But the crone, when she had recovered herself, ignored them all in favour of hobbling, spitting curses all the way, after an unexpectedly clean-looking copy of a magazine that she had, for what reasons it was hard to conceive, been clutching in one hand.
It had been blown by a puff of wind, or even forced over the ground by the battering raindrops, to within a foot or two of Ghote himself. He stooped and picked it up, wondering as he did so whether in a place as remote and old-fashioned as this he would get into trouble for having so much contact with a harijan woman. In towns of this sort the old ways were still powerful.
‘Mine, mine,’ the old crone crackled at him.
‘Yes, yes, I am giving,’ he answered, arranging the flapping pages as he spoke.
And then, a couple of words in the precious magazine caught his eye and quite transfixed him with astonishment.
There in bold black letters in the middle of a narrow column of print was his own name.
It was quite clear, unmistakable. ‘Ghote Goes In’. And the paragraph read on: ‘Top trouble-shooter Inspector Ganesh Ghote (pronounced Gotay) of Bombay C.I.D is to be sent …’
Totally ignoring in his utter surprise the old crone, who was by now plucking at his shirt sleeve, he looked up at the top of the page to see what on earth magazine it was that for some unimaginable reason was writing about him.
It was Time. Time magazine. He knew it. He had seen DSP Samant reading it.
But why? Why his name in Time?
He scurried to the head of the article. ‘Saint-v-C.I.D’. What was this? He read at lightning speed.
There was not, when he conducted one heat-stroke of analysis on the piece, all that much to it. Facts were evidently hard to come by. But what there were were terrible. The piece dealt precisely with the case he had just at this moment arrived to tackle, but it added one item that he had had no idea of. It seemed that a local holy man had, for unexplained reasons, set his face against the whole investigation into the Municipal Chairman’s first wife’s death. He was conducting a fast against any further inquiries, a fast ‘unto death’. And he had already been doing so for forty-eight days ‘as of now’. There was a picture too, not of the ‘saint’ nor of the ‘C.I.D man’ – and thank heavens for that at least – but of the Municipal Chairman, a sharp, crocodile-grinning face under a narrow white Congress cap, a good photograph, crystal clear, even down to a birthmark on the chin. ‘Chairman Savarkar: A Swami’s protection’.
A sudden whip-like fury sprang up in Ghote’s mind against the Eminent Figure who had so cunningly briefed him the day before. There had been not the least mention of this trouble. And it must have been well enough known about in this area for some sharp-eyed correspondent to have got hold of the tale and sent it as an amusing story – an amusing story – to Time magazine. And, worse, it had already been decided then, days and days ago, that he himself was to be sent to investigate. He had been the last to be told.
He was standing facing the station entrance. He very nearly marched straight back in and demanded the time of the next train to Bombay.
How could he conduct a tricky business of this sort when the whole town would be expecting him? When they all knew that he had been sent here to make out a case against Vinayak Savarkar, the man among them all who could see to it in the twinkling of an eye that any local official who came under his displeasure was moved off the scene for ever, who could do a thousand and one useful things for anybody who had obliged him, from getting a place for a boy at a coveted school to acquiring reserved train seats at a moment’s notice? What hope would there be of getting admissions about any dubious conduct fifteen years ago out of the people already warned in this way?
The hand pluck-plucking at his shirt became yet more insistent. The sprouting-haired face looking up into his was contorted with anxiety and anger.
‘Sahib, it is mine, mine. I must have, Sahib.’
He thrust the wretched magazine into the crone’s hand and watched her hobble away, clutching, one in either wrinkled arm, her earthenware pot and her Ovax jar.
Then he turned and set out for the waiting tongas. After all, he had been given orders, he had to obey.
So, with as an addition to his troubles the extreme slowness of the ride into the centre of the sleepy and stifling little town, and the continuing downpour which while it lasted sent spouts of water in through the unmended rents in the hood of the tonga, Ghote was feeling more despondent than determined when he reached the main street.
It lay, he saw, wide and puddle-pocked, with occasional bullock-carts and cyclists proceeding along it and some determinedly browsing cows, squatting children and rummaging pi-dogs scattered here and there, not to mention two hostages to the spirit of modernity in the shape of parked motor-cars, one dilapidated to the point of ruin and the other by contrast overwhelmingly bulbous and glossy.
But then at last there was the police-station, standing heavily whitewashed in every particular, between the Palace Talkies – now showing the last record-breaking hit film Ghote had succeeded in taking his wife to in Bombay about a year before – and on the other side of Rao Dispensary (Dr R. Rao: propr). And, as the tonga began to slow yet more its already leaden pace, Ghote greeted the smartness of the building with a small lifting of the spirit.
Policemen were policemen everywhere.
And then, when he had already risen in the tonga’s rearward-facing seat balancing the burdensome orange egg-box on his widespread right palm, the vehicle suddenly lurched sharply forward.
It was all he could do, clutching desperately at its frail side with his one free hand, to keep himself in at all. And in a couple of seconds he found himself clacking along the wide street again at a speed quite twice that which the lean-shanked horse had attained at any point in the journey before.
He jockeyed the egg-box on to the patched leather seat behind him and heaved himself down beside it. He was in the process of swivelling round to give the tongawalla a furious reprimand when the vehicle was pulled to a shakingly abrupt halt right in front of the big bulbous parked car.
A man in a white Gandhi cap was leaning out of its back window, a cigar clamped between widely grinning teeth. Ghote recognized him instantly, if only because of the big blotchy birthmark in the shape of a well-prowed boat on his lower left jaw. It was the Municipal Chairman.
And at once Ghote understood what had happened to his tongawalla. The fellow had not simply been struck with a fit of total wilfulness. When his vehicle had jerked forward in that startling way it had been because Vinayak Savarkar had leant out of the window of his big car and had beckoned. When the Municipal Chairman beckoned in this town people came running.
And then to Ghote’s sheer astonishment the Chairman, removing for an instant the long cigar from his grinning teeth, actually addressed him by name.
‘It is Inspector Ghote? From Bombay, all the way?’
Ghote looked at him in mute fury.
How on earth had the man known that this perfectly ordinary looking chap in white shirt and trousers sitting in an ordinary station tonga was an inspector of the Bombay C.I.D?
‘You are wondering how I know that you are the famous Inspector Ghote, long stories in the newspapers?’ the Municipal Chairman asked now with another snapping grin.
‘No,’ Ghote shouted.
‘But you are Inspector Ghote?’
Ghote swiftly considered denying it.
‘I see you are wondering whether to deny,’ the Chairman said. ‘But I am telling you it would be of no use whatsoever. I know too much.’
He sucked at the end of his cigar like a street-boy sucking at the end of a piece of sugar cane, with concentrated fervour.
‘So you are wondering still? Yes? No?’
He actually waited for Ghote’s answer.
‘Yes,’ Ghote said with dignity, sitting straighter on the tonga’s worn seat. ‘Yes, I am wondering.’
‘It is very simple,’ the Chairman answered, with something of the a
ir of a very intelligent teacher instructing a provenly dull pupil. ‘A certain Eminent Figure in Bombay may send his spies to this town, but he forgets that I can send my spies to him. And no sooner had Inspector Ghote boarded the train at VT Station last night than a good friend of mine telephoned me straightaway. So when that train arrives at our town and I see just one of the station tongas coming I am not in much difficulty knowing who is here.’
‘Very well then,’ Ghote said, realizing with a glint of reviving guile that at least the boldly labelled egg-box was down on the tonga seat out of sight, ‘very well, I have come. I have come on orders to investigate the death of your late wife and I mean to carry out that investigation.’
The Chairman threw his cigar down into the slushy mud of the street. It was smoked to half its length only.
‘Now then, Inspector Ghote,’ he said, ‘shall I tell you why I went to such trouble to make sure I saw you just as soon as you were arriving?’
‘If you like,’ Ghote said.
The lean horse in the shafts of the tonga took a sudden half-step forward in an effort to get hold of a strip of much-trodden mango peel. The frail vehicle swayed and swung on its single axle. Ghote grabbed both sides.
He saw the Chairman’s wide mouth snap up the incident like a gecko lizard snapping up a chance mosquito.
‘Well then, Inspector, I did it so as to give you good advice. Good advice while there was still plenty of time for you. It is this: in Bombay things may be different but in this town it is what I say that goes. I am boss, see? I am telling you, every single damn one of the officials in this town owes his place to me – the District Judge, the Superintending Engineer, the Number One at the Hospital, the Head of the Public Works Department, the House Rents Controller – all, all. So ask who you want, ask what you want, you will not be learning one damn thing. See?’
His wide grin flashed out at Ghote, hard as a barrier of white-coated steel.
‘Now,’ he went on with unabated cheerfulness, ‘I am a reasonable man, Inspector. I know you have been given a job to do, and you must do it. So you stay in the town. Do not go. Enjoy yourself.’
His eyes flicked over the street.
‘Go to the Palace Talkies,’ he said, ‘No need to pay, just give your name to Manager. I will see he is informed. Best seat every night. And afterwards just drop in at the Krishna Bhavan Restaurant, or, if you do not like, try the Royal Hindu. Both proprietors are very good friends of mine. They will make no charge.’
He pushed his head a little further out of the car window, happily ignoring the few drops of rain that still fell at the tail end of the shower.
‘Oh, Inspector,’ he said with an atrocious wink, ‘if it is a matter of gay girls. It is Francis Street you are wanting. Do not mind which house. Of all I am landlord. Just to give my name. And then when you have stayed week, or ten days even, back to Bombay you go and tell them no bloody good. All right?’
The head went back in at the car window. The window began to rise.
‘No,’ Ghote shouted, causing the tonga to rock violently once more. ‘No. It is not all right.’
Abruptly the window was lowered to its full depth.
The Chairman’s grin shot out from it like a whip-crack.
‘But listen, Inspector, also,’ he said. ‘It is not top men only that are my friends in this town. There are goondas too that I know. Bad hats, Inspector, every one of them. Men who would not hesitate to set upon a perfectly innocent man in the street at night and beat the daylights out from him.’
Ghote stood bolt upright still in the gently oscillating tonga.
‘I am a police officer,’ he said.
That and no more.
2
The Municipal Chairman did not appear to be greatly put out by Ghote’s declaration. Yet perhaps his flashing grin was a little subdued as he slowly wound up the window of his big car muttering ‘As you like, as you like.’ And when the gross vehicle squelched slowly forward through the slush and wide puddles of the street Ghote was able to see that the birth-marked face on the far side of the glass was looking decidedly thoughtful.
He felt pretty thoughtful himself.
He had known from the start that he would not be able to conduct an investigation in a place like this without tough opposition. But somehow the very openness with which the Chairman had laid down his cards made the difficulties ahead seem all the more mountainous.
No doubt there had been some boasting in what had been said. A District Judge was hardly likely to be completely in the man’s pocket. And probably too most of the other officials whose names had been rattled off like that were not so indebted to him as he had made out. But, on the other hand, it was perfectly certain that anyone as rich as Vinayak Savarkar could have plenty of goondas at his beck and call. And he could see to it that they got away with inflicting a beating-up, too. There would be plenty of lawyers ready to discover something to the discredit of the arresting officer in such a case, or to invent it.
And when such a person as the Municipal Chairman also had the backing of the forces of good, as it seemed, in the shape of a holy man prepared to fast for days and days in order to protect him from any investigation, then the outlook was black indeed.
Ghote clambered down from the tonga and took some satisfaction in paying the driver the very minimum fare. Then, doing his best to conceal the gaudy egg-box in his cradling arms while it could still be linked with the Inspector Ghote the Chairman had spoken to, he picked his way back down the muddy street to the police-station.
If that man is not to get away with it every time, he thought to himself, there is only one thing for it. I must just act so damn quickly that even he is not prepared for me.
*
Inside the police-station the comforting impression Ghote had gained from its exterior smartness was at once reinforced. The outer office was in a state of scrubbed cleanliness on every scrubbable surface and everything that could possibly be polished had been polished till it dazzled. The constables on duty were every one turned out to a nicety, down to the last neat fold in their turbans.
One of them came smartly forward when Ghote presented himself at the uncluttered wooden counter, and when Ghote, in a careful undertone, gave him his name, there was an immediate and alert reaction.
‘Oh, yes, sahib. Special orders from Superintendent Chavan. You are to be taken in to see him ek dum.’
Ghote felt a positive stream of warmth go through him. He was on home ground.
He followed the man down a corridor – scrupulously painted doors, each with a clean name-card in a glintingly polished brass holder – and into the interior of the building. Soon the constable stopped, tapped respectfully on a final door, listened for the barked ‘Koi hai?’ and spoke up smartly in answer.
‘Inspector Ghote, Superintendent sahib. Brought straight in as per orders.’
An instant later the door in front of them was jerked open and Superintendent Chavan stood there.
He was a big man, out-topping Ghote by a good eight inches. Though heavy of build and broad and a little puffy of face, any unpolicemanlike impression this might have made was totally effaced by the extreme correctness of his uniform. It had been ironed to the last rigidity, a very ideal of what its wearer should look like.
While the constable threw up a heel-crashing salute, the superintendent urged Ghote into the office, a broad smile on his broad face.
‘Sit down, my dear Inspector, sit down. You smoke?’
A brilliantly polished brass cigarette-box was thrust forward. Ghote seated himself on the chair drawn up dead square to the broad desk.
‘It is most kind,’ he said. ‘But I do not smoke.’
‘No? Sensible fellow. Wish I could cure myself of the wretched habit.’
Superintendent Chavan drew up his own well-padded chair with businesslike briskness. He reached forward and adjusted the position of his braided uniform cap that lay to one side of the neatly-kept desk.
‘My dea
r fellow,’ he said, ‘I cannot tell you how damned pleased I am to see you.’
‘I am certainly pleased to be here,’ Ghote said.
Superintendent Chavan looked up in surprise.
‘Pleased to be here?’ he asked. ‘In this town? Now?’
Ghote smiled a little ruefully.
‘No, not exactly that,’ he admitted. ‘But I am certainly pleased to be inside a police-station, and such a well-ordered one.’
The superintendent puffed out his broad chest a little.
‘I like to think I know how a station should be run, even though we are miles and miles from you chaps in Bombay,’ he said.
‘It looks so well run that I am a little surprised it was thought necessary to send me here at all,’ Ghote replied.
Superintendent Chavan tapped thoughtfully with long fingers on the edge of his braided cap.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is the problem.’
He gave the cap a final little pat, as though he derived strength from it, and continued.
‘Perhaps you have not altogether appreciated, my dear Inspector, what it is like to live in a town like this. It is not Bombay, you know. We are not very up to date. You will not find women in slacks, and inter-caste marriages. And here also we have to acknowledge that a certain individual is undoubtedly the boss.’
This confirmation of the words of that ‘certain individual’ himself struck chilly on Ghote’s renewed optimism.
‘Boss he may be,’ he said, in a defiant attempt to perk himself up. ‘But he is not above law.’
‘Certainly not, certainly not,’ replied the superintendent. ‘I hope you did not think I was meaning that.’
Ghote felt the warmth beginning to flow back. At least there was complete solidarity within the police camp, however strong the pressures from outside.
Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg Page 2
