From down on the beach just below an uncertain call came from the proprietor of Trust-X. Ghote switched on the big car’s headlights.
A little over a minute later Manibhai Desai came up on to the road.
‘Is it all right?’ Ghote asked in a hiss of anxiety.
‘I have left it,’ Mr Desai replied.
*
There had been nothing more to say. Ghote had realized that Manibhai Desai did not wish to talk. Would he, when they arrived back at Mount Greatest, confess and confide everything to his wife? Was she, in the privacy of the bedroom, a person different enough from the one he himself had seen for this to be possible?
So the pair of them drove along to Cumballa Hill in silence. Ghote had briefly reported on the walkie-talkie that the drop had taken place and had received a brief acknowledgement, and after that not a word was spoken in the big Buick.
Even when they got back to the penthouse they still hardly exchanged a word. Manibhai Desai asked Ghote if he would be so good as to stay for the night and arranged for a sleepy servant to bring him a rug in the huge, luxurious drawing-room. And there not much later Ghote settled down to sleep for the first time in his life on cushions of raw silk.
‘Superintendent Karandikar will ring the moment there is any news.’
That had been his muzzily-spoken parting assurance to the manufacturer of Trust-X. But the telephone had remained silent.
No news. No news. The thought, for all the anxiety it generated, lulled him to sleep.
*
He woke with a terrible start. The white telephone over on the simulated-wood refrigerator was shrilling. The time, when he blearily contrived to see the face of his watch, was ten minutes past six.
He staggered over to the telephone and picked up the receiver, managing only to mutter an incoherent ‘Hello’.
‘Inspector Ghote?’
It was Superintendent Karandikar, alert as the spreading day itself.
‘Yes, Superintendent. Here, Superintendent.’
‘You will inform Mr Desai that at 6 a.m. precisely I gave orders for the box down on the shore to be examined. It appeared to contain exactly what Mr Desai put into it just after midnight.’
‘I see, Superintendent,’ Ghote said.
The sense of anticlimax descended on him like a white flood. But it was broken here and there already with black dashes of fear for little Pidku’s life.
He licked his lips.
‘Superintendent,’ he asked, ‘have you got the men?’
‘If I see fit to inform you of other developments, Inspector, I shall so inform you.’
‘But, Superintendent, Mr Desai is bound to ask me.’
‘Mm. Very well, you can let Mr Desai know that there was no sign of them at all down on the beach. No sign at all.’
‘Yes, I see, Superintendent.’
‘And you can tell Mr Desai also that my men on the beach have just informed me that the white box contained the sum of one lakh of rupees together with a note from Mr Desai himself. His actions were in direct contradiction to the advice I gave him, in the strongest terms. You will therefore tell him that the necessary confidence between us has ceased to exist.’
‘Yes, Superintendent. Very good, Superintendent.’
‘And, Inspector, I hope you were entirely ignorant of this deplorable state of affairs.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote answered with terse blankness.
‘And what does that “Yes, sir” mean, Inspector? Were you ignorant of the note and that ridiculously large sum of money? Were you, man? Yes or no?’
Ghote told the bare-faced lie. It was an affirmation of his belief that, despite all the arguments on the superintendent’s side, it was right to have hoped that the kidnappers would have released Pidku for a sum of sufficient size.
The superintendent barked once and rang off.
Ghote went and prowled round the penthouse. Various servants were to be seen carrying out their early morning tasks. But of Mr and Mrs Desai there was as yet no sign. Only fat and commanding little Haribhai came marching ahead of his ayah on his way down to the garden.
Ghote was pleased to note that behind the black-skinned and leathery ayah there walked the chauffeur whose uniform he had worn the night before. At least Haribhai should be safe from a second attempt at a snatch.
It was not until a few minutes before seven that Ghote encountered the newly-risen proprietor of Trust-X in the hall. He at once told him the news, or lack of it.
‘So the boy?’ Mr Desai asked, his deep-set eyes suddenly glaring. ‘What would have happened to him?’
‘There is nothing to tell,’ Ghote answered, almost hopelessly. ‘Perhaps it was after all that the kidnappers were unable for some reason to go to the shore last night and that is why the money was still there.’
‘It was all those police,’ Mr Desai replied with iron scorn. ‘At the time I thought it. Everywhere I looked on the way to the shore there were police. In cars. Hiding by walls, and not hiding well. Out at sea there was a launch also, with a searchlight. And shouting of orders I heard down on the beach.’
‘Yes,’ Ghote was constrained to agree. ‘It might well have been that the extent of the ambush frightened them off.’
‘And now? And now?’ Mr Desai asked with spearing bitterness.
He did not wait for an answer. Indeed there was no need to. The ‘And now?’ said everything.
But it was at this moment that the newspaper vendor who served the flats delivered the day’s papers through the letter-box in the wide front door. And with them, fluttering face up to the top of the pile of heavy newspapers, was a small, cheap-looking envelope bearing in familiar crude red-pencil lettering the words ‘MR DESAI’.
9
The red scrawled capital letters on the cheap envelope stared up at Ghote like a sudden flaming sword placed on his path. He knew immediately that this was the kidnappers again.
Although this envelope was not the same shape as the other and although one set of scrawled letters might look much like another, this was beyond doubt written by the same hand that had spelt out Mr Desai’s name on the note left when the snatch had taken place.
‘It is them,’ he shouted to the proprietor of Trust-X, who was also staring at the red lettering, apparently equally transfixed. ‘Quick, the news-vendor. I must see him.’
And in an instant he was tugging at the long, flat bolts, top and bottom, of the wide teak door, and had it open and was looking out at the bare landing on the top floor of the high block.
The sliding stainless steel doors of the lift were closed and anonymous. Above them the little lights of the indicator registered ‘G’. The ground floor? Surely there had not been time for the news-vendor to have got all the way down to the ground? Had they both stood so long staring at that envelope?
‘The newsman,’ Manibhai Desai said, coming out on to the landing. ‘He is forbidden to use lift. There are stairs there for the servants.’
For the first time Ghote noticed, discreetly tucked away, a narrow doorway evidently leading to the stairs with opposite it an equally narrow door that must be the servants’ entrance to the penthouse.
He ran over and started to descend the stairs as fast as his legs would operate. The stairwell was as narrow as it could be, and the steep steps were in slabby bare concrete. Getting down them at speed was by no means easy. But Ghote forced himself to go as fast almost as if he were falling, holding out first one arm, then the other and letting his palms smack against the rough cement walls till they stung.
He must catch the news-vendor. Once the man had got away from the block there was no telling where he might go. It might be next day before he was located. And by then he could have well forgotten vital details of how he had been handed that letter and asked to deliver it. It ought not to be long since he had started his descent of these precipice-giddying stairs, and he would surely have no particular reason to hurry. So it ought to be all right.
Leaping and half-fall
ing and saving himself in the grey light of the barely lit stairwell, Ghote wished he could stop for an instant, end the smacking clatter of his feet and hands and hear whether there were other steps going down ahead of him. But he dared not abate by a quarter-second the speed of his downward tumble.
And now, from below, the light of day was at every instant increasing. Would he reach the foot of the stairs without seeing his man?
And now it was the final turn, and out, through a slit of an archway, into the concrete-paved service area at the back of the high block.
There was a water-tap by the wall and a group of servants from the flats were round it, washing out cloths. Not far away from them a boy of fifteen or so was moodily examining an ancient bicycle, upended on to its saddle. To the other side a gaggle of servants’ children, naked and almost naked, played on the dusty surface like a heap of scrawny-legged puppies.
‘The newsman. The newsman. Where did he go?’ Ghote called out with all the force of his lungs.
And, to his delighted surprise, the unpromising boy with the broken bicycle at once looked up.
‘Just gone by,’ he said, and he pushed out an arm, the thumb roughly pointing, in the direction of the corner of the towering block nearest to Ghote.
‘Thank you,’ Ghote called as he ran.
He rounded the corner, and it was all over. There not ten yards away was the news-vendor, a lean-fleshed individual with his head bare, the short, dark hair turning grey, wearing a battered-looking shirt and a pair of shorts and carrying under his arm a still substantial roll of newspapers.
‘Newsman, newsman,’ Ghote called.
The fellow turned, pulling a paper from his bundle as if he hoped to make a quick, occasional sale, no doubt at the expense of some regular customer elsewhere.
Ghote presented himself in front of him, still panting hard from the chase.
‘You delivered a letter at the flat at the top just now?’ he demanded.
The news-vendor looked at him suspiciously.
‘I sell papers, I am not postman,’ he said.
‘But you delivered a letter this morning?’ Ghote countered, trying rapidly as he could to soften his tone to one of polite interchange. ‘There is nothing wrong in delivering a letter.’
‘What if I did do that?’ the news-vendor replied cautiously, still clearly ready to take refuge in obstinate refusal to admit anything.
‘It was a letter for Mr Desai, Mr Desai who lives in the penthouse at the top of the block?’ Ghote asked.
‘I do not know who is who,’ the newsman answered. ‘It is my job to take them papers. One here, one there. Who they are I do not care. Only what they want. And that they pay.’
‘But at the top,’ Ghote persisted, seizing on what best he could to establish good relations with this valuable witness, ‘at the top where you deliver so many papers, you know that?’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘And they pay always, yes?’ Ghote asked, hoping and hoping that the wealthy proprietor of Trust-X did indeed pay this humble vendor of newspapers with regularity.
The man shrugged his stooping, bony shoulders.
‘There I am getting paid,’ he agreed.
‘And as you came to the block this morning, it was to there that someone asked you to deliver a letter, a letter with the name on it in red?’
‘If someone asks, who am I to say no? And besides they gave money. How should I not do what I am paid money to do?’
‘Quite right, quite right,’ Ghote assured him. ‘But all I am asking is what sort of a person was this who gave you money?’
‘It was a person,’ the newsman answered. ‘People are people.’
‘But you must have seen something of him. It was a man? Was he tall or short?’
‘Tall? Short?’ the news-vendor considered. ‘I cannot tell.’
‘But he paid you money. He spoke with you. Was he taller than you are yourself?’
‘Perhaps. A little.’
‘Good. Now, was he young or old?’
But the news-vendor lacked all Ghote’s pleasure in seeing the gradual emergence of a discernible person from chaos. His lean face took on again the look of dulled obstinacy it had worn before.
‘I tell you I did not look,’ he said. ‘The papers I carry are heavy. It is a long way from the newspaper dormitory. Already I was tired. A man came up to me and asked if, for money, I could take a letter. I asked how much. He gave, and I took the letter. And still I have more papers to deliver.’
He turned away.
Ghote hurried round and blocked his path.
‘This is a police matter,’ he said, more roughly. ‘I am an inspector of C.I.D. The description of that man is needed. Now, speak up.’
But he could see at once that tougher measures were being even less successful. The news-vendor’s obstinate look became one of blind panic. To be involved with the police, this was a sudden nightmare and could be ended only by wishing with every cell of the mind that it was not happening.
‘I do not know. Nothing I saw. Nothing.’
The words were almost inaudible.
‘What is your name?’ Ghote demanded.
He got no answer at first, but by putting his face close to the fear-blotted countenance in front of him and driving the question in as if it were a pointed rod he did at last obtain the muttered syllables. And then bit by bit he got the address.
‘All right, go now,’ he said, satisfied with this small accumulation of knowledge and able to allow his insight into the newsman’s condition to produce its proper reaction.
The newsman plodded off, frightened and defeated, his bundle of papers seeming twice the burden it had been when Ghote had first spotted him.
But then, Ghote thought, what more could you expect to get out of a man like that. It would be all such a one could do to get through the business of his own life, earning in a month perhaps no more than a hundred rupees. A hundred rupees, just one of many notes that the proprietor of Trust-X had had counted out to make up that sum one hundred times greater, that he had been willing to pay to save little Pidku. But a hundred a month would mean at best squeezing yourself and your family into a single room in a tottering chawl somewhere, perhaps even sharing that with another family. How could such a man have energy for the luxury of looking about him?
And then, when the newsman was some twenty yards away and as Ghote still stared at him, standing in the bright early morning sunshine and beginning to turn over in his mind the circumstances in which the fellow might have been given the red-crayoned letter, then he stopped, turned shyly round and called out.
At first Ghote thought he had not heard what had been called. But then he realized that there had been only five words and that he had registered every one of them.
‘He wore red check shirt.’
They were not much. But they did confirm a little one of the contradictory statements that Superintendent Karandikar’s interrogators had obtained from the witnesses to the actual snatch. There had been talk of a shirt, either red or blue, either checked or striped. But the consensus had on the whole been for a red checked shirt and here was a gramme of confirmation.
Clearly, too, it was the most the news-vendor was going to be able to give by way of help. But, feeling that some tiny thing had after all been accomplished, Ghote went round the block to the front entrance and its luxurious lift, feeling a degree more optimistic.
*
Up in the penthouse again Ghote found that Manibhai Desai, after the sharp warning about fingerprints he himself had given the day before, had done nothing at all about the new note. It lay in its envelope still on the scatter of newspapers on the floor of the hall.
Stooping down and lifting it with one fingertip at each opposite corner, Ghote examined it. But the plain envelope and the rough red capitals yielded nothing. He went over to the rosewood laminate table where the telephone was and dropped the letter on to it. Then, taking his penknife from his pocket, he succeeded in teasing
up the flap of the envelope without touching the rest of it. After that it was easy enough to slide the note inside on to the table and unfold it.
It consisted of a single sheet of very ordinary writing paper, identical as far as Ghote could remember with that of the first note now undergoing, for what it was worth, laboratory examination. And as it lay on the luxurious-looking surface of the table its message, in the same brutal red crayoned capitals, was plain to see:
YOU HAVE CONTAK PELICE – WE MITE BEEN KILLING BOY BUT WE STIL HAVE SOM HART LEFF – GO TO GREAT WESTERN HOTEL AGEN AT 8 TO DAY MORNING
Pidku was alive.
That thought swept warmly through Ghote’s mind in advance of his swift, cold consideration of the situation presented by this renewed communication with the kidnappers. Within instants he was busy trying to work out whether matters were now essentially any different from what they had been before something somewhere in the enormous extent of Superintendent Karandikar’s bandobast had betrayed to the kidnappers that the police had been brought into the affair. On first consideration he thought that things had not changed: the kidnappers still held Pidku, from the new note it appeared that they still were making their appalling claim for the huge sum of twenty lakhs for his life, and they had begun again to set up a rendezvous to collect it.
So it was simply a question of Mr Desai going to the squalid Great Western Hotel once more and then taking to a new rendezvous the one lakh, or another such sum which doubtless could be got together by the efficient Mr Shah if Mr Desai had not received back the notes Superintendent Karandikar now held. They would have, too, to repeat their plea to the kidnappers to settle for this sum and to think of Pidku’s father, but there should not be any difficulties about that.
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart Page 10
