‘Inspector,’ Ghote said, suppressing the fury he felt at being saddled with this fellow, ‘I see a taxi there. For God’s sake, let’s get over to the station.’
H. K. Verma felt tears of rage come into his eyes.
Would it all never go away? Simply waiting for the telephone to be answered at the Hotel de Paris, calling personally to make sure of the best table, the thought of old Srivastava in his musty library had leapt into his head. Electric-light bright. And how could such a petty detail as that phone call that had started it all be stuck so fast in his memory? A stone embedded in a tree. It was there, as if he had only just slammed down the receiver that day. This very receiver he was holding.
‘Why? Why, Srivastava sahib?’ he had shouted. ‘Why was she getting hold of the Recollections now only?’
‘Sir, she must have been hearing some rumours.’
He had cursed himself then. If, before the split in the ruling party and Government needing an injection of support, he had not had the idea of gaining some attention by putting it about that there was some juicy secret in the Recollections, all would have been well. But, no, he must go hinting at some sex scandal or something, and in no time everyone was wanting to go through the Recollections. And he had been so delighted with his chalak, and the way it had produced so many mentions of the party in the papers. All the speculations and gossips, Calcutta-side, Bombay-side, everywhere. Till Mrs Shoba Popatkar had got it into her head it would be the right thing simply to bring to light the truth.
And now, what if some CIDwalla from Bombay should find his way to Srivastava at the Banares Hindu University? Then . . . Then there would be a path open, if the investigator had the brain to see it, pointing like an arrow to himself.
But, no. No, that could not possibly happen. Why should the investigation of a murder in distant Bombay even bring a detective to Banares? Far away, holy Banares?
But if, somehow, it became possible . . .
His hand shaking, he put the receiver back before the hotel had answered.
Getting out of the taxi, the first person to catch Ghote’s eye was the white hippy who had appeared to be watching him when he had been waiting to get rid of his bed-roll. The fellow was, he saw now, even more of a wretched specimen than he remembered. Thin to the point of starvation. Blond hair above his pinched and lined face a thickly dirt-clogged mass. Shirt ripped down one side and as dirt-encrusted as his hair. Grimy blue jeans ragged at the ends and gaping with holes at the knees.
With a bite of malice he pointed out this example of Banares squalor to Mishra.
But the Banares inspector was not at all put out.
‘Oh, yes, I am knowing that boy. He has been in the city some time. You are often seeing here, and at Manikarnika Ghat also. He is said to be working for the Dom Raja.’
‘The Dom Raja?’
‘Ah, yes. You are not, of course, knowing who is that individual. A very-very Banarasi figure. I must tell you all about him.’
Inwardly Ghote cursed. It looked as if he had let himself in for a whole new spate of information. None of it ever to be of any use. But he had asked the question.
‘Yes, you see, the Dom Raja is the hereditary in-charge of the Manikarnika Ghat, the most used of all our famed burning ghats. Long, long ago, in perhaps mythical times even, one Raja Harishchandra, a very-very truth-loving man, was asked by the great brahmin Vishvamitra for a fee we are calling rajasuya dakshina. In his hundred per cent wish to do right thing he was at once giving the said Vishvamitra no less than his whole kingdom. Then, when Vishvamitra was still asking and demanding, all that Raja Harishchandra could do was to come here to Banares and sell himself as slave to some brahmins to do the dirty works of the burning grounds. In the end, you know, Harishchandra was rewarded by the gods. They were restoring him his throne. And those brahmins, known by the name of Doms, were having to perform the cremation works. The head of their community is known as the Dom Raja.’
‘Most interesting, but—’
‘But I am sorry to say some of those Dom rajas have been very-very naughty fellows. Demanding too much of fees, selling for extortionate sums the wood for the pyres, and even the stones that are needed to sink in the Ganga the bodies of smallpox victims and the very young children. They have been drinking wines, taking drugs also. And that is what that junky fellow there is doing, we are believing. I think he is even staying in that man’s house. The house that is looking out over the Ganges just by the Manikarnika Ghat. If you go by boat along the river you would see it. There are two tigers on the balcony there. Life-size plus, and full-colour painted. They remind how death can seize you at just only any moment.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Ghote persisted. ‘But this boy?’
‘Oh, he is just only selling some what they are calling brown sugar to tourists and hippies coming from the West. Not to worry.’
For a moment Ghote was tempted to ask if peddling crudely processed heroin to tourists was an example of Mishra’s much praised masti in action. But, mountain of useless information though Mishra seemed to be, he might need his help later. And already his investigation had been delayed long enough. So he said nothing and looked round the forecourt wondering who might have remembered Mrs Shoba Popatkar from almost a week before. If anybody had.
‘We should try those fellows with the autorickshaws,’ he said. ‘She must have taken some transport when she came.’
‘Why not?’ Mishra answered, ambling in the strong afternoon sun over to the line of little black-hooded yellow-bodied vehicles.
Yet none of the drivers seemed to be able to remember among the thousands of passengers coming and going an aged lady wearing a very plain sari with a suitcase and a stout leather handbag. The bag that, back in Bombay, had yielded a Banares rail ticket and an address book.
But then they had a lucky break. Their activities had aroused the suspicions of a young Railways Police constable. He came over. But, as soon as he recalled having once met Inspector Mishra, he broke into a wide grin.
‘Mrs Shoba Popatkar you are asking,’ he said. ‘I was seeing just only last week. My father was in Railways Police before me, and he was often telling about her and all her good works. Showing us her picture in newspaper sometimes also. So when I was seeing, here itself, at once I was knowing who it was. Then I was requesting her if I could be of some helps, and she was saying she was wanting to go to the BHU.’
Ghote had to ask then what the letters stood for, and got from Mishra a longer history of Banares Hindu University than he at all wanted. Of how it was a huge seat of learning just beyond the boundary of the holy city. Of how it had been founded in 1904 by Mrs Annie Besant and Pandit Madan Malaviya. Of how once an American studying there had assured him that ‘India’s conscience is her greatest gift to the world’. Of how Pandit Malaviya had at the end of his life refused to spend his last days within holy Banares, where dying he would be guaranteed release from the cycle of birth and rebirth, because he had too much to do in a next life.
After failing more than once to break into this outflow, at last Ghote simply seized Mishra by the arm and tugged him away.
‘We are going there,’ he shouted at him. ‘We are going to your BHU. Where it is? How do we reach?’
Mishra blinked and blinked.
‘But I was telling you, Inspector. It is just outside the boundary of the city. We can go by taxi. It would not take too long. But, first, there is a place near here where you can get very excellent thandai, the most cooling drink existing. With a nice amount of bhang mixed in, and, perhaps better even for giving soul-cleansing blessing, one pinch of Ganges silt itself. You should try.’
‘Inspector,’ Ghote spat out, hardly checking his rage, ‘let me say it once more. I am here in Banares for just only one thing. To find out what Mrs Shoba Popatkar came here for. What made some person unknown follow her all the way back to Bombay and strangle her. And this perhaps we will discover as soon as we are getting to your BHU. So, take me there. Now. Take, take,
take.’
5
The peon from the office downstairs sidled in when H. K. Verma, in answer to a knock at the door that had been somehow both timid and urgent, called, ‘Come.’ There was a look of scared apology on his face.
‘What is it, Raman? Do not stand there like a stupid owl only. What it is?’
‘Oh, sahib, it is—’
‘Speak up, speak up, man. What has got into you?’
‘Sir, it is police. Sir, an inspector. From Bombay, sir.’
Raman thrust out the card he had been given. H. K. Verma ignored it. He hardly even saw it. A great frozen block seemed to have occupied his whole head, his whole body.
At last he heard Raman speak again.
‘Sahib, he is wanting to see. Must I bring him upstairs, sahib?’
‘No.’
It was all he could manage to utter.
But after a long moment, hearing inside himself now the tiny thunder of his heart, beating and knocking, he forced some more words out.
‘No. No, say it is too late. I cannot see anybody just now. Say he is to come back. Tomorrow. Another day.’
Raman looked as if that was a message he could not see himself delivering. He made no effort to go.
H. K. Verma moved to give him a slap. But at once thought better of it.
His mind had abruptly become unlocked from its state of ice-bound fear. Ideas, wild notions, absurd fantasies raced each other one after another.
He would prevent Raman going down and the fellow below would just turn tail and go away. Back to Bombay. Back to Bombay from where he should never have come. From where it was impossible that he had come.
He would get away himself, leap down into the galli below, somehow land on his feet like a cat, run and run and run. There must be somewhere to hide. To hide for ever. A temple? A math, where he could live out the life of a monk, one among a hundred anonymous orange-robed figures?
He would go down now, at once, and – and— And obliterate this Bombay fellow. Wipe him from the face of the earth. Never more to be heard of. They would forget all about him back where he had come from. The inquiry would disappear like dust blown away in the hot summer wind.
Mrs Popatkar had not been killed. She was alive. Alive again and well. But, no. No, she must not be alive. Not alive to tell the world what KK had believed before he died.
The thought brought back sobriety.
It would be no use sending away this fellow now, if even he would consent to go. No. No, he must be faced. The worst must be faced. And perhaps, after all, this was not the worst. How could this Bombay inspector, how could anybody, truly know what had happened in that bare little flat? No one could. This fellow must be just only guessing. If that.
‘No, Raman,’ he said, wondering at the simple calm in his voice. ‘No, I might as well be seeing. Bring him up.’
‘Ji haan, sahib.’
Ghote stepped in past the peon, a one-eyed fellow. For a moment, first seeing him, he had remembered the superstition from his childhood: a one-eyed man means evil. But this man had seemed more scared than wicked.
The room was large and bare. Three or four narrow sofas covered in red rexine were pushed up against the walls. A table in one corner was just big enough for a TV set under its embroidered dust-cover and a cream-coloured telephone. From up near the ceiling a row of stained-glass ventilators sent light from the massive illuminations on the Vishwanath Temple, the Golden Temple, in multi-coloured rays sliding across the floor and the blue-painted walls. One, a reddish oblong, cut across a large framed photograph of a group of white-capped politicians, Lucky Friends With Respected Party Leader H. K. Verma.
Dominating the whole room, however, was the party leader himself, the man the librarian at Banares Hindu University had said it was necessary to see before anyone could inspect Krishnan Kalgutkar’s Recollections. A commanding presence, seated in a massive woven-cane peacock-throne chair, its back widespread behind him, his hands firmly placed on its broad arms. A white kurta of homespun khadi fell from his broad shoulders. A dhoti in the same pure white lay draped in graceful folds from sail-swelling belly down over well-rounded knees.
A big well-fleshed face with dark, brooding eyes, deep-set under a wide brow. A faint, ambiguous smile on full orator’s lips.
‘Good evening, sir. I am by name Inspector Ghote, of the Bombay CID. I am sorry to have to trouble you at this hour. But I am in Banares to make inquiries concerning the death of Mrs Shoba Popatkar in Bombay. You are perhaps aware Mrs Popatkar, a lady well known in our history, has been murdered?’
A muscle in H. K. Verma’s big, sad-eyed face flickered for an instant.
‘Yes, yes. I was, of course, reading the obituary in Times of India. A very terrible business. Very terrible.’
‘Yes, sir. And that is why we are pursuing each and every angle with all our efforts and energies. That is why I am here in Banares myself.’
‘Yes, Inspector. But sit, sit. No formalities. Sit. But, tell me, how is it that inquiries into a murder in Bombay have brought you here, so many hundred miles distant?’
Ghote, perching himself on one of the narrow rexine sofas at a considerable distance from the party leader, gave a little cough.
‘It is quite simple, sir. You see, we were learning from inquiries in Bombay that Mrs Popatkar had come here shortly before her death, without informing anyone of reason for her visit. And we have found also a witness, a fellow from the UP itself, who is stating that just only before the time she was attacked – the culprit was strangling his victim, sir – a man speaking Hindi with what he was recognizing as very much of a Bhojpuri accent was asking where Mrs Popatkar is staying.’
H. K. Verma remained silent for so long that Ghote began to wonder whether his reasons for coming to Banares had appeared absurd.
But at last there came an answer.
‘I see, Inspector. And— And do you have a good description of this UPite?’
‘No, sir. I regret to say not. The witness was not at all realizing he had heard that familiar accent until the man had gone altogether out of sight.’
‘I see. A great pity.’
H. K. Verma appeared to be pondering the implications.
‘Otherwise,’ he said at last, ‘you might have already been able to lay hands on this – this murderer.’
‘Yes, sir. But we are hopeful still. You see, it is our belief that the culprit went to Bombay because of something Mrs Popatkar must have learnt or discovered here itself. And, sir, today only I was finding what that might be.’
Again no response.
No wonder this fellow has not succeeded to lead his party to more than a handful of Lok Sabha members from up and down India, Ghote thought. For all the weight of his presence he is slow as a buffalo.
‘Yes, Inspector, and what is that?’
The big, brown, deep-set eyes were fixed on him with sombre intentness, as if his answer was somehow of major importance.
‘Oh, sir, it is quite simple. You see, I was able to trace Mrs Popatkar from the Cantonment Station where she was arriving— You know she is always travelling by train, not plane, and in lowest class also?’
‘Yes, yes. I did not ever have the honour to meet Mrs Popatkar, but that is a well-known fact. A well-known fact, after all.’
‘Well, sir, with the assistance of a former officer of the Banares police, a very helpful colleague for me, I was able to trace Mrs Popatkar’s steps from the station to the Banares Hindu University, sir. The BHU, as it is known.’
‘Yes, yes. And then?’
A spark of impatience.
Was he saying too much? Was he irritating this influential fellow?
‘Oh, then, sir, I found she had gone to a small library at the BHU. A place that is devoted to preserving what they are calling contemporary documents, sir.’
‘Is there such a—’
H. K. Verma abruptly stopped. A loud and prolonged cough followed.
‘Ah, but, no,’ he resumed eventu
ally. ‘No, I am well knowing the place you mean. Mr Srivastava, the librarian there, is a good friend of mine.’
‘Yes, sir. He was the gentleman who was giving me your name. You see, sir, he was telling me that Mrs Popatkar had come to his library for the purposes of consulting one document only, the Recollections of Mr Krishnan Kalgutkar, sir, the founder of your party.’
Once again H. K. Verma was slow to react. But at last he answered.
‘And it is because of that you have come to me?’
‘Oh, yes, sir. You see, Mr Srivastava was stating no one is permitted to see that document for one hundred and one years, sir. Even though Mrs Popatkar had insisted to do it, and he had not been able to prevent. So, sir, you see, I am thinking that what it was she read there may be a clue to why this person from Banares was needing to end her life. So, sir, I have come to you to take special permission to go through these Recollections myself. Mr Srivastava was saying there is no other way.’
‘No, Inspector,’ H. K. Verma brought himself to say.
Then blankness overwhelmed him. He could think of no possible reason to forbid this Bombay CIDwalla from poking his nose into the Recollections. And if he did, what would he find? The founder of our party believing at his life’s end he had been wrong . . . That all we stood for in so many wilderness years was wrong . . . So we would be laughing-stocks only. The High Command never daring to take us in. Not however much they are needing the few of our votes block.
And the fellow must know already, or he would very soon read it in the papers, that the leader of the party had been asked to take his votes-bank into Government, and was to be given a Cabinet seat as Minister for Social Upliftment.
The finger will point to me only. And when more inquiries are made . . . So many weak points waiting. Things I thought would never come to light. The girl at Babatpur Airport I lost my temper with. All the other attempts I made to get a flight. The people who fuelled Vikram’s plane. Vikram himself, even. The authorities in Bombay who must have logged his plane’s arrival. A dozen lurking dangers. A hundred. Each one adding little by little to the case they will make against me.
Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote) Page 4
