Would that storm of inquiries at the hotel have alerted the kidnappers? Would they be aware that Manibhai Desai had flouted their instructions and called in the police? Would their answer be the dead body of little Pidku, discovered tomorrow morning somewhere conspicuous, such as lying on the grey stones by the Gateway of India or perhaps in front of the great honeycomb building of the Sachivalaya for every person working in the state secretariat, as well as all the visitors to the big India Life office next to it, to see?
The life insurance office and that unpaid-for life: there would be a bitter joke indeed.
The seconds ticked past. On the walkie-talkie Ghote was able to hear Superintendent Karandikar checking round some of the vehicles taking part in his bandobast. There were no fewer than forty-seven of them all told, private cars begged or borrowed from all over the place, commercial vans pressed into service, a few police trucks rapidly disguised with a quick coat of colour wash. Not all of them were linked to the same network as the Buick, but enough were for Ghote to get a good idea of the extent and efficiency of the bandobast.
‘Central to Car 8. Central to Car 8. Car 9 reports it is able to see you. You are not on station. Increase speed by five kilometres per hour.’
And then less than a minute later.
‘Central to Car 7. Central to Car 7. Car 8 reports you are visible to him. Increase speed by five kilometres per hour.’
The vehicles were patrolling on fixed routes round and round the main throughfares of Bombay at this midnight hour. Ghote found himself harbouring a disloyal thought that this increase in traffic at a time normally very quiet might in itself be enough to alert the kidnappers wherever they were. But he suppressed it. After all Superintendent Karandikar was efficient. Everybody acknowledged that.
‘Central to Decoy. Central to Decoy. Come in Decoy.’
He snatched up the little round microphone.
‘Decoy to Central. I am receiving you. Over.’
‘Central to Decoy. Desai has now left hotel. Repeat Desai has now left –’
At the car door the figure of Manibhai Desai himself suddenly loomed up out of the patches of light and shadow. The men with a walkie-talkie at some vantage point looking out over the Great Western Hotel must not have been very quick passing on their message. Ghote dropped his microphone and hurried round to open the Buick’s rear door for the proprietor of Trust-X.
‘Is all well sahib?’ he whispered.
Manibhai Desai’s face was plainly sheened in sweat even in the cool of the night. He licked the lips of his wide mouth.
‘Yes. Yes. All well, I must get in.’
Ghote, with an inclination from the waist in his unaccustomed white uniform, saw Mr Desai into his seat, softly closed the car’s door and almost ran round to his own place. The moment he slumped into it he pushed aside the glass panel behind him and spoke.
‘What did they say? I must report instantly.’
‘Yes. Yes.’
The manufacturer of Trust-X gave a deep puff of a sigh.
‘It is Dr Annie Besant Road,’ he said. ‘We are to be there at ten minutes past midnight, or they will not accept payment.’
8
As Ghote without a moment’s loss of time relayed the kidnappers’ message, his mind was busy over its implications. Yes, it had been just as he had expected. Dr Annie Besant Road, part of the series of main thoroughfares running more or less north and south through Bombay beside the west or Arabian Sea shore, was something over a mile away from where they were now at Jacob Circle. It would be an easy trip. Either they could go swiftly along Haines Road, straight as an arrow and with almost no traffic on it at this post-midnight hour, and then with a sharp turn left go down Dr Annie Besant Road itself till they reached the point where it was possible to get directly down to the shore. Or, it would be as simple to take Clerk Road away from the Circle, go along between the Race Course and Willingdon Club and then at the high gateway of the Mahalakshmi Temple – where doubtless at Diwali Manibhai Desai fulfilled his rare religious duties – swing hard right, go along past the shore by Hornby Vellard and thus come straight into Dr Annie Besant Road from the other direction.
In either case it should be nicely before 12.10 a.m. that the proprietor of Trust-X got out of the car and, lugging the heavy Gladstone bag, set off on his lone walk down to the sea, at that point almost a quarter of a mile away from the road.
‘Sir, I will start at once,’ he concluded his brief message to Superintendent Karandikar.
‘No.’
‘Sir?’
‘You will delay your start for four minutes, repeat four minutes, under pretence of engine difficulties.’
‘But, Superintendent sahib, I would not be able to get Mr Desai to the rendezvous by the agreed time.’
‘You will not arrive to time, Inspector. You will arrive ten, repeat ten, minutes late. I need the maximum period to deploy. Understood?’
‘But, Superintendent, they have threatened –’
‘Inform me in three and a half minutes that you are leaving Jacob Circle. Out.’
Ghote laid down the microphone.
Never before had he felt himself so much in two minds. One half of him wanted to slip the big Buick into gear and set off along Haines Road as fast as the car’s acceleration would allow, eating up the straight stretch, saving every second, and the other half of him rose up like a triple row of armed men against any such disobeying of an order. Every command that he had received in all his years in the police and had at once carried out stood like a spearman steadily holding his pointed weapon to prevent any movement in a contrary direction.
At least, Ghote thought with the rational front of his mind, I can cut the engine and begin re-starting it. But I will not necessarily stay the full three remaining minutes. I will do what I feel is right when the time comes.
Or must I do what I know is right?
His eyes were fixed, peering to redness, on the second hand of his watch as his left arm lay across the top of the Buick’s steering-wheel.
‘Quick, man, we must go,’ Manibhai Desai said, leaning forward and speaking into the gap of the sliding glass panel between them. ‘They have said ten past twelve.’
Ghote turned round.
‘You did not hear?’ he asked. ‘Superintendent Karandikar has insisted to take an extra ten minutes. He wishes to be sure of getting his men to the point designated.’
Even as he spoke, Ghote heard from the walkie-talkie on the car floor the little metallic voices flicking out orders and acknowledgements.
‘All speed to Dr Annie Besant Road, and take up station …’
‘Ten men to take up position between …’
‘Passing Breach Candy Baths. Over.’
Manibhai Desai did not immediately reply. But when he spoke it was with his face pressed urgently to the gap in the glass panel.
‘Inspector, I think we should go now.’
The very abjectness of the tone of voice set up perversely a contrary impulse in Ghote.
‘I am sorry, sahib. An order is an order.’
‘But the boy. They may be ready to kill him at this moment.’
The words sent springing up in Ghote’s head a vision of what might even at that instant be happening. He saw some dark corner of the shore, not far away from where the white box was hidden beside the gecko rock. Even a patch of tussocky, wind-battered grass, burnt and brown, came into his vivid mental picture, with two men crouching in its scanty shelter. One of them had a big crude watch on his wrist and was peering into the night, and the other was kneeling over the small form of Pidku, the tailor’s son, one coarse rough hand pressed hard across the almost meltingly soft flesh of the boy’s face, stopping the least cry, and the other hand grasping a knife. Ghote saw it as a long, jagged-edged butcher’s blade.
Was that happening? Was that happening now? If what the kidnappers had said was the truth, some such scene must actually be in progress.
The second hand of his own watch
ticked its jerky way round the little dial.
Twenty seconds to go. Ghote started up the Buick’s engine and slipped into gear, but he kept his foot on the clutch.
‘Permission to go, Superintendent?’ he asked into the microphone.
‘In fifteen seconds, Inspector. The bandobast is proceeding according to plan.’
Ten seconds.
Ghote picked out his exact path round the Circle and into the enticing straight of Haines Road. He would be at the place in much less time than Superintendent Karandikar had counted on if there was even half the power he thought there was in the Buick’s big engine.
‘Central to Decoy.’
‘Decoy to Central. Sir?’
‘You may proceed, Inspector. But do not, repeat not, exceed twenty kilometres per hour. Over and out.’
Ghote sent the big car shooting forward. But he did not let its speedometer exceed that ordered, maddeningly stately speed.
*
By Ghote’s watch it was the fixed-on hour of 12.10 a.m. when the sweeping headlights of the slowly advancing Buick flickered on to the high walls of the big ice-cream factory in Dr Annie Besant Road. But surely the kidnappers would give them a few extra minutes? Surely they would not carry out their terrible threat with the punctuality of a time-signal?
They were bound to give an additional five minutes, he decided.
The walkie-talkie beside him crackled into life.
‘Central to Decoy. Halt where you are.’
For fifty yards, for a hundred yards Ghote continued to drive the big car at the same stately speed. But then his untaken resolution crumbled before the habit of obeying orders given.
He brought the car to a quiet halt, switched off the headlights and picked up the walkie-talkie microphone.
‘Decoy to Central. Have halted, Superintendent. Do you wish Mr Desai to proceed on foot?’
If the proprietor of Trust-X set off at a run, despite the heavy leather bag of money, perhaps he would at least get down on to the shore by 12.15 still.
‘Central to Decoy. Mr Desai is to remain in the car. Repeat in the car. You will wait where you are till further orders. My dispositions are not yet completed. Over and out.’
From the glass panel behind Ghote’s head came a sharp, inquiring rap. Ghote turned round.
‘Superintendent Karandikar has ordered us to wait here,’ he said bleakly.
‘But, Inspector, already it is past 12.10,’ Mr Desai said with awkward urgency. ‘But perhaps they would give a little more time. If I went myself now and hurried …’
‘Superintendent Karandikar has said specifically that he wishes you to remain in the car, sahib.’
‘No, Inspector. That child’s life is at stake. I am going.’
‘Very well, Mr Desai,’ Ghote answered, taking desperate pains not to let the deep satisfaction that glowed and glowed inside him show by as much as one blink in his voice. ‘Very well, but I shall have to report your departure.’
‘Do that, Inspector. Do that. I am not caring.’
And the proprietor of Trust-X flung open the rear door of his big Buick and staggered out with the heavy Gladstone bag clutched firmly in his right hand. Ghote watched him trot forwards in the pale gleam of the sidelights for five or ten yards. Then he reached for the microphone again.
‘Decoy to Central. Decoy to Central.’
‘Central to Decoy. Please remain off air. All channels are urgently required.’
Quietly Ghote succumbed to the temptation. He sat back in the chauffeur’s comfortable seat and breathed deeply in and out. At the far extremity of the glow of the sidelights he was able, just for one moment longer, to make out the dim form of the proprietor of Trust-X with the awkward lugging shape of the Gladstone bag beside him. He was still going forward at a determined trot. He would get to the shore as soon as it was possible to do so. There was nothing more to be done.
The night was quiet. Only from the walkie-talkie down on the floor came the occasional swift but subdued metallic voice reporting ‘In position’. Superintendent Karandikar’s bandobast was filling out its designated form to the last tuck.
Would Mr Desai be on time? If he were to flash the long torch he had brought with him just as soon as he reached the place where you could get down to the shore –
In a sudden panic Ghote scrabbled round to see if the proprietor of Trust-X had forgotten the flashlight.
But no, it had gone from where he had seen it earlier on the wide and springy back seat. And then, in what now seemed to have been an incredibly short time, came the order.
‘Central to Decoy. Proceed to set-down point. Please see that Mr Desai takes flashlight. Over.’
‘Decoy to Central. Instructions received. Over.’
Grinning to himself with a small, bitter wryness, Ghote drove the big Buick forward to the point where abruptly to his right the huge extent of the Arabian Sea could be seen. He halted, pushed his whole head and shoulders out of the car window and peered into the darkness of the night.
Yes, quite far away on the rocky shore he could see the beam of a torch. It looked, strong though he knew it to be, pathetically tiny from up here on the road. But it was easy to spot. The kidnappers where they were waiting were bound to have seen it. And, a merciful extra, none of Superintendent Karandikar’s deployed men, though they were certain to have been aware of it too, had evidently thought fit to report it back to Central. Otherwise the wrath of the superintendent would undoubtedly have broken before this.
And surely the proprietor of Trust-X had been in time. Ghote looked at his watch. It said only a few seconds past 12.20 even now. So it would not have been very long after 12.15, not very long, that Mr Desai must have reached the beach.
Behind, the sound of a car coming up fast along the road sent a rush of sweat up on his back. He pulled his head in and jerked round.
It was one of Superintendent Karandikar’s disguised patrols, he realized. Evidently the superintendent planned to have cars moving at speed up and down Dr Annie Besant Road for the whole time of the drop, ready if necessary to join in an instant pursuit.
And now, not twenty yards away along the road, he could make out the bulk of a considerable group of men hiding, if not very well, beside a wall. There was even a faint murmur of subdued voices. Certainly, if the kidnappers weren’t to be caught it would not be for lack of men on the ground.
But what if the criminals realized how thickly meshed the net around them was? What if in desperation they then killed Pidku?
Ghote fought to get the rational side of his brain on top. Would anybody, seeing that they were on the point of arrest, be so lacking in simple sense as to commit a murder to add to their crimes? Surely not. Surely not.
From somewhere along the shore there came, in the still of the night now that the sound of the fast patrol car had died away, a solitary, faraway shout of command, only just distinguishable from the cry of some disturbed seabird.
The whole shore must be blocked off by now. What drive Superintendent Karandikar had. It might be easy enough to work out the maximum forces that would be needed to be certain these men did not wriggle through the least gap in the net, but to make sure that all those forces were got into place, to fight the delays and the unwillingnesses and to overcome, that really took a man.
Now time seemed to be dragging when, up to a few minutes earlier with that terrible deadline rawly in his mind, it had gone breakneck. In strict obedience to the kidnappers’ orders, he did not attempt to leave the car. But he leant as far out as he could and strained to see and to hear what was happening down on the beach, while every now and again he noted behind him the rapid passage of another of Superintendent Karandikar’s fast-moving patrols, going in either one direction or the other.
The tiny glimmer of Manibhai Desai’s flashlight was only intermittently visible now, blocked sometimes by his body and sometimes, Ghote guessed, disappearing when the proprietor of Trust-X stooped to examine some rock that bore a slight resembl
ance to the fly-snapping gecko. What if he never found the place? But he must. The kidnappers would have chosen somewhere that, once you were on the spot, would be easily recognizable. After all, they wanted the money. The twenty lakhs, as they must be thinking of it as.
From the faintly gleaming still blackness of the sea stretching far away beyond the more broken black of the shore there came, very quiet at first but steadily growing louder, the sound of a motorboat engine.
So this was how they were going to grab the ransom sum?
But Ghote’s first, quick thought was swiftly altered. Abruptly the distant launch switched on a searchlight and sent the cold white beam swinging in a wild arc along the shore, silhouetting for one instant indeed the familiar tall form of the manufacturer of Trust-X with his Gladstone bag. Then as abruptly the light was extinguished and the boat’s motor cut. Apparently Superintendent Karandikar had thought of everything, except how to maintain constant discipline over the crew of a picket launch far out at sea.
Ghote peered on into the now restored soft darkness of the moonless night.
Another fast patrol car whirred by behind him, its tyres zizzing on the smooth road surface, its lights momentarily illuminating the luxurious interior of the Buick.
Then he thought that Manibhai Desai’s torch must now be pointing towards him. Was it? Had the proprietor of Trust-X found the gecko rock? And if the one lakh was now in the weed-hidden box, would the kidnappers, when they came to read the short note that was with it, the note composed with difficulty by the two of them hours and hours ago it seemed now, would they agree to its proposal?
‘One lakh is a great sum, even for me. I pay it willingly in return for the life of the son of a man who is little to me. But I cannot ruin myself and my family. Please think of the boy’s father who has no other children. Set him free.’
And then the clear, bold signature ‘Manibhai H. Desai’. Ghote, with a feeling of faint shock, had recognized it as familiar. And then he had remembered. Each card of Trust-X tablets bore it, in personal guarantee of their efficacy.
Yes, there could be no doubt about it now: Manibhai Desai was coming back up towards the road. Were the kidnappers at this very moment inching forward on pressed-to-the-stones bellies to retrieve the box? And were Superintendent Karandikar’s men down on the beach already wondering whether the slight movements they had spotted were signs of their quarry? And was someone – that man with the long butcher’s knife? – still holding a horny hand across the soft mouth of the little tailor’s son, ready to break in one instant that long-built, surrounding wall of respect for human life the moment he suspected betrayal?
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart Page 9
