Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade

by H. R. F. Keating

  When he got back to the office he would …

  He pulled himself up. Surely this was just the result of thinking that Amrit Singh’s shadow would see Inspector Ghote miles from his proper territory at a time when he should be answering his D.S.P.’s queries back at headquarters.

  But there was no one to observe such curious behaviour as it turned out. Almost an hour later when he had emerged on to the grey sands again after completing his slow, careful half-circle he was convinced that if anyone had been tailing Amrit Singh they had let him get right out of sight.

  He quickly looked along the beach to the tongue of jutting vegetation where he had left the sturdy Sikh. He had had glimpses of him often enough while he was manoeuvring round, but he had not seen him for the last few minutes. He was still there, only sitting comfortably at the foot of the tree now.

  The inspector drew a deep breath of relief.

  He looked over at the scatter of palm-leaf thatched huts and the palisaded curing yard. Outside most of the huts the women sat or stood in little groups. Many of them were preparing food. Children ran about on the greyish sand, except for a group of girls busy stringing flags on lengths of cord in preparation for the Holi holiday next day. Evidently the men were still at sea. Was Amrit Singh waiting for their return? He certainly seemed in no hurry to move.

  Quite suddenly Ghote decided to tackle him. This time the advantage of surprise would be on his side. He smiled quietly.

  A few steps along the soft, yielding sand and he was within easy speaking distance. Amrit Singh was looking out to sea. Plainly he had no idea that anyone was so near to him.

  Ghote spoke softly in a voice which would just reach the big Sikh.

  ‘Amrit Singh, why did you kill Frank Masters?’

  Amrit Singh leapt up. His right hand reached swiftly down to the bulge in his cummerbund.

  ‘No,’ said Ghote. ‘No guns. You do not think I would come out here without saying where I had gone, do you?’

  ‘A gun, Inspector?’

  The tall Sikh laughed. But for once without conviction.

  ‘No,’ said Ghote, ‘this is not the time for shooting. This is the time for answering only. Why did you kill Frank Masters?’

  ‘Inspector, you know that I did not,’ Amrit Singh said.

  The words were delivered flatly, as a matter of mere form.

  ‘I know that you did,’ Ghote said. ‘You took the powder from that green glass jar. You put it in the curry on the serving table by the open window of the tiffin room at the Foundation. Why did you do it, Amrit Singh?’

  But he had overplayed his hand.

  ‘Inspector, I did not take any poison. I did not know it was powder even. Or that it was kept in a green glass jar.’

  Ghote thought of the smashed fragments of the little brown jar the arsenic trioxide had been in. If the jar had not been broken, would they after all have got a trace of one of Amrit Singh’s prints off it somewhere? Or would it have been a latent impression from Krishna Chatterjee?

  He felt the initiative was slipping away.

  ‘Inspector.’

  Ghote looked quickly up at the big Sikh. Unexpectedly, his voice did not contain the familiar broad hints of irony. For once he did not seem to be playing with his interrogator like a jungle cat. He seemed ill at ease.

  ‘Well,’ Ghote snapped, seizing on the first thing that came into his head to gain himself the upper hand again, ‘well, what exactly are you doing here? Is this a bazaar for a poor travelling salesman to display his goods?’

  And he seemed to have made a lucky hit.

  Amrit Singh looked nervously at the collection of patched, dank, greenish huts with the women in their tightly wrapped saris squatting outside them.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘we are friends, are we not? And it is strange for friends to meet here.’

  ‘Never mind about friends,’ Ghote said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘A man may travel where he wants,’ Amrit Singh said.

  Again he lacked real conviction.

  ‘He may travel where he wants, but he should be able to say why he is there,’ Ghote stated.

  ‘Look, Inspector, between friends,’ Amrit Singh began again.

  ‘Between a policeman and Amrit Singh,’ Ghote said.

  The Sikh ploughed on.

  ‘Inspector, I am a poor man. You are a poor man. Between poor men there is always friendship.’

  Suddenly Ghote remembered the five hundred rupees in his pocket, and why it was that he had come out to the village. To see whether there was something someone not really poor could do for people in real danger of having just nothing to eat if precarious luck turned only a little against them.

  He looked past the Sikh’s broad frame down towards the cluster of flimsy huts. The group of girls rose to their feet at just that moment and carried a long string of pathetic little flags towards the curing yard.

  Amrit Singh, who had been looking at Ghote trying to assess his reaction to the general propositions he had been putting out, gave up and launched into a more direct approach.

  ‘Inspector sahib,’ he said. ‘I am poor. I know it. You know it. Poor as can be. But just today, as it happens, I have a little money. I have been lucky in selling some things. I know I ought to use the money to pay off the heavy debts I have, but I am ready not to. For a friend.’

  ‘What about the huge sum you made at the Masters Foundation?’ Ghote said, trying for another lucky shot.

  ‘Inspector, no huge sums have I made. I am a poor man, the poorest of the poor. But today I have a few rupees, perhaps even a few hundred rupees, and if you like I will share them with another poor man who is my friend.’

  ‘Are you trying to bribe a police officer, Amrit Singh?’

  ‘Inspector, that I should do such a thing. I am trying to share my luck only. And I am remembering a friend who only two days ago was talking about such a thing as a refrigerator.’

  The Sikh decided that he had advanced enough counters for the time being. He waited to see if they were taken up.

  And Ghote, standing in front of him, his eyes unmoving, keeping the questioning firmly in his own hands, felt his heart patter hard.

  A refrigerator. How had the Sikh happened to hit on that, of all things, to propose as a bribe?

  Perhaps he had let something of his private life appear when Amrit Singh had been talking to him in the compound at the Masters Foundation. He must watch himself.

  His silence had the happy effect of forcing the Sikh to go yet another stage onwards.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘there are many refrigerators, but why should not poor men like you and I have one? It would cost not very much money. I saw yesterday only a fine refrigerator in the paper. And it would cost only one thousand and ninety rupees.’

  Again he waited, with so much more bait economically laid out.

  ‘If you are offering me the price of a refrigerator to forget I have seen you here,’ said Ghote levelly, ‘then you can stop right away. I will take no bribes.’

  ‘Inspector, think of your wife when you go home and say a refrigerator is coming by the next delivery. Or when you show her the very notes that will buy one. One thousand rupees, Inspector.’

  The Sikh’s hand slipped between the folds of his broad sash. Ghote had little doubt that somewhere there he had notes to the value of a thousand rupees, and beyond. He thought of the notes in his own pocket, and of what they were intended for.

  ‘You are generous,’ he said to Amrit Singh. ‘But then when your money has been taken from other people only, you can afford to be generous. If it had been truly your own, would you give it to others? And out of true kindness, like Frank Masters? Or would you keep every anna?’

  The Sikh evidently understood that this was a really final answer. His dark eyes suddenly glowered with rage.

  Ghote tensed slightly, expecting violent action.

  But he got only violent words.

  ‘Give? Kindness?’ said the tall
Sikh with deep contempt. ‘What man would look on you as a man if for no reason you gave? Money is not a plaything to be handed to children only. If a man has got money for himself, then he knows it is worth something. He does not go here and there giving.’

  From the emphasis he put on this last word, it was plain that Amrit Singh had a very different outlook on life from that of Frank Masters.

  ‘You would be twice the man you are if you had given a tenth only of what Frank Masters gave,’ Ghote said sharply.

  ‘Frank Masters.’

  The Sikh spat into the slimy earth at his feet.

  ‘I know all about Frank Masters,’ he said. ‘Why did he have to come all the way to Bombay to rule other people’s lives? Are there not poor people in America for him to play with? But, no, he has to come here to make himself feel good. Only in India can he find the very poor and get the most for his money. For a few annas here he can make a poor boy do just what he tells him, and can say to himself that he has changed a life.’

  Ghote felt that he wanted to protest but could find nothing to say.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the Sikh went on, ‘if you want to find a really bad man, look there. There is someone who, just to feel happy himself, will make someone else change his whole life, will make him go where he thinks it is best for him to go, do what he thinks is best. And not even to get money. But just so that he feels good with himself. If I had my way Frank Masters and all his sort would be dropped into the Harbour with a good rock tied to their legs.’

  ‘So that was why you killed him?’ Ghote said.

  But he knew that the question was only a hasty jibe. His real answer was going to be in deeds not words: he was going to give every anna of the five hundred rupees to the fisherman’s family. To make it up, in a way, to Frank Masters.

  Only one thing stopped him from running down straight away to the huts and shouting for the great fat Paramour.

  That was that he did not want to let Amrit Singh go. More than ever now he wanted to make sure he could have him pulled in at any moment. An idea occurred to him. Swallowing his anger, he made himself speak casually.

  ‘Well, perhaps you are right,’ he said. ‘Frank Masters was certainly very rich.’

  ‘And very bad,’ said Amrit Singh determinedly.

  ‘And yet you and I are far from having his money,’ Ghote went on.

  He positively saw the spark of hope light up again in the Sikh’s dark eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ the tall man said, ‘we are poor.’

  Ghote sighed.

  ‘But we can be friends,’ Amrit Singh said. ‘And what money we have we can share with friends as friends. And friends can help each other. They can keep quiet about some things sometimes.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Ghote.

  Amrit Singh dug his hand into his sash again.

  ‘No,’ Ghote said. ‘I will think. It is wrong.’

  Amrit Singh shrugged his broad shoulders.

  ‘Can I see you somewhere later? Tomorrow?’ Ghote said.

  Amrit Singh calculated for a moment.

  Then apparently he decided to make the best of a difficult situation.

  ‘I shall be at Morton Road early tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Then perhaps I shall see you,’ said Ghote.

  The tall Sikh did not wait to exchange pleasantries a moment longer. He had got as good a bargain as he could hope for, and in an instant the thick swamp vegetation swallowed him up. Ghote caught one quick sight of the red and blue turban, and no more.

  He turned towards the huts of the village.

  Outside Tarzan’s family hut now the Paramour was sitting cross-legged. Between her enormous rounded knees, straining tight the cloth of her sari, there was a big bowl in the bottom of which she was pounding something. Her great forearms, whose flesh pressed hard against the dozen thin glass bangles she wore, were working rhythmically bringing a pestle down and down with terrible heaviness.

  When Ghote’s shadow fell across her she looked up. The moment she saw who it was she laughed till she shook.

  ‘Have you come looking for that bad son again?’ she said.

  ‘I have come because of what I saw yesterday,’ Ghote replied.

  The remark evidently seemed to her even richer in humour than her own question. She roared and gasped with laughter.

  ‘What you saw yesterday,’ she got out at last. ‘Or was it what you did not see?’

  Ghote ignored all this.

  ‘Yesterday,’ he said, when he thought she would hear him, ‘yesterday I saw how difficult it was for you to live without being a prey to evil men. And that is why I have come back: to offer help.’

  ‘Oh, it is difficult to live,’ the Paramour agreed. ‘In a few days we have to pay money back on the boat, and it is not there. We save nothing. The men will not do it. You know what they say? That because a fisherman lives by robbing the sea he cannot save what he makes.’

  She giggled softly, almost to herself.

  ‘But you see how foolish this is,’ Ghote said. ‘You are a woman of authority. You must make them put away a little when the catches are good.’

  The giggling became a frank laugh again.

  ‘All right,’ Ghote said, ‘I understand your difficulties. And I am prepared to help you start again. This is what I will do.’

  He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the tight bundle of notes. For an instant the fat woman stopped laughing completely. Her eyes went wide.

  Then she lowered them to look at the handful of pounded spices in the big bowl and giggled modestly a little.

  ‘I want you to take this money,’ said Ghote. ‘It will pay off much of the debt on your boat. Then your catches will bring you a proper livelihood, you and both your stepsons. But you must promise you will make them save when they do well, so that they can last over a poor catch without borrowing again.’

  A podgy hand reached upwards towards the roll of notes he held.

  ‘Will you promise?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, sahib, I will promise. Such wealth. Such goodness. Sahib, I kiss your feet.’

  Ghote thrust the money into her fist.

  But he could not help noticing that she made no move to kiss his feet in actuality. Instead she shoved the notes down into her enormous bosom and stayed with her head lowered.

  Ghote decided that it would be best to leave at once. He turned and marched off through the yielding grey sand along the top of the beach. He tried to analyse his feelings. They were confused, but seemed mostly to be stirrings of disappointment. He had certainly not felt a great surge of happiness at the moment the notes had left his hand. But there had been something in the way the big podgy fist had enveloped them that had disconcerted him.

  He turned and looked back.

  It came as no real surprise to see that the enormous Paramour was sitting there visibly quivering, even at this distance, with great tides of irrepressible laughter.

  The journey back to Bombay was terrible. To begin with, Ghote found when he got to the end of the muddy path through the swamps that there was no tonga waiting at the start of the road. Amrit Singh had commandeered it. The extra walk to the railway station took him hours. The sun beat down. The dust rose up. His left heel began to throb where it had been so jolted at the Morton Road place. He felt abominably tired.

  Then he had an interminable wait for a train, and, once it had come, progress was hardly faster. The stations crept by – Borivli, Kandivlee, Malad, Goregaon, Andheri, Ville Parle, Santa Cruz, Matunga Road. At last they pulled into Churchgate Station. It was by now late in the afternoon.

  Standing in the station concourse, buffeted by people hurrying by in all directions, mostly carrying, it seemed, huge bedding rolls, Ghote stood and tried to make up his mind what to do. A red-shirted coolie with three battered cardboard suitcases under each arm banged into his back.

  Should he go to the office even at this late hour? What would he say if the chaprassi on duty in the entrance gave him a message that D.S.P.
Naik had been asking for him all day? How could he possibly tell him that he had spoken to Amrit Singh and had not arrested him? There would be certainly no point in confronting the D.S.P. with the question that reared up in his own mind at any and every opportunity. If he said to him ‘Which of them did it? Which?’ he would be told pretty sharply not to talk such nonsense.

  And it was possible the D.S.P. was really right.

  A man wheeling a low barrow neatly piled with dozen upon dozen of sticky-looking cream horns scraped its edge all the way across Ghote’s shin bones. Ghote stepped sharply back and banged into an elderly, bespectacled traveller nursing a big earthenware drinking water jug. Some of the water spilt. The eyes that looked at Ghote through the spectacles were infinitely reproachful.

  Ghote strode away.

  There was no point in going home. Although he hardly dared put the thought into words the suspicion was beginning to lurk somewhere in his mind that he had been a colossal fool to give all that money away. It would need a great deal of explaining.

  He tried thinking about Frank Masters to counteract these thoughts. After all, when Frank Masters gave huge sums away nobody put it in the papers that he was a fool.

  And with the memory of Frank Masters back again came the question: Which of the two? Which?

  Ghote decided to go to the Foundation once more. There was nothing to be done there, but at least he would be near the source of it all.

  Before he got to the big, old bungalow in Wodehouse Road he became involved in another incident of the sort which, it seemed, had dogged him ever since he had first been put on the case.

  His bus stopped a little north of the Foundation and he was walking abstractedly along towards it, past the Catholic cathedral, past Stranger’s Guest House, past the Y.M.C.A., when an abrupt contortion in the traffic stream beside him caught his eye. He looked round.

  Standing half in the deep storm gutter, half in the roadway itself, were the boys of Edward G. Robinson’s gang. Their heads were bent in a tight circle and evidently some deeply secret negotiation was going forward. The passing traffic was swerving sharply to avoid them and an occasional driver with an unusually tender social conscience broke the silence-zone rule by giving a quick toot of his horn as he passed. But the boys ignored it all, even the rackety van Ghote saw at that moment positively brushing the back of Edward G. Robinson’s tattered black jacket.