In a few moments Shinde would be standing at the witness table, being asked about the night Desai had sent him out into the rain to buy a cigarette. What would he say? And if he produced the story he had been asked to tell, if he said that his hero, the new inspector, had not been in the station since before midnight, would he have the strength to repeat the lie again and again in the face of savage questioning?
The door was opened and the orderly brought Shinde in. He had made efforts, desperately obvious efforts, to look extra smart for the awesome occasion. His shirt, thin and much washed, had been ironed so ferociously that a crease stretched like a pencil line from one side of his chest to the other. His half-pants equally had been starched to board-like stiffness.
A few paces inside he came to a halt, thumped together his heels, in wretched rubber chappals, and directed into the room in general his splay-fingered salute.
The orderly led him to the witness table.
R.K. was almost gentle as he took him through the preliminaries, his name, his position, his hours of duty.
‘Now, I want you to think back to the night of June the 24th last year.’
‘It is the night Desai Sergeant was drowned in the lake?’
R.K.’s eyes glittered frostily.
‘Let us say it was the night when you last saw Sergeant Desai.’
‘Achcha, sahib.’
‘Now, tell us what happened in the police station from the time after the last man, except for the A.D.I.G. and Inspector Ghote, left duty.’
Shinde looked all round as if he expected to see some burly constable with a lathi waiting to beat him if he said anything unpleasing to the sahibs at the long table.
‘Go on,’ said R.K.
‘It is about the cigarette?’ Shinde asked.
‘Well, we can begin there. You were requested by Sergeant Desai, who was still present though off duty, to go out, yes?’
‘Ji, sahib.’
‘At what time was this?’
‘In the night, sahib.’
‘Yes, yes. We know it was after dark. But I am asking at what time exactly you left the police station.’
‘I am not knowing, sahib.’
‘Come, man, you must have some idea. Was it at ten? At eleven? When?’
‘Please, sahib, I am not able to tell the time.’
R.K. pounced.
‘And yet you told Inspector Sawant when he was making his inquiries – you remember Inspector Sawant? – that Inspector Ghote left the police station before midnight. I suggest to you, Shinde, that you can very well tell the time, and that you know very well at what hour it really was when Inspector Ghote left.’
But all this was plainly too complicated for the peon to follow. He shook his head in bewilderment and looked down at his feet in their battered rubber chappals.
R.K. drew in a slow breath and started again.
‘Shinde, are you able to tell the time from a clock? Yes or no?’
‘No, sahib.’
‘But you told Inspector Sawant that Inspector Ghote left the police station before midnight, yes?’
‘Yes, sahib. Inspectorji was leaving before-before midnight.’
‘And how do you know that, Shinde? Was it because you looked at the clock you cannot read? Or was it because you were instructed to say that was the time at which Inspector Ghote left?’
Now it was out, fairly and squarely. Would Shinde, harassed as he was being, tell the truth now, unable to think of anything else?
He took a long time before replying, a big frown of puzzlement on his face.
‘Sahib, it is this way. Some of the times in the clock I am able to tell. Time of normal-end-of-duty. Time at midday, two hands pointing up, up. Same also at midnight, though that I am not often seeing.’
‘How very convenient,’ R.K. said. ‘And are there other times you can tell? Such as when you are due for your meal? When your officer takes his meal? And others? Are there? Answer me, please.’
‘Yes, sahib. No, sahib.’
R.K. threw back his head.
‘And what sort of answer is that? Yes and no. You are a very clever man, Shinde, to be able to answer both yes and no to the same question.’
‘No, sahib. I am not at all clever. This is why I am Government Servant Class Four only.’
‘But you still have not answered my question,’ R.K. said, after the tiniest of pauses.
‘Please, sahib, I am forgetting.’
‘Forgetting what times you can tell, is it? Forgetting that you very well can tell any time you like? Forgetting that you told the time when you last saw Inspector Ghote that night, and that it was well after midnight?’
‘No, sahib, no. Forgetting what is question.’
R.K. sighed.
‘Very well. Will you please tell the Inquiry whether or not you can read the time from a clock. And this once, speak the truth.’
‘Sahib, I have always spoken truth.’
And then poor Shinde pulled himself up short, and Ghote saw with plunging dismay that a dark blush was spreading up over his face.
It was as much as to say Sahib, I have always spoken truth until Inspector Ghote begged me to lie for him.
‘You have always spoken the truth, have you, Shinde?’ R.K. said, descending like a hooked-beak kite on to its prey. ‘Then tell us the truth now. At what time did you last see Inspector Ghote on the night Sergeant Desai disappeared?’
There was a long, terrible silence. Ghote could see the peon’s throat working as if there was a clotted lump there which he felt he must spit out or choke.
Then at last he managed to utter an answer.
‘Sahib, before midnight.’
‘You are telling us that Inspector Ghote left the police station before midnight? You are telling us that, though you have sworn to tell the truth?’
An almost childishly baffled look came on to Shinde’s face then.
‘Sahib?’ he said.
‘Yes, man, yes?’
‘Sahib, when was I swearing to tell the truth?’
And Ghote realized, only just able to prevent a great smile breaking out, that Shinde in his simplicity had bested the great R.K. Because the fact of the matter was that, this not being a court of law, witnesses were not sworn. R.K., in close pursuit, had forgotten the circumstances, as he himself and even Mrs Ahmed had done earlier.
But R.K. was not the man to give way to fury, even after letting himself be caught out by a simple peon. With unruffled calm he resumed his questioning.
‘Very well, you have not sworn. But I hope nevertheless you have some respect for the truth. And I am now going to ask you again to tell us, in truth, at what time Inspector Ghote left the police station at Vigatpore that night.’
‘Sahib, before midnight.’
Shinde spoke the words with shining bravado.
Poor fellow, Ghote thought, little does he realize that with such an evident attitude he is almost saying aloud I am telling a first-class lie.
But plainly R.K. saw that there was no point in continuing to press his victim. That, if he did so, the brave lie would be repeated and repeated, and that in any case its falsity, if not wholly exposed, was more or less plain for everyone to see.
‘Well, Shinde,’ he said, ‘we will pass over that “truth” you have chosen to put before us – for the moment.’
He gave a quick look towards the Board table to make doubly sure his point had got over. Then he turned back to the hapless peon.
‘Let us instead look at some of the other things you did that night. For example, the cigarettes you went out to buy for Sergeant Desai.’
‘No, sahib, I did not.’
‘Not? Not? Now, we have had enough and more than enough of your lying. You told the Inquiry not ten minutes ago that you were sent by Desai to buy him cigarettes. Do you now dare to tell us this was not so?’
‘Sahib, it was not so. One cigarette only Desai Sergeant sent me to buy.’
From the Board table there came, dis
tinctly, the sound of an all but smothered laugh.
But once again R.K. showed no sign of being ruffled. Ghote, however, thought that he could detect beneath that air of glacial calm a yet harder determination to bring the victim to his knees.
Was there nothing he could do himself to intervene?
‘One cigarette then, Shinde. I stand corrected. And at what hour did you leave to buy this one cigarette?’
‘Sahib, I am not knowing. Only at my end-of-duty time and at midday and midnight also when the clock hands are the same as I am able to tell the time.’
‘Are you attempting to say that you cannot give the court – give the Inquiry any idea of what time you left? Come, was it before the others in the station had been so conveniently sent out? Or after?’
But now Mrs Ahmed was on her feet, enraged. Or so to all appearances.
‘Sir,’ she addressed the Presiding Officer, ‘this is monstrous. My client dismissed the personnel in the station that night solely on humanitarian grounds. To imply that he was sending them away for some nefarious purpose is wholly malafide.’
‘Yes,’ S.M. Motabhoy said benignly. ‘I think perhaps that the last question should not go on the record.’
He looked across at the shorthand clerk’s desk and waited until he had seen him draw a line through some symbols on his pad.
‘Please continue, Mr Sankar,’ he said.
R.K. gave a short melodramatic sigh and turned to Shinde again.
‘Well now,’ he said, ‘cannot you give us any idea of when it was that you were sent out to buy that cigarette?’
Ghote knew how important the repeated, trivial-seeming question could be. If Shinde told the Inquiry when he had left the station, and if R.K. was then able to establish that he had been away for some considerable time, it could become clear that Shinde had not been present at about half-past eleven, and his earlier lie would be exposed. But Shinde, God bless him, was hardly likely to be able to work this out.
He waited with sharp trepidation for the reply.
‘Sahib, it was raining when I was leaving.’
‘Ah.’
R.K. pounced again.
‘Now, at what time did the rain start and finish that night? And let me warn you, Shinde, that if necessary other evidence can be brought on this matter. Now, tell the Inquiry: when did the rain start?’
‘Sahib, it was starting just when darkness came.’
‘Good. That has the ring of a truthful answer. At last. Now, when did the rain cease?’
This was the crucial moment, Ghote thought. The rain – how vividly he could recall it – had slackened to not much more than a drizzle while he and Tiger had been wheeling that slumped body through the outskirts of the town. If Shinde indicated that he had got back from buying Desai’s cigarette after the rain had eased off then it would be clear that he himself had been at the station to say goodnight to him and leave at a much later time than 11.30. And there would be scientific evidence from the Weather Bureau at Colaba to establish the time the rain had lessened.
But again this was hardly something which a Class Four Government Servant could be expected to work out.
Yet it was plain, at least to him, that Shinde was attempting to do the sum. Would he arrive at an answer that was consistent with the lie he had been persuaded to tell and had stuck to so loyally?
‘Sahib …’ Shinde said at last, with horrible hesitancy.
‘The time the rain ceased or slackened?’ R.K. demanded.
‘Oh, sahib, by then I was so wet I was not at all able to tell whether it was hard-hard rain or soft only.’
R.K. simply turned to the Board and lifted eloquent shoulders.
‘Well,’ he said with calmness, ominous calmness, ‘let us try to get at this vexed question by another route.’
He turned again to Shinde, who produced for him a tentative, uncomprehending smile.
‘At what hour did you yourself reach your quarter that night?’
‘Oh, sahib, I am not knowing.’
‘Of course not. But you have a wife, have you?’
‘Oh, yes, sahib. Very good wife.’
‘I trust, Shinde, we shall not have to call this wife of yours from Vigatpore to Bombay, to call her into this very room, to ask her the questions which you seem so singularly unable to provide us with answers to.’
‘Please, sahib?’
‘Do you want your wife to stand where you are now?’
‘Oh, no, sahib. That would not be very good at all. She is very fearful and she is not understanding anything also. Not like me, sahib.’
‘Well then, will you try to understand this, and give us an answer in which we can all believe? At what time did you reach your quarter that night?’
‘Sahib, it is hard to say.’
‘It is not. You must have known when you got there. Now, tell us the exact truth.’
‘Please, sahib?’
Into Shinde’s eyes there had come the expression that enters a dog’s when it is given a command beyond its comprehension.
‘Answer, man. At what time did you reach your quarter?’
‘Sahib, I cannot.’
Ghote, pinned to his hard little chair, felt for the fellow.
Once more he was having to find a second lie to back up the first. If he truly told them the time he had got back home, the whole game would be given away in an instant. If he failed to provide a satisfactory answer, his wife would be hauled from Vigatpore, be subjected to R.K.’s attacks, and in all probability state the actual simple truth.
He felt a desire, from deep within himself, to leap to his feet, to shout out Yes, yes, I did help Tiger Kelkar all the time, and I asked this poor fellow to lie for me. And he has done it. But now, now, you have the truth.
He grasped the sides of his chair with both hands, as if physically to prevent himself rising. And he swore that he would not let Shinde endure this torment beyond just one question more.
‘Come, this is arrant nonsense. It is plain to us, to every single person in this room, that you are prevaricating. Now, stop that altogether. Answer my question, and answer with the truth. At what time did you yourself reach your quarter?’
‘Sahib, my wife was sleeping-sleeping when I was reaching. My three-four children also. Sahib, it must have been before the time the clock hands were pointing up-up.’
‘Before midnight?’
‘Yes, sahib, before midnight, I am saying.’
R.K. Sankar sank down on to his chair and waved the witness away.
14
Once more Ghote made his way on his phut-phutting old scooter back home for a midday meal. Doing so left him little time, in fact, to eat. But he felt that if he took any tiffin anywhere near the Old Secretariat he might see someone else involved in the Inquiry, if only the shorthand writer or the stout old long-service havildar who acted as receptionist at the entrance. And he wanted for a few minutes at least to get away from all the menace that hung over him.
Certainly the journey made forgetting that easy. Weaving through the traffic with the rain steadily descending making the roads stream with water two or three inches deep at times, effectively prevented him from thinking of anything except keeping his machine upright. Potholes, where the slapdash repairs of the previous year had been washed out, were another hazard. As were the pedestrians who, blinded by rain and their inevitable umbrellas, made wild darts from one side of the road to the other.
A girl did that now, one hand holding a wildly swaying coloured umbrella, the other hoisting up her sari, the red dye of her forehead kum-kum running in a trickle down the centre of her nose. He wobbled violently but managed to keep his machine going and get round behind her. But all too soon he was forced to a halt as the traffic in front came, vehicle by vehicle, to a solid jammed mass.
Another waterlogging, he thought. Or perhaps trouble with some handcart loaded with three or four old chairs to ferry people over a deeper flood. They were always getting stuck and producing outbreaks o
f shouting, illegal horning and more bad temper than that brought on by the perpetual damp and the hordes of new-bred mosquitoes.
He waited with some patience.
What new witness would R.K. bring in this afternoon? And who was it who was helping him prepare the terrible case he was putting?
He shook the anxious pricklings from his mind.
On the Fiat immediately in front of him he saw a rat, driven out by flood water, take a frenzied leap off a piece of half-sunken wood in a puddle and on to the car’s rear bumper. It scampered across and dived off on the far side. A twinge of unaccustomed pity moved him. He too knew what it was to be harassed by unknown forces from unknown directions.
The Fiat started forward and he set off again.
Home at last, Protima had food ready for him. And questions.
He knew she had a right to hear how the morning had gone, but he longed not to have to tell her. Poor Shinde had managed to maintain his lie, however obvious it was that he had been lying. But to explain it all to Protima, to live those fears all over again: he shrank from it.
So, as he slipped into the pair of fresh socks she had warmed for him by the stove in the kitchen, he began instead quickly to tell her the tale of S.M. Motabhoy’s adventure of the night before.
He laid it on a bit describing, as S.M. Motabhoy hardly had, the water rising inch by inch with its dangerous floating layer of petrol.
‘And what happened? What happened?’ Protima demanded.
Then, without waiting for his reply, she flew into a spat of rage.
‘Oh, why you can never tell me anything properly? Why must you go through it all from start to finish, one, two, three, as if you were telling a judge or a magistrate only? Did it all catch fire? Were people charred to death? Tell me. Tell me.’
‘I have told already that S.M. Motabhoy was arriving at the Inquiry,’ Ghote snapped back. ‘You must see from that how it was all okay in the end.’
‘Well then, if it was, why were you making so much of a story?’
Ghote almost replied Just to stop you eating my head about the damned Inquiry. But he stopped himself in time. He owed Protima that and much more. The least he could do was to stand back from a pointless quarrel.
Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery Page 13
