‘Oh, yes, sahib. Inspector uniform. The three stars on the shoulder had been taken off because when you beat the clothes they get beaten also. But I could see the marks where they had been.’
‘You are most observant. So, tell us, what else did you notice about this uniform?’
‘Very very dirty, sahib. Pant most dirty. Very much of mud.’
Ghote’s mind raced.
And, yes, he had an answer. Of a sort. So this was not the time he would have to confess to Mrs Ahmed. Perhaps that time, after all, would never come.
He leant back and whispered.
‘The compound at Shivram Patel’s, it was most disgracefully neglected. And with the rain it had already become highly muddy. My trouser would have got extremely dirty there.’
He turned back to listen to R.K.
But R.K. seemed to have abandoned the question of the muddiness of the uniform. Which seemed odd. And what was it he was fishing for now?
‘And was there anything more that you, plainly an exceptionally observant person, noticed about those garments?’
The dhobi looked at him for a moment or two, as if to be sure that his answer would be the one that had been required. Then he spoke.
‘Oh yes, yes, sahib. Something more.’
‘Good. And what was that?’
‘The buttons of the jacket, sahib. They had been cut off with a scissor so that they also would not be beaten when I am washing. But there was one of them that was different, sahib.’
‘One? Different?’
‘Oh, yes, sahib. Number Two button down, it had been torn off from the jacket. Not at all cut. I was seeing the ends of the threads, sahib.’
‘Torn off? You are certain about that?’
‘Oh, yes, sahib. Many, many people are accusing me of cutting off buttons to steal, so I am always looking to see what has been done.’
‘Good. Excellent. And this was, let us be sure of it, the second button down? The Number Two button down?’
‘That was it, sahib.’
‘Good. I see. Thank you.’
But, Ghote thought in bewilderment, what on earth use to them can that evidence be? I picked up that button. Yes, certainly it did come off when I lifted up Desai’s body and the threads would look different from the places where Protima cut off the other buttons. But I picked up that one. I know I did.
So what can this be about? What?
17
It was not long before Ghote learnt what the significance of the missing button was, something that was to prove a blow to the defence Mrs Ahmed had so far established for him that was more damaging than he could have imagined. But first she was merely concerned with cross-examining the frightened Vasantrao Chavan. About the button she could ask him nothing, since neither she nor Ghote had any notion of its importance. But, armed with what he had told her about the foul, muddy state of Shivram Patel’s compound, she was enabled by her questioning to put what the dhobi had said about the mud on the uniform in a much less damning light.
R.K. Sankar seemed even less discomposed than usual, however, by the way this part of his case had been made to look merely fanciful. He rose impassively to tell the Board what witness he next proposed to produce.
‘Mr Presiding Officer, you may feel that it is too late in the day for a further witness to be heard, especially one who, you will find, will substantiate a major portion of the case it has been my duty to put before you.’
‘Well, Mr Sankar,’ S.M. Motabhoy gravely answered, ‘I do feel certainly we should not attempt today to hear a witness of major importance. Who is it you wish to call?’
R.K. unexpectedly turned and directed his full gaze at Ghote, abruptly rigid on his hard chair.
‘Mr Presiding Officer,’ he said, ‘the witness I should like next to put before you is one Piraji by name. He will testify to having seen the accused in company with the late A.D.I.G. Kelkar proceeding at night through the byways of Vigatpore with between them on a bicycle the body of a dead man.’
‘Very well, Mr Sankar. Tomorrow.’
Ghote hardly heard S.M. Motabhoy. What R.K. had said boomed like a knell in his head.
He wanted not to believe it was possible. There could not have been a witness to that dreadful procession of his and Tiger’s. The rain that night had been too absolutely blottingout for it to have been possible. And yet, of course, it was possible. It had not been totally beyond anyone’s powers to make their way beneath that sheeting, spearing downpour. He and Tiger had done it, after all. So someone else could have been out under it too.
But if there had been someone there to see them, someone whose evidence had been cunningly kept back by R.K. and Pimputkar till this moment, then this was the end of it all.
Yes, he thought, now I shall have to own up to everything. I shall have to tell them just what it was that I did. Nothing else for it. To tell them, and take the consequences. Finish of police work. Finish of service. Finish of everything.
The members of the Board, however, seemed to have taken R.K.’s dramatic announcement much in their stride. They had got to their feet and were putting on their uniform caps preparatory to going out. One or two of them were looking anxiously at the windows to see what the weather was doing. The rain, which had slackened to little more than a drizzle, was now coming down insistently once more. The window panes were awash and the tossing palms lining the Maidan no more than blurred shapes against the tumbled grey of the sky.
Ghote turned to Mrs Ahmed. But she, too, was simply bundling papers back into her big battered bag.
He remembered her calm attitude at the start of the Inquiry when R.K. had listed the events of the night in Vigatpore in such detail that he himself had momentarily panicked. Then she had said they should wait till the actual evidence had been produced and she had cross-examined the witnesses. No doubt she was treating R.K.’s announcement now in the same down-to-earth way.
But then she did not know that the new witness would be speaking no more than the truth. He must tell her.
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘could we kindly have a few minutes of talk.’
To his surprise Mrs Ahmed looked up at him with an expression of plain annoyance.
‘Inspector, I am sorry, but the Footpathwasi Kriti Samiti is taking out a procession against compulsory clearance of pavement dwellings during monsoon period. I have promised to join in presenting the petition, and already I am late.’
Ghote could not keep the hurt he felt off his face. Ready to pour out his confession, it had not occurred to him that Mrs Ahmed might not be ready to hear it. To hear it and to condemn him.
‘Inspector,’ she said hurriedly, ‘I am really very sorry. But a promise is a promise. Look, tomorrow morning I will come one quarter of an hour early. Would that be enough time?’
‘Yes, madam,’ Ghote said. ‘That will be enough of time. More than enough. Thank you.’
What I have to say, he thought, can be quickly said. Two or three sentences only of the truth, and it will be done.
He took his cap, tramped down and found his plastic cape and gumboots – S.M. Motabhoy, he saw, had no rain protection and was having to run in his uniform across the pavement to where his driver was waiting with his car – and went out to face the long scooter ride home through the piled up, impatient traffic and the swirling beating rain.
It took him even longer than usual to reach home, and even having to battle with the traffic and the rain did not prevent him thinking more and more despondently about the disaster which seemed to be about to topple down on him now like a huge poised rock. But, however grim the outcome would be, nothing altered his decision that all he could do was to end the lying and tell first Mrs Ahmed, then the whole Inquiry that he had indeed done what R.K.’s new witness was going to state that he had done.
So as soon as he had peeled off his plastic cape, almost as wet inside from condensation as it was outside from rain, and kicked off his gumboots he beckoned Protima into the kitchen. There, he hoped, Ved
, sitting with his ear close to the radio on its shelf listening to the Bournvita Quiz, would not hear.
Then, with hardly a moment to pluck up his resolution, he told her that after all he was going to let the Inquiry hear the truth.
‘No,’ came the compacted monosyllable of her reply.
He thought for a moment that this was to be her only response. And, though the word had been spoken with explosive force, he felt it was an amount of opposition he could overcome.
But, of course, it was not all there was.
‘Think, think,’ Protima began to plead when words were restored to her. ‘If you will not think of me, if you will not think of yourself, think of Ved only. How is he to become fully educated if after tomorrow you are without any income? You yourself said it: it would not be easy for a dismissed officer to find more employment. And then where are school fees, and college fees also to come from? Would you have Ved go to work? At the age that he is? Like a millworker’s son? Would you do that to your child?’
‘It may not come to so much,’ he countered.
‘But it would. You have said and said. Dismissal is what faces you.’
‘It may not be so bad. The Show Cause notice might state only “Reduction in rank”.’
‘And you know that it will not.’
He hung his head. It was true, if now he were to admit after so many lies, so much evasion, that all along the truth had been just as the Inquiry charges had alleged, then it was only to be expected that S.M. Motabhoy would fix on the severest punishment within his powers. Dismissal. It would certainly be dismissal.
Protima put a hand on his arm. He smelt suddenly a faint whiff of raw onion from the meal she had been preparing. Cooking for him, as she had done ever since the first day of their marriage when, with such pride, she had made what his mother had told her was his favourite dish, sweet carrot halwa. He felt, a sweeping flood-tide, in that single gesture of hers all that the years of their marriage had brought to them in closeness, in affection, in physical togetherness, in love. He must not now, in these days of crisis, lose all that they had given each other. He must trust her. Trust her through and through.
‘My husband, why must you do this now? What has happened that you have gone back on what you had promised?’
So, painfully, he told her in full detail how R.K. with behind him Inspector Pimputkar, that mongoose, had so carefully laid out his case to look at its very blackest at this point.
Protima was silent when he had finished. But at last she spoke, slowly and hesitantly.
‘Husbandji, again I am begging. But for this only. Wait one day more, till you have heard-heard what this Piraji they are calling has said. It may not be as bad as they are promising. It may be the fellow thought only that he had seen you and Kelkar Sahib.’
Ghote heaved a long sigh.
‘But there is the button,’ he said. ‘He will tell, I am certain, that he saw that missing button. Why else was R.K. so keen to get that evidence from our dhobi?’
‘But you will wait all the same? One day more only? Or two. It is Saturday tomorrow. Wait until Monday because the Inquiry will not be held on Sunday, will it?’
‘Very well,’ Ghote said, beaten down by all the weight of their shared past. ‘I will leave it till Monday. But till then only.’
And at that moment Ved burst through the bead curtain behind them, face shining in simple uninhibited triumph.
‘Dada. Dada. The Bournvita Quiz. I knew every answer.’
Ghote looked at his son with fierce pleasure, behind which there beat sickening fears for his future. Was he himself still going to imperil it all? He refused to think.
Chastened and still exhausted, next morning Ghote felt not a little embarrassment as he left early so as to meet Mrs Ahmed at the hour she had promised him to be there. Now, after all, he had nothing to say to her.
He arrived at the Old Secretariat even earlier than he needed, and stood waiting, going over in his mind the rather feeble excuses he had concocted.
The minutes passed.
He looked at his watch. Mrs Ahmed was already five minutes later than the hour she had given him.
More time went by. Had she perhaps realized that what R.K.’s witness was going to say must be true? And had she simply abandoned him? And rightly so.
But, when there were only two or three minutes before the Inquiry was due to resume she appeared, running and looking uncharacteristically ruffled beneath her rain-streaming umbrella.
‘Inspector, I am sorry to be late. A waterlogging. Some boys, I suspect, had blocked a drain. But when my husband’s car reached they were not there to push us through.’
‘Nothing to worry, nothing to worry,’ Ghote assured her, relieved to an extraordinary extent.
Together they hurried up the stairs, along the photograph-lined corridor and entered the big room just as S.M. Motabhoy was looking round to see if everybody was ready to begin.
‘Mr Sankar,’ he said, when he had waited for Mrs Ahmed to dump some papers from her heavy bag on her desk. ‘You had a new witness for us.’
‘Yes, Mr Presiding Officer. I call one Piraji, from Vigatpore.’
There was some delay, but not a long one, before this mysterious person who had, according to R.K., actually seen the two of them with the body on the bicycle was led in.
Ghote looked at him with fierce anxiety. What could he make of this man who had been so cunningly kept in reserve by R.K. and Pimputkar finally to undo him? The man who, for whatever reason, had been out on that first night of the monsoon and who when the rain had begun to ease off had seen them in the dim orangey moonlight from the shadows. Only, why was he in the shadows? This man who had seen the place where on his own uniform a button was missing?
Plainly the fellow was poor. He was wearing only a checked red lungi wrapped round his waist and a thin shirt with an unmended rip just below its single pocket. On his head he had a white headcloth – only it was, rather, a dirty grey.
So not exactly a respectable witness. But if he were to speak up and tell his truth with conviction it would be enough. It would discount the effect of a face pitted with smallpox scars and the twist in his long nose.
‘You are one by name Piraji?’
R.K.’s questions had begun, the questions that were in all likelihood to lead to the final truth of that night in Vigatpore.
‘I am Piraji, maharaj.’
‘Piraji, do you remember a certain night, the first of the monsoon, in Vigatpore last year?’
‘Very well I am remembering, maharaj.’
‘That night you were in a certain backlane near the edge of the town, not far from the lake there?’
‘I was, maharaj.’
The fellow, despite his villainous face, was speaking up well. S.M. Motabhoy would not be influenced by a twisted nose and smallpox marks. He would accept the fellow’s evidence as true.
As it was. As it was.
‘At about what hour was this? Can you say?’
‘I cannot say very well, maharaj. But from the time I was leaving my home, which is five miles from Vigatpore, it must have been after midnight.’
‘After midnight? You are sure of that?’
‘Ji, maharaj.’
‘It could not have been an hour earlier?’
‘Nai, nai, maharaj. Past-past midnight.’
Still firm in everything he was saying. No trying to make out he could tell the time to the minute. No talk of non-existent clocks. Just this plain statement that he had left his house some five miles out of Vigatpore at a time that would have brought him to that backlane at much the hour he and Tiger had actually been there.
But what on earth was the fellow doing at that hour at such a spot? Why had he left home at –
The answer came into Ghote’s mind with the certainty of a line being drawn under a simple sum of addition and the answer set down.
He turned urgently to Mrs Ahmed.
‘A history-sheeter,’ he whispered. ‘Nothing
but a history-sheeter.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered back after she had heard him out. ‘Yes, I was beginning to wonder. But are you sure?’
‘The more I am thinking, the more certain I am.’
Behind Ghote as he whispered, R.K.’s steady questioning continued punctuated by his witness’s easy answers and that reiterated, obsequious ‘maharaj’, ‘maharaj’.
‘And there was a button missing from his uniform?’
‘Ji, maharaj.’
‘Which button? Can you say?’
‘Ji, maharaj. Second button down.’
‘And that man, that police officer in uniform with one button, the second one down, missing, pulling along that bicycle with on it a man who appeared certainly to be dead, can you see him here in this room now?’
‘Ji, maharaj. He is there.’
And the pock-marked man’s outstretched arm and extended forefinger pointed directly at Ghote sitting, back stiffly upright, on his hard chair.
‘Thank you, Piraji. That is all. That is enough.’
Mrs Ahmed rose to her feet then, quite slowly, adjusting the drab green sari under the white barrister’s bands round her neck.
‘Piraji, from what community do you come?’
Ghote, watching not the witness but R.K., lolling behind his table with its impressive piles of papers, thought he detected on that never-angered face one tiny spasm of rage.
‘I am of the Mahadev Koli community.’
‘And most members of that community live near Vigatpore?’
‘Yes. Near.’
Mrs Ahmed drew herself up a little.
‘The Mahadev Koli community,’ she said blandly. ‘And you know, doubtless, that in Kennedy’s authoritative book on the criminal tribes of India your community is described as one whose members leave their lair only to commit robberies and dacoities, and that though in recent times –’
R.K. was on his feet and almost shouting.
‘Mr Presiding Officer, this is disgraceful. The witness cannot be expected to answer such a question. What does he know of Kennedy’s book or any other?’
S.M. Motabhoy up at his long table gave a hint of a smile.
Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery Page 16
