Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote)

by Keating, H. R. F.

  This is pressing him. Pressing hard. If he flew with his grandson to Bombay – as he did, as he did – then at some time he must have left the house. Can he be sure now someone will not remember, for some chance reason only even, seeing him go?

  But, no, damn it, perhaps I should have insisted to see Raman straight away. Catch that one-eyed liar before he is having a chance to be taught his answer.

  Change tactic, even now?

  No – damn, damn, damn – he is beginning to answer. And this might be where he is slipping up. Listen. Concentrate.

  ‘Oh, but, yes, Inspector, you do not expect me to remain captive in my own house all night?’

  Never mind answering that sort of pleading. Ask a question myself. One with some dagger in it.

  ‘So, sir, at what time precisely were you leaving?’

  Short pause again. Another tiny drop of admission. But now . . .

  ‘Really, Inspector, you are demanding too much. Who keeps time to that extent in our easy-going Banares? I can tell you the exact hour I leave the house every morning because I take a holy sunrise dip. But after that, who knows?’

  Damn. Should never let him take the chance to dodge, and he has taken it. To the full. Sunrise dip. Holy Ganges. I am a good man. How can you think I could ever stoop to murder? All that stuff and nonsense.

  Well, try to get back.

  ‘Very well, sir. I am understanding it is not always possible to say to one minute where one is, especially after some days.’

  Ha, yes. Fellow is relaxing. A little, little pause now. Yes. And pounce.

  ‘But you can at least remember where you went.’

  Yes. Got him. Hundred per cent confused.

  But not for long. The brain must be working fast.

  ‘But, yes, Inspector, I can easily remember what I did six days ago. We were then at the fourth Ram Lila night. I, of course, went out to Ramnagar to watch that play.’

  Clever, clever devil. Something he would hardly be able to produce a witness to if he went on his own. No doubt a huge crowd there. Ram Lila just outside Banares is famous. Second only to Delhi itself. There would be onlookers by the thousand, by the lakh. And all taking place in darkness. For the fireworks that come after.

  What night of the ten that the plays happen would this have been? What would have been enacted? Ask him. Catch him out? Not a chance. He will have seen them year after—

  No, wait. Usha said he had not gone this year. Something they chit-chatted about.

  But can I challenge him with her? Never. He will deny he was ever with her. He will say, if I tell him I saw him leave here and traced him to that house in Dal Mandi, I was altogether mistaken. That I followed someone else.

  But all the same it is evidence once again. He was not in Banares that night. He was in Bombay. In Dadar.

  He is leaning forward now, smiling. One damned oily smile.

  ‘But, alas, Inspector, I can produce no witness. The Maharajah of Banares, of course, was there. He presides each night. But I do not think he saw myself.’

  Smile at the joke? Laugh even? Never. Never.

  ‘That is all very well, sir. But I want definite proof you were here in Banares and not flying to Bombay.’

  Sharp frown on the wide brow under those greying curls of hair.

  ‘Inspector, I tell you again. I very much resent your attitude. Wherever Vikram was, I was not with him. I cannot make myself clearer than that. Now, if you please, I have work to do.’

  ‘No, sir. I have questions still to ask.’

  ‘Inspector, I have told you where I was that evening. It is a matter of regret I did not happen to see anyone I know. And that this year I did not go to Ramnagar with a party of friends.’

  As you could not have done, you liar. Because you were flying to Bombay. You were. You were. And somehow I will trick you into admitting.

  ‘But, Inspector, as it is, you will have to take my word for it. As you should. I am not without a certain reputation for truth-telling. Even when truth-telling has kept me out of Government for many, many years.’

  Try that, will you? The man of good deeds. No. The man of one evil, evil deed.

  At him again. At him.

  ‘Very well, sir, let us assume you have—’ Make one small pause here, show I have not believed one word he has said – ‘remembered correctly what you did that night. But the Ram Lila episodes do not last too long. So what were you doing after?’

  Yes, that tiny eye-flick of dismay. Grabbing for one more lie.

  Press hard. Press harder.

  ‘Did you come home, sir? What time did you come home? To within one hour, let us say? I know you Banarasis do not go in for the clocks and the watches.’

  But the smile back on those bloody orator’s lips.

  ‘No, Inspector, we do not consult our watches at each and every moment like you hustle-bustle Bombayites. And on the nights of the Ram Lila itself we are even worse.’

  What is he going to try now? What of difference can Ram Lila nights make?

  ‘Those plays are there, Inspector, to teach us. And I, for one, take what I have seen to heart. After the play that night I walked about asking and asking myself had I kept up to my resolutions to do good and to be good.’

  Utter hypocrite.

  Ah, but try this.

  ‘Sir, while you were walking and pondering also did you perhaps stop and buy a paan? I am knowing you Banarasis are so much liking to munch your India-famed paans. Sir, you are one well-known figure in this city. Will some paanwalla have recognized?’

  He is considering.

  Will he fall for it? Is he thinking whether he knows some fellow he can bribe? Will he dare try that?

  ‘Inspector, after watching that play I was altogether too concerned with the state of my soul to go buying paans.’

  The state of your soul. Black, black, black. Too black to be washed white by all the water in Ganges itself.

  ‘Then, sir, you were, after however much of pondering, you were returning at last here?’

  Moment of caution. But answer coming quickly enough.

  ‘Of course I came back home. What else should you think I would do? I came back. I went to my lonely bed. You know my wife was expiring some years past? And in the morning I rose up and went, as always, to Mother Ganga.’

  Pleased enough with himself now. Must be damn sure none of that can be disproved against him. But keep trying.

  ‘And you cannot say, at all, when it was you were returning here?’

  He is even daring to laugh now.

  ‘Not at all, Inspector. Not one least little bit.’

  ‘But someone will have seen you come in, no? You have servants, isn’t it?’

  ‘All sound asleep by that time. Whenever it was.’

  ‘You do not keep a watchman?’

  ‘Why, yes I do. Or rather I did. A fellow by the name of Karim, something of a rogue. A Pathan. But, I am sorry to say, the fellow has vanished. Some articles missing. Nothing of value.’

  Vanished. Or sent away? Could I get hold of this Pathan? This Karim?

  ‘Vanished, sir? You mean he is absconding altogether?’

  ‘Yes. Exactly, Inspector.’

  ‘But you have an address for him in his native place? That is the procedure police are recommending to all with servants in Bombay.’

  ‘But here, Inspector, with Nepal not so far distant there is no point in keeping such details.’

  Check.

  Some other way to force him finally into the corner? His link with Mrs Popatkar? I cannot at all see what it is. I cannot. And without it I will never be able to go to the Senior Superintendent, request full back-up for an arrest.

  All right, he has denied knowing her at all. But I can anyhow ask once more. Better also make it easy for him to admit. Before he has grasped what it may mean.

  ‘Mr Verma, you have stated you have never met Mrs Shoba Popatkar. But, if you would search your memory, I believe you must find some occasion. She came he
re, a ticket examiner was telling me, many times over the past years.’

  ‘Inspector, how often must I repeat? When I make a statement I tell the truth. That and nothing more. It is my lifelong habit.’

  ‘And you are telling the truth itself now when you are saying you have never, not once even, met Mrs Popatkar?’

  And – what is this? – no immediate reply. No angry Inspector, I have told you the truth. Why must you keep asking and asking?

  Now a sudden, sharp lurch forward in his chair. Canework creaking.

  ‘Inspector, I have told you the truth itself. Why must you keep asking and asking?’

  Well, there is the answer. Almost to the word as I had imagined. But why did it take so long to come? Why?

  Cannot think of any possible reason. Checkmate now after all?

  The slanting ray of green light, all dancing with motes, had moved round a little with the slow-moving sun outside. But it was no less broad.

  Checkmate? No, by God, I will not let it be. Think. Think.

  Yes, one more move I can make. On same line – not very much of cunning – but all that is left to me. May threaten his raja. With some luck, just may.

  ‘Mr Verma, the first time I came to see you it was to make one simple request. It was to take your permission, as chief trustee, to read the Recollections of the late Krishnan Kalgutkar.’

  Blank face opposite. Heavy cheeks weighted with flabbiness.

  But go on.

  ‘Sir, I was informing you then I required to see the said Recollections in view of the fact that Mrs Popatkar had read same shortly before she was murdered. Mr Verma, I am now repeating that request.’

  Sudden look of stony opposition. Enough. Enough to tell me, yes, that whatever refusal he will bluster out that last frail arrow I had, against all odds, has struck home.

  For a tiny flash of time Inspector Ghote saw himself as wielding the bow of legendary Arjuna in the Mahabharata, victor at the great battle of Kurukshetra.

  19

  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 weak a barrier?

  H. K. Verma wondered once again whether he could have refused to see the Bombay mongoose. There were too many gaping holes in his air-puffy defences. Too many questions he would find hard to answer. And, always at the back of his mind, there was the temptation. To surrender. There like a hanging cloud before the start of the monsoon, hovering, rain-thick.

  Or, more, it seemed at moments like a bed. A bed ready waiting as, hammered down with fatigue, he approached. Softness, repose, comfort. How easy to fall down on to it. How easy not to go on fighting. To say suddenly, for no reason, Inspector, I cannot keep on lying and lying. I am not the man to do it. Inspector, yes, I did kill Mrs Shoba Popatkar.

  But if I had refused to see him now, he thought, the fellow would probably have gone to the Senior Superintendent of Police and asked to have me arrested. They would not like to do that out there at Cornwallis Lines, but they might think they had no choice.

  No, best to hear the worst.

  And to fight. To fight and fight and fight. If it is only for time to decide where my life should go. Now that this has happened. Now I am a murderer.

  ‘Sir,’ the fellow was beginning now, ‘I have come again because I am not one hundred per cent happy with what you were saying in this room itself yesterday.’

  Rat. Rat. Rat. How dare he . . .

  At once he could feel the rage making his face, his whole body, into one heat-frozen pillar of hatred. All the more icily bitter because what the rat had said was right. He should not have been happy with the lies I had to tell, the dodgings and evasions I had to make.

  ‘Inspector,’ he managed to bring out at last in answer, ‘if you are happy or not happy, that is no concern of mine.’

  Not the best thing to have said. It will just only antagonize the little rat even more. But all I could find to say.

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Excuse me, but it is your own answers I am doubting.’

  And you think I also did not have doubts about those answers?

  ‘I answered you, as I recall, with very great fullness.’

  And I did. In the fullest truth I did. I put my case to this man. I made him my judge even. I touched his feet.

  And what is he saying now?

  ‘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.’

  There. Not bending one inch towards me. Not for all his pretending, then or now. All his gave me much to think . . .

  ‘It is just only for me to seek simple answers, yes or no, to simple questions.’

  But, no. No. The answers cannot be simple. The questions I put up were not simple. Was I right when I choked the words in that woman’s throat? I was. I was. How much harm, to so many, she would have brought. But also I was not in the right. No. Killing her. Taking her life.

  ‘But what if there are no simple answers?’

  All I can say. It is not much. But, to say all I would like, I would have to begin with a confession. A full confession to what I actually did. And, no, I cannot do it. Not now. Not just now.

  ‘No, sir, there are things that are not at all matters for rumination and philosophizing.’

  Wrong, Mr Inspector. Wrong. And you must know it. Always everything is a matter, not for the pointless rumination and philosophizing you are trying to make them out to be, but for weighing up. For weighing the right and the wrong. You know it. I know it. And I must be given time to make that weighing.

  ‘To matters of fact just only one straight answer can be given.’

  What is he saying? Oh, hopeless to try to convince the stupid donkey.

  ‘So you say, Inspector. So you say.’

  Drop it. Drop it. Let it go.

  ‘Sir, I do say. Let me ask one such question only.’

  Now it is coming. Now. And this one question may be the one that goes, like an arrow, through some thin place in the wall I have built round me. That weak wall of air only. An arrow going to the heart of it. To my heart.

  But I will not make it easy for him. Not a word. Not a word in answer. Till I must.

  ‘Sir, did you on the night of October the sixth travel to Bombay in a plane flown by your grandson, Mr Vikram Verma?’

  Answer Yes. Yes, I did? Finish it now? Take rest? Let what will happen happen?

  No. No, he will have to fight harder than that. He will have to fight me. Me. For my life itself.

  ‘No, Inspector. No, I did not go to Bombay that night.’

  There. It is told. The direct lie. I have done it. Myself, the man proud, yes, proud, always to have told the truth.

  ‘Mr Verma, let me ask one more time. Did you fly to Bombay in a plane piloted by your grandson?’

  He knows I am lying. He stands there in front of me and asks me, like a master at a school, to repeat to him what he knows I have got wrong. Just as Masterji, taunting, did to me in those days, and more than once. And I will have to do it. No matter what extra of punishment it will bring.

  ‘No. No, Inspector, I did not.’

  ‘No, sir? But let me remind you, Mr Vikram Verma has admitted he flew there.’

  Ah, it is trying tricks now, is it? You have come down from Masterji to bully in the classroom when the lesson is over. Well, I can answer you now in the way you should be answered.

  ‘And has he stated that I accompanied him?’

  Now, will you lie to me? Will you go on with your too easy trick?

  ‘No, sir. He would not say you were there also.’

  So, no more trickery. Good. And keep to saying that, Vikram, my boy. Keep to it. Remember, I have lied for your sake. One flagrant lie. Sixteen years of age. So, lie now, and for ever. For me.

  And let me lie, boldly and well, for him. For myself.

  ‘Then, Inspector
, you must take his word for it. And mine also. I did not go to Bombay. What makes you believe I did?’

  Carry the fight into the enemy camp. Rush in with torches blazing. Let him see he is not the only one who can fight.

  ‘Sir, I was unable to believe what Mr Vikram Verma was telling.’

  So that is the best you can do? No, you are not being so clever, Mr Inspector. And I see you hesitating now. Thinking where you can possibly go, is it?

  Very well. One blast from my gun.

  ‘How dare you accuse a grandson of mine of lying and lying. I shall take this to the highest authorities.’

  Yes, let it rip. Blast him to pieces only.

  ‘Let me tell you, Inspector Ghote, I am not without friends at the Centre. At the top. The very top.’

  Hah. Now we would see.

  ‘Sir, you are welcome to go to whatsoever top you are wishing.’

  No. No. I went too far. I have opened once more some wide gap for him to come through.

  ‘Would you like to make some telephones now this instant?’

  And he has the cheek only to look at my telephone there. To dare me to go to it. And he knows damn well I cannot. That if I were to try it even, I would be laying myself open to a hundred more difficulties in explaining to Jagmohan Nagpal. To whoever I could think of.

  How I would like to take this rat and shake him to death. Yes, to death.

  Now he is coming at me once more.

  ‘Well then, sir, let me now ask this: where were you itself on October the sixth, from – shall I say? – the afternoon onwards?’

  What to answer? What to answer? I was still, the day after I had heard from Srivastava, running round this way and that. To Vikram. To the Flying Club. To the bank for money. Just so as to get to Bombay before that woman’s slow, slow train reached. And how can I say that?

  Why, why, did I not take time to think? I should have guessed this question could come, even though I did not think the little rat would dare to put. I could have thought out some answer when he was saying only that he could not believe Vikram. He was hesitating then. Thinking. And I, too, could have been thinking.

  But what can I say now? What?