‘I do not think you would have to worry about that, D.S.P.,’ he said.
He spoke the words with every ounce of conviction that he could muster.
‘Good man. Good. Then get after Amrit Singh and bring him in.’
‘I am seeing to that, D.S.P.’
‘And, Inspector.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Do not forget I would like to hear you are getting some decent exercise. Hockey, Inspector.’
‘Yes, D.S.P.’
Ghote put down the receiver.
There was nothing else for it now. He would have to find out who had murdered Frank Masters before D.S.P. Naik realized that the boys were not going to provide doctored evidence. And his next step in that event was clear. Thanks to what Edward G. had let slip he could at least get hold of Amrit Singh.
And he now had a weapon to use, of a sort. If D.S.P. Naik was prepared to have the Sikh arrested on the evidence as it stood, then at least the threat of using that arrest was ready at hand.
Ghote straightened his shoulders.
It was late that day, however, before the inspector came face to face with Amrit Singh again, and when he did so it was in circumstances that he would have preferred to have been different.
He had the name Morton Road to go by and nothing else. He could have asked around at headquarters to find out whether Amrit Singh had a known hide-away there. But he had learnt his lesson from D.S.P. Naik discovering his proposed plans over the ambush at the Masters Foundation. It was no use talking: he had to act on his own.
Morton Road, for all its solid English name, proved to be a very ramshackle thoroughfare in North Bombay. It ran in fits and starts for nearly half a mile north from Foras Road. Ghote set off to walk its whole length, keeping an eye wide open for any sign of Amrit Singh’s presence. One trip along its length convinced him that he had set himself a hard task. There were dozens of tall, narrow houses with dark uninviting doorways and little open-fronted shops on the ground floors, their high shelves crammed with a huge miscellany of cheap goods and little boys scrambling up monkey-fashion to serve the customers. Here and there were courtyards, which could reasonably come under the description of ‘the Morton Road place’, even if they were not strictly on the street. Amrit Singh could be anywhere. It was all disreputable enough.
From decaying balconies from which fluttered long strips of many-coloured drying saris, street-girls looked down calling to likely customers. At doors here and there stood heavily-muscled men idly swinging hefty sticks and interrogating the occasional hang-dog visitor.
When he got to the far end Ghote almost decided to give up and go and see what was known about Amrit Singh’s Morton Road place at headquarters. But the thought of how easily the D.S.P. might get to know that his orders had not been carried out finally persuaded him to try again.
There was a small hotel on the top corner of the street, an uninviting place smelling of South Indian food and stale coffee, obviously designed to catch the unwary arrival at the nearby Central Station. The proprietress, a big, shapeless, very dark woman with bright betel-stained lips, made no objection to him taking a room for the rest of the day. As she shut the flimsy door and left him he heard her chuckling hoarsely as she waddled downstairs. He quickly took off all his clothes except for a cotton vest and his trousers. It was easy enough to find plenty of dust to smear over these two garments to make them look inconspicuous enough for the area.
He located a back way out and a minute later was idling down the crowded and dirty street with the acrid smell of smoke, spices and ordure in his nostrils and in his ears the clashing sounds of shouted conversations in half a dozen languages, blaring radios and assorted musical instruments.
He stopped at a small eating stall and ordered tea. Sitting on the creaky wooden bench, nursing his brass tumbler between his two hands, he listened to the talk of other customers. And sure enough he had not been there much more than twenty minutes when he heard the name Amrit Singh.
He turned slowly and looked at the stall owner, a tall bald-headed man with the predatory nose of a vulture. It was evident from the glitter in his close-set eyes that he knew who was being talked about and was following the conversation with interest.
The two customers who had mentioned the Sikh were at the far end of the stall from Ghote and he could not, without drawing more attention to himself than he would have liked, get near enough to hear more than a murmur of what they were saying. But he was happy enough to have got a smell of the trail as quickly as this.
Some ten minutes later he called the stall holder over and asked for something to eat. When the man came back he beckoned him close.
‘I have heard that this street is a good place for certain things,’ he said.
The bald head ducked a little nearer him.
‘I have a friend who has a friend somewhere near here called Amrit Singh,’ Ghote went on.
Into the close-set eyes came a look of calculation. Ghote put his hand into the pocket where he had put all his money and other possessions before leaving the corner-hotel. He took out two rupees.
‘I would very much like to see Amrit Singh,’ he said. ‘I hear he would have something for me. But unfortunately my friend is away and I do not know where to go.’
The bald-headed, bird-of-prey stall-holder shook his head. Ghote tried a little more money.
‘Amrit Singh is a very dangerous man,’ the stall-holder said.
Ghote shrugged his shoulders.
‘Perhaps I shall find what I want somewhere else,’ he said.
‘It is very likely,’ said the man.
But in the several hours that followed Ghote got no further clues. Then as he was leaving a paan-shop, where he had spent a good deal of time negotiating over a twist of black tobacco before bringing Amrit Singh’s name into the conversation, a beggar reclining propped on the shop’s stacked wooden shutters with a great balloon of swollen leg laid out in front of him plucked at his trouser leg.
Ghote nearly went straight past. But the memory of Frank Masters and his new resolves stopped him. He felt for a coin small enough not to attract attention and put it in the man’s hand.
‘You want Amrit Singh?’ the beggar said, a meandering grin appearing on his puffy and blotched face.
Ghote’s heart thumped.
‘You know where he is?’ he said. ‘I have been sent with a very important message, but I cannot find him.’
The beggar laughed for a little bit.
‘Many messages for Amrit Singh,’ he said.
A trickle of saliva escaped from his loose lips.
‘Where can he be found?’ Ghote asked.
He was beginning to be afraid that the man was not intelligent enough to give him a clear answer.
But his fears were unjustified.
The beggar pointed with the length of gnarled stick he had to act as a crutch.
‘In that courtyard just past the street tap.’
Ghote looked in the direction the wavering stick was pointing. The courtyard entrance was dark as pitch although the sky, or what could be seen of it in the gap between the tall houses, was still filled with light.
Ghote gave the beggar another coin, a large one, and hurried off. The man’s hiccuppy chuckles followed him.
At the entrance to the courtyard Ghote stopped. He was in something of a quandary. It was a good bet that Amrit Singh was there to be found, and he very much wanted to be sure of him. But when he had him he wanted to have the upper hand, and, dressed the way he was, by now a good deal grubbier and sweatier than when he had left the little hotel, he could not see himself playing the assured police inspector. Yet if he went back and got his clothes the beggar, or someone else, might warn the big Sikh. And even approaching a house in such a district looking like a policeman was liable to send all the inhabitants scuttling out by a back way.
It was this last thought which decided him. He plunged forward into the thick darkness of the courtyard entrance.
Beyond, the p
lace was lighter again. The pale blue sky looked down into the yard and it was easy to see the several doorways that led into it. Ghote chose the first and made his way over to it. There was a narrow hallway with the slumped figure of a man wrapped in a whitish cloth fast asleep on the floor. Ghote pushed at him with his foot till he stirred. Then he crouched down beside him and spoke sharply.
‘Amrit Singh? Where is Amrit Singh?’
‘What do you want with Amrit Singh?’
It was not the stirring figure wrapped in the sheet that spoke. The voice came from behind Ghote and at the same time he felt a hard hand clamp firmly down on the nape of his neck.
He slipped forward over the half-sleeping figure and attempted to wriggle to the side.
An instant later he was dangling upright, his feet off the ground and a pair of locked arms tightly round his waist.
But for all his slightness of build, Ghote was not the sort to be caught like this. One sharp, well-judged backwards kick and he was free. He wheeled sharply round, crouching lightly on the balls of his feet ready for a throw.
And without the least warning felt another pair of arms clamp round his chest.
He was lifted up and suddenly jabbed hard down. The force of the unexpected jerk sent a spasm of pain shooting up from his left heel. For an instant he lost consciousness.
When he came to it was to find that the sleeping man at the foot of the stairs had disappeared. In his place stood his first attacker, a huge creature wearing only a loincloth and a turban. Ghote could see his bare chest gleaming in the dim light, with the muscles standing out like great coils.
The man thrust his face close up to the inspector’s in a wave of bad breath and garlic.
‘What do you want with Amrit Singh?’
‘I have business with him,’ Ghote said. ‘Private business.’
Behind him the man who was pinioning him gave him a sudden sharp shake.
‘What business?’ said the big, bare-chested man.
‘I want to see Amrit Singh,’ Ghote repeated.
The big man drew back his clenched fist. His eyes, sunk in the heavy flesh of his face, were shining with sharp excitement.
‘What is this? Why, it is my old friend, Ghote.’
Behind the heavy face and glittering eyes there appeared the luxuriantly curling beard, the jutting eyebrows, the bulky turban of Amrit Singh himself.
‘Hallo, Inspector,’ he said. ‘This is most pleasant. You have come to visit only? I did not know you knew my poor home.’
He gave a little flick of his head and Ghote found himself standing on his own feet again. A dull pain spread up from his left heel.
‘But I have found you out,’ he said to the big Sikh.
Amrit Singh laughed.
‘Come up, come up, Inspector,’ he said.
He turned and marched easily up the stairs. Ghote followed. He was limping badly, and at the turn of the stairs when he put his foot down awkwardly an involuntary groan escaped him.
‘I hope those fellows did not treat you badly,’ Amrit Singh said. ‘They are rough men only. But good-hearted.’
He chuckled to himself in the ever-increasing gloom of the stairway.
Below Ghote could hear the two good-hearted fellows grumbling to each other in mutters.
Amrit Singh opened a rickety door. A beam of light came out. Ghote blinked.
‘Come in, come in,’ Amrit Singh said.
Ghote entered. He saw at once that the place was a speakeasy. The room was bare except for two hard wooden chairs placed almost in the middle of the floor and a sagging bed in one corner. Protecting an inner doorway was a crude wooden counter on which stood half a dozen thick, dirty glasses and a hair-oil bottle half full of heavy brown liquid. Behind the counter was a weary-looking man with a thick growth of beard and a little bright blue Christian medal hanging from a thin chain in the gap where his stained red check shirt was open to the navel. Sitting on the floor beside the two chairs were three young men. They looked a good deal cleaner than their surroundings. Two of them wore kurtas of fine white cloth and the third had a bush-shirt of dull blue silk and a gold chain round his neck. As Ghote entered he was leaning forward towards his two companions with a dreamy, ecstatic look on his face reciting poetry.
None of the three took any notice as Amrit Singh strode round behind the rough counter, shouldered the bartender aside and led Ghote through a jangling glass-beaded curtain into the inner room.
This was as bare as the outer one, furnished only with two beds facing each other on opposite walls about six feet apart. A small electric light bulb dangled from the ceiling. There was no fan. By way of decoration there was a religious motto in a wooden frame painted silver.
Amrit Singh flung himself back on one of the beds and lay resting his thickset frame against the damp-patched wall. He said nothing, but rested there uttering an occasional grunted chuckle. Ghote sat on the edge of the bed opposite. He decided to leave the Sikh to make the first move.
He read the motto on the wall. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ The frame hung askew.
Eventually Ghote came to the conclusion that there was no point in not speaking after all the difficulties he had had in getting there.
‘Why did you poison Frank Masters?’ he said.
Amrit Singh did not stir a muscle.
‘Inspector,’ he answered, ‘I hoped you would have decided not to speak more about that.’
‘You were in the compound of the Masters Foundation the night Mr Masters died,’ Ghote said.
The Sikh’s eyes twinkled.
‘But will your witnesses say that in court?’ he asked.
Ghote paused for an instant. The time had come.
‘They will say more,’ he replied. ‘They will say they watched you enter the dispensary hut. They will say they crept up to the window and saw you go to the cupboard where the poison was kept, open the jar and take out enough to kill Frank Masters.’
The Sikh’s eyes ceased to twinkle.
‘And who will say that?’ he demanded.
Ghote smiled a little.
‘Do you think I will tell and let you threaten them into silence?’
‘There would be no need. They would be lying. In court they would break down.’
‘We will see.’
Ghote felt a flicker of the hunter’s excitement. Amrit Singh was coming up with the predictable responses. He would hardly expect him to go down on his knees and babble out a confession straight away. But along this path lay what might amount in the end to an admission. Certainly enough of one to let Ghote feel that the Sikh was being arrested with good cause.
He stayed silent. And as he had expected Amrit Singh was unable to let the conversation drop.
‘So you have witnesses that I was seen to go into that hut?’ he said.
‘One of them you know,’ said Ghote. ‘We will take steps to see Sonny Carstairs gives evidence that you made him hand over the key.’
The Sikh gave a single grunt of a laugh.
‘Sonny Carstairs,’ he said. ‘I would like to see him in court.’
‘You will.’
‘But evidence I had the key is not evidence that I went into the hut.’
‘We have that.’
‘And evidence that I went into the hut is not evidence that I took the poison.’
Ghote could not stop himself hesitating fractionally. But it was fractionally only.
‘We have that evidence also,’ he said.
A faint smile lifted the Sikh’s full lips in the deep jungle of his beard.
‘That is strange,’ he said. ‘Because that at least I did not do.’
Ghote pounced.
‘You entered the hut then?’ he said.
Amrit Singh’s eyebrows rose.
‘You had evidence?’
‘We have evidence for more than that.’
The Sikh shook his head.
‘Not for me taking the poison,’ he said.
Suddenly he swu
ng to his feet. Ghote instinctively tautened up.
The Sikh laughed.
‘Oh, Inspector, if it was going to be like that, would I have told my man downstairs to let you go?’
He paced up and down the little room a few times.
Then he stopped and looked down at Ghote.
‘I will tell you what happened,’ he said.
He shrugged.
‘Why not? You can be sure later I will deny.’
He sat down on the bed opposite the inspector again. This time crouching eagerly forward.
‘Last Friday afternoon,’ he said, ‘I came back here from some business in Hyderabad and there was a message waiting. It said that that Frank Masters of yours had found some gold in his bungalow and that he had taken it and locked it in the dispensary hut.’
Ghote leant forward another inch.
‘I knew Frank Masters,’ the Sikh went on. ‘I knew he might lock away the gold while he thought whether to tell that his favourite boys were smugglers only. So, although I did not expect gold there that day, I went.’
Ghote’s brain was seizing on each driblet of this story, especially these hints about Frank Masters himself, and pounding at them like a hammer.
The Sikh shrugged his massive shoulders.
‘It was possible,’ he said. ‘That boy may be very good at standing on his head but he is not very sensible. No matter. I went to the Masters Foundation. I knew all about that hut and that it was the one safe place to lock away anything. So I slipped up to the house, climbed a drainpipe, went along the roof and had a little talk with your good Sonny Carstairs in that room of his.’
He found the recollection very amusing.
At last he went on.
‘Then I went back and went into the hut. I did not think I was seen, but it is never possible to be sure. That is why it is important to have good lawyers, even though it is expensive.’
He laughed again.
And suddenly sobered up. He got to his feet and stood towering over the inspector.
‘I went into that hut,’ he said. ‘I looked everywhere for the gold. There was nothing there. I went out of the hut.’
His deep-set eyes were glowing fiercely.
He turned away.
‘I thought the message must have been a mistake,’ he said. ‘Such things happen. And when I asked it was indeed too hard to find who had sent it first.’
Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade Page 13
