Just inside the door of the house some sort of a goonda was sitting on a lopsided cane stool. A thick cudgel lay across his knees.
He stepped up to him.
‘A good friend was telling me this is a very fine place.’
The man gave him a grin, half in complicity, half in warning.
‘Go in, go in. See Rukmini Auntie.’
A gesture down a narrow, littered passageway to a room at the back.
Cautiously he went along, past a blue plastic shopping basket, a bicycle frame without wheels, a large empty tin that had once contained mango jam, a child’s kite with one of its spars broken.
Rukmini, he thought. Odd chance that this brothel madam should have the same name as Mishra’s bright little granddaughter. This Rukmini must once, too, have been a three-year-old with no notions in her head other than, like Mishra’s little Rukmini, to do what was good, not to make mistakes in her reading or counting. How then had – he saw in the dim orangey light ahead a hugely fat woman in a gaudy sari, legs up on an old wooden chair, buttocks spilling over – how then had some little girl, wholly innocent, become this creature, plying this trade?
But no time for such speculations now. Difficult negotiations ahead.
He entered the room.
‘I have been told by a friend there is a girl here who is very-very exceptional.’
‘All my girls.’ The flat statement.
‘This girl . . . Tell me, are you knowing one Mr H. K. Verma?’
A grunt of acknowledgement. One that could, if need be, appear as pure denial.
‘My good friend H. K. was telling me there is one special girl he is very much liking.’
‘When was he telling? Just now?’
‘No, no. It was one week, two weeks past.’
‘Well, Usha is just only free. Rupees one hundred. Half an hour.’
He paid.
The money would have to come out of his own pocket, but if it led to the murderer of Mrs Popatkar . . . And, should it by some wonderful piece of luck do so, then, by God, he would claim it as some other sort of expenses. Small dishonesty.
‘Usha,’ the madam called in a loud croak, harsh as a crow’s.
In a few moments the girl appeared.
With a certain lightening of his spirits, he saw she was at least a better class of chukla than those he had seen parading up and down during his long wait outside. She must be, he thought, perhaps thirty. Still, despite the life she must have led, with a good complexion, lively eyes, upright body.
She was looking at him now in frank assessment.
What will she be thinking, he asked himself. Is this one a quick come-and-go fellow? Will he want something strange? Will he be gentle? Brutal? Will he insist on talk?
Well, that he would do. And he had a notion that Usha would not be impatient of talk. She looked – and why, he thought, should she not? – distinctly intelligent.
‘Come then,’ she said. ‘Or is it that you are shy only?’
There was a twinkle in her eyes.
Following her up a narrow, very dark staircase, he felt that this was going to be someone he might like for herself as a person. Perhaps he really would stand a chance of learning something from her.
As soon as he had entered the room she led him to – bare walls, green painted, ceiling fan slowly whirring, broad old bed with ornately carved legs, silky red shawl scantily covering it – he told her he had not come to her for the usual purpose. It was a risk, but, right from the moment he had seen her, he guessed she might be someone he could say that to.
‘You have paid. I am happy if you want to sit only. But one half-hour, mind, no more.’
She looked at him, head a little cocked to one side, a hint of a smile.
‘Though I have an idea you are wanting a little more than sit.’
‘That is very clever of you.’
‘So you want to talk and talk. Is it, Why did you take up this bad-bad life?’
‘So why did you?’
He had wondered how to wind into what he wanted to know. This seemed as good a start as any.
Usha smiled.
‘One old story. My parents were poor. My father was a Second Division clerk, and by the time I was eleven or twelve he had altogether lost his health also. At last one evening when he had just returned from work he went out, as was his habit, to fill the buckets of water from the outside tap. But he was a long time returning. And then— Then when we were going out he was there lying dead, buckets spilt beside him. So we became very much poorer, and I also had no brothers and there were my younger sisters to feed and educate so far as possible. Then I got to know a woman older than myself, who seemed to take pity on me, and after some time she suggested I could make money by this work I am doing now. At first I was very much troubled by what she had said. But she told me that the work was nice once you had begun. So bit by bit she got me to agree. Of course, at first I did not find it nice. But now . . . Now I sometimes like it, when the man is in any way decent.’
Now, he thought. Can I ask now if she found H. K. Verma in any way decent?
But take it slowly.
‘And you find many of the men who come decent?’
‘Decent?’ she said sharply. ‘It is depending what you are meaning by decent. To me it means the ones who do not make too much trouble. But are they truly decent? No. No.’
Damn. Heading fast away from H. K. Verma.
‘But some . . .?’
‘No. It is immoral what they are doing. It is immoral also what I am doing. I know it. But how many women are also as immoral? Working in some office and pleasing the boss, in whatever way it is done, that also is immoral. Having boyfriends, as some young girls are doing nowadays, even in holy Banares, and exploiting them. That is again immoral.’
All perhaps true. But going even further from H. K. Verma.
‘And Mr H. K. Verma,’ he plunged in with sudden recklessness. ‘How immoral was he? Was he one of the decent ones? You know who I am meaning by Mr H. K. Verma?’
She looked at him, alert eyes hard now.
‘So that is why you have come? What it is you are? Private detective? I have yet to meet one of that sort. But there is something about you that says you are the breed.’
A double risk.
‘No, I am not a private detective. But your guess is not too bad. I am a police detective. From Bombay.’
Hard now to read what was in those eyes. Suspicion certainly. And anger? Anger at having been a little tricked?
No, he did not think so.
‘And, Mr Detective, you are knowing, isn’t it, Mr H. K. Verma was here this afternoon itself?’
‘Yes. Yes, I was following him. I waited till he had gone. He was here very much more than one half hour.’
‘He paid for that. You may also, if you are wanting to stay so long. But I would not waste your money. However long you are staying, you will not hear one word about Mr Verma.’
‘No? But why?’
‘Because I am doing my work as it should be done. I am giving the men who come what they are wanting, and I am doing nothing more. They know their secrets are safe with me. That is what they come for, some of them, the ones who say truth is at the bottom of a well and there also I am. So they are finding truth of what they are wanting in sex matters. And, if they are wishing it, they can tell me the truth about their all lives, and know that truth will stay with me here at the bottom of my well.’
‘Shabash,’ he exclaimed.
Well done. All right, this was a prostitute. One they called ‘worn as a temple stair’, the lowest of the low. But she was doing what she did in a hundred per cent the right way. And he could not but admire that.
‘You have found your duty in this life,’ he said, slowly unravelling the thoughts in his mind, ‘and you are following it. That is good. Yes, good. I mean it.’
‘Yes,’ Usha came back at him, eyes bright suddenly, ‘you are right, I must have been born to this life. I must have be
en quite bad in my former janma.’
A sharper twinkle in her eyes suddenly.
‘Yes, I may have been even a CIDwalla.’
He grinned.
‘So,’ he said, ‘however bad it is to be a CIDwalla, I must all the same work out the duty of the janma I have been given. Perhaps for being a prostitute in my former life. And it is the task of a CIDwalla to ask questions.’
‘And for a prostitute not to answer.’
‘But if I tell you that I am almost certain Mr H. K. Verma has done something that will make him in his next life a donkey or a rat or even a mosquito?’
An abrupt look of understanding.
‘So that was why he was saying he will never, never leave holy Banares. He is hoping to die here and gain moksha despite any sins. No more lives, donkey, rat or mosquito.’
And you are happy if he escapes from what he has done in that way?’
She thought for a moment, sitting there on the edge of the big, shawl-covered bed, looking up at him.
‘Ah,’ she said eventually. ‘Yes, that is something to think. If I am paying now for misdeeds in a former life, why should he not pay for his?’
‘So, what else, besides wanting to die within the bounds of Banares, was he saying?’
‘Shall I tell you?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, suddenly sure. ‘You will tell me.’
For a little she was silent.
‘There is not so much to tell.’
‘But all the same tell.’
‘He was talking. Much more today than he has done before, and much different.’
‘What different?’
‘Oh, he was saying about his politics-follitics. But I was not paying so much of attention.’
‘But he was saying more?’
‘Yes.’
She frowned in concentration.
‘He was talking – it was when he was almost asleep – about going to Bombay. Is there also somewhere there called Dadar?’
A bright light shining in the distance.
‘Yes, yes. What did he say about Dadar?’
‘No, it was not anything. It came when he was trying the second time. And, half asleep, not much able to do it.’
‘And . . .?’
‘First of all, it was Bombay, Dadar, Bombay, Dadar. And then when he tried to begin again . . . Then he was different. Always before he has been one of the easy ones. He was never wanting very much. Some comfort only. But today . . .’
‘Yes, today?’
‘Suddenly then I was having to push him away. He was putting his hands to my throat. At first I thought it was love juices beginning at last to flow fast. But then I began to think he might press in his thumbs altogether too hard. And as he was doing that he was saying also, Stop, stop, damn you. Stop. I will not let you speak.’
‘And he said more? A name? Was there a name?’
‘No, no. I was pushing him off then. And soon he was becoming quiet, and after we were chatting this-and-that only.’
‘What this-and-that? Bombay talk? Dadar?’
‘No, no. Banares only. Ram Lila plays. Had I been to Ramnagar to watch? He had not been this year. He was not quite knowing why. Did not feel like. That is all.’
But, yes, he thought. Yes. it may well be enough.
18
A bar of greenish light slanting in from one of the high ventilators, alive with twirling motes in the bright morning light, stretched like a barrier between them. It was a little after nine o’clock.
Too strong a barrier?
Ghote had decided it would be best to wait till the next day to go to H. K. Verma. He needed as much time as he dared take to think out how, with evidence as shaky as he had, he could go about his interrogation. Because it was as an interrogation now, rather than an interview, that he thought of the encounter.
To go to the Senior Superintendent and ask for H. K. Verma to be brought in for a fully formal interrogation, he had immediately realized, was simply not practical. He could almost hear the Senior Superintendent’s very words: Inspector, what possible motive could a Banares citizen of Mr H. K. Verma’s standing have for killing a lady like Mrs Shoba Popatkar?
And he would have had no proper answer. Yes, it looked likely that Mrs Popatkar had been strangled by a man with a Bhojpuri flavour to his Hindi who shortly before her death had asked where she lived. It was fair, too, to assume her murder was connected with her visit to Banares and her forcing Mr Srivastava to let her see Krishnan Kalgutkar’s Recollections, of which as leader of his party H. K. Verma happened to be the guardian. But H. K. Verma had done no more than enforce the ban Krishnan Kalgutkar had stipulated. What could there be in the Recollections to have given him an overriding need to kill Mrs Popatkar?
Nevertheless he had felt almost to a certainty that, when he confronted the party leader, he would be face-to-face with Mrs Popatkar’s killer. Because of Vikki Verma’s obstinate silence. Because of what Usha had said. Because of that strange plea on behalf of ‘the good murderer’ H. K. Verma himself had made.
But he knew he would have to tread very carefully.
‘Sir,’ he began. ‘I have come again because I am not one hundred per cent happy with what you were saying in this room itself yesterday.’
He saw H. K. Verma’s heavy face freeze into a glare of chill rage.
‘Inspector, if you are happy or not happy, that is no concern of mine.’
‘Oh, yes, sir. Excuse me, but it is your own answers I am doubting.’
‘I answered you, as I recall, with very great fullness.’
‘Sir, what you said gave me much to think. But, sir, speculations as to whether a murder can be a good deed are not my duty to consider. It is just only for me to seek simple answers, yes or no, to simple questions.’
‘But what if there are no simple answers?’
‘No, sir. There are things which are not at all matters for rumination and philosophizing. To matters of fact just only one straight answer can be given.’
‘So you say, Inspector. So you say.’
H. K. Verma’s heavy shoulders moved up and down in a massive shrug.
‘Sir, I do say. Let me ask one such question only.’
Silence on the far side of the slanting bar of greenish light.
‘Sir, did you on the night of October the sixth travel to Bombay in a plane flown by your grandson, Mr Vikram Verma?’
No immediate answer.
What was the fellow going to reply? Could this be it already, the moment of breaking? Had this one direct, inescapable question brought in a single leap the end of his task?
‘No, Inspector. No. I did not go to Bombay that night.’
Liar. Liar. I know that you were going. That denial has just only confirmed it.
Right. Make him feel to the full what it is he is doing. Lying. Denying. Wriggling to save his skin itself.
‘Mr Verma, let me ask you one more time. Did you fly to Bombay in a plane piloted by your grandson?’
‘No. No, Inspector, I did not.’
‘No, sir? But let me remind you, Mr Vikram Verma has admitted he flew there.’
‘And has he stated that I accompanied him?’
‘No, sir. He would not say you were there also.’
‘Then, Inspector, you must take his word for it. And mine also. I did not go to Bombay. What makes you believe I did?’
I can hardly say it was, in the end, because a prostitute told me what you had muttered during failed sexual intercourse.
But at least, with that extra question, I have an opening that a flatly repeated denial would have blocked.
‘Sir, I was unable to believe what Mr Vikram Verma was telling.’
Leave it at that? Or go on to say I expect – as I do not for one moment – young Vikram to break down under further questioning? Watch the effect of that jump of falsehood?
He hesitated. And found the hesitation had been enough.
‘How dare you accuse a grandson of mine of lying and lying.
I shall take this to the highest authorities. I am not without friends at the Centre. At the top. The very top.’
Altogether too much. Too much shouting. Too much bluster. Nothing less than another admission.
And I know, by God, how to make the most of it.
‘Sir, you are welcome to go to whatsoever top you are wishing. Would you like to make some telephones now this instant?’
He settled his glance firmly on the smart, cream-coloured instrument on the table beside the shrouded TV set.
H. K. Verma simply sat and glowered.
‘Well then, sir, let me now ask this: where were you itself on October the sixth, from – shall I say? – the afternoon onwards?’
Again a pause. A give-away pause. Plain that the big man in the peacock chair, that bar of greenish light just touching the outermost pure white folds of his dhoti, is not simply sorting out in his head where exactly he was. He is busy inventing. Something not too detailed, but all the same likely.
He is. He is. I am sure of it.
‘Inspector, this was some time ago. How can—’
Cut sharply in.
‘Sir, it was six days ago only.’
He is on the hook. Keep the line hard-tugging.
‘Yes. Six days ago. Thank you for pointing it out. It helps me to bring it back to mind.’
‘So, sir, where were you?’
Do not let him have one second more of thinking time. Let him make every sort of mistake in the inventions he is producing. Let him tangle himself more and more.
‘I was— Let me see. I was, of course, here. In the house. But I work in this room and down in the office also. One or the other. Impossible to say where at any one moment.’
‘Very good. I am taking it there are people who could confirm same. The clerks in your office? Your peon?’
‘Yes, yes. The clerks see me coming and going, though they may not know whether I was there on one day rather than the next. Or I could call Raman some time later.’
Yes. After you have had a quick, secret word. I know that one-eyed Raman. The type who is scared, scared for his job and ready to lie till he drops down dead to keep same.
‘Then, sir, you were in the house. But for how long? Did you leave it at all that day, just six days ago? You must be able to remember.’
Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote) Page 16
