Cheating Death

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Come with me,’ Ghote said into the boy’s ear, however. ‘Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch, I am wanting one word.’

  The boy looked up. His face took on, instant by instant, the appearance of blotted-out fright.

  Not such a goonda after all, Ghote thought. I would not have too much of trouble in finding where he has hidden Dean Potdar.

  But, despite the boy’s appearance of submissiveness, he took care to get a good grip on the elbow of his right arm as he propelled him through the ranks of tables – heads looked up, pens ceased to scratch – and out through the still open door.

  In the corridor he saw Mohinder and Sarita waiting. They both started forward.

  With a snapped-out ‘No’ he brushed past and hurried his prisoner away. Luckily catching sight of a classroom apparently unoccupied, he pushed his captive inside and slammed its door closed with his heel.

  ‘Now, Shantaram Antrolikar,’ he said. ‘I am wanting no nonsense. I know it is you who has kidnapped Dean Potdar, and you are going to tell me straightaway, ek dum, where you have hidden.’

  ‘But – But –’

  ‘I have warned you. You answer now, or you find yourself in one police cell, and there we would not worry too much about how we are getting our informations.’

  Behind the boy’s large spectacles, already slipping down his nose from the sweat that had started up all over his face, his eyes were wide and fearful. And utterly perplexed.

  ‘But – But – My name is not Shantaram Antrolikar.’

  ‘Now do not try that sort of trick with me. I had your seat number. You were at that table. Very last warning. Where have you got Dean Potdar?’

  ‘But – But, Inspector, there was one only mistake. Two of us were allocated Seat 73. Shantaram was moving. He was saying better to sit next to genius Ram Amelkar than me only.’

  At once Ghote knew that this boy, whatever his name was, had been telling the truth. It all fell into place. The boy had not seemed at all like the person Mohinder had described, and both he and Sarita had looked astonished when he had marched this fellow past them.

  He turned on his heel and ran from the room.

  What if that goonda Antrolikar had noticed what was happening at the seat allocated to him? Would he have guessed why the boy had been taken out? And have slipped away himself, regardless of whether he wrote the exam or not?

  Neither Sarita nor Mohinder was to be seen outside the hall now. But he would damn well make sure, if he still could, that he had Antrolikar under his grasp this time, with or without their confirmation.

  He paused an instant at the door of the hall – Pin-drop Silence Please Have Respect – then, silently as he could so as not to attract his quarry’s attention, if the boy was still sitting at his table, he pushed the door open and slipped in.

  All inside was quiet. Or comparatively so. Victor Furtado, up on the dais, was looking vaguely ahead into the distance. Below, at more than one spot students leant towards each other once again exchanging whispered information.

  Ghote walked quickly and quietly up to Victor Furtado. He took a long look round at the rows of tables, the bent black heads, the coloured shirts of the boys, the bright saris of the girls.

  And, to his delight, the only table he saw vacant was at Seat 73.

  So Shantaram Antrolikar must still be in the room. Either he had not realised what it meant when the other boy had been marched from the hall, or he had felt himself so secure he was brazening it out. Well, in a minute he would find just how secure he was.

  In a rapid undertone he explained to the Goan lecturer what had gone wrong.

  ‘Kindly check through your list of numbers and find which is missing,’ he said. ‘That must be where Antrolikar is now sitting.’

  He endeavoured, while Victor Furtado turned the pages of his long list – why did the fellow have to make such a damn rustling noise? – to efface himself as much as possible.

  Could he by thinking hard of something else, anything else, actually become less noticeable? But what to think about? What to find that was not something to do with that bloody adage he was now even more caught up in?

  Home. Home life. Ved getting the captaincy of the Regals. Protima.

  Oh, yes, it was high time to give Protima more of thought. Ridiculous that he had still not done what he had to do. He had made up his mind, after all. He had made up his mind – the thought occurred to him as somehow significant – just before he had been ordered to investigate all this adage-wrapping business out here. So why had he done nothing? But he had hardly been at home … No, see the truth, he had been there yesterday afternoon. What had there really been then to stop him seizing a –

  Victor Furtado was whispering urgently.

  ‘Yes? Yes?’

  ‘Antrolikar is in Seat 84. Definitely.’

  Looking down, Ghote rapidly worked out from the position of the one unoccupied table, No 73, where No 84 must be. And, yes, the boy looking sullenly at his question-paper there and not writing at all had just the appearance he had expected of Shantaram Antrolikar. He was a hulk of a young man, wearing a shirt of a more vibrant check than any around, with a thick gold chain prominent at his neck, dark-faced and ugly.

  Quietly he stepped off the dais and, hoping to be taken for some extra invigilator, set off on a roundabout route so as to approach Antrolikar from the rear.

  Only as he got near did he see what had been laid with ostentatious care at the front of the hulking young fellow’s table. A knife. A long knife of the sort used by butchers to kill goats.

  Oh, yes, he thought, warning to poor Victor Furtado not to try to stop him cheating.

  But it was not a question of stopping cheating now. It was something a great deal more serious.

  He stepped silently up, leant forward and clamped the long knife hard to the table while with his other hand he fastened a fierce grip on Antrolikar’s shoulder.

  Then he spoke again the words he had murmured before.

  ‘Inspector Ghote, Crime Branch. You are coming with me.’

  And at once he hauled Antrolikar to his feet.

  The boy turned, face swelling with dark anger.

  But after one moment of doubt he looked away and allowed himself to be led off.

  Outside in the corridor the boy from Seat 73 was standing, pale-faced.

  ‘Go back in, go back in,’ Ghote snapped. ‘And good luck also.’

  Then, regardless of the request for pin-drop silence, he pushed Antrolikar hard up against the nearest wall.

  ‘You have kidnapped the Dean of this college,’ he said, putting all the implacability he could into his voice. ‘You or your friends are keeping him somewhere. Now, where? Where?’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  Crack.

  Ghote landed a flat-palmed blow on the side of the boy’s head. It would, he knew, do him little real harm. But it would damn well hurt.

  He hoped, in fact, it would hurt so much that the boy would attempt to respond. Then he could give him something that would really make him think.

  But the boy only stood there, looking obstinate.

  Ghote gave a long theatrical sigh.

  ‘So you are going to play at being one big-big goonda, is it?’ he said. ‘Then let me be telling you something. What I am going to do now is to take you to the nearest chowkey and have you locked up.’

  ‘I won’t care.’

  ‘No, I do not think you will. But I think you will care for what I would do next.’

  ‘You try your police brutalities on me, and I would see you are in big trouble. My father is one high-up in Rajwani Chemicals.’

  Ghote smiled then.

  It was a smile he had been reserving to use since this impromptu interrogation had begun, a smile of evident pleasure. But what Shantaram Antrolikar had just said would make it, he hoped, all the more effective when its meaning finally sank in.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Now what is this father of yours going to say when he is hearing I h
ave not touched one hair of your head, but that I have gone to Principal Bembalkar and made sure he will boot you out, no BA, no nice label to get a fine job after?’

  It took the boy a second or two to grasp it. Ghote could see on his face when it had happened. A sudden look of baffled fury.

  ‘Listen,’ the boy said at last. ‘Keeping Old Pot-belly out of the way one – two hours, one – two days even, that is just only one good joke.’

  ‘And when he is having heart attack? You are damn well knowing he has heart condition. Every one in your damn college is knowing. So, when he has that, where are you going to laugh at your good joke then?’

  ‘But – But why should he do that?’ the boy protested, his voice rising to a surprising whine. ‘He would not die. He would not.’

  ‘Now,’ Ghote snapped out, ‘where are your friends keeping him?’

  Another moment of baffled longing not to be where he was.

  ‘At the back of Paris Hotel. That fellow there is one good friend to us.’

  ‘Then you had better go back to your seat and see if you can write one correct answer. If I am finding the Dean, and if he is still in good health, then I will have a word with Mr Furtado and you would not have been outside during whole course of exam.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. All right. I am going.’

  The boy positively scuttled away. It did Ghote, watching to make sure he actually went back in, some good to see him. Perhaps now, despite all past disappointments, the coiling adage was beginning to break apart.

  But, just at the door of the hall Antrolikar turned and called out.

  ‘Inspector, get plenty of police if you go there. Those fellows are ready to fight, and none of them would worry about not getting BA.’

  Then he quickly opened the door and slipped in.

  Ghote stood for longer than he had meant to, thinking.

  Perhaps young Antrolikar had proved to be less tough than Mohinder had believed. He had had a weakness, and it had been something to use against him. But it looked as if his friends at the Paris Hotel were going to be different. If they really were prepared to fight to keep the Dean hostage it was not going to be easy to rescue the fat little man without those ‘plenty of police’.

  But for how much longer was it safe to leave the explosive academic in the hands of his tormentors? And how much longer could he himself afford to spend time over it? Damn it, he was here to find out, as quickly as possible on orders from Delhi, how that question-paper had been stolen. And Bala Chambhar, there was him too. Lying in that coma. Or perhaps dead now. Murdered.

  Yet Dean Potdar might break out in a fatal rage at any moment. From what he himself had learnt about him in those humiliating sessions trying to use him to find out about the college he had shown every sign of resenting anyone attempting to tell him what he could do. He would resent it even more if it was some students bossing him. So the chances really were high that a heart attack could come at any minute. He could not leave him there at death’s door.

  But to arrange to have the Paris Hotel surrounded by police and then to raid it might take hours.

  Best to try and tackle the place on his own? At once? Yes.

  Yes.

  More lines tricking and entangling round that damn adage.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Setting out for the Paris Hotel, Ghote found himself impelled to hurry and at the same time leadenly inclined to delay. He was all too conscious of the need to rescue tubby, heart-attack prone Dean Potdar with maximum speed. But he was equally very much aware that effecting a rescue single-handedly might well be a straight path to disaster.

  Turning the corner into the entrance hall, he saw the lanky figure of Amar Nath. In a jump of decision he made up his mind to recruit him.

  The fellow, for all his rough-and-ready approach, was quick enough to take in the situation.

  ‘By God,’ he said as soon as Ghote had outlined it, ‘they have dared to kidnap Potdar sahib, is it? Oh, I would like to be there when he is shelling those fellows. He would give them plenty mustard.’

  He gave a roar of laughter.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he went on. ‘So much of mustard, and then – Then, poof. You are knowing that little fatty has got one bad heart?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ghote said.

  ‘So we must be getting him back, one, two, three, no? If he is not already lying dead mutton at those fellows’ feet.’

  ‘So, chalo,’ Ghote said urgently.

  Striding along beside the security man, it was all Ghote could do to keep up. And already he was beginning to suspect that taking the fellow along might not have been such a good idea.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, making an effort not to gasp a little from the speed of their progress across the compound. ‘Listen, when we are getting there it will be a matter of making one careful approach. I want to do this without any whiff of troubles. So take your time from me, no?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ Amar Nath responded. ‘Just what you like, Inspectorji.’

  Although the words were an acknowledgement, Ghote felt that their cheerful tone hardly echoed it. But he had enlisted the fellow now, and in any case if he met any opposition he was likely to need every bit of muscle to be had.

  Ought he to have risked the delay and waited till he had a squad of tough constables ready to go in? But the decision had been taken now. And – he thought of Amar Nath’s crude ‘poof’ – surely it was the right one.

  They crossed the road towards the Paris Hotel. Amar Nath seemed determined to be first to get there. Ghote, without quite actually running, contrived just to outpace him.

  Looking in from outside, the place seemed no different from the two other occasions he had been there, on that first morning with Amar Nath and when he had just poked his head inside as he had waited till Mohinder Singh Mann would get to the student canteen. Not the least sign of any unusual activity.

  The oily proprietor was sitting just as he had been before, poring over his stained and spotted account book. The same out-of-date calendars hung at the same slight angles on the blue peeling walls. The same boy was mopping listlessly as ever at one of the tables. The smell of over-boiled tea still pervaded everywhere.

  Was it ever made fresh?

  But he had no time to attempt to work out an answer to that.

  In the gloom at the back of the place he made out now four hefty young men clustered round a game of cards at a table just beside the doorway into the kitchen. None of them looked exactly unlike a student. But there was something about them, something in the insolent set of their shoulders, in the way their shirts were all unbuttoned to the waist, that, despite the glimpses to be had of well-off young men’s thick wristwatches, jewel-glinting rings and heavy gold neck chains, said to Ghote one word: goondas.

  Yes, he thought, I have seen types much like these in the slums, hanging around the door of some crime boss, young men ready at his one command to beat up anyone he points at. Or anyone just only taking their fancy. These fellows here may be educated, but they are not one bit different from slum riff-raffs.

  He had intended to take a seat at one of the far tables, casually order tea and, after a while when nobody was taking notice, slip into the kitchen. Leaving Amar Nath behind if possible, he would then see what he could find. But he realised now this was impossible. Although the group at the table seemed engrossed in their game of rummy, slapping the cards down with boasting shouts and roars of laughter, it was evident enough they were sitting where they were to make sure nobody except the tea boy went through the doorway beside them.

  So what to do? Settle down at a table near the front of the place, order tea – no doubt Amar Nath would want toast, an omelet – and to see what would happen. That seemed best.

  But before he had time to turn to the proprietor any decision was taken out of his hands.

  With a single great battle shout, Amar Nath simply charged straight at the group at the far end.

  He might have brought it off. They had barely turned from their
game when he was on them. Their table crashed to the floor. Two of them fell with it. Ghote, standing momentarily transfixed, saw a third take a fearsome punch to the face that clearly put him out of things.

  But the odds were such that even the tall Punjabi could not win at. In a moment the one he had not accounted for was hurling himself on to him. With a thunderous jar he fell to the floor. Now, the first two were up again and plunging forward. In the heap of struggling bodies – another table went spinning – fists rose and fell.

  Ghote had darted forward, cursing Amar Nath for ruining what chance they had of getting the Dean out alive. Even with the two of them fighting full out there was now little hope of getting the better of these young brutes.

  But then he had halted.

  No knives were in evidence. Nor any other weapons. And, however overwhelmed Amar Nath was, his opponents were too closely pressed down on him for any of them, even the first fellow now hovering to plant kicks, to do serious damage.

  So, taking a moment to mark out his path, he ran lightly forward, swerved past the tangle of threshing limbs, jumped clear over the body of the boy Amar Nath had knocked out and an instant later was through the doorway into the kitchen.

  There he saw an elderly nut-faced man with one long protruding yellow tooth, bare to the waist, evidently the cook. No trouble from him. And, of course, no sign of Dean Potdar.

  But there was a door at the far end, standing open for coolness.

  He ran towards it, darted through and found he had come into a little cramped high-walled compound, cluttered with rubbish of all sorts, empty cold-drink crates, half-squashed cartons, plastic canisters. But in a corner there was a small shelter or large cupboard made out of thick, tar-spattered planks. It had a door, of sorts, with a big, grey padlock dangling down from it.

  There. If Dean Potdar was anywhere he must be in there.