Axel Svensson at his elbow, silently watching the man deep in a world of his own. The cockroach blunderingly negotiated the last obstacle but one, the tin of pins and paperclips. And then Ghote saw the peon bring up his other hand from beneath the table, grasping between finger and thumb one of his long office pins. He poised it over the cockroach, savouring the fact that, just as paradise seemed in sight for it, doom was to fall.
‘No,’ shouted Axel Svensson.
The peon dropped pin and carrot. The cockroach, in utter confusion, scuttled to the table edge and fell off. Ghote stepped smartly forward.
‘Police,’ he said. ‘To see one Mrs Phanse.’
The peon blinked, open-mouthed.
‘Mrs Phanse?’ he said at last. ‘Phanse like phanse, the jack-fruit. Yes. Yes, she is here. Room 17, first floor. Like jack-fruit, that is what we are always saying.’
Without any further delay, Ghote led Axel Svensson off. All very well for him, god-like, to have saved the cockroach. But cockroaches were pests. Compassion should go only so far.
Room 17. He knocked at its door.
‘Come in,’ a voice called.
Mrs Phanse, still dressed, it appeared, in the old washed-out sari she wore at night, was sitting on the only chair the bare room possessed, drawn up to its one narrow window.
She scrambled to her feet when she saw the two strangers.
‘What— What is it?’ she said, her voice rising in panic. ‘You are not wanting me? Not from— From him? From my husband? I have left him, you know. Left him for ever.’
‘Mrs Phanse,’ Ghote replied, as calmly as he could, ‘they were giving us your address at the school. I am a police officer. This is Mr Svensson, an observer from Sweden. I have some questions I wish to ask you, nothing to do with any husband whatsoever.’
‘No, madam, no, certainly not,’ Axel Svensson put in with lumbering eagerness.
‘Yes? Then what is it? What do you want to ask me? I am safe here. Safe. In the hostel. This is a women’s area. You should not be coming pushing in.’
‘Madam,’ Ghote said, ‘we are here in pursuance of duty. It is quite right for us to come. All we are doing is trying and attempting to find one Mrs Hinks, the mother of Albert and Gloria in your class at the school.’
Then, even as he said the words, something stirred in his mind. Hinks. Hinks. He had heard someone speak about a Hinks, and before Axel Svensson had brought to light the fact that Victor Masters was Victor Hinks. Only, it had not been a Victor—
Yes. Yes, this is it. Adik, in praising his own first-class work out at Shanti Niwas, had said Anil Ajmani’s PA before the present one had been killed in some brawl six years ago. And his name was Vincent Hinks. So … so can that man be Victor Hinks’s brother? Victor and Vincent, it was perfectly likely. And if so …
Abruptly he changed his line of questioning.
‘Madam, are you knowing anything of the Hinks family? The father is one Victor Hinks, yes? Madam, did he once have a brother going by the name of Vincent, Vincent Hinks?’
And, to his total surprise, a deep blush came up on Mrs Phanse’s strained face.
‘Vincent,’ she murmured, ‘my poor Vincent.’
She looked straight at Ghote.
‘Once I was in love with Vincent Hinks,’ she said. ‘Before— Before I was married to— To that nasty drunk. In love, yes. He was so handsome, so fair and so clever too. He could do anything. No wonder everybody loved and admired him. Even his ugly brother. But he— He was in love with that rich girl where he was personal assistant. It was going to be a love-match. Then— You are knowing Vincent was killed, yes?’
‘Yes. Yes, madam, I am knowing such. It was in some fight.’
‘Oh, no, Inspector, it was not.’
‘Not?’
‘No. No, Vincent was murdered. And I can tell you who was murdering him, if not with his own hands, with the aid of a hired supari using some horrible knife, like a fish knife. It was his boss. His boss, Mr Anil Ajmani, Ajmani Air-Conditioning.’
‘Madam,’ Ghote said hurriedly, the thoughts in his head darting and linking and twisting round too fast to capture. ‘I see you are very much in distress. We will take leave now. And thank you.’
Whe
n he had ushered out a bewildered Axel Svensson, he took him by the arm and marched him three or four yards down the corridor.
‘Axel,’ he said, ‘I have something to tell. I am knowing now why Victor Hinks was taking alias as Victor Masters. The murderer of Anil Ajmani is not the man who was blackmailing Victor Masters to keep locked up the dogs at Shanti Niwas. No, the murderer is no one else but Victor Hinks, alias Victor Masters, himself.’
TWENTY-ONE
‘Mr Kabir, sir,’ Inspector Ghote said. ‘There is a matter I have to inform you.’
Yes, he thought, in a flash of instant reevaluation. Yes, now I have done it. I am about to tell Mr Kabir that everything his top team was working at over at Shanti Niwas, that protected-protected zone of safety Anil Ajmani was building round himself, was just only one bloody waste of time. And will he believe me? Have I done enough to make certain he will? Am I right even?
‘You’re going to tell me you’ve laid that damn Yeshwant by the heels at last, Inspector?’
‘No, sir, no. Sir, it is the Ajmani case.’
‘Ajmani? That’s got nothing to do with you, Inspector. Do you mean to tell me you have been poking your nose in at Shanti Niwas instead of obeying my direct orders?’
‘Sir, yes. But, sir— Sir, it was by chance only, in course of Yeshwant inquiries, sir, that I was learning what I have.’
‘Inspector, it had better be something good and hard, or you’ll be finding yourself clearing your desk before another hour’s gone by.’
‘Yes, sir. I think it is good, sir, and hard also. Sir, I am able to name the murderer of Mr Anil Ajmani.’
There. Said. And now the task of proving it. And quickly. Or I will be finding, yes, myself clearing my desk, as he is saying. Perhaps also getting no other desk to be seated at.
‘Inspector—’
‘Sir, it is Mr Victor Masters, security in-charge at Shanti Niwas.’
‘Oh, it is, is it, Inspector? So why do you think Mr Adik, who has been up at the house every day since the murder took place, has not told me this fellow committed the crime?’
Oh, it is all coming true. Just as I was forecasting and fearing. He is setting his mind one hundred per cent against whatsoever I may say.
‘Sir, it is this. Inspector Adik was not knowing what I have just only this morning at last found out.’
‘Oh, he wasn’t, wasn’t he? So, what is this piece of vital information you’ve got it into your head that you know and no one else does? Spit it out, man. Spit it out. If you can.’
Now, do it. Say it. Yes, spit same out. But spit all in one good piece. Or …
‘Yes, sir. Sir, it is that the said Victor Masters is not at all such. Sir, he is one Victor Hinks. And, sir, he was once having a brother, Vincent Hinks by name, who, sir, six years ago was murdered. Victim of supari killing.’
And not finished yet. Hardest part of all perhaps yet to come. Do it, say it. And wait for one damn explosion.
‘Sir, that killing was paid for by Shri Anil Ajmani himself.’
But Deputy Commissioner Kabir stayed silent.
Is he remembering and recalling facts about Mr Anil Ajmani, businessman who was building up air-conditioner empire by altogether ruthless means? Are facts, conveniently hidden but there to those who know, about union organizers who were killed in mysterious circumstances coming back into his mind? And other nefarious deeds also?
Time passed. Leaden time. A whole minute. More.
Then the Deputy Commissioner spoke again, sounding now somehow less fiercely British.
‘Inspector, you are sure of this? You’re sure of your facts? Sure beyond doubt?’
Am I? Yes, I was, or I was thinking I was. When I was facing prospect of Mr Kabir’s anger. But now it is different. He has taken in what I have said. He has remembered what he has. He has thought about same. And he is ready to believe, and to act on what I have said. But he is feeling he must be sure, doubly sure. And now, suddenly, I am asking myself if I have got it right. Or if in the end, somehow, I have got it all wrong.
But, no. No, no, no. I am right. I must be. This is the truth of what was happening that night at Shanti Niwas. It is.
‘Sir, yes. Yes, sir, I am one hundred per cent certain of circumstances. Sir, I was hearing this-all from the teacher of Victor Hinks’s children. She is well knowing whole family, sir, and some years past also she was believing Vincent Hinks was going to marry her. Sir, a first-class witness.’
Or is she?
Abruptly another streak of doubt shot like a lightning flash through Ghote’s mind.
Mrs Phanse – phanse like the jack-fruit – wasn’t she after all a woman who had to take leave from her school because of her troubled mind? Hadn’t he found her in that room at her hostel sitting lost to the real world around her? Locked in the only thoughts she could bear to think?
‘A first-class witness? Is she indeed? Well, we won’t go into why you were talking to her, not at the present moment. What I think we’d better do, if he’s still in the building, is to have Inspector Adik up.’
He reached for his internal telephone, barked out an inquiry, put the handset down.
‘He’s on his way.’
For several long minutes silence hung in the air in the big cabin, with its enormous wall-map of Bombay, its large, painted, pin-dotted board detailing the whereabouts of every single officer in Crime Branch. Only the whirring of the tall standing fan that kept Mr Kabir cool made itself evident.
Ghote stood there, at attention, forcing himself to keep his mind blank of all thought.
At last there came a brisk tap on the door and Adik entered, marched across to the desk, clicked heels.
‘Sir?’
‘Adik, Inspector Ghote here has just told me a certain fact, at least I hope for his sake it is a fact, which may materially alter the Ajmani investigation.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Tell him, Ghote.’
A gulp.
‘It is this, Adik bh— It is this, Inspector. I have been able to discover that the Shanti Niwas head of security is not at all one Victor Masters. That is, he is such, but he is going under false name. He is really Victor Hinks, brother of one Vincent Hinks who was, as you yourself were mentioning, Mr Anil Ajmani’s former PA. Killed in a brawl also you were saying. And I have found out that Ajmani sahib had good reasons for wanting end to life of said Vincent Hinks.’
‘This is true, Ghote?’
‘He tells me it is,’ Mr Kabir put in.
‘Then, DCP, this may be important.’
‘And, sir,’ Ghote broke in, feeling now he was being listened to with full attention both by Adik and Mr Kabir, ‘who only but the head of security at Shanti Niwas could have entered that house without causing those dogs, always prowling outside during hours of darkness, to make one barking hullabaloo?’
‘The dogs in the night-time,’ Mr Kabir said thoughtfully. ‘So, Ghote, you’re something of a Sherlock Holmes, eh?’
Ghote was baffled. Why should Mr Kabir suddenly call him as a Holmes? But much that Mr Kabir said had always baffled him.
‘No, sir, no,’ he ploughed on. ‘It is just that I was finding out certain things, and I was able to put together two, sir, and two.’
‘I don’t suppose Holmes ever claimed to be able to do much more than that, once he had obtained his data. So what else did your simple sum tell you, Inspector?’
‘Well, sir, I was happening to learn also that Mr Ajmani’s daughter, one of the Yeshwant victims I was interviewing, sir, now Mrs Latika Patel, wife of Mr R. K. Patel, MLA, was six-seven years ago contemplating one love-match. And, sir, it was with the altogether tall, handsome, clever and fair Vincent Hinks.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Inspector Adik broke in. ‘You have got the wrong man. I’ve never seen Vincent Hinks, after all killed some six-seven years past. But no one could say he can have been fair and handsome, however clever he may have been to rise up to be Anil Ajmani’s PA. Just look at the man you say is his brother
. Victor Masters is as ugly a devil as you could wish to see. The two cannot be sons of same father.’
Ghote felt an abrupt downward plunge of deflation. Is Adik right? And, if so, was Mrs Phanse altogether wrong after all?
But deflation lasted for no more than two seconds.
‘No,’ he exclaimed. ‘No, Adik, brothers do not have to look so much of alike. I have a Swedish friend, here in the city at this moment, a very tall and upstanding man. And he was telling he has a brother who is short almost to dwarf.’
‘Well, yes,’ Mr Kabir put in. ‘Brothers can look very different. Why, in my own family …’
He let the ramifications of his distinguished brahmin clan fade into anonymity.
‘So, you see,’ Ghote began again, once more inwardly triumphant, ‘Victor Hinks is having one strong motive for killing Mr Ajmani. He was believing that six-seven years ago Ajmani sahib, when he found his daughter was proposing to marry an Anglo-Indian from nowhere itself, gave instructions, and some goonda one night was knifing to death this Vincent Hinks. Sir, I believe it was with a fish knife.’
‘Like the one I myself found in the fountain at Shanti Niwas,’ Adik came in, staking a claim.
‘And like one I have seen in a Koli shop in Colaba where Victor Masters was a customer,’ Ghote added, seeing once again the shop-owner snatching from the wall a long fish knife and coming threateningly towards him.
‘Good man,’ Mr Kabir murmured.
‘And, yes,’ Ghote resumed, feeling now his two listeners were all ears. ‘Yes, Victor Hinks was worshipping his more clever and fair brother. I was told this with full details by Mrs Phanse. So when Victor came to believe his much worshipped brother had been killed at behest only of late Anil Ajmani in order to stop the marriage – Miss Latika was soon after married off to R. K. Patel, very big dowry, I expect – he was making up his mind and determining to take revenge. So he was disappearing from wife and family and taking new name, because he was not at all willing to pay for crime he was intending to commit. He was finding a room to stay at. It is in Kamathipura. I have seen it. And then he was finding job as security guard. He was working his way up, until not long ago he was becoming in-charge at Shanti Niwas. Then, now inside ring of security at that House of Peace, he soon saw how he would be able to reach Anil Ajmani in his den itself, with no one knowing how a murderer could have got through all the securities there.’
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