Go West, Inspector Ghote
Page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
GO WEST, INSPECTOR GHOTE
H. R. F. Keating
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First published in Great Britain in 1981 by Collins Crime Club.
This eBook edition first published in 2020 by Severn House Digital,
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.
Copyright © 1981 by H. R. F. Keating.
Introduction copyright © 2020 by Vaseem Khan.
The right of H. R. F. Keating to be identified as the author of this work and the right of Vaseem Khan to be identified as the author of the introduction has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0396-0 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
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INTRODUCTION
Sitting on my bookshelf in my east London study is a twenty-year-old and somewhat dog-eared copy of The Perfect Murder. Some of the pages are marked by my own all but illegible scribbles, others are crinkled by a combination of damp and rainwater; not just any rain, mind you, but honest-to-goodness monsoon rain. I bought the book from a roadside seller while living in Mumbai in my twenties, the sort of grinning, roadside sprite that is as much in evidence in H.R.F. Keating’s 1960s vision of India as he was in the India I found myself in. I’d gone there in 1997 to work as a management consultant, and ended up spending ten wonderful years ‘in-country’. My parents hailed from the subcontinent but I’d grown up in Thatcher’s Britain – all I knew of India came from hazy memories handed down to me by my father (he’d been unceremoniously shunted across the newly-created border to Pakistan as a child during Partition) and bits and pieces I’d gleaned from Bollywood movies.
The India that I discovered was a nation on the cusp of transformation, a country beginning the journey from a semi-industrialised agrarian economy – the post-colonial India that Keating introduced to us decades earlier and that had largely stagnated since – to the status, today, of superpower-in-waiting. A country of swamis and snake charmers – as it had always been – but now, increasingly, a country of call-centres and coffee shops, of shopping malls and software firms, of MTV and McDonald’s. A country that Inspector Ghote would find both recognisable and wholly beyond his imagining.
By the time I returned to the UK, a decade later, I had already decided that I would encapsulate those incredible memories of India into a novel. The result was The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, the first in my Baby Ganesh Agency series. These crime stories, featuring a policeman forced into early retirement from the Mumbai police service and subsequently compelled to ‘adopt’ a one-year-old baby elephant, are my attempt to chronicle the tumultuous landscape of the India that I observed first-hand. Five novels and two novellas in the series later, I can admit that these tales of the subcontinent owe a debt to H.R.F. Keating’s Inspector Ghote series.
Back when I was casting around for a suitable template upon which to base The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, my eye alighted on that old copy of The Perfect Murder. I had already had the idea of a policeman who inherits a baby elephant, but I was seeking inspiration that such a work – a crime novel set on the subcontinent – might find an audience. The modern publishing industry was not prone to experimentation, or so my investigations at the time informed me.
As I reread Keating’s novel and recalled the success that his series had enjoyed, I was emboldened. Two years later I completed my manuscript and whizzed it off to a small selection of agents. The rest, as they say, is history.
My protagonist, Inspector Ashwin Chopra, could not be more different to Inspector Ghote. Whereas Ghote is a timid, sometimes obsequious fellow, often forced to bend to the prevailing winds of authority, Chopra is a rigid, bristly-moustachioed man, unfailingly honest, and intractably unyielding. And yet in their DNA we find a common gene – an unwavering commitment to that dark flame that flickers so elusively on the subcontinent – justice. For India is a place where justice is often at the mercy of those with wealth and power. This did not sit well with Ghote, and neither does it sit well with Chopra.
Both Keating and I set out to bring to life these two policemen and the city that they inhabit – Bombay/Mumbai – India’s city of dreams. Yet the respective roads that we travelled to do so could not have been more different. I spent ten years living and working in India; Keating only visited India for the first time a decade after The Perfect Murder was published.
That being the case, one might rightly ask why he chose the subcontinent as his muse in the first place? The answer: he picked up an atlas, flicked through it, and randomly chanced upon a map of India. From such moments of serendipity are legends born.
The novel that Keating subsequently wrote was published in 1964 and entitled The Perfect Murder. It featured Inspector Ganesh Ghote (pronounced Goh-té) of what was then known as the Bombay crime branch, a detective of considerable resourcefulness and tenacity. Ghote is not your typical western policeman. There is little of the maverick about him, no melodrama, no bitter divorces in his past (he is dedicated to his wife Protima), no hard-charging, hard-drinking machismo. He is a minor cog within a vast engine of bureaucracy and at the same time accepts this and chafes against it. He is set above the common man – by virtue of his uniform – and yet condemned to forever belong to the lower echelons of that vast stratified populace that gives India such colour and depth. Time and again in these immensely readable novels we see Ghote at the mercy of bombastic senior officers, villainous landlords and wealthy industrialists. In the face of abuse, obstacles and evil machinations, Ghote remains undeterred, finding his way to resolution in every case through a combination of understated intellect and quiet bloody-mindedness. When asked about the genesis of his seminal character, Keating would later reply, ‘Inspector Ghote came to me in a single flash: I pictured him exactly as he was, transposed as it were by some magic arc from Bombay to London. It was a tremendous piece of luck really, because I don’t think Inspector Ghote will now ever die. At least he’ll live as long as I do.’
Prophetic words. The Perfect Murder has met with enduring success. Upon publication it won the Crime Writers’ Association’s
Gold Dagger in the UK and claimed an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Keating was on his way. And after twenty-five wonderful books and a short story collection, Inspector Ghote has joined the pantheon of great sleuths: Holmes, Poirot, Maigret. In his own way, Ghote has that shimmering of Golden Age stardust about him.
The first Ghote arrived more than half a century ago. The world has changed since then and literary sensibilities have moved with the times. Today, controversies abound under the banner of ‘cultural appropriation’, some justified, others perhaps trumpeted beyond the merits of the case by vested interests. Seasoned literary commentators and social media trolls alike are quick to pronounce judgment on writers they feel have not earned the right to depict a particular lived experience. No doubt they would make much of the fact that H.R.F. Keating, by his own admission, knew very little about India when he began researching these novels. His portrayals of India and Indians might offend some, an example of what they might term post-colonial hubris.
I think this is missing the point. That was a different era, with different dynamics at work. Yes, there will be some who find offence merely in the fact that a middle-aged white man who had never been to India should achieve literary acclaim for novels set in the country. Personally, I believe that writers must have the licence to write that which inspires them. Whilst diversity and cultural authenticity in publishing is something I fervently believe in – for obvious reasons – I will also stand by the right of authors to be authors, that is, to journey on those fantastical oceans of the imagination that make writing such an enjoyable endeavour. For me the key to all such quasi-moral quandaries is whether or not an author has treated his subject matter with respect and empathy. And in his treatment of the subcontinent and its people Keating did more than simply create a series of intriguing crime novels. He brought the India of that time – in all its grit and glory – to the attention of the wider world.
We only have to look at how appreciative Indian readers themselves were of his portrayal.
In a 1981 article for India Today (updated in 2014), Sunil Sethi tells the story of Keating’s third visit to Bombay. He is mildly astonished when a young woman, a fan of his books, approaches him to express her admiration. Keating, Sethi tells us, can’t quite believe the reception he received in India: ‘There you are quietly writing away at your desk, and you produce this little book. Your wife likes it, but she’s an interested party. Your agent approves, but he’s also an interested party. Then you come 5,000 miles from home, and people stop you on street-corners to tell you how much they love reading your books. Isn’t it wonderful?’
Of course, the country has changed dramatically since then. I wonder what Keating would make of this modern India? And what would modern Indians make of him and his work? More importantly, how would Ghote fare? I have a feeling that the inspector, a beacon of decency in a sometimes indecent world, would find himself quite at home as India continues its struggle to undo millennia of entrenched social attitudes: corruption, inequality, nepotism, and the debilitating effects of the caste system.
Ultimately, as a lifelong crime reader and now a relatively seasoned writer in the genre, I believe that there is nothing so likeable in the annals of crime fiction as an honourable detective. And in Ghote we find just such a man, a man for the times in which we live.
Vaseem Khan
London, 2020
ONE
The man’s office was enormous. Inspector Ghote, at the door, stood stock still unable for a moment to take a step forward so overwhelming was the effect.
Even its occupant, at whose urgent request he was there, seemed shrunk into insignificance behind his huge, carved table-desk at the far end. Yes, even Mr. Ranjee Shahani, the crorepati, the “magnate” as the English-language newspapers called him, the head of Shahani Enterprises itself, was dwarfed here.
But why had this man, this magnate, requested the presence of a simple inspector of the Bombay C.I.D.? And so urgently? And why had it been that nothing could be told him about the reason for the request?
Ghote drew in a breath, still without setting foot on the first of two vast carpets that lay between him and the crorepati’s huge table-desk, and the very air he sucked in seemed a different substance from the damp, sullen atmosphere of end-of-monsoon Bombay outside. It was air-conditioned to a chilliness that put him in mind of the snow-crowned Himalayas.
“Mr. Shahani? It is Inspector Ghote.”
He wished violently that his voice had sounded less dry in the back of his throat.
The magnate, the crorepati, there at the far end of the huge room, lowered his head in slight acknowledgement.
“Yes,” he said. “It was Inspector Ghote.”
Was? It was Inspector Ghote? Why, why “was” and not “is”?
“Come, Inspector.”
Ghote plunged onto the carpet in front of him, a softly shining expanse of pale, marked-at-a-touch fawn with mysteriously contorted bluish dragons disporting over it, fetched at some time long past from Ancient China. Dimly, as he advanced, he was aware of the walls of this twenty-five-storey-high paradise, great areas of slatted wooden blinds that turned to cool dimness the harsh sunlight striking at the floor-to-ceiling windows behind. Massive earthenware tubs and fat sagging baskets held green plants reaching up to the very top of the airy room or tumbling in lush cascades to its floor.
Behind the desk with its legs carved into the shape of yet more dragons, sharp-clawed and vigilant now, the small crouched figure of Mr. Ranjee Shahani watched him in unbroken silence.
He stepped off the first carpet, on to the second, as big, as pale, as dragon-writhing. He squared his bony shoulders in a sudden access of resolution.
But why, oh why, did this have to be the day he had put on his oldest, thinnest shirt, the white one with the wiggly red squares?
And now at last he was in front of the crorepati’s desk, that huge glinting rectangle of highly polished wood edged with a band of intricate carving, its surface broken only by a gold-tooled leather blotter—but that must be at least five feet long and three wide—a telephone in dully gleaming gold on the right and a paan-box in equally solid gold on the left.
He brought his eyes up to look straight at the crorepati. Framed by his tall, leather-backed chair, Mr. Shahani sat unmoving, a well-fleshed bullfrog pensive over which ignorant fly next to snap up.
“Sir?” Ghote said firmly.
“Ah, yes. Yes. Well, I have spoken to my very good friend the Minister for Police Affairs and Cultural Activities, and he told me that if I am wanting a C.I.D. wallah with three-four weeks’ leave due, then it was Inspector Ghote I must ask for.”
Yes, Ghote acknowledged with an inward foreboding, it was true that he had accumulated at least four weeks’ time off-duty—overdue annual leave, casual leave and leave in lieu of extra days worked. Next week he was due to begin using up a good deal of it. To go with Protima and little Ved, before school began again, to Banares, most ancient and most holy of all the cities of India.
And now it looked as though that long-awaited trip was about to be cancelled. Influential Mr. Ranjee Shahani had asked for a C.I.D. man with plenty of free time at his disposal.
Into Ghote’s head there flashed contradictory emotions. To be chosen for whatever task it was that this most important person wanted performed: It was a mark of trust, of high trust. To have to perform whatever task it was: It could well prove beyond his powers, beyond anyone’s powers, and then …
And, another thing, and worse. Banares. It was not where he himself would have chosen to go to shrug off for a little the burden of combating crime in swarming, heat-oppressed Bombay. Banares was Protima’s choice of place, and she had made it one on which there rested the whole state of their life together. If he was going to reject her long-cherished yearning to step into the waters of Holy Ganges at their holiest point, then, she had declared, she would know finally that their marriage was no longer the union of two souls it had so clearly been in
its first months when they had come to love each other. If she did not get to Banares this time, she had said—well, shouted actually—she would know they were linked only in a dust-dry contract, for him to provide a roof, food and clothes and for her to cook that food, mend and get washed those clothes, order what lay beneath that roof.
Inspector Ghote licked his dry lips.
“Sir—sir, what is it that I can do for you?” he asked.
The crorepati did not reply immediately. And when he did it was in a slow, thoughtful tone.
“Inspector, what I would say to you is altogether most confidential. Nothing of it is to be spoken to any other person whatsoever. I would not want to have to mention you after to my very, very good friend, the Minister for Police Affairs. Not one word beyond these walls. Ever.”
Ghote let his eyes flick swiftly away to the areas of glass shaded by their smart, slatted blinds and lush green plants. He felt a hot, harsh wind of anger rise up within him at the crudeness of the crorepati’s threat. He would have liked to let it sear out.
“Not a word, of course, Shahani, sahib,” he made himself murmur discreetly.
“Inspector, I am a poor man.”
Ghote fixed his eyes firmly on the unblemished white paper in the huge leather-tooled blotter at the desk’s centre rather than let them stray for even the shortest betraying instant to the gold-plated telephone or the solid gold paan-box.
He waited.
“Inspector,” Ranjee Shahani went on with a long sigh, “some of the world’s goods I have. I have earned and earned them with the labours of my head. But in one thing, Inspector, I am altogether lacking.”
Ghote knew that he was not expected to ask what this one thing was. When Ranjee Shahani was ready to disclose it he would do so.
Abruptly, the crorepati put his two pudgy little hands down flat on the unsullied blotting-paper in front of him.
“Inspector, I am a man without sons. Almost I am a man without children. I have one daughter only. One daughter only.”