Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Yes, Mr Sankar,’ he said. ‘The question was expecting rather more of your witness than he was likely to be able to provide. But then, since you omitted to ask him where he came from, Mrs Ahmed was perhaps justified in drawing the Board’s attention to his antecedents in the way she chose.’

  R.K. sank back on to his chair.

  ‘Mrs Ahmed,’ S.M. Motabhoy continued, ‘I accept that the witness is in fact of such dubious reputation, a member of a caste of professional robbers, that we cannot in justice hear him. No doubt he was in Vigatpore that night for the purposes of his profession and he is lucky to find himself sent back home at public expense with no further questions asked.’

  Ghote felt as if, tossed hither and thither on some great river in full flood, miraculously a log or a raft or some solid object had come up from beneath him and lifted him to safety.

  S.M. Motabhoy watched the unfortunate Piraji being hustled from the room. Then he gave his resounding cough.

  ‘And now,’ he said, ‘though the day is not far advanced I am going to adjourn until Monday morning. I have an engagement I must attend, and I had hoped the Inquiry would have concluded its business before this. However, we have not done so.’

  He turned again to R.K.

  ‘And on Monday,’ he said, ‘I think we had better hear from Inspector Pimputkar once more. He seems to have been somewhat unfortunate, to say the least, in the witnesses he has found.’

  Ghote was hardly aware after this of the Inquiry breaking up. Mrs Ahmed did ask him what it was he had wanted to say to her first thing, and he managed to stammer out that it no longer mattered. She seemed to assume it had been something to do with the evidence Piraji had been going to give and, stuffing her papers into her bag, she left in her accustomed hurry.

  Ghote left then in his turn.

  But as he sat astride his scooter before attempting to kick start it, he pondered over the escape he had had.

  It had been miraculous, yes. But it had also been his own doing. If he had not realized that Pimputkar had got hold of a witness the Board were bound to consider tainted and if he had not pointed out to Mrs Ahmed what community the fellow was likely to be from, even recalling from police college that authoritative book, by now all would have been lost. Of course, Pimputkar must have hit on the notion that if anyone was about in Vigatpore on such a night it might be a thief, and he had probably consulted Inspector Khan’s ill-kept Bad Character Roll and had at last tracked down Piraji. It was clever of him, damned clever. But he had been outwitted.

  With a flare-up of sheer pride, he kicked his machine into life and set off. Only to find that, underneath, he had come to a resolve in exactly the contrary sense.

  He was not going to go on hoping that with luck and occasional cleverness he could continue to outsmart Pimputkar. Because however cunning the fellow was, however unscrupulous, the fact remained that he was trying to prove a case that was true. And even his tainted witness, the dacoit, the professional thief, had been speaking no less than the truth.

  On that night in Vigatpore he himself had done just what Pimputkar had guessed that he had.

  No, he had promised Protima that he would say nothing until Monday. But on Monday he would stand up before the Inquiry and tell the whole truth at last. No more wriggling. No more evading. He had done what he had done, and he would own up to it.

  18

  Ghote said nothing of his new determination when he reached home. He had made up his mind and would not change it, however sudden his decision had been. And he did not at all welcome the infuriated opposition he would have to face if he were to tell Protima. He did bring himself, with reluctance, to give her at least an account of what had happened at the Inquiry, and he endured in silence her evident satisfaction at having, as she thought, prevented him from making an unnecessary confession.

  The effort left him nervy and irritable. The sharp-smelling dampness everywhere, which in other years he had happily ignored, seemed to enter into his very body. He sneezed and shook himself.

  ‘You are catching cold,’ Protima said. ‘You must change your shirt. You should have done it when you were first coming back.’

  ‘No, no. I am quite all right.’

  ‘No, you must. If you are taking a fever just only now it would be very bad. Remember, the Inquiry goes on on Monday also.’

  ‘I know when the Inquiry is.’

  ‘But if you have to face questioning by that R.K. Sankar when your head is full of cold only …’

  ‘It will not be full of cold,’ he snarled.

  Why, why did she have to remind him of the ordeal which sooner or later he would have to face again? R.K.’s full-scale questioning, cold in the head or no cold, would be quite bad enough.

  But then a thought bloomed secretly in his head. He was not going to have to face that questioning. As soon as the Inquiry reopened he would stand up and say he had a statement to make. Then he would tell them, without any lies, without dodging anything, just what had happened that night. And the Inquiry would come to an end.

  R.K.’s icy task would be over. Inspector Pimputkar’s investigation could be left on the file. All that would remain would be for S.M. Motabhoy to decide what punishment he should award and enter it on the Show Cause notice. And that would be that.

  What would happen afterwards would happen. If it was ‘Dismissal’, as was almost certain, he would not think of contesting it. He would surrender uniform, belt, warrant card, everything. And then he would do what he could to scrape some sort of a living somehow.

  It would be the end of all his hopes. But, in truth, their end had come at the moment when he had put himself at Tiger’s disposal. There could be no going back from that. Any idea that there had been was illusion only.

  The thought of how utterly complete his ruin would be wiped away with paradoxical comfort all the irritation he had been feeling.

  ‘Well, if you are insisting,’ he said to Protima, ‘I will put on another shirt. If it is not damp also.’

  Protima ignored this last little jibe – it had been in any case half-hearted – and found him a shirt which she had managed to keep dry. He put it on, and succeeded in rejecting without rancour her immediate next suggestion, that he should munch a raw onion.

  Next morning the rain had blessedly come to a temporary halt. Looking out, Ghote saw that the sun had even begun to shine again. Wet surfaces everywhere, black tarmac, huge puddles, grey pavements, were glinting and gleaming. His hard-won subdued cheerfulness of the day before bounded up into a state of positive well-being. The future might be grim – he did not let himself think precisely about it – but at least it was settled. Next day, in one short statement to the officers of the Inquiry he would lift the torturing weight from his shoulders once and for all.

  ‘I think I will go and eat a whiff of air,’ he said to Protima. ‘It is nice to see the sun for a little.’

  ‘No,’ she said unexpectedly.

  ‘No?’

  She stood for a moment, a small frown of thought on her forehead.

  ‘No. Please, the drainages at the back have become blocked. There is very nasty smell. Can you take some Expel and clear them? You must put four to five tablespoons at the mouth of each and then pour on boiling water.’

  Ghote felt a little put out. He did not usually object to such domestic tasks. A certain amount of feminine incapability was flattering. But the sight of the sun, often dreaded but today enlivening, had made him keen to take his stroll and to have that impulse unexpectedly checked was annoying.

  ‘But cannot Ved do such a simple task?’ he asked. ‘The boy is always playing and playing. It is time he learnt that there are duties also.’

  ‘Playing and playing? He is not at all playing always. Look how well he studies. Look how good he is in squeezing out the towels at the windows.’

  ‘Well, he can do this also.’

  ‘No. No, I am not wanting you to go out this morning.’

  ‘Ah, that is it, is it? But
why are you wishing me to be pegged down in the house only?’

  Protima looked abruptly sullen.

  ‘And why should I not?’ she asked. ‘You are so much away. Why should I not be wanting you for once to be here?’

  ‘But I have been here and here ever since I have been under suspension itself. And you were complaining against me then.’

  ‘Well, now I am not complain –’

  A loud hooting from a car outside brought her to a halt. Surprisingly, she hurried across and looked out.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Look who has come.’

  What on earth … Ghote thought.

  He went over to the window in his turn.

  And then he understood.

  Drawn up immediately outside was a foreign-made car, one of the few in Bombay. Though it was not new, it gave off an evident air of ostentation, considerably enhanced by the large, tough-looking driver in the front bursting out of a white uniform with a cap with a shiny black peak.

  Ghote turned to Protima.

  ‘It is Ram Bhaskar,’ he said. ‘You have asked him to come. That is why you were not wanting me to go out. That was why also you were asking me to wait before I was telling the truth to the Inquiry.’

  ‘What if it is Bhaskar Sahib?’ Protima answered. ‘He is your oldest friend, isn’t it?’

  Ghote stood speechless and at a loss.

  Yes, Ram Bhaskar was his oldest friend. The two of them had been friends, sometimes friendly enemies, right from the days when he had been the schoolmaster’s son and Ram the son of the temple pujari, a father he had perhaps driven into bitterness because of the tremendous, uninhibited youthful rages that had got him into every sort of trouble – besides making him the unanimous choice to take the part of the fierce demon Ravana in the annual Ramayana play.

  He and Ram had had many a ding-dong argument, many a fight. One in particular Ghote recalled. It had almost brought an end to the friendship, though what it had started over neither of them afterwards had been able to remember. But he could see them both now, standing under the jack-fruit tree at the edge of the village pond. Each had succeeded during the struggle in breaking the other’s brahmin’s thread, a serious enough crime, and each was, dark with anger, standing glaring at the other. Which of them had pronounced the unsayable words first? I put a brahmin’s curse upon you. The curse, they had fervently believed then, that could not be taken back.

  And, Ghote was sure, though neither of them when the wild quarrel had mysteriously resolved itself had ever referred to those shouted words again, neither had ever quite forgotten them.

  Was Ram Bhaskar’s puff of a curse coming true for himself now? Certainly he had never been in a worse trouble. And his own once believed-in curse? Well, despite the foreign car and the driver in uniform, Ram’s career – he had gone into business, profit-mad as any Marwari – had not been spotless. As the years had gone by, he himself had taken good care not to know too much about it. Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, cheating, no doubt applied. Indeed, Ram seemed to be a fine example of what people called an ‘eight-forty’, a double-dyed cheat. And yet the friendship had maintained itself, however long the gaps between seeing each other, however far apart their lives had grown. Really it was ridiculously like a typical Hindi film, two brothers separated in youth one to become the Hero, the other the Villain.

  And Protima had known, much though she disapproved of this notorious figure from his past, just how strong the friendship still was. She knew that Ram was perhaps the one person of his own age who could influence him. So, of course, she had wrung out of him that promise of delay and had summoned the demon to her aid.

  Out in the road, Ghote saw Ram step from his car, cigarette in mouth, stocky, walking almost with a wrestler’s gait up on the balls of his feet. There was a faint smile on his lips though there was no one there to smile at. He was wearing a light tan suit in what, even at a distance, was plainly raw silk.

  Yes, Ram had done well for himself. Moving from one business to another just before the bad times or the Customs Investigators came. Was he still the owner of that firecrackers factory? Perhaps he had got rid of it now.

  There came a loud cheerful knocking at the door.

  ‘Well,’ Protima said, ‘are you going to let him in? He is your friend from boyhood.’

  With a tumble of feelings, Ghote drew back the door bolt and admitted Ram. With great pattings of each other’s backs they embraced. Protima, hovering discreetly, offered tea or a cold drink.

  ‘Hard stuff,’ Ram said breezily. ‘You know I am always drinking hard stuff.’

  ‘At the start of the morning?’ Ghote answered, a grin creakily forcing its way on to his face.

  ‘Oh, well, I cannot be expecting such a good-good policewalla to have a whisky bottle ready. Tea it will have to be.’

  Protima went to the kitchen.

  Ram threw himself down in the one comfortable chair and thrust out his legs.

  ‘So, what is this I am hearing?’ he said. ‘Ganesh Ghote suspended. Up before big-big Inquiry. And wanting to say I am guilty-guilty, forgive, forgive?’

  ‘So Protima was telling you everything?’

  ‘Of course, of course. Sensible woman you got yourself there, Ganeshji. Always said. Beautiful also.’

  ‘Well, if you have come to persuade,’ Ghote answered, ‘you can drink your tea and get back into that great big car you have.’

  ‘And you are still riding scooter?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am. But soon I will have to sell.’

  ‘Because they are going to neck you out of the police, bhai?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it might be the best thing, you know. You could get down to some business-business then and make some money-money.’

  Ghote’s old friend gave him a quick shrewd glance.

  ‘But, no,’ he laughed. ‘I know that is not what you were wanting ever to do in life. Damn fool you, but that’s the way you are. Wanting and wanting always only to be a policewalla.’

  He sat up suddenly in the comfortable chair.

  ‘You remember that missionary fellow used to come to the village?’ he said. ‘You wanted to keep King-Emperor’s peace even then, when we were all throwing mud and stones at the fellow. How years fly off. But you remember that?’

  Ghote did, and smiled. It had been when they were both no more than nine or ten. For some reason a European missionary had taken to coming to the village, a solemn, pale-faced fellow lurking under a large sola topee with a stiff, shiny white round collar ringing his scrawny neck. He had been accompanied by varying groups of converts armed with a harmonium and one or two other musical instruments. Sometimes there had been a trumpet which had produced only occasional supporting notes, either much too loud or feebly squeaky. After they had gathered a crowd by singing a hymn or two, the missionary would speak in terrible banging Marathi. On the first occasion it had even taken his listeners some while to make out he was talking in their language at all. But then, when it had penetrated that he was actually urging them to throw the temple idol into the village pond and ‘come to Jesus meek and mild’, tempers had flared.

  And it had been Ram, boy that he was, who had been fiercest among them all, shouting and black with rage, perhaps in defence of the pujari, his father, with whom he did nothing but quarrel. And mud had flown, and, yes, a stone or two. Rapid retreat of converts. But brave stand by missionary. Till the very last gasp of his sermon ‘Remember then these words of the Bible. Yea, I do well to be angry even unto death.’ As if any one of them had read the Christian’s Bible to remember anything from it, as if more than two or three of them could even understand the English the fellow had dropped into for his quotation.

  Though, oddly, he himself had remembered the words through all the years. From time to time they floated into his mind – at the most unlikely moments.

  Protima came in with the tea.

  ‘Well, Bhaskar Sahib,’ she said when they had drunk a little, ‘have you
spoken to this husband of mine?’

  ‘He has,’ Ghote answered. ‘And no good has it done him.’

  Ram laughed.

  ‘Nai, nai, bhai. I am not even beginning.’

  Still feeling his resentment like an iron rod down his back, Ghote refused to let Ram’s cheerfulness move him.

  ‘You had better not begin itself,’ he said. ‘Recall old days if you like. But do not interfere with what I myself am doing today.’

  ‘You are afraid I will lose my temper and give you a beating like the day we quarrelled by the jack-fruit tree?’ Ram asked, eyes sparkling.

  ‘If beating was given, I was the one giving.’

  ‘But who got his thread broken?’

  Ram grinned broadly.

  ‘If you really remember that,’ Ghote said, ‘you would know that both our threads were broken. But you were the most angry.’

  Ram wagged his head.

  ‘Yes, I am sure I was. In those days I was angry at everything. But now, you know, I never lose my temper. Not once.’

  ‘No, that I am not believing,’ Ghote shot out.

  ‘But it is true-true.’

  Ram winked then.

  ‘I am not knowing whether it is plenty of booze or plenty of charas, Inspectorji,’ he added. ‘But I promise you, never now do I get at all angry.’

  ‘But your business?’ Ghote asked despite himself, so amazed was he by Ram’s claim, which nevertheless, knowing him through and through as he did, he found he fully believed. ‘How do you make a success of your business without shouting and cursing?’

  Ram laughed.

  ‘Business is fine,’ he said. ‘You were seeing the car I have now? Things go from good to better, and not only because people are bursting more and more of fire-crackers. No, by using plenty-plenty child labour, defying every day Minimum Wages Act, and by making many-many prohibited types, ukhali daru exceeding ten centimetres in length and tadtady throw-downs, I do nicely-nicely. And all without one word of cursing.’

  Ghote – he had the canework stool – sat in silence for a moment or two, still absorbing the fact of the transformation in his boyhood friend. Then he answered dully.