Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Stop,’ said the proprietor of Trust-X. ‘Stop. There is a difference.’

  Mr Shah stopped, but cast an inquiring glance at Mrs Desai. She was beginning a brusque gesture to order him out when her husband resumed.

  ‘No, there is a difference,’ he said. ‘I will tell you what it is. I know it here.’

  His large and expansive hand, that not so long before had been on the point of landing – slap – on Mr Shah’s horn-rim-protected face, smote himself somewhere in the region of his large hand-printed silk necktie.

  ‘I know it here,’ he repeated. ‘It is the tailor. That is the difference between the two sorts of giving: the tailor is here. In this house. In this flat. It is because he is here that I must pay for his son.’

  ‘But he is not our servant at all,’ Mrs Desai argued frowningly.

  ‘It is not that, it is not that,’ her husband said, shaking her claims off like a persistent fly. ‘It is that I have spoken to the father. He and I have spoken face to face. I must pay. I will pay.’

  And the argument was evidently finally decided, though Ghote noted with an inner disquiet that Mr Desai ordered his accountant into the dining-room to hand over the money with the evident purpose of concealing from his wife that the Gladstone bag contained not fifty thousand rupees but a whole lakh.

  He would have liked the victory to have been totally sweeping. In the half-lie, he sensed, there lay the possibility of a retreat. And it might be a retreat which even in his moment of triumph the proprietor of Trust-X would be secretly pleased to have left open for himself.

  7

  The third telephone call came, once again exactly to time, at 6 p.m. precisely. Ghote and Manibhai Desai were alone in the drawing-room of the flat, the largest room of all the big, airy rooms in the penthouse, furnished with huge, soft sofas and chairs covered in bright blue raw silk, its picture windows that faced the dark blue of the Arabian Sea shaded now by striped Venetian blinds against the declining rays of the sun as they poured in from the west out of an almost cloudless sky. Some quarter of an hour earlier Mr Desai, after casting a stealthy look at one of the two gold sunburst clocks that presided over the big room and giving Ghote a surreptitious wink, had insistently reminded his wife that she had not yet changed for the evening. A little to Ghote’s surprise, Mrs Desai had failed to notice this transparent manoeuvre and had left them alone with the telephone and in taut expectation of being given the kidnappers’ final rendezvous.

  But, in fact, when the telephone, another white one, on the handsome simulated-wood refrigerator in one corner of the big room with its somewhat oppressive blue roses wallpaper – ‘England-imported’, the manufacturer of Trust-X had not failed to tell Ghote – rang, both of them had started in surprise as if some strident fire-alarm had pealed out into a quiet hour.

  Manibhai Desai had actually spilt some whisky – Ghote, conscious of duty, had declined the offered drink – on to the spongily thick red carpet and had set down his glass on one of the many small glass-topped tables with a clink of extraordinary loudness. He had then rushed over to the telephone, picked up the receiver and barked a hoarse ‘Hello’ into it. But at once he had realized that the big radiogram, on which he had been playing to an unresponsive Ghote a loud selection of Nat King Cole hits, was still going at full blast.

  He now signalled wildly to Ghote, who was padding across to listen in to the conversation, to go back and switch the machine off.

  Ghote turned and ran over to the glossy radiogram. He looked at its array of white knobs. They were labelled bewilderingly with such terms as ‘Woofer’ and ‘Tweeter’, ‘Treble’ and ‘Bass’. But there did not seem to be a single one marked simply ‘On/Off’. The noise from the long loudspeaker directly in front of his knees was deafening. Away in the distance, it seemed, Manibhai Desai was shouting ‘Hello, hello’ and ‘Wait one moment only’.

  They would miss the call altogether if he could not stop this cataract of sound. He felt suddenly clammy with sweat.

  Then he reached forward, seized the arm above the slowly revolving record and lifted it. In the stark silence that broke in on them Manibhai Desai’s shouting voice trailed rapidly away to nothing. Ghote dabbed down the fragile plastic arm somewhere, anywhere, registered a fleeting fear that he had ruined it for ever, and turned and darted across the big room again towards the telephone.

  As he neared it he could hear that indelibly remembered flat voice speaking at the far end.

  On the wall in front of him a big, brightly painted mask, no doubt a tombola prize won once by Mrs Desai at some such function as that morning’s Beat Contest, glared down with a wide and mocking grin on its hollow mouth.

  ‘… again, have you got the money?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have the money,’ Manibhai Desai replied, most convincingly, to the voice that Ghote had half-heard.

  ‘Good. Then on the road I would tell you about there is one point only where there are no houses and you can get straight down to the sea. That is the place.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I understand, no houses,’ Manibhai Desai said. ‘But what road is that?’

  ‘You would find the box on the tide line,’ the flat voice cut in, ignoring Mr Desai’s question. ‘Walk in a straight line to the sea, that will bring you to the spot. Look for a flat rock about in the shape of a gecko, but with no tail. You understand? A head and front legs and body of a gecko with the mouth open to take a fly, but no tail?’

  ‘Yes, yes, a gecko, I understand that,’ Mr Desai said, and then, realizing he had missed an opportunity to prolong a little more this hopefully traceable call, he added: ‘No. Wait. I do not understand. Say it all again.’

  ‘Like a gecko. A gecko. Bring flashlight, you would see.’

  Ghote detected considerable tension in the flat voice now, this was the trickiest bit, trickiest for the kidnappers, trickiest for anyone attempting to outwit them.

  ‘But what if I do not find?’ Manibhai Desai answered, a convincing wail in his voice.

  ‘Find. You have to. Or you are killing the boy. Find the gecko rock and look between it and the one beside. The white box is there. But it is covered in weed.’

  ‘But even if I can find, where exactly on the shore is this? You have not said.’

  ‘Come alone,’ the flat voice broke in. ‘Drive to the place where the road comes to the shore, and then walk. We would be watching, and if you are not alone expect before long to see the boy’s body.’

  ‘Listen,’ Manibhai Desai said urgently. ‘Listen, I cannot drive. My chauffeur must come in the car. And also why cannot he come with me to the shore? It would be dark. It is a lot of money. Someone might attack me.’

  Ghote held his breath. This was a critical point for Superintendent Karandikar’s plan.

  In a long telephone conversation the superintendent had had with Mr Desai about an hour earlier, when it had begun to look certain that the assorted searchers along the shoreline were not going to succeed – no wonder they had not, Ghote thought, with the white box so carefully hidden – they had been told that somehow they should obtain the consent of the criminals for more than one person to go to the rendezvous. The extra person was to be Ghote himself. The superintendent and Mr Desai had decided that it would be best for him to be disguised as the chauffeur and had agreed to take the risk of saying to the kidnapper on the telephone that Manibhai Desai could not drive, a minor lie it was probably safe to tell since it was seldom in fact that the manufacturer of Trust-X was not driven wherever he went. To have somebody in the car was vital to the superintendent’s plan, as otherwise it would be extremely difficult to keep the decoy under surveillance. With Ghote acting as chauffeur, a walkie-talkie radio could be installed on the floor beside him and following vehicles at a safely discreet distance could be kept in contact.

  Now Manibhai Desai had tried the throw. Would it succeed?

  ‘No,’ said the flat voice, after a considerable pause for thought. ‘No, you cannot have anyone with you down on the shore.
But if you must be driven, then bring chauffeur. But he is not to leave car. Understood?’

  ‘Very well, very well, if you say. But where am I to go? You still have not told.’

  Manibhai Desai again sounded convincing with this assumption of grumbling reluctance in ceding the less important part of what he had wanted to get. But, Ghote thought, no doubt success in business depended often enough on the ability to deceive, and the manufacturer of Trust-X would have to bargain for his raw materials in just the same way as any other manufacturer.

  ‘Now listen again,’ the flat voice said. ‘And carefully.’

  ‘I am listening. I am listening.’

  ‘At exactly midnight go to Jacob Circle and –’

  ‘But there is no shore there,’ Manibhai Desai broke in.

  ‘Listen,’ the flat voice commanded.

  ‘Yes, I am listening, but –’

  ‘Make your chauffeur wait there in the car with the money. You go by yourself along Ripon Road and just in a lane on the left you would see a small hotel. It is called the Great Western Hotel. Go in there and wait for the telephone to ring. At midnight just. You understand? You understand?’

  ‘Yes, but tell –’

  The receiver at the far end was banged sharply down.

  Was it possible to detect extreme haste, even panic, in that sudden sharp click? Perhaps it was. Certainly the period when panic was likely to occur had begun.

  For both sides.

  *

  The time on Ghote’s much-checked watch was 11.56 exactly. Four minutes to midnight. He had brought Manibhai Desai’s big Buick almost to Jacob Circle, approaching from the west along Clerk Road. There was very little traffic about. No difficulty should prevent them keeping the new appointment the kidnapper had given.

  Superintendent Karandikar had checked out the Great Western Hotel with a thoroughness, as described in person to Mr Desai and an attentive Ghote, that was totally exemplary. And it had been established beyond doubt that the concern, squalid though it might be, was perfectly innocent of any complicity in the kidnapping.

  Everybody in any way connected with it from the South Indian cook to the proprietor had been questioned by a whole squad of C.I.D men. Each of its semi-permanent residents, travelling salesmen, itinerant healers, part-time agents for undefined businesses, had been interrogated. No one even coming to eat a vegetarian meal in its fly-haunted dining-room had escaped scrutiny. But, at the end of it all, it seemed that the only reason the kidnappers had selected the sleazy little place as the spot where the proprietor of Trust-X would receive his final instructions for the rendezvous was that it possessed a telephone, kept in the entrance lobby, and did not attract so much chance custom that the instrument was likely to be in use at midnight.

  Yet Ghote had upsetting doubts on two counts.

  First, he could not help wondering whether Superintendent Karandikar’s very thoroughness would not betray the whole plan to the criminals. If they had kept any sort of watch on the hotel, they could hardly have failed to see the squad of detectives that had descended on it within fifteen minutes of their having given its name to the manufacturer of Trust-X. The subsequent mass-questioning could not but have been noticeable to even the most hurried passer-by if they knew what to look for.

  And the second fear Ghote could not suppress arose out of the former. It had come to him more and more clearly that the operation they were seeking to defeat showed every sign of having been thought out with extreme care. To have three separate telephone calls gradually revealing the final point for the collection of the ransom surely showed that someone of considerable intelligence had worked out that it was most likely that, if the proprietor of Trust-X had defied instructions and called in the police, then they would eventually attempt an ambush at the money drop point. The counter-plan the kidnappers had devised seemed calculated to defeat all but the most wide-scale police action. No doubt when shortly after midnight Mr Desai took the call in the Great Western Hotel, his orders would be to go at top speed to the final rendezvous. There the kidnappers could be already waiting in perfect safety, and as soon as they had seen Mr Desai leave they could swoop on their white box and be away within seconds. It would be difficult indeed for any pursuers to get near them.

  It was unlikely, of course, that the criminals’ planner, however far-sighted, could have anticipated a police plan as immense as Superintendent Karandikar’s. But nevertheless the existence of some sort of master-mind seemed plain. Especially in view of the exact figure of twenty lakhs that had been demanded. Had the kidnappers not been the victims of a chance-in-a-million mistake because the two boys had happened to change clothes, they would now be in possession of the real Haribhai Desai. And no doubt the Gladstone bag at this moment in the glass-screened, air-conditioned back of the car with the proprietor of Trust-X would have contained, not just one lakh and a note from Mr Desai, but every anna of the full sum of twenty lakhs, though it would have drained the manufacturer of Trust-X to the very bottom of his resources to raise it.

  And if there was such an intelligent person at the head of the kidnappers, Ghote asked himself finally, would even the most massive operation be absolutely proof against him?

  Jacob Circle.

  Ghote, from underneath the white cap with the shiny black peak that was ordinarily the wear of the Desai chauffeur, found a place to park just where Ripon Road left the Circle. He scurried out of the Buick’s driving seat and went and opened the rear door for Mr Desai, striving as much as possible to keep his face towards the protective side of the car in case the kidnappers were watching from some hidden vantage point and knew the real chauffeur by sight.

  ‘Do not forget,’ he warned the manufacturer of Trust-X in an undertone, ‘Superintendent Karandikar wishes you to shout out as loud as you can if there is any unexpected trouble at the hotel. He has men posted all round.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mr Desai replied.

  He sounded harassed and unhappy. Ghote did not blame him.

  Getting quickly back into the Buick and the security of its dark interior, Ghote picked up the small round microphone of the walkie-talkie set from the floor beside the driving seat. He held it in his fist down under the dashboard and spoke into it in a low voice, slumping his head forward as if he were dozing.

  ‘Decoy to Central. Decoy to Central. Over.’

  ‘Central to Decoy. Speak louder. Over.’

  Ghote glanced out of the car windows. There seemed to be nobody near. He brought the microphone up a little higher and raised his voice a degree.

  ‘Decoy to Central. Mr Desai has left for the Great Western Hotel. Over.’

  ‘Central to Decoy. Did you deliver warning as instructed?’

  ‘Decoy to Central. Warning delivered. Over.’

  He let Superintendent Karandikar’s tiger tones resonate still in his mind. Yes, he had carried out that particular instruction to the letter. But what about the way he had aided and abetted the proprietor of Trust-X in his rejection of the superintendent’s plan concerning the money?

  It had happened at the meeting between the three of them which the superintendent had convened so that he could explain to Manibhai Desai the full extent of what he called his ‘bandobast’ for the ambush. The superintendent, spare, upright and iron grey of face, had looked, it had had to be admitted, a little ridiculous in the loose white clothes and heavy white turban of a servant, a disguise he had assumed in order to come to the penthouse without arousing suspicion should the kidnappers still have a watcher somewhere near Mount Greatest. And Ghote had said not a word when the proprietor of Trust-X, after hearing about all the arrangements, had let it be understood that he would add ‘only a few hundreds’ of real money to the cut paper that the superintendent had brought with him. Even later, when Mr Desai had substituted the bundles of notes amounting to a full lakh that the downtrodden Mr Shah had brought, again he let the change pass without comment.

  Had he been right to have done that?

  A st
ealthily moving figure caught his eye on the far side of the Circle near the Dhobi Ghat tank, just outside the light of the tall street lamps. But then the dimly-seen shape stopped, knelt, unfolded a bundled sheet and stretched out at full length. Only a pavement sleeper settling down for the night.

  Had he been right? Ought he not to have supported the superintendent one hundred per cent? It was his superior officer whose intentions he had allowed to be frustrated, after all. Ought he not to have told the proprietor of Trust-X straight out that the advice he had been given by the superintendent earlier was correct? That the only way to treat kidnappers was to refuse to have any dealings with them? To make it totally plain, even when it became necessary to employ a trick like the present one, that in the end it was a trick and that in no circumstances would such breakers of a fundamental law be treated with?

  He sighed.

  Well, he had not been able, when it had come to it, to do that. He had sympathized too deeply with the manufacturer of Trust-X and the way in which he had found beneath his ambitious, forward-carving exterior a stifled beat of the heart that had said ‘Pay’.

  If only they had been able to trace that third telephone call. It had been longer than the others, with that moment of negotiation over whether Manibhai Desai should be allowed a chauffeur or not. It might have been possible to trace it. But it had been not quite long enough, and the dilemma thus had not been happily solved in advance.

  But what about that chink of weakness that the kidnapper on the telephone had shown in allowing Mr Desai to use a chauffeur at all? Did that not indicate that fundamentally the superintendent was right in his fierceness?

  ‘Central to Decoy. Central to Decoy.’

  The tiger voice penetrated his thoughts with startling aptness.

  ‘Decoy to Central. Am receiving you. Over.’

  ‘Central to Decoy. Desai has entered hotel.’

  Ghote looked at the watch he had so carefully synchronized with the superintendent’s own back at the penthouse. One minute to midnight.