It was more excited and disturbed than he was used to hearing it. But it was the flat voice he had first listened to on the telephone in the hall of the Desai penthouse and had heard on four other brutally impressing occasions since. It was the voice of the kidnappers’ spokesman informing the master-mind of their enterprise that Mr Desai had not been at the Great Western Hotel to get his instructions for the final rendezvous.
‘Later,’ Mr Shah hissed into the telephone, the power of his suppressed fury making the hushed word almost into a shout.
He crashed the receiver back on to its rest.
But Ghote’s hand descended almost as quickly to clasp his wrist like a steel trap. He jerked it up and twisted it in an instant behind the greasy-suited accountant’s back.
‘Now,’ he said, letting the hatred rip in his voice, ‘talk and talk fast, Mr Shah. Where is the boy being kept?’
‘I do not know, Insp –’
Ghote gave the arm he was twisting a sharp little jab upwards. The accountant let out a breathy yelp of pain.
‘Am I going to force it out of you?’ Ghote demanded.
‘Inspector, you are making a mis –’
This time Ghote gave the arm a more savage push up towards the shoulder-blade above it. The accountant gave a long, sobbing moan.
‘No. No. Stop.’
‘Talk then.’
‘It is a room behind a paan-shop. In a lane in Bhuleshwar. It is called Bawoodji Lane. It is the paan-shop there.’
A dark song of triumph started up in Ghote’s head. He had done it. He had done it. The Holitints factory was in Bhuleshwar. Shah must be telling the truth, and he himself had fought his way to the secret concealed among all the employees of Trust-X Manufacturing.
But had he done it in time? It must be just after nine now since Shah had been told that Mr Desai had not gone to the Great Western Hotel. No doubt, had that call gone on, Shah would have been asked what the men holding Pidku should do now. Perhaps he would have been asked for his casting vote on whether to kill the boy at once. Well, luckily he had simply told his accomplice to ring back later.
So there ought to be a little time. But there would not be much.
‘Right,’ he said to the wretched, moaning accountant. ‘You are going to come with me. And quickly.’
Still keeping an implacable grip on his right wrist, he swung him round the desk and marched him out of the still gaping door. At a sharp trot they descended together to the glossily smart reception area. There, Ghote offered no explanations but simply propelled his captive across the highly polished floor and out through the blue-glass swinging doors. Let the Pathan chaprassi and the elegant receptionist behind her counter make what they would of the firm’s accountant departing in this humiliating way. They would soon enough learn the truth about him.
Outside in the bright morning sunlight the taxi was still waiting, the young Sikh at the wheel happily puffing a cigarette. The meter, Ghote thought in an incidental flash, must by now have clocked up a formidable sum.
As he bundled the accountant in ahead of him he shouted an order to make for Bhuleshwar as fast as possible. And then he realized with a little jump of pleasure that now he ought to be able to charge the whole trip to expenses.
*
For the first part of the journey, plunging southward from the sea-touched spaces of Worli to the close, confined, crowded sweat-pit of Bhuleshwar, Ghote devoted all his energies to extracting from the cowed accountant every detail of his plot that might be helpful in dealing with the other members of the gang in their hideout clustered round little Pidku. He hardly noticed indeed, as his driver swung in and out of the now lessening traffic, that at one stage they had worked their way round Jacob Circle again, within a hundred yards or so of the little Great Western Hotel and its telephone that had figured so prominently in the affair.
Instead he battered without remorse at the greasy-suited Shah. How many others were involved in the business? What were their names? How had they become involved? Ah, so there had also been another of them working at Trust-X. In the stores. And no doubt light-fingered with the supply of new envelopes. Had any of them records of violence? Did they carry any weapons? Had they hidden Pidku in the same place all along? How had they evaded Superintendent Karandikar’s searchers? Had they planned to take the boy to a new hiding-place if Mr Desai had agreed once more to pay them? Were they finding it difficult to move about with so many police in the area?
From these and other questions banged out in the swaying back of the taxi, Ghote learnt a good deal. There were, it seemed, only three people involved besides the accountant. The others were, as he himself had suspected, three pretty rough individuals, the storeman, whom Shah had first picked on to help him when he had detected him in a pilfering racket, and two of his friends. They were certainly likely to have weapons of some sort, though the accountant did not think they had any firearms. And, yes, by dint of hiding Pidku in a storage box in the yard at the back of the paan-shop they had escaped the massive search that had taken place the night before. And now they had been planning to move on, though they had not thought it would be easy.
‘And the boy? And Pidku?’ Ghote asked. ‘Now that they have not been able to get in touch with you, what will they do?’
‘I do not know.’
But the crouching accountant looked so doubly frightened as he said this that Ghote guessed the worst was likely to take place.
‘You must know,’ he said, putting his face close to his prisoner’s and slamming the words into him like blows.
‘Inspector, I swear –’
‘They have all along been ready to kill? Yes? Yes?’
The accountant put his hands up to his eyes.
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘They would kill.’
Ghote swung away.
‘Go faster,’ he said to the taxi-man.
‘Inspector?’ Shah said from behind him.
The tone was sickeningly ingratiating. Ghote could hardly bring himself to respond.
‘Well?’
‘Inspector, it would help if I told you how the paan-shop can be approached from the rear?’
Ghote swung back round on the bouncing, swaying seat.
‘Help or not,’ he said, not disguising his disgust, ‘you are going to tell, and quick.’
‘But, Inspector, you saw how Mr Desai used to treat me. Inspector, I was less than a pi-dog to him. Can you wonder I used my knowledge to make him feel?’
The accountant slipped half off the seat in an ecstasy of grovelling. His lined, featureless face twitched and twitched.
‘You did more than make him feel,’ Ghote said inflexibly. ‘You have nearly stamped the life out of another father, a poor man you knew nothing of.’
‘But Mr Desai had to be made to pay,’ the accountant answered, another terrible twitch distorting his whole face.
‘And the boy’s finger had to be cut off to make him pay?’ Ghote said.
A wild look, raging and flaming, came into his prisoner’s spectacleless eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, even at that cost. Something was needed to stab him to the heart.’
And the depth of hatred that this revealed, like a black root torn out, made Ghote see that indeed the master-mind of the kidnap gang, for all the cold cunning he had used, had not been set on at the start by any frigid calculation.
Yet, whatever glimpse of sympathy this made him feel for him, he was not going to let his purpose now be deflected.
‘You said there was a back way to paan-shop. What is it? Answer up. Answer up, or it will be the worse for you.’
‘It is a passage,’ the accountant blabbed out. ‘It is a passage from the lane that runs parallel. It does not look as if it leads anywhere. There is a pile of rubbish, a chicken coop … But you can get over. And then you are between the two rows of houses. It is easy to get from one to the other.’
‘And the paan-shop?’ Ghote said. ‘How do you know when you have reached it?’
‘That is easy, easy, Inspector. The back part is used for storing bales of betel leaves for the paans. There is no difficulty I promise. I promise.’
‘Hm.’
Ghote looked at his babbling prisoner without pity. But in a moment he turned and spoke to the Sikh driver.
‘Do you know Bawoodji Lane in Bhuleshwar?’
‘Ji, sahib.’
‘Good. Then take the next turning past it, another lane, and stop when I tell you.’
Ghote turned and put his head out of the taxi window.
He was looking for a traffic policeman. What the blubbering Shah had said to him about the back way into the paan-shop garden, the place in which little Pidku must actually be hidden, had given him an idea. If he could hand over the accountant to somebody reliable and at the same time get a message to Superintendent Karandikar to say where the kidnappers were, then he could allow himself before one of the superintendent’s heavy-footed squads descended on the paan-shop to slip in by the rear and be ready perhaps simply to protect Pidku, perhaps even to rescue him. If he managed that, while he was at the same time in a position to cut off the kidnappers’ retreat should it be necessary, then he would have amply justified his taking of the initiative.
Only, where was there a traffic man? They were not far from Bawoodji Lane now.
Well, if the worst came to the worst, he could tell the taxi-man to stop and then send him to telephone a message to Superintendent Karandikar while he waited himself in the taxi with the acc –
No. There.
Some thirty yards ahead he spotted a traffic constable, a steady-looking veteran with a big grey moustache, a model of neatness and discipline, puttees above his sandals faultlessly rolled, yellow tunic crisp and uncrumpled, the black leather criss-cross straps and belt over it glinting dazzlingly in the sun.
‘Pull up by that constable there,’ he said to his driver.
The Sikh grinned.
‘You are going to give me in charge for reckless, sahib?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Ghote said, ‘I am going to pay you damn’ well out of public funds.’
As he took out his wallet and began counting notes, the Sikh brought the taxi to a halt just where the constable stood.
The grizzle-moustached veteran appreciated the situation the moment Ghote explained.
‘Very good, Inspector sahib,’ he said, ‘I will take this fellow to the chowkey just as fast as he can march. There I will telephone ek dum to Superintendent Karandikar and tell him it is the paan-shop in Bawoodji Lane. I know it well, their paans have so little in them it is like having a piece of American gum only.’
He laughed with brisk joviality and jerked the wretched Shah out of his seat in the car and on to the pavement. Then, holding his arm in a hair-matted hand that was like an animal clamp, he bustled him unceremoniously away.
Ghote too set off at a fast walk, judging that even with the pavements as crowded as they were it would be quicker to go on foot than get the taxi to drive further on. In a few moments he came to the entrance to Bawoodji Lane and glanced up it.
He thought he could catch a glimpse of the open front of the paan-shop about half way along. He almost expected to see one of the searching squads of uniformed constables noisily barging into it, with little Pidku at the back still unprotected. But in fact there was no one other than the milling everyday throng all along the crowded length of the lane.
He hurried on. And when he came to the next turning he could hardly restrain himself from breaking into a run as he went up along the narrow lane in search of the seemingly blocked passageway the accountant had told him about. Only the thought that a run would draw unnecessary attention and perhaps warn the kidnappers kept him down to walking pace.
People of all sorts, idling, squatting, sleeping, walking, stopping to haggle, stopping to gossip, taking time to revile and curse one another, blocked his way. He barged and pushed past them. He twisted and wriggled. And all the time he kept glancing forwards and back, measuring and estimating the distance he had traversed, calculating how much further he would have to go till he came level with the paan-shop and could expect to find the narrow passageway.
A mooning cow with a vile, slobbery strip of mango peel dangling three-quarters of the way out of its mouth lumbered straight up towards him. He gave it a vicious push and shoved his way past.
And then, just as he had decided that he must have somehow missed seeing the passage, over across on the other side where another lane turned off at a right angle something caught his eye and then sent a thump of joy through him that stopped him dead in his tracks. The whole end of the short, cul-de-sac by-lane was stained a vivid and unlikely blue from the broken stones of its footway to the tops of the dark, tumbling houses on either side.
The wall blocking its end, he decided still joyously, must be in fact the wall of the Holitints factory itself. So the back of the paan-shop on the other side of this lane would be only just within range of the blowing blue powder. And that would be why that finger had had only a few grains of blue under its nail.
So this must be the right spot. And, yes, there on the left was the passageway. The sunlight pouring on to the faces of the houses on either side had made it hard to see, but, once spotted, the dark, black slit was impossible to miss.
He did break into a run now. A dog, slinking along by the vile-smelling street drain nosing for something to gnaw at, got under his feet. He nearly fell, recovered and plunged into the passage entrance.
It took him several moments to adjust his eyes to the darkness, which seemed at first almost as thick as night despite the strip of hard blue, sunlit sky above. But at last he was able to make out where he had to go.
Yet when he did so his heart almost failed him. The way ahead seemed totally blocked. There was a tall, battered hencoop, round which there pecked and squabbled half a dozen dispirited chickens. Beyond that was a mound of indistinguishable rubbish topped by an old barrel with half its side knocked out. The whole was the better part of five feet high.
He remembered, however, what the miserable Shah had said and pressed on. Past the coop he was able to see over the rubbish barrier, and, sure enough, the passageway did continue. He scrambled his way up the mound of rotting ordure, getting his trousers stained appallingly up to and beyond the knees. But he was able to get over, and he staggered gratefully down the last few yards of the passageway.
He came out, as the accountant had said he would, into a small garden, if garden such a dirt-patch could be called, bounded by low, crumbling walls.
Which way to go? He decided that probably he should backtrack a little and turned his attention to the low wall on his left. There was no difficulty getting over. Moving cautiously so as to avoid if possible attracting the attention of any of the people living in the houses on either side, who might well be more in sympathy with the law-breakers than with the forces of order, he crossed the garden he had got into and peered over its far wall. And, yes. Surely, there, two walls further on, were some soft, springy-looking bundles that might well contain new supplies of betel leaves for the paan-shop.
He hurried on, and at the next wall was able to confirm by the clean, tangy smell cutting over the prevailing low stench that he was indeed within a few yards of his destination.
For a second he stood, crouching so that only his eyes came above the level of the dilapidated wall in front of him, and surveyed the paan-shop yard and the back of the house itself. It did not take him long to find what he first sought: up against the wall of the house there was a small lean-to shelter made from heavy timber.
There must be the place where Pidku was hidden. He hardly blamed the searchers for leaving it out of account. It was only some four feet high and had evidently been built just as a store-place, good enough to keep out the rain. But, confirming to him that what was in it now was valuable indeed, there was on its lid a heavy chunk of broken concrete secured with rough wire. It would quite obviously be a great deal too heavy to b
e lifted by a boy of five.
With one last glance round to make sure no one seemed to be taking particular interest in his activities, Ghote crossed the remaining distance separating him from the paan-shop’s yard. He heaved himself over the last wall and moved rapidly across to the wooden bunker, every step confirming his observation that it was indeed what he had been looking for. When he reached it he saw, as he hoped, that it was only the weight of the broken-edged concrete block that was keeping the close-fitting wooden lid in place.
He shut his eyes for an instant, took a quick, deep breath, clasped the front edge of the thick lid and heaved both it and the wired-on block upwards.
At first the inside of the bunker, which must have measured about four feet across each way as well as in depth, seemed totally black. But then there was a tiny movement, almost as if a light breeze had disturbed a bit of old rag and had faintly fluttered it.
Ghote bent forward, peering with every degree of force he could bring to his eyeballs. And, yes, there lying at the bottom of the bunker was a child.
But what a child.
As Ghote’s eyes grew bit by bit accustomed to the darkness inside the bunker, he was able to make out all the details. Always in his mind’s eye he had pictured little Pidku as an attractive boy, a pleasanter pair to Haribhai, chubby and well cared for with glossy hair and a smiling, lively, fragile-skinned face. The only son of a father as devoted as the tailor would have such a boy despite his poverty, he had thought. But the child lying crouched sideways on the earth floor of the bunker, although from the ball of dirty and knotted rag round his right hand he must be beyond doubt little Pidku, was as far removed from the boy of his mind’s eye as it was possible to be.
He was no longer dressed in the ‘latest fashion, straight from the shops’ clothes that he had, so long ago it seemed now, mischievously exchanged with his rich friend, Haribhai. Instead he was naked. And his limbs, that ought to have been rounded and sturdy, seemed scrawny as a half-starved chicken’s. He was dirty too. The whole top half of his legs was covered with mess. And the face that looked slowly up to the light, blank with fear, was in no way the face Ghote had so often pictured under the horny hand of the knife-threatening kidnapper. Instead it was grimy, mucus-smeared and already blotched with sores.
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart Page 18
