There was nothing he could do. All the while he kept thinking of the big Sikh, striding out across the beach with the heavy package in the dirty, earth-stained sacking clutched firmly to his chest. And taking with him that sudden, last delusive hope.
As abruptly as he had been caught up the capricious crowd let him go.
Dazed and half-blinded he took a few drunken steps clear of the noise and wild movement. One idea he had kept in his head. Amrit Singh had been running towards the sea. Hardly looking where he was going he set off at a loping run down the gentle slope of the grey sand.
At last he found himself well clear of the revellers, dodging through the scattered groups of narrow beached fishing craft lying careened over to one side or the other. He stopped for a moment and looked both ways along the shore.
Amrit Singh was there.
His tall figure, a single lone presence on this day of mass celebration, could be distinctly seen making its way along the edge of the sea over to where the sluggish creek broke the low coastline. And he was walking. He thought he was safe.
Ghote set out in pursuit, cutting straight across the grey sands to head off the Sikh following the shore line. He wondered why Amrit Singh had not taken the same short cut.
And then he knew. Abruptly his feet began to sink in soft, wet, rippled sucking sand. Should he go back? To retrace his steps and then go round the long way would mean that he would almost certainly lose sight of Amrit Singh. And above all he must stay where he could see him. If the Sikh stopped to bury the heavy little package again while he was unobserved all would be lost.
Ghote decided to plunge on. A little crab scuttled across the wet sand in front of him.
He cursed himself for not having noted that wet gleam as the Sikh must have done. But there was nothing he could do now. Supposing the water-saturated patch got suddenly deeper? People were sucked to death in places like this.
And then he was out.
The sand under his soaked and heavy shoes was suddenly firm. Wet still, but hard now, almost like a cement floor. He began to run.
He found himself moving easily forward and smiled a little to himself, thinking he was not as out of training as D.S.P. Naik had supposed. Tramping the hot, crowded and hard streets of the city was probably every bit as good for the stamina as playing games of hockey. Even if it lacked the same touch of glamour.
He moved swiftly forward, almost as if in a dream. And everything began to take on a matching dreamlike quality. Behind him the sound of the Holi revellers was faint now, shrill, musical and distant. The pounding, brutal noise of reality had simply been left far behind. Above the solid black smudge that represented the dancing crowd he saw, when he glanced for a moment over his shoulder, a light, fabulous and unlikely cloud of pinkish red, the dazing, dazzling powder of a short time before. And, turning back, ahead of him walking with his head down and arms still clutching tight the heavy little bundle, was Amrit Singh. On the smooth, caked sand Ghote’s heavy shoes were making no noise. As if still in a dream he let his legs stretch out in a quiet increase of pace and a second later launched himself almost gently through the air.
His arms closed hard round the tall Sikh’s legs. And he had him. Gold-handed.
But he never got Amrit Singh safely behind the locked door of a C.I.D. headquarters cell. At the railway station he enlisted the help of the local police to make sure his hard-won captive, for all that by then he was being held at his own gunpoint, did not succeed in making a break for it. It was a sensible precaution. But it was Ghote’s undoing.
As he stepped out of the train at Churchgate Station he was greeted by the immaculately white-clad form of Inspector Patel of the Customs. In the sudden realization of the contrast between his own clothes after the Holi assault on them and the Customs man’s spotless appearance he even almost forgot the existence of Amrit Singh, handcuffed firmly to his wrist. But Inspector Patel could plainly think of nothing else.
‘Well, well,’ he said, giving Ghote a quick, piercing look from his thin, chopping blade face. ‘This is a very unfortunate business indeed.’
Ghote looked at him. His bewilderment must have been all too obvious.
‘This business of arresting the man yourself for a purely smuggling offence,’ Inspector Patel explained painstakingly.
‘I had the gold put into the safe at the chowkey where I took him first,’ Ghote said.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Inspector Patel. ‘I dare say that can be put right. But you cannot expect this other business to be forgotten just like that. You had no right to do it, you know. No right. Not for a purely smuggling offence.’
And so it was that Ghote, stained and spattered from his encounter with the celebrating villagers, had to stand mutely among the noisy crowds at Churchgate Station and watch Inspector Patel, in the full glory of a properly entitled Customs officer, lead away the faintly sardonic figure of the notorious Amrit Singh.
Suddenly he thought of the refrigerator fund and what it had been spent on. His world looked very flat.
He waited till late that night to make his apology to Protima. Longer than this he felt he could not put it off. It must be done that day.
But the day could be prolonged.
They were sitting outside in the yard at the back of the house. Already it was beginning to feel a little cooler.
‘We could sleep now,’ Protima said.
‘Just a few minutes more. It is only now that it is pleasant.’
‘And tomorrow? Are you going to be fresh tomorrow if you have such a short night when for once you do not need to?’
‘Tomorrow will be different,’ Ghote said.
Tomorrow you will know that your cherished plans for the refrigerator have fallen to pieces, he thought.
He said nothing more.
From the neatly shaped, heavy bulk of the neem tree nearby came the muffled cheep of a sleepy bird. Ghote sighed.
It was true, it was pleasant out here at this time of day. It was cool. It was calm. Everything was peaceful. You could put everything finally into its place, if you wanted to. Except, perhaps, that some things would have to be looked at before they were put away, and. …
So in the end it was Protima who brought up the subject of the refrigerator fund.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow will be a great day for me. Can you get the money out early?’
Ghote took a breath. One. Two. Three.
‘There is no money,’ he said.
‘No money? But you told –’
‘There was. There was. I did. But – But I have done a very silly thing. I have given the money away.’
‘You have given away five hundred rupees?’
Protima was too astounded, it was obvious, to keep the sheer incredulity out of her voice.
‘Yes,’ Ghote said.
His disappointment at not having the confession received with more understanding put an edge on his voice.
‘Yes,’ he repeated with a touch of bravado, ‘I have given away five hundred rupees.’
Protima rose to her feet like a sudden whirlwind.
‘Who have you given it to? How could you give away so much? Have you no thought of your family even?’
‘Whose money was it?’ Ghote shouted, suddenly swept right away. ‘Who earned the money? Who saved it up? If I had said nothing you would never have even known there was five hundred rupees.’
‘That has nothing to do with it. There were five hundred rupees. Five hundred rupees. And you gave them away. Gave them.’
‘What do you mean that that has nothing to do with it? It has everything to do with it. I have just explained. As far as you are concerned the money simply does not exist.’
‘Oh, I know that. It does not exist indeed. You have given it away.’
‘That is not what I meant at all. Not at all. Why can you never understand a simple piece of logic? If I had given the money away, of course it would exist. But I was saying that it does not exist. As far as you are concerned
.’
‘Have you or have you not given the money away?’
‘I told you I had given it away.’
‘Then what do you mean about “if you had given it away”? You have. You have given away the money that was to buy me a refrigerator. After all the years when I needed one so much, when it is the day before we get it, you give the money away. My money.’
‘Your –’
And he stopped himself. He took a deep breath and told himself that he was in the wrong. He had given the money away. Protima was right to be angry. But how to tell her what had happened to the money after he had given it away?
‘Listen, my little one,’ he said.
This was almost his last card. The special term of endearment he kept for her. The expression that meant so much because it was so plainly not really true. The tall, invariably elegant Protima, fine, chiselled, fiery, was never anyone’s ‘little one’. Except his. It was his right.
‘Listen, my little one.’
She stopped. She stood looking at him, even though it was with smouldering, guarded eyes.
‘I can explain everything. It was all the fault of this damned case.’
She seemed restive at this and he hurried on.
‘Look. It was. I tell you it was having to think all the time about such a person as Frank Masters. I saw him as a man of such generosity, coming to this country from the luxuries of America, devoting his time to caring for the vagrants that most of us do nothing about. I began to think about what sort of person he must be, and what sort of person I was.’
‘And so you set up as a little Frank Masters of your own and gave away my refrigerator money?’
He would not be roused.
‘Yes, I did. That is what I did. And only afterwards did I begin to find out what Frank Masters was really like.’
‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘His death was caused by something bad he had done? Underneath all the while he was –’
‘No, no, no. It was not that. Frank Masters was not a bad man. But he was not the all-good man that I thought either. I found that out in the end. He had his faults. And one of them was even giving away too much.’
Protima was looking doubtful now. He stared at her intently.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘that is what my mistake was. I tried to be like him, and instead of doing my work I began thinking about whether I was a good man or a bad man. And – And there is worse.’
‘What worse?’
‘What happened to the money after I had given it to the poor family of fishing people who needed it to pay off the debt on their boat.’
He was whispering now.
‘They took the money,’ he went on, ‘and they spent every anna on celebrating Holi. It all went up in smoke. Down to the last pie.’
And Protima threw back her head and laughed.
He sat where he was on the rattan chair with the sagging arm and looked up at her. In the faint light he could see her neck, smooth and columnar, as she laughed and laughed with her head back and her whole body shaking.
‘Oh, Mr Policeman,’ she gasped at last. ‘Mr Policeman, what a judge of character you are.’
‘If it comes to a criminal …’
He had begun stiffly, but he could not keep it up. In a moment he too was shaking with mad outbursts of laughter.
From the open window of the house behind them came a plaintive voice.
‘What is it? Why are you laughing?’
Ved.
‘It is all right,’ Protima called. ‘It is just your father. He is such a funny man.’
No reply came. After they had stood in silence for a little Protima walked softly into the house. She came out again almost at once.
‘Asleep,’ she said.
She looked at Ghote down her nose, her eyes sparkling a little.
‘You with your difficult case,’ she said.
‘But it is difficult,’ Ghote said.
‘When you have arrested Amrit Singh with smuggled gold on him?’
‘Yes. I know that. But still I am just in the same position as before over the Masters affair. Certainly Amrit Singh would say nothing more to me all the way back in the train. And I suppose he will never say anything.’
‘Does it matter now?’
‘But of course it does. The situation is exactly the same as before. Frank Masters started to be sick soon after he ate a beef curry. He was poisoned by arsenic trioxide. Arsenic trioxide was stolen from the dispensary at the Masters Foundation just before the meal. Only two people went into that dispensary, both of them without any right to, Amrit Singh and Krishna Chatterjee. It rests exactly equally between them.’
‘But just because Frank Masters was sick,’ Protima said, ‘why should it be poison? I think you are quite wrong about that. Little Ved is sick sometimes, and no one says it is poison then.’
Ghote sighed deeply.
He knew there was never any point in going over such details with Protima. She might be wonderful when you had made a terrible mistake, but she lacked any powers of logical reasoning.
‘Well?’ she said in face of his sigh and silence. ‘Well, is that not right?’
Ghote shook his head.
‘No, I am afraid it cannot be that,’ he said.
‘But why not? Are you saying that Ved has been poisoned so many times? I think you policemen need to come and do a woman’s work in the house.’
‘No,’ Ghote said. ‘I have explained everything.’
‘But I have told you that children get sick for all sorts of reasons. That was something you forgot.’
Suddenly Ghote felt nettled.
‘I did not forget,’ he said sharply. ‘Just, please, leave police work to me and I will leave house matters to you.’
He saw that Protima was ready with a reply. As she invariably was. And he made up his mind that he would not hear it. This was his business.
He jumped up and walked quickly into the house, his head tilted up proudly.
But, once out of Protima’s sight, he checked himself. His old fault again. And it was at that moment that he solved the Masters case.
SEVENTEEN
Inspector Ghote’s first action was to go as fast as he could through the city centre and out to the Masters Foundation. There he found that he had arrived in the middle of a serious crisis. As he stood just inside the tall front door, pausing for a moment to set in his mind the final details of his plan of campaign, there came hurrying past the obsequiously bent form of the podgy, shiny-skinned cook. He went at a half-run, bare feet pattering on the floor, towards the door of the staff tiffin room. At it he stopped, groaned heart-rendingly, ducked his well-greased head even lower and entered.
A waft of cooked-food smell, rich and spicy but with a tang of the burnt about it, came out. Ghote realized that he had arrived at the time of the evening meal. He thought for a moment and decided that this suited him pretty well.
He saw that the cook, in his worried haste, had neglected to close the door completely. Quietly he walked across and stood listening.
It was not difficult to make out what was going on. Just as he approached, Dr Diana’s clear English tones rang out.
‘You know what I’ve had you called in here for?’ she was demanding.
‘Oh, yes, memsahib. Know very well,’ came the cook’s soft reply.
‘All right, my lad. Let’s just hear what. If you know so well.’
‘Oh, memsahib, is my disgraceful cooking.’
‘Yes, it is your disgraceful cooking. But don’t think you’re going to get away with all those apologies this time. I want to know just why your cooking’s so disgraceful.’
‘Very bad cook, memsahib.’
‘Come on, that won’t do at all. Why are you bad? Tell me first exactly what was bad about the food tonight.’
‘Don’t know, memsahib. Just appalling all round, memsahib.’
‘No, it was not.’
‘No, memsahib?’
‘No.’
&nb
sp; ‘Cooking good, memsahib?’
‘No.’
‘Oh yes then, cooking very bad. Sorry, memsahib.’
‘I asked you just what it was you had done wrong tonight. I am not interested in how bad you want to make yourself out to be. I simply want to know what you did wrong with the food we are attempting to eat now.’
‘Yes, memsahib.’
‘Well?’
The cook evidently could think of no way of abasing himself in a manner that would please Dr Diana. He remained silent.
After an ominous pause Dr Diana’s voice floated coldly out again.
‘You know that this cannot be allowed to go on, don’t you?’
But it was not the cook who answered. Instead Ghote recognized Fraulein Glucklich’s curiously accented English.
‘Dr Diana,’ she said sharply, ‘I think you are forgetting something.’
‘I tell you one thing I cannot forget. I cannot forget the interminable series of utterly disgusting meals I have had to put up with here. And nor do I think the whole blame should be put on the cook.’
‘No, indeed it should not. That is precisely what you are forgetting. If the cook is bad, I would remind you, it is because the late Herr Frank, whose purusha has passed on in the great samsara, deliberately chose a bad cook.’
‘All right,’ Dr Diana came back icily, ‘he did choose the cook. But then it’s simply time you and everybody learnt that Frank’s choices are no longer binding in this establishment.’
Even from where he stood in the quiet hall Ghote could hear Fraulein Glucklich’s gasp.
‘That is certainly a very true observation.’
It was Krishna Chatterjee intervening now.
‘Certainly a most true observation,’ he repeated. ‘But on the other hand, there can be no doubt that an institution that bears the name of Frank Masters is bound, at least temporarily, to pay due attention to the practices observed in his lifetime. Perhaps, however, there is a solution to the problem that would heed the wishes of all parties to this unfortunate occurrence. What I mean to say is, is it not possible to arrange for some instruction for this poor fellow?’
Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade Page 21
