‘Well, I am not going to report you and your tadtady throw-downs, even if what you are saying is not just only your joking. In one day’s time I shall no longer be the little police officer who wanted always to keep order when the missionary walla came to the village.’
‘Oh, but you will be,’ Ram said. ‘You cannot help. And you can report-report as much as you like. Two-three bribes will take care of all.’
‘No,’ Ghote shot back in sudden fury. ‘You need not think that each and every time a bribe will get you out of trouble. Not every officer in the police is corrupt.’
Ram leant back in his comfortable chair and roared with laughter.
‘You see, little policewalla, you are a police officer still. I said it: you cannot shake yourself out of that, however hard you are trying. Not if you shake and shake till Shiva destroys the world.’
Ghote felt caught out. Caught out as he had often been by this best friend in his boyhood. By some riddle, or some joke, or some tongue-twister. But caught out now more deeply. By the truth. Ram had cleverly ripped to pieces that whole edifice of belief he had constructed that he could after all accept no longer being a police officer. It was as if, as he had seen once, a blast of monsoon wind had seized an old sari used as a curtain by a wretched family living in a huge waterpipe waiting to be dug in and had shredded it to rags to reveal all inside.
Yes, oh yes, he still wanted in his heart’s core to do the job that he had done all his life.
And – a yet worse thought grew up in his mind – there was the other thing Ram had said, the fact he had yet to tackle in his mind.
That Ram never now lost his temper. That he ran his business with success without resorting to anger, without shouting, without the least bite of rage.
It was extraordinary. Ram, Ram whose whole being on the surface had always consisted of that exploding temper, now to be, not placid, but free of those instant descents, or ascents, into wild, uncontrolled rage. If Ram had been, in their old village days, always the chosen Ravana, the fierce demon, when the Ramayana plays had been enacted, then had a supernatural being somehow changed sides? Had the demon god become a good god?
Could such a change happen in human nature?
Yes. Yes, it could. It had. Though Ram could and would lie and lie, in business, in trouble, to bring off a joke or a jape, he himself had always known when such a lie was being given out. He knew Ram as well as he knew himself. He had always done. So, yes, it seemed that it was possible for someone, who appeared to be ruled in all he did by the sudden fire-cracker rages he was heir to, to overcome that entrenched weakness. To become a new man.
Or, not quite that. More, he thought, knowing Ram as he had done from very earliest days, more to shed an unnecessary outer casing and to fall back to the true shape underneath. Yes, that was a possible thing.
But –
But – the sudden thought came to him – but that had not been Tiger Kelkar’s way. The way he himself had believed he must go. The way he had come to think was the only right way for a good police officer, one who existed not to fill his own pockets but to put right the wrongs in his world.
He realized now, sitting on his stool in emptied silence opposite a cheerfully grinning Ram, that in fact he had never in the depths of his being truly believed in the way of anger, however much he had told himself that Tiger was the example to follow, however much he had done to prove that to himself.
Had he not all along had a counter-example there to see, little though he had brought it to mind? But he had had the memory of old Nadkarni there, as alive as that of Tiger until Tiger had come into his life in vigorous person once more. And had he ever in all the time he had worked under and even alongside that patient old spider seen him in rage? Never by a hair’s breadth. And yet he had admired him. And still did admire him, puny and aged though he had now become. Because he had not been puny in the days when he had been in his seat. With him you would never think, as he had thought so often with poor Shinde in Vigatpore, of ‘Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.’ Nadkarni, ever quiet, ever calm, had carried his sword always.
So, if Tiger’s way was not the only way, or even the better way for him himself, what had become of all that had begun on that dreadful night in Vigatpore?
19
In the state of emptiness in which Ghote found himself with his realization that attachment to Tiger Kelkar was not the only pattern he could follow, it had needed none of Ram Bhaskar’s persuasion to make him decide after all not to break his promise to conceal the truth from the Inquiry. Ram had been forceful about ‘taking a practical view’. He had even offered to bribe S.M. Motabhoy to make some legal error, perhaps in the Show Cause notice he might eventually have to fill out. But it had all been unnecessary.
‘Bribing that man is something even you could not be doing,’ Ghote had concluded. ‘But in any case if I stick to my story, now that they have discounted that criminal Piraji, there cannot be any evidence strong enough for it to go against me.’
‘And you will not be foolish-foolish and spill each and every bean yourself?’ Ram had asked.
‘No, no. You were right. What I want is to stay as a police officer. It is what I can do, and I will tell this one lie to my level best so that I may go on doing it.’
But things did not turn out to be quite as simple as he had then thought.
On Monday the rain, which had resumed its downpour on Sunday afternoon and had continued unabated all night, abruptly eased off just as he was setting out, in good time, for the Inquiry. In consequence he arrived more than twenty minutes before proceedings were due to begin. And so did Mrs Ahmed. Aware of her behind him as he sat waiting in the big room, a series of new thoughts assailed him.
Why was he still deceiving this fighter for truth, this enemy of hypocrisies? He was taking up her time purely for his own selfish reasons. He was letting her support his lie when she could be working for the pavement dwellers whose huts were in danger of being bulldozed in full monsoon or the stairways refugees from the slum at Worli. Or, even, there was the person who had put together that long, indignant purple-typed protest.
No, was he not putting himself and his problems altogether too much to the fore? His mind full of nothing but whether he ought to lie so as to go on living the life he felt was the only one for him, he had forgotten even the man whose life ending had been the start of the whole business, poor stupid Sergeant Desai. He had forgotten him, as he had altogether forgotten Desai’s bhabhi, the girl full of guts whose husband had had his brother unjustly taken from him. And he had admired the bhabhi. He had felt himself on her side when at Headquarters she had stood up to the A.C.P. in his own office.
But now, full of his own troubles, all other thoughts had been driven out. Mrs Ahmed, had he really thought again about the slum dwellers she had taken him to see? Those men in the stinking lock-up? Those families in their wretched rain-dripping, flooded huts?
They had their troubles, worse than his. They had their lives somehow to live. As had Mrs Ahmed. And all for his own concerns he was putting her out of his mind, and, worse, taking up her time that could be being used, hard worker that she was, to good ends.
For some five minutes more he sat and squirmed while these thoughts ran through his head. Then he got up and leant over the desk behind him.
‘Mrs Ahmed, madam,’ he said, ‘there is something I am wishing to tell.’
Mrs Ahmed looked up from a legal document she had been perusing – a writ in yet another case she had taken up? – and gave him a friendly glance.
‘Well, what is it I can do for you?’
For a moment Ghote was silent, suddenly not knowing how he was to say what he was now fully determined to come out with, At last he made an effort.
‘Madam, I regret that I have all along been deceiving.’
‘Deceiving, Inspector?’
A quick frown had appeared on her broad forehead.
Ghote swallowed.
&
nbsp; ‘Yes, deceiving. The truth of the matter is that each thing that they have been saying about me is one hundred per cent correct. Yes, it was not until 3 a.m. that I was returning to Shivram Patel’s house. Yes, I was there in that office when A.D.I.G. Kelkar threw the inkpot at Sergeant Desai. It was even I myself who suggested to him he should not submit to arrest at my hands and, because Desai had very much boasted of his swimming powers and taken up bets thereon, that he should put his body into Lake Helena. And that we were doing together. Yes, even that fellow Piraji, member of a criminal tribe though he is, was telling the truth when I was not.’
Mrs Ahmed sat in silence once his long, tumbling explanation was over.
‘Madam, please,’ Ghote said at last, ‘what are you going to do?’
‘Inspector, I have the feeling that you are not intending to tell all this to the Inquiry. Am I right?’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘Why, Inspector?’
Ghote paused a moment before replying.
‘Well, it is this,’ he said. ‘Except and bar this one only thing, I have been a good police officer always. A damn good police officer, though I am saying. So I am wishing, if it is in any way possible, to go on being a police officer.’
Mrs Ahmed was silent again for a little.
‘I suppose it might be possible,’ she said. ‘I had up till now believed it was going in our favour. In your favour.’
‘In mine only?’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Ahmed said. ‘In yours alone. Let me tell you this, Inspector. I will no more come to your assistance. I will not back you up if you are intending to go on with your lie. But one thing I will do, not altogether willingly but because I believe you are a good police officer, one of not so many. I will continue to sit here. You must at least appear to be represented, and it is too late now for you to find a substitute.’
‘Yes, madam,’ Ghote said, not having thought of this.
‘So today when R.K. Sankar brings his case to its end by calling Inspector Pimputkar I will not, as I had intended, cross-examine to show there is a degree of animus against you. Nor will I call you yourself in my turn. You will have some chance to put your case when you make your Defendant’s Statement. You must do with that what you can.’
‘Yes. I understand. It is most good for you.’
He went back and sat down.
Through his mind there passed what he imagined the morning’s proceedings would now be like. R.K. would take Pimputkar through his evidence uninterrupted by any sharp questions. Every insinuation would be allowed to tell to its fullest. R.K. after a little would look with barely concealed wonder over at Mrs Ahmed sitting unmoved at his every daring bending of the strict truth. Then at last he would tell S.M. Motabhoy that he rested his case. And S.M. Motabhoy, with all his rounded courtesy, would ask Mrs Ahmed to call her witnesses, and she would simply say that she did not intend to call any. S.M. Motabhoy, surely, would then ask, in astonishment, whether she did not even mean to call the accused and again she would say that she did not.
So they would come to his own Defendant’s Statement when he would simply repeat his denial that he had known anything about Tiger’s disposing of Desai’s body. And then … Then there would come the moment when the Board’s decision was made known.
Would it be in his favour? Or with such evidence as had been put before them going unchallenged, especially what Pimputkar would now find to say, would they after all find against him?
It was hard to tell. But if it did go against him then S.M. Motabhoy would simply write down on the Show Cause notice – he had glimpsed it already there on the table, waiting – what punishment he proposed and sign and date it. But what would the punishment be? Dismissal, almost certainly. Perhaps, if S.M. Motabhoy was markedly lenient, only compulsory retirement. But that would be just as bad. And it would be the very least a fair man like S.M. Motabhoy could impose on an officer who had persisted in concealing a major crime.
As he had. As he had.
When the Inquiry resumed it seemed to go, uncannily, almost exactly as he had foreseen. It all echoed unpleasantly the very first day of the proceedings when R.K. had, mysteriously as it had then seemed, recounted all but exactly what he and Tiger had done the night they had disposed of poor Desai’s lumbering body.
Pimputkar was called and, taut-faced, burning with inner zeal, was taken through his evidence. He said nothing that was particularly new, but, skilfully guided by R.K., he contrived to present the findings of his investigation at their most damning. And, as at each malicious twist Mrs Ahmed failed to rise in challenge, R.K. did glance across at her in increasing amazement. Then when at last he announced that he rested his case and S.M. Motabhoy asked Mrs Ahmed to present hers – it was like a dream, a nightmare, coming true by daylight – she said simply that she did not intend to call any witnesses.
Yet, nightmare though it was, Ghote found that he was experiencing a tiny glim of content. His troubles had been caused by a decision that he felt had been right. And now he had freed Mrs Ahmed from the burden of innocently backing the lie he was telling in support of that decision. If that was putting him to torture now, well, so be it.
‘You are not calling even Inspector Ghote?’ S.M. Motabhoy asked, his eyebrows rising.
‘No, Mr Presiding Officer.’
S.M. Motabhoy sat pondering for several long moments. Then, looking directly at Ghote, he spoke.
‘I said at the outset of this Inquiry that our purpose was to elicit the truth and that, to that end, I did not consider we should necessarily be bound by the conventions and procedures of a court of law. It is my feeling that such a policy has been of benefit to us already, more than once. So, in the circumstances, I propose that we should again establish our own convention and that Mr Sankar should put to you, Inspector, such questions as he deems appropriate.’
Ghote felt sick.
To have to come up after all against R.K. once more, and unprotected now by an advocate of his own. Would he be able to hold out? He had survived that first unexpected short encounter when he had been questioned about whether he had a guru-chela relationship with Tiger. But now his whole defence, his whole lie, would fall under examination, and officers every bit as experienced as himself had told him how they had been made to feel like muddled erring schoolboys under the whiplash of R.K.’s tongue. And they had been giving evidence that was, for the most part, the simple truth.
R.K. began, quietly, by going back to the early part of that night more than a year before. Repeatedly consulting the papers on the table in front of him, he asked about each of the men in the police station who had been sent off duty at that time. Under this almost hypnotic questioning, Ghote found he was able to remember just what he had said and done in even greater detail than when he had listened to the men themselves saying, from this same witness table, what they had recalled of his orders. As R.K. asked each question he answered it truthfully and exactly. None gave him any trouble. After all, he had done just what he was telling R.K. he had done and there was nothing to hide about any of it.
‘So, Inspector, by approximately the hour of 11 p.m. all the personnel in the station had been sent to their quarters?’
‘Yes, sir. With the exception of the night sentry, who was outside, and of course myself.’
‘Good. But, Inspector, are you not omitting one name?’
‘A.D.I.G. Kelkar, sir? But I was not considering him as one of the station personnel.’
‘I should hope not, Inspector. I should hope not.’
R.K. fell silent. Ghote waited for the next question.
‘Well, Inspector?’
‘Sir?’
‘Have you not omitted one name? I wonder what the significance of that may be.’
‘I am sorry, sir, I am not understanding.’
‘No, Inspector? Is this perhaps because we have come to an area about which you would prefer to tell us nothing?’
‘Sir?’
Ghote felt himself now suddenly all
at sea. Dangerously at sea.
‘Inspector, where was Sergeant Desai at this time?’
‘I – I – Sergeant Desai is the whole subject of this Inquiry. I did not – It did not occur to me that you could be meaning him.’
‘Indeed? But I have asked, Inspector, whether Sergeant Desai was present in the station at that time. Will you kindly bring yourself to answer?’
‘Yes, sir. Yes, Sergeant Desai was present, though I myself was not aware of it.’
‘I see. But you were aware later of Mr Kelkar throwing the inkpot at him?’
Ghote had to check back the affirmative almost on his lips. The abruptness with which they had entered the territory of pure fiction had almost caught him out.
‘No, sir, no,’ he managed to reply without, he hoped, his hesitation being too noticeable. ‘I had left in my turn before Desai went in to take Mr Kelkar the F.I.R. he was requiring.’
‘Ah. So Sergeant Desai went into Inspector Khan’s office where A.D.I.G. Kelkar was at work, did he? And you knew this, although you had left the building? You were perhaps somewhere in that room, a disembodied spirit?’
‘No, sir, no. No, I was saying, I had left the station before that took place.’
‘And yet you knew all about it? Had every detail at your command?’
Ghote drew in a long breath.
‘I did not have at my command every detail,’ he said. ‘I naturally knew Desai took in an F.I.R. and had an inkpot thrown at him. Mr Motabhoy was reading out A.D.I.G. Kelkar’s account, here in this room itself.’
‘Very well.’
R.K., while by no means looking discomposed, had spoken somewhat abruptly.
Ghote began to feel with this one small triumph that the whole examination, much more of it though there must be, might not be quite as bad as he had feared. If he could only keep his head, keep calm, he could survive without that truth coming to light.
But R.K. showed no other sign of feeling he had failed.
‘Let us pass right on to another point,’ he said. ‘A matter about which we have already heard some evidence. Shri Shivram Patel’s house. Tell me, your account of arriving there before midnight was sheer invention, was it not?’
Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery Page 18
