Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

  But once he had squeezed through the narrow gap between two ornate and ancient buildings opposite – he had to turn sideways to negotiate it – his troubles began. He found himself in a bewildering jumble of close-packed wretched huts fabricated from pieces of galvanised iron, sheets of plastic and even the cut-up remains of huge painted film hoardings, with, rising up from them like storm-battered crags in a turbulent muddy sea, eight or nine tall, tottering chawls, accommodation built long ago for workers in the mills nearby. None, of course, with a number on it.

  Working his way past mothers in thin, dirt-streaked saris crouching over little fires stirring at blackened cooking pots, past naked babies crawling feebly in the dust, past little girls in open-backed frocks and small boys wearing only holes-ripped half-pants, all mixed up with mange-marked dogs, scrawny pecking chickens and the occasional rootling hairy black pig, he asked, whenever he saw anyone likely to know, where Chawl No 4 might be.

  At last a leering, bold-breasted chukla leaning at the open doorway of her hut told him where it was, despite his having hastily brushed aside her invitation. Now it was only a matter of discovering someone who happened to know on which floor was the room, out of the dozens on either side of the central corridors, where the Chambhar family lived.

  He picked at last on a boy of nine or ten who, despite a much scabbed face, was possessed of a pair of brightly sharp eyes.

  ‘Bachcha. Bala Chambhar? He is living here?’

  The sharp eyes looked up at him.

  ‘Policewalla, nai?’

  Amazing how a boy like this could pick him out for what he was, despite his wearing shirt and pants like any one of hundreds of thousands of Bombayites.

  ‘Ji haan, police,’ he answered. ‘But I am not making troubles.’

  The boy considered briefly. Then spoke.

  ‘Come.’

  He led Ghote up three flights of rickety wooden stairs, greasy and dangerous with years of use. Here and there along the corridor at the top men were stretched out on the bare floor or on much frayed grass mats, stertorously asleep in the mustily humid air.

  ‘Here,’ the boy said, pointing to the door of one of the rooms. ‘Chambhar Mrs inside only. Bala hospital. Dying soon.’

  Ghote hoped that he was not hearing what might prove to be the truth. His best chance still was Bala recovering consciousness enough to say something indicating what the link was between the question-paper disappearing from Principal Bembalkar’s chamber and copies being sold by Bala himself up and down Bombay. But he had an unpleasant feeling that his sharp little scabby-faced guide might know, somehow, more than he did, for all that it was scarcely an hour since he had seen with his own eyes Bala lying in a state of utter suspension, apparently neither going towards death nor coming slowly back to the living.

  He knocked at the door the boy had indicated.

  After a moment it was cautiously opened an inch or two. A woman in a white widow’s sari with a seamed and suspicious face, peered out. Eye-catchingly evident was a scar-surrounded hole in her right nostril where once some pitiful nose-jewel had lodged before even that had had to be sold.

  Ghote told her who he was.

  With a chesty sigh she opened the door far enough to let him in.

  The room he saw was so bare of possessions that it might have been awaiting some new tenant. Another thin white sari, with a carefully sewn patch all too visible in it, hung across the narrow barred window, perhaps as a curtain, perhaps to dry after washing. Otherwise the sole decoration on the long-ago painted green walls, here and there dark with hair-oil stains, was a crinkled oleograph of Dr Ambedkar, the great Untouchable leader, with at one corner of it the Buddha set against a plummy red background, gold-surrounded. Two charpoys, their cords frayed and sagging were the only items of furniture. On the high shelf along one wall stood a battered, much scratched can of kerosene, fuel for the single cooking ring on the floor, with beside it, making it by contrast look all the more wretched, a bright little plastic tub that had once contained sweet, saffron-flavoured shrikhand from one of the smart Monginis cake shops.

  But nowhere was there any sign of the Oceanic College student who, according to the CBI report, had lived here. No books, no writing materials, nothing.

  Ghote’s spirits sagged. No, there was not going to be any clue here to the boy Bala. No nice middle-class notebook or diary scrawled with the names, addresses or even telephone numbers of dozens of friends. Friends in whom he might have confided, have laughingly told how he had been given that money-spinning advance question-paper.

  Perhaps Bala had left home months and months ago? Slept where he could with friends or fellow students? Or perhaps it was just that such study books as he had once bought or borrowed had been sold.

  ‘Your son, Bala,’ he said carefully to the battered creature who had been watching him with poking suspiciousness as he had made his survey of her bare home, ‘are you knowing who are his friends?’

  ‘Hospital,’ the old woman said, a gleam of cunning in her rheumy eyes. ‘Taking his life, they are saying.’

  ‘Well,’ Ghote answered, trying for what comfort he could, much though he suspected the old woman’s answer had been designed to give nothing away that might help a policewalla, ‘We all of us in this world at times wonder whether we should pull on or be giving up.’

  ‘They are saying he is one badmash,’ the old woman went on with obstinate cunning. ‘But he was a good son to me. He had promised a new sari from what he was making by selling that paper, whatever it was.’

  Ghote sighed. He was going to learn nothing here. And, in fact, was it likely that an old woman like this would know Bala’s college friends and possible accomplices? She had probably no idea what a question-paper really was. She would know nothing at all of exams or invigilation, of cheating and how it was all too often done. The chances that she was even able to read must be minimal.

  What, if anything, would her bright but dishonest son have told her of his lucky reaching up to the status of college student. How much about it would she have been able to grasp? What dim notions must have passed through her mind, if he had said anything at all.

  No way out of the adage here.

  And nothing more in this bare room to give the least clue to that link between stolen question-paper and question-paper seller.

  He turned to go, sullen despair welling up.

  But then, at the very last moment, Bala’s mother broke into what seemed to be a wail of genuine misery. But, despite the small upswelling of pity he suddenly felt for her, what she said gave him an unexpected spurt of hope.

  ‘He was coming back from Lucky Copy Centre. He was going out once more with those paper-papers. Then, when he was coming home next, soon-soon he was falling asleep and not waking. Not waking. Not waking. Not ever waking.’

  ‘But he may wake,’ Ghote said, with a jab of remorse. ‘I have seen one hour ago only at KEM Hospital, and he is alive still. He is alive. He may come back to you yet.’

  With those words of hope, false hope he all too sharply feared, he left, clattering down the greasy wooden stairs fast as he could go. Now he had at least one more place to make inquiries. The Lucky Copy Centre.

  NINE

  The Lucky Copy Centre – Ghote had glimpsed its name as he had come up along Dadasaheb Phalke Marg – was only half a dozen shops down from the Vishnu Shoe Clinic. It would be the natural place for Bala Chambhar to get the stolen question-paper copied. Someone bound to be still there, even though darkness had now fallen, might know one of the boy’s friends, or at least be able to describe them. So, Ghote thought, as he waited for a break in the jostling, swerving rush-hour traffic, this is really one good hope.

  The place, when he had at last got across the road to it, hardly matched, however, its name and the big signboard he had noticed – All Sorts of Petitions Notices Agreements Power of Attorneys Etc Is Undertaken. Under a makeshift roof spanning a small gap between two buildings a single dented and paint-scarred copyi
ng machine was the sole service offered. Its operator, a man of late middle age with a round bald head and a pair of large-lensed pinkish-framed spectacles plastered across his face, was deeply absorbed in a newspaper spread across the top of its flimsy wooden counter.

  Ghote placed himself in front of him.

  The operator remained unmoved.

  Ghote gave a rat-tat of a cough.

  Still no response. The fellow was locked on to the Death Notices, a grubby-nailed finger slowly making its way down the column.

  Leaning forward, Ghote seized the digit between his own finger and thumb and lifted it off the page.

  Now the diligent reader did look up, peering apprehensively through his pinkish-framed spectacles.

  ‘Police,’ Ghote jabbed out. ‘Now, you are knowing a youth from round here by the name of Bala Chambhar?’

  The man considered, eyes blinking slowly behind the round lenses.

  ‘I am’ – he paused – ‘knowing, yes.’

  ‘Good. And Bala was coming here last Monday in the evening to have some work done?’

  ‘Last’ – pause – ‘Monday …’

  A longer pause. What on earth could he be hesitating over?

  ‘Yes. Monday.’

  Ghote pushed on, feeling at every moment more confident.

  ‘Good, good. You were seeing what it was the boy was having copied, isn’t it?’

  ‘I was –’ another long-drawn pause – ‘seeing.’

  ‘It was a question-paper, no? A University of Bombay question-paper, Statistical Techniques?’

  ‘It – might – Yes. Yes, it … was.’

  Exasperation flamed up in Ghote.

  ‘Why were you allowing?’ he shouted. ‘You must have been knowing this was one illegal document. Why were you letting that boy make copies by hundreds and hundreds?’

  ‘Twenty … seven. Eight, one free.’

  ‘All right, twenty-eight. But nevertheless why were you allowing?’

  ‘I was –’

  Deep consideration showed itself on the round face behind the pink-framed spectacles.

  ‘… not.’

  ‘Not what? Not what?’

  Ghote jumped in before another impossible pause arrived.

  ‘I was not,’ the fellow repeated with maddening slowness, ‘knowing this was one new paper. I was not … looking so closely. Sometimes students are wishing –’

  And then the pause did come, the careful choice of the next word.

  ‘To … examine old papers to see old questions.’

  Now it was Ghote’s turn to consider. Was the fellow lying? But what if he was? Copying that question-paper was not the greatest crime in the world. It might have been better, in fact, if he himself had not banged out that accusation with such ferocity. But the fellow was really too much.

  He drew in a careful breath.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I can understand you may have been a one hundred percent innocent party. Bala was saying nothing to you about that paper?’

  Long pause.

  ‘No.’

  Ghote plunged quickly on.

  ‘Well, was Bala with some friends when you were doing business?’

  ‘He was with –’

  Ghote waited, patting himself on the back for the patience he was showing. Who would it turn out to be? Would this fellow know the name? Was the tiny thread really going to lead onwards and onwards?

  ‘… no one.’

  ‘No one?’ Ghote could not help firing back, bullet-like. ‘You are saying he was with –’

  He brought himself to a stop. Drew in another breath.

  ‘Bala was here on his own?’ he asked more quietly. ‘You are sure? No friend hanging in background?’

  ‘No.’ Pause. ‘No. No one. Not on Monday evening. Not –’

  Another long, considering wait.

  ‘… on Tuesday.’

  Ghote’s heart leapt.

  ‘He was here again on Tuesday? Bala Chambhar was here on Tuesday? What time it was? What for was he here?’

  ‘More –’ Pause. ‘Copying.’

  ‘Of that same paper? Was it? Was it?’

  ‘Yes … He was coming … early. He had then more –’

  ‘More money, yes?’

  The fellow looked faintly aggrieved at his answer being anticipated in mid-flow. If his drawn-out words could possibly be described as flow.

  ‘Yes, more … money. Fifty … extra copies.’

  Calm, Ghote said to himself. Take it slowly, very, very slowly.

  ‘What time was this on Tuesday?’

  ‘As soon as … I … was opening. Eight o’ … clock sharp.’

  Ghote thought. This might well be significant. Apparently Bala was happily getting more copies of his stolen paper made at 8 a.m. on the day he had been admitted to hospital after taking those sleeping pills. So what had happened between those two events? When had the boy learnt the police were on his tracks and had decided abruptly to take the way out he had chosen? If it proved possible to trace him a little later than his eight o’clock visit here, he might yet find someone Bala had told about the link between Principal Bembalkar’s chamber and the first sales of the paper. Whatever it was.

  Then surely the cat would be free of the adage. He could file that report at last, and it would be an altogether better example of police work than the single sheet the CBI fellows had produced.

  But tracing Bala from the time he had left the copy centre was not going to be easy.

  He turned and looked at the road behind him under the bluey white light of the street lamps. Traffic was still hooting and pushing along, as at eight o’clock on last Tuesday morning it would have been doing in the opposite direction but with even more stink and vigour. So Bala would have been lost to the copy-shop operator’s sight as soon as he had set off. And the pavement was, if anything, even more crowded and crammed than the roadway. People of all sorts were making their way up and down it, coolies with headloads of every variety, crates, an oil-drum, big bundles of heaven knows what, and businessmen, white-capped with clean white dhotis falling from fat stomachs, children dodging and running, secretaries and shop assistants in saris of every colour under the sun, and a beggar thrusting his way against the flow, dirty palm pushed out to anyone who looked as if they would produce a coin or two. That, too, would have been no different at eight o’clock last Tuesday, except that people would have been making their way to work instead of coming away from it.

  No, no hope at all of tracing Bala’s movements as he had left with his supply of newly copied question-papers. And where would he have gone? It was anybody’s guess. To hang about, certainly, outside one of the colleges of Bombay University waiting to offer his advance information about those Statistical Techniques questions to any student willing to pay. But which college would he have chosen? Elphinston, of course. The trail had begun with a student from there. But, otherwise, no telling. No telling at all.

  He felt the clustering sticks and thorny creepers of the adage once more unyielding around him.

  But, damn it, he was not going to be defeated now, not when he had at last made one small advance.

  He stood there on the crowded pavement and thought.

  Yes, there was only one thing to do. He would have to go back to Oceanic College and get hold of any student who had been a particular friend of Bala’s. The boy could not have been so secretive as never to give even a hint to some close pal about the wonderful money-spinning thing that had somehow come into his hands. But – he looked at his watch – no point in going out there again now. No one would be there, any more than they had been that first night.

  So it was home.

  And – the thought came rushing into his mind like water from a suddenly turned-on tap – was this the time to do what had to be done about Protima? But no sooner had he asked himself the question than he realised that Ved should be back by this hour. So the matter would not at all arise. It could, after all, wait. The right moment would co
me sooner or later. The main thing was that his mind was made up. Definitely.

  Only would Ved perhaps have gone out again? To some friend?

  For a long moment he hesitated where he was. But then, unable to think of any reason to do other than make his way homewards, he set off.

  And found he was in luck. As soon as he tapped on the outer door he heard Ved’s rushing footsteps coming towards him.

  But why, he asked himself at once, had he thought of Ved being at home as good luck. Would good luck truly have been if Ved had been out, and if he could have dealt with Protima there and then?

  She had cooked a meal that was supposed to be a favourite of his. And was.

  So, after an evening of quiet domesticity, he was able to leave home next morning in good time to arrive at Oceanic College well before the 7.30 a.m. start of lectures.

  Now, he thought, I must just only ask each and every student I am seeing, and sooner or later I would get hold of that good friend of Bala’s. And then … Then, with just somewhat of luck, the secret of how the Statistical Techniques question-paper was spirited out of the Principal’s chamber and into Bala’s hands would be his. End of all that adage nonsense.

  For a moment, standing just inside the tall iron gates of the college compound, he let his mind toy once again with that damn word. Adage? Addage? Which was it? And what, oh what, did it really mean?

  But already, clustered round the cycle stand, a whole group of boys were putting their machines into the concrete racks under the supervision of the attendant, a noisy and opinionated fellow who, from his accent as he shouted commands, largely ignored and mostly contradictory, must be a South Indian.

  Ah, he thought, just what I am wanting. Ten – fifteen possible witnesses, each to hand.

  He hurried over.

  But the first boy he drew aside promptly denied ever having known Bala.

  ‘But you must be knowing all the boys in your year?’ he said incredulously.

  ‘Well, it is possible I am not knowing each and every – But, no. No, Bala was not at all in my year. Not at all.’