Four, he thought. Enough of them to spread well out if he made a break for it.
And now they seemed to have realized that their quarry had done something unexpected. They had stopped and were evidently having a muttered consultation.
Had he succeeded in evading them?
He looked down at the land to either side of the road. It was difficult to make out exactly how things lay, but it looked as though on the far side of the road there was a patch of scrubland. The blotchy shapes of low-growing bushes, probably more kika, seemed to be clear, intermixed with the faint gleam from a good many puddles. It was hardly the sort of territory through which someone who did not know their way could move without making a fair amount of noise.
So the goondas would work out that he had come up on to the bund.
He looked along the inside of the wire fence. Some twenty or twenty-five yards back down near the steps leading into the great still black pool of the water there was a small shelter, little more than a roof on four poles. And under that shelter, plain enough to see now in the intermittent flicker of sheet lightning that had broken out somewhere on the horizon, was the tank watchman fast asleep.
Ghote contemplated trying to wake him. But the noise he would have to make calling to him from this side of the fence would at once betray his location. And in any case the sort of fellow the town would employ to look after something as little necessary to guard as the tank would be an old man, past anything in the way of help.
He decided to let him lie. If he did wake him, it would only earn him a broken head.
He looked down at the goondas again. They were still conferring, but he could see that they were each in turn looking up at the slope of the bund now.
It would not be long.
He took a quick glance along the fence in the other direction. Perhaps if he were to run full out …
His eye lit on a gap in the mesh, plain against the distant lightning.
He slowly raised himself to a crouching position and then made for the hole in the wire at a run, keeping as low as he could. He cursed the light khaki of his borrowed uniform.
And then he was through. On the far side of the fence the ground sloped slightly downwards till it came to the top steps of the tank, now, with all the rain, only a foot or two above the surface of the water. Ghote dropped down into the scanty cover the ground formed and waited, straining his ears and endeavouring not to breathe heavily, to see if he could hear what the goondas were doing now.
It was some little time, during which he thought he had once or twice caught the sound of low voices calling to each other, before he realized that there was a third person inside the boundaries of the tank.
There was the old sleeping watchman, and there was someone else.
Some fifty yards ahead of him, perhaps not as much, a slim white-clad figure stood on the topmost step of the tank, looking forwards and downwards at the black expanse of the water.
And no sooner had he taken in the presence of this person, than he realized what it was they were there for.
It was a not uncommon way of committing suicide, to take the plunge into the night waters of some half-deserted tank. If one was no swimmer – and here in the very centre of the Indian sub-continent by no means everyone would be able to swim – it was as good a way as any of ending a miserable life.
He watched the still, slim, shortish figure. And he wondered where his duty lay. In the ordinary way as a policeman he would have had no hesitation in approaching quietly such a figure as this and making sure that they did themselves no harm.
But at this moment? At this moment when there were four great muscled goondas waiting to attack him, and when to speak out loud would be inevitably to give away his presence? And there was not only his own safety to consider. He had been sent here to do a job, and if he were put into hospital for months, or left somewhere dead, that job would not get done.
Nor was it only a job.
Damn it, the Municipal Chairman had got away with one hell of a lot. He should not be allowed to get away with this.
In front of him down on the steps of the tank the slim white-clad figure suddenly stopped. When he straightened up Ghote was almost certain he could see a large white envelope that had been placed on the tank step. So it was definitely going to be suicide.
Ghote got to his feet in one quiet movement and walked quickly but very quietly over the soft ground of the bund top towards the still figure.
When he was within a couple of yards he saw to his surprise that it was a boy of only thirteen or fourteen that he was going to have to deal with. For a moment he paused, thinking hard.
Then he took a long pace forward, so that he could grab the boy’s elbow if he had to. When he spoke it was very quietly as if he was coaxing a sacred animal into an enclosure.
‘It is a dark night to be out,’ he said.
The boy started so wildly that he almost lost his footing.
‘Who – Who – What –’ he babbled.
‘I also am out in the dark,’ Ghote said comfortably. ‘It is a night for thinking.’
And for other activities, he added to himself. For an instant he contemplated trying to use this youngster as a shield to get himself to some place of safety. He seemed, from the good quality of his white bush-shirt and shorts, to come from some well-to-do family, probably with a house quite near. If he could lead the boy back there …
But even as the thought entered his mind he knew he would have to dismiss it. Goondas under the Chairman’s orders would not be the sort to balk at the presence of a stripling like this, and the boy was likely to end up badly hurt as well.
‘Yes,’ the boy answered now, the first shock of his fright leaving him, ‘yes, it is a time for thinking.’
There was a strong tinge of self-dramatizing youthful melancholy in the words. Ghote calculated that his task was already half done. But he ought, all the same, to see if he could find out exactly what the matter had been.
‘You were thinking also?’ he said to the boy, speaking in a slightly wondering, here-is-a-fellow-spirit tone and confident in the darkness that his uniform epaulettes would be invisible.
‘I was thinking,’ the boy said darkly.
‘Of what were you thinking, I wonder. Of life … ? Of death … ?’
Ghote could have smiled, the boy reacted so exactly as planned. But more than half his thoughts were on a matter that did not bear smiling about.
‘Yes,’ the boy said, ‘it was of death that I was thinking.’
Suddenly he stooped, snatched up the large envelope that he had placed on the granite tank step beside him and thrust it crumplingly into his trouser pocket. Ghote hastily pretended to be looking introspectively out across the dark water of the narrow tank. He wished he could have looked behind him at the skyline to see whether any dark figures were crossing it. But he did not want to draw the boy’s attention to anything like that. If he was to get out of him what his particular trouble was, he would have to do so in what seemed the complete secrecy of the night.
Now it was his own turn to drop a slow remark into the meditative atmosphere.
‘Often,’ he said, ‘I have longed for death.’
He had been going to add ‘… like a lover longing for his mistress.’ But the youngster seemed a bit young for such a comparison.
‘You also?’ the boy said now, turning quickly to Ghote.
‘Yes,’ Ghote replied, still the mysterious philosopher. ‘There are times in every man’s life when Death seems the solution to so many troubles.’
‘True, true,’ commented his fellow-thinker.
‘But then,’ Ghote went on, after a proper pause, ‘sometimes there is another answer.’
‘Another answer?’
‘Sometimes there comes into a man’s life, mysteriously, he knows not from where, a kindred spirit. And there lies the other way.’
The boy had turned fully to face him now. His mouth was hanging a little open. The words were re
ady to drop out of it as a plum at its moment of ripeness falls from the tree. It was almost comic. Except that when the words had fallen there would be another, and not so easily solved, problem to be dealt with.
And except that for the boy this too had been a matter of life and death.
‘May I speak to you?’ the boy said now.
‘Speak.’
‘I am going to be married.’
This was not quite what Ghote had been expecting. An examination failure had been more the line his thoughts had travelled on.
‘Married?’ he said. ‘But you cannot yet be fifteen.’
‘I am fourteen just. But, you know, the law can be got round if the father is determined.’
Ghote did know.
‘And you do not wish to marry?’ he asked. ‘You have seen the girl? She is not pretty?’
‘She is very pretty.’
Again Ghote felt he had anticipated too much.
‘But … ?’ he asked tactfully.
Suddenly the boy jerked away from him.
‘Oh, you would not understand,’ he burst out.
Damn, Ghote thought, I have let him go.
He was half tempted to let him go in earnest. He knew that it needed only the slightest wrong answer on his part to have the lad storm off into the darkness now. And if he did that it would give the goondas, who almost certainly had by now heard their voices and were waiting for developments, a few minutes less in which to take up their positions, a few minutes which might make a lot of difference.
But in front of him was a tormented young man, and it was more than probable that his torment was one of the self-inflicted ones of youth.
Ghote addressed himself to the immediate task again. He recalled his own adolescence. And almost as if his mind had been lit up by the distant flash of lightning that at that moment broke in the distance – showing him up more clearly to the waiting goondas? – he found he knew what the answer was.
He spoke softly to the boy.
‘Have you ever seen a baby being born?’ he asked.
The boy’s gasp came clear on the thick night air.
‘How did you know it was that?’ he said.
‘You saw it. Perhaps you peeped through the walls of a hut when some woman in the servants’ quarter of your house was giving birth. You thought even it was something dirty. And you found it was cries and pain?’
‘Yes,’ the boy whispered. ‘And I am not going to make that happen to any woman. Ever.’
Ghote almost smiled in the darkness, only he was afraid the boy might catch a glimpse of his face and feel hurt. The very same experience had happened to him at much this age. And how long had the same implacable resolution he had made lasted? Perhaps a year. Just long enough for the process of growing-up to readjust him.
Yet he had not contemplated suicide. He must say something to this boy to help him break up the hollow burden he had placed upon himself. But what?
That after the pain of the birth the mother was always so content that she had brought a child into the world that all the agony was forgotten? No. More than likely the boy had heard that one, and had rejected it.
‘Listen,’ he said, feeling his way a little. ‘Listen, it is true that the pains of birth are often so hard that they make a woman cry out. But that – do you know the saying there is about this? Old sayings are good things. They are what people have thought concerning the problems that have come to them, just the same, for thousands and thousands of years. Do you know the saying we have about a birth?’
‘No,’ said the boy cautiously.
‘A child is not born without blood,’ Ghote said. ‘And children must be born, you know. That cannot stop. And it cannot be done without blood. Without blood, remember that.’
He waited to see whether he would need to say any more.
There was a long silence while the boy thought at the problem. Then he spoke again.
‘Thank you,’ he said feelingly. ‘And, good night.’
‘Good night,’ Ghote said.
He watched the white-clad boy walk away through the darkness along towards the gap in the wire fence through which he himself had come. He calculated that the goondas, seeing him going, would do nothing until he was out of hearing.
10
They came just exactly as Ghote had expected. He could almost have said ‘One, two, three, go’ before they started to move when the last sounds of the boy’s footsteps had died away down on the road below.
Ghote saw the four of them quite easily. They were making no attempt at concealment now. They had no need to. He was standing right down by the edge of the black strip of water, and while he had been in conversation with the boy the four of them had come through the gap in the wire only fifteen yards away and had spread out in a line. They must have lain down in their prefixed positions and then when the boy was safely out of the way they had all stood up at the same time, like so many figures in a fairground booth.
Only Ghote was not going to shy anything at them. They were going to deal with him.
They advanced together, keeping in line. One of them was chuckling to himself, throatily.
Ghote waited. He could not see anything that he could do. The water of the tank lay only a foot or two behind him, stretching away to either side for perhaps a hundred yards in each direction. If he started to run along its edge one way or the other, the oncoming goondas would have to increase their pace only a little to trap him well before he got beyond the end of their line.
He licked his lips.
Now the two end men of the line were closing in more quickly. The two in the middle were only six or seven yards away from him but they had come to a halt and were standing there grinning. He could see white teeth clearly in the darkness.
The two at the far ends of the line had now reached the water’s edge and were coming towards him that way. There was an abrupt sound from one of them and an outbreak of cursing. Evidently, in keeping his eyes intently on his target, he had put a foot wrong, slipped on the damp stone of one of the tank steps and had nearly gone in.
But even this mishap proved to be a measure of their confidence. The man plainly felt himself at leisure to have a thorough curse and swear about how nearly he had gone into the detested water before he got down to business.
How nearly he had gone into the detested water. Suddenly Ghote swung right round and without an instant of hesitation dived into the still and black tank.
He felt the cold rain-freshened water close about his body. Then his outstretched hands touched lightly against the slimed-over lower steps.
One peril safely behind. The steps had descended as steeply as the boy’s suicide scheme had hinted that they might, and the escape plan had not come to an abrupt end with himself lying stunned in a foot of water.
Would his other assumption pay off as well? He struck out strongly, waiting to surface only till he was out of easy stone-throw range. And then he swam just as hard as he could, and he listened.
The goondas on the bank were shouting to each other, loud and angry Marathi voices.
And, yes, they were shouting what he had dared to hope they would. They were shouting to each other to run round the long and narrow tank. Not one of them could swim. The man who had slipped on the edge and had been so put out by what had nearly happened to him had spoken for them all. Here, almost in the centre of India, by no means everyone was a swimmer.
The far side of the narrow tank loomed up out of the darkness. The goondas’ shouts sounded far off.
But he would hurry all the same until he had got right to the safety of the police-station. There was going to be much to do next day and he was not going to take the least risk of not being there to do it.
*
In spite of having returned with borrowed uniform clinging soddenly after its immersion in the tank and in spite of the discomforts of a night on an improvised bed in Inspector Popatkar’s office, next morning Ghote felt wonderfully invigorated. The Municipal Chai
rman had failed once: he was not then invariably successful in his undertakings as everybody liked to make out.
Now it remained to take advantage of this failure.
It was as likely as not, Ghote calculated, that the goondas were being careful to go to ground after letting him escape. No one would like telling the Municipal Chairman that they had not succeeded in carrying out orders he had given them. So, as far as the Chairman was concerned, the intrusive inspector from Bombay was out of the way. Now was the time to strike then. And the place to strike was obvious too. At the Chairman’s very house. There was the old nurse from his first wife’s home there somewhere in the servants’ quarter and, from the way she had been hidden, it was certainly possible that she had something to tell.
Ghote waited until the Chairman was bound to have come into his office in the centre of the town, and then he went and had a quick precautionary word with Superintendent Chavan before setting out.
‘I shall go there dressed once more as a chicken-feed sales representative,’ he said to him. ‘Thank goodness, no one in the town seems to have linked that man with the police inspector from Bombay yet.’
Superintendent Chavan glanced down at the considerable expanse of his beautifully ironed uniform.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘In certain branches of our work disguise is undoubtedly necessary.’
‘Quite so, sir, quite so,’ Ghote agreed. ‘And that is why I would be obliged if you would issue an order to your men in the station here to take particular pains not to mention what my present appearance is. And also I am telling only you each day where I shall be going.’
‘First-class idea,’ said the superintendent.
And, those ringingly confident tones still in his ears, Ghote set out with his brightly labelled egg-box on the rear carrier of his battleship bicycle for the Chairman’s house once more.
Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg Page 10
