‘In the Muddamal Room at the – ’
‘All right, Inspector,’ Tiger cut in, his voice not raised in anger but incisive as ever. ‘That was where you put it, was it? Put it and the rest?’
‘Yes, sir, I – ’
‘Where are you speaking from, Inspector?’
‘Bombay, sir.’
‘I see. Then no chance of you getting there first. Or of myself, come to that.’
‘No, sir. I am most sorry, sir, but that night – ’
‘That will do, Inspector.’
The shortest of pauses. And after it that unmistakable voice again, sharp and swift but – miraculously, extraordinarily – without the least trace of anger.
‘Thank you for keeping me informed, Inspector.’
And the line went dead.
Ghote sat there, the upper part of his thighs positively trembling in the aftermath of what he had had to say.
Had he managed to tell Tiger enough? He supposed that he had. There was only really that one thing to say. That one unforgivable thing: that he had let slip that the tell-tale bloodstained jacket was there to be found in the station at Vigatpore. To be found where, surely, its presence could mean one thing only, that a quantity of blood had got on to it in the station, that the wound on Desai’s head had not been inflicted in the lake, that he had not drowned, had not gone for that absurd swim, but had been killed, killed unlawfully. And at a time when only Tiger and himself were in the station building.
Tiger could easily enough work out for himself all of that. Tiger would work it out, and twice as quickly as he himself.
But what would Tiger do?
What Tiger did Ghote learnt, by chance, next day.
Over the bat-wing doors of his office there appeared the head and shoulders of old Inspector D’Sa, now retired.
‘Ah, Ghote. How are things with you? Still hard at work I am glad to see.’
He pushed open the doors, came in and plonked himself down with a long puff of a sigh.
‘Damned hot,’ he grunted. ‘Hope the monsoon won’t be late this year. When you are as old as I am …’
Ghote suppressed a ripple of irritation. After all, the old boy must find it hard after years of busying himself with routine work, in which he delighted, to have nothing in particular to do. He had failed to get one of the security jobs that many retired officers acquired and, after a lapse of a few months, had taken to wandering into headquarters to chat with anyone willing to spare him time.
‘How are you these days then?’ Ghote asked, resigning himself to twenty minutes or more of placid chit-chat.
‘Oh, pretty well. Pretty well, considering. I keep busy, you know. Walking about, looking for things gone astray. Times are going from bad to worse, you know. Bad to worse. You’ve heard about Tiger Kelkar?’
Ghote felt a jab of ice enter him. Tiger. What could there be already to hear about Tiger?
For several instants he remained incapable of speaking, incapable of replying in any reasonable off-hand way to D’Sa’s held-out piece of gossip.
‘Tiger?’ he managed at last. ‘No. What to hear?’
‘You mean you have heard nothing?’ D’Sa asked, provoking in Ghote now an uprush of irritation that made him want to leap from his chair, seize the old fool by the shoulders and shake him till he rattled.
Again it took him some moments to get out a decently polite reply.
‘No. No, I am hearing nothing. What news is it?’
‘I was up talking to Commissioner Sahib,’ D’Sa answered painstakingly. ‘Always has a few minutes for an old officer, Commissioner Sahib. A real gentleman.’
‘But what was he telling?’ Ghote could hardly keep the rage out of his voice.
‘Why, that Tiger has shot himself,’ D’Sa replied comfortably. ‘Blew out his brains yesterday afternoon. Commissioner Sahib wouldn’t tell me just why. But there is some sort of a scandal, believe you me.’
The old fellow’s eyes gleamed joyfully.
And Ghote sat there unable to utter, unable to think, unable to feel.
*
Inspector Ghote read the Commissioner’s memo for the sixth, seventh, eighth time.
From the Commissioner of Police, Bombay
To: Inspector G. V. Ghote
I have considered certain events alleged to have occurred at Vigatpore P.S. on the night of June 24/25 last year and I must request a full account of your part therein. I require to have the aforesaid account before me by 0900 hours on Monday, June 4.
What could he say? What could he answer?
One thing was clear. It had been becoming more and more so since he had heard that Tiger had shot himself: whatever note or confession he had left behind had not mentioned his own part in the events of that terrible night. Otherwise he would have received, not a request like the one staring him in the face at this moment, but a visit from a senior officer with an arrest warrant.
Tiger had too much of loyalty to have betrayed him. That was certain.
No, the reason this memo was lying on his desk was that there must have been, of course, an investigation already. As soon as the Inspector-General had read Tiger’s last letter he would have ordered an inquiry. Sent some officer from Vigilance Branch at Pune to check up on each and every detail of what Tiger had written. Tiger must certainly have said that he had taken the body to Lake Helena on his own, and that in itself was not very likely. In fact the two of them together had had enough difficulty getting it there. Perhaps already some kind of experiment with a dummy and a police bicycle had been carried out. And if as a result the officer making this new investigation – coming from Vigilance he would be a lot sharper than old Sawant – suspected a second person must be involved, his own position was bound to have come under scrutiny. Then, at the least the investigator would have discovered from questioning the men sent off duty that night that he himself had been left eventually alone in the building with Tiger.
But no one else, surely, had witnessed any of the incidents of that night, except only Shivram Patel’s servant admitting him to the house at the end of it all. And even then the fellow had accepted without any protest his lie about the time. So there was nothing for even the keenest investigator to find. Whatever suspicions there might be, there was nothing that could be proved.
He was at liberty then to say whatever he wished in answer to the Commissioner.
Could he, if he wanted, say exactly what had occurred? From start to finish? From that absurd, unnecessary moment when he had ordered Desai to take the F.I.R. book in to the A.D.I.G. right on to the moment when he himself had thrust the bundle of Desai’s clothes to the back of the shelf in the Muddamal Room behind the loudspeaker?
Could he? Should he?
Ever since he had heard of Tiger’s death, knowing that sooner or later he was bound to get this request from the Commissioner, he had asked himself time and again these questions. And had not been able to find an answer.
Somehow, too, he had been unable to confide in anybody. Not even Protima back at home, although she had questioned him and questioned him sharply in that way of hers more than once about his lack of appetite, his long lying awake at night. But, for all that he loved her as his wife, for all that he trusted her, he had not felt able to unburden himself to her of his secret. It was too fast entwined among all that in his innermost being he believed in for him to be able to pull it out, whole and writhing, and present it, bare, even to the wife of his bosom, even to his Sita to his Rama, one he knew would make any sacrifice for him, just as he was.
Much, much less had he felt he could talk to any one of his colleagues however much, understanding the full circumstances of his position, they might have been able to give him good advice.
He had known he was clinging to an altogether false hope, but until he had actually seen the memo with his own eyes he had still felt dimly that what had happened had not properly happened.
But now he had seen the memo. Its words were there staring him in th
e face.
A full account of your part therein.
By Monday morning.
At least then he had a day to think it all over again. One day.
He felt a qualm of sickness.
Before Monday morning he would have had to have decided something that might mean the whole course of his life would be altered. And not only of his life, of Protima’s and of Ved’s, too. Of Ved’s, with all his promise.
But if in answer to the Commissioner he was to state the full facts that had led to that moment of plunging commitment in Vigatpore, then he would be brought up in no time at all before a Board of Inquiry, and at it he would have no alternative but to recapitulate his confession. And then … Then, almost certainly, having admitted to a crime as grave as concealing the evidence of a culpable homicide, he would be necked out of the police. Necked out of his life as it was.
What would he do after that? He might be able to get some sort of work, though with graduate unemployment running as high as it was, youngsters just out of college applying for a mere clerk’s job by the hundred, he might not even get that. And Protima would suffer, and Ved. Ved would suffer worse. He might have to go out at once and earn what he could, earn something to put a bite of food in their mouths. So no more progress. All bright hopes tumbled into the dust, tossed into the drain to rot and be swirled away. No Police Commissioner Ved Ghote. No police officer post even. But life as a coolie. Or a handcart walla. Or a pavement vendor.
Unless he himself persisted with the lie he and Tiger had built up together on that terrible night. He had been happy then to do what he had done. It had been worth every twist of deceit, every agony he had endured, to keep Tiger, fierce, cleansing, scarifying Tiger, in the police service.
But Tiger was no more in the police service. Tiger was dead. And all that the lie and the deceit would do now was to keep him himself, Tiger’s pale shadow, as a police officer.
Was he worth it? Was he, pale though he was, enough of Tiger’s shadow to justify that lie? To justify cheating that poor, full-of-guts bhabhi of Desai’s? To justify living the rest of his life protected by a monstrous lie?
And there was one day now only to decide. One day.
8
Ghote stood, rooted in indecision, beside his scooter a good hour earlier than his usual time of departure for home on a Saturday. He was unable to make up his mind to leave even though he had tidied away all the papers on his desk and left himself nothing to do.
He felt gripped in every way by his inability to decide what answer to give to the Commissioner.
At last, glimpsing a fellow officer over on the far side of the compound and thinking he might come across to chat, he hurriedly got astride his machine and kicked it into spluttering life. But even when he arrived home after phut-phutting his way through the still busy working city he still could not bring himself to tear loose the intertwined secret deep within him.
He ate even less than he had in the past few days of the food, the meal cooked just to his taste, that Protima had prepared. And then he sat, sat in his customary chair, that mark of stability, of a future stretching out, and did nothing and said nothing.
More than once Protima asked him questions, more and more trivial questions needing less and less of an answer and put with ever-increasing quick sharpness. And each time he grunted out the barest of answers. Ved, sensing that something had gone much astray, after one application for money to buy a paper cone of spicy chana had met with blank silence, took himself off idly kicking at imaginary stones to play with his friends. He came back at the promised hour, but Ghote, who liked nothing better than to offer him praise, again could not bring himself to utter a word.
Ved mooched off to bed, and a little later, much before his usual time, Ghote grunted out that he was sleepy too.
But, of course, in bed he lay sleepless, stiff on his back, hands underneath his head, uncomfortably sweating, and soon aware that in the other cot Protima, too, was not asleep.
At last there came the query in the hot darkness.
‘Are you awake?’
He knew that this was the moment he had been really waiting for, wanting even. But still he could not wrench out that tangle of fears and feelings inside him.
‘I know you are awake. Why is it you cannot sleep? What are you worrying?’
‘It is nothing.’
‘No. I know it is something. What it is? What?’
He lay there silent still, a sort of smouldering resentment filling him, against Protima for no reason, against life because he was victim of such a conspiracy of circumstances.
Protima slipped out of bed and came across. She sat on the side of his cot.
‘Please,’ she said.
He felt all the depth of the plea, a depth the greater for Protima, customarily a jetting fount of words, having confined it to that single, heart-tugging syllable. But the very pull of it seemed to increase in his breast the determination not to speak.
Not to have to speak. He lay thickly wishing for some intervention from above, from anywhere, that would provide an answer without him ever having to drag from within himself the words, the explanation, that must be there, absolutely unwilling though he was to examine what they were.
In the hot silence Protima sat on the end of his cot without another sound.
He began then, perversely, to wish she would speak.
She has only once to ask, he said to himself. That is all. If she would speak one word only. But she will not. And if she can be so bloody obstinate, at a time like this, I will be also.
He knew he was being ridiculous. Unfair and ridiculous. But he began to take a positive malign pleasure in that unfairness.
Then in the dark he heard Protima sob. A single, checked, quickly suppressed sob.
And at last the twice-locked floodgates burst open.
‘I have done something terrible, terrible.’
So he told her everything, from the arrival of Tiger Kelkar on his Inspection to the moment when the news that Tiger had shot himself had so abruptly come to his ears, with all too soon afterwards the arrival of the Commissioner’s memo.
She said nothing for two or three long stifling minutes. Then she spoke.
‘And what you will say in your answer that you must give?’
‘I do not know. The truth, perhaps. All that I have just only told you.’
‘And what will happen then?’
‘There would be an Inquiry by the Commissioner. There will be one, whatever I am saying.’
‘And?’
‘Oh, I do not know. Yes, I do. I have thought about it. There are many things they could do to me, when they know what I have done. I could receive censure only. But that is not likely after what I did, after what Kelkar Sahib and I did. Or I could have promotion withheld. But if it was only that … Or, I suppose, they could say that my actions had caused expenditure of police time, and deduction from pay was in order. Or there is reduction to a lower stage in the pay time-scale for a period to be specified. Or, and this is the least that is likely, reduction in rank.’
‘To constable?’
‘No, no. They are not able to do that. Reduction in rank is always at most to that at which service was entered.’
‘So you would become sub-inspector once more?’
‘Yes. But it might not be only that. There is compulsory retirement. And …’
‘Yes? What else?’
‘Dismissal. Perhaps also in that case a charge under Section 201, causing disappearance of evidence of an offence committed or giving false information touching it so as to screen an offender.’
Protima sat silent then on the side of the bed. It seemed to Ghote that he could sense the chill desolateness that was entering her. He wanted to say something that would push it away. But what was there he could say? The truth was there between them, just as his long, obstinate silence had been earlier. If the full extent of what he had done that night in Vigatpore came out before an Inquiry, then certainly one o
f the worst of the alternatives he had told her of would be visited upon him.
Dismissal.
The end of his life as he had known it, as he had expected to know it till the finish of his working days and beyond.
And had not Tiger Kelkar seen just such an end facing him? And taken his way out?
He knew, lying there in the stifling darkness of the premonsoon night, that Tiger’s way was not for him. Perhaps he lacked the courage. Perhaps he simply did not feel himself to be spewing up such a fiery lava-stream of self-anger. Perhaps he was too aware of how he would be deserting Protima and Ved, fruit of their union.
But, if Tiger’s way was barred to him, what other was there?
He found his mind all grey blankness.
‘But, if supposing …’ Protima said at last, her voice small and without hope in the dark.
‘If supposing I am dismissed?’
‘Yes.’
He uttered a sigh, a sigh that had more than a little of tears in it.
‘I do not know,’ he said finally. ‘What else than police work am I fit for? It is all I have ever wanted to do. It is all I have ever done. It is all I have ever hoped to do.’
‘Yes.’
An acknowledgement.
He felt a spasm of ridiculously petty irritation.
‘What good would I be as a security officer?’ he broke out. ‘Oh, I could do that job all right, but what of satisfaction would be there? And in any case I do not think I would be getting. Who is going to want a dismissed fellow? Even old D’Sa, you know, thirty-five years unblemished service, he could not get such a post.’
‘But then … Then how would we make our both ends meet?’
‘I do not know. I do not know. There would be some way, I suppose. Other people keep from starving to death. We should do the same. But …’
He lay there in silence again, bitter silence. Near the foot of the bed he could feel waves of encouragement emanating from Protima, waves of sympathy, of hope. But what good were they in face of the future that inevitably, it seemed, awaited him?
‘It is not as if I have not been a good officer,’ he flared out suddenly. ‘Have I taken bribes? You have complained even that we never had “income from above”. Have I aided and abetted criminal elements? Have I toadied and treated reverently superior officers? No, I have never so much as held open one car door to them. Have I had suspects beaten up even? Had them hung by the arms and cane-hit till they talked? Did I buy my posting to the C.I.D.? And now I am to lose everything after I have sweated every ounce of my blood, and all because of one terrible night only.’
Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery Page 7
