Nor did he much care for intruding his private affairs on the proprietor of Trust-X by asking to use his telephone. But he would have to do so. After all, he owed things to his wife.
And now was the time. Manibhai Desai had barked his last instructions to the unfortunate Mr Shah and had put down the telephone receiver.
‘Please,’ Ghote said. ‘I would be very grateful to ring up my wife. By six o’clock when we are hearing from that fellow again she will expect me at home.’
‘Use, use,’ Mr Desai said, gesturing expansively at the telephone.
He turned away and his eye caught the still cluttered lunch table.
‘Why cannot anybody in this house do anything when they should?’ he shouted in fury.
While he was yelling for the bearer, whom he had so unceremoniously ejected not long before, Ghote hastily dialled his home number.
He had to wait a little for the phone to be answered, and felt a growing impatience. To keep this friend of the Commissioner hanging about while he held a private conversation was not right.
But at last Protima answered. Ghote took a quick breath and stated the facts as briefly as he could, carefully refraining from saying who it was who had been made the victim of this kidnapping at second hand. If details of the affair got to the Press sooner than Superintendent Karandikar had bargained for, then he wanted to be sure there was no possibility of blame being attached to him.
Protima seemed to receive the blow of his late return well.
‘Then you will come back perhaps late tonight, perhaps even tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes, I am afraid it will be that. But I must ring off now. So take care of yourself, and tell little Ved to be a good boy.’
He had a momentary vision of his son, coupled with the thought of what it might feel like if for some inexplicable reason he should be kidnapped.
‘Lock the door of the house,’ he said hastily to Protima. ‘You know I have my key.’
‘There is no need.’
Her voice was suddenly tense and harsh. Ghote shot out a question before he could help himself.
‘No need? No need? Why is there no need? Listen, there are men who –’
‘I shall not sleep if you are not here.’
That cold statement. And it was not really even true. Many a time he had come back late after she had made such a threat only to find her asleep and peacefully so. But the threat always had power to disturb him. It was Protima’s weakness to have periods of sleeping badly, and he worried about them. And she knew it.
‘But, yes,’ he said, ‘you must sleep, or tomorrow you will be tired all day.’
And then he suddenly wanted to ask her if she had taken that day’s Trust-X tablet. There were times when she forgot, and when she did she perhaps seemed more irritable the following day. So a missed Trust-X combined with a night of no sleep would be a bad combination.
But somehow with the proprietor of Trust-X standing just behind him, calmly and unashamedly listening, he felt he could not mention the product. Hastily he paraded in his mind some alternative ways of asking. ‘Have you taken the thing from the white envelope?’ ‘… thing that comes monthly?’ No, no, no.
‘Well,’ he said, trying to get some cheerfulness into his voice and knowing he was going to fail. ‘Well, do your best. And I will see you when I will see you. Good-bye.’
He waited a little to see whether Protima would say good-bye to him. If she did, it would mean she was secretly acknowledging that the quarrel was over. She said nothing. He put down the receiver.
*
The afternoon was terrible. Time crawled. There was virtually nothing that had to be done. Manibhai Desai sent his cheque for one lakh to his bank and Ghote took advantage of the messenger to send the kidnappers’ note and its envelope to the forensic laboratories. But after that the proprietor of Trust-X refused to take any decisions till it was certain Superintendent Karandikar’s massive search of the rocky parts of the Bombay shoreline had failed. But as the hours went by Ghote began to have more and more doubts about what success could come of searching six miles – ten kilometres, Superintendent Karandikar would have said – of wide shoreline.
It was even quite possible that the kidnappers had been keeping watch on the white box and had been alerted by the presence further along the shore of dozens of dhobis making no attempt to do any clothes-washing. They could then have spirited the box away before the searchers got to it and have even put it back after the dhobis, or the boatless fishermen, or the unusually methodical scavengers, had passed by.
But speculation about what was going on was pointless.
Which did not stop the manufacturer of Trust-X from frequently indulging in it, and from regularly insisting that Ghote get in touch with Superintendent Karandikar and ask what progress had been made. Ghote fought off these requests as well as he could, but more than once he had to succumb. And, when he did so, the fact that Superintendent Karandikar knew perfectly well that the inquiry was being made at the behest of Manibhai Desai did not stop him rasping the inquirer as if his tongue was indeed the harsh tongue of the tiger.
Ghote, to some extent, had his own back on the proprietor of Trust-X by suggesting after each call that they ought to tell the father of the missing boy there had been no progress, for there never was anything more hopeful to say.
The first time Manibhai Desai jibbed horribly.
‘But, no,’ he said.
‘But he would want to know.’
‘But there is nothing to tell.’
‘Even that would be something. He can believe that we in the police are doing our utmost.’
‘I am not sure if that is really the case.’
‘But, nevertheless, sahib, do you not consider that you should say something?’
And then a sudden flush of fury on those bold features.
‘If you are so insisting the man should be told, then do the telling yourself.’
Ghote went and told the poor tailor his non-news, and did so again each time he made inquiries.
At four o’clock Mrs Desai came back from the Beat Contest in aid of the Bihar Flood Victims. She did not ask about Pidku, or even about Haribhai. But she did recount the success of the contest and tell with enthusiasm of the large sum that had been raised to help the distant sufferers from disaster.
And, although at first Ghote had reacted with secretly shocked disapproval, the very liveliness she brought to her account of the different sums that had been raised in various ways and of the prizes that had been won by this group or that penetrated bit by bit after a while the armour he had buckled on against her.
Her cherry-red fingernails danced as she described the way the winning group played. They danced again and her eyes shone as she demonstrated the size of the big head-thrust-upwards pottery horse that had been the first prize in the tombola. It was easy to join in with her enthusiasm. Her husband did so with a smile on his wide mouth for the first time that day, And, no doubt, the Commissioner’s wife, had she been there, would have delighted in this lively, kameez-clad, modern and gay figure as if she were indeed her own daughter.
And, after all, Ghote thought with a perceptible relaxation of the taut muscles of his back, life must go on. The dark problem that had occupied his day like a massive, over-hanging monsoon cloud was only one problem. Life, to get anything ever done, had to be bigger than any one of its problems.
Then, in the immediate aftermath of all the gaiety just when Mrs Desai had left them to go and get changed, Mr Shah arrived.
When the doorbell rang Ghote himself opened it on Manibhai Desai’s instructions, though he declined to produce the Enfield ·380. That he had contrived, as long ago as when he had volunteered for his stint as deputy ayah, to put into a drawer in the front of the mock-rosewood telephone table.
Mr Shah, standing at the threshold, cast an instant gloom on the bubble jauntiness that had irradiated the penthouse with Mrs Desai’s return. He was a lean individual of about
forty, he was dressed in a greying white suit so extraordinarily frayed at the cuffs and so greasily worn at the collar that the eye kept returning to it despite every better resolution. It was only with a distinct effort indeed that it was possible to take in the face, anyhow largely concealed by a big pair of dulled and battered-looking horn-rim spectacles. And then there did not seem to be anything much more to see than a drawn and worried pattern of lean flesh.
But there was one other strongly notable thing about Mr Shah: chained to his right wrist he carried a Gladstone bag of stout leather.
It was this that immediately claimed Mr Desai’s attention. He took one look at the accountant and spoke in a fierce, subdued mutter.
‘Quick, you fool,’ he said,‘come in at once and go through to the –’
But at just that moment Mrs Desai, all gaiety and lightness and smooth living still, came back into the hall.
The proprietor of Trust-X turned swiftly away from Mr Shah and attempted to say something to her. But it was plain that he could not at all think of anything to say. And in the meantime Mr Shah, with quick and almost slinking obedience, did as he had been asked and came scuttling into the luxurious, Mizrapur-carpeted hall.
‘I am sorry if I am late,’ he said, in the rapid patter of excuse. ‘It took a great deal of time to record all the numbers of the notes.’
‘Notes?’ said Mrs Desai, at once all sharpness and alertness. ‘What notes are these?’
And then her eyes took in the heavy leather bag chained to Mr Shah’s wrist.
She whirled on her husband.
‘You are going to pay for that boy,’ she accused him. ‘You have gone against every word I have said. You are going to pay. How much?’
But Manibhai Desai was prepared to fight.
‘Yes,’ he retorted, spreading out his broad shoulders like a defensive wall, ‘I am going to pay for that boy. It is the least I can do.’
‘How much? How much? How much?’
Ghote, transfixed beside the depressing Mr Shah as an unwilling spectator to the scene, saw that with each repeated question Mrs Desai stamped a little, long, petulant foot.
‘What I spend is my own affair,’ her husband answered her loftily.
‘It is your affair, is it? To spend money that can be used to buy the things I need, that I want. That is your affair only?’
‘When have I ever denied, when ever?’ Mr Desai shouted back, apparently feeling on safer ground now.
‘I am asking: how much for that boy?’ his wife countered, skilfully falling back to her strongest position.
‘I am not telling.’
Mrs Desai, cherry-red nails held talon-wise, swung away from him. She brought all her forces abruptly to bear on the grey Mr Shah.
‘How much have you brought?’ she demanded.
Her husband equally swung to face the accountant.
‘You are not to tell,’ he thundered.
‘You will tell me,’ Mrs Desai said, a fury of command in her voice.
‘It is not much,’ Mr Shah said, placatingly.
But his words did nothing to stem the darting anger in Mrs Desai’s whole face. Mr Shah swallowed.
‘It is about half a lakh only,’ he said.
‘Fool.’
Manibhai Desai flung out the word. Mr Shah retreated a step and tried to raise his right arm in self-defence perhaps against an expected slap. The weight of the heavy leather Gladstone bag was too much for him.
But, luckily, his employer’s attention was soon enough diverted.
‘Fool, is it?’ Mrs Desai screamed. ‘It is you who are the fool, Manibhai. Half a lakh? You would give half a lakh for that tailor’s brat?’
‘He is the only son,’ Mr Desai replied, actually cringing a little now.
‘I do not care if there are twenty sons,’ Mrs Desai flung back. ‘You would give half a lakh? When we would soon be needing new car. When both cars we would soon be needing to replace, and you are well knowing what must be paid to get to the top of the list. Fool. Fool. And fool again.’
Ghote, beside the gradually relaxing Mr Shah, wondered if with this assault he would not see the strong-minded manufacturer of Trust-X actually reduced to grovelling. But he was in for a surprise.
Manibhai Desai’s bold-featured face was only for a few instants a picture of retreat. Soon enough an expression of calm resolution unexpectedly emerged.
‘Perhaps fool it is,’ he said, with a new quietness. ‘But at some time a man must be a fool for the sake of God.’
Mrs Desai was unimpressed.
‘God? God?’ she said. ‘When were you ever at a temple? When? When? Never, except at Diwali when you make offerings you do not believe because they are in honour of Lakshmi. Yes, the goddess of riches will make even you half-believe.’
‘I may not go to temples,’ Manibhai Desai replied. ‘And, very well, perhaps I do not believe in God. I do not know. But I know this. There comes at last a time for giving.’
‘But giving you are always and plenty,’ his wife answered, countering this new, quieter tone with a calm reasoning voice of her own. ‘Trust-X Manufacturing is often leading the list of givers. Look at today. None gave a prize half as good as Trust-X. And that was in aid of flood victims. What better, if you must be giving?’
‘That is not the same thing,’ her husband answered, his deep-set eyes suddenly sparkling in a new fury.
‘Not the same? To give is to give. Come now, Mani, stop this foolishness. It is well to give, if you want. But all things must be done with common sense only.’
She put a hand, long-fingered, cherry-nailed and pleading, on to his arm. He made no attempt to throw it off.
Ghote abruptly and sharply feared for little Pidku.
‘Besides,’ Mrs Desai went on wheedlingly, ‘are the police doing nothing? In taxes how much do we pay? Surely they must be doing something?’
And, to Ghote’s plummeting dismay, she swung round to him, inquiry written plainly on her bird-light, beautifully madeup features. She should not have even realized in the midst of such a dispute that he was here at all: it was starkly unfair.
He cleared his throat.
‘The case is under the care of Superintendent Karandikar,’ he said. ‘He is an officer universally respected for his great efficiency.’
‘And he is doing what?’ Mrs Desai demanded, as if a Superintendent Karandikar could be like a servant or shopman, all promises and no performance.
‘At this moment,’ Ghote replied with some dignity, ‘perhaps the most massive search of the Bombay shoreline ever to be carried out is in progress. The criminals were unwary enough to betray to us that they have left a white box to receive the ransom sum placed between two rocks somewhere on the shore. As of now some hundreds of police, under the disguise of dhobis, fishermen and scavengers also, are fine-tooth combing the whole area so that when that box is found a full-scale ambush may be mounted.’
‘And if they do not find?’ Mrs Desai said sharply.
‘In that eventuality,’ Ghote answered, ‘Superintendent Karandikar has already set up a fail-safe plan.’
A snicker of pleasure went through him as he hit on the expression ‘fail-safe’. That if anything should convince Mrs Desai of the C.I.D’s up-to-date efficiency.
‘And what is this fail-safe plan?’
‘A fail-safe plan is a plan –’
‘Do you think I am not knowing what is fail-safe? Do you think I’m reading nothing? No magazines? Nothing? What is the plan itself I am asking?’
Ghote offered a slight apologetic cough.
‘In the event of a failure to locate the ransom drop site,’ he said, ‘the superintendent would request your husband to keep the rendezvous offered by these criminal elements, and he would arrange for your husband to be followed so that the men can be seized at the moment of the hand-over.’
‘My husband to be followed,’ said Mrs Desai, still not impressed enough. ‘And if these men see you policemen following, what then? T
hey will seize the money and make their escape.’
Here Manibhai Desai interrupted quickly.
‘But Superintendent Karandikar is to supply false money,’ he said.
‘False money?’
Mrs Desai swung back round to him, and Ghote knew that at that moment he himself had once again ceased to exist for her.
‘False money?’ Mrs Desai repeated, all concentration on her husband. ‘Then why are you having brought here that?’
She flicked five cherry-red fingernails in a gesture of pure disdain out towards Mr Shah, or towards the Gladstone bag.
Manibhai Desai bit his underlip.
‘I have ordered that money,’ he said, gathering resolution, ‘because in the event of the kidnappers getting away with the supposed ransom I wish to give them at least such a sum as will induce them after all to surrender the little boy, Pidku.’
‘But already I am saying that you give and give plenty. Why give so much for this one boy only?’
A small frown came on the high, sloping forehead of the proprietor of Trust-X. It came there and stayed.
‘Somehow,’ he said, ‘I am feeling it is not the same thing to give for others as to give for him.’
Ghote would have liked to join in the discussion here. He would have liked to step forward and produce the answer to the conundrum disturbing Mr Desai. Only he knew that he and Mr Shah had now more than ever to efface themselves. And besides he could not produce the conundrum’s answer.
But he saw that Mrs Desai was looking with calculation at the puzzledly obstinate expression on her husband’s face, and in a moment she spoke on a new note.
‘Perhaps giving to many is the same, perhaps it is not,’ she said with a sudden lightness. ‘But in any case let us not worry about it just now.’
She turned briefly to Mr Shah.
‘You can take the cash back to office now,’ she said quickly. ‘See that it is put in the safe, and get it to the bank again first thing tomorrow.’
Mr Shah gave a half smile of acknowledgement and began slowly to sidle towards the wide front door.
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart Page 7
