Go West, Inspector Ghote
Page 21
“Put it just here,” Ghote said.
The lieutenant placed it as he had been asked.
“Perhaps you could help me to get up on it,” Ghote said. “I would be able to do it on my own, but it would be quicker with some help.”
“Sure.”
The lieutenant put his arms round the pillar to steady it and thrust out a knee so that Ghote could step up. In a moment he was perched high, looking not at all like the elegant little statue in the lobby.
“Yes,” he said. “You see I can reach this tall ceiling now.”
“Yup. I see.”
“And this, I suppose, will be the one.”
“Guess so.”
Ghote placed both hands flat on the wooden ceiling panel immediately above his head. As his fingers touched it a momentary doubt flickered through him. But it was momentary only.
He pushed vigorously upwards, and the panel, hinged on one side, flopped back open. He put his hands through the black square that was revealed and, straining up on tiptoe, stretched till he could get his elbows on to the sides of the surrounding frame. Then with one wriggling heave he hauled himself right up.
As soon as he had recovered his breath he began calling down his findings.
“Yes, the inner tube is here.”
“Fine.”
“It is fastened with drawing-pins on each side.”
“Known as thumbtacks in this part of the world. But I get the picture. The inner tube makes a sort of big catapult, right?”
“Right. And still tied to the middle of it there is the razor. I am taking care not to touch.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Yes. I think there was also a length of cotton, orange cotton, that held back the trap-door until the inner tube came right through and broke it.”
“Guess there would have to be something like that. Well, that just about wraps it up then. Nice straightforward case. Right?”
“Right, Lieutenant”
NINETEEN
It was very different from Los Angeles. Lanes, so narrow that the relentless sun could not penetrate their depths, were filled thick with people. People jabbering, gesticulating, sleeping, chanting, arguing, standing, lying, squatting, bargaining, lost in prayer. Pilgrims, tourists, naked sadhus striding out brandishing their iron tridents, beggars, white-clad widows with stark shaven heads, white-skinned hippies wandering drug-bemused, pundits inexhaustibly expounding, touts busy and pouncing. “Just take my card only, no obligation to buy.” Cows, slow, bony and arrogant, moved here and there through them all. Dogs scavenged, scratched, slept, fought. Goats strained at ropes, nibbled, butted. Flights of brilliant green parrots darted.
It was pulsatingly noisy. Pipes moaned and screeched. Drums thrummed and boomed. Transistor radios poured out music, film music, holy music. Temple bells clanked almost continuously as worshippers entered and brought their presence to the attention of the god within. Car horns honked and bleated. Bicycle bells jangled.
And everything was directed down towards the mighty, slow-drifting river, Holy Ganges, with its great, stone-stepped ghats alive with pilgrims and beggars and holy men and holy-seeming rogues and simple bathers and yet simpler washers of clothes. Motor coaches poured out their passengers here. A big yellow tourist vehicle spewed a whole load of camera-toting Americans. Guides seized on them. Priests beside the funeral pyres bickered formidably over the price of the necessary supply of sandalwood and verse by verse over the necessary Sanskrit readings.
Protima, her long-cherished ambition realised at last, and only some ten days later than she had originally hoped for, was in her element. Little Ved beside her was wide-eyed with wonder.
Ghote was less pleased. But he was there, in holy Banares, a pilgrim like the thousands upon thousands of others.
They crossed the great greenish river to the far sandy side where in a wide open space the saint whom Protima had particularly wished to hear was addressing an enormous crowd, patient under the broiling sun. Baba, wearing white homespun of a dazzling purity, sat cross-legged on his high, awning-covered pandal sending his words spilling out in gentle waves over the thousands in front of him.
From the angle at which Ghote at last found himself looking, the old man’s sweetly-bearded visage was obscured by the fat ball of the microphone that dangled from its boom in front of him. But Ghote was not worried by that. Instead, he contented himself with letting his eyes roam over the crowd all round.
And it was then that he spotted a face at once sharply familiar and, for a moment, unplaceable. Where was it he had seen that particular girl before?
Ridiculous. The face was as well-known to him surely as—as his own son’s.
Then the girl turned her head a little and he caught her in full profile. At once he recognised, seen close-to in Bombay less than a week before, a soft smudgy little nose, a countenance that was a new-born puppy’s or a deer’s, inquisitive, innocent, fearfully in danger from the harshnesses of the world.
Nirmala Shahani, it seemed, had found herself a new guru.