Go West, Inspector Ghote

by H. R. F. Keating

  But Ghote refused to let himself be impressed by that. There was nothing in that building for grown men nervously to finger guns about. The man who had died there had not lost his life in any way different from the forms violent death ordinarily took. He had not. He had not. No mysterious spirit was going to attempt to rush in on the scene of that death. Neither was one going to come roaring out, impervious to heavy bullets.

  This was a murder, or perhaps a suicide, like any other. It must be.

  Evidently, however, the sight of the two deputies had caused a massive train of thought to surface in Fred Hoskins’ jackal-fur-topped head.

  “Gan boy,” he said suddenly, laying a beef-red hand on Ghote’s elbow and bringing him to a halt in the passageway between Swami’s house and the dining-hall, just beside the half-mended bicycle that had so cheered him by its happy Indian-ness the first time he had set foot here.

  “Yes, Fred?”

  “Gan, it is my duty to inform you of a certain fact.”

  “Yes, Fred?”

  “I want you to know, Gan, that working alongside you, a foreigner and a member of an alien race, here in God’s own country, I realise that I have a very great responsibility.”

  “Yes, Fred.”

  “Gan, I am going to suggest you now take a fresh look at this whole case.”

  “Yes, Fred?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s become clear to me that you’re heading in the wrong direction. I didn’t tell you before, in case it might reflect on the skills and methods of the Bombay police force. But I feel it is my duty to let you know my opinions.”

  “Yes, Fred.”

  The huge private eye drew himself up to his greatest height. He plunged his thumbs into the wide black leather belt that cinched him in under his grain-sack of a belly.

  “Inspector Goat,” he said, “the person responsible for this case of Murder One is a man we already know. It’s not that clean-living girl we’ve just interviewed.”

  Ghote broke in. He knew as he did so that it would be useless. But some irrepressible prickliness in him produced the words before he could check them.

  “Fred, I have never said it is Miss Emily that we are looking for. Fred, at this moment I am on my way to talk to the young man, Brad, a person we have yet to interview.”

  “I regret to inform you, Gan boy, that you’re mistaking my intentions. That’s probably natural in an officer not accustomed to the operational methods of the Californian police forces. But you still don’t understand.”

  “I am sorry, Fred.”

  “I accept that apology, Gan, in the spirit in which it was given. And let me tell you I honour you for it. A man who has the intestinal fortitude to apologise when he knows he’s in the wrong will always have the respect of Fred J. Hoskins.”

  “But, Fred, you were saying …”

  Why could the fellow not get on with it? If they were going to go on standing here like this lecturing and receiving lecture, the business that reared up in front of him like a malignant, wide-spreading kikathorn hedge would never be beaten down. And, he suddenly realised, he held a conviction—had it only just been born in his head?—that there was an answer, a logical answer, to it. The riddle of Swami’s death did have a logical solution, however improbable it might prove to be. And weren’t the improbabilities human beings were capable of creating all too probable in any case?

  If only he could just get on with the business of seizing hold of all the necessary facts.

  “I was about to tell you, Gan, exactly why you’re going in the wrong direction. Point Number One: the swami was murdered. Point Number Two: he was murdered by one so-called Johnan-something-or-other. Point Number Three: the murder was carried out by means entirely alien to us here in the West. Point Number Five: those means only you understand, and I think you should concentrate on bringing these unAmerican methods to light.”

  For an instant Ghote thought of asking what had happened to Point Four. But instead he embarked, feeling himself pushing uphill an immense stone juggernaut wheel, on explaining how matters stood in his own estimation.

  “Fred, we have found nothing at all to prove that Johnananda killed Swami. He is only as much a suspect as Miss Emily or, I regret to say, Nirmala Shahani. And we have begun to see that Brad Lansing is perhaps more likely than any of them. Besides, also it is not at all impossible that Swami’s death was suicide.”

  If we could forget that knife that is not there, he added to himself.

  But he saw from the fixed expression planted on Fred Hoskins’ big, beef-red face that all his explanation had been time wasted.

  “Gan, it is very likely because of your unfamiliarity with our American way of speaking that you didn’t understand the most important words uttered by that sweet kid in your presence a few minutes ago.”

  He wished violently that he could snatch up the bicycle beside him and pedal off at full speed out of any chance of hearing anything more from this yammering giant of obstructiveness. But the machine’s front tyre was still dangling loosely round the wheel, its inner tube missing. This was not a time for miracles.

  “Yes, Fred,” he said. “What is it I have not understood?”

  “I will quote you her exact words, Gan. I owe you that. And you will thank me for my remarkable memory.”

  “Thank you, Fred. Already.”

  “These then were her exact words: ‘There are certain mysterious powers possessed only by Hindu Indians plus also certain individuals, namely John-whatsit, who have had the opportunity of visiting India.’ That was what she said, Gan.”

  Or not unless they’re like Johnananda and have been to India. Yes, Emily had said that. And it was true that, though the words had struck him, he had thrust them aside in his eagerness to follow the trail he had seen opening before him then. It could be, too, that the words were important enough. At the least they went clean contrary to his own opinion of Johnananda as a weakling Englishman making a poor attempt at playing swami.

  Yet even if Emily’s assessment of Johnananda might be more accurate than his own, blinded as he might have been by prejudice, did it mean that the Englishman was any more a likely suspect than he had been before? Did those words show that Johnananda had killed the swami by supernatural means? Clearly they did not go as far as that.

  He drew in a sharp breath.

  “Fred,” he said, “I have noted your opinion, and I would agree that those words of Miss Emily’s that you so accurately remembered had escaped my full attention. But, nevertheless, if only for the sake of elimination, I am now proceeding to interview Mr. Bradfield Lansing, Junior.”

  And he proceeded. He turned on his heel and marched off at a rapid pace over the softly springy pine-needle-coated ground.

  But Fred Hoskins followed.

  “Gan, I want you to know that I appreciate what you’re doing. You’re using the process we call elimination. You’re cutting out all the possibilities, no matter how wild they may be, before we home in on your target. That’s good thinking, Gan boy.”

  Ghote, marching down towards the Visitors’ Centre and Brad Lansing, decided he was not going to offer any thanks for the compliment.

  Fred Hoskins, long, meaty legs striding out, kept pace with him at his shoulder. And, pouring steadily on to his unprotected head, there came an unending waterfall of clacking noise.

  He tried the use of mental discipline to shut it out.

  “So you’ll have all the necessary information, I’ll give you a rundown on the principle of the retirement community, a system that’s been developed in the Golden State to a point where no other place can rival it. You know why I’m giving you this info?”

  “Because you believe Johnananda killed Swami to gain large financial benefits,” Ghote snapped, his mental shield having proved unavailing.

  “The reason is so you realise that Johnan-something murdered his predecessor so he could cash in.”

  “Yes, Fred.”

  If only the fellow would stop. If only it were
possible to be quiet and think. There must be questions to ask that, if put correctly, would bring to the forefront of his mind the answer he had suddenly felt that deep-down he already knew. Perhaps some of those questions he ought to be putting in just a few minutes’ time to young Brad. But even trying to think what they might be just now was like attempting to light a match while tumbling headlong down a river in full monsoon spate.

  “I guess in India you don’t see many retirement communities. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not criticising the Indian way of life. It’s a way you people have chosen, and you have to stick with that choice.”

  “No, Fred, we do not have retirement communities.”

  We are more sensible, he wanted to add. We keep our aged family members with us in the home. Where they enjoy being, and where we honour them for the age they have attained, where they pass on to us and to our children by the mere fact of their presence the knowledge of life and the wisdom that has come to them over the years.

  Instead, he tried lengthening his stride. The sooner he got to the Visitors’ Centre the sooner this battering downpour of words would cease.

  But Fred Hoskins’ long legs had no difficulty in keeping him right at his elbow.

  “When a man has come to the end of his working life, Gan, what he wants to do is play all the golf he never had time for when he had to worry about making enough money to be able to play golf whenever he wants. Not only golf, but bridge and canasta, tennis, or bowling even. Any or all of these are available to the retired person. Now, I’d like you to get this clear in your mind: a man doesn’t want to play golf if he’s gonna be interrupted by jerks with beer cans or with people of, ah, different racial origins from himself. That man wants peace. It’s his right.”

  There came a pause. But Ghote knew that making no comment would not prolong it.

  “Yes, Fred,” he said.

  “So enterprising real-estate corporations buy up big lots and build houses. Mansions, sometimes, equipped with every convenience to make life as comfortable and carefree as possible. Such corporations have naturally also included necessities like swimming pools, golf-courses, tennis-courts, country clubs, restaurants, shopping centres, and radio stations. And they’ve set up private peace-keeping forces, and their own private undertakers to provide such signs of respect as the motorcycle escort for the cortège.”

  It took Ghote some few moments to grasp from the unfamiliar word cortège just what this last phrase of Fred Hoskins’ deluge had meant. When he did so there flashed into his mind a picture. There was a raggedy procession of chanting, music-making mourners behind a two-pole bier on which, draped in white with face exposed and garlanded, lay the body of his own father on its way to the burning ghat and return of its exhausted flesh to the common matter out of which over the years it had been made.

  But he shook the image from his mind. He had a task in front of him. Brad, the disciple he had seen humiliated by Swami in front of everybody, how was he to approach him?

  From over his shoulder the clacking word-splurge poured on.

  But at last the Visitors’ Centre came in sight.

  Ghote flung a question back towards the looming private eye.

  “Fred, do you wish to be present when I am interviewing this young man?”

  “Yes, sir, I most certainly do.”

  In sudden silence Fred Hoskins followed him into the round, log-walled building. Its racks of floaty orange garments, its glass-fronted cupboards with their arrays of electronic meditation timers, folding meditation benches, and yoga pants (made in India) seemed at once familiar and from some far distant time, a time when he had been no more than an innocent seeker of a perhaps captive girl, deeply worried about how he would be able to cope with the giants who surrounded her, and their wily master.

  Now, however, instead of being empty of people, something that had momentarily encouraged him when his throbbing head had been all too unprepared to tackle even an ogre’s outrider, there sat at the central eight-sided table Bradfield Lansing, Junior, orange T-shirted, orange trousered, legs encased in clumping green rubber boots.

  “Oh,” Ghote said, pretending surprise, “here is the very person I was wanting to meet.”

  Young Brad looked up.

  “Me? You wanted to meet me? I guess I don’t exactly know who you are.”

  Ghote smiled. Ingratiatingly.

  “No, no, you would not at all know me. My name is Ghote. I am from India. From Bombay. I have come here actually at the request of the father of one of the disciples. He is very, very worried about what has been happening to her.”

  “I wouldn’t think he had any cause to worry. Anybody at the ashram couldn’t be in a better place.”

  “A better place?” Ghote let a pause hang for a moment. “Well, but please excuse me, only yesterday I was seeing what Swami did to you. That did not look very good to me.”

  A smile, a grin, lit up the boy’s long, intent face.

  “Hey,” he said, “you got the wrong idea. An ashram isn’t a place you go to have yourself a good time. It’s a place you go to find you’re having a better time than you ever knew you could.”

  From behind Ghote’s shoulder the massive form of Fred Hoskins stepped forward.

  “Say that again,” he demanded.

  Brad blinked.

  “This gentleman is Mr. Fred Hoskins,” Ghote said with haste. “He is my American colleague.”

  Almost he added: two thousand rupees a day plus expenses.

  “Oh. Hi, there,” Brad said. He blinked again. “Let me try and explain it another way. What a true guru has to give to a chela, a disciple, eventually is bliss. But he doesn’t just deal you out a ration of it just because you come and ask, or maybe pay. No. He shows you the path. He makes you see how the whole materialistic bag is weighing you down. And then, if you can follow him, in the end you get there and find you’ve attained bliss.”

  “There?” said Fred Hoskins, with deep suspicion. “Where’s there?”

  Ghote wondered what it would take to shut the fellow up. If Fred Hoskins was going to engage in debate about the nature of the spiritual life, especially when he seemed incapable of viewing anything other than from his own crassly materialistic point of view, they would never get to the point of putting this young man under pressure. They would never get him to reveal, possibly, that he had been in the swami’s house the night before. They would never learn, perhaps, the secret of what had happened to the weapon that had cut Swami’s throat.

  Brad’s young, intent face took on a yet more serious expression. His eyes rested on Fred Hoskins’ beef-red countenance gravely as a judge’s.

  “There,” he said. “You ask where’s there, and you’ve got every right to ask. But I can’t tell you. I know an answer exists. I know it here.” He thumped his somewhat narrow chest. “I know it. I’ll tell you: Swamiji utterly changed my life from the moment I got here. He made me happy, completely happy. I have all kinds of moods, but I’m always happy now.”

  Quick as a mongoose darting at the neck of a writhing snake, Ghote jumped in.

  “Happy?” he said. “And were you still happy when Swami was hitting you yesterday? Was that a step on your path to there?”

  Brad’s eyes lit up.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you’re beginning to see it. A guru has to show you the way. For some he does it with love, if that’s what’ll get rid of the mind-chatter they’re full of. But for others he does it in other ways. Maybe by slapping them like yesterday, maybe even by putting them through a hell of a lot worse.”

  Again Ghote saw a slim gap where he could dart to something else he wanted to know. Again he jumped in.

  “A girl. If a guru is wanting to stop—what was it?—the mind-chatter of a girl, would he do worse to her than slap only?”

  Brad stirred uneasily on his orange plastic-seated chair. He looked hard down at the spread of glossily bright pamphlets on the table in front of him.

  “I know why you’re asking,
” he said.

  “Yes,” Ghote answered. “I am asking because of things I have heard. I have been sent here, you know, by the father of Miss Nirmala Shahani, who is very much fearing what has happened to his daughter.”

  Brad looked up at him with pained eyes.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Jeez, how could I know? For certain know? I mean, if Swamiji … well, if Swamiji did break girls’ pride by, well, by practically raping them, they wouldn’t want the whole world to know. And they shouldn’t either. What happens between a person and his guru, if it’s in private, it’s private.”

  “But,” said Ghote.

  He thought that this one word would be enough. It was. Brad looked down at the table again, shuffled a pile of pamphlets together, then hastily spread them out once more.

  “There’s always rumours,” he said, his voice little more than a mutter. “Hey, in a place like this there shouldn’t be, but some of the kids …”

  Ghote, standing close beside the boy and doing his best to make his body into an implacable wall to which no answers but the truth could be offered, saw the thin, bare neck bent over the bright spread of the pamphlet-strewn table.

  Some of the kids, he thought, echoing Brad’s words. I am looking at a kid now, however near to man’s estate he is. But he was not going to allow himself to let the boy off the hook, however much sympathy he might feel for him.

  “Well,” he asked, riding Brad down with every harsh syllable, “just what was it that some of the kids used to say about Swami?”

  The honest, serious eyes turned to look squarely at him.

  “They said Swami used to do it … used to have some of the girls.”

  “That he used to ravish girls? But these rumours and tittle-tattles, did they say also why it was that Swami did that? Did they say it was to break spirits only? Or did they say it was for his pleasure?”

  Brad flushed. Hot, ashamed blood in the pale cheeks of his long, serious face.

  “It was only rumours,” he said, his voice rising. “They shouldn’t have been saying such things. They shouldn’t have been thinking them even, not here in the ashram.”